"March 1, 1994" is the day Ari Halberstam was killed and it was a Tuesday. So it wasn't one of those infamous Friday sermons that inspired this yellow bellied Muslim coward.
____________________

From the NY Sun: http://www.nysun.com/article/28767

For Ari Halberstam

By DANIEL FREEDMAN
March 8, 2006

No sooner had the New York Times launched its series on the Imam of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge than the phone rang at The New York Sun. It was Devorah Halberstam, the mother of Aaron "Ari" Halberstam, a 16-year-old rabbinical student gunned down on the Brooklyn Bridge on March 1, 1994. She was calling to say that Monday would be the 12th anniversary of the murder of her son and that the mosque the Times was extolling as a seat of peaceable Islam was the place from which Rashid Baz set out on the shooting spree that claimed her son.

As the Times ran out its series, we waited for some mention of this fact. We were interested to read that the Imam at the center of the reporter's story, Sheik Reda Shata, "is," as the Times reporter wrote, "neither a firebrand nor a ready advocate of progressive Islam. Some of his views would offend conservative Muslims; other beliefs would repel American liberals. He is in many ways a work in progress, mapping his own middle ground between two different worlds."
----SNIP----

Posted by: dennisw at March 10, 2006 8:45 AM

The UAE could rebound and pick up the New York Times for pennies on the 2000 dollar.

Posted by: Beagle at March 10, 2006 8:52 AM

Further reading says Friday, February 25, 1994 was the day of the sermon that inspired Baz to kill some Jews. So blame the shooter Rashid Baz and those infamous Friday sermons from mad dog Imams & Mullahs--->>>

Prior to the attack, on February 25, Baz went with a friend to the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge mosque, "where they heard a sermon relating to the incident in Hebron," where Baruch Goldstein had murdered Muslim worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. After the sermon, Ms. Barsky reports, Baz "took two of the guns that he usually kept in the trunk of his car and moved them to the front seat of his car.The two guns were the weapons that he used in the shooting."

From NY Sun, same article as in previous post

Posted by: dennisw at March 10, 2006 8:58 AM

I read the first installment and was struck by its blissful naivte. In particular, the sentence "A group of men lured the vendor to the mosque, where he confessed to stealing $11,400." jumped out at me. There was a story there but the reporter was too dumb (or scared) to pursue it.

Posted by: Raw Data at March 10, 2006 10:22 AM

 "Then there was the series' look at terrorism. "What I may see as terrorism, you may not see that way," Mr. Shata says. What does he mean by that? The reporter doesn't tell us."

And I propose she does not tell us because the NY Times et al operate out of a core belief of moral/cultural relativism. The Religion of Relativism's dogma, 'everything is the same as everything else, finally' prevents the sort of curiosity employed by those seeking objective truth.

If one's task is to make everything the same as everything else, then the NY Times reporter - and the acolytes of the religion of moral relativism who religiously read this stuff - will applaud her success. As will the Islamizt fundamentalists whose dread purpose such stupidity and moral laziness serves.

Those seeking objective truth (which the NY Times et al pretend to do but don't) will naturally be horrified by this stuff. Thank you Diana West for writing so honestly and for Hugh and Robert's curiosity and full-time commitment to objective truth.

Posted by: Daisytoo at March 10, 2006 10:48 AM

I read the third installment--I actually forced myself to read to see how far idiocy can go. To write such misleading puffery about two of the most charged issues in Islam, women's status and marriage, is not only idiocy but a kind of professional high crime. The cretin should never be allowed to write anything. Ever.

Posted by: ovidius_naso at March 10, 2006 10:51 AM

When he exhorted the Moslem Males in his mosque to take second wives, Imam Reda Shata himself committed a crime by directing others to violate the law.

I fully expect the NYPD to arrest him forthwith.

MORE APOLOGISTS MORE MORE HAND-WRINGING MORE DUMBASSES MORE MO!!

Did the reporter find out the good Imam's stance on clitorises, whether they should be chopped off?

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at March 10, 2006 11:46 AM

Andrea Elliott is hardly the only offender. Read, for example, not only the absurd justifications by various editors at The New Duranty Times for their failure to exhibit the courage displayed by all sorts of European newspapers and, in this country, by smaller papers and campus newspapers (make those editors of those papers the future editors of The Bandar Beacon and The New Duranty Times). And columnists at the NDT followed dutifully suit. One example that sticks in mind and craw was Michael Kimmelman's indignation about the supposed offensiveness of those Danish cartoons, followed by some faint praise for the principle of free speech.

There is Tom Friedman, who if he knew anything was supposed to know about the Middle East, and who made his name as a reporter -- a mere reporter, with no understanding of the men and events he reported on because he was reporting without any reference to, or understanding of, what Islam does, and how it affects everything, from the slight diffrences in position of Maronites and Greek Orthodox in Lebanon, to the behavior, often otherwise inexplicable, of the Alawite military caste that controls Syria and must simultaneously be alert to challenges from local Sunni Muslims, and at the same time is willing to promote the Mulim agenda, with unusual ferocity (as if to prove that Alawites are, despite their worship of Miriam, plus islamiste que les islamistes).

There is Nicholas Kristof, who has described the mass murders in Darfur, by Arab Muslims, of non-Arab (black African) Muslims, but who appears to be constitutionally unable to understand why what is happening in Darfur is simply the expression of Arab supremacism that is part of Islam, for which Islam is a vehicle. He doesn't get it, or doesn't want to. He cannot relate the Arab looting, raping, and killng of black Africnas, inferior Muslims, not-conceivably-complete Muslims, because they are not Arabs, to the attitude of Arabs in Iraq toward the Kurds (and the complete indifference of the Arab League to the Al-Anfal campaign of Saddam Hussein's Arabs carried out against the Kurds); nor does Kristof manage to relate what is happening in Darfur to another example of Arab supremacism: the cultural and linguistic imperialism on dislay in Algeria, against the Kabyles, or Berbers, who over the past decade or two have been rioting in Tizi-Ouzou and elsewhere, demanding that the Berber language, Tamazight, be permitted in public places, and finally the ruling Arab generals who run a stratokleptocracy (rule by thieving military) not unlike that of Mubarak, but with a greater infusion of French-trained technocrats and dipomats) than the stolid Egyptian can call on.

Unless and until Kristof begins to connect the Arab supremacism for which Islam is the vehicle, to what is hapopening in Darfur (and just why, his readers have a right to ask, and to be given his answer, do Egypt and Libya so strongly oppose any introduction of effective, i.e. Western, troops, who might actually put paid to the Janjaweed, now apparently conducting their freewheeling murders over the border in Chad, but what are borders to the umma al-islamiyya, doing God's work, which is to spread Islam, preferably by taking the loot of Infidels (if you have a lot of oil money flowing, then you don't have to resort to that -- but in the Sudan they are impatient, and can't wait for the oil revenues to flow) or, where attacks on full-fledged Infidels have been temporarily halted because of Western pressure and interest and publicity, as has happened in the southern Sudan (with that impermanent "agreement" between the Arab Muslims of Khartoum with the southern Sudanese, the latter made stronger by outside support and publicity), you find a substitute, and the substitute at hand are those quasi-Muslims, those Muslims who, not being Arabs but mere blacks, cannot possibly rank as high, or be as good Muslims, as any Arab on a camel can, shooting his rifle, smashing that baby's skull with the butt. No, none of that has appeared in Nicholas Kristof's many anguished reports from Darfur. He cannot connect the Arab mistreatment of Darfur blacks to Arab mistreatment of Berbers, or Kurds, or any other non-Arab Muslims. He cannot make the connection, just as Tom Friedman cannot explain the absurdity of the "two-state solution" and other things about which he, Friedman, has been so excitably enthusiastic (that is Friedman: excitable, an enthusiast, above all for whatever little title-shtick he comes up with -- "the world is flat" or "the lexus and the olive-tree" or... well, I have a good one for Friedman, but as he comes to this site to be horrified at what is said about him, I won't bother helping him out).

The New Duranty Times, The New Duranty Times.

Jock Whitney's Herald-Tribune, the Boston Evening Transcript that the son of the St. Louis furrier used as the title of a poem, or for that matter hundreds and hundreds of newspapers that have lived, and then died. Or for that matter, the magazines that lived and died: the North American Review, Judge, Hound and Horn, and thousands of others. Even Punch, the famous Punch, that seemed as if it could not possibly sink, finally -- glug, glug.

Ubi sunt? they ask of men, of monuments that disappear, even of newspapers. And it will be asked, sooner than people realize, within a decade or two, of The New Duranty Times.

Posted by: Hugh at March 10, 2006 11:47 AM

Deliberate disinformation or criminal negligence?

In any case, stupidity can no longer pass as 'reporting news',
what does it take for these freaks to grow a spine?

The selective and twisted reporting by the MSM has become a joke. Some people are unable to handle freedom, they are willfully clueless.

Seems they all waiting for some kind of Fuhrer, for they are lost without somebody cracking the whip over them.

Despicable fools in the land of the free!

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at March 10, 2006 12:22 PM

An unexpected blast of good news: the always regrettable Washington Post will lay off 80 reporters today. This is good news for two reasons:

1) With 80 fewer of them, maybe the nation and take its first baby steps towards clarity on Islam, and

2) If they have to get real jobs and actually work for a living, maybe the reports can reform themselves and atone for their crimes against mankind.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at March 10, 2006 1:11 PM

Speaking of Cub Reporters: Here's a Chicago Suntimes journalist who plays the dhimmi with this puff piece. Note how she graciously uses the nausiating (pbuh)

Today, blasphemy is harder to define

March 10, 2006

BY CATHLEEN FALSANI RELIGION WRITER

It would seem that, much like beauty, perfection and the difference between Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen, blasphemy, at least these days, is in the eye of the beholder.

We don't really talk much about blasphemy, or its cousin, sacrilege, anymore. It kind of sneaks up on us and catches us by surprise when we're not looking.

Such was the case with cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a Danish newspaper.

Apart from our Muslim brothers and sisters and the odd Dane among us, most of us hadn't given much thought to the prophet or Denmark.

That is until last month, when all hell broke loose over cartoons that the obscure Scandinavian newspaper editors say they thought were harmless socio-political commentary, and scores of Muslims thought were an affront to God of the first order.

In an age of pluralism, multiculturalism, and (some say) secularism, what constitutes blasphemy?

Is it an image of the Buddha adorning a flip-flop?

A Hindu deity on the front of a skimpy tank top?

Madonna and Guy Ritchie praying at the tomb of the Matriarch Rachel in Israel?

Jesus as a namby-pamby cable-access talk-show host on "South Park"? Or political paraphernalia that says it's our "God-given right" to bear arms?

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Posted by: nuh at March 10, 2006 2:03 PM

Thousands of words; negligible expertise; and no curiosity.

This is the disease inflicting reporting by the MSM in general, on every topic, not just Islam. Front page news stories in the dailies of the major cities have been reduced to AP newswires, the same level of journalism that was the norm for small town newspapers of yore that had no news staff, but only the local columnist, who might have been the town's sole barber, to report on weddings and funerals, and if lucky, cover the race for county coroner.

Gone are the days of Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) and Walter Burns (Cary Grant) working the newsroom in His Girl Friday sending their colleagues from competing newspapers leading them with false scent down false trails, all because of the scoop. Newspapers used to survive on the scoop because in a competitive environment the scoop was all important.

Now that the MSM, print and broadcast, has been consolidate into a few controlling interest, there is no more need for the scoop. After all, when your paper is now the only game in town the people will read what you give them. Without competiton there is no more need for in depth reporting, no reason to make your customers want to buy your product over the one in the newsrack next to it.

Of course, since the customer is no longer motivated to buy the sole remaining newspaper, except out of an easily broken habit, revenues decline. Instead of re-invigorating the newsroom, reporters are laid off, the paper becomes filled with yet more AP news feeds, and reveunes decline further as the morning newspaper has now become filled with nothing more than same 15 second headlines heard on the evening TV news while eating supper.

The morning newspaper contains nothing fresh, nothing new, therefore no "news." Once proud metropolitian dailies that used to provide reading material throughout the day have been reduced to about 2-3 actual pages worthy of reading and 50 pages of Macy*s advertisment.

Even the BBC, there might of been a time when it truly was a global enterpise most respected. But now when I read the BBC news, I find the same news with the same shallowness of CNN headlines. A BBC online news article is lucky to have at least five paragraphs that are not repetitive rewords of each other.

This shallowness leads to one interesting phenomenon: we criticize the BBC for being so biased towards the Muslim world that it becomes indistinguishable from al-Jazeera; the Muslim world criticizes the BBC as being Zionist controlled that it becomes indistinguishable from the Jerusalem Post.

Back to the female cub reporter for the NY Times that Diana West takes issue with. Let's give her credit, not much, for at least trying. She at least got thousands upon thousands of meaningless words into print. Now go to the BBC and look to all of the in depth columns written by veteran John Simpson. The man is an amazing genius, he can address any topic, in depth, in eight paragraphs or less! But at least that is 50% more paragrpahs then the typical BBC nes article, so it must be in depth.

My question to the MSM: Where's the beef?

Posted by: Lisa at March 10, 2006 2:06 PM

Islam has a long tradition of hating women, which is proof of it's falseness.

As far back as it's founder Mohhamad young girls (nine year olds) were meant to be married off to 50 year olds, Mohhamad himself married a 6 year old (among 20 other wives) and Mohhamad had a regular habit of raping women, and advised his men about how to rape women during his campaigns.

However in Christianity women always had higher status, in the stories about Jesus he is accompanied by a faithful following of women. Infact freeing women from patriarchal controll was a central tenet in early christianity.

Posted by: NicephorusPhocas at March 10, 2006 2:10 PM

"Is it an image of the Buddha adorning a flip-flop?"

The world's largest Buddahs were destroyed by muslims a few years ago.

"Madonna and Guy Ritchie praying at the tomb of the Matriarch Rachel in Israel?"

Wasn't Rachel's tomb burned and desecrated by the muslims a couple of years ago? Maybe it was Jacob's tomb. Think I'd rather have Madonna praying there than muslims sacking it.

This cathleen falsani is a sickening joke.

On the bright side, the abdication of MSM "journalists" of their responsibilities is what drives people who strive to become informed citizens to web sites such as JW/DW. The void is being competently filled.

Posted by: Infidel33 at March 10, 2006 4:23 PM

Islam is a religion that allows for a lot of dialogue and discussion...

So long as the discussion falls within the narrow parameters of the venomous commands issued by God in the Koran.

Hate infidel speech? Cool. Mass murder planning talk? Awesome. Trading wife beating stories over a cup of java? Sexy. Strategies for collecting fatter welfare checks? Productive. Some frank and truthful discussion of Mohammed as the lowest human ever? Verboten.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at March 10, 2006 4:57 PM

No-nonsense Diana West: "When asked about a 2004 sermon that "exalted" a female suicide bomber as a "martyr," Mr. Shata seems "unusually conflicted," the reporter writes. He declines to comment for fear of "[inviting] controversy," and alienating New York rabbis he has "forged friendships with." And there the question lies: She just lets him slip away. All the news that's fit to print, apparently, doesn't include the heart of the matter."
---------------------------

"forged" friendships alright, See verses 3:28 and 41:34. By withholding his opinions on Palestinian martyrs, is Mr. Shata protecting his "friendships" or is he protecting Islam?

Posted by: Archimedes at March 10, 2006 6:14 PM

"Now go to the BBC and look to all of the in depth columns written by veteran John Simpson. The man is an amazing genius, he can address any topic, in depth, in eight paragraphs or less! But at least that is 50% more paragrpahs then the typical BBC nes article, so it must be in depth."
-- from a posting above

If this were not now, but then, during World War II, and someone saying the kind of things John Simpson says about the world, and about England's allies and England's enemies, said them, and if such a person had done the kind of things, promoted the kind of worldview, at the BBC World Service that John Simpson has promoted, such a person would no longer be working for the BBC, but would long ago have been discharged and publicly disgraced, or possibly charged with under some Aid-to-the-Enemy Act.

Posted by: Hugh at March 10, 2006 6:54 PM

OT:

Survey: 29 percent of Swedes have become more negative towards Islam, the views of the rest remain unchanged

http://icevikings.blogspot.com/2006/03/survey-29-percent-of-swedes-have.html

Posted by: IceViking at March 10, 2006 7:08 PM

And today, from the execrable Guardian:

'Charting the lost innovations of Islam

It is the thread that links cars, carpets and cameras and is also responsible for three-course meals, bookshops and modern medicine...'

It devolves from there -- European tax revenues for Islamic Da'wa!

I have also commented on this disgusting article in the "Charles Clarke is a collaborator, Let me count the ways" post entitled "Clarke criticises Danish 'mistake' over cartoons'

This is the smelly link to this smelly screed:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1728032,00.html

Posted by: jsla at March 10, 2006 7:08 PM

From the Guardian site that jsla has referenced:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1728032,00.html

"It lifts the veil on hundreds of innovations - from kiosks and chess through to windmills and cryptography - that are often popularly associated with the western world but originate from Muslim scholarship and science."

Chess caught my eye, so I went to one of a zillion available educational sites:

The about.com site:

http://chess.about.com/od/history/

"Where did chess come from? The most widely accepted scenario is that chess appeared in India around 600 A.D., was adopted in Persia around 700 A.D., and was absorbed by Arab culture around 800 A.D. Just as chess is a difficult game, its origin is a difficult puzzle. We may never know the truth of its birth."

I wonder how the exhibit’s organizers will spin that?

Posted by: PRCS at March 10, 2006 8:11 PM

Or how about this:

"Meanwhile, it was Caliph al-Ma'mum's interest in astronomy that led to the development of large observatories, sophisticated astronomical instruments and a rigorous analysis of the stars."

Never mind the Greeks. Never mind the Egyptians. Never mind the Mayans or the Chinese or the Natives of America or the Persians (pre-Islamic) and many many others -- all of whom devoloped "large observatories" and "sophisticated astronomical instruments" and in some cases even "a rigorous analysis of the stars...." -- And much of it THOUSANDS of years before the blight of Muslims ever appeared on the horizon...

Posted by: jsla at March 10, 2006 8:21 PM

But chess is haram. There is some hadith about that, so old Mo' must have been exposed in an unpleasant way to chess from a non-islamic source.

Sonn we will be reading how islam invented the mother of all inventions - necessity.

I was reading some claptrap the other day about how islamic engineers in muslim spain where the first to figure out how to bring water from the mountains to the cities for drinking and the fountains in the plazas. Of course the Roman aquaduct system predated them by many many centuries. Another Roman invention, that islamic engineers never thought of, because it the concept is haram, was the indoor toilet with indoor plumbing to flush the waste.

Everytime I read one of these "islam was first" articles, I wonder how people can be so brainwashed to think there was nothing but cavemen dragging women around by their head prior to 632 AD.

Posted by: Lisa at March 10, 2006 8:25 PM

But this is FAR more than just a ""Islam was first" articles" -- it's from a "project" funded by the UK Home Office and the Department for Trade and Industry... This is a Government "project" funded by UK and EU tax revenues... Government Da'wa for Islam --

And most poisonously: "Tailored to appeal to school children and their teachers..."

I hope our British friends get off their duffs and put a stop to this kind of trash. Yesterday.

Posted by: jsla at March 10, 2006 8:32 PM

Lisa, you make many good points. It still is pretty amazing that the mainstream media have uniformly sunk to third-rate reporting standards,sickening distortions and plain falsehoods. Do we know much about who owns the major media, whether there is significant Arab financial stakes in some,and the degree of editorial independence? ( I must confess I am quite ignorant about this issue.) The saving grace is that the growth of online news and the explosion of blogs such as this one are introducing competition to the MSM and they are feeling the heat.--Chakravak

Posted by: Chakravak at March 10, 2006 8:46 PM

The Islam innovation stuff is laughable. As for chess,it most likely originated in Hindu royal courts in India. And we all know that the so-called Arabic numerals were brought by Arab traders to Europe from India. Some math history books actually do call them Hindu numerals.--Chakravak

Posted by: Chakravak at March 10, 2006 9:03 PM

Re 1001 Inventions exhibition (by the way, a very double entendre name): they forgot to include another Islamic invention, the chirectomy (excuse my Greek), the inspiring operation of severing a thief's hand. And the clitorectomy, too.

Posted by: highbg at March 10, 2006 11:32 PM

In the Diane West's article, she mentions the new book by Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept -- How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within.

I'm about 80 pages in to the 236-page book, and find it a helluva page-turner. Bawer describes his experiences living in Europe in several countries, and takes you inside the European press, mindset and social order, while showing in vivid detail the Islamization of Europe, how it's happening, including fascinating detail about the Islamized suburbs of European cities -- the lifeways of those suburbs and the nature of their ties to the home countries of the immigrants.

Bawer is gay, and in reading him, I have the feeling that, partly because of that, he is intensely driven to see with brilliant incisiveness into what is happening with Islam in Europe. And somewhat as most of the U.S. population at one time would only trust a conservative (Nixon) to start a relationship between the U.S. and Communist China, the MSM might only trust someone like Bawer, who seems in some ways liberal, to provide such a devastatingly detailed and vivid indictment of how Islam currently manifests in Europe and where Islam is going there. Without at all descending into MSM relativism, Bawer evinces in his thinking a certain kind of MSM liberal empathy that goes the extra mile to recognize the strong points of many sides in many debates. All the more credible should he then be to the left and Europeans themselves, if they get around to reading this deeply informative, fascinating (and to me, rather horrifying) account by Bawer of his life in rapidly Islamizing Europe. (But I'm only up to page 80.)

Posted by: eduardo odraude at March 11, 2006 1:22 AM

Hugh,
you write that the Arab League did not object to the 1988 Anfal mass murder operation of saddam hussein. The Arab League was worse, in fact. As I recall, Clovis Maqsoud, the Islamochristian spokesman for the Arab League --in 1988 maybe working for Kuwait-- complained that the stories in the Westernj press about poison gas use by Iraqi forces against the Kurdish population were inventions of Zionists.
Let somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

Posted by: Eliyahu at March 12, 2006 5:53 AM

I read the quotes from Maqsoud in LeMonde in 1988, as I recall.

Posted by: Eliyahu at March 12, 2006 5:54 AM