Savage fights back, sues CAIR

The truth-challenged unindicted co-conspirators of the Council on American Islamic Relations have been targeting radio host Michael Savage, as they have targeted so many others before him. They've been pressuring advertisers to stop advertising on his show, and they've been succeeding. Background here.

But Savage, unlike Fox, unlike National Review, unlike so many others, is unwilling to play the dhimmi and kowtow to these lying Islamic supremacist thugs in their continued assaults on the freedom of speech. It's about time that somebody with the resources to do so has fought back.

The text of Savage's suit can be found here. A few highlights:

The conduct of CAIR (in addition to raising money) in violating the copyright interests of Michael Savage was to gain media attention and control so that CAIR would be seen as the “moderate” voice in the media. In fact CAIR is a radical voice that deliberately attempts to be seen as centrist so that media time goes to CAIR and once on the air, CAIR directs its rhetoric to the benefit of its extremist clients. This is a deliberate tactic and the theft of the copyright material was part of a pattern and practice advancing this tactic.

30.

As set forth herein, CAIR is not a civil rights organization but is instead a political organization designed to advance a political agenda that is directly opposed to the existence of a free society that includes respect and dignity for all people and all religions.

The copyright infringement herein is part of this plan. CAIR’s fundamental purpose is to be a lobbyist for foreign interests.

[...]

34.

CAIR while claiming in its paperwork to be a civil rights organization was in fact co-founded in 1994 by Ibrahim Hooper, Nihad Awad, and Omar Ahmad, all of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook.

35.

The director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation counter-terrorism unit has stated that IAP is “a Hamas front…(that is) controlled by Hamas, it brings Hamas leaders to the US, it does propaganda for Hamas.”

36.

CAIR opened its first office in Washington, DC, with the help of a $5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a self-described charity founded by Hamas operative, Mousa Abu Marzook.

37.

At a 1994 meeting at Barry University, CAIR co-founder Nihad Awad stated that:

"I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." Awad wrote in the Muslim World Monitor that the 1994 trial which had resulted in the conviction of four Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who had perpetrated the previous year's World Trade Center bombing was "a travesty of justice."

38.

Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, and the United States. Hamas is banned in the Muslim nation of Jordan, Australia and the United Kingdom.

39.

Plaintiff contends that CAIR is still associated with foreign groups as set forth more fully herein and that the wrongful intent in violating the copyright as set forth herein was based in part upon a desire to silence a vocal critic of Hamas.

40.

The involvement of CAIR’s founders in illegal conduct was addressed on February 2, 1995, when U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named CAIR Advisory Board member and New York Imam Siraj Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel Rahman's foiled plot to blow up numerous New York City monuments.

41.

On May 7, 1996, CAIR coordinated a press conference to protest the decision of the U.S. government to extradite Marzook for his connection to terrorist acts performed by Hamas. CAIR characterized the extradition as "anti-Islamic" and "anti-American."

42.

Prior to 9/11, CAIR continued in its claim that it was a civil rights organization. They made this claim when in October 1998, CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama bin Laden as "the sworn enemy," asserting that this depiction "offensive to Muslims."

43.

Also in 1998, CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the two al Qaeda bombings of American embassies in Africa. CAIR’s leader Ibrahim Hooper, claimed the bombings resulted from "misunderstandings of both sides."

44.

In a July 1998 news article CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad is quoted speaking to a group of California Muslims expressing his hope of seeing an America under the domination of Islam. In that article, Ahmad is quoted as saying,

Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.

45.

On October 5, 2001, just weeks after 9/11, CAIR’s New York office sent a letter to The New York Times arguing that the paper had misidentified three of the hijackers and suggesting that the attacks may have been committed by people who were impersonating Arab Muslims.

46.

CAIR further exploited 9/11 as it put on its website a picture of the World Trade Center in flames and below it a call for donations that was linked to the Holy Land Foundation website.

47.

The HLF is the Holy Land Foundation. On December 4, 2001, the Attorney General of the United States stated that “the Holy Land Foundation, received much of its early money from Mousa Abu Marzuq, a top Hamas official who, the U.S. courts have determined, was directly involved in terrorism."

48.

The use CAIR’s website to misappropriate the spirit of 9/11 charity to raise money for a terror organization is a pattern of conduct of CAIR that has been repeated with the appropriation of Michael Savage’s material for CAIR’s own purpose. While the outrage of diverting 9/11 charity is unmatched in its callousness, the success of that enterprise may well have emboldened CAIR in its present conduct.

49.

When the President of the United States closed the Holy Land Foundation in December 2001 for collecting money "to support the Hamas terror organization," CAIR decried his action as "unjust" and "disturbing."

50.

On April 20, 2002, CAIR’s director spoke at a rally in Washington D.C. He spoke from a podium next to a Hezbollah flag.

51.

On December 29, 2004 Wagdy Ghoneim, an extremist Egyptian cleric known for his advocacy in support of violence and hatred for Jews, decided to voluntarily leave the country after being accused of immigration violation, CAIR’s director in California, Hussam Ayloush, told The Los Angeles Times that the case demonstrated “the selective application of laws on Muslims.” CAIR has never publicly criticized the radical statements made by Ghoneim.

52.

In a July 7, 2004 interview with BBC, Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s spokesman, defended Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, a Qatar-based Muslim cleric known for his support for terrorism, as “respectable,” adding: “I don't think there's any incitement of violence on his part.” Qaradawi was an open supporter of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, as well as groups targeting U.S. forces in Iraq. Qaradawi is barred from entering the U.S. because of his advocacy of violence.

53.

On April 13, 2005: Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter, and two of his brothers, were found guilty of supporting terrorism by funneling money to the leader of Hamas. They were convicted in a federal court in Texas of handling and trying to conceal an investment by senior Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzuq. In July 2004, Ghassan Elashi was convicted on separate charges of illegally exporting goods to Syria and of money laundering. At that time, a representative of CAIR’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter, Khalil Meek, argued that the only thing the Elashis were guilty of was the “crime of being Muslims in America.

54.

On February 21, 2006, CAIR National Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar appeared on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country debating the Dubai side of the U.S. ports story. Michael Savage was the leader of the public opposition to the purchase of major U.S. ports by Dubai and Savage herein alleges that the misappropriation and misuse of his content as set forth herein was done in part in retaliation for Savage’s opposition to overseas ownership of such a strategic asset.

55.

Such political conduct in favor of foreign organizations supporting violence has continued to the present up to and including the time of the copyright infringement and during all times known to plaintiff up to the date of the filing of this lawsuit.

56.

At 8:00 pm on June 6, 2006, the Ohio affiliate of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OH) honored one of the unindicted conspirators in that 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj had also served as a defense witness at the trial of one of the men convicted for that terrorist attack, the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman (a conviction that CAIR has labeled “a travesty of justice”). More than 400 CAIR-OH supporters gathered at this fund-raising banquet.

57.

On August 7, 2006: Altaf Ali, executive director of CAIR-Florida, published an opinion piece in the Sun-Sentinel, in which he compared Israel and the U.S. government to Al Qaeda.

58.

On August 12, 2006: CAIR participated in and endorsed several rallies in support of Hezbollah and the “resistance” fighting American forces in Iraq.

59.

In October, 2006 a CAIR affiliated publication, InFocus, printed an article supporting Hezbollah. The commentary claimed that the war was part of an American-British conspiracy, a “phase of the larger plans of the colonialist superpowers.” It also praised the “epic heroism of the resistance fighters”.

60.

In May 2007 CAIR was identified by the government as an unindicted co-conspirator in a case involving a charity that was allegedly affiliated with Hamas. Federal prosecutors in the case of the Holy Land Foundation listed CAIR under the category: “Individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” The government also listed Omar Ahmad, CAIR’s founder and chairman emeritus, under the same category.

61.

In August 2-7, 2007 during the Holy Land Foundation trial in Texas, FBI agent Lara Burns testified about evidence connecting CAIR and two of its founders to the Holy Land Foundation as well as to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood movement that established Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. The agent identified CAIR executive director Nihad Awad as one of the scheduled participants at a meeting of Hamas officials in a hotel in Philadelphia in 1993. At the time, Awad was a representative of IAP. Burns also identified CAIR co-founders Awad and Omar Ahmed as members of the Palestine Committee set up by the Muslim Brotherhood.

62.

Attacks on other public figures have included an attack on Presidential candidate, Rudy Guiliani for using the phrase “Islamic Terrorism” and for accepting the endorsement of Pat Robertson whose endorsement of Guiliani included a reference to the “bloodlust of Islamic terrorists”.

63.

CAIR also attacked Guiliani’s choice of Daniel Pipes as foreign policy advisor. Pipes is the person who first published (in 1998) the quotation from CAIR’s cofounder that:

Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.

64.

CAIR has a pattern and practice of attacking critics. On or about January 6, 2004, an attorney and agent for CAIR wrote a “cease and desist letter” to Andrew Whitehead who runs a website www.anti-cair-net.org. In this letter, CAIR attacked Mr. Whitehead’s exposure of CAIR’s foreign ties deeming those facts as being “sociopathic and xenophobic,”. When Whitehead would not yield to CAIR’s demands they filed a

$ 1.3 million dollar libel lawsuit against him.

65.

Whitehead countersued and in his allegations made assertions similar to those of Daniel Pipes where he asserted that “Douglas Hooper, a/k/a “Ibrahim” Hooper (“Hooper”), CAIR's Director of Communications, also worked for the IAP before joining CAIR. He has stated: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future…” Hooper has defended payments of bounties to the families of suicide bombers who kill Jews.”

66.

CAIR later dismissed that lawsuit at a time when Whitehead’s attorneys started demanding information relating to CAIR’s sources of funding.

67.

The theft of Michael Savage’s copyrighted material and the destruction of the proper context of that material is yet another tactic to silence critics of CAIR. CAIR was specifically and by name attacked by Michael Savage in his October 29, 2007 statement but CAIR did not contest the truth of Savage’s attack on CAIR but instead sought to steal and sully his copyrighted work. Clearly CAIR did not wish to defend themselves and lose in the same manner that they failed in the lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead, therefore this new tactic was employed.

68.

Based upon these facts and further facts to be produced at trial, plaintiff alleges that CAIR is not a civil rights organization but instead is a political vehicle of international terrorism and that the copyright infringement itself and the manner in which the material was used, was part of a deliberate practice and pattern to do material harm to those voices who speak against the violent agenda of CAIR’s clients. The attack on Rudy Guiliani, Daniel Pipes, Andrew Whitehead and Michael Savage are part of a pattern and practice to silence critics of CAIR and critics of CAIR’s foreign agenda under the false guise of civil rights.

69.

In the summer of 2007, CAIR supported international terror when, in response to renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian terror organizations in Gaza , CAIR did not condemn the terror organizations that provoked the fighting but instead launched an anti-Israel media campaign. This has nothing to do with the civil rights of Muslim Americans. When CAIR is criticized for these tactics, it unleashes campaigns against these critics under the guise of “civil rights” as set forth above and as will be further proven at trial.

70.

Therefore CAIR seeks to silence its critics including those who use strong language but do not advocate violence while CAIR itself supports people who use even stronger language and advocate and urge actual violence against innocent civilians; all this under the guise of being a “civil rights organization”

Muslim Math

Sudanese Muslims burn a photo of the Muhammad teddy bear teacher

Mohammed + Teddy Bear = Riot

Mohammed + Atta = No Riots

Have I got that right?

Detroit man pleads guilty in bid to aid Hizballah

Aiding the jihad from Detroit. "Detroit man pleads guilty in bid to aid Hezbollah," from Reuters (thanks to Sr. Soph):

DETROIT (Reuters) - A Detroit-area man on Thursday pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges after a failed 1998 attempt to deliver global positioning systems and night-vision goggles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Fawzi Assi, 47, pleaded guilty in federal court in Detroit to attempting to provide support to a terrorist organization under U.S. law, federal prosecutors said.

The guilty plea marked the latest twist one of the first prosecutions under a 1996 U.S. law that made it illegal to provide money or other aid to terrorists groups as defined by the U.S. government....

Assi, who has been held in federal prison for the past three and a half years, now faces up to a 10-year prison term and a fine of up to $250,000, prosecutors said....

At the time of his arrest, Assi, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to the United States in 1978, was an engineer with Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford Motor Co.

Washington Post reporter slouches towards journalism

As predicted here last week, Perry Bacon, Jr., a reporter for the Washington Post, has demonstrated what passes for journalistic integrity these days by taking an eight-month-old column of mine in which I discuss the implications of Barack Obama's not being a Muslim as evidence that I'm involved in spreading rumors that he is a Muslim.

In "Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him" in yesterday's Post, Bacon says this:

Robert Spencer, a conservative activist, wrote in Human Events that "given Obama's politics, it will not be hard to present him internationally as someone who understands Islam and Muslims, and thus will be able to smooth over the hostility between the Islamic world and the West -- our first Muslim President."

Was I saying in this that Obama would, if elected, be our first Muslim President in a literal sense? Clearly not. I was saying he could be our first Muslim President the way Bill Clinton was our first black President. The whole first part of the column is about his not being a Muslim, and what the implications of that were in light of revelations in a Los Angeles Times piece that I linked at the beginning of the column. Although the link is now broken, the LA Times article can be found here. It says:

"To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago," Gibbs' Jan. 24 statement said. In a statement to The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, the campaign offered slightly different wording, saying: "Obama has never been a practicing Muslim." The statement added that as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood's Islamic center.

His former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama's grade-school teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both of the schools he attended.

So in my column I discussed what the reaction in the Islamic world might be to Obama's being, at least in the sense involved in his school registration, an ex-Muslim. Perry Bacon, however, makes no mention of that part of my column, or of the LA Times article from which I drew my information. He also, as I noted last week, made no attempt to contact me, although he did manage to get through to Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR, who of course told him that these horrible rumors I'm allegedly feeding were all part of our society's lamentable Islamophobia:

"The underlying point is that if you can somehow pin Islam on him, that would be a fatal blow," Hooper said. "It's offensive. It speaks to the rising level of anti-Muslim feeling in our society."

Ibrahim, I'll tell you what's offensive: pseudo-journalists like Perry Bacon who write agenda-driven articles like this one, and the facts be damned. But you wouldn't know anything about speaking out with no regard for the facts, now, would you?

43 held after bombs found at Christian fundamentalist leader's office -- no, wait...

Seriously, since -- as most assume -- all religions are equally capable of inciting their adherents to violence, why don't we see real headlines like the one above? Baptists targeting Methodists, Presbyterians bloodily retaliating for the last Episcopalian attack -- you get the idea. "43 Held after Bombs Found at Sunni Leader's Office," from AFP (thanks to all who sent this in):

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Authorities arrested more people on Friday after car bombs were found near the offices of Iraqi politician Adnan al-Dulaimi but did not say whether they thought he was the target or intended to use them himself.

Dulaimi, who told AFP he may have been targeted, said US and Iraqi troops held 43 people in raids on his Baghdad office and home after discovering two primed car bombs nearby.

"Early in the morning US and Iraqi troops came to my home and arrested 30 people, including my son Mekki," Dulaimi said.

He said troops had detained 13 people in a Thursday evening raid.

At the time, the Iraqi military Thursday announced the discovery of two vehicles packed with explosives at the premises in Baghdad's Hail Adel neighbourhood.

"Two car bombs, primed to explode, were found inside the office compound," Iraqi army spokesman Brigadier General Qasim Ata said on Thursday.

Troops destroyed the bombs in controlled explosions, causing heavy damage to Dulaimi's office and several nearby houses.

"It's a matter of regret that we found these car bombs at his office," Ata added, without saying whether Dulaimi was the target or whether the vehicles were meant to be detonated elsewhere.

On Friday, Dulaimi dissociated himself from the vehicles, which he said were found "somewhere behind my office and not close to it."

"There was no car bomb in or near my office," he insisted.

"I want to tell the Iraqi government, the American and Iraqi forces to check the information correctly because this announcement will make problems for the political process."

Indeed.

Thrilla in Londonistan: Ayaan Hirsi Ali vs. Ed Husain

I don't believe that Richard Dawkins actually exists, but whoever runs the richarddawkins.net website has posted audio of a bout for the ages -- not quite Ali vs. Frazier, but there is an Ali involved: Ayaan Hirsi Ali debating Ed Husain at the Centre for Social Cohesion.

Listen and judge for yourself who got the better of the argument. However, note also that Husain, after the manner of debate losers throughout the ages, has retold his side of the story in another forum, attacking Hirsi Ali and, unaccountably, Ibn Warraq and me in a Guardian column. My response, which touches on many of the arguments he makes in this debate, can be found here.

Purported bin Laden message to Europe: Quit Afghan war

An update on this story, from CNN:

(CNN) -- An audio recording attributed to Osama bin Laden called on Europeans to abandon Afghanistan and accused NATO troops of killing women and children there.

Projection. After all, jihadists -- al-Qaeda and otherwise -- never, ever, ever targeted women and children.

The message surfaced on Al Jazeera television three days after al Qaeda's TV production unit promised fresh communication from the world's most-wanted terrorist leader.

It's the first message purported to be from bin Laden since the Arabic-language TV network aired an audiotape last month.

In Thursday's message, the speaker claims sole responsibility for the September 11, 2001, attacks and accuses America's NATO allies of killing civilians in Afghanistan, where the country's Taliban rulers allowed al Qaeda to operate prior to 9/11.

"You didn't respect the rules of war and attacked and killed women and children on purpose," the speaker says.

The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified. It is believed to be new, but there was no indication when it was recorded.

[...]

About 41,000 troops from the United States, NATO and other countries are taking part in the fighting, the largest ground operation in NATO's nearly 60-year history.

The previous message from bin Laden included no dated references, making it impossible to determine when it was taped based on its contents. In the message, bin Laden called on his followers to be loyal to the Islamic nation, not to individual leaders, groups, tribes or countries.

The tape marked the first time bin Laden spoke directly to the militants.

"Beware of your enemies, especially those who infiltrate your ranks," he said in Arabic.

"I advise myself and the Islamic nation not to follow individuals and countries," he said. "Everything should be seen in the light of Islam."

Addressing the mujahedeen in Iraq as "my brothers," he said, "You have done well to perform your duty."

Take this dough and use it to get married

This reminds me of an old Edward G. Robinson movie I saw once -- the name escapes me -- in which the horrified good guys discover that "putting out a contract" on someone meant "arranging for them to be killed." The argot is clumsy and not hard to decipher, although I suppose those using it escaped the attention of law enforcement officials, and that was all they wanted to do.

"Terrorism accused explains Islamist internet code," from AFP (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Schleswig - A terrorism suspect on trial in Germany declared Thursday his devotion to Osama bin Laden and explained the code words used by Islamists during internet chat.

Moroccan-born Redouane al-H said that when a member of an Islamist internet community was arrested, the others told one another he was "sick."

The codeword for explosives was "dough." He added that a "taxi driver" meant a suicide bomber and to "marry" meant dying as a martyr.

H, who is accused of forming a terrorist group to recruit suicide bombers for Iraq, was giving substantive testimony for the first time at his trial in the German city of Schleswig, near the Danish border.

H, aged 37, confirmed he had sworn a vow of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network which mounted the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

"Osama bin Laden is my religious authority," he said, adding that he had wanted to move to Iraq in summer 2005 to take part in a jihad or holy war against Americans, whom he described as Crusaders.

He confirmed that later, in an internet chat, he had said he would kill Crusaders, but he denied forming a terrorist group, saying he and his friends had merely planned a relief operation for Darfur, Sudan....

Rice compares Israelis and Palestinians to blacks in segregated South

Witless Moral Equivalence Update: the Secretary of State feels their pain. Let's tease out her analogy: the Israelis are at once white segregationists and the victims of racist bombers, and the Palestinians are simultaneously white racist bombers and poor black victims of segregation.

All right.

Does she realize that the checkpoints from which the Palestinians suffer are a result of the bombings? Does she understand that there would be no checkpoints if there were not so many Palestinians determined to murder Israelis and destroy Israel? Does she understand that the checkpoints exist not "because they are Palestinian," but because they approve of and abet murderous jihadism?

Probably not.

From "FM's complaints of Arab conduct denied" in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

She told delegates that when a local church was bombed by white separatists, four girls were killed, including one of her classmates.

"Like the Israelis, I know what it is like to go to sleep at night, not knowing if you will be bombed, of being afraid to be in your own neighborhood, of being afraid to go to your church," she said.

She added, however, that as a black child in the South, forbidden to use certain water fountains and shunned from certain restaurants, she was also in a good position to understand the feelings of the Palestinians.

"I know what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian," she said. "I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness."

"There is pain on both sides," Rice concluded. "This has gone on too long."

Fitzgerald: A problem that cannot be solved, only managed

Abbas -- Abu Mazen -- has no power to commit anyone to anything. That is, he has no power to commit anyone on the Arab side. But Bush and Rice have set things up, in this ill-thought out attempt to come up with something, anything, that might be considered a "diplomatic victory in the Middle East" (given the obvious failure to deal adequately with the worldwide Jihad, and the obvious squandering of men, money, matériel, morale and attention in Tarbaby Iraq), so that Abbas' mere appearance at this Annapolis farce, happily of short duration, will commit Israel to several things.

His appearance will commit Israel yet again, publicly, in the form of the speeches and public commitments made by a hopelessly maladroit, terminally weak, and quite possibly corrupt prime minister, to the very idea not only of the "Palestinian people" (an idea that has to be undone, not further ratified for the nth time, by some idiotic Israeli unaware of how that clever construct prevents the recognition of the Lesser Jihad against Israel) but to the idea of a "solution" to that Lesser Jihad.

A “solution" is what Rice repeatedly calls for. In this she echoes Indyk, and the self-assured platitudinous dead-wrong "everyone-agrees-that-there-are-four-core-issues" Aaron Miller, along with every hass and ross and tinpot shuttle-diplomat whose entire career has been spent engaged in some phony "peace process" that continues to ignore The Real Core Issue: Islam, and the refusal, by Muslims, properly following the texts and tenets of Islam, to countenance the permanent existence of an Infidel state, whatever its size, on land once ruled by Muslims, land and, what's more, on land that is smack in the middle of Dar al-Islam.

There is NO "solution" – none -- to the Arab Muslim opposition to Israel's existence. Any further surrenders by the Israelis will only whet, not sate, Arab and Muslim appetites. The Western world, and that includes Rice and Bush and so on, attributes a desire to compromise to the Muslim Arabs -- a genuine ability to accept, and accept forever, the existence of Israel. No, it is not possible. Even if a handful of unrepresentative plausible Muslims, and I do not mean the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, who differ from the Fast Jihadists of Hamas only in matters of timing and tactics, not in ultimate goals, were actually to say they could countenance an Israel reduced in size and power, why should Israel entrust its fate to what they think, or think they think? Do they speak, can they speak, for the primitive Muslim masses, any more than Ahmad Chalabi could speak for the "Iraqi people"? Policy has to be made on a basis other than that of this or that plausible smiler, saying exactly what he thinks, at a minimum, must be said to please his powerful Infidel hosts or interlocutors.

But those who have studied Islam, studied the behavior, over many decades, of the Arabs, know perfectly well -- unless those students are apologists for Islam, collaborators with Muslims, out of conviction or cupidity (or sometimes both), or possibly are antisemites (or sometimes both) -- that the Arabs have no intention of recognizing Israel. Ask the defectors from that world. Ask Wafa Sultan. Ask Nonie Darwish. Ask Walid Shoebat. They know.

No, there is not a "solution." There is one way to prevent open warfare. It is to create, and maintain, a situation in which Israel is not only vastly more powerful militarily, but is widely understood in the Arab and Muslim world to be so, which allows Arab leaders the excuse of not going to war based on their invocation of the concept of Darura, or Necessity. That, and that alone, can justify, in the minds of the Muslim masses, a failure to take military action against Israel. Moral arguments are not relevant.

And so the Lesser Jihad must be held in check, and it can be held in check, but only if egregious meddlers from outside, eager to score points, allow it to be held in check. But instead, the Arab war on Israel, blandly miscalled the "Palestinian-Israel" conflict, has become a Theme Park where failed politicians such as Blair, or failing Administrations, such as that of Bush, in its last throes, decide to win some temporary fame and respite from criticism through doing the only thing it apparently knows how to do: Work On The Peace Process Between Israel And The "Palestinians." Come one, come all -- let's all go to the Middle East, or shuttle back on forth, or invite everyone here to Annapolis, to "jump-start" the "peace process" yet again, and "get things back on track" and deal with those "four core issues” that Aaron Miller and everyone else in the know just knows, because you see otherwise they wouldn't be in the know, would they? Those are the only Core Issues that exist, even when those "core issues" are in fact mere epiphenomena, on the vast substratum that is Islam, Islam, Islam.

There is no need to "make peace" between Israel and its mortal enemies. The peace is kept, now, by the strength of the IDF, and the control Israel still has over invasion routes, over aquifers, and over a tiny bit of strategic depth -- scarcely visible, and nothing like what the Sinai was, but still something -- in the heights of Judea. There is "peace." It will last not because of treaties with Arab Muslims, but despite treaties, and only if no more of those idiotic surrender-"truce" treaties are signed, or even discussed.

The Lesser Jihad against Israel cannot be solved, any more than the Greater Jihad against the larger Infidel world can be solved. It can be contained, it can be managed, it can be reduced to much more manageable proportions. That is a different thing. The entire Infidel world, similarly, must come to realize it need not either appease Muslims within or without Infidel nation-states, but also need not invade them -- they need only inform themselves as to the nature and menace of Islam, and to work against not only terrorism, but against all the less obviously alarming, but far more effective instruments of Jihad, which include the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and what appears to be inexorable demographic conquest within the Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels, especially in Western Europe.

The Arab Muslims will commit to nothing. And even if they were to commit, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) has no power to get anyone to follow him. And even if he did have the power to convince even a few on the "West Bank" (known as Judea and Samaria to Jesus, and to every inhabitant of the Western world up to 1949, when Jordan renamed it) to follow him, in pretending to briefly adhere to whatever he pretended to commit the "Palestinian" Authority or nascent "Palestinian" state to, it could and would be breached at the first opportunity. It would not be done, possibly, with the same openness as Arafat, who just a few weeks after the signing of the Oslo Accords was telling an audience of Muslims in South Africa that he would do as Muhammad did with the Meccans in that "treaty" of Hudaibiyya. No, the current-account flaunters of that meek-mild-quiet-accountant aspect, those "technocrats" who, of course, are the perfect outward facade of the continuing and of course endless siege of Israel, whatever its size, have other ways to slowly undo whatever trivial commitments they may make.

It is Israel that always and everywhere has scrupulously, meticulously, fulfilled its commitments. It is Israel that is always being asked to give up, and does give, tangible assets -- land, oilfields, airbases, potentially the control of aquifers, historic sites, and so on -- and also gives up, allows to be forgotten or whittled away or attacked endlessly without any response, the legal, historic, and moral rights of the Jews to the Land of Israel. Those rights begin, but do not end, with the precise terms, and the exact intention, of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine, and are further supported by the rights of a country that has won territory in a defensive war. Not to mention, of course, the in-gathering of Jews from all over the Middle East, where they had lived in various states of wretchedness, under Muslim rule, as dhimmis, ranging from the horrors of slavery in Yemen, to conditions made better by the existence of large non-Muslim communities and the pressure and presence of a European power, as in North Africa under the French, or in Iraq, even for a while after the British left, and in Egypt under the ancien regime, the regime of Farouk, and La Gazette de Caire, and the syces outside Shepheard's Hotel, and the Alliance Israelite, and the Yacoubian Building, of late-blooming cinematic fame.

Fitzgerald: Ed Husain, Zionists and "Islamists"

Here are the last few paragraphs of Ed Husain's attempt to equate "Zionism" and "Islamism":

"Just as Israel is an expansionist state which remains in occupation of the Golan Heights, Islamists plan for a state that would have an occupying army to support ever-expanding borders (see Hizb ut-Tahrir's draft constitution). Just as Zionists claim territory based on notions of "Jewish land" and God-given rights, Islamists wish to reconquer India and Spain as "Muslim land", once ruled by Muslim monarchs.

Zionists have achieved their state; Islamists are busy trying out every conceivable option to bring their dream Zion to fruition. For centuries, Jewish people said "Next year in Jerusalem", and for decades for now, Islamists have been repeating "Caliphate by next Ramadan". I did this for three Ramadans before realising I had been sold a pup and so abandoned Islamism, and slowly rediscovered Islam. There is a world of difference between Islam and Islamism, as there is between Judaism and Zionism.

While millions across the world make the distinction between Zionism and Judaism, to date that distinction is not yet clear for most of us when it comes to Islam. Islamism is not Islam, regardless of the claims of "Muslim spokesmen". To condemn Israeli excesses is not anti-semitic; and to criticise Islamism is not to be Islamophobic.

Among my closest friends, I count American Jews. As a Muslim, I see Jews as cousins-in-faith, the descendants of Jacob. In The Islamist, I denounce suicide bombings and support a two-state solution to the question of Palestinian nationhood, as endorsed by Muslim scholars at al-Azhar in Egypt. So I don't come to this as an enemy of Israel.

My problem lies with marketing political ideologies as religion. Whether it is evangelical Christianity in the United States and their religious support for rightwing Republicans, or Zionism posing as Judaism, or Islamism masquerading as Islam - all three are equally guilty of misleading people, creating conflicts and corrupting three of the world's greatest religions.

Note that Zionists are depicted by Ed Husain as religious fanatics. But Herzl, Max Nordau, and other early Zionists, and those who came later, such as Chaim Weizmann and his associates, or the incomparable Jabotinsky, writer, feuilletonist, boulevardier, and orator (Nabokov, the uncle of the writer, who as the Russian Ambassador to Great Britain heard Jabotinsky speak, and declared him to be the greatest orator he had ever heard) were all secular, worldly, thoroughly assimilated. They could have done nothing, continuing in their successful careers without giving a thought to the tragic condition and situation of Jews in Eastern and Central Europe.

Then there are those whom Ed Husain absurdly calls "Islamists," failing to realize that their goals are nothing but standard Islamic doctrine, even if their currently chosen means are, it seems, exclusively violent. (That in itself is strange, given that there are so many other instruments of Jihad -- the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa in the Bilad al-kufr, and of course slow and inexorable demographic conquest of those Lands of the Infidels.)

The "Islamists" do not read a different Qur'an, or consult a different set of "authentic" Hadith, or have a different version of Muhammad's life, from the Qur'an and Hadith and Sira consulted by those "moderate" Muslims whom Ed Husain allows himself to believe exist, or better, pretends to allow himself to believe exist.

He is alarmed about Muslim violence, one suspects, because he is alarmed about the position of Muslims in the West, and their continued ability to remain in that West, and to flourish -- as he so obviously does. His very slight disaffection, at the edges of Islam, should not relieve or satisfy anyone. For it is prompted neither by a keen recognition and keen analysis of the nature and permanent menace of Islam, nor of its persistent hold over the minds of men (Islam is primitive, but most men, in most times and places, are very primitive). He is no Wafa Sultan, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Ibn Warraq. He represents a snare and a delusion.

He might only ask himself this: suppose the "Zionists," as he calls them, were to hold on to every inch of land they now possess? After all, the Jews have a considerable historic, legal, and moral claim to that territory. It comes from the exact terms of the Palestine Mandate itself, which was set up for one purpose: to encourage Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine, and to facilitate "close Jewish settlement" on the land. The claim is further buttressed by the relentless siege by the Arab Muslims (supported by other Muslims), of the Zionist settlers, and then of the Jewish state. That siege is prompted by Islam, and that constitutes what can be called a Lesser Jihad. Some local Arabs who are islamochristians provided, for a time, a useful facade for what was always a Muslim campaign. And Ed Husain knows very well that that campaign is not going to end no matter what further surrenders of territory and of rights the Jews of Israel make. For those Arab Muslim gains will merely be pocketed. And then the complaining and the pressure -- diplomatic, economic, and whenever possible military -- will continue, will continue to the end of time. For it is absolutely intolerable that an Infidel nation-state, and still more humiliating one controlled by the long-despised Jews, should exist on land once part of Dar al-Islam.

And when Ed Husain writes of the desire of "Islamists" to recapture other lands -- Spain (Al-Andaluz) and Sicily, for example -- that were once under Muslim rule, he does two things, both of them bad. First, he implies that the desire of Muslims to re-possess lands once in Muslim possession is limited to those he calls adherents of "Islamism." Not at all. This is standard, mainstream Islam, and Ed Husain surely knows it. And then he further implies that the desire of Muslims (or, in his misleading presentation, "Islamists") is limited to the recapture of territories once under Dar al-Islam. This does, admittedly, cover a lot of territory. It includes Israel, and Spain, and Sicily, and a few other Mediterranean islands. It includes Greece, and all of the Balkans, and Rumania and Bulgaria and much of Hungary. It includes an enormous swathe of Russia. It includes most of India, and part of western China.

But that is not all it includes. For Islam inculcates not only the idea that once under Islam, forever to be, or to revert to the condition of being, under Islam, but that the whole world must ultimately come under the sway of Islam. And by telling us only about the places that were once part of Dar al-Islam, and even then carefully limiting how many such places he lists, Ed Husain causes unwary Infidels to breathe a sigh of relief. "Whew, at least thank god I live not in Spain or Sicily or Israel, but in Paris or London or New York. For a minute I was worried there."

I suspect that Ed Husain is on to a good thing, a gravy-train, as a professional "moderate" who offers "hope." It is a false hope, and a dangerous hope. Those who are subsidizing him, possibly believing in the old theory that "he's the best till the best comes round," should stop. There are those who tell the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth, about Islam. They are both ex-Muslims, and non-Muslims. Support them.

You can start, by the way, with this website. It needs all the help it can get.

New York: "Very gullible" doctor who conspired to treat Al-Qaeda jihadists gets 25 years to do prison da'wa

He was duped, you see. Duped.

"Doctor sentenced in NY terrorism case," by Larry Neumeister for Associated Press (thanks to Sr. Soph):

NEW YORK - A doctor convicted of conspiring to treat injured al-Qaida fighters was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison, with the judge reasoning that a sentence to deter others was needed because terrorists cannot carry out their deadly aims without help.

U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska noted Dr. Rafiq Sabir, 53, showed no remorse after his May conviction for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists by agreeing to treat injured al-Qaida members so they could return to Iraq to battle Americans.

The judge said there was "no reason to believe that this defendant has abandoned any criminal intentions."

She said terrorism offenses were among the most serious crimes prosecuted and required stern punishments.

"If not for assistance to terrorists, then terrorist acts would not take place," she said.

Just before the announcement of the sentence in a crowded courtroom, Sabir, of Boca Raton, Fla., insisted he was "completely innocent."

He said a co-defendant, jazz musician and martial arts expert Tarik Shah, had duped him into taking an oath with an FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter, never explaining that he was pledging loyalty to al-Qaida or its leader, Osama bin Laden.

"I'm an extremely gullible man," he said.

Sabir said he learned more about Shah at his trial than he had learned in the previous 20 years when they had become close friends.

He said he now realizes Shah tried to sell his services to al-Qaida.

"My intentions were entirely within the law," he said. "I had no idea I was being asked to be an al-Qaida member."

The judge said she concluded Sabir perjured himself when he testified during trial that he did not understand the accent of the FBI agent during the pledging ceremony and did not realize that "al-Qaida" was said or that references to "Osama" were about bin Laden.

Yes, he thought they were talking about Osama Smith, the local plumber. War Is Deceit, after all.

Illinois Muslim pleads guilty to jihad plot at mall

Talib Abu Salam Ibn Shareef, aka Derrick Shareef, is the fellow who said: "I swear by Allah, man ... I'm down to live for the cause and die for the cause, man," and also "I just want to smoke a judge."

Derrick Shareef Update, man. "23-year-old pleads guilty to 'jihad' plot at Rockford mall," from Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

CHICAGO (AP) - A 23-year-old man who once dreamed of waging violent jihad in Illinois now faces 30 years to life when he's sentenced next year.

Derrick Shareef pleaded guilty today to plotting a hand grenade attack on a Rockford mall crowded with Christmas shoppers.

The softspoken, bushy bearded man was apparently inspired by the violent acts of Mideast terrorists.

Apparently.

"Islam's highest religious authority" in U.S. to serve up Thanksgiving leftovers

Tomorrow at the National Press Club there will be a historic event: the highest religious authority for Muslims in America, "in the spirit of this Season of Thanksgiving," will present a fatwa denouncing terrorism to a leading Roman Catholic prelate and other religious leaders, who will reciprocate with their own statement praising diversity!

"Historic Display of Unity: Fiqh Council of North America to present Fatwa denouncing terrorists to Cardinal McCarrick and other religious leaders," from the Bridges to Common Ground website (thanks to Christine at CVF):

WHEN Date: November 30, 2007 Doors Open: 12:00 pm Lunch Served: 12:30 pm Event Begins: 1:00 pm

WHERE
The National Press Club, Ballroom
529 14th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20045

A remarkable demonstration of the unity of the American people will occur when a Fatwa denouncing terrorists and their violence, issued by the Fiqh Council of North America, Islam's highest religious authority, will be presented to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd III and other leaders of our nation's religious groups.

The Fatwa states that a believing Muslim cannot condone violence against innocent people, cannot associate with people who commit or promote acts of violence, and, most importantly, must report to the proper civil authorities those that might harm Americans.

It further states that targeting civilians' life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is prohibited in Islam -haram- and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not "martyrs" and that there is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism.

Read the Fatwa

In response to the Fatwa, the Christian and Jewish leaders will present a Thanksgiving Season Proclamation welcoming the action and pledging to work together to make America inhospitable to terrorists.

Here's the fatwa, from the link above:

The following Fatwa was issued by the Fiqh Council of North America, Islam’s highest religious authority in North America.

In the spirit of this Season of Thanksgiving, a uniquely American holiday, the Fiqh Council of North America states its unequivocal and unqualified condemnation of the destruction and violence committed against innocent men and women.

This condemnation of violence is deeply rooted in true Islamic values based on the Qur’anic instructions which consider the unjust killing of a single person equivalent to the killing of al humanity (Qur’an 5:32). There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism.

Targeting civilians’ life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is prohibited in Islam ― haram ― and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not “martyrs.”

In giving thanks for America and for American people and in the light of the teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah, we, the Fiqh Council of North America, clearly, without hesitation, strongly issue this Fatwa:

1. All acts of terrorism are forbidden in Islam.

1. It is forbidden for a Muslim to cooperate or associate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence.

1. It is the duty of Muslims to report to enforcement authorities any threat which is designed to place a human being in harm’s way, bringing them before a competent court of law and in accordance with due process.

We pray for the defeat of extremism, terrorism and injustice. We pray for the safety and security of our country United States and its people. We pray for the safety and security of all inhabitants of this globe. We pray that interfaith harmony and cooperation prevail both in United States and every where in the world.

On behalf of the Fiqh Council of North America.

"In the spirit of this Season of Thanksgiving" the Fiqh Council at least could have served up something fresh. Instead, all they're going to give McCarrick and Lloyd tomorrow will be leftovers. This fatwa is almost identical to the one they issued in July 2005. That one had three points:

1. All acts of terrorism targeting civilians are haram (forbidden) in Islam.

2. It is haram for a Muslim to cooperate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence.

3. It is the civic and religious duty of Muslims to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect the lives of all civilians.

This one also has three points, although in the two intervening years the children of the inventors of Arabic numerals seem to have forgotten how to use them:

1. All acts of terrorism are forbidden in Islam.

1. It is forbidden for a Muslim to cooperate or associate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence.

1. It is the duty of Muslims to report to enforcement authorities any threat which is designed to place a human being in harm’s way, bringing them before a competent court of law and in accordance with due process.

Two years have passed, and many people, including I myself, have pointed out the weaknesses of this fatwa. Yet now it is being reissued with slight revisions, but without any attempt to address the concerns that have been raised. The Fiqh Council "states its unequivocal and unqualified condemnation of the destruction and violence committed against innocent men and women." Is this fatwa designed to deter Muslims from imbibing the jihad ideology and joining jihad groups? If so, it needs to be much more specific and pointed. It condemns violence against "innocent men and women," but jihadists contend that no non-Muslim is innocent. So a jihadist who reads this fatwa could agree with it entirely and continue to carry out violent attacks against those he considers to be kuffar harbi -- infidels at war with Islam, and not innocents at all. If the Fiqh Council really wants to do something to stop this, it should define what it means by "innocent men and women." But this has been pointed out for two years, and they haven't done it. Why not?

The same problem runs through the document. Qur'an 5:32 is dragged out again, although the statement does specify that it only forbids "unjust" killing, and it is of course silent about 5:33, which mandates crucifixion or amputation for those who make war against Allah and his messenger Muhammad. Targeting "civilians" is condemned, again without defining what constitutes a civilian, or refuting the jihadist contention that there is no concept of "civilian" in Islamic law. Again, why not?

Note also the modification of the third point, from Muslims must "cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect the lives of all civilians" to Muslims must "report to enforcement authorities any threat which is designed to place a human being in harm’s way, bringing them before a competent court of law and in accordance with due process." Court of law and due process -- in other words, we reserve the right to protest the treatment of people like Jose Padilla and others held at Guantanamo, etc.

Finally, "we pray for the defeat of extremism, terrorism and injustice" -- all again undefined. So is this fatwa really intended to defeat Islamic jihad? If so, why all the vagueness and refusal to confront jihadism on its own terms?

Former British jihadist: Hirsi Ali, Spencer, Ibn Warraq helping Al-Qaeda

Ed Husain is the author of The Islamist, a book about how he entered and then left the jihadist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. He recently debated Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and has now written a piece in The Guardian, "Stop supporting Bin Laden," about how Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq and I are -- unwittingly, of course -- playing into the hands of Osama bin Laden himself.

This is, of course, a familiar canard, and one that I have dealt with before, when Dinesh D'Souza made the same charge. The contention is that because I -- and Hirsi Ali, and Ibn Warraq, and others -- point out that there is a broad and deeply rooted tradition of violence and supremacism within Islam, therefore we are marginalizing other Islamic traditions and legitimizing bin Laden. In saying this, Husain (and D'Souza) implies that jihadism is a clear Islamic heresy, and that there is a broad tradition within Islam that rejects violence against non-Muslims and Islamic supremacism -- and that Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq and I are ignoring or downplaying it out of some base motives. Bin Laden or someone like him invented jihadism and grafted it onto a religion that has otherwise peaceful teachings.

In reality, however, while there are a few courageous reformers out there, all -- not just one, or a few, but all -- the orthodox sects and schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the Islamic community to wage war against unbelievers and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law (references can be found here). There is no sect or school recognized as orthodox that rejects this. It is not playing into bin Laden's hands to point it out; in fact, it is playing into bin Laden's hands to deny it and denigrate those who point out that it is so, for there can be no reform of what one will not admit needs reforming. There are some disagreements between modern jihadism and traditional jihad theology: modern jihad is all defensive, as there is no caliph authorized to call offensive jihad, and some assert that only the state authority can call jihad in any case. But these disagreements do not touch on the central point: that it is legitimate to wage religious war. If Ed Husain wishes to pretend to the world that the situation of Islamic theology and jurisprudence is other than what it is, how sincere a reformer can he be? Wouldn't a genuine reformer acknowledge the existence of problematic passages and doctrines and formulate new ways to understand them, rather than pretending that they don't exist at all -- except in the minds of violent fanatics and those he would have you believe are merely hatemongers?

Husain's account of the debate at the Centre for Social Cohesion (before which he appeared, like Ayaan, as an invited speaker, not a representative) is revealing:

...Organised by the thinktank the Centre for Social Cohesion, and masterfully chaired by Douglas Murray, a capacity crowd of politicians, journalists, Muslims, civil servants, authors, thinktankers, publishers, police bosses, Islamists, and feminists questioned Hirsi Ali and me on issues not ordinarily raised in public. Was the Prophet Mohammad responsible for the murders committed by some of his companions? Was the prophet a military leader? Is political sovereignty for God, or humans?

Good questions. Can we get answers from this reasonable reformist? Alas, no, for the questions themselves are ignorant and hostile:

These, and other, questions stem from a deep ignorance of, and hostility towards, a complex, millennium-old Islamic tradition.

Maybe they do. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be answered. Maybe he answered them in the debate, but he certainly doesn't do so here. And since there are Muslims who say Muhammad ordered his companions to kill prisoners and to murder his opponents, and that he was a military leader, and that political sovereignty belongs to Allah, not to humans, why are non-Muslims ignorant and hostile when they ask these questions?

Just as Wahhabites and Islamists bypass scholarship, context, and history in the name of "returning to the book", Hirsi Ali and others such as Robert Spencer and Ibn Warraq commit exactly the same error. What do I mean? Let's take the question of apostasy. At an Evening Standard debate the other night, Rod Liddle had no qualms in declaring Islam, with a barrage of other baseless abuse, "a fascistic ideology". Why? Because the Qur'an commands the killing of those who abandon it. Really?

Actually, no, but read on:

Well, here are a few facts that might help the new coterie of Islam-bashers retract ill-informed statements: a) there is no verse in the Qur'an that calls for the killing of apostates;

Actually, there is no verse in the Qur'an that calls clearly and unequivocally for the killing of apostates. But Al-Shafi'i, the jurist who founded the school of Sunni jurisprudence that bears his name, held that Qur'an 2:217 called for the killing of the apostate: "And they will not cease from fighting against you till they have made you renegades from your religion, if they can. And whoso becometh a renegade and dieth in his disbelief: such are they whose works have fallen both in the world and the Hereafter." Others point to Qur'an 4:89 -- "But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them" -- as calling for the execution of apostates. The Qur'an interpreter Baydawi explained this verse this way: "Whosoever turns back from his belief (irtada), openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel."

Is it ill-informed Islam-bashing for me to quote Baydawi and al-Shafi'i in their interpretations of these Qur'an verses? I don't see why. Is it not rather disingenuous of Ed Husain to assert flatly that no verse in the Qur'an calls for the killing of apostates, without bothering to inform us that leading Islamic thinkers have said otherwise? I am all for reform and the rejection of the idea that apostates should be killed, but I seriously doubt it can be affected by denial that a problem exists rather than by confrontation of the problem.

b) the Prophet Mohammed did not kill several people who freely left Islam;

Here again, Husain doesn't mention the reason why that fact would be notable: because Muhammad himself directed that apostates be killed:

"If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him." (Bukhari 4.52.60)

"Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him." (Bukhari 9.84.57)

(Nor is it just a couple of texts in Bukhari. Muhammad's statement "Whoever changes his religion, kill him" -- من بدل دينه فاقتلوه -- is attested in whole or part, with some variations but no change of substance, also by Muslim, Malik's Muwatta, Ibn Hibban, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, An-Nassai, Ibn Majah, the Sunan al-Kubraa, Bayhaqi, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abu Ya`laa, Humaidi, Abd al-Razzaq, and Ibn Abi Shaybah.)

So did he not kill apostates on some occasions? Great. But unfortunately, he didn't direct his followers not to kill apostates. In fact, he did just the opposite. When Muhammad conquered Mecca, according to his ninth-century biographer Ibn Sa‘d, he ordered the Muslims to fight only those individuals or groups who resisted their advance into the city -- except for a list of people who were to be killed, even if they had sought sanctuary in the Ka’bah itself. One of those was Abdullah bin Sa’d, a former Muslim who at one time had been employed by Muhammad to write down the Qur’anic revelations; but he had subsequently apostatized and returned to the Quraysh. He was found and brought to Muhammad along with his brother, and pleaded with the Prophet of Islam for clemency: “Accept the allegiance of Abdullah, Apostle of Allah!” Abdullah repeated this twice, but Muhammad remained impassive. After Abdullah repeated it a third time, Muhammad accepted.

Did he thus reject the killing of apostates? Not quite. As soon as Abdullah had left, Muhammad turned to the Muslims who were in the room and asked: “Was not there a wise man among you who would stand up to him when he saw that I had withheld my hand from accepting his allegiance, and kill him?”

The companions, aghast, responded: “We did not know what you had in your heart, Apostle of Allah! Why did you not give us a signal with your eye?”

“It is not advisable,” said the Prophet of Islam, “for a Prophet to play deceptive tricks with the eyes.”

Apostasy from Islam had always been for Muhammad a supreme evil. When he was master of Medina, some livestock herders came to the city and accepted Islam. But they disliked Medina’s climate, so Muhammad gave them some camels and a shepherd; once away from Medina, the herders killed the shepherd, released the camels and renounced Islam. Muhammad had them pursued. When they were caught, he ordered that their hands and feet be amputated (in accord with Qur’an 5:33, which directs that those who cause “corruption in the land” be punished by the amputation of their hands and feet on opposite sides) and their eyes put out with heated iron bars, and that they be left in the desert to die. Their pleas for water, he ordered, must be refused. That's also in Bukhari, the Hadith collection that Muslims consider most reliable.

It stains credulity, in light of all this, for Ed Husain to give the impression that Muhammad disapproved of the murder of apostates. This kind of assertion may be comforting to non-Muslims who would prefer to believe that the notorious capital charges levied in early 2006 against the Afghan convert from Islam to Christianity, Abdul Rahman, were some sort of anomaly. Unfortunately, this claim simply does not accord with the facts of Muhammad’s life. And here again, if Ed Husain really wishes to work for reform within Islam, he can't stand before his fellow Muslims and pretend that those stories about Muhammad don't exist. They know they exist. He has to deal with them for what they are.

c) Sufyan al-Thawri, a second-generation Muslim, clearly stated that ex-Muslims should be free to exercise their will;

Great. And who is Sufyan al-Thawri? He was a renowned ascetic, but why do all the schools of Sunni jurisprudence -- Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanafi and Hanbali -- as well as the Shi'ites teach that the apostasy of a male adult merits death, if Sufyan al-Thawri's word is so authoritative? How can Muslims be persuaded to follow Sufyan al-Thawri rather than virtually all the mainstream Islamic jurists? It is easy to impress non-Muslims with a statement like this, when they don't know Sufyan al-Thawri from a hole in the ground, but unfortunately it is Muslims who today must be convinced that Islam doesn't mandate death for apostasy, and invoking Sufyan al-Thawri isn't going to accomplish that.

d) the four schools of Muslim jurisprudential thought that endorsed the killing of apostates did so on grounds of treason and sedition, not theology;

Yet another misleading point. It is true that the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence endorsed the killing of apostates because the apostate was seen as a threat to the stability of the Islamic state. But in that same Islamic jurisprudence, there is no separation between matters of state and theology, between the sacred and the secular. That is a Western, Judeo-Christian distinction. Islam has been since Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina a political and social system as well as an individual religious faith. To say that something is political rather than theological is essentially meaningless in terms of traditional Islam.

And in any case, the death penalty for apostates is based on the statements of Muhammad quoted above, and so have his prophetic seal. To say they're not theological is simply false.

e) the 1843-44 Ottoman reforms enshrined the right of Muslims to accept other religions without state punishment.

Indeed, but under heavy Western pressure, and with resistance from the Islamic clerocracy. These reforms, in other words, were not affected by Islam or from within Islam, but in spite of Islam. Here again, this is not to say that a form of Islam could develop that teaches that the apostate should not be harmed, but the Ottoman reforms did not come about because such a form of Islam had actually developed. It had not.

I could go on.

Oh, please do. And I hope it will be in a debate with me.

Hirsi Ali vociferously objects to the Prophet Mohammed being a moral guide. For me, it is his guidance, compassion, humanity, warmth, love, kindness that rescued me, and others, from Islamist extremism. He warned against religious extremism. His was a smiling face. His tomb in Medina today radiates the peace and serenity to which he was called.

These are lovely greeting-card sentiments, but they do not mitigate the force of Muhammad's statements above, or of his call to his followers to offer non-Muslims conversion, subjugation, or war. I'm glad that Ed Husain has apparently rejected such calls. How can he persuade more of his fellow Muslims to do so?

I concede that there is a problem with extremism among sections of the Muslim population - a context-vacuous literalism continues to threaten the very spirit of Islam.

"A context-vacuous literalism"? So it would appear that Ed Husain is now granting that the Qur'an and Sunnah, taken literally, mandate warfare against unbelievers. It is only by a rejection of that literalism that their force for incitement can be mitigated. If that is what he means, I am with him. But I find this rather odd after he strongly implied above that the Qur'an and Muhammad, taken literally, do not command death for apostates.

That same extremism has unleashed what is called "al-Qaida": an operation that adopts Islamism as its political ideology and Wahhabism as its theology. Mainstream Muslims have common cause with the west in defeating this hybrid beast. Just as Christian fundamentalists threaten the fibre of the Christian spirit (see Chris Hedges' recent book)

Yes, do, and see also my book responding to his hysteria about "Christian theocrats."

...Muslim extremists with petrodollars seek to impose a new, bastardised, soulless, rigid religiosity on the world's Muslims.

As with the issue of apostasy, there is, and has always been, much disagreement and debate within Islam on this and other contentious topics. It is by rediscovering the Muslim pluralist past that we will defeat literalism-based claims of exclusivity in our midst. There is no stronger argument against religious fanatics than to illustrate the scriptural weaknesses of their case.

Here again, Husain seems uncertain as to whether Islamic scripture bears out the jihadist case -- albeit in a literalistic, context-free way -- or not. If their case has scriptural weaknesses, it is odd that no school of Islamic jurisprudence has noticed them and modified its teaching on warfare against unbelievers and apostasy.

Hirsi Ali and others also frequently cite Muslim scripture to support their claims of a mythical "monolithic Islam". In my debate with Hirsi Ali, I was struck by the simple anecdotes she forwarded to illustrate her case. In Hirsi Ali, I see the same selective use of scripture as those that she opposes. Her objections to the Qur'an should also lead her to object to the Bible - after all, Leveticus has more references to stoning and burning sinners than ever found in the Qur'an. That's not to say it makes it right: it's about fairness in criticism....

Fairness in criticism? Physician, heal thyself! Leviticus may indeed talk more about stoning than the Qur'an, but in reality neither Jews nor Christians stone adulterers today, and both have evolved interpretative traditions that reject the literal application of such commands. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia and Iran, where Islamic law is still in force, stonings are still practiced. Eight women are awaiting death by stoning in Iran today, and Iranian authorities justify this by quoting Islamic law, not the statements of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. If she is employing a "selective use of scripture," so are they, and yet Husain's ire is directed at her, not at them. In my own books I've explained at length how Islamic authorities interpret Islamic texts to justify warfare against unbelievers and other atrocities: it is not my interpretation, or Ayaan's, but theirs.

Will Ed Husain confront it as such and work in good faith for Islamic reform, or will he continue to attack those who, if he really rejects jihad and Islamic supremacism, should be his allies?

When ex-Muslims such as Hirsi Ali ignore the nuances, complexities, and plurality inherent within Islam and allow the actions of a minority of Wahhabite-Islamists to speak for a billion Muslims, then she plays into the hands of extremists and allows their discourse to dominate one of the great faiths of our world. Worse, it creates a public space in which attacking all Muslims and Islam becomes acceptable, even fashionable. Demonising Europe's second largest minority helps nobody. No good can come of ratcheting up the prejudice against them. Yes, identify and combat extremists and in that fight you will find orthodox Muslims as partners. But continue to attack with ignorance, spite and hatred our history, our prophet, our scriptures, our scholars: then you confirm the al-Qaida narrative of a war against Islam. No, there is no moral equivalence between Bin Laden's murderous worldview and his critics. But a damage is being done that may take generations to repair.

When Muslims such as Ed Husain ignore the deep scriptural, theological and legal foundations of Islamic violence and supremacism, rather than acknowledging those foundations and calling for reform and reinterpretation of those aspects of Islam, then he plays into the hands of extremists and allows their discourse to dominate one of the great faiths of our world. For it will continue to dominate as long as it goes unchallenged, and Ed Husain and others like him hinder genuine reform by attacking those who are trying to call attention to these aspects.

Then he plays the basest "Islamophobia" card, suggesting that Ayaan is creating an environment in which "attacking all Muslims and Islam becomes acceptable, even fashionable." No. If anyone is doing that, it is Ed Husain: if he really wants to end "ignorance, spite and hatred" directed at Muslims, he could start by ending his sly disingenousness, his evasions, his half-truths and finger-pointing in the face of the biggest crisis of our time.

Jihadists crucify one, behead two in Thailand

Crucifixion:

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter..." (Qur'an 5:33)

Beheading:

"Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens...." (Qur'an 47:4)

"Muslim crucified, two Buddhists beheaded in Thailand: police," from AFP (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AFP) — A Muslim military informant was shot and crucified, while two Buddhist men were beheaded Wednesday by suspected Islamic separatists in Thailand's restive south, police said.

The Muslim man, a 58-year-old who belonged to a government-backed militia, was shot and then stabbed so badly that he was nearly decapitated, police Lieutenant Khanchitthol Kreunor told AFP.

Suspected rebels then drove six-inch nails through his head, arms and legs to attach him to two pieces of wood, which were laid out like a cross in the middle of a road in Rueso district of Narathiwat province, near the southern border with Malaysia, he said.

Khanchitthol said police found a note written in Thai and left near the cross, reading: "This is what the infidels deserve. The soldier dogs must meet this end."

"The victim was attacked and killed in such a grisly way because they knew he was a military informant. This is to terrify the people," Khanchitthol said.

About two hours later, two Buddhist fishmongers aged 20 and 61 were shot and then beheaded in another district of Narathiwat, police said.

The killings came after a month of spiralling violence in the region, which has seen more than 2,700 killed since separatist unrest erupted four years ago....

Former security guard at Andrews AFB accused of concealing ties to Islamic supremacist imam

The imam in question is Imam Musa, the Washington, D.C., Muslim leader who wants to establish an "Islamic State of North America" no later than 2050.

"Guard Accused of Hiding Ties to Imam," by Stephen Manning for AP (thanks to Marked Manner):

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A former security guard at Andrews Air Force Base who failed to put his Muslim name on a job application was trying to conceal his ties to a controversial Washington imam, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

U.S. District Court jurors began hearing the case against Darrick Michael Jackson, who failed to list "Abdul-Jalil Mohammed" as an alias on an application for a job at the suburban Washington base, home to Air Force One.

Jackson's attorney, David Chamble, said that Jackson used the Mohammed name only while at mosque or with Muslim friends, and that he didn't consider it a true alias that he needed to disclose. Chamble called it "an innocent omission" and excoriated the government for pursing criminal charges against Jackson.

Jackson is charged with making a false statement and could face five years in prison if convicted.

He already was a security guard at Andrews when he reapplied in 2005 after the contract for security at the base changed. He had to fill out a federal form, which asked whether he had any aliases.

At the time, he was affiliated with the Masjid Al-Islam mosque in southeast Washington, which is led by a fiery imam named Abdul Alim Musa. Musa is not on trial in the case, but prosecutors said Jackson tried to hide his ties to Musa and the mosque to avoid an investigation that might have led to the denial of his application.

Federal prosecutor David Salem told jurors, without elaborating, that Musa "has made some inflammatory statements about the United States." He told jurors the government was not pursuing the case because of Jackson's religion....

Olmert, Abbas vow to "confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis"

Curly, Moe, and Himmler

Naked moral equivalence, endorsed by Olmert, Bush, and -- of course -- Abbas.

Video here, of Bush reading from the joint statement.

Story here: "Mideast leaders vow 'new era of peace'"

And at FrontPage: "Moral Inversion at Annapolis," by P. David Hornik and "Palestinians: Aggressors, Not Victims," by David Meir-Levi.

Take a president with no understanding of the jihadist intransigence that fuels the Palestinian/Israel conflict -- not quibbles over the ownership of this or that piece of land -- who is desperate to shore up his sagging legacy. Take an Israeli prime minister who seems defiantly committed to the proposition that an Israel small enough and defenseless enough will be left alone by the jihadists, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Add in a "Palestinian" leader who is threatened at home by forces even more violently intransigent than he is, and who is leader of a group that tried to assassinate that same Israeli prime minister just a few months ago -- indicating that he himself is either complicit or ineffectual.

What do you get? A peace based on the equation of jihad terrorist violence against innocent people with resistance to that violence. Not an auspicious beginning.

Tough talk from Sarkozy: "We will find the shooters"

Will his actions be just as tough? "Sarkozy Calls French Riots Unacceptable," by Christine Ollivier for AP:

PARIS (AP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday that rioters who shot at police would be brought to justice as violence that rocked Paris suburbs appeared to ebb.

It was the first time Sarkozy, who had just returned from China, entered the fray since the rioting broke out Sunday night. The violence, which Sarkozy called "unacceptable," eased Tuesday night after police were deployed in force and quickly rounded up youths lobbing Molotov cocktails and setting cars ablaze.

The violence has drawn comparisons with riots that raged through suburbs nationwide in 2005, and has shown that anger still smolders in poor housing projects where many Arabs, blacks and other minorities live largely isolated from the rest of society.

"We will find the shooters," and they will "be brought to account before justice," Sarkozy said after meeting with a wounded police captain hospitalized in Eaubonne north of Paris.

The violence erupted Sunday after the deaths of two minority teens whose motorscooter collided with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town on Paris' northern edge.

Did Kenyan party promise Sharia for Muslims in exchange for votes?

Muslim leaders deny it. The very idea, however, that such a promise would win them votes -- which doesn't seem to being challenged by anyone involved -- belies the Western dogma that only a tiny minority of Muslims reject Western pluralistic government and mores.

"Kenyan Muslims deny Sharia claims," from the BBC (thanks to all who sent this in):

Kenyan Muslim leaders have dismissed as propaganda allegations that an opposition party promised to introduce Sharia for Muslims if it won elections.

The National Muslim Leaders Forum said its deal with the Orange Democratic Movement was to end the current discrimination against Muslims.

Christian leaders have been calling for the pact to be made public to end angry speculation ahead of December's polls.

Roughly one-third of Kenya's population of 34 million is Muslim.

Recent opinion polls show 45% of those interviewed support ODM's Raila Odinga compared to 43% who favour President Mwai Kibaki, who is running on a Party of National Unity ticket.

Rendition probe

Muslim leaders decided to make the pact public after a document circulated on the internet claimed that Mr Odinga's ODM had pledged to introduce Sharia in parts of the country where Muslims are in the majority.

Raila Odinga (front row with hat) at the ODM 2007 election campaign launch
The ODM is hoping Mr Odinga can hold on to his poll lead

"There was a fear that Muslims will force their faith on other people, Islam does not allow suppression of other religions and we will be the last to advocate for this," said Abdullahi Abdi of the National Muslim Leaders Forum.

Instead the memorandum of understanding, signed in August, states that Mr Odinga has pledged to defend Muslims against harassment and victimisation by state security forces who claim to be fighting terrorism.

Somali Immigrant Gets 10 Years for Plotting With Al Qaeda to Blow Up Ohio Shopping Mall

Nuradin Abdi Update. From the Associated Press:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A judge on Tuesday sentenced a Somali immigrant to 10 years in prison for plotting to blow up an Ohio shopping mall with a man later convicted of being an Al Qaeda terrorist.

Nuradin Abdi, a cell phone salesman before his arrest, will be deported to Somalia after serving the sentence. U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley imposed the sentence as part of a plea deal Abdi agreed to in July.

In a 20-minute statement to the court, Abdi's attorney Mahir Sherif said his client apologized to the people of the United States, the people of Ohio and the Muslim community.

One of those miraculous changes of heart precipitated by getting caught.

"He apologizes for the things he thought about and the things he talked about and the crimes he pleaded guilty to," Sherif said. "He wants to make it very, very clear that he does not hate America."

Yeah, sure, it's a swell place. It's just so full of infidel Americans.

The alleged plot was never carried out and Sherif long maintained Abdi was guilty at most of ranting about the United States' handling of the war in Afghanistan.

Abdi pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support for terrorists. Three charges were dropped as part of his plea deal; Abdi could have received 80 years in prison had he been convicted of all the counts he had faced.

Interludes

The Jihad Watch Interludes are now to be found, collected for easy clickable reference, on the upper left of the homepage, under the photograph of Oriana Fallaci. That link leads here, where you will find an explanation of why they're on the site. In order to make more likely that these selections do not lie neglected in the outer ether, they will now be posted also as part of the ever-changing group of new offerings, with each new entry placed at the bottom of the ever-lengthening cumulative list of previous entries.

These songs and excerpts from movies, and occasional poems, constitute “Interludes” that, like a dish of sherbet to cleanse the palate, are offered for sampling between one bout, and another, of grim and disturbing discussion of the nature and menace of Islamic supremacism. A means of mental escape over the North Wall, while the warden is not only deliberately averting his gaze, but also made sure to leave the ladder which you are expected to use. If, however, you find yourself unable to derive unalloyed pleasure from such offerings, and need metal more attractive, something in the uplift or enlightenment line, then you can, after having listened to a song or two or twelve, analyse away, to your heart’s content, what it was about that song, or singer, or sentiment expressed, that is so ineluctably un-Islamic in every way, and surely could never have been produced in a state or society suffused with Islam.

You can then add to the list of things not to be tolerated in Islam almost all of American, and West European, popular music. One more recognition of what we think of as harmless and is in Islam deemed haram and condemned with ferocity. Thus you can add to the lengthening list of things not to be tolerated in Islam, which obviously includes most forms of artistic expression, the free and skeptical inquiry without which the enterprise of science is not possible, the solicitude for individual rights and for the autonomy of the individual that is such an important part of advanced Western democracies, these harmless and pleasure-giving and laugh-provoking ("There is no humor in Islam" -- Ayatollah Khomeini) songs and movie excerpts, the mere insects of an hour. Insects of an hour they may be, but those insects keep chirping on the hearth, by the fireside, in the gloaming.

Those who stay to listen, and allow themselves to be amused or moved by the musical files so assiduously assembled by a harried staff of one, may be impressed to learn that that staff, in order to save time and conserve energy, has taken to wearing roller-skates so as to more quickly shoot from one part of the room in which the site’s musical and movie files are stacked and stored, to another.

Here, doled out daily by that sometimes accommodating, and occasionally truculent staff, as the tastiest if not always the most nutritious part of the panem quotidianum to be found placed each day in your lunch-bag, the one that contains the viaticum for each visitor's long day's journey, whatever time he arrives by unannounced click, into the remains of that day, is that list of Interludes:

Musical Interlude #1:

In The Gloaming, By The Fireside (Jessie Matthews)

Musical Interlude #2:

But We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye (Annette Hanshaw)

Musical Interlude #3:

Black Coffee (Marjorie Stedeford)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #4:

Voulez-Vous Le Taximeter? (Charlie Chaplin)

Musical Interlude #5:

Sittin' In The Dark (Anona Winn and Sam Browne)

Tell Me Dear Why Am I So Romantic? (Lillian Roth)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #6:

The Awful Truth (Irene Dunne and Cary Grant)

Musical Interlude #7:

I Can't Get Started (Bunny Berigan)

Musical Interlude #8:

Then I'll Be Tired Of You (Ambrose and His Orchestra)

Musical Interlude #9:

The Very Thought of You (Al Bowlly)

Melancholy Baby (Al Bowlly)

Cinematic Literary Musical Interlude #10:

Richard III (Ian McKellen)

Musical Interlude #11:

Exactly Like You (Elsie Carlisle)

Musical Interlude #12:

Si Tu M'Aimes (Jean Sablon)

Musical Interlude #13:

When You Take Me For A Buggy-Ride (Bessie Smith)

Musical Interlude #14:

The Wine of Love (Pyotr Leshchenko)

Musical Interlude #15:

If I Can't Have You (Lee Morse)

Musical Interlude #16:

I'm Dancing With Tears In My Eyes (Ruth Etting)

Musical Interlude #17:

My Old Man Said Follow The Van (Lily Morris)

Musical Interlude #18:

Tout Va Bien Madame La Marquise (Ray Ventura)

Musical Interlude #19:

I'll String Along With You (Smith Ballew Orchestra)

Musical Interlude #20:

At The First Sign (Hanka Ordonowna)

Musical Interlude #21:

I'm For Him One Hundred Percent (Frances Day)

Musical Interlude #22:

I Must Have That Man (Adelaide Hall)

Musical Interlude #23:

Let's Misbehave (Irving Aronson and The Commanders)

Musical Interlude #24:

Do, Do Something (Dorothy Lee)

Musical Interlude #25:

My Cutey's Due At Two-To-Two (Ted Weems and His Orchestra)

Musical Interlude #26:

I Want To Be Bad (Ambrose and His Orchestra)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #27:

The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo (Charles Coborn)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #28:

El Negro Zumbon (Silvana Mangano)

Musical Interlude #29:

You've Got Me Crying Again (Lee Wiley)

Musical Interlude #30:

Love Me Or Leave Me (Chick Endor)

Musical Interlude #31:

Je Cherche Un Millionaire (Mistinguett)

Musical Interlude #32:

She's The Sweetheart Of Six Other Guys (Harry Reser Orchestra, voc. Tom Stacks)

Musical Interlude #33:

You're Driving Me Crazy (Leo Monosson)

Musical Interlude #34:

Shanghai Lil (Gene Kardos Orchestra, voc.Dick Robertson)

Musical Interlude #35:

Love Me Tonight (Anson Weeks Orchestra, voc. Bill Moreing)

Musical Interlude #36:

Thanks For Everything (Artie Shaw Orchestra, voc. Helen Forrest)

Musical Interlude #37:

The Teddy Bears' Picnic (Henry Hall and His Orchestra)

Musical Interlude #38:

Looking For You (Jack Hylton and His Orchestra), voc. Pat O'Malley)

Musical Interlude #39:

My Dif'rent Kind of Man (Lizzie Miles)

Cinematic Interlude #40:

Kind Hearts and Coronets (Alec Guinness)

Musical Interlude #41:

Was kann der Sigismund dafür, daß er so schön ist?(Marek Weber Tanz-Orch., voc. Siegfried Arno)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #42:

Forty-Second Street (Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell)

Musical Interlude #43:

I Can't Believe It's True (Frances Langford)

Drilling a Hole in the Lifeboat

Barry Rubin explains at the GLORIA Center some of the many things that are wrong with the Annapolis conference:

What would you do if your foreign policy agenda had these priorities:

* Get Arab and European support for solving the Iraq crisis.
* Mobilize Arab and European forces against a threat led by Iran and its allies, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.
* Get Iran to stop its campaign to get nuclear weapons.
* Reestablish American credibility toward friends and deterrence toward enemies.
* Reduce the level of Israel-Palestinian conflict.

That pretty much describes the U.S. framework for dealing with the Middle East nowadays. The Annapolis conference is not going to contribute to these goals. The most likely outcome is either failure or a non-event portrayed as a victory because it took place at all. No one is going to say: We are so grateful at the United States becoming more active on Arab-Israeli issues that we are going to back its policy on other issues.

On the contrary, the conference is more likely to show the inability of the United States to produce results, thus undermining belief in U.S. leverage in the region in general. It shines the spotlight on the most divisive issue, the great excuse for not doing more to help U.S. efforts, raising its prominence. What most of Washington simply fails to understand is that any real demand for Palestinian or Arab concessions will be fodder for radical groups and frighten Arab regimes, pushing the latter away from support for America rather than toward it. And any Israeli concessions obtained by this process will not satisfy their demands either.

Despite thousands of claims by lots of famous people, national leaders, and respected journals, solving the Arab-Israeli conflict will not make radical Islamism or terrorism go away. Would you like to know why? Because even if this issue could be solved—which isn’t about to happen for reasons requiring a different article—to do so would necessitate a compromise including an end to the conflict, acceptance of Israel, and compromises by the Arab side. These steps would inflame the extremists and make any Arab rulers who accepted it vulnerable to being called traitors. It would increase instability in the Arab world, also by removing the conflict as splendid excuse and basis for mobilizing support for the current rulers. Arab politicians understand this reality; most people in the West don’t.

Read it all.

"The Palestinians believe Israel is not ready for total peace"

An Orwellian story on the Annapolis Appeasement Party: it's Israel that isn't ready for peace. Forget about those suicide bombers and the annihilationist rhetoric. The ones who don't want peace are, of course, the Jews. Maybe Matthew Lee means that Israel isn't ready for total surrender.

Meanwhile, there is nothing much in this document. They're going to establish a Palestinian state. Great. But then, unless Israel decides to rush headlong to suicide, that will stall on the Palestinian unwillingness to recognize Israel. Or it will stall when the Palestinians recognize Israel but then in Arabic say the opposite, and act as if they still believe it has no legitimacy. And they are certain to do that.

"Israel, Palestinians OK negotiating plan," by Matthew Lee for Associated Press:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed Tuesday to immediately resume long-stalled talks toward a deal by the end of next year that would create an independent Palestinian state, using a U.S.-hosted Mideast peace conference to launch their first negotiations in seven years.

In a joint statement read by President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged to start discussions on the core issues of the conflict next month and accepted the United States as arbiter of interim steps.

"We agree to immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in previous agreements," it said.

"We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008," said the document, which was reached after weeks of intense diplomacy and was uncertain until just before Bush announced it.[...]

Yet none of those difficult issues were mentioned in the joint document, which was to be endorsed by the conference participants, including key Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Syria, later in the day.

And, despite their agreement and impassioned rhetoric, neither Olmert nor Abbas showed any sign of yielding on the fundamental differences that have led to the collapse of all previous peace efforts: the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of disputed Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

But Olmert did promise that "the negotiations will address all the issues which thus far have been evaded. We will not avoid any subject. While this will be an extremely difficult process for many of us, it is nevertheless inevitable."

For his part, Abbas made an impassioned appeal to Israelis to support the peace process, saying that war and terrorism "belong to the past."

Oh yeah? Well, since you are one of the chief ones responsible for it, now you will have to back up those words.

"Neither we nor you must beg for peace from the other. It is a joint interest for us and you," he said. "Peace and freedom is a right for us, just as peace and security is a right for you and us."

"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end. It is time for us to look at the future together with confidence and hope. It is time for this tortured land that has been called the land of love and peace to live up to its name," Abbas said.

Occupation. Most will take this to mean he will accept the 1967 borders. But they weren't acceptable to the Palestinians before 1967.

His speech was immediately rejected by Hamas, which stormed to power in the Gaza Strip in June, a month before Bush announced plans for the peace conference.

Abbas "has no mandate to discuss, to agree, or to erase any word related to our rights," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in Gaza. "He is isolated (and) represents himself only."

In the face of such resistance, Arab support for the process is deemed essential and Olmert, speaking directly to those at the conference who have no relations with his country, said: "It is time to end the boycott and alienation toward the state of Israel."

"We no longer and you no longer have the privilege of clinging to dreams which are disconnected from the suffering of our peoples," he said.

After reading aloud the freshly reached agreement, Bush shook hands with Abbas and Olmert. Then those leaders shook each other's hands.

To maximize the moment of potential breakthrough, the three went through the gestures again. This time, they clasped hands together. And, for a moment, Bush stepped back and raised his hands to encourage the other two to come together for a handshake, which they did.

It harkened back to a memorable image of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, in one of his own Mideast efforts.[...]

Yes, and so much came from that!

Saeb Erekat, a principal Palestinian negotiator, sounded upbeat, saying that after seven years of a stalemate "now we have an opportunity" to get back to serious talks with broad backing.

"We have the whole world. We have President Bush. And it is going to be two states living side by side in peace," Erekat said. "Today is over. What's important is tomorrow."

Privately, however, members of the Palestinian delegation expressed skepticism that a deal resolving all the so-called final status issues could be reached within a year, and by the end of Bush's term in January 2009.

The joint document is general and doesn't deal with the difficult issues that that long divided Israel and the Palestinians. And the negotiation process is expected to be very tough and very long, according to Palestinians, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they didn't want to publicly spoil the conference's positive atmosphere.

The Palestinians believe Israel is not ready for total peace and Olmert will face a difficult time politically as any deal takes shape. Meantime, Abbas is seen as reliable, but also weak and a leader who can't in the end deliver on an agreement.

Abbas slammed as "traitor" at anti-Annapolis rallies

Hamas and Islamic Jihad hold to the hard line, refusing to understand that Abbas is getting what they want by different means. By Nidal al-Mughrabi for Reuters (thanks to Mackie):

GAZA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Palestinians joined anti-Annapolis rallies in Gaza and the West Bank on Tuesday, chanting "Death to Israel" and calling President Mahmoud Abbas a traitor for attending the peace talks.

Speaking at the largest protest in Hamas-run Gaza, leaders of the Islamist group which seized the enclave from Abbas's forces in June said the president had no right to make concessions to Israel at the U.S.-hosted conference.

"Let them go to a thousand conferences, we say in the name of the Palestinian people that we did not authorize anyone to sign any agreement that harms our rights," Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, told a cheering crowd.

"Anyone who does so will be judged by history as a traitor."

Hundreds also defied a ban on anti-Annapolis rallies in the West Bank, where Abbas holds sway, to attend protests held by a snall Islamist group in Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron -- where up to 3,000 people gathered.

Abbas's security forces clashed with protesters, hitting out at the crowd with batons, shooting into the air and firing tear gas to disperse the rallies. A journalist was injured and up to 30 people were arrested in Ramallah, a Reuters witness said.

In Gaza, journalists estimated crowds of up to 100,000 people. Hamas put the number closer to 250,000 -- similar to the turnout at a rally called by Abbas's secular Fatah faction earlier this month for the anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death.

Waving Palestinian flags as well as the green Hamas banner and black flag of the Islamic Jihad faction, protesters shouted "Abbas is a traitor"....

Gang rape in Annapolis

Human Events asked me to write about reactions on the "Muslim street" to the Annapolis summit, so I did that for this week's column: "Gloom Before Annapolis." But the "Muslim street" reactions didn't leave me much room to say what I really thought of the conference itself. Frank Gaffney's piece in the Washington Times, "Gang rape in Annapolis," is much better and more worth reading:

It is fitting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of today's so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women.

Despite official efforts to low-ball its significance, Miss Rice's conclave is shaping up to be a gang-rape of a nation on a scale not seen since Munich in 1938, when the British and French allowed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to have their violent way with Czechoslovakia.

This time, the intended victim is Israel. As with the effort to appease the Nazis and Fascists nearly 70 years ago, however, the damage will not be confined to the rapee. The interests of the Free World in general and the United States in particular will suffer from what the Saudis and most of the other attendees have in mind for the Jewish State — namely, its dismemberment and ultimate destruction.

The Bush Administration also, at least as far as the dismemberment goes. Read it all.

77 police officers hurt in Paris riots; "genuine urban guerillas with conventional weapons and hunting weapons" among rioters

Escalation. "Rampaging Youths" Update. "77 police officers hurt in Paris riots," by Angela Charlton for the Associated Press:

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France - Rampaging youths rioted for a second night in Paris' suburbs, firing at officers and ramming burning cars into buildings. At least 77 officers were injured, a senior police union official said Tuesday.

The overnight violence was more intense than during three weeks of rioting in 2005, said the official, Patrice Ribeiro. He said that "genuine urban guerillas with conventional weapons and hunting weapons" were among the rioters.

The riots were triggered by the deaths of two teens killed in a crash with a police patrol car on Sunday in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town in Paris' northern suburbs.

Residents claimed that officers left the crash scene without helping the teens, whose motorbike collided with the car. Officials cast doubt on the claim, but the internal police oversight agency was investigating.

Rioting first erupted in Villiers-le-Bel on Sunday night. It grew worse and spread Monday night to other towns north of Paris. Rioters hurled stones and petrol bombs at police, authorities said.

The use of firearms added a dangerous new dimension. Firearms are widespread in France, and police generally carry guns. Guns, though, were rarely used in the 2005 riots that spread to poor housing projects nationwide.

Police are facing "a situation that is far worse than that of 2005," said Ribeiro, national secretary of the Synergie officers union.

"Our colleagues will not allow themselves to be fired upon indefinitely without responding," he warned on RTL radio. "They will be placed in situations which will become untenable."

Saudis free 1,500 jihadists after they "repent"

But what did they repent of? They repented of takfir -- the practice of branding fellow Muslims non-Muslims, and thus lawfully to be killed. This practice is used promiscuously by modern jihad groups, and it is that that Saudi authorities made sure they "repented" of -- because that targets them. They did go farther -- read on -- but nagging questions remain.

"Over 1,500 Extremists Freed After Repenting," from Arab News (thanks to all who sent this in):

RIYADH, 26 November 2007 — Saudi authorities have released more than 1,500 reformed extremists, who were detained on charges of embracing and spreading takfeer (the ideology that brands other Muslims who disagree wi