Muslim Activist Sues Pope, Cardinal

Kissing the Qur'an probably won't help this time

Adel Smith is trying to make Christianity illegal in Italy. The statements quoted below from the Pope and Ratzinger are merely expressions of the Christian Faith. If this most frivolous of all frivolous lawsuits goes forward, it should also render illegal Islamic statements about Muhammad's being the last and perfect revelation, correcting and abrogating all previous ones. From AP, with thanks to Susan and Mrs. Obelix:

A Muslim activist sued the pope, a top cardinal and other church officials Saturday, claiming their comments about the superiority of Christianity violated the Italian constitution.

Activist Adel Smith said he was seeking a court condemnation of the comments but no monetary or other punitive damages.

Smith, who is president of the Muslim Union of Italy, has previously made headlines here for his court battle to have a crucifix taken down from his son's classroom. Several other Islamic organizations distanced themselves from that effort.

In his latest legal effort, Smith said Pope John Paul II and other church officials have violated the Italian constitution which proclaims that all religions are equal under the law. Italy is officially secular, but largely Roman Catholic.

Smith cited a passage of John Paul's 1994 book, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," in which the pope writes that the "richness of God's self-revelation" in the Bible's Old and New Testament's has been "set aside" in Islam.

The suit also cites comments by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog, who in a 2000 document said the faithful of other religions were in a "gravely deficient situation" concerning their salvation compared to Catholics.

Calls placed to the Vatican spokesman weren't immediately returned Saturday.

Islam 101 tries to bridge gap

Here's a feelgood story from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle about clearing away post-9/11 misconceptions about Islam. Of course, the main misunderstanding is about jihad:

On Sept. 11, 2001, just after he watched the World Trade Center towers fall on television, Aly Nahas received a call from a rabbi offering him shelter.

The rabbi was a friend of Nahas’ who was worried that people might take out the horror of that day on local Muslims. But rather than seek shelter, Nahas rushed to the Islamic Center of Rochester, where he was a volunteer.

When he got there, his rabbi friend, two priests and a minister were waiting. Within two hours, the group held a news conference to assure the public that the Muslim community condemned the attacks. In the year and a half after Sept. 11, Nahas gave 45 lectures on Islam. . . .

Carman hopes that the two-hour sessions, which include an hour lecture as well as time for questions, help demystify Islam. One important misconception, he said, is about jihad. The Egyptian-born Nahas said that jihad, often used synonymously with terrorism, essentially means to strive to better oneself.

That's wonderful. I am sure that Nahas's non-Muslim audience will go away feeling reassured. I hope that the Rochester paper will run a follow-up story about Nahas's activities among Muslims, in which he convinces them that the radical understanding of jihad as violence against unbelievers is wrong on Islamic grounds. I wonder what Nahas would say about the almost daily stories posted at Jihad Watch in which Muslims commit violence and call it jihad. Until those Muslims are confronted and that understanding of jihad definitively refuted, dialogues like the one described in this story are essentially meaningless.

Brunei Sharia watch: Too Near Pork Products Complaint Lodged Against Shop

Aieeee!

Even in the supermarket, delicate Muslim sensibilities require discrimination against non-Muslims. To keep a Muslim child from being defiled by picking up a can of pork, Muslims in Brunei are asking that products for non-Muslims be hidden away. From BruDirect, with thanks to Nicolei:

Members of the public particularly shoppers in a prominent supermarket in Kuala Belait are expressing discontent over the arrangements of “non-halal” foods which are placed not far from the daily needs items of Muslim customers at the supermarket.

A number of customers here stated that the arrangements of food for non-Muslims at the stated shop are placed near essential products such as soaps and detergents and next to daily use items such as tissue paper and other goods.

One customer who refused to be named stated that the racks on which are placed the non-halal foods should be moved far away from aisle frequented by Muslim customers.

The customer said that on one occasion his 7-year-old daughter was at the said supermarket to buy instant noodles when she unknowingly picked up a can from the rack to ask him about its contents.

"I was shocked to see that the word ‘pork’ was inscribed on the can that she was holding. The can was taken from a rack which was placed just across the rack from which I took the instant noodles," he claimed.

He had pointed out the matter to the workers there, but till now the problem remains.

When the supermarket was visited again, it was found that racks containing a number of canned and plastic packaged foods for non-Muslims were still placed alongside racks holding washing soaps and tissues, and facing the rack displaying varieties of instant noodles.

The shop owner should have understood the situation surrounding the community and is advised to consider the full interests of the customers, particularly in terms of sale item arrangements.

UK Muslim wives get rights!

What's that? You thought British Muslim women had the same rights as anyone else in Britain? Guess again. Some Muslim men aren't happy about it, but Muslim women have just been granted a whole list of new rights by Britain's Sharia Council. From AsiaNews.co.uk, with thanks to Nicolei:

DETAILS of a new Islamic marriage contract that will protect women's rights have been unveiled for the first time in the North West. At a meeting of top mullahs and Islamic scholars in Bury it was predicted that mosques throughout the UK will use the new contract and revolutionise Islamic marriages.

Called the nikah namah provisions in the contract include:

l A wife's right not to have children
l Equal rights in divorce
l A wife's right to work and control over her own pay . . .
l Outlawing all verbal, physical and sexual abuse by the husband
l The right of a wife to visit relatives in the UK or abroad

The draft contract is the work of the UK Shariah Council and the Muslim Parliament of Britain - organisations that have voiced their concern that Muslim women can get a raw deal from existing Islamic marriage custom. . . .

The response from men was less welcoming and some were shocked over its clauses.

One man, who did not want to give his name, said he was amazed at some of the women's rights proposed.

He said: "The purpose of an Islamic marriage is to have a family but the contact is saying that a woman cannot get pregnant unless she wants to. How can that be increasing the Muslim line in the family?"

Molana Barkatullah said he knew that some men would be unhappy about it.
He added: "During the time of the Prophet, women were given rights for the first time and some of the men found that hard to deal with, but they eventually accepted these rights. That was 1400 years ago and it will happen again."

Los Angeles Teacher Resigns Over Muslim Scarf Flap

The headscarf controversy comes to the US. It's a strange incident: it seems that this instructor had a policy against headgear in class, as it obstructed the view of other students. So he asked a Muslim girl to remove her headscarf. Now he has resigned under pressure, to the delight of the Council on American Islamic Relations. But was this really an anti-Islamic incident? From NBC4TV, with thanks to Twostellas:

An Antelope Valley College instructor resigned Thursday, a week after ordering a Muslim student to take off her religiously mandated head scarf or leave class, school officials said.

Robert Daniel, described as a part-time instructor, taught an introduction to computer science information course. He resigned in writing this morning, school officials said.

The college's Board of Trustees was expected to decide Friday night what action to take against Daniel. The school said other instructors will be brought in to teach the two spring semester courses that had been assigned to Daniel.

Daniel could not be reached for comment.

Fajr Burhan is a 19-year-old electrical engineering student. She was born in Phoenix but her parents are from Syria. About five years ago, Burhan began wearing the traditional Muslim hajib head scarf.

Burhan said the garb had never been a problem at the school until last week, when Daniel told her to remove the hajib.

Daniel told her "to either stay and follow his rules (by removing the scarf) or leave the class," Burhan said.

Burhan is in her last semester at Antelope Valley and hopes to graduate this year and transfer to UCI. To graduate, she needed to pass the course Daniel taught.

Burhan said Daniel made the demand knowing the scarf's religious significance, although she acknowledged that Daniel told her he does not allow hats or headgear because they can block the view of other students.

After a discussion with Tom Miller, the school's dean of business and computer studies, Burhan returned to class wearing the hajib, but said Daniel ignored her when she tried to answer questions.

Interim AVC President Jackie Fisher, who said the school does not have a dress code and has a zero-tolerance policy on discrimination, later apologized to Burhan.

Ra'id Faraj of the Southern California office of the Council on American- Islamic Relations applauded the move.

"It's really bizarre that we would encounter this in a college," Faraj said.

Anti-dhimmitude in Lebanon: Cardinal Sfeir Laments Efforts to Islamize Lebanese Education

A Lebanese patriarch sees a threat to Lebanese culture from Islamization. From Zenit News Agency, with thanks to Nicolei:

Cardinal Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites, warns that an attempt is being made to Islamize public and private education in Lebanon.

In a Lenten message to the faithful and all the population of Lebanon, published on the patriarchate's Web page (www.bkerke.org.lb), the Maronite patriarch invites the Lebanese to a "clear cooperation characterized by transparency."

Cardinal Sfeir focuses on problems that affect the Lebanese governing class, including corruption, nepotism and the impossibility of making free decisions.

To safeguard coexistence in a democratic system, the people must have the right to "ask for explanations from" those who govern them, he said.

The cardinal lamented that drugs, alcoholism and gambling are ever more widespread in the country, making it harder for families to ensure the education of their children.

Cardinal Sfeir is especially concerned about the attempt to Islamize both public and private education, given that the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization -- a sort of Muslim UNESCO -- is allowed to operate in the country and exercise its influence on the Lebanese school system.

Such Islamization of education is "a threat not only to schools but to all of Lebanese culture," he said.

To promote Islamic education as an absolute ideal for schooling is to ignore that in Lebanon "there are two religions, two cultures and two civilizations at work, pertaining to Christianity and Islam," the cardinal said. "Both together form one people."

A question on the status of women taken as prisoners during Jihad

Despite obfuscations and denials by many Muslims in the West, jihad is (as I demonstrate in Onward Muslim Soldiers) a quite coherent and comprehensive set of laws for warfare against non-Muslims and their treatment as dhimmis after the successful conclusion of that war. These laws cover virtually every aspect of that warfare, and they are still part of the Sharia — they have not been set aside or repudiated by any Muslim sect. This is underscored by a question on Ask-Imam.com answered by the South African Mufti Ebrahim Desai. It takes violent jihad, slavery, and the rape of slave women for granted — since, after all, they are declared legal by the Sharia. (Thanks to LGF.)

In the "Jihads" (Islamic wars) that took place, women were also, at times, taken as prisoners of war by the Muslim warriors. These women captives used to be distributed as part of the booty among the soldiers, after their return to Islamic territory. Each soldier was then entitled to have relations ONLY with the slave girl over whom he was given the RIGHT OF OWNERSHIP and NOT with those slave girls that were not in his possession. This RIGHT OF OWNERSHIP was given to him by the "Ameerul-Mu'mineen" (Head of the Islamic state.) Due to this right of ownership, it became lawful for the owner of a slave girl to have intercourse with her.

It may, superficially, appear distasteful to copulate with a woman who is not a man's legal wife, but once Shariah makes something lawful, we have to accept it as lawful, whether it appeals to our taste, or not; and whether we know its underlying wisdom or not. It is necessary for a Muslim to be acquainted with the laws of Shariah, but it is not necessary for him to delve into each law in order to find the underlying wisdom of these laws because knowledge of the wisdom of some of the laws may be beyond his puny comprehension. Allah Ta'ala has said in the Holy
Quraan: "Wa maa ooteetum min al-ilm illaa qaleelan" which means, more or less, that, "You have been given a very small portion of knowledge". Hence, if a person fails to comprehend the underlying wisdom of any law of Shariah, he cannot regard it as a fault of Shariah (Allah forbid), on the contrary, it is the fault of his own perception and lack of understanding, because no law of Shariah is contradictory to wisdom.

Nevertheless, the wisdom underlying the permission granted by Shariah to copulate with a slave woman is as follows: The LEGAL possession that a Muslim receives over a slave woman from the "Ameerul-Mu'mineen" (the Islamic Head of State) gives him legal credence to have coition with the slave woman in his possession, just as the marriage ceremony gives him legal credence to have coition with his wife. In other words, this LEGAL POSSESSION is, in effect, a SUBSTITUTE of the MARRIAGE CEREMONY. A free woman cannot be 'possessed', bought or sold like other possessions; therefore Shariah instituted a 'marriage ceremony' in which affirmation and consent takes place, which gives a man the right to copulate with her. On the other hand, a slave girl can be possessed and even bought and sold, thus, this right of possession, substituting as a marriage ceremony, entitles the owner to copulate with her. A similar example can be found in the slaughtering of animals; that after a formal slaughtering process, in which the words, "Bismillahi Allahu Akbar" are recited, goats, cows, etc.; become "Halaal" and lawful for consumption, whereas fish becomes "Halaal" merely through 'possession' which substitutes for the slaughtering.

In other words, just as legal possession of a fish that has been fished out of the water, makes it Halaal for human consumption without the initiation of a formal slaughtering process; similarly legal possession of a slave woman made her Halaal for the purpose of coition with her owner without the initiation of a formal marriage ceremony.

In short, permission to have intercourse with a slave woman was not something barbaric or uncivilised; on the contrary, it was almost as good as a marriage ceremony. In fact, possession of a slave woman resembles a marriage ceremony in many ways and both have a lot in common with each other. One similarity is this that just as a free woman cannot have two husbands simultaneously; a slave woman cannot be used for intercourse by two owners. Another similarity is that a free woman whose marriage is on the rocks, cannot marry another man until her previous marriage is nullified through divorce, etc. Due to the discrepancies between husband and wife, the marriage sometimes reaches a stage where it becomes virtually impossible for the couple to live as man and wife with the result that divorce is brought into force to nullify marriage ties. Similarly, if a slave woman was married previously in enemy territory to a non-Muslim, and is then captured alone, i.e. without her husband, it is not permissible for any Muslim to have relations with her until her previous marriage is nullified, and that is done by bringing her to an Islamic country and making her the legal possession of a Muslim. Bringing her into Islamic territory necessitates the rendering of her previous marriage as null and void by Islamic law because with her husband in enemy territory and she in Islamic territory, it becomes virtually impossible for them to meet and live as man and wife. That is why it is not permissible to have intercourse with a woman whose husband is also taken into captivity and put into slavery with her. Another resemblance between the two is that, just as a divorcee has to spend a period called "Iddat" before another man is allowed to marry her; similarly, a slave woman has to spend a period called "Istibraa" before her owner can have coition with her.

Another similarity between marriage and possession of a slave woman is that just as the wife becomes a dependant of the husband and he has to provide a home, food and clothing for her, a slave woman also becomes a dependant of her owner and he has to provide a home, food and clothing for her. Yet another similarity is this that just as marriage makes the close relatives of the wife Haraam upon the husband; i.e. he cannot get married to his wife's mother, grandmother, sister, etc., similarly if a man has copulated with a slave woman the slave woman's close relatives also become Haraam upon the owner. With all these similarities it does not make sense to regard copulation with a slave woman distasteful whilst copulation with one's wife is not regarded as distasteful. . . .

One question that still remains is whether slavery still legally prevails anywhere in the Islamic world and whether it can be successfully implemented in this age. Well, there is no prevalence of lawful slavery in the Islamic world today and it would be difficult to implement it because of the stringent conditions attached to it. Firstly, the prisoners have to be captured in 'Jihaad' in the true sense of the word. Then again, If true 'Jihaad' did break out somewhere, there are still a number of other laws and conditions to abide by which are far too stringent for any Islamic country in the world to abide by in this time and age when people's personal gains and whims and desire are being given preference to over Islamic Law. According to Islamic Law, captive female prisoners are also part and parcel of the booty. One fifth of the booty has to be first distributed to the needy, orphans, etc. The remaining four-fifths should then be distributed among the soldiers who participated in the war. The distribution can only take effect after the booty is brought into Islamic territory. The Ameerul-Mu'mineen (Head of the Islamic State) remains the guardian of the female prisoners until he allocates them to the soldiers. Only after a soldier has been allotted a slave girl, and made the owner of her, will she become his lawful possession. After she spends a period called 'Istibraa', which is the elapse of one menstrual period, It becomes permissible for her owner to have relations with her. After possession of the slave too there are a number of other laws that affect the master and slave. There is hardly any Islamic country today that can abide to all these conditions, with the result that it is quite difficult to implement slavery in this time and age.

Anti-dhimmitude in Norway: Man jailed for blocking wife's integration

European Muslim leaders like Dyab Abou Jahjah of the Arab European League, as I show in Onward Muslim Soldiers, fiercely oppose any attempt to integrate Muslims into European society. But now, for the first time, a Norwegian court has declared that illegal. From Aftenposten, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

An Oslo court has convicted an African-Norwegian not only for abusing his Algerian wife but also for preventing her from integrating into Norwegian society. It's the first time a Norwegian court has ruled such practices as illegal, and the offender was sentenced to three years in jail.

Prosecutors are calling the sentence "very important" for efforts to ensure the rights of immigrants, especially women, and promote integration.

The 48-year-old offender has been in Norway for 30 years. Nine years ago, he married an Algerian woman 20 years younger than he was and brought her to Norway as well.

The court claimed in its ruling that he then launched years of physical abuse against his wife and prevented her from leaving their home without his permission. If she did leave home, she was ordered to cover her face and hair.

He also abused the couple's children, and when his wife started attending Norwegian classes at the advice of juvenile authorities, he picked her up directly after the class to prevent her from mingling with other students.

She eventually broke out of the marriage and brought charges against him with the help of public prosecutors.

They used a 102-[year-]old law that states that a man can be punished with prison if he fails to exercise his duties towards his spouse or their child. Given the state's efforts to promote integration and prosecute domestic violence, Hanne Kristin Rohde of the Oslo Police District said "we saw that we had to try" invoking the little-used law.

The man tried to appeal his conviction, but his effort was rejected. The length of his sentence, considered harsh in Norway, is under appeal, however.

Saudis: No Jews Welcome

The Saudi tourist site saying that Jewish people were ineligible to apply for visas was up as late as last night; I sent it to a friend at 7:44 PM yesterday. But now image-conscious Saudis have taken it down. Does that mean their policy has changed? That question is as yet unanswered. From AP:

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a frequent critic of United States policy toward Saudi Arabia, said Thursday that the Middle East country's new visa policy outlined on a tourist Web site should be quickly condemned by American officials.

The Web site, promoting a new Saudi program to offer tourist visas to encourage more foreign visitors, lists four groups not entitled to tourist visas, including "Jewish People."

The Saudi government has traditionally only issued travel visas for employment, Hajj pilgrimages, and other visits with official sanction.

In addition to Jews, the Web site by the Supreme Commission for Tourism also says it will refuse visas to anyone with an Israeli passport or a passport that has an Israeli stamp.

"It is very difficult to see the Saudis as anything other than a backward country with backward ideals and this reaffirms that," said Weiner. "I think the administration should take a hard look at this Web site and decide whether a country that has these policies should be considered our ally."

Weiner said the U.S. should close its doors to Saudis until they "clarify" their immigration policy.

The U.S. Army builds a mosque

When was the last time you heard of the U.S. Army building a church, or a synagogue? What's that? A wall of separation? Well, the wall is down in Afghanistan, where a plaque in front of one mosque proclaims: "Matachina mosque, reconstructed in 2002... with the help of the American people." From AFP, with thanks to Daniel Pipes:

"Matachina Madrassa" reads a rusty, battered metal plaque. A metre away is a brand-new stone on which is written in fresh lettering: "Matachina mosque, reconstructed in 2002... with the help of the American people."

On November 16, 2001, during the heat of the US-led war against the Taliban regime, at least 34 people lost their lives here. The dead included fighters but also religious students, women and children, killed during the bombardment of this Islamic school and mosque in the suburbs of Khost.

Reconstructed

The building has since been reconstructed almost identically with the financial support of the United States army.

Some rubble and a toppled brick wall are the only evidence of the bombing.

And a new mosque has been rebuilt on the site of the carnage. A wooden door, decorated with Arabic writing, opens on to a large, empty vault. Inside, a painted niche indicates the direction of the holy city of Mecca, towards which the faithful pray.

An already dusty plastic floor covering sits between the imposing stone pillars supporting the building. The only exaggerated decoration in this spartan decor is a made-in-China plastic gold clock fixed high on the wall.

Nobody ever comes

"Nobody ever comes into this mosque, what are you doing here," asks a soldier from a neighbouring garrison.

The mosque's guard lives just metres from the building, in a mud-brick home. The door is padlocked shut. "The man has gone to pray in another mosque."

The new Matachina mosque is almost always empty. Hardly refinished, it is already abandoned as the faithful prefer to pray elsewhere.

So the American taxpayers financed a mosque in Afghanistan as a gesture of good will, and nobody goes to it anyway. I hope the Army will henceforth stay out of the mosque-building business.

India: Islamic Militant Groups Demand Women Cover Up

Some Muslims seem to have no trouble turning from calls for the freedom to wear headscarves in France to denying the freedom not to wear them elsewhere. From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

Three Islamic rebel groups in Indian-controlled Kashmir have demanded that women in the region wear head-to-toe veils and that all beauty parlors close, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The groups want restaurants to shut partitioned areas supposedly reserved for families - but in reality also used by young couples. It also wants tutoring centers, which prepare teenagers for college examinations, to segregate girls and boys, the Times of India newspaper said.

The demands were made by the Al-Madina Regiment, which the newspaper described as a collection of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Al-Umar and Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen militant groups.

The rebels have been fighting Indian security forces since 1989, seeking independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan. More than 65,000 people have died.

Anyone failing to meet the demands by March 1 would "face the consequences," the newspaper quoted Al-Madina Regiment chief Umar Khalid as saying.

Similar demands have been made in the past - and few are adhered to.

Muslim women in Jammu-Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, usually don't wear head-to-toe burqa veils and instead cover their heads with loose scarfs.

What Is Arab Antisemitism?

There is a great deal of value in this MEMRI report on Muslim Anti-Semitism, but one passage in particular caught my eye, as I discuss this phenomenon at length in Onward Muslim Soldiers:

It is indeed unfortunate that the status of the Jews as a tolerated minority in the Muslim world before the advent of Zionism has come to figure prominently in the competition between Jews and Arabs to enlist public opinion. The lay reader is often at a loss between the arguments on both sides. On the one hand, he hears that Jews (and Christians) had the status of a protected minority under Islam, and that Jews in Muslim Spain enjoyed a golden age of peace and prosperity; on the other, he is told that Jews and Christians had no legal equality and were never anything other than second-class citizens. These conflicting versions are put into a balanced perspective by Bernard Lewis:

Even at its best, medieval Islam was rather different from the picture provided by Disraeli and other romantic writers. The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented by Jews in 19th-century Europe as a reproach to Christians – and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.

Like most powerful myths, this story contains an element of historic truth. If tolerance means the absence of persecution, then classic Islamic society was indeed tolerant to both its Jewish and its Christian subjects – more tolerant perhaps in Spain than in the East, and in either incomparably more tolerant than was medieval Christendom. But if tolerance means the absence of discrimination, then Islam never was or claimed to be tolerant, but on the contrary insisted on the privileged superiority of the true believer in this world as well as the next.

Read it all. (Thanks to Jeffrey Imm.)

Dhimmitude at the State Department

An official webpage on the U.S. State Department site celebrates "Muslim Life in America." I looked in vain for similar pages celebrating Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist Life in America.

Daniel Pipes, whose own site alerted me to this (with thanks to LGF), points out that "the State Department provides links to and thereby endorses groups that the federal government has either effectively shut down (the American Muslim Council), is currently investigating (Islamic Society of North America), or has arrested multiple employees of (Council on American-Islamic Relations). Additionally, other organizations on the list (Council on Islamic Education, Islamic Institute, Muslim Public Affairs Council) were long ago exposed as sympathetic to militant Islam."

No links, however, to danielpipes.org. Or Jihad Watch.

Security Concerns Prevent Iraqi Christians from Returning Home

The harsh situation of Christians in postwar Iraq. From VOANews, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Many Iraqis who fled to Syria for safety before, during and just after the war in Iraq say they still are afraid to go home.

Nearly a year after the war in Iraq, Seita Daoud sits in a sparsely furnished, badly heated apartment in a poor neighborhood of Damascus. She says she is afraid to go home. "It was not easy to leave my country," she says. "I was born in Iraq. I raised my children there. But it is too hard and too uncertain there now."

A few days after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces, Seita Daoud packed up her family of nine and headed for safety across the border in Syria. She had already sold off most of their possessions, keeping only a few family photos, including a portrait of her husband who had died years before.

Speaking the ancient language of her Assyrian Christian community, Seita says she is still not sure what to do. "I am ready to go back," she says, "but first I must be sure of security to raise my children. They all left their schools and their jobs. What will we find when we go back," she asks.

Seita is not alone. She says most of her Assyrian Christian neighbors, several hundred families, are here in Damascus with her. "Some," she says, "have arrived in the past few months. They say Iraq is too unstable for religious minorities."

Her son Yvan is blunt. "We number fewer than two-million," he says, "with no strong tribal leaders or big politicians to protect us."

U.S. officials and members of the Iraqi Governing Council insist ethnic and religious minorities, which make up about three-percent of the population, will be legally protected by any future government.

Yvan is not convinced. He says minorities suffered under Saddam Hussein and he does not want to see it happen again.

He acknowledges that Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim community was harshly persecuted by Saddam Hussein. Now, he worries how Christians and other religious minorities would be treated if strict Islamists gain control of a future government.

His mother worries more about the violence and lack of jobs. "Where would we find work," Seita asks. "You need a connection to get work with the Americans." But she shakes her head. "And, those who do work with the Americans are afraid," she says, "because the Americans are targets and Iraqis working with them are too."

For 26-year-old Taygor, the decision to leave was easy. Like other university students, he says he had to sign up for military training and he did not want to fight to defend Saddam Hussein. He left school and Iraq well before war began. "Saddam ruined our lives. He ruined our society," Taygor says. "Everything that is happening now is a result of what he did when he was in power."

Taygor cheered when the U.S.-led coalition took control of his country, but he says he has no desire to go back even now that Saddam Hussein is gone.

Neither does 33-year-old Anwar Deriyawish, another Iraqi Christian from Baghdad. The former welder lived in a rented house with his wife and children. "I have nothing there. Why should I go back," he asks.

Anwar has applied for a visa to Australia, but speaks no English and is not optimistic he will ever go there.

In contrast, Seita Daoud has no doubts she and her children will return to Iraq one day. She just cannot say when that day will come.

"We didn't kill our beautiful daughter"

The tragic story of Shafilea Ahmed is not necessarily one of honor killing; however, the girl was upset enough at the prospect of an arranged marriage to swallow bleach. As young Muslims in the West are increasingly caught between two cultures, we will see more of such stories. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The parents of Shafilea Ahmed, the murdered Asian teenager, upstaged detectives yesterday when they gatecrashed a televised police briefing to deny that they were guilty of a so-called "honour killing".

Senior officers had just given details of how their daughter's badly decomposed body was found concealed in undergrowth when Iftikhar Ahmed, 44, and his wife, Farzana, 41, arrived with their legal team.

The couple, from Warrington, both of whom are on police bail after being arrested on suspicion of kidnap, were weeping and dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs as they entered a privately-hired suite in a Cheshire hotel.

Det Chief Insp Geraint Jones, who is leading the investigation, looked surprised at their arrival and refused to allow them to sit at a table positioned in front of a Cheshire Police screen. A few minutes later, clearly embarrassed by the interruption, he and his team left the building.

Neither of the Ahmeds spoke during their protest. However, through their solicitor they insisted they were in no way involved in the death of their "beautiful and irreplaceable daughter".

They went on to accuse police of having become blinkered by a racial stereotype which dictated that as Asian parents they must have been involved in their daughter's murder. This was a course of action, they claimed, that was allowing "the real culprit" to remain at large.

Shafilea, 17, disappeared six months ago, shortly after returning from a trip to Pakistan where she had resisted the overtures of a distant cousin to take part in an arranged marriage.

While in Pakistan she became so distraught she swallowed a quantity of bleach. This burned her gullet so severely that she required hospital treatment both there and once she had returned to Britain. Shafilea spent most of Sept 11, 2003, at Priestley Sixth Form College and later went to a local call centre where she worked four nights a week.

Her mother picked her up and drove her home. She went to bed, as she did every night, with her seven-year-old sister. When the household awoke she had gone. She was reported missing eight days later by her former teachers at Great Sankey High School.

Cheshire Police have been convinced almost from the outset that Shafilea was kidnapped and possibly murdered. At press conferences they consistently refused to rule out the possibility that she was the victim of an honour killing.

Instead, they portrayed the "intelligent, ambitious and popular" teenager as a girl torn between traditional family ties and the Western culture she sought to embrace.

At home she spoke Urdu and observed Muslim prayers with her three sisters and younger brother. But at the same time she idolised R&B singers, wore tight jeans and secretly stored the mobile telephone numbers of male friends at college.

She and her 15-year-old sister, who was also her closest friend, shared a love of pop stars such as Justin Timberlake and Kelly Rowland. They frequently travelled to the Trafford Centre, Manchester, to go window shopping.

Police fears that Shafilea had been murdered were confirmed when workmen found a girl's body beside a riverbank five miles from the M6 near Kendal, Cumbria.

However, the remains were so badly decomposed it took forensic scientists three weeks to confirm her identity. During that time the Ahmeds said jewellery found on the body was "similar" to some their daughter had owned.

Mr Jones did not invite the girl's parents to yesterday's press conference. But they turned up anyway, arriving at the Village Hotel, Warrington, in a dark blue Mercedes.

Milton Firman, their solicitor, asked police if he and the Ahmeds could sit at their table. When they refused, he stood in the corner of the room and began reading from a prepared statement.

Nothing, he said, could change the cruel reality that the couple had lost a beautiful daughter - "a reality made all the more painful in view of the unsubstantiated allegations against them".

He went on: "Mr and Mrs Ahmed wish to confirm once more that they strenuously deny any direct or indirect involvement in their daughter's untimely demise.

"If called upon to do so, they shall not hesitate to defend their good and unblemished names in any court." Police should begin to work with the family, rather than to carry on an inquiry based upon a form of ethnic stereotyping, he said.

The Ahmeds should now be left to grieve while the authorities "go elsewhere to find those truly responsible for any foul play". Later Mr Firman accused detectives of "putting two and two together and coming up with 14".

He said the couple "despised" the term "honour killing", and in their daughter's case it was entirely inappropriate.

He said the Ahmeds had not reported their daughter missing in September because she had run away twice before and on each occasion the police response had been poor.

Mr Firman added: "It is very easy to stereotype parents in an Asian family and look for tell-tale signs. There is certainly an in-built prejudice in the way these inquiries are handled."

Mr Jones had earlier refused to be drawn on questions about the Ahmeds. But he said the discovery of Shafilia's body meant that "the net is now closing" on whoever had murdered her.

The teenager's body was found in bushes beside the River Kent, in the first area of woodland off Junction 38 of the M6. Her killer or killers had deliberately concealed her beneath undergrowth. A pathologist has yet to confirm the cause of death.

Iranian Government Daily: The U.S. & 'Zionists' have Bribed the IAEA to Fabricate Lies About Iran's Nuclear Progress

When under pressure, blame the Zionists. The Tehran Times is resorting to this in the face of IAEA findings about Iran's nuclear program. From MEMRI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

"Pressured by U.S. officials and supported by the Zionists, some officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its official website have started fabricating lies about the Iranian nuclear program, and even allowing some secret news about the Iranian nuclear program to leak to Western media. Such moves show the Iranian officials should have considered suspending cooperation with the IAEA rather than suspending enriching uranium.

"Recently, diplomats from the Vienna-based IAEA have warned about the increasing U.S. pressure on the IAEA top officials, including its director Muhammad El-Baradei and some inspectors, in order to egg on them [sic] to give a negative report on Iran's cooperation with the IAEA. Even an expert from the IAEA told the Mehr News Agency about secret meetings between the IAEA senior officials and some envoys from the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services in recent weeks. The expert even didn't rule out the possibility of bribing or threatening IAEA officials by these secret services.

"Some observers in Vienna have evaluated the U.S. pressure on El-Baradei as so high that he has become depressed and passive. Even a Western diplomat from the UN nuclear watchdog has said there is no certainty the statements aired inside the IAEA headquarters are not eavesdropped. Some evidences including recent statements by El-Baradei, stressing the necessity of tough inspection of the members' nuclear sites, especially after unfounded allegations by the U.S. officials over Iran's nuclear program and a wide coverage of these rumors by the Western media despite a close cooperation between Tehran and the IAEA would clearly show that the agency has been degenerated into an international political tool for pushing forward the U.S. unilateral policies in the world. There are some other indications to substantiate the point."

Revealed: the child brides who are forced to marry in Britain

From the Observer, with thanks to Susan:

Ayse was 14 when she was smuggled into Britain and forced to marry her cousin. Family members turned out in large numbers to welcome her at the illegal ceremony in a north London public hall.

'They kept whispering in my ear to ask why I wasn't smiling,' recalls Ayse, now 20 and living in a refuge in east London. 'I told them I was terrified and desperate, that I was just a child and far too young to get married. I pleaded with them to help me escape, but no one saw anything wrong in what was happening. I begged my husband not to marry me, but he told me I had no choice.'

Despite being two years below the British age of consent, Ayse was moved into her cousin's family home, where she lived openly as his wife in the local Kurdish Turkish community.

'I was all alone in a foreign country, unable to speak the language,' she said. 'I was trapped. Until I escaped, I didn't even realise that marrying at 14 wasn't legal in Britain: everyone I knew in London regarded it as normal.'

In the two years before she reached 16, the sex Ayse was coerced into having with her cousin was statutory rape. 'It was disgusting, awful,' she said. 'I used to scream and cry all night. I was too young, too tender. It killed me inside. Life became meaningless.'

Ayse's new family refused her permission to continue school and kept her a virtual prisoner in their home. During her four-and-a-half year marriage, Ayse was treated as a servant by her new family and prevented from speaking to anyone outside their immediate circle.

As she matured, Ayse became increasingly desperate and, after twice attempting suicide, found the courage to climb through a window and flee.

'I knew the cost escaping would have on my life. I now live in fear of being tracked down and killed by my husband's family. I have been rejected by my family back home and by the Kurdish community here. As a young girl, I could not face the thought of how my life would be if I escaped. But once I became a woman, I developed the strength to take that step.'

Authorities have long battled to stop the traffic in underage British girls taken back to their country of origin to be married off by their parents. But an Observer investigation has discovered that a growing number are now being married without leaving Britain. The ceremonies are known as community marriages.

'They're happening and numbers are growing,' said Peter Cripps, head of the Community Safety Unit at Shoreditch police station in east London. The Metropolitan Police is one of the few forces to admit that such marriages take place on its territory.

'I'd say we were at the stage with community marriages now that we were at with honour killings six years ago. That is, the idea is so horrible and incredible most people don't accept they're happening. Six years ago, honour killings were barely even talked about, but now the police are getting convictions. Basically, we're waiting for community marriages to hit the news the same way, then we expect a flurry of cases.'

Community marriages are held in accordance with the religious laws of many south Asian, Turkish, Middle Eastern and north African cultures. After the ceremony, the girl is moved into the home of her 'husband'. She is raped in the name of marital sex, frequently abused by her new family and allowed to attend school only if it would attract the attention of the law if she left.

Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, has demanded an urgent meeting with the Minister for Children, Margaret Hodge, next week to discuss the issue. Cryer, who drove through Labour's action plan on forced marriages now wants to create similar guidelines for underage community marriages.

'Entire communities are complicit in this,' she said. 'And unless the Government does something about it, a rapidly increasing number of underage girls will be forced into situations where they are subjected to statutory rape in the name of culture and tradition.'

Cryer learnt this specific form of forced marriage existed only when she received a call from a school concerning a 15-year-old who is now believed to have been married to a 41-year-old relative.

'A young girl had gone to her teachers one Friday before Christmas, saying she didn't want to go home because she suspected her parents intended marrying her off that weekend,' she said.

But when the teachers phoned social services, they were told the earliest appointment available was the following Tuesday. 'The school protested, but social services were unmoved,' Cryer said. 'It was a completely inappropriate response and we've launched an investigation.'

The teachers were eventually forced to take her back home. Their intervention, however, seemed to have dissuaded the parents from carrying out their plans, but a few weeks later the school contacted Cryer again. 'Apparently the child's demeanour has completely changed in the past few weeks,' she said.

She has begun missing school for long periods of time and when she attends, a man waits for her at the gates at break times, lunch and after school. 'When she does turn up, she is completely introverted,' said Cryer. 'It's like she's in deep trauma or shock.'

Cryer is investigating, but her attempt is complicated by the fact the child is now refusing to talk. 'If the case is going to stick, we have to persuade the girl to give evidence against her family and if we go in, all guns blazing, she could deny the whole thing,' she said.

The hermetic nature of the communities involved means that in the vast majority of cases no one who is not a close family friend is aware that any specific ceremony is taking place.

'We know this happens a lot, but it tends not to come to wider notice until much later when the girl seeks help and is able to find a way of doing so,' said Dave Macnaghten, who sits on the Association of Chief Police Officers' forced marriage steering group. 'Unfortunately, if that happens at all, it takes place many years afterwards when the girl has found the maturity and courage to escape.'

Even those who live and work in the community have been unable to solve the problem 'We don't hear of the cases where the marriage takes place in this country any more than the authorities do,' said Houzan Mahmoud, a domestic violence adviser for the Middle East Centre for Women's Rights. 'These communities have become ghettoised. The girls don't know where to go for help. They believe the prestige of their whole family is at stake.'

Zahir Fatima, director of Kiran Asian Women's Aid, has come across five cases of underage community marriages.

'Often we only hear about it by mistake,' she said. 'When the women finally escape, they tell us the age they married in the course of telling us about all the other abuse they have suffered at hands of their husbands and families.

'I've met quite a lot of young girls who were bought into this country by much older men. The youngest was a 12-year-old from Kashmir, who was bought over six years ago to marry her first cousin, a man in his late twenties.'

About a year later, the girl gave birth to a son. 'She worked in a factory in the north of England and though the whole south Asian community there knew she was married and had a son, despite being just 13, they didn't find it odd,' said Fatima.

The girl began to be abused by her husband and made several suicide attempts. 'She was desperate, she was just a child,' said Fatima. 'But I only learnt about when she had grown up enough to flee the abuse and ended up in our refuge.'

The police believe that a central problem in convincing the local community to report these marriages is the belief that they are acting in the best interests of their community.

'Parents have no fear of getting caught because they have no sense that they're doing anything wrong,' said Jim Blair, head of the Metropolitan Police's Diversity Directorate. 'Parents who force their children into marriages justify their behaviour as building stronger families and protecting cultural and religious traditions.'

Guidelines concerning child protection procedures and forced marriage were given to every police station and social service office in 2001, but officials admit they frequently fail to reach those on the front line.

'I hear of incidents concerning community marriages all the time, but those with the power to act often don't know what to do when confronted with real-life examples,' said Monawara Bakht, manager for NSPCC Young People's Centre Unit and a chair of Acpo's forced marriage steering group.

Anticipating which communities might be more likely to approve of underage community marriages is also difficult because it depends on different traditional readings of central religious texts. According to some interpretations of, for example, Sharia law, a woman can be married as soon as she reaches puberty, which can be as young as nine.

But some say there are many other reasons why traditional families are feeling an increased anxiety and pressure to marry off their underage daughters.

'It is impossible to identify any single reason, but izzat, or honour, always plays a large role,' said Arvinder Lall, from the Ashiana Project in east London which runs the only refuge in Britain for women fleeing forced marriages.

Lall says the daughter's izzat links her behaviour to the honour of her entire family. If a girl behaves badly - that is, if the family judges she is becoming too independent, too westernised or is gaining the attention of other men - she could destroy the izzat of them all. 'It's very easy to damn these parents, but it's important to remember that they're not doing it to be cruel.

'First-generation immigrants fought for their culture to be accepted in Britain. Now they're watching as their achievements are whittled away by their own, increasingly westernised children. They're desperate to protect their culture and this is an extreme way in which they try to do that.'

What the men get out of marrying an underage girl is the prospect of a malleable wife who has not yet learnt to be independent or question the role a strict Islamic wife is expected to fulfil.

Lall was recently hired to teach police in Cambridgeshire about forced marriages after they found themselves dealing with the attempted murder of a 15-year-old Asian girl from east London and the murder of her two friends.

'When the family found she had a boyfriend, they arranged for her to get married to a member of their community,' said Lall. 'To escape, the girl left home with her boyfriend and two of his friends.'

On the motorway, the youths' car was run off the road by another vehicle, killing the boyfriend's two friends. Although the girl is now living in a police safe house, a lack of evidence has prevented charges being brought.

Laili Sadr, also from the Ashiana project, is still haunted by the case of Ashana, a 15-year-old girl from east London who was being pressured by her family to marry a young local man from her own community. Sadr spent six weeks trying to persuade Ashana to report her case to social services, but the child refused and eventually severed all contact.

'Ashana was more like a 12-year-old than a 15-year-old,' said Sadr. 'She was terrified of getting married, but what young girl could face the complete rejection and fury from her community? She was crying when she came to see us. She didn't have a clear idea of what marriage meant - and certainly didn't want to have sex - but felt she had no choice.'

Shortly after the ceremony, Ashana's mobile stopped working and Sadr never heard from her again. 'I pray that she's safe. But there's no way I can be certain.'

Community leaders are at a loss as to how to deal with a crime that few can prove occurs. 'There are already enough laws to stop this sort of practice and they are having no effect' said Fatima. 'Community integration is the only answer, but that shows no sign of happening.'

Cryer adds: 'I expect there to be a surge in numbers because, in contrast to the rest of the British population, there's disproportionate number of young people in the south Asian community reaching marriageable age.

'But there is no appetite among left-wing campaigners to tackle the issue because they are terrified of being called racist. If you take a stand on this issue in Bradford, you are accused of demonising the south Asian community. As a result, many politicians and other people feel they are not allowed to talk about this for fear of being told they are doing the BNP's work for them.'

Government officials deny they are afraid to risk controversy and claim that funding, not courage, is the issue. Heather Harvey, from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, recently come across the case of a 13-year-old from Yemen, who lived openly with her husband and baby in London.

'These cases will continue until we have some way of centrally collating evidence of the trend,' she said. 'At the moment, no single organisation collects every record of this practice, which means we can't prove it is widespread. And unless we can prove it is a trend, we can't get funding to tackle it.'

In her east London refuge, Ayse weeps uncontrollably when she thinks about her past and her future. 'I had my childhood taken away and missed out on all my teenage years. I missed every kind of love, even my own mother's, and am finding it very difficult to put my life back together. Sometimes I still wonder if it's worth trying to have a future. Many days, I'm not at all sure that it is.'

Mickey in controversial 9/11 art

Celebrating 9/11 at the Royal Scottish Academy. From AFP, with thanks to "Allah":

Art show organisers have defended a sculpture of Mickey Mouse flying a plane into the World Trade Centre, saying it was about "making you think".

Mickey's Taliban Adventures is one of almost 300 pieces in the Royal Scottish Academy's student exhibition in Edinburgh, which opened to the public on Saturday.

The exhibition by final-year and postgraduate students from Scotland's art and architectural schools also includes a short film showing the dying moments of a poisoned mouse.

The Twin Towers work - based on the attack on New York on 11 September 2001 in which 2752 people died - was made by Alan Bennie of the Edinburgh College of Art.

It shows the Disney figurehead flying a toy plane into cartoon-like foam models of the World Trade Centre, which have been given eyes to lend them a surprised expression, as well as flames made of felt.

"I don't think it's a particularly shocking piece," said Colin Greenslade, exhibitions co-ordinator for the Royal Scottish Academy.

Universal icon

"The Twin Towers have become an icon and everyone has their own feelings about it, whether they knew people who were involved or can just remember where they were when it happened," he said.

"This is about making you think."

The film of the poisoned mouse, by student Jock Mooney, is exhibited next to a statement explaining the circumstances, following complaints from animal rights activists.

In it, Mooney said the mouse had already been poisoned when he found it outside his flat and that his film was intended to show the effects of the methods used to get rid of rodents.

Diana West: Staring down sharia law

Diana West has some acute and perceptive insights on Sharia and Iraq:

Another big story has come out of Iraq with little media fanfare -- and this is one with colossal implications.

Recently, L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, toured a new women's center in Karbala. (The center occupies a former Ba'athist Party headquarters -- nice touch.) There, citing a 2003 United Nations report that pegged the poverty and non-productivity of the Arab-Muslim world to the repression of half its workforce -- women -- under Islamic sharia law, Bremer touted the equal rights and full participation of women in the new Iraq.

This topic was apt, particularly since the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council voted in late December to withdraw Iraqi family law matters from their secular jurisdiction and place them under an undefined Islamic sharia law. Such a legal maneuver could subject women to underage marriages, polygamous marriages, on-the-spot divorces ("I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you," is all a husband has to say in certain sharia proceedings), unfair inheritance laws and other terrible inequities.

Bremer has not approved the Islamization of Iraqi family law. (Nor, as Paul Marshall reported at National Review Online, has Bremer intervened in the Islamization of Iraq's universities, nor the peremptory removal of a female deputy minister for whom hardliners refused to work.) Against such a political backdrop, Bremer discussed the current draft of the interim Iraqi constitution, which is due Feb. 28. The draft designates Islam the state religion of Iraq, Bremer said, and "a source of inspiration for the law" -- not the only source of inspiration for that law.

What would happen, Bremer was asked, if Iraqi leaders write an interim constitution inspired exclusively by Islamic law? "Our position is clear," Bremer replied in an unforgivably underreported answer picked up by the Associated Press. "It can't be law until I sign it." This statement strongly suggests Bremer would veto an Islamic charter -- which, of course, he should for the sake of liberty and justice for all Iraqis. Equal rights before the law do not exist under Islamic law. One citizen, one vote does not exist under Islamic law. Freedom of worship does not exist under Islamic law. Minorities -- that is, non-Muslims -- enjoy rights and protections at the pleasure of the Muslim community that are ever-subject to the capriciousness of a rights-canceling fatwa. Indeed, Islamic law is not the basis of a religion, as the Judeo-Christian world understands religion, but is rather the basis of a controlling ideology that is nothing short of totalitarian.

Sharia's adherents, of course, would disagree. In a January article about the Governing Council's family law decision, every judge and lawyer the Los Angeles Times interviewed in Baghdad insisted on the superiority of sharia law to civil law.

"Sharia is from God, the law is man-made, and sharia is better because what comes from Allah is fixed," said Kadhim Jubori, 55, who has practiced family law for 33 years in Baghdad. ("I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you" is fixed?) Fixed or not, U.S. efforts to tend democracy's roots in Iraq would wither under any sharia-based constitution.

This would bode ill, but not just for Iraq. The fact is, as columnist Charles Krauthammer said recently in a magisterial address to the American Enterprise Institute, "You win by taking territory -- and leaving something behind." We won Iraq by taking territory -- and now must leave the basis for democracy behind. Not sharia.

Such a policy -- Krauthammer calls it "democratic globalism" -- combines realism with an idealistic commitment to human freedom, tempered, he cautioned, by "strategic necessity." That means that the United States commits blood and treasure only in "places central to the larger war against the existential enemy, the enemy that poses a global mortal threat to freedom."

Fifty years ago, that described Germany and Japan, vortexes of fascism. Both nations, Krauthammer noted, "were turned, by nation-building, into bulwarks against the next great threat to freedom, Soviet communism." Today, he continued, the new global threat to freedom is "the new existential enemy, the Arab-Islamic totalitarianism that has threatened us in both its secular and religious forms for the quarter-century since the Khomeini revolution of 1979." He continued: "Establishing civilized, decent, non-belligerent, pro-Western polities in Afghanistan and Iraq ... would, like the flipping of Germany and Japan, change the strategic balance in the fight against Arab-Islamic radicalism."

Krauthammer admits we may fail even as he insists we must try. Certainly, the first thing to do is for Bremer -- and the American people -- to be prepared to veto a sharia-based constitution in Iraq.

Australia: Terror's many tongues

Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun has some pointed observations about the situation in Australia. (Thanks to Kevin.)

IT goes like this. First, Australia's Mufti, Taj El-Din El-Hilaly, praises terrorists in Arabic.

Then, when his words leak out, the sheik's spokesman, Keysar Trad of the Lebanese Muslim Association, tells us in English how we've again got the peace-loving cleric all wrong.

Roll the tape. Just before the September 11 attacks, Hilaly was filmed by SBS in his Sydney mosque endorsing suicide bombers.

Afterwards, Hilaly went to Lebanon and signed a statement by clerics endorsing suicide attacks in Israel -- like those which have killed so many civilians.

Trad tried to explain away both incidents, just as he this week claimed Hilaly was again taken out of context by reports this week of his visit to Lebanon.

Those reports said he'd again called for a jihad against Israel, praised suicide bombers as "martyrs", and met the head of Hezbollah, a terrorist group he called a "model for all the Mujahideen in the world".

And how credible is Trad as an apologist for this?

After all, Trad was a translator for the extremist Islamic Youth Movement of Australia, which has been linked to al Qaida.

And although denouncing terrorism himself, he is a zealot who has called Australians "the descendants of ... criminal dregs".

Lovely. So why do Muslims call Hilaly their Mufti?

Letter to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder

From the Simon Wiesenthal Center (with thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

Monday, February 23, 2004

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder

We join with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in demanding your public rebuke of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation, the flagship of your Social Democratic Party, for funding the three-day Beirut International Conference on 'The Islamic World and Europe: from Dialogue towards Understanding that featured speakers from Hezbollah and Hamas - two terrorist organizations that murder Jews and promote the most libelous anti-Jewish canards including the 'Blood Libel' and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As you know these organizations are blacklisted by the European Union for their murderous activities. Other speakers included one associated with the Moslem Brotherhood who is notorious for sowing the seeds of Jew hatred in France; another is believed to have ties to al-Qaeda, and a leading Hamas idealogue and former activist in Islamic Jihad.

All this happened simultaneously while Germany’s Foreign Minister Fischer gave his speech at the European Commission’s Antisemitism Conference in Brussels where he sought to reassure Elie Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors that your nation stands in solidarity against the antisemitic venom emanating from the Arab world.

Chancellor Schroeder, if the Foreign Minister’s speech is indeed German policy, it is a message that needs to be delivered not so much to Jews, but to the Arab Nations. We await your public rebuke of the Foundation and a commitment that Germany will no longer invest any more of its funds and prestige to legitimize mass murderers and Jew haters.

You can add your name to this petition here.

Kerry's wife supports U.S. radicals, jihadists

I was starting to think that the message John Kerry's campaign sent to an Iranian news agency was just a blanket email in which the Iranians were included, but was not specifically a message to the mullahs. That may be true. But Kerry's wife is a major donor to a group that funds all sorts of organizations the mullahs would love. From WND:

If John Kerry becomes president, the first lady will have a track record of support for the causes of radical, anti-American groups – including Islamists, terrorist-defense law firms, abortionists and homosexual activists – that, by comparison, would make much of the country nostalgic for the days of Hillary Clinton, a study of her philanthropy patterns by Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin concludes.

One of heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry's favorite charities is the Tides Foundation, a 28-year-old grant-making institution that funds to the tune of hundreds of millions radical groups that, among other things, protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq, demand open U.S. borders, provide the legal defense of suspected terrorists and promote the spread of Islamist ideology in the U.S.

Heinz Kerry, worth an estimated three-quarters of a billion dollars, working through the Howard Heinz Endowment, oversaw the donation of more than $4 million to the Tides Foundation between 1995 and 2001, reports G2 Bulletin, a premium, online intelligence newsletter published by WorldNetDaily.

While John Kerry criticizes the way President Bush has conducted the war in Iraq, he actually cast a Senate vote to support it. Yet, Tides' Iraq Peace Fund and Peace Studies Fund supports the War Resisters League and Ramsey Clark's International Action Center. Clark actually offered to defend Saddam Hussein. His center also sponsored International ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice, both of which were run by long-time communist revolutionaries.

The Democratic Justice Fund, created through the efforts of Tides and George Soros, seeks to ease U.S. restrictions on Muslim immigration from countries designated by the State Department as “terrorist nations.” Tides also supports the Council for American Islamic Relations, a group that bills itself as a “Muslim civil rights group,” but one whose leaders have links to the terrorist group Hamas.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad openly stated in 1994, “I am a supporter of the Hamas movement.” Community Affairs Director Bassem K. Khafagi has been arrested for visa and bank fraud. Randall Royer, a communications specialist and civil rights coordinator at CAIR, was arrested along with a group of Islamic radicals in Virginia for allegedly planning jihadist activities. CAIR has defended terrorist fronts posing as “charities” – some of which have shut down by the Bush administration.

Tides supports the National Lawyers Guild, which began as a Communist Party front. Last October, Lynne Stewart, an indicted terrorist NLG lawyer, gave a rousing closing speech at the organization's convention. Stewart was arrested for helping her client, convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with terrorist cells in Egypt.

"And modern heroes, dare I mention?" she said. "Ho and Mao and Lenin, Fidel and Nelson Mandela and John Brown, Che Guevara, who reminds us, 'At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.' Our quests like theirs are to shake the very foundations of the continents."

Heinz Kerry not only serves as chairman of the Howard Heinz Endowment, she also sits on the board of the Vira I. Heinz Endowment.

The Earth Island Institute is a recipient of Heinz cash. Three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America by Islamists, the group published a statement on its website rationalizing the terrorist actions. Under the headline, "U.S. Responds to Terrorist Attacks with Self-Righteous Arrogance," the statement explained that the destruction of the World Trade Center, the crash at the Pentagon, the four airline hijackings and the 3,000 Americans killed "was not an 'attack on all American people,'" but "an act of anger, desperation and indignation." . . .

In addition to its support of CAIR, Tides supports the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Arab American Action Network.

A group called "Barrio Warriors" is also a recipient of Tides grants. This race-conscious Hispanic organization calls for the "liberation of Aztlan," the American southwest, including California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

Sharia vs. polio in Nigeria

AP reported that the rejection of the polio vaccine by a polio-ravaged Nigerian state was due to anti-American sentiment and conspiracy theories. That is true, but it is also true that these fears are being stoked by the local Islamic authorities: "But fears mounted last year after Datti Ahmed, a Kano physician who heads a prominent Muslim group, the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, said polio vaccines were 'corrupted and tainted by evildoers from America and their Western allies.'" From News24.com, with thanks to pgrockas:

Polio left Dauda Abdullahi with twisted limbs, unable to walk. But he refuses to allow his children to be immunised against the disease that crippled him three decades ago.

"Only Allah can save us. I don't trust medicine," the 42-year-old roadside shoemaker said.

Immunising toddlers with mouth drops has reduced the number of polio cases from 350 000 children annually in the 1980s to fewer than 800 worldwide last year. Yet the virus is spreading again from Nigeria, where UN officials say a third of the world's cases are the result of a vaccine boycott.

Amid rising Muslim-Western tensions worldwide, Nigeria's Muslims are heeding allegations that the vaccine is a US plot to spread Aids or infertility.

Since October, three northern Nigerian states have banned door-to-door vaccinations until they are satisfied the vaccines do not contain harmful substances.

"Since September 11, the Muslim world is beginning to be suspicious of any move from the Western world," said Sule Ya'u Sule, speaking for the governor of Kano, one of the states where the vaccine is banned. "Our people have become really concerned about polio vaccine."

UN and Nigerian federal government officials stress the vaccines have repeatedly been proven safe. But detractors don't believe it, and meanwhile polio strains are spreading from northern Nigeria's trading centre of Kano to at least seven nearby countries where the disease was previously eradicated, says the World Health Organisation's Bruce Aylward.

Dozens of recent cases

Aylward, WHO's global co-ordinator for the polio eradication campaign, cited dozens of recent cases in Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad and Cameroon.

On Sunday, Nigeria sent a team of 12 scientists, government officials and Muslim leaders to South Africa, Indonesia and India to spend a week witnessing tests that would dispel the suspicions.

Muslims in Nigeria's arid north have become increasingly wary of vaccine initiatives since 1996, when families in Kano accused New York-based Pfizer Inc of using an experimental meningitis drug on patients without fully informing them of the risks.

The company denied any wrongdoing and a US court dismissed a lawsuit by 20 disabled Nigerians alleged to have taken part in the study, but a US appeals court revived it late last year.

Zubairu Shaba, a former journalist who has lobbied the Nigerian government for compensation on behalf of the Pfizer patients' families, said he and others distrust the entire Western medical establishment.

'They prefer to die'

"So many families won't go to hospitals again. They prefer to die," Shaba said. "We are suspicious of people who come to our doors with liquid for our children's mouths. We don't know who they are or what they want."

Not everyone agrees. "I've heard lots of people saying bad things about polio vaccine. I don't believe it," 22-year-old Habiba Nara said as a nurse at a clinic in northern Nigeria put vaccine drops in the mouth of Abubakar, her screaming 40-day-old baby boy.

Community health worker Jammai Bala says she encourages the nervous "to believe in God".

But fears mounted last year after Datti Ahmed, a Kano physician who heads a prominent Muslim group, the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, said polio vaccines were "corrupted and tainted by evildoers from America and their Western allies".

Subsequent tests initiated by the federal government in Nigeria and South Africa proved conclusively the vaccines were free of all harmful substances, officials say.

Muslim groups rejected the results. Kano state officials insisted their own scientists tested the vaccines and found trace amounts of oestrogen and progesterone, female sex hormones which the officials feared could cause infertility.

Jama'atu Nasril Islam, an influential Muslim group, said it sponsored its own tests in Britain and India and got similar results.

Modern day Hitlers

"We believe that modern-day Hitlers have deliberately adulterated the oral polio vaccines with anti-fertility drugs and contaminated with certain viruses which are known to cause HIV and Aids," Ahmed said.

Aylward, the UN official, says any test results showing hormones are "false positives" arising from improper testing methods or the mixing of foreign materials during testing.

Even hormones at the levels alleged by critics would be of "absolutely of no health consequence" and amount to less than the amount found naturally in mothers' breast milk, Aylward said.

Presbyterian church apologizes

Jeffrey Imm has forwarded to me an apology from the Presbyterian church for anti-Semitic remarks made by a Muslim speaker sponsored by a Presbyterian group, speaking at Wooster College in Ohio.

The following statement is made by the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, the Office for Interfaith Relations and the Office for the Middle East and Europe of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in response to concerns about a presentation made at the College of Wooster last October. The speaker appeared through a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) program that itinerates individuals involved in peace and justice efforts in other countries to presbyteries, synods, and Presbyterian colleges and seminaries to help Presbyterians understand concerns for peace around the world.

FOR RELEASE, February 10, 2004

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), by action of its General Assembly, has adopted and re-affirmed clear policies abhorring, renouncing and opposing
all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.

Consistent with those policies, the church's Peacemaking Program, Office for Interfaith Relations and Office for the Middle East and Europe, unequivocally disavow remarks and images reportedly used by a speaker at a
church-sponsored event at the College of Wooster last October. We regret
that some in the audience may have been offended.

While the church cannot take responsibility for expressions made by an individual, it categorically rejects harmful attitudes or the use of demeaning language. It is committed to resist and overcome anti-Semitism and all other attitudes, expressions, or actions that deny or defame the full humanity of another.

In this regard, our offices restate the PC(USA)'s long-standing position affirming Israel's right to exist within legitimate and secure borders; calling for justice and the restoration of dignity and freedom for the Palestinian people; and advocating for an end to the Israeli occupation, a cessation of all forms of violence on all sides, and an urgent return to sanity through negotiation for an honorable and enduring peace in Israel and Palestine.

Sara P. Lisherness
Coordinator
Presbyterian Peacemaking Program
100 Witherspoon Street, Rm. 1625
Louisville, KY 40202-1396
888.728.7228 x5779
slishern@ctr.pcusa.org

Pakistan Sharia watch: ninth school destroyed

From the BBC, with thanks to Nicolei:

Police in Pakistan's remote Northern Areas said on Friday that a ninth school in five days had been attacked and destroyed. Local officials have blamed hardline Islamists opposed to female education. Eight of the schools were for girls, although the latest - burned down in a village near the town of Chilas on Thursday - was a boys' school. Three people have been arrested, taking the total detained over the spate of attacks to 20. The schools attacked were mostly set up by non-governmental organisations with foreign assistance. The BBC's Haroon Rashid in Peshawar says observers view the attacks as a setback to efforts to promote literacy in the under-developed region. Thursday night's attack was on a two-room community school in a remote village called Akhrot, near Chilas, 120km south of the regional capital of Gilgit.

Police said unidentified people torched the school, destroying the furniture and wooden parts of the building. No one was injured.

On 15 February seven girls' schools under the government's Social Action Programme were destroyed in the Daarayle Valley.

On 19 February a primary school in Chilas was dynamited.

Some local officials blame people opposed to the education of girls.

However, others believe the latest incident shows a more general targeting of international aid agencies by people who regard the construction of community schools with their funding as un-Islamic.

Last year attacks at the offices of the International Fund for Agriculture Development (Ifad) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Chilas caused severe damage.

Local officials say they have formed committees to investigate the matter.

A senior government official in Gilgit told the Reuters news agency: "We have about 100 community schools and the attacks have not stopped girls from going to them."

The Northern Areas have a population of around 1.5 million.

The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country at 12% but efforts by aid agencies to raise it have been met with suspicion by some hardline Islamists.

This week's attacks came shortly after President Pervez Musharraf appealed to Muslim religious leaders to help curb extremism.

Sharia alert: Bangladesh bans another novel by Taslima Nasreen

Can such actions be compatible with a free society? From the Hindustan Times, with thanks to TwoStellas:

Bangladesh has banned controversial feminist author Taslima Nasrin latest book for allegedly containing "objectionable" comments about Islam and Prophet Mohammad.

The government in a notification issued on Thursday banned the printing, reprinting, sale and stockpiling of the book, Shai Sob Andhakar (Those Dark Days) published last month in West Bengal.

The government banned the import, sale and printing of the book in the country because it contains "grave and objectionable comments about Islam and Prophet Mohammad" and "may cause hatred in the society," an official notification said.

The exiled author's autobiography was banned on the day it was to be released at the ongoing book fair in Dhaka on the occasion of language day. This is Nasreen's second book, which has been banned by the government in the last four months.

The new book is the follow-up volume of the controversial book Ka, which was banned late last year after the country's leading poet Syed Shamsul Haq filed a defamation suit alleging that the book portrayed him in bad light.

Nasreen, a physician-turned-writer now in exile, fled Bangladesh in 1994 after Islamic fundamentalists threatened to kill her following publication of her novel Lajja.

She is currently researching secularisation and women' emancipation in Islamic countries at Harward University.

Islam illegal under law, court told

Interesting court case going on in Australia. Two Christian pastors are on trial for "vilifying Muslims" during a 2002 seminar. But as they make their defense, they are going on the offensive. From The Age, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Islam was an illegal religion because the Koran preached violence against Christians and Jews, a Christian group told a judge yesterday.

The group's barrister, David Perkins, said that Christianity was established under Australia's constitution and had special protection, especially through the blasphemy law.

Mr Perkins told the Victorian and Civil Administrative Tribunal that if the state's new religious hatred law intended to fetter the teaching of Christian doctrine it was invalid.

Victoria's Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 referred to lawful religion, and it was in that sense, he said, that by preaching violence Islam was disqualified.

"The Koran contradicts Christian doctrine in a number of places and, under the blasphemy law, is therefore illegal," he said.

In the first case under the act, the Islamic Council of Victoria has complained that Catch the Fire Ministries, Pastor Danny Nalliah and speaker Daniel Scot, also a pastor, vilified Muslims at a seminar in March 2002.

Australia: Mufti not to be investigated

The Australian Mufti, Sheikh Al-Hilali, who reportedly called for jihad against Israel recently (as well as claiming that Australia was originally Muslim), is now singing a different tune — and Australia's Federal Police are accepting that he does not support an armed uprising against any state. From News.com.au, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

THE Australian Federal Police has rejected a request for a formal investigation into the conduct of Australia's most senior Muslim leader.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock yesterday asked the AFP to look into the activities of the Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali, the Mufti of Australia, while overseas.

Sheik Alhilali reportedly called for a jihad against Israel and met Hizbollah leaders during a recent visit to Lebanon.

An AFP spokeswoman said the force was not investigating Sheik Alhilali but refused to comment further.

"We are not investigating the matter," the spokeswoman said.

Prime Minister John Howard yesterday condemned Sheik Alhilali for incredible insensitivity over the meeting with Hizbollah.

Hizbollah's military wing is listed as a terrorist organisation in Australia but its political wing is not.

Mr Howard today denied he was out to get Sheik Alhilali but said he was seeking further information about what was said and attempting to get a copy of the speech.

"I'm not out to get him," Mr Howard told Sydney radio 2GB.

"As Prime Minister, I am reacting to something which on the face of it, from somebody who is the titular leader of 300,000 people in this country is quite unacceptable."

Sheik Alhilali last night told SBS radio's Arabic language program that he had not called for a jihad and did not support suicide bombing, a Sydney newspaper reported today.

Alabama to Allow Headscarves in Drivers License Photos

A new policy in Alabama is not in and of itself an example of dhimmitude, but it is interesting to contrast this with the French headscarf ban:

Responding to complaints from Muslims and Sikhs, Gov. Bob Riley's administration is changing a policy that prohibited the wearing of head scarves and turbans in driver's license photos.

The new policy says head coverings and headgear are acceptable for religious beliefs and medical conditions, but for no other reason. State Public Safety Director Mike Coppage said his department was delivering the rule change to county probate judges on Friday, and that it would take effect Monday.

Muslim women who had complained were glad to see the state's quick response. "This is a victory for religious freedom for everyone in this country," said LaTonya Floyd of Mobile.

Dhimmitude in India

This one seems motivated by a desire to get votes. From Sify.com:

The BJP has strongly protested against the Mulayam Singh Yadav Government's decision to cut short school hours on Fridays to allow Muslim students to offer Jumma ki namaz.

The move is being perceived as an effort to appease the Muslim votebank ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. According to a Government order issued on February 16 to all schools and colleges affiliated to the UP Board, the school hours would now be from 8 am to 12 pm on all Fridays.

Reacting strongly to the "absurd Government decision", state BJP chief Vinay Katiyar, demanded that the Government order be withdrawn immediately.

"It smacks of the Government's appeasement policy. Mulayam Singh Yadav is scared of his shifting mass base in the coming Lok Sabha polls. Hence he's using such tactics to draw minority votes. Such a step will create a divide between Hindu and Muslim children in schools," he said.

Katiyar further said the BJP would take to the streets to protest this decision. He argued: "In that case even the bhakts of Lord Shiva would demand a holiday on Monday and devotees of Lord Hanuman would demand a holiday on Tuesday."

He said the party would stage an agitation in front of the Assembly. "The protest would continue till the Government withdraws the order," he added.

The order issued by the Principal Secretary, Education, Neera Yadav on February 16, says that the State Government, after due consideration, has decided to change the school timings on Friday's from 8 am to 12 pm.

The changed timing would be applicable to all aided, unaided, and Government-run primary schools, junior schools, high schools and intercolleges in the state. So far, school timings have been six hours -- from 8 am to 2 pm or 10 am to 4 pm, Monday to Friday, with Saturday being a half day.

District Inspector of Schools Vikas Srivastava said the order would be implemented with immediate effect in the state Capital and students can look forward to the new timings from this Friday.

Girls' schools in Pakistan blasted

Discrimination against women is so deeply ingrained into the Sharia in so many ways (women's testimony is devalued, they cannot marry or even leave the house without permission, they may be beaten (Qur'an, Sura 4:34), etc.), that many Islamic radicals consider the very idea of education for women to be an affront to Islam. This article shows how far some are willing to take this. Non-Muslims should take note, for these radicals would no doubt enforce the Sharia's provisions for dhimmis with equal ferocity, given the opportunity. From the Gulf Daily News, with thanks to Nicolei:

Islamic militants dynamited seven primary schools for girls in Pakistan's remote north in the past week in a bid to discourage female education, a government official said yesterday..

The attacks occurred in two districts of the Northern Areas but caused no injuries as they were carried out at night, a senior government official from Gilgit said.

Unknown men planted a low intensity explosive device in the three-room school building which exploded on Wednesday without causing any casualties, local police officer Zaheer Khan said.

"The attack caused minor damage to the building, but no casualties," he said.

It was the fifth incident in less than a week in which schools had been targeted.

He blamed the attacks on local tribesmen encouraged by "religious elements" opposed to education of girls.

"The majority of the people are supportive of girls' education but a tiny minority is opposed," said the official.

"We have about a 100 community schools and the attacks have not stopped girls from going to them."

Police said they had detained 16 people in connection with the attacks, six of which happened in Diamir district and the seventh in Chilas.

Khan said non-governmental organisations had set up several schools in Diamir district which Khan said had upset extremists in the region.

The latest attack, which badly damaged the school, occurred just three days after a group of men, angered over increasing activities of foreign-funded charity organisations, set fire to seven schools for girls, damaging the buildings and furniture.

However, it was not immediately clear whether the same people were behind Wednesday's attack, said Mohammed Jan, a government official in Chilas.

Message of hate brought to Ohio campus

A disquieting story about the propagation of jihadist "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" slander in the United States, unconscionable dhimmitude from a Presbyterian "peacemaking group" — and nothing but supine silence from officials at an American college. From Cleveland Jewish News, with thanks to EPG:

Last October, Samir Makhlouf, invited to speak at the College of Wooster, delivered a diatribe against Jews.

During his presentation, he presented the fraudulent, antisemitic screed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a factual book that "explains" how Zionists have been taking over the world's political, economic, religious and communication organizations.

Makhlouf's 15-20 minute slide presentation was rife with dead Palestinian bodies "proving" Israeli war crimes. The slide show ended with a Star of David morphing into a swastika, and had frames equating Zionism with Nazism. The "equals" sign was then replaced by a "greater than" sign, suggesting that Zionism was even worse than Nazism.

While no one disputes that this is what Makhlouf presented, to date, no one from the College of Wooster, or Presbyterian Peacemakers, the organization that provided the speaker, has issued an apology or acknowledged those who were offended by the presentation.

Bettysue Feuer, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, says she has been working on this issue with the College of Wooster for quite a while. A public apology, she says, "would go a long way." Noting that Makhlouf is not the first antisemitic speaker the College of Wooster has hosted, Feuer says she is disturbed by the seeming lack of supervision over who is permitted to air their views.

"It's a shame there is not more sensitivity shown to the diverse population of the campus. To allow a speaker who shows such bigotry shows a real lack of understanding on (the College of Wooster's) part."

Feuer is also interested in knowing the criteria the Presbyterian Peacemakers use to choose their speakers.

Mark Wilson, a Jew who is a professor of geology at the college, says he was approached by a number of students following Makhlouf's presentations, one held during an ethics class, and another at an open public lecture. The students told him they "were rather amazed" by what they saw and heard.

Relatively few Jews attend the college, notes Wilson, so there didn't seem to be much of an outcry against Makhlouf's presentations. Nevertheless, he says, an apology should have been issued.

Also disturbing, Wilson adds, is the response some of the more virulently antisemitic speakers receive. "Fawaz Damra (imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland and recently cited for lying about his ties to terrorist organizations) was invited here, and while I don't mind having him on campus, I was disturbed that no mention was made of his recent past."

While he's not sure how many students or faculty came to hear Damra, Wilson says there was a "very large turnout of people from the area who cheered him and cheered him."

The Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, proclaims a "commitment to peacemaking" on its Web site. They profess "a journey of racial justice and understanding" as well as commitment to overcoming prejudice.

Sweet Young, an administrative assistant for the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, told the CJN that no one from the organization would be available to comment on the October presentation by Makhlouf until some time in February. She directed questions to Gordon Shull, who hosted the speaker in Wooster.

Shull, a Presbyterian and former professor at the College of Wooster, admits he understands some students may have been offended. He is also aware that non-Jewish students may have come away with erroneous and harmful information about the validity of the Protocols. However, he says, he "would not encourage them (Peacemaker organization) to issue an apology. I'm not into apologies or casting blame."

Shull sent out e-mails to the College of Wooster faculty intimating that the speaker's presence at the college was actually the responsibility of the Israeli government because the Palestinian speaker he had initially tried to get was unable to secure a travel visa. He repeated the charge several times in a phone interview with this reporter that he felt the speaker's appearance could be blamed on the Israeli government. Shull later called back saying he would like to retract that sentiment.

In further deflecting responsibility from himself, Shull said, "I regret that the director of the Hillel Foundation (Professor Peter Pozefsky) chose to be offended by it, rather than take it as a teachable event."

Pozefsky a professor of history who has assumed the Hillel post as a volunteer, has pretty much singly-handedly raised concerns to fellow staff and administration about speakers such as Makhlouf and Damra. He estimates that at least seven such individuals making antisemitic remarks have spoken at the college in the past few years.

"There are plenty of people who are willing to say this is awful, but no one is willing to put their necks on the line," he says. "I shouldn't be the only one making sure Jews aren't trashed on this campus."

Pozefsky likens the Makhlouf fiasco to the response he received to requests he raised before Damra came to speak. "I didn't want to censor him," he says. "I just wanted students to know who he was before he spoke."

Pozefsky e-mailed his concerns on the faculty listserve, but the response he got "was a combination of hostility and complacency." On one occasion, a colleague accused him of trying to violate free speech. Another time, he was accused of harassment.

After the Presbyterian Peacemaker presentation, Pozefsky found himself once again in the position of attempting to rectify the damage made by a speaker's slanderous allegations against Jews. While he didn't attend the lectures, some of the students expressed their concerns to him. One student told him that he found "the illusion Makhlouf painted about Jewish bankers and their domination of the West" particularly disturbing. So was a slide that read, "May God bless our martyrs; may they find peace in the heavens."

"There are very few Jewish students on campus," Pozefsky points out, "and they don't want to be activists or seem like crybabies." However, he notes, these young people are in the care of the college, and their feelings and well-being should be taken into consideration. Further, he says, non-Jewish students have gotten "terribly shamefully biased, unscholarly and misleading, stridently antisemitic information as part of their (college) education.

"If women or blacks were spoken about like this, or if someone came and spread homophobic hate speech, that would never be tolerated," he says. "Is this acceptable because it was directed toward Jews?"

R. Stanton Hales, president of the College of Wooster, did not return calls to the CJN. John Hopkins, assistant vice president for college relations and marketing, e-mailed the CJN to say that Hales will "make a statement once he has determined all the facts to his satisfaction." He did not give a date when that would be.

Anti-dhimmitude in Denmark

Jihadist khutbas are not welcome in Denmark. From the Guardian, with thanks to Andy Bannister:

Denmark is tightening its immigration rules to make it harder for fundamentalist Muslim clerics to settle in the country and establish radical communities.

The move is designed to encourage Muslims to integrate into wider Danish society but is bound to attract criticism that it is discriminatory.

Indeed, it is bound to. But where is the guarantee that imams will not preach jihadist hatred in the mosques?

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister, said the measure would affect all religious groups, but a rightwing political party admitted it was principally intended to tackle Islamic extremism.

Denmark's 170,000 Muslims account for 3% of the population and are the second largest religious community after the Lutheran church, followed by four-fifths of the country's 5.3 million strong population.

"Access to obtaining a Danish residence permit for foreign missionaries has been too easy up until now," Mr Rasmussen said. "That is why we are putting forward new requirements for residing in the country."

Critics complained that the influence of radical imams had been exaggerated, while the government said it merely wanted to encourage integration.

"This is to make sure that they are worthy of the trust society shows by letting them in," a spokesman said yesterday.

Supporters of the measure accuse foreign clerics of urging Muslim immigrants to stick to customs such as wearing the veil, female circumcision and stopping women from working and learning Danish.

Mr Rasmussen's minority centre-right government relies on the anti-immigrant Danish People's party's to pass legislation. The proposed changes are part of a deal reached last year with the People's party and the opposition Social Democrats.

The new rules will require any person coming to Denmark on a religious visa to show that they are a "worthy" candidate, are educated, financially self-supporting and connected with one of 200 recognised religious communities.

The DPP, which proposed the changes, confirmed they were aimed to curb the activities of Muslim clerics, or imams. "In theory, these rules concern all clerics from all religions," said Peter Skaarup, a party spokesman. "But in practice, they target the imams."

Like France, the Netherlands and other western European countries, Denmark has been struggling with Muslim issues since before, but especially after, the September 11 attacks on the US.

Danish media have reported the case of an imam who praised Osama bin Laden in his Friday sermons.

Baghdad Pastor Shot Dead

When dhimmis get out of line, they forfeit their contract of protection. One of the ways they do that is by proselytizing. Thanks to FreedomNowNews for forwarding this:

On Saturday, February 14, 2004 at approximately 4:30 pm local time in Baghdad, a van loaded with four Americans was attacked in an execution style attack. The attack occurred near the village of Mahmodia which is about one half hour south of Baghdad. The four passengers were: Pastor John Kelley, Pastor Kirk Di Vietro, Pastor David Davis and Pastor Garland Carey. Their van was sprayed with automatic weapon fire. The attack came from a small passenger car that was behind the van. The car passed the van on the right side and repeatedly sprayed the vehicle with bullets. Three of the men in the van received minor wounds, but Pastor John Kelly of the Curtis Corner Baptist, Wakefield Rhode Island, was killed in the attack. The driver of the van saved the lives of the other three men by evasive driving tactics and delivering the en to an Iraqi hospital. He was not injured, although the van was damaged considerably. The US Army got involved at the hospital and supervised their examinations and medical attention. A member of the US Consulate contacted me and delivered the three survivors safely into my hands at approximately 10:30 pm. They have each one talked with their families and they are resting today. We have been assured that they will be able to fly from Baghdad soon. I personally called Mrs. Kelley with this information. We are in contact with the US Military command and are awaiting instructions.

This was a tragic loss. Pastor Kelley has been a close associate of mine for many years. We have worked on a number of projects together in the work of the Lord. he was volunteer for this team, as were the other members. He requested permission to come and he has certainly been a blessing to all with whom he has had contact. My grief is without description. He was a great man. He served in the US Marines, pastored for more than 25 years and was a pillar of Christian manhood.

Robert Lewis, in Baghdad

If you would like to send a sympathy card to Mrs. Kelly, you may do so at
the following address.

Mrs. Kelley
Curtis Corner Baptist Church
591 Curtis Corner Rd
Wakefield, RI

Out of context in Australia

The Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, Taj Al-Din Hamed Abdallah Al-Hilali (the one who claimed Australia was originally Muslim), has come under fire for his remarks praising jihad and suicide bombing. His defense? His remarks were "taken out of context."

I couldn't begin to count the times that Muslim spokesmen have told me I am taking Qur'an quotes, or Hadith quotes, or the words of radical Muslims, out of context. It is an all-purpose defense, but it's a lazy and ultimately ineffective one. What possible context could justify or mitigate incitements to mass murder? And even if the Qur'an's injunction to "slay unbelievers wherever you find them" (Sura 9:5) really does only apply to some of the Prophet Muhammad's opponents, it is not being wrenched out of this context by "venomous Orientalists" like me, but by radical Muslims around the world who seem unimpressed by arguments that this behavior was restricted to Muhammad's day. And why are they unimpressed? Because the entire context of the Qur'an and the way it is traditionally interpreted by Muslims does not teach that this verse cannot be applied to contemporary situations. Moreover, if the Prophet behaved that way, his actions in this as in everything else are exemplary -- so even the argument used by the "out-of-context" folks doesn't blunt the force of this verse or keep it from being used by radicals.

What is needed is thoroughgoing reform that will rule out radical Muslim exegesis of the Qur'an as an option for Muslims. Shallow, tiresome bleats of "out of context" and "religion of peace" don't quite accomplish this.

From The Australian, with thanks to Kevin:

A SENIOR Liberal MP today urged the Federal Government to consider action against the leader of Australia's Muslims for praising Islamic suicide bombers and calling for a holy war against Israel. . . .

Christopher Pyne, parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Family and Community Services, said he was appalled and horrified by Sheik Alhilali's alleged support for violence.

But a spokesman for the Sydney-based Mufti said he had been taken out of context. . . .

The Mufti's spokesman in Sydney, Keysar Trad, said MEMRI had taken the Muslim leader out of context.

"The Mufti is a proponent of peace and peaceful solutions to any conflict," he told ABC radio.

"I spoke to him today and he assured me that the context in which he made his message was not in the way that it was reported by these people."

Mr Trad said the Mufti believed Muslim resistance fighters may target occupying military forces, but not civilians.

He said the Mufti was not urging people to carry out suicide bombings.

"He is saying, let's not condemn them because these people are making a major sacrifice to protect their country," said Mr Trad, of the Lebanese Muslim Association.

Nor was the Mufti calling for a war against Israel.

"He was not so much calling for a jihad in the nature of war, but in the nature of what will get that country to respect the United Nations resolutions."

Hmm. A peaceful jihad to force respect for UN resolutions. That's a new one.

Sharia alert: Living in fear of Pakistan's new 'Taliban' regime

The seriousness of those who want to impose Sharia and all its restrictions (including the prohibition of music) upon Pakistan (where dhimmi Christians already have it bad enough) is illustrated by this Telegraph story about the terrorization of a Pakistani pop singer. It also contains interesting information about how these radical Muslims want to force women to wear the veil. (Thanks to Jeffrey Imm.)

Fame was no protection for one of Pakistan's most celebrated pop stars when he indulged in the "un-Islamic" practice of singing in public.

Gulzar Alam was beaten with rifle butts and fists when 20 policemen armed with AK47s raided a wedding party where he was performing.

"They are trying to be the Taliban," said Mr Alam. "They are trying to impose this Islamic system. But music is our tradition and it reflects our culture."

Covered in bruises, he was dragged to the cells in the frontier city of Peshawar and locked up for four hours before friends secured his release.

Mr Alam, 42, said: "The police said, 'This music is banned'. They swore at me. They treated me like a very low person. This province has become a police state."

Mr Alam had fallen foul of the Islamist coalition running Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. For the first time, extreme religious parties have won outright control of the government of this crucial area near the border with Afghanistan.

They have a simple manifesto: to reinvent the Taliban in a corner of Pakistan.

Since winning power less than 18 months ago the coalition has banned