Florida Muslim student indicted on explosives charges has terror past in Egypt

An, er, explosive revelation about Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed: "Indicted USF Student has Terror Past in Egypt," from the Investigative Project on Terrorism (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

Two Egyptian students enrolled at the University of South Florida have been indicted for carrying explosive materials across states lines. One of the defendants also is charged with teaching the other how to use them for violent reasons.

Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 24, an engineering graduate student and teaching assistant at the Tampa-based university, faces terrorism charges for teaching and demonstrating how to use the explosives.

According to officials familiar with the case, Mohamed has been arrested previously in Egypt on terrorism-related charges. He is said to have produced an Internet video showing how to build a remote-controlled car bomb.

Mohamed and Youssef Samir Megahed, 21, also an engineering student, were stopped for speeding Aug. 4 in Goose Creek, S.C., where they have been held on state charges. Police found pipe bombs in their car near a Navy base in South Carolina where enemy combatants have been held. They have been held in a South Carolina jail while the FBI continued to investigate whether there was a terrorism link.

Read it all.

Muslims in Thailand tell tall tales about Thai army atrocities

It's a time-honored technique, hallowed by successful use by Hizballah and others. Honest Ibe Hooper should give these folks a stern talking-to.

"Muslims Battle Buddhists in Thailand's Troubled South," by Jürgen Kremb in SpiegelOnline (thanks to all who sent this in):

Tuwnedaniya Tuwaemaengae, 24, insists that he has nothing to do with the rebels. Although he is a chemistry student in Bangkok, he says that the Islamic revolution is currently more important to him than his studies. He organized a demonstration a few weeks ago which brought the provincial capital Pattani to a standstill. Now he is taking journalists on a tour of a village where soldiers allegedly committed atrocities against Muslims.

The villagers line up along the road to greet their visitors. The region in Narathiwat province is part of the "red zone" where the rebels collect taxes from the villagers to fund their insurgency. In the house of the local imam, villagers tell the story of an army raid and the murder of two young Muslim men. They point to two fresh grave mounds as evidence. But there is not a single bullet hole in the mosque, which villagers claim came under Thai army fire for several minutes.

Muslim students in Florida indicted on explosives charges

CAIR will have a statement as soon as Ahmed Bedier finds out what he's allowed to say. Goose Creek Jihad Update: "Fla. students face explosives indictment," by Lara Jakes Jordan for Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

WASHINGTON - Two Egyptian students at the University of South Florida were indicted Friday for carrying explosive materials across states lines and one of them was charged with teaching the other how to use them for violent reasons.

Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 24, an engineering graduate student and teaching assistant at the Tampa-based university, faces terrorism charges for teaching and demonstrating how to use the explosives.

He and Youssef Samir Megahed, 21, an engineering student, were stopped for speeding in Goose Creek, S.C., on Aug. 4, where they have been held on state charges.

India: Hyderabad Muslims irked by police visits to madrassas in wake of jihad bombings

In the wake of the jihad attacks that killed 30 people in Hyderabad, Muslims are irked once again -- but not by Muslims perpetrating such attacks. No, what has really upset them are police visits to madrassas. "Hyderabad cops visit madrassas, kick off a row," from IBNLive (thanks to all who sent this in):

New Delhi/ Hyderabad: The Hyderabad police have ruffled feathers by visiting madrassas while investigating the August 25 twin bomb blasts in the city.

Sources tell CNN-IBN the police are searching for a man called named Mujibur Rahman but authorities refused to comment if he is a suspect in their investigation.

The police have asked madrassas to supply information on their students and teachers and their source of funding. Police teams, since August 25, have visited at least 10 madrassas including the Jamia Islamia Darul Uloom in Shivrampalli and Jami Anwar Ul Huda in Kishanbagh.

The police investigation has upset the Deeni Madrasa Board, the top organ of all madrassas in Andhra Pradesh. The board has objected to the police visits, and is meeting Chief Minister Y S Rajashekhar Reddy in the evening to register its protest.

“Madrassas is an educational institution; it is open to all. Raiding a madrassas in the dead of night will send wrong signals and create communal frenzy,” Moulana Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, general secretary of the Deeni Madarsa Board, told the Deccan Chronicle newspaper.

Wrong signal? Where should they look for clues to the bombing, then? In Hindu temples? And what about this "communal frenzy"? Is that a threat?

California Muslim pleads guilty to plot to sell Uzis to Iran

Yes, but relax. "This had nothing to do with terrorism," said Deputy Federal Public Defender Guy Iversen. Maghloubi's attorney said that in his own nutty, marvelous, winsome way, his client was trying "to actually try and help a rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran" by helping a foe of the Thug-In-Chief. But is any opponent of the pint-sized Mad Mahdist a friend of the United States? That, unfortunately, is not so clear.

"Man pleads guilty to plot to sell weapons to Iran," by Greg Krikorian for the Los Angeles Times (thanks to Mackie):

A West Hills man has pleaded guilty to an audacious plan to buy as many as 100,000 Uzis in the United States and sell them to officials in Iran's government.

Under a plea agreement reached this week, Seyed Mostafa Maghloubi, 49, acknowledged that he tried to obtain submachine guns and night vision goggles and ship them to Iran, in violation of U.S. laws prohibiting such transactions.

According to the plea agreement, Maghloubi's plan dated to at least October 2005 when he approached an unidentified individual and said he was interested in buying the weapons and goggles.

The individual, who was identified only as a cooperating witness for the government, brokered a meeting between Maghloubi and an undercover Los Angeles police detective who Maghloubi believed was an arms dealer.

[...]

The discussions eventually led to Maghloubi taking delivery of three fully automatic Uzis and one pair of night vision goggles.

At all times, the plea agreement says, Maghloubi -- who was born in Iran and is a naturalized U.S. citizen -- sought to deliver the military equipment to a faction within Iran's government that is aligned with a former president who is a political foe of the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In that light, Maghloubi's attorney said, his client was trying "to actually try and help a rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran."

"This had nothing to do with terrorism," Deputy Federal Public Defender Guy Iversen said.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office had no comment on the plea agreement.

Misunderstanders of Islam say to prospective jihadists: "What will unite you is the love of Islam and the motto 'There is no God but Allah'"

Here is yet another example of the heavily Islamic character of jihadist appeals. Note the emphasis on the ideological aspect of the jihad, and the denial that the movement has any dependence upon charismatic personalities or even upon Al-Qaeda itself: the authors are confident that Muslims can become jihadists simply by studying the Qur'an and Sunnah.

Yet we are told again and again that the people who write things like this actually misunderstand Islam. It would be refreshing if someone who believed that supplied some evidence for this view -- not evidence that would convince gullible Westerners that Islam is peaceful, but evidence which would blunt the force of appeals like this within the Islamic world.

"On Islamist Websites: How to Join Al-Qaeda, Form a Jihad Cell, and Select a Western Target – '[Is] Assassinating the American Ambassador... Difficult For Someone Who Has Already Crushed America in His Home?,'" from MEMRI:

On August 26, Islamist websites posted an item titled "How to Join Al-Qaeda." It is not clear when the item was written; it was produced by the website Al-Thabitoun 'Ala Al-'Ahd, which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Egypt and is currently inactive.

[...]

"You feel that you want to carry a weapon, fight, and kill the occupiers, and that it is our duty to call for jihad as much as to call for prayer... All that is required is a firm personal decision to fulfill this obligation, and participation in jihad and the resistance...

"Do you really have to meet Osama bin Laden in person in order to become a jihad fighter? Do you have to be recognized by Al-Qaeda as one of its members to become a jihad fighter? If Al-Qaeda commanders should be killed, would the jihad be eliminated? What would you do if Al-Qaeda did not exist today? How is Osama bin Laden different from you? - [yet] he managed to establish the world jihad organization. Who provided training to Osama bin Laden and Abdallah 'Azzam when they went to Afghanistan to become the first Arab jihad fighters?

"The answers to these questions are the following: I don't have to meet Osama bin Laden to become a jihad fighter. Moreover, there is no need to meet even one jihad fighter to become one. Neither do I need recognition from Al-Qaeda...

"As the first step, imagine that Al-Qaeda does not exist and that you are interested [in waging] jihad - what would you do in this case?... If you know any young people - whether one, two, or more - in your area, mosque, or university who are as dedicated and enthusiastic about jihad as you are, come to an understanding with them, and together form a cell whose objective is to help Islam and only Islam...

"At first, your cell should have no more than five members, all absolutely trustworthy... The cell must have a commander and a shura council... The commander must clearly realize that he is Osama bin Laden to the cell members...

"Each cell should have a source of funding... When you have several members, you will [surely] find the funds for your cell... Then you should buy weapons, make plans, brainstorm, plot your plans, monitor your enemy's important objectives, and study its moves. Set a goal; for example, assassinating the American ambassador - is it so difficult? Is it [indeed] difficult for someone who has already crushed America in her home?

"What is the difference between you and the hero of the New York attack, Muhammad Atta, who planned an action which even today shakes the world every time it is mentioned? Assassinating the ambassador takes no more than a gun and a bullet. One could disguise oneself as a peddler in order to tail [the target], which shouldn't cost a lot of money...

"The cells must maintain contact among themselves, but by no means in a direct or conventional way. The contact must be spiritual: What will unite you is the love of Islam and the motto "There is no God but Allah." Even if the contact between [your] cell and the rest is indirect, it will be close... You must meet once a month... You must not meet in the same place twice... Personal meetings with a small number of people [must take place] once a week...

Greetings, students of Carl Ernst

Question: When is a professor not a teacher but a propagandist?

Answer: When he forces your intellectual hand, constraining you by means subtle or open to accept his point of view on a given issue. A genuine academic does not think for his students, but trains and equips them to do so. He is not afraid of, nor does he discourage, open disagreement with his points of view, for he is not trying to compel his students to reach certain predetermined conclusions, but rather to give them the means to evaluate competing ideas on their own, and to be able to sift truth from falsehood.

Your professor, Carl Ernst, William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, I am sorry to say, is not a teacher. He is a propagandist. He is not trying to train you to think, but to enlist you as a member of his ideological cadre. Yes, this is a harsh statement, but unlike Dr. Ernst, I support assertions I make with evidence. Here is the evidence.

1. In the syllabus for his course, "Introduction to Islamic Civilization," Religious Studies 180, he recommends that you visit this site, Jihad Watch, as well as the site of the Chick Tract comic books.

The effect for which this is designed should be obvious -- as obvious as if I had, in a course I was teaching, assigned various academic works and then said, "For next week, read Carl Ernst's Following Muhammad and/or watch the Bugs Bunny feature 'Hassan Chop.'" Jihad Watch is a news and commentary site about global jihad activity. Every assertion we make here is from news sources (usually from wire services) or verifiable from Islamic texts. Chick Tracts are comic books reflecting a paranoid, conspiracy-minded view of the world and purveying numerous falsehoods, such as the idea that the Vatican cooked up Islam as part of its fiendish scheme to control the world. By equating Jihad Watch and Chick Tracts, Dr. Ernst is manipulating you into thinking they're two species of the same thing.

Now, probably Dr. Ernst does think that: that we are paranoid conspiracy mongers here, or something near to that. But note that he doesn't offer you any evidence for this view at all. He just puts the two sites in proximity, and lets the juxtaposition do the work.

This is manipulation, not education.

2. Dr. Ernst offers, as evidence that I am not to be trusted as a source on Islam, this page, "Notes on the Ideological Patrons of an Islamophobe, Robert Spencer." Note, in the first place, the characterization "Islamophobe." No evidence is offered for it. Nothing from my books, nothing from this website, nothing at all. His use of this word is, again, manipulative and without substance, designed to propagandize rather than convince, much less to equip one to make his own judgment.

In reality, in my books and articles, and at this site, I explore the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify their violent acts and make recruits among peaceful Muslims. This is not "Islamophobia," this is the only reliable path to Islamic reform, since you can't reform what you won't admit needs reforming. Terror attacks in the name of Islam, justified by Islamic texts, take place on a virtually daily basis around the globe -- and each one shows anew how desperately needed is this exploration and rethinking of the Islamic texts. But Dr. Ernst is not engaged in that effort, and he is not bothering to explain what he thinks is wrong with the way I'm going about it. He's just throwing smear-words.

Note also that in the document, he doesn't offer a single example of anything I say that is inaccurate. Instead, he expects you to dismiss me because he doesn't like my publishers. This is an example of the logical fallacy of appealing to authority: he is suggesting that his own publishers (such as Shambhala) are more prestigious than those of his critics, and that therefore he is to be believed over them. Argumentum ad verecundiam and ad hominen attacks are two sides of the same worthless coin.

I have invited Dr. Ernst to debate, pointing out that he could thereby show me up as wrong and end my influence -- which he obviously regards as baneful, and which extends to a great many people, as I have written two bestselling books and several others that did quite well. But he has declined, despite the obvious ease with which he no doubt thinks he could dispatch me in a debate about Muhammad and the influence of early (and Qur'anic) Islam on today's jihad violence. Instead, he persists in using me as a slide, as Exhibit A of "Islamophobia" in his classes, while declining to substantiate a single one of his assertions. Well, this time the Exhibit is talking back from the slide.

This is no professor. This is a propagandist, and a shallow one at that.

UPDATE: I posted this as an example of the dishonest propaganda that passes for education far too often in universities these days. Carl Ernst, however, is no worse and no better than a host of others. I ask that you please not write to him, or to the President of the University of North Carolina. It will do no good, and -- if your letter is intemperate -- only confirm their prejudices. There is no point in writing to either one, as this situation goes far beyond these two men, and will not change without a major transformation within American universities in general.

UPDATE 9/2: Carl Ernst demonstrates anew his commitment to genuine academic inquiry

UPDATE 9/4: Hugh Fitzgerald offers Carl Ernst's students a recommended reading list.

"The meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any Jihad on earth"

The HLF trial, in which CAIR is heavily implicated, continues with some eye-opening revelations. "Prosecutors say Muslim charity in Texas got appeal to help fund holy war," from The Associated Press (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

DALLAS: An unknown Islamist militant appealed to a Texas-based Muslim charity for money to help fund a jihad, or holy war, against Israel, according to a letter that surfaced in the terrorist-financing trial of the charity's leaders.

Other letters appeared to thank the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development for helping the children of martyrs — suicide bombers, prosecutors implied.

The letters were among thousands of pages of documents that prosecutors claim show financial dealings between Holy Land, which was shut down in December 2001, and groups controlled by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization.

Five former leaders of Holy Land are on trial in federal district court on charges of raising more than $12 million for Hamas, conspiracy and money laundering. They could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

Defense lawyers, who will begin making their case on Tuesday, have said the men gave humanitarian aid to schools, orphanages and hospitals in Palestinian areas of Israel but denied helping Hamas....

The most inflammatory document introduced by prosecutors was an unsigned, handwritten letter in Arabic from the Islamic Relief Committee, which the U.S. government contends is part of Hamas' network of social organization in Gaza and the West Bank. The unknown author told leaders of Holy Land that Palestinians were happy to see fighters carrying out attacks on Jews.

"Jihad in Palestine is different from any other Jihad; the meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any Jihad on earth," the author wrote.

The letter implored supporters to "provide us with what helps Weapons, weapons, our brothers."

FBI agent Lara Burns testified that the letter was seized in a 2004 raid at the Virginia home of Ismail Elbarrasse, who served with some of the Holy Land officials on a group of U.S. supporters of the Palestinian cause.

Another letter, from 2000, was a thank-you note from the Islamic Society in Palestine, a group the U.S. government alleges is controlled by Hamas. A group official, Sheikh Ahmad Mohamed Bahr, thanked Holy Land for helping "the children of the martyrs, the wounded, the injured, and the needy."

Other documents appeared to indicate that Holy Land gave money to Hamas officials and fighters whom Israel deported to Lebanon in the early 1990s....

Bush Administration scraps plans to screen U.S. foreign aid contractors for terror ties

Yes, why bother? After all, Islam is a religion of peace!

"Plan for Terror Screening of Aid Groups Cut Drastically," by Walter Pincus for the Washington Post:

The Bush administration has decided to sharply scale back its plan to screen U.S. foreign aid contractors around the globe for potential terrorism connections, deciding instead to begin with a pilot program involving aid recipients in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip before expanding it worldwide.

The decision, announced Tuesday at a meeting of U.S. officials and representatives of nonprofit groups, was made after lawmakers and several large aid organizations said that the global screening requirements were onerous and unwarranted. An official of the U.S. Agency for International Development had earlier promised to defer the program, which initially was to have taken effect Monday.

The global screening program, initially described in a July 17 Federal Register notice, would have required that all nongovernmental organizations seeking funds from the agency provide detailed information about key personnel, including phone numbers, birth dates and e-mail addresses.

That information was to have been reviewed by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to ensure that there were no connections with individuals or groups associated with terrorism or threats to national security. It would have affected thousands of individuals in nonprofit groups, charities, religious organizations, colleges, universities and private corporations.

At the presentation Tuesday, USAID officials said they would initially carry out a "pilot vetting program" with recipients of grants and contracts in the West Bank and Gaza, according to materials presented at the meeting and made available to The Post by a contractor organization on the condition that it not be identified.

Fitzgerald: Top Five Famous Muslims

I found this at a website supposedly devoted to sport: www.pakpassion.net. The list is an inspiring blend of mass-murderers and mass-media sports stars. The arithmetic needs work.

top 5 famous muslims of alltime

1) Mohamed Ali- the greatest boxer of all time [float like a butterfly sting like a bee]

2) Osama Bin Laden - not none for the best of reasons but is suposed to be a terrorist mastermind. Fights for Al-Quaida

3) Zinedine Zidane- one of the greatest footballers ever comes from an algerian backgroung great footballer

4) Tupac Shakur- best rapper of all time not sure if he is muslim or not but it did say he is on a website

4) Sadam Hussain- Once again not known for the best of reasons but use to be presindent i think of iraq.

5) Imran khan- great cricketing allrounder great captain lead pakistan to world cup glory

i no there are other famous muslims who invented thing but these are mine
what do you guys think it will be good to see your top 5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Fitzgerald: What Islamic "radicalization" means

"We are fortunate that radicalization seems to have less appeal in the U.S. than in other parts of the world," he said, "but we do not believe that America is immune to homegrown terrorism."-- from this article

This statement, variants of which are made so often with such self-assurance, needs to be examined. We are often told that "Muslims in America are different" or "the situation in America is different from that in Western Europe." (At least this concedes that there is a "problem" with Muslims in Western Europe.) Why? Oh, because Muslims in America are so very "different" because they are so well-off: so many engineers, so many computer programmers, that sort of thing. In other words, something about the American Dream, defined entirely in terms of economic wellbeing, but having nothing to do with the legal and political institutions of the United States that help to explain not only that economic wellbeing, but all the other things, far more important than mere bank accounts, that make America America.

Implicit in this view -- "radicalization has less appeal in America " -- is the by-now thoroughly discredited notion, which keeps coming in by the rhetorical back door, that "poverty" causes what is demurely called "radicalization." But that is not so. "Mike" Hawash was an Intel engineer, with an American wife, and Little-League playing children, and a salary of $360,000 a year. Yet he was prepared, having rediscovered and deepened his faith in Islam, to go off -- after 9/11 -- to Afghanistan to kill Americans.

The word "radicalization" does not tell us anything, but attempts rather to hide the truth from us. What is "radicalization"? It is the state in which an individual Muslim, or a group of Muslims, decide to be very good Muslims indeed, and to do all that is demanded of Muslims, including the duty of participating in Jihad to remove all obstacles, everywhere, to the final triumph of Islam. Some Muslims choose not to participate directly. Some choose to avert their minds from that duty, to pretend that it does not exist. Some out of filial piety, and the apparent need to have an "identity," to continue to call themselves "cultural Muslims," meaning that they are no longer believers at all, but don't really want to make that leap into the dangerous unknown -- the leap made by Ali Sina, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and no doubt tens or hundreds of thousands of others around the world, who out of fear do so not quite so openly and noisily follow them.

But those who are "radicalized" -- and these are a great many -- have not embraced a doctrine that has nothing to do with Islam, but rather has everything to do with it. The texts they read are the same. But they read the full texts. They know the duty of Muslims. They choose, however, as their instrument of Jihad not only such things as campaigns of Da'wa, and the careful Tu-Quoque-and-Taqiyya efforts designed to prevent Infidels from finding out just a little too much about Islam, mainly by keeping those tiny Infidel minds busy with "the three abrahamic faiths" and "we revere Jesus and Moses" and of course the five canonical prayers, and the giving of zakat -- for fellow Muslims -- and the observance of Ramadan and the inspirational delights of the hajj, but also violence. And that is what "radicalization" means -- not some different, weird, unrelated set of beliefs, but merely the set of beliefs that arise naturally out of, indeed are inculcated by, Islamic texts read and understood as Muslims have read and understood those immutable texts for 1300 -- or possibly 1200 -- years (for it is unclear when the Qur'anic text was fixed in amber).

But the texts are the same, the same ones read by Muslims in France as in the United States. The same texts as are read by Muslims in Iran, or the Sudan, or Libya, or Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan. The refusal of American authorities, or writers on the subject of Islam in America, to recognize that there is no great difference between the Islam in America and Islam elsewhere, is inexcusable. The only difference that for now inhibits Muslim demands and behavior is the fact that Muslims constitute 1% of the total population, that that population is far less likely, for a number of reasons, to appease or acquiesce as so many in Western Europe have done, and that they cannot act quite as openly, quite as aggressively (though many Muslim groups are doing, in fact, their blatant damnedest) as they do in Western Europe.

"Radicalization" simply means an intensification of Islamic faith, and a willingness to participate oneself directly in Jihad, rather than simply support the effort as part of a community obligation, and finally, the willingness to use violence ("terrorism") as an instrument of Jihad. And that is all.

Fitzgerald: Defend the West by educating it

"The memo's writer, Mohamed Akram, wrote that members of the Brotherhood 'must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.'" -- from this article

Cut-and-paste. Print as many copies as you wish. Email others.

Home: Refrigerator (that magnet again). Wallet. Glove compartment.

Outside: Distribute to friends, family, colleagues at work, that person in the check-out line at the supermarket or the dry-cleaners or the Post Office with whom you deliberately strike up a conversation about Islam.

Keep it up. Don't stop.

And there is more to do with this. Much more. Don't merely put that up on your refrigerator door or bulletin-board. Don't merely have it at hand when you are engaging others in conversation, or to give out to acquaintances and colleagues, always as evidentiary accompaniment to, and not in lieu of, coherent argument.

Do something else. Take this remark and a half-dozen or dozen just like it, and put them on big boards. And then the next time you have to counter-picket some anti-American or anti-Israel or anti-Infidel demonstration, make sure you appear with those signboards, with those quotations in very big letters. And make sure the cameras get a view, and the inquiring reporters can't avoid seeing them.

And what's more, perhaps a permanent picketing of the White House and Congress, in which Infidel citizens, will take turns -- a number signing up who will, from the Washington area (or from out of town) to picket for one full day, outside either various Congressional office buildings, or outside the White House itself. Make it a permanent thing, with a dozen or so picketers, of the "from-all-walks-of-life" school. And be sure to include, symbolically, all non-Muslim faiths and also those of no faith at all, and of various ages, races, and so on.

This should be repeated and repeated, endlessly, at every opportunity, in every conceivable place. It should become and remain a permanent reminder of the nature of the menace. And perhaps a few of those picketers can also have relevant passages from the Qur'an inscribed. You can find on-line exactly which ones make the greatest impression, or perhaps just some phrases -- "Banu Qurayza," "Khaybar Oasis," "Asma bint Marwan," "Abu Afak," "Aisha" -- listed, so that those who pass by, and those who report as well, will have to ask what they mean. And then they will have to listen to the reply as each otherwise unfamiliar detail from the Life of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, is patiently and concisely explained.

Up to now, demonstrators have been remarkably limited and unimaginative. How many counter-PLO demonstrators have you seen wearing signs or chanting slogans such as "Israel will live" or "down with terrorism" or "Israel wants peace" or similarly utterly pointless, utterly unconvincing, utterly boring slogans that mean nothing? And they likewise do nothing to bring to any would-be audience's attention the nature of the menace that Israel faces. Such demonstrations are a useless exercise.

But "Stop the Jizyah" then requires people to find out about the "Jizyah," what it was and what it is and what it could be again. "No to the Lesser Jihad Against Israel" allows people to reinterpret the endless siege of Israel correctly, and not as this phony "nationalist" revolt of the "Palestinians." A sign saying "Stop the Campaigns of Da'wa" or "Stop Demographic Conquest" or "Isn't Ten Trillion Dollars Quite Enough?" will raise other issues -- the issue of what constitutes Jihad and the instruments of Jihad, so that those who apparently believe that "Jihadists" (a word to be used sparingly) are limited solely to those Muslims who use violence, who engage in qitaal or combat, will be disabused of the limited nature of their understanding, and will see that the global Jihad is advancing in many, many other ways quite aside from armed combat, or qitaal.

That's a start. That's a way of forcing the introduction of needed concepts. Begin with that of the "Dhimmi" and that of "Jihad." And go from there.

Keep it up. Don't stop.

There is a great deal of work to be done, a great many people who need to be educated.

Jury wants a hair off the Megahed

They want DNA and hair samples, which may indicate suspicion that Mohamed and Megahed were involved in other cases beyond this one.

An update on the Goose Creek Jihad story. "Jury Wants DNA, Hair Samples In USF Case," by Elaine Silvestrini for the Tampa Tribune (thanks to Michelle Malkin):

TAMPA - A federal grand jury in Tampa is asking for DNA and hair samples from a University of South Florida student jailed four weeks ago in South Carolina on explosives charges, his attorney said.

Andrew Savage said in a phone interview Wednesday night that he had no indication why the samples were being sought from his client, Youssef Megahed.

The news came as the grand jury heard testimony Wednesday from people who have connections to Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed, another USF student arrested at the same time.

Accompanied by attorneys, at least three people entered the grand jury area of the U.S. District courthouse on North Florida Avenue in downtown Tampa. They were the owner of a home where Mohamed planned to rent a room, the landlord's son and a Muslim community spokesman. All three later declined to comment to a reporter.

Megahed and Mohamed, were pulled over for speeding in South Carolina on Aug. 4 about seven miles from the Goose Creek Naval Weapons Station, which houses a military prison for enemy combatants.

The men were charged with possession of an incendiary or explosive device, based in part on items found in the trunk of their car, authorities said. Mohamed said they were carrying fireworks.

One week later, on Aug. 11, the FBI searched a home at 12402 Pampas Place in Tampa that is owned by Noor and Ana Salhab. Authorities said the search was related to the case involving the students.

[...]

Federal court records show that Salhab leased the house in the early 1990s to World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a think tank run by Sami Al-Arian, the former USF professor accused of funding Palestinian terrorist organizations....

Not just accused. He pled guilty.

Also appearing before the grand jury Wednesday was Ahmed Bedier, who has been a spokesman for the Megahed family. Bedier is executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations and a frequent media spokesman for Muslims and Islamic causes.

He was accompanied by attorney Lyann Goudie and appeared to be in the grand jury area for about an hour.

Bedier declined to answer questions about his testimony, saying he wanted to check with the national headquarters of CAIR about what he was allowed to say.

Yes, Ahmed, check with them to see if you're allowed to tell the truth today, or if that isn't done on Thursdays.

Thai PM: Muslims in South don't want peace

Ibrahim Hooper, call your office: clearly Surayud Chulanont is a racist Islamophobe.

"Thai PM says peace talks fruitless in Muslim south," from AP (thanks to Twostellas):

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said Wednesday that separatists fighting in Muslim-majority provinces have refused to take up his offer to launch peace talks.

"As of now, there has been no progress on starting negotiations, because that would require the agreement of both sides. So there are no talks for now," he told reporters.

"My government is still adhering a policy of non-violence, but cooperation from the people is crucial," he said.

Since Surayud took office following a military coup last year, he has made a series of peace gestures to the militants fighting along the southern border with Malaysia.

But the violence has only escalated since the coup, and the government has deployed thousands more troops and paramilitary forces to the region.

Three radio interviews today

The Left won't dare touch this issue; to do so would burn their multiculturalist fingertips. And of course, there are many, many fearless conservative anti-PC types -- and most of the leading ones -- who quail in fear when they see me coming, and don't have the necessities, as Al Campanis might have said, or the intestinal fortitude, to discuss the issues relating to the global jihad and how to defeat it as I set them out, perhaps for fear of appearing to be less than 100% multicultural, or of arousing the ire of some unindicted co-conspirator or other, resulting in their even more fearful and spineless bosses canning their shows.

However, there are also many, many radio talk show hosts who are not so cowardly. I have discussed issues relating to my book Religion of Peace? and above all, why this book is a necessary contribution to the defense against Islamic supremacism, on dozens of shows since the book first came out, and here are three more.

All times PDT:

8:20 AM The Right Balance

8:30 AM Muscle Head Revolution WMCA

11:00 AM Schiffer Report WHK and Righttalk.com

Violence escalates in Caucasus

News of escalating jihad violence in Ingushetia, though sandwiched between anecdotes and political speculation that tend to de-emphasize the jihadist aspect of the story. "Violence escalates in turbulent Russian region," from Reuters:

ALI-YURT, Russia (Reuters) - Petimat Tatriyeva was woken up [sic] one morning late last month by shouts and banging coming from the courtyard of her home.

She said it was a raid by Russian security forces. "About 15 men ... burst into the yard. One of them put a machine gun to my forehead. They said: 'Where are the men? We'll count to ten, then throw a grenade into the house'," she told Reuters.

"When my 15-year-old son woke up, they threw themselves at him and beat him up," she said. "They beat my husband on the kidneys and pressed their fingers into his eyes."

Tatriyeva and her family live in Ingushetia, a mainly Muslim republic where for more than a decade Moscow's forces have been fighting a low-level military campaign against armed Islamist militants linked to separatists in neighboring Chechnya.

But things are getting worse. In response to an escalation in attacks by insurgents, Moscow in late July sent in an additional 2,500 interior ministry troops, almost tripling the number of special forces in Ingushetia.

The escalation in violence shows that seven years after President Vladimir Putin came to power on a pledge to "wipe out" the insurgency in Russia's North Caucasus region that includes Chechnya and Ingushetia, the rebels are not beaten.

In Chechnya, attacks have grown rare, but the problems appear to have shifted next door.

Some people in Ingushetia draw parallels with Chechnya eight years ago. Then, after a lull in the fighting that had already dragged on for six years, troops were sent back in to respond to a wave of rebel attacks. That unleashed a new war.

Now in Ingushetia, reports emerge almost daily of gun battles or ambushes on police vehicles.

This summer the insurgents have killed an aide to Murat Zyazikov, the region's pro-Moscow president, and launched an audacious attack on an army base. Last week a Russian soldier was killed in an attack on a column of troops.

In July, the rebels murdered an ethnic Russia schoolteacher, Lyudmila Terekhina, and two of her children. A bomb went off in the cemetery as she was being buried, wounding several mourners.

In Ingushetia's capital, Nazran, armored personnel carriers drive through the streets. Roadblocks check the documents of everyone entering the city.

[...]

Nazran resident Idris Khamkhoyev said heavy-handed police operations were causing bitterness among the local population.

"They (Russian security forces) are rampant and answer to no one," he said. "They are exacerbating the situation and we now fear a repetition of the Chechen problem."

Sounds like the jihadists aren't helping, either.

In Moscow, some observers see other parallels with Chechnya. The start of the second Chechen war helped the then little-known Putin show off his credentials as a tough politician. It was a factor in his victory in the 2000 presidential election.

[...]

"In theory, the new deterioration of the situation in the Caucasus could be used to raise the profile of the successor, or as a pretext for calling off the election completely," said New Times, a Russian-language news magazine.

Flight delayed overnight because some passengers were speaking Arabic

This is the world we live in today: the jihadists have created a climate of fear and suspicion. They have successfully "struck terror into the hearts of the enemies" (Qur'an 8:60) and don't have to do a thing to perpetuate that feeling of terror all over. If these Arabic-speaking passengers had been ordered off the plane, a lawsuit would no doubt ensue that would make the Flying Imams look like Zionist Crusaders; as it is, if the identity of the "traveler with a child" who "elected to get off the plane" comes to be known, watch for him or her to be excoriated as a racist.

Meanwhile, what can be done about this? For one thing, if Muslim advocacy groups in America became much more energetic in genuine anti-terror efforts, instead of spending their time complaining about anti-terror efforts and supporting initiatives such as the Flying Imams lawsuit, with its chilling effect on passengers reporting suspicious behavior, the fears of many would be assuaged.

"Passenger dispute delays American Airlines flight overnight," by Debbi Farr Baker for the San Diego Union-Tribune:

SAN DIEGO – A conflict between passengers at Lindbergh Field Tuesday night caused the overnight delay of an American Airlines flight headed to Chicago.

Flight 590 was scheduled to depart at 11 p.m. for Chicago O'Hare International Airport but was rescheduled for Wednesday at 10:15 a.m. after some kind of dispute among customers started at the gate and continued onto the plane, said American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner.

While Wagner said it is the airlines policy not to disclose any information about their passengers, televised reports claimed that the incident involved a group of six to seven Iraqi Americans and another passenger who was apparently uncomfortable that the men were speaking in Arabic.

The jet left the gate at 11:14 p.m. but did not take off and instead returned at 11:26 p.m. after a traveler with a child elected to get off the plane, Wagner said.

The airport's 11:30 p.m. curfew then prevented the plane from taking off, Wagner said.

Hizballah to file lawsuits against Israel for war damage

Chutzpah. "Hezbollah to file lawsuits against Israel for damage caused in war," by Yoav Stern for Haaretz (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

Hezbollah is planning to file a host of lawsuits against Israel over the damages it caused during the Second Lebanon War. Lebanese individuals with dual citizenship will file the suits in the countries where they hold citizenship.

Attorney Ibrahim Awada, who heads Hezbollah's legal department, revealed the plan last week on a Syrian television program devoted to "Zionist crimes against Lebanon." He said that each plaintiff will hire a lawyer in the country where he files suit, and Hezbollah will pay the lawyers' fees.

The Lebanese government began mulling lawsuits against Israel immediately after the war ended last summer, but was stymied by the fact that United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the war, blamed Hezbollah, rather than Israel, for its outbreak. The government therefore set up a legal committee to explore more limited options, such as suits specifically over Israel's use of cluster bombs and destruction of infrastructure.

However, Hezbollah was furious that the government has so far done nothing, and therefore decided to launch its own lawsuit blitz, using private individuals.

London-based Muslim newspaper editor would dance in Trafalgar Square if Iran nukes Israel

Feel the love.

"London editor prays for nuclear attack on Israel," by Jonny Paul for the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Jcom):

The editor of an Arabic daily newspaper published in London said in an interview on Lebanese television that he would dance in Trafalgar Square if Iranian missiles hit Israel.

Talking about Iran's nuclear capability on ANB Lebanese television on June 27, Abd Al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, said, "If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight."

In the interview, Bari Atwan was asked if he thought there is a process of détente [vis-à-vis Iran] and an American-Iranian inclination to reach a deal on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"If there is a deal, it will be at the expense of the Arabs and if there is a war, it will also be at the expense of the Arabs," he responded. "I'm sad to say that we have no backbone now. If Iran reaches a deal with the Americans, what will be the bottom line? That Iran will have a nuclear program, and even if it does not manufacture nuclear weapons in the next 5-10 years, it will do so later."

Yep.

Your Black Muslim Hotel

Oakland's Marriott employs security personnel from an outfit with ties to Your Black Muslim Bakery. Feel safer?

"Your Black Muslim Hotel: Marriott still employs security firm with Black Muslim Bakery ties," by Robert Gammon in East Bay Express (thanks to WriterMom):

Over the past decade, more than a hundred thousand visitors have strolled into the Oakland Marriott Hotel and convention center, where among the first faces they encountered were those of well-dressed young men sporting bow ties. These men are the hotel's private security officers, who also happen to be members of the Black Muslim clan believed responsible for the assassination of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey.

Even after Bailey's brazen murder just a few blocks from the hotel on August 2, the Black Muslims remained at the Marriott, roaming its giant lobby and each of its 21 floors. Marriott spokesman Chris Daly said that in addition to providing security for hotel guests and the city's main convention center, the men "even perform bellhop duty if need be."

When asked why an international company with $12.2 billion in sales last year would continue to employ kin of the late Yusuf Bey, disgraced patriarch and founder of Your Black Muslim Bakery, Daly argued that the security firm is entirely separate from the bakery. Nineteen-year-old bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard has been charged with Bailey's murder, and Broussard's attorney has indicated that bakery CEO Yusuf Bey IV was the likely mastermind.

Al-Sadr freezes Mahdi Army for six months to "safeguard its ideological image"

Apparently Al-Sadr is feeling the heat for the mosque attacks in Karbala. "Iraqi Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr Suspends Mahdi Army Activities," from AP (thanks to Mackie):

BAGHDAD — Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered a six-month suspension of activities by his Mahdi Army militia in order to reorganize the force, an aide said Wednesday.

The aide, Sheik Hazim al-Araji, said on Iraqi state television that the goal was to "rehabilitate" the organization, which has reportedly broken into factions, some of which the U.S. maintains are trained and supplied by Iran.

"We declare the freezing of the Mahdi Army without exception in order to rehabilitate it in a way that will safeguard its ideological image within a maximum period of six months starting from the day this statement is issued," al-Araji said, reading from a statement by al-Sadr.

The order was issued after two days of bloody clashes in the Shiite holy city of Karbala that claimed at least 52 lives. Iraqi security officials blamed Mahdi militiamen for attacking mosque guards, some of whom are linked to the rival Badr Brigade militia.

A spokesman for al-Sadr, Ahmed al-Shaibani, denied the Mahdi Army was involved in the Karbala fighting. Al-Sadr called for an independent inquiry into the clashes and urged his supporters to cooperate with the authorities "to calm the situation down," al-Shaibani said.

Indian Muslims riot, Taj Mahal closed to tourists

Are they rioting over the Hyderabad jihad attacks? Outraged at this hijacking of their peaceful religion? No, they are rioting over the apparently accidental deaths of four Muslims. "Taj Mahal closed to tourists after India riots," from Reuters (thanks to Twostellas):

Police closed the Taj Mahal and placed parts of Agra city under curfew after Indian Muslims burned trucks and battled police to protest the deaths of four community members hit by a lorry.

The accident occurred around dawn in Agra when the men were returning after marking "Shab-e-Barat", or the "night of forgiveness or atonement", when Muslims pray for the dead.

Angry crowds set fire to 11 trucks, including the one involved in the accident, said state police officer Brij Lal.

"With curfew imposed in six police circles of Agra, the area in and around Taj Mahal is also completely shut to public as a precautionary measure," Lal said.

Television footage showed smoke billowing over one neighbourhood, young Muslims clashing with police and a line of trucks burning fiercely.

"They are hurling bricks at police sent to stop the violence in one area but the situation is coming under control as our people are on the job," Lal added.

Spencer commenting on your website?

Have I left a comment at your website? Almost certainly not. I barely have time to leave comments at this one. I did comment at a site a few weeks ago, at the invitation of a friend, and can't remember the time before that that I commented on any site besides this one.

However, someone is using my name and linking to this site, leaving comments purporting to be by me at other sites. These comments are, as you may imagine, abusive and absurd, designed to bring me and this site into disrepute.

Note here again: the opponents of Jihad Watch cannot, and do not, bring forth even one single example of anything I have written that is false. Instead, they resort to lies and smears -- just look at the comments fields of the Derbyshire/Spencer exchanges at Pajamas Media, and the recently published CAIR farrago.

Their desperation is showing.

But the bottom line is this: if you see "Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch" commenting at some weblog, it almost certainly isn't I. If you have any doubt, ask me.

Jihad group incites war on West, promises "heads will roll"

"We are working for a Caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia and from Khazakhstan to Saudi Arabia." Hmmm. On my map Denmark doesn't fall between Morocco and Indonesia or between Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia. Unless you go the other way, I suppose.

"Islamic group incites war on West," from The Copenhagen Post (thanks to all who sent this in):

Controversial Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir celebrated its annual congress in Copenhagen on Sunday with words of anger against Jews and the West, reported daily free newspaper Nyhedsavisen.

Nearly 600 Muslims attended the meeting at KB Hallen in the city’s enclave of Frederiksberg, where religious leaders spoke of the rise of an new Islamic Caliphate and the fall of Western powers.

‘The Caliphate can arrive in an hour, two months or two years from now,’ said Fadi Abdullatif, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s president, who owns a previous conviction for publicly urging his members to kill Jews. ‘We are working for a Caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia and from Khazakhstan to Saudi Arabia.’

The union of nations under a common Islamic law could be created by force if necessary, according to another of Hizb ut Tahrir’s leaders, Atta bin Khalil. Khalil also told those in attendance to ‘continue their state of war against the Jewish nation’.

A third speaker at the congress, Emir Shamil, said that ‘heads may roll’ in the recreation of the Caliphate.

Defending Our Own Civilization

Jamie Glazov interviews the dreaded Jihad Watch Director at FrontPage:

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Religion of Peace?.

FP: Robert Spencer, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Spencer: Thanks, Jamie. I am a great admirer of your work and it is always good to talk with you.

FP: Likewise sir.

What inspired you to write this book?

Spencer: For six years now, almost invariably when I would talk about the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims, people would respond by referring to violence in the Bible and the sins of Christianity. Over time I came to see that the all-pervasive sense of guilt and self-hatred that blankets the West in this age of the dominance of multiculturalism is the single greatest obstacle keeping us from meeting the ideological challenge that the jihadists present. Insofar as Westerners are ashamed of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and so many are, they will not defend it.

This is not a matter of faith. Whether or not one is Jewish or Christian, Judeo-Christian civilization has given the world numerous ideas of human rights that the jihadists directly challenge: freedom of conscience, the equality of dignity of men and women, equality of rights before the law for all, and more. Islamic Sharia offers a radically different model of society. We in the West need to recognize this and stand up for our own civilization, culture, and heritage. If we are too paralyzed by guilt and consumed with self-hatred to defend our own civilization, we certainly won't keep it.

FP: Ok, so let's build on these themes. Can you talk a bit about why the lib-Left wages war on Christianity and keeps quiet about Islam? This is a pathology in the context of Islamic jihadists being the real threat to free societies.

Spencer: Well, Jamie, this phenomenon is so all-pervasive that I thought it deserved book-length treatment. Ayaan Hirsi Ali said it well to a Leftist interviewer in Canada a few weeks ago: "You grew up with freedom, and so you think you can spit on freedom." They take it for granted, without realizing how severely it is imperilled. Would Leftists prefer to live in an Islamic society rather than in one that is or was Judeo-Christian? If they would, they will be, eventually, quite unpleasantly surprised: they will discover that many of the liberties they enjoyed were made possible by core assumptions of the Judeo-Christian civilization they helped to subvert, and that those liberties are not upheld under Islamic law.

FP: I disagree with you in the sense that I think that the Left realizes very well how severely imperilled our society is in the face of radical Islam. Just like in the days of communism, the Left venerates tyranny and yearns for submission under it. The Left knows exactly what it is doing when abetting and supporting an entity that it knows it itself will be consumed by. There is a logic to why leftist intellectuals support societies that butcher intellectuals, why leftist feminists support societies that mutilate women and why leftist homosexuals and minorities worship societies that barbarize homosexuals and minorities. It's a death wish based on self-loathing. But perhaps this deeper discussion between us belongs in another forum.

Let's continue: in what ways is Christianity a religion of peace and Islam not a religion of peace?

Spencer: In terms of your disagreement with me, I think you have a fascinating thesis, and I think it is well worth exploring. It is noteworthy, as you yourself have pointed out elsewhere, that both the Left and the jihadists envision an earthly utopia enforced by terror: the Left has demonstrated this every time it has gained power, and Sharia is a recipe for a totalitarian reign of terror in the name of justice and right, as the Taliban showed. I look forward to discussing this further with you and getting your thoughts on this.

So getting back to Christianity and Islam: Islam is unique among religions in having a developed doctrine, theology, and legal system mandating warfare against unbelievers. This is found in the Qur'an and Sunnah, as well as in Islamic jurisprudence. Many like to point to violent passages in the Bible as an alleged equivalent to this, but actually the Bible contains no open-ended, universal command for believers to wage war against unbelievers, as does the Qur'an (9:5, 9:29, 2:190-193, etc.). The violent passages in the Bible are also spiritualized by most exegetes, while mainstream Muslim commentators going back to Muhammad's first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, and including many modern authorities (such as Imran Ahsen Khan Nyazee of the International Islamic University and many others) see the Qur'an's violent passages as taking precedence over other, relatively peaceful passages.

Jesus taught, "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44). The Qur'an tells Muslims to be "ruthless to unbelievers" (48:29). When one commits violence in the name of Christianity, he is transgressing against Christ's teachings, but the jihadists make and sustain the case among their fellow Muslims that they are the believers who are being truly faithful to Islamic teaching.

FP: Why is there no distinction between Church and State in Islam? What are the consequences of this reality?

Spencer: The ideas of the non-establishment of a state religion, and the equality of rights of all before the law, both of which are essential to any viable republican government, arose in a Christian context. The philosopher and cultural analyst Roger Scruton observes that Christ's "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21) "contrasts radically with the vision set before us in the Koran, according to which sovereignty rests with God and His Prophet, and legal order is founded in divine command."

From a Muslim perspective, this is a virtue. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor at George Washington University and author of many books about Islam, suggests that Christianity was incomplete because, unlike Islam, it offered no comprehensive system for governance. Nasr asserts that because Christianity "had no Divine legislation of its own, it had to absorb Roman law in order to become the religion of a civilization." Therefore "in Christian civilization law governing human society did not enjoy the same Divine sanction as the teachings of Christ. In fact this lack of a Divine Law in Christianity had no small role to play in the secularization that took place in the West during the Renaissance." By contrast, "Islam never gave unto Caesar what was Caesar's. Rather, it tried to integrate the domain of Caesar itself, namely, political, social, and economic life, into an encompassing religious worldview."

The jihadist Sayyid Qutb stated this idea more bluntly in 1948. After criticizing both the Communist world and the West for their materialism, he continues: "But Christianity.cannot be reckoned as a real force in opposition to the philosophies of the new materialism; it is an individualist, isolationist, negative faith. It has no power to make life grow under its influence in any permanent or positive way..Christianity is unable, except by intrigue, to compete with the social and economic systems that are ever developing, because it has no essential philosophy of actual, practical life. On the other hand, Islam is a perfectly practicable social system in itself.It offers to mankind a perfectly comprehensive theory of the universe, life, and mankind." In short, it offers a totalitarian, theocratic vision -- which might be quite attractive to true believers like Qutb, but remains less appealing to dissenters.

Scruton notes that in contrast to this theocratic framework within Islam, "the fifth-century Pope Gelasius I made the separation of church and state into doctrinal orthodoxy, arguing that God granted 'two swords' for earthly government: that of the Church for the government of men's souls, and that of the imperial power for the regulation of temporal affairs." While the understanding of the relationship between the two has been the source of a great deal of controversy, "throughout the course of Christian civilization we find a recognition that conflicts must be resolved and social order maintained by political rather than religious jurisdiction." One reason why this is so important is for the protection of minorities and dissenters -- freedom of conscience, Scruton says, "requires secular government."

Scruton, of course, is not referring to the aggressively anti-religious secularism that has dominated the public discourse on religion in the United States for several decades now, but simply to the non-establishment of a state religion. Only a state in which there is no established religion can people of differing religions live together in harmony, enjoying equality of rights before the law. Freedom of conscience can only be guaranteed where one is free to change his religion, or to have no religion at all, without incurring a death sentence or any other legal penalty.

FP: Many Muslim extremists love to paint the West as being rampant with "immorality" and the Islamic world as being somehow "pure." But is the Islamic world really more "moral" than the West?

Spencer: Jihadists routinely deride Western freedom as libertinism: "In essence," one explained, "the kufr [unbelief] of Western society can be summed up in one word which is used over and over to justify its presence, growth, and its glorification... Freedom. Yet what such a society fails to comprehend, is that such 'freedom' simply represents the worship and enslavement to desires, opinions, and whims, a disregard for what is (truly) right, and a disregard for the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth."

However, as much as American conservatives may deplore the depravity of pop culture today, they should not allow themselves to be placed on the defensive by the Islamic moral critique - and not just because of the hypocrisy of the jihadists in making this critique. In reality, the freedom at which the jihadists sneer is an essential component of any genuine morality. "Australian law guarantees freedoms up to a crazy level," remarked the controversial Australian Mufti, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali - but without freedom, even "up to a crazy level," morality is hollow. The secular West, with all its irreligion and debauchery, provides the only authentic framework for genuine virtue. Without the freedom to choose evil, the freedom to choose what is good actually amounts to nothing more than coercion. If an individual is forced to be good, he may display an outward conformity, but this conformism bears no other resemblance to the genuine virtue that is manifested in a choice to do good when one could just as easily choose the opposite.

Yet this coercion is a fundamental element of Sharia law, with its stonings and amputations. The Ayatollah Khomeini admitted this without apology: "Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors!"

The alternatives are not to try to appease the jihadists by deriding permissiveness in accord with their cultural critique or to turn a blind eye to the genuinely revolting aspects of pop culture. In fact, one of the most potent recruiting tools the jihadists have today is their ability to present themselves as those who are loyal to God, as opposed to a Western world full of blasphemers and libertines. Thus a shrewd response to the jihadists' ideological critique of the Western world would be to point out that the Judeo-Christian tradition, with its principle of individual freedom as a prerequisite for virtue, offers a superior (yes, superior) vision of God and the world than that offered by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his sword as the key to Paradise. Certainly there is great moral evil in the West, as there is everywhere else in the world, but that moral evil is an unavoidable byproduct of the freedom without which there can be no genuine adherence to moral norms.

Such a response would give content to the oft-repeated avowal that America is offering "freedom" to the Islamic world. Rather than allowing the jihadist characterization of that freedom as mere libertinism to go unanswered, an explanation of the elements of genuine virtue would take the substance out of the jihadist moral critique altogether.

FP: Who is threatened by militant Islam? Who are the potential victims?

Spencer: Everyone is threatened by the Islamic jihad in various ways, except the Muslim male jihadists themselves. The Islamic law the jihadists want to institute institutionalizes the subjugation of women and non-Muslims, denies freedom of conscience, inhibits freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. So who is not among the potential victims?

FP: Overall, what role is the Left playing in this terror war?

Spencer: One of obfuscation and denial, with a smattering of outright identification with those who would destroy us. There is plenty of denial and wilful ignorance about the jihad threat on the Right also. It is long past time for both sides to stop playing politics with this threat, and to take steps to secure our national survival.

FP: What are Islam's and Christianity's disposition toward reason? What are the effects of these dispositions?

Spencer: Nietzsche once noted that "there is no such thing as science 'without any presuppositions.' A philosophy, a 'faith,' must always be there first, so that science can acquire from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist." It may be jarring to those who believe that faith and reason are at odds, and that religions are all the same, but it is nevertheless a historical fact that modern science took its presuppositions from Christianity, and that Islam gave modern science no impetus at all.

The Qur'an explicitly refutes the Judeo-Christian view of God as a God of reason when it says: "The Jews say: Allah's hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so." (5:64) In other words, it is heresy to say that God operates by certain natural laws that we can understand through reason. This argument was played out throughout Islamic history. Muslim theologians argued during the long controversy with the Mu'tazilite sect, which exalted human reason, that Allah was not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws. "He cannot be questioned concerning what He does." (Qur'an 21:23).

In contrast to the dogmatic stagnation of the Islamic world, science was able to flourish in Christian Europe during the same period because Christian scientists were working from assumptions derived from the Bible, which were very different from those of the Qur'an. The Bible assumes that God's laws of creation are natural laws, a stable and unchanging reality-a sine qua non of scientific investigation. In the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas even went so far as to assert that "since the principles of certain sciences-of logic, geometry, and arithmetic, for instance-are derived exclusively from the formal principals of things, upon which their essence depends, it follows that God cannot make the contraries of these principles; He cannot make the genus not to be predictable of the species, nor lines drawn from a circle's center to its circumference not to be equal, nor the three angles of a rectilinear triangle not to be equal to two right angles." (Emphasis added)

Such ideas could never have taken root in the Islamic world. They would have been tantamount to saying that Allah's hand was fettered.

FP: What reactions do you expect to your book? What reactions have there been to your book?

Spencer: I expect the usual venom and distortion of my thesis from Muslim and non-Muslim apologists for jihad in the U.S. I'd like to begin a dialogue with those who believe, like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, that religion itself is the problem. John Derbyshire has begun this with an elegantly written review at Pajamas Media, to which I have been invited to reply. I have written a reply, and hope PJM will publish it soon.

FP: What do you hope to achieve with Religion of Peace?

Spencer: I hope that all those people -- Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, secular Muslims, atheists, etc. -- who enjoy the benefits of Judeo-Christian Western civilization will be moved to mount a more spirited defense of that civilization in its hour of greatest peril.

FP: Robert Spencer you are a true soldier. Thank you for having the nobility and the courage to tell the truth and for your priceless contribution to the West's fight for freedom. We hope to talk to you again soon.

Spencer: Thank you, Jamie. I admire your courage and that of everyone at FP for your willingness to discuss these issues openly and freely, despite the political correctness that blankets us and the smears and intimidation that are at this point virtually the only non-lethal weapons remaining to the politically correct Left and the apologists for jihad.

Spencer on Mike Gallagher Show today

I'll be on Mike Gallagher's nationally syndicated radio show this morning at 7:34 AM PDT to discuss my new book War and Peace -- oh, no wait, scratch that. My new book is Religion of Peace?.

Thug-In-Chief: Gadzooks, we got nukes

Of course, he has said this before. Many learned statesmen in Washington and Western Europe will no doubt strenuously disagree, but I'm just not altogether sure this fellow is trustworthy.

"Ahmadinejad says his country now a 'nuclear Iran,'" from AP (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated Tuesday that Teheran has achieved full proficiency in the nuclear fuel cycle and warned the West that dialogue and friendship - not threats - were the right way to deal with Iran.

Right. HE makes the threats. WE respond with calls for dialogue. Didn't you read the script?

"Today, Iran is a nuclear Iran," Ahmadinejad told a press conference in Teheran. "That means, it fully possesses the whole nuclear fuel cycle."

Ahmadinejad, however, said his country was committed to a "peaceful path" in pursuing its controversial nuclear program.

Shiite gunmen clash at Karbala festival

More Shi'ite-Shi'ite Jihad -- and undoubtedly still more to come. By Robert H. Reid for the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD - Fighting erupted Tuesday between rival Shiite militias in Karbala during a religious festival, claiming 51 lives and forcing officials to abort the celebrations and order up to 1 million Shiite pilgrims to leave the southern city.

Security officials said Mahdi Army gunmen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al- Sadr fired on guards around two shrines protected by the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

Residents of Karbala contacted by telephone said snipers were firing on Iraqi security forces from rooftops. Explosions and the rattle of automatic weapons fire could be heard during telephone calls to reporters in the city 50 miles south of Baghdad.

In addition to the deaths, security officials said at least 247 people were wounded, including women and children.

The clashes appeared to be part of a power struggle among Shiite groups in the sect's southern Iraqi heartland, which includes the bulk of the country's vast oil wealth.

It's naturally a little hard to achieve stable self-government -- which requires restraint and compromise -- when everyone professes a divine mandate to take everything by force.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said entrances and exits to Karbala "have been secured and more forces are on the way from other provinces." Officials said buses were sent to evacuate pilgrims from the city, which includes some of the world's most sacred Shiite shrines.

Gunfights also broke out Tuesday between Mahdi militiamen and followers of the Supreme Council in at least two Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, police said. And extra police took up positions in the center of another Shiite city, Diwaniyah, after gunmen fired on a mosque associated with the Supreme Council, police said.

The trouble started in Karbala late Monday as tens of thousands of Shiites were streaming into the city for the Shabaniyah festival marking the birth of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the 12th and last Shiite imam who disappeared in the 9th century. Devout Shiites believe he will return to Earth to restore peace and harmony.

Scuffles broke out between police and pilgrims as the crowd tried to push through the security checkpoints near the Imam al-Hussein mosque, the focal point of the celebrations. At least five people were killed, police said.

Early Tuesday, crowds of angry pilgrims chanting religious slogans surged through the streets, attacking police and mosque guards, witnesses said. Two ambulances were set ablaze, sending a huge column of black smoke over the city.

"Help me, Doc, I'm suffering from Islamophobia!" "Read these two books by Karen Armstrong, and call me in the morning!"

The coinage of the term "Islamophobia" is an exercise in blaming the victim. If Muslims want to end "Islamophobia" instantaneously, here's how:

1. Focus your indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Renounce definitively not just "terrorism," but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means.
3. Teach Muslims the imperative of coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

Do those five things, and voila! "Islamophobia" will vanish. No UN program needed.

"Muslim Nations Want 'Islamophobia' on Anti-Racism Meeting's Agenda," by Patrick Goodenough for the CNSNews.com (thanks to WriterMom):

(CNSNews.com) - "Islamophobia" and the defamation of Islam are the most conspicuous forms of racism and intolerance today, and a global U.N. conference on racism planned for 2009 should come up with practical solutions to deal with them, an Islamic bloc representative told a preparatory meeting in Geneva Monday.

The 2009 meeting is intended to review a U.N. conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, just days before 9/11, but the 56-nation Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) wants Islam to be high on the agenda.

"The world since 2001 has not remained static and witnessed new forms of racism and racial discrimination," Pakistan's representative to the U.N., Masood Khan, said at a meeting of the planning body, or "prepcom bureau," according to prepared remarks.

Speaking on behalf of the OIC, Khan told the meeting that "there has been a stark rise in hate crimes, discrimination, racial profiling and intolerance against Muslims in many countries."

And now, a word from Tokyo Rose

A little while ago I received this email from a jihadist crowing about the impending collapse of secularism in Turkey:

another great day for Islam, once again you lose Spencer how bad must you now feel? you kept dreaming that Islam would no longe exist in turkey but the turks have shown they want Islam and love Islam contrary to what you claimed and thought....

face it robert, your losing this battle and war, unlike christians Muslims love their faith and will never turn on it like you christians turn on christianity and become secular atheists.

oh well another victory for Islam, and another loss for its enemies........ :)

In fact I am shedding no tears, and in reality never "claimed and thought" anything other than that there was widespread support for Sharia in Turkey. The demise of Turkish secularism, which in any case was only marginally less monstrous than Sharia in its treatment of non-Muslims, was inevitable, given the nature of political Islam. Were policymakers and analysts not besotted with D'Souzaite fantasies, they wouldn't be surprised either.

But in any case, I wouldn't give up even if there were no one left at all. No matter what, I am not going to submit.

Derbyshire/Spencer: The Pajamas brawl

Here is Derbyshire's response to my response to his review of my book Religion of Peace?.

And here, also from Pajamas, is my final response. Hearty thanks to John Derbyshire for this exchange, which I have enjoyed immensely. I hope he has also.

John Derbyshire wishes I had read his review of my book Religion of Peace? “more carefully,” since he now contends that he did not say – as I had characterized him as saying — that “Christianity and Islam are ‘equally likely to incite violence.’”

I ask Mr. Derbyshire’s indulgence if I mistook his statement in his review that “God’s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ” as meaning that God’s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ. It was on that that I based my own summary of what I took to be his view: that Christianity and Islam are “equally likely to incite violence.” Looking at his words again, I still think it’s reasonable to conclude that that’s what they mean.

But no matter. If he doesn’t mean that, so much the better. He now says, “persons wishing to commit violence will find justification in any text they pick up—the New Testament, the Koran, Science and Health, or the Harry Potter saga. Charles Manson, if memory serves, got his inspiration from a Beatles song about a fairground attraction.” This is obviously true, but Charles Manson is in the bughouse for excellent reasons, and if Derbyshire is now saying that any text – any text at all – is no more or less likely to incite violence than any other, this would manifest a nihilism so corrosive as to strip all words, and everything altogether, of any meaning. It is certainly true that someone who is thoroughly deranged and depraved could understand “Do you don’t you want me to love you/I’m comin’ down fast but I’m miles above you” (from the Beatles song in question) or even “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” as containing some kind of coded command to destroy other human beings, but clearly the words don’t mean that, and that is why we do not see and have never seen large-scale, international movements of terrorists justifying their actions by invoking Beatles songs, or Harry Potter, or Science and Health, or…the Bible.

The Qur’an, however, is quite another matter. It has given rise to a global movement of terrorists who frequently and copiously quote its teachings to justify their actions (in ways the Crusaders, Inquisitors, and all the rest of history’s Christian bogeymen never dreamed of doing with the Bible). Unless words mean absolutely nothing, “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” (9:5) and “fight…the People of the Book…until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29) and “fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah” (2:193) and all the rest (and there are many more) do contain more incitement to violence than a pop song about a playground slide, and thus more violence is committed in the name of the Qur’an than in the name of Helter Skelter.

And to be sure, Mr. Derbyshire is cautiously “inclined to think that Islam offers more and better justifications for militancy than does Christianity.” That, of course, is my entire point in the book, since that very point is routinely controverted in the mainstream media. It is controverted to an extent that I thought it necessary to consider it in a book-length treatment, and to try in the process to give people who enjoy the benefits of living in the Judeo-Christian West a sense that they have a culture and a civilization that they should be proud of, and begin to defend more forthrightly and unapologetically.

This is not a matter of religious belief or proselytizing. I don’t proselytize in the book, which is about the value of Judeo-Christian civilization; accordingly, Mr. Derbyshire’s continued insistence that “irreligious people see all religions as equally preposterous” seems to me to be a bit off the point in this discussion. I am not arguing in this book that Christianity is less preposterous than Islam, and there is nothing I wrote in it that could not have been written by an informed atheist, or Jew, or Buddhist. The fact that Mr. Derbyshire considers Christianity preposterous is noted; it may, however, have blinded him to the ways in which he benefits from the civilizational advances it fostered, as well as to the ways in which the propagandistic “equivalence” arguments that are so prevalent nowadays sap the will of Westerners to defend what we are told every day is a rotten, worthless thing.

Thus I appreciate Derbyshire’s quip that “perhaps the book’s subtitle should be: ‘Why Christianity is a religion of peace and Islam isn’t, and how I wish it were the other way round!,’” but I must reject the sentiment. The whole point of my book is that Judeo-Christian civilization stands for values that are more humane and life-affirming than those of Islamic Sharia. In place of supremacism, conformism, fear, and a culture of violence and revenge, there is the possibility of genuine virtue, born in genuine freedom, and an affirmation of the dignity of the human person that does not – pace Derbyshire’s earlier contention – lead with any inevitably to relativism and the loss of the will to defend one’s own. We can only regain that will by recovering a sense of the value of who we are, of what we have done, and of what we have made. That is why I wrote this book, and why I am as glad as he is that Mr. Derbyshire and I share some views of what must be done to extricate us from this present fix. With all his immense talent and insight, I look forward to fighting alongside him for the survival of our embattled common civilization.

An Ode to Judeo-Christian Western Civilization

Rabbi Aryeh Spero reviews my book Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't at Human Events:

Robert Spencer has done it again. Religion of Peace? is the fifth in a series of meticulously researched and analyzed books he has written regarding the major issue of our day -- the dangerous challenge of Islam to the West. He is absolutely correct in underscoring the religious impulse behind Islam’s latest push to sublimate the West. But a secularized West seems to its own peril unwilling to acknowledge this religious component as the engine behind the hard and soft jihad coming our way.

This is a swift read written in a fluid manner reflective of a thinker who has long thought about the points he makes. The book is not weighed down by ponderous sentences, though Spencer’s ideas are deeply reasoned.

Ignoring Ancestral Faith

Spencer’s main thesis -- and he is on the mark -- is that too many in the West no longer realize that our life of liberty, rewarding individualism and human rights are a direct consequence of and specific to a unique religious philosophy -- the Judeo-Christian one. Because so many have become distant from the knowledge and a kinship to their ancestral faith and since so many are intoxicated by the feel-good sentimentality of multiculturalism, they cannot and will not appropriate to the Judeo-Christian outlook the overwhelming credit it deserves for providing us the life we here in the West enjoy, the life of liberty and choice.

Living in times where the fashion is to pronounce that “nothing is intrinsically better than anything else,” elitists categorize all religions as basically the same, indistinguishable in their big ideas and aspirations. Imbibing such foolishness and lacking religious seriousness, many in the West wonder why the need to stave off the non-al Qaeda form of Islam since they assume our life and institutions would be equally benevolent, appealing and forward-looking if under the control of another religion, Islam.

Spencer proves the folly of such assertions by citing not only the distinct differences between scriptural and Koranic verses but, even better, also spotlighting those who interpret and give shape to these verses for its followers, thus establishing the on-the-ground philosophic and theological realities separating Islam from the Judeo-Christian worldview. He does so not by being disrespectful or dismissive of Islam, but by quoting countless imams loyal and proud of their ideology -- those in the Islamic driver’s seat -- who deride our freedoms, concept of free-will and especially the allowances we in the Judeo-Christian community grant women in making decisions for themselves and as equal partners in family and public life.

In fact, beyond the religious imperative of Jihad -- which demands either conversion, second-class dhimmi status or death for non-believers -- the unspoken yet most animating force behind jihadism is the fight-to-the-death mentality of Islamists unwilling to relinquish the authoratative power men have over their women and daughters and the near arbitrary way in which men may have their way with women -- be it for honor, lust, power, convenience or sheer hierarchy.

There is an enormous difference, which filters down to every moment and aspect of society, between a religious outlook that labels moral only those activities freely chosen as opposed to an ideology that finds coercion admirable even if it results in the called-for submission to sharia law. There is a difference between a Judeo-Christian theology that ascribes to scientific inquiry a rationality conforming to the rational and predictable principles upon which God created the cosmos and that which looks negatively on any form of inquiry and investigation -- rationality itself -- if it could lead to conclusions different from unyielding sentences in an ancient text.

Enemies of the West

Too many in the West fail to realize this for they are still myopically fighting their age-old enemy here, the one they see on the street. As Spencer so aptly puts it: “The most determined enemies of Western civilization may be those on the left who fear their churchgoing neighbors more than Islamic terrorists.”

As with communism before, leftists judge Islam not by its actuality around the world today but the utopia its proponents say it will become when all live universally by it alone. In contradistinction, the anti-American left is eager to summarily chuck America and capitalism by deliberately refusing to notice our high ideals, overwhelming accomplishments and reality of goodness, relentlessly highlighting only the exceptions where we have failed (relatively minor) even though, unlike other societies, we earnestly redress our problems.

Typical of many of the multicultural and socially enervating dummkopfs graduating our brain-washing colleges today is a young woman named Rachel, cited in the book. Speaking to a group of American Indians, she tells the chief: “I don’t see anything about my culture to be proud of. It’s all nothing. My race and culture are nothing. On the other hand, you of the American Indian traditions have something great, something to be proud of.” Liberals love to wax rhapsodically about every culture but their own. Other people’s pride in their culture is considered admirable and healthy while expressed pride in the Judeo-Christian American civilization is characterized as racist, ethno-centric and bordering on ”Nazism.” It’s no wonder they are unwilling to fight to preserve our culture.

Unlike the jihadists arrayed against us, the elitists shaping America’s outlook refuse to see this as a clash of civilizations or a war of religions. To do so, they would be forced to take sides. Many no longer like or identify with our side. For most, it would be “unsophisticated” to have to, this late in the game, extol the Judeo-Christian beliefs they have fought their whole lives and too embarrassing to embrace the patriotic Americanism necessary to fight for our culture. To do so would strip them of their identity and their reason for getting up each morning. Thus, they deny the reality of jihad.

Thug-In-Chief licks his chops

"Now say 'How high?,' Nouri, come on, 'How high?' When I tell you to jump, that's what I want to hear, capisce?"

Little did Noah Feldman and his ilk realize that when they so fervently propounded blue-thumbed Iraqi democracy, that the apparent Shi'ite enthusiasm for Jeffersonianism would come to this. "President Ahmadinejad Says Iran Ready to Fill Power Vacuum in Iraq," from AP (thanks to all who sent this in):

TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Tuesday that a power vacuum is imminent in Iraq and said that Iran was ready to help fill the gap.

"The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," Ahmadinejad said at a press conference in Tehran, referring to U.S. troops in Iraq. "Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbors and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation."

Yes, watch for him to get very chummy with the Saudis.

Fitzgerald: Outrageous behavior by Muslims can be a good thing

Muslim- and Arab-American leaders are upset that the FBI didn't consult them — as it has done in other instances — before releasing the photos on the Internet and to news organizations. […] "We need to get some type of apology from them and figure out how to get back to where we were," said Rita Zawaideh, head of the Arab-American Community Coalition. -- from this article

"As it [the FBI] has done in other instances"!

Why has the FBI ever consulted, for one minute, with "Muslim and Arab-American groups" on its standard procedures? Releasing pictures of those who are sought for past or likely future criminal activity is routine, and is a most successful method, proven to work. Just look at how many of those publicized by John Walsh on "America's Most Wanted" have been subsequently seen by viewers and reported to the police. It is idiotic for police methods to change.

And why were they changed ever? Why were "Muslims and Arab-Americans" ever, apparently, allowed to censor this procedure? And what don't we know? And why do we all suspect, or have good reason to know after having talked to certain officials in law enforcement, to think that a great deal is being hidden from us so as not to arouse the public, not to create any "animus" toward those "Muslims and Arab-Americans" who, in organized groups, apparently think they have a perfect right to limit the public's safety in several ways? They do it when they slyly deny the reason for acts of terrorism by Muslims, and slyly deny in every way they can what is in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and offer only the continued treacly and dangerously misleading propaganda about Islam at those phony Muslim Outreach Nights, those idiotic "Interfaith" sessions ("three abrahamic faiths" etcetera) intended to ensure -- because at this point threats will not do the trick, the Infidels are as yet uncowed, and too numerous for that -- that Muslims will remain safe from the widespread suspicion that they would arouse and do arouse among any Infidels who actually take the time to study the texts, tenets, attitudes of Islam.

Those texts, tenets, and attitudes are observable all over the world, in Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, and not just now, but for the entire history of Islam. For those texts are immutable, and they mean what they say. And so it becomes all the more suspicious when American Muslims do not denounce, day and night, terrorism as a weapon of Jihad -- and when they complain when the police force of the Infidels dares to use the methods it has used for more than a century (those "Wanted Posters" are part of American lore, especially in the West). No other group dares to presume to interfere with such efforts.

Why should Muslim and Arab-American groups have any say in what the police do or not do in such a matter? It is perfectly appropriate, and especially necessary in cases of suspected preparations for acts of terrorism, to enhance our common safety (that is, the safety of non-Muslims, those who inherited the political and legal institutions, and cultural legacy, created in turn by generations of non-Muslims, of this country), by disseminating pictures of suspects. This is a most useful tool.

This is the kind of behavior from Muslims that is so outrageous that it will prove, in the end, useful to those of us who think the sleepwalking public needs a shake or two. For anyone living in Seattle can take the ferry, and anyone might be able to imagine himself on that ferry, with that bomb going off. And now that the photograph of the two suspects have been widely publicized, if those two are innocent they have only to step forth and demonstrate it. Meanwhile, those who recognize their faces now have a duty to step forth and identify them -- especially if the two men in question do not present themselves. And non-Muslims are going to have a very hard time, indeed, as they imagine themselves or possibly their children on that ferry, being sympathetic to Muslim demands, Muslim outrage. No, that outrage is likely to meet with ever-growing Infidel outrage, and once the denial-interfaith-outreach-it’s-all-been-exaggerated cord has been snapped in Infidel brains, once the connection is gone, it can never be put back the way it was.

And it all the result of Muslim behavior. For if they were not to protest, but to eagerly pledge their cooperation and what’s more, deliver on that cooperation, then the mounting suspicion, that grows higher every day, would not mount, or would not mount at quite the same rate.

So the outrageous behavior of CAIR and other Muslims is in fact a good thing, it is having good effects on Infidels.

Fitzgerald: Needed: A Muslims-only airline

The sole purpose of the Flying Imams’ lawsuit is to intimidate the pilots and crews of planes. And it would have included passengers, but the effect on an angry public, quite capable of identifying with those passengers, was deemed to be too dangerous for the "image" of Islam. That image is sinking fast in any case, with each new outrage, and this lawsuit is one of those outrages.

But here there is a question of money. Who should pay the costs of defending such a lawsuit? Should it be U.S. Airways alone? If what the pilots and crew did was in the interests of all passengers on all flights -- and clearly it was -- and if those Muslims who are attempting to intimidate them are also attempting to intimidate the pilots and the crews (and the passengers, even if the "John Doe" part of the lawsuit was prudently dropped at the last minute), then it is all pilots, and all crews, and all passengers, in the United States who should be paying for the defense of those particular pilots, that particular crew.

Other airlines should offer not merely moral but financial support. There ought, perhaps, to be added on to airline tickets the cost of defending against such malevolent and dangerous litigation. For we will all suffer if the lawsuit succeeds, and we will all gain --- those of us who are not in the business of pushing the Jihad against Infidels, in any way we can -- if the defense against the lawsuit is successful. But it is important that the pain of the suit, the money that pays the lawyers, is shared by the entire population of passengers who take, or even rely on, travel by air.

Share the expense, and the pain -- and that way the full and sinister nature of what is being attempted will be more widely understood and publicized. Do not let US Airways do it alone. It shouldn't have to.

Their noisy and prolonged threat of suit, even if it is now over, no doubt has caused severe emotional stress to those passengers who had been -- rationally -- suspicious of the imams and reported them. In such circumstances, should not there be a lawsuit against the six imams for that very threat, and the way it continued until the very last, when Congressional legislation about those "John Does" was coming to the rescue?

Meanwhile, to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, perhaps a "Muslims-only" airline should be established -- Muslims-only except for the pilots, lest the plane head you-know-where -- and with a locked cabin, and possibly armed guards every few feet. Then Muslims can travel on that airline (oh, it can be a very big airline) and on no other. There would still be a security problem on other airlines for non-Muslims, for there will still be Muslim terrorists acting on the tenets of Islam as they not unreasonably interpret them, to conduct the Jihad by "striking terror" in the hearts of the enemy. But millions if not billions of man-hours in security-checks that are needless, would be saved each year, and in other ways also this would be a good solution. Islam divides the world between Believer and Infidel. As there is nothing that can be done to Islam (the canonical texts are immutable, and the gates of ijtihad slammed shut a thousand years ago, and self-dramatizing Irshad Manji is not about to swing them open), then Infidels, too, should come to regard the world as divided in this way. The world's main division is now that between Believer (Muslim) and Infidel (non-Muslim). That makes a lot of sense. It helps clear the mental air. It makes a policy of self-defense against the Jihad much more possible. No more worries over what constitutes a "moderate" Muslim or how to keep a "moderate" safely and forever "moderate," or how to make sure that the "moderate" Muslim's children do not turn out, for on reason or another, to be "immoderate" (like some of those London bombers). No: Infidel and Muslim.

That's what they believe. That's what they think. That's what many of them have acted upon in dar al-Islam, over a very long period, and given half a chance, that's exactly how they would act in what, for now, is still the Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels.

So we should believe, and distinguish, in precisely the same way. It's the only way to protect ourselves.

Fitzgerald: Six questions about victory in Iraq

I have posed the questions so many times before.

But here they are again:

1) Should a "victory" in Iraq be defined as anything other than an outcome which will definitely leave the Camp of Islamic Jihad weakened?

2) If the answer to #1 is, as I hope it will be, "No," then why is it better to prevent the sectarian fissures within Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'a? These fissures are not limited to Iraq. They can be observed in a half-dozen countries, and what's more, they have the ability to set Sunni regimes against the Shi'a who stand to inherit The Land of the Two Rivers, that is, Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia, of course, was the center for 500 years of the Abbasid Caliphate. For the first hundred it was centered in Samarra, and for the remaining four hundred in Baghdad, madinat al-salaam, the fabled city of Haroun al-Rashid. It will also set those Sunni regimes against the Shi'a in their midst, or, to put it another way, they will not be willing to allow the "Persian" Shi'a, those "Rafidite dogs," to inherit that part of the Arab land that is considered to be the place where its (much exaggerated) "glorious history" was made, and where its capital city, "glorious" Baghdad, was the center of that history.

3) If the answer to #1 is "No," and if it is clear that 80% of the world's Muslims are non-Arab, but have in various ways and to various degrees (with the Kurds and black Africans of Darfur, mass murder; with the Berbers, denial of their right to use the Berber language or preserve and disseminate the Berber culture) been the victims of Arab cultural and linguistic and economic and political imperialism, why does it not make sense to encourage the Kurds to obtain independence? For this will raise, in the minds of many non-Arab Muslims, the very thought that it might be possible to throw off the Arab yoke. And this in turn is likely to cause all kinds of dissension within the Camp of Islam, even possibly driving some non-Arab Muslims, whose ethnicity works against rather than reinforces their Islam, to leave Islam altogether.

4) If the answer to #1 is "No" (as I hope it still is), then do we not wish that the co-religionists of Sunnis and Shi'a in Iraq will send aid from outside? Such aid is likely to use up their men, their money, their materiel, their attention, and especially to force the two most sinister and powerful Islamic states, Iran and Saudi Arabia, for reasons of prestige, to necessarily ensure that "their side" does not lose. And since in Islam (as the Americans refuse so far to recognize) one does not compromise but ends either as Victor or Vanquished, such a low-level war is liable to go on forever.

5) There is so much more that might be said, including my oft-repeated argument that Turkey can be made to accept an independent Kurdistan, with American guarantees that such a state will not make territorial demands on Turkey, but will direct its efforts to Iran and Syria. And in the case of Iran, such a Kurdish state can have effects not only in the Kurdish areas of Iran, but among its other non-Persian minorities. One wishes, for example, for continued unrest among the Arabs in Khuzistan, and Iranian repression, and then renewed unrest, just as one hopes that the Shi'a in the oil-bearing Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia will become more and more disgruntled, and that the Shi'a in Bahrain, to which an Iranian official has just renewed Iran's longstanding claim (sending shudders down Arab spines), will behave in similar fashion.

6) If you answered "No" to #1, but find fault with my #2-#5, then tell us please how the Bush strategy, the one to bring "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" and to sacrifice Americans, and American money, to prevent those sectarian and ethnic fissures from widening, and doing everything possible to tamp them down, will lead to a good result, to that "victory" I defined in #1 above.

I'll wait right here. Tell me. Tell all of us.

Be detailed. No vagueness, no "we just can't do this" or "it wouldn't be right to do that." Go ahead.

Fitzgerald: The capacity for reason and logic is impaired

ISLAMABAD, Aug 21: Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Sher Afgan Niazi on Tuesday stunned both the treasury and opposition senators when he roundly criticised the foreign policy, describing it as one of appeasement at the cost of national interests, sovereignty and honour….

Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal’s Prof Khurshid Ahmed immediately stood up to endorse most of the views expressed by the minister, and welcomed the “change of heart,” describing it as part of the change that had taken place in the wake of the July 20 landmark Supreme Court judgment....

Dr Niazi said in his speech that the key role Pakistan played in bringing about the downfall of the former Soviet Union was a blunder. It resulted in the emergence of a unipolar world and gave the US a licence to attack any country it wished, he said.

He said that American presidential candidates’ statements threatening Pakistan’s internal security were a reflection of the jaundiced thinking of US leaders who had forgotten lessons of history and the glorious past of Muslims.

Lashing out at the recent US law attaching strings to financial assistance to Pakistan, Dr Niazi described it as insulting and demanded that “we must return and refuse to accept such assistance”.

He said the country should learn to stand on its own feet by rejecting all foreign assistance as a proud Muslim nation....

The minister said that events which followed the 9/11 incident proved that it was the brainchild of Jews. He said that according to holy Quran, Jews and Christians could never be friends of Muslims.... -– from this article

The Pakistani minister, and many other Muslims, who simultaneously accuse "the Jews" or "the American Crusaders" of staging the 9.11.2001 attacks, and also express great delight at those very attacks, demonstrate how, all over the Dar al-Islam, the capacity for reason and logic is impaired.

The credulous acceptance of a Total System, with its Complete Regulation of Life and Explanation of the Universe (at no extra cost), the belief that one should never question Allah, and that one should never dare to recognize the contradictions in the Qur'an itself (but be satisfied with "naskh" or "abrogation"), and that one should never notice the 20% of the text that makes no real sense (see Christoph Luxenberg on that 20% that makes no sense), the ability to believe one thing and its opposite at the same time, or to find behind every failure of Muslim states and societies not the real reason for that failure, but the machinations of Infidels, the alacrity with which every crazy charge against those Infidels becomes deeply and truly believed, the incapacity for any degree of skepticism or lonely critical thought, the willingness to subject oneself to, or enroll oneself in, some collectivist enterprise, as if fearful of remaining an individual and eager for instruction and direction at every turn so as to be relieved of the need for thought or independent moral judgment -- all this characterizes Islam.

And one example of the sheer craziness that Islam encourages is that of the Pakistani minister above. But it is really no different with any of those who refuse to think for themselves and smilingly, brightly, like the young Muslim woman on the Islam segment of Christiane Amanpour's dreadfully misleading CNN thing, tell us how happy they are to return to the full faith. By the full faith, of course, they mean those Rules To Live By which make it all so very simple, don't they, if we all wish to be simpletons in our existence, and to take a seventh-century Arab-language Guide, fabricated out of many strands -- the pagan Arab lore, the bits and pieces of characters and stories lifted and distorted from Judaism and Christianity -- as the lodestar of our lives. It then becomes, supposedly, applicable for all time, despite the fact that it is merely a Guide to Seventh-Century Arabian Life. Its relevance and application are held to be eternal.

Those who are still capable of thought will be the most offended, to the precise degree that they are capable of that thought. About others, though, I'm not so sure. Some may like the idea of being zombies, directed in what they dress and eat and think and do, every single step of the way. Some may find it positively comforting.