EU 'covered up' attacks on Jews by young Muslims

As anti-Semitism skyrockets in Europe, "the government is very anxious not to upset the Muslim community." From The Telegraph:

Jewish leaders accused the European Union yesterday of covering up the true scale of anti-Semitic violence carried out by Muslim youths, reigniting a controversy over Europe's failure to confront Islamic extremism at home.

A study released by the EU's racism and xenophobia monitoring centre astounded experts by concluding that the wave of anti-Jewish persecution over the last two years stemmed from neo-Nazi or other racist groups.

"The largest group of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white Europeans," said a summary released to the European Parliament. "A further source of anti-Semitism in some countries was young Muslims of North African or Asian extraction.

"Traditionally, anti-Semitic groups on the extreme Right played a part in stirring opinion," it added.

The headline findings contradict the body of the report. This says most of the 193 violent attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher shops, cemeteries and rabbis in France in 2002 - up from 32 in 2001 - were "ascribed to youth from neighbourhoods sensitive to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, principally of North African descent.

"The percentage attributable to the extreme Right was only nine per cent in 2002," it said.

The report on Belgium said most of the fire-bomb and machine-gun attacks on Jewish targets were the result of a spillover from the Palestinian intifada.

The European Jewish Congress accused the EU watchdog of twisting data from the 15 member states to suit its own ideological bias, describing the report as a catalogue of "enormous contradictions, errors and omissions."

"We cannot let it be said that the majority of anti-Semitic incidents come from young, disaffected white men. This is in complete contradiction with the facts recorded by the police," it said.

The EU suppressed a report last year by German academics concluding that Arab gangs were largely responsible for a sudden surge in the anti-Jewish violence, allegedly because the findings were politically unpalatable.

Victor Weitzel, who wrote a large section of yesterday's far more detailed study, told The Telegraph that the latest findings had been consistently massaged by the EU watchdog to play down the role of North African youth. "The European Union seems incapable of facing up to the truth on this," he said. "Everything is being tilted to ensure nice soft conclusions.

"When I told them that we need to monitor the inflammatory language being used by the Arab press in Europe, this was changed to the 'minority press'.

"Honestly, it's incredible," he said.

Mr Weitzel's 48-page section - compiled with a Polish academic, Magadalena Sroda - is the fruit of months of interviews with Jewish leaders across Europe. While far-Right and traditional "Christian" forms of anti-Semitism still exist, the report homes in on a new form of "anti-Zionist Left" prejudice.

This demonises Israel and subtly leaks into prejudice against all Jews. The study describes Belgium as a country where anti-Semitism has become almost fashionable among the Left-leaning intelligentsia.

But most of the report focuses on Jew-baiting by Muslim youths. It paints an alarming picture of daily life for France's 600,000 Jews, the EU's biggest community.

In schools, Jewish children are beaten with impunity, and teachers dare not talk about the Holocaust for fear of provoking Muslim pupils, it said.

Britain, which saw a 75 per cent rise in incidents last year, was gently rebuked for hesitating to take "politically awkward" measures against Islamic radicals.

"The government is very anxious not to upset the Muslim community," the report said.

EU may have funded terrorists, says Parliament

EU Parliament: the terrorists' bank? (EU Parliament photo)

For the first time, EU authorities have admitted that their money might have been used for terrorism. From the EU Observer, with thanks to LGF.

Tens of thousands of euro of EU funds may have been diverted to people linked with Palestinian terrorism, according to a report from the European Parliament, obtained by the EUobserver.

The report cites documentary evidence seen by a Parliamentary working group- set up last year after allegations that EU funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) had been misused - that between 21,500-39,000 US dollars of EU funds may have been transferred to terrorists.

It is the first time that the EU has judged its own funds to Palestine may not been used for their intended purpose.

The allegations relate to funds given by the EU directly to the Palestinian Authority account from June 2001 until December 2002.

What constitutes evidence?

The report details the work of a 13-member cross-party parliamentary group. It is due to be finalised this evening (31 March) behind closed doors and is, in many ways, inconclusive.

The group says it does not yet have enough evidence to show funds were transferred directly to terrorists, but can show that monies were transferred from the PA to members of the Fatah group, which is linked to the 'Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades' - a group on the EU's terror list.

The Israeli intelligence services say that evidence yielded from military operations in the Palestinian territories show 2.5 million euro which was "requested and delivered" to the PA fell into terrorists hands, of which 39,000 US dollars can be proven to have been actually paid out.

"Examination of the documents by the European Commission showed that payments to alleged Fatah activists had been authorised for a sum of 21,000 US dollars", according to the report.

Although it adds: "a link between the Palestinian Authority budget structure and the financing of Fatah is difficult to clearly picture".

Direct assistance

The EU paid around 10 million euro a month directly into the Palestinian Authority's budget during between June 2001 and December 2002 to help avert its financial collapse after Israel withheld tax transfers.

The retention of the tax left the authority unable to pay staff and pay for basic public services, promoting the EU and other international donors to step in.

The EU withdrew its direct assistance shortly after Israel resumed payments in June 2002.

The Parliamentary report backed the Commission's aim of propping up the PA but criticised the method chosen.

"The Commissioner [External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten] showed his best intentions in order to stabilise the situation and to encourage the reform of the PA institutions in a very difficult context".

However it does conclude: "Budgetary Assistance was not the most appropriate financial instrument to be implemented".

Sources taking part in the talks say there is still discussion over what constitutes evidence of funding terror which could change some details of the final text of the document.

It is not clear when the Parliament will publish the report.

Four Christians arrested in Egypt

Rowan Williams: will the friendship he seeks have any substance? (BBC)

Their crime? Possessing Bibles and other Christian material. From Ekklesia:

Four Christians have been arrested in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt after police found that they had Bibles and Christian music tapes in their possession, according to reports received by the Jubilee Campaign.

The four Christians - Peter Nady Kamel, Ishaq Dawoud Yassa, John Adel and Andrew Sa'id - all University students at Cairo or Minya Universities. They had gone together to the beach resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, by the Red Sea, for a Christian retreat and stayed at a hotel.

They were arrested in their hotel rooms by local police at 9 a.m on January 26th 2004. Their rooms were searched and all their possessions confiscated. The four Christians have been charged with forming a group that threatens the national unity, social peace and national security. They appeared before the District Prosecutor on January 29 and March 28. Their next appearance before the Prosecutor is scheduled for May 8 and their detention has been extended at least till that date.

Jubilee Campaign believes it is highly likely that the Christians have been wrongly accused of having the Bibles and Christian tapes for the purposes of evangelising Muslims, since such actions are often condemned by the authorities as "threatening national unity".

Pope Shenouda the Third, Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, mentioned briefly the arrest of the Christians in a speech, but did not say who the detained Christians were. In that same speech Pope Shenouda publicly condemned the kidnapping of Christian girls at supermarkets. These girls are falsely told that they have won a prize and to go upstairs to collect it. When they go to collect it, they are kidnapped for forced conversion to Islam.

The families of the kidnapped girls met with Pope Shenouda on Sunday March 21st and had a second meeting with him on Thursday March 25th. At the second meeting, Colonel Ahmad Mostafa, a police officer with special responsibilities for affairs of the Christian community, was present. He listened to the families' accounts regarding the kidnapping of their family members but did not make any comments.

The Christian human rights organisation, Jubilee Campaign, has been campaigning for kidnapped Egyptian Christian girls for several years and believe that the forced conversion of Egyptian Christians to Islam is an escalating problem, fuelled by police and government indifference to the plight of Christian kidnap victims.

Jubilee Campaign's Researcher and Parliamentary Officer, Wilfred Wong, said; " While Jubilee Campaign welcomes the police officer's willingness to meet with the families of kidnap victims, we know that the Egyptian authorities have in the past shown apparent concern for the problems of Egyptian Christians, only to end up doing nothing concrete about it. We therefore intend to continue lobbying the Egyptian government regarding the kidnapping of Christians until they actually ensure that the victims are returned to their families and the kidnappers are punished.

"We are also campaigning for the release of the four detained Egyptian Christians. It is unusual for Egyptian Christians to get into trouble just for having Bibles and Christian tapes in their possession and these arrests signify an increasing willingness by the police to detain Christians on the slightest pretext."

Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has opened a Christian-Muslim dialogue meeting with high hopes for a "deepening of understanding and of friendship between us." Will he ask his Muslim dialogue partners, in the interests of friendship, to denounce the persecution and harassment of Christians in Egypt?

Europe: Anti-Jewish attacks soaring

Who is responsible for all this? No clue from this article. From News24.com:

The number of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe has soared in recent years, according to a report by the EU's racism watchdog on Wednesday which singled out five countries for particular concern.

Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Britain have seen a notable rise in anti-Jewish attacks over the last two or three years, said the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) report.

Most countries also saw worrying trends, it said, although few problems were recorded in four countries: Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Finland.

"Europe has a problem with anti-Semitism, manifestations of which have been getting more frequent in some parts of the EU over the last two or three years," said the EUMC in a report presented to the European Parliament.

The report comes after the EU held a high-level conference in February to clamp down on anti-Semitism --a "monster" that Jewish leaders warned had returned with a vengeance to the continent six decades after the Holocaust.

That conference was hastily organised after a shock opinion poll in November which found that Europeans believe Israel is the biggest threat to world peace.

The 344-page report by the Vienna-based EUMC was the first time that data have been collected systematically across the European Union, which expands from 15 to 25 members on May 1.

Areas of concern highlighted by the study, focussed on 2002 and 2003, include:

• in Belgium "a catalogue of incidents of varying extremity ... including the firebombing of Jewish property and some serious physical assaults."

• in Germany most acts were verbal rather than physical. Jewish groups reported increasing numbers of letters, emails and phone calls from 2002.

• in the Netherlands anti-Semitic acts increased "significantly" in particular in Amsterdam which has a relative large Jewish community.

• in Britain there were violent attacks on two synagogues, two cases of suspected arson and several attacks on Jewish cemeteries.

• in France there was a six-fold increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2002. "There were many incidents of Jewish people assaulted and insulted, attacks against synagogues, cemeteries and other Jewish property," it said.

So who is responsible? Here's a hint.

Dhimmitude in Australia: Cardinal Pell to host Muslim cleric at Cathedral Interfaith Prayer

Feisal Abdul Rauf

From Australia's Catholic News, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Cardinal George Pell of Sydney will welcome Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to St Mary’s Cathedral tomorrow for a lunchtime Interfaith Prayer Service.

Imam Feisal is visiting Sydney at the invitation of Premier Bob Carr, who will also be in attendance at the Service.

Stressing that Imam Feisal is welcome at St Mary's, Cardinal Pell said: "One of the ambitions of Pope John Paul II is to encourage dialogue between mainstream and moderate Muslims, particularly with Catholics, but also with all Christians and all people of good will."

“He has an interesting set of views and we look forward to hearing more from him," said Cardinal Pell. “The stakes are very high. In our own small way we are talking about war or peace. Our Catholic and Christian faith compels us to work for peace.”

That's swell, but is Feisal Abdul Rauf really a good dialogue partner for Cardinal Pell? Abdul Rauf has said: "The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets."

This is outrageously specious, but it depends on the ignorance of the listeners. The bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima were not justified by the bombers on the basis of Christian theology. The bombings by terrorists -- 9/11, 3/11, etc. -- are justified on the basis of Islamic theology. By claiming that they are equivalent, Abdul Rauf obscures the Islamic roots of modern-day terrorism, thus hindering the prospects for the reform within Islam that is so desperately needed if jihad terrorism is ever going to cease.

He has also said, according to the Sun Herald, that "there could be little progress until the US acknowledged backing dictators and the US President gave an 'America Culpa' speech to the Muslim world." Of course. The historical depredations of jihad, they were all the fault of the West. The fall of Constantinople? Probably because of Byzantium's support for Israel.

Deputy Prime Minister of Bahrain hosts Neo-Nazi

Baker: now in Bahrain

"Islamic countries can save the West from its moral decay." Who said it? Bill Baker, who, according to the Orange County Weekly, "has resurfaced as a frequent guest speaker at Muslim functions across North America despite articles in OC Weekly in 2002 that outed the Laguna Hills resident as the former head of the neo-Nazi Populist Party and led to his ouster as a close associate to the Reverend Robert Schuller of Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral."

The MSA has hosted Baker at Western Michigan University.

Note the similarities of the soothing syrup of peace and harmony between Muslims and Christians that Baker peddles and that which is sold by American Muslim advocacy groups. Neither face the harsh realities of the persecution of Christians by Muslims, or lingering dhimmitude.

From the Gulf Daily News, with thanks to Nicolei:

ISLAMIC countries should come to the rescue of the Western world which is suffering from moral decay and deterioration, says a top US scholar and writer.

Muslims and Christians should join hands in the pursuit of peace, freedom, justice and moral values, said California-based Christians and Muslims for Peace (CAMP) president Professor Bill Baker.

No country, irrespective of its military and money power, can exist if its moral values are deteriorated, he told the GDN.

"Islamic countries can save the West from its moral decay, provided Muslims lead a life built on the five pillars of Islam," said Prof Baker.

"Islam is like a house built on the rock of submission and supported by five pillars: Witnessing, Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving or Tithing, and Pilgrimage.

"These five pillars are the distinguishing marks of Islam from all other religions."

Prof Baker is in Bahrain at the invitation of Discover Islam.

He gave a talk on Zionism or Judaism, Justice or Injustice, Oppressor or Oppressed at Beit Al Quran last night.

Deputy Prime Minister and Islamic Affairs Minister Shaikh Abdulla bin Khalid Al Khalifa hosted a luncheon reception in honour of Prof Baker at his Riffa residence yesterday.

It was attended by Information Minister Nabeel Al Hamer, Municipalities and Agriculture Minister Dr Mohammed Al Sitri, Parliament second deputy chairman Shaikh Adel bin Abdulrahman Al Maawda, Islamic Affairs Under-Secretary Shaikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Defence Under-Secretary Dr Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, GDN chairman Anwar Abdul Rahman, Discover Islam chairman Ishaq Kooheji and other guests.

Prof Baker presented to Shaikh Abdulla the copies of his latest books: More in Common than you think: The bridge between Islam and Christianity and Theft of a Nation.

Now is the time to build on the foundations of existing coalition and co-operation between Christians and Muslims, said Prof Baker.

"Now is the time to teach all Muslims and all Christians everywhere about the common ground they share," he noted.

"As a Christian who has lived, studied and interacted with Muslim believers for many years, I consider it my responsibility to set forth the basic history and teachings of Islam in an effort to educate the sincere individual who truly wants to know what Muslims believe and practise.

"Once learned, that individual may join with other Christians in building bridges of peace, dialogue, and understanding with the brothers and sisters of Islam."

America and the Western nations begin the new millennium by presenting Islam as the most dangerous threat to freedom and democracy, said Prof Baker.

"Politicians portray longtime Arab allies as untrustworthy and in need of close scrutiny, while the media too casts aspersions on the millions of honourable Muslim citizens living in the West," he added.

"My mission is to remove the distortions and prejudices created against Islam by bringing people and nations on common ground.

"I also appeal to Christians and Muslims to oppose the common evils of all mankind by joining hands in the pursuit of peace, freedom, justice and moral values."

CAMP, based in Southern California, has members in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Middle East, who are actively engaged in promoting dialogue between Muslims and Christians.

Prof Baker is a member of the Near East Institute of Archaeology, the Oxford Philosophical Society and numerous other organisations.

He had earlier addressed a dialogue session at the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry, entitled East meets West - Removing Mistrust between Islam and the West.

Dhimmitude and the New Jersey Democrats

Senator Jon Corzine

Joel Mowbray reports that in New Jersey it wasn't just Jewish groups that were giving legitimacy to Islamic radicals; it was also two Democratic legislators: Congressman Bill Pascrell and Senator Jon Corzine. From the New York Sun, via FrontPage:

Rep. Bill Pascrell and Senator Corzine, both Democrats of New Jersey, addressed an annual "community brunch" last month co-sponsored by 11 Muslim organizations, including a mosque that has allegedly raised funds for Hamas and another New Jersey mosque whose former imam was convicted last year for smuggling more than a half-million dollars to an Egyptian group that the American Treasury Department subsequently designated a terrorist organization. Mr. Pascrell has also received campaign contributions and fund-raising support from the president of the event's primary sponsor.

The American Muslim Union's Annual Community Brunch on February 21, 2004, was co-sponsored by 10 other organizations, including the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Center of Passaic County of Paterson, the El Tawheed Islamic Center of Jersey City, and the Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center of Teaneck.

The co-sponsor with the most apparent ties to radical Islam, including allegedly raising funds for Hamas and hosting as a speaker last year an alleged Hamas figure, is the Islamic Center of Passaic County. The American Muslim Union, though, appears to have close ties to the Islamic Center of Passaic County, as five of its current and former directors and executives have held or still hold leadership positions at the Islamic Center.

The American Muslim Union insists it is a mainstream group, and Mr. Pascrell says he doesn't regret the appearance. Neither Mr. Pascrell nor Mr. Corzine generally vote outside of the Democratic mainstream on Israel or terror-related matters.

The co-founder of and former imam at the Islamic Center of Passaic County, which was founded in 1989, was Mohamed El-Mezain. He worked with the ICPC to raise funds for Hamas in the mid-1990s, according to an FBI memo drafted in November 2001 by the FBI's assistant director of counterterrorism, Dale Watson. Mr. El-Mezain, who is no longer affiliated with the Islamic Center and could not be reached for comment, was never charged or arrested.

The FBI document, which provided the basis for the U.S. government to shut down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in December 2001, cited a "reliable" source in noting that "during a speech at the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in November, 1994, Mohammad El-Mezain, the HLFRD's current Director of Endowments and former Chairman of the HLFRD Board, admitted that some of the money collected by the ICPC and the HLFRD goes to HAMAS or HAMAS activities in Israel. El-Mezain also defended HAMAS and the activities carried out by HAMAS."

The American Muslim Union's president, Mohamed Younes, who is a member of Islamic Center of Passaic County's board of trustees, told The New York Sun that people at the mosque "did not know everywhere their money was going, and they would not have meant to give to Hamas."

Mr. El-Mezain and the Islamic Center of Passaic County appear to have other ties to Hamas.

Mr. El-Mezain attended a conference in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s where more than $200,000 was raised for Hamas and the keynote speaker urged participants to "finish off the Israelis," according to the FBI memo.

The FBI memo cites a "reliable" source who says that at a Muslim Arab Youth Association conference held from December 30, 1994, to January 2, 1995, the keynote speaker was Sheikh Muhammed Siyam, who was introduced as "head of operations of Al Jihad Al Islamia in Gaza, the Hamas military wing." According to the FBI in formant, Mr. Siyam told the crowd, "Finish off the Israelis. Kill them all! Exterminate them!"

"Following Siyam's speech," the memo continues, "El-Mezain exhorted the crowd to contribute money. It was subsequently announced that $207,000 was raised for 'the cause."' The FBI informant also said that at the conference, Mr. El-Mezain announced that he had raised $1.8 million inside the United States for Hamas in 1994 alone.

Magdy Mahmoud, who is the cofounder and president of CAIR-NJ, one of the co-sponsors of the American Muslim Union brunch, was on the executive board of the Muslim Arab Youth Association and directed its Chapters Committee from 1993 to 1998, during which time the 1994-95 conference occurred. According to his biography on CAIR-NJ's Web site, Mr. Mahmoud later served as the chairman of the Chapters Committee for the American Muslim Union from 1999 to 2001. Mr. Mahmoud did not return a call requesting comment.

According to the Islamic Center of Passaic County's Web site, the mosque hosted a lecture in February 2003 by Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who was identified in the FBI memo as a prominent Hamas figure.

Another co-sponsor of last month's event attended by Messrs. Corzine and Pascrell, Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center, was co-founded by Waheed Khalid, who has defended Hamas activities. When asked by the Bergen Record newspaper in 1998 about Hamas' terrorist activities, Mr. Khalid, who until late last year served as the mosque's president, responded, "They are trying to get the occupiers out of their home."

Mr. Pascrell said that allegations that any of the co-sponsors of the event are radical Islamists or tied to terrorist organizations are "pure crap." Asked if he felt that by appearing at the event he was lending legitimacy to radical organizations, he added, "I'm not going to deal in rumors; the rest is crap. I know these men as fine family men."

A spokesman for Mr. Pascrell later clarified that the congressman wasn't referring to Alaa Al-Sadawi, the former imam at El Tawheed Islamic Center, who was convicted last July of attempting to smuggle more than $650,000 in cash to the Global Relief Fund in Egypt in April 2002.The U.S. Treasury Department designated that fund as terrorist in October 2002.

The spokesman for the congressman said, "That guy should be in jail, but you can't hold the members of the mosque responsible for his actions."

Despite multiple calls from the Sun, Mr. Corzine's office offered no comment.

The American Muslim Union's president, Mr. Younes, stressed that his organization is both moderate and mainstream, adding that it has worked to "bring people together of all faiths."

According to both men, Mr. Younes and Rep. Pascrell have been friends for almost a decade. Mr. Younes and his wife have contributed more than $4,300 to Mr. Pascrell's campaigns since 1998, according to federal election records. Mr. Younes also said that he has hosted "several" fund-raisers for the congressman, including one that netted over $20,000 in October 2000. Messrs. Younes and Pascrell said they can't remember how many fund-raisers Mr. Younes has hosted, or when the most recent one was held.

Mr. Pascrell said he had no regrets about addressing the American Muslim Union- sponsored brunch last month, noting that he has never been given any warning about the group by authorities. "I'm on the Homeland Security Committee and I've never been briefed that they are something I should stay away from," he explained.

A call for an end to the dhimmi mentality

Jean-Christophe Mounicq zeroes in on the prevailing dhimmi mentality in the Washington Times:

The morning of Jan. 29, upon hearing about the attack on a bus in Jerusalem, I did not experience the expected emotion. It seemed such a "normal" thing, and I have not enough tears to shed for people I do not know.

The next day, on Jan. 30, I read an article about one of the victims — Avraham Belhassen, 26 years old, a young father — and realized that I could tolerate no more. I can no longer tolerate terrorist folly, Islamist hatred, the passivity of Muslims, the blindness of the West.

Following the attacks in Madrid, this feeling struck me again. The reaction of the Spanish people, cringing in fear before the Islamist claim of responsibility, bothered me even more. I can no longer tolerate such cowardly Munich-like behavior that leads inevitably to dishonor and war.

The reaction of the European media and political class to the elimination of Sheikh Yassin — the master of hate and terrorism, and one who had called for the murder of Jews — pushed me over the edge. I can no longer tolerate descriptions of the monster responsible for hundreds of deaths and thousands of wounded as a "spiritual leader," a poor "paralytic in a wheelchair." I can no longer tolerate murderous, barbaric Islamist hatred.

I can no longer tolerate the electoral victories of Islamists in Algeria, Turkey or France. I can no longer tolerate the indifference of Muslim leaders and the majority of Muslims to the suffering of non-Muslims. I can no longer tolerate their affected statements or their perpetual self-victimization.

I can no longer tolerate the double game of Yasser Arafat, the Saudi princes or Pakistani leaders. I can no longer tolerate watching Muslims dance with joy, in the Palestinian territories or in Paris, following attacks on the World Trade Center or an Israeli bus. I can no longer tolerate their anti-Semitism, anti-Christianism, anti-Buddhism or anti-Hinduism.

I can no longer tolerate those who hate liberty but take every advantage of it. I can no longer tolerate Islamist lack of respect for secularism and equality, between men and women, Muslims and others. I can no longer tolerate their lack of respect for the cultures of the very countries that shelter them. I can no longer tolerate the multiplication of veils on women in the streets of Paris.

I can no longer tolerate attacks on French officials, abusive complaints against the police, terrorism against judges, the ban against teaching about the Holocaust in schools, or the brutalization of male doctors who treat Muslim women in hospitals. I can no longer tolerate burning cars in Strasbourg and synagogues in Bondi. I can no longer tolerate catcalls when the Marseillaise is played during games at the Stadium of France. I can no longer tolerate the cries of "death to Jews" in their demonstrations or "death to Christians" written on walls.

I can no longer tolerate concealing the massacres of Christians and Jews in Islamic countries, Copts in the Middle East, of one-and-a-half million Orthodox Armenians in Turkey at the beginning of the last century, as well as a million-and-a-half Christian Sudanese at its end. I can no longer tolerate Muslim ethnic cleansing in Kosovo or Palestine. I can no longer tolerate Islamist totalitarianism.

I can no longer tolerate the relativism and masochism of a West incapable of recalling its own history other than to denounce it. I can no longer tolerate comparing the Crusades to jihad, when the Crusades were nothing but a parenthesis in the history of Christianity while jihad is an integral part of Islam.

I can no longer tolerate the cowardice, weakness and mediocrity of the majority of Western leaders, or the unwillingness of Westerners to affirm their own values and the superiority of liberty and democracy over all other principles and systems. I can no longer tolerate the inability of Europe to recall its Judeo-Christian heritage.

I can no longer tolerate taxes that the European Union transforms into subsidies for the Palestinian Authority or that France transforms into arms for Saddam Hussein. I can no longer tolerate paying the maternity bills for women ready to sacrifice their infants as suicide bombers or for teaching children hatred on the West Bank.

I'm going to pray in the memory of Avraham, pray that his death and those of so many others might finally open the eyes of the cowards in the West who refuse to face the truth. I'm going to pray for Westerners to understand that the war on terrorism is in reality a war against Islamism, and that Islamism is gaining ground among Muslims.

I'm going to pray that moderate Muslims might organize demonstrations against the terrorists just as Corsicans and Basques have demonstrated against their own terrorists. Pray that Islam, which is entering its nuclear era, might become neither conqueror nor warrior, but rather adapt to modernity before it is too late.

How European Dhimmitude Came to Be

The Weekly Standard has a piece this week on Islamic radicals in Europe. It points out that "the jihadists of Europe have drunk deeply from the virulently anti-American left-wing currents of Continental thought and mixed it with the Islamic emotions of 1,400 years of competition with the Christian West" and says it will be "interesting" (a milder word than I would use) "to see whether France's envy of American hegemony trumps its own experience and fear of Muslim holy warriors trying to blow their way into heaven."

As I have pointed out in the past, it is ironic that leftists are marching under the banner of "No Blood for Oil" when it is leftist governments who have decided to roll over and play dhimmi in exchange for petroleum.

ON AUGUST 26, 1995, a militant Islamic group led by a 24-year-old French Muslim named Khaled Kelkal attempted to blow one of France's high-speed trains off its rails. Luckily, the bomb's detonator, which used an ordinary 12-volt battery, failed. Later that fall, other bombs would go off in France: two in double-decked commuter rail cars in Paris, one in a trash can along the very bourgeois Avenue de Friedland, another in a Parisian open-air market, and one more in a provincial Jewish school. In all there were nine attacks in three months, which killed 10 people and wounded 114.

The bombings in 1995 provoked a widespread awareness for the first time in France that the country had a radical-Muslim problem, which was increasingly homegrown and not imported. Kelkal moved to France from Algeria when he was one month old; not known for being religious in his troubled youth, he became an Islamic militant in a French jail, as have hundreds of highly Westernized French Muslims. Many more thoroughly secularized French Muslims, who did not have crime-filled youths, have become Islamic radicals, culturally at war with the society that made them. Zacarias Moussaoui, the "twentieth hijacker" of 9/11, is the most notorious example of an areligious Frenchman who became intoxicated with the holy-war ideology preached in many radical mosques throughout Western Europe.

This phenomenon of highly Westernized Muslims and converted Christians becoming radicalized believers has happened throughout Western Europe. Relatively few Turks have joined radical Islamic organizations allied with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, even though Turkish fundamentalists are numerous and often hardcore. At home and abroad, they are perhaps more numerous and better organized than are fundamentalists of any other nationality. But the Turks who have been arrested for association with al Qaeda usually share one bond: They were either born or raised in Germany and are culturally more German than they are Turkish Muslim. These young men are part of what the Iranian-French scholar Farhad Khosrokhavar has called the néo-umma guerrière--"the new holy-war community of believers" that recognizes neither national nor ethnic identity nor traditional Islamic values. Their Islam is "a new type of Nietzscheanism" where suicide and murder become sacred acts of an elite, self-made race of believers who want to bring on a purifying Apocalypse.

A small cadre of European scholars, mirrored by a small group of European internal-security and intelligence officials, have followed the growth of Islamic radicalism in Europe for nearly 20 years. They know, even if European politicians do not, that Europe's most fearsome Muslim true believers are not products of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation, or the First Gulf War, or the American troop presence in Saudi Arabia after 1990, or the Algerian civil war, or the Bosnian war, or the strife in Chechnya, or the Hindu pillaging of mosques, or the war in Afghanistan, or the second American war against Saddam Hussein, or the globalization of American culture. These events are banners that men who are already converted to jihad wave as they march to give battle. The holy warriors in Europe do not want to see peace in Palestine any more than Hamas's spiritual chief Ahmad Yassin or Osama bin Laden or Iran's clerical guide Ali Khamenei wants to see Israelis and Palestinians solve their problems in two separate, peacefully coexisting states. They do not care about Israeli settlements.

Europe's jihadists are born from their imperfect assimilation into Western European societies, from the particular alienation that young Muslim males experience in Europe's post-Christian, devoutly secular societies. The phenomenon is vastly more common among Arabs than among African or Asian Muslims. The reasons why these young, predominantly Arab males are drawn to the most militant expressions of Islam are complex and always personal. But their journey--which they usually begin as highly Westernized, modern-educated youths of little Islamic faith and end as practitioners of bin Ladenism--is a thoroughly European experience.

The jihadists of Europe have drunk deeply from the virulently anti-American left-wing currents of Continental thought and mixed it with the Islamic emotions of 1,400 years of competition with the Christian West. It's a Molotov cocktail of the third-world socialist Frantz Fanon and the Muslim Brother Sayyid Qutb. Muslims elsewhere have gone through similar conversions--the United States, too, has had its Muslim jihadists and will, no doubt, produce more. And the globalization of this virulent strain of fundamentalist, usually Saudi-financed, Islam is real and probably getting worse. But the modern European experience seems much more likely to produce violent young Muslims than the American. Europe may be competitive with the worst breeding grounds in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

For Americans, after 9/11, this is obviously not just of academic interest. For the future of al Qaeda--if al Qaeda is to have a future where killing Americans en masse remains its transcendent raison d'être--is in Western Europe. September 11 could not have happened without a European base of operations.

Though the State Department wasn't particularly discriminating in issuing visas to Saudis before 9/11, it does a much better job now. The security review of visas granted to Middle Eastern men will only become more stringent with time, doing enormous injustice to the innocent and greatly complicating the operational lives of the guilty. Western European travel documents--which still allow easy access to the United States--are essential for al Qaeda and its allied organizations. But obtaining travel-worthy false European passports for non-state-supported terrorist organizations is becoming harder and harder (this is particularly true since the European Union forced the Belgians to implement better control of their passports, which had been "disappearing" routinely in large numbers). Thus, Islamic holy-warrior terrorist organizations need European Muslims who can lawfully obtain Western European passports.

Al Qaeda knew this a long time ago, which is why the recruitment of Muslims who could travel and operate in the West was a high priority. If al Qaeda or allied holy-warrior organizations cannot operationally enlist and train American Muslims to strike within the United States--and the evidence before and after 9/11 suggests that al Qaeda has done a poor job of finding American Muslims who need to kill non-Muslim Americans to express their love of God--then they must enlist European Muslims or risk compromising the most important element in their recruitment call to holy war. French-born holy warriors could perhaps spiritually survive bombing France, but it's not the same as attacking the United States. America is the cutting edge of Western civilization--not France--and modern Muslim holy warriors want ideally to terrify and humble their enemy's advance guard, not the more lightly armed, less threatening troops behind.

WHICH BRINGS US TO SPAIN. It is possible that if the Spanish were to withdraw from Iraq, they might save themselves from further jihadist attack. It has been a long time since Spain was the preeminent Christian foe of the Muslim world. Unlike France, which is still a cultural force in North Africa (even if, increasingly, it is only a French translation service for American civilization), Spain is irrelevant to the dreams, aspirations, and hatreds of Arabs. France has a Muslim population now deeply and permanently anchored in its national psyche and daily life. Spain does not. And as much as some Muslim denizens of Spain may hate their non-Muslim neighbors, it is a little hard to envision even the most historically sensitive Spanish Muslim holy warrior bombing Madrid repeatedly because of the medieval loss of "Andalusia" to the Catholic princes of Castille and counts of Barcelona. Spain could probably walk away from the United States, pillory America as loudly as possible (anti-Americanism in Spain runs deep and is historically much more heartfelt than in France), emphasize the glories of Muslim Spain and sincerely regret its fall, and not get bombed anymore.

The bombings in Spain could easily produce a Europe-wide temptation to duck: While quietly assisting America in its counterterrorist efforts (the French have been superb allies in this regard since 9/11), they publicly would take as much distance as possible from the United States and ratchet up the "pro-Muslim," "pro-Arab" propaganda. This approach would naturally blend into Western Europe's current official analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation as the crux of all the bad blood between the Muslim world and the West. It could dovetail nicely with the developing Democratic party campaign argument depicting Iraq as a mistake, as a digression from the war on terror that has made counterterrorism more difficult. Muslim holy warriors might still try to bomb American embassies or businesses in Europe, which of course could cause numerous European victims, but that would be better than having European passenger trains blown off their rails or Alpine highway tunnels firebombed.

President Bush has said that we, the West, are all in this together. But this simply isn't true. The néo-umma guerrière doesn't really want to strike Spain, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland, or even France as much as it wants to bomb the United States. It would be a delicious irony if small bands of Muslim holy warriors in the twenty-first century accomplished the opposite of what the Ottomans, the most powerful of Islam's empires, achieved in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The latter helped bring the West together; the former may help tear it apart.

If a Western split doesn't happen, then we will probably have the French to thank. They know that Zacarias Moussaoui was once upon a time a good Frenchman. They know that more Khaled Kelkals are being born in the banlieues. They know that even the most dedicated Muslim holy warriors might sometimes have to settle for attacking the second best. But then again, Paris hated losing on Iraq. Many in the French elite--most prominently, the foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin--want the democratic experiment in Iraq to fail. With the American loss of Spain and the waffling in Poland, the French sense victory in Europe. It will be interesting to see whether France's envy of American hegemony trumps its own experience and fear of Muslim holy warriors trying to blow their way into heaven.

Dhimmitude in New Jersey: Jewish groups lend legitimacy to radical Muslims

Joel Mowbray shows why the standards for moderate Islam have been set too low, at least in New Jersey:

Sometimes, partnering with ostensibly moderate Muslim organizations in holding interfaith events can lead to a lot of trouble and controversy if proper homework isn't done in advance.

Just ask two Jewish groups in New Jersey.

The UJA Federation of Bergen County and North Hudson and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of New Jersey had both signed on to co-sponsor an interfaith brunch scheduled for this Sunday, March 28th, which was organized by the various members of a longstanding interfaith coalition.

When a large number of members of the two Jewish groups complained, the interfaith coalition uninvited the American Muslim Union, which was one of two Muslim co-sponsors and jointly listed along with the Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center as the event's only two hosts.

But appearances can be deceiving.

According to officials at both the mosque and AMU, AMU is very still very much a part of the interfaith brunch. Both organizations, in fact, maintain that their respective levels of participation remain exactly the same as before. And the featured speaker, who was selected by the two groups (and has her own set of problems relating to radicalism), has not changed either.

Given the histories of people involved with AMU and Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center, it's not difficult to see why so many in the local Jewish community were concerned.

Though the American Muslim Union appears moderate in its official literature — saying it is "dedicated to serving the American Muslim community and its unique needs" — the organization has interlocking leadership with a group that has allegedly raised funds for Hamas and hosted as a guest speaker last year an alleged Hamas member.

Four current and former AMU directors and executives have held or currently hold leadership positions with the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC), a mosque located in Paterson, New Jersey. ICPC was founded in 1989 by, among others, Mohamed el-Mezain, who was the Chairman of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLFRD), which the Treasury Department designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in December 2001.

According to a November 2001 FBI report that served as a basis for Treasury's decision to shut down HLFRD, a "reliable" FBI informant "reported that during a speech at the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in November, 1994, Mohammad El-Mezain… admitted that some of the money collected by the ICPC and the HLFRD goes to HAMAS or HAMAS activities in Israel. El-Mezain also defended HAMAS and the activities carried out by HAMAS." Just last February, ICPC hosted a speech by Abdelhaleem Ashqar (http://www.icpc.com/icpcv2/lectures/lectures.icpc?directory=Friday_Lectures), who is identified by several FBI informants cited in the memo as a prominent Hamas member. Ashqar was jailed for two months last fall for his refusal to testify before a federal grand jury probing Hamas.

Although the ties to Hamas are allegations — El-Mezain nor anyone else affiliated with AMU or ICPC has been arrested — AMU has co-sponsored several rallies that any genuinely moderate groups would not associate themselves with. Chief among these rallies is one held in Times Square in April 2002, which called for, among other things, an end to the Israeli "massacres" of Palestinians.

To judge for yourself, look at a flyer promoting the event by clicking here. The headline is "Stop Palestinian Genocide" and features an obviously forged photo of a baby lying in a pool of blood in a hospital bed. There may be many legitimate debates among reasonable, moderate people about Israel's treatment of Palestinians, but there are no widespread "massacres," nor is there any "genocide" of Palestinians. It is wildly false to claim either.

So when UJA issued a four-paragraph statement, which was read to this columnist over the phone by a UJA official, announcing that AMU was no longer a co-sponsor of the interfaith brunch, many members were relieved and considered the matter closed.

What Bergen County's interfaith coalition did, according to UJA's statement, was that it "determined that in the spirit of brotherhood, the faith communities rather than any organization will be the official sponsors of the Brunch." In other words, since AMU couldn't be called a co-sponsor, nobody else could either.

To put it another way: Nothing's changed, other than the elimination of the label "co-sponsor."

Although a UJA official angrily denied that AMU had ever been involved with the interfaith brunch — this person declared that an invitation listing AMU was a "mistake" — officials from both AMU and Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center maintain that neither group's role in the event has changed.

On the dais, in fact, will be the chairman of AMU's Bergen County chapter, Waheed Khalid, who was the co-founder of Dar-ul-Islah and was, until recently, its president. A UJA official brusquely dismissed this as inconsequential, but it appears that Khalid will be the only Muslim on the dais and will be the one introducing the featured speaker, Dr. Ingrid Mattson, the vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Several people at the mosque labeled Khalid — it seems correctly — as the event's emcee.

UJA's four-paragraph statement noted that it "will not participate in any organization whose members advocate… anti-Semitism in any form" or express a "reluctance to condemn terrorism without qualification," yet Khalid himself has defended Hamas and has called a miniseries based on the virulently anti-Semitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" both "interesting" and "news."

When asked by the Bergen County Record in May 1998 about Hamas' terrorist attacks, Khalid responded, "They are trying to get the occupiers out of their home."

And in November 2002, Khalid made a startling comment to the New Jersey Jewish Standard about Egyptian television's 40-part miniseries based on the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a book first published by Russia in 1897 that purports to show a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. Apparently without a hint of irony, Khalid told the paper, "I think it is news and it is quite interesting to know what it says."

Several officials at UJA acknowledge that they know about Khalid's comments. Yet he remains the sole Muslim on the dais, making him the de facto representative of the Muslim community at the event.

But even if neither AMU nor Dar-ul-Islah were participants in the interfaith brunch, the event would still be problematic because of the featured speaker, who was selected by the two Muslim groups.

Though Dr. Ingrid Mattson appears moderate, she is insidious precisely because she maintains that façade while steadfastly refusing to criticize radical Islamists, claiming that there is no such thing as Wahhabism and that the term "Islamic terrorism" should not be used in the media. Most shocking of all, though, is how little concern she expressed about suicide bombings in an essay she wrote shortly after 9/11.

At a CNN-sponsored "town hall" forum in October 2001, Mattson — with a straight face — claimed that the radical, Saudi-sponsored form of Islam known as Wahhabism was akin to the Protestant movement in Christianity. Wahhabism "really was analogous to the European protestant reformation," she explained.

This wasn't an isolated use of the analogy. At a November 2003 roundtable sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies Conference, Mattson said the Wahhabist movement in Islam is "a very old struggle …between the more theologically austere Muslims who like Protestant Christianity believe that there should be no saints there should be no intervention between you and G-d."

Mattson takes a similar "see no evil" approach to the idea of Islamic terrorism. Mattson was one of several Muslim "scholars" quoted in a Washington Times article shortly after 9/11 who claimed that the media should not use the term "Islamic terrorism." Mattson took this stance despite the fact, as the Times paraphrased her, that "Islamic terrorists themselves use this term."

The reason Mattson is able to pass herself off as a moderate is probably because she clears the low bar set for most Muslims: the ability to explicitly condemn suicide bombings. But she hasn't done so for very long. In a remarkably revealing essay Mattson penned for Beliefnet.com in October 2001, she wrote that, until then, Palestinian suicide bombings "simply did not cross my mind as a priority among the many issues I felt needed to be addressed." She stated it as matter-of-factly and inconsequentially as someone who apologizes for forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning because it "simply did not cross my mind as a priority."

There seems little doubt that Mattson's statements would violate UJA's own standard of refusing to participate in an event with someone who expresses a "reluctance to condemn terrorism without qualification." But still she remains the featured speaker of this weekend's interfaith brunch.

It's true that no one connected with either the American Muslim Union or the Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center has been arrested, let alone convicted. And in America, everyone is — and should be — free to hold any belief, no matter how repugnant.

But have we set the standard for "moderate" Islam so low that organizations like AMU and Dar-ul-Islah can gain much-needed legitimacy by hosting interfaith events endorsed by Jewish groups? Because whenever AMU or Dar-ul-Islah is attacked in the future for espousing unseemly propaganda — and given their histories, it will happen — they can point to events like this Sunday's interfaith brunch and say, "If Jewish groups are able to accept us, why can't you?"

It's understandable that the two Jewish groups in Bergen County don't want to disrupt an interfaith coalition that's been around since the 1980's, but shouldn't they be more concerned about the cover they're providing to groups that clearly don't deserve it?

Dhimmitude in Britain: Muslims angry at plan to bring back historic statue of wild pig

A headless statue of a pig has become the focal point of an attempt to Islamize a park in Derby. From IndustryWatch, with thanks to LGF:

FOR more than 100 years it stood proudly as the centrepiece of England's oldest public park before being decapitated during a Second World War air raid.

Now a row has broken out after plans to replace Derby's historic Florentine Boar statue were abandoned for fear of offending Muslims, whose religion considers pigs to be 'unclean'.

A replica of the statue, a crouching wild boar, was intended as the jewel in the crown of a Pounds 5 million National Lottery- funded restoration of the city's Arboretum Park.

But councillors have called for the proposal to be scrapped amid sinister warnings that the statue would be vandalised or stolen.

The Florentine Boar statue stood from 1840 until 1942 when it was beheaded by a German bomb. But it was last week branded 'offensive' during a meeting of Derby Council's minority ethnic communities advisory committee.

Councillor Suman Gupta, a Labour representative for Derby's Derwent ward, told the meeting: 'If the statue is put back in the Arboretum, I have been told it will not be there the next day, or at least it won't be in the same condition.

'We should not have the boar because it is offensive to some of the groups in the area.' The park is in an area known for its large Pakistani community.

Shokat Lal, a community leader, said at the meeting: 'In Normanton the majority of residents are Pakistani Muslims.

'I'm not saying we have to lose the boar, but we could put the boar in the city centre so it does not cause offence to people.' Local historian Christopher Harris told The Mail on Sunday: 'We are living in a multicultural society and I hope that would include English culture.

'If the boar had never been destroyed in 1941, these people would have grown up with it and would not have noticed it.

'Activists have jumped on the chance to make a statement. It is one that damns English culture-But the wild boar is part of Derby's culture.' He said a small minority of Muslims with extreme political views had issued veiled threats to the council over the statue.

The land for the park was donated to the council in September 1840 by Joseph Strutt, the first mayor of the Borough of Derby, a wealthy cotton mill owner who wanted to give the public a place to exercise.

He commissioned architect J.C. Loudon to landscape the area. The hollow ceramic boar was donated by Mr Strutt.

Sculpted on commission by W. J. Coffee - and based on drawings of a similar statue in the Market Nuovo in Florence - it was intended as a gift to the working classes of Derby.

Last week's committee meeting proposed that a statue of Mr Loudon should be erected at the Arboretum with a new site for the boar in the city centre.

Last night, Councillor Gupta told The Mail on Sunday: ' Communities change.'

Tory leader Philip Hickson said: 'The community is strong enough to stand a statue of a boar in a park. But we live in an age where sometimes things are a little more politically correct than they ought to be.'

More on the Muslim response to Carey

Carey: Bad, bad dhimmi!

The outcry against George Carey is growing. From The Telegraph:

British Muslims reacted with anger yesterday at an attack on Islamic culture delivered by Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.

Muslim leaders said his claim that moderates had failed to condemn suicide bombers was totally unjustified, and rejected his assertion that Islam, over the past 500 years, had displayed a "strong resistance to modernity".

In a public lecture in Rome on Thursday evening, Dr Carey had also criticised the "glaring absence" of democracy in Muslim countries and said Islamic culture had contributed "no great invention... for many hundred years".

Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Federation of Muslim Organisations in Leicester, said Dr Carey's statement was "disastrous" for relations between Christians and Muslims.

"He has fallen prey to the campaign tactics of racists in this country," he said.

As to the suggestion that Muslim leaders were not doing enough to criticise terrorists, Mr Moghal said it was "nonsense".

"We condemn suicide bombers, we go on radio, on television, we have made statements. What more can we do?

"We cannot be responsible for the criminal actions of others - they are not under our control. The former archbishop has got it wrong."

Dr Zaki Badawi, regarded as a moderate voice in Muslim circles who has been consulted by Tony Blair on a number of issues, said he was "quite upset" by the comments.

"I think Dr Carey made a rather unfortunate statement at a time when there is about to be dialogue between Muslims and Christians in America," said Dr Badawi, principal of the Muslim College in Ealing, west London.

He said that Dr Carey's view of Islam was historically inaccurate and failed to recognise that the West had undermined democratic revolutions in Iran and Egypt in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The speech also omitted any mention of the British Empire, which colonised Muslim countries, said Dr Badawi.

He added that the West's recent dominance of technology was more to do with geography and development than religion.

"I have great affection for Dr Carey but it is unfortunate he delivered this lecture," he said.

Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, was swift to dismiss the former archbishop's words, denouncing them as "myopic". He said: "Frankly, one is dismayed by Lord Carey's comments.

"One is surprised to find Lord Carey recycling the same old religious prejudice in the 21st century."

Ahmed Versi, editor of Muslim News, said: "We hope that the current Archbishop Rowan Williams - who is very different - will condemn these views."

But Lord Carey defended his speech yesterday on BBC Radio 4's The World At One programme.

"It is meant to provoke a reaction. In the same way I look at the West and Christianity and am equally critical," he said.

"I'm looking at the way we build stereotypes of each other and the way we must transcend this and I think that a person looking objectively at the entire speech - five and a half thousand words - will see there's a balance there...

"So to twist it as an attack on the Islamic world would be far too simplistic and sadly it does suggest how polarised the world is at the present moment.

"The positive is that I believe we can do more together. Two great faiths, Christianity and Islam, working together against extremists on both sides. That, in fact, was the thrust of my message."

Dr Carey's remarks came just before his successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, leads talks between Christian and Muslim scholars in New York, which start on Monday.

Although Lambeth Palace would not be drawn into a reaction, the Bishop of Southwark, the Right Rev Tom Butler, attempted to calm emotions.

He said: "Sometimes opinions will be expressed robustly in either direction; if this can be handled with maturity and mutual respect, understanding can be deepened and our dialogue can emerge strengthened."

Dr Carey received encouragement from the leader of an organisation which supports Christian missionaries working in Islamic countries.

Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Barnabas Fund, said that Dr Carey's lecture had taken "great courage".

"He has spent years establishing dialogue with Islam. Now he recognises that the core of Islam must be radically changed if there is going to be any change in their attitude towards suicide bombing and so on. This is a departure for the Church," he said.

"He is going to get a lot of flak from the Muslim community, who will feel that he has betrayed them, and from the liberal wing of the Church of England who will feel that he has stepped out of line."

A great blow against dhimmi intimidation

In Australia, as you may know, the Islamic Council of Victoria has brought suit against two Christian preachers — simply for teaching the facts about Islam. So far this seens to have backfired on the Muslim group in a big way, as now Islamic witnesses have been compelled to read passages from Qur'an and Hadith and acknowledge that, well, yes, that is Islamic teaching.

In this pdf is the witness statement of Mark Durie, an Anglican priest and professor of linguistics. Durie has provided an outstanding summation of the Islamic sources of jihad ideology, dhimmitude, and related topics. If you are looking for a concise guide to these matters, here it is.

Mark Durie Witness statement

Egypt: Coptic Pope condemns forced conversions of Christians to Islam

Pope Shenouda III

A press release from the Jubilee Campaign, with thanks to FreedomNowNews:

For immediate release

March 25th 2004

EGYPTIAN CHURCH LEADER CONDEMNS FORCED CONVERSIONS OF CHRISTIANS TO ISLAM

Pope Shenouda the Third, Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, has publicly condemned the kidnapping and forced conversions of Christian women to Islam. In a speech on March 16 he said, "I have received so many letters about what's happening to the Christian girls who go to supermarket stores to shop. At the store they tell them that they have won and have to go upstairs to receive their award or prize. After that we don't know what's happening to these girls upstairs.

There is a lot of talking going on about this matter, and I see that what's happening will create a religious clash in the country. I'm urging the police to take a serious action against what's happening, because I have a numerous number of letters regarding this matter. We don't know where they took the girls. They could be anywhere.

This matter shouldn't be taken in a careless way as if nothing happened. I'm saying this and I know how dangerous the situation is. We don't want more disasters to happen to us. We've had enough."

Sine 1993, the Christian human rights organisation, the Jubilee Campaign, has been campaigning against the forced conversions of Egyptian Christians, especially women, to Islam, and has had numerous cases of such incidents brought to its attention.

In 1998, the late Bishop Athanasius of Beni Souif, gave a public talk in which he described an incident which took place some years beforehand, when a young Christian woman came to him for help after she managed to escape from Muslims who had held her captive with the intention of forcing her to convert to Islam.

She had fled from a house where different teams of Muslims were working to
pressure or force Christians to convert to Islam. She had been tricked by two Muslim friends into accompanying them to that house, where she was held captive. Her description of what happened there indicated that there was a very organised and systematic approach by these Muslims to waylaying and forcing Egyptian Christians to convert to Islam.

Jubilee's Researcher and Parliamentary Officer, Wilfred Wong, says, "The attempts to force Christians to convert to Islam in Egypt are on the increase and the methods are getting increasingly varied and well organised.

Some of these forced conversions are carried out by Muslim individuals, with the help of their friends, while others are being conducted by well funded groups. Christians of all denominations are seen as "fair game" for forced conversions, whether they be Protestants, Coptic Orthodox or Catholic. It is common for money to be offered to Christians to convert to Islam - no small matter in a country where poverty is very widespread - but it also common for intimidation and force, including kidnapping and the threat or use of rape to be adopted as a method of making Christians convert to Islam. Christian women and girls are especially vulnerable to these attacks and the Egyptian authorities do nothing to protect the Christians. The Egyptian police even order the families of kidnapped Christian women to forget about their daughters and not to try to get them back.

Pope Shenouda rarely ever makes public pronouncements regarding the persecution of Christians but for him to have recently publicly mentioned these kidnappings of Egyptian Christian women is one disturbing indication that the problem is escalating sharply. Since the Egyptian authorities do nothing to help, the Muslims involved in these forced conversions are emboldened to increase the scale of their operations. Much prayer is needed against this evil phenomenon."

In his speech, Pope Shenouda also referred to an incident where some young Christian men were travelling and carrying some Bibles. They were arrested and interrogated by the authorities simply because they were in possession of a few Bibles.

There are about ten million or more Christians in Egypt, making them by far the largest Christian community in the predominantly Islamic Arab world. For many years Jubilee Campaign has been warning the international community that this also makes Egyptian Christians a prime target for Muslim fundamentalists, who want to rid the Arab world of such a large Christian presence by either converting them to Islam, driving them out of the country or killing them.

**************

For further information you can contact Wilfred Wong on +44 (0)20 7219
5129.

Jubilee Campaign is an interdenominational Christian human rights organisation which has worked with over 150 British Parliamentarians on human rights issues all over the world.

South Florida Anti-Hate Group to Protest CAIR and Hamas

A press release from Americans Against Hate:

For Immediate Release Contact: Joe Kaufman

March 26, 2004
joe@joe4rep.com

SOUTH FLORIDA ANTI-HATE GROUP TO PROTEST CAIR AND HAMAS

(Coral Springs, FL) On Saturday, April 3rd, at 6:00 pm, Americans Against Hate (AAH) will be conducting a protest against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Palestinian terror group HAMAS. The event will take place outside the Wyndham Ft. Lauderdale Airport hotel, where CAIR's national Executive Director, Nihad Awad, is coming to speak.

At the rally, AAH will be highlighting:

* Nihad Awad's personal connection to a group that was founded by a HAMAS leader who was later deported by the U.S. government.
* Awad's statement in support of HAMAS, made at a Florida university symposium.
* Awad's position as an editor for a publication that celebrated terrorist attacks made by HAMAS.
* Awad's defense of HAMAS on a popular CBS television news show.

In addition, at the event, AAH will prove that CAIR, just after the 9/11 attacks, appeared to provide material support for terrorist organizations, and that this support resulted in the deaths of innocent people, including Americans.

Joe Kaufman, the Chairman of AAH, stated, "While the media has made the public aware of the fact that America has been threatened with attack by HAMAS, much of the public does not know that there is a HAMAS front existing and thriving right inside America. On Saturday, April 3rd, WE WILL EXPOSE THIS FRONT and hope that the media does not ignore it."

Where: Outside Wyndham Ft. Lauderdale Airport hotel
When: Saturday, April 3, 6:00 pm
Directions: From I-95, take Griffin Rd. exit (Exit 23), and head East
0.3 miles. Hotel is on the North side of the road (1870 Griffin Rd.)

There will be important speakers, and refreshments will be served.

Joe Kaufman is available for interview at: joe@joe4rep.com.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS, READ JOE KAUFMAN'S LATEST FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE ARTICLE, A NIGHT OF HAMAS "HEROES."

Dhimmitude and Ralph Nader

Dhimmi Ralph

From Paul Sperry in FrontPage magazine, the sad story about how Ralph Nader is cozying up to the same elements who oppressed his dhimmi Maronite Christian forbears in Lebanon:

A hush fell over the packed ballroom of the Marriott Hotel in Arlington, Va., as the emcee asked Arab guests to join him in a moment of silence "in honor of all the heroes and martyrs" of the 2000 intifada. Ralph Nader, the event's keynote speaker, was among the participants.

The silence was soon replaced by thunderous chants of "Run, Ralph, run!" as presidential spoiler Nader took the stage to demand a "viable state" for Palestinians. He also slammed Washington for using secret terror evidence against illegal Arab immigrants, and called economic sanctions against Iraq one of the "great crimes of the U.S," according to an American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee newsletter account of its June 2001 convention.

That was three months before the 9-11 terrorist attacks, which were carried out by 19 Arab immigrants who got substantial assistance from the Muslim community while they prepared for the attacks. Did that terrible day change Nader's views? Not one bit.

In July 2002, at another Washington-area Islamic convention, he accused the FBI of using McCarthyite tactics to question Arab immigrants -- the new American bogeymen, according to Nader. "They used to be called communists," he said. "Now they are called terrorists."

As a keynote speaker there at the Islamic Circle of North America's confab in Baltimore, he shared the stage with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Anwar Aulaqi, the Wahhabi imam who ministered to two of the 9-11 hijackers in closed-door sessions.

Nader must have made quite an impression, because the next year, ICNA's former president invited him to headline an Islamic conference in Florida with none other than Shaikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais, a top Saudi cleric who has called on Allah to "terminate" Jews -- "the scum of humanity" and "grandsons of monkeys and pigs" -- while urging Muslims to shun peace with Israel.

While no anti-Semite, Nader has publicly deplored Israeli retaliation for Palestinian suicide attacks and recommended suspending U.S. aid to Israel.

The promotional flier bills him and Al-Sudais, senior imam at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, as "specially invited guests" at the December 2003 event near Orlando, which featured co-conspirator Wahhaj again, along with the imam of dirty-bomb suspect Jose Padilla and an official of an Islamic
charity raided by federal agents for suspected terror financing. Nader declined the invitation only after the press got a hold of it.

This is the side of Nader, an Arab-American, most Americans don't know, including the Birkinstock-wearing, tree-hugging trust funders who actually vote for him. And it's why Nader will likely draw even more votes this election from the energized Muslim community, which feels betrayed by the Bush administration for the Patriot Act and the Iraq war, both of which Nader opposed.

He garnered nearly one-fifth of the Muslim vote in 2000, according to exit polls by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. That's more than double the share for Al Gore, who miffed Muslim leaders for failing to address their concerns about secret evidence in deportation hearings. Bush met with Muslim leaders during the last campaign to at least pay lip service to their concerns, and walked away with 72 percent of the Muslim vote.

But in the wake of 9-11, Nader remains the only real champion of their causes. Democratic hopeful John Kerry voted for both the Patriot Act and Iraq war resolution.

"I am aware of all the Patriot Act arrests without charges, stereotyping, harassing and dragnetting of Arab-American immigrants," Nader told the Village Voice upon announcing his 2004 bid for the White House this month. "There is a civil liberties crisis in those communities."

"Ralph Nader was the unchallenged hero of Muslims" in the last election, said friend Paul Findley, a leading Islam apologist who authored "Silent No More: Confronting America's False Images of Islam," which is on Saudi-backed CAIR's recommended reading list. And he'll be that and more to them this time around.

The affinity is more than just political, says the former U.S. congressman, who earned a reputation as "Arafat's best friend in Congress." He notes that Nader shares a cultural bond with the community as the son of Lebanese immigrants. His late father, Nadra, and mother hail from Zahlah, Lebanon. Ralph is the youngest of four, including two sisters and a late brother,
Shafeek.

"Muslims of Arab ancestry felt a close kinship with Nader, the first candidate of that heritage to run for the nation's highest office," said Findley, who's been on Saudi's payroll since leaving Congress.

How touching ... and scary.

Of course, Nader has little chance of winning the White House and officially appeasing the Wahhabi lobby with whom he appears to be so cozy. The Muslim voting bloc, at just a few million, is relatively small. If the presidential election were held today, Nader would draw just 7 percent of the overall vote, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, though that's more
than twice as much as he got in 2000.

In fact, Nader could end up hurting his community more than helping it. If Muslims shift much of the overwhelming support they gave Bush in the last election to Nader, rather than Kerry, they may help reelect Bush, their new sworn foe. Bush and Kerry are in a statistical dead heat, and Kerry can't afford to lose any votes to Nader.

Ironically, the White House may be joining Arabs and Muslims in their "Run, Ralph, run!" chorus.

Islam & Multi-culturalism

A speech by Azam Kamguian on the Sharia courts in Canada. From the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society:

In my speech, I will argue against the Islamic tribunals and will discuss how the Islamic Sharia law brutally violates human and women’s rights. I will try to demonstrate how Islamism and multi - culturalism are a united camp against universal human rights in Canada. At the end, I will emphasise the urgency of stopping the Islamic tribunals in Canada.

As we all know, Islamists in Canada have recently set up an Islamic Institute of Civil Justice to oversee tribunals that would arbitrate family disputes and other civil matters between people from Muslim origin on the basis of the Islamic Sharia law. This is the first time in any western country that the medieval precepts of the Sharia have been given any validity. One can imagine that the Islamists will use this as a lever to work for similar recognition in many other western countries. After all, if Canada is prepared to recognise Sharia law in this way why not every other country in the west.

This move is yet another effort by Islamists to impose the barbaric Sharia law, but this time on the people in the west. This move belongs to political Islam, a major force that has brutally suppressed people’s rights and freedom in general and women’s rights in particular in the Middle East. It is a political movement that came to the fore against the secular and progressive movements for liberation and egalitarianism in the Middle East. In Iran, the Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Islamic regimes proceeded to transform women's homes into prison houses, where confinement of women, their exclusion from many fields of work and education, and their brutal treatment became the law of the land.

Sadly and unfortunately, the setting up of the Sharia tribunals in Canada will be given validity, due to the reactionary politics of multi-culturalism. This is yet another fruit of a policy that causes fragmentation; apartheid based legal system and racism. Of course, this politics of fragmentation and apartheid suits the purpose of Islamists best. Mr. Mohamed El Masry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, has argued that Canada needs "a multiplicity of laws" to accommodate different groups when their moral standards clash. Mr. El Masry says the tribunals, which would include imams, elders and lawyers, will provide Muslims with the means to settle civil disputes out of court according to their beliefs.

Advocates for the Islamic tribunals have argued that one of the beauties of free and open societies in the west is their flexibility. But the very same ‘flexibility” provides the Islamists with the opportunity to impose their own rigid and oppressive rules on a specific community in the society. Mr. Momtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, and a leading proponent of the Islamic tribunals has said: "It - the Islamic tribunal - offers not only a variety of choices, but shows the real spirit of our multicultural society," The very same Mr. Ali also says: “…On religious grounds, a Muslim who would choose to opt out … would be guilty of a far greater crime than a mere breach of contract – and this would be tantamount to blasphemy or apostasy”. You are aware that blasphemy and apostasy are among the worst crimes in Islam, in many countries punishable by death.

This project is against the equality of all citizens before the law, regardless of race, religion or gender. Such equality does not exist under the Islamic Sharia law. Sharia tribunals effectively establish a parallel legal system based on religion, which I believe will lead to an apartheid-based legal system. The principles of individual freedom and equality before the law should take precedence over any collective goals that members of a particular group might claim for themselves.

Many people from Muslim origin will be pressured into accepting arbitration by the Islamic Institute on matters of civil and family law. This presents a serious problem for the rights of particularly women living in Canada. The decisions of the tribunal will be final and binding and will be upheld by the Canadian courts. The Institute will be applying Islamic Sharia law which is totally against impartiality of the legal systems. For example, a woman's testimony under the Sharia counts only as half that of a man. So in straight disagreements between husband and wife, the husband's testimony will normally prevail. In questions of inheritance, whilst under Canadian law sons and daughters would be treated equally, under the Sharia daughters receive only half the portion of sons. If the Institute were to have jurisdiction in custody cases, the man will automatically be awarded custody once the children have reached an age of between seven and nine years. Given this inequality it is particularly worrying that there will be no right of appeal to the Canadian courts. The principle being that if both parties in a dispute willingly submit to Islamic arbitration, they can't complain when they lose.

The problem here is the word "willing". Too many women from Muslin origin living in the west still live in Islamic and patriarchal environments where the man's word and pressure from the community is law. It will take a brave woman to defy her husband, and to refuse to have her dispute settled under Islamic law when her refusal could be equated with hostility to the religion and apostasy. To this is added the problem that going to a Canadian court will take longer and cost more. There is no reason however why arbitration service under Canadian law could not be used instead. The danger is that once these tribunals are set up people from Muslim origin will be pressured to use them, thereby being deprived of many of the rights that people in the west have fought for centuries.

In virtually every western country with a sizeable Muslim minority there is pressure from Islamists for a separate civil and criminal law. They seek to establish their own state to oppress people, legally and officially. There must be no state within a state. Yet this is precisely the objective that the Islamic advocates are pursuing. They argue that it is their duty as good Muslims to work for precisely this end. And this end precisely leads to more forced marriages, more honour killings, more Islamic schools, more FGM-s done secretly, and more harassment and intimidation towards women and girls in ghettos.

In Islam, as Mr. Momtaz Ali has said, there is no separation between religion and the law. But in the contemporary civilisation, laws are seen as the work of man and as such can be changed in the light of changing circumstances. In Islam, the law is against universal women and human rights, but is God’s law, and change is impossible.

Islamic Sharia law should be opposed by everyone who believes in universal human rights, women's civil rights and individual freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and belief and freedom from religion. Islamic law developed in the first few centuries of Islam and incorporated Middle Eastern pre - Islamic misogynist and tribal customs and traditions. We may ask how a law whose elements were first laid down over 1000 years ago can be relevant in the 21st century. The Sharia only reflects the social and economic conditions of the time of Abbasid and has grown out of touch with all the human's social, economic, cultural and moral developments. The principles of the Sharia are inimical to human's moral progress and civilised values.

Islamic law forcefully opposes free thought, freedom of expression and freedom of action. Accusations of impurity, of apostasy are waiting to silence any voice of dissent. Suppression and injustice shapes the lives of all free minded people. One is borne and labelled Muslim, and one is forced to stay Muslim to the end of their life. Islamic law denies the rights of women and non- - Muslim religious minorities. Non -believers are shown no tolerance: death or conversion. Jews and Christians are treated as second - class citizens.

Under the Sharia, for over two decades, millions around the world have fallen victim: countless people have been executed, beheaded, stoned to death, had their limbs cut off, flogged and maimed, bombed to pieces and routed. In countries which have proclaimed an Islamic state, such as Iran, the Sudan, Pakistan, some states in Northern Nigeria, and Afghanistan, we have already seen the pernicious effects of the Sharia.

Human rights and the Sharia are definitely and irremediably irreconcilable and antagonistic. Universal human rights are essential to ensure a certain standard of living for people across the globe. It is not acceptable to let governments and authorities away with many of the abuses by using multi - culturalism as an excuse. We cannot let multi-culturalism becomes the last refuge of repression. To accept religion as a justification for human rights abuses is to discriminate against the abused and to send the message that they are un-deserving of human rights protection.

Multi-culturalism is a cover to create a comprehensive social, legal, intellectual, emotional, and civil apartheid based on distinctions of race, ethnicity, religion and gender. This complete system of apartheid attacks women’s basic rights and freedom and justifies misogynist rule inflicted on women by Islamists. Any attempt to restrict human and women rights in the name of religion and culture, or defining freedom and equality according to different cultures and religions is racist.

Our contemporary society is far larger, diverse and complex than the small primitive tribal society in Arabia, 1400 years ago, from which Islam emerged. It is time to abandon the idea that anyone should live under the Sharia. More than ever before, people need a secular state as well as a secular society that respects freedom from and of religion, and human rights founded on the principle that power belongs to the people and not to God. It is crucial to oppose the Islamic Sharia law and to subordinate Islam to secularism and secular states.

I call upon all secularist forces and freedom-lovers to stand up and protest against the setting up of Islamic tribunals in Canada. All progressive people should make a joint effort to stop Islamism and multi – cultural politics of the Canadian authorities from violating the universal human rights and our civilised values.

Dhimmitude and George Carey

Carey: Bad dhimmi!

Former Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey is under fire from Muslim groups for remarks he made during a lecture in Rome. From the Telegraph via Smh.com.au, with thanks to Susan and Fanabba:

The former archbishop of Canterbury George Carey has made a trenchant attack on Islamic culture, saying it is authoritarian, inflexible and under-achieving.

In a speech that will upset sensitive relations between the faiths, he denounced moderate Muslims for failing unequivocally to condemn the "evil" of suicide bombers.

Why will this upset "sensitive relations between the faiths"? Carey isn't covering up unequivocal condemnations of suicide bombing by moderate Muslims. In Onward Muslim Soldiers I point out that moderates have repeatedly insisted that Islam forbids suicide, which is beside the point: radical justifications for suicide bombing don't consider that it comes under the heading of suicide at all. Rather, it is covered by verses of the Qur'an such as this one: "When ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks. . . . But those who are slain in the Way of Allah, He will never let their deeds be lost. Soon will He guide them and improve their condition, and admit them to the Garden which He has announced for them" (Sura 47:4-6). The moderate response to this idea has been wholly inadequate.

He attacked the "glaring absence" of democracy in Muslim countries, suggested they had contributed little of major significance to world culture for centuries and criticised the Islamic faith.

Well, these are harsh things to say, but where exactly are they inaccurate? I discuss the decline of Islamic culture and the difficulty democracy has had in the Islamic world in Islam Unveiled, and show how these tendencies are encouraged by a particular approach to the Qur'an. These may not be pleasant topics, but Carey certainly isn't making these things up.

Dr Carey's criticism, during a lecture in Rome, is the most forthright by a senior church leader in recent times.

He acknowledged that most Muslims were peaceful people who should not be demonised. But he said outrages such as the September 11 attacks and the Madrid bombings raised difficult questions.

What's unreasonable about that?

Contrasting Western democracy with Islamic societies, he said: "Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes with deeply entrenched leadership, some of which rose to power at the point of a gun and are retained in power by massive investment in security forces."

"Whether they are military dictatorships or traditional sovereignties, each ruler seems committed to retaining power and privilege."

Dr Carey said he was not convinced by arguments that Islam and democracy were incompatible, citing the example of Turkey. He urged Europeans and Americans to resist claims that Islamic states were morally, spiritually and culturally superior.

Carey has thus issued a challenge to the culture of dhimmitude that is fast spreading across Europe and is already being seen in America. Cultural myths, such as that Muslim Andalucia was a beacon of tolerance (which I explode in Onward Muslim Soldiers) are taken for granted everywhere, and are being used as political tools. Carey is unusually perceptive to take note of this.

"Although we owe much to Islam handing on to the West many of the treasures of Greek thought, the beginnings of calculus, Aristotelian thought during the period known in the West as the Dark Ages, it is sad to relate that no great invention has come for many hundred years from Muslim countries," he said.

"This is a puzzle, because Muslim peoples are not bereft of brilliant minds. They have much to contribute to the human family, and we look forward to the close co-operation that might make this possible.

"Yes, the West has still much to be proud of, and we should say so strongly. We should also encourage Muslims living in the West to be proud of it and say so to their brothers and sisters living elsewhere."

Dr Carey said moderate Muslims must "resist strongly" the taking over of Islam by radical activist elements, and "express strongly . . . their abhorrence of violence done in the name of Allah".

I don't see how any reasonable person could take issue with that last paragraph.

Christians, who shared many admirable moral values with Muslims, such as respect for the family, must speak out against the persecution they often encountered in Muslim countries.

"During my time as archbishop, this was my constant refrain - that the welcome we have given to Muslims in the West, with the accompanying freedom to worship freely and build their mosques, should be reciprocated in Muslim lands," he said.

A perfectly reasonable thing to call for.

But here is the predictable response. From icWales: Ex-Archbishop accused of prejudice.

Muslims in Britain have attacked a former Archbishop of Canterbury, accusing him of "recycling" religious prejudice after he criticised Islamic culture.

Lord Carey accused Islamic societies of being authoritarian and committed to power and privilege - often led by people who rose to power "at the point of a gun".

He also criticised the Islamic faith, saying Muslim theological scholarship had declined over the last 500 years, "leading to strong resistance to modernity".

Lord Carey made his comments during a lecture in Rome, on the eve of a seminar between Christians and Muslims in New York.

"Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes with deeply entrenched leadership, some of which rose to power at the point of a gun and are retained in power by massive investment in security forces," it was reported by the Daily Telegraph.

"Whether they are military dictatorships or traditional sovereignties, each ruler seems committed to retaining power and privilege."

Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, was swift to dismiss the former archbishop's words.

He said: "Frankly, one is dismayed by Lord Carey's comments.

"One is surprised to find Lord Carey recycling the same old religious prejudice in the 21st Century."

Once again: what did Carey say that was untrue? I haven't seen all of his remarks, but I can document everything in this report. Why is any negative observation about the Islamic world immediately classified as prejudice? Iqbal Sacranie would do his community a far greater service by showing a willingness to engage in self-criticism and dialogue with outsiders. That is, after all, what he and his colleagues repeatedly demand from the West.

Peace, love, and understanding — just no Star of David

No Stars of David allowed in an art exhibit promoting peace and love at the Egyptian Cultural and Educational Bureau in Washington, DC. From the Washington City Paper, with thanks to Seafarious. (This is "Star Search," the second item on the page.)

It was just supposed to be about peace, love, and understanding, say the artist and the curator. But that was before somebody spotted the Star of David.

Three stars, actually, painted into three works by painter Jorge Perez-Rubio that were part of his recent “People and Places of Egypt” exhibition at the Egyptian Cultural and Educational Bureau on New Hampshire Avenue NW. Both Perez-Rubio and the show’s curator, Aaron Pomerantz, say that Ala El Din Sarhan, a cultural attaché with the bureau, asked them repeatedly to take down the three paintings as the show was installed on Feb. 23.

“And as the show was being hung, [Sarhan] looked at [all the other paintings] very thoroughly,” says Pomerantz, a Chevy Chase consultant who says he’d showed Sarhan the exhibition catalog months before. “He was being proactive in discovering any Stars of David.”

The Miami-based Perez-Rubio, who lived in Cairo for two years, has painted more than 20 works in what he calls his “New Jerusalem” series—a kind of Where’s Waldo? of monotheism in which a cross, a crescent, and a Star of David are tucked into topsy-turvy, four-horizoned cityscapes. “In every great city—Cairo, New York, Miami—you make room for everybody,” he says. “[The concept] makes some people uncomfortable, and that’s what I felt that evening.”

Sarhan denies asking for the paintings to come down. And he now says that he’s even come to appreciate Perez-Rubio’s project. “The way he explained [the works],” says Sarhan, “he’s able to portray himself better than the curator. I liked the idea very much. Tolerance. If you rotate it 180 degrees, you can still get the same idea: We’re all living under the same sun.”

But the day before the show closed on March 9, the exhibition languished unmarked, unlit, and unguarded. A long table and a podium obscured access to a whole wall of works.

“Dr. Sarhan didn’t honor the art,” says Pomerantz, who adds that the attaché pestered him to remove the works as quickly as possible after the opening. “I would love to do another show at the Egyptian Embassy,” he adds. “Just not with Dr. Sarhan.”

Dhimmitude and Nelson Mandela

Al-Bawaba reports (with thanks to "Allah") that Nelson Mandela has just wrapped up a state visit to the Wahhabi kingdom:

Former South African President Nelson Mandela left the Saudi capital of Riyadh Wednesday, according to SPA news agency.

At the King Khaled International Airport, he was seen off by the kingdom's Minister of Health Dr. Hamad bin Abdullah Al-Manei and South Africa's ambassador to the Kingdom Abdul-Hameed Khabir, the agency added.

I trust that while he was there he rocked the House of Saud with his trademark eloquent, ringing denunciations of injustice and inequality of rights among peoples. He probably took them apart for their religious discrimination (chiefly against Jews and Christians), slavery, and much more.

What's that? He didn't say a word about any of that? Hmm. Why not, Nelson?

Dhimmitude at the Globe and Mail

The headline says: "Man charged in anti-Semitic incident." It takes nine paragraphs for them to tell you what the man's name is. And of course there is no mention of the possibility that his anti-Semitism was part of the larger epidemic of Muslim anti-Semitism. By covering each incident like this as a one-of-a-kind aberration, the media misleads the public and keeps it unaware of a massive and growing problem. (Thanks to "Allah.")

As Toronto police announced the first arrest yesterday in connection with a recent spate of anti-Semitic crimes, political leaders of all stripes united to issue strong condemnations of the "deplorable" vandalism of the past week.

"It can be tempting to remain silent in the hope that that would make the ugliness go away," Premier Dalton McGuinty said, "but to remain silent would be wrong."

At Queen's Park, all three parties unanimously agreed to take a stand against the anti-Semitic acts with a resolution reading, "As representatives of the people of Ontario, the Legislative Assembly condemns the recent acts of anti-Semitism and expresses its continuing support for the government of Ontario's long-standing zero-tolerance policy towards hate crimes."

Offering his sympathies to members of the Jewish community, Mayor David Miller added that Toronto will "stand together in our condemnation of all hate-motivated crimes."

The condemnations -- voiced yesterday everywhere from Toronto City Hall to the House of Commons -- came after a week in which numerous houses, cars and gravestones were damaged or defaced with painted swastikas and other messages of hate.

In the most recent incident, police say they caught a man early yesterday morning as he painted anti-Semitic graffiti on the hoarding surrounding a construction site on Bloor Street West near High Park.

He had painted three identical drawings with an equal sign between a Star of David and a swastika, police said.

"It's not the first time this has happened," said Lewis Poplak, director of planning for Context Development Inc., the company building a condominium on the site. Police records indicate identical graffiti have appeared at the site several times during the past three to four months.

Reza Safaei, a 46-year-old from Toronto, has been charged with three counts of mischief under $5,000. The company has numerous Jewish employees, including both its president and chairman, Mr. Poplak said, and he believes the vandalism to be a "hate-based crime." He added he has spoken to the Toronto police hate-crimes unit about bringing his concerns before the courts for consideration at sentencing if the man is convicted on any of the three counts.

Toronto police Staff Inspector Brody Smollet said yesterday that he did not believe the suspect belongs to any racist organizations and that there was no initial indication the vandalism near High Park was connected to the other incidents in Thornhill, north of Toronto.

"I'd like to think the Jewish community can take some solace in the fact that we have made an arrest," he said.

"[But] this is only one individual and one set of charges that have been laid."

The board of directors of Toronto's Crime Stoppers program offered a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of people responsible for the recent vandalism.

The Canadian Jewish Congress has also organized a rally for tomorrow night.

Ed Morgan, Ontario chairman of the congress and a law professor at the University of Toronto, said he thinks it's very important for community leaders to quickly denounce the vandalism.

"I think statements by elected officials and police officials are incredibly important at this stage, as are statements by school officials and school boards, as well as redoubling anti-racism efforts in the classroom," he said yesterday.

"If there is no atmosphere in Canada that says this is at all tolerated or admired," he added, "it will eventually subside."

Indeed. But there is such an atmosphere in Canada, created by an unwillingness to do anything that might remotely offend Muslims.

Muslims publish 'Jesus' ad

From WND, with thanks to Cathy:

A controversial Islamic lobby group has published an ad in California newspapers seeking to win acceptance with the message that Muslims "respect and revere Jesus" as do Christians.

The ad by the Southern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is headlined "More In Common Than You Think," with a photograph of the old city of Jerusalem.

CAIR has launched an advertising campaign called "Islam in America," which in the wake of tensions resulting from the 9-11 terrorist attacks aims to dispel stereotypes and portray Muslims as ordinary citizens who love their country.

The "Jesus" ad, quoting from Islam's book the Quran, reads:

'''Behold (O Mary!)' The Angel said, 'God has chosen you, and purified you, and chosen you above the women of all nations. O Mary, God gives you good news of a word from Him, whose name shall be the Christ (Masih or Messiah), Jesus son of Mary, honored in this world and in the hereafter, and one of those brought near to God.' (Holy Qur'an, 3:45)

"Like Christians, Muslims respect and revere Jesus. Islam teaches that Jesus is one of the greatest of God's prophets and messengers to humankind.

"Like Christians, every day, over 1.3 billion Muslims strive to live by his teachings of love, peace, and forgiveness. Those teachings, which have become universal values, remind us that all of us, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and all others have more in common than we think."

Muslims point out, however, that they reject Christian belief in Jesus' divinity and regard him only as a prophet.

Muhammad, in fact, is considered by Muslims to be superior to Jesus because Islam's founder is believed to have brought God's final revelation.

CAIR claims to be a civil-rights group that represents mainstream Muslims in the U.S., but the group is a spin-off of the Islamic Association For Palestine, labeled a "front group" for the terrorist organization Hamas by two former heads of the FBI's counterterrorism section.

CAIR issued a condemnation Monday of Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin that made no mention of Hamas or Yassin's responsibility for countless terrorist attacks against Israel, which were part of his stated objective to destroy Jews and the Jewish nation.

I am all for diminishing prejudice and building bridges, but not under false pretenses. Why doesn't CAIR confront the roots of Muslim hostility toward Christians, and repudiate those roots? Why doesn't CAIR quote verses of the Qur'an, like this one, which places all Christians under a curse, and then show why Muslims must reject this kind of thinking? (This is the verse: "The Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!" — Sura 9:30).

Iraq's Basra Gives View of what a Shia State May Be Like

From AP, with thanks to "Allah," a look into the state the Shi'ites want to set up in Iraq — a state very like the caliphate state that the radical Muslims want to impose on the rest of the world.

It was the clearest sign yet that what's developing in southern Iraq is not the open, free and democratic society promised by the U.S.-led coalition occupying Iraq. The police officer at a roadblock ordered a traveler to cover her hair if she expected to continue her journey.

"This is an Islamic country and you must respect our feelings," said the officer in the pale blue uniform supplied by the occupying coalition.

What? You mean she doesn't have a human right not to cover her hair? But I thought that the hijab in France was a human rights issue!

Welcome to the Islamic state of southern Iraq where almost every public building is adorned with murals and posters of the three prominent Shiite Muslim clerics "martyred" in the chaos of today's Iraq or under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

It is the sons, brothers and followers of these three men who -with the backing of neighboring Iran -are shaping the Shiite politics in the south. Here, secular ideas are not tolerated, alcohol sellers and video shop owners risk their lives, clubs and restaurants are closed for playing music, and women fearing for their lives hide behind veils.

While the world's attention has been focused on the bickering over whether the country's interim constitution should make Islam "a source" or "the source" of legislation and over the form of federation best suited for Iraq, these hardline Islamic forces are quietly putting down roots and building their power base.

Many Basra residents say that the Shiite clerics who rule Iran are behind much of the religious-vigilante violence taking place in this city of 2 million and that the Islamic Republic is determined to have an influential role here.

"Basra is the center of culture and science," said Mustafa, a 26-year-old businessman. "Most of the religious parties are mercenaries who lived in Iran .... They want to impose their ideas on us. They want their word to be the law. We are afraid of them."

Many in Basra fear that by the time elections are held next year and a constitution is in place, it will be too difficult to eliminate these forces, which will be fully entrenched.

There is not yet talk of a Shia state within a federated Iraq, but Basra and the surrounding four provinces offer some clues of what such a state would look like.

Things have changed since the days before the 1991 Gulf War when Basra was a favored weekend destination for Kuwaitis, whose country bans alcohol and who made the three-hour drive across the border to live it up in the city's bars and nightclubs.

Although alcohol is not strictly illegal, all the bars and liquor shops have now closed. Many were shut by the now ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein after the 1990-91 Gulf War to appease the Muslim faithful. Others have been bombed by Islamic vigilantes more recently, and owners of other shops shut down out of fear.

At least three vendors of alcohol have been killed in recent months. It's still possible to buy booze, but it's a hush-hush affair. A bottle of Johnny Walker Scotch goes for up to $50, so most consumers opt for the $20 harsher whiskey brewed in the region.

Women have been especially affected by the changes in Basra. They are hardly seen in the streets -almost never at night -and when they do go out they wear the hijab, or veil. Even some Christians follow this practice, though the law doesn't mandate such Islamic dress, as it does in Iran .

"The situation of women used to be bad under Saddam, but it's worse now," said Ahood al-Fadhly, a women's rights activist. "Now, they can't even come into the street the way they want to dress."

Some Basra residents complain that Britain, whose troops occupy Basra, is turning a blind eye while the religious establishment usurps the running of the city through intimidation and threats against secular residents.

Explaining why the British are loath to intervene, Maj. David King, a British spokesman, says: "We are not here to dictate our way of life," but merely "to provide a basic foundation to get Iraqis back on their feet."

Analyst Gareth Stansfield, of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, isn't surprised at the Iranian role. Basra is just 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Iranian border, and Stansfield sees no way that the British, with their 8,220 soldiers, could block Iranian influence.

"Basra is in Iran 's backyard," he said in a telephone interview. "To suggest that Iran wouldn't get involved is ludicrous."

The U.S.-led coalition also is already engaged in a guerrilla war farther north, in the "Sunni Triangle," and needs the Shiites -who make up 60% of Iraq's people -as allies, and not as adversaries.

The drive south from Baghdad to Basra, Iraq's second largest city, shows how southern Iraq is changing. Villages along the road are dominated by images of Imam Ali, a revered Shiite saint, and the black and green flags of Islam fly over mud houses.

In small towns and cities -where politics is more defined -Imam Ali's images give way to murals and posters of Ayatollahs Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, founder of the Islamic Dawa Party, Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, and Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr -whose hardline followers are now led by his young son, Muqtada al-Sadr, who is based in the holy Shiite city of Najaf.

Ayatollah al-Hakim, who was killed in an explosion last summer in Najaf, had his headquarters in Iran until the U.S.-British forces ousted Saddam, and his brother Abdel Aziz al-Hakim is a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

Al-Hakim's close ties with Iran have not dented U.S. support for him. Nor have they stopped U.S. President George W. Bush from endorsing him as a moderate.

SCIRI's presence is obvious in Basra, from the Iranian-backed al-Nakheel TV station and -more importantly -the forcing of the police intelligence unit to recruit more than 150 men from the Badr Organization, the SCIRI militant wing that is trained and financed by Iran .

But beyond that, SCIRI does not have much popular support in Basra. Even though the Dawa party enjoys mo