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More work for poor, heavily burdened Ibrahim Hooper: after he has straightened out all those Turkish misunderstanders of Islam, he will have to trek to Pakistan to introduce this imam to Islam's true, peaceful teachings. And maybe when he gets back he can explain to us how it is that so many Islamic clerics, who have devoted their lives to studying the Qur'an and Hadith, seem to get it so drastically wrong -- and all in the same way.
"Cleric’s chilling warning to UK," by Oliver Harvey for The Sun (thanks to John):
A FANATICAL Pakistani cleric told The Sun yesterday of his chilling dream to turn the world Muslim – by force if necessary.Qari Hifzur Rehamn, 60, spoke openly of imposing Islamic law’s stoning and beheading on Britain – as Pakistan was rocked by unrest over the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
He warned: “We want Islamic law for all Pakistan and then the world.
“We would like to do this by preaching. But if not then we would use force.”
Rehamn, 60, spoke in the Pakistani town of Kahuta as the call to prayer echoed over the dusty streets.
He is Imam of the town’s fundamentalist religious school or madrassa, where classes for kids as young as nine include Jihad or Holy War and barbaric punishments.
His teachings are frightening enough. But his mosque lies in the shadow of the secret bunker where Pakistan produces nuclear weapons.
And when asked if it would be right to nuke British infidels, he laughed and answered: “Probably.”
Rehamn, in a flowing grey beard and turban, explained Islamic, or Sharia Law as we sat surrounded by some of his 250 students.
He said: “Adulterers who are married should be buried in earth to the waist and stoned to death.
“Homosexuals must be killed – it’s the only way to stop them spreading. It should be by beheading or stoning, which the general public can do.
“Thieves should have their hands cut off. Women should remain indoors and films and pop music should be banned.”
So what does he think of Britain? The dad insisted: “The nonbelievers must be converted to Islam. Morals in your society, with women wearing revealing clothes, have gone wrong.”
Read it all.
Another Eurabia Alert. "3 held on Dutch violence fears," from CNN:
(CNN) -- Dutch police raided five homes in Rotterdam early Monday, arresting three men suspected of planning an imminent act of violence, according to a spokeswoman for the Netherlands' Justice Department.
Two of the suspects, aged 31 and 32, are Dutch-Moroccan and the third is a 39-year-old Sudanese man, spokeswoman Desiree Leppens told CNN.
Disgruntled members of the Dutch Reformed Church, no doubt.
She said special police forces conducted the raid after the Justice Department received information from General Intelligence and Security Services on the three men.
"We got the information yesterday evening and around 6 o'clock (Monday morning) we had the first arrest," Leppens said.
Dutch authorities have launched an investigation and must charge the men by the end of the week, she said. She said it is too early in the investigation to elaborate on what charges are being considered.
She had no other details on the raid or what led authorities to the suspects.
Eurabia Alert. "Brussels cancels New Year revelry," from Sky News:
Traditional New Year's Eve celebrations in Brussels have been cancelled over heightened fears of a terror attack.
The Belgian capital is on high alert after police detained 14 people on suspicion of helping to plot a jailbreak for an alleged al Qaeda militant.
Last week the government said it believed the suspects were planning to use explosives to attack the city and free inmate Nizar Trabelsi, who is serving 10 years for plotting to a car bomb at an air force base.
Tunisian Trabelsi was arrested just days after the 9/11 terror attacks.
He has denied his supporters were planning attacks and a judge has said the 14 should be released as there is not enough evidence.
But the heightened security measures at the airport and subway stations will remain in place until at least January 3.
The Belgian capital's Christmas market was supposed to stay open all night on New Year's Eve but it will now shut at 6pm. The ice rink will close two hours later.
"We've reviewed the situation and the conclusion is that there is no reason to scale back the current level of alert," said Jaak Raes, director general of the government's Crisis Centre.
"The aim is not to create panic ... but to avoid unnecessary risks."
If you're surprised by this, call me. I've got a very nice deal I can make you on a lovely suspension bridge. "'Peace partner' ready to make nice with Hamas: Weeks after U.S. announced $555 million to bolster Abbas against terror group," by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to Doug):
JERUSALEM – In a major policy speech today, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged dialogue with rival Hamas, calling for a "new page" to be started with the terror group."There is no way for any party here to be an alternative to the other, and there is no room for terms like coup or military takeover, but only for dialogue, dialogue, dialogue," Abbas said, referring to Hamas at a large rally marking the 43rd anniversary of his Fatah organization.
Abbas called for "a new page, writing in its lines a credible agreement based on partnership, on life, on our homeland and our struggle to liberate it."
He said new elections should be held in an effort to reconcile the warring Hamas and Fatah factions in hopes of improving life for Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Abbas' calls for dialogue fly in the face of the U.S. and Israeli policy of isolating Hamas and negotiating with Fatah, which the U.S. considers moderate.
For those who have not been keeping up with the Interludes that have been put up, sometimes steadily and sometimes in fits and starts (all are are available for retrieval by clicking on the link under the photograph of Oriana Fallaci at left), here, by way of inveiglement, are #65-#135, a little more than half of those put up between Thanksgiving and Hogmanay, 2007. And here is an explanation of why they're here at all.
Musical Interlude #65:
If I Could Be With You (Hal Swain Orch.)
Musical Interlude #66:
You're The Cream In My Coffee (King Solomon and His Miners, voc. Scrappy Lambert)
Musical Interlude #67:
Girl of My Dreams (Blue Steele Orch.)
Musical Interlude #68:
Say A Little Prayer For Me (Jack Payne Orch. & voc.)
Musical Interlude #69:
You Made Me Love You (Artie Shaw Orch., voc. Helen Forrest)
Cinematic Interlude #70:
Musical Interlude #71:
Cinematic Musical Interlude #72:
The Jitterbugs (Gracie Fields)
Musical Interlude #73:
Lover Come Back To Me (Lawrence Tibbett, Grace Moore)
Musical Interlude #74:
You Ought To See Sally On Sunday (Bertini and His Tower Blackpool Band)
Musical Interlude #75:
I'm Doin' What I'm Doin' For Love (Libby Holman)
Musical Interlude #76:
The Missed Rendezvous (Aleksandr Tsfasman)
Musical Interludes #77-79: Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields (Vaudeville Songs)
77.
79.
Why Don't You Practice What You Preach?
Musical Interlude #80:
Musical Interlude #81:
He's Only A Working Man (Lily Morris)
Musical Interlude #82:
Every Now And Then (Helen Kane, Donald Douglas)
Musical Interlude #83:
Lonely Melody (Bix Beiderbecke)
Musical Interlude #84:
Positively Absolutely (Jan Garber Orch.)
Musical Interlude #85:
Blue Moon (Aleksandr Varlamov Orch. & voc.)
Musical Interlude #86:
Ain't You, Baby (Ray Miller Orch., voc. Dusty Rhoads)
Musical Interlude #87:
She Didn't Say Yes(Ray Noble Orch.)
Musical Interlude #88:
Love Will Forgive You Everything (Hanka Ordonowna)
Musical Interlude #89:
Musical Interlude #90:
Body and Soul (Annette Hanshaw)
Musical Interlude #91:
I'm Gonna Meet My Sweetie Now (Jane Green)
Musical Interlude #92:
When You're Caught In The Web Of Love (The High-Hatters)
Musical Interlude #93:
Musical Interlude #94:
Musical Interlude #95:
Dark Eyes & St. Louis Blues (Washboard Serenaders)
Musical Interlude #96:
Musical Interlude #97:
What Wouldn't I Do For That Man? (Helen Morgan)
Cinematic Interlude #98:
Devchata (scene of First Love)
Musical Interlude #99:
Got A Date With An Angel (Debroy Somers Band)
Cinematic Dancing Interlude #100:
Ooh! That Mitzi Mayfair!
Musical Interlude #101:
Walkin' My Baby Back Home (Lee Morse)
Musical Interlude #102:
Comical Interlude #103:
Egyptian Sand Dance (Wilson and Keppel)
Musical Interlude #104:
I'm Sure Of Everything But You (Henry Hall Orchestra)
Musical Interlude #105:
My Baby Just Cares For Me (Jack Payne Orchestra)
Musical Interlude #106:
Got A Date With An Angel (Al Bowlly)
Musical Interlude #107:
A Mother's Heart (Pyotr Leshchenko)
Musical Interlude #108:
Tout Va Bien Madame La Marquise (in Italian)
Musical Interlude #109:
The Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Ted Weems Orchestra)
Cinematic Interlude #110:
Love Is Strange (Lipstick On Your Collar)
Musical Interlude #111:
Musical Interlude #112:
Miss Wonderful (Ted Weems Orchestra)
Musical Interlude #113:
You're In My Heart But Never In My Arms (Jack Swain New Royal Band)
Musical Interlude #114:
You're In My Heart But Never In My Arms (Jack Swain New Royal Band)
Musical Interlude #114:
I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling (Gene Austin)
Musical Interlude #115:
I'm Funny That Way (Ruth Etting)
Cinematic Musical Interlude #116:
La Fille Du Bédouin (Georges Milton) (then click on the image of the camera)
Non-Musical Interlude #117:
Musical Interlude #118:
Irgendwo Auf Der Welt (Comedian Harmonists)
Musical Interlude #119:
Le Plus Beau Tango Du Monde (Tino Rossi)
Musical Interlude #120:
Nobody's Sweetheart Now (Adrian Schubert Orch.)
Musical Interlude #121:
I'm Cooking Breakfast For The One I Love (Libby Holman)
Musical Interlude #122:
I Still Get A Thrill Thinking Of You (Hal Swain Band)
Musical Interlude #123:
Because My Baby Don't Mean Maybe Now (Ben Bernie Orch.)
Musical Interlude #124:
Musical Interlude #125:
Cinematic Musical Interlude #126:
Viktor Viktoria (Renate Muller, Anton Walbrook)
Musical Interlude #127:
Tout Va Bien Madame La Marquise (In Russian)
Musical Interlude #128:
Musical Interlude #129:
These Foolish Things (Cedric Gibbons)
Musical Interlude #130:
Every Thing I Have Is Yours (Billy Merrin's Commanders)
Musical Interlude #131:
Musical Interlude #132:
Just You, Just Me(Jack Hylton Orch., voc. Sam Browne)
Cinematic Musical Interlude #133:
When We Build A Little House (Eddie Cantor)
Musical Interlude #134:
Love Me Tonight (Annette Hanshaw)
Musical Interlude #135:
The Clouds Will Soon Roll By (Leo Reisman Orch., voc. Charles Carlisle)
Any takers? Anyone? Anywhere? Alevis? Anyone?
"Muslim Minority Marches Against German Crime Show," from Spiegel Online (thanks to all who sent this in):
The popular German TV series "Tatort" has provoked an uproar within a segment of its Turkish community. Alevi Muslims, who practice a tolerant offshoot of Shiism, say the show has revived a centuries-old incest libel and may inflame immigrant tensions in Germany.Up to 20,000 Alevi Muslims in Germany gathered in front of the Cologne cathedral on Sunday to protest a broadcast of a popular TV series called "Tatort" (Crime Scene). Alevi leaders said the show played on a centuries-old prejudice against Alevis by showing a character involved in incest.
The protest "was absolutely peaceful," said a police spokesman according to Agence France-Presse. An Alevi leader in Germany, Mehmet Ali Toprak, told the Tageszeitung newspaper: "The Alevis respect freedom of press and freedom of opinion and are opposed to any ban on cultural expression. But these values must not be used to harm the dignity of a minority."
In other words, they've got to go, and pronto.
In Morocco, I've been told more than once, they don't have jihadists. Islam is different there. It's a long way from Morocco to Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. Yet Morocco too doesn't seem free of jihadist sentiment. "Jihadists in Jails Win Leverage Over Their Keepers," by Michael Moss and Souad Mekhennet for the New York Times (thanks to all who sent this in):
CASABLANCA, Morocco — Ahmed Rafiki sprawled on the makeshift couch in his cell, a fresh red henna dye in his long hair and beard.
As Muhammad recommended.
Known to other militants as the father of Moroccan jihadists, he was convicted in 2003 of leading young men to fight Americans in Afghanistan. But here in Oukacha Prison, Mr. Rafiki, an Islamist cleric, is serving the final months of his sentence in style.His kitchen and larder are stocked three times a week by his two wives. His curtained doorway leads to a private garden and bath. He has two radios and a television, a reading stand for his Koran and a wardrobe of crisply ironed Islamic attire.
“In my case,” he said with a smile, “the people treat me well.”
Hardly a scene of harsh interrogation and detention for which Moroccan prisons are known, Mr. Rafiki’s plush prison life is evidence of an awkward balancing act between the crackdown on militants in many countries and the power those militants can hold over the authorities.
Through hunger strikes and protests, Mr. Rafiki and Oukacha’s 65 other militant inmates have won perks — including exclusive use of the conjugal rooms — that make them the envy of the prison’s 7,600 other inmates.
One recent morning, a prisoner advocate handed the warden a long list of inmates not linked to terrorism cases who were demanding equal time with their wives.
“‘Why do they get much more rights than we get here?’” the advocate, Assia El Ouadie, said the other prisoners constantly asked her. “‘Do you want us to become terrorism prisoners, and then we will get those rights?’”
Read it all.
They planted a string of bombs near entertainment venues. Now, what kind of "separatist rebels" would do that? Well, Colonel Prabphan Meemongkon tells us in paragraph 3 that they are "militants." In paragraph 4 we find out that this happened in a "Muslim-majority region," and in paragraph 9 we learn that the Thai South was previously "an ethnic Malay sultanate."
Could this be an Islamic jihad, based on the Islamic principle that "Islam must dominate, and not be dominated," and that Muslims must not, when they have the strength to overturn it, accept rule by the kuffar? Only an attentive and informed reader might come to that understanding from this AFP story, which is typical of coverage of the Thai jihad (except that it doesn't use the word "restive"). It's just a separatist uprising, you see. Why Muslims in Thailand would want to separate from the rest of Thailand is unexplained -- that's irrelevant. It's just a separatist uprising. Move along.
"One killed, dozens injured in bombings in Thai south: police," from AFP (thanks to Anne Crockett):
NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AFP) — A string of bombs planted by suspected separatist rebels rocked Thailand's troubled south Monday, killing one person and injuring dozens near the Malaysian border, police said.Explosives planted at entertainment venues across Sun Ngai Kolok town in Narathiwat province wounded 27 people in the early hours of Monday, two of them seriously, police said.
"It was likely done by militants who target innocent people during new year," local police chief Colonel Prabphan Meemongkon told AFP.
He said police managed to defuse one bomb at a hotel in the Muslim-majority region, where rebels are waging a bloody battle for a separate state, but five devices struck two other hotels nearby.
The first blasts hit at about 12:40 am Monday (1740 GMT Sunday), sending people fleeing into a hotel car park, where another bomb was hidden.
A police officer in Narathiwat said that explosives had been packed into cigarette packets, which were planted inside a hotel disco.
Another blast hit a hotel karaoke bar, he said.
Later in nearby Yala province, one person was killed and four were injured when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded outside a restaurant, police said.
More than 2,800 people have been killed in four years of separatist unrest in Thailand's south, an ethnic Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension....
In the event that the jihadists get close to it. From the National Terror Alert Response Center (thanks to Mackie):
US special forces snatch squads are on standby to seize or disable Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the event of a collapse of government authority or the outbreak of civil war following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.The troops, augmented by volunteer scientists from America’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team organization, are under orders to take control of an estimated 60 warheads dispersed around six to 10 high-security Pakistani military bases.
Military sources say contingency plans have been reviewed over the past three days to prevent any of Pakistan’s atomic weapons falling into the hands of Islamic extremists if the administration of President Pervez Musharraf appears threatened by civil unrest....
Barry Rubin discusses the meaning of the Bhutto assassination.
Much will be said about Benazir Bhutto's assassination; little will be understood about what it truly means. I'm not speaking here about Pakistan, of course, as important as is that country. But rather the lesson--as if we need any more--for that broad Middle East which begins in Pakistan and ends on the Atlantic Ocean coast.This is a true story. Back in 1946, an American diplomat asked an Iranian editor why his newspaper angrily criticized the United States but never the Soviet Union. The Iranian said that it was obvious. "The Russians," he said, "they kill people."
A dozen years earlier, in 1933, the Iraqi official Sami Shawkat, gave a talk which became one of the most famous texts of Arab nationalism. "There is something more important than money and learning for preserving the honor of a nation and for keeping humiliation at bay," he stated. "That is strength....Strength, as I use the word here, means to excel in the Profession of Death."
What, you might ask, was Shawkat's own profession? He was director-general of Iraq's ministry of education. This was how young people were to be taught and directed; this is where Saddam Hussein came from. Seventy-five years later the subsequent history of Iraq and the rest of the Arab world show just how well Shawkat did his job.
September 11 in the United States; the Bali bombing for Australia; the tube bombing for Britain; the commuter train bombing for Spain, these were all merely byproducts of this pathology. The pathology in question is not Western policy toward the Middle East but rather Middle Eastern policy toward the Middle East.
Ever since I read Shawkat's words as a student, the phrase, "Profession of Death," which gave his article its title, struck me as a pun. On one hand, the word "profession" meant "career."
To be a killer--note well that Shawkat was not talking specifically about soldiers, those who fight, but rather those who murder--was the highest calling of all. It was more important than being a teacher, who forms character; more important than a businessperson, who enriches his country; more important than a doctor who preserves the life of fellow citizens. Destruction was a higher calling than construction. And for sure in the Arabic-speaking world what has been reaped is what has been sowed.
But also the word "profession" here reminds me of "to profess," "to preach." What is of greatest value is for an educator to preach and glorify death. What kind of ideology, what kind of society, what kind of values, does such a priority produce? Look and see.
Like children playing with dynamite, Western intellectuals, journalists, and diplomats fantasize that they are achieving results in the Middle East with their words, promises, apologies, money, and concessions. Yet how can such innocents cope despite--or perhaps because of--all their good intentions with polities and societies whose basic ruling ethos is that of the serial killer?
And what can be achieved when those most forward-looking and most creative, those who want to break with the ideas and methods creating a disastrous mess, the stagnant system which characterizes so much of the Middle East, are systematically murdered? Read the roll: King Abdallah of Jordan, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri of Lebanon, the bold author Farouq Fawda in Egypt, Iraqi Sunnis who dare seek compromise, Palestinian moderates, Algerian modernists, and thousands of women who seek a moderate degree of freedom.
The radicals are right: dying is a disincentive. And for every one killed how many thousands give in; and for every one threatened how many hundreds give in?
Seventy-five years after Shawkat, Hamas television teaches Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip that their highest aspiration should be to become a suicide bomber, with success measured by how many Jews are killed. And, by the way, the Palestinian Authority's television in the West Bank sends a similar message, albeit not quite as often.
Will billions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) change anything when the men with the guns take what they want? Are PA chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, respectively a timid bureaucrat and a well-meaning economist, going to take a bullet for lifting one finger to get a compromise peace with Israel?
How are you going to get a government of national conciliation in Iraq when the insurgents have shown they can gun down any Sunni politician or cleric who steps out of line?
The current supporters of the Lebanese government are probably the bravest politicians in the Arabic-speaking world, men willing to defy death. But how can they stand firm when Western governments rush to engage with the Syrian government that murdered them, and Western media proclaim the moderation of a Damascus ruler who systematically kills those who oppose him?
Can anyone really expect a stable society capable of progress in Pakistan when a large majority of the population expresses admiration for bin Ladin? And what about the Saudi system where, as one local writer put it, the big Usama put into practice what the little Usama learned in a Saudi school.
Don't you get it? The radical forces in the region are not expecting to retain or gain power by negotiating, compromising, or being better understood. They believe they are going to shoot their way into power or, just as good, accept the surrender of those they have intimidated.
That is why so much of the Western analysis and strategies for dealing with the region are a bad joke. Usama bin Ladin understands that, as he once said, people are going to back the strongest horse in the race.
According to all too many people in the Western elites, the way to win is to be the nicest horse.
But doesn't this assessment sound terribly depressing and hopeless? Well, yes and no.
Radical Islamists like to proclaim that they will triumph because they love death while their enemies--that is, soon-to-be-victims--love life.
Be careful what you wish for, though, because you probably will get it. For those who love death the reward is...death.
For those who love life, the outcomes include decent educational systems, living standards, individual rights, and strong economic systems.
All these things, and others that go along with them, are what really produce strength. And isn't it interesting that, contrary to Shawkat, the nations that put the priority on these things enjoy far more honor and suffer far less humiliation than happens with his model.
The profession of death has wrecked most Middle Eastern societies. But it has never succeeded in defeating a free society. It is not an effective tactic for destroying others but only for devastating one's own people.
Who killed Benazir Bhutto? The Sami Shawkat philosophy: alike in its Arab nationalist, Islamist, and Pakistani authoritarian versions which dominate Middle East politics.
The Somali jihad resurgent. "Somalia: Hundreds of Islamist militants advance on Baidoa," from AKI (thanks to Sr. Soph):
Jarail, 31 Dec. (AKI) - Several hundred Islamist militants belonging to the al-Qaeda linked 'Young Mujahadeen' group have gathered at a disused miliatary base 40 kilometres from the southern city of Baidoa, where Somalia's transitional government is based, pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat reports, quoting unnamed government sources.The 'Young Mujahadeen' are being led by the Islamic Courts movement's former miltary commander, Mukhtar Rabow, whose battlename is Abu Mansur.
The group's objective is to launch intermittent attacks against Baidoa. To fend off such attacks, the Somali authorities have deployed an 'extraordinary defence plan' for the city, al-Sharq al-Awsat said.
Islamist militants in recent days have taken the village of Jarail, in the central part of the country, and over the weekend waged fierce firefights with Ethiopian troops in the capital, Mogadishu.
The militants are reported to have launched rocket attacks against government offices and the stadium in Mogadishu, which has become the Ethiopian troops' base.
Ethiopian troops came to the rescue of the embattled Somali government a year ago and swiftly ousted the Islamic Courts, which had briefly controlled large areas of south and central Somalia.
Remnants of the fundamentalist movement have since reverted to guerrilla tactics, waging a deadly insurgency, mainly on the streets of Mogadishu.
Hundreds of people, mainly civilians, have died in clashes between Ethiopian-backed government forces and insurgents over the past six months. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have been forced to flee Mogadishu, sparking what the United Nations has described as Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.
Some disassembly required. An update on this story. "Aksa Martyrs Brigades calls for Fayad's assassination," by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Jerusalem Post:
Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, on Sunday called for the murder of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad for "collaboration" with Israel and the US.
This was the first time the group has openly called for Fayad's assassination. In the past, the group distributed leaflets strongly condemning Fayad and calling for his dismissal.
Fayad has been under heavy criticism from some Fatah leaders and activists, who accuse him of denying them public funds and plotting to undermine Fatah's grip on power. Other Fatah leaders have also accused Fayad of seeking to consolidate his power with the hope of replacing Mahmoud Abbas as PA president.
The threat was made in a leaflet distributed by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip. Some Fatah officials in Ramallah sought to distance themselves from the threat, claiming that the leaflet had been forged. They even went as far as accusing Hamas of being behind it.
"The command of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip calls on all its elements and striking forces in the West Bank to immediately eliminate the so-called Salaam Fayad," the leaflet said. It claimed that Fayad's Ramallah-based government was working for Israel and the US.
Calling on Abbas to fire the Fayad government, the leaflet criticized Fayad for cutting off the salaries of many Fatah supporters in the Gaza Strip. It also attacked him for allowing the PA security forces in Bethlehem to hand over to Israel three Israelis who had entered the city on Saturday.
"We call on all our members and the policemen in the West Bank not to obey orders from the Fayad government, because it's serving an American agenda and helping Israel eliminate the Aksa Martyrs Brigades," the group continued. It also called to fire PA Interior Minister Abdel Razzak al-Yahya for announcing that the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank had been dismantled.
Whoops. No virgins. "Two suicide bombers die in botched Pak attack," from Reuters (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):
KARACHI - Two suspected suicide bombers were killed in Pakistan’s central Punjab province early on Sunday when the devices they were carrying exploded prematurely in an apparent botched attack on a former minister, police said.The blast in Haroonabad, in southern Punjab, comes just days after former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was slain in a suicide attack, triggering widespread violence that has killed at least 44 people.
Police said they believed Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq, a former religious affairs minister in President Pervez Musharraf’s government who had earlier been staying at a house 200 metres (yards) away from the site of the blast, was the intended target.
“My guess is that they were there to target Mister Ejaz-ul-Haq who visited the area a day earlier,” Zafar Abbas, district police officer in nearby Bhawalnagar, told Reuters by telephone. Haq had already left the area before the incident.
Police found scattered body parts and the wreckage of a motorcycle at the scene of the blast, and suspect they either met an accident or fell from the bike, detonating the explosives.
“We have retrieved two heads, which are badly mutilated and cannot be identified. One appeared to be in his early 40s while the other is a younger one,” said another police officer....
Police said some religious elements at a nearby mosque had chanted slogans against Ul-Haq and Musharraf’s former government over a military assault on a Taliban-style movement at Red Mosque in Islamabad in July, which triggered a wave of suicide bombings.
Savage's CAIR suit is heating up. "Michael Savage lawsuit links CAIR to 9/11 plot," from WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to Doug):
WASHINGTON – It's no longer just a charge of copyright violation in the case of Michael Savage v. Council on American-Islamic Relations.Now the radio talk star is going for the legal jugular in his battle with the group that bills itself as a Muslim civil rights organization.
The San Francisco-based talker has amended his lawsuit against CAIR for misusing audio clips of his show as part of a boycott campaign against his three-hour daily program to include charges the group "has consistently sought to silence opponents of violent terror through economic blackmail, frivolous but costly lawsuits, threats of lawsuits and abuses of the legal system."
The amended lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California, also charges CAIR with using extortion, threats, abuse of the court system, and obtaining money via interstate commerce under false and fraudulent circumstances – calling it a "political vehicle of international terrorism" and even linking the group with support of al-Qaida.
The federal government recently named CAIR, based in Washington, D.C., as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged scheme to funnel $12 million to the terrorist group Hamas.
And as WND has reported, CAIR has been associated with a disturbing number of convicted terrorists or felons in terrorism probes, as well as suspected terrorists and active targets of terrorism investigations.
"Groups like CAIR have a proven record of senior officials being indicted and either imprisoned or deported from the United States," said U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., co-founder of the House Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus.
Savage and celebrity civil rights attorney Daniel Horowitz are attempting to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to make the case that "CAIR and its co-conspirators have aided, abetted and materially sponsored al-Qaida and international terrorism."
CAIR launched a campaign against "The Savage Nation," as the program is called, using extended audio clips of the show to make the case that advertisers who supported the talker were actually endorsing "hate speech" against Muslims.
Savage turned the tables on the activist group by initially suing for copyright violation of the show's material. This week the suit was expanded with some of the strongest allegations ever made against CAIR publicly.
Among the charges is that CAIR is "part of a deliberately complex and deliberately confusing array of related organizations" and that its "organizational structure is part of a scheme to hide the illegal activities of the group, funding, the transfer of funds and to complicate investigation of the group."
Other highlights of the suit:
* "CAIR is not a civil rights organization and it never has been. … CAIR was and is a political organization that advocates a specific political agenda on behalf of foreign interests."
* "The copyright infringement was done to raise funds for CAIR so that it could perpetuate and continue to perform its role in the RICO conspiracy set forth in Count Two and to disseminate propaganda on behalf of foreign interests that are opposed to the continued existence of the United States of America as a free nation."
* "CAIR would have to register as a foreign agent if their activities were not hidden under the false claim that they are a civil rights organization that enjoys tax-exempt status."
* "CAIR was tied to terror from the day it was formed. The group was incorporated on or about 1994 by Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad. Both men were officers of a terror organization known as the 'Islamic Association of Palestine.'"
* "CAIR's parent group, IAP, was founded in or about 1982 by Musa Abu Marzook. Marzook was IAP's ideological leader and controlling director from the date of its founding until shortly after his deportation from the United States in 1997. At all time relevant, Marzook was an operative of, and/or affiliated with, the 'Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah,' or 'Hamas.' Hamas is an international terrorist organization."
* In 1998, "CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama bin Laden as 'the sworn enemy,' asserting that this depiction [was] 'offensive to Muslims.'"
* In 1998, "CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the two al-Qaida bombings of American embassies in Africa. CAIR's leader Ibrahim Hooper claimed the bombings resulted from 'misunderstandings on both sides.'"
* "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."
* "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." The Holy Land Foundation, the suit charges, is "a terror organization."
* "CAIR receives significant international funding. For example, in 1999 the Islamic Development Bank gave a $250,000 grant to CAIR to purchase land for a national headquarters. In 2002, the World Association for Muslim Youth, a Saudi government-funded organization, financed distributing books on Islam free of charge and an advertising campaign in American publications. This included a quarter page in USA Today each Friday, for a year, estimated to cost $1.04 million. In 2003, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $500,000 to distribute the Koran and other books about Islam in the United States. In 2005, CAIR's Washington branch received a donation of $1,366,466 from a Saudi Arabian named Adnan Bogary. In 2006, Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, deputy ruler of Dubai and UAE minister of finance and industry, financed the building of a property in the U.S. to serve as an endowment for the organization. This gift is thought to generate income of approximately $3 million a year."
* "The role of CAIR and CAIR-Canada is to wage PSYOPS (psychological warfare) and disinformation activities on behalf of Wahabbi-based Islamic terrorists throughout North America. They are the intellectual 'shock troops' of Islamic terrorism."
* "The Council on American-Islamic Relations is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. It works in the United States as a lobby against radio, television and print media journalists who dare to produce anything about Islam that is at variance with their fundamental agenda."
* "CAIR has links to both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorism expert Steven Emerson has stated before Congress that CAIR is a front for Hamas."
Read it all!
Maybe this book from Waqf Ikhlas Publications made them misunderstand their religion. "Turkey arrests five for al Qaeda links: report," from Reuters:
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey has detained five people for links with al Qaeda after police operations in four cities including the capital Ankara, Turkish TV reported on Sunday.
The arrests follow the detention at the weekend of 19 people for suspected links to the Islamist militant group, which had claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks against the British Consulate, two synagogues and an HSBC bank in Istanbul killing more than 60 people in November 2003.
The court ordered five of the suspects to be held for possible trial.
Turkish media said one of the suspects was a Turk who taught English language in the country's central city of Aksaray.
Authorities have stepped up security in main cities ahead of the New Year Holiday, fearing bombings. Istanbul municipality cancelled a traditional New Year's Night party in the city's main square.
Pop quiz! Who said that? Me? Andy Bostom? Serge Trifkovic? Greg Davis? Must have been one of us "Islamophobes," no?
Whoops! Nope! It comes from a book, Islam and Christianity, printed by a Muslim publishing house, Waqf Ikhlas Publications, and distributed by the modern, moderate, secular Turkish government to non-Muslims who come to work in Turkey. It's on page 316 of the 7th edition.
I expect that Ibrahim Hooper and Salam Al-Marayati will be on the phone to Waqf Ikhlas Publications forthwith, explaining to them that they're misunderstanding Islam and jihad. Oh, those Turkish Islamophobes!
The learned architects of the current policy
Close your eyes and repeat it over and over again: We are not in a war. We are not in a war. We are not in a war. The aimless death cult has nothing to do with Islam. The aimless death cult has nothing to do with Islam. The aimless death cult has nothing to do with Islam. Keep your eyes closed, now! If you keep your eyes closed and believe very, very hard, it will come true!
"Britain Drops 'War on Terror' Label," from the Daily Mail via Military.com (thanks to Sparta):
The words "war on terror" will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country's chief prosecutor said Dec. 27.Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless "death cult."
The Director of Public Prosecutions said: 'We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language."
London is not a battlefield, he said.
"The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers," Macdonald said. "They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way."
His remarks signal a change in emphasis across Whitehall, where the "war on terror" language has officially been ditched.
Officials were concerned it could act as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, which is determined to manufacture a battle between Islam and the West.
The term "Islamic terrorist" will also no longer be used. Officials believe it is unhelpful because it appears to directly link the religion to terrorist atrocities....
In "Why the Left Hates Democracy," my longtime sparring partner Dinesh D'Souza expresses his attachment to the democratic principle: an attachment so strong and unyielding that he says, If they want Sharia, let them have it!
So why does the left hate democracy in the Muslim world? The reason is simple. Muslims are socially conservative and generally want a greater role for Islam in their private and public lives. Consequently Muslim democracies are likely to be more conservative socially than they are when secular despots rule them. The left fears Muslim democracy because it is terrified of Muslim values, especially sharia or Muslim holy law. Feminists and gays are not likely to fare very well under Muslim holy law.When Iraqis rejected secular candidates and voted for a party that pledged to have sharia, at least in some forms of domestic law, the New York TImes howled that democracy could be "consigning Iraqi women to a life of subjugation." Columnist Maureen Dowd warned that "the Iraqi election may actually be making things worse" because "it is going to expand the control of the Shia theocrats." These complaints might have some plausibility if women or Sunnis were not permitted to vote. But women and men both voted for the Dawa party, and so essentially the Times and Dowd were arguing that if Iraqis don't want equal roles for men and women, their democracy is a sham.
All this puts me in mind of that great American statesman, Stephen A. Douglas, the originator of the concept of popular sovereignty. Regarding slavery in Kansas he said, "I care not whether they vote it up or vote it down," as long as the will of the people was expressed and carried out. And now D'Souza casts himself as the great Douglas of Dhimmitude, who cares not whether the people of Iraq vote Sharia up or down, as long as they express their almighty popular will. And look, he says: even women voted for it, so how oppressive can it be?
Well, some slaves fought willingly on the side of the Confederates during the Civil War, too, but I don't think that proves anything about slavery itself. And as for popular sovereignty, we have too many Douglases today, and no Lincolns. "Feminists and gays" are indeed "not likely to fare very well under Muslim holy law," but that's just the beginning. All women, feminist or not, will be subject to restrictions on the value of their testimony (cf. Qur'an 2:282) and their inheritance rights (cf. Qur'an 4:11), and made vulnerable to religiously-sanctioned beating (cf. Qur'an 4:34). Non-Muslims will be subject to restrictions on their freedom of worship and made to pay a special tax -- and you can see from the links that where hardliners gain control, this is already happening. Non-Muslims would not be considered equal to Muslims before the law.
D'Souza has thus placed himself in a paradoxical position: he believes in the rights of man, from which come the concept of popular sovereignty. He believes in the right of self-determination so strongly that he advocates that Iraqis and other Muslims exercise it even to the point of disenfranchising and relegating to inferior status large segments of their societies.
To break this paradox, we need a leader with the courage, the insight, and the will to say that he or she believes in the rights of the individual as delineated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (for all the limitations of that document, it enshrines Judeo-Christian principles of human rights as universal, including the freedom of conscience and the equality of dignity of all people, both of which are denied by Sharia), and thus opposes Sharia.
And finally, D'Souza completely ignores the fact that wherever Sharia is imposed, the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism have not been far behind, and have set large segments of the Sharia society (if not its leadership, although the House of Saud is a highly questionable case) against the U.S. and the West. So he is advocating, in sum, the adoption of a system that will ultimately make the United States more enemies.
There is no easy solution. I am certainly not advocating that the U.S. topple Sharia regimes around the world. I do think we should adopt a defensive anti-Sharia posture, and oppose its encroachment in the U.S. and Europe. As for Iraq, I don't think there is anything we can ultimately do to keep it from being adopted, but we certainly should not be aiding and abetting that adoption. That would be like selling the Reds the rope they will use to hang us.
Khalid Hasan and I may have our differences, but I wholeheartedly applaud his courage and clear-sightedness in writing this in the Daily Times (thanks to all who sent this in):
The most shameful part of the Aqsa tragedy lies in the online and offline rumours that those who consider themselves “rightly guided” have been circulating. Some suggested that she had a black boyfriend (note the racism), others that she was sexually promiscuous, and some even called her a drug pusher. In other words, her father had every moral right to kill her, is the message. The Canadian imams, many of them in their self-styled attires and operatic headgear came out with other justifications. Sheikh Alaa El-Sayyed, imam of a Toronto mosque, said, “Women who wear hijabs occupy higher positions in Islam, according to religious teachings.” Where did the imam get that because nowhere does Islam lay that out? He also said, “We cannot let culture supersede religion. If we stay away from the teachings of Islam, we will pay for it.” Translated into straight language, it means that since Aqsa stayed away from the teachings of Islam, she had to “pay for it”.
Hot on the heels of Why Can't Muslims Debate? Part 1 and Part 2 comes this: Why Can't Leftists (and Their Islamic Allies) Respect Those Who Disagree With Them? There is a tendency among those on the Left to assume that everyone with a point of view different from theirs is an idiot, as well as a satanic, cynical manipulator. Just think of the caricature of George W. Bush, as simultaneously the half-wit marsupial who can't form a coherent sentence and the evil mastermind behind the 9/11 inside job.
And so we come to a "Dr Marranci," who back in September posted a series of questions to me that I overlooked until today, when a reader kindly pointed them out to me. The questions, although couched in invitations to civil debate, are patronizing in the extreme (see, for example, #7). He cautions me that I should reply civilly, as if I am likely to reply with a string of invective. There's the evil side of the equation. And he accuses me of, among other things, attempting "to link historical facts of the past to the present situation, so that Muslims, all of them, even the ‘moderate’ majority, are trying to reduce us to Dhimmitude, of the same kind experienced in Europe during the Middle Ages." Have I ever said such a thing? Of course not. The idea that I might think that "all" Muslims are trying to do anything in particular puts me firmly in the idiot camp.
Now, I've written seven books, hundreds of articles, and about 19,000 blog posts, and in them I have said a great many things about Islam and Muslims, and jihad and terrorism, and dhimmitude and Islamic supremacism. Before formulating his questions, Marranci seems to have read maybe one or two of those articles and blog posts, and leaps to numerous false assumptions about what I believe and what I argue about these subjects. Now, I am of two minds about this. The questions are leading, condescending, and manipulative, but I think I should answer them anyway. After all, it would be asinine of me to demand that someone read my books before he asks me any questions. But my own question to Dr. Marranci is, On what basis do you assume that I hold the positions you obviously assume I hold from your questions? I'll be glad to have a civil debate, but it has to be civil on both sides, no? Without one side assuming he is dealing with an evil idiot. And finally, before I answer your questions, your contention that I've read some books and am trying to impose the content of those books on an Islamic world that is much larger and more complex than those books is, simply, false. Rather, I report, as you'll see if you read my writings, on how Islamic jihadists today are trying to take the contents of those books and bring it out into the world, and how peaceful Muslims are so far unable to stop them from doing so. You seem, like many others, to assume that it is I who have made the connection between Islam and violence and supremacism, when in fact it has already been made by many, many Muslims, and I simply report on it.
So, to your questions:
1. Do you think that there is only one ‘real’ interpretation of Islam as religion so that only certain Muslims (those whom you labelled Islamo Fascists) are the ‘real’ Muslims?
No.
2. Do you think that Muslims think, behave and act in a certain way because of Islam?
Some of ‘em. Not all of ‘em.
3. Do you believe that Western Civilization is a unitary, unilinear historical process derived from a unique historical reality?
No.
4. Do you believe that there is an attempt to reduce to the state of Dhimmitude the West, so that we have to assume that there exists a unitary plan and project aimed to achieve such a goal? If so, who is behind the plan?
Yes, but I do not think that means that we must assume that there exists a unitary plan and project aimed at achieving such a goal.
5. Do you believe that Muslims are a lobby trying to take hegemonic control of universities, mass media, and other key elements in order to implement the Shari’a at a global level?
Some of ‘em. Not all of ‘em.
6. Is the Shari’a one? If so, could you provide a clear example of the applied version? If this is not the case, where can we find what you define as the Shari’a?
No. From the Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanafi, Hanbali, and Ja’fari schools of jurisprudence.
7. Which is, according to you, the difference between Islam and Muslims? Are they the same?
Um, I think...um...maybe...Islam is the belief and Muslims are the believers? Um, is that it? And no, they’re not the same.
8. How do you define Fascism, radicalism, fundamentalism in general, and what kind of elements can make it ‘Islamic’?
Fascism: everything in society is oriented toward the supreme goal. Radicalism: taking something really, really seriously. Fundamentalism: technically this has to do with the acceptance of five doctrinal points among 19th century American Protestants, but people like you also often apply it to Muslims who stress the traditional faith and literal understanding of the Qur’an and Sunnah. Fascism is Islamic when Muslims push forward a societal program in which everything is oriented toward Islamic purity.
9. Does your definition of the West and Westerners include also the Muslim generations which are born in Europe or the US?
Some of ‘em. Not all of ‘em.
10. What is your definition of Civilization?
A type of culture or society, of a specific time and place.
11. What makes the West a Civilization?
Lots of things. Above all today I’d say a commitment to the equality of dignity of all people, which the schools of Islamic law deny, a commitment to the equality of rights of all people before the law, which the schools of Islamic law deny, a commitment to freedom of conscience, with the schools of Islamic law deny, and a certain attachment to art as ennobling the human spirit, such as is not possible in a strictly iconoclastic culture.
12. Why do you refer to the flirtation of Muslim leaders with Fascists but omit any reference to the parallel relationship of Zion-Revisionists with the same Fascist leaders? What is the difference at a historical level?
The “Zion-Revisionists” didn’t have a program for world domination, and the subjugation of unbelievers. Historically, they never did. The jihadists always have had one, and still do.
That's it. I'll admit my answers are a bit laconic and tongue-in-cheek. I'll admit that I tend to react that way when I'm being condescended to. If Dr. Marranci really wants to debate, I'm game. If he wants to lecture me about the difference between belief and practice, which I have written about ad infinitum, and about the meaning of words, like an errant schoolboy, then he is going to have to find another mark.
UPDATE: I just posted this and then found this post over at Marranci's. Here is another manifestation of the tendencies I described above, along with a strange example of projection: Marranci says that he hopes I will "find the time to debate, correctly and academically" with him, and then sneers that my "worshipers" and I are "extremely good in sophistic polemic, but they seem in difficulties when the discussion is open and civilised." I would suggest in turn to Dr. Marranci that when he refers to my "worshipers" and compares me to Mussolini (and note also his illustration to this post), he is proving his proficiency at "sophistic polemic" and his disdain for "open and civilised" debate, despite his protestations.
SECOND UPDATE: Dr. Marranci again demonstrates his attachment to "open and civilised" debate by, instead of focusing on anything substantive that I have said above or elsewhere, tries to portray me as some kind of cult leader. And while criticizing me for being a humorless SOB and a kicker of kittens, he takes the fact that I posted a link to an "I love Robert Spencer" t-shirt below as evidence that I really am trying to form a cult of personality.
Since I began this post by discussing the intellectual bankruptcy of many of my opponents and their tendency to do nothing but demonize me rather than deal with what I actually say, I can't help but be amused by Dr. Marranci's readiness to prove my points. For the record, this humorless SOB (me, not Marranci) posted the "I love Robert Spencer t-shirt" as a joke. A j-o-k-e. After all his condescending word-definition questions, I suppose I should ask Marranci if he knows what a joke is. For the record, I have nothing to do with this t-shirt. I did not design it, I do not sell it, I do not receive any money from its sale, I do not know who did design it, and for that matter, I don't even think it refers to me. There is a Broadway actor who has the misfortune of sharing a name with me, and I suspect the shirt is referring to him. But I found it by chance on Amazon, and thought it was funny.
However, I am thinking of buying one and sending it to Dr. Marranci, gratis.
Osama bin Laden emerges from his hideout in this undated file photo
Even a dog can walk around in the daylight. But not Osama bin Laden. "Blood for blood, destruction for destruction." Blah for blah. Talk about a tired act.
"Bin Laden issues warning on Iraq, Israel," by Salah Nasrawi for Associated Press (thanks to Sr. Soph):
CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden warned Iraq's Sunni Arabs against fighting al-Qaida and vowed to expand the terror group's holy war to Israel in a new audiotape Saturday, threatening "blood for blood, destruction for destruction."Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida's latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida's Iraq branch on the run.
The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, though Pakistan's government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination.
Bin Laden's comments offered an unusually direct attack on Israel, stepping up al-Qaida's attempts to use the Israeli-Arab conflict to rally supporters. Israel has warned of growing al-Qaida activity in Palestinian territory, though terror network is not believed to have taken a strong role there so far.
Islamic Tolerance Alert:
"We intend to liberate Palestine, the whole of Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the sea," he said, threatening "blood for blood, destruction for destruction.""We will not recognize even one inch for Jews in the land of Palestine as other Muslim leaders have," bin Laden said.
In Iraq, a number of Sunni Arab tribes in western Anbar province have formed a coalition fighting al-Qaida-linked insurgents that U.S. officials credit for deeply reducing violence in the province. The U.S. military has been working to form similar "Awakening Councils" in other areas of Iraq.
Bin Laden said Sunni Arabs who have joined the Awakening Councils "have betrayed the nation and brought disgrace and shame to their people. They will suffer in life and in the afterlife."
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said bin Laden's tape shows that al-Qaida's aim is to block democracy and freedom for all Iraqis.
"It also reminds us that the mission to defeat al-Qaida in Iraq is critically important and must succeed," Fratto said. "The Iraqi people — every day, and in increasing numbers — are choosing freedom and standing against the murderous, hateful ideology of AQI. And we stand with them."
Several hours before the tape was issued, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, said al-Qaida was becoming increasingly fearful of losing the support of Sunni Arabs and had begun targeting the leaders of the Awakening Councils.
Petraeus said al-Qaida attaches "enormous importance" to "these tribes that have turned against them, and to the general sense that Sunni Arab communities have rejected them more and more around Iraq."
"They are trying to counter this and they have done so by attacking them," which is increasingly turning Sunnis against al-Qaida, he said.
In the audiotape, bin Laden denounced Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the former leader of the Anbar Awakening Council, who was killed in a September bombing claimed by al-Qaida.
"The most evil of the traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life," bin Laden said.
Note, yet again, the exclusively religious nature of his appeal to Muslims.
"This is another example of how the terror organizations exploit the humanitarian aid that is delivered to the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip with Israel's approval"
"War Is Deceit" Update "IDF: Chemicals were disguised as EU aid," by Talia Dekel for the Jerusalem Post:
The IDF and Shin Bet uncovered 6.5 tons of potassium nitrate hidden in sacks that were disguised as aid from the European Union, the army announced on Saturday.
Security forces discovered the stash in the cargo of a Palestinian truck at a West Bank checkpoint earlier in December. According to the IDF, the material, hidden in sugar sacks, was planned to be used by terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
"Potassium Nitrate is a banned substance in the Gaza Strip and the Judea and Samaria region due to its use by terrorists for the manufacturing of explosives and Kassam rockets," the IDF spokesperson wrote in a statement.
"This is another example of how the terror organizations exploit the humanitarian aid that is delivered to the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip with Israel's approval," the statement read.
Some Sunnis might beg to differ. But it is abundantly clear, particularly given Iran's aid to Hamas and the Taliban, that this is how the mullahcracy has been trying to position itself.
"Islamic unity is the lesson of Ghadir: Leader," from the Tehran Times (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):
TEHRAN -- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said here on Saturday that the important lesson from the Ghadir event is to avoid division in the Islamic world.“Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS) was the Prophet’s appointee, but when he noticed that realizing this right might harm Islam and cause discord, he not only did not make any claims but cooperated with those who ruled the Islamic society… because Islam needed unity,” the Supreme Leader told thousands of well-wishers in remarks made on the occasion of the Eid al-Qadir holiday.
By following Imam Ali (AS), today the Iranian nation is the standard-bearer of Islamic unity in the world, the Leader noted.
Stressing the need for vigilance in the face of enemy plots to spread the “virus of discord” between followers of various Islamic schools of thought, the Leader added, “The great lesson of Ghadir is to fight against discord and to put this important lesson into practice, the followers of Islam should avoid insulting each other’s sanctities and stop bringing up provocative and sensitive issues.”
“And, as it was expressed in the hajj message, through their vigilance and unity, they should disappoint the plan by the (global) arrogance (imperialist forces) to create religious divisions and a Shia-Sunni clash.”
Eid al-Ghadir is the anniversary commemorating the last sermon of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his household) at Ghadir Khumm on Dhul Hijjah 18, in the year 10 AH. It is celebrated mainly by Shias, who regard it as confirmation that Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS) was to succeed Prophet Muhammad (S).
Some, alas for Khamenei, beg to differ indeed.
Sunni/Shi'ite Jihad Update. "Bomb in Baghdad Kills at Least 7 In Crowd of Mostly Shiite Shoppers," by Joshua Partlow and Zaid Sabah for the Washington Post (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):
...Friday's blast occurred in Tayaran Square, east of the Tigris River, near a barricaded bazaar of vegetable carts and used-clothing dealers. The U.S. military said seven people were killed and 29 wounded. Iraqi police officials cited higher tolls: 14 killed and more than 60 wounded.Camouflaged Interior Ministry commandos took up positions around the square throughout the afternoon, ordering at gunpoint any car that slowed down to keep moving.
Many of the victims were taken to Kindi Hospital in eastern Baghdad, where angry young men roved the parking lot while the wounded wailed inside. Policemen and hospital staff members said the government had ordered them to deny journalists access to the hospital, openly identifying themselves as members of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that dominates the Health Ministry.
"Are you crazy? We are the Mahdi Army, and you know how it works," one policeman said outside the hospital.
A couple of housekeeping notes:
1. People say false things about me rather frequently -- attributing to me statements I have never made, and positions I have never held. I suspect that this is because it is easier to dismiss a straw man than to deal with what I actually say. Usually these are better off ignored, but when they start spreading and people start asking me about them, then I think it is better to clarify them. And so it has been brought to my attention that a man who has published a deeply flawed work about Muhammad and Islam, in a consideration of how many active jihadists there are, says this: "Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch is on another planet with his estimate of as many as 650 million jihadists - one in every two Muslims."
Have I ever actually made such an estimate? No, I have not. If I had done so, I really would be on "another planet." What I have done, and what this individual has apparently misunderstood, is state that jihadists enjoy the support of, in some areas, up to half of the Muslims. This is borne out by the recent poll in which 46% of Muslims in Pakistan expressed a favorable view of Osama bin Laden, and by the Al-Jazeera poll that put that support among Muslims worldwide at just under 50%. Does this mean that 50% of Muslims are or ever will be active jihadists? No, of course not, and I have never said it did, anywhere, at any time, in any forum.
2. A person who has used the names "Idontlikemuslims" and "osgood bombay" has posted genocidal comments here, and ones asserting that every single Muslim is the enemy. We do not hold either position here, but are working in the defense of human rights. This person has been banned by IP and by user name, but neither method is foolproof. Such comments, of course, only play into the hands of those who oppose our resistance to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. And the only people talking about genocide, concentration camps and the like are those who oppose the anti-jihad resistance, and who use such charges to try to discredit us.
All that leads me to believe that "Osgood Bombay" is a provocateur, who is trying to discredit the site by leaving such comments here so that they can be used by our enemies. It has happened before.
So I ask everyone who reads this site regularly: if you see comments that use abusive language for Muslims or anyone, and which advocate genocide or incarceration, or which say that each and every Muslim is the enemy, or something similar, please write to me using the Contact Us box at left (scroll down) and let me know where it is -- I will remove it. Comments are unmoderated; I don't have time to read them all myself, and don't have the money to hire someone to do so. So any help you all can give is much appreciated.
Peace In Our Time! "Abbas's Government Dismantling Militant Groups: Minister," from Reuters (thanks to Sr. Soph):
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The top Palestinian security official said on Saturday his government was dismantling militant groups, including those connected to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.The pledge by Interior Minister Abdel-Razak al-Yahya came one day after Palestinian militants killed two off-duty Israeli soldiers who were hiking near the West Bank city of Hebron. Two of the militants were also killed in an ensuing gun battle.
Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed at a U.S.-sponsored peace conference last month in Annapolis, Maryland to launch negotiations with the goal of reaching a statehood agreement by the end of 2008.
But Israel has said it will not implement any agreement until the Palestinians meet their obligations under the long-stalled "road map" peace plan to rein in militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Hamas Islamists seized control of Gaza in June after routing Abbas's secular Fatah forces there, but Fatah still holds sway in the West Bank.
The Palestinians assert that they are meeting their security obligations in the West Bank by launching a security clampdown in some of the largest cities.
"There is no al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades any more," Yahya told Voice of Palestine radio, referring to Fatah's largest armed group.
He said Abbas's Western-backed government has started "working to dismantle" other militant groups, though he did not spell out how that would be accomplished.
"We wish they (other groups) will respond positively and follow al-Aqsa's example," Yahya said.
Sorry, Yahya: "Islamic Jihad vows not to disarm," from Xinhua (thanks to Twostellas):
GAZA, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- A senior leader of Islamic Jihad (Holy War) movement in Gaza said on Saturday that his movement would not disarm since resistance against Israel was a way to achieve the Palestinian people's goals."For us, the resistance was not our aim but a way to reach the goals of the Palestinian people who are suffering from the occupation and have no other choices to face the Israeli aggression," said Naffez Azzam, a senior Jihad leader in Gaza City.
Azzam's remarks came in response to earlier statements by Interior Minister of the Western-backed Palestinian government in West Bank saying al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, armed wing of Fatah movement led by President Mahmoud Abbas, was dismantled.
He wasn't involved, he says, but he thinks it was great. From Edinburgh Evening News (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):
A MILITANT warlord in Pakistan today rejected government claims that he was behind the assassination of former prime minister and popular leader Benazir Bhutto.A spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud, described as the country's leading al-Qaida general, dismissed the allegations as "government propaganda".
"We strongly deny it. Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Benazir Bhutto," the spokesman said.
"The government is levelling a baseless allegation and we think it is doing so to divert the attention of the people of Pakistan from the real killers."
Mehsud is the leader of the newly formed Tehrik-i-Taliban, a coalition of Islamic militants committed to waging holy war against the government.
The interior ministry yesterday released a transcript of a conversation between Mehsud and another militant in which he offered congratulations for the suicide attack.
"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mehsud said, according to the transcript....
A potpourri of charges. "Morocco jails 15 people convicted of terror links," from Agence France-Presse:
RABAT: Morocco's anti-terrorist tribunal has jailed 15 Islamists for between one and four years in three separate cases on conviction of terrorist activity or connections, the MAP news agency reported Friday. The special court in Sale near Rabat sentenced seven people late on Thursday to between one and two years in prison after the prosecution accused them of links to May 2003 attacks in Casablanca which killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers. Another group of seven were jailed for four years each after being found guilty of receiving paramilitary training with Algeria's extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which was in January renamed the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Those seven, who included a former resident in Belgium and two ex-students in Syria, allegedly wanted to go to Iraq to fight a "holy war." The 15th case concerned Jawad Tarmil, a Moroccan expelled from Algeria, who was accused of GSPC membership and jailed for two years for forming a criminal group, terrorist activity and serious breaches of public order, MAP reported.
Somalia Jihad Update. "Somali town captured by Islamist fighters," from Agence France-Presse:
Mogadishu - Islamist militia on Friday took control of a town in south-central Somalia after Ethiopian soldiers withdrew overnight, witnesses said.
No word on the reason for their withdrawal, either in this story, or one from the BBC. The AFP article continues:
The Islamists, who briefly controlled much of south and central Somalia before they were ousted by Ethiopia-backed Somali government troops early this year, have since been waging near daily attacks against the joint forces.
"The Ethiopian forces withdrew from the town overnight and now I can see the former Islamic courts fighters," said Mohamed Haji Elmi, a local elder.
The Islamists took over Guriel, 300km north of the capital Mogadishu, which they had previously controlled.
Infiltration. "Muslim pressure," by Bill Gertz in the Washington Times (scroll down):
Pro-Muslim officials at the Pentagon are putting political pressure on one of the U.S. military's most important specialists on Islamist extremism, according to defense officials.Stephen Coughlin, a specialist on Islamic law on the Joint Staff, met recently with Hasham Islam, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England's close aide. The officials said Mr. Islam, a Muslim who is leading efforts for the Defense Department's outreach to Muslim groups, sought to convince Mr. Coughlin to take a softer line on Islam and Islamic law elements that promote extremism.
There is also evidence that a whispering campaign is under way to try and discredit Mr. Coughlin as a "Christian extremist with a pen" and force him out of the building, according to the officials.
Mr. Coughlin came under fire from pro-Muslim officials after a memorandum he wrote identified several groups that are being courted by Mr. Islam's community outreach program as front organizations for the pro-extremist Muslim Brotherhood.
Mr. Coughlin based the memorandum on documents released as evidence in a federal terrorism trial that he stated "are beginning to define the structure and outline of domestic jihad threat entities, associated nongovernmental organizations and potential terrorist or insurgent support systems."
Mr. Coughlin noted that the documents identified one of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups as the Islamic Society of North America, whose leaders were hosted by Mr. England in April at the Pentagon, raising concerns that the deputy defense secretary does not understand clearly the nature of the Islamist threat he is working against as the No. 2 official.
Mr. England has been a leading advocate of what critics in the Pentagon say is a misguided attempt to reach out to the wrong Muslims, regardless of their views, in an effort to counter Muslim extremism.
That approach has kept military and civilian officials from conducting much-needed assessments of how Muslim extremists are waging war because doing so would involving analysis of Muslim religious tenets, a politically taboo subject area.
Aye, there's the rub.
Ali Eteraz at Pajamas Media suggests that if the U.S. would drop Musharraf and support an independent panel investigating the killing of Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistanis would wake up to the evils of political Islam and vote pro-American:
An independent panel will likely conclude that it was the terrorists that killed Ms. Bhutto and not any elements associated with Musharraf himself. By doing so, Musharraf will be able to clear the cloud of suspicion hanging over his head, and might, in the process, be able to use the international community to identify how much the pro-Taliban elements have infiltrated Pakistan’s government. By severing itself from Musharraf and calling for an objective international panel, the US might also be able to see the extent of Musharraf’s complicity with the Islamists, if any.If the U.S. can create the conditions for such a public demonstration of the history and extent of jihadist killing and infiltration, it would arm the people of Pakistan with unerring proof about who is their real enemy. It would be a boost to their sense of survival. It would demonstrate that the US is looking out for them. They would be able to take these feelings to the polls.
Historically, Pakistanis have never voted for religious fanatics. Today the U.S. must use an international panel to remind them that the reason they have never voted Islamist is because Islamists do not care for Pakistani lives. This kind of gesture will give resolve to the people of Pakistan. When facing the kind of terrorism Pakistanis do every day, resolve is the most important thing.
So that's all it will take: if the U.S. abandons Musharraf and sponsors an independent investigation into Bhutto's death, the Pakistani jihad will melt away. The 46% who registered approval for bin Laden as recently as September will vanish, and the the 9% who said they had a favorable view of George W. Bush will skyrocket. The 74% who said they opposed "U.S. military action against al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan" will begin, presumably, to change their minds.
I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, Andrew McCarthy was far closer to the mark when he wrote yesterday:
The real Pakistan is a breeding ground of Islamic holy war where, for about half the population, the only thing more intolerable than Western democracy is the prospect of a faux democracy led by a woman — indeed, a product of feudal Pakistani privilege and secular Western breeding whose father, President Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, had been branded as an enemy of Islam by influential Muslim clerics in the early 1970s.The real Pakistan is a place where the intelligence services are salted with Islamic fundamentalists: jihadist sympathizers who, during the 1980s, steered hundreds of millions in U.S. aid for the anti-Soviet mujahideen to the most anti-Western Afghan fighters — warlords like Gilbuddin Hekmatyar whose Arab allies included bin Laden and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the stalwarts of today’s global jihad against America.
The real Pakistan is a place where the military, ineffective and half-hearted though it is in combating Islamic terror, is the thin line between today’s boiling pot and what tomorrow is more likely to be a jihadist nuclear power than a Western-style democracy.
Search the archives here and you will find abundant confirmation of all these points. And the most obvious reason why the Pakistani jihad will not evanesce if Musharraf goes away is that it existed before him, and has been gaining in strength and influence ever since the founding of Pakistan -- and particularly around the time Benazir Bhutto's father was murdered by the Zia al-Haq regime, which introduced numerous Sharia provisions into Pakistani law.
In a piece entitled "Who's Afraid of Benazir Bhutto?" (thanks to James), which seems to be about whether the jihadists or Musharraf killed Bhutto, my old debating partner Dinesh D'Souza revisits the disastrous thesis of his last book: that America's immoral society has created the global jihad, as a reaction by beleaguered proponents of traditional morality against the depravity and debauchery swamping the earth courtesy American pop culture.
What does this have to do with who killed Benazir Bhutto? Absolutely nothing, but it enables D'Souza to give the impression that Bhutto and Bernard Lewis would line up in agreement with the idea that everything would be just fine between the West and the Islamic world if we just went back to the days of Ozzie and Harriett and Doris Day.
Meanwhile, although it has been many months since he released his book, D'Souza has still not managed to come up with a second name of a "traditional Muslim" with whom he thinks American conservatives should ally. The first he mentioned was Egyptian Mufti Ali Gomaa, whom the New York Times identified as a supporter of the jihad terror group Hizballah. Whoops. Maybe the second attempt will be more successful, but I know he has another book out since then, and maybe he just hasn't had time to get to it. Since he has revisited his older book today, however, maybe he will take a moment to answer a few of the questions I asked in my review of his book here -- notably, if the jihad is a reaction to American pop culture, are Buddhist schoolteachers who are being murdered in Thailand exponents of American pop culture? Are Christian schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia on their way to school the vanguard of an invasion by Eve Ensler? Are churches torched in Nigeria because they are showing blue movies during off hours?
But I don't expect any answer, of course. D'Souza, after all, has never bothered to retract or correct his ridiculous claim that I want Muslim countries to replace the Qur'an with the Torah. Some people will say anything, I guess. And others, more fool they, will believe them.
But the January 8 elections are still on. "Bhutto Killing Blamed On Terror Groups," from SkyNews (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):
The assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose funeral was held today, has been blamed on al Qaeda and the Taliban.They were accused of the killing by Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz who said he had evidence which solved the "whole mystery".
He was speaking after Ms Bhutto was laid to rest in a ceremony attended by hundreds of thousands of grief-stricken mourners.
[...]
Ms Bhutto's murder has sparked violence across Pakistan and thrown next month's elections into doubt.
At least 32 people have died in the riots. Police have been told to shoot if necessary to maintain law and order.
Troops are patrolling the streets of Hyderabad and Karachi, where an earlier attempt was made on Ms Bhutto's life.
Despite the turmoil Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Mohammadmian Soomro has said elections will still go ahead on January 8.
"Right now the elections stand where they were," he told a news conference. "We will consult all the political parties to take any decision about it."...
Much better to leave it to a Tiny Minority of Extremists to wield all legislative, executive, and judicial power, eh? This story appears to precede Bhutto's assassination yesterday, but is nonetheless highly relevant to yesterday's events.
"Taliban leader warns against using religion for electoral gains," by Iqbal Khattak for the Daily Times:
BANNU: A senior Taliban leader warned parties on Thursday against “using religion for electoral gains”, saying they would join parties urging boycott of January 8 polls.
“In Shariah, democracy is un-Islamic. Our movement is completely against what you call democracy in which a small majority can decide irrespective of the fact whether what they have done was good or bad,” the Taliban leader, asking not to be named, told Daily Times in an interview here.
He said the Taliban were “against elements who are using Islam for electoral gains”.
This un-named Taliban leader doesn't appear to take into account the fact that democracy might be used to bring about more Sharia law; after all, the success or failure of a democracy depends on the values that inform its participants-- both candidates and voters. But perhaps Sharia-by-democracy isn't fast enough, and those gains won't guarantee the abolition of the present system. And at any rate, this election won't hand the Taliban the absolute power to which they believe they are divinely entitled.
The warning comes at a time when Maulana Fazlur Rehman, contesting the National Assembly seat NA-26 in Bannu besides NA-24 (Dera Ismail Khan), is rallying for party candidates to win as many National and provincial assembly seats amidst stiff challenges from rival candidates in southern districts of the Frontier province, the JUI-F heartland.
Severe punishment: “Our members in Bannu district are strictly barred from taking part in the elections and anyone found guilty of violating the directive will be severely punished,” said the senior Taliban leader who did not wish to be identified.
He said there were around 500 Taliban members in Bannu city. “We will join forces trying to convince the people that people’s solution of problems does not rest with democracy,” he said.
A surprisingly good editorial for a mainstream media source -- this one is in the Union Leader, "Murder in Pakistan: Hatred all over the world":
SO, THEY don't hate us for our freedoms, eh?The horrific murder of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's best hope for democratic reform, is almost certainly the work of al-Qaida or al-Qaida-linked extremists. You know, the guys who would stop hating us if only we quit pursuing our interests in the Middle East.
Al-Qaida, the Taliban and Islamic extremists in general have long hated Bhutto for her pro-Western sympathies, for opposing their primitive utopianism, and for simply being a woman who dared do a man's job. They have threatened to kill her before, and now a shooter/suicide bomber has done it.
[...]
Anwar Sadat. Benazir Bhutto. Theo Van Gogh. Daniel Pearl. Three thousand Americans on 9/11. The editors of Jyllands-Posten -- almost. Salman Rushdie -- almost. Pervez Musharraf -- almost. We could go on, but maybe you get the point. The message is perfectly clear: Challenge the jihad, pay with your life.
A radical Islamic army seething with rage and delusion grows stronger, slaughtering more and more of our potential allies, as we spend years debating whether, to save our civilization, our warriors should ever be allowed to pretend to drown a captured enemy combatant.
If we don't see this threat with greater clarity, we will lose our chance to thwart its ambitions before it reaches its full strength. What we are seeing is only a taste of what is to come if the jihad is allowed to grow unchecked.
Here is a terrific piece by Cliff May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies on the Wall Street Journal's recent hatchet piece on Israel and the Christians of Bethlehem:
In this holiday season, there are journalistic conventions one comes to expect: stories lamenting the commercialism of Christmas; stories summing up the 12 months gone by and predicting the direction of the New Year; and stories blaming Israelis for the problems afflicting the Holy Land.Reuters, the BBC, McClatchy, ABC News -- in recent days, all have run pieces in the last category. But the one that troubled me most appeared in the Wall Street Journal -- my favorite national daily newspaper -- on Dec. 24. It was written by Ken Woodward, a religion writer whose work I've long respected. But in this instance his subject was not religion but foreign affairs, and what he produced was the usual anti-Israeli dogma.
His op-ed was headlined: "The Plight of Bethlehem: Why Christians can't visit the holy shrines in Jerusalem." The first thing to note is that, according to Palestinian tourism officials, 450,000 foreigners will have visited Bethlehem by the end of this year -- a 50 percent increase over the 295,000 who came last year. Every hotel room was filled. Among the tourists on Christmas Day were 7,000 Israeli Christian Arabs. Fadel Badarin, the chief of the Palestinian tourism police, declared that in 2007 "the tourism situation in Bethlehem was great."
The low point for tourism to Bethlehem came in 2002. Then-Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat had turned down the peace offers forged by President Clinton during his last days in office. Arafat went on to launch a wave of suicide bombings against Israel, a terrorist assault known as the al-Aqsa Intifadah. At one point in that conflict, Palestinian terrorists took over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and used the Christians inside -- including nuns and priests -- as human shields.
Yet Woodward argues that Israel "cannot blame the Christians' dire circumstances" on the Intifadah because "Muslims are suffering just as much as the tiny Christian minority." Does Woodward actually believe militant Islamists spare ordinary Muslims from suffering? Does he not know that the majority of victims of Islamist terrorism -- in Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and elsewhere -- have been moderate Muslims?
Woodward also seems unaware of the extent to which Bethlehem's Christian population has declined since 1995 -- the year Arafat's Palestinian Authority took over the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Oslo Accords. Arafat quickly fired the city's Christian politicians and replaced them with his cronies.
Conceding that "Israel, of course, must protect its security," Woodward nevertheless slams Israel for doing so. He singles out the security barrier separating the Christian village of Beit Jala from the Jerusalem neighbor of Gilo. Woodward fails to mention that Palestinian snipers had used locations in Beit Jala to shoot at Israeli men, women and children in Gilo. On my first trip to Israel, in 2002, I visited Gilo. The residents had indeed erected a concrete barrier to stop the bullets. On it, they had painted a mural of Beit Jala -- to remind them of the neighbor it had become too dangerous to look upon.
Read it all.
On Christmas Eve, the Guardian published an odd commentary piece by Ajmal Masroor, the director of Communities in Action. It was odd because Masroor was openly proselytizing for Islam, wondering why former British Prime Minister Tony Blair didn't convert to Islam rather than to Catholicism. One doesn't usually see such open proselytizing in a major newspaper. In any case, in the course of his piece Masroor said this:
According to Blair, Islam "extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition". I agree, but why has he embraced Catholicism with its history of hostility towards science and is embedded with superstition?
Why indeed? I can't and won't speak for Blair, but the idea that Islam extols science while Christianity is hostile to it is historically and conceptually false. And it's an important question, not only for science, but also for the defense of the West in general against the civilizational challenge posed by the Islamic jihadists. In my book Religion of Peace?, therefore, I discuss it in detail, beginning with an explanation of the importance of the question from none other than Friedrich Nietzche, who once noted that “there is no such thing as science ‘without any presuppositions.’…a philosophy, a ‘faith,’ must always be there first, so that science can acquire from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist.”
It may be jarring to those who are accustomed to believing that faith and reason are perpetually at odds with each other, and that religion is an eternal enemy to science, but it is nevertheless a matter of historical fact that modern science has derived a great deal of its direction, meaning, limit, method, and right to exist from Christianity. It is likewise true, and probably just as jarring to those who assume that all religions are essentially identical in character, that Islam has not provided, either historically or in the present day, the same kind of impetus to its development.
At Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI observed that “for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.” The one hundred Muslim authorities who wrote an Open Letter to the Pope replied that “To say that for Muslims ‘God’s Will is not bound up in any of our categories’ is also a simplification which may lead to a misunderstanding. God has many Names in Islam, including the Merciful, the Just, the Seeing, the Hearing, the Knowing, the Loving, and the Gentle….As this concerns His Will, to conclude that Muslims believe in a capricious God who might or might not command us to evil is to forget that God says in the Qur’an, Lo! God enjoins justice and kindness, and giving to kinsfolk, and forbids lewdness and abomination and wickedness. He exhorts you in order that ye may take heed (al-Nahl, 16:90). Equally, it is to forget that God says in the Qur’an that He has prescribed for Himself mercy (al-An’am, 6:12; see also 6:54), and that God says in the Qur’an, My Mercy encompasses everything (al-A‘raf 7:156). The word for mercy, rahmah, can also be translated as love, kindness, and compassion. From this word rahmah comes the sacred formula Muslims use daily, In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Is it not self-evident that spilling innocent blood goes against mercy and compassion?”
Fair enough, although we have often seen the limitations within an Islamic context of condemning the spilling of “innocent blood”: who is innocent? Under what circumstances? But aside from that, the authors of the Open Letter seem to be contradicting the Pope’s point about the Islamic view of God, but they do not actually do so. In attempting to refute the idea that Islam envisions “a capricious God who might or might not command us to evil,” the writers offer a number of Qur’an quotes that assert that “God enjoins justice and kindness,” and is merciful and compassionate. Yet in noting that in Islam, Allah’s “will is not bound up with any of our categories” and quoting Ibn Hazm saying “Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry,” the Pope was not so much saying that in the Islamic view Allah would command his people to do evil, but that he might change the content of the concepts of good and evil. In other words, Allah would always enjoin “justice and kindness,” but what constitutes “justice and kindness,” just as what constitutes “innocent blood,” might change.
This idea has extraordinarily important implications for the development of science. There is an odd passage in the Qur’an that sums up this perspective, and how it differs from the Judeo-Christian view of God: “The Jews say: Allah’s hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so.” (5:64).
The Jews, in their wickedness, claimed that “Allah’s hand is fettered,” but in fact Allah’s hand is not fettered. It is unclear what Jewish concept the Qur’an is referring to in this case, but the indignant response to it is clear: Allah’s hand being unfettered is a vivid image of divine freedom. Such a God can be bound by no laws. Muslim theologians argued during the long controversy with the Mu‘tazilite sect, which exalted human reason beyond the point that the eventual victors were willing to tolerate, that Allah was free to act as he pleased. He was thus not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws. “He cannot be questioned concerning what He does” (Qur’an 21:23).
Accordingly, there was no point to observing the workings of the physical world; there was no reason to expect that any pattern to its workings would be consistent, or even discernable. If Allah could not be counted on to be consistent, why waste time observing the order of things? It could change tomorrow. Stanley Jaki, a Catholic priest and physicist, explains that it was al-Ghazali, the philosopher that the authors of the Open Letter recommend to the Pope, who “denounced natural laws, the very objective of science, as a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah.” He adds that “Muslim mystics decried the notion of scientific law (as formulated by Aristotle) as blasphemous and irrational, depriving as it does the Creator of his freedom.” Social scientist Rodney Stark adds that “it would seem that Islam has a conception of God appropriate to underwrite the rise of science. Not so. Allah is not presented as a lawful creator but is conceived of as an extremely active God who intrudes in the world as he deems it appropriate. This prompted the formation of a major theological bloc within Islam that condemns all efforts to formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they deny Allah’s freedom to act.”
The great Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) explained orthodox Islamic cosmology in these terms:
Human intellect does not perceive any reason why a body should be in a certain place instead of being in another. In the same manner they say that reason admits the possibility that an existing being should be larger or smaller than it really is, or that it should be different in form and position from what it really is; e.g., a man might have the height of a mountain, might have several heads, and fly in the air; or an elephant might be as small as an insect, or an insect as huge as an elephant.This method of admitting possibilities is applied to the whole Universe. Whenever they affirm that a thing belongs to this class of admitted possibilities, they say that it can have this form and that it is also possible that it be found differently, and that the one form is not more possible than the other; but they do not ask whether the reality confirms their assumption. They say that the thing which exists with certain constant and permanent forms, dimensions, and properties, only follows the direction of habit, just as the king generally rides on horseback through the streets of the city, and is never found departing from this habit; but reason does not find it impossible that he should walk on foot through the place: there is no doubt that he may do so, and this possibility is fully admitted by the intellect.
Similarly, earth moves towards the centre, fire turns away from the centre; fire causes heat, water causes cold, in accordance with a certain habit; but it is logically not impossible that a deviation from this habit should occur, namely, that fire should cause cold, move downward, and still be fire; that the water should cause heat, move upward, and still be water. On this foundation their whole fabric is constructed.