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In Malaysia, Islam is the official religion of the state. That means that it's funded by the taxpayers. And the non Muslim taxpayers are, of course, taxed more heavily than the Believers in a disguised jizyah system known as the "Bumiputra system".

There is a great sense of irony knowing that mosque, surau and madrassah construction, as well as other Islamic affairs, are subsidized through the (excessive) taxation of the more entrepreneurial Chinese, non Muslims, and their various enterprises.  Those enterprises include, but are not limited to:

• Massage parlours (which often function as de facto brothels)

• Karaoke bars (with alcohol, music with sexually explicit lyrics, and sometimes much more)

• Chinese restaurants (serving pork, other 'non halal' food, and alcohol)
  

In Malaysia, the infidel-owned and frequented dens of 'vice and sin' continue to financially power the Islamic juggernaut. Malaysian Muslims, especially those within the government, (usually) know better than to try to directly do away with such establishments, as such concerns make up the host that the local branch of Islam leaches upon. Killing the host would naturally have undesirable effects upon the believers. Without infidels to feed upon, Islam and Muslims -- in Malaysia or anywhere else -- have no chance of continued survival.

So it should be little surprise that the Muslim government in Malaysia has decided to step up its state-sponsored da'wah-related indoctrination and brainwashing efforts, as long as the infidels are around to foot the bill. Even if this eventually reduces the very source of all this money in the first place, by creating more Believers and reducing the number of dhimmis that can be excessively taxed. "RM15mil house for Muslim converts", from The Star, 6 July:

KUALA LUMPUR: The Federal Territory of Islamic Religious Council will build a house for Muslim converts so they can learn more about Islam.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom said the house, the first of its kind in Malaysia, would be used to guide converts towards strengthening their character.

“We will provide them a syllabus on obligatory prayers, reading the Quran and expose them to fasting,” he said here yesterday.

Jamil said the house costing RM15mil [USD$5 million] would be built in Sentul and was expected to be completed within two years. - Bernama

FrontPage Magazine's managing editor Jamie Glazov interviews Jihad Watch contributor 'The Anti Jihadist' about Islamic persecution of Christians in Malaysia. An excerpt:

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is The Anti-Jihadist, a counter-jihad writer, activist and critic of Islam who resides in a majority Muslim country. He writes under a pseudonym for reasons that do not need to be explained. His work can also be found at Jihad Watch, Infidel Bloggers Alliance and Pedestrian Infidel.

FP: Welcome The Anti-Jihadist to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to talk to you today about the Muslim persecution of Christians in Malaysia. But first, tell us a bit about your background and how you arrived to being who you are.

The Anti-Jihadist: In order to protect my identity, I’d rather not get into too many specifics about my background, for reasons I hope you and your readers understand. Suffice it to say that I grew up in a middle class, educated family where the discussion of politics and other ‘sensitive’ topics was encouraged. I grew to appreciate and then embrace this intellectual sort of freedom.

As I grew older, I began to notice differences between what I heard the government say or what was taught in school, and what was really happening in the world, but I learned to keep such thoughts to myself in order to get along. Then 9-11 happened and it turned the world upside down, my own perception of it in particular. I wanted to be surprised that Muslims had carried out mass murder explicitly in the name of Islam, but I wasn’t. Another shock for me was when I found out that the Muslims — jihadists, Al Qaeda members and others — who planned the attacks in New York and Washington had had a big planned meeting right here in Kuala Lumpur (the capital and biggest city in Malaysia) in early 2000. And the conspiracy theories about 9-11, the increased appearance of anti-Semitic diatribes in Malaysian bookshops (one tome by Henry Ford is popular here) were things that I simply could not turn a blind eye to anymore. Lastly, Malaysian terrorist Azahari Husin had his hero’s sendoff near Kuala Lumpur in 2005, and about the same time the Malaysian Christian convert Lina Joy was told by this nation’s highest court that she was not allowed to become a Christian, despite the fact that religious freedom is supposedly guaranteed by Malaysia’s constitution. By then, I could no longer hold back my pent-up disgust and outrage at what was happening.

FP: So you turned your back on Islam?

TAJ: I don’t want your readers to have the impression that I am now or ever was a Muslim. While I am not a Muslim, I have indeed been asked to become one, on more than one occasion and with varying degrees of seriousness. ‘Dawah’, or Islamic prosetylization, is never too far away in Malaysia.

Deciding that Islam as an ideology (and not Muslims per se) was my enemy was a personal Rubicon for me, a step that, once taken, could never be retracted. I understood how serious this was, from my own studies of Islam, from my knowledge of what’s happened to other critics of Islam, and from the repeated warnings here in Malaysia regarding ‘insults’ to Islam — i.e. being too truthful about it.  And the pointed Malaysian warnings about being ‘respectful’ of all religions (‘respect’ for Islam is all the government here really cares about) make it very clear that criticism of Islam is a big, big red line that should never be crossed.  Furthermore, in Malaysia it’s quite legal for anyone to be arrested and held indefinitely without charge, trial or access to legal council.  It’s a law called the ‘Internal Security Act’ or ‘ISA’ for short and it’s positively medieval. ISA is one of the reasons that you rarely hear criticism of Islam from anyone in this country, in public and even in private, no matter how outrageous things get.

So around late 2005, when I made my fateful personal decision to take up the cause of counter-jihad, to oppose Islam, I told very, very few people. Thankfully, my significant other, a former Muslima, who has known since the beginning, has fully supported me. I have a very small circle of close friends with whom I’ve shared my views, my articles, and so on.

Beyond that, I’ve told no one–not my family, my colleagues, acquaintances and most of my friends. My counter-jihad writing and work are secrets that I’ve been compelled to keep in order to ensure my continued survival.  And it is a wearisome burden, I can assure you. My writing and my political views has, in essence, forced me to live a double life. Beyond my trusted circle I cannot afford to tell anyone about what I know, or my writing, or about what others in the counter-jihad are saying. So there has been a personal toll–I’ve had to become paranoid, and always watchful about what I say around others. But I’ve never considered going back to what I was before. I can’t and I won’t.

FP: Share with us what is happening to Christians in your country.

Read it all at FrontPage.

Perhaps these reflections will not be of interest to committed non-believers. Certainly, those among the readers who regard all religion as a moral and intellectual infection, and Islam as simply the world's most virulent, should skip ahead to the next atrocity report. There are plenty of them, as the worldwide Islamic movement whips itself up into a crescendo, manipulating Western guilt to disarm our defenses, using our oil addiction to fund its propaganda, gloating over our relative infertility, twisting our liberties so as to take them away, exploiting our hard-won openness and self-criticism in the service of a global theocratic tyranny. There are plentiful reports of fanaticism, illiberalism, misogyny and hypocrisy, and it's important such events be chronicled honestly—as happens in too few other places in the media. So please, if you regard the God of the Christians and the Jews as merely one more face of Allah, Moloch, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, move along to the next post. There's nothing to read here.

Those who do find the life of the spirit of interest, who are willing to consider religious problems (and problem religions) according to their genre, might find it worthwhile to think about Islam and its effects on the human soul. These vary, of course, according to the conditions of individual believers. While I'm no expert on the subject, it seems to me that we can discern some clear divides within the Islamic “community”:

1. Cultural Muslims, with an unreflective or a superstitious faith, who can live for long periods in relative peace with non-Muslim neighbors. This situation can exist for one of two reasons: These Muslims can constitute a small minority living within a regime whose dominance is clear and whose culture is self-confident. (Here I'm thinking of the Albanians who used to dwell quite happily inside the Austrian monarchy.) Or the Muslims can form a majority whose power is unquestioned, where local Christians have long been subjugated, and the latter buy toleration at the price of institutionalized inequality. (There were long stretches of Ottoman history where stability of this unequal sort obtained, punctuated by periodic atrocities.) However, external events or internal instability can quickly revoke the charter of such tolerance, and make the local Christians convenient scapegoats—as the Armenians learned during World War I, and Iraq's Assyrian Christians discovered during America's blundering invasion and occupation. This type of Islamic intolerance is not starkly distinguishable from other forms of bigoted nationalism. Jews in Medieval Europe, Catholics in Stuart England, and Huguenots in France, were victims at various times of whipped-up persecutions.


2. Orthodox, motivated Muslims, who have studied the scriptures and hadiths of their own religion, and been activated by preachers who rely on these authoritative texts to “awaken” Cultural Muslims to their solemn duties as believers—including jihad, dawah, and emigration as means of spreading the faith. The great transformation of the Arab world from category 1) to category 2) is what we have witnessed over the past three decades, since the defeat and collapse of “secular” Arab nationalism. Unlike Judaism (which has fought for millennia in self-defense) and Christianity (with its mostly pacific scriptures and theoretically demanding criteria for “just war”), Islam is a religion which is always one crisis, and a few street preachers, away from launching a crusade.


3. Burnt-out, disillusioned Muslims who have seen up close and personal how the faith they knew from the cradle stokes the lowest, harshest instincts of the human heart, constricts the mind like a chastity belt, enshrines injustice, and retards scientific and moral progress. At the very highest intellectual level, we see examples of this category in Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the sterling writer Ibn Warraq, whose work I've commended here before. But there are countless thousands more such people living in the midst of Islamic societies or subcultures who either feel trapped into the hollow practice of a faith they find repugnant—or who have paid the heavy personal and spiritual price entailed in leaving Islam.

The people who fall into category 3) are natural allies in our cause—but we should remember that they are something more. They are human beings whose system of meaning, whose architectonic of moral order, has collapsed in on itself. The faith which formed much of their identity, by which they may still be defined by others, no longer sustains them. Perhaps it haunts them. The threats of the vengeful desert god whom they were taught to regard as a master (and they were the slaves) still ring in their ears in unquiet moments—and the best defense they can find is sheer defiance: Such a god cannot, should not exist. They must act as Orestes does in Sartre's play The Flies, where the hero taunts Zeus and proves him ridiculous. They feel they must say, with Prometheus, “I hate all the gods!”

I felt this instinct at work when I read the contribution of a commentor on this site, “fineliving56,” who wrote:

All I can say as an ex Muslim is, I am so glad I am free FROM islam, It is getting so hard to not to talk about it with a family I live with still Muslims . I do not care what I am called as long as I am out of prison mentally and bodily.

What I [wish] is for Christians not to feel the need [when they are around ex muslims ] to tell us about the God of their religion . I thing most of us feel religion is a disease of the brain [ sorry ] that does not mean in any way that we ex Muslims are lowering Christianity to the level of Islam which we hate , it reaches every [at least I am] fiber of our being .We feel that christens feel they need to fill that gap that Islam left , but they do not realize we are people who their bodies was ravished with cancer and now is cured and it was caused by smoking , we do not want to smoke again fearing cancer will come back . I hope I described it good enough [ English is still hard for me ] .

I feel religion is a cancer of the brain. We can live perfectly well without it by teaching our Kids Right from wrong without the threat of burring hell . In Fact a humen who is doing the right thing, JUST FOR THE SAKE OF DOING THE RIGHT THING ,IS MUCH MORE COMMENDABLE THEN OUR NEED TO SECURE A PLACE IN HEAVEN .

My response to this post was not to wish I could send this person a tract. I wanted, instead, to weep. Here is a soul, so far as I can see, who was ruined for God. Or rather, God was ruined for him, thanks to the vicious caricature he once was taught to worship. I wouldn't presume to argue with such an ex-Muslim, to proffer him the Gospels and a lithograph of the Sacred Heart. I fear that any such images of God will seem like milk and water, like pale and implausible waterings-down of Islam's celestial despot. It is not my place to argue with him.

What I can do is agree with him. The god to whom he was exposed—the capricious, vindictive, power-hungry celestial narcissist, whose prophet was a bigot and a bandit—should not, cannot, must not exist. If he did, we should enlist as his enemies. We should not wish to spend eternity with him, to grind our own foreheads forever into his dust. Any soul with honor ought instead to rebel, forever. Better to serve in hell than in that heaven.

We all thought it couldn't happen. We never would would have guessed, although Robert Spencer noticed. Even the Episcopalians I know wouldn't have predicted that it was possible to do something so outrageous it might get you disciplined by the Episcopal church. (Leave aside, of course, actions or statements that verge too far to the Right; people tempted that way generally find their own ways to Rome or Antioch anyway.) But we were wrong. In a development that is—once you look past the callous folly that provoked it—rather encouraging, it seems that an Episcopal priest in Missouri has been threatened with the loss of his collar and his job if he won't stop practicing Islam. Which he'd promised to do for 40 days, instead of Christian rituals. For Lent. As Christianity Today reports:

The Rev. Steve Lawler should have just given up chocolate or television for Lent.

Instead, Lawler, the part-time rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, decided to adopt the rituals of Islam for 40 days to gain a deeper understanding of the faith.

Two days after it began, he faced being defrocked if he continued in those endeavors.

"He can't be both a Christian and a Muslim," said Bishop George Wayne Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. "If he chooses to practice as Muslim, then he would, by default, give up his Christian identity and priesthood in the church."

Lawler didn't foresee such problems when he came up with the idea. He merely wanted to learn more about Islam, he said, especially in light of the ongoing congressional hearings on the radicalization of the faith.

On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, he began performing "salah" five times a day, by facing east, toward Mecca, and praying to Allah. He also started studying the Quran and following Islamic dietary restrictions by abstaining from alcohol and pork.

During Holy Week, he planned to fast from dawn to sunset as Muslims do during Ramadan.

So far so good. With a firmness that white scions of Canterbury haven't displayed for decades, Lawler's bishop cracked down on him. Of course, the reason he gave was soaked in relativistic lavender eau de toilette:

[I]n [Bishop] Smith's eyes, the exercise amounts to "playing" at someone else's religion and could be viewed as disrespectful.
...
"I believe what he's trying to accomplish or says he's trying to accomplish, which is to deepen his understanding of Islam, is admirable," the bishop said. "But you dishonor another faith by pretending to take it on. You build bridges by building relationships with neighbors who are Muslim."

Local Muslims knew better than Bishop Smith how to interpret Rev. Lawler's servile grovelings:

Mohammed Ibrahim, chairman of the board of directors of the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis, isn't offended at all by Lawler practicing Islamic rituals.

"I think it's a good idea to understand better what Islam is," he said. "We do welcome it. People can come and watch us pray at the mosques and participate in prayer if they want to."

I'll bet he isn't offended—and if he were he wouldn't show it. The first principle in the Methodology of Dawa is to present the friendly, peace-loving face of Islam to possible converts. Then involve them in the life of a close-knit community, shear off their ties to their previous lives, and only then, once they have completely committed themselves to their new faith, inform them “what revolution it must bring in the life of an individual and the society in which he lives.” I'm thankful that Bishop Smith sensed, at least on some level, what stakes were entailed. And perhaps he's not alone.

It's not the first time the Episcopal Church has confronted a priest over dabbling in Islam; in 2009, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding was defrocked two years after she embraced Islam because, her bishop said, "a priest of the church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim."

Smith said Lawler would face punitive actions if he continued with the rituals.

I was almost disappointed to read the following sentence:

Lawler said he only planned to take his idea so far -- he did not intend to embrace one of the Five Pillars of Islam that requires Muslims to declare a belief in the oneness of God and to accept Muhammad as God's prophet.

That's really too bad, because if Lawler had made the shehada, and then tried to go back on it, he would by Qur'anic injunction be subject to the death penalty—a penalty that is on the lawbooks, and is applied, in majority Muslim countries like Iran and Afghanistan. Of course, that's part of the Muslim experience that the priest probably didn't bank on when he decided to play at being Lawler of Arabia.

There was never much hope of his conversion taking. The Prophet's seed fell on fallow ground, as became clear on Day Two of his Muslim Lent, when Lawler showed his deep faith in mainline Protestantism by performing its most sacred rite: He issued a press release.

On his second day of seeing Lent through Muslim eyes, Lawler issued a press release promoting his unique way of spending Lent. Speaking to a reporter that afternoon, he had no problem reconciling his Episcopal views with those of Islam.

"I could have sat down and read scholarly literature on Islam, but that's still stepping back from it rather than encountering it," he said, over a cup of tea in the office of St. Stephen's Church. "You can think about doing something, but once you do it, you really reflect on it."

Lawler's own words perfectly encapsulate how the West has “encountered” Islam: Act first, then reflect on it. In a fit of lazy cultural vandalism, we admitted tens of millions of Muslims into our countries, and then once they'd lodged themselves like bits of broken glass in our intestines, we sat down to digest what we'd done. Some of us are willing to admit that we're feeling the pain, but many more are gritting their teeth and pretending it doesn't hurt—or worse yet, blaming their bodies for failing to “welcome” such newcomers.

Lawler doesn't seem to have learned much from his experience, except that even Anglicanism has its limits—and limits are one thing he has spent his life evading:

Lawler, who has been at St. Stephen's for eight years, was born and raised in the Roman Catholic Church but left during his early 20s because he didn't care for its conservative viewpoints.

"The Episcopal church is a fairly open church," he said. "If I was the pastor at a very conservative church, I could come in one day and have the locks changed (for doing the Islamic rituals)."

Lawler learned the Episcopal church is more rigid than he had thought. After hearing the objections of the bishop, Lawler reversed course, giving up the Islamic rituals.

There is more evidence that Anglicans are pushing back against Islamic conquest last month, when the Church of England announced it would stop serving halal food in its church schools. (Small victories... I'll take them!) What staggers me is the thought that some Irish-American who found the Catholic Church too confining a home would be remotely tempted by the one world religion that still has heresy trials, religious wars, and governments that enforce its laws on religious minorities. Was Lawler merely nostalgic for the abuses of Christianity that attended the Spanish Inquisition and the Thirty Years' War? Was he born in the wrong century?

More likely, Lawler learned from reading books like Karen Armstrong's that Muslims are merely Episcopalians with hookah pipes. Maybe the only real school for people like him is the one of hard knocks. It seems he wasn't knocked quite hard enough, however:

For his part, Lawler said he was not disappointed with the Episcopal church's reaction.

"It's a conversation, so I don't feel excluded or ordered about, and I understand Bishop Smith's concerns about what this would mean," he said. "I knew I was stepping into this as a discovery. It's turning out to be different than I thought, but also richer than I thought."

Yeah, Lawler's in the right church, all right. The moment I hear Muslim authorities talking that kind of blather, I'll know that they've caught the modern rot, and I'll stop worrying about them.

“Go sell crazy somewhere else—we're all stocked up here!” That is one of the great lines in 1990s American cinema. It was spoken by the misanthropic recluse played by Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, and it pretty well describes the business we're in, resisting jihad. Every day, at least one of the news stories Robert or Marisol posts reads like something that couldn't actually be happening, but instead is a first draft of a bad idea discarded by Evelyn Waugh or Anthony Burgess for a satire they thought to write, but tossed into the trash can as too implausibly caustic. Then somebody at Jihadwatch, desperately short of copy, fished the idea out, flattened the crumpled paper on his desk, retyped the thing and posted it as fact. Indeed, Robert and I have discussed the idea of creating an April Fools' edition, a Jihad “Onion” issue full of stories so wildly outrageous that readers would spot them instantly as parodies. But he's inclined not to do it, since (as he put it): “How could people tell? What's already happening is so completely insane I doubt you could improve on it.” Indeed, I've written acid satires in the past, only to see them pretty much come true before I could get them published. The speed with which reality outpaces parody these days is deeply dispiriting. Even with the Internet, it's hard to iron out the typos in a timely satire before real headlines spoil the thing. It's as if these horrific ideas that come to me are puppets like Pinocchio—and Satan loved them so much he made them real.

Which brings me to today's installment: The Ottoman Charter Schools of Pennsylvania. Doesn't it sound like some bitter fantasy cooked up over pork rinds and bourbon after a gun show? Perhaps it's the sequel to a bleak daydream like: The Cloned Scientologist Sex Slaves of Hawaii. Only this one is all too real, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Sunday:

Fethullah Gulen is a major Islamic political figure in Turkey, but he lives in self-imposed exile in a Poconos enclave and gained his green card by convincing a federal judge in Philadelphia that he was an influential educational figure in the United States.

As evidence, his lawyer pointed to the charter schools, now more than 120 in 25 states, that his followers - Turkish scientists, engineers, and businessmen - have opened, including Truebright Science Academy in North Philadelphia and another charter in State College, Pa.

That's right, the Poconos, home of cheesy resorts with heart-shaped hot tubs where middle-aged American Methodist couples go for second honeymoons to “reconnect.” But amidst that world of comfy, silly normalcy there's at least one man who's thinking wistfully about the Caliphate, the jizya, and janissaries. Jihadwatch has reported before on Gulen's reputation as the “Turkish Khomeini,” citing a report by Asia News that stated that Gulen

has been criticised by a large number of secularists who believe that underneath a veneer of humanist philosophy, Gülen plans to turn Turkey’s secular state into a theocracy.

Secular Kemalists have compared him to Khomeini and fear that his return to Turkey might turn Ankara into another Tehran. The governments of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are also weary and suspicious of his “Turkish schools promoted by Islamic missionaries.”

At the basis of Gülen’s teachings is the notion that state and religion should be reconnected as they were in Ottoman times and that Turkey should play the role of beacon for the Balkans and the republics in the Caucasus.

Oh, that Fethullah Gulen. Now that we know the hero of the story, let's consider his accomplishments. According to the Inquirer, Gulen's public charter schools

are funded with millions of taxpayer dollars. Truebright alone receives more than $3 million from the Philadelphia School District for its 348 pupils. Tansu Cidav, the acting chief executive officer, described it as a regular public school.

"Charter schools are public schools," he said. "We follow the state curriculum."

But federal agencies - including the FBI and the Departments of Labor and Education - are investigating whether some charter school employees are kicking back part of their salaries to a Muslim movement founded by Gulen known as Hizmet, or Service, according to knowledgeable sources.

The Inquirer then throws in the obligatory, “Please don't blow up our editorial offices!” disclaimer:

Unlike in Turkey, where Gulen's followers have been accused of pushing for an authoritarian Islamic state, there is no indication the American charter network has a religious agenda in the classroom.

Religious scholars consider the Gulen strain of Islam moderate, and the investigation has no link to terrorism.

Of course, if AsiaNews is right, Gulen doesn't need to employ terrorist tactics. If democratic “reforms” in Turkey take hold and cut the already slackening grip of its secularist military and constitution, orthodox Muslims like Gulen will take power by the ballot box. As the anti-Semitic French authoritarian Charles Maurras once said, rakishly: “We will use any means to come to power—even democratic ones.” So will Gulen.

But if you can read past this bit of dhimmi nonsense the rest of the Inquirer report is thoroughly damning—of the broken American immigration system. Because as it turns out, Gulen's organization is staffing its schools with Muslim imports from Turkey. The paper notes that the investigation is “focused on whether hundreds of Turkish teachers, administrators, and other staffers employed under the H1B visa program are misusing taxpayer money.” And further:

Another aim of the Gulen schools, a federal official said, is fostering goodwill toward Turkey, which is led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the pro-Islamic prime minister, whose government recently detained journalists after they alleged that Gulen followers were infiltrating security agencies.

Gulen schools are among the nation's largest users of the H1B visas. In 2009, the schools received government approvals for 684 visas - more than Google Inc. (440) but fewer than a technology powerhouse such as Intel Corp. (1,203).

The visas are used to attract foreign workers with math, science, and technology skills to jobs for which there are shortages of qualified American workers. Officials at some of the charter schools, which specialize in math and science, have said they needed to fill teaching spots with Turks, according to parents and former staffers.

Ruth Hocker, former president of the parents' group at the Young Scholars of Central Pennsylvania Charter School in State College, began asking questions when popular, certified American teachers were replaced by uncertified Turkish men who often spoke limited English and were paid higher salaries. Most were placed in math and science classes.

"They would tell us they couldn't find qualified American teachers," Hocker said.

That made no sense in Pennsylvania State University's hometown, she said: "They graduate here every year."

Other school parents described how uncertified teachers on H1B visas were moved from one charter school to another when their "emergency" teaching credentials expired and told of a pattern of sudden turnovers of Turkish business managers, administrators, and board members.
...

Further evidence of the ties comes from a disaffected former teacher from Turkey who told federal investigators that the Gulen Movement had divided the United States into five regions, according to knowledgeable sources. A general manager in each coordinates the activities of the schools and related foundations and cultural centers, he told authorities.

Ohio, California, and Texas have the largest numbers of Gulen-related schools. Ohio has 19, which are operated by Concept Schools Inc., and most are known as Horizon Science Academies. There are 14 in California operated by the Magnolia Foundation. Texas has 33 known as Harmony schools, run by the Cosmos Foundation.

The next time someone tells you that fear of sharia and stealth jihad is just some paranoid fantasy, tell them about the neo-Ottoman theorist sitting in a heart-shaped tub in the Poconos running a string of Turkish-staffed schools throughout America on the taxpayer's dime. And he will think you are crazy. Then show him the evidence—rub it in his face—and he will admit you are right, then dismiss you as an “Islamophobe.” In response, remind him that the person in The Lord of the Rings who dismissed Gandalf the Grey as “Stormcrow” was the traitor, Grima Wormtongue. Then smile, wink and walk away with the line: “Don't behead the messenger.” Say it in your best Jack Nicholson voice.

As CAIR's press release from the other day demonstrates, Islam gets a lot of mileage out of its appropriation of Jesus. One does not need to be a Christian to see that. But while Islamic apologists accuse us right and left of "cherry-picking" verses out of the Qur'an and taking them "out of context," the verses selected by CAIR do just that. Among others:

"Say: 'We believe in God and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and it is to Him that we surrender ourselves'" (2:136).

Another verse in the Quran states: "Behold! The angels said: 'O Mary! God giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those nearest to God'" (3:45).

Those selections deliberately and knowingly present a half-truth -- one that has been useful for Islam's cause both in proselytizing and in its claims for public consumption of being a peaceful religion. In both cases, apologists and dawah-peddlers depend on listeners who don't know better to project the Jesus they know onto those carefully selected Qur'anic verses.

And in too many cases, Islamic proselytizers have the element of surprise on their side when those who have otherwise well founded misgivings about Islam's intentions do not know about Jesus in Islam, or have heard an oversimplified version that slick apologists can deflect with deceptive use of chapter and verse. Those people are vulnerable to being won over by the half-truths of Islamic dawah.

Remaining uninformed about the content of Islamic teachings is not an option, if we are to defend our way of life.

In prior reporting about the reaction to Mike Huckabee's objections to allowing Islamic worship in designated Christian worship spaces, we have quoted Islamic texts that help fill in the rest of the story. Here, again, is a handy summary with additional sources and useful commentary on the "other" Jesus in Islam, whom apologists can't tell you about up front.

"DURIE: Stop opening churches to Muslims," by Rev. Mark Durie for the Washington Times, February 23 (thanks to Observer):

Last week, Fox News posted a report that Heartsong Church in Cordova, Tenn., and Aldersgate United Methodist Church near Alexandria, Va., have made their church buildings available to Muslims to use as places of worship.

Critics of these outreach initiatives, such as Mike Huckabee, have been accused of ignorance. However, the contents of Muslim prayers and teachings about Isa, the Islamic Jesus, give reasonable grounds for churches to reject such arrangements.

A prominent element in Islamic daily prayers is the recitation of Al-Fatihah (the Opening), the first chapter of the Koran. Often described as a blessing, Al-Fatihah has a sting in its tail. After introductory praises, the final sentence of Al-Fatihah is a request for guidance “in the straight path” of Allah’s blessed ones, not the path “of those against whom You are wrathful, nor of those who are astray.”

Who are the ones who are said to be under Allah’s wrath or to have gone astray from his straight path? According to the revered commentator Ibn Kathir, Muhammad himself gave the answer: “Those who have earned the anger are the Jews, and those who are led astray are the Christians.”

Al-Fatihah is as central to Islamic devotion as the Lord’s Prayer is to Christians: It is recited at least 17 times a day as part of daily Muslim prayers. Yet according to Muhammad himself, this prayer, which is on the lips of every pious Muslim day and night, castigates Christians as misguided and Jews as objects of Allah’s wrath.

Another good reason for churches not to host Muslim worship, paradoxically, is their veneration of Isa, the Islamic Jesus.

Muslims venerate Jesus, but as a Muslim prophet. In the pages of the Koran, the disciples of the Muslim Jesus declare, “We are Muslims” (Sura 5:111). The Islamic Jesus is not the Christian Son of God, the divine suffering Savior who died on the cross for the sins of the world.

Certainly there are some similarities between Isa of the Koran and Jesus of the Gospels. The Koran calls Jesus “al-Masih” - the Messiah - and both figures are said to have been born of a virgin, to have performed miracles of healing and to have raised the dead. Yet here the similarities end. Isa of the Koran was not crucified and did not die but was raised up by Allah (Sura 4:157-158).

It is in Muhammad’s vision of the end times that the role of the Muslim Jesus comes into sharp focus. Muhammad taught that when Isa returns, he “will fight for the cause of Islam. He will break the cross, kill pigs, and abolish the poll tax. Allah will destroy all religions except Islam” (Sunan Abu Dawud 27:4310).

What can the apologists say to that? They will almost certainly try to throw Abu Dawud under the bus as an unreliable hadith. In the pecking order of ahadith, "Sahih" ahadith -- "sound, reliable" ones -- are so designated for having reliable provenance, and often repeat narrations about the same event to corroborate their authenticity. And Sahih Bukhari corroborates this narration from Abu Dawud several times (003.034.425, 003.043.656, 004.055.657).

Not that apologists won't try to throw Bukhari under the bus after Abu Dawud. When its appalling contents come under the scrutiny of non-Muslims, "Sahih" suddenly and magically becomes rather... "Squishih."

What does this saying mean? The cross is a symbol of Christianity. Breaking the cross means abolishing Christianity. According to Islamic law, the poll tax, or jizya, buys protection of the lives and property of Christians (and Jews). Abolishing this tax will mean that jihad will be restarted against Christians and no more protection shall be afforded to those who do not submit to Islam.

The Egyptian jurist Ahmad ibn Naqib stated in his compendium of Shariah, “The Reliance of the Traveller,” that the toleration of Christians living under Islamic law only applies “before the final descent of Jesus. … After his final coming, nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent … for he will rule by the law of Muhammad … as a follower of our Prophet” (translation by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, pages 603-4).

In this end-times scenario, the Islamic Jesus becomes the ultimate destroyer of Christianity, when, by his sword, he compels all followers of the Christ of the Gospels to become Muslims and live in accordance with the Shariah of Muhammad.

Churches should not welcome into their buildings the veneration of Isa the Islamic Jesus, who, as a true Muslim, is intended to bring about the final, violent destruction of Christianity. By all means, let Christians show kindness to their Muslim neighbors, but the sentiments embedded in Islamic daily prayers, which curse Jews as the target of Allah’s wrath and Christians for going astray, can have no place in a Christian church - even if recited in the cadences of classical Arabic.

I have enjoyed my stint so far as a daily columnist for Jihadwatch, and been impressed by the vast majority of the commentors who have joined in the discussion of my columns. The pieces I've posted have had their share of resonance outside the site: One of them, the scripturally-inspired "If Thy Cojones Cause Thee to Sin," ended up in the email blast the brave Rep. Tom Tancredo sent out to his supporters, and earned a denunciation in the radical-leftist American Independent, and winning a link from Forbes.com. My ruminations on the Islamicization of Spiderman (is it time for a new SIOA-style group to protect Gotham City?) were picked up in USA Today. There has been plenty of hand-wringing on pro-Islamic sites about my (fruitless) call for Egypt to keep the Tsar in power, lest the Bolsheviks of the Muslim Brotherhood seize control of the best-armed Arab nation and persecute its millions of Christians. Not bad for two months on the job.

Given the fact that I'm joining the struggle against a billion-man world religion, and doing so from the point of view of a pro-Israel, American Catholic paleocon, I expected disagreement, even hostility. What I didn't guess would happen was that my work would be attributed to someone else--much less to our fearless leader, Robert Spencer. One of the parasitical sites managed by stealth jihadists, who spend all their time reading Jihadwatch, then posting snarky, misleading commentary, has called me out as follows:

Lately, Spencer has posted articles by the mysterious Roland Shirk, someone we know nothing about, probably because he is another one of Spencer's pen-names (like Hugh Fitzgerald). Apparently, Mr. Shirk is a mouthpiece for JihadWatch's more belligerent attacks on the constitutional freedoms of indigenous law-abiding Muslims.

Okay, we're busted. "Roland Shirk" really is just another name used by Robert Spencer. Ditto "Hugh Fitzgerald." I'm stunned at the perspicacity of the Muslim supremacists who were able to smoke us out. After all, it can't be easy to spot the similarities of style between the sort of prose Robert employs under his own name, and those of his pseudonyms.

Here's a passage written by Spencer under the pen name "Hugh Fitzgerald":

And The New York Times continues, in ways little and big, to ignore the reality of Islam. It is a case of individual folly and mediocrity - the egregious Tom Friedman comes immediately to mind, and so too does Nicholas Kristof. But then there are the reporters. There are those who report from Pakistan on various rapes and murders of Christians but are careful never to dwell on, and sometimes fail to mention altogether, the religious prompting of such atrocities by Muslims. See, for example, the report recently of Sabrina Tavernise on the young girl murdered by her Muslim employer, a leader of the Lahore bar, and how little she explained, and how much that was relevant she left out. See how other reporters, in Iraq, for example, have by ignoring Islam never asked the most obvious of questions: how is it that the goal, under Bush, or under Obama, of leaving Iraq unified and prosperous, will somehow contribute to our own defense, the Defense of the West, against the worldwide Jihad that is merely the sum of all the local Jihads? And the same question should be asked of Afghanistan. But while the editors of the New York Times so clearly did not support Bush, and are vaguely unhappy with the transfer of the "center of the war on terrorism" to Afghanistan by the Obama Administration, they lack the ability or willingness to discuss Islam, the ideology of Islam, and hence even to begin to think in terms of the threat to Western Europe through such instruments of Jihad as deployment of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest.

Compare this to Spencer inhabiting the alternative personality "Roland Shirk":

George Orwell must be collaborating with Evelyn Waugh, controlling events from Heaven. I've often had dark thoughts of the sort, while skimming world events--particularly Third World events. Living on New York's Second Avenue back in the 90s, I got in the habit of listening to the BBC as I slept, to drown out the sound of 18-wheelers ba-da-BOOM-ing over potholes covered with iron plates. The habit stuck, and ever since I have periodically had my dreams invaded by prim-sounding reports of native uprisings, tribal massacres, Afro-socialist and multiculturalist rants, and elaborate rationalizations of how this year's corrupt election, cholera epidemic, or jihadist attack can be traced back and blamed on colonial oppression. My subconscious gave events an even more lurid twist, and the dream-narratives that resulted invariably seemed like discarded drafts for Waugh' Black Mischief or Scoop. All terribly incorrect.

Now here's a sample of naked, full-frontal Spencer:

Sun Ra was born on the planet Saturn some time ago. The best accounts agree that he emerged on Earth as Herman "Sunny" Blount, born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, although Sun Ra himself always denied that Blount was his surname. He returned to Saturn in 1993 after creating a stunningly variegated and beautiful assemblage of earthly and interplanetary music, most notably with his fervently loyal Arkestra. (Many great musicians passed through the Arkestra over the years, including reedman Pharoah Sanders, trombonist Julian Priester, and violinist Billy Bang. Most notable and long-tenured were the criminally underrated John Gilmore on tenor sax and Marshall Allen on alto). Mr. Blount, or Mr. Ra, or Mr. Mystery (as he was sometimes styled in later years) first appeared on the scene as a pianist with Fletcher Henderson's band, and to the end of his life Ra retained an affinity, respect, and genius for big band music in the style of Henderson and his contemporaries, with Sun's own extra-galactic twists.
...
Because he insisted that he was a Saturnian, and developed an elaborate cosmology and myth-system with considerable spiritual and political implications, Sun Ra was often dismissed as a clown. For some listeners it was enough to see him decked out in his extraterrestrial regalia to call him a con man and move on. Even the most cursory hearing of the music demonstrates that such dismissals were and are patently unfair. Behind Ra's mythology were a good number of sound and sensible ideas; more importantly, he was a master musician who left a magnificent body of work. His influence as an arranger and a leader cannot be underestimated, and is ignored by musicians only at their peril.

Frankly, I'm taken aback that people credulous enough to believe in the djinn, and accept the story of Muhammad riding a genetically-modified donkey into heaven, had the sharp critical faculties needed to detect the common threads connecting Spencer's many stylistic diguises. But now they're onto us, so we might as well 'fess up. I would like to make the point, however, that none of Spencer's impersonations arose from timidity. (When you're already on Al-Qaeda's hitlist, you really have no motivation to hide behind pen-names in order to slam the New York Times; it's not like they were planning to review your books, anyway.) No, the reason Robert Spencer invented me, and Hugh Fitzgerald, was simple modesty. He didn't want to make a vulgar display of versatility, to show off the way Rahsaan Roland Kirk (the source of my pseudonym!) used to when he'd play three saxophones at once. Our parent personality, Robert, is just too self-effacing for that sort of thing--which may explain why he never hit the pop charts in his first career as an itinerant saxophone player in Eastern Europe. Those Slavs want somebody willing to put on a show, and do an endzone dance. (Though there is somewhere online a grainy video of Robert playing Charlie Parker after setting his saxophone on fire.)

But the stealth jihadists shouldn't spend too much time congratulating themselves. They have only uncovered two of the many, many alternate personalities and literary voices Robert Spencer has developed--essentially cloning himself like Agent Smith in Matrix 2: Reloaded. Yes, Robert Spencer is Roland Shirk and Hugh Fitzgerald. What his enemies do not know is that Robert is also Ibn Warraq, Stephen Emerson, Bat Ye'or, and (in his spare time) Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And those are just the names we've decided to cop to at this time. There are more--oh, so many more--avatars of Robert Spencer, appearing all over the Internet, in guises too multifarious for our enemies to uncover. At least three major jazz critics writing remotely for major music magazines, one biographer of Bob Dylan, and a major importer of hummus to southern California, are also secretly Spencer.

In fact, to discourage assassins, Spencer no longer appears in public under his real name. That avuncular, slimmed-down fellow recently seen at CPAC is actually actor Tony Shalhoub, who has donned a false beard to portray Spencer on television and at major speaking events for the past seven years. (Has no one ever noticed that "Spencer's" speaking schedule is eerily incompatible with the shooting schedule of "Monk"? Our enemies are so foolish, so blind....) There are three other "stunt-Spencers" who show up for less important events, like college talks and debates with Dinesh D'Souza, where their answers are fed to them through sophisticated Bluetooth devices purchased second-hand from Shin Bet. Hundreds of "Spencer's helpers" are now in training at the Jihadwatch Ranch (formerly Neverland), for release throughout the country in 2012. It is our aim to make Robert Spencer as ubiquitous each Eid as Santa Claus is at Christmastime--so that one day, every little girl and boy in America can sit on "his" lap at department stores, and tell him the gift they really want: "Freedom."

For those of us who no longer believe in Santa Claus, there remains a single consolation: the series of grim, deliciously wicked presents that pour down our chimney from the Grinch. In the absence of St. Nick, some ghastly Krampus dashes through the skies (like Jack the Pumpkin King in the kids' classic The Nightmare Before Christmas) dropping cynics like me such gifts as Rat-in-the-Box, walking and talking Chucky dolls, and baby zombie reindeer. There's no other scientific explanation for the appearance of this news story in the Christmas eve Post-Tribune. It seems that in Gary, Indiana, a holiday event was held to honor the memory of Michael Jackson, entitled (naturally) "Christmas for the Children." Given the persistent, documented charges that Jackson liked to do a whole lot more than cuddle with kids, perhaps the gift the King of Pop might have preferred was some "Children for Christmas."

The party was sponsored by the Gary-based not-for-profit the United Urban Network, whose CEO, Cassandra Cannon, explained, "Today, we decided to honor a Gary native who cared a lot about children and he has said in the past that he would love to return to his hometown and help the children." The prospect of Jackson's ghost returning to Gary and prowling the city to "help the children" seems better suited to Halloween than Christmas--bringing us back again to Tim Burton territory. The event apparently featured "pasta dishes, tamales, vegetable, salad and cake, children and adults," and Christmas songs by "American Idol's Season 9 contestant Marcus Jones and Michael Jackson impersonator Dashon Butler," most prominently "The Little Drummer Boy."

The reason I commend this blessed event to readers of Jihadwatch was the photo that accompanied this Evening Without Irony. The caption read: "Jihad Muhammad explains the principles of Kwanzaa while lighting a candle on the Kinara at United Urban Network Inc./Steel City Renaissance 'Christmas for the Children: A tribute to Michael Jackson.'"

I would cheerfully have given up my Christmas in New York City to have sat instead over tamales in Gary, Indiana, and learn from Mr. Jihad Muhammad about the principles of Kwanaa--a holiday entirely unknown in Africa, or indeed anywhere on earth before it was invented by Maulana (Swahili: "master teacher") Ron Karenga (real name: Ronald McKinley Everett) in 1966. The African-American online journal Chicken Bones offers this account of Karenga's career:

He was born on a poultry farm in Maryland, the fourteenth child of a Baptist minister. He moved to California in the late 50's to attend LA Community College. He later moved to UCLA, where he got a Master's degree in political science and African Studies and by the mid 1960's, he had established himself as a leader of the black movement- a self described "cultural nationalist". He had purposely used the term "nationalist" to distinguish his group from the Black Panthers who were Marxists. He wanted a separate black state while the Marxists worked for integration.

The friction between his group and the Panthers mirrored the centuries of tribal warring in Africa. Both groups were heavily recruiting at UCLA in the 60's and vying for control of the newly developed African Studies Department. Karenga and his group backed one candidate for dept. head and the Panthers another. Both began carrying guns on campus and on Jan. 17. 1969, about 150 students gathered at the lunchroom to discuss the problem. Two Panther members had been admitted to the college as part of a federal program that helped black high-school dropouts enter the university. The meeting turned violent and ended with two of Karenga's group, George P. Stiner and Larry Joseph Stiner killing two. The Stiner brothers shot two Panthers John Huggins, 23 and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, 26 - dead.

UCLA chancellor Charles E. Young, scared that the violence would hurt admissions said "The students here have handled themselves in an absolutely impeccable manner. They have been concerned. They haven't argued who the director should be; they have been saying what kind of person he should be." The remarks were made after the shooting and the university went ahead with its Afro-American Studies Program. Meanwhile, Karenga's group grew and performed assaults and robberies always following the law laid down in The Quotable Karenga, a book that laid out the "True Path of Blackness." "The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black."

On May 9, 1970 he initiated the torture session that led to his imprisonment. The torture session was described in the L.A. Times on May 14, 1971. "The victims said they were living at Karenga's home when Karenga accused them of trying to kill him by placing crystals in his food and water and in various areas of his house. When they denied it, allegedly they were beaten with an electrical cord and a hot soldering iron was put in Miss Davis' mouth and against her face.

Police were told that one of Miss Jones' toes was placed in a small vise, which then was tightened by the men and one woman. The following day Karenga told the women that 'Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what I know." Miss Tamao put detergent in their mouths; Smith turned a water hose full force on their faces, and Karenga, holding a gun, threatened to shoot both of them. The victims Deborah Jones and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothing."

Karenga was convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of false imprisonment. He was sentenced on Sept. 17, 1971 to serve one to ten years in prison. After being released from prison in 1975, he remade himself as Maulana Ron Karenga, went into academics, and by 1979 was running the Black Studies Department at California State University in Long Beach and converted to Marxism. Kwanzaa's seven principles include "collective work" and "cooperative economics." He is still there and everyone has almost forgotten the cruel and vicious attacks committed on his fellow blacks. Kwanzaa has been successfully marketed and is now heralded as a great African tradition.

The silver lining is that rather than "de-whitinizing" Christmas as Al Sharpton purported - it has polarized the holiday season -Hanukkah for Jews, Kwanzaa for Blacks, and Christmas for whites.

As Ann Coulter points out, "Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation." Coulter also reports that Karenga was, in effect, a stooge of the FBI--who supported him behind the scenes in a covert attempt to split the Black Panther Party.

Suddenly, it makes more sense why someone named Jihad Muhammad would be an expert in the principles of Kwanzaa--a divisive and religiously meaningless holiday created explicitly to encourage African-Americans to cultivate racial separatism. Much as Communist activists did in the 1920s and 30s, Muslim evangelists are trained to target African-Americans, to prey upon their very real grievances and cultivate imagined ones, the better to detach them from their historic patriotism and deep-seated Christian faith. Muslim preachers especially single out black men in prison, and leave out the most revolutionary and political implications of Islamic faith--as admitted by the manual "Methodology of Dawah" by Shamim A. Siddiqi, designed to aid Muslims in the propagation of their faith:

Almost every community has its Imam. He is the virtual leader of the community and all its members are loyal, faithful and obedient to him. Many of these communities have Dawah programs that are strictly restricted to the Afro-American community of America. Normally the Afro-American population of prison is the center of Dawah work. In some localities it is also conducted in Black neighborhoods around the mosques.

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 demands from a Muslim. Aqidah is explained without giving the details of the impact of Iman Billah and Iman Bil- Akhirah, 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 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, as in most of the cases the Da'ee himself is not conversant with it.

Having read this far, I've lost any sense of grim delight I might have taken in the Gary, Indiana, Michael Jackson Christmas party. Most of the people present were surely hard-working, loyal Americans who had no earthly idea that the holiday being preached to them by the devout Jihad Muhammad was an invention of a criminal and a terrorist, designed to deprive black Americans first of their patriotism, then of their historic faith. (By the time he made up Kwanzaa, Karenga was a doctrinaire Marxist.) These Midwesterners didn't turn up for a Christmas party because they were seeking a "partial and concocted" version of Islam, with its "revolutionary" implications carefully hidden. They remembered when Michael Jackson was a normal-looking, fabulously talented child singer with a cute Afro and the voice of an angel. What he became over time was as twisted and sad as the story of Kwanzaa, and as ugly as the face of stealth jihad. And there's nothing funny about that.

Pamela Geller, who is interviewed in this article, comments on it here: "The American people are sick of being deceived and misled. Stop talking, start acting. Let's see Muslim supremacist groups lay down their arms against those of us who are exposing and reporting on jihad, and instead take up the fight against the jihadist 'fringe' that is at war with the West. Why is Geller or Spencer their target? Why aren't the Muslim 'extremists' their target? This is all about the Ground Zero victory mosque. Notice how they all close ranks and make it about 'Islamophobia,' when everyone knows it is a deeply offensive, deliberately provocative act. Opposition to the mosque is not 'Islamophobia,' it's 'Islamorealism' (hat tip to Spencer, who coined that term years ago)."

Indeed I did, and thank you, and I'm glad to see it is getting wider currency lately.

"Mosques Open Their Doors to Neighbors in Effort to Win Over Skeptics," by Lauren Green for Fox News, October 22:

The prayers, the Koran and the people. They're the three things Muslims would like Americans to know about.

To counter negative stereotypes, Muslim leaders nationwide are flinging open the doors to their mosques, hoping to present a positive image of Islam.

"The main thing is to open the doors and to share with people, to clarify who we are so people have no fears, so we can develop stronger relationships overall," says Imam Al-Amin Abdul Latif of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York. [...]

The neighborly hospitality is certainly part of the effort, but its fundamental impetus is to combat widespread opposition to building an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. And it's a hard task, indeed. A Fox News Opinion Dynamics Poll shows 61 percent - other polls put the figure as high as 70 percent -- oppose building a mosque so close to the site of the worst terror attack on U.S. soil, an attack that was perpetrated by Muslim extremists.

Dr. Hafiz Rehman, who hosted the Long Island event, says, "On 9/11 the planes were hijacked and the religion was hijacked. We want to build close to there so people know Muslims are mainstream Americans also."

It will be an uphill battle.

Pamela Geller, head of Stop Islamization of America, sees a sinister purpose behind the open-house PR campaign: "Dawa, proselytizing to Islam, bringing people to Islam to convert," she says.

"This is not about sensitivity. There has not been one instance that they reconsidered Ground Zero Mosque.... I don't think the American people need an education. I think that the Islamic supremacists need some sensitivity training."...

Indeed. The accommodation is always one-sided. The concessions are always from one side. Yet no one seems to notice, or care.

The Islamic Circle of North America has been named in "a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends" by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is bent on waging "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

They say they want to encourage dialogue via these billboards. Great. I'll start. The billboard says that Islam is "the way of life of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus & Muhammad." That is a reflection of the Islamic supremacist notion, rooted in the Qur'an (3:67, 5:116, 9:30, etc.), that the Biblical prophets taught Islam, and their messages were corrupted by their followers to create what we know of today as Judaism and Christianity. In this view, Judaism and Christianity have no legitimacy whatsoever: they are renegade, twisted, hijacked versions of the original Islam.

So my question is: How does ICNA hope to encourage dialogue by making a declaration at the outset that Judaism and Christianity are false, renegade religions? Wouldn't it be more likely to encourage dialogue if ICNA, instead of simply trying to convert people to Islam (which is really what this call to "dialogue" is all about), acknowledged the supremacist aspects of some Islamic texts and teachings, and offered a way forward for Muslims that would blunt the potential of those supremacist texts and teachings to incite believers to hatred and violence?

That is always way too much to ask. But if this call to "dialogue" were genuine, it would be merely Step One.

"Billboards going up to promote Islam," by Bob Von Sternberg for the Star Tribune, December 15 (thanks to Block Ness):

Hoping to encourage interfaith dialogue, an Islamic organization will unveil a pair of billboards in Minneapolis this week.

The Minnesota chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America plans to unveil the billboards Friday, the eve of the Islamic New Year.

The billboards will be located along Hiawatha Avenue in south Minneapolis and Central Avenue on the north side.

They are part of a nationwide multimedia campaign that also includes placing posters on buses and subways in other big cities.

The billboards will display a toll-free telephone number where people can get answers to questions about Islam, as well as obtain free copies of the Qur'an and other Islamic literature.

"Got Questions? Get Answers," the billboard states.

In a prepared statement, the campaign's organizers are quoted as saying, "Islam is often a misunderstood religion, leading some to hold bias view of Islam with discrimination and suspicion of Muslims. This ad campaign will provide an opportunity for the people of Twin Cities to take a fresh and positive look at Islam."

We've covered the dawah buses that appeared in various cities a few months ago, but has anyone seen anything like this white truck? In "A Different Kind of Ice Cream," November 23, the estimable Baldilocks recalls a strange visitor to her Los Angeles neighborhood:

[...] At midday, I was in the back of the house in my office--blogging, of course. At some point, a noise entered my consciousness. It was a voice, a tinned one and, as I listened I became aware of three things: that the voice was male, that it was coming out of a bullhorn and that it was repeating the same phrase over and over again. However, I could not make out the words at first. [...]

The voice was coming from speakers attached to the type of truck that is sometimes used by ice cream vendors. The truck was spotlessly clean and gleaming white except for the design on the side: the huge blood-red star-and-crescent symbol of Islam.

The occupant had been exhorting the residents of this neighborhood using a two-sentence phrase, most of which I have blocked out of my memory. But I do remember one part and, really, it's the only relevant part. The occupant was advising us to...

"Embrace Islam."

By the time I gained the presence of mind to grab a camera, the gleaming white truck had moved on. I haven't seen it since.

From the time that it came to light the Major Nidal Malik Hasan basically warned the FBI and the Army of what he was--if not of what he was about to do--I've been thinking of that "ice cream" truck and what that particular vendor was selling. Aren't Jihadis required to warn their infidel foes and invite them to convert before any attack?

"Embrace Islam," he said. Left unspoken was the alternative.

Read it all.

In "...as al-Zawahiri Tries to Boost Jihadi Morale" at Global Terrorism Analysis, Stephen Ulph lays out evidence that Zawahri is trying to combat low spirits among his troops. The archterrorist also has a few harsh words for Muslims who are not aiding the jihad.

An extended audio statement from Ayman al-Zawahiri, believed to have been made in mid-September, was posted on December 9 on the al-Safinat jihadi forum (http://202.71.102.108/~alsafnat/vb). Under the rubric "Four years on since the attacks on New York and Washington," and dated Sha'ban 1426 (September 2005), the 48-minute tape was produced by al-Sahab Media Productions, an organization that has come to be known as al-Qaeda's video production company. The statement is worth examining in detail since, amid the rhetoric of denunciation and challenge, it reveals much about the present state of morale within the al-Qaeda organization.

The presentation, entitled Mu'awwiqat al-Jihad (Obstacles to Jihad), is provided with English subtitles and is hence intended for the widest possible circulation. It starts off in a buoyant tone: "I wish to speak to you about the victory that, with Allah's permission, is imminent; for a simple reason, that the key to victory is in our hands." Subsequently, however, the tone shifts, indicating some exasperation at the lack of the "final push" required to ensure the success of the jihad, outlining that "the primary cause of defeat is in ourselves." As if to counter a mood of despondency, al-Zawahiri underlines how the jihad has already achieved successes. In Iraq, he maintains, the resistance "stabs America every day and makes it scream and search feverishly for a way out of its predicament there." And in Israel, "were it not for the mujahideen's confrontation of Israel and its agents (our rulers) Israel would have now expanded to many times its current size." The mujahideen have also, he asserts, effectively defended Islam from the "puppet rulers," under whom "the corruption would have worsened and they would have sought to eradicate Islam."...

For all the bullish talk of triumph, the message of al-Zawahiri's address appears equally crafted as a last-minute appeal for support to help prevent the defeat of the mujahideen. "The key to victory is in our hands," he states, "and in turn, the primary cause of defeat is in ourselves." This part of the message is particularly noteworthy, in that the reproach and call for jihad contradict the image of success he maintains the jihad has already achieved. Al-Zawahiri gives his diagnosis for the problems besetting the jihad: "The first battle we must win is our battle with ourselves, our battle with out weakness and helplessness and clinging to the earth; our preference for small gains." He then goes on to encourage the mujahideen by belittling the enemy as having little else but technology on their side, and "driven only by fear and desire; in the field they don't make a stand in any honest encounter." At root of the problem of the lack of victory is Muslims' "fear and ignorance of fighting" and their "submission to [the regimes'] terrorism and intimidation." Al-Zawahiri then develops this theme on the disastrous passivity of the Muslims; taking the example of the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat by Khalid al-Islambouli, he notes how everyone subsequently abandoned them to their fate and contented themselves with "passive praise." Another example is Saudi Arabia, where Muslims who called for reform were "left to fight alone" and (in a probable reference to the penitent Saudi jihadi shaykhs) "some callers to reform relapsed and turned around to stab their brothers, the Mujahideen, in their backs."

Al-Zawahiri appears genuinely exasperated at the lack of enthusiasm in the Muslim community for the rigors of jihad and the ability of the broader community to content itself with the war of words. He scoffs, from his position out there on the front line in the hills, at the armchair commentators. "If each one of us wants to turn into a debater, analyst, and specialist who dresses in elegant clothes, attends seminars and appears on screen, then returns to his house safe from the tyranny of the Crusaders and their agents, then there is no hope for deliverance."...

Recall, immediately following the London bombings of July, all the tough talk from the Blair government? The promises to crack down on extremist mosques which incubated the hatred that directly led to the deaths of dozens of Britons? Well, forget all that, from the AP:

The British government Thursday dropped a key part of the anti-terrorism legislation proposed after the deadly July 7 suicide bombings on London's transit system, abandoning its effort to let police shut down extremist mosques.

The plan, introduced a month after four suspected suicide bombers killed 52 bus and Underground passengers, had been criticized by police and religious organizations.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke said in a written statement to the House of Commons that he was dropping the proposal "although we will keep the matter under review."

The proposal would have given police powers to temporarily close places of worship being used by extremists. The trustee or owner would then be served with an order to halt radical activity.

The Home Office spokesman said 66 people and organizations had responded to a consultation on the proposal, and most were opposed.

The Association of Chief Police Officers also opposed the idea, saying it risked alienating ordinary Muslims and driving extremism underground.

The Rev. Graham Sparkes of the Baptist Union of Great Britain said Baptists had suffered persecution and imprisonment in the past in their efforts to "secure control over what was preached, where it could be preached, and who could preach."

"Al-Qaeda leader on tape," from the Herald Sun, with thanks to JE:

OSAMA bin Laden has called for more suicide bombings in his first video appearance in more than a year.

The video, yet to be proved authentic, was dropped off on Tuesday at a news agency in the Afghan city of Kandahar....

Pajhwok says the 30-minute video shows bin Laden with Taliban commander Mullah Dadollah.

The pair warn that al-Qaeda has secured "new defence weapons", which analysts believe may be anti-aircraft missiles to fire at commercial airlines.

Bin Laden allegedly says: "We have unwavering faith in God. Now that we have acquired new weapons, we will defeat the enemy the way we defeated the Russians.

"Only Muslims have the courage to carry out suicide attacks."

And the religious justification for doing so (cf. Qur'an 9:111).

I'm glad the Jerusalem Post is noting this, but it is a bit late. I have only been saying this publicly for about three and a half years, and it has only been six years since Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani testified the same thing before a State Department Open Forum.

Mainstream US Muslim organizations are heavily influenced by Saudi-funded extremists, according to Yehudit Barsky, an expert on terrorism at the American Jewish Committee.

Worse still, Barsky told The Jerusalem Post last week, these "extremist organizations continue to claim the mantle of leadership" over American Islam.

The power of the extremist Wahhabi form of Islam in the United States was created with generous Saudi financing of American Muslim communities over the past few decades. Over 80 percent of the mosques in the United States "have been radicalized by Saudi money and influence," Barsky said.

Before the 1970s, she explained, "Muslim immigrants who came to the United States would build a store-front mosque somewhere. Then, since the 1970s, the Saudis have been approaching these mosques and telling them it wasn't proper for the glory of Islam to build such small mosques."

For many Muslims, it seemed the Saudis were offering a free mosque. However, Barsky believes for each mosque they invested in, the Saudis sent along their own imam (teacher-cleric).

"These [immigrants] were not interested in this [Wahhabi] ideology, and suddenly they have a Saudi imam coming in and telling them they're not praying properly and not practicing Shari'a [Islamic law] properly." This Saudi strategy was being carried out "all over the world, from America to Bangladesh," with the Saudis investing $70-80 billion in the endeavor over three decades.

Will earthquake aid really win over Pakistani hearts and minds? This article, "For Devout Pakistani Muslims, Aid Muddles Loyalties," from the New York Times (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist), suggests that it does win over those who are not politicized, but that jihadists and their sympathizers are unswayed -- as I observed about the tsunami relief effort in this article.

This highlights another problem that I have often noted: that peaceful Muslims are susceptible to being politicized by jihadists, thereby rendering hearts and minds initiatives void. Continued protestations that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked, and refusals to look squarely at the ways jihadists use Islamic theology and tradition to justify their actions and recruit, only exacerbate the vulnerability of non-politicized Muslims by cutting the ground out from under anyone who would oppose this jihadist activity in any effective way. No one can fix a problem when they will not even admit that it is a problem.

BASSIAN, Pakistan, Oct. 24 - Asmat Ali Janbaz's explanation for the American military helicopters flying over this isolated mountain valley last Thursday afternoon was familiar.

Mr. Janbaz, who lives in the area and who describes himself as an Islamic hard-liner, contended that the Americans were not ferrying injured earthquake victims to safety; instead, they were secretly establishing an American military base in northern Pakistan to encircle China.

"This is the mission!" he declared triumphantly. "Not to help the people of Pakistan."

Yet after Mr. Janbaz departed, something extraordinary happened. Here in a mountainous corner of northern Pakistan long thought to be a center for militant training camps and religious conservatism, three men dismissed his theory and heartily praised the United States for aiding victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake, which killed more than 53,000 Pakistanis.

"People don't believe such things; people only believe in what they are seeing," said Manzur Hussain, a 36-year-old hospital worker whose brother, sister and two sons died in the earthquake. "People who give them aid, they respect them."

While it is too early to reach firm conclusions, anecdotal interviews with earthquake survivors in this picturesque mountain district, known as Mansehra, suggest that American assistance may be improving Pakistanis' perceptions of the United States - an image that has been overwhelmingly negative here since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq....

Muhammad Farid, a homeopathic doctor in the devastated town of Balakot, said he still deeply disagreed with the American invasion of Iraq and other policies. But the dispatch to Pakistan of 14 American military helicopters and more than 20 foreign search and rescue teams surprised him.

"It has changed our opinion about the United States," he said, adding that hard-line clerics' descriptions of debauched foreigners have proved untrue. "They have been accusing all these people of spreading immorality, but these are the people who came to save our lives."

Pakistani officials and political analysts cautioned that any relief-related change in perceptions would be limited. The international aid may sway the perceptions of moderate Pakistanis, particularly well-educated city dwellers, they said, but it is unlikely to sway the country's small core of militants who support Al Qaeda.

"Even if paradise is delivered to them, they'll keep abusing us, the Americans and the Jews," said a close aide to President Pervez Musharraf, a military ruler and religious moderate who has survived at least three assassination attempts from suspected Islamic militants. "This is going to take a long time."

Islamists are also doing their best to aid earthquake victims and curry support, and in an unknown number of cases, succeeding....

Al Qaeda, whose senior leaders are thought to be hiding several hundred miles to the southwest along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, also joined in. In a videotaped message released on Sunday, the group's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged Muslims to help earthquake victims.

"I call on all Muslims in general, and I call on all Islamic humanitarian associations in particular, to move to Pakistan to provide help to their Pakistani brothers, and that they do it quickly," Agence France-Presse reported him as saying. "All of us know the vicious American war on Muslim humanitarian work."

Mr. Janbaz, the self-described hard-liner, echoed those sentiments in an interview in Bassian, a village just outside Balakot. He painted the American relief effort in sinister terms and identified himself as a member of the Movement to Enforce the Law of Shariah, a banned militant group that dispatched volunteers to fight American forces in Afghanistan in 2001.

But he appeared to have few takers around Balakot, a riverside town of 150,000 people that appears to have suffered most of the 13,285 deaths in the Mansehra district....

Hugh Fitzgerald touches in today's Daily Hugh on the problem of recruitment of moderate Muslims for the jihad, and of course it is something I have emphasized repeatedly: self-proclaimed peaceful and moderate Muslims have made no effort to separate themselves from jihadists, and many times here at Jihad Watch we have chronicled the adventures of moderate Muslims who suddenly turned out to be...immoderate. Probably when they were at work at their dentistry office in Kfar Manda, these two appeared to be upstanding citizens, having carved out a good, prosperous place for themselves in Israeli society. But appearances, once again, were deceiving.

From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Kemaste:

Two Israeli Arab dentists from the Galilee were arrested on suspicion of helping Hamas plan bombings in Israel, security sources revealed Sunday.

The two were identified as Nazmi Hassin, 35, and A'salam Zeidan. They were arrested in September, but news of the arrest was under a gag order until last night.

According to security sources, the pair had studied dentistry in Romania in the 1990s. After being recruited into Hamas they even underwent espionage training in Turkey, linked up with a handler and carried out missions for Hamas once they returned home.

Hassin, 35, from Nazareth, told interrogators that he was trained in surveillance, intelligence collecting, encryption and clandestine activity. The training was held during a five-day period in Istanbul. Plans to send him to Iran for military training fell through because he only had an Israeli passport.

Once back in his Galilee village, Hassin helped recruit Zeidan, his partner at their dentistry office in Kfar Manda. He also passed on the names of at least three other Israeli Arabs to his Hamas contact for potential recruitment.

Zeidan, 36, told his interrogators he agreed to find safe houses for Hamas members transporting "the goods." In 1999, Zeidan traveled to Turkey for training with Hamas, that included learning how to obtain fertilizer used for making explosives, bomb assembly and transmitting orders via e-mail accounts. He also served as a courier for Hamas and delivered money to a Hamas member in Nazareth. In 2002, Zeidan met with a Hamas agent in Saudi Arabia and agreed to scout out potential crowded bombing sites in Tel Aviv. Hassin aided Zeidan in maintaining contact with their Hamas handler.

And what is the message the portly cleric wishes to convey? Why the glorification and urging of jihad, of course. From the Times Online:

THE exiled radical Islamist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammad is continuing to reach his followers in Britain through websites and internet chatrooms. After a period of silence that came after Bakri Mohammad’s decision to leave Britain for Lebanon to avoid the threat of arrest and deportation, his followers have re-emerged online.

They have been detected using a chatroom labelled “Muslims in the UK” to deliver lectures that deliberately challenge proposals in the Terrorism Bill to outlaw the glorification of terrorist acts.

The nature of the material suggests that Bakri Mohammad’s movement is prepared to be more explicit in its preachings and teachings.

In one session a man calling himself Mizaan, who spoke with an English accent, said: “We should all of us glorify terrorism and we should incite religious hatred.

“Don’t worry, it’s not illegal for us to say that the Mujahidin on 9/11 were the magnificent 19, and it’s not illegal for us to say that Mohammad Sidique Khan (July 7 ringleader) and the four on 7/7, that they were the fantastic four.”

Speaking animatedly, Mizaan stated that the world was divided into two camps — Islam and kuffar — which would always be at war. He repeatedly urged his listeners to take part in that war.

He said that he was in contact with Bakri Mohammad. but it was not possible to determine from where in the world the lecture was being broadcast.

The chatroom appeared on the Paltalk internet network which is run by a New York-based company. In January The Times revealed that Bakri Mohammad used the same network to declare Britain a “land of war” and encourage his followers to join al-Qaeda.

He's a moderate imam who lied about jail time he served for assault and about having been caught with a false French passport. Imagine what he would have done if he hadn't been so moderate. From The Gazette, with thanks to RG:

The imam of Montreal's largest North African mosque shocked his followers yesterday when he told them Canada wants to deport him for lying to get into the country as a refugee in 1997 and lying again to become a permanent resident in 1999.

Admitting he concealed information about jail time he served in France for assault in 1995, as well as having been caught with a false French passport in 1996, Said Jaziri vowed to stay at the Al-Qods mosque until he's deported....

"I'm a very moderate imam," Jaziri, 38, clad all in white, said in French under the gaze of more than 100 Muslim men who had come for Friday afternoon prayers at the mosque on Belanger St. near Iberville St.

"I'm staying here until expulsion - nowhere else," he vowed, as journalists invited for a hastily called news conference listened in, interrupted by people in the crowd declaring their faith in their spiritual leader....

Jaziri was in the news last month when he proposed using government subsidies to build a $20-million grand mosque for Montreal's rapidly growing Muslim population, an idea quickly rejected by Montreal's city administration.

The Ba'athists employ jihad rhetoric, just as Saddam himself did when he was in power. From AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Nicosia - Saddam Hussein's ousted Ba'ath party called on supporters in Iraq to step up attacks on US and Iraqi forces as his trial starts today, according to an Internet statement....

"This illegal trial will turn a new page for the Jihad (holy war) of the Iraqi armed resistance ... organised for the long run by our companion and leader," it said.

An Islamic Television update. From the Arab News:

Muslims should create, develop and make use of the media properly and reasonably, according to S.G.P. Jafry, president of Jafry Communications of Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.

“The system of messengers is a long-established and well-known tradition. The media is a powerful messenger, and Muslims must earn to use it effectively, especially post-Sept. 11,” Jafry told Arab News yesterday.

He explained that Sept. 11 had opened up more opportunities for the Muslim media. “It has created an environment for the reception of ideas. Questions are being asked, which must be answered in a studied and reasoned manner.”

Jafry said that in the present environment, it was the duty of Muslims to use the media to build bridges of understanding. “The media should concentrate on explaining what Islam really is. For example, when we say that we believe in all the Prophets, it breaks the ice, and helps to remove several mental blocks, and clear some ignorance and misunderstandings,” he added.

Speaking of his company, Jafry explained: “We are a national broadcaster presenting three TV programs — two on cable in Toronto, London (Ontario) and Ottawa and one national all over Canada using CTS — Christian Television Station and Vision TV Network. We are pioneers of Indo-Pak entertainment, having begun in 1969, mainly presenting radio programs. In 1978, we began television programs.”

Jafry Communications also supplies Islamic TV programs to Bridges TV in the United States. “Keys to the Qur’an,” which is prepared from material provided by the Saudi government, is on TV three times a day. Another program, “Calls of the Minaret,” is featured twice a week.

Jafry pointed out that Islam is a full set of rules for mankind’s benefit. He said that the Holy Qur’an speaks of two kinds of duties — duties toward the Creator and duties toward man or society, with a major emphasis on the latter.

“The problem is that we do not give enough attention to our duties toward man. Post-Sept. 11 this has become important and we must explain and show how much importance Islam attaches to the betterment of, and service to, mankind. We have begun producing information, such as the rights of neighbors (including non-Muslims), duties toward parents, looking after the community (which includes non-Muslims) honesty in dealings, why four wives, and so on,” Jafry said.

“In other words, we try to explain to Muslims and non-Muslims what Islam is."

"School that nurtured the Islamic call to arms," from The Australian, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The Islamic school in Tenggulun has some of the most notorious alumni in the world, having been a place of learning, preaching and refuge to many of the key protagonists in the October 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people.

Today, it has 150 students from all over the far-reaching archipelago and, according to its founder Muhammed Khozin, he teaches his students to do with words what his brothers chose to do with bombs.

The students The Australian met there yesterday quizzed this reporter about his religious beliefs and debated the issue of whether the holy trinity in Christianity was false. They muttered among themselves about whether I was really a reporter or an Australian intelligence agent....

Welcome to the breeding ground of radical Islam in Indonesia. It started with Jemaah Islamiah spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir's Ngruki school in Solo, Central Java, and has spread into other pesantren across the country....

Khozin, as well as being one of the school's founders, is the brother of three of the 2002 Bali bombers, Ali Gufron, known as Mukhlas, Amrozi and Ali Imron, who all attended and taught at the school.

As head of one of Indonesia's most notorious families, he is keen to distance his community from the second Bali bombings, which he says are "different" to the first. His brand of Islam, he says, is different. He says the community has moved on and does not want to be linked to the new "tragedy".

But to Khozin, there is no difference in his ideology and his brothers'. The difference is in how they chose to act on their anger at Westerners flaunting their liberal values. He refers to the non-Muslim community as Kaffir Dhimmi, the name the prophet Mohammed gave to the non-Muslim communities. He says it is the responsibility of Muslims to fight this group by convincing them to behave with respect towards their Muslim neighbours.

He says the fight should not be "physical" but a fight with words.

Khozin does not believe that Westerners and Muslims can live side by side while Westerners continue to believe, for example, in allowing women to wear bikinis at the beach and to drink alcohol.

It is a "morality war" brought on by Australians and Westerners in general refusing to respect his culture.

This is another species of the kind of talk that clouds men's minds. Liberals tend to think that if American foreign policy were adjusted, there would be peace with the Islamic world. Some conservatives tend to think that if American immorality were reined in, there would be peace with the Islamic world. Both are tempted to wax rhapsodic about statements like Khozin's "morality war" appellation, which plays into the assumptions of both Left and Right. However, the general ignorance of Islam in the West leads all too many analysts on both the Left and the Right to breeze right past his statement about dhimmis. They don't realize that Khozin and his ilk will not acquiesce to peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims if America were suddenly to become moral (by their lights) and isolationist. Rather, Khozin and Co. would continue to believe that Allah was commanding them, after the example of Muhammad, to offer unbelievers conversion, subjugation, or death (cf. Sahih Muslim 4294). And that tripartite offer doesn't hinge on any behavior of the infidels at all. It is an offer that must be made to them simply because they are infidels.

He said his school "prepares the student to make sure foreigners do not do that in Indonesia". You only have to talk to his son, 19-year-old Afif, to know that the young people coming through the Islamic schooling system take that message to heart and maybe even beyond.

He says Bali will not be safe from terrorism until Australians and other Westerners visiting there behave in a way that is respectful of Muslim culture. Ask Afif what he wants to do when he grows up, the answer is simple: "Fight for Islam."

Then comes some wishful thinking from The Australian:

This is probably best interpreted as youthful spirit and not a declaration of jihad but his commitment is to ending what he sees as a Western corruption of his country. It shows that with such a hardline philosophy on what is and what is not acceptable, it is a fine line between fighting with words and fighting with bombs.

While Afif's uncles, Mukhlas -- the commander of the 2002 bombings -- and Amrozi, who played a key role procuring most of the equipment they needed, are facing the death penalty, he doesn't view what they did as wrong because they scared away many Westerners. He considers the Muslims who died as martyrs; he says the Westerners who died are not his concern because they were unbelievers.

As part of its consideration of the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act, about which I wrote here and here, the Senate will finally get around to looking into the Freedom House report on Saudi hate literature in American mosques, which was only issued last January. From the New York Sun, with thanks to Ruth King:

WASHINGTON - The American government is demanding that Saudi Arabia account for its distribution of hate material to American mosques, as the State Department pressed Saudi officials for answers last week and as the Senate later this month plans to investigate the propagation of radical Wahhabism on American shores.

The flurry of activity comes months after a report from the Center for Religious Freedom discovered that dozens of mosques in major cities across the country, including New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, were distributing documents, bearing the seal of the government of Saudi Arabia, that incite Muslims to acts of violence and promote hatred of Jews and Christians.

A Washington-based group that is part of the human rights organization Freedom House, the Center for Religious Freedom also found during its yearlong study that the Saudi-produced materials describe democracy and America as un-Islamic. They instruct recent Muslim immigrants to consider Americans as enemies and the materials urge new arrivals to use their time here as preparation for jihad. The documents also promote the version of Islam officially embraced by Saudi government and several of the September 11, 2001, hijackers, Wahhabism, as the only authentic Islam.

In response to the Freedom House report and as part of the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005 sponsored by Senator Specter, a Republican of Pennsylvania, the Judiciary Committee - of which Senator Specter is chairman - will be holding hearings into the hate materials on October 25, a spokesman for the senator, William Reynolds, said yesterday.

The Accountability Act, introduced in June, says its purpose is "to halt Saudi support for institutions that fund, train, incite, encourage, or in any other way aid and abet terrorism, and to secure fully Saudi cooperation in the investigation of terrorist incidents." The legislation is highly critical of the House of Saud for its support of terrorist activity and cites the January Freedom House report as evidence of the kingdom's complicity in the spread of radical Islamist ideology. As part of the Accountability Act, Senator Specter has in the past held Judiciary Committee hearings into Saudi financing of terrorism and Saudi Arabia's role in injecting ideology into textbooks for Palestinian Arab schoolchildren.

"To qualify for any of the jobs, a person has to be someone who 'seeks the guidance of God.'" In a larger sense this is actually nothing new. "Al-Qa'ida Recruits Through the Internet," from The Media Line, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

Al-Qa'ida has recently begun to recruit members to the organization through the Internet, reports the London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat. Among the posts needed to be filled, are: an editor for Jihadist announcements in Iraq – both in audio and in video; an editor for TV video clips published through satellite stations; and an editor for written announcements in Arabic and English.

The wanted ads can be found on a website affiliated with Al-Qa'ida. The site said its public relations division will e-mail those who would like to apply for the jobs once they make the initial connection.

Al-Qa'ida did not specify what the salaries would be. It did state, however, that "Each Muslim has to know that he does not possess his time. His time belongs to the raped [Islamic] nation, whose blood was spilled without revenge."

To qualify for any of the jobs, a person has to be someone who "seeks the guidance of God."

It has become apparent this week that poor Karen Hughes has an impossible job. Wherever in the Muslim world she goes, Ms. Hughes is derided by extremists and “moderates” alike, who view most of her statements as little more than Zionist propaganda. Along the way, she is forced to defend policies which have already been thoroughly demonized by newspapers, Al-Jazeera, government officials, and religious leaders alike. Therefore, I’m reticent to criticize her, but her trip to Saudi Arabia has been absolutely shameful, according to Pakistan’s Daily Star:

US envoy Karen Hughes said on Tuesday Washington had privately discussed the issue of hate literature in American mosques with the Saudi government and asked for their help in getting rid it.

Hughes, whose job as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy is to counter the negative US image among Muslims and explain President George W Bush’s policies, brought the subject up publicly in a meeting with Saudi journalists.

But she did not discuss it - nor other human rights issues - in a meeting later with Saudi King Abdullah. “I hope you will find room to respect people of different faith and different faith traditions,” Hughes said at a luncheon with Saudi media.

“We are concerned that literature has been found in American mosques that has a message that is not tolerant and we hope the people of Saudi Arabia will work with us as we try to deal with this issue.”

Saudi hate literature in American mosques? It can’t be! Of course, as Jihadwatch and others have frequently reported in the past, the Saudi government has been fully complicit in spreading literature which calls for - among other things - murdering Christians and Jews.

US ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Oberwetter said Hughes was the first top Bush administration official to talk publicly in the kingdom about the anti-Christian, anti-Semitic material, which some human rights groups say has been sanctioned by the Saudi government.

Hallelujah, someone actually “talked” about the hate literature within Saudi borders! What progress!

“We’ve been raising the issue privately,” Hughes told reporters traveling with her to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. “One of my jobs is to raise issues in, I hope, a respectful way to help other countries understand American values.”

Hughes said she had never met Abdullah before and that they only “talked on personal terms”. “In a follow up meeting, I would feel very comfortable raising those issues,” she said.

Why wait, Ms. Hughes? Could the “personal” issues you saw fit to discuss with Abdullah really be more pressing than the fact that his government continues to produce and propagate hate literature? Again, no one should expect much from Ms. Hughes’ tour, but the American people deserve better than the quiet equivocation on display thus far.

Has he been reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)? "Wiretap mosques, Romney suggests: Pushes gathering of intelligence," from the Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON -- Governor Mitt Romney raised the prospect of wiretapping mosques and conducting surveillance of foreign students in Massachusetts, as he issued a broad call yesterday for the federal government to devote far more money and attention to domestic intelligence gathering.

In remarks that caused alarm among civil libertarians and advocates for immigrants rights, Romney said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation that the United States needs to radically rethink how it guards itself against terrorism.

''How many individuals are coming to our state and going to those institutions who have come from terrorist-sponsored states?" he said, referring to foreign students who attend universities in Massachusetts. ''Do we know where they are? Are we tracking them?"

''How about people who are in settings -- mosques, for instance -- that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror," Romney continued. ''Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping? Are we following what's going on?"

Watch for the uproar, already brewing in this Globe piece.

Jihad proceeding from dawa in Argentina? From the Washington Times, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BUENOS AIRES -- Police have briefly detained dozens of Muslim missionaries from the Arab world and South Asia in recent months, acting on tips from Spanish and Italian officials investigating terrorist attacks in Europe.

Argentine newspapers reported that 26 members of Jamaat Tabligh, an Islamic missionary sect, had been held, questioned and released.

European investigators suspect Jamaat Tabligh of involvement in the March 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed nearly 200 people, according to a report in the La Nacion newspaper.

The newspaper said the missionaries entered Argentina earlier this year on a possible recruitment mission.

Felipe Sola, governor of the state of Buenos Aires, confirmed that seven Jamaat Tabligh adherents from Qatar and Egypt were detained three months ago in his jurisdiction.

Officials held the men for several hours, retaining their passports but ultimately releasing them because they had not violated the law, Mr. Sola said. Malaysian, Pakistani and South African nationals were also detained in other parts of the country.

Including prominent American Muslim "moderate" Muzammil Siddiqui. I wonder if Siddiqui endorses this kind of spreading of Islam by Saudis: calls for violent jihad and restoration of the caliphate. From Arab News, with thanks to Mackie:

JEDDAH, 1 September 2005 — Prominent Muslim leaders have emphasized Saudi Arabia’s significant role in spreading the message of Islam across the world, supporting Muslim minorities and strengthening Islamic solidarity.

Dr. Muzammil Siddiqui, chairman of the Islamic Fiqh Council in North America, said American Muslims were looking to Saudi Arabia for its continued support for Islamic activities and Muslim causes and to defend the principles of the religion.

Siddiqui met Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah at his palace here on Tuesday as part of a Muslim World League delegation. Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh and MWL Secretary-General Dr. Abdullah Al-Turki were present during the meeting.

Siddiqui said Muslims all over the world were pinning great hope on Saudi Arabia and expected it to continue its policies in support of Muslim causes and Islamic minorities, and work for Islamic unity.

A professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at the University of California, Siddiqui commended King Fahd’s services to Islam and Muslims. “The late king had established departments of Islamic studies and law at US universities and supported hospitals and medical research centers,” he pointed out.

Former Sudanese President Abdul Rahman Suwar Al-Dahab, a member of MWL’s constituent council, said Muslims pray to God to give strength to King Abdullah to work for their causes.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq issues virulent manifesto: Group calls for violence, destruction of 'American empire,'" from CNN, and Eschwapp:

(CNN) -- Laying out its ideology in a broad manifesto, the group al Qaeda in Iraq -- which has been behind many of the worst attacks, beheadings and kidnappings in Iraq -- says the insurgency is in better shape than the United States acknowledges and vows to continue the insurgency and "destroy the American empire."

"Every now and then, the schoolboys of the Pentagon and the adolescents of the Black House keep blasting our ears with talks of pure arrogance and conviction saying, 'We will not leave Iraq until we accomplish our mission.' This desperate catchphrase that they keep repeating is used to make the public believe that the mujahedeens are in bad shape, as if they are begging the Americans, saying, 'Please Americans, leave Iraq,' " the group says in an e-book, an extensive document on the Internet.

"We vow by the name of God that we are determined to destroy the American empire," it says.

The book, filled with calls for violence and hate for all but "true Muslims" -- a group that it says does not include Shiites -- surfaced on an Islamic Web site this week....

The e-book includes numerous sections totaling dozens of pages, covering such topics as how the Quran justifies beheadings and why democracy is wrong....

Repeatedly, the book calls on Muslims to launch attacks against foreign forces in Iraq and people who cooperate with them.

"The basics of our faith revolve around not harming true Muslims and not shedding one single drop of Muslim blood because one drop of true Muslim blood shed amounts to the demise of this whole world. So why do we carry out operations in Iraq against the Americans and their aides in the (Iraqi) army and police? First, to please God, who orders us to carry on this jihad and to force the occupiers to pull out of the land," it says, vowing to "spread the light of justice and glory all over the world."

It cites "the glory that shines from our brothers, local and foreign fighters who left their countries, spouses and children and are sacrificing their blood for you to protect you and protect your families and honor, your women and children, forcing the occupiers to pull out of your country."

The document calls on Iraqi troops and police to turn their backs on the new elected government.

"You who betrayed Muslims and in humiliation became one of many collaborators, a servant under the command of the cross, we ask you to return to your Islamic instinct or cutting your neck will be your only punishment for your treason against your religion and your people."

It adds this warning: "Repent or else."

The group says its "doctrine and mission are clear and they can be summarized as our agreement to believe in and fight for the religion of God. We believe that those who follow these beliefs and the provisions of faith are true Muslims and anyone who denounces any of these beliefs and conditions is an infidel even if he still claims to be a Muslim."

It calls the Shiite faith "a confession of polytheism and rejectionism."

The document warns there will be no end to the insurgency. "The call for jihad goes on until doomsday, whether there is an imam calling for it or not."

The central image of the e-book is the group's logo -- a globe with an open book, presumably the Quran. Coming out of the center of the Quran are a spear, a Kalashnikov rifle, a hand with the pointer finger sticking up -- a symbol of unity -- and a banner reading, "There is no God but God; Mohammed is the messenger of God."

Yet the learned analysts continue to pretend that this has nothing to do with true Islam, and that we can fight this foe while ignoring the Islamic appeal of such messages and assuming, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that most Muslims reject such appeals.

Now here will be a test case if I ever saw one. If he is allowed to stay and continue to preach hatred and violence, it's good night for Britain. From the TimesOnline, :

ONE of the targets of the Government’s crackdown on the preachers of hate said last night that he would not try to flee Britain or go into hiding before his expected arrest next week.

Muhammad al-Massari, the Saudi dissident, said that if Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, tried to target him as the first to be deported, he would wreck the initiative in the courts. “He wants to look tough by picking high-profile people, but I am ready to fight him in the courts,” he said.

Another hardliner believed to be on the government list, Yasser al-Siri, an Egyptian-born website operator, said: “I’m not worried about expulsion. My legal team think it’s impossible.”

Mr Clarke said he expected to see the first of the extremists excluded from Britain in the coming week.

Dr al-Massari, 58, who has lived in Britain since 1994, has been condemned by MPs from all parties for reportedly backing the killing of Tony Blair on his website and radio station.

Muslims preaching hatred and intolerance in British madrassas, while the dhimmi authorities idly stand by. "Hate-India campaign by British muslim radicals," from Asian Tribune, with thanks to Andy:

Britain has suddenly realised that radicalism has made deep inroads among its young Muslims. That would not have come as a surprise to Her Majesty’s government if it had cared to take a serious view of some of the patently objectionable and unacceptable activities of the people who have been preaching hate and intolerance in the island nation for quite some time and also listened to some voices from India. It is hardly a secret in the UK that the most radicalised section among its Muslims citizens are people of Pakistani origin, followed closely by those who trace their roots to Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan.

India has reasons to be concerned about this phenomenon and, in fact, New Delhi should take up the matter with London without any delay. Much to the resentment of the Muslim community as a whole, the Madrassas in the UK have attracted a lot of adverse publicity lately. They are thought to be the main recruiting grounds for Islamists and jehadis who have now brought their terrorist activities to the very heart of the country.

There are about 1000 Madrassas, most of them attached to the mosques, where they impart Islamic history and jurisprudence and teach languages like Urdu and Arabic. Going by the London police claims now, quite a few Madrassas obviously expand their curriculum to include preaching hatred to the young and impressionable pupils.

The clerics in these mosques run schools are often imported from Pakistan, presumably after they have been ‘cleared’ by the ISI. The Muslims from India have kept a remarkable distance from the activities of the extremists. Post-Godhra the ‘imported’ preachers and British advocates of hate and terrorism are targeting the Gujrati Muslim youth in Britain to become the ‘pioneer’ batch of Indian mercenaries of death.

It therefore comes as no surprise that ‘hate India’ lessons form an essential part of the British Madrassa curriculum. Pictures from Kashmir with provocative captions adorn the walls. The ‘serene surroundings’ of the Dal Lake are shown as being surrounded by ‘600,000’ Indian soldiers, a patent Pakistani propaganda. Gun-totting Indian troops are depicted as harassing ordinary Kashmiris by stopping and searching them in bazaars. A Kashmiri youth’s funeral is shown with a perversity that is common in the Pakistani media: ‘one more added to the genocide,’

Of course, there is plenty of ammunition against the West and posters exhort the youth to join the Jehad. Some posters carry ‘interesting’ messages: ‘Show Allah what he loves to see from jehad’. ‘Hurry to rescue your brothers in al-Fallujah and eliminate your rulers if they stand in your way’ and ‘to die for the sake of Allah is better than life and what it contains.’

Read it all.

Erstwhile British jihadist Omar Bakri will have to settle for flying the black flag of Islam over Lebanon or the UAE, at least for now. "Transplanted Jihadi," from Newsweek, with thanks to Scaramouche:

Aug. 17, 2005 - Radical imam Omar Bakri Mohammed, whose pro-Jihad agitation led British authorities last week to ban him from their shores, now is likely to set up a new base in either Lebanon or the United Arab Emirates, according to a close associate.

British officials disclosed last week that Bakri, founder of a controversial and now dissolved militant group known as Al Muhajiroun (The Immigrants) had been sent a letter informing him he would not be allowed to re-enter the U.K., his longtime country of residence. The Syrian-born preacher had left Britain for what initially was described as a vacation to Lebanon shortly after a wave of deadly suicide bombings of London's transport system on July 7 and a second round of attempted attacks on July 21. In the wake of the attacks, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government promised to curb the activities of preachers like Bakri, either by ejecting them from Britain or taking them off the streets through new antiterror legislation or regulations.

Bakri associate Abu Yahya, a Briton who described himself as a former Al Muhajiroun spokesman, told NEWSWEEK that when Bakri left for Lebanon, he "never planned to come back to the U.K. in the first place." Bakri's "ultimate aim" was to go to Pakistan, said Abu Yahya, who said that he and other British followers of Bakri were "in contact" with the imam. Now, however, Bakri is "most probably" going to stay in Lebanon, though it is possible he could also try to settle in the Persian Gulf emirates of Sharjah or Abu Dhabi, according to Abu Yahya, who is currently in Britain. "He's a world-renowned figure. He has an international following ... He's going to continue his duties wherever he is." Bakri was picked up by Lebanese authorities last week for questioning but was later released.

Only days before his departure from London, Bakri, whose proclivity for outrageous statements made him a favorite target for Britain's raucous tabloids, declared that he would not inform the police if he knew that another cell of Muslim terrorists was planning a new attack on London. "I have said publicly, on the record, if I knew somebody was going to attack here, I will hold him, I will call the Muslims to hold him," Bakri told Britain's Channel 4 News, adding, "I would never tell the police. I am not working for the police. I would never, ever, tell the police about any Muslim. It is God-forbidden."

That prohibition is based on Qur'an 4:92.

I used to refer to jihad terrorists and Muslims who held to the same perspectives as those terrorists as "radical Muslims." By this I meant Muslims who were willing to perform radical actions for their faith -- or who approved of those actions. This was as opposed to those Muslims who just wanted to live quiet, ordinary lives. However, many misunderstood the term: some thought it implied that they were radicalizing an originally peaceful Islamic doctrine.

But of course every Islamic legal school sanctions, with minor variations, jihad warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. Anyone who has read any of my books knows that I have never held that Islamic doctrine has a peaceful core, although obviously there are peaceful Muslims in the world, so to avoid this misunderstanding I stopped using the term.

Now I call the purveyors of violence in the name of Islam what they call themselves: mujahedin, jihadists. And here is a most interesting article: "Muslim convert rejects radical label: Briton Abdur Raheem Green says genuinely radical Muslims call him a moderate," from the New Zealand Herald, with thanks to Liberal Muslim. Abdur Raheem Green maintains that although he was earlier quoted as saying that Muslims and Westerners "cannot live peaceably together" and that "Islam teaches its followers to seek death on the battle field, that dying whilst fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise and Allah's good pleasure," within the Islamic community he is actually a moderate. And of course, he never really said those things:

A man described by some Australian media as one of Britain's most radical Muslim converts starts a speaking tour today for New Zealand Islamic Awareness Week.

Abdur Raheem Green, who rejects the radical label, had been due to speak at the Auckland University of Technology on Monday but the public lecture was cancelled because he had to change his flight plans when he was refused entry to Brisbane for a one-hour stopover.

Mr Green said he was told when checking in at Sri Lanka about three days ago that he could not land in Brisbane but was given no reason by the Australian High Commission.

"They said sorry there was a problem ... it would probably take a while to sort out." He instead booked a direct flight to New Zealand.

Mr Green had not been told he was banned from Australia, where he was due next week, but understood his entry was under review.

He said he could understand concern after being called a radical Muslim by Australian media, a label which had shocked and upset him.

"It's the first time I've been called a radical ever. They [radicals] call me a moderate."...

Maybe this is because he condemns terrorism, although like CAIR's fatwa, his statement is ambiguous and non-specific:

Mr Green has appeared on the BBC condemning terrorists and composed an online mosque statement after the London bombings.

"Terrorism is wrong - that's it, plain and simple." He said, however, he had publicly commented on the reasons behind terrorism.

"But people don't want to hear ... We're not trying to justify terrorism but help people understand why this is happening."

Mr Green either denied quotes attributed to him in the Australian press or said they were taken out of context, twisted, or over-simplified.

He said his personal views had changed over the years since he converted in 1988 and the reports failed to acknowledge that he had often said the opposite of what was claimed.

He could not imagine ever saying Muslims and non-Muslims could not live together peacefully. "That's the one that upset me the most ... I absolutely do not believe that."

Mr Green was also reported to have said: "The truth is that Islam teaches its followers to seek death on the battlefield, that dying while fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise and Allah's good pleasure."

He said that had been taken from a letter he wrote to his father more than 10 years ago.

Jihad was a loaded term which had been linked with terrorism. "It is not about fighting for money or revenge but much more complex."

It could include physically defending one's land, family and country, which Westerners also supported, he said. "That is totally different from terrorism."

OK, so does he think today's jihadists are defending their land, family and country? If not, why not?

Mr Green could not recall saying that conflict between Islam and the West was "not only sanctioned but ordered in the Koran", although he admitted he might have once said something like that.

He pointed out the conflict of ideas between Western materialism and Islam and in that sense Muslims were always going to feel "a little uncomfortable" with non-Muslims.

Mr Green hoped New Zealanders would come to his lectures to better understand what Islam was about.

"I've certainly not come here to recruit people for terrorism."

Javed Khan, president of the Federation of Islamic Associations, which invited Mr Green to NZ, said the Australian allegations were false and things were taken out of context.

Ah. Out of context. Of course. Incidentally, has anyone ever quoted the Qur'an or a jihadist spokeman IN context?

Call off the celebrations: Bakri is coming back. Let's see if any British officials have the anti-dhimmitude to deny him entry. From the Telegraph, :

Omar Bakri Mohammed, one of the Islamic extremists who faces possible treason charges over support for the London bombers, plans to come back to Britain after leaving at the weekend, he has said....

"I am going to return back in four weeks unless the Government say we are not welcome, because my family is in the UK.

"I left by my own passport. I do not think I will have any problem returning back to the UK but I do not want the Government to use the presence of Omar Bakri to change the rules."

He said he believed the Government was using him to put pressure on the Muslim community.

He added: "I wish for the British people to think about Islam. I wish as well that this Government will go back to its own sense, not changing its values because they do not know who committed the bombings in London."

Bakri denied he had called the July 7 bombers the "fantastic four" and said he condemned the atrocity.

"I never, ever spoke about the bombings in London. Fantastic Four is a film, nothing to do with the bombings. I never, ever talked about the bombings except to condemn the killing of innocent people."

The radical cleric sparked outrage last week when he said he would not inform police if he knew Muslims were planning a bomb attack on a train in the UK and supported Muslims who attacked British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Asked whether he would inform police if he knew a Muslim was planning to commit a crime, he said his faith does not allow him to do so.

"I will never report to the police any Muslim because Islam forbids me. Definitely I would stop him whatever the cost, even if it cost me my life. That is my duty as a Muslim.

"My religion forbids me to report a Muslim to the British police.

"I believe Islam is superior and nothing supersedes it but we can live with you in harmony," he said.

Harmony -- sure. The harmony of the master with those he has subjugated.

Omar Bakri Mohammed, who has long made no secret of his desire that one day the black flag of jihad would fly over 10 Downing Street, and of his labors to that end, has fled England.

In no sense can this be anything but good news for England and for Western civilization. At last this cancer within is not being tolerated. From the BBC, with thanks to pjsmediawatch:

A controversial Islamic cleric has left the UK for the Middle East, his spokesman has said, amid speculation he would be investigated for treason.

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed - former head of radical group Al Muhajiroun - left on Saturday for Lebanon, his colleague Anjem Choudary told the BBC.

Tony Blair had warned Mr Mohammed's organisation faced a potential ban under new anti-terrorism measures.

Mr Choudary said the cleric believed "Britain had declared war on Muslims".

Actually Bakri declared war on England, a long time ago.

"Deportation not fair, says extremist (on benefits)" from the Daily Mail with thanks to Leveller.

An extreme Muslim cleric whose family have been living on benefits in Britain for 20 years says it would not be 'fair' to deport him.

Speaking after the Prime Minister announced his clampdown, father-of-seven Sheik Omar Bakri said: "I have wives, children, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law. It would be hard on my family if I was deported."

Wives, plural?

Since Syrian-born Bakri settled in Britain, he and his extended family have raked in benefits amounting to at least £300,000.

He is registered disabled because of an injury to his leg during his childhood, and was recently supplied with a £31,000 Ford Galaxy under the Motability scheme.

Bakri, who lives in a £200,000 home in North London, tops up his £250-a-week benefit payments with an extra £50 incapacity allowance.

He has praised the September 11 terrorists as 'magnificent', called Israel 'a cancer' and said homosexuals should be 'thrown from Big Ben'.

In January, he declared that Britain had become a 'land of war', and called on Muslims to unite behind Al Qaeda. He has supported suicide bombings and urged his followers to kill non-Muslims ' wherever, whenever'.

He also claimed he has no wish to stay in Britain, but his family would suffer if he was deported...

"I’m sorry, but this is England, Britain, and we don’t want this fomenting of terrorism to go on." Quite right, old man. From the Times Online, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Tony Blair is expected to give details this morning of proposals to widen the British Government's powers to deport and the block the entry of preachers and extremists who encourage terrorism in the UK.

The Prime Minister will not announce any new powers, rather a clarification and extension of rules that already allow Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, to remove individuals from Britain if they are deemed a security threat.

In the days after the London bombings, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, asked for new rules to proscribe "glorifying terrorism" and to make it easier to prosecute what he called "preachers of hate".

This morning, Sir Ian welcomed the proposed expansion of powers: "It may have been better if it was done before, but let’s do it now," he told GMTV.

Sir Ian also said that he believed that there was now more public support for rules to govern the behaviour of provocative preachers and extremists. In the past, critics have warned that preachers will be imprisoned and persecuted in their home countries if they are removed from Britain.

"One of the difficulties has been this idea about how can we deport people to places where they may suffer oppression," he said. "Well, I think the public mood is shifting. I’m sorry, but this is England, Britain, and we don’t want this fomenting of terrorism to go on."

He said it. He also said that his religion is NOT tolerant. He said it. When I report on his saying it, I get called "intolerant." He doesn't get called intolerant by his coreligionists. I do. See how the game works?

A fuller story on Abu Bakr's remarks, from The Age, with thanks to SRoss:

A Melbourne radical Islamic teacher last night described Osama bin Laden as "a great man" and declared he would be betraying his religion if he told students not to train in terrorist camps.

Abdul Nacer Benbrika, also known as Abu Bakr, said: "My religion doesn't tolerate other religion . . . Jihad is a part of my religion."

ASIO revoked Mr Benbrika's passport earlier this year, the ABC reported, and it recently raided and questioned him. But although it took papers, charges had not been laid.

Earlier this week former ASIO officer Michael Roach said Australia had about a dozen terrorist cells, with up to 60 individuals in Sydney and Melbourne. Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty has confirmed this....

Mr Benbrika told The 7.30 Report, which reported that some of his students had gone to overseas terrorist training: "According to my religion, here, I don't accept all other religion except the religion of Islam."

He said he was "not involved in anything here. I am teaching my brothers here the Koran and the Sunna and I'm trying my best to keep myself, my family, my kids and the Muslims close to this religion".

"I am telling you that my religion doesn't tolerate other religion. It doesn't tolerate. The only one law which needs to spread, it can be here or anywhere else, has to be Islam."

Pressed on why he did not tell students not to go abroad for terrorist training, he said: "If I do this, it means I am betraying my religion."

"Jihad is a part of my religion and what you have to understand (is) that anyone who fight for this sake of Allah . . . when he dies, the first drop of blood that comes from him . . . all his sin will be forgiven."

He described Osama bin Laden as "a great man. Osama bin Laden was a great man before 11 September, which they said he did . . . and until now nobody knows who did it".

He said the problem was that there were two laws - Australian law and Islamic law.

Mr Howard strongly rejected the notion of two laws. "Suggestions that there is an exclusivity of religious belief in this country is against the values we hold," he said. "It's also very unfair and damaging to those hundreds of thousands of Muslim Australians who share my view . . . that we should respect other religions and we should try and live in tolerance and harmony."

OK, let's see those thousands of Muslim Australians who share Howard's view start working against people who think like Abu Bakr in their communities.

More poverty-causes-terrorism analysis. Don't these people ever read anything but their own recycled prejudices? Even the London bombers were not desperately poor, unemployed, etc. But there is also more in this piece. From BusinessWeek, with thanks to Eschwapp:

What the attacks have revealed or perhaps underlined again is that there exists in Britain and elsewhere in Europe a pool of young Muslims sufficiently alienated to make them easy prey for the recruiters of radical groups who lurk in Muslim communities. The reasons for the alienation vary. According to national statistics, British Muslims, who mostly come from the Asian subcontinent, fall at the bottom of society in measures such as unemployment and educational qualifications.

"THE ISLAMIC THING." Joblessness among British Muslims, for instance, hovers at 15% to 22% for youths, vs. around 5% for the overall population. Many of those who do work are stuck in low-level jobs. "The number in catering is just staggering," says Steven Vertovec, a professor of social anthropology at Oxford University. "We are not seeing much intergenerational social mobility."

Many of those born in Britain often grow up in inner-city ghettos, where they attend schools populated by people mostly like themselves. Members of the Muslim community say that some youths have difficulty coping with the clash between the traditional mores of Pakistan or Bangladesh and Britain's liberal sexual attitudes.

"I feel sorry for the youngsters," says Amjad Pervez, 47, who owns a food-services business in Bradford, a small city near Leeds, the home of three of the July 7 suspects. Pervez, who emigrated from Pakistan in 1969, says, "I think it's a grind children are going through -- they've got cultural baggage, they've got the Islamic thing. In every aspect of their lives they see conflict, conflict, conflict. Some of the youngsters can't take it."

"CHALLENGER TO AMERICA." Yet economic and social alienation are far from enough to lead young men to bomb commuter trains. The latest wave of bombings should be seen as the response of a small but lethal minority of Muslims in Britain and elsewhere to what they consider the humiliation of the world Muslim community by the West and its surrogates in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian areas, and elsewhere. Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader, serves as a role model that these young men admire.

As Saad al-Fagih, a London-based Saudi dissident and expert on radical Islamic groups, explains: "An angry Muslim does not know how to translate his anger into sophisticated action with a strategy. All he knows is a man called bin Laden is acknowledged as the real challenger to America.

"Only a person with this (bin Laden's) group can satisfy his ambitions and let him feel he had done something for the umma (community) of Islam. He looks for some means to contact this group. At the same time, the group has its own recruitment people who can reach him. Once they meet, it's all over. They will tell him what to do -- a plan with a specific action, with a specific place, and a specific time."

HOW MANY MORE? Al Fagih thinks a senior figure in Al Qaeda gave the order for the London attacks, though the details were left up to the cells. Al Qaeda-linked groups have taken responsibility, but the authenticity of the Web messages cannot be verified.

What's certain is that no matter how direct their connection to the attacks, bin Laden and al Qaeda provided the inspiration for these two groups of young Muslims. It is hard to think that there aren't others like them thinking along similar lines.

And what are moderate Muslims in Britain doing to stop that?

As I have noted many times, it is the jihadists who in the Islamic community wear the mantle of being true and pure Muslims. No self-professed moderates have yet successfully challenged that. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

The suspected terrorist accused of trying to bomb a tube train at Warren Street used to berate a Muslim shopkeeper for selling alcohol, it was claimed last night. Yasin Hussan Omar, 24, a Somalian national who arrived in Britain as a child, lived in a rented flat in New Southgate, north London.

One shopkeeper, Mohammed Hassan, claimed yesterday that Omar had accused him of not being a "proper Muslim".

"I never got the impression he had any money and he would complain about me selling alcohol, telling me I was not a good Muslim," Mr Hassan said.

Another shopkeeper, Ali Dursun, claimed Omar often railed about halal meat.

"He said Turkish people were not proper Muslims," Mr Dursan said....

Because of their relatively secular government.

Meanwhile, the family of Ibrahim - the first to report his name to police after his CCTV image was released - said yesterday that he had not visited their home in Harrow for many months.

However, Sarah Scott, a neighbour of Ibrahim's parents, claimed she had seen him in the area about two weeks ago.

Miss Scott, 23, said Ibrahim had tried to convert her to Islam and had told her 80 virgins would be waiting for him if he died loyal to Allah. "I have known him since I was about 11," she said. "He was here about two weeks ago. It would have been after the July 7 bombings. He was pretty calm but then he was always calm."

She said he had given her a pamphlet on Islam last year. "We were sitting down having a fag and he asked me if I was Catholic because I have Irish family," she said. "I said I didn't believe in anything and he said I should.

"He told me he was going to have all these virgins and he got to have them if he prayed to Allah. He gave me a book and told me to read it. He said it would change my views and any questions I should ask him. I didn't realise he was a terrorist."

A friend of Ibrahim, who would give him name only as Kawser, praised the actions of the suicide bombers. Speaking yesterday outside the flat Ibrahim and Omar shared in New Southgate, he said: "As a Muslim I believe it's one of the most honorable ways to die, defending your beliefs.

"You shouldn't do it because people will think you are brave but for Allah.

"It depends on the situation, but if someone gave me a bomb and said, 'Go and do it', I would have to consider it. If I was in a situation, at a time of war, to go and blow up civilians, I don't think I would do it. But to go and attack the Houses of Parliament or Downing Street, they are military targets. I hope the bombers go to paradise after giving up their lives as martyrs."

Ibrahim's brother, Amir, briefly emerged from the family home yesterday wearing a scarf and hooded top to cover his face and tried to throw a dustbin at television cameras.

"I haven't seen him," he said. "He has not lived here since he was 18. My mum and dad are sick with the stress of all this."

Take it up with your brother, Amir.