Jihad Watch: October 2008 Archives

October 31, 2008

Charles Johnson hits bottom, digs

February 12, 2009: New addendum added below. Charles Johnson is libeling me outrageously, ultimately because of a couple of weblinks. The whole absurd and tedious story of his descent into madness follows.

NOTE, November 10, 2008: The controversy between Charles Johnson and me began when I linked to Brussels Journal and Gates of Vienna, although he has never shown similar anger toward others he counts as allies who also link to those sites. He assumes that to link to these sites implies agreement with everything they say, which it doesn't. He and his followers insist that to link to these sites means one endorses the Belgian party Vlaams Belang. He says they're fascists, although they support Israel; they say they're not, which for him makes them crypto-fascists. I say I don't endorse them (or any party); he says I do, which I guess for him makes me a crypto-crypto-fascist. He says I'm encouraging genocide (because of a comment someone unknown to me left at his site), I say I'm not, and he says that my defending myself constitutes a "vicious attack" against him.

These serpentine and Orwellian absurdities unfolded over the course of several days, beginning on Halloween. I have now written two posts about Charles Johnson, entitled "Excommunicated" (October 31) and "Charles Johnson hits bottom, digs (part 2)" (November 6). It has been brought to my attention this morning that the second of these has mysteriously disappeared from Google's Search tool, although it still appears on this site.

I have written to Google about this. But meanwhile, for the ease of readers who may be searching, and for anyone offended by juvenile thuggery, I decided to create this new post and place it in the archives. It contains the content of both posts about Charles Johnson. And if this one also disappears from the Google Search, I will create another, because there should be a place where people of good will can hear the truth amid the increasingly shrill libels that Charles Johnson and his followers are directing my way.

EXCOMMUNICATED
October 31, 2008

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has denounced me and he and his followers are slinging wild accusations against me because I have linked -- under a disclaimer saying that I don't necessarily agree with everything at every linked site -- to two sites he doesn't like.

To read the whole story of his unprovoked attack, and this petty and needless conflict, read on.

I'm sorry to say that my old friend Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has written this:

I'm done with Robert Spencer. And very, very disappointed in him.

And:

Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch are out of our RSS feeds. I'm not going to support people who link to vile sites like Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal.

He also wrote me, asking me to take down the "Designed by Little Green Footballs" logo that had been up on this site.

What heinous crime have I committed? Last month I restored the links here to Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal, after speaking with Baron Bodissey, Paul Belien, and Geert Wilders in Washington, and wrote that I doubted that Fjordman was a neofascist or race supremacist.

Of course, for many, many months my list of links has carried this disclaimer: "Note: Listing here does not imply endorsement of every view expressed at every linked site." One might have thought that my linking to both LGF and Gates of Vienna was indicative of an openness to perspectives even from people who disagreed with one another and also with whom I might disagree, and not a blanket endorsement of either one or any other site. That, however, was too subtle for some LGF commenters, who dressed me up in jackboots right away, accusing me of an "apparent embrace of the neo-Nazi movement" and claiming that I support genocide.

So apparently my doubting that Fjordman et al are racist neofascists who support genocide makes me a racist neofascist who supports genocide. Linking to groups that are accused of being neofascist, although they deny it, makes me one who embraces neo-Nazis. Unfortunately Charles himself has endorsed this loopy leap of logic in the past. Richard Miniter and Diana West both disagreed with him that several European parties, especially Vlaams Belang, were fascist. In response Charles wrote this:

I've learned recently that neo-fascists are much more prominent in conservative circles than I had previously realized. There are other well-known pundits who are sympathetic to the fascists, too -- I've drastically revised my opinion of more than a few people, e.g. Diane West, Richard Miniter, and several others.

Whatever one thinks of Vlaams Belang, that just makes no sense. West and Miniter don't think Vlaams Belang is fascist, and Charles is representing that as meaning that they are "sympathetic to the fascists."

Charles did this also to Andrew Bostom:

I'm now getting hate mail from Andrew Bostom, who believes we should all be joining forces with European white nationalists, calling me all kinds of names and insults.
It's an eye-opener about Bostom.

Andy is less than diplomatic, but in one of his emails to Charles he was making a point that I think was compelling. In speaking this way about West, Miniter, and Bostom, Charles seems to have been assuming that anyone speaking favorably about European individuals or groups who are accused of being neofascist, or accepting their denials that they are neofascist, must himself be a fascist sympathizer, or one who believes we should ally with white nationalists. Andy accordingly noted that Roger Kimball had commented favorably on a Diana West piece on people in Europe who are accused of being neofascist, and that National Review Online had also linked to the piece. He called upon Charles to be consistent and label NRO and Kimball as neofascists also. There are others also, besides Kimball and NRO. At LGF I put it this way:

The statement that I have "embraced the neo-Nazi movement" is false, and libelous. Charles, you and your friends here are now in the position of saying that everyone who doesn't believe these people (Fjordman, Belien, etc.) are neo-Nazis must themselves be neo-Nazis. Well, Ian Buruma recently published an article in the LA Times saying that the European anti-immigration parties were not neo-Nazis. Diana West has written the same thing in articles that have been picked up at the National Review and quoted favorably by Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media.
Unless you all are prepared to say that Buruma, the LA Times, West, Kimball, and National Review have "embraced the neo-Nazi movement," you can't logically say it about me.

I forgot to mention John Rosenthal, who also wrote a piece doubting that some of the European parties accused of being neo-Nazi are actually neo-Nazi.

Also, when we start playing guilt by association games, how much guilt do you incur for how much association? If one who links to the Brussels Journal has thereby become someone who "apparently embraces the neo-Nazi movement," or at least someone who has done something so "disappointing" as to warrant being removed from RSS feeds, etc., then why does Charles still link to Pajamas Media? For on PJM's blogroll you will find...Brussels Journal. Has Charles, by linking to PJM and appearing on PJTV, become one with whom we should be "very, very disappointed"? Has he become one who is "sympathetic to the fascists"? Why is PJM's link to Brussels Journal not something that makes him "very, very disappointed," but mine is?

Is that not absurd? I have gone on record many, many times explaining why I reject race-based approaches to the jihad threat -- most recently in connection with the Cologne conference. Hugh and I have been clear here in our rejection of LePen, the BNP, and all those who traffic in such approaches. We have been consistent in maintaining that anyone who advocates genocide in comments here will be banned and find his comment deleted. The controversy here is over whether or not some other individuals and groups belong in that category, not over whether one should support race supremacism and genocide or not. Charles has done a grave disservice by acting as if those who reject his judgments about these groups and individuals, or who even -- like me -- are willing to entertain differing points of view on these matters, are ipso facto neo-Nazi or white supremacist sympathizers. He is in this behaving much like the Islamic supremacist bullies of East Tennessee, who are convinced that anyone who says something they don't like must be a liar, a bigot, a racist hater.

I'm done with Charles Johnson. And very, very disappointed in him.

UPDATE: The links to LGF above no longer work; click on them and you'll get a "Forbidden" notice. Well, Charles, old friend, you stay classy -- this only confirms the impression that what we are dealing with here is the bully's fear of actually having to answer for what he said. But his comments are still at LGF; you can go there and see them, or copy the link location from here and paste it into the address bar -- it will become visible that way.

Meanwhile, I note also with sorrow that the mendacious Kejda Gjermani ("medaura") is spreading her libelous attacks on me at LGF yet again, as she has been allowed to do for months. It is telling.

SECOND UPDATE: The comments over at LGF are getting really vile -- accusing me of actually posting pro-genocidal material there, or sending someone to do so, or inspiring someone to do so apparently by what I post here. As well as all the accusations of race supremacism, fascism, etc., that he has for months allowed to become standard over there when my name comes up.

Bear in mind that all of these attacks are based on guilt by association. None of them are based on anything I have actually ever said or written. And the case against those whose association so taints me is, contrary to Charles's repeated and strident assumption, unproven.

Charles ought to be ashamed of himself, both for his bullying and inconsistency, and for his allowing this to go on. In any case, he has rendered himself irrelevant (at best) in the struggle to defend the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, the equality of rights of all people before the law, and Constitutional pluralism against the jihad and Islamic supremacism. His demand of an absolute ideological lockstep is ultimately at variance with those principles of freedom anyway.

THIRD UPDATE: As you can see from my comment here, Charles himself has now begun defaming me with hints that I support genocide -- because of a comment that some idiot who has nothing to do with me put up at LGF. Probably he will block the link again, but you can paste it into a new window and it will work.

1023 Charles 10/31/2008 7:28:22 pm PDT
Unbelievable.

If I were you, Robert, I'd ask myself some serious questions about what I was doing to encourage the open support for genocide expressed by jdow.

Good luck indeed.

The background of this is that this "jdow" character posted a pro-genocide comment there, and this is supposed to be my fault. The evidence? Well, apparently "jdow" has commented here too.

Do I know who "jdow" is? No, I do not. Is he any different from anyone else who posts here whom I don't know? Is he any different from Abdullah Mackay, who posts here often, and sharply disagrees with everything I write, or from any other commenter here?

The only possible way that I could be responsible for someone promoting genocide is if I promote it myself. So: can Charles Johnson or anyone else produce a scrap of evidence from my writings to show that I have encouraged open support, covert support, or any support for genocide? Charles should either produce evidence that I do, which he cannot do, or he should retract his libelous insinuation. That he will almost certainly do neither is evidence that he has become a deeply dishonest and untrustworthy man.

But that he would stoop to this defamation shows what he really is, and what he is about. It makes me sorry that I ever counted him as a friend or ally.

FOURTH UPDATE: Paste in this link:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/25/6143272

It reads thusly:

25 Charles 11/01/2008 10:18:32 am PDT
Note: please use the report button if you see anyone posting ugly comments related to Robert Spencer's vicious attack on me this morning. I expect some meltdowns.

And Charles knows meltdowns! Note well: falsely accusing me of encouraging genocide -- that's not a "vicious attack." Asking for supporting evidence for the charge or a retraction, and doubting I will get either (and I won't) -- that's a "vicious attack."

Charles seems to be working from the playbook of the jihad enablers who have nothing to say about jihad attacks but are quick to label the reporting of jihad attacks as "Islamophobia."

Charles, have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

FIFTH UPDATE: I want to emphasize that I have not endorsed the Vlaams Belang. This whole controversy is not about the Vlaams Belang, but about whether or not one can disagree with Charles Johnson and not be defamed as a result. I have merely recognized that people of good will, who are not "seriously deluded" (as someone calls them below) and are not racists or neofascists, have mounted a case opposing Charles Johnson's assessment of the Vlaams Belang. In other words, the question is not whether or not we should support neofascists, but whether or not Vlaams Belang is neofascist. That question is hotly disputed, and those who think that Johnson has not made his case are not evil just for thinking that.

If Vlaams Belang were openly neo-Nazi, it would be an open-and-shut case, and no one should support them. But this is a search for crypto-fascists, and people assess the evidence differently. It is an issue warranting further study. And until Charles demanded that his link be removed from here, I had both sides represented in my links.

All this has eluded them, however, such that over in his LGF echo chamber they say -- and even Charles suggests -- that I have embraced the neo-Nazis and encourage genocide. He ought to be monumentally ashamed of himself for this defamation.

SIXTH UPDATE: Heartfelt thanks to all those who have expressed their support and appreciation of my work. I am grateful to each one of you.

As far as the ongoing discussion of the BNP goes, it is their race-based membership requirement and race-based emphasis that makes me unable to support them. I have explained why elsewhere, more than once.

The libels and misrepresentations of my positions at LGF, and the fascist/Stalinist snap-to of instantly excoriating someone who had been a valued friend as an evil and dangerous foe, should be illuminating to anyone who wonders what is going on. And remember, this all happened not because of anything I said or did, but because of a couple of blog links under a disclaimer.

The LGF commenters, however, have begun -- here again in true Stalinist fashion -- searching for previous signs of my ideological deviation.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/1145/6142955

In that comment someone quotes something from my 2003 book Onward Muslim Soldiers: "Begin to regard Muslim immigration as a national security issue, and take steps to limit it and end it if possible. (And of course all illegal aliens should be made to leave immediately.)" This is evidence of my secret wickedness.

So apparently Muslim immigration is not a national security issue: the stealth jihad, the sleeper cells, the jihad plots are all chimeras. And illegal aliens should make themselves at home.

Then there is this:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/1146/6144662

This links to a Gates of Vienna post about the honor killing of the Said sisters in Texas. I am not sure what the point is here -- perhaps it is that it is terrible and neo-Nazi to suggest that there could have been an honor killing in Texas. Unfortunately, the facts demonstrate otherwise.

With comments like these going unchallenged, it is hard to argue against the proposition that LGF has ceased to be concerned about the spread of Islamic supremacism in the U.S.

Those who exhort both Charles Johnson and I to cut the crap should recall that Charles Johnson is entirely, wholly, and solely responsible for provoking this rift, and for the overheated rhetoric of support for genocide, fascism, etc.

I see also that Charles Johnson is also charging me with personally betraying him by "embracing" people who have attacked him.

It is odd that he would make this charge after allowing his comments fields to become the arenas for repeated libels of me and my work by Kejda Gjermani ("medaura"), Michael Hussey ("mph"), "Killgore Trout" and others.

And even if he had not done that, his charge would only make sense if I had dropped the link to LGF while restoring the link to Brussels Journal etc. In fact, I had links to all sides here, which I had hoped would become the foundation for a gradual reconciliation of people who, let us not forget, had once been friends. That Charles would get so angry about a couple of blog links is reminiscent of a second-grade lunchtable where one kid gets angry with another kid for inviting other kids to sit at the table also.

It was Charles who chose to see these links as a repudiation and betrayal, when there was no necessary reason for him to have done so. Gates of Vienna has criticized me in the past, so I could have followed Charles' path and considered that anyone who even suggested they were not evil was no longer my friend. I have links to other people I don't always agree with and have had public disputes with -- such as "Allahpundit" at Hot Air. Yet no one at LGF is insisting that I must share all of Allahpundit's views because I link to Hot Air. They only insist that I share all of GoV's views because of the link here to them. Why is that? Because insisting on the latter is consistent with the picture of me as a neofascist that they want to paint.

In any case, LGF commenters are now saying I have restored "VB" to my links, when Vlaams Belang was never there, and I have stated above that I have not endorsed VB. And they're saying that soon I will be bringing white supremacists to speak at anti-jihad conferences in the U.S. This is arrant, libelous nonsense, and it illustrates that the commenters there simply aren't interested in the truth, but are here again falling into Stalinist lockstep.

Charles also has stated that he did thousands of dollars of work for this site, for which I never paid him. In reality, he did a great deal of work for which he was duly paid. Then he did some work here and there for which I repeatedly asked him to bill me. (I just found half a dozen requests from me, asking him to bill me, in a moment's search of one email box.) He never did. Ultimately, it seemed clear at the time that he considered the unbilled items minor tweaks, but to imply that I ripped him off his, to put it mildly, untrue. That he would attempt to use against me something over which I had no control and that was against my repeatedly expressed wishes is a measure of the man. He is essentially saying, "Hey, I tried to buy Robert Spencer's friendship, and he betrayed me by not being for sale."

And finally, Charles has referred repeatedly to my "vicious attack" upon him, yet he has never answered the points I made in the "vicious attack," which could only refer to the above post. For instance, why is it OK for LGF to link to Pajamas Media, which links to Brussels Journal, and Pajamas Media is not fascist, but if I link to Brussels Journal, LGF must delink from me and call me a fascist? Charles Johnson doesn't answer that question, and he can't answer it, because in fact when it comes to a "vicious attack" and a "stab in the back" he has been the perpetrator, not the victim.

Charles Johnson, let us remember, initiated this whole thing and wrote he was "done" with me, etc.

I responded, defending myself, and have added updates responding to his increasingly shrill attacks, most notably that I am encouraging genocide.

This is what constitutes in his eyes a "vicious attack."

Apparently the only way I could have avoided "viciously attacking" Charles Johnson would have been to roll over and allow him to defame me without response.

Call this one "Charles Johnson Hits Bottom, Digs."

SEVENTH UPDATE: Charles Johnson is going CAIR one better by blaming me not for unmoderated comments made here at Jihad Watch, but for comments left at LGF and emails he has received that oppose the lunatic course he has taken. So for the record I am stating here now that I have never asked anyone to write to Charles Johnson or to comment at LGF in my defense, and have no responsibility for anything anyone says while doing so. And I ask those who support me not to write to this man, or to comment at his site. Thank you.

CHARLES JOHNSON HITS BOTTOM, DIGS (PART 2)
November 6, 2008

I had not intended to write about Charles Johnson anymore, but tonight he has posted a video of two antisemitic idiots singing a song making fun of Holocaust victims. One of them turns out to have been a member of the Belgian Vlaams Belang party, although apparently he has been expelled from it due to this video. Anyway, this has become the occasion for Charles and his sycophants to renew their libels -- and since one person encouraged people to contact me, as if I have something to do with these people, I thought this occasioned another statement.

Anyway, whatever the relationship of these people is or was with the VB, as I said here: "I want to emphasize that I have not endorsed the Vlaams Belang. This whole controversy is not about the Vlaams Belang, but about whether or not one can disagree with Charles Johnson and not be defamed as a result." It was occasioned not by my linking to Vlaams Belang, as someone at LGF falsely claimed, but because I restored links to Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal. I did this not because I agree with everything written there, any more than I agree with everything written at any site to which I link. In fact, Dymphna of Gates of Vienna has been sharply critical of me in the past. But there are some noteworthy things being written there. In fact, yesterday I was told that Gateway Pundit and Michelle Malkin linked to a Gates of Vienna post. Will Charles Johnson denounce them as neofascist sympathizers?

Charles Johnson says of me in this LGF thread, "I won't have anything to do with him. He's behaving despicably." You can see that here -- he has classily blocked links from this site, so you can't just click and go, but you can paste this link into your address bar and see it: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/287/6184151. He has also fabricated out of whole cloth the claim that "if you believe what Spencer has written, Geert Wilders has apparently softened his opposition to groups like the Vlaams Belang too." That one is here: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/555/6184555. In reality, I have never written a single thing about what Geert Wilders thinks of Vlaams Belang, and I have no idea what Geert Wilders thinks about Vlaams Belang.

In fact, it is Charles who is behaving despicably, and not only because he is lying and being completely inconsistent in his denunciations. In the first place, I have a disclaimer above my links -- he has completely ignored that. In the second place, he blamed me for a genocidal comment left at LGF, with no evidence that I had anything to do with it -- and I didn't. This is the sort of thing that is outstandingly despicable, as I can remember times when his opponents blamed him for unmoderated comments at his site, and he rightfully took exception. And in this case, mind you, he blamed me not for a comment left here, but for a comment left at his site.

Third, he is again inconsistent, linking to others who link to Brussels Journal, and not denouncing others who don't share his views of the situation in Europe. Even the Wall Street Journal links to Brussels Journal. Is the Wall Street Journal a genocide-encouraging, fascist-sympathizing rag, Charles?

Charles Johnson continues to defame me without just cause or provocation. He is encouraging in his followers the idea that my work is worthless and I am evil, and providing a platform for their Orwellian Two-Minutes' Hate, because of a couple of weblinks. He ostensibly champions liberty and free speech, but in reality LGF has little to do with either and everything to do with its owner’s singular narrative, featuring his moves to quash all dissent and demonize all dissenters. This is ironic at best and fatuously and pathetically hypocritical at worst. Charles Johnson is, therefore, hardly the kind of ally one needs in the struggle that looms before us, the defense of free speech.

ADDENDUM, November 9: Family Values' comment below, at November 9, 2008 12:55 AM, makes reference to this LGF comment:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/73/6197660

I was sent the text of this comment. In it, the man who wrote me, Walter L. Newton, claims that I am monitoring LGF closely. In fact, I only see what people send me from there. This was sent to me, and I went over there to check it out -- the first time I had been there in awhile, and the last time I hope to go there.

Anyway, for the record: Walter L. Newton asked me about my intention to “investigate” the groups that Charles Johnson says are neofascist. I wrote this:

Actually, I am fighting jihad, and have no interest in or intention to investigate these groups. Insofar as they are fighting jihad, I applaud them. Insofar as they are doing anything else, my endorsement is not implied.

Walter L. Newton, perhaps unsurprisingly, takes this to mean that I don't care if they are Nazis, as long as they are fighting jihad. In fact, as I have said many times, I will not make common cause with neofascists, white supremacists, or neo-Nazis. Just weeks before Charles Johnson and his frenzied hordes decided I was "embracing the neo-Nazi movement" and encouraging genocide, I wrote here that I could not endorse the Cologne anti-jihad meeting because of the involvement of LePen and Jorg Haider. I retract nothing in that post, which you can find here.

What is at issue here is whether Vlaams Belang is indeed a neofascist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi party. That is indeed a matter that requires investigation, since they are not openly or obviously any of those things. Charles Johnson believes he has marshaled a great deal of evidence that shows that they are. Sensible and well-informed people (in fact, much better informed about Europe than is Johnson himself) believe Johnson has not made his case. As I have remarked several times, Johnson himself has become so manichaean and paranoid that he appears to believe that those who doubt that he has made his case are white supremacist neofascists themselves. He has defamed Andrew Bostom, Diana West, Richard Miniter and others on this basis – which in itself doesn’t say much for Charles’ credibility. He has now even defamed Ilana Mercer, the daughter of an anti-apartheid crusader, as a white nationalist – apparently basing his case on false statements from Wikipedia linking her to a white nationalist organization with which she has no connection. Ilana Mercer wrote to him, asking him to take down the defamatory post, and he actually complied -- the first time I know of that he has shown any compunction for his erratic leaps of logic and rushes to judgment. Meanwhile, Charles Johnson's paranoia increases, and credibility decreases, with every new denunciation.

Anyway, if determining VB’s true nature requires investigation, why did I tell this Walter L. Newton that I wasn’t going to investigate? Actually, I had just told him in a previous email that I was still looking into this matter – which the LGF commenters, true to form, took as a contradiction. It was only a statement of priority. I am going to keep fighting jihad. I will never make common cause with neofascists. I am going to continue examining the situation in Europe in general, and VB, and sifting the evidence. But I am not going to turn Jihad Watch, as Charles Johnson has turned LGF, into a site devoted almost entirely to this question – and certainly not into the witch-hunting hatefest that LGF has become.

But yes, I am going to continue to monitor the situation in Europe. In fact, as far as Vlaams Belang goes, I asked a Dutch speaker to examine the video Charles Johnson posted, of VB leader Filip Dewinter supposedly visiting a neofascist book fair. This is the information he sent me:

In fact, it does seem to be some book fair of student organizations. The title of the video says:
Livres sur le nazisme et le Voorpost (milice nazi du Vlaams Belang) en vente pendant les conférences du Vlaams Belang - Vlaams Choc de Peter Boeckx (2005) 2/8

(Books about Nazism and Voorpost (the Nazi militia of Vlaams Belang) for sale during conferences of Vlaams Belang -- Vlaams Choc of Peter Boeckx (2005) 2/8)

"Vlaams Choc" was an anti-Flemish television program on Walloon (=Belgian French-language) television. This apparently is from the program shown on August 2, 2005.
Belgium is dominated by the French-speaking Walloons. VB wants the independence of Flanders and wants to free the Flemings from Walloon domination.

The book fair is definitely NOT from 2005. Mark the orange logo of Vlaams Blok, visible on the background during the video (on the ribbon against the wall: you see the Flemish lion flag (yellow with black lion) and the Vlaams Blok logo). The Vlaams Blok was officially disbanded in 2004. The logo was no longer in use afterwards. Hence, this video is NOT from 2005 and has to be older. Vlaams Belang was founded in November 2004. It has an entirely different logo.

Here is what the video shows:

0:1 VB members with poster saying "Geen stemrecht voor vreemdelingen" ("no voting rights for foreigners") and the Vlaams Blok logo
0:2 a student of KVHV putting out posters and books for display on a table.
KVHV = Katholiek Vlaams Hoogstudenten Verbond (Catholic Flemish University-Student Association)
KVHV is a conservative Catholic organisation. Good guys, anti-Socialist, very Catholic (support the Pope). Their enemies call them "fascists", which they are not, just traditional Catholics.
0:9 Display of "Ons Verbond" (Our Association), the magazine of KVHV. There is also a poster with a stop sign over a communist hammer and sickle.
0:12 Dewinter entering and asking "Where is the president?" (= the KVHV president?)
He shakes hands with a man. Not a student, hence not KVHV.
0:19 Mark the Vlaams BLOK logo on the ribbon against the wall.
0:23 display of booklets, magazines about Flemish volunteers on the Eastern Front during WWII.
0:28 book about Joris van Severen (see below. JvS was a Belgian fascist, pro-Belgium, anti-Flemish independence in the 1930s. He was an admirer of Mussolini, but an opponent of Hitler. JvS was murdered in May 1940 by French soldiers.) There is also a booklet marked "Voorpost". Voorpost is a small right-wing Flemish organization. They are very anti-American. Voorpost is independent from VB, but many of its members vote VB. They often speak aggressive language and seek confrontation with enemies such as leftists and Walloons. I think they are infiltrated by the Belgian state security and deliberately provoke incidents in order to give VB bad press.
0:30 book display of Hitler: une fatalite allemande by Ernst Niekisch, a Communist opponent of Hitler. http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Ernst-Niekisch Niekisch was imprisoned by Nazis from 1937 to 1945. Also there is the anti-immigration novel Camp des Saints of Raspail, and "The Fenian Movement" (the Fenians were 19th century Irish nationalists fighting the British domination of Ireland).

It is not clear whether this is the KVHV bookstand (I doubt it since the books are in French). It is not clear either whether these are the books that Dewinter is looking at.

0:36 an open book with a picture of Joris van Severen.
0:40 picture of German soldiers.
0:42 Dewinter at a book stand (PS Not clear whether it is the book stand shown before).
0:50 Dewinter grabs a book. I cannot see which one. He says "Vu de Droite" (The Right-wing View). Vu de Droite is a book by French philosopher Alain de Benoist. De Benoist is anti-American, anti-Christian, and calls himself a "neo-Pagan." (Btw: Benoist opposes Le Pen and called on his followers to vote Communist. He also admires Muslims for their fighting spirit. For Benoist and his followers Christianity has caused the weakness of the Europeans. They Europeans have to rediscover their pagan fighting spirit.)
1:00 Dewinter asks a KVHV member (recognisable by his red-brown student cap and the ribbon with the KVHV arms) whether he has already read this book. The student says he has not read it because he is "illiterate". (If the book is. indeed, Benoist's book, the Catholic student does not seem very impressed with it. It is possible that Dewinter is joking: showing the anti-Catholic book to the Catholic student).
1:08 Dewinter asks whether the magazine (on the table) is the KVHV magazine. The students say he is allowed to take some copies.
1:18 Dewinter at another book stand. Apparently with literature from the independence movement in Brittany (a Celtic-speaking region in the West of France).
He asks the man: "You are a Breton?"
1:20 The man says he is indeed a Breton and tells Dewinter "You are an example for us. Your party is a model for us."
1:32 Dewinter says: "If we can help you we will do so."
PS Dewinter is no longer carrying the Benoist book, but has a glass in his hand, the other hand is free (as we can see when he is shaking hands with the Breton).

Here is what Charles Johnson says about Dewinter's conversation with Andries, the Catholic student:

Filip deWinter: “Have you read this, Andries?” (asks as he points to book)
Bookseller : “No I am illiterate.” (Sarcasm... meaning he actually read it)

Filip deWinter: “Is this a good book?” (asks about another Nazi book on display)

Bookseller: “It served my beliefs.”

In reality Dewinter showed the anti-Catholic book to Andries, who answered he had not read it because he is "illiterate." I do not hear Andries and Dewinter talk about another book that "served his beliefs." Andries says he is illiterate. Then Dewinter asks whether the magazine on display is their (KVHV) magazine. They say it is, and tell him he can take some copies. I do not hear Dewinter asking "Is this a good book?" Nor do I hear anyone saying "It served my beliefs."

I do not know where Charles Johnson gets this from.

On the table there are a lot of books on Flemish volunteers to the Eastern Front and the Verdinaso movement of the Belgian fascist Joris van Severen. Van Severen began his political career as an MP for the Flemish nationalists (and a democrat) in the 1920s, but later became pro-Belgian and founded a Belgian-nationalist fascist party ‘Verdinaso,’ modeled on Mussolini’s party.

He admired Mussolini, but loathed Hitler, and called on his followers to fight the Nazis in the event of an invasion of Belgium. Nevertheless, he was arrested by the Belgians in the beginning of the war and murdered by French soldiers on May 20, 1940, together with a group of Belgian communists and Hungarian and Czech Jews, who had also been arrested by the Belgian authorities.

After his assassination his party fell apart. Some of his followers joined the resistance, others collaborated with the Germans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joris_Van_Severen says this:

Joris Van Severen ideological thinking was also influenced by Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès, whilst failing to come to any accommodation with the Rexists or the Flemish National Union. Van Severen was equally opposed to Adolf Hitler and on the outbreak of World War II he banned his followers from producing any material in support of Nazism.
Execution

When Germany began executing Fall Gelb (the invasion of the Low Countries by Germany) in 1940 the Belgian government arrested him, together with many other Flemish-nationalist en communist politicians, and thousands of foreigners, and transported him to France for lack of space in Belgium. Van Severen belonged to a group of prisoners who was imprisoned in Abbeville, where, during havy German air attacks at May 20, he was shot with 20 other prisoners by French soldiers who thought they were dangerous spies.

The death of its leader left the Verdinaso without a leader and it soon began falling apart. Some Verdinaso-members joined forces with the Germans, others joined the (now almost completely unknown) resistance group Dietse Eenheid and others just stopped involving themselves in politics.

But aren’t the book fair operators wearing neo-Nazi uniform caps? No: “the caps are student caps. Flemish student organisations have caps (cfr German student organizations). You can recognize the organization by the cap's colour. The KVHV color is brown-red with a black and yellow (colors of Flanders) ribbon beneath it.”

So we have a book fair selling one book by a fascist, another by a Communist, and an anti-Catholic book. This is a neo-Nazi book fair? Dewinter is a neo-Nazi for going in and glad-handing people there?

Even if Vlaams Belang were everything Charles Johnson says it is (and it clearly isn't), nothing about it is established from this video. Nor is anything established by the activities of people who were expelled from the party for those very activities. Charles Johnson will no doubt keep witch-hunting, and I will keep approaching all the groups in Europe, without exception, with open-eyed reserve. But no one should be under the impression that Charles Johnson is fairly or dispassionately presenting evidence about them.

SECOND ADDENDUM, 7PM PST, November 9:

Charles Johnson is a liar, and even the Lizards -- some of them -- are beginning to wake up to it. I was just sent this comment from someone who is braving the stench and reading LGF:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/608/6201404

In this one Johnson brushes aside the fact that he had posted a tissue of fabrications regarding this book fair jaunt by Dewinter:

608 Charles 11/09/2008 5:33:00 pm PST
re: #601 brotherofchronos
I'm not defending that. I'm simply saying that the video was badly translated, which could be used to cast doubt on your other evidence. I don't understand why you would want to take that risk.

At this point, it's far beyond any nitpicking that comes from those people. Let them go ahead and "cast doubt" all they like - it's all they have left.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/616/6201420

Then the commenter "BrotherofChronos" dares to respond to The Master by reminding him that truth and integrity are, well, important:

Nevertheless, the translation was wrong. It's not right, charles. I realise it's your site and you can do what you like with it but I can't see any moral justification in using what is effectively manufactured evidence to prove this. The video says one thing. The translation you were provided with says something completely different. If you're not careful it could bounce back at you.

Oh, it's bouncing! Bouncing just like a...little green football...

And so honest readers are bouncing right out of the defamation and lie factory that is Little Green Footballs.

UPDATE November 12: I have been informed that Charles Johnson has completely revised his presentation of this book fair, removing without explanation (in the main post, anyway) the false translation he earlier posted. Now, apparently, the big problem is the book Dewinter picks up, Vu de droite by Alain de Benoist.

I'm not sure how Johnson and his Little Green Moonbats can rationalize the idea that picking up a book means that one endorses it, but of course rationality has nothing to do with this. The book that Charles Johnson called a "Nazi book," and that his sycophants at LGF are apparently calling a "fascist book," actually received the Grand Prix de l'Essai from the Académie Française in 1978. The Académie Française did not in 1978 and does not now award prizes to "Nazi books." The neofascist rag known as the New York Review of Books reviewed the book in 1980 and said that de Benoist condemns "fascism of the left and right." His book Vu de droite, in Charles's world so unforgivably handled by the demonic Dewinter, according to this actually won praise from that noted fascist...François Mitterrand.

Little Green Moonbats now devotes a considerable amount of time wringing its hands over the horrors of Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Human Events, and the Conservative Book Club. I would rather fight Osama bin Laden, Omar Bakri, Anjem Choudary, Abu Bakar Bashir, and people who share their ideology -- people who are much less of a concern at LGF than they used to be.

I fall victim to an Internet prank, and Charles Johnson, desperate, tries to defame me with it
February 12, 2009

The decline of Little Green Footballs into shrill irrelevancy has been unpleasant to watch. I have just learned that Charles Johnson has put up a post entitled "Robert Spencer Joins Genocidal Facebook Group" (no link because Johnson some time ago, in a display of immaturity, barred links from this site). Tonight's attack revolves around a Facebook group called "Campaign for the Reconquest in Anatolia," which I joined while sitting in an airport today around 2:30PM. I joined Facebook altogether a few months ago and haven't spent much time with it, and accept friends and join groups as a matter of course, since the whole idea seems to be to expand one's reach and get the word out about what one is doing -- in my case warning about the global jihad.

But in this case I have fallen victim to an Internet prank. Johnson's response to my joining this group was so swift that I suspect that the group itself, and its invitation that I join it, was a hoax and a setup, but in any case I freely acknowledge my mistake: I was working through a number of such requests hurriedly, and joined the group without looking further at what it was all about. I didn't read any of the material the group had posted, which Johnson says advocates genocide and ethnic cleansing and even links to the Aryan Nations.

This whole thing is absurd: Johnson has made it his business to ferret out those who secretly, according to him, support such things, but back on Planet Earth I have repeatedly, and unequivocally, gone on record many times decrying genocide, ethnic supremacism, white nationalism, fascism, Nazism, racism, and, yes, the Aryan Nations. Search this site and you'll see.

Once one starts dealing with secret allegiances and associations based on a social networking site, you might as well say that I secretly support a military coup that will install Bozo the Clown, or his intellectual peer Charles Johnson, as President-for-Life of the United States. But there is more serious business to attend to.

UPDATE: I've been informed that this use of Facebook material for defamation and libel by Facebook user "Cato the Elder" is in violation of Facebook rules. I've accordingly written to Facebook asking that his account there be revoked.

SECOND UPDATE: I'd also like to remind Charles Johnson publicly that accusing someone of supporting genocide who doesn't support genocide is actionable libel. I don't have the time to waste suing this noxious individual, but anyone who continues to take him seriously as a public figure with something to contribute to public discussion should be advised that his attachment to the truth is tenuous at best.

Posted at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)

Excommunicated

UPDATE, November 10, 2008: A later post on this, "Charles Johnson hits bottom, digs (part 2)" has mysteriously disappeared from Google's Search tool, although it still appears on this site. (I have written to Google about this.) Thus for the ease of readers who may be searching, and for anyone offended by thuggery, I decided to paste that page into this one. Here it is:

ADDENDUM, November 9: Family Values' comment below, at November 9, 2008 12:55 AM, makes reference to this LGF comment:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/73/6197660

Anyway, for the record: Walter L. Newton asked me about my intention to “investigate” the groups that Charles Johnson says are neofascist. I wrote this:

Actually, I am fighting jihad, and have no interest in or intention to investigate these groups. Insofar as they are fighting jihad, I applaud them. Insofar as they are doing anything else, my endorsement is not implied.

In fact, it does seem to be some book fair of student organizations. The title of the video says:
Livres sur le nazisme et le Voorpost (milice nazi du Vlaams Belang) en vente pendant les conférences du Vlaams Belang - Vlaams Choc de Peter Boeckx (2005) 2/8

(Books about Nazism and Voorpost (the Nazi militia of Vlaams Belang) for sale during conferences of Vlaams Belang -- Vlaams Choc of Peter Boeckx (2005) 2/8)

"Vlaams Choc" was an anti-Flemish television program on Walloon (=Belgian French-language) television. This apparently is from the program shown on August 2, 2005.
Belgium is dominated by the French-speaking Walloons. VB wants the independence of Flanders and wants to free the Flemings from Walloon domination.

The book fair is definitely NOT from 2005. Mark the orange logo of Vlaams Blok, visible on the background during the video (on the ribbon against the wall: you see the Flemish lion flag (yellow with black lion) and the Vlaams Blok logo). The Vlaams Blok was officially disbanded in 2004. The logo was no longer in use afterwards. Hence, this video is NOT from 2005 and has to be older. Vlaams Belang was founded in November 2004. It has an entirely different logo.

Here is what the video shows:

0:1 VB members with poster saying "Geen stemrecht voor vreemdelingen" ("no voting rights for foreigners") and the Vlaams Blok logo
0:2 a student of KVHV putting out posters and books for display on a table.
KVHV = Katholiek Vlaams Hoogstudenten Verbond (Catholic Flemish University-Student Association)
KVHV is a conservative Catholic organisation. Good guys, anti-Socialist, very Catholic (support the Pope). Their enemies call them "fascists", which they are not, just traditional Catholics.
0:9 Display of "Ons Verbond" (Our Association), the magazine of KVHV. There is also a poster with a stop sign over a communist hammer and sickle.
0:12 Dewinter entering and asking "Where is the president?" (= the KVHV president?)
He shakes hands with a man. Not a student, hence not KVHV.
0:19 Mark the Vlaams BLOK logo on the ribbon against the wall.
0:23 display of booklets, magazines about Flemish volunteers on the Eastern Front during WWII.
0:28 book about Joris van Severen (see below. JvS was a Belgian fascist, pro-Belgium, anti-Flemish independence in the 1930s. He was an admirer of Mussolini, but an opponent of Hitler. JvS was murdered in May 1940 by French soldiers.) There is also a booklet marked "Voorpost". Voorpost is a small right-wing Flemish organization. They are very anti-American. Voorpost is independent from VB, but many of its members vote VB. They often speak aggressive language and seek confrontation with enemies such as leftists and Walloons. I think they are infiltrated by the Belgian state security and deliberately provoke incidents in order to give VB bad press.
0:30 book display of Hitler: une fatalite allemande by Ernst Niekisch, a Communist opponent of Hitler. http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Ernst-Niekisch Niekisch was imprisoned by Nazis from 1937 to 1945. Also there is the anti-immigration novel Camp des Saints of Raspail, and "The Fenian Movement" (the Fenians were 19th century Irish nationalists fighting the British domination of Ireland).

It is not clear whether this is the KVHV bookstand (I doubt it since the books are in French). It is not clear either whether these are the books that Dewinter is looking at.

0:36 an open book with a picture of Joris van Severen.
0:40 picture of German soldiers.
0:42 Dewinter at a book stand (PS Not clear whether it is the book stand shown before).
0:50 Dewinter grabs a book. I cannot see which one. He says "Vu de Droite" (The Right-wing View). Vu de Droite is a book by French philosopher Alain de Benoist. De Benoist is anti-American, anti-Christian, and calls himself a "neo-Pagan." (Btw: Benoist opposes Le Pen and called on his followers to vote Communist. He also admires Muslims for their fighting spirit. For Benoist and his followers Christianity has caused the weakness of the Europeans. They Europeans have to rediscover their pagan fighting spirit.)
1:00 Dewinter asks a KVHV member (recognisable by his red-brown student cap and the ribbon with the KVHV arms) whether he has already read this book. The student says he has not read it because he is "illiterate". (If the book is. indeed, Benoist's book, the Catholic student does not seem very impressed with it. It is possible that Dewinter is joking: showing the anti-Catholic book to the Catholic student).
1:08 Dewinter asks whether the magazine (on the table) is the KVHV magazine. The students say he is allowed to take some copies.
1:18 Dewinter at another book stand. Apparently with literature from the independence movement in Brittany (a Celtic-speaking region in the West of France).
He asks the man: "You are a Breton?"
1:20 The man says he is indeed a Breton and tells Dewinter "You are an example for us. Your party is a model for us."
1:32 Dewinter says: "If we can help you we will do so."
PS Dewinter is no longer carrying the Benoist book, but has a glass in his hand, the other hand is free (as we can see when he is shaking hands with the Breton).

Here is what Charles Johnson says about Dewinter's conversation with Andries, the Catholic student:

Filip deWinter: “Have you read this, Andries?” (asks as he points to book)
Bookseller : “No I am illiterate.” (Sarcasm... meaning he actually read it)

Filip deWinter: “Is this a good book?” (asks about another Nazi book on display)

Bookseller: “It served my beliefs.”

In reality Dewinter showed the anti-Catholic book to Andries, who answered he had not read it because he is "illiterate." I do not hear Andries and Dewinter talk about another book that "served his beliefs." Andries says he is illiterate. Then Dewinter asks whether the magazine on display is their (KVHV) magazine. They say it is, and tell him he can take some copies. I do not hear Dewinter asking "Is this a good book?" Nor do I hear anyone saying "It served my beliefs."

I do not know where Charles Johnson gets this from.

On the table there are a lot of books on Flemish volunteers to the Eastern Front and the Verdinaso movement of the Belgian fascist Joris van Severen. Van Severen began his political career as an MP for the Flemish nationalists (and a democrat) in the 1920s, but later became pro-Belgian and founded a Belgian-nationalist fascist party ‘Verdinaso,’ modeled on Mussolini’s party.

He admired Mussolini, but loathed Hitler, and called on his followers to fight the Nazis in the event of an invasion of Belgium. Nevertheless, he was arrested by the Belgians in the beginning of the war and murdered by French soldiers on May 20, 1940, together with a group of Belgian communists and Hungarian and Czech Jews, who had also been arrested by the Belgian authorities.

After his assassination his party fell apart. Some of his followers joined the resistance, others collaborated with the Germans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joris_Van_Severen says this:

Joris Van Severen ideological thinking was also influenced by Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès, whilst failing to come to any accommodation with the Rexists or the Flemish National Union. Van Severen was equally opposed to Adolf Hitler and on the outbreak of World War II he banned his followers from producing any material in support of Nazism.
Execution

When Germany began executing Fall Gelb (the invasion of the Low Countries by Germany) in 1940 the Belgian government arrested him, together with many other Flemish-nationalist en communist politicians, and thousands of foreigners, and transported him to France for lack of space in Belgium. Van Severen belonged to a group of prisoners who was imprisoned in Abbeville, where, during havy German air attacks at May 20, he was shot with 20 other prisoners by French soldiers who thought they were dangerous spies.

The death of its leader left the Verdinaso without a leader and it soon began falling apart. Some Verdinaso-members joined forces with the Germans, others joined the (now almost completely unknown) resistance group Dietse Eenheid and others just stopped involving themselves in politics.

SECOND ADDENDUM, 7PM PST, November 9:

Charles Johnson is a liar, and even the Lizards -- some of them -- are beginning to wake up to it. I was just sent this comment from someone who is braving the stench and reading LGF:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/608/6201404

In this one Johnson brushes aside the fact that he had posted a tissue of fabrications regarding this book fair jaunt by Dewinter:

608 Charles 11/09/2008 5:33:00 pm PST
re: #601 brotherofchronos
I'm not defending that. I'm simply saying that the video was badly translated, which could be used to cast doubt on your other evidence. I don't understand why you would want to take that risk.

At this point, it's far beyond any nitpicking that comes from those people. Let them go ahead and "cast doubt" all they like - it's all they have left.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/616/6201420

Then the commenter "BrotherofChronos" dares to respond to The Master by reminding him that truth and integrity are, well, important:

Nevertheless, the translation was wrong. It's not right, charles. I realise it's your site and you can do what you like with it but I can't see any moral justification in using what is effectively manufactured evidence to prove this. The video says one thing. The translation you were provided with says something completely different. If you're not careful it could bounce back at you.

Oh, it's bouncing! Bouncing just like a...little green football...

And so honest readers are bouncing right out of the defamation and lie factory that is Little Green Footballs.

------

And here is the original post:

------

To read the whole story of his unprovoked attack, and this petty and needless conflict, read on.

I'm sorry to say that my old friend Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has written this:

I'm done with Robert Spencer. And very, very disappointed in him.

And:

Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch are out of our RSS feeds. I'm not going to support people who link to vile sites like Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal.

He also wrote me, asking me to take down the "Designed by Little Green Footballs" logo that had been up on this site.

I've learned recently that neo-fascists are much more prominent in conservative circles than I had previously realized. There are other well-known pundits who are sympathetic to the fascists, too -- I've drastically revised my opinion of more than a few people, e.g. Diane West, Richard Miniter, and several others.

Charles did this also to Andrew Bostom:

I'm now getting hate mail from Andrew Bostom, who believes we should all be joining forces with European white nationalists, calling me all kinds of names and insults.
It's an eye-opener about Bostom.

The statement that I have "embraced the neo-Nazi movement" is false, and libelous. Charles, you and your friends here are now in the position of saying that everyone who doesn't believe these people (Fjordman, Belien, etc.) are neo-Nazis must themselves be neo-Nazis. Well, Ian Buruma recently published an article in the LA Times saying that the European anti-immigration parties were not neo-Nazis. Diana West has written the same thing in articles that have been picked up at the National Review and quoted favorably by Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media.
Unless you all are prepared to say that Buruma, the LA Times, West, Kimball, and National Review have "embraced the neo-Nazi movement," you can't logically say it about me.

I forgot to mention John Rosenthal, who also wrote a piece doubting that some of the European parties accused of being neo-Nazi are actually neo-Nazi.

I'm done with Charles Johnson. And very, very disappointed in him.

Meanwhile, I note also with sorrow that the mendacious Kejda Gjermani ("medaura") is spreading her libelous attacks on me at LGF yet again, as she has been allowed to do for months. It is telling.

1023 Charles 10/31/2008 7:28:22 pm PDT
Unbelievable.

If I were you, Robert, I'd ask myself some serious questions about what I was doing to encourage the open support for genocide expressed by jdow.

Good luck indeed.

The background of this is that this "jdow" character posted a pro-genocide comment there, and this is supposed to be my fault. The evidence? Well, apparently "jdow" has commented here too.

But that he would stoop to this defamation shows what he really is, and what he is about. It makes me sorry that I ever counted him as a friend or ally.

FOURTH UPDATE: Paste in this link:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/25/6143272

It reads thusly:

25 Charles 11/01/2008 10:18:32 am PDT
Note: please use the report button if you see anyone posting ugly comments related to Robert Spencer's vicious attack on me this morning. I expect some meltdowns.

Charles seems to be working from the playbook of the jihad enablers who have nothing to say about jihad attacks but are quick to label the reporting of jihad attacks as "Islamophobia."

Charles, have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

SIXTH UPDATE: Heartfelt thanks to all those who have expressed their support and appreciation of my work. I am grateful to each one of you.

The LGF commenters, however, have begun -- here again in true Stalinist fashion -- searching for previous signs of my ideological deviation.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/1145/6142955

So apparently Muslim immigration is not a national security issue: the stealth jihad, the sleeper cells, the jihad plots are all chimeras. And illegal aliens should make themselves at home.

Then there is this:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/1146/6144662

With comments like these going unchallenged, it is hard to argue against the proposition that LGF has ceased to be concerned about the spread of Islamic supremacism in the U.S.

I see also that Charles Johnson is also charging me with personally betraying him by "embracing" people who have attacked him.

Charles Johnson, let us remember, initiated this whole thing and wrote he was "done" with me, etc.

I responded, defending myself, and have added updates responding to his increasingly shrill attacks, most notably that I am encouraging genocide.

This is what constitutes in his eyes a "vicious attack."

Apparently the only way I could have avoided "viciously attacking" Charles Johnson would have been to roll over and allow him to defame me without response.

Call this one "Charles Johnson Hits Bottom, Digs."

Posted at 11:48 PM | Comments (658)

ETSU professor: Spencer event marked by "rudeness and hate" -- from the audience

I received this email this morning from Paul Kamolnick, a professor at East Tennessee State University who was instrumental in bringing me to the campus. He kindly gave me permission to publish it.

Dear Robert,
I want to sincerely thank you for your presentation. I also very much enjoyed the time we were able to spend before the talk talking about these questions more generally. My thoughts on the evening's events.

1. I felt that your presentation was excellent, eloquent, and your argument, very well substantiated. I was very impressed with your public speaking skills and found you a delight to be with.

2. The Muslim leadership of the mosque obviously took this opportunity to organize a forceful Da'wa event for themselves; treat you with hateful disrespect; and as you have pointed out in your writings and in our earlier conversation, did not challenge the facts upon which your case rests. I consider it a personal insult that Taneem Aziz misrepresented the Muslim presence to me. His last communication to me suggested that some members of the Muslim community might attend, but it is obvious that this was a leadership-organized affair.

3. I was asked by several persons how the event went, and my response has been: It was extremely unpleasant, and not at all what I had hoped for. When I went home I began pondering the evening's events and thinking seriously about what you had said about the limits of engaging the 'modernist' apologetic, and why it is not enough.

4. I apologize to you Robert, for the rudeness and hate you experienced. I am deeply impressed with you as a human being, and student, and speaker.

5. The lessons learned by me were enormously productive, and I think at least a few persons in attendance got to witness something that will lead them to research for themselves, the 'peaceableness' of this faith, when confronted with the prospect of its own imperialist past.

I wish you the best Robert, and hope that sometime our paths cross again.

Sincerely yours,
Paul

Posted at 3:47 PM | Comments (33)

East Tennessee State University: The death of reasoned discourse

Over the last year, during three different Islamo-Fascism Awareness Weeks, I've spoken at seventeen university campuses all across the country. I've never been shouted off the stage, as have some other speakers. I have, however, been threatened, heckled, protested, and made the subject of libelous hate-sheets passed out to people attending my talks, but I have never encountered a bolder or more brazen display of Islamic supremacist denial, obfuscation, lies, slander, intimidation, apologetics for mass murder and open hostility to reasoned discourse than I did Wednesday night at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee.

East Tennessee State, of course, is that bastion of free inquiry and open debate that denied funding for my address for fear that my speaking there would make Muslim students feel "ostracized." Through a donation from the Middle East Forum, supplementing the David Horowitz Freedom Center's covering of the costs of travel, lodging and a bodyguard (all of which should have been paid for by the University, whose students evidently can't be expected to behave civilly), I was able to go anyway, and university officials need not have worried: Muslim students had no reason to go away feeling ostracized. Indeed, they were anything but ostracized: along with some Muslim leaders from the area, they were responsible for an evening strongly reminiscent of the denunciation sessions once held in the Soviet Union and Communist China for those who deviated from the ideological line of those who held power. The same furious hatred, the same frenzied personal attacks, the same emotionalism and defiance of reason and fact -- it was all on display in spades, and it was all directed at me.

Inside the folder that Muslim students were handing out at the door was a paper entitled "WHO IS THE REAL ROBERT SPENCER?" This contained the usual libels, more expensively printed than usual. A few choice morsels:

He is politically aligned with the extreme Right-wing and receives patronage from Neo-Conservative foundations and organizations.

This sentence is designed to frighten away the ignorant and easily intimidated by invoking scare words -- "Right-wing," "Neo-Conservative" -- that ultimately have no substance beyond "opposed to Islamic supremacism." But as empty as it is, this charge was a favorite of the Muslim propagandists at the event. Two separate questioners asked me just who was paying me, asking me to identify the "right wing extremists" that were supposedly bankrolling my attempt to "defame Islam."

I refused to play along with this, saying both times that I was supported by patriotic Americans who were interested in defending the U.S. Constitution, the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights before the law, and I would not stand by silently while these good people were slandered. For this one of the slanderers said he hoped that the audience noted how "defensive" I got at his question. But he did not dispute my characterization of my benefactors -- no doubt for the questioners who tried this ad hominem tack, to defend the Constitution is precisely to be a "right wing extremist."

The flier goes on to claim that I have "no formal academic training in Islamic studies," which is false. I don't have a degree in it, but I certainly have formal academic training in it. I took courses on Islam, and first read the Qur'an, while working toward my Master's degree in Religious Studies -- not, as the flier claims, in "the field of early Christianity." The University of North Carolina doesn't offer a Master's degree in "early Christianity." Of course, the point is that I have learned most of what I know about Islam through personal study -- something I've never made a secret of. The assumption of the flier is that this means that what I say is inaccurate. Its compilers, however, did not and could not buttress that assumption with any actual evidence that I've said anything false about Islam.

The flier invokes such impartial, disinterested authorities as Carl Ernst, Robert Crane, FAIR, Dinesh D'Souza, and Stephen Suleyman Schwartz to establish my wicked "Islamophobia," although none of them either, of course, offers even one specific example of any false or inaccurate claim that I make about Islam. (How proud Dinesh D'Souza must be to find himself used as a tool by Islamic supremacist smearmongers and thugs!)

Then followed a few supposedly damaging quotes from me, such as my saying that Islam is the only major religion that mandates violence against unbelievers -- in other words, statements that are absolutely true, but may appear troublesome to the ignorant. Anyway, the main impact of this flier and the folder it came in was that it showed signs of considerable expense and careful preparation: the Islamic community of East Tennessee worked long and hard to prepare for my appearance at ETSU, and this showed also during the question period.

Many of the questions were clearly scripted. One girl apparently got mixed up about which question she had been assigned to ask, and asked the same question that had been asked by a young man before her. When I asked her why she was asking the same question that the previous questioner had just asked me, she insisted it was a different question, so I went ahead and answered it again.

My talk was not disrupted, but the question period immediately heated up, with the first questioner engaging in the ad hominem "Who is paying you" attack. Subsequent questions were uniformly hostile, with many "questioners" engaging in self-righteous and beside-the-point counter lectures. I tried to stop them from doing this whenever I could, as this was something both the moderator and I had asked the audience not to do -- a request the Muslims in the audience utterly ignored.

Many also called me a liar. Yet only one questioner even tried to back up the accusations of lying with even one specific example. He claimed that I had misquoted the Qur'an, because I had said that Qur'an 4:89 said "Slay them wherever you find them." He asked me to read the passage -- I had a Qur'an with me, so I read it, including the section that says, "Slay them wherever you find them." Evidently his point was that I had misrepresented the passage because I didn't mention that it goes on to say that Muslims shouldn't fight those with whom they have peace treaties. I pointed out that I had discussed the institution of dhimmitude at some length, in which non-Muslims agree to what is essentially a peace treaty with the Muslims, accepting a second-class status and institutionalized discrimination, and so I had not misrepresented the passage, and had not misquoted it, since it does indeed contain the words "Slay them wherever you find them."

It wasn't until I was back at the hotel that I remembered that I had only quoted 4:89 out of the Islamic legal manual 'Umdat al-Salik, which quotes "Slay them wherever you find them" -- and only that part of the verse -- from 4:89 in the context of its teaching about jihad warfare. So if I was misquoting the Qur'an, it was actually this Islamic legal manual certified by Al-Azhar, in Cairo, the foremost authority in Sunni Islam, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, that was misquoting the Qur'an. Not that it would have made any difference with the thuggish crowd at ETSU.

Besides that one failed attempt, no one even tried to demonstrate that anything I had said (and established from the Qur'an, Sunnah, and fiqh) about the Islamic doctrinal imperative to make war against and subjugate unbelievers was false. One charged that the translations of the Qur'an and 'Umdat al-Salik that I was using (I had both with me) were inaccurate, but was unable to sustain his claim after I pointed out that both were made by Muslims -- and that Al-Azhar even certified the accuracy of the translation of 'Umdat al-Salik.

Several "questioners" spoke of how painful it was to have to sit and listen while I defamed Islam. I responded to one that if reading from their authoritative texts and recognized authorities constituted defaming Islam, maybe he ought to take a second look at those authorities.

The questioners, all of whom were Muslim, issued two separate invitations to the audience to attend one of Yusuf Estes' talks, at which, they said, they would hear the truth about Islam. Capping off a lovely evening was the last questioner, who had no question at all, but accused me of shouting down questioners (perhaps in reference to cutting off their windy, pseudo-pious counter-lectures), not answering questions (in reality I answered every substantive point that anyone made), and calling me a liar. One of his slightly smoother coreligionists than ran to the mike to assure me that he thought of me as a brother, albeit a misguided one, and...to invite everyone to come see Yusuf Estes.

The Orwellian Hate-Rally atmosphere reached its crowning point just before I left the hall (between police officers and security guards, of course). A middle-aged Tennessee matron approached me; she had been sitting next to her husband, who was clearly a Muslim, during the entire evening, and had not asked a question. She said: "I forgive you for hating Muslims so much, and I hope that God will forgive you too." I told her that I didn't hate Muslims, and that she should be ashamed of saying so -- but she was busy making a quick getaway.

There was an unpleasant, mob atmosphere, marked by the refusal of any of my accusers to deal with the actual arguments that I had made. Perhaps they hoped to rattle me, but the more that they resort to these gutter tactics, the more determined I am to resist them.

It is worth noting that in the news as this event took place was the beheading of a convert from Islam to Christianity for apostasy, the stoning to death of a woman for the crime of adultery, and a suicide car bombing in Somalia. And that's just a small bit of this week's jihad news. The people in the mob at ETSU are among those who are responsible for these things. They could be speaking out against them, but they didn't say a thing about them Wednesday night at ETSU, and almost certainly will not.

Instead, they direct all their energies toward discrediting one who is speaking out against these things. Their motives are clear. The blood is on their hands.

Make no mistake: had a Muslim speaker been treated this way, the university would be opening up a commission of inquiry about "Islamophobia" on campus. As it is, university administrators will take little notice of what happened on their campus Wednesday night. But to the lasting shame of East Tennessee State University, the record of what happened will stand as a challenge and rebuke to anyone who thinks that reasoned dissent and free academic inquiry are still even possible at ETSU, or at many other American universities today.

Posted at 3:43 PM | Comments (27)

Happy Halloween

Boo!

Trick-or-treaters to the Jihad Watch offices in Secure Undisclosed Locationville will be given a free copy of Islam: What the West Needs to Know. Fewer calories than a Milky Way, and more informative!

Posted at 2:26 PM | Comments (34)

Havin' fun killin' apostates and missionaries

I'm working now on my report on my speech at East Tennessee State University Wednesday night, and thought this deserved a separate post. The tone for the evening was set by a folder that Muslim students were handing out at the door to everyone who entered the hall. A sticker on the front read "ISLAM: Religion of Peace" -- the topic for the evening was "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?"

Inside the folder was a piece libeling me; a flier, "30 Facts About Islam," laden with taqiyya and detours; and two handsomely printed cards headed "Find Your...Bridge to Faith," and breathlessly announcing, "THIS IS WHAT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR: Find Out The Truth About The Fastest Growing Religion From An Ex-Preacher!" These cards announced six appearances between November 6 and 9 of Sheikh Yusuf Estes, a convert from Christianity to Islam, in Johnson City and Knoxville. "Sheik Yusuf," it read in part, "helps many new people to Islam using straight talk & funny jokes, while answering harsh attacks against Islam & the Muslims. He makes it fun & easy for all of us to understand."

I am sure that at these events Yusuf Estes will present a sugar-coated version of Islam, shorn of jihad violence and supremacism, in line with the directives of the book Methodology of Dawah by Shamim A. Siddiqi. This is a guide written by a Muslim for a Muslim audience on how to make American (particularly black American) converts, and it specifically tells Muslim proselytizers not to tell prospective converts the whole truth about Islam. On pages 48 and 49 of that book (corresponding to pages 70 and 71 of the pdf here) you will find this:

Through their Dawah activities, these communities approach the Afro- American people, who are already depressed and deprived, and are in quest of their true 'identity'. Islam is presented to them. The concept of Tawheed (Oneness of God) is explained to them in an academic fashion without telling what this Kalimah [declaration of faith] demands from a Muslim. Aqidah [Islamic belief] is explained without giving the details of the impact of Iman Billah [faith in Allah] and Iman Bil- Akhirah [faith in the afterlife], and without telling what revolution it must bring in the life of an individual and the society in which he lives.
Some rituals of religion and traditions of the Muslim Community are explained. A short account of the Prophet's (S) life is presented, without the revolutionary aspect. When Islam is acceptable to the new entrants in this concocted or abbreviated form, the ceremony of Shahadah [the profession of Islamic faith] is performed with great reverence. A non-Muslim thus becomes a Muslim, obedient to Allah (SWT) alone. The revolutionary aspect of Islam is rarely brought before the new converts, himself is not conversant with it. [Emphasis added.]

Yet while Estes is certain to present, in line with this, a "concocted or abbreviated" form of Islam, shorn of its "revolutionary aspect," he is clearly quite conversant with the "revolution" that Islam "must bring in the life of an individual and the society in which he lives." Sure, Yusuf Estes is always laughin', havin' fun, and here he is making the Islamic death penalty for apostasy fun and easy for all of us to understand:

[...] Yet another example that occurred at the time of our blessed prophet, peace be upon him, was that of some who pretended they wanted to be Muslims only to take advantage of the believers, gain some worldly benefits and then abused and slaughtered an entire group of shepherds that memorized the entire Quran, who were caring for them.
They killed them in cold blood and took everything for themselves. The prophet, peace be upon him, was very disturbed over this and ordered them to be severely punished and left to die without any food or water.

3. The proper punishment

From this example we learn how to deal with traitors and terrorists who have no intention of doing anything except evil and spreading fitnah (evil and terror) throughout the land.

Qur'an 5:33 mandates crucifixion or amputation of a hand and a foot on opposite sides for those guilty of fasad, which is similar to fitnah.

Over the centuries since the inception of Islam, we can find cases of people leaving Islam and what was their example and what the prevailing jurists decided in their particular situation.
Most all of these were not punished except in the cases of treason, other acts of violence or for propagating corruption, dissention and promoting evil along with their apostasy. [...]

Now let us consider the realities of balance in Islam in light of today's world.
There is no existing Islamic state with a khilafah. This means the hudud (punishment according to Islam) of the Shar'iah (Islamic Law) cannot be appropriately applied.
Additionally, anyone not being a citizen living in an Islamic state could hardly be tried and convicted by the state in a proper manner.

In other words, of course Islam has a death penalty for apostasy, but it can only be fully enforced within the caliphate, and the caliphate doesn't exist today, so the punishment cannot be applied.

[...] To conclude, Islam comes from Allah, the actual Creator and Sustainer of the universe. [...]
If a person wants to accept this belief and way of life, then they should be free to do so. If another person would reject this even though the evidence is clearly in favor of Islam, they are free to make this choice but would live in the society still receiving the benefits and services available, such as food, shelter, clothing, protection and charity.

However, they would pay a larger tax on their wealth due to their not being conscripted to serve in the military and so on.

In other words, they would be made to "pay the jizya [poll tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Qur'an 9:29).

Conditions are really what bring about the different rulings on dealing with those who enter Islam and then leave it, with the clear intention of bringing about dissention and unrest amongst the people.
Also, those who seek to convert people away from Islam into other faiths or to destroy the Islamic government would naturally be considered as traitors and then dealt with as such.

So in other words, Yusuf Estes teaches that missionaries should be killed, in line with Muhammad's example in brutally killing people he considered to be traitors.

What a fun guy!

Posted at 2:03 PM | Comments (13)

Hamas: "Marriage is the same as jihad"

Mass wedding celebration, courtesy Hamas

According to Hamas, marriage is like jihad not (necessarily) because it is full of "struggle," violence, and perpetual animosity between the Dar al-Husband and the Dar al-Wife, but rather because it begets children, who become jihadis and "martyrs." Hamas: always pragmatic.

"For war widows, Hamas recruits army of husbands," by Taghreed El-Khodary for the International Herald Tribune, October 31, 2008 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

GAZA: The grooms were resplendent in white shirts while the brides all wore black. At a sports stadium one recent October evening, thousands of Palestinians — 300 newly married couples along with relatives and friends — gathered for a mass wedding celebration, the 10th here this year courtesy of Hamas.

Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza, has been observing a truce with Israel since June, allowing its underground fighters to resurface but leaving them without much to do. At the same time, hundreds of the group's women have been recently widowed, their husbands having been killed either in confrontations with Israel or in the fighting last year between Hamas and its secular rival, Fatah.

Taking advantage of the pause in violence, the Hamas leaders have turned to matchmaking, bringing together single fighters and widows, and providing dowries and wedding parties for the many here who cannot afford such trappings of matrimony.

"Marriage is the same as jihad," or holy war, said Muhammad Yousef, one recently married member of the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas underground. "With marriage, you are producing another generation that believes in resistance."...

Posted at 12:30 PM | Comments (22)

Iranian top dog: "America should be aware not to put its huge body on top of the suicide bombers' explosive devices"

"The Iranian people hate the US." But surely if we just sit down and chat we can hash things out and reach an understanding.

Meanwhile, the saber-rattling steps up in intensity: "Iran threatens US with suicide bombers," from the Media Line News Agency, October 30 (thanks to James):

Only a few days ahead of the American presidential election, Iranian parliamentary speaker 'Ali Larijani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah 'Ali Khamanai have launched harsh verbal attacks against the United States.
Referring to the US army's attacks in Pakistan and Syria, Larijani said they would not be answered with diplomatic protests.

"The US method and conduct, expressed by this aggression, will only be stopped by a clear-cut and unexpected response, whose grounds were set by the martyr Hussein Fahmida," Larijani said during a parliamentary session on Wednesday.

Fahmida was 13 when he detonated an explosive device he carried on him, destroying an Iraqi tank during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

"America should be aware not to put its huge body on top of the suicide bombers' explosive devices," Larijani said.

On the same day, Khamanai said the differences between Iran and the US were far beyond differences of opinion.

"The Iranian people hate the US… [because of] the various plots the US government has hatched against Iran and the Iranian nation for the past five decades," Khamanai said.

The Supreme Leader added that any nation that would not honor Iran's identity and independence would have its "hands cut off."...

Posted at 5:16 AM | Comments (47)

A student's report on my speech at East Tennessee State University: "Some of the worst mob mentality I’ve unfortunately had to experience anywhere"

Wednesday evening I spoke at East Tennessee State University in the most virulently hostile atmosphere I've encountered on any campus in the country, courtesy the school's Muslim students and Muslim leaders from the local community. By tomorrow I hope to have completed my own report, but I just noticed this comment by an ETSU student named Ryan, and thought it worth putting up as a separate post both so that you don't have only my word on how these things go, but also as a witness to, and a protest against, the atmosphere of thuggery and propaganda, and hostility to reasoned discourse, that increasingly prevails in American universities.

Succinct questions, intellectual honesty, and good manners somehow eluded the audience at East Tennessee State University on Wednesday night. I was appalled at the crass grandstanding of the attendees, who seemed to have had an immutable opinion and came only to heckle. Though perhaps understandably aggrieved by the information, the mob chose to flog the messenger instead of reevaluating the documents Mr. Spencer was referring to.
Any information coming to light that injures one’s understanding of one’s religious faith is going to trigger an emotional reflex in the innermost of one’s sense of existence. The factual accuracy of this new information to the believer is inconsequential in many cases; the only permissible behavior or interpretation is the one a person has been socialized and taught to accept as correct.

Mr. Spencer’s faux pas with this audience occurred precisely at the moment they noticed he was challenging their orthodoxy with their own texts. Instead of asking questions related to the lecture, the degenerates began frothing at the mouth with excitement and elected to respond without even a modicum of tact and assassinate Spencer’s character in the most insidious ways, referring to him as a “liar” while not offering even so much as an iota of textual substantiation. After a few schmucks gave ten to fifteen minute rambles on their personal lives, I began wondering whether those audience members venerated themselves or Allah to a greater degree, or if I should attribute the behavior to some inebriate condition.

The courtesy of letting Mr. Spencer address a certain point was thrown out the window as some inquirers opted for raising their voices, interrupting the speaker, and were apparently trying to goad those who did not agree with them into a shouting match. While the school may be a refuge for the area’s young, immature, and often harmless pinkos, the behavior of this audience was beyond the pale and was some of the worst mob mentality I’ve unfortunately had to experience anywhere.

In all fairness, this isn’t an issue relating to Islam; it is simply amazingly poor manners by an intolerant group of people. I am a student at East Tennessee State University and attended this lecture, and apologize to Mr. Spencer, the readers of JihadWatch, and all present who witnessed the thuggery. There are reasonable people everywhere, but a professional attitude and scholarly detachment are often drowned by de facto censures by the ideological public that is unwilling to delve into an issue beyond a stale talking point.

Posted at 1:26 AM | Comments (53)

OIC chief: Islamophobia is a new form of racism, except it's even worse than racism

Eklemeddin İhsanoğlu insists that "Everybody is entitled to criticize anybody or anything," but he also says there must be a "red line" that places "insults" and mockery off-limits. Who draws that line? What if, for example, the criticism is found to be insulting?

And there is much more, including an attempt to bolster the "racism" angle by presenting "Islamophobia" as the new anti-Semitism (never mind the raging hatred of Jews that is encouraged and sustained by Islamic texts), and a glossing over of the countless bloody battles waged in Islamic history over theological disputes (obviously some "red lines" were crossed there, and then all bets were off). It's tempting to say you can't make this stuff up. But on the other hand, İhsanoğlu just did:

"Islamophobia worse than racial prejudice," from Today's Zaman, October 30:

The secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Eklemeddin İhsanoğlu, has told a Danish newspaper that Western institutions which deal with Islamophobia agree that hatred against Islam and Muslims is worse than racial discrimination.

"Incitement to religious hatred is a new form of racism, and Western institutions dealing with Islamophobia are unanimous in saying that the phenomenon of Islamophobia is worse than racial discrimination," he stated in a recent written interview with the Danish Jyllands-Posten daily. İhsanoğlu stressed that discrimination is discrimination whether on religious or racial grounds. İhsanoğlu also clearly expressed that the OIC is neither against criticism of religion nor is it calling for a ban on any criticism of religion.

The full text of the written interview with the questions of Jyllands-Posten, a copy of which was also sent to Today's Zaman, is as follows:

Can you explain why you believe that criticism of religion can be defined as racism?

First of all, let me be very clear on one point. We are neither against criticism of religion nor do we call for a ban on criticizing religion. The history of religions, including Islam, is a history of criticism and debate which has led to the formation of different sects and schools of thought. These debates have always been there at the academic, scholarly or theological level. As for debates which are conducted at the level of public opinion, we have no problem with any criticism, as long as they are objective, fair and conducted in a responsible manner.

The problems start when the religious beliefs of individuals belonging to any religion or venerated religious figures, i.e., prophets, whether Muhammad, Jesus or Moses, are ridiculed, denigrated or targeted with campaigns of insults with apparent or declared intent to incite hatred against the followers of this or that religion. I am quite surprised to see in the Danish press insinuations that I and the OIC are opponents of freedom of expression, endeavoring to stifle this freedom by calling for a ban on the criticism of religion. [...]

But it all depends on your definition of "criticism."

Can you give an example of the kind of criticism that should be defined as racism?

We believe that incitement to religious hatred is a new form of racism. Western institutions dealing with Islamophobia are unanimous in saying that the phenomenon of Islamophobia is worse than racial discrimination. In practical terms, in many instances it is difficult to determine what constitutes incitement to religious or racial hatred, which are both proscribed as against international human rights. For example, when a Muslim immigrant is discriminated against or physically attacked by extremists, the causes could be on either racial or religious grounds, or both. The daily attacks, either physical or verbal, against Muslims throughout the West are the proof of the negative effect of hate speech campaigns which have resulted in an eroding of the human rights of those Muslim victims.

We should not forget that anti-Semitism, which caused horrendous tragedies for European Jews last century, cannot be explained technically or lexically as discrimination based solely on race, since the Jews subject to the Holocaust were Europeans from different parts of the continent; it was also because of their religious affiliation. Within the same context, one should realize that the Palestinians, who have been suffering a grave tragedy for the last 60 years, are ethnically Semitic, but what happens to them is not defined as anti-Semitism. What I am saying is that discrimination is discrimination whether on religious or racial grounds. I believe we are facing a gross campaign of disinformation on the part of some extremist quarters in the West and some European politicians who have little understanding of the matter and try to exploit the issue for domestic political gain by creating unnecessary fear of "the other."

Why should it not be possible to criticize a religion?

What follows is a massive conflation of insults (real or perceived) and incitement. This should be familiar, as many Islamic advocacy groups in the West persist in their efforts to classify any criticism of Islam or exposure of unpleasant aspects of Islamic law and belief as hate speech and incitement.

In my previous answers, I have tried to explain my views about this. If I may elaborate; the criticism of religion has been there for centuries. Trying to humiliate, insult others and jeopardize their basic human rights solely over their religious beliefs, particularly in the case of Islam, which is followed by 1.5 billion people, is understood as an act which falls outside the borders of critical dialogue or civilized criticism.

Narrowing down the discussion on the freedom of expression to demanding the freedom to be able to denigrate even the most sacred religious values is neither civilized nor intellectual. Yet, at the diplomatic level, we are not even focusing on this aspect. What we are saying is that incitement to hatred should not be allowed, particularly if this specific act constitutes a crime within the parameters of international human rights documents. Article 20 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requests governments to take measures at the national level against incitement to religious hatred.

What we are also advocating is that we should all abide not only by domestic laws and blasphemy laws, codes of conduct or ethics regulations, if they exist, but also by internationally agreed legal instruments.

According to The Washington Post, you recently said that there is a "red line" that should not be crossed. What do you mean by that? And what will happen if the "red line" is crossed?

I think there has always been, and there should be, a "red line" for any irresponsible attitude, whether it is on the individual or group level. Nobody can deny that in the exercising of any particular freedom, one should act with a sense of responsibility. We might differ on the point where freedom stops and responsibility starts. I would like to remind that all legal documents always strike a balance between freedoms and responsibility. With regard to the freedom of expression, the responsibility starts when there is an act of incitement to hatred proscribed by international law. It is important to recall that with the provision of freedom under human rights, it is only the freedom of expression which is linked with responsibility.

Read it all, preferably sitting down.

Posted at 12:16 AM | Comments (28)

October 30, 2008

Al-Qaeda top dog prays: "O God, humiliate Bush and his party, O Lord of the Worlds, degrade and defy him"

Not that he is endorsing any party, Reuters hastens to assure us. "Qaeda wants Republicans, Bush "humiliated": Web video," from Reuters, October 30 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda leader has called for President George W. Bush and the Republicans to be "humiliated," without endorsing a party in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, according to an Internet video posting.
"O God, humiliate Bush and his party, O Lord of the Worlds, degrade and defy him," Abu Yahya al-Libi said at the end of sermon marking the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, in a video posted on the Internet.

Libi, a top al Qaeda commander believed to be living in Afghanistan or Pakistan, called for God's wrath to be brought against Bush equating him with past tyrants in history.

The remarks were the first from a leading al Qaeda figure referring, albeit indirectly, to the U.S. elections. Muslim clerics often end sermons by calling on God to guide and support Muslims and help defeat their enemies....

Funny thing. Now, why is that? Reuters doesn't tell us, of course, about the sharp division between the believers -- the "best of people" (Qur'an 3:110) -- and the unbelievers -- the "most vile of created beings" (Qur'an 98:6) -- that runs through Islam. Nor does it discuss the geopolitical and supremacist implications of these prayers for the "defeat" of their enemies.

Some posters have also argued over the merits of trying to attack the United States before the election or waiting until later, the report said....

And indeed, although of course there still are a few days left, those who have counseled that it is best not to mount a violent jihad attack against the U.S. before the election seem to have won out.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain has been portrayed as likely to allow "the continuation of Republican control and aggressive policies toward the Islamic world."

Posted at 8:35 PM | Comments (23)

SUNY-Binghamton: An unwitting admission

One of the most striking elements of the response to the talks that I have been giving on university campuses all over the country is the never-yielding unwillingness of Muslim questioners to admit even the smallest point. They will dismiss the evidence that I bring from authoritative Islamic sources of the jihad imperative to subjugate non-Muslims under the rule of Islamic law as the ravings of a few extremists, not hesitating to repudiate any authority, no matter how influential it may be in the Islamic world.

This may seem to be a canny tactic, as most of the non-Muslims in any given audience have no idea who is an authoritative voice in Islam and who isn't, and so it gives the impression that I am quoting marginal people to whom the vast majority of Muslims don't listen. But as an approach it carries with it some serious risks: anyone in the audience who does know anything about Islamic theology and law, and about who the authoritative voices are in the Islamic world, will know they are lying. Also, anyone who is reasonably well informed about the extent of jihad activity worldwide, from Europe to Indonesia, will wonder just how tiny this Tiny Minority of Extremists™ really is.

Another hazard of the policy of deception, rooted as it is in Muhammad's dictum that "war is deceit" and the Qur'an's mandate to deceive unbelievers when under pressure, is that not all Muslims in attendance may have gotten the memo. So it was at SUNY-Binghamton, where I spoke Tuesday night. One questioner asked me specifically about the Islamic doctrine of religious deception. I explained that it was founded upon the words of the Qur'an itself: “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers. If any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah; except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them” (Qur’an 3:28).

The Sunni Qur’an commentator Ibn Kathir explains that in this verse “Allah prohibited His believing servants from becoming supporters of the disbelievers, or to take them as comrades with whom they develop friendships, rather than the believers.” However, exempted from this rule were “those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda' said, 'We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.' Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, 'The Tuqyah [taqiyyah] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.'"

This practice is also sanctioned by the Qur’an warning Muslims that those who forsake Islam will be consigned to Hell — except those forced to do so, but who remain true Muslims inwardly: “Any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters unbelief — except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in faith — but such as open their breast to unbelief, on them is wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful penalty” (Qur’an 16:106). Ibn Kathir explains that “the scholars agreed that if a person is forced into disbelief, it is permissible for him to either go along with them in the interests of self-preservation, or to refuse.”

Moreover, Sahih Bukhari, the hadith collection that Sunnis consider the most reliable, records three times Muhammad's statement that "war is deceit." Another hadith in a collection considered reliable by Sunnis has Muhammad saying that lying is permissible "in three cases: in battle, for bringing reconciliation amongst persons and the narration of the words of the husband to his wife, and the narration of the words of a wife to her husband (in a twisted form in order to bring reconciliation between them)" (Sahih Muslim 6303). Muhammad also gave the killer of Ka'b bin al-Ashraf permission to lie in order to deceive Ka'b and lure him to his death.

Another venerable Sunni commentator on the Qur'an, as-Suyuti, says that "it is acceptable (for a Muslim) to eat the meat of a dead animal at a time of great hunger (starvation to the extent that the stomach is devoid of all food); and to loosen a bite of food (for fear of choking to death) by alcohol; and to utter words of unbelief..."

Anyway, after I had explained all this, a Muslim questioner started talking about Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and how they persecuted Muslims and forced them to convert to Catholicism, such that many Muslims feigned conversion while remaining Muslim inwardly. Did I think that the doctrine of religious deception, he asked me, was revealed in view of that situation? In reply I told him that the doctrine of religious deception was found in the Qur'an, as I explained above, and that it was therefore considerably older than the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

Yes, he replied, but asked me again: didn't I think that the doctrine of religious deception was revealed by Allah to Muhammad in order to provide for the situation that Ferdinand and Isabella would create, far in the future? Being somewhat slow on the uptake, it was only then that I realized that his question assumed the divine origin of the Qur'an, and I told him that I declined to make a statement of faith in Islam. But his question was inadvertently revealing: he was not, unlike other questioners, full of wounded indignation and hotly denying that Islam had a doctrine of deception at all. He was assuming that Islam does have a doctrine of deception, and trying to get me to see the divine wisdom of this doctrine.

But that was the only crack in the facade. Otherwise the hostile questioners resorted to their usual tactic of charging that what I was saying was false without ever being able to pinpoint any actual inaccuracy in anything I said. One girl tried valiantly, explaining that in Islam there were four -- well, she couldn't quite remember what they were, but there were four of them, and they were sort of like sects, and why hadn't I said anything about the diversity among them? I explained to her that she was probably thinking of the four major madhahib, schools of Sunni jurisprudence, and that they did not differ in any significant particular on the Islamic community's obligation to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law.

Significantly, no one in the audience challenged that assertion -- in fact, after eight college speeches during this round of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, no one ever did. Which is not to say that some didn't hesitate to lie: one man claimed falsely that I had never referred to Muhammad as a prophet during my talk (since I am not a believer, I had referred to him during the talk as "the prophet of Islam") and asked me, in a tone of reproach, what people were going to think of Muhammad after hearing what I had said. He then proceeded to note that I had said nothing about how kind Muhammad was to his neighbors, how gentle, how beloved of his friends. I acknowledged that this was true -- I discussed these traditions in The Truth About Muhammad -- but pointed out that Muhammad had also commanded, in ahadith Muslims consider equally authentic, warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers. Was he denying the existence of such traditions? He did not answer the question.

And so it went. It's really fairly obvious that if Muslims at these campus talks really rejected the ideology of jihad and Islamic supremacism, they would not charge me with "hate" for discussing its existence, or traffic in denial and obfuscation about the existence of this ideology. Every one of these talks has been, or should have been, instructive for non-Muslims in the audience who may have assumed that the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims™ actually rejects the Islamic supremacist agenda. But I doubt that very many of those non-Muslims have had their eyes open to what was going on right in front of them, in Binghamton and elsewhere -- and for me the worst was yet to come, at a virtual Islamic supremacist storm-trooper hate rally at East Tennessee State University the next night. But that will be the subject of another post.

Posted at 8:08 PM | Comments (20)

Somalia bombings have markings of Al-Qaeda, US official says

Depending on what one means by "al-Qaeda," perhaps. If this official means a leader in the core unit of al-Qaeda issued it, that would be unlikely; if by "al-Qaeda" the official means Islamists with the same ideologies, who may nonetheless have no formal connection with al-Qaeda, bingo. It's most likely from al-Shabaab.

"Somalia bombings have markings of Al-Qaeda: US official," from AFP, October 30:

NAIROBI (AFP) — The deadly coordinated suicide car bomb attacks against key targets in two Somali breakaway states Wednesday have the markings of Al-Qaeda, Jendayi Frazer, US assistant secretary of state for Africa, told reporters in Nairobi.

"Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they have the markings of Al-Qaeda," she said after attending a summit on Somalia in the Kenyan capital.

"We believe that these senseless attacks highlight the determination of violent extremists to undermine peace and stability throughout Somalia and the Horn of Africa."

Interesting comment considering Somalia and the Horn of Africa have been in turmoil and clan-wars well before the world heard of al-Qaeda, and have not experienced "peace and stability" for decades.

Frazer said Washington will continue to support regional efforts to combat terrorism.

"There is a serious terrorist threat in the Horn of Africa, concentrated in Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland and we have to address it as a region," she said.

Frazer called for action against Eritrea for hosting Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, an influential Somali cleric listed as a terrorist by Washington and who has rejected recent peace talks and ceasefires.

"What I can say is Aweys is sitting in Eritrea... he is in the UN and US terror list. Eritrea is giving a safe haven to a terrorist, we need to act accordingly," she said.

Meanwhile, any number of influential Somali clerics are harbored safely in Somalia itself -- not to mention the Islamist movement "al-Shabaab" (the "Youth").

"He is not for peace in Somalia, he is not for good governance in Somalia, he is making terrorism threats, we need to treat him accordingly," she told AFP.

Posted at 9:49 AM | Comments (9)

Spencer: Gates Woos Obama

In Human Events today I discuss how the Secretary of Defense seems to be wooing our media-anointed President-to-be by taking a hyper-PC line on the global jihad:

Is Robert Gates hoping that if Barack Obama is elected president, he will keep him on as Secretary of Defense?
It sure looks like it. Last week, while speaking at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Gates tacitly endorsed Obama’s famous identification of Afghanistan as the central front in the war on terror. After a few brief and perfunctory remarks about Iraq, Gates spent most of his address talking about Afghanistan, which he proclaimed to be “the test, on the grandest scale, of what we are trying to achieve when it comes to integrating the military and the civilian, the public and private, the national and international.”

Nor was that the only indication that Gates is extending a virtual CV in Obama’s direction. In his address, Gates noted that “in the wake of the end of the Cold War, a new threat has emerged to menace peace-loving people of all nations and all religions.” That threat? “Violent extremism,” which Gates said “seeks to eject all westerners and western influence from the Middle East and Southwest Asia, to destroy Israel, and overthrow all secular and western-oriented governments in the region.” He explained that these “violent extremists” have “unlimited ‘ideological zeal,’” but he never even came close to explaining the content of that ideology, which would of course have required him to talk about Islam. This politically correct tack is sure to endear him to those who may soon be deciding who will oversee Obama’s Pentagon.

Gates’ analysis of this “violent extremism” echoed Obama’s: he said that the threat emanated from “failed and failing states, from ungoverned spaces.” In this, he hewed closely to Obama’s statements in an interview last summer, when the candidate attributed the rise of “extremist elements” to “a shift in Islam that I believe is connected to the failures of governments and the failures of the West to work with many of these countries, in order to make sure that opportunities are there, that there’s bottom-up economic growth.” (The refutation of the idea that economic growth will end support for jihad terrorism is staring Gates and Obama in the face, and its name is Saudi Arabia -- but neither seems to have noticed.) And Obama would approve of Gates’ pious admonition that “our own national security toolbox must be well-equipped with more than just hammers” -- i.e., it needs to be filled with goodies for regimes that tell the State and Defense Departments what they want to hear.
One would think that Gates would know better by this time, especially after recent revelations of how the Musharraf government in Pakistan was for years taking American money to fight against jihad terrorists and simultaneously aiding those same jihad terrorists. Indeed, less than three weeks before his address to the Institute of Peace, Gates was asked during an appearance at the National Defense University in Washington how the incoming President might smooth over the tense situation between the U.S. and Iran. Gates’ reply was telling: “I have been involved,” he said, “in the search for the elusive Iranian moderate for 30 years.” Then Gates recounted an incident from a 1979 meeting between then-National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and officials of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran. Gates, who was there, said Brzezinski told the Iranians that the U.S. would recognize the Khomeini government and even sell Iran weapons, but that the Iranians demanded that the U.S. hand over the Shah to them. When the U.S. refused, they stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, thus beginning the hostage crisis. Mideast analyst Barry Rubin commented: “Had the United States been a mean bully in its treatment of the new Islamist Iran? On the contrary, Washington did everything possible to negotiate, conciliate, and build confidence. We’ll do almost anything you want, Carter and Brzezinski offered, just be our friend. Far from being appeased, Iran demanded such a total humiliation -- turning over the fatally ill, deposed Shah for execution -- even that administration couldn't accept it.”

Gates, with his talk of diversifying our current alleged hammers-only approach to “violent extremism,” and his apparent politically correct unwillingness to delineate the true motives and goals of those who would destroy us, seems determined to go down this road again. As far as Obama is concerned, that may be just fine and spare him the trouble of finding a new Secretary of Defense. But will America be able to pay the cost of still more politically correct myopia and appeasement?

Posted at 7:13 AM | Comments (50)

Jihadist suicide attacks kill dozens in Somalia

The northern part of the country had been relatively peaceful, but, you see, it was a completely wrong variety of peace (i.e., not the kind the jihadists promise), and thus, absolutely had to be stopped by any possible means.

Somalia Jihad Update. "Suicide attacks kill dozens in Somalia," by Xan Rice for the Guardian, October 29:

A wave of synchronized suicide attacks on UN, diplomatic and government institutions in northern Somalia killed up to 31 people today.

Three car bombs detonated in Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway Somaliland region. Another two vehicles exploded in neighbouring Puntland, which, like Somaliland, has been relative peaceful compared to the rest of the country.

The careful coordination and nature of the attacks is unprecedented in Somalia and marks a serious deterioration in an already dire security situation. Suspicion immediately fell on the radical Shabaab militia, which is part of much broader Islamist-led resistance fighting against the Somali government and occupying Ethiopian troops.

In Hargeisa, the Ethiopian consulate suffered the greatest damage, with up to 20 people reported dead. An attack on the president's palace killed at three people, including the presidential secretary, while two workers died at the headquarters of the UN Development Programme (UNPD).

"A vehicle forced its way into the compound and then exploded," said a UNPD spokesperson in Nairobi. "It appears that the driver of the car was still inside."

The suicide bombers, who were reported to have used driving four-wheel drive vehicles, struck within a few minutes of each other.

In Bossaso, Puntland's main city, explosive-laden cars detonated at separate interior ministry offices responsible for combating terrorism, killing six people. Dozens were injured in the five attacks.

"I fear that this is exactly what it looks like - the Shabaab," said a military expert on Somalia, who cannot be named because of his position. "We expected them to launch high-profile attacks, but this was extraordinary, requiring a large coordinated and concealed effort."

Analysts believe the timing of the bombings was no accident. Regional heads of state, including Somalia's president, Abdullahi Yusuf, were meeting yesterday in Nairobi to discuss the country's future. Peace efforts had received a boost over the weekend when Yusuf's government and the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) signed a deal in Djibouti agreeing to a ceasefire, and a phased withdrawal of Ethiopian troops.

The jihadists will only allow peace (or the absence of shooting) and order to take hold on their terms. Then, if either ever comes into effect, they will take credit as the "only" group that could achieve it (see also: Hamas, and the Taliban).

But a breakaway wing of the ARS, as well as the Shabaab, rejected the deal. They refuse to enter negotiations before the complete withdrawal of the Ethiopian forces that invaded Somalia in December 2006 to oust an Islamist authority from power.

Previously during peace negotiations the Shabaab has launched large attacks, mainly in Mogadishu, to demonstrate that they have control on the ground.

"It's clear that the Shabaab, or jihadis or whatever you want to call them, are trying to make a statement that they target any place in Somalia, not just the south," said a Western diplomat in Nairobi. "But we cannot let this undermine the Djibouti agreement, and we have to expect and accept that these sort of attacks may continue in the short term."...

Posted at 12:00 AM | Comments (9)

October 29, 2008

Canada: Islamic terrorist found guilty of "some" charges

"Duped" into thinking he was only killing NATO forces, not UK civilians

His "high-profile" lawyer insists that his client "was duped by the extremists into believing the group intended to wage an attack on NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, rather than targeting civilians in the U.K." More telling is the fact that the word "Islam" does not even show up anywhere in this report. Rather, we are told that the accused followed a "unique brand of ideological hatred." What, pray tell, could that be?

"Khawaja guilty on some but not all terror charges," from CTA.CA, October 29 (thanks to Sounder):

An Ottawa software developer whom prosecutors accused of promoting a unique brand of ideological hatred has been found guilty of some terror-related charges against him, but not all.

Momin Khawaja, the first person charged under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act, faced seven charges in connection with a foiled U.K. bomb plot.

An Ottawa judge found him guilty on five counts of financing and facilitating terrorism and two Criminal Code offences related to building a remote-controlled detonator with the intent of causing an explosion.

However, the judge said the prosecution did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that Khawaja, 29, was aware his U.K. associates planned to bomb domestic targets using the so-called Hi-Fi Digimonster detonator he built.

As a result, the charges related to the detonator weren't counted as terrorism-related charges, said CTV's Rosemary Thompson, outside the courtroom.

"So he faces a very stiff sentence down the road but the one caveat in this is his lawyer did convince the judge that his client wasn't aware of plans to bomb a night club and shopping centre as this cell was planning to do," Thompson told CTV Newsnet.

Sentencing has been scheduled for Nov. 18.

Khawaja's high-profile Canadian lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, has argued his client was duped by the extremists ["extremist" what, rock band?] into believing the group intended to wage an attack on NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, rather than targeting civilians in the U.K.

Crown Prosecutor David McKercher has pointed out that the British plotters bought and stockpiled a large quantity of fertilizer that could be used in a home-made bomb. He also said there was no chance Khawaja believed the plotters were going to carry the fertilizer into Afghanistan for use there, but that he knew they were planning to hit U.K. targets.

Evidence submitted in the case also indicated Khawaja met with people involved in the British plot to discuss remote-control technology, attended a terrorist training camp and that he supported the 9/11 terrorist bombings.

A shopping mall, night club, and electric and gas facilities were said to be on the group's list of U.K. targets.

Five of Khawaja's alleged co-conspirators were convicted in London last year and sentenced to life in prison.

Posted at 5:33 PM | Comments (70)

U.S. experts and leaders suggest "talks" with Taliban

Apparently they believe that "the Taliban is not monolithic. Reports out of Afghanistan reflect a splintering among Taliban leaders, with some offering to take part in a democratic system and allow girls to go to school." More here. "Our view on Afghanistan: Talk to the Taliban?" from USA Today, October 29 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

Negotiations might help as part of broad strategy to defeat al-Qaeda. A new, once preposterous, idea is gaining ground: Negotiate with the Taliban. Yes, that's right — the fundamentalist Islamic extremists who once ruled Afghanistan, who harbored 9/11 masterminds Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri and their terrorist training camps before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, and who continue to be al-Qaeda's allies and protectors.

After the invasion,Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders fled to Pakistan's wild northwest region, where they launch attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence agencies say any new attack on the U.S. would likely originate in the Taliban/al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan.

Yet opening communications with the Taliban is an option being considered by a range of leaders and experts, including the former U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, who's now in charge of Iraq and Afghanistan as head of Central Command.
[...]

Talking to the Taliban might be a long shot, but perhaps not quite as long as some suspect if the goal is simply to get its leaders to betray al-Qaeda. On Tuesday, Pakistani and Afghan political and tribal leaders agreed to establish contacts with the Taliban. Saudi Arabia has already facilitated informal talks.

Well, if Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are reaching out to the Taliban -- all Muslims who put a premium on sharia and despise the infidel world -- what are we waiting for?

Further, the Taliban is not monolithic. Reports out of Afghanistan reflect a splintering among Taliban leaders, with some offering to take part in a democratic system and allow girls to go to school. It's not unimaginable that they might, with the right pressure or incentives, help deliver al-Qaeda leaders. The point is that no options are possible unless explored.
[...]

The U.S. badly needs a winning strategy in Afghanistan — one that does not cripple the U.S. economy and military for many more years in pursuit of the unattainable. Talking to the Taliban? Time to hold our noses and at least be open to the idea.

Posted at 3:17 PM | Comments (14)

Osama bin Laden: "The Jews are free to do whatever they wish with Muslim women"

Islamist Propaganda Alert. More on this story. "Guantanamo Yemeni claims 'al Qaeda's best video,'" by Jane Sutton for Reuters, October 29:

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A Yemeni prisoner watched an al Qaeda recruiting video with his Guantanamo interrogator and proudly admitted producing the work, the interrogator testified in the U.S. war crimes court on Wednesday.

"He considered it one of the best propaganda videos al Qaeda has to date," former FBI special agent Ali Soufan testified in the U.S. war crimes trial of defendant Ali Hamza al Bahlul.

Osama bin Laden was so impressed with the video that he promoted Bahlul to become his media secretary, the FBI agent quoted Bahlul as telling him.

Bahlul is on trial at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda to commit murderous attacks, soliciting to commit murder and providing material support for terrorism. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Bahlul was captured near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and sent to the Guantanamo detention center in early 2002. When Soufan showed him the video during an interrogation, Bahlul said it had taken him six months to piece together on his laptop computer using Adobe software, television news images and footage of bin Laden speeches.

The production summarized the state of the Muslim world and blamed America and Israel for all its woes.

It included a segment titled "The Destruction of the American Destroyer USS Cole," praising the suicide bombers who drove an explosives-filled boat into the side of the American warship at the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000. The blast blew a hole in the side of the Cole and killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Prosecutors said the video was shown at al Qaeda camps to persuade trainees that becoming suicide bombers was a righteous cause.

Soufan said Bahlul told him al Qaeda expected the Cole attack would lure a new wave of recruits to the anti U.S.-war that they believed to be the start of Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil.

Prosecutors showed the video to the jury of nine U.S. military officers on Wednesday. It showed starving and crying children, mangled and blood-spattered bodies and scenes of Muslims under attack in Bosnia, Chechnya and the Palestinian territories.

Gruesome images alternated with footage of Osama bin Laden saying, "The Jews are free to do whatever they wish with Muslim women ... the child dies in the arms of his mother."

In the piece, bin Laden urges Muslims to abandon their fear of dying and avenge the bloodshed.

The work is titled in flaming letters and punctuated with the sound of gun blasts, sobbing and Koranic verse. Bahlul used special effects to superimpose a cartoonish blast over a news photograph of the damaged Cole.

Bahlul sat at the defense table beaming with pride during some segments and nodding in agreement at the bin Laden portions. He pounded his fist on the table once at the mention of the defilement of Muslim women.

Soufan testified that Bahlul had told him, "Everything I believe is in that tape."

Bahlul, a slightly built man with a short, dark beard, was denied permission to act as his own attorney. His U.S. military lawyer is honoring his request not to put on any defense in the tribunal that Bahlul previously called "a farce."

His trial is the second full test of the special tribunals created to try non-U.S. citizens outside the regular civilian and military courts.

About 255 suspected members of al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated groups are now being detained at Guantanamo. More than 750 non-U.S. captives suspected of terrorism have been held without trial at the base in the seven years since President George W. Bush declared a war against terrorism.

(Edited by Jim Loney and David Wiessler)

Posted at 3:04 PM | Comments (38)

Australia's Jihad Jack free

He claims to have fooled al-Qaeda; did he fool the court as well?

"Australia's 'Jihad Jack' free," from the Straits Times, October 29:

MELBOURNE - AN AUSTRALIAN Muslim convert walked free on Wednesday after a years-long legal battle when a judged sentenced him to jail for holding a falsified passport, but released him due to time already served.

Joseph (Jack) Thomas was the first Australian to be convicted under anti-terrorism laws introduced after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US and subsequently dubbed 'Jihad Jack' by the media.

But the conviction for receiving money from the Al-Qaeda terror network while he was in Afghanistan was later quashed and a second trial last week cleared the 35-year-old of the charge.

He was sentenced on Wednesday to a nine-month jail term for possessing a falsified passport but was immediately released because he had already spent that time in custody.

The decision ends Thomas' five-and-a-half year legal battle which has seen him undergo two trials and spend some 265 days in jail in Australia.

The court heard that Thomas had changed the Taliban visa for Afghanistan in his passport because he felt that leaving it there would be a 'one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay'.

Thomas entered Afghanistan in 2001 before the September 11 attacks and was arrested in neighbouring Pakistan in January 2003 as he attempted he return to Australia. He was held in detention in Pakistan for six months without charge.

In 2006, an Australian court convicted him of accepting funds from Al-Qaeda.

He was released that August when the court of appeal quashed the conviction, ruling that an Australian police interview with Thomas in Pakistan in 2003 was conducted under duress and was therefore inadmissible.

Thomas' lawyer Jim Kennan said his client was relieved at the outcome.

'We're just pleased that the matter has now finally concluded,' he said outside court. -- AFP

Posted at 9:13 AM | Comments (12)

Pakistan "summons" U.S. ambassador, protests missile strikes

But what is the alternative when mounting evidence indicates that the Pakistanis are double-dealing, and sometimes pre-warning the terrorists. Friend and Ally Update.

"Pakistan summons U.S. ambassador over missile strikes," from China View, October 29 (thanks to Dionysios):

ISLAMABAD, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani foreign ministry on Wednesday summoned the United States ambassador to Pakistan and expressed its strong protest over the missile strikes by American drones in the country's tribal regions, Pakistani Foreign Office said in a statement.

"The U.S. ambassador was called to the Foreign Office today and a strong protest was lodged on the continued missile attacks by U.S. drones inside Pakistani territory," said the statement.

"It was underscored to the ambassador that the government of Pakistan strongly condemns the missile attacks, which resulted into the loss of precious lives and property," the statement noted.

A copy of the Senate resolution adopted on Monday against the missile strikes was handed over to the ambassador, it said.

"It was emphasized that such attacks were a violation of Pakistan sovereignty and should be stopped immediately," the statement stressed.

The U.S. drones based in Afghanistan have carried out 34 strikes and intrusions into Pakistani territory in the last seven months, according to News Network International news agency.

Suspected U.S. drones fired missiles targeting local militants in South Waziristan tribal region who gathered to offer prayers last Sunday night. As a result, at least 20 people were killed, according to local media reports.

Posted at 8:52 AM | Comments (24)

U.K.: Only one Islamic "preacher of hate" deported in past 3 years

Meanwhile, Abu Qatada lives, eats, and shops on the government dole. That'll show 'em. "Just one 'preacher of hate' deported in last three years," by Andrew Porter and Caroline Gammell for the Telegraph, October 28:

Ministers unveiled a 12 point plan to crack down on fanatics in the wake of the 7/7 bombings.

But three years on it been revealed that only one person has been deported from Britain, in 2006, for "fomenting extremism." Only two people have been stripped of UK citizenship as part of measures promised by Tony Blair.

In addition only nine people have been deported on "national security grounds" since 2005.

The figures - published in Home Office answers to questions from Tory MP James Clappison - came as Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, attempted to launch a new push designed to stop fanatics entering Britain.

Her efforts were attacked by Mr Clappison, a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee. He said it amounted to little more than a re-announcement and admission of failure.

He said: "The Government has been promising to draw up a list of preachers to be excluded since 2005 and failed to do so. They are treating the public with contempt by failing to deliver on a number of points in its 12-point plan.

"The Government's implementation of what was supposed to be a proper clamping down on serious threats to this country has been feeble. They have a woeful record on these matters."

Deporting preachers of hate living in Britain was a key element in a 12-point-plan announced by Tony Blair in August 2005 after the terrorist attacks in London. He said the measures would see foreigners deported or barred from entering Britain for justifying terrorism and encouraging hatred between communities.

The Home Office published a list of "unacceptable behaviour" which was part of an attempt to deal with radical clerics. Three years on Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, yesterday attempted to launch a renewed push to stop extremists entering Britain.

Miss Smith yesterday said that 230 people have been barred from entering the UK - 79 of them religious extremists.

She said in the future, the names of all those barred from Britain will be shared with other countries, as well as community groups and leaders in the UK.

Speculation that the Government would "name and shame" yesterday (tues) all those already on the list proved unfounded and led to the accusation that the announcement was little more than a "tawdry gimmick".

A Home Office spokeswoman said names would not be drip-fed to the public, but revealed if there was genuine public interest.

"These new rules will make it easier to exclude those who want to come to the UK to stir up religious or racial hatred - our presumption will be to keep people involved in these behaviours out of our country.

"For the first time we will name and shame preachers of hate and share our exclusions list with other countries to help them decide who should be excluded from their countries."

Alleged extremists will have to prove their innocence under rules designed to target radical Islamists, neo-Nazis and violent animal rights activists. Currently the burden of proof rests with the Government.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "Through these tough new measures I will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country.

"Coming to the UK is a privilege and I refuse to extend that privilege to individuals who abuse our standards and values to undermine our way of life."

Among those already banned are Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, who ran the radical group Al-Muhajiroun, and Abdullah al-Faisal, a Mulsim [sic] preacher who influenced July 7 bomber Germaine Lindsay.

Posted at 12:04 AM | Comments (36)

October 28, 2008

"Only jihad by word and pen is left...Blood, blood, destruction, destruction"

Expect Muslims in America to denounce and demonstrate against Ali Hamza al Bahlul's misuse of the word "jihad" forthwith. Expect MSA's on campuses all over the country to hold rallies denouncing Bahlul's linking of jihad with blood and destruction.

What's that? None of that will happen? Instead they will call me an "Islamophobe" for daring to point out what Bahlul said? Oh, of course. I forgot how things work there for a minute.

"Al Qaeda media man waged 'jihad by pen,' U.S. says," by Jane Sutton for Reuters, October 28:

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - An accused al Qaeda media director waged "jihad by word and pen" and made a video aimed at overcoming trainees' resistance to carrying out suicide attacks, a prosecutor in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal said on Tuesday.
The prosecutor, Army Maj. Dan Cowhig, outlined the case against Yemeni captive Ali Hamza al Bahlul at his trial at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba. His opening statement suggested the nine U.S. military officers on the jury will have to decide whether creating propaganda is a war crime.

Cowhig read from Bahlul's journal, which was seized in Afghanistan, and from letters he said Bahlul wrote from Guantanamo to al Qaeda leaders, lamenting that he could not join the September 11 hijackers he hailed as heroes.

..."Only jihad by word and pen is left," he quoted Bahlul as writing.

"I am an officer of al Qaeda," he quoted him as writing elsewhere. "Blood, blood, destruction, destruction."

Bahlul also is accused of scripting the videotaped wills of his former roommates, September 11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Ziad al Jarrah. He set up a satellite link so bin Laden could hear news reports of those attacks on his laptop computer, but couldn't get the audio portion to work, Cowhig said....

Posted at 12:55 PM | Comments (218)

Syrian foreign minister accuses U.S. of "terrorism" in raid on al-Qaeda cell

Just another reason to be prepared with follow-up questions when you hear Muslim interest groups and speakers issuing blanket condemnations of "terrorism": Since terrorism is a tactic, and not an ideology, the term can be applied strictly or loosely to a wide range of situations, while not saying anything more substantial, objective, or even accurate about them. "Jihad," on the other hand, is highly specific; the more one is aware of the jihadist ideology and its basis in Islamic texts and teachings, the less room there is for dissembling by apologists. And hope springs eternal that this fact may yet dawn on the U.S. government.

An update on this story. "Syria: Foreign minister accuses US of 'terrorist aggression'," from AdnKronos International, October 27:

London, 27 Oct.(AKI) - Syria's Foreign Minister, Walid Muallem, on Monday accused the United States of "terrorist aggression" over an alleged weekend raid on a village near the Iraqi border. Speaking in London after talks with British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, Muallem said the attack was in breach of international law.

"We consider this criminal and terrorist aggression. We put the responsibility on the American government," he told a media conference in London.

"Killing civilians in international law means a terrorist aggression," he added, in the first comments by a Syrian minister since the reported attack on the village of Al-Sukkariya, eight kilometres from the border.

Earlier on Monday, Iran joined Syria in condemning the alleged US attack.

Asked if Syria would use force if the Americans mounted a similar operation again, he said: "As long as you are saying if, I tell you, if they do it again, we will defend our territories."

Muallem stressed that all the victims were unarmed Syrian civilians who were killed on Syrian territory.

The Syrian minister said that four American helicopters had crossed the border around 5 p.m/ on Sunday local time. Two of them landed at the village site, while the other two aircraft protected them.

In Washington, White House spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, refused to comment on the reported attack. However, media reports say that an unnamed US military official confirmed the attack.

More information: "Syrian foreign minister criticizes US raid," from the Associated Press, October 27 (thanks to Eleutheria ´H Thanatos):

[...] The US military said it was targeting the network of al-Qaida-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria to help fight in Iraq. Syria said troops in four helicopters attacked a building and killed eight people, including four children.

"They know full well that we stand against al-Qaida," al-Moallem said. "They know full well we are trying to tighten our border with Iraq."

Posted at 12:07 AM | Comments (37)

Revolutionary Guards commander: Iran arms "liberation armies" in Mideast

Shocking? Not at all. But the official confirmation from a Revolutionary Guards commander suggests he doesn't anticipate anyone trying to stop them. "Iranian commander: Iran arms Mideast 'liberation armies'," from the Associated Press, October 27 (thanks to Eleutheria ´H Thanatos):

A government web site in Iran quoted on Monday a top Revolutionary Guards commander as saying that the country is supplying weapons to "liberation armies" in the Middle East.

The report by Borna news provides the first official statement from a top military commander that Iran is providing weapons to armed groups in the Middle East.

Monday's report quotes Gen. Hossein Hamedani, deputy commander of a volunteer militia that is part of the elite Revolutionary Guards, as saying Iran is self-sufficient in weapons production and is supplying arms to "liberation armies" in the region.

Hamedani didn't provide further details, but Iran is widely believed to provide weapons to Lebanon's Hizbullah group.

In addition to supplying Shi'ite jihadist groups in Iraq and Hamas, along with its alleged role in Shi'ite insurrections in Yemen.

Posted at 12:06 AM | Comments (4)

Israeli military intel chief: Syria-Hizballah ties growing stronger

"If Israel's indirect talks with Syria were aimed at testing whether it might be possible to pull Damascus out of Iran and Hizbullah's orbits, then so far the test has failed."

"Yadlin: Syria-Hizbullah ties growing stronger," by Herb Keinon for the Jerusalem Post, October 26:

If Israel's indirect talks with Syria were aimed at testing whether it might be possible to pull Damascus out of Iran and Hizbullah's orbits, then so far the test has failed, Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin indicated in the cabinet Sunday.

Despite the talks, not only has Damascus not lessened its cooperation with Hizbullah, it has actually stepped up its relationship with the organization.

"[Syrian President Bashar] Assad currently trusts Hizbullah more than his own army," Yadlin said during a briefing. "Hizbullah operatives are working from within Syria. The Syrians are loosening all restraints, and [are irresponsibly giving] Hizbullah access to almost all of their strategic capabilities."

Assad "is continuing to open up his warehouses to Hizbullah," Yadlin continued, adding that Syria was "turning into the arms granary" for Hizbullah.

He also said that Iranian and Syrian involvement in Lebanon was a means of taking control of the country.

And Hizballah has proven itself an indispensible tool in undermining the control of the Lebanese government.

"Syria and Iran are buying the regime in Lebanon and are pouring substantial money into buying parliamentary representatives and into conducting dubious business deals," the MI chief said. "The Iranian offer to assist in the building of the Lebanese Army is a ruse to take control of Lebanon." [...]

Regarding the diplomatic process with Syria, Yadlin said Assad was interested in an agreement with Israel on Syria's terms, but wanted to wait until after the US elections and the establishment of a new administration before moving anything forward.

Yadlin said Hizbullah was still trying to avenge the assassination of its commander Imad Mughniyeh, but was concerned about a harsh Israeli response. As such, he said, Hizbullah was working through indirect channels, including attempts to carry out attacks through Gaza.

Yadlin said this was creating some tension between Hizbullah and Hamas, since Hamas had an interest in preserving the current calm in the Gaza Strip. He said Hamas had, in fact, recently arrested Hizbullah terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

Regarding the Iranian nuclear program, Yadlin said Teheran was exploiting the transition period and current political uncertainty both in Israel and the US to advance its nuclear program.

"The changing of the governments in the US and Israel, and the world economic crisis, are being exploited by the radical axis in order to improve its situation," Yadlin said. "Iran is exploiting the weakness in the international theater, in anticipation of the new government in the US, in order to move forward on its nuclear program and to soften the network of international opposition."

Posted at 12:01 AM | Comments (8)

October 27, 2008

Muslims behead Christian convert from Islam in Somalia

Mansuur Mohammed: This offends no one

Last week at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Muslim students rolled their eyes and smiled with exasperation when I noted that all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence taught that the penalty for apostasy from Islam was death, in accord with Muhammad's words, "If anyone changes his religion, kill him." One young man, who was unusually polite, actually wrote a piece about it in the school paper, which I still intend to answer. But the consensus in any case was that I was representing a minority view as a majority one. Very well: I expect, therefore, that the UWM MSA will be organizing a rally in memory of Mansuur Mohammed, denouncing his killers, and calling upon Muslims everywhere to defend the freedom of conscience.

Is that too much to ask?

"Somalia: Christian Aid Worker Beheaded For Converting From Islam," from Compass Direct, October 27:

NAIROBI, Kenya, October 27 (Compass Direct News) – Among at least 24 aid workers killed in Somalia this year was one who was beheaded last month specifically for converting from Islam to Christianity, among other charges, according to an eyewitness.
Muslim extremists from the al Shabab group fighting the transitional government on Sept. 23 sliced the head off of Mansuur Mohammed, 25, a World Food Program (WFP) worker, before horrified onlookers of Manyafulka village, 10 kilometers (six miles) from Baidoa.

The militants had intercepted Mohammed and a WFP driver, who managed to escape, earlier in the morning. Sources close to Mohammed’s family said he converted from Islam to Christianity in 2005.

The eyewitness, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said the militants that afternoon gathered the villagers of Manyafulka, telling them that they would prepare a feast for them. The people gathered anticipating the slaughter of a sheep, goat or camel according to local custom.

Five masked men emerged carrying guns, wielding Somali swords and dragging the handcuffed Mohammed. One pulled back Mohammed’s head, exposing his face as he scraped his sword against his short hair as if to sharpen it. Another recited the Quran as he proclaimed that Mohammed was a “murtid,” an Arabic term for one who converts from Islam to Christianity.

The Muslim militant announced that Mohammed was an infidel and a spy for occupying Ethiopian soldiers.

Mohammed remained calm with an expressionless face, never uttering a word, said the eyewitness. As the chanting of “Allah Akubar [God is greater]” rose to a crescendo, one of the militiamen twisted his head, allowing the other to slit his neck. When the head was finally severed from the torso, the killers cheered as they displayed it to the petrified crowd.

The militants allowed one of their accomplices to take a video of the slaughter using a mobile phone. The video was later circulated secretly and sold in Somalia and in neighboring countries in what many see as a strategy to instill fear among those contemplating conversion from Islam to Christianity....

Will Sanaa Nadim be outraged? What do you think?

Posted at 7:50 PM | Comments (70)

Fitzgerald: The duty of Jihad has to be defined accurately

The duty of Jihad has to be defined accurately, but also in a way that can easily be grasped by auditors, so that it does not exclude, but clearly includes, all of the current instruments that Muslims employ to further Jihad.

The initial smokescreen, or deception, offered both by Muslims and by such non-Muslim apologists as Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, was to suggest, or even insist, that the very recent, and most secondary, definition of “Jihad,” formulated primarily by some “reforming” Muslims in the last century (at a time when Muslims were weak, and in apparent disarray), was the widely-accepted one. But this has been impossible to sustain, given the widespread use by Muslims themselves – now copiously quoted at such sites as MEMRI, and in newspaper and radio and television accounts – of the real meaning of Jihad.

And what is that meaning? To repeat: Jihad is a duty, incumbent on all Muslims, to strive to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam, all over the world. In the earliest days of Islam, those obstacles would be military in nature: Muslims invade a land possessed by non-Muslims, fight to conquer them, and then to impose Muslim rule over them, and to offer them the choice of death, conversion, or life as dhimmis under such rule. But in the modern world, when non-Muslims still possess overwhelming military superiority, it is not “qitaal” or combat in the traditional sense that is the main instrument of Jihad. Rather, even when it comes to the use of violence, the preferred method is the kind of attack on non-military targets, designed to instill terror, that we have no difficulty calling terrorism. Such attacks -- on airplanes, on busses, on schools, on subways, on office-buildings, on hospitals – are explained away or justified by Muslims, as perfectly acceptable variants on traditional “qitaal” or combat. And since Infidels have more powerful armies, terrorism is seen as merely a way of equalizing things, and not itself morally unacceptable. Still other Muslims, while feigning to denounce a vague “terrorism,” always leave open, in their failure to define what constitutes “innocents” or “civilians,” the acceptance of terrorism as a method. And indeed those very infrequent and pro-forma “denunciations” no longer fool as many as they once did, so often have those loopholes been pointed out – and too many Muslims among those denouncing terrorism have been found to support it in one way or another.

But the definition of Jihad must be ample enough to include all the other instruments, aside from qitaal or terrorism, that are used with such effectiveness today. These instruments of Jihad include the deployment of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da’wa (the Call To Islam, which means the attempt to convert as many susceptible Infidels, among the economically and psychically marginal, as possible), and demographic conquest, which consists of both the deliberate, and the non-deliberate (but just as effective and dangerous) overbreeding of Muslims in Infidel lands. That increase in numbers leads, as Boumedienne of Algeria said in 1974 at the U.N., to a conquest “through the wombs of Muslim women.” The generous benefits of Infidel nation-states allows Muslim women not to work (though non-Muslim women do), to have large families, and to take full advantage, and then some, of all the benefits – free and excellent medical care, free education, free or heavily-subsidized housing, and generous family allowances – that appear tailor-made for the large Muslim families who are busy, in their own way, increasing inexorably the Muslim presence, and therefore perceived and real power, all over the Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels. This is accompanied by continued large-scale immigration of Muslims. And instead of halting this immigration and constructing policies designed to limit the size of Muslim families, or at least not to be so generous with support, and even to promote policies that may make it more difficult, or at least not quite so easy, to conduct Muslim life in a non-Muslim environment, the Western world so far, now that it recognizes a problem, appears incapable of soberly drawing up the measures that it has every right to employ to protect its own legal and political institutions, the conduct of art and science, and the development of individual liberties so threatened by the collectivism of that Total Belief-System that some, too easily call a “religion,” which is to say – Islam.

So, if you are asked to provide an intelligible and comprehensive definition of the word “Jihad” provide this:

Jihad is the duty incumbent upon all Muslims, to participate, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, to engage in the “struggle” (which is what “Jihad” means) to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then to the dominance, of Islam. It can take the form of combat, or qitaal. It can take the form of terrorism, It can take the form of the Money Weapon, which Saudi Arabia alone has supplied, or distributed, to the troubling tune of nearly one hundred billion dollars over the past few decades, to support mosques, madrasas, armies of Western hirelings, and every sort of pro-Islam propaganda, from textbooks in the schools, to those interfaith-healing racketeers who ply their smiling trade, some of them naïve, and some of them knowing exactly what they are doing. It can take the form of carefully-targeted campaigns of Da’wa, especially in prisons or among the psychically marginal. These people go off on their Spiritual Searches and finally allow their personal mental Greyhound to stop at the station marked Islam, where they got off that bus, never to get on again.

And finally there is demographic conquest, which has to be halted and then reversed, through measures that are perfectly acceptable ethically and morally, and that, in a rightly-ordered world, and among Infidels less willfully determined not to recognize the dangers that are daily mounting, would have been undertaken long ago.

Posted at 7:47 PM | Comments (5)

Fitzgerald: Obama will have to reconsider

Obama once upon a time took tuition from, or at least listened intently to, the likes of Rashid Khalidi, a practiced performer on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And there were others too, who similarly presented the Arab case, with a practiced air of indignation, victimhood, and sweet reasonableness.

But like Prince Harry, when he becomes Henry V, Obama will have to reconsider, and not just for election purposes, some of the dangerous innocences and perhaps enthusiasms and misunderstandings of his youth, especially on a subject where, apparently, he never received any countervailing presentation from those capable of offering it. Jewish financial backers of the Peace-Now variety are not what one means by those capable of offering a countervailing presentation as to the history of Arabs and Jews, not only this year, or twenty years ago, but over the history of the Middle East since Islam arrived -- and put in the context of the Arab and Muslim treatment or attitude toward all non-Muslims and, as well, toward non-Arab Muslims such as the black Africans in Darfur.

Obama has shown himself to be intelligent and also a quick study, as well as a keenly ruthless politician. It would be good if, rather than offer the pro-forma and palpably unfelt rhetoric that may please the easily-pleased audiences of AIPAC, he were really to study the source, nature, and unsusceptibility to "solution" through further Israeli surrenders of land and relinquishing of rights, of what is not a "struggle" for "the legitimate rights of the (recently-invented) "Palestinian" people (i.e., the local Arabs), but rather a Lesser Jihad against the Infidel nation-state of Israel. This Jihad is without end, though it is possible to manage it through deterrence. And this Jihad is participated in not only directly, but indirectly. Propagandists, including those who may not be Muslim but rather islamochristian (Khalidi may, like Hanan Ashrawi, possibly may fall into this category), should have their soothing presentation balanced by real study and thought about what Islam means, and about what the texts and tenets and attitudes and atmospherics of Islam mean for non-Muslims as judged by those texts, and by the behavior of Muslims toward the non-Muslims whose many lands they conquered and whom they killed, or converted, or subjugated as dhimmis.

Forget, for right now, about Israel. Study what has happened to Hindus in India, to Buddhists and Hindus in East Asia, to Christians and animists in sub-Saharan Africa. Study what is happening today to the historic, now "post-Christian" West in its center and source, Western Europe. Once all of that is grasped, then return to the subject of tiny, hardly-to-be-discerned-on-a-world-map Israel. Compare its size, with the thousand times more land and the fabulous unearned wealth of the Arab Muslims, who everywhere treat ruthlessly their own non-Muslim or non-Arab minorities. Then, in Obama fashion, start to think about "distributivist" or "redistributivist" justice when it comes to what the Arabs possess and what the Jews of Israel have built out of land which, pace Khalidi, was an ill-considered backwater, fallen into ruin and desolation. All the accounts of Western travellers support this view. All the demographic and cadastral records will give a different picture from the one Obama was so plausibly painted.

He needs to understand not the easygoing, syncretistic, even slightly-lapsed Islam that he may identify with his father and with his stepfather, and with still-tolerant Indonesia during those years of his youth. But one cannot judge Islam on that basis; one has to instead study the texts, and the history of Islamic conquest.

One would be relieved to learn that Obama was reading Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who come bearing intelligent and uncowed witness, just as one would be relieved if he were known to be reading, say, such a book as "Since Time Immemorial" and looking not so much at the author's sometimes too-sweeping rhetoric as at the wealth of quotation that cannot be unsaid or undercut.

And one would be even more relieved to discover that Barack Obama, whether or not he wins the election, were not only reading the books by, but meeting with, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, and perhaps, especially, someone who lived in Somalia, and Kenya, and Saudi Arabia, and then in the Netherlands and the United States, and could help Obama see things straight -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Besides, Obama is not foolish enough, one assumes, if he wishes to achieve any of his domestic agenda, to use up political capital and to confirm all the worst fears, or heighten all the anxieties that remain about him. They remain among some who may, nonetheless, decide to vote for him, allowing themselves to believe that he will act as they hope, and not as they fear.

One does not wish to trade the incomprehension and messsianic sentimentalism of the Bush Administration in Iraq (and Afghanistan) for what would be even worse: a policy of dealing with the worldwide manifestations and instruments of Jihad (the "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam) through greater "dialogue" and "understanding." Such an understanding is really based on a willful refusal to understand the texts and tenets of Islam, and the behavior that naturally flows from such texts and tenets, and their steady inculcation, whether in a mosque or madrasa, or simply through one's own steady reading, and a taking of those texts to heart. Such false understanding is miles away from what we need: a clever policy designed to exploit pre-existing fissures within the Camp of Islam and -- most importantly -- to force Muslims themselves to confront the fact that the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of Muslim states and societies are a direct result of Islam itself. And this can only be done if Infidels themselves come to that clear understanding.

If Obama is willing to learn this, such an understanding would stand him in good stead, and help him to make the case not only for leaving Iraq, but also for not repeating the same naive kind of errors in Afghanistan, and instead for shoring up those conducting the war of self-defense against adherents of Jihad through other means -- including, most importantly, every conceivable attempt to diminish OPEC oil revenues that supply the Money Weapon that has been used to such great effect not least in the capitals of the Western world.

If he proves unable or unwilling to do this, he will probably ends up, for example, appointing as Secretaries of State and Defense those who have given every sign of being susceptible to Muslim arguments and blandishments, or who exhibit a long history of being notably anti-Israel in their voting records and attitudes. That is a sure sign of being more likely, for emotional reasons, or other sorts of pathologies present in a forme fruste, to wish to continue to willfully misunderstand the nature of Islam -- not least because a right understanding would naturally help Israel.

One has only to consider how eager Pat Buchanan is to not understand the worldwide threat of Jihad. For to the pat-buchanans of this world, it is more important to persuade the American government to essentially throw Israel to the wolves, even if this whets, rather than states, Arab and Muslim appetites for further triumphs, and not all of them confined to the Middle East. McCain, if he wins, clearly will be appointing some Democrats to his cabinet. If Obama wins, he might do worse than appoint someone who has held posts dealing with security and who demonstrates an immunity to that anti-Israel undercurrent so obvious in the votes of Senators Hagel and Lugar, who are both mentioned in the short lists. What if that Secretary of State were to be, for example, James Woolsey?

Such a choice would relieve a great many people who are worried about -- and not completely out of whole cloth -- Obama's ties to, or sympathies with, Islam and Islamic causes.

And were Obama to lose, he would still need to better inform himself about Islam, and not to surround himself with Yesterday's Men who have spent the last few decades unaware, essentially, of what the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest in the countries of Western Europe mean. They have not been paying attention, and have focused idiotically only on the Middle East and, in some cases -- see Dennis Ross -- have professional reasons for insisting upon believing that "peace-processing" and "shuttle diplomacy" and endless "negotiations" leading to a "peace treaty" mean a great deal, when any student of Muslim treatment of all treaties with Infidels (see Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam) demonstrate how silly, futile, and dangerous such pious hopes on the Infidel side will and must necessarily be.

Posted at 7:40 PM | Comments (26)

SUNY-Stony Brook: Manufactured outrage

Sanaa Nadim: Offended

Last Thursday night when I spoke at SUNY-Stony Brook, the new tactics about which I have written here, here and here were not as much in evidence as they had been at other campuses: students did not try to disrupt my remarks, but the MSA did show up in force, and were ready with hostile and contemptuous questions.

The fireworks began with the first question. Sister Sanaa Nadim, the chaplain of the Stony Brook MSA, stood up to declare how incredibly offended she was by my taking Qur'anic verses out of context in order to portray all Muslims as extremists. She launched into full-bore counter lecture mode (despite requests from me and the student organizers not to try to hijack the lecture during the question period, but to ask a brief question), repeatedly attempted to talk over my answers, and only retreated a bit when I pointed out what a splendid example of courtesy and fair play she was giving to her students.

When I did get a chance to speak again, I listed some of the Islamic authorities who taught that offensive jihad warfare against unbelievers was the final and lasting stage of jihad, including Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Kathir, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, etc., and asked her to save her offense for those people if she truly opposed this point of view, but not to pretend that I had originated this perspective.

But of course, it is likely that she, like most of her coreligionists in the U.S., has never expressed any outrage toward any of them or their modern exponents, allowing bland condemnations of an undefined "terrorism" to suffice. I think it that the outrage she was directing at me seemed manufactured, perhaps to give gullible audience members the impression that she had never heard before of this interpretation of Islam -- as none other than Mahdi Bray once claimed during a Q-and-A after a talk I once gave in Boston.

I also cautioned Sanaa Nadim and the MSA members in attendance that it was dangerous to believe their own propaganda: I had not said that all Muslims were "extremists" during that speech or in any other speech or in anything I had ever written. (In fact, I don't even generally use the term "extremist.") Nadim and her MSA students at Stony Brook, like the shrieking self-righteous harpy who descended upon me at Penn State and her allies in the audience there, seem to have memorized a few talking points that have been cooked up somewhere about what I supposedly say, and were working from that rather than dealing with what I actually said.

At the same time, however, the MSA's furious reaction and eager distortion of my remarks at both Penn State and SUNY Stony Brook highlights the other side of the coin, a point I have also often emphasized: the limited value of the fact that not all Muslims are "extremists." That not all Muslims are on board with the Islamic supremacist program is simply a fact, but it does not follow from that fact that there is any significant body of Muslims who are actively or seriously opposing the jihadists and Islamic supremacists. There are a few courageous individuals here and there, but as I have pointed out many times using Ibn Warraq's phrase, while there are moderate Muslims, there is no moderate Islam. And while some people are cultural and nominal Muslims who are ignorant of and/or indifferent to the jihad imperative, it cannot be assumed (as many Western government and law enforcement officials assume) that any given peaceful Muslim opposes the jihad simply by virtue of the fact that he is not actively engaged in violence or participating in plotting in a violent jihad group.

Moreover, when Muslims in America get angrier at me for discussing how other Muslims are using Islam to justify and spread an expansionist, totalitarian, and discriminatory ideology, than they do against those Muslims, it does not inspire confidence. In fact, it should make every non-Muslim who witnesses it wonder at their misplaced priorities, and at just how insincere are their protestations of moderation. I am not saying that Sanaa Nadim and her students in the SUNY Stony Brook MSA are jihadists. But if they really want to show that they accept American Constitutional pluralism, they would do well to start by acknowledging the existence of the Islamic supremacist ideology and repudiating it in specific terms, and backing up that repudiation with deeds (beginning with transparent, honest, inspectable programs teaching against it in mosques and Islamic schools in America), instead of getting angry at anyone who brings it up.

I can illustrate my point here by reference to one of Sanaa Nadim's own writings. In 2002 she contributed a chapter to the book Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future, edited by Sunita Mehta. Nadim's chapter is called "Women and Equality In Islam." In it, she attempts to show that "the realities that we have seen in recent history regarding the status of women in so-called Muslim countries do not reflect authentic Islam." Indeed, "extremist Muslims -- the West shudders at the phrase -- have given all sincere Muslims a bad name." She declares that "Islam brought true freedom to women." One may be led to believe from all this that Sanaa Nadim in her essay takes up and refutes some of the reasons that those "extremist Muslims" give for their oppression of women, but no such luck. The most glaring omission is that Nadim, even while discussing some of the Qur'an's statements about women, never mentions Qur'an 4:34, which declares that "good women are obedient" -- and what of those who aren't? "Beat them."

She could have argued, as many Islamic apologists in the West have done, that no Muslims take this verse literally (it's okay for them to assume that Islam is a monolith), or that Muhammad mitigated it in the Hadith. Both of those positions are weak, as I have demonstrated elsewhere, but at least they aren't pretending that the verse doesn't exist at all. For Sanaa Nadim to ignore this verse in an essay about the status of women in Islam is extremely strange, and whatever her reasons may have been for doing this, they can't have had anything to do with genuine reform. Real reform doesn't happen by ignoring what needs reforming, but by confronting it. I think it's likely, however, that if during my talk I had mentioned 4:34, and the high incidence of wife abuse in Islamic countries, Sanaa Nadim's outrage would only have heightened. But the fact that it isn't turned against those Muslims who invoke 4:34 to justify spousal abuse, and that she passed up a golden opportunity to condemn them and call for reform in her book about women in Afghanistan, is telling.

As was the MSA's playing of the victim card Friday night in Stony Brook. One MSA member stood up to complain that MSA events at the university were not as well-staffed with campus police as mine was. I refrained from replying that I doubted that MSA events on campus were preceded by the threat that if they went on as planned, there would be "repercussions" -- which was a threat that the sponsoring group received in connection with my talk, and which police thoroughly investigated. I didn't refrain from telling him this out of politeness, but simply because I didn't think to mention it; I was too busy replying to his complaints about how difficult life had become for Muslims after 9/11.

I told him that I too was often singled out for extra searches in airports, and once while stuck in an airport was working on Jihad Watch when suddenly I found myself surrounded by police, several of whom were holding back hungry-looking police dogs. Someone had seen "jihad" on my screen and reported me, and I was taken away for questioning. I told him I didn't mind any of this, since I loved America and knew about threat we were all facing, and so didn't mind putting up with inconvenience for the sake of national security, knowing that if I wasn't doing anything wrong, it would all come out all right in the end anyway.

But of course if one doesn't hold in high regard the safety of innocent Americans, and would rather use the alleged mistreatment of Muslims in the war on terror as a means to halt those anti-terror efforts, one would not be interested in putting up with such inconveniences. Is that really the impression that this young man intended to leave with me and with the rest of the audience Thursday night?

Posted at 5:34 PM | Comments (49)

Melanie Phillips: Obama adopts the agenda of the jihadists

From "Is America really going to do this?," by Melanie Phillips in The Spectator, October 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Obama assumes that Islamic terrorism is driven by despair, poverty, inflammatory US policy and the American presence on Muslim soil in the Persian Gulf. Thus he adopts the agenda of the Islamists themselves.

It's true: Obama adopts the jihadists' grievance-based analysis, which is based on the proposition that the anger toward the U.S. in the Islamic world stems from something the U.S. has done, not from imperatives within the Islamic world itself. This is not just a Leftist point of view: in this Obama has something in common with many on the Right, such as Dinesh D'Souza, who insists that the Left provoked 9/11 by making American pop culture so rotten that when it was exported it aroused the ire of straitlaced moralists like Osama bin Laden.

The problem with all of these analyses, whether from the Obamaite Left or the D'Souzaite Right, is that they completely ignore what underlies the shifting lists of grievances that the jihadists produce -- and that is the jihad and Islamic supremacist imperative to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law. This imperative that is not based on anything those unbelievers have done or not done, but solely upon their status as unbelievers. This imperative is rooted in the Qur'an (9:29), the Hadith (Sahih Muslim 4294) and Islamic jurisprudence (all the orthodox schools of Islamic law accept the principle that it is a responsibility of the Islamic community to wage war against unbelievers until they convert or submit). The contents of the grievance lists will change, but this will remain constant.

Yet virtually no one in public life dares even to face the fact of its existence.

Posted at 2:58 PM | Comments (26)

Raymond Ibrahim: Saudi calls for "interfaith dialogue" in context

Can't we all just get along?

According to the Associated Press, Saudi King Abdullah recently said that he plans on attending a meeting in November at the United Nations in New York to further his "initiative to promote interfaith dialogue.” The King further remarked that “extending Muslims' hands to non-Muslims will help ‘purify’ the reputation of Islam at a time when the world is criticizing the faith.”

Of course, none of this is new; Abdullah has been “reaching out” to infidels for some time now. Prior to the much touted interfaith conferences in Madrid, the Saudi monarch is said to have “made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews” — going so far as to refer to the latter two as “our brothers.” The Jerusalem Post further wrote that such talks would be geared toward developing “respect among religions.”

The Arabian kingdom, however, is famous for tenaciously upholding and exporting “Wahhabism/Salafism,” that literalist brand of Islam that preaches absolutely no tolerance, murders apostates, and condemns all non-Muslims as infidels. It is also famous for having supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11, “educating” fellows such as Osama bin Laden, and boasting, of all things, a sword on its national flag. One can’t help but question the old monarch’s motives. Moreover, while the Saudi king was/is beguiling infidels with his calls for “dialogue,” that the textbooks of his kingdom are still instructing the youth of Saudi Arabia to hate all non-Muslims, is further demonstrative of Abdullah’s sincerity, or lack thereof.

Here’s another telling anecdote: days before the Madrid conferences, prominent Saudi Sheikh Abdul Rahman Barrak issued a death-fatwa against two Saudi writers. Their crime? They wrote articles in the Saudi paper Al-Riyadh questioning the Muslim position that holds all non-Muslims — whom the Saudi king would otherwise call “brothers” — as infidels. According to the Arab News, Barrak had said: “Anyone who claims this [that non-Muslims are not infidels] has refuted Islam and should be tried so that he can take it back. If not, he should be killed as an apostate from the religion of Islam.”

Does this mean that King Abdullah truly believes Christians and Jews are not infidels, and if so, does that also mean that Barrak should issue a fatwa for his life, for having apostatized?

At any rate, is the Saudi king aware that “dialogue” is supposed to be held by two or more singular participants who nonetheless genuinely believe that they share some basic human rights — such as the freedom to practice whatever religion they wish without being molested? Only civilized peoples who are agreed to such fundamentals can move on to more temporal matters, such as territorial disputes (e.g., Israel/Palestine). But what is the point of having “dialogue” over secondary matters when the primary issues — basic human rights — are not endorsed by all participants?

In Saudi Arabia, the facts remain: native citizens who dare apostatize must be slain; absolutely no churches, synagogues, or any other symbol of non-Muslim worship (e.g., crosses, Stars of David, Bibles) is permitted on the peninsula; non-Muslims are barred from entering Mecca or Medina.

These are just the visible forms of intolerance practiced in the home of Islam and its founder. Theoretically — or rather, theologically — speaking, the juridical worldview of Islam is little better: whenever the opportunity presents itself, the whole world must be brought under Islamic rule, either willingly or by the sword, following the pattern of the Islamic prophet and the first “righteous” caliphs. What is even more troubling is that this Muslim view of world conquest isn’t merely a product of certain obscurantist schools of Islamic thought; nor is it a “hijacking” by Bin Laden and his likes. Rather, it is the codified worldview of all four schools of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam. In fact, it is a communal duty (a fard kifaya) imposed on Muslims.

In light of all this, where exactly does Abdullah get the gall to call for “dialogue”? The measure of any community’s sincerity and tolerance toward the “Other” is how well that community treats the “Other” when the latter is under its authority.

In the United States, for example, Muslim minorities have the exact same rights — to build places of worship (mosques), publicly carry their scriptures (Korans), to worship and proselytize, and, simply, to be Muslim — as do Christians, Jews, and the rest. That is proof that the West is prepared for dialogue over ancillary matters: it has already visibly demonstrated that it firmly believes all humans are guaranteed basic rights.

Countries like Saudi Arabia evince no respect for basic human rights and freedoms. The contrast is amply demonstrated by the recent comments of one high ranking Saudi who said that “It would be possible to launch official negotiations to construct a church [note the singular] in Saudi Arabia only after the Pope and all the Christian churches recognize the prophet Muhammad” — which of course would make all Christians Muslim.

How would Muslims react to a requirement that, to build mosques in the U.S., they must first publicly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?

Indeed, Saudi calls for dialogue are akin to the following hypothetical scenario: Imagine if the U.S. today enshrined, and enforced, laws in its Constitution maintaining that blacks are inferior to whites, and that, at best, they must be treated as second-class citizens. Then, despite the fact that the whole world is aware of these laws, despite the fact that blacks living outside the U.S. are constantly hearing about Americans persecuting blacks in the U.S., despite all that, imagine the U.S. also “reaching out” to powerful African nations, insisting that there is a need for “dialogue”—you know, to “clear things up” and (verbally) demonstrate how blacks are viewed as "brothers."

Perhaps the greatest proof that the old king is being insincere is the fact that, in most of his ostensibly “multi-culti” speech, polytheists are conspicuously left out. Prior to Madrid, for instance, Abdullah continuously stressed that this dialogue is to be only with “our brothers in all religions which I mentioned, the Torah [Jews] and the Gospels [Christians].” If the Saudi king was honestly trying to promote religious tolerance around the world, why weren’t polytheists invited to the talks? Specifically, why weren’t Hindus invited, who also have a long and often bloody history with Islam, including territorial disputes (e.g., Kashmir) that continue to this day?

The theological reason is that polytheists (“al-mushrikun”) are held in an even worse position than Christians and Jews (whom the Koran refers alternatively to as “people of the Book,” but in the latter chapters and verses — which take precedence, according to systems of abrogation — as “infidels” who must be fought in perpetuity). So while Abdullah’s “brothers,” Jews and Christians, can in fact cling to their faiths (once subdued and made to live according to second-class, “dhimmi” status), polytheists must either convert, or die.

Still, it is evident that the king’s failure to reach out to Hindus is not so much due to theology—as we have seen, doctrinally speaking, Jews and Christians are marginally better—but rather that, while the king sees a need to reach out to the currently powerful Judeo-Christian West, he has no pressing need to reach out to Hindus.

Yet, if dialogue is meant to ameliorate conflict, shouldn’t Indians at the very least also be invited to these talks, since Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan—which, combined boast some 1.5 billion people—are, whenever the latter is not experiencing internal upheavals, sometimes on the brink of nuclear war? The answer is obvious: the Muslim brothers of Pakistan are enough of a stalwart, as they are both equally armed, and so there is, at this point, no need to “reach out” and touch those particular infidels.

While Abdullah’s “impassioned plea for dialogue” is certainly worthy of support, the starting point of that discussion must be the Muslim world’s treatment of the non-Muslims in their midst. Once Saudi Arabia affords basic human rights to non-Muslims — not to mention Saudi citizens who simply wish to convert without being executed — then dialogue over secondary matters can ensue. Until then, the Saudis have absolutely no place at the negotiation table and, if anything, should be ashamed of these continuous public displays of blatant hypocrisy.

Posted at 12:10 PM | Comments (32)

Gaza students call US voters, asking them to support Obama

Why? Because "once he said the Palestinian people are suffering most in the world." Clearly Ibrahim Abu Jayyab thinks that Barack Obama is on the Palestinian side in their jihad against Israel. He hates Hamas, but of course Hamas is the fault of ... George W. Bush.

"Voices for Obama resound from afar," by Carolynne Wheeler for the Globe and Mail, October 27 (thanks to Writer Mom):

NUSSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, GAZA STRIP — For every point that U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama gains ahead of the Nov. 4 election, a young student in a sparsely furnished room an ocean away is taking enormous satisfaction.
For months, Ibrahim Abu Jayyab has been working through the night, telephoning American voters at random to plead in broken English that they support his favourite candidate.

Never mind that most of the people Mr. Abu Jayyab calls don't even know where the Gaza Strip is, much less understand why this man with heavily accented English crackling down the phone line should care about the U.S. presidential race.

"Obama is the best candidate. He has leadership qualities, he is charismatic. Once he said the Palestinian people are suffering most in the world," Mr. Abu Jayyab says, his eyes heavy after another late night, already back at the computer that is his pride and joy in a life otherwise dominated by poverty. On screen is an enormous photo of Mr. Obama in a classic pose - which has, perhaps, inspired Mr. Abu Jayyab's recurring dreams, of Mr. Obama putting a hand on his shoulder and promising peace.

A media student at Gaza's al-Aqsa University, Mr. Abu Jayyab, 23, has chafed at the strict religious rule enforced since the Islamist Hamas organization took control 17 months ago. A heavy economic embargo, imposed by the international community after Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence, has collapsed Gaza's economy and squelched any hope of finding a decent job after graduation.

Like most in Gaza and across the Arab world, the young man blames U.S. President George W. Bush for the mess, in part for his unwavering support of Israel. So when a young, black American senator emerged as the front-runner in the Democratic primaries, he found himself hoping for change, even here in the never-changing Middle East.

Mr. Abu Jayyab, who speaks little English and at first left only practised messages on telephone answering machines, has since enlisted the help of 15 friends to use computer VOIP programs, including iCall, to randomly call U.S. telephone numbers. They frequently meet in a nearby Internet café, where they work in fear that Hamas forces or even more radical groups will burst in.

Of the dozens of calls they'll make each night between midnight and 4 a.m. - early evening in most of the United States - Mr. Abu Jayyab and his friends say they may only speak to one out of every 10 households. They've encountered answering machines, small children, and often people impatient with their Arabic-accented English....

Posted at 11:21 AM | Comments (19)

Iraq: "We are killed because we are Christians"

The Christians in Iraq, although they have lived there longer than the Muslims have and have nothing to do with the United States, are considered, because they share the religion of the American "Crusaders," to be kuffar harbi -- infidels at war with Islam -- and thus by the terms of Islamic law their lives are forfeit. Persecution of Christians in Iraq Update: "'We are killed because we are Christians,'" by Deborah Haynes in the Times, October 27 (thanks to James):

One grey-haired woman understands more than most the fear that has gripped Iraq's beleaguered Christian community over the past month.
Her brother, Bashar al-Hazim, was among the first to be murdered in a wave of targeted killings that has forced more than 2,000 Christian families to flee the northern city of Mosul.

Masked gunmen walked up to Mr Hashim as he stood with his two children outside their house in the east-side of Mosul in late September.

They demanded to see his identity card, confirmed he was Christian and executed the 41-year-old on the spot.

"I could have died when I found out. He was a dear brother and was killed in a very despicable way," said the woman, 60, who was too afraid to give her name.

She, like thousands of other Christians who have left the city since the start of October, claims to have no idea who carried out the attack. Fear of potential repercussions appears to prevent many in the region from speaking their mind.

"We're peaceful people. When my brother was executed he had no enemies. Why was he killed? He was not a member of a party. There was no reason except for being Christian," the woman, dressed in a black gown, said....

Read it all.

Posted at 9:03 AM | Comments (17)

Islamophobes gouge out Muslim's eyes -- no, wait...

If this really had been an "Islamophobic hate crime," of course, it would be front-page news all over the world. As it is, since the perpetrators were most likely jihadists, it will get no notice beyond this story. "Attackers 'gouge out Afghan man's eyes,'" from AP, October 27:

Armed assailants have attacked a man, gouging out his eyes in front of his family in southern Afghanistan, officials say....
Ghulam, 52, said three armed men knocked on his door in the Sangin district of Helmand province late Thursday. After he opened the door, they punched him in the face, put the barrel of a Kalashnikov rifle in his mouth and gouged out his eyes with a knife in the presence of his wife and seven children....

Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for Helmand's governor, blamed Taliban fighters for the attack, saying the militants often kill innocent Afghans.

"This guy Ghulam was just a normal man, a farmer," Ahmadi said.

"He didn't have any link with the government or NATO forces. He was a normal man, but these killers took out his eyes in front of his family. I don't know what kind of heart these killers have."

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi denied that Taliban fighters were involved....

Ghulam, whose head was almost completely wrapped in a large white bandage, said his attackers were wearing black turbans on their head like many Taliban fighters, but that he didn't know who carried out the attack.

Taliban militants sometimes carry out harsh punishments for people they accuse of being thieves or "spies" for the Afghan government. Such punishments have included cutting off people's hands or tarring and parading them publicly, but few reports of people having their eyes gouged out have surfaced in Afghanistan in recent years.

Posted at 8:33 AM | Comments (14)

Briton and South African shot dead in Kabul by their Afghan security guard

"Officials said that they remained unsure of the motive for the killing and were investigating the guard’s background," although infiltration is being acknowledged as a possibility. The grave difficulty that Westerners have in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere is that there is no reliable way to determine who is really on their side and who is on the side of the jihadists, no matter how many bridges have been built and how many hearts and minds won.

"Briton and his colleague killed by their Afghan security guard," by Tom Coghlan for The Times, October 27 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A British man and his South African colleague became the latest victims of deteriorating security in Kabul when they were shot dead outside their office by a security guard who then killed himself.
The shootings occurred on the eve of the funeral of Gayle Williams, the British charity worker killed last week, who was buried yesterday in the Afghan capital’s British cemetery.

The British Embassy named the dead Briton as David Giles, 42, the country director of the international courier DHL in Afghanistan. He died with Jason Bresler, the freight company’s South African deputy director, when an Afghan security guard at the DHL offices sprayed their car with automatic fire as they arrived for work on Saturday. The guard placed the gun under his chin and shot himself.

Officials said that they remained unsure of the motive for the killing and were investigating the guard’s background. Some reports suggested the man joined the British-run security company that protected DHL only a month ago. “No one knows if this person was recruited [to carry out the killing] or there was infiltration of the enemy,” said Zmarai Bashery, spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry.

A spokesman for the Taleban denied involvement in the killings. Privately, Western officials said that Taleban involvement in the latest attack was not thought likely....

Posted at 7:40 AM | Comments (17)

October 26, 2008

Syria claims US troops conduct raid inside Syria

"Syria condemns this aggressive act and holds American forces responsible for this aggression and all of its repercussions." A "developing situation."

"'US troops' strike inside Syria," from the BBC, October 26 (thanks to Paul):

US helicopter-borne troops have carried out a raid inside Syria along the Iraqi border, killing eight people including four children, Syrian officials say.
The official Syrian news agency Sana said the raid took place in the Abu Kamal border area, in eastern Syria.

It said that American soldiers on four helicopters had stormed a building under construction on Sunday night.

The US says it is investigating. It has previously accused Syria of allowing foreign militants into Iraq.

Syria has summoned the US and Iraqi envoys in Damascus to protest at the raid.

"Syria condemns this aggressive act and holds American forces responsible for this aggression and all of its repercussions," a government official said....

Its timing is curious, coming right at the end of the Bush administration's period of office and at a moment when many of America's European allies - like Britain and France - are trying to broaden their ties with Damascus, our correspondent adds....

"Four American helicopters violated Syrian airspace around 1645 local time [1345 GMT] on Sunday," Sana said.

"American soldiers" emerged from helicopters and "attacked a civilian building under construction and opened fire on workers inside - including the wife of the building guard - leading to [the deaths] of eight civilians", it added.

"The helicopters then left Syrian territory towards Iraqi territory," Sana said.

The dead include a man, his four children and a married couple, the Syrian report said, without giving details of the children's ages....

Posted at 9:01 PM | Comments (35)

Al-Qaeda behind 2007 Glasgow terror attacks?

More on this story. "Al-Qaida appears to claim Glasgow attack," from the Associated Press, October 24:

The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq has said his group is focused on attacks outside the country in a new audiotape in which he seemed to claim responsibility for the June 2007 attack on Glasgow International Airport.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, did not specifically mention the Scottish airport in the nearly 45-minute interview posted on the Internet on Thursday.

But he said his group carried out its "last operation in Britain, a good part of which was launched on the airport and the rest was not carried out due to a mistake made by one of the brothers."

Two men were arrested and charged with conspiring to murder after a burning Jeep loaded with gas cylinders was driven into Glasgow airport in June 2007. A day earlier, police discovered two cars packed with explosives in central London.

British authorities indicated at the time that they thought the plotters may have had links with al-Qaida.

Masri said that a few days before the airport attack, one of the plotters "got in touch and informed [al-Qaida in Iraq] that the operation is about to happen."

Many terrorism analysts have expressed concern that well-trained fighters from al-Qaida in Iraq and other Islamic extremists groups in the country could seek to export violence to places like Western Europe and Afghanistan as Iraq becomes more stable....

Posted at 11:26 AM | Comments (12)

Muslim students: Bali bombers are "holy warriors"

The cognitive dissonance between what these students say and what I hear from Muslim students on university campuses in the U.S. is enormous. These students openly acknowledge the Islamic imperative of violent jihad; on American campuses, Muslim students profess outrage and wounded indignation, exhorting me to "Stop the Hate" and pretending that I made up this Islamic imperative, and that it doesn't really exist at all. But if they consider Muslims such as the students at the Darusy Syahadah Islamic school -- and those who taught them -- to be twisting Islam and distorting its teachings, why is it that they never seem to do anything within the Islamic community to fight the spread of these teachings, but instead reserve all their ire for me simply for pointing out that many Muslims understand Islam to be exhorting them to violence and supremacism?

I've asked this question innumerable times, of course, and never gotten an answer, because there is no answer. Or rather, there is only one answer, and it is obvious, but Islamic groups in the U.S. still seem to be banking on the majority of Americans not noticing, or caring about, this obvious answer and its implications.

"Islamic students praise Bali bombers," from AFP, October 26 (thanks to JE):

FOR the skullcapped students of the Darusy Syahadah Islamic school there is no question that the three radical jihadis behind the 2002 Bali bombings are heroes.
Sheltering from the equatorial sun on the steps of the school's mosque, the students crowd to offer their approval of bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra.

Authorities say the three bombers will face the firing squad by early November for their role in the attack, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

"They're holy warriors, that's how I respond, they're holy warriors,'' said Sir Muhammad Royhan Syihabuddin Ar-Rohmi, a slight 18-year-old.

His friend Nawawi, also 18, leaned forward in agreement: "They are like us, they wanted to do good deeds.''

Good deeds, i.e., killing 200 infidels.

With its peeling buildings, stray sheep and low-hanging mango trees, Darusy Syahadah in Central Java has long been a key hub for recruitment and indoctrination in the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant network, experts say.
While authorities have wound up JI cells and killed and imprisoned key militants, JI-linked Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia have been left to spread the network's radical ideology.

If a new generation of JI bombers were to emerge, it would be from schools like this. Alumni include Salik Firdaus, a suicide bomber who obliterated himself in the 2005 Bali bombing that killed 20 people.

If the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims™ really deplored the jihad ideology, as everyone from George Bush and Colin Powell to students at the MSA's around the country at colleges where I have been speaking would have us believe, it would be reasonable to assume that their highest priority, or one of their highest priorities, would be to educate their own people against it. After all, if "a new generation of JI bombers were to emerge, it would be from schools like this," it is because the teachers at the the Darusy Syahadah Islamic school are teaching their students the propriety of killing or subjugating unbelievers. This is an ideology that is spread by education. Yet nowhere in the world -- not in the U.S., not anywhere else -- is there any counter-pedagogical effort by self-professed anti-terror Muslims.

However, analysts say the picture is not quite that simple.
Hurt by the police crackdown and facing public disgust over bombings, JI is deeply split, said Sidney Jones, a JI expert at the International Crisis Group think-tank.

A small minority faction behind fugitive Malaysian Noordin Mohammed Top still supports and is working towards bombing local and foreign targets, she said.

The other more numerous faction, dominating the schools, continues to glorify jihad, or holy war, but many of its members have been influenced by a government "deradicalisation'' strategy that has helped halt attacks.

"I think the schools are still problematic, they are inculcating the idea of the glory of jihad. But there isn't a jihad to fight now,'' Jones said.

"The question is: what will these graduates be doing five to 10 years from now?''

Finding a jihad to fight, of course, and one that will probably end up being on the doorstep of many people who today are insisting that Islam is a Religion of Peace™ and that those who are concerned about massive Muslim immigration into the West are just bigots and racists.

For Mustaqim, the principal of Darusy Syahadah, the watchword is preparation.
The school encourages exercise and self-defence and aims to strengthen and defend Islam, said Mustaqim, sporting white robes, a wispy beard and bruises on his forehead from frequent prayer.

"It says in the Koran that infidels will strengthen each other and wage a war of falsehood. We have been instructed to strengthen Islam against falsehood,'' he said.

That's rich, given how the entire edifice of Islam in the West is built on falsehood -- a well thought-out, carefully orchestrated campaign of falsehood, that meets with furious indignation and cries of "bigotry" anyone who dares to examine the stated motives and goals of the jihadists.

On suicide bombings against civilians - the hallmark of Noordin's faction - Mustaqim stressed that the aim is noble but the methods incorrect.
"In the methods (Noordin) has taken, we're not on the same path. Methods, that's what I'm talking about, methods,'' emphasised Mustaqim, whose wife is the sister of Ubeid, a JI militant jailed for helping the fugitive Noordin.

Methods, that's what he's talking about, methods. Yet in the U.S. Lawrence Wright wrote a much-lauded piece in the New Yorker about how some jihadists were changing their methods, and innumerable commentators, conservatives and liberals alike, could scarcely contain their excitement: Muslims were denouncing al-Qaeda! The Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims™ was finally asserting itself! The end of the War On Terror was at hand!

It never seemed to occur to these learned analysts that all that was being discussed was a change of methods, not of goals, as was patently clear from Wright's piece itself, although even Wright seemed to miss it. But since they have been focused on methods (terrorism) rather than goals (Sharia supremacism) all along, they missed this one also.

There are indeed peaceful Muslims, and there are indeed some among those who aren't interested in waging any kind of jihad. They either don't know or don't care about the imperative to struggle against unbelievers. They may have what they consider to be better things to do. Of course, such people are everywhere being challenged by Muslims who insist that they represent pure and true Islam, and that those who are not waging jihad are not good Muslims. Such people, being indifferent to or ignorant of these matters, are not going to stand up against the jihadists, and the jihadists regard them as a large recruiting field.

There is a very small group of Muslims who are actively trying to reform these Islamic imperatives, but don't kid yourself: it is a very small group, and not an influential one. The group of Muslims who feign indignation when non-Muslims discuss the jihad ideology, and who claim never to have heard of such a thing or that it is a heretical version of Islam cooked up by a Tiny Minority of Extremists™ -- they are much more numerous. They are dangerous, also, because they fool so very many people.

Outside the mosque, student Nawawi said it was "up to God'' whether he would follow the example set by the Bali bombers.
"Not everyone has to follow them,'' he said.

He is quite right. In Islamic theology there are many ways to aid the jihad. Nawawi can wage the jihad of the tongue or the pen, or the jihad of the pocketbook. He may also be referring, although this is unlikely, to the fact that in classic Islamic theology jihad warfare is fard kifaya, an obligation of the community as a whole but not of every individual believer. Jihad becomes fard ayn, obligatory on every individual Muslim to aid in some way, when a Muslim land is attacked. I say that it is unlikely that he was referring to that distinction because jihadists today generally argue that Muslim lands have been attacked, and that therefore jihad is fard ayn. On the other hand, he may be referring specifically to Bali, where it would be hard to argue that a Muslim land has been attacked.

At the al-Mukmin boarding school founded by alleged JI spiritual head Abu Bakar Bashir in the nearby town of Ngruki, the bombers are honoured but opinions are similarly mixed.
About 1,600 students attend classes in rooms bedecked with cardboard cutouts of assault rifles and posters extolling the virtues of "martyrdom''.

Cardboard cutouts of assault rifles in a religious school. Yet no Muslim who gets so indignant at me seems to be upset about this. Now, why is that? Is it really so unclear?

Sitting on the floor of his lounge in the school grounds, the acid-tongued Bashir blamed the main 2002 blast on a CIA "micro-nuclear'' device fired from a ship off the Balinese coast.
"The bomb Amrozi set off, the first one, at most it shattered glass and didn't wound people, or at most wounded them a little,'' he said.

''(The bombers) struggled in that way, not as terror, but with the aim of defending Islam, which is being terrorised by America and its friends ... they are counter-terrorists, not terrorists,'' he said.

Remember that one the next time you hear a Muslim say that he condemns "terrorism," without defining his terms.

But al-Mukmin school principal Wahyudin said the bombers' indiscriminate bombing of nightclubs on the island was a disproportionate response to the global oppression of Muslims.
"What I can fault is that Bali is not a conflict area, it's not an area of war. Although we can say there certainly were enemies there, there were also non-enemies. That has to be avoided. That was a mistake there,'' he said.

What Wahyudin is saying is that jihad violence is fine in a conflict area, but not in an area in which there are present in significant numbers people who are not considered to be at war with Islam. But he has no problem with the concept of violent jihad in principle.

Posted at 8:30 AM | Comments (31)

Blogging the Qur’an: Sura 60, “She Who Is Tested”

Karen Hughes: She was tested too

The Medinan Sura 60 calls for an examination of the all-important but completely overlooked question of frames of reference: what is said is not always heard the way it is meant. Consider these remarks by President Bush and Karen Hughes, his former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, on the Islamic Feast of Eid al-Adha, which commemorates the end of the Hajj and Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son.

In December 2006, Bush issued a statement that read in part:

For Muslims in America and around the world, Eid al-Adha is an important occasion to give thanks for their blessings and to remember Abraham’s trust in a loving God. During the four days of this special observance, Muslims honor Abraham’s example of sacrifice and devotion to God by celebrating with friends and family, exchanging gifts and greetings, and engaging in worship through sacrifice and charity.

And the previous January, Hughes said:

Eid is a celebration of commitment and obedience to God and also of God’s mercy and provision for all of us. It is a time of family and community, a time of charity....I want to read to you a message from President Bush: “I send greetings to Muslims around the world as you celebrate Eid al-Adha. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham placed his faith in God above all else. During Eid al-Adha, Muslims celebrate Abraham’s devotion and give thanks for God’s mercy and many blessings.”

In speaking of Abraham, even when doing so in the context of Eid al-Adha, Bush and Hughes were probably thinking of Genesis 22:15-18, in which Abraham is rewarded for his faith and told he will become a blessing to the nations: “by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.”

But the Muslim audiences that Bush and Hughes are addressing don’t read Genesis. They read the Qur’an. Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son (who is not named) is recounted in 37:102-109. And in sura 60, Allah says that Abraham is an “excellent example” (uswa hasana, أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ, a term applied also to Muhammad in 33:21) for the believers when he tells his pagan family and people that “there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred for ever, unless ye believe in Allah and Him alone” (v. 4). The same verse goes on to say that Abraham is not an excellent example when he tells his father, “I will pray for forgiveness for you.” Hatred is held up as exemplary; forgiveness is explicitly declared to be not exemplary.

Bush and Hughes are thus reinforcing a worldview that takes for granted the legitimacy of everlasting enmity and hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims -- and doing so precisely in the context of trying to build bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims. This demonstrates once again how vitally important it is for them, and for the rest of us, to have a detailed understanding of the theological and cultural frame of reference of jihadists and Muslims in general. But for lack of this, not only are statements issued that could have and should have been much more carefully worded, but policy errors keep multiplying.

According to Islamic tradition, this sura was revealed after Muhammad and the Muslims set out to conquer Mecca, and a Muslim named Hatib bin Abi Balta‘ah notified the Meccans of the impending attack because he had relatives in Mecca. Hatib bin Abi Balta‘ah was a veteran of the Battle of Badr, and so Muhammad declined Umar’s request for permission to behead him, saying, “He attended Badr. What can I tell you, perhaps Allah looked at those who attended Badr and said, ‘O the people of Badr, do what you like, for I have forgiven you.’” But then Muhammad received this sura, which takes Hatib to task for taking as his friends the enemies of Allah (v. 1) and tells him that his relatives will not help him on the Day of Judgment (v. 3). He, and Muslims generally, should emulate Abraham’s hatred of his unbelieving relatives, and not his forgiveness of them (v. 4).

Nevertheless, Allah holds out the possibility that one day the Muslims and the Quraysh will reconcile (v. 7) and tells the Muslims that they are not forbidden to deal kindly and justly with those among the Quraysh who have not fought them (v. 8) – that is, says Ibn Kathir, “those who did not have a role in your expulsion,” the expulsion of the Muslims from Mecca. But they must not turn in friendship to those who did fight against them (v. 9). This passage has been invoked by jihadists today to justify what they describe as a defensive jihad against the United States, which is, in their view, fighting against Muslims.

Then the sura turns to the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, which Muhammad had concluded in 628 on disadvantageous terms with the pagan Meccans. Muhammad had shocked his men by agreeing to provisions that seemed highly disadvantageous to the Muslims: those fleeing the Quraysh and seeking refuge with the Muslims would be returned to the Quraysh, while those fleeing the Muslims and seeking refuge with the Quraysh would not be returned to the Muslims. But according to Ibn Ishaq, when a woman of the Quraysh, Umm Kulthum, joined the Muslims in Medina, and her two brothers came to claim her in accord with the provisions of the treaty, Muhammad refused to return her: Allah had forbidden him to do so with a new revelation saying that Muslim refugees should not be returned to those whom they had fled – a revelation now enshrined in vv. 10-13.

In refusing to send Umm Kulthum back to the Quraysh, Muhammad broke the treaty. Although Muslim apologists have claimed throughout history that the Quraysh broke it first, this incident came before all those by the Quraysh that Muslims point to as treaty violations. A Muslim biographer of Muhammad, Yahiya Emerick, asserts that Muhammad based his case on a bit of legal hair-splitting: the treaty stipulated that the Muslims would return to the Quraysh any man who came to them, not any woman. Even if that is true, Muhammad soon – as Emerick acknowledges – began to accept men from the Quraysh as well, thus definitively breaking the treaty. The breaking of the treaty in this way would reinforce the principle that nothing was good except what was advantageous to Islam, and nothing evil except what hindered Islam. Once the treaty was formally discarded, Islamic jurists enunciated the principle that truces in general could only be concluded on a temporary basis of up to ten years, and that they could only be entered into for the purpose of allowing weakened Muslim forces to gather strength to fight again more effectively.

This principle is tremendously relevant in today’s geopolitical situation, whenever and wherever the State Department or any other non-Muslim political entity indicates a willingness to conclude a treaty with a Muslim group that is clearly committed to traditional Islamic principles – such as Hamas and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines, with whom the Philippine government is anxious to conclude a deal. But as relevant as it is, this principle is universally ignored.

(Here you can find links to all the earlier “Blogging the Qur’an” segments. Here is a good Arabic Qur’an, with English translations available; here are two popular Muslim translations, those of Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, along with a third by M. H. Shakir. Here is another popular translation, that of Muhammad Asad. And here is an omnibus of ten Qur’an translations.)

Posted at 7:50 AM | Comments (39)

Women's rights, anti-FGM campaigner killed in Somalia

"Their organization campaigns for women's rights and against female genital mutilation but it was unclear who was behind the attack." My guess would be that it was militant Christian Fundamentalists.

"Aid worker killed in Somalia," from AP, October 26 (thanks to Eleutheria ´H Thanatos):

The head of a Somali aid agency says a gunman shot dead a Somali woman employee in the latest of a string of attacks on the humanitarian community.
Ali Sheik says Duniya Sheik Daud was killed Saturday evening as she returned from work at the Iida organization in the central Somali town of Gurilel. Their organization campaigns for women's rights and against female genital mutilation but it was unclear who was behind the attack....

Posted at 7:37 AM | Comments (9)

Senior Iranian official: Hey, let's attack Britain

To attempt to deter America from attacking Iran, in a roundabout, Rube Goldberg sort of way. But the NATO agreement about mutual aid in the event of attacks would throw a bit of a wrench in the works. "Iranian official calls for attack on UK," by Jonny Paul for the Jerusalem Post, October 25:

Fearing a US strike on Iran during President George W. Bush's last months in office, a senior Iranian official has suggested the Islamic regime should target London to deter such an attack.

In an article on the Iranian Web site Aftab last week - translated by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute - the head of the Europe and US Department in the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Wahid Karimi, said that an attack on London would deter the US from attacking Teheran.

"The most appropriate means of deterrence that Iran has, in addition to a retaliatory operation in the [Gulf] region, is to take action against London," Karimi said.

In the article, the Iranian official said that an attack might also stem from the fact that presidents in their second terms are "usually adventuresome."

Citing some examples he said: "US presidents are usually adventuresome in their second terms... [Richard] Nixon, disgraced by the Watergate scandal; [Ronald] Reagan, with the 'Irangate' adventure; [and Bill] Clinton, with Monica Lewinsky - and perhaps George Bush, the sitting president, will create a scandal connected to Iran's legitimate nuclear activity so as not to be left behind."

He speculated that a US attack on Iran could come between next month's presidential election and when the new president enters office in January 2009.

"In the worst-case scenario, George Bush may perhaps persuade the president-elect to carry out an ill-conceived operation against Iran, prior to January 20, 2009 - that is, before the regime is handed over and he ends his presence in the White House. The next president of the US will have to deal with the consequences," he warned.

Bush may persuade the president-elect to carry out an operation against Iran before the president-elect is inaugurated? Or... Bush will ask permission of the president-elect? Alright, then.

Admitting that previous Iranian warnings to paralyze "the Jerusalem-occupying regime" to deter "American adventurism" has not worked, Karimi said that "the most appropriate means of deterrence" for Iran would be to attack London.

Posted at 12:01 AM | Comments (24)

October 25, 2008

Life TV and Jihad Watch

Daring Question's Rashid

Unbeknownst to most English speakers, Islam is currently “under attack” (at least that’s how many Muslims depict it) from Christian, Arabic missionary satellite stations. Spearheading this phenomenon is Al-Haya (or “Life TV”), a station dedicated to discussing issues relating to Islam and Christianity, specifically, demonstrating the many shortcomings and problems of the former, while pointing out how those problems are not present in the latter.

Life TV has been extremely successful in winning converts from the Islamic world. Unprecedented in all ways—Middle Eastern Christians (dhimmis) being confrontational and critical towards Islam, while unabashedly proclaiming their faith—Life TV has rocked the Islamic world.

Perhaps most (in)famous is Coptic priest Zakaria Botros. After finding out about him and watching some of his shows on the Internet, I wrote about him for NRO. (I am told that mine was the first major and widespread article about Botros, which subsequently led to many reporters inquiring and writing more about the priest—a natural result considering that what he and Life TV are doing is both extremely newsworthy and practically unknown in the Western world. I’m only happy that it worked out this way.)

Aside from Zakaria Botros’ shows (Questions about Faith and Dialogue of Truth), there in another program I’ve been recently following called Su’al Jari’, that is, “Daring Question.” Hosted by apostate Muslim converts to Christianity known only by their first names, Rashid and Ahmed, the show’s no-holds barred style has made it, along with Zakaria’s shows, one of the most watched programs on Arabic satellite. And, as with the Coptic priest’s shows, theirs has come under increasing attack from the Muslim world—not least because it is instrumental in gaining converts from Islam. (The above YouTube video is an English sub-titled clip of Rashid and Ahmed talking to a weeping Muslim woman living in England who wants to convert to Christianity but is afraid of her Muslim husband.)

The show typically deals with a theme in Islam—most recently, the absurdities of recent fatwas. Next the hosts, who, as former pious Muslims are evidently very learned in their former faith, proceed to describe the legitimacy of that theme straight from Islam’s sources—first the Koran, followed by (often little known) hadiths, and then the words of the ulema—that is, usul al-fiqh. After demonstrating the problem, as well as Islam’s support for it—recently, that drinking camel’s urine is salutary—they discuss the issue, as well as welcome calls from viewers, some sympathetic apostates, some on-the-fence Muslims, others Muslim zealots who promise the hosts death and misery in this world and the hereafter.

Though all this is important, it is also all done in Arabic, preventing English speakers from following the debate, the issues, the outbursts, and the threats. While the show is geared towards proselytizing Muslims, it does this by exposing Islam—and it is this latter aspect which should be of particular importance to Jihad Watch readers, regardless of their religious affiliation, or lack thereof.

I will, therefore, begin watching Life TV more regularly, summarizing the more important episodes—including making better known otherwise obscure hadiths and ulemaic verdicts and fatwas, as well as modern day Muslims’ views on these issues—thereby keeping Jihad Watch readers informed of this very important debate going on in the Islamic world and exclusively in Allah’s language.

Posted at 3:36 PM | Comments (59)

Islamic Jihad: Palestinian discord due to a "slow down" against Israel

Israel: damned either which way. So now, all the civil strife between Hamas and Fatah is due to those organizations losing sight of the real enemy, Israel. Makes sense -- especially since this sort of thing has plenty of precedents in Islamic history. Take the Islamic conquests, for example. Immediately after Muhammad's death (632), most of the Arab tribes tried to break away from Muslim authority, which led to the Ridda Wars (or "Apostasy Wars"), dominating the first caliph, Abu Bakr's, short reign (632-634). These civil wars were extremely bloody; tens of thousands of apostates were slain. Second caliph Omar, upon ascension, knew that the best way to put an end to the civil strife was to direct the Arabs' collective bellicosity to other peoples -- all in the name of jihad -- setting off the Islamic conquests. Ironically, one of the very first infidel regions to be conquered was Jerusalem. Thus today, since Muslims are losing focus on Israel, they fight and kill each other in Palestine -- or at least that's Islamic Jihad's take on it.

"Islamic Jihad Movement considers a slow down against Israel as leading to difficulties for the Palestinian people," from Al-Summaria, October 25 (my translation):

During the ceremony of the 31st anniversary of the assassination of the the Islamic Jihad Movement's founder, Fathi al-Shiqaqi, the current leader, Nafidh Azzam, considers a slowing down [of operations] against Israel as creating only difficulties for the Palestinian people's jihad, leading to only an increase in division and internal strife. He called on the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to halt negotiations with the Hebrew state. Similarly, Azzam demanded a halt to political arrests between Fatah and Hamas, stressing the need to support a reconciliation and end the division, easing the way for dialogue.

Posted at 11:29 AM | Comments (13)

Al-Qaeda and the elections revisited

A good corrective by Walid Phares to the liberal media's insistence that al-Qaeda prefers McCain over Obama, and is actively trying to see to it that the former wins the election.

"Walid Phares explains al-Qaeda 'endorsement' of McCain," by Rick Moran for American Thinker, October 23:

Liberal blogs and websites were falling all over themselves yesterday, breathlessly and gleefully reporting that an al-Qaeda sympathetic website had come out and "endorsed" John McCain for president.

The reason they did this is because back in 2004, John Kerry said his loss to George Bush was not because he was one of the most boring, flip flopping, far left liberal candidates in history but because Osama Bin Laden released a tape a few days before the election that echoed many of the same talking points being pushed at the time by Democrats.

Well the simple minded fools now believe that this "endorsement" of McCain will have the same effect. Aside from the laughably ridiculous notion that anyone believes John McCain would be a better president for al-Qaeda than Barack "root causes" Obama, frequent AT contributor Dr. Walid Phares gives us the real reason behind this move by the terrorists:

[Writes Phares:] "If McCain is elected, al Qaeda knows that there will be different teams of advisors to wage a different type of campaign. The Jihadists are very knowledgeable about American and European intellectual debates. They also know the thinking process of the counterterrorism teams under Obama. Hence, there is a difference between what al Qaeda's decision-makers and their analysts know, and what their propagandists wish to instill in the U.S. election debate. What they state should be translated and understood only within the greater picture of what they want to achieve.

Al Qaeda's propagandists operate within the realm of what the Jihadi machine has created in terms of political culture over the years. The main ideas are that the U.S., under President Bush, tried but failed to destroy al Qaeda; hence, the Jihadist narrative says that any next U.S. President who continues the policies of the Bush Administration will give victory to al Qaeda. Inserting their arguments in the ongoing Presidential debate, this means that the candidate who advances Bush strategies will be better for the goals of Bin Laden. Hence the site's assertion that al Qaeda welcomes a McCain victory (in a sarcastic style).

But this tactic used by the Jihadi propagandists is part of a reverse psychology. It aims at sending a message to the American voters: if you want al Qaeda to win, vote for McCain. The Jihadi web sites cannot state it otherwise, such as if you want the U.S. to win, vote for Obama, because in Jihadi war doctrines there cannot be a victory for America, under any President. Hence, what al Qaeda seems to be attempting to achieve is to affect the perception of the undecided voters by stating to them that the strength of McCain in the war on terror is not really strength. Therefore, in the end, the move is aimed at sinking the chances of the former U.S. Navy Pilot by crumbling the support among undecided voters who might ultimately have come to his camp as late as D Day.

Of course, such subtleties are too much for our leftist friends on the internet. It won't alter either their political perception nor would any of this change their belief that a McCain election actually would be inimicable to our efforts to destroy al-Qaeda - that is, if destruction of the terrorists is what they want. They would much prefer to send them food, educate them, teach them how to improve their economies - all the things al-Qaeda could care less about. What they want are dead westerners and anything that furthers that goal - say, endorsing the stronger candidate believing it will adversely affect his chances thus electing someone weaker than McCain - seems to escape our leftist friends who are doing a victory dance over the terrorists endorsing McCain.

Posted at 11:04 AM | Comments (13)

Eyeing Obama Administration, Defense Sec'y stops talking about "Islamist" terrorism

Hoping President Obama might let him keep his job, Gates toes the PC line and opts to ignore the one single explanation of their own motives and goals that the terrorists have offered to us.

"As Obama era looms, Gates drops 'Islamist' from characterization of terrorism," from the World Tribune, October 24 (thanks to Rosanne):

Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week referred to Islamist terrorism by the politically-correct term “violent extremism” during a speech to the U.S. Institute of Peace. The use of the non-Islamist terminology highlights the ongoing debate in government over the use of terms like jihad and Islamic extremism in public discussions of terrorism.
Gates said Oct. 15 that “in violent extremism, we face an adversary today that seeks to eject all Westerners and Western influence from the Middle East and Southwest Asia, to destroy Israel and overthrow all secular and Western-oriented governments in the region.”

In a second reference, he said “the long reach of violent extremism emanating from failed and failing states, from ungoverned spaces brought terror to America's shores and subsequently brought America and our allies to Afghanistan.”

The State Department and Department of Homeland Security recently issued guidelines for U.S. government officials that said American Muslim groups had recommended not using “jihad” or Islamic extremism in labeling Muslim extremist violence in order not to offend Muslims.

A U.S. Central Command Red Team of experts however, stated in a recent report that honest reports require labeling the terrorists as Islamic and jihadist since the roots of the violence lie in Islamic law. The controversial report called for “freedom of speech in jihad analysis” and sought to debunk the State and DHS reports claiming that the use of Islamic terms in describing terrorists was offensive speech and was opposed by some U.S. Muslim groups.

Several Democrats in recent weeks have said Gates should stay on if Barack Obama wins the presidential election, an appeal that has not been rejected by Gates, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

Posted at 9:44 AM | Comments (9)

Obama's friendship with Khalidi, who calls Israel a "racist" state with an "apartheid system" and says America has been "brainwashed" by Israel

Rashid Khalidi is a supporter of the jihad against Israel. He is a Columbia University professor whom Hugh Fitzgerald terms a "long-time propagandist for the Arabs and quasi-academic engaged for decades in the 'construction-of-the-Palestinian-identity' project." He is also not always honest about his own statements about this -- and is apparently a close friend of Barack Obama.

The ever-vigilant Andrew McCarthy has details, via Stanley Kurtz, at The Corner.

Posted at 9:33 AM | Comments (4)

Palestinian pol: Unless we get a state, "instability" will continue

Of course, what Musa Abu Zaid doesn't tell you is that "instability" will continue even after the "Palestinians" get a state, as is made clear by his own organization's insistence on the total destruction of Israel.

"Middle East: PNA, Without Own State Instability Will Remain," from ANSAmed, October 24 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - RENDE (COSENZA), OCTOBER 24 - The Palestinian people are "asking for a fair and total peace", which can only be reached "through the proclamation of a sovereign State, with Jerusalem as its capital and within the territory occupied in 1967. This is the basis for "peaceful coexistence with the Israeli people". Otherwise, "the region will encounter yet further problems and will remain a cause of instability in the world". These are the words of the Palestinian National Authority's Vice-Minister for Youth and Sport, Musa Abu Zaid, who was speaking today in Rende at the Euro-Mediterranean conference on the charity sector, which is linked to the 2008 Rexpò forum on social responsibility. "The Palestinian people", added the PNA's government representative, "have played an active and guiding role in the resistance of the occupation of Israel, acting in the love of liberty and independence. Consequently, they have paid a high price in terms of martyrs, wounded people, and those who have been arrested and expelled, just as they have suffered the destruction of economic, social and educational infrastructures, which has had a serious impact on the younger generations, in particular".

The younger generation, of course, has suffered most from the inculcation of the violent jihad ideology.

Posted at 9:22 AM | Comments (10)

Fitzgerald: When that old-time religion comes back

When that old-time-religion comes back, and that religion, or rather Total Belief-System, is Islam, that can only mean disruption and danger for Infidels. This holds true whether they are in Muslim-dominated lands (Copts in Egypt, Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq) or in non-Muslim lands if Muslims with innate supremacism and a triumphalism gain power and influence. That triumphalism alternates with pessimistic and sullen passivity, when their inculcated impulse to make raids on and overcome non-Muslims must be held, for now, and only temporarily, in check.

When Islam was seen as obviously weak relative to the West-- as it was for about a century and a half (roughly, from 1820 to 1970) -- then Muslims were relatively quiet. In fact, they even made moves to placate the West in meaningless ways. For example, both Azzam Pasha, the first Secretary of the Arab League, in 1951 did remember to convey his good wishes to Christians at Christmas time. This was the same Azzam Pasha who promised that the war against the Jews in 1948 would result in a "massacre" the likes of which "had not been seen since the days of the Mongols," the man who is also the great-uncle of Ayman Al-Zawhiri (I am apparently the only one who finds this of note, for I keep mentioning it, and no one picks up on it). And for the same political calculations, when the Ayatollah Khomeini had not yet solidified his power, for one time, and one time only, he similarly wished Christians of the world his best wishes at Christmas time. We know, as the world's Christians did not know then, what Khomeini's real views, what Azzam Pasha's real views, are on what the rights of non-Muslims should be in a well-ordered society, and a well-ordered world. They are the same rights as dhimmis possess under the Shari'a, which means no rights other than those temporarily granted by benevolent Muslims, as long as the conditions of their dhimmi status are never broken, are faithfully and completely kept. And even then, Muslims have over time, whenever they felt like it, managed to find excuses for pogroms and mass forced conversions, or slaughter on the flimsiest of pretexts, whether of Copts in Egypt, or of Jews and Armenians in Tabriz under Shah Abbas II, or in the massacres of every Jew in Granada in 1066.

The Jihad is not "back." It never went away. Jihad, the "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread and then the dominance of Islam all over the world has always been, and always will be, central to Islam. What changed over the past fifty years is the perceived strength of Muslims, which is the result not only of the removal of the French from North Africa (and the British bases along the littoral of the Persian Gulf, in what were called the "Trucial States" -- where the Royal Navy kept the truce among states and tribes that would otherwise be in a state of natural, and constant, warfare), but in the main, the result of the happy accident of geology, by which Muslims have received, through no effort on their part, more than eleven trillion dollars since 1973 alone, with more trillions coming along all the time. That has given them power. That has given them reach. That has given them the ability to pay for campaigns of Da'wa, to build mosques and madrasas, and what's more, maintain them, all over the Western world. That is what has enabled the Saudis alone to spend nearly one hundred billion dollars to further the Cause of Islam; the entire budget for Soviet propaganda abroad, over 70 years, was about 7-8 billion. That has given them the ability to buy up, in ways small and big, all kinds of government officials, in office and out of office, including ambassadors to Arab states, journalists, teachers and other specialists in Middle Eastern affairs, businessmen with contracts dangled before them. Colin Powell saw nothing wrong with allowing himself to be befriended by Prince Bandar, making him his steady racquetball and tennis companion. And he saw nothing wrong with pocketing, just a few days after he had resigned, the gift of a Jaguar from Prince Bandar, the representative of one of the most hideous and, to the United States, dangerous and malevolent, regimes on earth. Yet Colin Powell managed, somehow, to retain a quite-unjustified reputation for probity -- so that Senator Stevens of Alaska is relying on the character reference that Colin Powell has supplied, singing the praises of Stevens as having as much probity as...well, impliedly, as Colin Powell himself. And few of us who know about Powell and his resistible, ridiculously inflated rise, and his Prince-Bandar connection, would disagree with that.

The money was necessary, but not sufficient. At the same time, and in each country for slightly different reasons, there has been massive, seemingly unstoppable, Muslim immigration. And then, once in, and on the dole of the Western welfare state, Muslims have steadily outbred their hosts, so that, for example, in The Netherlands, there were 1,500 Muslims in 1960, 15,000 in 1970, 400,000 in 1997, and today there are over a million, with Rotterdam and several other cities soon to have Muslim majorities.

This Muslim immigration was allowed to take place as a result of the same inattention to Islam, to what Islamic texts say, to what Islam teaches, to the likely and predictable effect of Islam on the minds of its adherents. After all, there are 1350 years of history of Muslim behavior, from Spain to the East Indies, that can be studied, examined, learned about, and that might just serve as a guide to Muslim behavior today. But just as the doctrine of Islam -- the texts, the tenets -- were so blithely ignored, so has the actual practice of Muslims over time and across space been ignored. Few have cared to examine and to learn about all that, although it just might have served as a guide to the present-day situation worldwide. Instead, history, like the canonical texts, has been ignored by the political and media elites all over the Western world. And it is the continued ignoring of both the doctrine and the practice of Islam that has caused, and is causing, and will cause, such unnecessary suffering on the part both of the indigenous Infidels, and those non-Muslim immigrants who have arrived in the West, all at the hands of Muslims, and all of it utterly predictable.

Islam is triumphalist. Arab Muslims who have oil declare that it is a gift from Allah to the "best of people" -- though they are careful not to share that gift with other Muslims, even to other Muslim Arabs. But the money, and the abasement of the Western world, reinforces the conviction that comes from Islam, that History Is On Their Side. Any victory, anywhere, for the forces of Islam, encourages Muslim triumphalism.

But then there is another reason for the return to Islam, or to the stricter outward conformity with Islam to be seen in such places as Egypt. The further away Egypt gets from the past, the past of Lord Cromer, the past in which non-Muslims, Copts and Jews, were not subject to daily humiliations and attacks -- because the government, prompted by the British, did not countenance it -- and the more it becomes "Arab" rather than "Egyptian" (the latter identity may be encouraged, the former discouraged, by those who want to weaken the hold of Islam), the more it becomes Islamic. Islam explains to the rich and powerful Arabs their wealth and their power. It justifies their extraordinary behavior, such as the domestic slaves they dare to take with them when they live in London or outside Washington, or when their children attend those Western schools, or they themselves enter those Western hospitals. For the rich Arabs simply could not do without Western education and medical care, just as they need the West for Rest And Recreation, for that funfair-cum-brothel atmosphere that they find here.

And since the world is their oyster, they can get away with all kinds of criminal behavior. See the Saudi bribery scandal in Britain, or the Saudi prince who tried to smuggle 66 suitcases of cocaine into France and claimed, when caught, "diplomatic immunity." See the sex-slave scandals, the strange unexplained disappearances of Western women from Australia, from Spain, from everywhere, many of whom are believed to end up in Middle Eastern harems, disposable as kleenex of course, as all Infidels are ultimately disposable, once they have been made use of by their Arab masters.

Islam is the answer for the rich Muslims. It is the answer, the consolation, for the poor Muslims. Only when Muslims are forced to confront the reality of Islam can things possibly improve. What is it they must confront? They must confront this reality: that the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of societies and states suffused with Islam are a direct result of Islam itself.

How can they be made to confront this? They can be made to confront this if many Infidels, having studied the matter, will arrive -- some regretfully and surprised, some with a grim air of "I knew it but did not dare say it" -- at that understanding, and able to explain, uninhibitedly, why they think it so. A demonstration project will soon reveal itself in Iraq, if the Americans leave and Islam reverts to its own level. This could also happen in Afghanistan, which is no more the "central front" in the "war on terror" (itself a misnomer) than is Iraq. Both McCain and Obama have things wrong, and both at this point seem incapable of learning enough about Islam to fashion intelligent, and far less costly -- in expenditures of men, materiel, money -- policies. Islam may no longer be viewed through any prism of sentimental messianism (Bush's bringing of "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East who will then, presto-chango, become our friends, for our being Infidels doesn't matter in the Bush Administration's mental universe), but there is still a refusal to see what Islam inculcates, and why this cannot change, and why the Infidels of this world are all, in different ways, and at different rates, threatened by Islam. Yet because the texts of Islam are immutable, it is silly to ignore this, and to pretend that Islam will, after 1350 years, somehow "reform" itself or, still more misleading, that the very nice, smiling, plausible Muslims one may meet somehow "represent" Islam, even if one were to believe and trust them (and given the emphasis on deception in Islam, and even the religiously-sanctioned doctrines of Taqiyya and Kitman, it would be foolhardy to do so). It would be foolish to think that policies can be based on the existence of these people who are either sinister, or if not, if they really mean it, ill-informed about Islam, or out of embarrassment deliberately pretending to be so, because if you are a Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslim, you still are afraid to become a defector, in the Ibn Warraq or Wafa Sultan or Ayaan Hirsi Ali manner, are still perhaps feeling a residual filial piety that forces you to defend, or to pretend there is no need to defend (because you feign surprise when aspects of Islamic doctrine are presented to you for your response), Islam.

We in the West must understand that the reasons for the hideous state of the Muslim world all go back to Islamic tenets -- its penchant for despotism, its reliance on Infidel aid or on the manna of oil, both of which reflect inshallah-fatalism, its mistreatment of non-Muslims and of all women, its inhibiting of art and of science and even of music, its stifling of free inquiry, and its suffocating intellectual atmosphere that deems everything outside of Islam essentially unimportant. All of this explains why Pakistan has turned out to be...Pakistan, and not (for all of its difficulties) India, why Malaysia is not Singapore, why the Arab OPEC states, despite being the recipients of the largest transfer of wealth -- and unearned to boot -- in human history, are still completely dependent on foreign wage-slaves, many of them are treated atrociously by these desert Simon-Legrees, all daggers and dishdashas, with their sneers of cold command.

Infidels must learn this first. Infidels who understand this must replace, in the policy-making positions, those who will not or cannot grasp the nature of Islam, its texts, tenets, attitudes, atmospherics. And once Infidels, and their governments, have understood this, it will be hard for many of the world's Muslims to ignore this realization. At the very least, this will demoralize many Muslims, put paid to their triumphalism. At most, it may lead to many non-Arab Muslims, having been made aware of the fact that Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism, turning away from Islam. They may even discover their pre-Islamic roots (sometimes those roots are very close to the surface, in a not-too-distant past). When Muslims in India, or in Pakistan, or in Bangladesh, for example, begin to wonder about their Hindu ancestors, and what made them convert to Islam and start imitating little Arabs and claiming an Arab genealogy, then we will be getting somewhere. When black African Muslims begin to find out more about the Arab slave trade, and Arab slavery today, and the theft, by Muslims, of oil wealth that lie under the lands of Christians in the southern Sudan and southern Nigeria, and when they further learn that Islam causes economic stasis because inshallah-fatalism does not promote economic activity, then we will be getting even more to that fabled somewhere.

And so on.

All it takes is a few brains to be well-placed in Washington.

Is that too much to ask?

Posted at 8:28 AM | Comments (19)

Fjordman reviews Ali Sina's Understanding Muhammad

The learned European essayist Fjordman here reviews Ali Sina's Understanding Muhammad. Since Fjordman has been accused of being a white supremacist and a neofascist, some people have also accused me of being a white supremacist and neofascist, because I publish his fine essays on jihad and the Islamization of Europe. So I thought I would take this opportunity to say that while white supremacism and neofascism are wrong and should everywhere be opposed, I do not believe Fjordman is a white supremacist or a neofascist. What many have taken as "white supremacism" is his interest in trying to stem the tide of immigration into Europe, which threatens to make Europeans into minorities in their own countries, and -- because the immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim -- to create a series of Sharia states across Europe. In 2006, well before he began to be accused of race supremacism, Fjordman wrote this:

We shouldn’t idealize mass-immigration too much. When one group of people move into a territory where another group of people already live, this has usually throughout human history ended in war. Either the newcomers will be expelled, or they will subdue or wipe out the previous inhabitants, or the groups will divide the country between them.
I see little reason to expect any different result where the indigenous population happens to be white. [...]

I do not see why I should have to choose between White Supremacy and White Worthlessness. It is one thing to reject the idea that your culture should be forced onto others, it is quite another thing to say that you shouldn’t be allowed to retain your culture even in your own country. The latter is simply a matter of self-preservation, the most basic instinct of all living things down to bacteria level.

I have a right to preserve my culture, too, even though I have blue eyes, and cannot see anything “racist” in not wanting my children to become a persecuted minority in their own country through mass immigration. That you are denounced as a White Supremacist for just stating the obvious shows how deeply entrenched and internalized this anti-white bias has become.

More recently (two weeks ago), the genuinely neofascist VNN Forum (an evil site to which I will provide no link) criticized one of Fjordman's articles about Europe for not blaming Jews for the problem. VNN Forum writers called Fjordman "a neocon jew-ass-kisser who is either oblivious of the fact that jews are responsible for what is happening or is aware but doesn't have the guts to name the jew." They also pointed out that "the Brussels Journal is never critical towards the Jew" and went on to complain that "multiculturalism stops when the Jew is down and out. Those Islamophobic 'nationalist' parties accomplish nothing....I would rather see anti-synagogue marches over anti-mosque ones. The mosques become a non-issue if you defeat the wretched sheeny."

I would rather stand with Israel, and Fjordman, than with those racist neofascists.

So without further ado, here is his review of Ali Sina's book:

If I make a shortlist of people who have significantly influenced my views on Islam, the Iranian ex-Muslim writing under the pseudonym Ali Sina has to be one of them. Now based in North America, he has founded the website Faith Freedom International (FFI), www.faithfreedom.org, to inform non-Muslims about the violent nature of Islam and help Muslims leave Islam. Sina has published the book Understanding Muhammad on the psychological nature of Islam's founder as he appears from Islamic sources.
The book Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out from 2003, edited by Ibn Warraq, contains the personal stories of several former Muslims, among them Ali Sina. Ibn Warraq is the author of several books, among them the modern classic Why I Am Not a Muslim and his most recent Defending the West. I will start with a few quotes from Sina's testimony in Leaving Islam and continue with quotes from his own book. I will provide page references to make it easier for others to quote and use the material.

In Leaving Islam, Ali Sina describes how, growing up in Iran, he had illusions of a "real Islam" which was good and tolerant. He advocated the real Islam as he thought it should be and criticized the mullahs and their deviations from the "true" teachings of Islam. Page 138:

"I idealized an Islam conforming to my own humanistic values. Of course, my imaginary Islam was a beautiful religion. It was a religion of equality and of peace. It was a religion that encouraged its followers to go after knowledge and be inquisitive. It was a religion that was in harmony with science and reason. I thought science got its inspiration from this religion. The Islam that I believed in sowed the seeds of modern science, which eventually bore its fruits in the West and made modern discoveries and inventions possible. Islam, I used to believe, was the real cause of the modern civilization. The reason the Muslims were living in such miserable state of ignorance in comparison to the un-Islamic West was all the fault of the self-centered mullahs and the religious leaders who, for their own personal gain and dominance, had misinterpreted the real teachings of Islam. Muslims honestly believe that the great Western civilization has its roots in Islam. They recall great Middle Eastern scientific minds whose contributions to science have been crucial in the birth of Modern science."

He mentions some of these scholars, like the mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam, the physician and alchemist Rhazes (al-Razi) and the physician and philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina), all of them worthy of respect. I should mention that they were all Persians, not Arabs, and that Rhazes in particular didn't believe a word of Islamic teachings. He was a good scholar, but he wasn't a good Muslim.

Sina tells about his education abroad. His father didn't want him to go to an immoral Western country. Page 139:

"Pakistan, being an Islamic country, was safe. People were religious and therefore moral. This, of course, proved to be untrue. I found people there to be as immoral and corrupt as Iranians. Yes, they were very religious. Yes, they did not eat pork and I saw no one consuming alcohol in public, but I noticed they had dirty minds, they lied, they were hypocrites, and they were cruel to the women and, above all, filled with hated for the Indians. I did not find them better than Iranians in any way. They were religious, but not moral."

However, he was appalled by the general disdain Pakistanis had for non-Muslims:

"I learned about the reasons for the partition (of India) and for the first time about Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He was presented as a very intelligent man, the father of the nation, while Gandhi was spoken of in a derogatory way. Even then I could not but side with Gandhi and condemn Jinnah as an arrogant and ambitious man who was responsible for breaking up a mighty nation and causing millions of deaths. I did not see difference of religion enough reason to break up a country. The very word Pakistan seemed to be an insult to the Indians. They called themselves pak, or 'clean' to distinguish themselves from the Indians, who were najis ('unclean'). The irony is that I never saw a people dirtier than the Pakistanis, both physically and mentally. It was disappointing to see another Islamic nation in such intellectual and moral bankruptcy."

Personally, I have a slightly more critical view of Gandhi, whom I believe was extremely naïve. His non-violent methods might leave an impression on a civilized nation such as Britain but clearly wouldn't have had any impact on a Genghis Khan, nor did they have any value against Muslims. I have noticed that where Westerners have "Islamophobia," Indians have "communalism." That's what it's called when non-Muslims talk about one thousand years of Jihad, a war which continues to this day. Non-Muslim communities have been virtually decimated in Pakistan and are in serious decline in Bangladesh, yet the Muslim population in the Republic of India has actually grown since the partition, not just in actual numbers but as a percentage of the overall population. Whereas the few remaining non-Muslim communities in Pakistan face brutal discrimination, Muslims in India enjoy special rights, including limited use of sharia law. They have more political freedom and a higher average income than Muslims in neighboring countries, but they still attack non-Muslims.

Later, after his experiences in Iran and Pakistan, Ali Sina discovered that Western infidels were not as dirty and immoral as he had been told. Pages 139-140 of Leaving Islam:
"I decided to go to Italy for my university studies. I concluded that there was nothing I could learn in an atmosphere filled with bigotry and stupidity. In Italy people drank wine and ate pork. But I found they were more hospitable, more friendly, and less hypocritical. I noticed people were willing to help without expecting something in return. I met an elderly couple who were very hospitable to me. They called me on Sundays to have dinner with them and not stay home alone. They did not want anything from me, they just wanted to have someone to give their love. I was almost a son to them. Only those who have come to a new country, who do not know anyone and cannot speak even the language, can appreciate how much the help and the hospitality of a local is worth. Their house was sparkling clean and the floor was marble and always shiny. This was quite in contrast with my idea of Westerners. Although my family was very open toward other people, my religion had taught me that the non-Muslims are najis (IX.28) and one should not take them as friends."

In Understanding Muhammad, Sina tries to show how the religion of Islam has been shaped to this day by the psychological of its founder, and why Islam can appropriately by labeled "Mohammedanism." For Muslims, all actions of Muhammad constitute law. Page 166:

"He was entitled to marry or have sex out of marriage with as many women as he wished. He could raid civilians, kill unarmed men, loot their properties and take their women and children as slaves and even rape them. He could assassinate his critics and torture them to make them reveal where they hid their treasures. He could have sex with children. He could lie and deceive his opponents. He could massacre his prisoners of war coldbloodedly. None of that bothers his followers. At first they deny all of the above charges vehemently, accusing you of maligning their prophet, but once the evidence is presented, they suddenly change tactics and defend him, justifying the very evil deeds they had outrageously denied. For Muslims, Muhammad's actions are not measured by what we humans know as right and wrong. Rather he is the standard, the measure of right and wrong. As the result, if a crime was committed by Muhammad, that crime becomes a holy deed and is emulated by his followers unquestioningly. Muslims are capable of committing the most atrocious acts of indecency and savagery with a clear conscience, because it is sunnah (performed by Muhammad)."

Islam became a ruthless and violent creed because of the ruthlessness and violence of its founder and his followers. The concepts of what others would consider good and evil do not exist in Islam. Instead, we have the concepts halal and haraam, permitted and forbidden, categories which very often do not correspond to what non-Muslims would consider to be moral or immoral. For instance, drinking a glass of wine is bad, but killing somebody because they say something critical of Muhammad is good. Sina again, page 167:

"In Islam, the ends always justify the means. For example, killing is wrong, but if it is done to promote Islam, it is good. Suicide is prohibited, but suicide bombing that will cause the death of non-Muslims is a holy act. Stealing from fellow Muslims is prohibited and the thief's hand will be chopped off, but looting non-believers was practiced by Muhammad. So stealing from non-Muslims is considered acceptable by Muslims. Sexual intercourse out of marriage is taboo, but rape of unbelieving women is okay. The goal, which is the establishment of the reign of Allah on Earth, is regarded to be so lofty that everything else becomes secondary. In the history of Islam, we read that people murdered their own fathers or waged war against them. Such actions are praised as the sign of faith and devotion of the believer. Lying in Islam is prohibited, except when it is done to deceive non-Muslims and advance the interests of Islam."

Even Islamic sources reveal the brutality of Muhammad's behavior. The esteemed biographer Ibn Ishaq narrates in Sirat Rasul Allah p. 515 the conquest of Khaibar. Sina explains, page 38:

"He reports that Muhammad, without warning, attacked this fortress town, inhabited by Jews and killed many unarmed people as they were fleeing. Among those captured was Kinana. Ibn Ishaq states: 'Kinana al-Rabi, who had the custody of the treasure of Banu Nadir, was brought to the apostle who asked him about it. He denied that he knew where it was. A Jew came (Tabari says 'was brought') to the apostle and said that he had seen Kinana going to a certain ruin every morning early. When the apostle said to Kinana, 'Do you know that if we find you have it (the treasure) I shall kill you?' He said, 'Yes.' The apostle gave orders that the ruin was to be excavated and some of the treasure was found. When he asked him about the rest (of the treasure) he refused to produce it, so the apostle gave orders to al-Zubayr Al-Awwam, 'Torture him until you extract what he has.' So he kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead. Then the apostle delivered him to Muhammad b. Maslama and he struck off his head, in revenge for his brother Mahmud.'"

As Ali Sina states: "On the same day that Muhammad tortured to death the youthful Kinana, he took his seventeen year old wife Safiya to a tent for sexual intercourse. Two years earlier, the Prophet had beheaded Safiya's father along with all the males (except those who had not yet begun pubescence) of the Jewish tribe Bani Quraiza."

This kind of behavior is unparalleled among the founders of any major religion on Earth. The Buddha or Jesus certainly never did anything comparable to this. Why were Muhammad and his followers so ruthless? Was it in response to persecution? No, says Sina. After thirteen years of preaching, Muhammad still had no more than seventy or eighty followers. Page 17-18:

"Muhammad's call in Mecca was received with indifference. The Meccans, like most non-Muslims of today, were tolerant of all religions. Religious persecution in those lands was unheard of. Polytheistic societies are generally tolerant by nature. They were offended when Muhammad insulted their gods. Despite that, they did not harm him. Muhammad encouraged his followers to leave Mecca. Naturally the Meccans did not like that idea. The Muslim families were upset, as were the masters of slaves who had converted to Islam. Some of the slaves were caught while trying to escape and were beaten. That was not, of course, religious persecution. The Meccans were simply trying to protect what they considered to be their property. For example, when Bilal was caught, his master, Umaiyah, beat him and put him in chains. Abu Bakr paid his price and he was set free. He was being punished for trying to escape, causing a financial loss to his owner and not for his beliefs."

Sina mentions a few other incidents claimed by Muslims to represent "persecution," but in his view, "These stories can hardly be classified as religious persecution. In the Middle East individualism is an alien concept. Women in particular cannot make their own decisions. Even today, Muslim women can be honor-killed if they decide to marry a man of their choice without the consent of their families."

The truth is that Muslims were unsuccessful in attracting many converts in Mecca, yet they were allowed to stay there and preach for more than a decade. They did not attract many followers until after the move to Medina when they started looting caravans, which tells us plenty about the real motivations of Muhammad's followers. Page 19:

"There is no evidence of any persecution against Muhammad and Muslims in Mecca. Nonetheless, Muslims make such claims because Muhammad has made that claim. Muslims will not doubt anything Muhammad has said. Astonishingly, even some non-Muslim historians who are not sympathetic to Islam have fallen into that trap and have echoed this untruth. Muhammad claimed victimhood, when in reality he was the victimizer. Muslims do the same. Everywhere it is Muslims who are killing, oppressing and persecuting, and yet they are the ones who cry loudest claiming to be victims and oppressed."

In the Medina period, Muslims became much more violent and arrogant and launched a series of assassinations to cast terror in the hearts of their opponents. As the Koran says (8,12): "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them." Several individuals who had done nothing wrong other than mocking Muhammad's teachings verbally were killed. Understanding Muhammad, page 43-44:

"He wanted to send the message that any opposition or criticism of him could mean death. That is exactly the same modus operandi Muslims employ today, where the threat often only need be implied. They follow the model and example set by their prophet, who they regard as their greatest strategist. They want to create a boundary of fear so they may establish their supremacy through terror. There is no doubt in the mind of the Muslim terrorists that this strategy works. To them, the Qur'anic injunction of 'casting terror in the heart of the unbelievers' seems a sure way to victory. It worked for Muhammad. He bragged, 'I have been made victorious with terror.' It worked in Spain when the terrorists killed two hundred people by blowing up commuter trains on March 11, 2004, and in response, the Spaniards voted a socialist for government who immediately adopted a policy of appeasement vis-à-vis the Muslims. Because of the successful precedents set by Muhammad and his ideological heirs, terrorists conclude that a terror strategy will work everywhere and every time. They will not stop unless the world falls or they are proven wrong by facing a much greater force."

As Sina points out, this strategy of harassing or murdering opponents and critics has been a feature of Islam from its inception. This line of thinking is very much alive today since it's encoded into the personal example of Muhammad, his sunna. Page 196-197:

"If you live in an Islamic country, you could be put to death for criticizing Islam, Muhammad or his companions. If you live in a non-Muslim country, you could be assassinated even if you are not a Muslim. Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh learned that lesson too late when he rolled in his own blood after he was shot and stabbed by a Muslim for assisting the Muslim dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali in making a movie on women in Islam. In July 1991 Ettore Caprioli, the Italian translator of The Satanic Verses, was grievously injured, and Hitoshi Igarishi – professor of literature and an admirer of Islamic civilization, who had translated the book into Japanese – was assassinated in Tokyo. William Nygaard, the Norwegian translator, was later knifed. The idea is to instill so much terror that no one dares to speak against Islam."

I have to correct an error here. The principle of killing "blasphemers" who criticize Islam is indeed still valid. The Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was killed in 1991, following the death sentence against author Salman Rushdie by the Iranian Islamic leader the Ayatollah Khomeini from 1989. The Italian translator Ettore Capriolo was attacked the same year, but survived. However, William Nygaard was the publisher of the Norwegian edition of The Satanic Verses, not the translator, and he wasn't knifed, he was shot several times outside his home in Oslo. Fortunately, he survived and recovered and has continued working in the publishing business after the incident. This is just a minor factual mistake, but it is an unnecessary one which takes only a couple of seconds to check and correct on the Internet.

What's most important to notice about these assassinations or attempted assassinations is that Muslims made up a very small percentage of the population in both Italy and Norway, not to mention in Japan, at the time, but even a tiny Muslim minority can be enough to kill freedom of speech, literally and metaphorically. Muslims cannot tolerate any criticism of their doctrines, a trait they have inherited from their Prophet. Ali Sina again, page 250:

"Megalomania, bullishness, the sense of entitlement and all other narcissistic traits of Muhammad are present in each and every Muslim, to the extent that they emulate their prophet. From king to pauper, from president to janitor, Muslims consider themselves to be superior to the rest of humanity. They are convinced that one day Islam will dominate, mankind will submit to them, and they will be the masters of the world. This feeling of self importance was expressed eloquently by Dr. Mahatir, the outgoing Prime Minister of Malaysia during an OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference) summit in 2003. He acknowledged that the early Muslims built their 'civilization' by studying the works of the Greeks and other scholars before Islam and then boastfully added that the 'Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars in order to access their own scholastic heritage.' In his speech he invited the Muslims to amass 'guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships' to subdue that non-Muslim detractors and again rule over them."

Mr. Mahatir also called for a "final victory" over the Jews, who conspire to keep Muslims divided and humiliated.

If Islam is so bad, why has it survived for so long? One of the reasons is that it provides a religious excuse for conquest and looting. Another is that it can be a useful tool for authoritarian rulers who want to shore up their power. Page 66:

"Islam was an instrument of domination. After Muhammad, others used his cult for the very same purpose. Muslims become like putty in the hands of those leaders who invoke Islam. Mirza Malkam Khan (1831-1908), an Armenian who converted to Islam and together with Jamaleddin Afghani launched the idea of an 'Islamic Renaissance' (An-Nahda), had a slogan of unrivaled cynicism: 'Tell the Muslims something is in the Qur'an, and they will die for you.' On his deathbed, Muhammad urged his followers not to remain idle, and exhorted them to push on and continue their jihad to conquest. Genghis Khan gave a similar command to his sons on his deathbed. He told them he desired to conquer the world, but that since he could no longer do it, they should fulfill his dream. The Mongols, like Muslims, were terrorizors. For the narcissist, all that matters is to win. They have no conscience. For them, lives of other humans are cheap."

According to his architect Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler was fond of saying things such as: "You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"

Nazism was essentially a new religion of Jihadism, which had much more in common with Islam than with Christianity. The admiration was mutual. As late as in 2005, Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf was among the top bestsellers in Turkey, as it is in a number of Arab and Muslim countries, behind a book about a Turkish national hero detonating a nuclear bomb in Washington D.C. At the same time, Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan has stressed that Islamophobia must be treated as "a crime against humanity."

Another concept Islam and Nazism have in common is the Big Lie. Understanding Muhammad, page 179:

"Adolf Hitler, in his Mein Kampf, (1925) wrote: 'The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.' If anyone should have known the power of the big lie and that the bigger the lie the more believable it sounds, it was Hitler. Another good statement is that of George Orwell, author of Politics and the English Language. He wrote: 'Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.' Why big lies are so convincing? It's because an ordinary person generally does not dare to tell a big lie. He fears that it would not be believed and that he would be derided. And, since everyone has heard or has said a few white lies, most people generally recognize them when they hear one. The big lies are so outlandish that they often startle the listener. Most people are not equipped to process them adequately."

Ali Sina believes that the big lie "offsets the scale of our common sense. This is not unlike loading a scale that is made to weigh kilos with tons. It stops showing the correct weight. The indicator may even stop at zero. Hence, Hitler was right. The big lie is often believed more than a small lie."

Perhaps the simplest explanation for why Islam is so big is that people believe in big lies, and Islam is the biggest lie ever told in human history. Never has a more appalling human being than Muhammad ibn Abdullah had a greater and more lasting influence on so many people.

Although Ali Sina is critical of Islam he is also critical of the West, especially its belief in Multiculturalism and the ideological censorship regime known as Political Correctness, which he has called the "white man's disease." To demonstrate what's wrong with the West, he uses the example of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" who converted to Islam, trained with Jihadist groups and fought in Afghanistan against his own country. Page 220:

"John Walker Lindh is one victim of the sickness of Western society called political correctness. Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who called the Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan 'freedom fighters'? John went on to become a freedom fighter. What is wrong with that? Didn't President George W. Bush and Tony Blair repeatedly announce, 'Islam is a religion of peace?' Why jail a follower of the religion of peace who has simply followed the instructions of his religion of peace? The West is guilty – guilty of complicity, of appeasement and of self deception. As required summer reading for first-year students, Prof. Michael Sells of the University of North Carolina compiled a book called Approaching the Qur'an where only the 'nice' teachings of the Qur'an pertaining to the early Meccan verses were handpicked and the violent, bloody verses that call for killing, looting and raping unbelievers, those that churn the stomach of any sane person that were written later in Medina were deliberately left out. This is nothing but playing the game of deception. The same deception is found in the books of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito in their definition of Islam."

Sina believes that a false image of Islam is being portrayed for infidel consumption by Western academics, for various reasons of ideological and financial corruption. The problem is, when young Westerners believe the lies they are fed about Islam, we disapprove of their actions as they embrace Islamic teachings. Sina considers this to be a form of hypocrisy. Page 220 continued:

"These children are not guilty. They are the products of our sick ethos called political correctness. How many newspapers, television or radio stations have the guts to call a spade a spade when it comes to Islam? Which one of our politicians has the mettle to stand in front of a camera and tell the nation that Islam is not a religion of peace? Watch your kids. If anyone dares to tell the truth, he is immediately branded as a racist and a hate-monger, and his head will roll. Meanwhile, Islamic propagandists are given freedom to twist the truth and promote their lies, knowing they will never be challenged on anything they say. CAIR, Council of American-Islamic Relations, (or better said 'Conning Americans with Islamic Ruse') furnishes thousands of libraries across the country with Islamic books, hoping to find more John Walker Lindhs. Mosques are being built in every city and town throughout the country to instill the hatred of America amongst the American kids. The situation is worse in Europe, Australia, Canada and other non-Muslim countries."

Ali Sina certainly isn't politically correct. On page 248 he states that "Islam is not just a false belief but also a mental disorder. It is a disorder that reduces sane people into insane people."

On pages 256-257 he attacks the doctrines of Multiculturalism and the idea that all cultures are equally worth preserving:

"If any culture needs to be preserved, it is the Western, Helleno-Christian culture. It is this culture that is facing extinction. It is to this culture alone that we owe the Enlightenment, Renaissance, and democracy. These are the foundations of our modern world. It would be a terrible mistake not to preserve this culture. If we do nothing, we face a future where democracy and tolerance will fade and Islam's more primitive instincts will subjugate humanity. All cultures are not made equal. A doctrine that advocates subjugation of women and minorities is not equal to a culture that promotes equality of all people irrespective of their beliefs, gender and race. Islam is not a culture. It is the antithesis of culture. It is barbarity, savagery and incivility. Islamic civilization is an oxymoron, while Islamic terrorism is redundancy. We owe our freedom and modern civilization to Western culture. It is this culture that is now under attack and needs protection. I wrote this book with two goals in my mind: to help Muslims see the truth and leave Islam, and to unmask the real face of Islam and warn of its threat, so the world can stand up and protect itself."

This echoes the ideas of another former Muslim, Ibn Warraq, who believes that berating and blaming the West, which has been fashionable since the 1960s and 1970s, has had the result that many Westerners now seem unwilling or incapable of defending their own civilization against outside attacks. In his book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism, Warraq highlights the destructive impact of Said's influential book Orientalism from 1978. Said was influenced by Foucault, Marx and the French intellectual tradition and refused to acknowledge evidence contrary to his claims about "Western bigotry." Page 246:

"In cultures already immune to self-criticism, Said helped Muslims, and particularly Arabs, perfect their already well-developed sense of self-pity. There is a kind of comfort and absolution in being told that none of your problems are of your making, that you do not have to accept any responsibility for the ills besetting your society. It is all the fault of the West, of infidels….Orientalism came at the precise time when anti-Western rhetoric was at its most shrill and was already being taught at Western universities, and when third-worldism was at its most popular. Jean-Paul Sartre preached that all white men were complicit in the exploitation of the third world, and that violence against Westerners was a legitimate means for colonized men to re-acquire their manhood. Said went further: 'It is therefore correct that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.' Not only, for Said, is every European a racist, but he must necessarily be so. As I have argued, Western civilization has been more willing to criticize itself than any other major culture."

It is interesting to notice that individuals such as Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Wafa Sultan and others who were not born into Western civilization are at the forefront of defending Western freedoms, while many white Marxists willingly collaborate with Muslims and cry "Islamophobia!" whenever somebody points out the violence inherent in Islamic doctrines. We are thus faced with the highly unusual situation – perhaps unique in world history – where a major civilization is attacked by insiders and defended by people who were not born into it.

In Understanding Muhammad, Ali Sina takes the traditional Islamic sources at face value and uses them to reconstruct an image of the person Muhammad as he appears in these sources. There exists a revisionist school of thought which has even questioned whether Muhammad existed at all. Personally, I tend to believe that he was an historical person, some form of Arab national leader, although there is much about the early history of Islam which we do not know and I am willing to consider all possibilities. The advantage of relying on the traditional sources is that according to the texts Muslims themselves use, Muhammad comes off as a highly immoral person. In a way, this strengthens the case of those who believe that Islamic texts were at least inspired by an historical person: If Muhammad ibn Abdullah of Mecca is a later invention, wouldn't those who invented him have made him appear to be more noble? Ironically, it is possible to argue that the very appalling personality that is portrayed in the hadith and Sira literature is an argument in favor of viewing him as an historical person.

I agree 100% with Ali Sina's view that Islam cannot be reformed. Indeed, he partly taught me that. I find his book Understanding Muhammad to be very valuable. However, his idea of spending many pages on detailed discussions of what kind of mental or physical illnesses Muhammad did or did not suffer from was sometimes too technical for my taste. Sina's understanding of the nature of Islam is impeccable, and his writings should be considered required reading for those dealing with Islam in their everyday life. My advice would be: Do buy Sina's book, but read it in combination with one or several other books. A very accessible title on the subject would be The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion by Robert Spencer, but there are also other titles available.

Posted at 7:55 AM | Comments (38)

October 24, 2008

Friday night textbook fun

Can you spot the difference between these two passages? If you can, I'll buy you a beer.

Both are from The Western Heritage, by Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner. Ninth edition, Prentice Hall, 2007. It's an advanced high school world history text.

Passage #1:

The authors of the Gospels believed Jesus was the son of God and that he has come into the world to redeem humanity and to bring immortality to those who believed in him and followed his way. To the Gospel writers, Jesus' resurrection was striking proof of his teachings. At the same time, the Gospels regard Jesus as a figure in history, and they recount events in his life as well as his sayings. (p. 161)

Passage #2:

At about age forty, [Muhammad] began to receive revelations from the angel Gabriel, who recited God's word to him at irregular intervals. These revelations were collected after his death into the Islamic holy book, the Qur'an [literally, a "reciting"], which his followers compiled between 650 and 651. The basic message Muhammad received was a summons to all Arabs to submit to God's will. (p. 200)

Wait a minute. Does this have anything to do with the jihad? Oh yes it does.

Posted at 5:46 PM | Comments (59)

Russia: Jihad against slot machines

Morality: gambling? No way! Armed kidnapping? Fine.

"Gunmen kidnap up to 15 in Russia's Ingushetia," from Reuters, October 24 (thanks to James):

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - Armed men drove into Russia's Ingushetia region and abducted up to 15 people including policemen from a checkpoint and a slot machine parlour, police and witnesses said on Friday.
Witnesses said the gunmen, dressed in camouflage, entered Ingushetia from neighbouring Chechnya late on Thursday and presented themselves as police officers. Chechen authorities said they had nothing to do with the raid.

Islamist groups fighting an insurgency in Ingushetia against Moscow's rule frequently target gambling halls and shops selling alcohol, saying they contradict Islam....

Posted at 1:25 PM | Comments (24)

University of Scranton: The silent treatment

Tuesday night at the University of Scranton some members of the sponsoring group were nervous. The university had taken much longer to approve my speaking at the campus than they had taken to approve other speakers, and had made the students answer all sorts of questions about whether the event would be in keeping with the mission of the university.

How about this for the mission of a university? Should it perchance be "the place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth" Should it be a place where "inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge"? (Thus Cardinal Newman.) Or should it be an indoctrination house for propagandists to stifle inquiry into and speculation about issues they wish not to be explored, as they interfere with the thrust of their propaganda?

I suspect they've already made their choice between those two at the University of Scranton, as well as at other once-fine universities all across the country, but they did let me speak Tuesday night. However, one of the members of the sponsoring group invited the local imam to come to the talk and make a five-minute rebuttal address after I spoke. I never did get the full story on this, but apparently he wanted to show the university administrators that the group was willing to air all points of view. I was asked Tuesday afternoon whether or not it would be acceptable to me if the imam spoke, and I said Absolutely Not. The group nevertheless seems to have asked him to speak, but he did not reply to their invitation.

Why did I oppose having the imam speak after me, when I profess to be so open to discussion and debate? Because what was proposed was not a debate or a dialogue, but my speech and his rebuttal. I would be happy to debate him if a debate were set up, and happy to answer his questions if he had deigned to show up at the talk, but not happy to have him come in to "correct" my remarks, as if there really were something wrong with what I am saying, such that someone is needed to come in afterward, smooth ruffled feathers, and issue a disclaimer.

Thus when I got to the venue I urged the sponsoring group not to allow themselves to be intimidated. Of course, that's easy for me to say: I don't have to live there for four years. I have immense respect for every member of this group, including the young man who suggested that the imam come in, because they hold to their principles under tremendous and often outrageous pressure from university administrators and their fellow students. Nevertheless, they and all students who are opposing the jihad and standing up for other politically incorrect positions should avoid allowing themselves to be put on the defensive and even tacitly accepting the Leftist/Jihadist line that what the anti-jihad stands for is bigotry, racism, hate, etc. It isn't. It is freedom, it is human rights, it is Western civilization, it is nothing for which to apologize, nothing of which to be ashamed.

Anyway, during the talk itself, which was apparently attended by at least some members of the campus MSA chapter, I noticed a number of students rolling their eyes and smiling in amused disgust at the egregious things I was saying. Since they did this frequently throughout the talk, I was ready for a barrage of hostile questions during the Q-and-A period. But none materialized. Not a single one of the eye-rollers approached the microphone to ask me even one question. So after a few questions from people in the audience who were sympathetic to what I was saying, the evening ended somewhat prematurely.

So all the MESA Nostra professors and all the MSA's loudly insist that I am wrong, wrong, wrong, and yet none of them dares to even try to prove it when I am right in front of them. Isn't that interesting?

The university is, said Newman, "a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge." That is an ideal. It is not the University of Scranton, or much of anywhere else that goes by the name of university these days.

Posted at 12:51 PM | Comments (25)

Fort Dix jihad video depicts gory decapitations and jihadi celebrations

Fort Dix Jihad Update. "Jurors in Fort Dix terror trial view tape from seized computers," by John P. Martin for the Star-Ledger, October 23 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

Jurors at the Fort Dix terror trial today watched videos of beheadings and al Qaeda propaganda seized from one defendant's computer, footage investigators contend proves the young Muslim men were studying terror tactics and preparing to attack.

One video opened with background music and a man singing "Blood shall be spilled" in Arabic.

Sounds like certain Koranic expressions found in a children's video-game that has infuriated Muslims.

Then two Iraqi captives appeared in succession on camera, each sitting before a red tapestry and confessing they had been spies for America and Israel.

An FBI language specialist, Gassan Hajjar, then described for jurors what happened next: Using a knife, the captors sliced off the hostages' heads, taking four to six minutes to complete the decapitations, he said. They held the severed heads aloft, placed them back on the bodies and celebrated.

Prosecutors aired the videos as the first week of testimony in the Camden courtroom came to an end, letting the images potentially linger in jurors' minds as a searing coda to the week.

Agents extracted the videos from a computer seized last year at the Cherry Hill home of Shain and Eljvir Duka, illegal Albanian immigrants who prosecutors say were radical Islamists plotting to attack Fort Dix or another area installation.

Being tried with them on charges of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers are their brother, Dritan Duka, of Cherry Hill; Mohamad Shnewer, a native of Jordan and nationalized U.S. citizen from Cherry Hill, and Serdar Tatar, a legal permanent resident from Turkey who lived in Philadelphia.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Hammer and William Fitzpatrick have argued in court filings that the men watched al Qaeda videos of religious lectures, political propaganda and violent attacks to mentally and emotionally prepare themselves for a jihad, or holy war.

The clips jurors watched were among hundreds of jihadist photos, articles and Internet links agents found on the defendants' computers after the May 2007 arrests ended a 15-month FBI investigation.

Jurors were spared the actual scenes of beheadings after attorneys objected the explicit brutality wasn't proof of any conspiracy by their clients and would unfairly prejudice the jury against them. U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler refused to ban the videos altogether, but ordered that prosecutors show an "antiseptic" version that stopped the videos right before the decapitations.
[...]

Defense attorneys have argued there was no terror plot. They claim the alleged conspiracy was created and encouraged by paid FBI informants hired to infiltrate the plot and agents eager to win a terrorism conviction.

Posted at 9:16 AM | Comments (21)

UNC-CH: Ain't it just like a friend of mine to hit me from behind

Last Monday night I spoke at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This was the campus I was most looking forward to visiting and simultaneously least looking forward to visiting, for a variety of reasons: I lived in Chapel Hill for seven years myself, graduated from the university, and still have some close personal connections there; I've had unfriendly exchanges with the academic propagandists Carl Ernst and Omid Safi, both of whom are professors there; and as I anticipated arriving there and then walked through the campus again it was hard to keep from thinking about the 2006 freelance jihad attack of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, which took place in a central area of the campus, a place I know very well and of which I have many memories -- a place which upon revisiting, even though there is no sign that anything out of the ordinary ever happened there, brought even to me a peculiar and unsettling vividness to this issue.

Before the talk I walked through campus with an old friend, and in due course we passed through Saunders Hall, home of the Religious Studies Department -- a place where I spent a great deal of time many years ago, the place where I first began reading the Qur'an and studying Islam, the place where so many things happened that have proven to be decisive in the course my life has taken. I found Omid Safi's office, but didn't find Safi, and neither he nor Ernst showed up for my talk. As it happened, James Taylor was in town playing a concert for Obama, and as Taylor is a big local hero, few people turned out to discuss the global jihad. But Taylor wasn't the only reason why people stayed away: Aisha Saad of the campus chapter of the Muslim Students Association told The Daily Tar Heel that the MSA decided not to come out to see me: "We do not see it setting the stage for a productive discourse but rather falling into a circular discussion that perpetuates stigmatized and superficial conceptions of a diverse community."

Uh huh. Well, pardon me if I find that a bit odd, not to mention disingenuous. I myself am always ready to defend my views. Ernst and Safi have both consigned me to the circle of hell reserved for "Islamophobes," but neither has ever deigned to point out even a single inaccuracy in anything I have written about the global jihad or Islamic supremacism, and neither of them had the decency or courage to come out to my address and talk things over. Neither did the MSA.

Here again, I suspect this is a tactical decision. The MSA cannot answer what I say, and for their part Ernst and Safi certainly can't either. So the easiest route is simply to stay away, and to pretend that I am beneath notice, while continuing to indoctrinate their impressionable captive audiences about "Islamophobia."

Well, my standing challenge to Ernst and Safi is worth repeating. I would be happy to debate them at a time and place of their convenience. They cannot deny that people are reading my books (in fact, many more people than are reading their books, and I don't even have their captive audience of college students who have to read my books because I put them on my syllabus), and so if they really believe that what I am saying is so far wrong and easily refuted, they should take up my challenge and wax me in a debate, so as to end my baneful influence.

But they don't dare try. Now isn't that interesting?

Meanwhile, I was challenged, but the challenge came after the event, from an unexpected quarter. One person who did show up for the talk was the son of an old housemate, now a student at the university himself. While this led me to meditations on the fleetingness of life and the rapid passage of time, this young man was concerned about more pressing matters. He asked me privately after the address if I thought that I was attracting the wrong kind of crowd: loutish, thuggish commenters at Jihad Watch, shouting for vengeance, that sort of thing. Didn't I think I was inciting people to violence?

This is a common charge, so I thought it worth mentioning this question and discussing it here. In the first place, of course, there hasn't been any violence committed in my name or inspired by me. I hope that there never will be, but if there ever were, I wouldn't really be any more responsible for it than the Beatles were responsible for the Manson murders just because Manson invoked "Helter Skelter" as his motivating force. I don't tell people to commit violent acts or take the law into their own hands, and anyone who does has nothing to do with me. When I stand up to defend the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the equality of rights of all people before the law, and Constitutional rule in the U.S., against Sharia supremacism, there is nothing in what I am saying that anyone could reasonably construe as incitement.

As for commenters, as I have said many times before, comments here are largely unmoderated, and people of all perspectives comment here, including jihad apologists. If I am responsible for one comment I am responsible for all of them, which would mean attributing to me all sorts of contradictory positions. Comments that are racist, genocidal, etc. will be removed when we see them. Commenters who are anti-jihad should bear in mind that if we discard our civilizational principles in order to defend them, there is no use defending them at all. And they should not be stupid, and avoid handing the jihadists and their allies ammunition -- because make no mistake: the jihadists need "Islamophobia," and they're looking for it. When they don't find it, they manufacture it. I have some evidence that pro-jihad commenters, sent from some very interesting sources, have planted hateful and genocidal comments here in order to try to discredit the site. And the manufacture by Muslims of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S. attests to how politically useful such attacks are: they deflect attention away from jihad activity while implying that resisting the jihad leads to the victimization of innocent people.

The fact that actual hate crimes against Muslims are relatively few indicates that Americans are in the main decent people who respect the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty. But the fact that my old friend's son would even ask this question indicates how effective the media's preoccupation with nonexistent "backlash" against innocent Muslims every time a Muslim is caught plotting jihad violence has been. And of course the mainstream media has often aided and abetted the effort by American Muslim advocacy groups to claim for themselves protected victim status that would absolve them from all scrutiny and criticism.

I was glad to answer the question, as I would have been glad to answer any and all questions from the MSA, or Carl Ernst, or Omid Safi. But they chose not to risk exposing the hollowness of their own positions.

Posted at 9:00 AM | Comments (46)

What Obama and McCain will do about the jihad

At last, someone takes up the issue of the nearly forgotten elephant in the living room. "Candidates On Fighting Islamic Extremism," from CBS, October 23 (thanks to Twostellas):

Obama:
* Says if he gets a shot at bin Laden, he will take it - with or without Pakistani permission.
* Would send in more troops to Afghanistan.
* Wants to give Pakistan $7 million to build schools, roads and health clinics.

McCain:

* Says it’s a mistake to be so explicit about violating another country territory, but leaves little doubt he would go after bin Laden even if that would be necessary.
* Would send in more troops to Afghanistan.
* Supports non-military aid to Pakistan, but has put no price tag on it.

(CBS) To help you make an informed decision in the presidential election, CBS News is devoting a large part of our broadcasts until Nov. 4 to telling you where the candidates stand on major issues - from the war in Iraq to health insurance to education … and a lot more. Each piece will be an in-depth look at the issues facing the 44th president. In this installment, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports on how what Barack Obama and John McCain propose to do about Islamic extremism would affect the world.

The Issue

The driver of an orange-and-white car shown in a video tape is a suicide bomber. He just barely misses an American convoy. The threat of Islamic extremists on the battlefield is so deadly, the only way to win is to shoot first.

But to Greg Mortenson, the real battleground is in the Hindu Kush, where Muslim children have no schools. For him, a classroom is the best weapon against terrorists.

"I think they fear education and literacy much more than they fear a good gun battle," Mortenson said.

Since 1993, Mortenson has been building schools in mountains so dangerous you take your life in your hands just crossing a river.

"Fifteen years later, now we have 78 schools, about 28,000 students and our primary focus is on girls' education," he said.

He is competing against religious schools called madrassas, teaching jihad to young boys who graduate to terrorist training camps. And his 78 schools are badly outgunned.

"Today, there's about 25,000 extremist madrassas with about four million mostly boys going to school, learning about militant ideology," he said.

Why is that? Does anyone know or care? Do they really think that there are 25,000 "extremist madrassas" because people don't have roads or scholarships?

"Doesn't sound like a fair contest," Martin said.
"It's just a drop in the bucket," Mortenson said.

A drop in the bucket against a fanatic ideology that, for a decade now, has spawned monstrous attacks on Americans.

The Candidates

There is no more visceral issue than the battle against Islamic extremism. And from the beginning, both candidates have put it at the center of their appeal to voters.

For both men, it begins with hunting down Osama bin Laden and other top terrorists - wherever they are.

"We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president, I will not," Sen. Barack Obama said in May. "We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights."

Obama makes no bones about it - if he gets a shot at bin Laden, he will take it - with or without Pakistani permission.

Sen. John McCain says it’s a mistake to be so explicit about violating another country's territory, but leaves little doubt he would do exactly the same.

"There's a guy out there in Afghanistan or Pakistan," McCain said in March. "You know his name: Osama bin Laden. And if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I'll get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice."

The battle against bin Laden and Islamic extremism began in Afghanistan. Seven years later, the United States has 32,000 troops there, and it is still not clear which side is winning.

"Our commanders on the ground in Afghanistan say that they need at least three additional brigades - and our commanders in Afghanistan must get them," McCain said.

Both candidates say they would send in more troops.

"As Commander in Chief, I will have no greater priority than taking out these terrorists that threaten America, and finishing the job against the Taliban. That's why I've called for at least two additional U.S. combat brigades," Obama said.

The U.S. military is already planning to send four more combat brigades - about 15,000 troops - and both candidates seem likely to approve. Both also recognize that's not enough. It will take what's called "soft power."

Obama wants to give Pakistan $7 million to build schools, roads and health clinics. McCain also supports non-military aid, but has put no price tag on it.

Has either one even been asked about the evidence that the Pakistani government has jihadists in high places, and that much of the money we have given them to fight "extremists" in the past has...gone astray?

In Los Angeles, McCain said: "Our goal must be to win the hearts and minds of the vast majority of moderate Muslims who do not want their future controlled by a minority of violent extremists. In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs."

Does study of the roots of "violent extremism" enter into this struggle against it and attempt to win hearts and minds? Are we too politically correct even to allow ourselves to know what we're dealing with? Does McCain, does Obama have a plan for combating the Islamic supremacist ideology that renders so many of our attempts to win hearts and minds fruitless?

Does anyone even wish to know or care where this problem came from? They continue to assume that it's all about poverty, despite the fact that so many studies have shown that jihadists tend to be wealthier and better educated than their peaceful peers. Scholarships and roads will fix it. But have they even considered the possibility that some Muslims may wish to wage jihad against the West even after they receive scholarships and schools and roads and health clinics?

Is it forbidden even to raise the possibility that some Muslims will consider that an attempt to buy them off, and will hold all the more tenaciously to their ideology of violence and supremacism?

Posted at 5:12 AM | Comments (51)

France: Nine convicted of plotting armed jihad

"[Safe] Bourada was one of 36 Islamic militants convicted a decade ago for providing support for bombings that terrorized France in 1995. He received a 10-year term, but won early release in 2003 under police surveillance."

"9 convicted in Paris terror trial," by Pierre-Antoine Souchard for the Associated Press, October 23:

PARIS (AP) — A Paris criminal court convicted nine people on Thursday including a French-Algerian former prison inmate who admitted establishing an Islamic group that called for armed jihad in France.

Safe Bourada, 38, was sentenced to 15 years in prison while eight others received penalties of one to nine years on charges linked to financing of and association with a terror group.

Bourada admitted in court to creating a militant group called "Ansar al-Fath," or Partisans of Victory. The group was suspected of planning attacks on the Paris Metro and Orly airport. It was dismantled in 2005 after French authorities received a tip from Algerian counterparts.

In 2005, Christophe Chaboud, head of the counterterrorism unit of the national police, told The Associated Press that the group had had "indirect" contacts with Iraq's former al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006 in Diyala province.

The court ruled that one of the group's members — Kaci Ouarab, 31 — had received weapons training in Lebanon in 2005 that was designed to help carry out bombings in France.

Ouarab, who the court considered "the natural, legitimate and even operational successor" of Bourada, was sentenced to nine years without the possibility of parole for at least six.

Kais Melliti, 36, considered an important organizing and financial operative, was given eight years — without the possibility of parole for at least two-thirds of that term.

Another suspect, Djamel Badaoui, 31, was sentenced to five years. The court ruled he was in charge of "seizing goods" — notably by extorting money from prostitutes on three occasions, to fund terror attacks.

Two French converts to Islam — Stephane Hadoux, 40, and Emmanuel Nieto, 34, — were given three-year sentences, half of which were suspended by the court.

Bourada was one of 36 Islamic militants convicted a decade ago for providing support for bombings that terrorized France in 1995. He received a 10-year term, but won early release in 2003 under police surveillance.

Under Thursday's verdict, he will not be eligible for parole for at least 10 years.

Posted at 12:52 AM | Comments (10)

October 23, 2008

Obama's ties to CAIR, Nation of Islam mean that he would "fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees"

"Look, Barack, another unsavory CAIR op! Let's go shake his hand!"

I have never credited the "Obama is a secret Muslim" rumors, but that is not the end of the story of Obama and Islam. In "Obama Would Fail Security Clearance" in the Philadelphia Bulletin, October 21, Daniel Pipes traces (and documents with numerous links) Barack Obama's ties to questionable Islamic individuals and groups:

With Colin Powell now repeating the lie that Barack Obama has "always been a Christian," despite new information further confirming Obama's Muslim childhood (such as the Indonesian school registration listing him as Muslim), one watches with dismay as the Democratic candidate manages to hide the truth on this issue.
Instead, then, let us review a related subject – Obama's connections and even indebtedness, throughout his career, to extremist Islam. Specifically, he has longstanding, if indirect ties to two institutions, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), listed by the U.S. government in 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding trial; and the Nation of Islam (NoI), condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its "consistent record of racism and anti-Semitism." [...]

Pipes concludes:

That Obama's biography touches so frequently on such unsavory organizations as CAIR and the Nation of Islam should give pause. How many of politicians have a single tie to either group, much less seven of them? John McCain charitably calls Obama "a person you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States," but Obama's multiple links to anti-Americans and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees.

Be sure to read it all.

Posted at 2:43 PM | Comments (56)

Fitzgerald: Who decided that we owed this to Somalis?

Eighty thousand Somalis, almost all of them Muslims, have been allowed into this country. What they have done can be seen in Lewiston, Maine, where their enormous burden on the benefits system left so little for the native poor, who had been paying into that system for decades, that the Mayor of Lewiston publicly expressed his alarm at the Somali influx. For his pains he was mechanically, and roundly, denounced as a "racist.”

Or it can be seen in the places where some Somalis do work, rather than live on benefits, such as those meat-packing plants in Nebraska and Colorado where the non-Somali workers, who bear the brunt of the behavior and attitudes of the Somalis in their midst, revolted when the meat-packing company was prepared to supinely give in to Muslim demands, demands that would have given preferential treatment to Muslim workers. One of the non-Muslim workers was widely quoted: "The Latino is very humble," said Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS U.S.A. Inc., since 1994. "But they are arrogant," he said of the Somali workers. "They act like the United States owes them."

In Minneapolis, Somali and other Muslim taxidrivers have refused to pick up people carrying liquor (at the airport where those arriving from abroad dutifully carry their Duty-Free) and also blind people with seeing-eye dogs. It is fascinating to consider that because in seventh-century Arabia some Arab, who may or may not have existed, is said to have said that he wouldn’t enter a house “with statues or dog,” in twenty-first century America a blind person waiting patiently for a taxi may not be picked up. And consider this, while we have stopped to look at that Hadith: for 1350 years Muslims have had to stifle whatever creative impulse they might have had to create statuary. And not only that, but wherever they have been able, they have destroyed the statues -- Greek or Roman, Byzantine or Buddhist -- all across the vast lands they have conquered. They haven’t stopped today. Look at what the Taliban did not only to the Bamiyan Buddhas (with engineering help from Pakistanis and money from Saudis), but also to the already pathetically teeny-tiny contents of the Kabul Museum, with its remains of so many civilizations that had overlapped or overlaid one another, in palimpsestic fashion, over that swath of territory now known as Afghanistan.

Those Somalis were allowed into this country as “refugees.” But why are Muslims who leave a Muslim country, where they are not persecuted for being non-Muslims but instead can do the persecuting, and who bring their supremacist Total Belief-System with them and show in a hundred ways that they believe their faith Superior and they Superior as well, owed a living in Lewiston, owed special favors in Nebraska and Colorado, owed exemption from the hack-license rules in Minneapolis? They clearly believe that it is we, the Infidels who gave them misplaced rescue and succor of every kind, who must change our ways, who must yield to them.

Who decided that we owed this to Somalis? Was it because the Americans went to Somalia to prevent the natural state of Hobbesian man into which Muslim lands descend without a Muslim bully-boy or despot to manage things the way Muslim rulers do, through their absolute control of the military and the mukhabarat and some version of the mutawwa -- the three M’s of Muslim rule that keep those Arab despots the longest-ruling rulers or dynasties or juntas in the last century? See Khaddafy in Libya, see the Hashemites in Jordan, the Sherifians in Morocco, the FLN military men in Algeria, the Bourguiba-Ben Ali reign in Tunisia. The military, embodied currently by Mubarak, have ruled over Egypt since the coup of Nasser and Naguib back in the early 1950s. See also the Al-Saud, the Al-Thani, the Al-Maktoum, the Al-thises and Al-thatses, up and down the Arab side of the Persian Gulf. See the vicissitudes of the same small group of zamindars and generals who rule, and own, Pakistan, see see see. Military, Mukhabarat, Mutawwa (the variant spelling in the Islamic Republic of Iran is “Mullahs”).

That’s the Three M’s of Modern Muslim Rule. Forget your Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau, your Mill and Bentham, your Bagehot, your Oakeshott, your Rawls or, in the alternative, your von Hayek. It’s a completely different world, the world of Islam. This is something our credulous, hopeful, sentimental, arrogant rulers, the ones who were going to “remake the Middle East,” did not understand, because they had lost, in the hectic vacancy of Washington, the habit of study, the ability to think.

Perhaps that lesson can be learned even by some of those raised in the Age of Ignorance, the Western Jahiliyya -- the Age, that is, before an Awareness and Grasp of Islam as a Total Belief-System with an amazing hold on the minds of men. But they, most men everywhere, are primitive, which is why it is best that their primitiveness be channeled by a faith less dangerous to all those who do not submit to the same faith, and one that just possibly is founded on principles that, if actually followed, could do a lot of good. Just because you rise to the top in Washington, you can’t stop learning, and you have to learn to undo the clichés of the past, about Islam as a “bulwark against Communism,” or about Islam as a “religion of peace” (which arises from the dreamy idea that All Religions Are The Same, and We All Want The Same Thing).

You have to learn about the texts and tenets of Islam, unlike James Baker, with his Saudi baker-and-botts wheeling-dealing, and unlike Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. with the fabulous largesse the Saudis and other Muslims have presented to their Presidential libraries, and unlike the “respected” (by whom? For what?) Colin Powell, who has been supremely aware since his earliest military days of the need to be attuned to politics and pleasing the powerful. He hasn’t looked back, he “seen his opportunities and he took ‘em.” Powell was happy to pocket the keys of the Jaguar that Prince Bandar, his tennis-and-racquetball partner and pal, gave him. Powell learned from Bandar so much about the Al-Saud, about Saudi Arabia, about Islam, so much that he can pontificate indignantly about unfair worries or suspicions about Muslims in high office, and can get away with using as his point of departure (and his sole point, come to think of it), a single photograph of a Muslim mother grieving at the grave of her Muslim son. That son was one of a handful who must have enlisted in the American army.

Colin Powell was not asked to explain what makes him so sure that the doctrine of Islam is not worrisome, what makes him take as “representative” this particular soldier, and not the Muslim Marine who went AWOL, leaving his post and returning to Lebanon, not the Muslim soldier who rolled a grenade into a tent, killing two officers, not the Muslim sailor who apparently was offering to give secrets about his ship to other Muslims for their own deadly use, not all the other examples of Muslim mendacity. Instead, this single example, of a photograph, caused Colin Powell to become a great and reassuring authority on Islam on national television, without a single bit of information about Islam other than what he gleaned from Prince Bandar (he of the jangling keys to the Jaguar, pocked by Mrs. Powell just a few days after Colin Powell left office, and could now “accept the gift” that a few days before would have been illegal).

Some, many, of these people must be prevented from again being in positions of authority. And all those who have not yet shown signs of coming to understand, of even making the attempt to understand Islam –- through direct and personal study, and not through vicarious study, that is having an aide or two has read a book or two, and then “summarize” in power-point form what “Islam is all about” -- should be kept out of any position. For they represent, in their ignorance, and in their continuing influence, a supreme danger. Inertia plays a part, inertia and being overawed by those who, simply because they have served high up in this or that administration, are foolishly accorded a respect that their own display of mind does not suggest they have earned, or are capable of earning.

And not just in foreign policy, but in domestic policy. If you cannot recognize the Jihad, don’t want to find out what it is, what it means, and why Islam is not merely a “religion” in the commonly-accepted sense but also an Identity, a Loyalty, both to what is a Total Belief-System and to the other Believers, the other Members of the world-wide Umma, an identity and a loyalty that trump all other possible identities and loyalties (or at least, that is what Islam inculcates -- a few may ignore what is inculcated, but then they may well be “Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only” Muslims), then you may not be able to connect the contents of this article about the killing of the Somali Christian for daring to be a Christian (and daring to suggest that the attendees at a wedding, including the bride and groom, had a right to understand the ceremony) with the attitudes of Somali Muslims, “Muslim refugees from Islam” (???), who have been allowed to settle deep within our borders, within what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines, the lines of Dar al-Harb.

Posted at 2:37 PM | Comments (20)

Stop the presses: Jihadist sentiments rising in Middle East!

What was AP's first clue? Anyway, it is clear from this article that the Salafists are gaining strength because they are able successfully to present themselves as the adherents of authentic Islam. This shows up most pointedly the ridiculousness of the line the American government is following, with its new a priori assumption that the Salafis are inauthentic in their practice of Islam: it leaves American analysts no way to evaluate, or to develop ways to challenge, the Salafist appeal.

"Ultraconservative Islam on rise in Mideast," by Paul Schemm for Associated Press, October 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):

CAIRO, Egypt – The Muslim call to prayer fills the halls of a Cairo computer shopping center, followed immediately by the click of locking doors as the young, bearded tech salesmen close shop and line up in rows to pray.
Business grinding to a halt for daily prayers is not unusual in conservative Saudi Arabia, but until recently it was rare in the Egyptian capital, especially in affluent commercial districts like Mohandiseen, where the mall is located.

But nearly the entire three-story mall is made up of computer stores run by Salafis, an ultraconservative Islamic movement that has grown dramatically across the Middle East in recent years....

Critics worry that the rise of Salafists in Egypt, as well as in other Arab countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, will crowd out the more liberal and tolerant version of Islam long practiced there. They also warn that the doctrine is only a few shades away from that of violent groups like al-Qaida — that it effectively preaches "Yes to jihad, just not now."...

Salafist groups are gaining in numbers and influence across the Middle East. In Jordan, a Salafist was chosen as head of the old-guard opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood. In Kuwait, Salafists were elected to parliament and are leading the resistance to any change they believe threatens traditional Islamic values.

The gains for Salafists are part of a trend of turning back to conservatism and religion after nationalism and democratic reform failed to fulfill promises to improve people's lives. Egypt has been at the forefront of change in both directions, toward liberalization in the 1950s and '60s and back to conservatism more recently.

The growth of Salafism is visible in dress. In many parts of Cairo women wear the "niqab," a veil which shows at most the eyes rather than the "hijab" scarf that merely covers the hair. The men grow their beards long and often shave off mustaches, a style said to imitate the Prophet Muhammad.

The word "salafi" in Arabic means "ancestor," harking back to a supposedly purer form of Islam said to have been practiced by Muhammad and his companions in the 7th century. Salafism preaches strict segregation of the sexes and resists any innovation in religion or adoption of Western ways seen as immoral....

Its preachers often glorify martyrdom and jihad — or holy war — but always with the caveat that Muslims should not launch jihad until their leaders call for it. The idea is that the decision to overturn the political order is up to God, not the average citizen.

But critics warn that Salafis could easily slide into violence. In North Africa, some already have — the Algerian Salafi Group for Call and Combat has allied itself with al-Qaida and is blamed for bombings and other attacks. Small pockets of Salafis in northern Lebanon and Gaza have also taken up weapons and formed jihadi-style groups.

"I am afraid that this Salafism may be transferred to be a jihadi Salafism, especially with the current hard socio-economic conditions in Egypt," says Khalil El-Anani, a visiting scholar at Washington's Brookings Institution.

The Salafi way contrasts with the Islam long practiced in Egypt. Here the population is religious but with a relatively liberal slant. Traditionally, Egyptian men and women mix rather freely and Islamic doctrine has been influenced by local, traditional practices and an easygoing attitude to moral foibles.

But Salafism has proved highly adaptable, appealing to Egypt's wealthy businessmen, the middle class and even the urban poor — cutting across class in an otherwise rigidly hierarchical society.

In Cairo's wealthy enclaves of Maadi and Nasr City, robed, upper-class Salafis drive BMWs to their engineering firms, while their wives stay inside large homes surrounded by servants and children.

Sara Soliman and her businessman husband, Ahmed el-Shafei, both received the best education Egypt had to offer, first at a German-run school, then at the elite American University in Cairo. But they have now chosen the Salafi path.

"We were losing our identity. Our identity is Islamic," 27-year-old Soliman said from behind an all-covering black niqab as she sat with her husband in a Maadi restaurant.

"In our (social) class, none of us are brought up to be strongly practicing," added el-Shafei, also 27, in American-accented English, a legacy of a U.S. boyhood. Now, he and his wife said, they live Islam as "a whole way of life," rather than just a set of obligations such as daily prayers and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

A dozen satellite TV channels, most Saudi-funded, are perhaps Salafism's most effective vehicle. They feature conservative preachers, call-in advice shows and discussion programs on proper Islamic behavior.

Cairo's many Salafist mosques are packed on Fridays. Outside Shaeriyah mosque, a bookstall featured dozens of cassettes by Mohammed Hasaan, a prolific conservative preacher who sermonizes on the necessity of jihad and the injustices inflicted on Muslims.

Alongside the cassettes, a book titled "The Sinful Behaviors of Women" displayed lipstick, playing cards, perfumes and cell phones on the cover. Another was titled "The Excesses of American Hubris."

Critics of Salafism say it has spread so quickly in part because the Egyptian and Saudi governments encouraged it as an apolitical, nonviolent alternative to hard-line jihadi groups.

These critics warn that the governments are playing with fire — that Salafism creates an environment that breeds extremism. Al-Qaida continues to try to draw Salafists into jihad, and its No. 2, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri, praised Salafists in an Internet statement in April, urging them to take up arms.

"The Salafi line is not that jihad is not a good thing, it is just not a good thing right now," said Richard Gauvain, a lecturer in comparative religion at the American University in Cairo.

The Salafis' talk of eventual jihad focuses on fighting Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, not on overthrowing pro-U.S. Arab governments denounced by al-Qaida. Most Salafi clerics preach loyalty to their countries' rulers and some sharply denounce al-Qaida.

Egypt, with Saudi help, sought to rehabilitate jailed Islamic militants, in part by providing them with Salafi books. Critics say President Hosni Mubarak's government sees the Salafists as a counterweight to the opposition Muslim Brotherhood....

Posted at 12:48 PM | Comments (10)

"The Iraqi government is asking Christians to remain in Iraq, but is doing nothing to stop them from being slaughtered"

There are promises of action from the prime minister, but it would be pleasantly surprising to see concrete steps taken faster than could be measured on the scale of geological eras. "More violence in Mosul: father and son killed because they were Christian," from AsiaNews, October 23:

Mosul (AsiaNews) - The Iraqi government is asking Christians to remain in Iraq, but is doing nothing to stop them from being slaughtered. Yesterday in Mosul, in the Sanaa neighborhood, a father and son were killed: no further details are available at this time on the method of the attack or the identity of the two victims, but their death must be seen in connection with the violence in recent weeks against Christians in the city.

The pogrom of the Iraqi Christians resumed at the beginning of October, and in a couple of weeks there have already been 14 deaths, plus 10,000 people who have fled from the massacre, toward the plain of Nineveh. Five homes have been destroyed in bombing attacks. An apparent calm has been seen in recent days, so much so that appeals have been launched calling for exiles to "return to their homes." According to a source for AsiaNews in Mosul, yesterday's murder could be "a signal to the Christians from terrorists or extremist groups," making clear to them that "they must leave the city."

Although half of the Christian population has left the city of Mosul because of fear of the violence, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki is calling on them to "stay" and to "collaborate in the reconstruction of the country." Yesterday the prime minister met with a delegation of religious leaders, to whom he confirmed that "the violence in Mosul is part of a precise political plan in the country," although he did not specify who is responsible for the attacks.

Al Maliki is asking the Christians "not to give in to the criminal plan," and to remain in Iraq in order to contribute to the rebuilding of the country: in order to do this, he expresses his hope that there may be "the help and collaboration of the entire society," so that it may be "the Iraqis themselves who defeat those who want to drag the nation into chaos and wipe out the presence of Christians." The prime minister also promised that the guilty "will be punished," and that their supporters will also be stopped.

Finally, the prime minister promises that "the presence of Christians among the security forces and police will be increased, including at the officers' level": previously, the rank of officer had always been reserved for Muslims. Al Maliki says that the presence of Christians within the army should help them to "remain in their homes and on their land," feeling safer and better protected. He recalls that the destruction of the community would do "enormous damage to the entire Iraqi people," and calls upon the Iraqi ministry for migrants to do everything it can "to facilitate their return home."

Yesterday, Louis Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk, once again denounced the campaign of extermination against the Christians, emphasizing "the political game connected to the upcoming elections," and to the plan, which he has always opposed, to create "a Christian enclave in the plain of Nineveh." Now it is a matter of understanding what concrete action the central government will take in order to defend the Christians from persecution. On October 21, a delegation of the faithful from Mosul met with local and national political leaders, including the deputy prime minister, Rafeaa al-Eissawi, the mayor of the city, and the governor of Nineveh. The Christian delegation gave the deputy prime minister a letter asking for the return home of families that have fled, action from the government to protect them, complete security for students returning to school and adults returning to work, and compensation for the people whose homes have been destroyed.

Posted at 10:05 AM | Comments (30)

Somali apostate murdered at wedding

Reason? He converted to Christianity. "Somali Christian shot at Muslim wedding," from Mission Network News, October 23 (thanks to Kyros):

Somalia (MNN) ― According to International Christian Concern, a 22-year-old Somali Christian, Ahmadey Osman Nur, was murdered last month during a wedding ceremony.

The Muslim wedding Nur was attending was performed in Arabic, the language of Islam. Even though most Somali Muslims don't speak Arabic, it is considered the "language Allah hears" and is therefore used in Muslim ceremonies.

Due to the lack of comprehension of the service by any of the guests, Nur asked that the contents of the wedding be translated into the Somali vernacular. The Sheik performing the ceremony was aware of Nur's conversion to Christianity, however, and took offense to the request. He declared him to be guilty of apostasy and asked a guard to "silence" him.

Nur was encouraged to leave the ceremony, and upon exiting, he was shot and killed by the armed guard.

Nur is not the first Christian to be put to death for his faith in Somalia. It seems as though many Islamic extremists are looking for reasons to kill believers, and they often do so without much justification.

Justification: sharia law commands the slaying of the apostate.

In the past nine months, six Somali Christians have been martyred, including Nur.

Ironically, Nur is now remembered for his generous compassion for those in need, a quality necessitated in the Five Pillars of Islam...

Posted at 8:50 AM | Comments (23)

Dayton "Islamophobic hate crime" hoax police report: "victim" blamed "black males"

Hate Crimes Racket Update: here are some interesting new developments on the Great Dayton Islamophobic Hate Crime Mosque Attack Hoax.

The police report states that the "victim" claimed that the alleged attackers were black males wearing baseball caps. Given that the entire incident appears at this point to be a fabrication, why would the "victim," or those who were coaching her, want to conjure up an image of menacing, Obsession DVD-watching black males spraying poison gas into the mosque? It seems like an odd choice for this little fictional account, given that Muslim spokesmen generally dismiss resistance to jihad violence and Islamic supremacism as "racism," and that such a false allegation could stoke racial tensions in downtown Dayton, as well as spark mutual suspicion between Muslims and non-Muslim black Americans.

The answer may be that the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton is moving its mosque to the distant and white suburbs of Sugarcreek Township -- a plan approved just days before the alleged incident, as this pre-incident Dayton Daily News article records. Whoever was behind this hate crime hoax may have calculated that any resistance to the mosque in Sugarcreek Township might be weakened by the proposition that Muslims were being threatened by black males in the mosque's present location.

Meanwhile, another hint that the people at the mosque know this was a hoax is that CAIR, which was actively involved in strong-arming the zoning board to approve the new mosque, makes no mention of the incident on its website, even though CAIR is vitally interested in such incidents and prepares an annual report on alleged anti-Muslim hate crimes. Certainly CAIR was initially interested: the CAIR-Cincinnati office even prepared and issued the mosque's initial press release on the "attack."

Also noteworthy is that Chris Rodda, the Daily Kos blogger who blamed Obsession and John McCain for this "hate crime," is now trying to walk back her story -- after the Dayton Daily News cast doubt on her report (after the Daily News itself walked back its coverage, much to Rodda's consternation).

Rodda built her libelous article on a third-hand report, from someone she admits wasn't at the mosque. But, hey, when you can score cheap points against conservatives, both against McCain a few weeks before the election and against the Clarion Fund at a time when CAIR was stoking the flames over the Obsession DVD, why not lie or at least exaggerate a little?

Finally, I'm told by my source for all this that the magic pepper spray can that was initially claimed to have been discovered several hundred yards from the mosque several days afterwards (and after police and fire personnel had already searched the area -- as the police report notes), but was later admitted to have come from inside the mosque, was conveniently found by the mosque treasurer. My source says that it seems clear that either the boy who was questioned or the girl who claimed to be the victim got into someone's purse inside the mosque, discovered a key chain pepper spray, and started playing with it (not knowing what it was) when it discharged. He says that it is highly doubtful that any charges will be filed or anything further will be said -- so as to protect the guilty (and to prevent police receiving the full wrath of CAIR for embarrassing anyone at the mosque for their fraud).

And for all of the innocent black males in the area of the mosque who were falsely placed under suspicion, along with the Clarion Fund, no apology will be forthcoming.

UPDATE: The estimable Aziz Poonawalla, an associate of the raving psychotic blogger Dean Esmay, was among those who rushed to blame Obsession and "Islamophobia" for this "hate crime." Subsequently he termed the discovery that the pepper spray was found inside, rather than outside, the mosque a "strange twist" -- which is an egg-on-the-face euphemism for "the attack was a hoax." But has Aziz Poonawalla issued a retraction and an apology? What do you think?

Posted at 6:39 AM | Comments (19)

Chesler: The FBI was right to drop designation of Said murders as "honor killing"

How many more girls must die as they did?

Over at Pajamas Media, in "The FBI Was Right. Why They Stopped Calling Yaser Said an Honor Killer," Phyllis Chesler says that the FBI's decision to stop calling the murders of Amina and Sarah Said by their father "honor killings" is tactical, not politically correct:

So here’s what I think: If indeed Yaser Abdul Said is still hiding in the United States–and is being sheltered by other Muslims–imagine it from their point of view. If they are strangers, not blood relatives, would they be more or less likely to turn him in if they learned he was a common murderer or if they learned that the FBI was pursuing him because he was a Muslim? Or a Muslim honor killer? Since the FBI is clearly interested in capturing him, perhaps they concluded that advertising Said as an honor killer might limit their chances of success.
Some Muslims view honor killings as the only way a family can cleanse itself from having been dishonored. To them, an honor killer might be seen as a hero. Thus, designating Said as an honor killer might endear them to him and lead to his being safely sheltered for a longer period of time. Other Muslims may disapprove of honor killings entirely but might also see the designation as a way in which Western culture might choose to unfairly stigmatize all Muslims. Thus, the more moderate Muslims might also be less inclined to “get involved” in turning another Muslim in.

There is no doubt in my mind: Said did honor kill his two young and vivacious daughters. But, I understand why the FBI might have changed the wording on the poster.

I sure hope she's right. On the other side of the balance is the fact that, as Chesler notes, CAIR was livid over the "honor killing" designation -- and some sectors of the FBI have been extremely solicitous of CAIR over the years.

Ultimately, whether or not the FBI terms this an "honor killing," the primary question is this: will American law enforcement officials ever begin to call upon the Muslim leadership in America to go beyond their bland affirmations that this practice has nothing to do with Islam, and actually do something about it? It is absolutely true that honor killing takes place in other cultural contexts. It is also true that the Qur'an says nothing about it. But it also cannot be denied that the stipulation in Islamic law that a parent who murders his or her child is exempt from penalty (cf. 'Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2) creates a legal and cultural atmosphere in which this sort of thing is tolerated. And our own multiculturalist blinders render officials too ignorant and/or bemused to confront this.

Posted at 6:02 AM | Comments (42)

Colombia: Authorities break up drug ring with links to Hizballah

More on Hizballah's activities across South and Central America. "Colombia says smashes drug ring with Hezbollah ties," from Reuters, October 22:

BOGOTA - Colombian authorities said on Tuesday they broke up a drug and money-laundering ring in an international operation that included the capture of three people suspected of shipping funds to Hezbollah guerrillas.

More than 100 suspects were arrested in Colombia and overseas on charges they trafficked drugs and laundered cash for Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel and for outlawed paramilitaries in a network that stretched from South America to Asia, the attorney's general office said.

"The criminal organization used routes through Venezuela, Panama, Guatemala, Middle East and Europe, bringing in cash from the sale of these substances," the statement said.

Among those arrested in Colombia were three people suspected of coordinating drug smuggling to send some of their profits to groups such as Hezbollah, the office said.

Those suspects -- Chekry Mahmoud Harb, Ali Mohamad Abdul Rahim and Zacaria Hussein Harb -- used front companies to send drug cash overseas, it said without providing further details.

Colombia, a key U.S. ally, remains the world's No. 1 cocaine producer, although over the last seven years Washington has sent more than $5 billion in aid that has helped weaken the country's FARC rebels and reduce violence from its conflict.

Washington has often complained that Iran-backed Hezbollah and other Islamic groups that it considers terrorist organizations are active in Arab communities in South American countries such as Brazil and Venezuela.

Posted at 12:02 AM | Comments (5)

October 22, 2008

Iran mulling pre-emptive strike against Israel

And the outcome of the presidential election will help them make up their mind. "Top Iran officials recommend preemptive strike against Israel," by Barak Ravid for Haaretz, October 22 (thanks to James):

Senior Tehran officials are recommending a preemptive strike against Israel to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear reactors, a senior Islamic Republic official told foreign diplomats two weeks ago in London.
The official, Dr. Seyed G. Safavi, said recent threats by Israeli authorities strengthened this position, but that as of yet, a preemptive strike has not been integrated into Iranian policy.

Safavi is head of the Research Institute of Strategic Studies in Tehran, and an adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The institute is directly affiliated with Khamenei's office and with the Revolutionary Guards, and advises both on foreign policy issues.

Safavi is also the brother of Yahya Rahim Safavi, who was the head of the Revolutionary Guards until a year ago and now is an adviser to Khamenei, and holds significant influence on security matters in the Iranian government....

Safavi said a small, experienced group of officials is lobbying for a preemptive strike against Israel. "The recent Israeli declarations and harsh rhetoric on a strike against Iran put ammunition in these individuals' hands," he said.

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz said in June that Israel would be forced to strike the Iranian nuclear reactor if Tehran continues to pursue its uranium enrichment program.

Safavi said Tehran recently drafted a new policy for responding to an Israeli or American attack on its nuclear facilities. While the previous policy called for attacks against Israel and American interests in the Middle East and beyond, the new policy is to target Israel alone.

He added that many Revolutionary Guard leaders want to respond to a U.S. attack on Iranian soil by striking Israel, as they believe Israel would be partner to any U.S. action.

Safavi said that Iran's nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes only, and that Khamenei recently released a fatwa against the use of weapons of mass destruction, though the contents of that religious ruling have not yet been publicized.

Regarding dialogue with the United States and the West, Safavi said Iran's decision would be influenced by the results of the U.S. presidential elections next month, as well as by the Iranian presidential elections in June and the economic situation in the Islamic Republic.

Safavi also said that a victory by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would pave the way for dialogue with Washington, while a John McCain presidency would bolster Iran's extreme right, which opposes dialogue. If conditions are favorable following the U.S. election, he said, Iran could draw back from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declaration that "the nuclear case is closed," and put it back on the agenda.

Safavi said he believed that U.S. sanctions on Iran have run their course, and that there would be no point in strengthening them. Tehran would therefore demand "firm and significant" U.S. measures in return for stopping uranium enrichment. He also said Ahmadinejad is not guaranteed victory in the June 2009 elections, particularly given the dire economic situation in Iran. Still, Iranian experts believe his only real competition is former president Mohammad Khatami, who has not yet joined the race....

Posted at 5:35 PM | Comments (38)

Al-Qaeda's Internet woes

More on this story. "Al-Qaeda websites 'hit by Western cyber attacks,'" from the Telegraph, October 22:

Three al-Qaeda propaganda websites have closed down after reportedly coming under cyber-attack from Western intelligence agencies.
The al-Ekhlas, al-Buraq and al-Firdaws websites, all linked to al-Fajr the propaganda wing of al-Qaeda, have been out of action since September this year, but al-Fajr denied the sites had "fallen into the hands of the enemy".

And you know, al-Fajr is always open and honest, especially with infidels.

The websites were due to broadcast videos celebrating the September 11 attacks, but have blamed technical problems for their silence, the Guardian reports.

The sites, which users access with a password, are closely monitored by intelligence agencies and academics studying al-Qaeda movements.

Suspicions of a deliberate campaign of disruption have been fuelled by the fact that a fourth website, al-Hesbah, continues to operate.

Several experts suggest al-Hesbah may be being used by Saudi intelligence to monitor and entrap jihadi militants.

The sites routinely post video clips of "martyrdom operations", such as suicide bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, plus statements purportedly from Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Joint Anglo-US cyber-attacks have been rumoured but neither government will confirm involvement. UK security officials have spoken of an "aggressive" new effort to counter al-Qaida internet propaganda.

William McCants, a consultant at West Point military academy, New York, who runs the Jihadica.com website said: "I think it's probably being orchestrated by several governments and it would have to be on the black operations [illegal but deniable] side," McCants said.

"Whoever is doing this knows what they are doing. They are being surgically precise."

"I think the Americans are behind this," said Egyptian security analyst Dia Rashwan. "I believe there has been a decision by the US to close down these internet forums as part of their strategy of defeating al-Qaida and to stop it getting attention in the Arab world."

Posted at 12:35 PM | Comments (24)

Spain (Andalus) remains Al-Qaeda target requiring "cleansing"

So much for the notion that political concessions -- such as withdrawing from Iraq -- would make Spain safe from al-Qaedist terror strikes. A month after the Madrid bombings, the newly elected Socialist government withdrew Spanish forces from Iraq, adding "The war [in Iraq] has been a disaster [and] the occupation continues to be a disaster. It has only generated violence." Bin Laden later hailed this move as a "positive initiative," adding his famous line "reciprocal treatment is part of justice," implying that, now that Spain has stopped "oppressing" Muslims, they are no longer a target. Apparently that's no the case; after all, al-Andalus is still part of the umma and needs "cleansing."

Spain remains Al-Qaeda target: report," from the AFP, October 20:

MADRID - Spain’s remains a target for Al-Qaeda four years after the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people, the intelligence service said in a report quoted by a Spanish newspaper Monday.

“The counter-terrorist activities by the state security forces since the March 11, 2004 attacks shows that Spain remains a target of the Al-Qaeda network and its allies as well as a source of human resources,” the intelligence service said in a report, a copy of which was seen by the El Pais daily.

“Al-Qaeda has not lost sight of the global jihad and, in exchanges with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), it has told them to quickly attack local targets and reminds them that their real goal is to cross into Al Andalus,” it said.

Al Andalus is the Arabic name for the parts of the Iberian peninsula that were under Muslim, or Moorish, control for almost 800 years until the late 15th century.

The GSPC last year changed its name to Al-Qaeda’s Branch in the Islamic Maghreb.

In September 2007, Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Al Andalus to be restored to the Islamic world, saying the first step needs to be the “cleansing’ of Spaniards and French from the Maghreb.

The Al-Qaeda inspired bombings on four packed commuter trains on March 11, 2004 killed 191 people and wounded hundreds of others.

Spanish courts last year ordered 21 people jailed for life over the attacks. Four have since been acquitted after appeals.

Spanish police last week arrested 12 north Africans suspected of links to the bombings.

Posted at 11:57 AM | Comments (10)

Yet another "al-Qaeda leader" killed, prior to detonating himself

Another one bites the dust. For a small, shadowy organization, al-Qaeda certainly has many "leaders." In the last two weeks, the media has reported the killing of any number of al-Qaeda leaders in various Muslim countries.

"Saudi leader of Al Qaeda killed in Iraq," from Al-Sumaria, October 20:

Defense Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Mohammed Al Askari reported that a special force killed on Sunday a Saudi leader of Al Qaeda called Abu Ubaida and his Iraqi assistant in a crackdown operation in Fatimiyat region in north eastern Baghdad. Al Askari noted that Abu Ubaida wearing an explosives belt was killed before he was able to detonate himself.

In a separate incident, two citizens were killed and tens others wounded including two policemen in a car bomb explosion near a fuel station in Al Zaafaraniya region.
Hours after the first explosion, a second explosion detonated in the same region in the crowded Al Kubaisi market wounding seven citizens. In Daquq District, a member of Kurdish Asayesh security forces was killed in an explosion targeting his car as he was heading to work.

Moreover, awakening forces in Samarra uncovered a mass grave including remains of 11 people from the city residents who were kidnapped by Al Qaeda last Ramadan.

Posted at 11:48 AM | Comments (7)

"White boy" terror suspect claims to have "fooled" al-Qaeda

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, death to you

So now, along with the I-was-only-kidding line of defense used by jihadis and their lawyers, we can add "I-was-only-exploiting-al-Qaeda." Jihad-Jack Update.

"Terror suspect Jack Thomas fooled al-Qaeda, trial told," from the Australian, October 20:

JACK Thomas deceived al-Qaeda by accepting money from the terrorist organisation while not intending to carry out an offer of "work", a court has been told.

Crown prosecutor Nicholas Robinson SC said Mr Thomas was not naive as he described himself, but calculating.

"He was the one who used the term naive, but look at what he did,'' Mr Robinson told the court in his closing address today.

"He took tickets and money from (Khaled) bin Attash who was clearly a member of al-Qaeda ... and he took them intending not to work.

"He deceived al-Qaeda.''

Mr Thomas, 35, is on trial in the Victorian Supreme Court for receiving funds from a terrorist organisation and possessing a falsified passport.

The Crown alleges the Melbourne man accepted $US3500 ($5053) and a plane ticket to Australia from al-Qaeda operative, Khaled bin Attash, in Pakistan between November 2002 and January 2003.

During that period, Bin Attash approached Mr Thomas claiming to have a message from Osama bin Laden that the terrorist leader wanted a "white boy'' to work for him in Australia, and that he, bin Attash, could offer $US10,000 ($14,438) immediately to anyone willing to carry out an attack.

Mr Thomas travelled to Afghanistan in March 2001, originally with his wife and child, to train with the Taliban to fight in the civil war.

He ended up in an al-Qaeda camp but says he didn't know it was run by the terrorist group until he saw Osama bin Laden at the camp for the first time, before September 11.

His barrister, Jim Kennan SC, said Thomas was certainly naive because he travelled to Afghanistan in the belief he could help stop the civil war.

"If that isn't the height of naivety, what is?'' Mr Kennan told the court.

"We say it's the height of naivety.''

Mr Kennan said the proposition by the Crown that Thomas defrauded al-Qaeda showed what a "thin and desperate Crown case this is.

"That's really ... a very desperate interpretation of that evidence,'' he said.

Mr Kennan argued there was no evidence before the jury to suggest bin Attash was a member of al-Qaeda.

He said the money and ticket were organised by Pakistani well-wishers, with whom Attash was involved.

The case before Justice Elizabeth Curtain, is continuing.

Posted at 11:27 AM | Comments (7)

Pakistan: Al-Qaeda #4 killed

As we all celebrate this minor victory (it seems almost weekly now that an "al-Qaeda #" from country X is slain) we should also ponder this far more reaching question: will the slaying of individual terrorists -- be they Zawahiri or bin Laden -- have any real effects on the long term goals of the jihad? Will it eliminate the theological mandate of jihad and the division of the world into two perpetually warring halves -- Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb? Killing them off one by one is of course a very good thing. But let's always keep in mind the differences between symptom (terrorist) and cause (ideology).

"Top Al-Qaeda operative believed killed in Pakistan," from the Regional Times, October 20:

ISLAMABAD: A missile attack from a remotely piloted US aircraft is believed to have killed a senior member of Al Qaeda in South Waziristan, a former member of a militant group in the region said. The operative, Khalid Habib, an Egyptian who was chief of operations in Pakistan’s tribal region, was described by the CIA as the fourth-ranking person in the Qaeda hierarchy.

Posted at 11:14 AM | Comments (15)

Indonesian police arrest 5 in al-Qaeda-linked plot against Jakarta fuel depot

Striving for spectacle and economic impact, along with loss of life. "Indonesian police arrest 5 over fuel depot 'plot'," from CNN, October 22:

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Police in Indonesia arrested five suspected militants Tuesday who they said were planning to attack a major fuel depot in Jakarta.

Brigadier General of Police Sulistyo Ishak said a raid on a house in north Jakarta also yielded a stash of explosives and weapons. Investigators found 21 bullets, 6.6 lbs. (3 kgs) of explosives, PVC pipes and bomb-making manuals, he said.

The suspected militants are believed to have ties to the al Qaeda-linked terror network, Jemaah Islamiyah, which aims to create a Muslim "superstate" across much of southeast Asia.

Authorities blame Jemaah Islamiyah for the Bali nightclub bombings of 2002, which killed more than 200 mostly Western tourists.

Investigators also suspect the group in subsequent attacks on the Australian Embassy and J.W. Marriott hotel, both in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

The house that police raided was rented under the name of one of the suspects, Wahyu Ramadhan. Authorities accuse him of being involved in violence in Poso, on Indonesia's eastern Sulawesi island.

Fighting between Christians and Muslims in the region killed more than 1,000 people in the late 1990s. Clashes still break out periodically and sometimes turn deadly.

Police have accused Jemaah Islamiyah of sending armed militants to Poso.

Posted at 9:42 AM | Comments (3)

Spencer: The Hate Crimes Racket

In Human Events today I discuss two recent anti-Muslim hate crimes -- and what really happened:

Students at Illinois’s Elmhurst College can rest easy: an arrest was finally made last Thursday in the alarming case of Safia Jilani, a Muslim Elmhurst student who told police two weeks ago that a masked man hit her on the head with a gun in a campus restroom -- and that on the mirror was written the blood-chilling words, “Kill the Muslims.”
When Jilani originally reported this incident, college officials acted quickly, locking down the campus for a thoroughgoing police search. Hundreds of students out of the 3,300-member student body held a rally protesting the “hate crime,” and campus police offered Muslim students free rides and escorts around campus.

But now the crisis is over: the culprit has been arrested and charged with a felony -- and turns out to have been…Safia Jilani. After investigating the incident all week, police announced Friday that no one had hit Jilani on the head at all, and charged her with filing a false police report -- a felony that could get her three years in prison.

Police have also been investigating a late September incident the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, Ohio. A ten-year-old girl told police that while a crowd was inside the mosque to celebrate Ramadan, two men sprayed something from a spray can into a basement window. The girl herself was sprayed in the face, which she said made her face burn and made her feel sick to her stomach. Others soon began coughing and fled the building. Police and fire personnel along with hazardous materials teams came to the mosque to investigate.
Whose fault was this? Some inside the mosque and elsewhere were convinced that the attack was related to the anti-jihad Obsession DVD, which a non-profit organization, the Clarion Fund, has been bundling with newspapers nationwide. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others charged that the distribution of Obsession was a conservative attempt to whip up fears of terrorism and thereby elect John McCain. CAIR even asked the Federal Elections Commission to investigate.

Obsession had been distributed in Dayton newspapers just before the incident at the Dayton mosque -- which in the eyes of the Left, meant that the man most to blame for this apparent hate crime was none other than John McCain. Chris Rodda, author of a book entitled Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History, wrote furiously at the Far-Left Daily Kos website: “John McCain has a moral obligation to publicly censure the Clarion Fund, the organization that produced Obsession and is distributing the DVDs; to denounce the inflammatory, anti-Muslim message of Obsession; and to do everything in his power to stop any further campaign activities by his supporters that have the potential to incite violence.”

But McCain didn’t, and it’s a good thing, because there was no hate crime at the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton. Said Dayton police chief Richard Biehl: “There was nothing left at the scene or anything that makes us believe this is a biased crime.” HAZMAT team coordinator Denny Bristow added: “We can test for about 130 to 140 chemicals, including pepper spray, and all our tests came back negative.” A can of pepper spray that initial reports said was found outside the mosque later turned out to have been found inside the mosque.

The Elmhurst and Dayton non-incidents were not the first anti-Muslim hate crimes to be completely fabricated. In 2005 Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha combed through CAIR’s annual report purporting to document a rise in hate attacks on Muslims in the United States, and found “a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion.” One example: “CAIR cites the July 9, 2004 case of apparent arson at a Muslim-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. But investigators quickly determined that Mirza Akram, the store’s operator, staged the arson to avoid meeting his scheduled payments and to collect on an insurance policy. Although Akram’s antics were long ago exposed as a fraud, CAIR continues to list this case as an anti-Muslim hate crime.”

Why fabricate hate crimes? In today’s politically correct environment, they mean political capital. They foster the impression that resistance to Islamic terrorism equals hatred of Muslims, and results in the victimization of innocent people. And there is one candidate into whose hands such an impression plays -- but it isn’t John McCain.

Posted at 5:12 AM | Comments (45)

Saudis indict jihadists who wage jihad against the Saudis, world fooled again

AP plumps openly for the mujahedin, and drops all pretense of the idea that jihad is a spiritual struggle: "There is a degree of public sympathy for Saudis who carry out jihad in occupied Muslim countries." But still there is no indignation, in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the Islamic world, over the proposition that jihad warfare against unbelievers, and their subjugation, is justified. These men have been indicted for waging jihad against the wrong people, not because the idea of waging jihad in a violent manner is itself wrong, or because jihad against unbelievers is wrong.

"Saudis indict 991 terrorism suspects," from Associated Press, October 22:

Saudi authorities have indicted 991 suspected militants for participating in terrorist attacks carried out over the past five years, the interior minister said yesterday.
The legal proceedings mark a big step in the country's fight against terrorism. Saudi Arabia has so far been reluctant to resort to trying suspects on terrorism charges that could result in death sentences until it can show the public that every effort has been made to give the defendants a chance to repent.

"The kingdom has been the target of an organised terrorist campaign linked to networks of strife and sedition overseas," said the interior minister, Prince Nayef, in a statement. "This campaign targeted the way of life, economy and principles of Saudi society and sought to create chaos.

"It has direct links to a deviant group that adopts the [mindset] of al-Qaida."

The 991 suspects, he said, have been responsible for more than 30 attacks in Saudi Arabia since May 2003, killing 164 people, including 74 security officials. A further 160 attacks have been foiled, he added. The statement did not specify the nationality of the suspects or whether all were in custody.

The Saudi government fears a public backlash against its crackdown if it takes overly harsh measures against those indicted, and wants to avoid accusations it was doing so to please the US.

There is a degree of public sympathy for Saudis who carry out jihad in occupied Muslim countries. Many of those who have returned from imprisonment in Guantánamo Bay or Iraq have been placed on rehabilitation programmes to encourage them to renounce terrorism.

Nayef said the militants' actions had damaged the reputation of Islam and charity work, "attaching the label of terrorism to Islam and Muslims"...

I thought it was only "Islamophobes" who did that.

Posted at 4:44 AM | Comments (9)

October 21, 2008

Denmark: Two jihadists found guilty of preparing attack

An update on this story. "Denmark: Two men found guilty of terror plot," from AdnKronos International, October 21:

Copenhagen, 21 Oct. (AKI) - A Danish citizen of Pakistani origin and an Afghani national were found guilty on Tuesday of preparing a terrorist attack after they were filmed mixing explosives.

Hammad Khuershid was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while Abdoulghani Tokhi was sentenced to seven years by a court in the town of Glostrup, just outside the capital of Copenhagen. Both are in their early 20s.

The men were arrested after an anti-terror raid that saw Danish agents filming them as they were carrying out a test blast. The explosives were reportedly the same as those used in the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people.

Both men claimed the explosives were going to be used for fireworks.

At the trial prosecutors alleged that Khuershid had ties to an Al-Qaeda operative but they were unsure whether the attack was going to take place in Denmark or abroad.

Investigators claimed to have found bomb-making manuals in the men's homes.

Tokhi has a residency permit to live legally in Denmark, but authorities said he would be deported after completing his sentence.

There have been several anti-terrorism raids, arrests of terrorism suspects and a terrorism trial in Denmark since 2005. That was the same year that the country attracted widespread condemnation from Muslims around the world after Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Denmark is also involved in the war in Afghanistan and maintains a small contingent of troops in Iraq.

Posted at 3:29 PM | Comments (13)

News flash from the UK: Jihad to end by 2038

The Islamic jihad as a program of Sharia expansionism began in the 7th century in Arabia. Today's jihadists consider themselves to be only the latest warriors in a 1,400-year-old struggle. But here is some good news from the UK: that 1,400-year-old struggle will end by 2038!

This will be a miracle of immense proportions: an ancient and deeply entrenched ideology that is aggressively asserting itself all over the globe today will -- with what is from a historical perspective an amazing suddenness -- evanesce and disappear utterly. And the most amazing part of this is that this ideology will disappear without even being challenged. Apparently no one has to confront the jihad ideology or Islamic supremacism as such for them to be defeated by 2038. All we have to do is continue "anti-terror" efforts, and the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims will take care of the rest.

What's that? Peaceful Muslims aren't confronting the spread of the jihad ideology now, so why should we assume that they will begin doing so, and indeed, defeat it within three decades? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe?

"MoD scientists 'deployed in UK,'" from the BBC, October 21 (thanks to Edward):

Scientists from Porton Down have been deployed in the UK a "number of times this year", the government's head of counter-terrorism has told MPs.
The lab mainly specialises in nuclear and biological warfare but the reason for the deployments is not known.

Brigadier Chip Chapman told a committee of MPs he could not go into details for national security reasons.

The Commons defence committee is probing the UK's level of readiness for a terrorist or other emergency.

Lord West said ministers did not know the location and capability of all deployable troops in the UK at any one time but he was confident they could find out "straight away" in the event of an emergency....

How reassuring!

Brigadier Chapman told MPs "immediate response" teams from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) had been deployed on a number of occasions in the past year.
"The number of occasions they have been used and the circumstances I can not go into in this forum," said Brig Chapman, director of counter-terrorism and UK operations at the ministry of defence.

The DSTL, which is based in Wiltshire, is the UK's leading biological and chemical defence research centre.

It also develops a range of other technologies for military and civilian use, including X-ray scanning equipment and armour.

On the broader question of whether the UK was prepared for a major incident, Lord West confessed he did not know how many hospital beds could be made available in the event of an emergency of the order of 10,000 deaths.

But he said the Department of Health "would know" the figures and plans would be coordinated by the government's emergency planning committee Cobra.

Radicalisation

The security minister also said progress was being made on preventing young people becoming "radicalised" but he said it was going to be a long process.

He said he accepted Britain's foreign policy was a "problem" for some young Muslims but the government was now "engaging" with them.

Imagine how surprised he will be when Britain changes its foreign policy to suit its Muslim population, and then discovers that Muslim "youth" are still being "radicalized." But no initiative is being made to address the jihad ideology as such. It's all about trying to "engage" with Muslims so as to accommodate Muslim "anger" over British foreign policy.

"This isn't going to change just like that. To stop this radicalisation and extremism is going to take - and I get into trouble for saying this - about 30 years, I think....

Posted at 12:13 PM | Comments (44)

Spencer interviews Geert Wilders, Part 6

I have been and will soon again be hurtling through the air in a tin can today, but my kindly video expert has sent me this sixth and last segment of my recent conversation with the great Geert Wilders, producer of Fitna. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 here, part 4 here, and part 5 here.

Posted at 12:07 PM | Comments (11)

U.K.: Five arrested in "counterterror" raids

No word on whether those arrested were disgruntled Methodists or something else. But there is the detail that "key community leaders in the relevant areas have been contacted."

"Five arrested under Terrorism Act," from The Press Association, October 21 (thanks to Alex):

Five men have been arrested under the Terrorism Act, police said.

The men, aged 29 to 36, were arrested on suspicion of being involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism, West Midlands Police said.

Officers swooped on five residential addresses in Birmingham at about 6am on Tuesday.

A further two business properties were also searched following a "long and complex investigation" by the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit.

A police spokeswoman said the arrests were not related to any immediate plot or threat to public safety.

Officers later confirmed that the arrests took place at five addresses in the Sparkhill, Ward End, Hodge Hill, Bordesley Green and Aston areas of Birmingham.

The police spokeswoman said: "The properties are now being searched.

"As part of the investigation, a further residential address in Stechford, Birmingham, and two business properties in central Birmingham and Kenilworth, Warwickshire, are also being searched."

Police are not currently seeking anyone else in relation to the arrests.

The spokeswoman added: "The families of the men are being supported by specially trained officers, and key community leaders in the relevant areas have been contacted."

Posted at 8:59 AM | Comments (14)

Raymond Ibrahim: Is Osama responsible for Obama?

Former counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke recently suggested that al Qaeda may be trying to influence the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections. After describing al Qaeda’s recent attacks in the Middle East (Yemen, Pakistan), Clarke stated that these strikes may have been primarily geared at aggrandizing al-Qaeda’s capabilities via the media.

He then concluded that “Even more likely is the possibility that al Qaeda would hope the [“media-amplified”] attack would benefit John McCain. Opinion polls, which, as noted above, al Qaeda reads closely, suggest that an attack would help McCain. Polls in Europe and the Middle East also suggest an overwhelming popular support there for Barack Obama. Al Qaeda would not like it if there were a popular American president again.”

Clarke does not, however, explain why it is that al-Qaeda eschews a “popular president” or what that even means. Nor does he explain why al-Qaeda would want McCain, of the two candidates, the one who has been more forthright about associating Islamic ideology with al-Qaeda.

Moreover, the recent attacks in Yemen and Pakistan reveal very little: Islamist organizations have been attacking “apostate” governments from the beginning, well before 9/11; there is no reason to tie these events to American elections and certainly not see them as benefiting McCain.

That said, there is plenty of evidence that al-Qaeda has long been interested in influencing the outcome of American elections. Their primary method is propaganda -- those many chastising al-Jazeera communiqués by Osama bin Laden and his Second Ayman Zawahiri that have become mainstays over the years. The most obvious example is when a long bin Laden video surfaced days before the 2004 presidential election (Bush and Kerry).

Then, bin Laden repeatedly portrayed the Bush party as war-mongering racists (Bin Laden once even managed to sneak in a remark about the treatment of the American natives at the hands of the white man, and Malcolm X-quoting Zawahiri the treatment of his “black brothers” in America). Bin Laden further depicted Bush Sr as a wanna-be “monarch,” who established his sons on “thrones,” and was responsible for “the mass slaughter of [Muslim] children.”

Bush Jr was portrayed as being “blinded by the black-gold [oil],” which he killed “millions of children in Iraq” for. Bin Laden even managed to mock Bush for the now infamous anecdote -- thanks to Michael Moore -- concerning the president reading a goat-story to children when the strikes of 9/11 commenced.

Bin Laden concluded by saying that peace and security do not revolve around presidential candidates, but are rather in the hands of the people. But he also knew that the people’s will is made manifest in the president they elect. In other words, by mercilessly bashing Bush, his father, and his party, with nary a word about Kerry, he simultaneously implied that, if anyone, only the latter has a chance of ushering in peace and security.

More interestingly, in this same pre-2004 election harangue, bin Laden voiced no complaints or grievances concerning the eight year interval separating the father from the son -- the “Clinton era” -- further fueling the notion that the liberal clintonesque Democrats, ever celebrating diversity, tolerance, and equality, will set the world to right.

At any rate, it is important to note that bin Laden’s pre-2004 election message offered nothing new, simply that long list of endless, ever-morphing grievances, with the usual assertion that if only Americans would vote for someone who ameliorates these grievances -- not another “war mongerer” -- the war would end.

It should be clear by now (see the AQ documents in The Al Qaeda Reader) that the “grievance-mantra” is simply a smokescreen for a much more existential animus that has little to do with America’s temporal actions. In other words, all foreign policy aside, bin Laden has made it perfectly clear that nothing less than submission to Islam, what Islamic law demands, will ever guarantee peace between the West and al-Qaedist radicals. Al-Qaeda has repeatedly stated this in their clandestine writings to Muslims.

Even so, being utterly incapable of understanding theological doctrines and motivations, let alone apparently even appreciating textual evidence, the Left seems to still be convinced that the root problem is foreign policy, and that the solution is appeasement and concessions. Ex-Cia analyst Michael Scheuer, for instance, not only willfully chooses to ignore the blatant evidence contained in The Al Qaeda Reader concerning that organization’s ultimate motivations, but he dismisses it, that is, their own words, as a “neo-con” ploy -- perpetrated by yours truly -- while continuing to characterize bin Laden as, at once, Robin Hood, St. Francis of Assisi, and Thomas Jefferson.

Al-Qaeda and Islamists in general know and rely on such unbridled Western liberal guilt. Indeed, it is not implausible to say that, based on history -- from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton -- al-Qaeda has reasoned that it is always best to have a Democrat in office, someone who, while not taking radical Islam seriously, that is, not appreciating its metaphysical components, will try to appease by making “physical” concessions. And above all, someone who will not wage an offensive war against the terrorists, thereby giving al-Qaeda types worldwide that one thing they desperately need: Time. Time to regroup; time for the Western economy to falter (“We will bleed you like we did Russia”); time for Muslim nations to grow stronger, possibly acquiring nukes. Time to resurrect the caliphate.

Based on all this, what can one expect from al-Qaeda in regard to the upcoming presidential elections?

For starters, it must be understood that al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack, followed by their many grievance-filled communiqués -- which have only received more credence by the liberal Left’s assent -- have already taken a toll on American society, mostly by making widespread the notion that “more of the same,” that is, another Republican WASP president, will only lead to more of the same strife and terrorism. Hence that profound Democrat slogan: “Change.”

This may be precisely what al-Qaeda hoped for with the 9/11 strikes -- to convince Americans that Muslims are really angry, and to reinforce this fact with a barrage of indoctrinating communiqués insisting that this anger is entirely related to US foreign policy. Thus the need for “change,” the need to break away from Bush and his party, a popular if unconscious position that an increasing number of Americans from across the political divide seem to be taking. And while al-Qaeda may have planted this seed, the Left has run with it.

Enter Barack Hussein Obama, the ultimate representation of change, literally and figuratively: not only is he a liberal Democrat (i.e., “tolerant,” “peace-minded,” even “enlightened”); he is black (i.e., understands what it means to be a minority, to be the “other”); and his name is Barack Hussein Obama (i.e., as opposed to yet another George or John -- very Christian names -- he has a decidedly Arab/Muslim name that will surely endear Muslims to America). Who better to make peace with the rest of the, especially Muslim, world? Who better to make them like us?

This notion was most recently articulated by Jesse Jackson who “promised ‘fundamental changes’ in US foreign policy [if Obama wins], saying America must ‘heal wounds’ it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the ‘arrogance of the Bush administration.’’’ Concluded Jackson: “Barack is determined to repair our relations with the world of Islam and Muslims. Thanks to his background and ecumenical approach, he knows how Muslims feel while remaining committed to his own faith.”

Lest anyone assume that al-Qaeda is not sophisticated enough to connive such a feat of reverse psychology to their benefit, the Madrid bombings of 2004 should be recalled: three days before Spain’s general elections, explosions in Madrid commuter trains planted by al-Qaeda operatives killed 191 people and injured approximately 1,460.Three days later, Jose Zapatero and his ultra-liberal Socialist party won the election. There is good reason to believe that the Socialist party received a big boost in votes precisely because of the Madrid bombings, as many people were convinced the attack came in response to their involvement in Iraq.

The very day after winning the elections, Zapatero promised to withdraw Spain’s 1,300 troops from Iraq, saying, “The war [in Iraq] has been a disaster [and] the occupation continues to be a disaster. It has only generated violence.” One month later the last of Spain’s troops left Iraq. Bin laden must have been delighted, evinced by the fact that he often indicated this Spanish response as a step in the right direction. More telling is the fact that the first question Jamal Zougam (one of the arrested suspects of the Madrid bombings) asked upon arriving at the Courthouse on 15 March 2004: "Who won the election?' He must've been pleased to know that the terrorist attack achieved the desired result.

Yet while bin Laden’s 2004 “political campaigning” worked in Spain, it failed in the US. (After all, Kerry -- not to mention Obama’s running mates -- were all white.) Will al-Qaeda try again to influence this year’s elections? It may well have reasoned that it’s not necessary; the leftist media has already done the job.

Bottom line: without 9/11, the meteoric rise of Senator Obama would have been inconceivable. In this sense, then, Osama paved the way for Obama.

Posted at 6:13 AM | Comments (31)

Iran: We busted a pigeon spy ring

The mastermind

Hot on the heels of last year's Spy Squirrel bust comes this victory for counter-espionage. "Iran arrests pigeons 'spying' on nuclear site," from the Telegraph, October 20:

One of the pigeons was caught near a rose water production plant in the city of Kashan in Isfahan province, the Etemad Melli newspaper reported. It said that some metal rings and "invisible" strings were attached to the bird, suggesting that it might have been somehow communicating what it had seen with the equipment it was carrying.

"Early this month, a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring, with invisible strings," a source told the newspaper.

The source gave no further description of the pigeons, nor what their fate might be.

Natanz is home to Iran's heavily-bunkered underground uranium enrichment plant, which is also not far from Kashan.

The activity at Iran's controversial uranium enrichment facility is the focus of Iran's five-year standoff with the West, which fears it aims to develop nuclear weapons. The Tehran government insists its programme is intended to generate power for civilian use only.

Last year, Iran issued a formal protest over the use of espionage by the United States to produce a key intelligence report on the country's controversial nuclear programme.

It is also highly suspicious of Israel, whose extensive intelligence activities are not known to include the use of pigeons.

Posted at 12:03 AM | Comments (48)

October 20, 2008

Fort Dix jihadist: "They are the ones, we are going to put bullets in their heads, Allah willing."

Yet he denies terrorism charges. At any rate, forget about the "inconvenience" of metal detectors in the airport; thanks to these jihadists, now playing paintball and hanging out around donut stores may soon be deemed suspicious activities. Fort Dix Jihad Update.

"Trial starts for Muslims accused of plotting 'jihad-inspired' attack on US base," by Tom Leonard for the Telegraph, October 20:

Five Muslim men amassed an arsenal of machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades for an al-Qaeda-inspired attack on a US army base, a court heard yesterday.

The suspects may have trained by playing paintball but the alleged plot to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey has been presented by the US government as one of the most serious examples of home-grown terrorism since the September 11 attacks.

The five men, all born outside the US but resident in the country, were charged in May 2007 with planning but not executing the attack on the base, which trains troops for deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the start of their trial yesterday, prosecutors said the defendants were inspired by "jihad".

"Their motive was to defend Islam. Their inspiration was al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Their intent was to kill members of the United States armed services," said William Fitzpatrick, prosecuting.

The government alleges that in 2006 and 2007 the men turned paintball games into terrorist training sessions and met at places like Dunkin' Donuts to discuss killing soldiers on the army installation in New Jersey.

The jury was told it would see jihadist videos that the defendants watched and would learn many details of the alleged plot, including claims that one of the men went on reconnaissance missions at Fort Dix and other military installations.

The men, all aged in their 20s, have denied terrorism charges. They include three Albanian-born brothers, illegal immigrants who ran a roofing business in New Jersey.

The others are a Jordanian-born taxi driver and a Turkish-born convenience store assistant.

Their lawyers are expected to question the role of two paid government informants who made hundreds of hours of secret recordings in the case.

Addressing such potential claims, Mr Fitzpatrick said the FBI had to find people who would have credibility with aspiring terrorists.

One of the informants was interested in citizenship and the other was interested in money, he said.

The court heard that conversations recorded by the FBI included one in which Mohamad Shnewer, the Jordanian-born defendant, referred to being tailed by a car.

Quoting Shnewer in the recording, Mr Fitzpatrick said: "They are the ones, we are going to put bullets in their heads, God willing."

A sixth man who admitted supplying firearms to the group was jailed for 20 months in March.

Posted at 7:56 PM | Comments (14)

Christian extremists kill Muslim aid worker -- no, wait...

I'm in an airport now, on my way to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I'm speaking tonight to resume my college tour that took me to Penn State and the Universities of Wisconsin in Madison and Milwaukee last week. One of the most common questions I get on college campuses involves moral equivalence -- and really, students, if any of you are reading this, why not throw out the canned talking points (who is feeding them to you, anyway?) and ask some real questions? You have no idea how often I get asked the same thing. Anyway, one of you will probably ask me about "Christian extremists" tonight. My answer is summed up by stories like these. My tongue-in-cheek headline is meant to illustrate a serious point: we never see stories like this in reverse. Now, why is that?

"Taliban gunmen kill Christian aid worker in Kabul," by Amir Shah for Associated Press, October 20 (thanks to all who sent this in):

KABUL, Afghanistan – Taliban gunmen killed a Christian aid worker in Kabul as she was walking to work on Monday, and the militant group said it targeted the woman because she was spreading her religion.
The dual South African-British national, who worked with handicapped Afghans, was shot to death by gunmen who drove by on a motorbike in western Kabul, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary.

The Taliban claimed responsibility.

"This woman came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to the people of Afghanistan," militant spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press. "Our (leaders) issued a decree to kill this woman. This morning our people killed her in Kabul."...

Islamic law, of course, forbids Christians to proselytize among Muslims. They should rather adopt a posture of "willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Qur'an 9:29).

Posted at 11:02 AM | Comments (35)

Fitzgerald: Colin Powell and Jihad: A dereliction of duty

In evaluating the threat of Islam and Jihad, for the colin-powells of this world what counts is the flimsiest of anecdotal evidence. He takes the sentimentalism of our depraved politics at face value: "and then there is Mary, who lives in Sioux City, Iowa and makes $13.42 an hour." In this he recalls Bush at one of his State-of-the-Union farces, pointing to an Iraqi woman, who had been deliberately seated next to the parents of a Marine killed in Iraq. He asks her to stand up and acknowledge the applause of the crowd, applause presumably due her because she is "an Iraqi woman" who has not tried to kill Americans, and may even support what they are doing, or think they are doing, in Iraq -- which makes her, of course, a hero.

In an interview yesterday, Powell reached new heights or depths (they are the same in this case) of anecdotal absurdity. He offered up this:

"I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as 'Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well the correct answer is 'He is not a Muslim, he's a Christian, he's always been a Christian.' But the really right answer is 'What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?' The answer is 'No. That's not America.' Is there something wrong with some 7-year old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
"I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo-essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in you can see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American, he was born in New Jersey, he was 14 at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he can go serve his counrty and he gave his life."

So, on the basis of having seen a picture of a Muslim mother of a Muslim son who had been killed in Iraq, Colin Powell uses his (apparent) prestige to tell the interviewer and all of America, that there is nothing wrong with Islam, nothing wrong with the ideology of Islam, nothing to be concerned about in Sharia supremacism, nothing wrong with the idea of a Muslim president. His irresponsibility astounds.

He once held high office. And though he never demonstrated any particular gifts, he acquired -- possibly because there had to be something good about him to focus on -- the reputation for "integrity." Apparently the gift to his wife of a Jaguar from Prince Bandar, his tennis partner, who was recently revealed in Great Britain to have been the recipient of up to $2 billion in kickbacks from a British aerospace company, and who was famous for distributing his largesse to powerful people in Washington, did nothing to modify this reputation for "integrity." It would be useful to know, by the way, whether Colin Powell has been on the Arab lecture-circuit, the way so many others among our high and mighty have been, picking up, for a single lecture, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, even a million dollars (if you are Bill Clinton, or the first George Bush). But palling around with an obvious fixer and influence-peddler who worked on behalf of a sinister ruling family of a most sinister country, Saudi Arabia, befriending him, becoming his tennis-partner, says a lot about Colin Powell's judgment -- none of it good.

But in his offhand remarks In Defense Of Islam -- remarks based on his having seen a photograph of a mother mourning her son -- demonstrate what is so wrong with so many of our high and mighty, who presume to instruct and protect us. What does that photograph tell us? It tells us nothing at all about what Islam inculcates. Unless Colin Powell has studied the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, unless he has read the Qur'anic commentators, and such influential people at present as Qaradawi and Tantawi, he knows nothing about Islam, and has a duty not to make pronouncements as if he does. The dead soldier was, it appears, one of a very few Muslims who joined up. Indeed, there have been widespread reports of how the handful of Muslim (not Black Muslim) soldiers in the American and British armies have been subject to harassment and threats and even, in Great Britain, plots, by fellow Muslims who are outraged that they would behave in so un-Islamic a fashion, and dare to join an Infidel army to "fight against Muslims."

Is Colin Powell aware of how few Muslims are in the army, the Reserves, the National Guard? Is he aware of how few are like the soldier whose grieving mother at his gravestone apparently struck him so much that he felt it gave him the right to pontificate to the public at large about Islam? He only has that right when he learns enough about Islam. And there are no signs, none, that he has been any more diligent or responsible in fulfilling that task than Bush, or a hundred others, at the top of the Washington heap, who have squandered so many men, so much money, so much material, so much attention, so much time, in their insensate inability, or willful refusal, to learn about the ideology -- the politics, the geopolitics -- of the Total Belief-System of Islam.

What Powell did was a clear dereliction of duty. He baselessly, on the slimmest and most misleading of anecdotal evidence, jumped to sweeping conclusions about Islam and Jihad. A glimpse of a grave and a griever tugged at his heartstrings, but did not tell him anything about what the texts and tenets of Islam are all about, and why that particular grieving mother was, if she had no regrets about her son joining the American army, as little representative of Muslims as her son was. That photograph had no larger significance. It said nothing about the texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam. An intelligent observer would have understood this. A responsible observer, aware of his own ignorance of Islam, would never have dared to draw a conclusion, and impose that conclusion, on a presumably naive, and in some cases far too respectful, audience.

Of course Powell is behaving just like those who sentimentalize everything, reducing issues to this or that "real life" individual who may, or may not, be a useful representative or guide. But the error in this case was particularly egregious, and the irresponsibility flabbergasting, given the dangers the Infidels everywhere face. Does Powell know what is going on in southern Thailand? Does he think about the Biafra War, or southern Sudan? What does he know about the treatment of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh? What does he know about the spending of a hundred billion dollars by the Saudis alone to spread Islam all over the globe? What does he know about the present and certain future troubles, presented by no other group of immigrants, the result of the Muslim presence in Western Europe? He knows, I suspect, nothing of this. He's a big shot. He delivers lectures. He speaks slowly, and portentously. He has an air, some think (I don't) of "rectitude." We are expected to admire him, and to forgive this kind of negligence -- a failure to perform due diligence in investigating the matter of Islam -- that does damage to the ignorant and the simple-minded, who may not recognize anecdotal evidence, or be able to see how misleading it is.

Why should we forgive Colin Powell? What's so wonderful, what has ever been so wonderful, about him? And when will he give back that Jaguar to Prince Bandar?

Posted at 11:00 AM | Comments (52)

Afghan Muslim throws wife, daughter out of St. Louis window

There are crazy people who kill their families all the time. Christians, Hindus, Druids, whatever. Heck, most murders are committed by someone who knows the victims well.

Those things are indisputably true. It is also indisputably true that Islamic law is unique in giving divine sanction to certain kinds of abuse of women and children.

"Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great." -- Qur'an 4:34

And...

A manual of Islamic law certified by Al-Azhar as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).

In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

It is the job, or it should be the job, of Muslims in the U.S. who profess to embrace Western values and pluralism, and to reject Islamic supremacism, to teach against the attitudes that lead to this kind of thing. In any other context this would be axiomatic: womens' rights advocates in the West have fought long and hard against certain Western cultural attitudes that they have linked to the abuse of women. But when it comes to Islamic cultural attitudes that may lead to such abuse, and particularly to Islamic cultural attitudes that are linked to Islamic teaching, those same womens' rights advocates grow curiously silent.

Welcome to the New Multicultural Midwest: "Man throws wife, daughter out window in south St. Louis," from KMOV.com, October 18 (thanks to Paul):

St. Louis (KMOV) -- Police said late Saturday afternoon a 51-year-old man living with his family in a second floor apartment threw his wife and their 13-year-old daughter out the window.
The second floor apartment, located across the street from the Bevo Mill restaurant in south St. Louis, is nearly 17-feet above the sidewalk.

The woman and her daughter are in stable condition. A witness said the mother seemed almost in shock and the daughter was bleeding profusely.

The family is from Afghanistan and police said the father spoke little or no English. Other family members acted as interpreters....

Posted at 8:39 AM | Comments (48)

Taliban beheads bus passengers

Men traveling in civilian clothes to find work, although they claim that many of them were soldiers. In any case, the beheadings are sanctioned by Qur'an 47:4, which tells Muslims to "strike at the necks" of the unbelievers -- a verse routinely ignored by the televised pundits who have assured us repeatedly that the Qur'an says nothing about beheading.

"Taliban beheads bus passengers," from Agence France-Presse, October 20:

TALIBAN militants hijacked a bus in southern Afghanistan last week and killed as many as 40 passengers, authorities said, although only six beheaded bodies were recovered by today.
A spokesman for the insurgent group confirmed the militia had seized the passenger bus in Kandahar province and said 27 on board were killed because they were soldiers.

The defence ministry denied they were troops.

Kandahar provincial police chief Mutihullah Khan Qatah said there were 50 passengers aboard the bus when it was ambushed on Friday in Maiwand district about 50km east of Kandahar city.

"Among them 10 people were released after they were said to be civilians. The rest of them were killed," he said.

Six bodies were in the district clinic and about two dozen more were believed to be in a Taliban-controlled area, Mr Qatah said later.

"We are still trying to find them."

The police chief said the men, all apparently aged between 20 and 25 and in civilian clothes, were from Kabul and travelling to Iran to seek work in the neighbouring country. Hundreds of Afghans work illegally in Iran....

Posted at 4:55 AM | Comments (9)

U.S. military: Terms like "jihad" and "Islamist" needed

A refreshing departure from the desire on the part of the State Department and Homeland Security to avoid naming the enemy. "Military report says terms 'jihad,' 'Islamist' needed," by Bill Gertz for the Washington Times, October 20:

A U.S. military "Red Team" charged with challenging conventional thinking says that words like "jihad" and "Islamist" are needed in discussing 21st-century terrorism and that federal agencies that avoid the words soft-pedaled the link between religious extremism and violent acts.

"We must reject the notion that Islam and Arabic stand apart as bodies of knowledge that cannot be critiqued or discussed as elements of understanding our enemies in this conflict," said the internal report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

The report, "Freedom of Speech in Jihad Analysis: Debunking the Myth of Offensive Words," was written by unnamed civilian analysts and contractors for the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East and South Asia. It is thought to be the first official document to challenge those in the government who seek to downplay the role of Islam in inspiring some terrorist violence.

"The fact is our enemies cite the source of Islam as the foundation for their global jihad," the report said. "We are left with the responsibility of portraying our enemies in an honest and accurate fashion."

The report contributes to an ongoing debate within the U.S. government and military over the roots of terrorism, its relationship to Islam and how best to counter extremist ideology.

It cites two Bush administration documents that appear to minimize any link between radical Islam and terrorism.

A January 2008 memorandum from the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties stated that unidentified American Muslims recommended that the U.S. government avoid using the terms "jihadist," "Islamic terrorist," "Islamist" or "holy warrior," asserting that would create a "negative climate" and spawn acts of harassment and discrimination.

Dan Sutherland, Homeland Security officer for civil rights and civil liberties, said the document is not department policy.

"This was a compilation of recommendations and thoughts provided to us by some prominent American Muslim thinkers and never was intended to be Department of Homeland Security policy," he said in an interview.

"If a paper from another part of government says this doesn't make sense, that's a valid point. This memo is a thought piece meant to stir discussion."...

Read it all.

Posted at 12:08 AM | Comments (23)

October 19, 2008

Raymond Ibrahim: American Muslims' Priority Problems

All humans generally live according to some set of priorities. A person may make a priority of health, of pleasure, of study—of absolutely anything, really. But it is practically a law of nature that a person must make a priority of something. Even those who lead unstructured existences unconsciously live according to some set of unarticulated priorities, if only according to something so basic as the primal need for food, drink, and shelter.

For many people, religious practice — striving to obey God’s commandments — is a high priority, the highest, even. Yet this priority can come into conflict with the character of the society in which one lives. This is undoubtedly the case for devout Muslims who voluntarily relocate to Western nations. This invariably will compromise what many of them profess to be their ultimate priority: living in accordance to the divine laws of Allah (i.e., sharia — most of which is derived from the words and deeds of seventh-century Mohammad).

Some of these Muslims arrive in the West and refuse to compromise. Consider the following news stories:

A few Muslim cashiers working at Target stores in Minneapolis last year refused to scan customer purchases that may have contained pork products. Instead of swiping the products themselves — which is their job — they inconvenienced the customers or fellow employees by having them do it.

Muslim cab drivers have long been discriminating against customers carrying or suspected of carrying alcohol. Officials at the St. Paul International Airport estimate that, on average, alcohol-bearing customers seeking cab rides are denied 77 times per month. Some blind customers have also been turned down on account of their seeing-eye dogs.

Muslims in Seattle have requested (and been granted) regularly scheduled hours for their exclusive use of public pools; an all-Muslim-girls basketball team at a Chicago university demanded that men be barred from attending their matches; some 200 Muslim women signed a petition at a Michigan fitness center demanding separate workout times for men and women, or at least the erection of a screen divider between the men’s and women’s section (which was granted).

More recently, Muslims have been demanding special rights in regards to prayer time during Ramadan.

All of these issues revolve around the Muslim desire to live according to Allah’s laws — which, among other things, ban contact with pigs, dogs, and alcohol, insist on punctuality concerning prayer, and have rigid social guidelines, especially in regards to public interaction between the sexes. From a religious point of view, then, the anti-social behavior of these Muslims is logically consistent. They are doing only what their religion commands them to do. And their refusal to compromise on these points demonstrates that adherence to the commandments of Islam is a priority of the utmost importance to them.

However, if living in strict accordance to sharia is the first priority of some Muslims, one wonders: Why have they voluntarily come and immersed themselves in infidel countries that do not recognize sharia law and, indeed, allow many things that run counter to it, such as the selling and consumption of alcohol and pork and the liberal intermingling of the sexes?

Most of the Muslim countries that Muslims abandon for the West are much more conducive to the Muslim lifestyle and uphold many if not all aspects of sharia law. Yet, each year, thousands of supposedly “ultra-devout” Muslims forsake these countries and, of their own free will, come and surround themselves with wine-imbibing, swine-eating libertines. Why?

For the same reason that everyone else comes to the West — for the “good life.” They come in order to be prosperous and to enjoy opportunities, security, and equality the likes of which they could never have in their own countries (ruled quite often — no surprise — according to sharia). The vast majority of Muslims emigrating from the Islamic world do not leave due to necessity — say, oppression or starvation. No, they come to the infidel West solely to prosper materially.

But why are Muslims of the “ultra-pious” variety seeking after material comfort in the first place — especially when doing so will almost certainly undermine their professed desire to live strictly according to the sharia? Coming to live in a democratic country composed of some 300 million infidels is bound to affect any Muslim’s observance of sharia. These pious Muslims risk coming into daily contact with, not only pork, alcohol, and dogs, but all sorts of other defilements: flamboyant homosexuals, scantily clad women (who are often in positions of authority!), gamblers and usurers, to name a few. Are they not concerned that they, or especially their children, might become contaminated by the licentious and seductive practices of the infidel West?

If their priority is truly to strictly follow sharia, should they not remain in their Muslim countries of origin, which, if not as prosperous as the West, are definitely more conducive to the Muslim lifestyle?

Or, could it be that, despite all the ruckus (and subsequent headlines) made by these Muslims, living in accordance to Allah and his sharia is not their first priority, after all? At least, not to the degree that they would be unwilling to put this priority at substantial risk for the sake of living the good life, in a strictly secular and materialistic sense.

Furthermore, if common sense does not dissuade them from relocating to the West, the very sharia they claim to want to closely observe should. For instance, if pork and alcohol are condemned (e.g., Koran 5:4; 2:219), voluntarily living among infidels, idolaters, and atheists is looked on no better. The Koran declares: “O you who believe! Take neither Jews nor Christians as friends…whoever among you turns to them is one of them” (5:51).

There are countless verses and traditions, in fact, that make it clear that Muslims are to be in a constant state of animosity toward non-Muslims, waging war through tongue and teeth in order to spread Islam, and, when finally in a position of superiority, discriminating against those who refuse to convert (see, for example, Koran 3:28, 5:73, 5:17, 9:5, 9:25, etc).

When the Meccans persisted in their unbelief, refusing to accept the prophet-hood — and subsequent authority — of Mohammad, he finally abandoned his kinsfolk with these parting words, which some Muslims believe still define the proper relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims: “We [Muslims] disown you [non-Muslims] and what you worship besides Allah. We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us — until you believe in Allah alone!” (60:40).

So why are some Muslims making public scenes here in the United States over scanning bacon or transporting customers with sealed bottles of wine in their luggage while at the same time freely choosing to live with — and of course benefit from — those whom they are commanded to hate and wage war upon, or at the very least, disavow and be clean of?

Of course, there is always the "stealth jihad" to consider --- that is, the subtle, non-violent form of jihad that seeks to gradually turn the West into a part of the Abode of Islam. But that is another story for another time.

At any rate, “straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel” has long been a sure sign of hypocrisy. All Muslims who freely migrate to the West must understand that they can’t have it both ways — that they can’t have their cake and eat it, too. They must choose between either strictly upholding the laws and customs of 7th-century Arabia (in which case they should remain in their “sharia friendly” countries of origin) or, if prosperity and comfort is their first choice, let them relocate to the West, but prepare to assimilate — that is, compromise — to some degree. It’s a simple question of priorities.

Posted at 6:15 PM | Comments (215)

Former UK "intelligence" chief: 9/11 was no big deal

"So I think you can't write the war in Iraq out of history. If what we're looking at is groups of disaffected young men born in this country who turn to terrorism, then I think to ignore the effect of the war in Iraq is misleading." Of course! Why didn't anyone think of this before? If we just do what Muslims want, they won't fight against us!

"Response to 9/11 was 'huge overreaction' - ex-MI5 chief," by Richard Norton-Taylor for The Guardian, October 18 (thanks to Mark):

A former head of MI5 today describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction" and says the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism.
In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others.

"That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was as far as I was concerned another one," she says.

In common with Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who retired as MI5's director general last year, Rimington, who left 12 years ago, has already made it clear she abhorred "war on terror" rhetoric and the government's abandoned plans to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days without charge.

Today, she goes further by criticising politicians including Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, for trying to outbid each other in their opposition to terrorism and making national security a partisan issue.

It all began, she suggests, with September 11. "National security has become much more of a political issue than it ever was in my day," she says. "Parties are tending to use it as a way of trying to get at the other side. You know, 'We're more tough on terrorism than you are.' I think that's a bad move, quite frankly."

Rimington mentions Guantánamo Bay, the practice of extraordinary rendition, and the invasion of Iraq - three issues which the majority in Britain's security and intelligence establishment opposed privately at the time.

She challenges claims, notably made by Tony Blair, that the war in Iraq was not related to the radicalisation of Muslim youth in Britain.

Asked what impact the war had on the terrorist threat, she replies: "Well, I think all one can do is look at what those people who've been arrested or have left suicide videos say about their motivation. And most of them, as far as I'm aware, say that the war in Iraq played a significant part in persuading them that this is the right course of action to take."

She adds: "So I think you can't write the war in Iraq out of history. If what we're looking at is groups of disaffected young men born in this country who turn to terrorism, then I think to ignore the effect of the war in Iraq is misleading."

She doesn't know, of course, because she probably knows next to nothing about history or about Islam, that the war in Iraq is just a pretext, and if it weren't there, some other pretext would be found. The pretexts always shift, but the jihad imperative behind them remains.

Posted at 8:29 AM | Comments (116)

Jihadist group claims responsibility for US financial meltdown

Delusions of grandeur. But also a revelation of aspirations, just in case anyone still doesn't have a clue (and many, of course, don't). "Islamist group claims responsibility of US financial meltdown," by Mustafa Amarah at Fact International, October 16 (thanks to Gates of Vienna):

CAIRO- Members of the Egyptian Jihad group have declared that Islamic Jihad groups are responsible for the financial meltdown in the US as they distributed hundred of millions of US dollars in the world stock markets.
Fact International (FI), received a copy of the statement made by members of the Jihad Group in Abu Zabal Prison in Egypt, which said that the Jihad groups distributed the millions of dollars in the world’s stock exchanges, to hit the US economy, which resulted in the global financial crisis.

This issue is related to the collapse of the US Empire, after the main banks in the world collapsed and the world stock markets lost billions of US dollars.

The statement which was signed by prisoners who will not be mentioned by FI, said that, “the US failed in the war on Iraq and Afghanistan and had massive military, human and economic casualties.”

The statement also mentioned that a plant had to be set up for producing artificial limbs in the Occupied Palestine to overcome the loss. Another plant was established for producing the tyres of the US military Bradley as they had been damaged by the resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Posted at 8:04 AM | Comments (13)

Blogging the Qur’an: Suras 58, “The Pleading Woman,” and 59, “Exile”

The Banu Nadir Jews submit to the Muslim forces

At the beginning of the Medinan sura 58, Allah tells Muhammad that he has heard the pleas of the woman whose husband attempted to divorce by telling her, “You are to me as my mother’s back.” A woman thus divorced could not remarry, and indeed had to remain in her ex-husband’s household as, effectively, a domestic servant (see Asad’s explanation in his commentary on Qur’an 33:4 here). Allah directs that such a divorce is not final, but can be reversed if the husband frees a slave (v. 3), fasts for two months, or feeds sixty poor people (v. 4).

According to Islamic tradition, the woman mentioned here was named Khawlah bint Tha’labah, and her husband Aws bin As-Samit, and Gabriel gave this Qur’anic passage to Muhammad after Khawlah complained to the Islamic prophet about her plight. Here again, then, the reader of the Qur’an faces two choices: either Muhammad was fabricating revelations from the supreme God in order to solve problems and settle issues he encountered in the course of his daily life, such that what claims to be an eternal book is actually filled with incidental minutiae from Muhammad’s life, or every detail of his life was mapped out for all eternity by the deity in order to teach some eternal truths, and he was therefore the most important person who ever existed. There doesn’t seem to be any other alternative.

Later come more indications of the incidental and ad hoc nature of the Qur’an (or, alternatively, the minute divine planning of every detail of Muhammad’s life). According to Qatadah, v. 11 “was revealed about gatherings in places where Allah is being remembered. When someone would come to join in assemblies with the Messenger, they would hesitate to offer them space so that they would not lose their places. Allah the Exalted commanded them to spread out and make room for each other.” And then Allah tells believers to make contributions before private meetings with Muhammad (vv. 12-13).

This sura also includes familiar Qur’anic themes, including the bellicose promise that “those who resist Allah and His Messenger will be humbled to dust” (v. 5). Allah sees and knows all things, including the secret meetings of the unbelievers, and will punish them on the Day of Judgment (vv. 7-10). Those who befriend those who are accursed by Allah are the party of Satan (v. 19) and will suffer in hell (v. 17). (And of course, those accursed by Allah include Jews and Christians, as per 9:30). No one who loves those who resist Allah and Muhammad will enter Paradise (v. 22).

Sura 59 was revealed, according to Islamic tradition, after Muhammad had the Jewish an-Nadir tribe exiled from Medina. Allah “cast terror into their hearts, so that they destroyed their dwellings by their own hands and the hands of the Believers” (v. 2). Ibn Kathir explains:

When the Messenger of Allah migrated to Al-Madinah, he made a peace treaty with the Jews stipulating that he would not fight them and they would not fight him. They soon betrayed the treaty that they made with Allah’s Messenger. Therefore, Allah sent His torment down on them; it can never be averted, and His appointed destiny touched them; it can never be resisted. The Prophet forced them to evacuate and abandon their fortified forts that Muslims did not think they would ever control. The Jews thought that their fortifications will save them from Allah’s torment, but they did not help them against Allah in the least. Then, that which they did not expect came to them from Allah, and Allah’s Messenger forced them to leave Al-Madinah….

According to the historian Tabari, the betrayal of the treaty was actually a conspiracy to kill Muhammad by some members of the Banu Nadir. Rather than appealing to the Nadir leaders to turn over the guilty men, Muhammad sent word to the Nadir: “Leave my country and do not live with me. You have intended treachery.” When the men of the Nadir protested and invoked that covenant, Muhammad’s messenger replied: “Hearts have changed, and Islam has wiped out the old covenants.”

Abdullah bin Ubayy and some of the others that the Qur’an designates as “hypocrites” urged the Banu Nadir not to go, and promised to come to their aid if attacked (vv. 11-12, 16). Relying on this, the Nadir told Muhammad: “We will not leave our settlements; so do as you see fit.” With the displacement of responsibility onto the enemy that would become characteristic of jihad warriors throughout the ages, Muhammad told the Muslims, “The Jews have declared war.” Allah then promised Muhammad that he would strike “terror” into the Jews’ hearts (v. 13) and told him that both the hypocrites and the Jews would end up in hell (v. 17).

The Prophet of Islam ordered his Muslims to march out against the tribe and lay siege to them. During the siege, he ordered that the date palms of the Banu Nadir be burnt. The Nadir Jews, surprised, asked him: “Muhammad, you have prohibited wanton destruction and blamed those guilty of it. Why then are you cutting down and burning our palm-trees?” Allah justified Muhammad’s action by explaining that he cut down the trees “by Allah’s leave” (v. 5). Islamic apologists frequently cite Muhammad’s prohibition against wanton destruction — but don’t mention Muhammad’s own violation of this decree, and Allah’s endorsement of the violation.

What the Jews couldn’t carry with them became Muhammad’s personal property, which he distributed to the needy (vv. 6-9). He also kept some, as Umar later recounted: “The properties abandoned by Banu Nadir were the ones which Allah bestowed upon His Apostle….These properties were particularly meant for the Holy Prophet….He would meet the annual expenditure of his family from the income thereof, and would spend what remained for purchasing horses and weapons as preparation for Jihad.”

The sura ends with a warning to fear Allah, for the “Companions of the Fire” and the “Companions of the Garden” are not equal (v. 20), and with praise of the Qur’an, which would have made even a mountain bow down if it had been revealed on a mountain (v. 21), as well as praise of Allah himself, “the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Source of Peace, the Guardian of Faith, the Preserver of Safety, the Exalted in Might, the Irresistible, the Supreme” (v. 23), “the Creator, the Evolver, the Bestower of Forms,” to whom “belong the Most Beautiful Names” (v. 24). These are among the legendary ninety-nine names of Allah found in Islamic tradition.

Next week: Sura 60, “She Who Is Tested” – which contains an extremely revealing explanation of when Abraham is to be taken as an example, and when he is not – a key distinction that has unfortunately eluded George W. Bush and others who have tried to improve relations between the West and the Islamic world.

(Here you can find links to all the earlier "Blogging the Qur'an" segments. Here is a good Arabic Qur’an, with English translations available; here are two popular Muslim translations, those of Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, along with a third by M. H. Shakir. Here is another popular translation, that of Muhammad Asad. And here is an omnibus of ten Qur’an translations.)

Posted at 7:50 AM | Comments (14)

Fitzgerald: Students, find out for yourselves

"you did not live up to your reputation of being a crazy, muslim-hater."
-- from a note to Robert Spencer by a student at the University of Wisconsin

Puzzle: why don't students, instead of listening to others who pass on stuff-and-nonsense -- which then becomes, in the case in point, an apparently unquestioned "reputation of being a crazy, Muslim-hater" -- actually find out for themselves by going to Jihad Watch and reading what RS or others involved in the effort (and since comments are only very perfunctorily moderated, not attributing to, or blaming, the site for some of the postings that are irrelevant or unacceptable in other ways) have actually written. There are thousands of articles and postings by those contributors to choose from.

The implication of the writer is that had she not seen Robert with his own eyes, she would have continued to believe in that "reputation" of RS "being a crazy, Muslim-hater." Really? There is no other way to check that "reputation" fostered by CAIR and its determined collaborators, including not a few professors who are paid-up members of the Army of Apologists as well as of MESA Nostra (about which see here), than by seeing someone in the flesh? No way to find out what he actually writes, and whether what he writes is based on truthful rather than false quotations from the Qur'an, Hadith, Sira? No way to check these matters at all?

Isn't one of the favorite bumper stickers, reflecting a favored sentiment, that of "Question Authority"? Go ahead -- question the authority of those who whisper in your ear that so-and-so is a "rabid Muslim-hater." Find out for yourself about how that phrase is being spread around by those determined to shout down or whisper down (both methods can be effective) those who would subject the texts and tenets of Islam to study, analysis, and critical scrutiny. The shouters and whisperers want to do this so that Islam can remain forever beyond and immune from criticism, when the daily Jihad news, from Indonesia and the Philippines, from Malaysia and Thailand, from Bangladesh and India and Pakistan, from all over the Middle East, from all over the countries of Western Europe where only one group of immigrants -- Muslims -- present a permanent problem that no other group of immigrants present, because they come bearing not an alien creed, but an alien and a hostile creed, demands that criticism.

Many, as they read more and more of the Daily Jihad News (which is not well-reported, nor sometimes even covered at all, in the American media, just as it is not sufficiently covered, or explained intelligently, in the media of other Western nations) will want explanations that make sense. They will want explanations that help them not only to understand what is going on, but that will help them to predict the efficacy of such things as the war in Iraq (foolish) and Afghanistan (foolish), in the stop-and-go, confused and confusing efforts, to deal with violent Jihad, but to ignore, more or less, the other instruments of Jihad (the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, demographic conquest).

Robert's appearances on university campuses can encourage. And it can dispel the dark rumors so deliberately spread, about his -- or for that matter others' -- "reputation." The texts are there. They can be found at Muslim websites, treated differently, treated reverently, but still -- the texts are the texts. And many websites run by Muslims, for Muslims, do not hide what Islam inculcates, even if they attempt to express things more and more with one ear cocked to what non-Muslims, dropping or eavesdropping in, might make of texts and tenets that are presented just a little too forthrightly. And Muslims themselves, including some of the sweetest-sounding young girls have shown their keen awareness of the need to protect, by obfuscation and omission, the reputation of Islam. Why, I just heard a BBC interview with a Saudi "artist" who is taking part in an exhibition in London and fancies herself quite a revolutionary figure. But the way she carefully failed to explain to the interviewer something that that interviewer clearly needed to know -- that in Islam all sculpture, and all depictions of humans, is forbidden, was telling. She tiptoed around the subject, carefully avoiding the real explanation for the narrowness, and paucity, of Saudi or other Islamic art.

Read, study, think. It's the same in any field. That's how you learn about, and come to comprehend, the ideology of Islam.

Posted at 7:45 AM | Comments (9)

Fitzgerald: Muslim hate crimes hoaxes: don't be a dope

A Muslim student who said a masked gunman assaulted her after he wrote anti-Muslim slurs in a women's restroom at Elmhurst College has been arrested for filing a false police report, officials said today. – from this news article

One hopes the girl will be given a large fine and a prison sentence. This kind of thing has to stop. The entire campus was shut down and searched. The expense, in money and in time and in disruption of learning, is an expense ultimately borne by the students. They should understand that. They are the victims of a one-woman Muslim plot. They are the ones who have suffered, and what's more, been cynically mocked and manipulated. They should be not indignant at some imagined anti-Muslim "hate-criminals," but at the Muslimah who committed the crime and caused the expensive and time-consuming brouhaha. They also might ask themselves how many of her fellow Muslims on campus knew or strongly suspected it was all a put-up job (as with the pepper-spray-in-the-mosque farce), but were happy to go along, and happy to express in exaggerated form, their feigned indignation and baseless "worry," in order to create a rally-round-the-Muslim-victims atmosphere.

Rally around the victims, all right -- the victims of Jihad, violent and otherwise, all over the world. Start with those who are definitely non-Western -- blacks in the southern Sudan, two million of whom have been killed by Arab Muslims, and others enslaved, or Hindus persecuted and humiliated, and murdered, in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Yes, start there, and let that indignatio, aimed rightly, become just as Swiftily saeva as you please.

Are those students who marched off to that rally in solidarity with this Muslim “victim” aware of how many times this kind of thing has been pulled? Might they start to do a little investigating? And then, might they do a little investigating to find out what happens to Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan, Christians in the Moluccas (Indonesia), or southern Sudan, or parts of Nigeria? Might they find out what happens to Buddhists in southern Thailand at the hands of local Muslims? Might they find out why, in many cities in Western Europe, Jews are told not to go out wearing kippahs or other identifying marks, in order not to be attacked -- not by Nazis, but by Muslims?

Perhaps a little research, done in the tranquility of the library, or the dorm room, is now in order, as a way, the very best way, of making up for allowing oneself to be fooled and manipulated -- as so many, right up to our rulers in Washington, have allowed themselves to be when it comes to Islam.

A little study, a little reflection, and a lot of realism, might save everyone all kinds of whipped-up baseless indignation, when there is all kinds of real indignation that needs to be expressed -- starting, let's say, with the beating to death of Hindus by Muslims inspired by particularly fiery sermons, or the beating (but not yet to death) of Dutch homosexuals on the formerly-easygoing streets of Amsterdam, or the murders of Christians by decapitation, and the threats to murder so many others all over the lands where Muslims rule, from Indonesia (those beheaded schoolgirls, younger than the Muslim college girl who staged the stunt above, and who no doubt would defend to your death the right of Muslims to do what they want, to do what they do, all over the world) and Bangladesh and the Philippines, to Iraq. Look at what happens when the forces of Islam, no longer held in check by the iron fist of Saddam Hussein, are free to act against the Assyrians and Chaldeans, the last to remain in a country that long ago was entirely peopled by Christians (and Jews).

Look. Study. Don't be dopes. There are far too many dopes already, so easily manipulated by smiling, plausible, propagandists -- perhaps you have such a roommate -- for Islam, which is not merely or mainly a religion, but a politics and a geopolitics. Find out, but not from that smiling roommate who wants you to share the Iftar dinner, who tells you how wonderful Islam is, who wants you to find out all about Islam -- except of course all of the parts he doesn't want you to find out about. And that means almost all of Islam outside of the Five Pillars.

So many dopes. Please. Don't add to their number.

Posted at 7:33 AM | Comments (14)

Fitzgerald: Shia cults putting the devil in hell

Soon, a secretive group of worshipers tried to recruit the young widow, telling her that she could help bring the holy figure back to Earth. All she had to do was sleep with the group's male followers. – from this article

What a line. Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker, so what can a young Muslim male do when in a Muslim country there's very little candy, and liquor is haram, and besides, marriages are arranged, and you often can't see the girl you are about to marry, much less do anything else with her? You use whatever comes to hand, and what comes to hand to these randy rapists with their crazed stories is patter about hastening the Great Day.

For in Muslim societies, everything -- political dissent, or the search for sexual solace -- must be put in Muslim terms, seen as part of the universe of Islam. Here the con men in question tried both men and women: the widow-woman seeking comfort, and the unemployed man, also at his wit's end, seeking his own solace in a speeded-up messianism. She is supposed to offer herself; he is supposed to offer up his wife, his sister, his daughter, to the fine fellows in the Shi'ite group he wishes to join.

In the West, when conducting Da'wa in prisons, Muslim missionaries allow "New Muslims" (reverts converts) to believe that their sociopathic or at least criminal behavior can be seen as not robbery and rape, but rather as way to follow Islam, by helping themselves, even in a society still dominated by Infidels, to a kind of Jizyah-through-robbery, and to help themselves to the women of the Infidels too, but justifying it as a natural response -- sorry, can't be helped! -- to the way those non-Muslim women dress, which means they were asking for it, and deserved it, and got it.

And in the Muslim lands, Islam-based beliefs (as in Shia Islam, the belief in the appearance of the Mahdi), we see from this piquant example, can be used to justify taking advantage, in some way, of fellow Muslims (such as those with near-moron I.Q.'s who are sometimes used as suicide bombers), where what is really on offer is "rape" but rape "for religious reasons." That's the way to make it plausible, and while the article linked above mentions two cases in which the intended victims did not fall for the appeal, how many cases go unmentioned in which such an appeal was successful?

There is something definitely boccaccesco about this story, but the similarity in the use of religion by t