UK: Two guilty over religion killing

It is against Islamic law, of course, for a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim man. From the BBC, with thanks to Singh:

Two men have been jailed for life for killing a man wrongly targeted in a dispute between Sikhs and Muslims.

Shimraz Kahn, 35, got a minimum of 18 years for the murder of Major Singh Gill at his West Midlands shop. Waheed Akhtar, 22, was given 15 years.

The men believed Mr Gill's Sikh son was in a relationship with a young Muslim woman, Stafford Crown Court was told.

Two others were found not guilty. Two further suspects are believed to have fled to Pakistan....

Prosecutor Anthony Barker, QC said Mr Gill was the victim of a deliberate and planned killing.

"Some men had clubs, iron bars and hockey sticks and inside the shopkeeper was clubbed to death," he said.

"Yet the people who killed him had set out to kill someone else.

"They killed a perfectly innocent man who had done absolutely nothing."

He said the story behind the killing was complicated but involved the relationship of a Sikh man and a Muslim woman.

Belgium officials cancel lunch with Iranians after Iranians demand that beer not be served

What's this? A European official showing some backbone (no doubt the Iranians will be praying, "May Allah rip out his spine") and asking for common courtesy? Sack him! "No beer? No lunch!," from Reuters, with thanks to Twostellas and Mr. Tickle:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A lunch meeting between a leading parliamentarian in Belgium and counterparts from Iran has been canceled because the beer-loving Belgian could not stomach a ban on alcohol.

"Even for the tolerant Herman De Croo, that was a bridge too far," De Croo, a Dutch-speaking Liberal, told De Standaard daily Thursday.

De Croo, president of parliament's lower house, had been due to entertain the speaker and members of the Iranian parliament Friday during their visit to Belgium -- famous for its diversity of beer brands.

But he said lunch had been canceled because the Iranians, who as Muslims do not drink alcohol, wanted their hosts to do the same.

"I did not receive such demands in writing. But ... I was indirectly asked not to serve alcohol," said De Croo.

Herman DeCroo, I will forthwith proceed to hoist my own adult beverage in your honor.

The visit ran into further trouble after Iran's parliament speaker Gholamali Haddadadel insisted he would not shake hands with the female president of Belgium's Senate.

Anne-Marie Lizin, a Socialist, then canceled their meeting. She said in a statement that Iranians should respect local customs in Belgium, just as Belgians should in Iran.

Indeed.

Egypt: imprisoned Christian released

A happy update on this story from IRN News, with thanks to a tea-loving snail:

An Egyptian Christian was released from mental hospital following international pressure over his five-month forcible commitment to the mental hospital, and being charged from apostasy from Islam, Compass Direct has informed.

Gasir Mohammed Mahmoud was released on 9th June 2005 from the El-Khanka Hospital for Mental and Neurological Health in Cairo, Egypt.

Mahmoud was adopted and raised by a Muslim couple who were shocked last December after finding out that he had converted to Christianity two year before. Afterwards, his father appealed to local Muslim sheikhs prompting them to issue a death sentence against his son for apostasy.

However, his mother appealed to local state security police to protect her son from being killed, which resulted in Mahmoud's subjection to seemingly endless rounds of interrogation and a series of arrests.

Initially following his arrest, Mahmoud expressed that he was questioned "in a decent way" in the presence of state security officer Mohammed Amar. However, when he was transferred to a different official, who was accompanied by two Muslim sheikhs, they tried to convinced him to re-convert to Islam again.

After eight days, eating only the food that other fellow-imprisoned people shared with him, he was sent to Suez Security Directorate. After four days he was released.

His first footsteps led to an evangelical church where he asked for another copy of the Bible, since his was destroyed: "But they were afraid," Mahmoud said, "and refused to give me a Bible."

When he returned home, a messenger was already waiting for him telling him to meet Mohammed Amar again. During the next set of interrogations, when asked why he went to church; Mahmoud said he could not stop himself from going there.

"So he started to torture me, to pull off the nails of my toes," Mahmoud said. "Now I'm still not able to wear shoes because of the pain."

This torture continued for a further 18 days, and included stripping him naked and dousing him with ice-cold water over and over...

New Zealand: Government takes over Islamic school

From the New Zealand Herald, with thanks to Stuart:

The country's only co-educational Islamic school has been put under direct Government control amid concerns that its cultural environment is clashing with its education obligations.

Al-Madinah School in Mangere, Manukau City, has been under fire for several years for prioritising religion at the expense of the curriculum and segregating staff and students according to gender.

Successive Education Review Office reports have drawn attention to problems of "governance and segregation", and a limited statutory manager was installed in 2002.

But the Ministry of Education has now drafted in Dennis Finn - the man who took over at troubled Cambridge High School last year - to haul the 360-student school into line.

Melissa O'Carroll, the acting northern region manager for schools, said Mr Finn's appointment as commissioner was "to support the school and enable it to strengthen educational outcomes for all its students".

The school has made concessions to the review office. It reversed a 2003 decision to cease education for girls beyond Year 8 and last year extended the length of the school day to accommodate prayer and lessons.

But a new ERO report has sparked the overhaul, with Education Minister
Trevor Mallard dissolving the board of trustees after seeing the
report...

Pakistan: Muslim mobs burn Christian homes

A dhimmi was inadvertently burning pages with Qur'an verses on them. From WND, with thanks to Anthony:

Sources in Pakistan report a radical Muslim mob has attacked Christian homes in three areas near Peshawar, Pakistan.

According to Voice of the Martyrs, which aids persecuted Christians around the world, the Tuesday attacks came after a Christian man was accused earlier that day of burning pages with Quranic verses written on them.

VOM sources say the man, Yousaf Masih, a man in his 60s, has worked for almost two decades as a sweeper for the Pakistani military. His most recent assignment was cleaning in the home of a military officer, a major. Tuesday, he was asked to clean the office at the major's home. During the cleaning, he came across a bag of papers, and the major told Masih to take the papers outside and burn them.

According to the report, Masih is illiterate and would not have known what was written on the papers. Other workers saw the papers and said Masih was burning pages from the Quran.

After hearing the workers' accusations, Masih rushed to his home in the Lama Veera area of Nowshera, east of Peshawar, VOM's sources said.

At 3 p.m. Tuesday, police came to the home and arrested Masih. Insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad or the Quran can be punishable by death under Pakistan's harsh anti-blasphemy laws. Following the arrest, a group of angry Muslims came to the home and began to beat Masih's three sons, the report indicated.

Muslims returned to the area at about 10 p.m. that night and burned an estimated total of 200 houses in Lama Veera, CMH and Saran. Many houses were looted by the attackers, who stole TVs, refrigerators and other items. The mob beat Masih's sons and his brother, Yaqoob.

VOM reported authorities have arrested 16 people involved in the attacks. A Hindu temple was also attacked, indicating the mob apparently first believed Masih was a Hindu.

"Terrorists have a different agenda. A normal Muslim under normal circumstances would never dream of doing these things"

News of Delaware County (thanks to Anthony) has published a long dhimmi puff piece, "A look inside Delaware County's largest mosque," about the local Al Madinah Mosque (which they call the "the Masjid Al Madinah Mosque," or the "Al Madinah Mosque Mosque"). In it, there is a most interesting statement:

On a Friday afternoon at the Masjid Al Madinah Mosque, dozens of Muslims from across the world stand shoulder to shoulder with Americans of the same faith.

They face East, toward their holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

While nearby the converted house shoppers busily cruise the stores at 69th Street outside, a bearded man sings prayers in Arabic as worshippers watch on video monitors on three different levels.

Women and girls occupy the top floor; men and boys the first and basement. The guest speaker has already finished the "Khutba," a sermon mixed in Arabic, English and sometimes other languages. Now, it's time for praise....

"We started in a basement, but we never used to have Friday worship," said Mohommad Mujeed. "From the basement, we started to look for a place. We heard this place was being sold at auction. We spent over $100,000 on this building [fixing it up]."...

Mujeed said many Americans are unfamiliar with Islam and are exposed to it mainly through reporting on the violence of religious extremists. He insists, however, that their actions don't represent the main stream teachings of the faith.

"Islam is a peaceful religion," says Mujeed, "Muslims should love other people like they love themselves.

"Terrorists have a different agenda. A normal Muslim under normal circumstances would never dream of doing these things."

"Under normal circumstances"? So are there circumstances in which a "normal Muslim" would dream of doing these things? If so, what are they? Is Mujeed referring to the common teaching that when unbelievers are waging war against Islam, all Muslims have the obligation to fight back? But that is what the jihadists of today say is happening right now. Does Mujeed believe that to be the case, or does he think we are still in "normal circumstances"? If so, why? If not, why not?

Muslim body orders woman raped by relative to separate from husband

Sharia alert from India, via AFP, with thanks to Scaramouche:

LUCKNOW, India (AFP) - A powerful Muslim body in India has ordered a woman allegedly raped by a relative to separate from her husband, but said she was free to remarry if she wished.

The victim, 28-year-old Imrana Ilahi, was allegedly raped by her father-in-law Ali Mohammed in Muzafarnagar district of northern Uttar Pradesh about two weeks ago.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board, set up in 1972 to protect the rights of Muslim women in the country, said the marriage would have to come to an end.

"As per the Koran, Imrana's conjugal relationship with her husband stood dissolved since she has been raped by the latter's blood relative," the board's woman member Begum Naseem Iqtedar Ali told reporters here.

"Had she been raped by anyone other than a blood relation, she could have stayed with her husband ... but here a sacred relationship had been violated, the consequences of which have to be borne by Imrana and her husband Noor Ilahi," she said.

But Imrana could remarry if she wanted to, she added.

The Muslim body's rulings are binding on all Muslims in the country.

But it was a ruling by a group of local Muslim clerics that the mother of five children marry her rapist and treat her husband as her son that caused an public outcry.

The Muslim clerics said the rape had annulled the woman's marriage to her husband and had ordered that she marry her father-in-law.

Imrana's father-in-law, who is presently in jail, has alleged his daughter-in-law had consented to having sex with him....

When asked whether the ruling was too harsh on Imrana, Begum Naseem Ali said as believers of Islam, they had to "follow what has been prescribed by the religion and even the victim and her husband have professed to abide by Shariat."

UK: Muslim students' integration call

Giving with one hand, taking back with the other. From the BBC, with thanks to Anthony:

The ways in which Muslims can integrate better into society will be examined at a students' conference on Thursday.
The 500 delegates at the event organised by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis) will also discuss discrimination at universities.

Fosis spokesman Azam Bakeer Markar said Muslims faced more suspicion on campus since the attacks of 11 September.

Giving:

But he said the UK's 9,000 Muslim students would be encouraged to do more to show they "had nothing to hide".

"Muslim students are very active on campus and now there's always people questioning their various gatherings," Mr Markar said.

"In the climate of fear after 9/11 we consider it's best to engage more rather than withdraw into our shell."...

Taking back:

They will also hear from the wife of Babar Ahmad, who is facing extradition to the US on terror charges.

Fosis president Wakkar Khan said her presence reflected the students' concern at anti-terror measures taken by the government since September 11.

"Mrs Ahmad is going to be touching on the issues surrounding what happened with her husband and the implications for the Muslim community at large.

"It was quite a shock for the Muslim community when this happened because they saw Babar as just another Muslim, it could be any of us," Mr Khan said.

The US Department of State has claimed that websites run by Mr Ahmad, who is from Tooting, south London, urged Muslims to use "every means at their disposal" to train for jihad, or holy war.

This "could be any of us"? Really?

British Students Get "Know Islam" Kits

From IslamOnline, with thanks to Anthony:

CAIRO - A British council has presented resource packs covering the basic teachings of Islam to primary schools across the London borough of Harrow in an effort to provide a better understanding of the Muslim faith, according to a local daily.

"The new resources will help school staff further develop their approach to high quality teaching of Islam -- a religion that is far too often misunderstood," the Harrow Times Monday, June 27, quoted as saying Councilor Navin Shah, leader of Harrow borough Council, which has become the first to fully fund the teaching of Islam in primary schools.

The resource packs include books, artifacts, CDs, videos and teaching aids covering the basic Muslim beliefs and practices through interactive class projects.

Resources for secondary schools are also being developed and will be
available to schools across the borough, according to the paper.

The packs for primary schools were produced by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), in partnership with the Department of Education and Skills.

"We believe education is the key to creating a vibrant and understanding society," MCB Secretary General, Iqbal Sacranie, told Harrow Times.

That's Sir Iqbal to you, buddy.

"These resources, developed by our team of educationalists,...

Iqbal, I believe the word you are searching for is "sensationalists."

...aim to support the teaching of Islam in schools by making available creative, engaging and child-friendly resources on Islam and Muslims."

"We want to ensure that every school child in Britain has access to high quality Islamic resources through their schools," he added...

Yes, that's a high priority indeed. Would anyone be willing to donate copies of Islam Unveiled or Onward Muslim Soldiers to the Brits to further that end?

Remember: the MCB boycotted Holocaust remembrance ceremonies commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz. And now they are teaching British children about Islam.

Fitzgerald: Celebrating Lepanto, 2021

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald, inspired by this Red-and-Blue politically correct celebration of the Battle of Trafalgar, peers into his crystal ball and sees, a mere 16 years hence, what the celebrations of the Battle of Lepanto will be like in the looming Eurabia:

The year: 2021. The occasion: the 450th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, where the Turkish fleet under Ali, the captain pasha, was defeated by the naval forces of Venice and of Spain (commanded by Don John of Austria, natural brother to the great Philip II, King of Spain). This victory helped repulse the constant efforts by the Muslim Turks to penetrate even further and seize even more Infidel lands in Eastern and Central and Southern Europe.

At the site of the engagement, the ships are all identical. Indeed, they all belong to the Eurabian fleet of a newly-expanded Eurabia, in which Turkey is the most populous member.

Of course, no one in his right mind would have wanted to label the ships with such words as "Turkish" or "European" (much less "Venetian"). "We are all Turks now," joked the French Foreign Minister, Ekmelledin Uzal, to his British counterpart, Manwar al-Oteiba. But of course, it would not do to label the sides "Turkey" and "Turkey."

Cornel West, Jr., son of the celebrated winner of two Nobel Prizes (one in literature and another for peace), was chosen to organize this event that holds so much significance for the world's peoples.

He was a natural choice. For, as president of the Eternal Peace and Dialogue-to-Death Foundation, which boasts 800,000 employees in 65 countries and is funded with the turned-over endowments of several self-extinguishing foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, the Soros Foundation, the Buffett Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Walton Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Olayan, Khashoggi, and Khaddafy Foundations, as well as the assets of three dozen slightly smaller foundations that had similarly disbanded, from all parts of the globe.

It was he, the brilliant son of an even more brilliant father, who finally hit upon the right way to label those ships that were to re-enact the Battle of Lepanto in a spirit not of celebrating a victory (what does "victory" mean, and what is "defeat," when we are all the children of the same god, and all of us indistinguishable one from the other, after all?).

At first, Cornel West, Jr., possibly remembering how the Battle of Trafalgar was re-enacted years ago, when his father was still a hard-working University Professor at Princeton and celebrated winner of the 2005 Lannan Prize for Services to Culture and Humanity, or Humanity and Culture, or something -- thought the two sides might indeed be labeled the "Blue Team" and the "Red Team," as had been done for the Trafalgar anniversary. But then it was pointed out that the painting would be costly, and besides, what with the ozone layer constantly thinning out into nothingness, more and more people seemed to be suffering from daltonism, which meant that millions of spectators watching the re-creation on television would have difficulty distinguishing one team from the other.

Then West had a brilliant idea. It was, like all brilliant ideas, so obvious -- and yet, no one had thought of it. It would make clear, utterly and transparently clear, what wars and bloodshed were really all about. They were about nothing at all. They had nothing to do with any discrete quarrels, any venomous ideologies, any attempts by one side or another to conquer one side, or another.

No, wars -- Man's Inhumanity to Man -- was all about The Other. Man, especially Western man, European man, or European man's mutated descendants in North America, who were consumed with the need to create, and then to mount a campaign against, The Other. It could be anything. It didn't matter. In the time of Lepanto, it was the terrible Turks, the malignant and the turbaned Turks, the Turks of "Mama li turchi" used to scare little Italian children.

And so it came to pass, that in 2021, in the re-created Battle of Lepanto, where Cervantes lost a hand (and later would lose his freedom to a renegade, a Christian-turned-Muslim slave-master named Venedikili Hasan Pasha, a future Beylerbey of Algiers), each side bore the exact same label -- a label that showed the futility of all warfare, of all distinctions, of all the silliness that Western man, especially, has inflicted on the otherwise naturally peaceful people in this naturally harmonious world (don't you find it getting just a little hot, and stuffy, and harder to breathe, in this wonderful still fossil-fuel-driven world of ours?).

And this is what the great son of the even greater father decided to do:

He labeled the ships of the Venetians, and the other European contributors to the fleet, "The Other." And then he labeled all the ships that represented the naval fleet of the Ottoman Turks with signs that read "The Other."

And that was that. The Battle of Lepanto. "The Other" vs. "The Other." For there is no "Other" now, in 2021. And in truth, there never really was "the Other" -- for "the Other" was simply a construct of the Western world, one which the peaceful non-Westerners made the terrible mistake of borrowing from them.

As Mustafa Schwartz-Weiss Kara-Akyol al-Padovi, the Italian Minister of Culture, noted, "yes, we are all Turks and Muslims now. We are all "The Other" now. Alhamdulillah, we are all friends, there will be no more war. There didn't have to be war in 1571. We could all have saved a lot of time, a lot of pain, if only the Venetians and the Spanish had understood then what everyone in Europe now understands."

Fruit drinks were sold. There was loukoum. There was iced Moroccan mint tea There were hubble-bubble pipes.

A splendid time was had by all.

Introducing the politically correct naval battle

This story has nothing to do with the global jihad, but it shows why it is virtually certain that Britain will eventually capitulate to the jihadists and become an Islamic state: any nation that becomes ashamed of its own history and culture will ultimately die. What reason would it have to keep on living? And that death should be ruled a suicide. From Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain celebrated an epic naval victory Tuesday but a descendant of its hero Admiral Horatio Nelson said the Battle of Trafalgar bicentenary was trying too hard not to offend historical enemies France and Spain.

A highlight of the world's biggest naval review was featuring two fleets enacting a 19th century sea battle.

But they have been called simply the red and the blue fleet rather than by country names, which has sparked a shot across the bows from Nelson's great great great granddaughter.

"I am anti-political correctness. Very much against it. It makes fools of us," said 75-year-old Anna Tribe.

"I think the idea of the blue team fighting the red team is pretty stupid. I am sure the French and Spanish are adult enough to appreciate we did win that battle," she added.

The historian playing Nelson in the mock battle is equally annoyed.

"If you obliterate history for the sake of political correctness, you can't learn from the past. Nelson thought politicians were cowards. I tend to agree," Alex Naylor said.

You can say that again, Alex.

EU sets 2014 date for European cultural suicide

2014! Maybe this is why the dhimmi Swede is impatient. But this story says that the accession talks will indeed begin October 3, as von Sydow wants. "EU sets Turkish entry timetable," from Reuters, with thanks to Anthony:

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) -- The EU's executive Commission reaffirmed on Wednesday that it aims to bring Turkey into the 25-nation bloc, but not before 2014, in a negotiating mandate which it adopted ahead of starting accession talks with Ankara.

"The negotiations will be based on Turkey's own merits and the pace will depend on Turkey's progress in meeting the requirements for membership," the negotiating mandate said. "The shared objective of the negotiations is accession."

The document states that negotiations for Turkish European Union membership can only be concluded from 2014, after the bloc's next long-term budget which runs from 2007 to 2013.

Accession talks are scheduled to start on October 3, as agreed last December by EU leaders.

But before that, EU foreign ministers must approve the "negotiating framework" unanimously, which may give rise to more wrangling in a political climate increasingly skeptical of Turkish accession following the French and Dutch "No" votes to the EU constitution.

A Commission spokeswoman said the text, seen by Reuters ahead of the EU executive's weekly meeting, had been adopted with only minor changes in the wording.

Russia Drops Hate Inquiry into Jewish Text

No doubt Russian authorities were reading Jihad Watch and realized the error of their ways. And if you believe that, I've got a wonderful suspension bridge in which you may be interested in investing. An update on this misguided effort by the Russians. They've decided to forget the whole thing. From the Globe and Mail, with thanks to Scaramouche:

MOSCOW -- Russian prosecutors dropped an inquiry yesterday into whether a Russian translation of an ancient Jewish text incites national and religious hatred.

The prosecutors had been examining the Shulhan Arukh, a 16th-century Jewish religious book, searching for evidence that Jewish groups are illegally spreading hatred by distributing the text's Russian translation.

The decision to end the investigation came during a visit by a Russian trade delegation to Israel, which had been outraged by the inquiry into a code of Jewish laws that has served the religion for hundreds of years...

The inquiry began when 19 deputies in the Russian Duma signed a letter in January calling for a ban on Jewish organizations. The letter complained that Jewish groups were distributing an abridged version of the Shulhan Arukh, and alleged that the text prejudices readers against non-Jews...

The book serves as a guide to Jewish life, although many of the teachings are considered outdated by modern Jews. It describes proper clothing, ways of bathing, eating habits, marriage ceremonies, funeral rites and holiday celebrations.

Russian lawmakers who criticized the book apparently never read it, said Mr. Kogan, because he saw them on television making wild claims about its contents, such as the idea that it encourages Jews to kill non-Jews.

The regional Basmanny prosecutor found no evidence to support those
allegations. In a written decision dated May 30, the prosecutor said the book may offend non-Jews, but it doesn't constitute an incitement to hatred.

The prosecutor's statement also ruled that the lawmakers and others who signed the letter of complaint cannot be held criminally responsible for using phrases such as "Jewish fascism," and "Jewish aggressiveness as a form of Satanism."

"I'm happy that this case has been dropped," said Berel Lazar, Russia's chief rabbi, adding that he'd been personally informed of the decision by the Moscow prosecutor's office.

Sweden Wants Turkey - E.U. Accession Talks To Start On Oct. 3rd

Swedish Parliament Speaker Bjorn von Sydow is in a big hurry to get Turkey into the EU. Why the unseemly rush to dhimmitude? From Turkishpress.com, with thanks to Anthony:

ANKARA - Swedish Parliament Speaker Bjorn von Sydow said on Monday that Sweden wanted Turkey-EU accession talks to start on Oct. 3rd, 2005 in line with the decision taken at EU Summit of Dec. 17th, 2004.

Speaking in a joint news conference after the meetings between Turkish and Swedish parliamentary delegations, Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc thanked Sweden's support to Turkey's EU bid and wished Sweden to continue extending its support during the accession talks that would start on Oct. 3rd.

Turkey: On-the-spot circumcisions

On May 25 I posted a link to Alyssa A. Lappen's superb article, "Turkey's Forgotten Islamist Pogrom," which notes:

Published this month by Greekworks.com, the work subtitled The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul shows that riots which destroyed 4,500 Greek homes, 3,500 businesses, 90 religious institutions and 36 schools in 45 distinct communities, resulted not only from “fervid chauvinism, or even [from] the economic resentment of many impoverished rioters, but [from] the profound religious fanaticism in many segments of Turkish society.”

Now, from ekathimerini.com (thanks to Sparta) comes an important sidelight to this story:

Within a few hours, 45 Greek communities were looted and destroyed on that September night in 1955, when a protest in Istanbul veered out of control.

Greeks and Armenians were savagely beaten and there were gang rapes.

Turkish writer Aziz Nessin says that any male passer-by the Turks considered a Greek was forced to show if he had been circumcised.

In some cases, Nessin says, Turks carried out “circumcisions” on the spot with knives.

Vryonis shakes his head sadly when these incidents are mentioned to him. He says most of the victims of this atrocity were Greek priests.

Tolerance and tolerance

Last week I spoke at the New York Tolerance Center about "The True Nature of the Jihad Threat." News of death threats I have received somehow found their way to the New York Police Department, which -- unbeknownst to me until I arrived at the venue -- dispatched its "Hercules Team" to ward off any who might have wanted to make those threats reality. The Team, a group of courteous and accomplished plainclothesmen, turned away one young man with a backpack at the door, after he refused to let them search his bag.

Against that somewhat ominous backdrop, I spoke about the violent intolerance of the Islamic jihad: its imperative to impose Sharia, with its institutionalized discrimination against non-Muslims and women, and its mandate to commit violent acts that is rooted in the Qur'an and Sunnah, supported by mainstream understandings of those texts, and elaborated by Islamic law. I tried to impress upon the crowd the threat that the jihad poses to central notions of human rights enshrined in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights and derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Bravo for life's little ironies: after this talk about the need to defend the West from this furious and fanatical form of intolerance, I was confronted by a young man and a young woman who were quite offended by my -- you guessed it -- intolerance. The Muslims who made it necessary for us to have our conversation under armed guard because of death threats did not offend them. My talk did. We had a brief discussion -- until the young man refused to shake my hand and I realized that no real exchange of ideas was going to be possible -- in which I found that their views reflected a large number of common prejudices and false assumptions about the nature of the present conflict, the meaning of tolerance itself, and more. That's why I thought it might be worthwhile to recount some details of our encounter.

The young man, for example, insisted to me that my focus was wrong. He told me that even though he was a Jew, he believed that Israel was a worse violator of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights than the jihadists, and reiterated several times that America is the world's greatest terrorist, not any jihadist. These are, of course, fashionable notions on the Left and some sectors of the Right, but that doesn't make them true.

Israel a worse threat than the global jihad? What violence is Israel fomenting in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Bosnia, and elsewhere around the globe? Where are Israelis spreading an ideology that demands that its adherents subvert the states in which they live and replace their societies with a radically different social model that denies equality of rights to women and certain religious groups? Where are Israelis teaching their children that the noblest thing they can do with their lives would be to strap bombs on themselves and blow themselves up in a large crowd of unsuspecting civilians?

I am sympathetic to the Palestinian Arab refugees, some of whom I know personally. But let us not forget that the refugee problem was not created by Israel, but by the Arab states surrounding Israel that started war against her, making the displacement of peoples necessary where it need not have been. Those states also refused to take in those refugees.

It is also true that the obstacle to peace today in the Middle East is not Israel, which has always been willing to come to a negotiated settlement, but the Palestinian Arabs' attachment to the jihad ideology, which will admit of no peaceful coexistence or any lasting negotiated settlement, but only truces on the way to total victory: the destruction of Israel and reduction of the Jews remaining in the area to dhimmi status.

Israel remains today the only Western-style republic in the Middle East, with the possible and increasingly problematic exception of Turkey. I am in daily contact with Christians from the Middle East, who feel hemmed in on both sides. Most, continuing cultural habits ingrained by centuries of dhimmitude, identify with the Muslims and excoriate Israel. Others are aware of what Sharia means: were peace to come to the area, it is unquestionable that Christians would enjoy more rights and freedoms in Israel than they would in a Palestinian Sharia State (and the Sharia is already invoked in the constitution of the PA). Where in the Muslim world do religious minorities enjoy the rights they do in Israel? Yes, the wall has made life hard for Christians and others in Bethlehem and elsewhere. Blowing people up in buses and restaurants made life hard too. Jihadist brutality and intransigence made the wall necessary.

And America is the greatest terrorist? In this the young man echoed views better expressed by the likes of Osama and Abu Hamza, but let that pass. The fact nevertheless remains that even if the most lurid tales coming out of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are true, they are simply no comparison in terms of human rights violations to the day-to-day record of Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's most notable modern Sharia states. To ascribe jihad violence to a reaction to American imperialism is to ignore the jihad conquests that went on for centuries before there even was a United States.

Of course, I was not dealing with the clearest of thinkers. The young man insisted that my talk was about "True Islam," and that I had said that all terrorists were Muslims, when in fact the talk was entitled "The True Nature of the Jihad Threat," and I had said no such thing about terrorists (I actually said that there was no global terrorist network comprised of Jews or Christians acting on theological imperatives from the mainstream of their traditions.) But unfortunately, it would be too hasty to dismiss all this as the muddled views of two somewhat under-informed and overly propagandized young idealists: such views are held by millions in the United States today.

Even worse came from the young man's companion, a Syrian Muslim young lady, wearing pants and no hijab. She complained that my talk did not reach out to moderate Muslims like her -- indeed, she said, it was full of "vitriol" and left the audience more intolerant than they were when they came in. Their view of my intolerance was reinforced, they said, when a New York Tolerance Center official, delighted with my talk (and finding in it no "vitriol"), told me they wanted to have me back next year to be part of a panel. The Tolerance Center official asked me to give them the names of my "dream panel" -- people I'd like to appear with. Off the top of my head, I named Bat Ye'or, Rafael Israeli, and Ibn Warraq. The couple was dismayed: no Muslims! And not only that, but all people identified with "The Right"! I tried to tell them I'd be happy to appear with Tashbih Sayyid, or, indeed, any other Muslim who cared to discuss these things with me, but by that time I was having trouble getting a word in.

However, I never did find out exactly what they found intolerant about my talk. Since I insisted -- as I always do -- that Muslims and non-Muslims must face the reality that jihadists are using the Qur'an and Sunnah to recruit and motivate terrorists, and that only when they face this problem will there be any chance for a viable solution, I can only think that that was their problem. Of course, many on both the Left and the Right consider it in the worst possible taste to suggest that today's terrorism might have anything to do with Islam (despite the fact that this cuts the ground out from any genuine Muslim reformers, whom they profess to support). Couple that with a Saidist inability to see non-Westerners as anything but victims, and Westerners as anything but perpetrators, and you have a potent brew that clouds men's minds.

Is it intolerant to speak about the intolerance of others? Is it intolerant not to tolerate evil? Is it intolerant to set out facts that are uncomfortable and that most people don't want to face? This Jewish/Muslim couple runs an organization that is designed to foster understanding between Jews and Muslims by bringing Jewish and Muslim children together to "celebrate" the "religious identities" of each. How do they keep Muslim children from celebrating the aspects of their religious identity that call Jews apes and pigs (Qur'an 2:62-65; 5:59-60; 7:166) and says they are under Allah's curse (9:30) and must be fought (9:29)? I do not know. But I know that if they simply ignore such aspects of Islam, they will someday be unpleasantly surprised by a recrudescence of Qur'an-inspired anti-Semitism and violence.

Tolerance is a keystone of modern Western societies. But if it is an absolute value, it is a one-way-ticket to cultural suicide. Should the British and Americans have tolerated Hitler? "Toleration of the unacceptable," as Omid Safi's old pal Bob Dylan once said, "leads to the last round-up." I am trying to head that off. Intolerant? Sue me.

Watson: CAIR’s Amended Motion against Anti-CAIR

DC Watson points out some intriguing new developments in CAIR's suit against the intrepid Andrew Whitehead and Anti-CAIR:

March 31, 2004, Virginia Beach, Virginia: the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) files a civil lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead, the founder of Anti-CAIR (ACAIR), a gutsy organization whose purpose has been to inform the people of the United States of the activities of this particular Islamic organization.

There isn’t much to say about CAIR that hasn’t already been said by authors and scholars who are much more knowledgeable about this group than myself. Their organization is what it is, and we will continue to expose them.

After researching Mr. Whitehead, it is odd that CAIR would sue an average American citizen for an amount in excess of one million dollars, since it is most likely that they know that he doesn't have the means to pay such an amount. Is it really about the money? Or is CAIR simply demonstrating that filing lawsuits against those who speak out against them is a simply a weapon in their arsenal, as they wage war on free speech?

Nonetheless, some interesting information has come to pass. When this lawsuit was first filed, Mr. Whitehead and ACAIR were served with several complaints from the plaintiff in this case. Actually, there were six.

Listed below is page two from the actual complaint, which outlines what CAIR has viewed as libelous statements made by Whitehead on the Anti-CAIR website, and page two of the “Amended Motion” recently filed by CAIR’s legal representative. Whatever could the reason be for this amendment?

Compare the two. In the amended complaint, A & B are truncated, and E, F, G, and H are gone altogether (C & D seem to have bit the dust before even the first complaint was issued). Now why is that?

UK: Muslim woman 'followed husband's orders' and abducted children

Sharia alert from the UK -- not as the law of the land, but as a matter of individual observance. From EDP24, with thanks to Anthony:

A Muslim woman alleged to have been recruited to help abduct five children from Norfolk and take them to Libya told a court yesterday that she had only gone on the trip with her husband because she had to "obey him".

Wearing a veil completely covering her face, Wedad Ahmed, 38, said through the help of an interpreter that her husband Mustafa Abushima, 45, had not discussed with her the trip to Morocco, in which it is alleged they posed as parents of the five abducted children.

She told the jury at Norwich Crown Court: "When my husband gives an order I have to obey him. I cannot do anything but."

Russia Examines Jewish Religious Texts

They're looking for incitement to religious hatred, eh? Have they looked at a book that calls Jews (and Christians) apes and pigs (2:62-65; 5:59-60; 7:166) and says they are under Allah's curse (9:30) and are the "vilest of creatures" (98:6)? And that believers must wage war against them (9:5, 9:29)? Just wondering.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, is Kitsur Shulhan Arukh the foundation of a global network of people who are committing violence in its name? Do people behead innocent civilians while chanting the praises of God and holding up copies of Kitsur Shulhan Arukh?

From AP, with thanks to Anthony:

MOSCOW -- Prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether a Russian translation of an ancient Jewish religious text incites national and religious hatred, a move condemned by many Jewish organizations as anti-Semitic.

Moscow district prosecutors summoned Rabbi Zinovy Kogan for questioning last week as part of a probe into whether the Russian translation of Kitsur Shulhan Arukh, a code of ancient Jewish religious laws, provokes religious hatred, Kogan told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday.

The investigation was meant to review a ruling last month by Moscow prosecutors that the text did not inspire hatred and a criminal case was not warranted, said Kogan, chairman of the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations who published the translated text.

The Israeli government and Jewish organizations, including the Conference of European Rabbis, condemned the probe.

"To take a traditional Jewish text and try to ban it reminds us of the official state-sponsored anti-Semitism that we saw in czarist Russia," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

The original probe was initiated after two nationalist activists including a prominent far-right ideologue complained the text is aimed at "insulting human dignity based on national and religious affiliation," according to an earlier prosecutors' statement posted on the Web site of an anti-xenophobia group, Sova. The text was also accused of labeling Christians "worshippers of idols" in a reference to Christians' main religious symbol, the cross.

That's it? Sounds like standard religious polemic. Does it tell Jews to wage war against Christians? I think they're looking at the wrong book.

Murdock: Gays in the Islamic World

Syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock compares the rights of homosexuals in the West and in the Islamic world.

This weekend’s Gay Pride festivities in New York City climaxed with Sunday’s 36th annual parade down Fifth Avenue. As usual, the raucous affair thrilled some and rattled others, but everyone walked away intact.

One would have to fantasize about such an occasion, however, in most Muslim nations where homosexuality remains as concealed as a bride beneath a burqa. When it peeks through, it isn’t pretty. While many liberals (and President G.W. Bush) call Islam a religion of peace, "celebrating diversity" is hardly on its agenda. Consider these recent examples of the Islamic world's institutional homophobia:

In Saudi Arabia, 105 men were sentenced in April for acts of "deviant sexual behavior" following their March arrests. Al-Wifaq, a government-affiliated newspaper, claimed they illegally danced together and were "behaving like women" at a gay wedding.

"Calling the event a 'gay wedding' has become a lightning rod to justify discrimination against gay people," Widney Brown of Human Rights Watch told Patrick Letellier of gay.com.

Seventy men received one-year prison sentences while 31 got six months to one year, plus 200 lashes each. Four others face two years behind bars plus 2,000 lashes. If these four receive their lashes at once, Brown fears their wounds will prove fatal.

"Anyone caught committing sodomy -- kill both the sodomizer and the sodomized," Islamic cleric Tareq Sweidan demanded on Qatar TV last April 22. As the Middle East Media Research Institute (memri.org) reports, Sweidan continued: "The clerics determined how the homosexual should be killed. They said he should be stoned to death. Some clerics said he should be thrown off a mountain."

Ogudu Emmanuel and Odjegba Tevin admitted that they were male lovers after their neighbors reported them to Nigerian cops. They were arrested January 15 and charged with "crimes against nature." The pair apparently escaped from jail while awaiting trial and potential 14-year prison sentences. Gay rights activists worried that cops or other inmates may have killed them in custody.

Last November, an Islamic court in Keffi, issued an arrest warrant for Michael Ifediora Nwokoma after neighbors accused him of having sex with a man named Mallam Abdullahi Ibrahim. Nwokoma quickly fled. Ibrahim was charged with the "unholy" act of "homosexualism." The court postponed Ibrahim's trial indefinitely and incarcerated him until Nwokoma surfaces.

In northern Nigeria, where Sharia law governs 12 Muslim states, homosexuality requires capital punishment by stoning.

Iraq's terrorist Ansar al-Sunnah Army, the Islamic Army in Iraq, and the Mujahedeen Army issued a statement last December 30 urging Iraqis not to vote in last January's elections, lest democracy spawn un-Islamic laws such as "homosexual marriage," in their words. To be sure, many Americans also oppose gay marriage, but they at least have the good manners not to detonate advocates of same-sex unions. Ansar-al-Sunnah is incapable of such restraint. It scored major headlines when it claimed responsibility for a December 21 bombing at a U.S. military mess tent at a base in Mosul. It killed 22 people, 18 U.S. GIs among them.

Egyptian cops have met gay men online and through personal ads, then arrested them, according to a March 1, 2004 Human Rights Watch report. Since 2001, HRW says at least 179 men have been charged with "debauchery," prompting five-year prison sentences for at least 23. As the Associated Press' Nadia Abou El-Magd wrote, HRW "interviewed 63 men who had been arrested for homosexual conduct. It said they spoke of being whipped, bound and suspended in painful positions, splashed with cold water, burned with cigarettes, shocked with electricity to the limbs, genital or tongue. They also said guards encouraged other prisoners to rape them" -- thus using coercive gay sex to penalize consensual gay sex.

While he notes that secular nations such as Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Syria are more relaxed about homosexuality, Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch.org and editor of The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, warns against equating the homophobia of strict Muslim states with, say, American social conservatives' opposition to gay-rights laws.

"Jerry Falwell and others like him do not call for the deaths of homosexuals, while these people do," Spencer tells me. "This demonstrates the bankruptcy and, ultimately, the danger of such moral equivalence arguments, which are nonetheless ubiquitous today in discussions of Islamic terrorism."

Unlike Sunday's marchers, many in the Muslim world literally risk their lives and limbs by merely peering out of the Islamic closet.

International Association of Genocide Scholars: Open Letter to Turkish Prime Minister

This is sure to irk the Turk. From AZG Armenian Daily, with thanks to Anthony:

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, president Robert Melson, vice-president Israel Charny, collectively edited and sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the 6th session of the IAGS in Boca Raton, Florida, on June 6. Below we present the letter.

Dear Prime Minister Erdogan:

We are writing you this open letter in response to your call for an "impartial study by historians" concerning the fate of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention. We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is hundreds of independent scholars, who have no affiliations with governments, and whose work spans many countries and nationalities and the course of decades. The scholarly evidence reveals the following:

On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War I, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens – an unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. Another million fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years.

The Armenian Genocide was the most well-known human rights issue of its time and was reported regularly in newspapers across the United States and Europe. The Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented by thousands of official records of the United States and nations around the world including Turkey’s wartime allies Germany, Austria and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of survivors, and by decades of historical scholarship.

The Armenian Genocide is corroborated by the international scholarly, legal, and human rights community:

1) Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide in 1944, cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the Nazi extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he meant by genocide.

2) The killings of the Armenians is genocide as defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

3) In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization of the world’s foremost experts on genocide, unanimously passed a formal resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide.

4) 126 leading scholars of the Holocaust including Elie Wiesel and Yehuda Bauer placed a statement in the New York Times in June 2000 declaring the "incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide" and urging western democracies to acknowledge it.

5) The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem), the Institute for the Study of Genocide (NYC) have affirmed the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide.

6) Leading texts in the international law of genocide such as William A. Schabas’s Genocide in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2000) cite the Armenian Genocide as a precursor to the Holocaust and as a precedent for the law on crimes against humanity.

We note that there may be differing interpretations of genocide - how and why the Armenian Genocide happened, but to deny its factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history.

We would also note that scholars who advise your government and who are affiliated in other ways with your state-controlled institutions are not impartial. Such so-called "scholars" work to serve the agenda of historical and moral obfuscation when they advise you and the Turkish Parliament on how to deny the Armenian Genocide.

We believe that it is clearly in the interest of the Turkish people and their future as a proud and equal participant in international, democratic discourse to acknowledge the responsibility of a previous government for the genocide of the Armenian people, just as the German government and people have done in the case of the Holocaust.

German Opposition Throws Turkey EU Talks Into Question

Can Turkey's entry into the EU be stopped? Does Europe wish to survive? From DPA, with thanks to Anthony:

BERLIN (DPA) -- Germany's conservative opposition has again thrown into question the mandate for the European Union membership talks with Turkey.

Talks between the European Union (E.U.) and Turkey are due to begin on October 3.

This will be after Germany's early national election in September, which opinion polls predict will result in a win for the Christian Democrat-led (CDU) opposition.

But in a weekend interview with Deutsche Presse Agentur, a leading CDU official, Matthias Wissmann sought to play down Turkey's hopes for eventually signing up to E.U. membership.

According to Wissmann, who also chairs the German Parliament's committee on European Affairs, the talks need to avoid allowing Turkey "any illusion that it can expect full membership."

Man sentenced to have eyes gouged out in Iran

Sharia alert from Amnesty International via Iranian.ws, with thanks to Anthony:

Amnesty International is calling for a sentence of eye gouging against a man in Iran not to be carried out. The 28-year-old man, known only as Vahid, has been sentenced to have his eyes surgically gouged out for a crime committed when he was 16 years old.

The Iranian Supreme Court rejected an appeal earlier this month and ordered that the punishment should be carried out.

It may now be inflicted at any time and Amnesty International has issued an 'Urgent Action' appeal against the sentence and is urging the authorities to abolish punishments such as eye-gouging which constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, amounting to torture.

Amnesty International UK Media Director Mike Blakemore said:

"This is a truly shocking case amounting to a sentence of judicial torture.

"We appeal to the Iranian authorities to guarantee that this punishment is not carried out and would further appeal to all medical practitioners in Iran to have nothing to do with this gruesome punishment."

According to Iranian press reports, Vahid was convicted of deliberately pouring acid from a battery on the face of another youth, Gholam-Hossein, blinding him. This took place in 1993, when Vahid had been working as a labourer in the capital, Tehran.

Vahid reportedly maintained throughout his trial that the attack was not intentional and that he had only meant to threaten the youth with the battery during an argument, but the battery's lid had opened accidentally, causing the injury.

The trial court reportedly ordered that Vahid's eyes be sprayed with acid as retribution (qesas) for his actions. Vahid's lawyer appealed, arguing that the rest of his face would also be damaged from the acid.

The appeal was reportedly rejected by a second court which ruled instead that Vahid's eyes would be surgically gouged out in order not to damage his face.

This punishment is in accord with the Qur'an: "We ordained therein for them: 'Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal'" (5:45). However, even this verse continues: "But if any one remits the retaliation by way of charity, it is an act of atonement for himself."

On what is not allowed in Iran

From the Straining Out A Gnat And Swallowing A Camel Department: "Hundreds Attend Dedication Of Iranian-Christian Church," from NBC11.com, with thanks to Susan:

Hundreds of people gathered for a special dedication of the Iranian Christian Church in the South Bay.

It is the largest one in the Bay Area.

Nearly 600 Iranian Muslims who converted to Christianity attend the church.

It allows women to serve as pastors, something not allowed in Iran.

You know what else isn't allowed in Iran? Conversion to Christianity. It was good of NBC11 to notice their little blow for women, but it would have been nice if they had told the good folks in the South Bay about the Sword of Damocles these converts escaped. If these 600 Iranian ex-Muslims were still back home, they'd be facing death sentences for their act of conscience. Nor is that "extreme Sharia," as a silly new book styles such things: it is based on a notorious statement by the Muslim Prophet Muhammad: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Sahih Bukhari, 9:84:57).

In the United States these converts can live freely as Christians. Yet dhimmi spokesmen will still praise the diversity of the Islamic world over that of the West.

Rape victim takes case to Pakistan's Supreme Court

This will be an interesting test of Pakistan's attachment to the Sharia -- not the tribe-ordered gang rape, which is some barbaric local custom, but the enforcement of Sharia evidence laws (requiring four Muslim men who saw the act to establish that it actually happened) by the court that overturned the original convictions. Mukhtaran Mai update from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani woman gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council said on Monday she hoped the country's Supreme Court would reimpose death sentences on the men who attacked her.

The Supreme Court began hearing an appeal by the woman, Mukhtaran Mai, against the acquittal of five of six men convicted in the assault.

"I expect the same decision as was given by the special court," Mai told reporters in the Supreme Court before the session began, referring to the conviction of the men.

Six men were originally convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, but five were later acquitted after appealing to a high court in Punjab province, which cited a lack of evidence. A sixth had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

Mai, 33, was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council after her brother -- who was 12 at the time -- was judged to have offended the honor of a powerful clan by befriending a woman from the tribe....

Lodi: duped dhimmis still patsies

As the Man With No Eyes would say, You know, some men you just can't reach. In "Lodi, California Series Part II - Bad Faith Exchange With Islam," at PipelineNews (thanks to Mackie), William A. Mayer and Beila Rabinowitz detail how two of the non-Muslim religious leaders who signed a Declaration of Peace a few years back along with the ice cream jihad imam still haven't awakened to the fact that they were just pawns in his game.

June 27, 2005 – San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews - On March 24, 2002 six religious leaders signed a Declaration of Peace in Lodi, California.

That declaration read in part:

“We are six people gathered for a common purpose. Among us are a Jewish Rabbi, a Christian Minister, a Muslim Imam, and a believer from each faith. We acknowledge that fanatics and extremists have, throughout history, committed acts of terror and inhumanity against us all. Together, we repudiate these acts, and declare then to be contrary to our Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths.”

Although the full import of the Lodi, California terror related prosecutions is yet to be determined, at least two of the signatories on that document - who seem to have been exploited by members of the tainted Lodi Mosque and Farooqia Islamic Center - are in full and total denial.

To the contrary, they are seeking more of the same, as their correspondence with PipeLineNews indicates:

Rabbi Jason Gwasdoff, of Temple Israel, Stockton.

“I do not feel that I was taken advantage of in any way. I think the sentiments expressed in the declaration of peace were sincerely held by everyone who signed it. I do not assume the Imams are guilty of anything, and have yet to hear anything that would convince me otherwise. They are being held on immigration charges, and truthfully, if it weren't for the investigation of the Hayats I doubt they would be in jail today.

I think it is very important that we continue the interfaith dialogue with the Muslim community. We have much to learn about each other, and I have found that by talking and establishing relationships we dispel a lot of ignorance, and build important bridges.”

Pastor Norm Mowrey, formerly of First United Methodist Church, Lodi.

“I feel very positive about the Muslim Community in Lodi. It was wonderful journey with Jewish, Muslim and Christian friends that bought about the Declaration of Peace. That journey continues. We reject violence and terrorism now even more than before. If ever we needed to support each other it is now. I pray for my Muslim brothers and sisters in Lodi. I absolutely do not feel like I was taken advantage of in any way. Interfaith dialogue must continue. I am working here on the Monterey Peninsula to bring together Muslims, Christians (both Protestants and Catholics) and Jews. The journey will continue. We need to walk with each other during this most difficult time. This experience only points up the need for continuing understanding, trust, and friendship.”

UK: Quoting Koran Could Be Illegal Under Proposed UK Bill, Lawmaker Says

We already saw Daniel Scot in Australia forbidden to read from the Qur'an in court because it constituted incitement. It's almost lights out in the UK. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to J:

(CNSNews.com) - A British lawmaker says reading excerpts from the Koran that advocate harsh treatment for Christians, Jews and unbelievers would violate a religious hatred bill currently before parliament.

"If this bill makes any sense at all, it must mean banning the reading, in public or private, of a great many passages of the Koran itself," Conservative MP Boris Johnson said.

And that, he added, was "absurd and paradoxical, given that the measure is intended to be a protection against Islamophobia."

The Racial and Religious Hatred Bill edged closer to becoming law Tuesday, after a House of Commons debate and second reading vote....

During the debate, Johnson read out various excerpts from the Koran regarding the treatment of non-Muslims, including sura 22:19, which read in translation: "As for the unbelievers, for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skins shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods."

Johnson said while the Koran was not "unique in its hostility to other creeds," he challenged a government minister to explain "why and how you think the repetition of those words in a public or a private place does not amount to an incitement to religious hatred of exactly the kind this bill is supposed to ban."

The proposed legislation, which has been introduced in a bid to protect Muslims, would apply to "words, behavior, written material, recordings or programs that are threatening, abusive or insulting [and] likely to stir up racial or religious hatred."

Convictions under the law could lead to a seven-year jail sentence.

West Misjudged, Mistreated Islam: Swiss Expert

There are so many distortions and inaccuracies in this short article that it would take a book to disentangle them all. From IslamOnline, with thanks to Anthony:

GENEVA, June 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The West has misjudged Islam and done it injustice, largely because of shallow knowledge of the Muslim faith driven from the distorted writings of early orientalists, a prominent Swiss expert has said.

I see. So the Christian lands of the Middle East and North Africa were subjugated and Islamized in the seventh century and thereafter not by Islamic jihad armies, but by the distorted writings of early orientalists. Got it.

“Rising Islamophobia is the result of the West’s shallow dealing with and misunderstanding of Islam,” Arnold Hottinger, who spent 50 years in the Middle East reporting for the leading Neue Zurcher Zeitung newspaper, told a day-long seminar organized by the Paulus Akademie.

Not that it, if it exists at all, has anything to do with 9/11, or the Iraq beheadings, or the Madrid bombings, or countless other actions by Muslims. No. Hottinger is obviously of the Saidist mindset that Westerners can only be perpetrators, and Muslim non-Westerners can only be victims.

Hottinger, a fluent speaker of Arabic,...

Oh, well, you see, then he must know what he is talking about. This kind of thing slips by the reader so quickly that usually he doesn't even notice what is being done to him. See, he knows more than the Orientalists. I, on the other hand, am in daily contact with many fluent speakers of Arabic who could explain in dozens of ways how this man is wrong. So we're back to zero on this one.

...faulted the West of portraying Muslims as the terrifying neighbor for long centuries.

"Early orientlists and churchmen only portrayed Islam as a religion of violence and wars" he told his attentive audience.

“This image found its way into textbooks, turning the Muslim world to a terrifying neighbor, which is a major injustice to Islam.”

Look. Muslims advanced into Spain and Europe in the 8th century. Nine centuries later, mujahedin were besieging Vienna. There was no significant hiatus in between except during the time of the Crusades. The Muslims, in short, were the terrifying neighbor for Christian Europe for hundreds of years. If there had been no Muslim invasions of the West, Hottinger might have a point. As it is, he stands simply as a shallow propagandist.

Hottinger has authored a number of books about the Muslim world in addition to writing many articles and giving lectures.

Negative Image

The Swiss expert said Islam is a melting pot for people of different ethnic and cultural background, a fact, he said, that is hard for the West to conceive.

Note that he doesn't say it's a melting pot for people of different religious backgrounds. No, the dhimmis are to keep discreetly out of sight during this presentation. But Hottinger's contention is absurd in any case: it's designed to portray the Muslim world as superior to the West in terms of ethnic and cultural diversity -- witness the immigrants from all over the world streaming into Riyadh and Tehran!

“No textbook in the West explains how Islam rapidly grew in Asia, which is home to the majority of Muslims worldwide,” Hottinger said.

Oh, it hasn't been entirely ignored. You can find some information on the bloody jihads in India in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers.

“When the Muslim immigrants came to Europe, a negative image of Islam was already deeply-rooted.”

Meanwhile, while drawing a veil over the blood-soaked history of jihad and dhimmitude, he predictably enough skewers Western colonialism:

The Swiss expert also shed light on Europe's bad history of imperialism and colonialism in Arab and Muslim countries.

He cited Europe’s role in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, causing many ethnic and border conflicts still raving in several Arab and Muslim countries.

Why, that's precisely the complaint of the global jihadists.

When the First World War (1914-18) broke out, the Ottoman Empire broke neutrality and fought on the side of the Central Powers.

The Ottomans were eventually defeated by the Allies in the Balkans, Thrace, Syria, Palestine and Iraq and its territories were colonized by the victors.

EU & Turkey

On Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, Hottinger said refusal to allow the admission of Muslim but secular Turkey would be a “big mistake”.

He cautioned that such a position would have major consequences as it would prove the view of "Muslim extremists" that the West is not willing to make any rapprochement with Islam and Muslims.

Actually it is only the West that has shown any interest in such a rapprochement. What has been done, Hottinger, on the Muslim side?

“It will also prove that Europe is a Christians-only continent and will cast doubts on efforts to bridge the gaps between the two sides.”...

Why is no one complaining that Saudi Arabia is a Muslims-only country? Or that Christians suffer discrimination of one kind or another in every other Muslim country on the planet today?

Hottinger opined that any attempt to strip Turkey of its Islamic identity is doomed, saying even Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular republic in Turkey failed to do this.

“In the first democratic elections according to western standards, the Turkish people elected Islamists,” he said.

Further highlighting his point, Hottinger cited failed attempts by the communist rule to strip Muslims in Central Asian republics of their Islamic identity.

“During my visits to Central Asian republics after gaining independence following the collapse of the Communist rule, every body I met was keen on reaffirming his Islamic identity,” he recalled.

Quite so. And to see that fact in an unalloyed positive light is to gloss over huge amounts of evidence of jihadist activity related to that reaffirmation.

Jihad warning

A review of Bat Ye'or's landmark book Eurabia from the New York Post, with thanks to all who sent this in:

FOR over three decades, the historian Bat Ye'or has been a voice in the wilderness. Her warning that "jihad" had in the 1970s reemerged as a powerful force in much of Europe, fell on deaf ears. Most Europeans denied what was confronting them. They were equally blind, according to Ye'or, to the fact that many European politicians were effectively in collusion with the jihadists, motivated by economic aims, a philosophy of appeasement or by the shared values of anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

The 9/11 attacks, along with the revelation that several of the perpetrators had been educated at European mosques and universities, led to a greater awareness of the Muslim fundamentalist threat in Europe. And the Madrid train bombings, which killed 190 people last year, only reinforced that understanding. Yet willful ignorance remains.

Indeed, militant Islamists have been much better at understanding and exploiting Western cultural ideals and weaknesses than European and American intellectuals have been in understanding theirs.

Many Western liberals — viewing the world through their own narrow prism — still insist that Islamic terrorism is the product of ignorance and poverty, despite overwhelming evidence that most suicide bombers have been highly educated and relatively wealthy. Like Nazis, Communists and others before them who would destroy Western civilization, the jihadists in Europe, Iraq and al Qaeda know exactly what they are doing.

In "Eurabia," Ye'or points out that, for over a millennium, the effect of Islamic "jihad" through its political, military, economic and cultural components has been to subjugate and in some case extinguish once-thriving Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist civilizations in Asia, Africa and Europe.

She argues that "jihad" has now reappeared in Europe, not by accident but as the result of a grand design by French and other European diplomats to forge a new political entity, "Eurabia." It would fuse together the European and Arab worlds, dispose of Israel — the irritant in their way — and then challenge America for world hegemony.

The term "Eurabia," notes Ye'or, was first used in the mid-1970s, as the title of a journal edited by the president of the Association for Franco-Arab Solidarity.

Relying on detailed documents, minutes and directives generated by government bodies, including a little known organization set up by France in the 1970s called the Euro-Arab Dialogue, Ye'or charts the cooperation that has brought European democracies, Arab dictatorships and Islamic terror groups closer together. (Only last week, a Dutch diplomat was caught on film embracing a member of the Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad in Gaza.)

But as Ye'or notes, what started as a scheme for a greater "Eurabia" controlled by the French (who would in turn welcome the flow of Arab oil and Muslim immigration into Europe) has turned into an attempt by fundamentalist Muslims to take over Europe.

Within a single generation, a significant portion of the population of major cities in a dozen European countries have become Muslim.

Yet the crisis for Europe isn't about numbers, but militancy. Of course, most European Muslims wish to integrate, while peacefully practicing their religion. But opinion polls indicate that an increasing minority do not.

Watson: Confronting CAIR at the local level: Meet Kevin Montavon

DC Watson recounts the activities of the courageous Kevin Montavon:

We’ve witnessed what the Council on American Islamic Relations is willing to post on their website. We spar with them on a continual basis, and will do so until they cease to be. While we spend our time dealing with these spin artists, it’s very important to remember that they also utilize local news publications to push their Islamic propaganda. Thus they should also be countered at this level. A colleague of mine who lives in the Ohio area recently called CAIR out for their distortions about Islam and the Qur’an.

For any of the Islamic apologists that visit this site and attempt to defend Islam by categorizing anyone who confronts it as ignorant, my colleague and friend, Kevin Montavon, possesses a Communications degree, attended twelve years of Catholic school, and has read both the Holy Bible and the Qur’an from cover to cover.

This exchange occurred in Ohio’s largest newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch. It began with a column written by Mahmoud El-Yousseph, entitled “Sacred Quran valuable to all of mankind.” The Dispatch published this on Thursday, May 26, 2005.

El-Yousseph appears to be affiliated in some capacity with the Council on American Islamic Relations, or is at least sympathetic with the organization. I draw this conclusion from the fact that in his letter, he invites anyone interested in receiving a free Qur’an to contact CAIR.

“Sacred Quran is valuable to all of mankind”
Mahmoud El-Yousseph: Posted 5/26/2005

“If a Muslim-American and retired Air Force veteran may speak out on the issue of the desecration of the Holy Quran, as reported on May 9 by Newsweek, here goes:”

“I have not yet recovered from the sadistic images from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. God only knows whether Newsweek’s story, that a copy of the Holy Quran was flushed down the toilet at the U.S. detention center at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, was true.”

“At this juncture, I feel that it is more productive and beneficial to learn about Islam and the Quran from a Muslim than from a biased and unreliable news organization that has only profit in mind. For that reason, I share basic information about the Holy Qur’an with non-Muslim readers.”

‘The Qur’an is the complete book of guidance for mankind. It is the sacred book of the Muslims and the main source of law in Islam. It is considered God’s words, which the angel Gabriel brought to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. This took place in the year 610, when the Prophet was 40 years old, and the revelations lasted for 23 years. It starts for the first 10 years in Mecca and continues for another 13 years in Medina. Both cities are in present-day Saudi Arabia.”

“The Quran is written in Arabic, to be read from right to left. It orders Muslims to do good and to avoid evil. The Quran consists of 114 chapters, called suras, and 6236 verses, called ayahs, according to the book Islam: Beliefs and Teachings, by Ghulam Sarwar.”

“In the Quran, one can find stories of many other prophets who came before Islam, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus, peace be upon them.“

“A Muslim also believes in all the revealed books that are mentioned in the Quran: the Torah of Moses, the Psalms of David and the Gospel of Jesus. The Quran also mentions the Scrolls of Abraham.”

“The Quran mentions many events that occurred prior to Islam, events that took place during the prophet Mohammed’s life and events that will take place in the future.”

“It might even surprise readers to know that the Virgin Mary, peace be upon her, is the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran, and that her name is mentioned 34 times. Jesus’ name is mentioned 33 times. The Prophet Muhammad’s name is mentioned only five times. The Quran recognizes and respects other faiths and prophets. Such a faith deserves respect, not public insults.”

“Anyone who is interested in a free copy of the Holy Quran translated into English can visit the Web site of the Council on American Islamic Relations at www.cair-ohio.com.”

And here is Kevin Montavon's reply:

“Quran has little value to people who are not Muslims”
Montavon’s rebuttal: Posted 6/18/2005

“Is Mahmoud El-Yousseph the self-appointed spokesman for all Muslims in central Ohio? It seems that every time a sensitive issue arises that in any way involves Islam, he is the first to fire off a letter to The Dispatch.”

“In his letter to the editor of May 26, El-Yousseph engaged in some distortions that render his basic premise (that The Koran is valuable to all humankind) meaningless.”

“The Koran is not valuable to all humankind. It is not valuable at all to non-Muslims. To non-Muslims (who make up the majority of the world's population), The Koran is nothing more than a book. And it is not a very good one, at that”.

“El-Yousseph went on to state that Islam respects the revelations of other faiths such as the Torah and the Gospels. What he failed to mention is that the Koran also teaches that these books are deficient, and that the Koran is the only true word of God. It also teaches that Christians and Jews have received revelation from God, but they have distorted that revelation.”

“Perhaps El Yousseph would like to explain the verses in the Koran that condone wife-beatings, honor-killings, deception in the name of protecting Islam, and other behavior that is abhorrent to modern society“:

4.34 (on wives), "admonish them, leave them in their beds apart, and beat them")

5.51 ("don’t take Jews and Christians as friends, they are friends of one another")

8.12 ("I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger tips of them").

9.5 (Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush")

9.29 ("Fight those who do not believe in God, ... until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection".)

“Perhaps he would like to explain why societies that are based on Islamic law provide little or no equal rights to women, little or no religious freedom to practice a non-Islamic faith, and little or no progress in the way of assimilating into modern society.”

“When Americans see people who claim to be civilized engaging in riotous and murderous behavior simply because they think that pages from a "holy" book were flushed down a toilet, we can analyze these events and come to conclusions on our own. We do not need the Mahmoud El-Yousseph filter to explain everything to us. Thanks but no thanks.”

Kevin Montavon

A 'Million Muslim March' for Lodi?

First we had Kamal Nawash's Million Muslim Rally Against Terrorism, Hold the Million. Now we have a call from a non-Muslim radio talk-show host in Lodi, California, home of the ice cream jihad, for a Million Muslim March Against Terrorism. And the excuses are flying thick and fast from local Muslim leaders. From the Sacramento Bee, with thanks to all who sent this in:

One of Sacramento's most outspoken radio talk-show hosts, who has antagonized some Muslims with his on-air and online comments about Islam, is collaborating with Lodi Mayor John Beckman on what the two men are billing as the "Million Muslim March" to denounce terrorism.

KFBK personality Mark Williams has been hosting on-air discussions about terrorism and the Muslim faith since news broke early this month about an ongoing federal terrorism investigation that has upended the Central Valley town. So far, five Lodi men have been arrested in the case - none on terrorism charges.

Beckman called into Williams' evening show last week, answering what Williams calls a three-year standing invitation for Muslims to publicly rally against terrorism.

"I heard him talking about it on the radio," said Beckman, of Williams' on-air proposal. After contacting a representative from the Lodi mosque, Beckman said he called Williams and committed to organizing the march in his town.

Some Muslims wish Beckman hadn't made the call.

"He's got Islamaphobic tendencies," prominent Lodi Muslim leader Taj Khan said of Williams. "How can (former white supremacist leader) David Duke walk with Jesse Jackson?"...

Yeah, he wants Muslims to denounce terrorism. What a racist! What an Islamophobe!

Beckman had originally envisioned the march in late July with local Muslims walking city streets, possibly between the mosque and City Hall. He wanted it patterned after the Million Man March by African Americans in Washington, D.C., in 1995. On Tuesday, the project was continuing to blossom. The Break Through Project, a local coalition of Muslim, Jewish and Christian congregations and the principal organizers, has asked for more time. No date has been set.

Williams, who is unapologetically venomous at times in expressing his views - he suggested after the death of Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat that his headstone should be a urinal - says his heat is directed toward radical Muslim leaders who foster terrorism.

Extremist factions, he contends, are smothering the voice of what he calls "Joe Six-pack Muslims," those who are too intimidated to voice objections to more radical views.

A march or rally would give them an opportunity, Williams said.

"I think American Muslims are just as upset when they see extremists speaking for them," he said.

One of his frequent on-air targets is skeptical about Williams' motives.

Basim ElKarra, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Sacramento Valley, said his organization has an online petition signed by 688,560 people who have denounced terrorism.

"We've been denouncing terrorism forever. He's still not satisfied," said ElKarra.

ElKarra says Williams has labeled him an extremist on-air. "He doesn't even know me."

"He's calling our organization a radical, fascist organization," ElKarra said. "How can you respond to that?"

Maybe by explaining why several CAIR officials have been arrested recently on terrorism-related charges. Maybe by explaining the highly damning statements made over the years by various CAIR leaders. But I am not holding my breath.

2,500 US Scholarships Available for Saudis, Says Ministry Official

With no small help from obliging US officials who have expedited Saudi visas. From Arab News, with thanks to Eschwapp:

RIYADH, 26 June 2005 — Some 2,500 scholarships are available for Saudis wishing to study in the US in different fields, an official at the Ministry of Higher Education has announced.

Speaking to Arab News, Saad A. Al-Hagan, manager of public relations at the ministry, said scholarships were available for bachelor’s, master’s or PhDs in medicine, including nursing, pharmacy, engineering, computer science, basic sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry), law, accounting and e-commerce.

He said the decision to offer the scholarships was a result of Crown Prince Abdullah’s recent visit to the US. Those eligible are Saudis who have been admitted to a recognized American university and have a valid visa. They can either download the application from the ministry’s website or collect it from the ministry.

“The ministry will pay an amount equal to $1,200 per month if the recipient is a bachelor, and more for married students. Other expenses will also be covered such as a round-trip ticket and a monthly incentive depending on the student’s grade point average (GPA),” Al-Hagan said.

He thanked the US for expediting the issue of visas and said the measure would go a long way to allowing more students to study in the US.

According to earlier reports, the ministry has also made arrangements with a number of universities in Canada and Europe for sending Saudi students there for higher education.

Attempted honor killing in Michigan?

"Parents of son charged in beating may lose girl," from the Detroit News, with thanks to DC Watson:

MADISON HEIGHTS -- The Oakland County Prosecutor's Office on Thursday will attempt to permanently end the parental rights of a Madison Heights couple who police say neglected to seek medical help for their daughter after her older brother allegedly beat her over her relationship with a non-Muslim boy.

The 15-year-old girl, who is a Madison Heights Lamphere High junior, suffered a broken back in the beating, according to court documents. The trial to determine whether parental custody rights should be terminated is set for Thursday before Oakland Circuit Judge Joan Young.

The girl's brother, Ahmad Abdelmomen, 21, is charged with aggravated assault in the April 29 incident at their home in Madison Heights. Abdelmomen is free on bond pending a July 13 preliminary hearing before Madison Heights 43rd District Judge Robert J. Turner.

"She complained of the injury to her parents, but they didn't take her to a doctor because they condoned the punishment her brother gave her," said Robert Zivian, an assistant Oakland County prosecuting attorney assigned to the neglect case.

The following day, when the girl was still complaining of injuries, her parents called for an ambulance, according to Madison Heights Police Detective Sgt. Ron Hillman.

"She was in a lot of pain, and when she eventually went back to school, it was in a wheelchair," Hillman said. "It was too painful for her to stand for any period of time."

The girl initially told hospital workers she fell, Hillman said. After being questioned by police, she admitted that her brother had beaten her because he was upset over her relationship with a boy who was not of their religious faith, Hillman said.

"She wrote me a two-page statement about how both her brother and her parents disapproved of the situation," he said. "She wrote that's what prompted the beating in the first place."

West: Twisted 'tolerance'

Diana West gives us some more clear thinking, comparing Douglas Wood with Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot in the Washington Times:

The cases of the kidnapped engineer and the "guilty" pastors are not really parallel. The Victoria state court is not a murderous gang of jihadis. But there's something similarly outrageous about the coercion brought to be bear on these men -- coercion at gunpoint in Iraq, or on pain of prison time in Australia -- to revoke the precious and essential Western liberty to speak freely.

Such liberty is what compelled both pastors to flee their native Pakistan, where "blasphemy" against Islam can be a capital offense. And there's another connection: The Islamic doctrine of jihad that inspires the terrorists in Iraq is precisely what lies at the core of the Australian pastors' lectures and teachings, which are based directly on verses of the Koran and other Islamic texts.

What is car-wreck fascinating here is Judge Michael Higgins' conclusion that simply pointing out what the Koran says now constitutes outlawed speech in Victoria. During court proceedings, when Mr. Scot began to read verses from the Koran that denigrate women, a lawyer for the Islamic Council of Victoria, the plaintiff, cut him off, explaining that reading such verses aloud is itself an act of vilification. "How," wondered Mr. Scot, can it be vilifying to Muslims in the room when I am just reading from the Koran?"

How, indeed. As Robert Spencer has pointed out, at another point in the trial, the Australian judge was affronted that Mr. Scot had said that "the Koran promotes violence, killing and looting." Mr. Spencer writes: "In light of Koranic passages such as 9:5, 2:191, 9:29, 47:4, 5:33 and many others, this cannot seriously be a matter of dispute. Muslims have pointed to verses in the Bible that they would have us believe are equivalent in violence and offensiveness, or have claimed that the great majority of Muslims don't take such verses literally; but it takes a peculiarly strong resistance to reality not only to deny that such verses are there, but to charge one who pointed them out with religious vilification."

Mr. Nalliah, who plans to visit Great Britain to campaign against a similar vilification law now under consideration in Parliament, calls Victoria's shockingly totalitarian statute "sharia law by stealth." And so it is. In outlawing criticism of Islam -- which, so far, is the effect of the law -- Victoria has not only codified a peculiarly strong resistance to reality, but it has also adopted the practice of sharia-ruled states. This makes for a startling spectacle of free people placing a muzzle on speech, a limit on faith and a damper on inquiry.

Douglas Wood lost his freedom at gunpoint; Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot lost theirs by court-ordered political correctness. We know who rescued Mr. Wood; who will save the pastors?

Delaware: Students harassed, Muslim mom says

Ah, Muslims, those sensitive flowers. From the News Journal, with thanks to Nicolei:

A mother of three schoolgirls has filed a federal lawsuit against the Cape Henlopen School District, claiming school officials were disrespectful of their Islamic faith and didn't stop harassment by other students.

The lawsuit, made public Friday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, accuses a teacher at Shields Elementary School in Lewes of equating Muslims to terrorists while instructing a fourth-grade class last school year.

"During the course of that lesson, students were told 'Muslims believe the Koran teaches war and hatred'; 'Muslims believe that people who do not practice Islam are evil,' " the lawsuit said.

Yep, pretty inflammatory stuff. Of course Muslims don't believe that sort of thing, do they? Hmmm...Well, there was that fellow who wrote to me that "I want you to know that I hate you for the sake of Allaah and I make du'a for your destruction." And there was that Al-Muhajiroun seminar, "The Obligation of Inciting Religious Hatred."

But does the Qur'an teach war and hatred? Well, there is Qur'an 9:5: "Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush." There are also over 100 other verses counseling jihad in various ways. And hatred? Well, Allah hates the unbelievers: "He it is That has made you inheritors in the earth: if, then, any do reject (Allah), their rejection (works) against themselves: their rejection but adds to the odium for the Unbelievers in the sight of their Lord: their rejection but adds to (their own) undoing" (Qur'an 35:39). And they are vile, those unbelievers, even if they are among the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians): "Those who reject (Truth), among the People of the Book and among the Polytheists, will be in Hell-Fire, to dwell therein (for aye). They are the worst of creatures" (Qur'an 98:6). Do Muslims believe that those who don't practice Islam are evil? They do if they believe what the Qur'an says: how could "the worst of creatures" not be evil?

So once again it seems as if telling the truth about what at least Qur'an-believing Muslims believe is to be forbidden by Muslims in American schools.

The suit also alleges that the girl was denied equal time, and that her classmates teased her (which is a shame if it happened, but hardly uncommon in primary school, or grounds for a lawsuit) -- and it calls for the adoption of various dhimmi regulations:

School officials are accused of refusing to allow the girl in that class to explain Islam to her schoolmates, even though the teacher had discussed Christian symbols during Christmas.

"[When] it was suggested by the parent, that her daughter ... would make a balanced presentation explaining the Muslim religion to the classroom, to boost her self-esteem, it was expressed that such an action would be inappropriate, in that it would 'open a can of worms,' " the lawsuit alleges....

The lawsuit charges the district and its employees with failing to provide the students with equal protection for expression of their religious beliefs and due process to deal with the harassment that followed from fellow students.

One girl allegedly faced taunts such as "no loser Muslims allowed." Another of the girls was told she was ugly and had an ugly name.

The defendants also are accused of giving preference to Christian beliefs over Islamic beliefs in violation of the Constitution and retaliating against the family for exercising its right to practice its religion.

The case claims the fourth-grade girl was transferred to another teacher's class following her mother's complaints about the alleged anti-Islamic practices.

The mother and daughters are asking the court for monetary damages to cover their pain and suffering and to punish the district. They also want the court to order the district to:

•Develop policies to prevent intolerance and guide administrators on dealing with student complaints about harassment related to religious beliefs and social background.

•Implement mandatory training for faculty and staff on religious and cultural diversity.

•Keep statistics on racial discrimination and harassment complaints by students and the action taken to resolve them.

The lawsuit alleges the teachers' action, along with her supervisors' failure to stop it, made the fourth-grade girl so depressed that a therapist recommended she stay home from school and get tutoring.

But the lawsuit alleges even that option didn't work well because the instructor, approved by the district, continued to discuss ethnic hatreds and religious wars, despite the therapist cautioning against it. Another tutor was eventually sent to the family's house, but not for as much time as the family expected.

Anglicans Consider Divesting in Solidarity With Palestinians

From the New Duranty Times, with thanks to Seymour Paine:

LONDON, June 24 - The Anglican Church's international advisory body voted Friday to urge the church to consider withdrawing its investments in companies that support the occupation of Palestinian territories.

The move, presented as a message of solidarity with Palestinian Christians, immediately came under attack by Jewish groups, with some calling it ill timed and predicting a likely chill in Anglican-Jewish relations....

Before the vote, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, who helped lead the effort, talked about the occupation's effect on Palestinian Christians. He urged council members to support the resolution, saying it would send a strong message of disapproval to Israel.

Canon James Rosenthal, the council's communications director, said the remarks, and those by others, resonated with group members.

"When we hear the Christian population has dwindled to 1.5 percent, we are dramatically concerned," Canon Rosenthal said. "We have heard stories of humiliating experiences by Christians, and it is clear that the council sees the support of the Christian community as one of their foremost concerns."

Canon Rosenthal is talking about humiliation by Israelis. He doesn't seem to have noticed information like this, from "Christians in Holy Land in Crisis, Says Report," from Zenit:

For its part, in the city of Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, the growth of militancy among Muslims has caused a mass exodus from a town which up to 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel had been entirely Christian, observes ACN.

"All the Muslims like to come to this town. Little by little the Christians leave because they cannot live with the Muslims. There are some fanatics who do not like the fact that we exist," explains a longtime parish priest of Ramallah, Father Nazaih.

The priest also mentioned the bitterness that still exists several years after Muslim fanatics stole Christian land next to the church to build a mosque.

"They came with tractors and burst into the place," he said. "They broke the walls of the houses. We did not realize what was happening. They took everything. Even the governor could do nothing."

Of the thousands of families present in Ramallah in 1948, only a few hundred remain. Up to 40,000 Christians have gone to the United States, he added.

The New Duranty Times article goes on:

"Israelis are already traumatized and feel that the world is against them," said Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, earlier this month. The resolution, he added, would be "another knife in the back."

Belgium: Moroccan man jailed for anti-Semitic knife threat

Sentenced in absentia? And where is Chbaba B. now? From Expatica, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BRUSSELS — Antwerp Court sentenced in absentia on Friday a 22-year-old Moroccan man to six months jail and a EUR 550 fine for accosting and threatening a Jewish man last year.

It is the first time that such a case of anti-Semitism has led to a trial and a conviction, newspaper 'De Standaard' reported.

The suspect, identified only as Chbaba B., confronted a Jewish man in Statiestraat on 7 June 2004 and said: "I am Palestinian and I want to kill all the Jews". He then brandished a knife in front of the victim.

The Jewish man cycled to a nearby synagogue and alerted police, who later arrested the Moroccan. The suspect was found to be carrying a hacksaw.

Antwerp Court ruled that B. was driven by deep contempt and by feelings of hostility to Jewish people. "The facts bear witness to unacceptable intolerance and are a form of psychological violence," the ruling said.

Pakistan: Rape victim could be charged with adultery

...because of the peculiar evidence requirements of Islamic law: the victim's testimony is disallowed, and she must produce four male Muslim witnesses who saw the act. I discuss this evil law and its effects in Islam Unveiled.

"Rapist cop booked under controversial religious law," from the Indo-Asian News Service via Newz.in, with thanks to Doc Washburn:

A Pakistani policeman charged with raping a teenaged girl in a police station has been charged under a controversial religious law that carries the death penalty - but which could also enable him to walk free.

Sub-inspector Qaiser Shah was booked under Sections 10 and 11 of the Hud Zina Ordinance, which puts the onus on the victim to prove she was raped.

Under this law, the victim has to produce four male Muslims who were witness to the rape. If she fails to prove the allegation, she can be ostracised and even charged with adultery.

Late military dictator Zia-ul Haq had enacted the law in 1979. Successive governments - even the one headed by Benazir Bhutto - have paid lip service to repealing the ordinance but have not done so.

Shah is alleged to have raped 15-year old Saira at the Shahzad town police station here on the night of May 17-18.

15 Gamblers Caned in Muslim Indonesia

An update on this Sharia Alert from AP, with thanks to Nicolei:

BIREUN, Indonesia -- Fifteen convicted gamblers were flogged Friday for illegal gaming in Indonesia -- the first time caning was used as punishment in the world's most populous Muslim country.

After traditional Friday prayers, the 15 convicts were brought to a stage erected outside a mosque, where about 600 people gathered to watch in Bireun, a town in the semiautonomous Aceh region.

Religious officials wearing masks to conceal their identities struck the men on their backs with rattan canes. The blows did not break the skin and the men did not appear in extreme pain. At least one smiled and laughed during the caning.

"I am ready to be punished, but what about everyone else, including big time corruptors and thieves?" said Zakaria, 60, the oldest man beaten. "They should also be whipped."

Australia: Free speech farce

Andrew Bolt comments on Australia's Victoria State ridiculous hate speech laws in the Herald Sun (thanks to OBL r Us):

PREMIER Steve Bracks promised four years ago to give us "racial and religious tolerance" if we gave up our free speech.

What fools people were to believe him....

Every case, each more trivial than the last, involves worry and legal costs. Each one makes yet more people too scared to talk freely.

Then there was that other promise – that the laws would "promote . . . tolerance". Instead, they've set us at each other's throat.

Take this case against Nalliah and Scott, pastors with the Catch the Fires pentecostal church.

Without Bracks' laws, these men would have quietly given their church seminar on jihad three years ago to 250 fellow worshippers and none of us would have even known. But the laws changed everything.

They inspired the Equal Opportunity Commission to urge Muslims to complain, and one EOC employee, May Helou, even asked three converts from the Islamic Council of Victoria -- of which she was an official -- to drop in on the pastors' seminar.

So began a three-year prosecution against the pastors that has cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Last December, Judge Higgins finally ruled that Scot in particular had offended by quoting the Koran in a way that got "a response from the audience at various times in the form of laughter". Is laughter now a crime?

Stranger still, he gave 13 examples of how Scot had "made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct", at least eight of which involved him quoting the Koran, and, I believe, accurately. Yes, the Koran indeed authorises men to beat their wives. Yes, it indeed calls for thieving hands to be chopped off.

What did Scot say that was false? The judge listed just two trivial examples, but also said Scot hadn't made clear enough he was giving a literalist reading of the Koran that wasn't mainstream.

Did he? Isn't it? On such points, so deserving of debate, Scot was convicted of stating the wrong opinion.

But if the judgment was strange, so was the penalty.

Scot and Nalliah must now run four big advertisements, costing $70,000, in the Herald Sun and The Age, declaring they've been found guilty of bad-mouthing Muslims.

Oddly, these apologies must reach not just the 250 people who were at their seminar, but 2.5 million newspaper readers who weren't. Odder still, the judge ordered the pastors to never even imply what they'd said about the Koran. They are banned from speaking their mind not only in Victoria, but anywhere in Australia, where others are still free to say what they may not.

Not surprisingly, the pastors say they'd rather go to jail than comply. Let's see if Bracks dares let this happen.

Indonesia: three Christian women arrested for attempting to convert Muslims

"Three Women Arrested, Charged," from Compass Direct, with thanks to Nicolei:

June 23 (Compass) -- A Muslim council has accused three Indonesian women of attempting to convert Muslim children. Dr. Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti and Ratna Bangun were arrested on May 13 and taken to the Indramayu State Prison, where they await trial.

Dr. Zakaria is the pastor of Gereja Kristen Kemah Daud (GKKD), or Christian Church of David’s Camp, located in the small town of Harguelis, Indramayu district, West Java....

After the National Education System Bill became law in June 2003, all public schools were required to provide religious education for children of religious minorities attending their schools (see Compass Direct, “A New Twist on Indonesia’s Controversial Education Bill,” September 12, 2003.)

The school in Babakan Jati had no means of providing Christian education, and therefore asked the GKKD church to provide teachers and an appropriate program. The Christian students would then be evaluated at the end of each semester and given the required marks in their school reports.

The women of the GKKD church set up a “Happy Sunday” program, with Christian songs, games and Bible study for the children. The program was run by Bangun and Pangesti, under the direction of their pastor, Zakaria.

Program Attracts Muslim Attention

After running for approximately 18 months, the number of children attending the program had grown to 40 -- but only 10 were from Christian homes.

The Muslim children attended the popular program with the full consent of their parents. Some of them began to sing Christian songs at school and at home, and this attracted the attention of Islamic elders who, in December 2004, forced the church to close.

The women then continued to run the Happy Sunday program from Pangesti’s home.

On March 26, they organized an Easter bus tour to the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an amusement park in Jakarta. Each of the participating children was given a t-shirt displaying the name of the church and the Star of David logo, so that the teachers could keep track of them during the outing.

The children had also received gifts on other occasions. For example, at Christmas time each child was given a carry bag.

During the tour, one of the children asked for and received a Bible from one of the teachers.

Muslim Complaint Leads to Arrests

As a result, Islamic leaders approached church staff and demanded that Muslim children no longer be allowed to attend the program. A complaint was also made to the Indramayu District Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) council. As a result, the local MUI chairman, K. H. Muzakir Mahmud, made an official complaint to the Indramayu police.

On May 1, a local Islamic leader interviewed four of the Muslim children who had attended the Happy Sunday program and recorded their answers on video.

The children were asked whether the women had ever offered them money, to which they responded, “No.” However all the children said they had received gifts, and one told the interviewer that he had asked for and been given a Bible.

On the evening of May 13, the three women were arrested and taken to the police station for questioning. They were accused of breaching the Child Protection Law, Chapter 86, No. 23/2002. If convicted, they could be sentenced for up to five years and fined 1,000,000,000 rupees ($103,600).

Defaced Koran angers Nashville Muslims

A prime entry from our Too Stupid For Words Department, from the Nashville Tennessean, with thanks to zzzadig. The police didn't respond fast enough? What could they have done if they had gotten there sooner? Put the defaced Qur'an on life support? Pounded its chest and brought it back to life? Come on. Police should leave the scenes of burglaries and fights in order to rush to the scene of a torn-up book?

A Muslim holy book was found yesterday covered with flies, with a torn-out page mashed into what appeared to be feces and burned around the edges.

The Koran was discovered on a doorstep about noon by an Islamic man who lives nearby in the LeNore Garden Apartments complex. He was walking to his home in the community, largely populated by Islamic immigrants from Somalia. A neighbor told police the book had been on the steps since at least 5 p.m. Tuesday...

How did the neighbor know that? And why is this story being written as if what was discovered was a murder victim?

"It's in the heart of every Muslim. We respect and we love (the Koran) more than our families," said Ab-dishakur Ibrahim, imam of the Al-Farooq mosque. "I don't know why anyone would do this. I can't comprehend it."

About a dozen Muslim men waited outside 647 Crutcher St. throughout the afternoon, taking breaks from their watch only to pray and to notify other friends.

Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime and are consulting the FBI. A suspect could be charged with misdemeanor desecration of a venerated object or civil rights intimidation, which can be a felony or misdemeanor charge, said Metro police Capt. Mike Hagar. The district attorney would make a decision whether to pursue criminal charges....

Funny thing: we never heard about that "misdemeanor desecration of a venerated object" when somebody was selling a consecrated host on Ebay. Ebay initially stuck to its guns, insisting that it was a legal sale. Funny how nobody pointed out this little misdemeanor offense.

Here's the delay story: "Islamic leaders disturbed by delayed police response," also from the Tennessean:

Islamic leaders said they notified police six times yesterday before officers arrived at the site of a Koran desecration. Police said the delay was due to an unforeseen number of higher-priority calls, including a burglary and a fight involving an officer.

"We can't pick when the calls come in. We have to take the high priorities as they come," Metro police Capt. Mike Hagar said.

Three men, including two Islamic religious leaders, phoned for police help throughout the afternoon after a first call at about 2:45 p.m. Three hours after that call, and after a Tennessean reporter told the Police Department spokesman of the delay, police arrived.

Spokesman Don Aaron said the communications system had no record of the 2:45 p.m. call and that the first call that the 911 center received came in at 3:46 p.m. No police units were available at that time, he added, so officers were dispatched at 4:53 p.m. But as police headed to the scene, they were pulled off to deal with a break-in that was in progress.

The call about the damaged Koran was entered into the system as a "Code 1," or routine call, and other calls superseded it. Islamic leaders said police apologized to them for the delay, though it was little comfort.

Police "did not respond in an appropriate manner to this incident," Abdulhakim Ali Mohamed, imam of the Islamic Center of Nashville, said to a crowd of Muslims. "Regardless of their excuse, you need to let them know that you, as a citizen, will not accept that."

Turkey: 14-year-old shoots mother in botched 'honor' killing

An older but important piece from The Guardian of Istanbul via the Taipei Times, with thanks to Twostellas:

Birgul Isik had not expected to find her oldest son waiting for her at the bus station when she and four of her children returned from Istanbul to the central Anatolian province of Elazigon on Tuesday.

She certainly wasn't expecting the 14-year-old to pull out a gun as she moved to embrace him."You've disgraced the family," he said, and shot her five times in the head and chest.

She is still in a coma.

For the police who charged the boy with attempted murder, and arrested his father and uncle on suspicion of incitement, it is just another example of the "honor" crimes that result in the deaths of scores if not hundreds of Turkish women each year. Most die for breaking the rules of propriety: they talk to men in the street, they wear the wrong clothes, they insist on education rather than an early arranged marriage.

Isik's crime was to appear on television. It was the fifth time she had fled her violent, bigamous husband. Ignored by the authorities, abandoned by her own parents, who reportedly told her "a woman's place is with her husband," she finally agreed last Friday to appear on a show many have described as Turkey's equivalent of Oprah Winfrey.

You only have to glance at Yasemin Bozkurt's daily program Woman's Voice to see why. There's the live studio audience, the frequent angry exchanges. The themes are familiar too: match-making, runaway children, violent husbands.

A radical break from Turkish TV's traditional mix of local sitcoms and Hollywood fare, the show, like its half-a-dozen competitors, has proved a hit. Despite the early afternoon slot, it regularly rates among the country's top 10. It has also courted controversy from the start.

The presenters see themselves as defenders of women's rights, confronting issues that had previously been hidden away in the silence of family homes. For their critics, they are purveyors of "victimization TV," using people's suffering to improve ratings and advertising revenue.

Of course, lurid TV shows don't cause honor killings. There must be another ingredient.

Christians riot in Holland! Sixteen killed! Oh...wait...

I have been a bit of traveling. In the last two weeks I have given talks in San Antonio, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Washington, DC; and New York City. I spoke, as it happens, to two Christian and two Jewish groups. And the one question I received from each of these groups most often was: Well, what you're saying is true, but all religions have their extremists, don't they? Every religion has inspired violence, hasn't it?

Of course there have been violent people acting in the name of every religion. But the idea that all religions are equal in their capacity to inspire violence is not only false but misleading: it encourages the arrant nonsense that crops up fairly often in the comments section here, and which I encountered with particular virulence from two self-assured young activists in New York (more on that later, as it was a meeting that showed with particular clarity the danger of some common errors of the zeitgeist): the idea that Jerry Falwell is as much or more of a threat to Western notions of freedom and human rights as is bin Laden or Zarqawi.

For a long time I have thought of this as merely paranoid silliness, so patently absurd that it need not be addressed in depth. But more and more I see this is a principal obstacle to our resistance to the genuine jihad threat: it diverts attention, it diverts energy, and it clouds the issue at hand. For ultimately the point of dredging up the Crusades and Falwell is to suggest that Osama and the jihad are phenomena that are just going to crop up in religions (you know how those people are, not clever and sophisticated like us), and there is nothing we can do about that, so let's work through education and economic aid to eradicate the "resentment" that "fundamentalism" feeds off. That's fine, except that the Islamic jihad is not going to be diverted by education or economic aid: it is an ideological construct based on core Islamic principles -- principles which are unique to Islam. If attention is not directed to those principles and the role they play in motivating and abetting violence against innocents, that violence will continue, no matter how much money and schooling is thrown at the problem. We saw how the jihadists exploited tsunami relief to harangue people in Aceh into stricter Islamic observance. We see how the schools in Pakistan are veritable mujahid factories. Nattering about Jerry Falwell and Christian Reconstructionism only diverts us from these and other salient facts.

So here fate and the morning news have sent us a test case: the Dutch bishops are protesting what is clearly a blasphemous TV show from a Christian standpoint. The analogy between the Qur'an desecrations and this show is exact. So sit back and wait for the Christian riots and murders of innocents. And when they do not happen, as they certainly will not, have the courage to examine whether or not this may be because there is something about Islam that is different from Christianity and every other religion -- and Muslims and non-Muslims alike must acknowledge that forthrightly and deal with it honestly, or its ill effects will continue to play out.

"Dutch bishops protest TV program showing Jesus on a leash," from The Universe, with thanks to Mrs. Obelix:

The Dutch bishops have asked a TV station to stop broadcasting a series that shows Jesus on a leash being walked like a dog.

In the program, "God Does Not Exist," six scientists explain why they feel it does not make sense to believe in God.

But the bishops said their criticism was not aimed at the scientists' views; rather it was the absurdist clips woven throughout the show in which Jesus acts like a dog and a naked African woman is seen hanging from a cross.

The bishops, in a joint statement with the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, said the program "insults and provokes many people, especially religious people, and is a negative contribution to the important debate in Dutch society among believers and nonbelievers."
The show's producers said they are offering nonbelievers a forum to explain their views....

A spokesman for the Dutch bishops' conference said it was "hard to believe" that the TV station did not intend to offend anyone.
"They say they want to clarify the position of nonbelievers, but they do so at the cost of the things that are holy and precious for believers," Jan-Willem Wits told Catholic News Service.

"We endorse the freedom of speech, but this freedom has its boundaries and must be in service of the dialogue and better understanding of people," he said.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has called the program "disgusting."

Muntz and van de Wint have a reputation for being provocative. In 2000, they were fired by another broadcasting company after Muntz walked around a Jewish Orthodox neighborhood in Vienna, Austria, dressed up as Adolf Hitler.

Oh, these are lovely fellows.

Saudi Arabia: They're not "infidels." They're the "other."

The participants in the 5th National Forum for Dialogue in Riyadh evidently think it will be better PR for them and the Kingdom of they stop railing against "infidels" and start railing against "the other." But wait! Isn't it the West (as the learned Saidists will tell us), in its quest to demonize the "other," that has created all the tension between Muslims and the Western world? If the Saudis start talking about the filthy "other" who wars against Islam and must be conquered and subjugated, won't that make them guilty of the same thing? And, um, show (once again) the bankruptcy of the whole Saidist thesis? Hmmm.

"Better Understanding With Non-Muslims Stressed," from Arab News, with thanks to Eschwapp:

RIYADH, 24 June 2005 — Participants who gathered in a preliminary session of the 5th National Forum for Dialogue which is to be held in Abha, have asked that the word “infidel” be substituted by “other” in all religious and media speeches in the Kingdom when referring to non-Muslims.

They also called for better upbringing according to universal Islamic teachings of children, where youngsters would learn how to properly deal with “others” and called for religious institutions in the Kingdom to acknowledge their mistakes and correct them in this matter, whether they were in the judicial system or during sermons in mosques. Furthermore, they said that the hatred taught about non-Muslims in the educational system and in the media should stop and called for a definition of “religious standards” on how to deal with non-Muslims.

Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, deputy head of the National Forum for Dialogue who attended Wednesday’s preliminary session in Abha, said that efforts must be exerted for permitting what he called “an open channel” where citizens would express their concerns and discuss matters of interest at all levels.

Dr. Naseef also stressed in his opening speech the importance of how we deal with others and others’ feelings about us. He also said it was important to know our shortcomings in our dealing with others, adding that it was equally important to improve the way we deal with others, no matter where they were or where they come from.

Abha’s preliminary session to the 5th National Forum for Dialogue under the title “We and the others” which will be held in several months time in the same city, was attended by some 50 male and female participants from different educational backgrounds, among which were religious scholars, thinkers, young men and women, and local residents.

Discussions held by the participants also shed light on the need to define who the “other” was before engaging in a dialogue with the other party.

One participant said that “before engaging in any conversation with another party, it is important to know what the other party knows about us and how he thinks about us,” adding that it was important to “reconstruct society and provide the chance for its citizens to educate themselves in a way that would be beneficial to everyone on how to deal with others.”...

Yet another participant, Dr. Ali Al-Moussa, said that many Saudis have used religious speech to promote their own ideas of rhetoric and hatred toward others, especially since many of them have not been educated well enough in religion and tend to abuse the term “sheikh” to spread wrong messages in the community.

Well, certainly the wrong messages are getting out. But this doesn't seem to have been any accident, and has happened at the highest levels. We have documented many instances here of hatred and vitriol against the "other" being featured on official Saudi TV. Will that change? I doubt it.

Australia: Muslim books of hate sold

Dagnabbit, those fiendish Christian Reconstructionists are at it again, peddling their hate literature (no doubt featuring sentiments such as "Stone the Muslims!") right out in the open in Melbourne, Australia. What's that? Islamic jihadists? Hate material sold in a mosque? Oh! Well, that's because they are poor and disenfranchised, you see. It's their culture. How dare you impose your values on them!

From the Herald Sun, with thanks to Brian Holloway:

LITERATURE filled with hatred of Christians, Jews and non-Muslims is being sold at a mosque near a Melbourne home raided by ASIO. Books sold at the store attached to the Brunswick mosque tell Muslims they should "hate and take as enemies" non-Muslims, reject Jews and Christians, and learn to hate in order to properly love Allah.

The texts say Muslims should learn military tactics and suggest that if a person speaks ill of Islam it is acceptable to kill them.

They urge Muslims to strike back against "the barbaric onslaught from their enemies -- the Jews, Christians, atheists, secularists and others".

Pages are devoted to legitimising episodes of violence against Jews who insult Islam.

Note well how they use traditions of Muhammad to justify all this:

"A Jewish woman used to abuse the Prophet and disparage him. A man strangled her till she died. The Apostle of Allah declared that no recompense was payable for her blood," one book recounts.

A similar example is given of a man killing the mother of his two children because she "disparaged the Prophet"; he also was declared clear of any crime.

The article doesn't tell you, but the following are passages from the Qur'an. The first is 3:119; the second is 5:51:

"When they (non-Muslims) meet you, they say, 'We believe', but when they are alone, out of frustration and rage, they bite off the tips of their fingers because of you," one says.

"O you who believe! Do not take the Jews (Yahood) and Christians (Nasara) for friends (Awliyaa). They are Awliyaa to each other. And the one among you that turns to them is one of them."

Readers are instructed by the books not to feel compassion for non-Muslims, not to trust them, and not to speak well of them.

One book says faithful Muslims should learn military tactics.

Yes, just like the military maneuvers they're running through today down at the local Methodist church.

Also, as one might expect, one publication quotes the legendary forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Unreal for 30 Days: A "documentary" on Islam tells a preconceived story

Debbie Schlussel gives us an update on the egregious Morgan Spurlock in the OpinionJournal (thanks to all who sent this in):

Morgan Spurlock got famous from his Oscar-nominated documentary "Super Size Me." He ingested big McDonald's meals three times a day for 30 days, then blamed McDonald's for his bloated body and dodgy health. Now he's using his 30-day premise to get Americans to ingest his version of radical Islam on cable's FX Network.

Last year, I received a request to appear on Mr. Spurlock's new reality show, "30 Days." The episode for which I was being recruited, "Inside an American Muslim Family," airs next Wednesday. It features Mr. Spurlock's childhood friend from West Virginia, David Stacy, spending 30 days "living as a Muslim" in the Detroit area.

While Mr. Spurlock is often referred to as a journalist, and touts "30 Days" as a "documentary," the outcome of the show was decided before production began. A show summary sent to me before taping said: "This process aims to deconstruct common misconceptions and stereotypes. . . . Our character will learn firsthand about Islam and the daily issues that . . . Muslims in America face today. The viewers will witness our character emerge from the immersion situation with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the Muslim-American experience. . . . The potential is great for this program to enlighten a national television audience about the Muslim American experience and increase their compassion, understanding and support."

And indeed, The Wall Street Journal's own Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing about the show last week from a preview tape, noted that Mr. Stacy, by the end of his 30 days, "has become so enlightened that he is pronouncing, if incomprehensibly, on the meaning of Islam, his knowledge of the Quran, the real definition of jihad."

I asked the show's executive producers--all of whom worked on "The Awful Truth With Michael Moore," a cable TV show--how this could be a documentary when they had decided the outcome in advance. Wasn't it possible that Mr. Stacy would come out seeing that there isn't Islamophobia to the extent that the Muslim community claims? Might he see that there is disturbingly strong support in the Detroit-area Islamic community for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah--a fact regularly documented even in the normally pliant Detroit media?
No, the producers told me. "Morgan wants the show to demonstrate to America that we are Islamophobic and that 9/11's biggest victims are Muslims."

Read it all. Don't fail to do so. Don't make me come to your house and give you a quiz, now.

UK soccer team drops sponsor logo to avoid offending Muslims

Clash of civilizations alert. The sponsor doesn't mind, and the shirts with the logo are still available. But this is an indication of the kind of demands that are beginning to be made, and will continue to be made, and will ratchet steadily up. "Rangers drop Carling shirt logo for its Muslim supporters," from the Evening Times, with thanks to Stephen:

RANGERS have dropped the Carling logo from their replica shirts - for Muslim fans.

The club said it would sell unbranded tops to supporters who don't want to advertise beer on their chests.

The move comes after complaints from Muslims whose religion prohibits anything that promotes drinking.

Delighted fan Mansoor Ali, 24, said: "I really like the new Rangers top and want to buy one this summer, but as a Muslim I have a duty to follow Islamic teachings.

"So I am really looking forward to wearing a Rangers shirt with pride - and not associating myself with alcohol."

Mansoor has supported Rangers since he was five.

As a boy his dad refused to buy him a Rangers top because of the club's shirt sponsorship deal with McEwan's lager.

Now the MCB wants other teams to follow suit:

The Muslim Association of Britain today called on Celtic to follow Rangers' example - but said it was still worried about the sponsorship deal, struck by the Old Firm in 2003.

A spokesman said: "There is a wider issue about whether it is responsible for the teams to be promoting alcohol in this way, though Rangers' move is a welcome one.

"Full credit to the fans for taking up the issue with the clubs, and we hope that Celtic will also look after their Muslim following."

Celtic-mad Suleyman Dar wants the new Hoops top - but, like Mr Ali, doesn't feel comfortable advertising beer. He said: "I am still wearing an old NTL-sponsored top.

"It's a real shame because I would like to wear the latest strip."

A spokeswoman for Rangers said: "We will have a limited number of Rangers jerseys without the Carling logo available to purchase before the beginning of the season."

Coors Brewing, the company that owns the Carling brand, said: "This won't be a problem."

Fitzgerald: Let's misbehave

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald evokes the great Cole Porter in reflecting on the dhimmi stance recently taken by the Venice Biennale:

Statues, like paintings of any living creature, are forbidden in Islam. If the Bamiyan Buddhas managed for centuries to survive in Islam, it was only because the technical wherewithal was lacking. Once the Taliban acquired enough Western-produced explosives, they could finish the job.

A little booklet, possibly the most pathetic guide to an art museum ever published, is the "Guide to the Kabul Museum." I have a copy, published in 1964, long before the Taliban arrived on the scene to see Islamic justice done. There are a few dozen pages, a handful of photographs. It is clear that the ancient Greco-Buddhist civilization of Afghanistan, and of all other non-Islamic civilizations, were reduced mostly to rubble -- the flying rubble that we see whenever we see pictures of Afghanistan.

For in Islam, the pre-Islamic or non-Islamic artifacts are of no interest, no valuable. They can be destroyed, they should be destroyed. The tens of thousands of Hindu temples destroyed by the Muslim invaders, a partial list of which was compiled by Sita Ram Goel, are perhaps the best-known example. But what of everything that might have gone into that Kabul Museum but never made it?

The greatest destruction of art works in human history is that wrought by Muslim conquerors on the non-Muslim lands and peoples they invaded, conquered, and subjugated.

What will happen in Europe if it is islamized? If there are already people removing statues, however banal those statues may be, from art expositions now, what will happen in 10 years? In 20 years? Already statues have been vandalized or destroyed by Muslims -- in the Piazza del Popolo, and in a church in northern France (a statue of Mary and Jesus). Muslims have been recorded discussing their plans to destroy a celebrated fresco in Bologna that depicted Muhammad in Hell. What else is happening, and is being suppressed from us by worried European governments, whose elites, having been responsible for permitting millions of what are clearly enemy aliens, a classic fifth column, behind our own lines, cannot bring themselves to recognize the problem, and instead are intent on hiding the full truth from their own populations -- populations that are getting fed up?

In France, one out of every three babies born is now a Muslim. In 20 years, one out of every three 20-year-olds will, therefore, be a Muslim. What is to be done? Anything? Nothing?

In 1946, the most advanced and tolerant government in Central or Eastern Europe, a model of right-thinking, the government of Czechoslovakia, issued the Benes Decree. By that decree, because of their actions in the recent war (taking the enemy's side) 3 million ethnic Germans (many, but not all, had been supporters of Hitler and Deutschtum) were expelled from lands that had been populated by ethnic Germans for 600 years. No one in the Western world dropped a tear or uttered a protest. Everyone understood. Everyone still understands today, save for a handful of German revanshisty (as they used to be called in Krokodil cartoons).

When will the Western world begin to realize it faces a mortal threat, small now but growing, and growing precisely to the extent that its Muslim population grows, learns the local languages, learns to present itself with all the cunning suavity of Tariq Ramadan, to ensure the constant confusion and fear that is easy to spread, apparently, among Infidels -- all too willing to deny the evidence of their senses.

The Venice Biennale has long been one of those places that prides itself on its daring, its refusal to kowtow to the narrow-mindedness of entirely imaginary bourgeois prejudices. It has long been the butt of jokes for the kind of stuff it has sometimes put on display.

The most famous mocking of the Biennale occurs not in some ArtForum magazine, or one of those that Catherine M. (of "La vie sexuelle de..." fame) ran or runs in Paris, but rather on the silver screen. In "Le vacanze intelligenti" Alberto Sordi, playing a Roman pizza-maker, and his plump wife are sent off by their presumptuous three children (who pay for the trip) on a kind of cultural tour, when all they really want is to lie around and stuff themselves (as, in the end, they do). Among the most memorable scenes is one at the Biennale, where the fat wife slumps, exhausted, in a chair. As she sleeps, a guide comes by with his docile herd of visitors to the exhibition, and they stand solemnly in front of the dead-to-the-world wife, as he discusses her as one more of the art objects to be found.

So here we are, sans Sordi, sans wife, sans anything humorous at all. And the Biennale, with all those people -- the same kind who take the contents of the Saatchi collection, or that of Eli Broad, seriously -- who are delighted to mock, oh -- the Americans, or the benighted Vatican, or some such obvious target. But the mere hint that "Muslims" might be offended -- ah, those "tolerant" and "peaceful" Muslims we hear so much about -- and this piece must be quickly taken away.

Let no one, ever again, in the so-called Art World start prating about "transgressive" art. They are complete cowards when it comes to any real transgression, the real misbehavior -- in this case, the greatest transgression or misbehavior in the Western world is to do anything, anything, that might offend Muslims.

Well, let's misbehave.

Pro-Rafsanjani forces organizing in the US

News from www.iran.org:

Jun 22: The pro-Rafsanjani forces are organizing in the United States, attempting to sway public opinion and the media into believing the legitimacy of the presidential election farce. It’s not surprising that they are counting on the support of the Left in America.

Please see the press release below for more details.

FDI believes this current “election” in Iran is more aptly termed a “selection,” since all eight candidates allowed to run (seven finally appeared on the ballot last Friday) were vetted and approved by the Islamic fundamentalist Council of Guardians. None of the selected candidates supports dismantling absolute clerical rule (Velayat-e faghih) or the establishment of a secular government.

Iranian-American organizations may want to spread the word among their own base and contacts of this latest attempt to spread pro-regime propaganda in the United States.

+++

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/newsprint.cgi?file=/news2005/0620-23.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JUNE 20, 2005, 11:18 AM
CONTACT: Institute for Public Accuracy
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Iran at a Big Crossroads

WASHINGTON - June 20 -

The runoff election in Iran's presidential race, coming up this Friday, has profound implications for the future.

€ SIMIN ROYANIAN, ciwhr@yahoo.com
Royanian is co-founder of Women for Peace and Justice in Iran. She said today: "President Bush had proclaimed the elections in Iran undemocratic and a hoax from the beginning. ... Mr. Bush, by claiming that the Islamic Republic has no legitimacy, undermined the attempts of the reformist candidates at opening the possibility of normalization of relations. The people of Iran demonstrated that they are involved in deciding their destiny and they are a force to be reckoned with. The fact that the votes were spread among the candidates, necessitating a runoff, is another sign that the voters were not forced into voting for one pre-selected candidate. The result of the runoff election next Friday is very important since the frontrunner Rafsanjani promotes more liberalization and attempts to normalize U.S./Iran relations, while the second candidate represents the hardliners with no interest in open dialogue."

€ KAVEH EHSANI, kavehehsani@yahoo.com, http://www.merip.org
Ehsani is a research scholar at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is on the editorial boards of Middle East Report and Goft-o-gu (Dialogue) journal in Iran, and he is the author of a number of articles about Iran. Ehsani said today: "Despite some irregularities the election results in Iran probably show an accurate map of the political opinion in the country. These results show that conservative forces have managed to put together an effective nationwide political machine that consistently delivers voters. However, by the same token, the conservative vote has a maximum ceiling. As reformers, moderate conservatives, and formerly apathetic voters flock to support Rafsanjani against a 'fundamentalist' alternative, chances are that Rafsanjani will win with a strong hand, by posing as the savior of the nation against the dual threats of domestic extremism, and an effective international statesman able to neutralize the external military threats of the United States."

€ NORMAN SOLOMON, norman@accuracy.org, http://www.normansolomon.com
Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, was in Tehran for 10 days until yesterday. He spoke with hundreds of Iranians spanning the political and economic spectrum, including voters, reform activists, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the front-running presidential candidate. Solomon said today: "The Bush administration has been eager to dismiss the Iranian presidential election as meaningless, even though the election has included significant elements of democracy. The White House seems to be primarily interested in setting an agenda for military confrontation." Solomon is the author of the new book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."

New York : "Your terrorists are our heroes"

Last night I spoke at the New York Tolerance Center in Manhattan -- ironically enough, under protection from the NYPD after a death threat. Some New Yorkers, apparently, were not interested in tolerating my calling attention to the activities and goals of the global jihad network.

Irony was heaped on irony when I was confronted after the talk by a couple of self-righteous young people who informed me that America is the real global terrorist threat, and that I should be just as concerned about Jerry Falwell as about somebody like Ayatollah Sistani, whose equation of unbelievers as unclean in the same sense as dogs, pigs, and excrement I had made reference to during the question and answer period. I will be writing more about my exchange with this pair, since it was indicative of some prevailing attitudes that are important to address. But I mention them in this connection because when I saw this New York Observer article, "Local Insurgents: ‘Islamic Thinkers’ Menace Gay N.Y.," (thanks to JP for the link), I thought of them again: they're anxious to make an equation between Christian and Muslim extremists, while glossing over the fact that Falwell and others whom they like to mention do not call for the deaths of homosexuals, while these people do. This demonstrates the bankruptcy and, ultimately, the danger of such moral equivalence arguments, which are nonetheless ubiquitous today in discussions of Islamic terrorism. But their ultimate effect is to divert attention away from those who are actually committing violence and threatening to do so, and shifting it to others who do not commit or preach violence, as well as to people like me who are merely calling attention to the violence, hatred, and intolerance that is daily manifested by adherents of the jihad ideology.

On the evening of July 11, 2004, Kristine Withers walked down 37th Avenue, a main drag in Jackson Heights, Queens, and passed what had become a familiar sight: a group of tables set up on the sidewalk by the Islamic Thinkers Society, a local group of militant Islamists. On the tables, copies of the Koran and books espousing the group’s strict religious beliefs shared space with tracts on Zionism, pamphlets on the dangers of homosexuality, and signs bearing messages like "Your Terrorists Are Our Heroes."

Ms. Withers, who identifies herself as a lesbian and a political conservative, was offended by the group’s message. The Islamic Thinkers Society had become a regular feature at local gay-pride parades, where they’ve called for the castration and death of gay men, according to several witnesses who spoke to The Observer. But Ms. Withers said it was as much the anti-American messages as the anti-gay ones that riled her up.

"To me, it’s synonymous with the Nazis recruiting on 42nd Street during World War II," she said of her antagonists.

So, in another installment of the then-yearlong series of hostile exchanges between her and the group, she decided to do something. At one point in the exchange, she told the dozen or so bearded young men who make up the group that the prophet Muhammad was a pedophile. They called her a "Christian bitch," by her account. Then she knocked over a sign and stepped on it. Two young bearded men, members of the group, pulled the sign out from under her, sending her flying to the ground.

Soon, police arrived and took a statement from Mohamed Bahi, a student at Queens College who told The Observer that he is not a member of the group. Ms. Withers was charged with incitement to riot and four other counts. Queens District Attorney Richard Brown assigned the case to the unit of his office that handles bias crimes, though Ms. Withers argued that the Queens District Attorney was going after the wrong person for bias.

The Islamic Thinkers Society wouldn’t answer questions about the confrontation, but members of the group relived their confrontations with Ms. Withers on their password-protected Web site, hundreds of pages of which were provided to The Observer by the SITE Institute in Washington, which monitors online extremist groups. In their discussions, group members referred to Ms. Withers as "it" and a "dirty she-male."

"When ‘it’ came back with fists up and ready for action, it got what it asked for," wrote the site’s administrator, who goes by the name "Islamic Revival" and was apparently among the people on the scene. He described "a couple of slaps and snuffs in the face and a few other hits by a brother NOT from us but a brother who sells Islamic Books near us."

"They said what they said," explained Patrick Clark, a spokesman for Mr. Brown, of the Islamic Thinkers’ anti-gay statements. "But there’s also evidence to indicate that there was a crime that occurred, and that the defendant stomped on merchandise and religious artifacts and interrupted the prayer service and shouted epithets."

The case has since been resolved: Ms. Withers pled guilty this year and enrolled in anger-management classes, she told The Observer, to avoid the expense of a lawyer.

The dispute between an irascible lesbian conservative from Queens and a militant new group well on the fringes of the city’s Muslim community might appear to be a marginal conflict. But to New York’s gays and to some of its Muslim leaders, the scene in Jackson Heights bears a worrying similarity to communal conflicts that are challenging the idea of tolerance across Europe, with particular flashpoints in Holland and Scandinavia. There, young immigrants and the children of immigrants have been drawn to a more radical Islamic ideology than that of their parents. On the extreme fringes, these young men have committed acts of violence against Jews and gays, and in a case that shocked Europe, one young Dutchman of Moroccan origin murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in an Amsterdam street.

"It’s almost a cliché to define it like this, but in the end it’s a question of whether you can tolerate intolerance," said Leon de Winter, a Dutch novelist who has written on the Van Gogh murder. "We are defending the openness, the diversity of this society against tendencies from other cultures, in which this kind of openness which we celebrate is being regarded as a threat."

In this conflict, gays have become canaries in the ideological coal mine. Western liberals have tended to cut Muslim groups slack on their ideological pronouncements, in part out of sympathy with some of their causes—the insurgencies in Chechnya and the Middle East, for example—and in part out of a sense that anti-Muslim sentiment in the West is a more pressing problem than anything Muslims themselves might do.

But the rise of gay bashing on European streets has pushed the question of tolerance a step further and led some to question their reflexive defense of a put-upon minority. It has also opened up a heated debate within the gay community, and among liberals in general, over whether the proliferation of intolerant strains of Islam requires liberals in the West to take a harder line on issues like immigration and assimilation.

For some conservative intellectuals, rising anti-gay violence on the streets of Amsterdam, for example, comes as a kind of vindication.

"For liberals, the violent anti-gay hostility of their fundamentalist Muslim allies may be the first thing that really makes them realize they’re not on the same page," said the conservative gay writer Bruce Bawer, who lives in Oslo, and who is writing a book entitled While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within.

Others argue that the rise of conservative Islam in Europe is, in part, a reaction to Europe’s inability to integrate its immigrant populations. By this argument, America is different, given its openness to newcomers and its different set of Muslim immigrants.

"American Muslims are far better educated and far richer than average," said Muqtedar Khan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, who dismissed the Islamic Thinkers and their ilk as "small pockets of angry youth."

But here in New York, perhaps the most European of American cities in its traditional tolerance, some disturbing signs have emerged on the line between gay and Muslim communities. The Islamic Thinkers’ Web site is full of suggestions of anti-gay violence: "Man I can’t stop thinking: shoot the qawm of Lut," wrote one of the site’s moderators on May 20, using a Koranic reference to the story of Lot and Sodom....

The Islamic Thinkers, meanwhile, are not too new to American politics to play another familiar card: victimhood.

The group declined to respond to requests from a reporter to discuss their beliefs and their conflict with Ms. Withers. Instead, the group posted to its Web site (www.islamicthinkers.com) an e-mail from The Observer and warned that "an article would be published to deliberately misrepresent Islamic Thinkers Society and its views."

Later, the group posted a similar response to a forthcoming New York Times article: "Again and again, the Muslims of Islamic Thinkers Society have denied any interviews to the media," the Web site read. "Due to the unavailability of any direct source of information, even the reputable media outlets have turned into tabloids. The goal of the media is to suppress Muslims who stand up for injustice is vindicated even more now."

Even members of the Muslim community who have had limited interactions with the Islamic Thinkers are unsure of their origins or their size. The regular group, which spends weekend afternoons on that Jackson Heights street corner, is composed of about a dozen young Muslims, most of them men, some in traditional dress. Some of the group’s members are apparently American-born, and some are converts to Islam.

The Islamic Thinkers gained national notoriety earlier this year when they posted a video on the Internet—titled "Operation Desecrate American Flag"—that depicted them stomping an American flag into the curb and shouting that the "flag represents the Crusader war on Islam headed by the United State government."

The group has also become a fixture at Queens gay events, holding signs with messages like "Allah Will Destroy Nations That Allow Homosexuality" and "Today: Homosexuality; Tomorrow: Pedophilia; What’s Next? Bestiality?" at the borough’s Pride Parade, which runs through Jackson Heights. Last year, screaming matches erupted between the two sides; this year, police kept them apart.

"Somebody in the crowd started shouting ‘Go back to Osama bin Laden!’ or whatever, and these guys started shouting back," recalled Ayaz Ahmed, a gay Pakistani Muslim who attended this year’s parade. "I was like, ‘Oh, my God—what’s happening here?’"

But even some American Muslim groups who maintain that Islam forbids homosexuality have little time for the Islamic Thinkers. The executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Wissam Nasr, said the group’s style and the destruction of an American flag have caused "dismay" in the city’s Muslim community. The draft of a letter to the Islamic Thinkers, he added, is circulating among religious and communal leaders, and it tells the group: "You really have to know the disapproval that you’re meeting in the Muslim community."…

Other community groups were less willing to distance themselves from the Islamic Thinkers.

Adem Carroll of the Queens-based Islamic Circle of North America, for instance, said that the group was "not my cup of tea," but described it as "a sign of the alienation and anger that’s in the community, adding: "I think the approach of the Bush administration does not help.

"If you’re quoting me, I would hope that whatever I say doesn’t sound like I’m condemning them," Mr. Carroll concluded.

Logged and noted, Mr. Carroll.

UK: Religious hate law revolt fails

From the BBC, with thanks to M.A.

The government has survived a backbench revolt over its plans for a new law to ban the incitement to religious hatred.

An amendment from a coalition of Tory and Lib Dem MPs to block the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill failed by 303 votes to 246, giving a majority of 57.

Critics, including comic actor Rowan Atkinson, say the measure will limit freedom of expression and stop them from telling religious jokes.

But Home Secretary Charles Clarke says the bill protects "people not faiths".

The bill received a second reading by 303 votes to 247 - a government majority of 56 - and will now go on to its committee stage...

Fallaci: "The trial is nothing else but a demonstration that everything I've written is true"

From the Wall Street Journal, "Prophet of Decline: An interview with Oriana Fallaci"

NEW YORK--Oriana Fallaci faces jail. In her mid-70s, stricken with a cancer that, for the moment, permits only the consumption of liquids--so yes, we drank champagne in the course of a three-hour interview--one of the most renowned journalists of the modern era has been indicted by a judge in her native Italy under provisions of the Italian Penal Code which proscribe the "vilipendio," or "vilification," of "any religion admitted by the state."

In her case, the religion deemed vilified is Islam, and the vilification was perpetrated, apparently, in a book she wrote last year--and which has sold many more than a million copies all over Europe--called "The Force of Reason." Its astringent thesis is that the Old Continent is on the verge of becoming a dominion of Islam, and that the people of the West have surrendered themselves fecklessly to the "sons of Allah." So in a nutshell, Oriana Fallaci faces up to two years' imprisonment for her beliefs--which is one reason why she has chosen to stay put in New York. Let us give thanks for the First Amendment...

"When I was given the news," Ms. Fallaci says of her recent indictment, "I laughed. Bitterly, of course, but I laughed. No amusement, no surprise, because the trial is nothing else but a demonstration that everything I've written is true." An activist judge in Bergamo, in northern Italy, took it upon himself to admit a complaint against Ms. Fallaci that even the local prosecutors would not touch. The complainant, one Adel Smith--who, despite his name, is Muslim, and an incendiary public provocateur to boot--has a history of anti-Fallaci crankiness, and is widely believed to be behind the publication of a pamphlet, "Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci," which exhorts Muslims to "eliminate" her. (Ironically, Mr. Smith, too, faces the peculiar charge of vilipendio against religion--Roman Catholicism in his case--after he described the Catholic Church as "a criminal organization" on television. Two years ago, he made news in Italy by filing suit for the removal of crucifixes from the walls of all public-school classrooms, and also, allegedly, for flinging a crucifix out of the window of a hospital room where his mother was being treated. "My mother will not die in a room where there is a crucifix," he said, according to hospital officials.)
Ms. Fallaci speaks in a passionate growl: "Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty." Such words--"invaders," "invasion," "colony," "Eurabia"--are deeply, immensely, Politically Incorrect; and one is tempted to believe that it is her tone, her vocabulary, and not necessarily her substance or basic message, that has attracted the ire of the judge in Bergamo (and has made her so radioactive in the eyes of Europe's cultural elites).

"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder," the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote, and these words could certainly be Ms. Fallaci's. She is in a black gloom about Europe and its future: "The increased presence of Muslims in Italy, and in Europe, is directly proportional to our loss of freedom." There is about her a touch of Oswald Spengler, the German philosopher and prophet of decline, as well as a flavor of Samuel Huntington and his clash of civilizations. But above all there is pessimism, pure and unashamed. When I ask her what "solution" there might be to prevent the European collapse of which she speaks, Ms. Fallaci flares up like a lit match. "How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did?" She then says "Phwah, phwah," and gestures at slashing her wrists. "He committed suicide!" Seneca was accused of being involved in a plot to murder the emperor Nero. Without a trial, he was ordered by Nero to kill himself. One senses that Ms. Fallaci sees in Islam the shadow of Nero. "What could Seneca do?" she asks, with a discernible shudder. "He knew it would end that way--with the fall of the Roman Empire. But he could do nothing."...

"I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." I had asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion."...

Read it all.

Queens Muslim Group Says It Opposes Violence, and America

From the New Duranty Times, with thanks to all who sent this in.

The young Muslim men, with beards and bullhorns, work the streets of Jackson Heights on the weekends. They surface at parades and protests around the city, loudly declaring America the enemy and advocating for an Islamic state. Several weeks ago, they publicly tore up an American flag as payback for the reported desecration of the Koran at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Their own videos of violence against Muslims, one with the title "Muslim Massacres," have recently appeared on Queens Public Television.

In the annals of New York City's political outspokenness and fringe-group culture, the Islamic Thinkers Society may seem unremarkable at first glance. But after 9/11, in the city most damaged and unsettled by the terrorist attacks, the emergence of this young, however limited, Muslim-American voice is strikingly bold. In its fliers and on its Web site, the group describes itself as an "intellectual and political nonviolent organization," but it bears a strong resemblance to Islamist movements in England that try to unite Muslims by inciting anger...

The group's spokesman, Ariful Islam, said he was a 21-year-old student at La Guardia Community College who came to Queens from Bangladesh when he was 8. He said the group's purpose was promoting unity among Muslims and that the F.B.I. had been monitoring it for two years. The F.B.I. would not comment.

"What they're worried about is, are we recruiting for jihad," Mr. Islam said. "Through our past couple of years we have never recruited anyone to go to a foreign land. We have always made that clear through our activities. We have always stressed nonviolent means. However, that does not mean that we don't address American foreign policy, and we strongly disagree with their policies."

After years of quietly ignoring the group, the city's Muslim leaders began to speak out against it this week after reports of the flag desecration. Imams, activists and other leaders worry that the group is misrepresenting Islam, sending a negative message to Muslim youths and damaging a hard-earned, fragile trust between the Muslim community and those in law enforcement...

Phares: What Happened in Lebanon's Elections?

Walid Phares writes in FrontPage about why the elections in Lebanon might not be all they're cracked up to be, with thanks to EPG.

The last round of legislative elections ended June 19 in North Lebanon, completing a month-long process that gave the country a new assembly of 128 members. No violence marred the four rounds of voting; however, charges of corruption were raised, and many in the West, including those within the circles that supported the "Cedar Revolution," are struggling to understand the results. Any honest observer must admit Lebanon’s politics are complex. Unfortunately, the simple analysis of the elections that the media offers is not completely accurate...

The international media has reported the same basic analysis about the elections: according to election returns and party affiliations, the "Lebanese national opposition," led by Saadeddine Hariri carried 72 seats, a clear majority, to form the next Lebanese government. Hariri’s allies include the Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt (14 seats), the Lebanese Forces Party of jailed leader Samir Geagea (6 seats), and the Qornet Shehwan grouping (3 seats). According to this analysis, the "opposition" to the present Syrian-dominated government won the election, which therefore shifted the Lebanese to a moderate, pro-Western sphere.

This analysis is based on political reports out of Lebanon since the assassination in February of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, reports which included the million-plus people who flocked to downtown Beirut on March 14 to demand their independence from Syria. In the minds of viewers and governments around the world, those who led the protests that day are the heirs to a free, democratic Lebanon. Hence, Hariri, the son of the assassinated leader, and Jumblatt were named the leaders of the anti-Syrian movement. All other groups participating in the march were defined as followers. When Hariri’s election lists scored a majority in parliament, the perception was that the anti-Syrians had won...

Another, more complete analysis of the Lebanese elections, however, paints a different picture. The Lebanese political system is a labyrinth, notorious for its complexities, and one that is often oversimplified by observers or redrawn to match accepted worldviews. It is still, in fact, unclear whether the emerging parliamentary alliance will deliver democracy and keep Syria at bay...

Read it all.

Australia: Pastor prefers jail over apology

Update on the infamous Australian Religious Vilification case. Danny Nalliah stands firm as reported in the Herald Sun, with thanks to all who sent this in.

A CHRISTIAN pastor who has been ordered to apologise for vilifying Muslims says he will go to jail rather than say sorry for his comments.

Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) deputy president Michael Higgins ordered two pastors of an evangelical order, Catch the Fire Ministry, to apologise for comments they made in a speech, on a website and in a newsletter.

In a landmark ruling, the tribunal found Muslims were vilified by claims that Muslims were training to take over Australia, encouraging domestic violence and that Islam was an inherently violent religion.

The case was the first to be heard by VCAT since the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act took effect in Victoria at the start of 2002.

Outside the tribunal, Danny Nalliah – one of the pastors taken to VCAT by the Islamic Council – described himself as a martyr and said he would go to jail before apologising.

"Right from the inception, we have said that this law is a foul law, this law is not a law which brings unity," Pastor Nalliah said.

"It causes disunity and as far as we are concerned right from the beginning we have stated we will not apologise.

"We will go to prison for standing for the truth and not sacrifice our freedom and freedom to speak."

He said the Evangelical group had nothing against Muslims and its comments were taken out of context.

Judge Higgins said an apology was "appropriate" as the intention of the Victorian legislation was to protect freedom of speech, while placing limits on such freedom by prohibiting the vilification of persons or classes of persons...

I see, they are "protecting" freedom of speech by limiting freedom of speech...Thank heaven for the first amendment to the US Constitution!

Malkin: Debunking another Gitmo myth

Michelle Malkin writes in Townhall:

Newsweek. Amnesty International. Jimmy Carter. Dick Durbin. The Guantanamo Bay-bashing continues.

In a rant published Tuesday, the Minnesota Star Tribune actually castigated Durbin for "caving in" on his slanderous remarks comparing U.S. treatment of detainees at Gitmo to torture and genocide by Nazis, Soviets and Pol Pot. The paper wrote that Durbin shouldn't have apologized and decried the entire operation as a "hellhole."...

And now, the facts:

Every single detainee currently being held at Guantanamo Bay has received a hearing before a military tribunal. Every one. As a result of those hearings, more than three dozen Gitmo detainees have been released. The hearings, called "Combatant Status Review Tribunals," are held before a board of officers, and permit the detainees to contest the facts on which their classification as "enemy combatants" is based.

Gitmo-bashers attack the Bush administration's failure to abide by the Geneva Conventions. But as legal analysts Lee Casey and Darin Bartram told me, "the status hearings are, in fact, fully comparable to the 'Article V' hearings required by the Geneva Conventions, in situations where those treaties apply, and are also fully consistent with the Supreme Court's 2004 decision in the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case."

Treating foreign terrorists like American shoplifters -- with full access to civilian lawyers, classified intelligence, and all the attendant rights of a normal jury trial -- is a surefire recipe for another 9/11. That is why the Bush administration fought so hard to erect an alternative tribunal system -- long established in wartime -- in the first place...

Kahn: When “academic freedom” justifies academic terror

Tzvi Kahn writes in The American Thinker:

According to the logic of a recent report issued by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), denying accused criminals a job constitutes an unethical breach of “academic freedom.” So, if Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had doctorates and respectable publication records, could they receive teaching positions at an American university? More to the point, what about Mohammed Yousry, an adjunct lecturer in Middle East studies at York College of the City University of New York (CUNY), a person accused of providing material support to a terrorist organization?

After all, in America’s criminal justice system, alleged offenders are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law – and bin Laden and Hussein have yet to receive fair and open trials. Until then, if their academic records were otherwise sterling, a university may not penalize professors on grounds ostensibly unrelated to their scholarship or teaching. Such grounds, according to the reasoning of the AAUP report, include alleged support of a terrorist organization aiming to slaughter the very students the professor teaches.
The AAUP issued its report following Yousry’s federal indictment in April 2002. He served as the translator for attorney Lynne Stewart and her former client Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in October 1995 of masterminding the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and of plotting to bomb other New York City landmarks, including the United Nations, New York’s FBI building, and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.

Presently serving a sentence of life imprisonment, Abdel Rahman was the leader of the Islamic Group (IG), or al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, a terrorist organization based in Egypt seeking to destroy Israel and America and to overthrow the Egyptian government and replace it with a more Islamic state. According to federal prosecutors, Abdel Rahman once released a statement from prison, in reference to America, calling upon “Muslims everywhere” to “dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes, kill them on land, at sea, and in the air.” On November 17, 1997, six terrorists affiliated with the IG murdered fifty-eight tourists in Luxor, Egypt, hoping to pressure the American government to release Abdel Rahman.

In 2002 Yousry and Stewart were charged with knowingly transmitting violent statements of Abdel Rahman to his followers worldwide. In so doing, they violated Special Administrative Measures (SAM) instituted by the Bureau of Prisons that limited Abdel Rahman’s access to the media in order to prevent him from addressing his terrorist followers. But in September 1999, with the help of Yousry and Stewart, Abdel Rahman issued a statement from prison ordering the IG to end its previously declared cease-fire against the Egyptian government after Egyptian officials conducted a raid in Cairo that resulted in the deaths of four IG members.

Yousry and Stewart were convicted in February 2005 on all counts, including conspiracy, defrauding the government, and providing material support to a terrorist organization. They are presently free on bail pending their sentencing in July.

What, then, raised the ire of the AAUP? When news of the indictment became known, CUNY administrators responded by suspending Yousry with pay for the duration of the spring 2002 term. CUNY then effectively fired him by declining to reappoint him to teach as an adjunct in subsequent semesters.

According to the AAUP report, entitled “Academic Freedom and Tenure: City University of New York,” in terminating Yousry, CUNY administrators violated a host of procedures regarding due process, faculty peer review, and open communication that govern the appointment of adjunct instructors in academia, an allegation the university denied. Such charges are common in academic life and are not especially notable. What makes the AAUP report remarkable, however, is the extent to which it also defines “academic freedom” to include the right of professors to retain their positions even as they are being investigated for supporting terrorism. “Adequate cause for a dismissal,” says the report, “will be related, directly and substantially, to the fitness of faculty members in their professional capacities as teachers or researchers” – not, evidently, as human beings who do not support bloodthirsty killers. The AAUP then went on to reject “the theory of teacher-as-role-model” as having “scant purpose” in university life...

Read it all.

'Palestinian prisoner destroyed Quran'

Another silly story of Qur'an abuse. Prison Service says female security prisoner goes on rampage during body search, tosses Quran pages toward toilet. From YNet News:

ASHKELON - A female Palestinian security prisoner in Ashkelon’s Shikma Prison tore up pages from a copy of the Quran and threw them toward the toilet during a routine search Sunday, the Israel Prison Service said.

The 22-year-old detainee from a village near Hebron is an Islamic Jihad member who was arrested three months ago in suspicion of hostile terror activity.

She resisted a routine search by a female guard, and then took out torn Quran pages from her skirt and hurled them toward the toilet.

The guard handed the torn Quran pages to the prison’s director, and Prison Service officials said she showed heightened sensitivity to the holy Islamic book.

“Security prisoners are permitted to keep Qurans, and the Prison Service provides them with the books, but tearing pages out of the book and throwing them in the bathroom is blasphemy and hinders the prisoners’ right to conduct religious rites,” a Prison Service official said.

Sorry, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how tearing up a book could be construed as blasphemous in this day and age. I thought the world had given up these exaggerated notions of the sacred a long, long time ago. Just like a lot of other things Muslims are forcing back into our collective consciousness, these ideas have never left Islam. We must grapple with them, not simply accept them, as the prison official cited above has done.

'Bloody good' to be home, says Wood

An interesting update on the claims the Australian Mufti is making concerning Wood's captors and his release. From the New Zealand Herald:

CANBERRA - Douglas Wood, the 63-year-old Australian engineer rescued last week from kidnappers in Iraq, flew into Melbourne yesterday to a joyful reunion with his family but with questions still surrounding his release...

The spiritual leader of Australia's Muslims, Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali also flew to Iraq to help find and free Wood, at one stage igniting controversy by claiming to have evidence that the still-hidden engineer was alive and well.

Alhilali returned to Sydney yesterday, claiming that Wood's captors had originally sought a A$25 million ransom, but that they had subsequently agreed to release him at 6pm last Wednesday, the day troops found him bound and concealed beneath a blanket in a Baghdad house.

He told the ABC Lateline programme that the group holding him when Iraqi troops burst in had been using the house as a transit station for his release, and had been unarmed because they wanted to deliver Wood safe and well.

"They didn't know who these forces were because they had agreed to deliver him to me, so they had good reason to be frightened for Douglas' life from any forces who attacked this house, of course," he said.

It still remains uncertain how Wood was discovered, with conflicting reports that the raid was either the result of a tip-off or a chance discovery during sweeps by the Iraqi Army and US troops.

Yesterday Prime Minister John Howard said Australian officials in Iraq had confirmed that the discovery was the result of a "sweep and cordon" operation, during which troops had been told that specific houses should be searched...

North Carolina: Judges question use of Quran in taking oath

Judeo-Christian-Islamic values update from the Greensboro News & Record, with thanks to Anthony and Thunder Pig:

GREENSBORO -- All Syidah Mateen wanted was to give Muslim witnesses the chance to be sworn in on the Quran before testifying in Guilford County courtrooms.

But an attempt by the Greensboro Islamic center to donate copies of the Muslim holy text last week sparked a legal debate that has left state court officials scrambling to decide whether to allow the practice.

Officials with the Administrative Office of the Courts in Raleigh are trying to come up with a statewide policy on the issue before news of the controversy sparks a large outcry, spokesman Dick Ellis said....

An AOC lawyer's preliminary opinion last week said that state law allows people to be sworn in using a Quran rather than a Bible, Ellis said. But that conflicts with the view of top Guilford County judges, who told officials with the Islamic center Friday that they won't allow the practice in their courtrooms.

"An oath on the Quran is not a lawful oath under our law," Guilford Senior Resident Superior Court Judge W. Douglas Albright said earlier in the week. He sets policy for the county's nine Superior Court courtrooms.

Friday's news disappointed Mateen, who said she planned to pursue the issue further.

"This is a diverse world, and everybody does not worship or believe the same," she said. "We'll just have to get in touch with the right people and determine our next move."...

The issue surfaced for Mateen two years ago, when she came in front of Guilford District Judge Tom Jarrell. When she was asked to swear on the Bible before testifying in a domestic violence protective order hearing, the 40-year-old Greensboro woman asked Jarrell if there was a Quran.

"I was actually shocked that they didn't have any," she said.

She was allowed to testify after giving an affirmation to tell the truth, but the issue never left her mind.

Mateen recalls Jarrell telling her that day that all the courtrooms needed copies of the Quran.

Jarrell disagrees. He said he only told her he would look into the legality of such oaths if she wanted to bring a Quran in the future.

Mateen eventually went forward with her idea -- believing Jarrell approved. She got the backing of the Al-Ummil Ummat Islamic Center, which her late father established, to donate about 10 copies of the Quran to the county's courthouses.

The center's imam, Charles Abdullah, working through a judicial assistant, was prepared to hand over the Qurans last week.

"We do feel like it has some historical significance," Abdullah said. "We didn't want to make a big fanfare out of it."

But Jarrell said he was unaware of the donation until a reporter contacted him last week. He deferred any decision to the judges that set courtroom policy, and a meeting was postponed.

On Friday, Guilford Chief District Judge Joseph E. Turner said he told Abdullah that he could not accept the Qurans for the courtrooms.

But Turner asked whether Abdullah would donate a copy of the Quran to the law libraries in the county's two courthouses, and Abdullah agreed, he said.

Turner oversees policy for the county's 12 District Court courtrooms.

Both Turner and Albright said the language in the law -- which refers at one point to laying one's hand on the "Holy Scriptures" -- precludes someone from being sworn using the Quran.

Albright said he has nothing against other holy books, but he believes the statute is clear.

"Everybody understands what the holy Scriptures are," he said. "If they don't, we're in a mess."

AOC officials disagreed with that interpretation last week.

The law requires a person to fear both spiritual and temporal punishment if his testimony is false, and swearing on the Quran would satisfy that, Ellis said.

But AOC officials would rather Muslims give an affirmation instead of bringing another holy text into the mix, Ellis said.

State officials worry that would open the door to more problems. For example, Ellis asked, what if a person says they worship brick walls and should be allowed to swear on a brick?

"We don't want to complicate this simple procedure here," Ellis said.

Jarrell, the judge in Mateen's original case, said he's always been concerned about the utility of having atheists or non-Christians swearing an oath on the Bible.

"They might as well be swearing on a Sears catalog," he said.

If allowing people to swear on the Quran helps him get to the truth, Jarrell said, he has no problem with it. But he said he'll follow courthouse policy....

OK.

"Any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters Unbelief - except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in Faith - but such as open their breast to Unbelief, on them is Wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful Penalty." (16:106)

"If allowing people to swear on the Quran helps him get to the truth," Jarrell said. But what if they are uttering unbelief under what they consider to be compulsion, in line with the verse above? This is just one element of a much larger problem: in relations with unbelievers, the Qur'an simply doesn't teach the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is, as we see from the above verse, permissible to lie to unbelievers. Other values come in for a similar treatment: for believers, they are upheld, but for believers alone.

It is considered impolite to point this out these days. This kind of politeness could be our undoing. Once again I ask anyone reading: please prove me wrong. Please show me where the Qur'an commands Muslims to be honest specifically to unbelievers, or even states the command not to lie in terms that unequivocally apply universally. I am familiar with the verses generally used to do this, and I warn you: I am also familiar with what the mainstream Muslim commentators on the Qur'an say about them. So fire away.

Terms of Dhimmitude

"Terms of Internment: How to win friends and influence enemy combatants," from Alan Bromley in Opinion Journal, with thanks to EPG:

Well, I think we should not close Gitmo but write a new set of rules of procedure for the treatment of terrorists, those who often either hide behind civilians when being shot at or kill innocent civilians to show how tough they are. The new rules, with the working title of, "Terms of Internment", should be:

• We really, really respect all your beliefs and all your writings, even if you use them as your basis for killing us.

• We want you to retain your beliefs, and therefore we will continue to supply you with every written word that reinforces your instinct to kill.

• We will honor those words, at all times, as much as you do, lest we offend you.

• We will only serve you the best humus available, from Zabar's (serving airline food is a severe violation of these protocols), or have kosher catering from the nearest kabbalah center.

• We will cover our women, from head to toe, in your presence, lest you be unduly offended--or aroused.

• We will give each prisoner one innocent civilian to hide behind during interrogations.

• We will prepare each prisoner a list of 72 virgins (or give them 72 raisins, I forget which they want).

• We will never lie to you or try to deceive you in our quest for your information.

• We will neither wake you early, nor keep you up late, and will always wait until your prayer sessions are complete before questioning you.

• We will house you in no less than five-star accommodations, and if all the hotels are booked, will place you in the five homes owned by Sen. John Kerry and his wife.

Funny, sure, but how different is it from what the hysterical people who equate Gitmo with Nazi death camps really want?

Sculpture banned from the Venice Biennale

Because it might offend Muslims, of course. From Index, with thanks to Susan:

A sculpture by German artist Gregor Schneider was banned from the 51st Venice Biennale because the event's organisers said it might be offensive to Muslims.

The sculpture was a 15-metre-high cube covered in black fabric modelled after the Ka'ba in Mecca and was set to be displayed in St. Mark's Square. A spokesman for the Venetian arts authority said there was a danger that Muslims would feel provoked by the work, heightening the risk of the city being vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Schneider insisted that the artwork was not meant as a provocation. He said he wanted to symbolise a connection between European and Arab cultures.

The organisers tried to place the sculpture at another site, but finally decided not to display it at all. Instead, Schneider showed a video explaining his failed attempt.

Jordan: Siham Qandah victory sealed

A most welcome update on the Siham Qandah saga. But note that she still has to select a Muslim guardian for her children, since her husband putatively converted to Islam before his death, without telling her a word about it. "Jordan: Widow wins final Court Battle," from CompassDirect:

June 16 -- A Jordanian court of appeal rejected a last-ditch appeal this week from the Muslim guardian fighting for custody of Christian widow Siham Qandah's two minor children. The June 13 decision reconfirmed an earlier verdict from Amman's Al-Abdali Sharia Court two months ago which revoked the legal guardianship of Abdullah al-Muhtadi, the maternal uncle of Qandah's daughter Rawan and son Fadi. According to Qandah's lawyer, this final verdict from the appellate court cannot be appealed. It effectively cancels all other pending cases regarding permanent custody of the children. Al-Muhtadi has been ordered by the court to repay misspent funds he had withdrawn from his wards' inheritance accounts without judicial approval. Qandah may now select a new guardian for court approval to oversee her children's legal affairs until they reach maturity at age 18.

Anti-Jewish propaganda film shown in Dutch mosques

In December I posted about an anti-Semitic propaganda film, "Zahra's Blue Eyes," which depicts the vile slander of Jewish doctors stealing the eyes of a Palestinian child. It was being shown in Iran at that time. But now it is being shown in Holland. Here is a somewhat rough English translation of this Dutch article, courtesy Morghodius:

In certain Turkish mosques in Rotterdam, The Hague and Amsterdam an anti-Semitic film is sold. The TV program Nova showed it on Dutch TV. The movie is also shown too children. The movie was made in Iran and translated into Turkish.

The movie is called ‘Zahra's Blue Eyes’; it is about a Palestine girl that is kidnapped and mutilated by a Israëli soldier.

Her eyes are transplanted into a blind Jewish boy so he can see
again.

Beside being unconcealed propaganda against the state of Israel, which is not prohibited by the law, the movie contains anti-Jewish passages which, according to experts, fall within the range of the law.

The movie raise questions about the mosques where it is shown.

"The Koran Doesn't Oppose Women Driving"

An interview with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Feisal. "Saudi Arabia is changing at an incredibly quick pace," he says. Looks as if he's right, eh? Wow! Women drivers! Of course, it isn't legal yet. From Spiegel Online, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Saudi Arabia has continually delayed implementing urgently needed reforms. Why is it going so slowly and why are reformers having such a hard time of it?

Saud al-Feisal: Saudi Arabia is changing at an incredibly quick pace, but we can't allow ourselves any experiments. The primary goal of the government is to strengthen the inner cohesion of our country. Even the western democracies didn't develop within just a few years. It took centuries, for example, until Great Britain gave women the vote.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The nation's founder, Abd al-Asis Ibn Saud, and your father, King Feisal, introduced girl's schools, telephones and television against the opposition of the conservatives. But today, the government can't even seem to push the concept of driver's licenses for women through.

Saud al-Feisal: In the 1950s or 60s, it was also much easier to introduce the telephone or telegraph than it is to allow women to drive today. It is a cultural and a societal question that is faced with deep-seated opposition.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you, personally, support the idea?

Saud al-Feisal: I am for it. Not just for philosophical and political reasons, but also for practical ones. It is not a religious question. Nowhere in the Koran is it written that women are not allowed to drive cars. In any case, there are many other -- and more important -- rights that have to be granted to women; like the right to vote, for example or the right to follow the career path they wish. There is also nothing in the Koran that would speak against these reforms either.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In mid-May, religious judges sentenced three Saudi intellectuals to six, seven and nine years in prison because they demanded that Saudi Arabia be transformed into a constitutional monarchy. Human rights groups are outraged.

Saud al-Feisal: I cannot speak about the judges in detail, but I was in fact disturbed by the fact that human rights observers were expelled from the court room during this trial. The federal prosecutor who was representing the government in the case pled for them to be admitted as observers.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does that not clearly show that the religious authorities in Saudi Arabia have the last word today?

Saud al-Feisal: The power of religion is not a negative power to us; rather, it is, as Crown Prince Abdullah repeatedly points out, a power that we must use in order to keep together our society. Where we do have a problem is with takfir -- in other words, the tendency to denigrate people who think differently as heretics, as apostates ...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: ... and by declaring holy war against them. Between 2,000 and 3,000 Saudi residents are currently in Iraq fighting for the jihad. Does that alarm you?

Saud al-Feisal: We are very alarmed by that and we are doing our best to cut off recruitment in our country and to dry up their funding sources. Our border with Iraq is secure and the Iraqi government has now agreed to provide us with lists of Saudi citizens currently in Iraq. That is very good because as soon as we know we are dealing with one of our own citizens, we can help.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why is it that so many young Saudis turn their backs on their homeland to fight in foreign wars as Mujahedeen?

Saud al-Feisal: It is related to the images they see every day that come out of Iraq and Palestine. They consider what they see there to be an unjust war against Muslims. And in this part of the world, the principle of justice is of fundamental meaning. If a Saudi Arabian feels that he is being treated fairly, according to the same standards that are also valid for everyone else, he will always accept it. However, if he feels an injustice is being inflicted upon him, he will battle against it until his death. These days, you can't just proceed against terrorism using the military. The problems in Iraq and Palestine have been thrusted upon us. They must be solved politically.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Twenty three years ago, King Fahd proposed a peace plan for the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nothing ever became of it.

Saud al-Feisal: There will be no peace as long as long as the conflicting parties don't make compromises and move towards each other. From where we are at today, we consider it to be Israel's move.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Israel is now going to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

Saud al-Feisal: That could be a good first step, if it is followed by others. But it will not be enough if other problems are not solved -- especially the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

In other words, if Israel capitulates further, we will make more progress.

Lodi Mysteries

Daniel Pipes on his weblog discusses of the unexplained aspects of the Lodi California jihad case.

The arrest this week of five men of Pakistani origins in Lodi, California, on what are likely to be terrorism-related charges (terrorism was initially a formal part of the picture but was then retracted) has prompted extensive media coverage. The coverage has uncovered some mysteries, which I note here in the hopes of finding answers to.

Hamid Hayat, 22, arrested on his return from what he admits was a jihadist camp in Pakistan, is an American citizen born in Stockton, California who attended school (though only up to the sixth grade) in the United States. That being the case, why does the Los Angeles Times write that, "Apparently unable to follow the proceedings in English, Hayat listened with the help of an Urdu translator"? Perhaps it's because Lodi contains an Urdu-speaking ghetto; an earlier article quotes one Pakistani immigrant, Raja Khan, estimating that around 80 percent of Lodi's Pakistanis are not fluent speakers of English. (In the absence of the two imams yesterday, the mosque service was held in Urdu.)

June 14, 2005 update: Johnny Griffin III, the lawyer for Hamid's father, says the Hayats didn't make some statements attributed to them in the complaint. "For one thing, there was no interpreter present, and Hamid speaks and understands very little English."
When he was arrested, Hamid Hayat, the junior-high dropout, was packing cherries. His father, Umer, sells ice cream from a truck. But his maternal grandfather, Qari Saeed ur Rehman, founded the Jamia Islamia Madrassa in 1962 (and still runs it), is a leader in the Jamiat Ulema Islam Party, and served as minister of religious affairs in the late 1980s. The family is Pakistani religious royalty – so, what are the father and son doing in California as unskilled laborers?

Hamid Hayat's attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, explaining why his family traveled so often to Pakistan, said that it went "on one occasion to seek medical treatment for the mother." It traveled to Pakistan for medical reasons? Urdu-speaking doctors are not hard to find in northern California and they dispose of far superior facilities, so what's up?

On April 19, 2003, on the way to Pakistan, the same day Hamid and Umer Hayat were stopped at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Christiana Halsey revealed that they were found with $28,093 in cash. What is an ice-cream vendor doing with such an amount of money and why is he breaking U.S. customs regulations by taking out so much cash without declaring it?

And, speaking of money and travel, here is something curious about the Farooqia Islamic Center: the 2003 tax return of this apparently Islamist institution (it hosted the likes of Siraj Wahaj and links to the Islamic Society of North America and the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs) shows operating expenses of $57,544 in 2003, of which over one third, or $20,625, was spent on travel. Wonder why.

Muslim anger at bid to serve drink outside

From the UK's Evening Times, with thanks to Miss Jessel.

MUSLIM charities have tried to stop an Italian restaurant serving drink on a terrace, claiming it is offensive to Glasgow's Asian community. Gambrino Pizzeria in Kelvinbridge wants to use the pavement outside its premises as an eating and drinking area and has applied to Glasgow City Council for permission. However, the proposals for eight tables and 16 seats has infuriated the local Asian community who say drinking alcohol outdoors is "offensive".

Two Muslim charities, UK Islamic Mission, based at the Islamic Mosque in Carrington Street, and Noah's Ark/ Radio Ramadhan in Arlington Street, formally objected to the Great Western Road restaurant's seating plans.

Javeed Gill, secretary of the UK Islamic Mission, said: "This area is the second largest area for Muslims in the city and we look after 1500 young people and provide activities for them.

"We've no objection if it is being done inside but selling alcohol on the footpath is a temptation to our young people."

Mr Gill said concerns about the increasing number of outside drinking premises had been raised in the mosque.

Today, despite the protest, council officials are recommending the application be passed...

Prove me wrong, please

I got an email this morning making reference to my explanation of Dhimmi Watch (see above left):

Do you think the Quranic command that they should "feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29)(your translation)is a permanent, eternal and absolute command required to be applied and implemented under all circumstances, time and space, or was it specific to those who were and had been at war with the nascent Islamic community and tried their best to finish it? Thanks. [Name deleted]

This is one of many emails that I receive regularly, challenging my knowledge of this field. If 9:29 and the dhimma was only meant for the time of the "nascent Islamic community," you see, then it has nothing to do with the oppression of non-Muslims in Islamic countries today. So on this occasion I'd like to issue an open invitation: please prove me wrong. Remember, however: it is not enough for you to quote Qur'an 2:256 or 109:1-5 and assert on that basis that the oppression of the dhimmis never took place. There is abundant evidence that it did, as I document in all my books, and has been definitively established by Bat Ye'or in her books. It is likewise not enough for you to assert that the dhimmis were treated as well or better than the Muslims. That is false, and there is a mountain of historical evidence that establishes its falsity. Nor is it enough for you simply to maintain without evidence that the dhimma is a relic of history, never to be revived, since (search the archives here and you'll see) there are numerous jihadists who have made it quite clear that they hope to reestablish it if and when they gain power.

If, however, you have evidence of Islamic schools of jurisprudence actually abrogating the dhimmi laws, please let me know here. I don't think any such evidence exists, but since so many people are anxious to tell me I am ignorant of Islam, I am inviting them to teach me. Here is how I responded to the letter above:

Judging from the fact that the laws of the dhimma still appear in modern-day manuals of fiqh, I would say that most jurists understand them to be permanent, eternal, and absolute commands. However, those same manuals make it clear that they are not to be implemented under all circumstances, but only when various requirements are met. Cf. the Shafi'i manual 'Umdat as-Salik, section o11.

In fact that translation of 9:29 is Abdullah Yusuf Ali's. It appears to me to be an accurate rendering of the Arabic. Do you disagree?

However, I would like nothing better than to find jurists who have explicitly ruled out the application of the dhimmi laws in the modern period, or at any time in the future. If you have such citations, please send them. Thanks.

I look forward to receiving them.

Arizona: Iranian Poll Monitor Interview

A very enlightening discussion from Publius Pundit who reports an interview he conducted with one Mojtaba Agha, who was monitoring a polling station for Iranians in Tucson. Agha has taught at California State University in Hayward and the University of Phoenix, and is now a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona.

According to Mojtaba, there are approximately 2500-3000 Iranian expatriates in Tucson, 1500 of which are of voting age. At the time I arrived at 4pm, with an hour gone by and three left to vote, only 15 people had voted. Mojtaba was hoping for at least 60, but when I left around 5:30, only 25 had done so. The favorite among the Iranian-Americans was Moin by a landslide, but needless to say, it was a slow day...

Mojtaba also made several jokes about the informality of the procedure, saying that just like in the U.S., the voters coming in are all stupid and have no idea what they are doing.

Politics: This is the most interesting part, where Mojtaba offered some bizarre explanations for the state of Iran and that of the United States.

He said that he expected turnout in Iran to be extremely high, “even more than predicted,” and that certain groups were trying to “sabotage the Republic through boycotting” The reason he gave for this was that President Bush’s words the day before the election had inflamed people who would otherwise not vote to do so. He said that he was not going to vote because of the barring of female candidate, but he said that President Bush’s words and foreign policy “undermine Iran” so much that he felt compelled. His step second cousin, as well, voted only in the last hour because of this. Of course, it cannot be confirmed and is inconsistent with incoming reports out of Iran.

I asked him who he voted for, and he said Moin. The reason he gave was that he did not want to undermine the reform movement, though he admitted, “What Iran probably needs is a wiley candidate like Rafsanjani. And believe me, Rafsanjani is wiley!”

I pressed him on the issue of the barring of female candidates, along with the other some 1000 people who registered. He said that it can be justified, as the “decision reflects the reality of society.” As for the many hundreds of male candidates that registered, he denounced some as jokers and the others as mentally ill.

I asked him then how a society could be democratic when the Guardian Council can veto anything that the elected president does, and he responded that the existence of the Guardian Council also reflects the state of society. He said that a president without the full powers of one represents a transition period in democracy. He also said that the only reason the revolution against the despotic Shah took an Islamic face is because the only venue that the Shah did not repress was the mosque.

On that note, I asked him about his thoughts on the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI). He called it a one-man show based out of Texas, that man being a narcissist at that. He also said that those who support the SMCCDI are supporters of the Shah and want to see his son return to the monarchy. He said that this is why he supports the Republic, because all of the “fake talk” about a referendum is just to have the monarchy reinstalled. To do this, they coordinate with the administration and the Pentagon in particular.

I then asked him about the accusations by the SMCCDI that the polling stations across the U.S. are illegal based on the fact that an Iranian government agent must supervise each polling station, and such agents are not allowed outside a certain radius of D.C. or the UN. He insisted that each person present was a local volunteer, though he did not elaborate on their connections to the Iranian government. In this case, they are either breaking Iranian law, or they are breaking U.S. law. Most likely, it is the latter, given that they have access to a “special” phone line directly to the Iranian Interior Ministry.

Right? Got that? Right.

Now comes his views of U.S. foreign policy, which can only be termed as dillusional at best. He began by telling me to read 1984, and called American policy “Orwellian” since World War II. He said that President Bush uses religion to keep people stupid, and that the U.S. government must essentially do what the government in 1984 did — that is, find external enemies to justify their own power. He said that our government must keep us stupid and afraid so that we could have an eventual police state.

He said that now that the Cold War is over, and since we aren’t fighting the “Ohhhh evil commies! Scary!” anymore, we had to find a new enemy, that being Muslims and “terrorists.” He believes that the recent bombings in Khuzestan and Tehran were covert operations by U.S. forces. He said that our foreign policy was specifically designed so that it would only create more terrorists, so that we would have a perpetual reason to be at war and invade other countries.

On this note, we talked about the nuclear issue. He insisted that Iran is solely trying to develop nuclear power for its own use, and that the United States is trying to make Iran dependent on foreign sources for energy. He says that Iran does not want to develop a nuclear bomb, and insisted that Khamenei issued a fatwa last year declaring their development a sin. According to him, the fact that Iran’s Islamic government can declare nuclear bombs a sin and Southern Baptists cannot is “telling.”

At one point he seemed to make fun of the fact that I called myself a journalist because of my youth. He said that the media is the fourth pillar that props up and acts as the propaganda mouthpiece of the Bush admininstration, and that I’m a part of it. He also said that it is essentially our foreign policy that causes things like September 11 to happen.

That’s right, it is essentially our fault for September 11.

Apparently, the United States also orchestrated the coup that put Saddam Hussein into power specifically so he could attack Iran. Oh, and both he and Osama bin Laden are CIA agents. I’m not joking. He said that.

Conclusion: The interview lasted for an hour and a half, and it was one of the most bizarre conversations I have ever had. Mojtaba took me on first look as a very naive person, and since I just nodded to everything he said, he simply rambled on. He used the word “democracy” a lot to describe the developing situation in Iran, though every single accusation he made against American government establishing a police state seemed to, in reality, reflect that of Iran. This is very typical of a propagandist.

Perhaps one of the most important things we have to remember here is that this man is part of our higher education infrastructure. He has taught in American universities for several years, and is a visiting scholar here locally at the University of Arizona. This man has the ability to influence dozens, hundreds of young minds, something he himself tried to do to me. Instead, he has been revealed just for what he is. There is an old saying for those who visit the former Soviet Union, “Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” This was, by far, the most useful advice I was able to apply to this interview.

Pakistan: Draft of law finalised to abolish marriages to Quran

Change comes slowly to Pakistan's rural areas. From the Daily Times, with thanks to LH.

ISLAMABAD: The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has drafted a law abolishing the un-Islamic and inhuman custom of so-called marriage of a girl to the Holy Quran and recommended life imprisonment for persons involved in this practice. This practice, commonly known as ‘Haq Bakhshwan,’ is rampant in rural areas of Pakistan where feudal lords and other rich people deny the right of marriage to a woman just to preserve their property. (...)

According to the amendment whoever wilfully defiles, desecrates or damages a copy of the Holy Quran or allows the Holy Quran to be used for purpose of its marriage to a female or induces any person to swear on the Holy Quran never to marry anyone in her lifetime, shall be punishable with imprisonment for life.

Pakistan's tribe of "infidels"

Tales of ancient Kafiristan. "Lost tribe struggles for survival," from the Guardian, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

More than 2,000 years ago Alexander the Great tore across the mountains of northern Pakistan, plundering, conquering and, according to legend, sowing the seeds of a tribe that endures to this day. And today, the Greeks are back.

In a valley high in the Hindu Kush a three-storey building towers incongruously over a scattering of low-roofed huts. The ?300,000 (£200,000) centre - part school, part health centre, part museum and conference hall - is being built by the Greek government in an effort to save the Kalasha, Pakistan's tribe of "infidels".

Reputed to have descended from the armies of Alexander, the Kalasha have lived for thousands of years in a nest of idyllic valleys near the Afghan border. But their identity is being threatened by Muslim missionaries, tourism and neglect by central government.

The Kalasha are the last remnants of the population of Kafiristan, the
ancient "land of infidels" that straddled the borders of present-day
Pakistan and Afghanistan. About 4,000 of them survive in three majestic valleys that awe visitors as a sort of paradise lost.

Turquoise streams rush through leafy glades of giant walnut trees and
swaying crops. Clusters of simple houses cling to steep forested slopes. Compared with many compatriots beyond their valleys, the Kalasha are charmingly liberal: drinking wine, holding dancing festivals and worshipping a variety of gods. Women wear intricately beaded headdresses, not burkas, and may choose their husband.

"For me, the Kalasha are heroes, because they have reached the 21st century still living like their fathers," said Athanasius Lerounis, a 50-year-old schoolteacher from Athens supervising construction of the centre, which is due to open next month. "We want to help them preserve that."

The centre, which aims to provide everything from schooling to surgery, has reignited debate about how best to save the Kalasha way of life. Some community leaders feel the Greek initiative is good-hearted, but wrong-headed. "I don't blame them for wanting to help, but that help could damage us," said Saifullah Jan in Rumbur valley. "There is too much interference. Our people are getting spoilt. They should just let us be."...

Hitchens: Mind over Mullahs

Christopher Hitchens has an interesting piece in this month's Vanity Fair also carried in Front Page:

Driving down through the desert, from Tehran to the holy city of Qom, I am following the path of so many who have made the pilgrimage before me. They either were seeking an audience with, or a glimpse of, Ayatollah Khomeini or, if they were journalistic pilgrims, were trying to test the temperature of Iran's clerical capital. As I arrive, darkness is gently settling over the domes and spires of the mosque and the Shia theological seminary, the latter of which is demarcated by a kind of empty moat which doubles as a market. But I am not headed for these centers of spiritual and temporal power. My objective is an ill-paved backstreet where, after one confirming cell-phone call, a black-turbaned cleric is waiting outside his modest quarters. This is Hossein Khomeini. The black turban proclaims him a sayyid, or descendant of the prophet Muhammad. But it's his more immediate ancestry that interests me. This man's grandfather once shook the whole world. He tore down the throne of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and humiliated the United States. His supporters seized the American Embassy and kept 52 members of its staff prisoner for 444 days. The seismic repercussions of this event led to the fall of Carter, the rise of Reagan, the invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussein, and quite possibly the occupation of Afghanistan by the Red Army. It moved us from the age of the Red Menace to the epoch of Holy War. It was, at one and the same time, a genuine revolution and an authentic counterrevolution. I have become almost averse to shaking hands in Iran by now, because it isn't permitted for a man to shake a woman's hand in public in this nerve-racked country, and if you unlearn the conditioned reflex in one way, you unlearn it in another. But as I feel young Khomeini's polite grip, I fancifully experience a slight crackle from history.

Iranian hospitality is one of the most warming and embarrassing things it is possible to encounter. Before any conversation can begin on these grand questions, there must be fragrant tea, a plate of sohan, the addictive pistachio-and-saffron brittle that is the Qom specialty, and a pressing invitation to stay for dinner, and indeed for the night. The pressure is re-doubled on this occasion because the last time we met and talked I was the host.

Young Khomeini has been spending a good deal of his time in Iraq, where he has many friends among the Shia. He is a strong supporter of the United States intervention in that country, and takes a political line not dissimilar to that of Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani. In practice, this means the traditional Shia belief that clerics should not occupy posts of political power. In Iranian terms, what it means is that Khomeini (his father and elder brother died some years ago, so he is the most immediate descendant) favors the removal of the regime established by his grandfather. "I stand," he tells me calmly, "for the complete separation of religion and the state." In terms that would make the heart of a neocon soar like a hawk, he goes on to praise President Bush's State of the Union speech, to warn that the mullahs cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, and to use the term "Free World" without irony: "Only the Free World, led by America, can bring democracy to Iran."

Read it all.

DHS ranks Muslim clerics as "lowest threat"

Dhimmitude at DHS, where political correctness seems to have trumped the evidence -- evidence that keeps on being confirmed, as with the Lodi arrests recently. "Service Before Security," from Paul Sperry in FrontPage, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The good news is U.S. airport traffic is returning to pre-9/11 levels. The bad news is, so are security priorities at international terminals, where some of the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. illegally.

New internal memos I've obtained show the Homeland Security Department seems more worried about getting foreign travelers to their destinations on time than screening them for terror ties.

In fact, I've learned the department has formed a so-called Airport Wait Time working group, which met for the first time in December to come up with a national strategy to clock federal inspectors processing foreign travelers entering the U.S. at major international airports. Those who take too long are written up.

Airport immigration inspectors are our first line of defense against terrorists entering the country. They check fingerprints and photographs against terror watchlists and question suspicious foreign passengers.

Yet they are under new pressure to clear planes in response to complaints from airlines about security related delays.

"Flight times are now much more important than catching terrorists, drugs or illegals," a Customs and Border Protection supervisor at a major international airport told me. "We are always pressured to clear passengers in under 60 minutes, no matter what -- even though Congress lifted that mandate after 9/11."...

To reduce flight delays at these airports, DHS exempts a number of passengers from US-VISIT security screening if necessary, including teens, elderly, families, foreign pilots and religious workers such as imams, according to memo dated Jan. 2, 2004, and marked "LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE."

Foreign air crews are exempt even though a number of Saudi and other foreign Muslim airline pilots have been linked to terrorism.

So are Muslim clerics staying in the U.S. on R-1 and R-2 visas. Such foreign religious workers have been ranked the "lowest threat" among the 10 visa classifications (I've redacted the specific rankings, from highest threat to lowest, for obvious reasons). Yet hundreds of Muslim clerics have been linked to terrorism, many of whom still preach in the U.S.

Just last week, federal authorities arrested two Pakistani imams in connection with a terror case involving a possible al-Qaeda cell in the sleepy farming community of Lodi, Calif. The men allegedly violated the terms of their religious worker visas.

The leniency DHS gives such visiting clerics alarms GOP U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, since many are "calling for the violent overthrow of the nation" from mosque pulpits.

"They enter into this country, they are assigned to mosques. And most of the mosques in the United States are being built with Saudi money, most of them are Wahhabi. And these people, many of them, preach essentially sedition," Tancredo asserted in a recent hearing on border security held by the House International Relations Committee. "What these imams have said even outside the mosque would under any other situation, if anybody else would say these things, be considered to be seditious, and even charges would be brought on that basis."

He says putting them at the top of the list for exemption from fingerprinting and terror monitoring is the height of naiveté, and he's right. Many Muslim clerics use their religiosity simply as cover to carry out terror-related activities, such as recently convicted imam Ali al-Timimi, who encouraged young Virginia Muslims to kill Americans abroad.

India: a story of rape and marriage

I've been following the twists and turns of this story for a day or two now and this is the latest and sanest version so far. From the BBC "Father-in-law arrested for rape" with thanks to all who sent in the various headlines.

Police in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have arrested a man accused of raping his daughter-in-law.

The arrest follows reports that a Muslim council of community elders had ordered the victim to marry her father-in-law.

That's her father-in-law, the rapist, folks. Just in case you missed it.

But the order was criticised by a top Muslim body which said it was not valid under Sharia (Islamic) law.

It said the council was not authorised to give such a verdict and added that the alleged rapist should be punished.

Senior superintendent of police in the town of Chatarwal, where the incident took place, told The Indian Express newspaper that the alleged rapist was being questioned.

The 28-year-old victim is said to have been raped when she was alone at home.

Under the Sharia law... if her father-in-law has raped her, he should be sentenced to death

When the incident came to the notice of the council, it ordered that she marry her father-in-law and change her relationship with her husband to that between a mother and son.

It also ordered her to leave her home and stay away for seven month and 10 days to become "pure"...

Then, if that weren't enough, minutes before he was sentenced to life in prison, the father-in-law rapist proposed to his daughter-in-law to save her from the "stigma of rape," and maybe also to reduce his sentence. She rejected him.

Bangladesh: Government Fails to Act Against Religious Violence

From Reuters, "Bangladesh: Government Fails to Act Against Religious Violence Attacks on Minority Ahmadis Continue Amidst Censorship and Pogroms" with thanks to Skeet Street. The Ahmadis are a sect of Muslims who are considered to be apostates by Sunnis.

(KN)--an umbrella group of Sunni Muslim extremists--against the Ahmadiyya community. The KN and other extremist groups have attacked Ahmadiyya mosques, beaten and killed some Ahmadis, and prevented access to schools and sources of livelihood for others. They have demanded an official declaration that Ahmadis are not Muslims and a ban on all Ahmadi writings and missionary activities.

Founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Ahmadiyya community is a religious group that identifies itself as Muslim. It differs with other Muslims over the exact definition of Prophet Mohammad being the "final" monotheist prophet.

Under the Bangladesh National Party-led government, discrimination and violence against the Ahmadis has intensified. The report documents the government's failure to prosecute those responsible for anti-Ahmadi violence. It condemns the January ban on all Ammadiyya publications imposed by the government.

The Jamaat-e-Islami and the Islamic Okye Jyote, junior coalition partners in the government, do not recognize the Ahmadis as Muslims and have been involved in fomenting religious violence against them and other religious minorities.

"It's a dangerous moment in Bangladesh when the government becomes complicit in religious violence," said Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division. "The authorities have emboldened extremists by failing to prosecute those engaged in anti-Ahmadi violence and by banning Ahmadiyya publications." ...

Bono shocked by Muslim women's reaction to breastfeeding

From Breaking News with thanks to Two Stellas.

U2 frontman Bono was horrified during a visit to Ethiopia, when he saw local women pelting a breast-feeding aid worker with stones.

The American woman was oblivious of the offence she was causing, and had to escape the angry onslaught from female Muslims who had no qualms about injuring her or her baby.

Bono recalls: "I remember one vision of the people who are with World Vision, which is an American aid agency.

"One of the women was breast-feeding a child on the horse. She was so comfortable. She didn't mean to be insensitive.

"But the Muslim women did not like this and came out and started throwing stones at her because she was showing her breasts."

Muslim Schools: A View From The Inside

Yahiya Emerick writes an interesting article in IslamAmerica concerning the attitudes and beliefs of average American Muslims about raising their children in America and the attitudes of the children themselves. Thanks to Designut.

"Most parents send their kids here for reasons other than Islam," lamented the principal of a large Muslim school.

"A lot of our students have older brothers and sisters who have gone out of control. They smoke, use drugs, sleep around and disobey their parents."

I knew from my own experience that what he was saying was true. In my first year of teaching I had met the families of many of my students in the Muslim school.

What I saw shocked me.

The older siblings were completely and thoroughly non-Muslim in their behavior and demeanor. One girl had an older brother with an arm full of tattoos! The girl, who had seven older siblings that went through an urban public school told me that her parents were sending her to the Muslim school because they wanted "at least one good one."

On another occasion, I happened to be standing in the school office talking to the secretary when a middle-aged, Indo-Pak couple came in with their teenage daughter.

She was wearing tight jeans, no Hijab and a lot of make-up.

Her face said it all: she's been around. Her parents, as it turned out, wanted to enroll her in the Muslim school because they didn't want her to become "Christian." Oh... the parents also mentioned that she had a boyfriend and that they didn't want her to "get into trouble."

She was enrolled in the ninth grade and therefore would be in my Islamic Studies class. As it happened, she didn't know how to pray, she never made Wudu in her life and she knew nothing of Islamic teachings. She was, for all practical purposes, a non-Muslim with a Muslim sounding name.

Do you see a pattern emerging here? After having been involved with Muslim education for the last seven years as a teacher in Sunday schools, summer schools and full-time Muslim schools, I have had the chance to observe the immigrant Muslim community very closely. I wish I could say the indigenous Muslim community, but the immigrants have not seen fit to spread Islam to native-born Americans, but that's another story...

We recommend you read it all. Emerick continues to be shocked by America, shocked!

Verdonk orders three imams to leave

A very interesting development coming from Holland. Rita Verdonk is cracking down. From the Dutch Expatica, with thanks to Dutch Cares.

AMSTERDAM — Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has ordered three imams accused of being a threat to public order and national security to get out of the Netherlands.

The trio have been accused of preaching a militant anti-western message at Al Fourkaan mosque in Eindhoven and allowing young people to be recruited for Jihad.

They will be expelled if they do not leave the country voluntarily, Verdonk has vowed.

She has given them a month in which they can challenge her order but they cannot stay in the Netherlands pending the outcome of any appeal.

Lawyer Marq Wijngaarden is representing the three imams says he will go to court to block the minister's order. He did not want to comment further as he has not yet read the full text of Verdonk's decision.

The Dutch intelligence service AIVD indicated that the imams "contribute to the radicalisation of Muslims in the Netherlands", the Justice Ministry said earlier this year.

The ministry claimed the imams tried to recruit, or tolerated the recruiting, of Muslims for Jihad, or holy war. They are also accused of using their sermons to urge Muslims to "isolate" themselves from the rest of Dutch society...

Australia Hails Mufti’s Role in Hostage Release

You knew it was coming. Islamonline reports this morning:

CAIRO – The Australian government and people have paid tribute to the role played by the Grand Mufti of Australia to secure the release of the Australian hostage in Iraq from his captors.

"He has made an enormous effort,” said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Sheikh Taj Aldin Al-Hilali has spent much of the past month in Iraq trying to negotiate the release of the Australian contractor, Douglas Wood, who was released during an Iraqi military operation Wednesday, June 15.

“Real credit should be given to him (Hilali) for the effort that he made and the risks that he took including to his own security and in assisting the team's efforts to try to get Douglas Wood released," Downer told ABC Wednesday, June 15.

The 63-year-old contractor was kidnapped in late April by a self-styled Iraqi group calling itself the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq, which initially demanded that Australia pull its 800 troops out of Iraq.

The top Aussie official also hailed the role of the Muslim minority in Australia in securing the release of the Australian national.

"That's one of the assets we have as a multicultural country, that people all came together as 'Team Australia', and they brought their different strengths and so we appreciate it very much the contribution Sheikh Al-Hilali and more generally the Australian Islamic Community made," he said.

Promise Fulfilled

Commenting on the news of releasing Wood, the Grand Mufti of Australia said he had met his promise on sparing no efforts to securre the release of the Australian hostage.

“I left Australia for Iraq on May 15, following the kidnap of the Australian national. I committed myself not to leave Baghdad without securing the release of the Australian hostage,” he told IslamOnline.net Wednesday during his stop-over in Cairo.

“After tireless efforts and contacts with different parties as well as breath-taking adventures, the efforts were crowned in success.”

Sheikh Hilali maintained that he engaged in contacts with two Iraqi groups involved in the kidnap process.

“One of the two groups helped me to define the hostage’s location, which was attacked by an Iraqi military team backed by US forces.”

“The hostage was released six hours before he was due to be beheaded and a number of kidnappers were arrested.”...

Call me sceptical, but instead of falling on his knees thanking the Mufti, what Mr. Wood actually said was, "God Bless America" and raised a beer with his Aussie mates. I haven't seen it reported anywhere that the Mufti gave the tip leading to the raid.

Update: The Herald Sun reports, "Tip came from the streets" with thanks to Vinegar Joe.

IRAQI soldiers rescued Douglas Wood after they were tipped off by a "walk-in" -- a civilian who simply walked off the street into a military checkpoint.

The civilian told them of hostages being held in a house in the western suburb of Ghazaliya, one of Baghdad's most dangerous.
But until they found him under a blanket and strapped to a bed, the Iraqis had no idea it was Douglas Wood in the house.

The informant's identity will remain secret, as will any reward he might have been paid.

EU renews low-level meetings with Hamas

I think it's inevitable: Hamas is coming in from the cold. These ruthless terrorists, who have gloried in their murders of civilians and called for the genocidal destruction of Israel, are (like Arafat before them) going to be accorded the respect of statesmen and invited to sit at negotiating tables. And also like Arafat, their overall goals and tactics they use to attain them will otherwise remain unchanged.

I wrote in Onward Muslim Soldiers that their commitment to the jihad ideology made them implacable foes of any negotiated settlement: they wanted Israel destroyed, and nothing less. Now they still want Israel destroyed and the Jews subjugated as dhimmis in an Islamic state, but they are seeing the value of negotiating toward that end. Jews (as well as Christians) in Israel should take note: the end of the EU's playing ball with Hamas can only be the institutionalized second-class status of the dhimma.

From Haaretz, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

WASHINGTON - The European Union has informed the U.S. administration of a substantial shift in its contacts with Hamas. The EU decision, which surprised the Americans, allows low-level European diplomats - below the rank of ambassador - to conduct talks with Hamas representatives who are running in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by both the U.S. government and the EU.

The EU decision reflects a political-strategic turnaround with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and constitutes the first stage toward recognition of a terrorist group that explicitly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and views acts of terror against civilians as legitimate.

Batman Begins Opens Today

I, Freakin Batman, thought you'd like to know.

Show your support for the Caped Crusader.

Rajaram: Jihad, Terrorism and Dhimmitude

N.S. Rajaram writes from India. He is a historian whose primary focus is ancient history and pre-history. He occasionally writes on jihad and terrorism, and has lectured widely on Islamic terror in India, Europe, the U.S. and Australia. This is an illuminating piece on jihad and dhimmitude in India:

Jihad is the central doctrine of Islam and dhimmitude its historical consequence. Both should be defeated for India and the world to be really free.

The meaning of Jihad

Jihad is the central doctrine of the Islamic state, ordained by its scripture. Thanks partly to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the world now knows something of Jihad and its ties to Islamic terror. Nonetheless, Jihad continues to be presented as a noble internal struggle over one’s baser instincts— something like meditation and Yoga. Even when the violent aspect of Jihad is pointed out, its apologists claim that violence and terrorism cannot be justified as Jihad, as if “real Jihad” is something we should all welcome. As a result, a good deal of confusion prevails in the public mind with regard to the true nature of Jihad and its relationship to Islamic terror. The worst offenders in this game of sophistry are not the Muslims themselves but non-Muslim intellectuals and academics in India, Europe and especially America. It seems never to occur to these worthies that a medieval theocratic concept like Jihad has no legitimacy in a modern secular state— no matter what its real or imagined merits.

Another point worth noting is that terrorists worldwide acting in the name of Jihad cannot be defeated by redefining Jihad to suit our comfort level. The various Jihadis are drawn to the interpretation of Jihad given by the likes of Osama bin Laden and not the apologists that fill Indian and Western universities and newspaper columns. More significantly this “kinder, gentler” version of Jihad has no basis in either doctrine or history. It is necessary therefore to look at the primary sources to understand the place of Jihad in Islamic law and behavior. (Islamic law is part of its scripture.) What follows is a brief summary. More details on the place of Jihad in Islamic scripture and history can be found in Sita Ram Goel’s The Calcutta Quran Petition cited at the end of the article.

Dictionary of Islam defines Jihad as: “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad [the Prophet]. It is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Quran and in the Traditions [i.e., the Hadits or the ‘Acts of Muhammad’] as a divine institution, and enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam and of repelling evil from Muslims.” The last point about “repelling evil” calls for an explanation: its primary goal is to prevent Muslims from deviating from the true teachings of Islam of unrelenting hostility towards Kafirs and lapsing into heresy. Movements intended to root out such ‘evil’—often called ‘purification movements’—are a feature of Islamic history. The Wahabi movement that led to the Saudi brand of Islam and the Tablighi movement in India are two recent examples of such purification.

Dictionary of Islam also observes: “Sufi writers say that there are two Jihads: al-Jihadu ‘l Akbar, or the ‘greater warfare,’ which is against one’s own lusts; and al-Jihadu ‘l Asghar, or the ‘lesser Jihad’ against infidels.” It is important to note this is a later Sufi innovation that has no scriptural sanction; in fact it is a heresy that is rejected by the orthodox. Historically, the Sufis have actively supported and participated in the violent version of the Jihad, the only one that has any scriptural sanction. The nonviolent version is the one that is invoked by apologists, though it has played hardly any role in history since no one follows it.

Dictionary of Islam is also perceptive in noting: “The duty of religious war (which all commentators agree is a duty extending to all time) is laid down in the Quran in the following verses, and it is remarkable that all the verses occur in the al-Madinah Surahs, being those given after Muhammad had established himself as a paramount ruler, and was in a position to dictate terms to his enemies.”

So any hint of compromise that one finds in the earlier al-Meccah Surahs can be explained by the fact that they were given at times when Prophet Muhammad felt besieged and was forced to compromise with his adversaries in order to gain time. These were erased by the later Surahs revealed when the Prophet had become the paramount ruler.

The following Surah (IX. 5,6) sheds light on the Prophet’s idea of Jihad or the war against the infidels: “And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with God [Allah] wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them with every kind of ambush; but if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way, for God [Allah] is Gracious, Merciful.” So the Mercy of God offers unbelievers the ‘choice’ of conversion or death! This is just one example of many Surahs in the same spirit. There is no room for compromise in Jihad.

Terrorism in history

Like Jihad, terrorism is an integral part of Islamic history and doctrine that cannot be separated from its scripture. Terrorism, by which we mean the threat and use of violence against innocents, has a long tradition in Islam going back to Prophet Muhammad himself. The Hadits (compilation of the acts of the Prophet) record that the Prophet had the poetess Asma bint Marawan assassinated while sleeping with her child. Her crime was satirizing the Prophet and his claims in some of her verses. There are other such examples in the Prophet’s career. More importantly, terrorism was not limited to the founding period, like what happened following the French Revolution. (Robespierre’s “Reign of Terror.”) Its use as an instrument of policy is not an aberration but an inseparable and continuing part of Islamic history down to the present.

The most famous of the early Islamic terrorist organizations was the Nizari Ismailiyun, a Shiite politico-religious sect, founded in 1094 by Hasan-e Sabah. He and his followers captured the hill fortress of Almaut in northern Iran and turned it into their base of operations. Hasan styled himself Grand Master and went on to set up a network of terrorist strongholds in Iran and Iraq. He had trained assassins, most of who according to Marco Polo were drug addicts. According to Marco Polo, young boys captured by the Grand Master were turned into addicts by giving them progressively larger doses of the drug hashish. This way they were totally dependent on him and would do anything in return for hashish. They came to be known as hashishin, from which get the word ‘assassin.’ So the deadly mix of terror and drugs is hardly new.

Hasan-e Sabah and his successor Grand Masters commanded an army of assassins who spread terror among the people throughout Iran and Iraq. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Grand Master had “a corps of devoted terrorists, and an unknown number of agents in enemy camps and cities, who claimed many victims among the generals and statesmen of the Abbasid caliphate as well as several caliphs.”

The Nizari Ismaliyun or the Order of the Assassins expanded into Syria after its founder’s death. In the 12th century, Rashid ad-Din as-Sinan, famous as the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ set himself up as an independent Grand Master of the Assassin Order in the impregnable castle of Masyaf in Syria. For more than a century and half, from 1094 to 1256, these Grandmasters and their assassins spread terror throughout the Middle East. Their end came at the hands of the Mongol warriors of Haleku Khan— the grandson of Chengis Khan. He captured and destroyed the assassin strongholds in Iran one by one, and finally Almaut itself fell in 1256. He mercilessly killed every one of the assassin agents and their leaders. Two years later, in February 1258, Haleku’s soldiers sacked Baghdad itself and ended the Caliphate by executing the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustasim and his sons.

The Syrian castles and strongholds were gradually reduced by the Baybars I, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. The Ismaili order gradually faded into insignificance, becoming a minor heresy. It still has some followers in Syria, Iran with India and Pakistan having the largest numbers. They are known as Khojas and are followers of the Aga Khan. They no longer indulge in terror. In Pakistan though they are considered non-Muslims and often persecuted.

As just noted, it was the Mongols who finished off the Caliphate. The Caliphate officially ended with the death of al-Mustasim at the hands of the Mongols in 1258. The 19th century claim of the Ottoman Turkish Sultans to be the inheritors of the Caliphate was not recognized by Muslims outside India. It was a political ploy by the Ottoman Sultans to keep together their crumbling empire. But Mahatma Gandhi made the restoration of the Turkish Sultan as Caliph the centerpiece of the disastrous Khilafat Movement in the support of which he launched the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921. It resulted in a reign of terror in Malabar (Kerala) known as the Moplah Rebellion. It was the Khilafat that sowed the seeds of Partition. It also showed that terror could be used for political ends by invoking Islam.

Inspired by the terror that followed the Khilafat, Mohammed Ali Jinnah—a ‘liberal’ Muslim—resorted to terror to gain his political goal of partitioning India. In 1946, his call for ‘Direct Action’ in support of his demand for Pakistan led to street riots all across North India. The Congress capitulated and agreed to the Partition of India. So was Pakistan born.

In all this, there is an almost religious belief that terrorism is both legitimate and effective in gaining political ends. In the Pakistani official manual, The Quranic Concept of War by Brigadier Malik, it is explicitly stated: "Terror struck into the hearts of the enemy is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved... Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon him.”

The idea is to make the enemy live in a state of perpetual terror. The authority for this is the Koran (Anfal 59-60): “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemies of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.”

This is the seed of indiscriminate terror employed by Grand Masters of the Order of the Assassins centuries ago, and by Osama Bin Laden and a host of others today. This belief in the power of domination through terror, and its legitimacy, is what needs to be defeated. But first, it is necessary to recognize that this legitimacy rests on the scripture itself.

The basic truth is— terrorism runs like a thread throughout Islamic history. It is futile to try to separate Islamic terror from Islam.

Dhimmitude in India

Dhimmitude is a relatively recent concept among Islamic scholars though it has played a major role in the history of Islam. It was brought into focus by the pioneering work of the Egypt-born scholar Bat Ye’or. (Her penname, which means ‘Daughter of the Nile.’) Dhimmitude may be seen as the state of mind induced in the victims of Islamic terror, more particularly in the minds of the non-Muslim subjects in countries under Islamic rule. Like the famous ‘Stockholm Syndrome,’ which afflicts hostages by turning them into defenders of their kidnappers, dhimmitude also has the effect of turning the victims of harsh Islamic rule into its defenders; there is an unconscious fear that criticizing them might make their condition worse. It arose from the need of Islamic rulers to deal with non-Muslim subjects in their realm. It may be described as follows.
In an Islamic state, the Word of God (The Quran) and the Acts of Muhammad (The Hadits) lay down the rules—sacred as well as secular—for all people and for all time. These are binding on believers as well as non-believers. This may appear strange until one recognizes that the ultimate goal of Islam is to bring the whole world under its sway. The instrument for achieving world domination is Jihad, and the legal code for ruling the Islamic lands (Dar ul-Islam) is the Sharia— loosely translated as the Islamic legal canon. The Sharia treats some non-Muslims living in Dar ul-Islam as dhimmis (‘protected flock’), whereby they are granted limited protection as second-class citizens under debilitating conditions. The Egypt-born Bat Ye’or has made a detailed study of the state of the Jews and Christians as Dhimmis, and the peculiar ‘Dhimmi Civilization’ that it gave rise to. (This may be compared to the ‘Slave Civilization’ in the United States before the Civil War.)

The behavior pattern of a good part of the non-Muslim world today is explained by dhimmitude. This is particularly the case in India, where the wounds inflicted by centuries of Islamic rule on a large segment of the Indian intelligentsia and the political class have been so debilitating that they continue to live in a state of constant fear. This has left its stamp even on the writing of history as the distinguished historian R.C. Majumdar found out. In his words:

The official history of the freedom movement starts with the premise that India lost independence only in the eighteenth century and had thus an experience of subjection to a foreign power for only two centuries. Real history, on the other hand, teaches us that the major part of India lost independence about five centuries before, and merely changed masters in the eighteenth century… The Hindu leaders deliberately ignored patent truth and facts of history… They live in a fancied fraternity and are sensitive to any expression that jars against the slogan of Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai…

That is to say, political freedom in India has not brought about spiritual freedom; politicians and the intelligentsia still act like oppressed colonial subjects when asked to face the truth about their country’s Islamic past. This is typical dhimmitude. To comprehend this, we need to go back to the early period of Islamic conquests, which resulted in countries under non-Muslim rule (Dar ul-Harb) coming under Islamic rule (Dar ul-Islam). Recognizing that a newly conquered land is bound to have a substantial non-Muslim population, the Sharia provides for laws to govern them. They essentially become dhimmis. At first, it was meant only for ‘People of the Book’— or Jews and Christians, soon including Zoroastrians because Iran was rapidly conquered by the Arabs. Somewhat later, when Islamic rule came to parts of India, Hindus were given grudging recognition as dhimmis though, as idolaters, they were not entitled to it. But the expediencies of politics and governance forced Islamic rulers of India to bend the rules of the Sharia against the blandishments of the clergy.

This brings up an interesting issue: the idolatrous Hindus whose choice under Sharia was limited to ‘Islam or death,’ were much more successful in resisting the onslaught of Islam than the ‘protected’ Jews and Christians. Even the Zoroastrians of Persia, then a great empire ruled by the Sassanids, had to migrate to Hindu India to keep their faith alive. Hindus and Hinduism proved much more resilient than these ‘Religions of the Book’ and their adherents.

The Hindus never stopped fighting the imposition of Islam and finally defeated it though at great cost in terms of both land and people. It is a battle that still rages. It accounts also for the extraordinary hatred of Hindu India borne by Muslim ‘leaders’ in India and Pakistan— for it is a living reminder of Islam’s failure. This suggests that one is better off having Islam as enemy than ‘protector’. The protector inevitably turns predator and eventually consumes its protected flock.

All this has left an indelible mark on the psyche of the Indian intelligentsia, especially the media. This dhimmitude, which is rooted in fear of Muslim violence, is what is really behind much of the secularist attitudes and posturing. No one would take the spiritual pretensions and justifications offered by Islam apologists seriously but for the lurking fear of large-scale violence.

It is this dhimmi state of mind that makes secularist ‘leaders’ engage in purely communal activities, and granting concessions in the name of secularism. Some examples help bring this out. Last year alone 125 crore rupees were given to Haj pilgrims. This is a consequence of the Haj Bill introduced in 1959 by the ‘secular’ Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. What is no less scandalous is the diversion of funds from Hindu temples to mosques, brought to light by Sri Sri Ravishankar of The Art of Living Center. In the state of Karnataka Hindu temples generate Rs 40 crores. The government gives them back only 50 lakhs. The mosques on the other hand generate only about 50 lakhs, but get Rs 8 crores from the government! This means the government is in effect taking money from temples and diverting it to mosques and madrasas. This is in spite of the fact that Karnataka has no major pilgrimage centers. The diversion of funds from temples to mosques, madrasas and waqf boards is much greater in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, which have major temples like those at Tirupati and Guruvayoor. This is voluntary dhimmitude, for the Muslims never demanded any such largesse.

Here is another example. When some Hindu groups objected to M.F. Husain for painting Hindu goddesses in the nude, the secular intellectuals including the media defended his ‘artistic freedom’ do as he wished. But in 2002, a newspaper office in Bangalore was vandalized by a Muslim mob for publishing a perfectly innocent cartoon of Prophet Muhammad in its children’s section. And the newspaper apologized to the attackers. Imagine the victim apologizing to the assailants! Other papers in Bangalore—and at other places—have also apologized on similar occasions. So ‘artistic freedom’ means freedom to offend Hindu sensibilities only! This also is nothing but a manifestation of dhimmitude.

This brand of ‘dhimmi secularism’ not only distorts the truth, but also rationalizes cowardly behavior as the following example shows. Some years back the ‘secularists’ turned the killing of the Christian missionary Graham Staines and his sons into a national and international affair by blaming Hindu organizations. In 2002, a Christian youth Paul Raj and his Muslim wife Sameena were brutally murdered by the girl’s family because he did not convert to Islam. There was no public denunciation of this act of savagery either by the secularist politicians, the media or even Church officials. The Church officials would not even go near their orphaned child. It was finally adopted by a Hindu NRI family, which arranged for its care and upbringing. The same Church officials held public meetings and loudly denounced Hindu organizations, without any evidence, when a few windows in a church in Mysore were smashed by hooligans.

Dhimmitude in the Christian world

Dhimmitude can lead to absurdities as when a leading Indian politician attributed the advaita propounded by Sri Shankaracharya to Koranic inspiration! Even this pales into insignificance when compared to the behavior of religious leaders in the West. Pope John Paul II, during his visit to Egypt and Jerusalem, respectfully attended Muslim service without saying a word about the horrors inflicted on Coptic Christians. Likewise in India, he took the Indian Government to task for mainly imaginary atrocities against Christian minorities, while maintaining stony silence over the daily massacre of Christians in Islamic countries like Pakistan and Indonesia. This was taken a sordid step further by Church ‘leaders’ in India when they colluded with Muslim fundamentalist organizations like the Pakistan-based Deen-dar-Anjuman in engineering Church bombings with the sole purpose of discrediting the Indian Government. They seem driven by their hatred of the ‘heathen’ Hinduism as much as their Western counterparts by historic anti-Judaism. This has made them go on a propaganda spree in the West, denouncing Hinduism and the Indian Government, and inviting the US and the European Union to pressure on India to put an end to Hindu nationalist movements.

This is compounded by the growth of an extraordinary state of mind in a section of the Christian community in India. This group, made up mainly of followers of some American evangelical denominations (like Jehova’s Witnesses) but not limited to them believes that after defeating Iraq the United States will attack India and impose Christian rule. This fantastic belief appears to be part of the teachings of these religious groups founded on apocalyptic visions. This neurosis seems to be heightened by the rise of Hindutva, which it sees as the handiwork of anti-Christs who have arisen just before the Second Coming of Christ. This too lies at the center of their insane belief system.

In the long run, all this could have catastrophic consequences for Christians in India. The Hindu-baiters and the propagandists will not be there to defend them when there is the inevitable Muslim backlash against Christians in the wake of America’s war against terrorism, which the Muslims of the world see as a crusade against Islam. In the circumstances, the Christians’ best safeguard is the goodwill of the Hindus, but their state of mind of extreme dhimmitude seems to have made them antagonize the Hindus in the hope that the Muslims will reward them for their act!

This indicates that Christian organizations, beleaguered by declining fortunes in the ‘Christian’ West, are prepared to go to any length just to survive. The Church lives in constant fear of losing Rome to Islam as it lost Jerusalem to the Arabs in the first millennium and Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the second. This existential fear is not helped by the presence of Islamic armies in Kosovo, a hundred miles from Trieste on the Italian border, aided and abetted by NATO and the US with their lopsided priorities. In the long run, this dhimmi state of mind poses a greater threat to the world than the Islamic warriors. And as a state of mind rather than anything physical (like Jihad), it is also harder to combat.

(Winston Churchill is quoted as saying: “An appeaser is one who keeps feeding a crocodile in the hope it will eat him last.” This is part of the dhimmi mindset also, especially among Christian leaders worldwide.)

That this is not just of historical interest but also of profound contemporary significance is clear from the general policy of appeasing Islamic sentiments being followed by the West. As Bat Ye’or observes: “Today, the United States and Europe compete for the favor of the Muslim world by once again abandoning the victimized peoples to its mercies. The Gulf War against Saddam Hussein on the question of oil interests (1991) was redeemed by the destruction of Yugoslavia and the creation of new centers of Islamist influence in the heart of the Balkans… The war to annihilate Serbia was intended to punish the crimes of Milosevic and his regime, but the media campaigns endeavored to calm the anti-Westernism in the Muslim world and of Muslim immigrants in Europe. It also helped to gain forgiveness for the war on Iraq by a strong pro-Muslim counterbalancing policy in the Balkans.” Even the terrorist state of Pakistan has profited from the West’s dhimmi mentality. Had India been a small country instead of a major power occupying a strategic position, she might have shared the fate of Serbia to ‘redeem’ the destruction of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But there is no room for complacency here, based on the naïve belief that the West will follow a moral course. The West too is not free from dhimmitude.

Conclusion

All told, Bat Ye’or’s concept of dhimmitude is an inspired insight that sheds light on how whole communities and even nations may be manipulated by fear and greed. Or as Brigadier Malik of Pakistan put in his seminal The Quranic Concept of War (sponsored by General Zia ul Haq, the Founding Father of Talibanism): “Once a condition of terror into the opponent’s heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved… Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon him.” Dhimmitude is nothing but negationist accommodation rooted in fear.

As far is India is concerned, she is still under the spell cast by two ghosts from her imperialist past. One is Macalayism imposed by European imperialism and the other dhimmitude forced by Islamic rule. The latter is proving to be far more lasting and debilitating to the national psyche. As long as these ghosts keep their hold on the people and the institutions of India, the country, though politically free cannot be spiritually free. And as long as dhimmitude is seen to work, the Muslims, their leadership in particular, will continue to harbor imperial visions. They will see every move towards equality and every growth towards nationalism as an assault on their fundamental right. India will become truly free only when this imperialist mindset and dhimmitude are both rooted out. This is the challenge before the next generation.

References

Dictionary of Islam (1885, reprinted 1999). Compiled by Thomas Patrick Hughes. RUPA & Co, New Delhi.

Bat Ye’or Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2002). Translated from the French by Miriam Kochan and David Littman. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, Associated Universities Press, Cranbury, NJ, USA and Gazelle Book Services, Lancaster, England.

Goel, Sita Ram (1999). The Calcutta Quran Petition, 3rd edition. New Delhi: Voice of India.

Malik, Brigadier S.K. The Quranic Concept of War, with a Foreword by General Zia-ul-Haq (1979). Wajid Ali’s Limited, Lahore, Pakistan. Indian edition by The English Book Store, New Delhi.

New Orleans Police to be trained in sensitivity by Nation of Islam

From the BayouBuzz, with thanks to Athinker.

The security chief for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has been hired to provide sensitivity training for the NOPD. Captain Dennis Muhammad has conducted sensitivity training in other cities such as Buffalo and will be paid $15,000 for his services, which NOPD Chief Eddie Compass says are needed in New Orleans. Compass says there are people in New Orleans who have complained about police treatment and are “anti police.” Compass believes that the “members of the Nation of Islam have some type of relationship with these people.”

However, what about those in the community and on the NOPD who are not members of the Nation of Islam? David Benelli of the Police Association of New Orleans says his phone has “been ringing off the hook” with members upset about the hiring of someone with ties to the Nation of Islam. The NOPD is 45% white, while the city is about 30% non-black, so there is a large number of people who might feel insulted by this decision. However, not only should whites be outraged about the selection of this Nation of Islam leader to conduct sensitivity training, but also all African-Americans in the community who are of the Catholic or Jewish faiths.

At the press conference announcing the training, a rabbi and priest expressed concern about Muhammad’s selection. Such concern is more than justified considering the history of Muhammad’s boss, Louis Farrakhan. Here are just a few of the Nation of Islam’s beliefs, as well as some of Farrakhan’s disturbing statements:

Whites are “blue eyed devils.”
Jews are “bloodsuckers”
“Hitler was a very great man.”
Jews controlled the slave trade and currently control the government
Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad believed that whites were created by an evil Black scientist and that there will be “The Great Decisive Battle in the Sky” when a space ship will kill all white people by bombing the earth
Muhammad believed that white people should relocate to Europe and that racial integration was wrong

In addition, Farrakhan has met with dictators in Sudan, Libya and Iraq, before the war, and praised their governments while denouncing the United States. Leaders in the Nation of Islam have also made very inflammatory anti-Catholic statements. In a November 1993 speech at Kean College in New Jersey, Farrakhan’s chief spokesman Khallid Muhammad said, “T]he old no-good Pope-you know that cracker, somebody need to raise that dress up and see what´s really under there. Jesus was right; you´re nothing but liars. The book of Revelations is right; you´re from the Synagogue of Satan.”

Due to public outcry, the New Orleans Police Chief reversed himself and will conduct sensitivity training under other leadership. From WND, with thanks to wwrwtw.

...While Chief Eddie Compass initially announced the plan as he sat next to controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whose fiery sermons and pronouncements have been criticized as racist and anti-Semitic, the city's top cop is now distancing himself from the controversial leader.

Compass argued the Nation of Islam's security chief, Capt. Dennis Muhammad, had successfully implemented the program in other cities, including Buffalo, reported WWL-TV in New Orleans.

Now Compass says the training will go on but with different leadership.

Compass said he decided to implement a program after hearing complaints about police officers during his recent tour of the city's high-crime neighborhoods.

"The people in the community who are anti-police, who really need to hear our message, who [we] really need to build the bridges with -- members of the Nation of Islam have some type of relationship with these people," Compass said earlier...

Fallaci Accuser Found Guilty of "Defamation"

Robert Spencer wrote a great piece on Oriana Fallaci yesterday. Now it seems the tables have turned and her accuser was found guilty of the same crime he accuses her of committing. ADEL SMITH, 6 MONTHS SENTENCE FOR DEFAMING RELIGION, from AGI, with thanks to RZ.

Padua, Italy, Jun 14 - Adel Smith, President of the Union of Italian Muslims, was sentenced by the Padua court to 6 months in prison, converted to a fine (over 6,000 euro), for the crime of defaming religion. On January 4, 2003, Adel Smith, during a TV program broadcast live on the Paduan channel 'Serenissima Tv' made accusations against the Catholic church defining it as "criminal association" and against Pope John Paul II, defined as "a foreign man who heads the church" and "able double-crosser. [...] I declared undeniable modern historic facts: for this reason I do not regret my declarations. It seems to me that the sentence is political. I am very curious to know what those think who yesterday invoked the freedom of judgment and criticism today: is it so for me too?" Smith said he will appeal against the sentence and if necessary will resort to European courts "until he is acquitted." "I am confident and sure that at the end I will have justice."

UK: Muslim team forces FA rule change

From the BBC, with thanks to Marc.

The Football Association (FA) has changed its rules after a team was expelled by its league when Muslim players refused to play during Ramadan.

Manchester's Abraham Moss Warriors were fined by the FA and thrown out of the Lancashire League after the boys' team refused to play morning games.

The club was worried players fasting for Ramadan would become dehydrated as they could not drink before sunset.

The FA has now said no team must play if it affects religious observance.

Previously the rules only applied to Christians being asked to play on Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day.

"This is a massive victory not just for us but for everyone of all faiths around the country who wants to play football," said Warriors' manager June Kelly.

"It is just a shame that it took something like this to get the rules changed.

"Fifty years ago the rule might have made sense when there were hardly any Muslims playing but now we are such a multi-cultural society it was completely out of date...

Moroccans, Turks rally against Dutch immigration plans

From the Dutch Expatica, with thanks to Dutch Cares.

AMSTERDAM — Moroccan and Turkish groups in the Netherlands have set up a new action committee named "Genoeg is genoeg" (enough is enough) to organise a campaign against the Dutch government's tough immigration and integration policies.

The organisers are calling for a national demonstration on 17 September in Amsterdam. Two spokesmen for the new organisation outlined the plans for the demonstration during a press conference in the Moroccan capital of Rabat on Monday.

Dutch Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk arrived in Rabat for an official visit on Monday. She toured the Dutch embassy where modifications have been made to house the new integration tests that are to be introduced for would-be immigrants to the Netherlands.

While there was news on Monday that other European countries are interested in the immigration policies being pioneered by Verdonk, the spokesmen for the new action committee described her policies as discriminatory and racist...

One of those policies is to change the practice of retaining duel citizenship for THIRD generation Moroccan immigrants. Morocco is not cooperating. See Expatica here.

Bergen: The Madrassa Myth

Do you wonder why we call it the New Duranty Times? Peter Bergen and Swati Pandy write about "The Madrassa Myth" without once dealing with what is taught at those Madrassas.

IT is one of the widespread assumptions of the war on terrorism that the Muslim religious schools known as madrassas, catering to families that are often poor, are graduating students who become terrorists. Last year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell denounced madrassas in Pakistan and several other countries as breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists." A year earlier, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had queried in a leaked memorandum, "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

While madrassas may breed fundamentalists who have learned to recite the Koran in Arabic by rote, such schools do not teach the technical or linguistic skills necessary to be an effective terrorist. Indeed, there is little or no evidence that madrassas produce terrorists capable of attacking the West. And as a matter of national security, the United States doesn't need to worry about Muslim fundamentalists with whom we may disagree, but about terrorists who want to attack us.

We examined the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners. We found that a majority of them are college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering. In the four attacks for which the most complete information about the perpetrators' educational levels is available - the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, and the Bali bombings in 2002 - 53 percent of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. As a point of reference, only 52 percent of Americans have been to college. The terrorists in our study thus appear, on average, to be as well educated as many Americans.

While this is true, it doesn't necessarily follow that the madrassas are nothing to worry about.

The 1993 World Trade Center attack involved 12 men, all of whom had a college education. The 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities, a prestigious and elite endeavor for anyone from the Middle East. Indeed, the lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university in, of all things, urban preservation, while the operational planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina. We also found that two-thirds of the 25 hijackers and planners involved in 9/11 had attended college.

Of the 75 terrorists we investigated, only nine had attended madrassas, and all of those played a role in one attack - the Bali bombing. Even in this instance, however, five college-educated "masterminds" - including two university lecturers - helped to shape the Bali plot.

Like the view that poverty drives terrorism - a notion that countless studies have debunked - the idea that madrassas are incubating the next generation of terrorists offers the soothing illusion that desperate, ignorant automatons are attacking us rather than college graduates, as is often the case. In fact, two of the terrorists in our study had doctorates from Western universities, and two others were working toward their Ph.D.

A World Bank-financed study that was published in April raises further doubts about the influence of madrassas in Pakistan, the country where the schools were thought to be the most influential and the most virulently anti-American. Contrary to the numbers cited in the report of the 9/11 commission, and to a blizzard of newspaper reports that 10 percent of Pakistani students study in madrassas, the study's authors found that fewer than 1 percent do so. If correct, this estimate would suggest that there are far more American children being home-schooled than Pakistani boys attending madrassas.

Sooo, home schooling is just as bad as the madrassas? Now you know why we call it the New Duranty Times. In this case, think Jimmy.

Dhimmitude in Vermont: School Changing Nickname, Mascot After Islamic Protest

From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

HINESBURG, Vt. -- The Crusaders of Champlain Valley Union High are now history.

The School Board in the Vermont community is selecting a new nickname and mascot for the school.

The Islamic world has criticized the Crusades.

Yes, and I have criticized Islamic jihads, but I don't see that compelling any jihad terrorists to pack it in. This is just part of the larger campaign to make the West ashamed of its own culture and history -- the easier to subvert it. The West has nothing to apologize for in the Crusades, as I explain in my forthcoming book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

And closer to home, some people object to a knight bearing a crucifix as the symbol for a public school.

The image makeover will be implemented in time for the next school year.

Redhawks, Bobcats and Red Wolves are all in the running for Union High's new nickname.

I, Freakin Batman, have a suggestion: Cringin' Dhimmis. The Champlain Valley Union High Cringin' Dhimmis. How about it, School Board members? The mascot could be a little guy with a wide yellow belt and no shoes, head down, obsequious grin on his face. What do you think?

Pipes: Saudis Import Slaves to America

Daniel Pipes writes in Front Page:

Homaidan Ali Al-Turki, 36, and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, 35, appear to be a model immigrant couple. Having arrived in the United States in 2000, they live with their four children in an upscale Denver suburb. Al-Turki is a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Colorado, specializing in Arabic intonation and focus prosody. He donates money to the Linguistic Society of America and is CEO of Al-Basheer Publications and Translations, a bookstore specializing in titles about Islam.

Last week, however, the FBI accused the couple of enslaving an Indonesian woman in her early 20s. For four years, reads the indictment, they created “a climate of fear and intimidation through rape and other means.” The slave woman cooked, cleaned, took care of children, and more for little or no pay, fearing that if she did not obey, “she would suffer serious harm.”

The two Saudis face charges of forced labor, aggravated sexual abuse, document servitude, and harboring an alien. If found guilty, they could spend their remaining lives in prison. The government also wants to seize the couple’s Al-Basheer bank account to pay their former slave $92,700 in back wages.

It’s a shocking instance, especially for a graduate student and religious bookstore owner – but not a particularly rare one. Here are other examples of enslavement, all involving Saudi royals or diplomats living in the United States.

In 1982, a Miami judge issued a warrant to search Prince Turki Bin Abdul Aziz’s 24th-floor penthouse to determine if he was holding Nadia Lutefi Mustafa, an Egyptian woman, against her will. Turki and his French bodyguards prevented a search from taking place, then won retroactive diplomatic immunity to forestall any legal unpleasantness.
In 1988, the Saudi defense attaché in Washington, Col. Abdulrahman S. Al-Banyan, employed a Thai domestic, Mariam Roungprach, until she escaped his house by crawling out a window. She later told how she had been imprisoned there, did not get enough food, and was not paid. Interestingly, her work contract specified that she could not leave the house or make telephone calls without her employer’s permission.
In 1991, Prince Saad Bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud and his wife, Princess Noora, lived on two floors of the Ritz-Carlton Houston. Two of their servants, Josephine Alicog of the Philippines and Sriyani Marian Fernando of Sri Lanka, filed a suit against the prince, alleging they were for five months held against their will, “by means of unlawful threats, intimidation and physical force,” they were only partially paid, denied medical treatment, and suffered mental and physical abuse.
In March 2005, a wife of Saudi Prince Mohamed Bin Turki Alsaud, Hana Al Jader, 39, was arrested at her home outside of Boston on charges of forced labor, domestic servitude, falsifying records, visa fraud, and harboring aliens. Al Jader stands accused of compelling two Indonesian women to work for her by making them believe “that if they did not perform such labor, they would suffer serious harm.” If convicted, Al Jader faces up to 140 years in jail and $2.5 million in fines.
There are many other similar instances, for example, the Orlando escapades of Saudi princesses Maha al-Sudairi and Buniah al-Saud. Joel Mowbray tells of twelve female domestics “trapped and abused” in the households of Saudi dignitaries or diplomats.

Why is this problem so acute when it comes to affluent Saudis? Four reasons come to mind. Although slavery was abolished in the kingdom in 1962, the practice still flourishes there. Ranking Saudi religious authorities endorse slavery; for example, Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan insisted recently that “Slavery is a part of Islam” and whoever wants it abolished he called “an infidel.”...

Read it all. Lots of useful links in the original.

Remove the Israeli Settlements Game

Yes, this is an actual video game. "Disengagement, the video game" from Ynetnews, with thanks to JS.

Left-wing activists behind 'Day against Occupation for Democracy' introduce politically themed game to internet: Move the settlers.

The organizers of the "Day against Occupation and for Democracy," which will occur on June 17, have found a creative new way to get across their political message – by way of a free, Flash game on the internet that allows users to play IDF soldiers removing settlers from the territories.

"This is your opportunity to remove the settlements and get Israel out of the territories," the game's home page says.

To remove a caravan, the player need only click on it once, but when the caravan turns into house, two clicks are necessary to remove it. The game gets trickier when it comes to removing a settlement guarded by soldiers.

"To get rid of a settlement, you have to drag back the poor soldiers who have to guard it back across the Green Line – to Israel," the game explains.

The game's left-wing developers do have their limits, though: Those who toss Israeli soldiers into the sea do not get any points.

Once the soldiers are removed, the settlement can be taken down, but it is an almost Sysiphean task as the settlers keep on coming back to rebuild.

If the player loses the game, the screen displays a particularly bitter message: "One more settlement and the country is lost."...

Is it permissible for a Muslim to be a sincere friend to a person who is not Muslim?

More advice from the always helpful Islam Q & A site, with thanks to JK. And since when did they add another a to Allah? Soon, we need to address "the great Muslim spelling question," as well. Pick a spelling, any spelling, but stick to it will ya?

Question : I have questions about Islam; can you explain them to me? Is it permissible for a Muslim to be a sincere friend to a person who is not Muslim?

Answer : Praise be to Allaah.

It is not permissible for a Muslim to make friends with a mushrik or to take him as a close friend, because Islam calls on us to forsake the kaafirs and to disavow them, because they worship someone other than Allaah. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“O you who believe! Take not as friends the people who incurred the Wrath of Allaah (i.e. the Jews). Surely, they have despaired of (receiving any good in) the Hereafter, just as the disbelievers have despaired of those (buried) in graves (that they will not be resurrected on the Day of Resurrection)”

[al-Mumtahanah 60:13]

This was also the teaching of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).

1 – It was narrated from Abu Sa’eed al-Khudri (may Allaah be pleased with him) that he heard the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) say, “Do not keep company with anyone but a believer and do not let anyone eat your food but one who is pious.” (Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, 2395; Abu Dawood, 4832. Abu ‘Eesa al-Tirmidhi said: this hadeeth is hasan. It was also classed as hasan by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Tirmidhi, 2519).

Abu ‘Eesa al-Khattaabi said: Rather he warned against keeping company with anyone who is not pious and against mixing with them or eating with them, because eating with a person instills friendship and love in the heart.

He said: do not make friends with anyone who is not pious; do not take him as a companion with whom you eat and chat.

(Ma’aalim al-Sunan, Haamish Mukhtasar Sunan Abi Dawood, 7/185, 186).

2 – It was narrated from Samurah that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Do not live among the mushrikeen and do not mix with them, for whoever lives among them or mixes with them is not one of us.” (Narrated by al-Bayhaqi, 9/142; al-Haakim, 2/154. He said, it is saheeh according to the conditions of al-Bukhaari. The hadeeth was also classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in al-Silsilat al-Saheehah, 2/229 with its corroborating reports).

But it is permissible to deal with them in a kind manner in the hope that they might become Muslim.

It was narrated that Anas (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: There was a Jewish boy who used to serve the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), and he fell sick. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) came to visit him. He sat by his head and said, “Become Muslim.” (The boy) looked at his father who was with him, and he (the father) said, “Obey Abu’l-Qaasim (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).” So he became Muslim, and the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) went out, saying, “Praise be to Allaah Who has saved him from the Fire” (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 1290).

And Allaah knows best.

Well, that settles that. You can only be nice if there's a possibility you might convert the kafir, other than that, forget it.

Indonesia: A Push for Sharia

Of course, if anything bad happens to Muslims, it's always the fault of not enough Islam. "Muslim Leaders in Indonesia Push for Implementation of Islamic Law," From Compass, with thanks to Witness.

Following the deadly May 28 bombing in Tentena, Indonesia, both Muslim and Christian leaders have expressed concern about corruption and violence in the country. Some Muslim leaders believe the best solution is the nationwide implementation of sharia (Islamic law). Congresses held in Jakarta in 2004 and Sulawesi in March 2005 recommended that sharia principles be introduced through a revision of Indonesia's criminal law. Meanwhile, provincial councils are including more sharia principles in local bylaws. In some provinces, governors have restricted freedom of worship for Christians.

Pakistan: Rape victim cannot travel abroad

From the BBC, with thanks to Scaramouche.

The Pakistan government has confirmed that a victim of a notorious gang rape is on a special list of people who are not allowed to travel abroad.

Mukhtar Mai, raped allegedly on the orders of a tribal council in 2002, has demanded the restrictions be lifted.

"We want her case to be processed and resolved first," junior interior minister Shehzad Wasim said.

On Friday a court ordered that 12 men imprisoned in connection with the case must be released by Monday.

Ms Mai's name suddenly appeared on the "exit control list" earlier this month.

Immigration officers in Karachi say they have received instructions to stop her if she tries to travel abroad.

Ms Mai has been invited by human rights group Amnesty International to visit the United States.

Pakistan's opposition says that she is being prevented from travelling abroad because the government believes any such visit would hurt the country's image...

Jordan reconsiders its Islamic teachings

We've heard this kind of talk before, but will changing school textbooks actually help discourage jihad or change the traditional interpretations of Islamic law? From the International Herald Tribune, with thanks to Skeet Street.

AMMAN, Jordan By Middle Eastern standards, Jordanian schoolbooks are relatively free of bombast. But some textbooks used here to teach Islamic culture contain nefarious conspiracies that just will not go away.

There is the Western plot to divide the Muslim world. There is the conniving Jew seeking to destroy Islam. And there is the call for a return to the faith in response.

But if a committee reviewing the country's Islamic curriculum has its way, such talk, at least in the current form, is likely to become history. Facing growing extremism and rising security threats, educators are seeking to revamp their religious studies curriculum to cultivate a more thoughtful and open mind in a country that is among the more moderate of Arab states.

The effort to foster more moderate expressions of Islam is decidedly ambitious for an Arab government, but also very delicate.

Ostensibly, it seeks to inoculate Jordanian youth against extremism, although some critics complain that it is really an effort to ward off foreign pressure, especially from the United States, on which Jordan has grown increasingly dependent...

Muslim in Nazareth takes on Holocaust

From the Washington Times, with thanks to D.

NAZARETH, Israel -- No one talked to him at a recent family wedding, Khaled Mahameed says. Neighbors curse him at the supermarket. A relative accuses him of unwittingly playing into Israel's hands.

The reason: This Israeli Muslim has embarked on a lonely mission to teach his fellow Arabs about the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany put to death an estimated 6 million Jews.

Mr. Mahameed's newly opened Holocaust institute in the biblical town of Nazareth is a modest operation, with occasional lectures. About 60 photos documenting the genocide mounted on the walls.

But the effort is highly unusual if not unique in the Arab world, where the Holocaust often is played down or even denied.

One photo shows a Nazi officer pointing a gun to the head of a Jew who squats at the edge of a mass grave.

"Men like this man settled our land," Mr. Mahameed told five Arab visitors recently. "We have to understand the very deep trauma of this man."

Mr. Mahameed, 43, thinks that learning about the Holocaust could help Arabs understand Israel better and ultimately resolve the Middle East conflict.

A few of his neighbors have expressed support for his museum, but it has provoked strong opposition among Palestinians who say Israel used Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's genocide as an excuse to take Arab land...

A word from a student of Omid Safi

I have received a most indignant email from a young lady purporting to be a student of the illustrious Dr. Omid Safi of Colgate University. Given the rather sorry state of its grammar and syntax, I rather hope that it doesn't actually come from someone who sits at the feet of the great Safi himself, but I have no way of knowing for sure. It is reproduced below exactly as I received it, with comments from me.

My fellow students and I are getting sick and tired of your constant insults on Mr. Omid Safi.

For those of you who are just joining our program, a recap: Omid Safi teaches at Colgate U a course called "Islam and modernity." In April 2004 I posted about it here, noting it as an example of how indoctrination and propaganda have replaced genuine intellectual inquiry in our nation's universities, and particularly in the Middle Eastern Studies departments. Why? Because my man Omid included me in a list of "Islamophobes," from which his hapless students had to choose one to write a paper about. He didn't give them the opportunity to allow them to consider the arguments of these "Islamophobes" in and of themselves -- he did his students' thinking for them.

Omid eventually got wind of my posting here and we had a series of exchanges. In the course of this exchange, Omid impugns (of course) my knowledge of Islam, my good will, my overall motives, and my basic decency as a human being. All I did in response was point out that with his little enemies' list he was acting as a propagandist, not a scholar. And I confess, I made a little fun of his pomposity and arrogance.

Yesterday I linked to these posts in a posting about a puff piece on Omid. That's what evidently constitutes my "constant insults on Mr. Omid Safi." If he had engaged my work critically and come up with honest criticisms of it, we might have had a basis for a fruitful dialogue. If he had ignored it, I never would have written a word about him. But since he started out with namecalling, well, our love affair just got off on the wrong foot.

He is a great teacher and the nicest person Ive ever met.

Jeepers! Ever? Hey Omid, I think this girl has, er, a little crush on you!

Ive never met or not would I like, put anyone who dedicates themselves to insulting another person's religion and launching personal attacks on people, isnt the person you want to be around.

I am not quite sure what "Ive never met or not would I like, put anyone..." means, but I am fairly sure that I am being accused here of "insulting another person's religion and launching personal attacks on people." But I doubt that this young lady could find any instances in which I actually insult "another person's religion." I am a foe of Islamic jihad violence and terror, and I have spoken and written forthrightly about the words and deeds of jihad terrorists, and the contents of the Islamic texts that inspire them. If that is "insulting another person's religion," then I plead guilty. But I do not think it is. Insulting another person's religion would be to say something like "You guys worship an elephant? That's stupid!" Or "You think God takes on the form of bread? You ninny!" No one can produce a statement like that from me in reference to Islam, because I have never made one. As for "launching personal attacks on people," remember: I am not the launcher. That would be your man Omid.

Religious study isnt the subject where you just wake up one morning and decide to start reading a religious text.

Duly noted. I'll start in the evening from now on.

Can I become a doctor by just reading a medical book? Where were you educated at in this field?

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and after that on my own. I make no secret of that, or any apology for it. If I expected readers to accept what I say simply because it is I who say it, this young lady would have a case. But I do not. Every book I have ever published has been painstakingly footnoted, full of abundant references to primary Islamic texts and other key sources. Why? So that readers can check my work and decide for themselves. I was recently contacted by a philosophy professor who had done just that -- gone back to all my sources to verify my contentions, and had found to his amazement that what I was saying was true.

If this young lady had had the opportunity to get a real education, she might know that the argument from authority is the weakest of all arguments. And if she had troubled to read anything I have written, she might know that never once have I relied on that argument from authority -- in sharp contrast to my man Omid.

Mr. Safi is a brilliant lesson planner which challenge you academically, socially, and mentally.

A brilliant lesson planner! Wow! I am indeed awestruck by the prospect of a man whose lesson plans gleam thus, but I must point out that in fact Omid does not challenge me, not in any way. He puts me under his microscope but takes umbrage when I talk back from the slide. He has haughtily refused my offers to talk it over. Obviously if I am truly the bumbling, hateful idiot he makes me out to be, he ought to take the challenge, wax me, and be done with it. He could even sell the videotapes. But as it stands, I am the one "which challenge" him. And he has declined the challenge.

He doesn't "white wash" Islam and breaks down each religion to its core.

Zowie! To its core, without whitewash? And let me ask you this: how many professors of Islam besides Omid have you had? (Academically.) How many books about Islam besides Omid's and the ones he assigned have you read? (In the evening, of course, not the morning.) In other words, how exactly would you know if he is applying whitewash to the core or not? He don't have to wear overalls to do it.

We dont think for him, his lessons speak for themselves.

Indeed they do. That's what worries me. I am aware that you don't think for him, but I wish you would. A little thinking would help the situation. Maybe you could think about why a Muslim, Stephen Schwartz, was included on a list of "Islamophobes," with an explanatory note added only after I pointed out the absurdity of this. You might also wish to think about whether the things that Patricia Crone, Samuel Huntington, and Bernard Lewis have in common with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are really the most important aspects of their work. And you might think about whether it is possible that any of the people on Omid's enemies list might have valid points to make, and whether or not Omid is prejudicing you against them by calling them names at the outset. But don't do all this thinking for Omid; do it for yourself.

He never said anything negative or hateful about anyones religion.

Righto, luv. He said plenty that was negative and hateful, however. Or do you not find his little list "unrepentant Orientalists, outright Islamophobes, Neo-conservatives, Western Triumphalists, right-wing Christian Evangelicals, etc." pejorative?

You are a fraud Mr. Robert "great scholar without any formal training" Spencer.

What are you talking about? I wouldn't even think of reading a book except in the most formal proper eveningwear (never in the morning, I know, I know). Why, I am in my white kid gloves, white tie and tails as we speak -- I was just checking on a few things in the Qur'an.

What's that? That's not what you meant? You mean, I have no knowledge of how to study the sacred texts properly? Oh, I see. And I suppose that all the Muslims around the world who see in the Qur'an marching orders to commit violence today have had this training? For I am merely reporting on their usage. If Omid really wants to stamp out that sort of thing, let him refute things like this from Zarqawi. He's the one making arguments from Qur'an and Sunnah, not me. Am I to be disbelieved because I don't have a PhD when I read Zarqawi's letter and tell people what's in it?

Aside from that, I addressed this above: let Omid refute what I say about Islam, if he can (and he can't). So far his argument against me boils down to the fact that he has one more degree than I do. That proves nothing: I know lots of dolts with PhDs. I don't have one because I chose not to get one: I saw in 1986 that the field was becoming irredeemably politicized, and it has only gotten worse. Omid is a prime example. He can hide behind his degree all he wants, but that doesn't really prove me wrong.

Did he insult you? He called you and your peers an "anti muslim". Did that hurt your feelings? For a man whose sole purpose in life is to preach hate and associate himself with people who WOULD SUPPORT VIOLENCE AGAINST MUSLIMS, you really are a sensitive dude.

Yeah, I am a sensitive dude. You got me all choked up now, young lady. My sole purpose in life is to preach hate? Please supply one sentence, one paragraph -- anything -- that I have ever written that does so. Take your time. I'll be right here. And I associate myself with "people who WOULD SUPPORT VIOLENCE AGAINST MUSLIMS," do I? Now, did Omid tell you that? Because if he did, he might really start to get me peeved, I don't mind telling you. Bring your proofs, if you be truthful. Tell me who it is with whom I am associated who would support violence against Muslims. You can't, because there are no such people associated with me. I have no control over the dweebs who come to my site and post violence -- when I see their posts I remove them -- any more than I have any control over the Islamic apologists who come to my site and post silly justifications for terror.

You're the laughing stock of the scholarly world.

You know, I am really starting to weep copiously now. Yes, it's true. I'm ruining my eveningwear. To think: a self-important gang of fakes, hacks, Marxist leftovers, counterculture casualties, graying hippies, and apologists for terror are...laughing at me! I feel like Sally Brown giving her report before her class! I...I just can't take it...

Mr. Safi often quotes you haters and its really funny how narrow minded you are all. You all portray yourselves as these great saviors who are on the course to save humanity, like ur freakin Batman or something.

I love this! Hey everybody, I'm Freakin Batman!

Mr. Omid's silence shows how much character he has and ur insults show how pathetic you are. You people label all who disagree with you as "Islamists" and when someone tells the truth about you, you get ticked.

Yeah, "Mr. Omid" has been reaaalll silent, as he continues to teach his course in smear propaganda, he's just quiet as a mouse. But again, he is the one doing the labeling, not me. If you knew anything about me at all, you would know that I eschew the word "Islamist." Anyway, I ain't ticked. Not a-tall. I am just over here still ready for the Illustrious One to tell me that he Now Deigns to Mop the Floor with me in a debate. But I know he won't. I know Omid likes Bob Dylan, so here's one you can give him: "Omid, don't ask me nothin' about nothin', I just might tell you the truth."

Is your word God???

No, the Word is my God.

PS

I know you people are experts on twisting the truth. Mr. Safi urged us not to contact with you ppl but I really needed to get this off my mind.

Oh, come on, Omid, let them write! Let a hundred flowers bloom!

Toodles!

:)

And a hearty ":)" to you too.

Dhimmitude at the BBC: "Don't Panic, I'm Islamic"

Don't Panic, I'm Islamic is a new program on the BBC, with thanks to Cid Martel:

...Don't Panic, I'm Islamic meets Muslims who speak openly about what it means to be a British Muslim - at a time when the nation is fighting a 'war on terror'...

The programme also uncovers the implications of the prejudice they
encounter. Mohamed has been called 'Osama bin London' because he dresses in white robes and a headscarf similar to that worn by the prophet. "They all gathered around me when I went to the airport," he says, "simply because I wear Islamic robes. I told the airport security that I wouldn't be so stupid to dress up like this if I was carrying a bomb."

On the other hand, Sajidah, a softly spoken mother from Slough, explains: "There are many Muslims that come on the television but no one will ever say that they support Bin Laden. But privately if you speak to people there are many that will say what he did was right, that they (America) needed that smack in the face". While Sajidah sympathised with the victims of 9/11, she says that when Muslims are killed - such as those during the war and continuing strife in Iraq - there are no candlelight vigils or stirring speeches about punishing the perpetrators.

The comfortable middle ground is eroding as Muslims are asked to either accept the 'war on terror' and deny their heritage or become radicalised and condemned as 'terrorists'...

Cid comments: "So, by accepting the war on TERROR they deny their heritage? You mean, TERROR is part of their heritage? What is the Beeb trying to say here? That the war on TERROR is a war against Islam? I thought TERROR had nothing to do with Islam!"

Chicago Trib: "The visitors call the dead 'martyrs' and the U.S. forces who killed them 'infidels.' But they mean that in the nicest way"

Yes, they hate you and want to kill you, but very nicely. Dhimmi absurdity from "Afghans seek cures at shrine for Al Qaeda" in the Chicago Tribune, with thanks to LH:

NEAR KHOST, Afghanistan -- Some men want to walk without crutches, and some women want to get pregnant. A few Romeos stand in front of the graves and ask for love. Others pray for the souls of the dead.

Everyone has a wish at this Al Qaeda cemetery.

"I have an ache in my left leg," said Khanema, who like many Pashtuns has only one name. "I have a backache. Sometimes it hurts so much, I can't sleep. So I came here to pray to the martyrs. I came from Pakistan only for this shrine."

The men buried here at Martyrs shrine and another shrine nearby were killed in late 2001 during the U.S.-led war against the Taliban. On the second night of Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims, U.S. forces bombed a mosque in the southeastern town of Khost. Dozens of Taliban and Al Qaeda members were killed.

The mosque has been rebuilt, light green and peach, with large windows and a sunlit prayer room. But the two shrines for the dead and another in eastern Afghanistan have turned into pilgrimage sites, almost tourist attractions featuring Al Qaeda dead.

Villagers sometimes travel for hours to go to these shrines to pray. They stop as they return home to Afghanistan from Pakistan, where they had been living as refugees. They visit every day, or once in a lifetime.

The shrines show the logic of some people in the new Afghanistan, particularly those in the south and southeast, where the influence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda has been strongest. Those who come here do not necessarily support terrorists. Many say they do not hate the Afghan government or the U.S. forces. They welcome the upcoming elections and do not want war.

But these people are often desperate, for whatever reason, and they believe the dead men might help them. The visitors call the dead "martyrs" and the U.S. forces who killed them "infidels." But they mean that in the nicest way. They see no contradiction.

"People love the shrine, and I love it," said Marjullah, the Martyrs caretaker, adding that he helped carry the bodies of the dead to the shrine. But he says he also likes the Afghan government. And he says the U.S. forces should stay as long as they help rebuild the country.

‘Allah turned girl into dog’

Here is a superficially funny story about superstition and rumor-mongering. But there is a darker undercurrent: is this story completely fictional, or can it story be traced to a real girl in Taibeh? If so, where is the girl? Has she been murdered for throwing the Qur'an? With the claims that Muslims killed people in Afghanistan because they thought the Qur'an was desecrated at Gitmo, it is not outside the realm of possibility. The Islamic media that originated the stories of rioters killing people in the desecration riots made sure of that.

From YnetNews, with thanks to all who sent this in:

TAIBEH – Harsh punishment? A Muslim girl from Taibeh was punished by Allah and turned into a dog, according to rumors that have been circulating in the Arab-Israeli town this week, Arab-language newspaper Panorama reported.

According to the rumors, the harsh punishment was meted out after the girl, upset by her mother’s request to bring her the Quran as she
was watching television, threw the holy Muslim book at the mother with disdain.

The newspaper decided to look into the rumors and sent a reporter to check where they originated. As it turned out, the source was a photocopy of a news story posted in Taibeh’s largest mosque. According to that report, taken from the Internet, the unusual story happened in a Muslim country in Asia....

The newspaper reporter also turned to the Muslim leaders to ask their opinion on the matter. One religious cleric responded that the story was obviously baseless, “since Allah doesn’t need to turn a girl into a dog in order to prove his strength. If Allah wants to prove his power he can make the entire universe shake.”

Iran crows: Muslims to Train US Police

From Iran's IQNA, with thanks to Kaosktrl:

Tehran, IQNA: June 12, 2005--American Muslim groups are to train US police on the Islamic religion so as to be more sensitive towards Muslims.

According to the US Fox news channel, the US police, wanting to avoid a repeat of the scandals surrounding Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons, are to be trained on Islamic religion by American Islamic groups and foundations.

US officials advised to show sensitivity to Muslims

DHS told to play the dhimmi. From Pakistan's Daily Times, with thanks to Mackie:

WASHINGTON: The Department of Homeland Security has been advised to be sensitive to Muslim concerns and to take steps to ease the tension that now exists between American Muslims and US government agencies.

The advice was given by Dr Akbar Ahmed, of the American University, to Daniel Sutherland, of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties division in the Department of Homeland Security, during their meeting at the university last week.

According to the online paper, American Muslim Perspective, Dr Ahmed made three recommendations to the American official. First of all, the Pakistani academic said the Department must improve the way Muslims and Arabs are handled at airport security checkpoints. He told Sutherland, “People having many Muslim names - like my own - derive from our Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), are not terrorists but they are stopped and searched at every security checkpoint. This happens to every visitor from abroad and every Muslim American. You simply cannot humiliate Muslims like this.” Dr Ahmed explained that while the Department feels that America is under siege, so do Muslims. “At the time of September 11, there were millions of Muslims in the world and probably a few dozens of them wanted to do harm to the US. But when you antagonise and alienate Muslims like this, those that are angry at America start to multiply. The anger is at a peak level with the young generation on the edge. This is your challenge”. The US government needs to identify the “bad guys”, but not disrespect or humiliate Muslims as a community, he added.

Fine. Then let the Muslims identify and struggle against the "bad guys" in their own community, instead of resisting efforts to find them.

Britain gives knighthood to Muslim leader

Egregious dhimmitude in the UK: meet Sir Iqbal Sacranie.

Marc at USS Neverdock reminds us of some of Sir Iqbal's more memorable statements:

You may remember Sacranie's more infamous quote: "There is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist. This is deeply offensive."

And Sacranie "...welcomed plans to make inciting religious hatred an offence."

But of course he does, because Sacranie says "Saying Muslims are terrorists would be covered by this provision'."

There you have it. According to Sacranie if you call bin Laden a terrorist you could be locked up under the proposed legislation.

Islamists want killer of Israelis freed

Islamic law stipulates that a killer of non-Muslims is to be punished more lightly than a killer of Muslims, so this is unsurprising. From UPI, with thanks to Twostellas:

Amman, Jordan, Jun. 13 (UPI) -- Islamic-led professional associations in Jordan are pressing for the release of a soldier serving a life sentence for killing Israeli students.

The Syndicate of Jordanian Engineers, which is controlled by the Islamic Action Front, announced Monday that the coalition of 14 professional unions had asked the Committee for Combating Normalization of Relations with Israel to join efforts in organizing a national campaign to press for the release of Ahmed Dakamissa and others the group considers political prisoners in Jordan.

Dakamissa was sentenced to life in prison by a military court in 1997 after being convicted of killing seven Israeli schoolgirls who were on a school trip in the region of Baqoura on the Jordanian-Israeli border after Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994.

Dakamissa, who was a soldier at the time, justified his act by saying he opened fire at the girls after they made fun of him while he was praying.

Dakamissa was perhaps inspired by the example of Muhammad:

Once the Prophet was offering prayers at the Ka'ba. Abu Jahl was sitting with some of his companions. One of them said to the others, "Who amongst you will bring the abdominal contents (intestines, etc.) of a camel of Bani so and so and put it on the back of Muhammad, when he prostrates?" The most unfortunate of them got up and brought it. He waited till the Prophet prostrated and then placed it on his back between his shoulders. I was watching but could not do any thing. I wish I had some people with me to hold out against them. They started laughing and falling on one another. Allah's Apostle was in prostration and he did not lift his head up till Fatima (Prophet's daughter) came and threw that (camel's abdominal contents) away from his back. He raised his head and said thrice, "O Allah! Punish Quraish." So it was hard for Abu Jahl and his companions when the Prophet invoked Allah against them as they had a conviction that the prayers and invocations were accepted in this city (Mecca). The Prophet said, "O Allah! Punish Abu Jahl, 'Utba bin Rabi'a, Shaiba bin Rabi'a, Al-Walid bin 'Utba, Umaiya bin Khalaf, and 'Uqba bin Al Mu'it (and he mentioned the seventh whose name I cannot recall). By Allah in Whose Hands my life is, I saw the dead bodies of those persons who were counted by Allah's Apostle in the Qalib (one of the wells) of Badr. (Bukhari, 1:4:231)

Pakistan: Woman dies from acid burns

From the Daily Times, with thanks to Twostellas:

BAHAWALPURE: A woman hospitalised after her husband and in-laws allegedly threw acid on her died in Bahawalpur Victoria Hospital on Saturday. Atiqur Rehman told the Naushra Jadid police that his sister Rozina was killed by her husband Asgher after she opposed his plan for second marriage. On Friday, Asgher’s sister Fatima and Shammoo threw acid on Rozina and her little daughter Sonia when they were asleep. Both were taken to the hospital where Rozina died.

An interview with Bat Ye'or

Bat Ye'or speaks about her book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, her other books, and more with John W. Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute (thanks to EPG):

“I wrote these books,” said Bat Ye’or, “because I had witnessed the destruction, in a few short years, of a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years and which had existed from the time of Jeremiah the Prophet. I saw the disintegration and flight of families, dispossessed and humiliated, the destruction of their synagogues, the bombing of the Jewish quarters and the terrorizing of a peaceful population. I have personally experienced the hardships of exile, the misery of statelessness−and I wanted to get to the root cause of all this. I wanted to understand why the Jews from Arab countries, nearly a million, had shared my experience.”

Bat Ye’or’s wide historical research details the inferior condition accorded to Jews and Christian “dhimmis” (non-Muslim subjugated people) in Muslim lands, where they have survived through hardships and persecution ever since the rise of Islam in the 7th century. She pioneered the study of “dhimmitude” and the history and conditions of life of non-Muslims in their own lands, conquered by jihad and Islamized. According to Ye’or, “The conditions of Jews varied, but in general it was one of insecurity, humiliation and degradation for over 1,300 years, particularly in their own country, the Land of Israel.”

In 1997, Ye’or testified at a U.S. Congressional Hearing and the Human Rights Caucus on the subject “Past is Prologue: The Challenge of Islamism Today−An Historical Overview of the Persecution of Christians Under Islam.” “I discovered in my research that the Christian condition under Islam is similar and remarkably parallel to that of the Jews,” said Ye’or. “A historical tragedy has been going on for both religious groups. I realized that the fight for freedom from jihad and dhimmitude concerns us all, especially now in the 21st century. My research demonstrates that this is a very old problem, and it must be confronted now.”

Bat Ye’or has written three books on the jihad, Islam and dhimmitude. Her latest book is Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005). In it, she details the cooperation and collaboration between European countries and Arab League countries in every area, from foreign policy, economy, culture, media and immigration. She examines the economic, political and ideological factors that are leading a whole continent to choose dhimmitude and gradually abandon its culture and freedom. This choice and the increase of Muslim immigration, as well as the pressure of Islamic terrorism, Ye’or argues, have concurred to widen the rift between America and a sinking Europe. Eurabia is Europe’s future, Ye’or believes, and it is the agent of the extension of dhimmitude worldwide.

Read it all, please.

`Gamblers' to get seven lashes with a cane in Indonesia

Sharia alert from AP, with thanks to Nicolei:

Authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province will begin caning convicted gamblers next week, as part of efforts to broaden the implementation of Islamic law in the region, a government official said yesterday.

The mayor of the east Aceh town of Bireuen Mustofa Gelanggang said authorities next Friday will cane at least 20 convicted gamblers with seven strokes of a 2m rattan stick following prayers at a local mosque. The date was set after Acting Aceh Governor Azwar Abubakar signed a law approving the punishment Friday.

The law comes two years after the conservative province became the first in Indonesia to open an Islamic court, which is empowered to hand down punishments according to the Koran.

Abubakar is expected to sign additional legislation in the coming weeks that expands the use of caning to punish adultery and other crimes, Gelanggang said.

Pakistani man accused of killing two daughters for failing to serve him water

Because after all, what are women for? From AP, with thanks to OBH:

A farmer fatally shot two of his teenage daughters in a remote Pakistan village after one did not immediately serve him a glass of water when he returned from working in the fields, police said Friday.

The 47-year-old man shot his 18-year-old daughter for failing to give him water, and then killed his 16-year-old daughter when she tried to save her older sister, local police officer Mushtaq Warriach said.

The incident occurred Thursday evening near Sargodha, 300 kilometers (180 miles) northeast of Multan, a main city in the eastern province of Punjab.

Warriach said the man told police he "felt insulted" when his daughter remained seated after he asked her to get water.

UAE: 1-Year Jail for Kissing Couple

Sharia alert from the Arab News, with thanks to Designnut:

SHARJAH, 4 June 2005 — An unmarried Indian couple have been sentenced to one year in prison for hugging and kissing in a taxi in the Emirate of Fujairah in the north of the UAE. A report in the local press identified the man as Anis Balnabar and the woman as Bani Bent.

It is the first such case reported in the UAE in recent years. According to the report, Bani Bent, who works at a national’s house in Fujairah, came out of the building and flagged a taxi. A short distance ahead, she picked up the man and both got into the back seat of the vehicle.

The taxi driver was told to drive to a park. As he was driving, the driver spied through the rear mirror that the couple were hugging and kissing each other. He turned the car and drove straight to the nearest police station....

Police questioned the two. The couple admitted that they were lovers and hugging and kissing each other in the car.

Police took them into custody and referred the case to prosecutors who charged the man with “indecent assault by consent,” and the woman with facilitating the offense. A court in Fujairah sentenced both to one year each in prison.

Pakistan court orders 12 men freed in gang rape

A horrifying story from Reuters (thanks to Mackie):

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Pakistani court on Friday ordered the release next week of 12 men connected to a notorious gang-rape case, including six convicted of the crime, court officials said.

The men, detained in connection with the 2002 rape of Mukhataran Mai, were ordered to be freed by the high court in the central province of Punjab, officials of the court said.

Authorities had petitioned a review board of the court to extend the detention of the 12, which expires next Monday, but the court rejected the plea, the officials said.

It was the latest twist in a case that provoked an outcry in Pakistan and focused international attention on the treatment of women in the country, particularly in rural areas, where sometimes brutal tribal customs hold sway.

The original trial before an anti-terrorism court in 2002 found that Mai was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council after her brother -- who was 12 at the time -- was judged to have offended the honor of a powerful clan by befriending a woman from their tribe.

Six men were originally convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, but five were later acquitted on appeal to the Punjab provincial court, which cited a lack of evidence. A sixth man had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

The provincial government subsequently intervened and ordered that the men be detained for three months pending the outcome of an appeal by the victim against the acquittal. Six men who served on the village council were detained at the same time.

"The review board has held that there is no justification for the detention of these people and has ordered their release after depositing surety bonds of 50,000 rupees ($840) from each of them," Malik Saleem, a lawyer for the 12 men, told Reuters....

President Pervez Musharraf, who has been trying to project Pakistan as a moderate and progressive Muslim nation, has taken a personal interest in the case, saying it was tarnishing the country's image overseas.

Yep.

Indictment: Saudi Pair in Colo. Kept Slave

Sharia slavery update from AP, with thanks to Mackie:

A Saudi Arabian couple was in custody Friday, accused of turning a young Indonesian woman into a virtual slave, forcing her to clean, cook and care for their children while she was threatened and sexually assaulted.

Sexually assaulted? "And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess." That is, slave girls. That's Qur'an 4:24.

A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted Homaidan Al-Turki, 36, and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, 35, on charges of forced labor, document servitude and harboring an illegal immigrant.

Al-Turki also faces state charges including kidnapping, false imprisonment and extortion, as well as 12 charges of sexual assault. His wife faces some of the same charges. The two could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

Phone messages left Friday for their individual lawyers were not immediately returned.

U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Jeff Dorschner said the Indonesian woman, who is in her 20s, came to the United States with the couple legally to perform domestic chores. But her U.S. visa was hidden from her by Al-Turki and Khonaizan, according to Thursday's indictment.

The woman was controlled by "a climate of fear and intimidation" that included sexual abuse and the belief that she would "suffer serious harm" if she did not perform her tasks, the indictment said.

Jihadists on the march? Never fear! Omid Safi is here!

William Fisher, who "has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development," writes this in "Progressive Islam, or how to accept it's time to start a-changin,'" in Lebanon's Daily Star (thanks to Mackie):

In the United States there is an impression that no internal struggle exists within Islam between reformers and more rigid conservatives. The truth is, however, that such an internal debate, centering on how to interpret the Koran, has been going on for centuries. It is also true that today the debate has risen to a new level, fueled by the emergence of a small but rapidly growing branch of the faith known as Progressive Islam.

Great news, Mr. Fisher! And who is the foremost exponent of this Progressive Islam? Why, none other than my man Omid Safi, the egregiously haughty prof who does his students' thinking for him by smearing whole classes of scholars and researchers as "Islamophobes":

What is Progressive Islam, where is it, what does it believe? Long before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many Muslim spokesmen realized there was a growing, worldwide network of Muslim terrorists killing in the name of God. They also knew that the rights of women and non-Muslims were being routinely denied by Islamic regimes, such as the one in Saudi Arabia.

"We have our fanatics just like everyone else," says Omid Safi, the co-chair of the Study of Islam section at the American Academy of Religion, and a professor of philosophy and religion at Colgate University. Safi was one of the co-founders of the Progressive Muslim Union, which was launched in 2004. "We have to take a stand against Saudi-infected extremism," insists Safi. Many American Muslim communities, he adds, "are far too uncritical of Salafi and Wahhabi tendencies."

Yes, Omid, and why is that? If you aren't still afraid to debate me, I'd be happy to discuss it with you at Colgate.

He and other progressives believe that unless these radical tendencies are defeated, "the humanity of Muslims will be reduced to the caricature of violent zealots painted by fanatics from both inside and outside the Muslim community. It is time to start a-changin'," he says, borrowing from the lyrics of a famous Bob Dylan song.

Bob also said, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." It is the jihadists who have the intellectual initiative within Islam at this point, and folks like Safi aren't helping by spending their time smearing people who are resisting them. If Omid Safi is Exhibit A of this marvelous new Progressive Islam, I will remain skeptical, thanks.

Baghdad symphony: musicians play on despite death threats

This NBC article, "Baghdad symphony strikes a hopeful note: 73 musicians play on despite death threats," is curious: it mentions death threats in the subheading but not in the article. Still, there are two main reasons why they probably have received threats: music is forbidden by Islamic law, and the music they are playing is Western. (Thanks to Skeetstreet for the link.)

BAGHDAD — It was a gala classical concert with favorites by Beethoven and Schubert. But in Baghdad Friday night that meant blanket security — dozens of undercover police blended into the invitation-only crowd of 300.

Just performing is a victory for the 73 members of the Baghdad Symphony Orchestra and it's why Iraqi soloist Karim Wasfi chose the Dvorzak [sic] Cello Concerto.

“It has this will of survival,” says Wasfi. “It has this winning feeling in it. The music makes you feel a winner, somehow.”

The orchestra knows all about survival. The first in the Arab world, it struggled through two wars and economic sanctions under Saddam Hussein. The best talent fled Iraq. Musicians who stayed earned $1 a month and instruments fell into disrepair.

Still, the group, somehow, played on. And after Saddam's fall, life — and salaries — improved. There were also gifts of new instruments and a trip to America — all funded by the former U.S. authority in Iraq — highlighted by a concert in Washington, D.C., attended by President Bush.

Life improved? What about those death threats?

Dhimmitude at Gitmo: Kid-gloves for the Qur'an

The always brilliant Diana West reveals the ridiculous dhimmi lengths that American soldiers must go to at Gitmo to avoid offending Muslims by touching the Qur'an with their unclean infidel hands: "Gonzo Gitmo charade" in the Washington Times (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

Since all of Guantanamo's inmates, mirabile dictu, happen to be members of the same famed band of Muslim extremists, the Army has seen fit to distribute Korans. So far, so good, I guess. But the Army doesn't just distribute its Korans like any other religious book. That is, the Bible may get passed around, rifled through, dropped, tossed and stuffed into hotel room drawers. But not the Koran. According to Army policy, the standard operating procedure is: "Handle the Koran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art."

What's going on here? By official order, a whole lot of "respecting the dignity of the Koran." According to Section 6-5-c(3), should a Koran need to be removed from a detainee's cell -- you know, carried somewhere -- and the detainee is personally unable to move it (best option), and the Muslim chaplain, librarian and interpreter are also unable to move it (second-best option), then the U.S. Army guard, as a very last resort, may take action -- but only "after approval by the DOC (who notes this in the DIMS)."

Then the insanity really begins. The guard is directed to don "clean gloves ... in full view of the detainees prior to handling." He must use "two hands ... at all times when handling the Koran in a manner signaling respect and reverence." Why "respect" alone isn't abundantly sufficient isn't mentioned. While signaling two-handed respect and reverence, however, the guard must be mindful that "care should be used so that the right hand is the primary one used to manipulate any part of the Koran due to the cultural association with the left hand."

It goes on. There's more "reverent manner," more instructions for conveying the book inside a "clean, dry detainee towel." The cockeyed picture is clear. But it doesn't explain what's going on.

At first glance, this scene may seem to exemplify a bizarre excess of good manners, an absurdly obsequious respect for a largely foreign faith. Since when does the United States specifically direct its soldiers to show two-handed "reverence" in the handling of any religious book? But it seems to me that there's more behind this charade. The "clean gloves" and "detainee" towels are the tip off. The fact is, under Islamic law, non-Muslims are deemed unfit to touch the Koran. That much is generally known. What is not usually considered is the reason: According to the Islamic law, we are unclean.

The term is "najis." On the multilingual Web site of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric, there is a catalogue of Islamic laws (www.sistani.org). This includes a list of "najis things." There are 10, beginning with an assortment of excretions and body fluids -- obvious stuff that really shouldn't need special mention. On the "najis" list with urine, feces, etc., are the pig, the dog and the "kafir." That means the Christian, the Jew, the unbeliever in Islam -- and chances are, the Gitmo guard.

In effect, then, with its official policy of clean gloves and detainee towels, the military is promoting, enabling and accepting the Islamic concept of najis -- the unclean infidel -- a barbarous notion that has helped fuel the blood lust of jihad and the non-Muslim subjugation of dhimmitude. Our soldiers are many things: self-sacrificing, bold, loyal and true. They are not unclean.

Read it all.

Jatras: Playing the Devil's Advocate

A provocative new article by Stella L. Jatras:

The video shown at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague and rebroadcast on Serbian television and on US national TV of the killing of six Muslim men by a group of mercenary volunteers, known as the Skorpians, has shocked the Serbian people. The story goes that release of the video is due to the conscience of one of the perpetrators and delivered to ICTY courtesy of lawyer Natasha Kandic, founder and director of the "Fund for Humanitarian Law," an organization funded by George Soros.

Correctly, those who participated were immediately arrested and will stand trial, and, if found guilty, will be punished by the Serbian government. In view of this, will the Bosnian government now stand up and admit the atrocities that were committed by Bosnian Muslim forces against Serbian civilians so that they can also receive justice?

To play the Devil's advocate, it is necessary to know what precipitated the events in Srebrenica. Therefore, it is equally important that the video filmed by the dreaded Muslim commander in Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, who had mounted commando raids against surrounding Serbian villages whose remaining population were mainly elderly Serbs, many in their 80s, who refused to leave their homes also be shown at The Hague and on national TV. Bill Schiller in the Toronto Star of 16 July 1995, wrote of Oric: "On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric's Greatest Hits. There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing. Oric grinned throughout admiring his handiwork. 'We ambushed them,' he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen. The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: 'We launched those guys to the moon,' he boasted. When a footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: 'We killed 114 Serbs there.' Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises."

Why did Srebrenica happen, and what really did happen there? Balkan analyst Carl Savich gave his analysis of General Philippe Morillon's testimony at the ICTY regarding Srebrenica and Naser Oric stating: "The major conclusion from Morillon's testimony was this: The fall of Srebrenica in 1995 was the 'direct reaction' to the massacres of Bosnian Serbs by Naser Oric's forces in 1992-1993. Morillon acknowledged that Oric's troops had committed war crimes in eastern Bosnia. Morillon personally witnessed the exhumation of the bodies of Bosnian Serb civilians and soldiers who had been tortured, mutilated, and executed. He saw with his own eyes the Serbian villages that had been burned to the ground in the Srebrenica pocket. More than anyone else, Morillon understood the level of devastation in eastern Bosnia and the extent and nature of the massacres of Bosnian Serbs."

Who can forget the image of Madeleine Albright frantically waving a CIA satellite photo of the soccer field showing "proof positive" where 7,000 men and boys alleged to have been killed by Serbs in Srebrenica were said to be buried? Twenty-two renowned journalists investigated the site and came away empty handed. Furthermore, in his analysis of 18 September 2003 titled, "Srebrenica Casualty Numbers Challenged by Experts as Politicized and Ethnically Divisive," Gregory R. Copley, Director of Strategic Studies, wrote: "On the eve of the dedication of a monument to Muslims killed at Srebrenica, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1995, a group which includes a former UN official, intelligence experts, and journalists, released a statement challenging the alleged casualty number of 7,000 victims as 'vastly inflated and unsupported by evidence'."

In another analysis titled, "US Official implicated with Bosnian Representative Ashdown in Attempt to Force Fabricated Report on Srebrenica," Gregory R. Copley, with input from sources in Sarajevo and elsewhere, wrote, "Very reliable sources within the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and other sources in Sarajevo have told GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily that a second US official, Amb. Donald S. Hays, the Deputy High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been actively engaged in attempts to force a fabricated report to be published on the controversial wartime fighting at the city of Srebrenica."

A representative in the Bosnian and Federal Parliaments, Ibran Mustafic, gave an explosive interview on Aug. 15, 1996, to Slobodna Bosnia ("Free Bosnia," A Sarajevo newspaper). Mustafic was quoted as saying that the betrayal of Srebrenica "was consciously prepared and that the Bosnian president and the army command were involved in this business," and that was to sacrifice Srebrenica in order to gain sympathy of the West. Of his internment in a Serbian jail, he writes, "I should have died. They [the Bosnian Muslim authorities] don't appreciate living people. They appreciate the dead because they cannot talk."

Yasushi Akashi, former UN Representative in Bosnia, admitted in The Washington Times of 1 November 1995, that, "it is a fact that the Bosnian government forces have used the 'safe areas' of not only Srebrenica, but Sarajevo, Tuzla, Bihac, Gorazde for training, recuperation and refurbishing their troops." In other words, the so-called "safe areas" were used as military posts to train mujahedin fighters from Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Turkey and the entire Islamic world, free to commit their treachery by attacking Serbian villages and returning back to the safety of their UN protectors who conveniently looked the other way. Prior to the events at Srebrenica, these "Holy Warriors of Islam" had attacked 42 surrounding Serbian villages and over 3,000 Serbian villagers had been slaughtered, but when Serbs were provoked to retaliate against these Muslim assaults from these so-called "safe areas," they were condemned by the entire world.

President Bush said after 9/11 that we will do whatever it takes to defend ourselves against the [Muslim] terrorists, yet we denied the Serbs the right to defend themselves against the same enemy that we are fighting today.

If the American people are to be given the full extent of atrocities committed by both sides, shouldn't the photos be shown of mujahedin from Saudi Arabia holding the severed heads of Serb soldiers in Bosnia and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), holding the severed heads of Serb soldiers in Kosovo? Or the photo of Serbs being roasted live by Islam's holy warriors? Shouldn't the photo of the Serbian family that was slain by Bosnian Muslim forces, the father, whose genitals were stuffed in his mouth and an Islamic crescent and star etched on his forehead, also be shown on national TV? Or the photo of Serbian babies with a bullet hole between their eyes who had been killed by a Bosnian Muslim sniper? Shouldn't the video of atrocities committed by Nasir Oric as previously described be shown to the world, or is the "shock" syndrome reserved only for Serbs?

In civil wars, all sides do terrible things and it is tragic that this should happen to young boys, but are we not seeing reports of Muslim boys even younger being trained in Pakistan as suicide bombers?

America has not heard the last of atrocities alleged to have been committed by Serb soldiers. More stories, either fabricated or exaggeration will continue to emerge from out of the blue, but atrocities committed by Bosnian Muslims and by the Kosovo Liberation Army will continue to be swept under the carpet. That's the way the game is being played in the Balkans. All Christian Serbs wear black hats. All Bosnian and Kosovo Muslims wear white hats. Checkmate.

Scotland: Christian charity accused of bigotry

Do Muslims encourage religious diversity and tolerance? According to the ever-present myth of Islamic tolerance, yes. But in fact Islamic law only offers subjugation and discrimination to Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims. The kind of tolerance being demanded of this Christian group is never forthcoming from Muslim groups, and is never asked of them. This is another example of the unspoken moral double standard that prevails in the West: enlightened multiculturalists profess to believe that all cultures are equal and all people have equal capability, but in reality they simply do not expect as much from Muslims as they do from Western Christians.

From The Herald, with thanks to Nicolei:

TEACHERS last night called for an investigation into an American evangelical movement that collects Christmas gifts from Scottish pupils and sends them to children in deprived parts of the world.

The call followed concern that the charity, Samaritan's Purse, which runs the Christmas shoe box appeal, did not encourage religious diversity or tolerance.

Teachers at the annual meeting of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) in Perth were told that the charity – which has been endorsed by Franklin Graham, the evangelical preacher – was anti-Islam.

According to members of the South Lanarkshire branch of the EIS, Samaritan's Purse took 30,000 Bibles into Iraq alongside US soldiers "at the barrel of a gun".

Delegates were also told the Welsh fire brigade and the Co-operative movement had severed links with the organisation because of its extreme views.

However, a spokesman for the UK-based arm of the organisation dismissed the claims and said parcels were given to children across the world regardless of their faith.

In the past few years, more than one million parcels have been sent from schools in Britain to orphans in countries such as Mozambique, Romania and Azerbaijan.

Kenny Elder, from the South Lanarkshire branch of the EIS, told delegates: "It has a very right-wing, racist view of religion. It should be investigated by the union because it has a growing presence in our schools.

"A lot of people involved in schools don't know about the views of this organisation, and I believe Samaritan's Purse does not have a place in Scotland's schools."

The charity's UK spokesman accused the EIS of "political correctness" and said there was no attempt to influence children by inserting religious leaflets into the boxes.

"It is a very sad day when a level of political correctness causes people concern just because a Christian organisation is involved," he added.

Yes.

Fighting to stay in Norway, Krekar praises Osama bin Laden

You'd think this would be a disqualifying factor in his case, but I'll wager it isn't for the dhimmi Norwegians. From AFP, with thanks to Nicolei:

OSLO, June 9 (AFP) - 19h59 - Mullah Krekar, the founder of radical Islamist group Ansar al-Islam who is fighting an expulsion order from Norway, on Thursday reiterated his praise for Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, calling him "a jewel" of Islam, media reported.

"I do not deny that I have said that Osama bin Laden is a jewel among the imams of Islam. He is faithful to the religion," Krekar told an Oslo court, Norwegian news agency NTB reported, as he tries to prove that he presents no threat to Norway.

Norwegian authorities decided in February 2003 to expel Krekar, whose real name is Fateh Najmeddin Faraj, due to national security concerns, but his deportation was suspended until the situation in Iraq improves.

Dead man's dhimmitude in the UK

"Religion has no place in crematorium, says council," from the Timesonline, with thanks to Granny Weatherwax:

A COUNCIL-RUN crematorium has been criticised by clergymen and funeral directors for removing a wooden cross from its chapel for fear of offending non-Christians.

Torbay Council in Devon is accused of taking political correctness too far by removing the 5ft-tall gilt cross from the wall of the old chapel in the municipal crematorium.

It also anounced that the chapel would in future be known as the ceremony hall...

Alan Faulkner, Torbay Council's executive member for Environmental Services, defended the decision to remove the cross. He said: "We live in a diverse, multi-faith society and many people have no specific beliefs at all. The facility at Torquay Crematorium is a ceremony hall, it is not a chapel."...

But the Rev Anthony Macey, the vicar of nearby Cockington, said: "That cross has been in the chapel for nearly 50 years. I am very angry about this. Calling the chapel a ceremony hall is ridiculous. It has been the chapel since the crematorium was built."...

Father Paul Connor, the Roman Catholic priest for Brixham, said: "It would have been wiser and more politic of the council to consult undertakers and the clergy before they did this.

"If the cross offends people they can cover it up. What about the Christians who are offended by its removal?"

Indeed. When the Saudis begin to remove public signage in the Kingdom that says "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet" for fear of offending Christians, then we'll talk.

Myth of Islamic tolerance reigns at AP

The myth of Islamic tolerance is presented as fact in this AP story, "Anti-Semitism Conference Opens in Spain" (thanks to Seymour Paine for the link):

CORDOBA, Spain (AP) -- Governments must take concrete measures to fight anti-Semitism and other hate crimes, delegates to an international conference said Wednesday, meeting in a city where Jews, Muslims and Christians once lived in harmony.

The more often this sort of thing is repeated in this casual way, the more firmly it becomes lodged in the popular consciousness. And then the cries of "bigotry" begin against those who dare question it. Hitler found this an effective tactic in his day.

In fact, Muslim Spain was hardly a paradise for non-Muslims. Even Maria Rosa Menocal, in her extended whitewash of Muslim Spain called The Ornament of the World, admits that at the laws of dhimmitude were very much in force in the great Al-Andalus:

The dhimmi, as these covenanted peoples were called, were granted religious freedom, not forced to convert to Islam. They could continue to be Jews and Christians, and, as it turned out, they could share in much of Muslim social and economic life. In return for this freedom of religious conscience the Peoples of the Book (pagans had no such privilege) were required to pay a special tax — no Muslims paid taxes — and to observe a number of restrictive regulations: Christians and Jews were prohibited from attempting to proselytize Muslims, from building new places of worship, from displaying crosses or ringing bells. In sum, they were forbidden most public displays of their religious rituals.

So much for paradise. Also, historian Kenneth Baxter Wolf observes that “much of this new legislation aimed at limiting those aspects of the Christian cult which seemed to compromise the dominant position of Islam.” After enumerating a list of laws much like Menocal’s, he adds: “Aside from such cultic restrictions most of the laws were simply designed to underscore the position of the dimmîs as second-class citizens.” These laws were not uniformly or strictly enforced; Christians were forbidden public funeral processions, but one contemporary account tells of priests merely “pelted with rocks and dung” rather than being arrested while on the way to a cemetery.

If Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together peaceably and productively only with Christians and Jews relegated by law to second-class citizen status, then al-Andalus has absolutely no reason to be lionized in our age. The laws of dhimmitude give all of Menocal’s accounts of Jewish viziers and Christian diplomats the same hollow ring as the stories of prominent American blacks from the slavery and Jim Crow eras: yes, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington were great men, but their accomplishments not only do not erase or contradict the records of the oppression of their people, but render them all the more poignant and haunting. Whatever the Christians and Jews of al-Andalus accomplished, they were still dhimmis. They enjoyed whatever rights and privileges they had not out of any sense of the dignity of all people before God, or the equality of all before the law, but at the sufferance of their Muslim overlords.

There is more on this in Onward Muslim Soldiers.

UK: Freedom of speech in grave peril as religious hatred bill is unveiled

The chief problem is that religious hatred is in the eye of the beholder -- and that Muslim advocacy groups have been quite canny in appropriating the language of civil rights movements in tarring their adversaries as hatemongers. Underscoring this is the fact that British pols openly courted Muslim votes in the last election by declaring their support for the religious hatred bill. Its adoption would be a cornerstone of the Islamization of Britain. "Religious hatred bill is unveiled," from the BBC, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Controversial plans to make incitement to religious hatred illegal are being unveiled by the government.

Critics say the re-introduced bill - which bans insulting words or behaviour intended or likely to stir up religious hatred - will stifle free speech.

But ministers have pledged the new law will not affect "criticism, commentary or ridicule of faiths".

If it mirrors racial hatred laws, the maximum sentence for those found guilty will be seven years in prison.

The bill will apply to comments made in public or in the media, as well as through written material.

Freedom of speech

The government says the legislation is a response to the concerns of faith groups, particularly Muslims.

The Muslim Council of Britain has welcomed the move, arguing that the courts have already extended such protection to Sikh and Jewish people.

Saidist professor update: Khalidi a plagiarist?

This is the quality of work being done today in the politicized Middle East Studies Departments of our nation's universities. Yet in those Departments the "Orientalists" are routinely derided by men who are just (at best) propagandists and shills, not academics. "Rashid Khalidi: Plagiarist?" from Lee Kaplan at FrontPage:

For those unfamiliar with Khalidi, he is the recipient of the Edward Said Chair at Columbia University. Columbia has been in the news lately due to accusations its Middle Eat Studies department is patently anti-Israel and even unfair to Jewish students. A new film recently out titled “Columbia Unbecoming” has been circulating and reveals this academic bias with tales of Middle East faculty abuse against students who support Israel. Khalidi, for his part, once said that killing Israeli soldiers is justified during the peace process.

The article where my friend found the quotation was posted on the web page of the American Committee of Jerusalem. She wanted a better reference than a web page, so she Googled a particularly absurd phrase: “The simple fact is that the majority of the Arab people of Palestine are not descendants of those that arrived as part of the wave of Islamic-Arab conquest in the seventh century.”

The search produced a nearly identical sentence, but this one was from a 1994 article on the history of Jerusalem written by the late Kamil Jamil el Asali of the University of Jordan.[1] The two articles share more than bad scholarship. They are alike; too alike.

Like possible plagiarism.

Entire sentences appear in both articles:

Asali: “The names of the two oldest rulers of the city, Saz Anu and Yaqir Ammo, were identified by the American archaeologist W. F. Albright as Amoritic.”

Khalidi uses the same sources and quotations used by Asali.

Asali: In The Golden Bough, the British anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) stressed that, "the Arabic-speaking peasants of Palestine are the progeny of the tribes which settled in the country before the Israelite invasion."

Kahalidi: In 1902, the British anthropologist Sir James Frazer wrote in his famous study The Golden Bough: "The Arabic-speaking peasants of Palestine are the progeny of the tribes which settled in the country before the Israelite invasion.".

Read it all.

Dhimmitude from James Carroll: "The image of Muslims as prone to violence by virtue of their religion was mainly constructed across centuries by Europeans seeking to bolster their own purposes"

The ever-egregious James Carroll outdoes himself with this outstanding display of historical distortion and obfuscation, "The war against Islam," from the Boston Globe (thanks to all who sent this in):

AMONG THE factors leading to the French and Dutch rejections of the European constitution last week, none looms more ominously than the nightmare of antagonism between ''the West" and Islam. Many Europeans fear a rising tide of green, both within the continent and from outside it. Where once communists threatened, now Muslims do. A new wall is being built.

Muslims, meanwhile, see a flood of contempt in pressures on immigrant communities in European cities, in restrictions on Islamic expression, and in openly expressed reservations about Turkey's admission to the EU precisely because of its Islamic character. Given escalations of the war in Iraq together with widely reported instances of Koran-denigration by US interrogators, such trends in Europe make the global war on terror seem expressly a war against Islam. The ''clash of civilizations" seems closer at hand than ever.

Notice how 9/11 doesn't enter into this calculus. For Carroll it is as if the war in Iraq and "instances of Koran-denigration" were just acts of unprovoked aggression by the West.

To make sense of this dangerous condition, it can help to recall some of the forgotten or misremembered history that prepared for it, from the remote origins of the conflict to its manifestations in the not so distant past. As the story is usually told in Europe and America, the problem began when a jihad-driven army of ''infidel" Saracens, having brutalized Christians in the ''Holy Land," threatened ''Christendom" itself with conquests right into the heart of present-day France. Charles Martel is the hero of primal European romances because he defeated the Muslim army near Tours in 733. But for Martel, Edward Gibbon wrote, ''the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford."

"As the story is usually told in Europe and America..." Carroll is trying to get away with suggesting it didn't really happen this way, although he doesn't come out and say that. And why not? Because the historical record shows that it did happen that way.

Across subsequent centuries, in the European memory, Islam posed the great threat to the emerging Christian order. But was that so? Lombards, Normans, Vikings, forces from the Slavic east, and violent contests among Christians themselves all wreaked havoc in Europe, even in Martel's time.

Threats to the emerging Christian order? Really? Lombards, Normans, Vikings: all already Christian or soon Christianized. The jihad threat was perceived as greater because it was greater: it would have entailed the utter destruction of Christian society, or, as Carroll puts it with sneer quotes, "Christendom," and its replacement with Sharia. The Lombards, Normans, and Vikings never threatened to do anything remotely approaching that.

As I learned from the historian Tomaz Mastnak, the threat from the Saracens was one among many.

Militarily, yes. Culturally or religiously, no.

It was defined as transcendent only with the later Crusades, when Latin Christian armies set out to rescue that ''Holy Land" and roll back Islamic conquests. The crusading impulse presumed a demonizing of Saracens that was justified neither by the threat they actually posed nor by their treatment of Christians in Palestine.

"The crusading impulse presumed a demonizing of Saracens that was justified neither by the threat they actually posed..." So now we have it: Martel was fighting a phantom army. Gibbon was being hysterical. But what if Martel had lost at Tours? Where would the jihad armies have stopped? How much of Europe would they have had to occupy and subjugate for Carroll to acknowledge that the threat from them was genuine?

"...nor by their treatment of Christians in Palestine." As it happens, I have just completed a book entitled The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (coming August 8 from Regnery), and I did some research on this question.

What was life like for the Christians in Palestine in the years leading up to the Crusades? Let's see: In 1004, the sixth Fatimid Caliph, Abu ‘Ali al-Mansur al-Hakim (985-1021) turned violently against the faith of his Christian mother and uncles (two of whom were Patriarchs) and ordered the destruction of churches, the burning of crosses, and the seizure of church property. He moved against the Jews with similar ferocity. Over the next ten years thirty thousand churches were destroyed, and untold numbers of Christians converted to Islam simply to save their lives. In 1009, al-Hakim gave his most spectacular anti-Christian order: he commanded that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem be destroyed, along with several other churches (including the Church of the Resurrection). The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, rebuilt by the Byzantines in the seventh century after the Persians burned an earlier version, marks the traditional site of Christ’s burial. The church had served as the model for the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Caliph al-Hakim commanded that the tomb inside be cut down to the bedrock. He ordered Christians to wear heavy crosses around their necks (and Jews heavy blocks of wood in the shape of a calf). He piled on other humiliating decrees, culminating in the order that they accept Islam or leave his dominions.

The erratic caliph ultimately relaxed his persecution and even returned much of the property he had seized from the Church. Thanks to al-Hakim’s change of policy, which continued after his death, in 1027 the Byzantines were allowed to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Nevertheless, Christians were in a precarious position and pilgrims remained under threat. In 1056, the Muslims expelled three hundred Christians from Jerusalem and forbade European Christians from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. When the fierce and fanatical Seljuk Turks swept down from Central Asia, they enforced a new Islamic rigor, making life increasingly difficult for both native Christians and pilgrims (whose pilgrimages they blocked). After they crushed the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071 and took the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes prisoner, all of Asia Minor was open to them — and their advance was virtually unstoppable. In 1076, they conquered Syria; in 1077, Jerusalem. The Seljuk Emir Atsiz bin Uwaq promised not to harm the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but once his men had entered the city, they murdered 3,000 people.

But I guess Carroll would say they all committed suicide.

Indeed, chronicles of the earlier period take little or no notice of the religion of Saracens. Religious co-existence, famous in Iberia, was a mark of other lands conquered by Arabs.

Yes, and it is mythical in Iberia, unless by "co-existence" Carroll means the co-existence of slave and master, beggar and king.

Europe's initiating ''holy war" with Islam, that is, was based on flawed intelligence, propaganda, and threat exaggeration.

Carroll earlier alluded to "Latin Christian armies" attempting to "roll back Islamic conquests." Did those Islamic conquests not constitute the initiation of "holy war" on the part of Muslims? Evidently not in the befogged mind of a dogmatic multiculturalist.

The poison flower of the Crusades, with their denigrations of distant cultures, was colonialism.

European colonies in the Middle East weren't founded until hundreds of years after the conclusion of the last Crusade, and had no historical continuity with the Crusades. Nor did those colonies do anything to threaten the hegemony of Islam in the colonized areas, except press for the abrogation of dhimmi laws.

The dark result of European imperial adventuring in the Muslim world was twofold: first, the usual exploitation of native peoples and resources, with attendant destruction of culture, and, second, the powerful reaction among Muslims and Arab populations against colonialism, a reaction that included an internal corrupting of Islamic traditions. The accidental wealth of oil in the Middle East made both external exploitation and internal corruption absolutely ruinous. The political fanaticism that has lately seized the Arab Islamic religious imagination (exemplified in Osama bin Laden) is rooted more in a defensive fending off of assault from ''the West" than in anything intrinsic to Islam. The American war on terror, striking the worst notes of the old imperial insult, only exacerbates this reactionary fanaticism (generating, for example, legions of suicide bombers).

"The political fanaticism that has lately seized the Arab Islamic religious imagination (exemplified in Osama bin Laden) is rooted more in a defensive fending off of assault from 'the West' than in anything intrinsic to Islam." Acceptance of this thesis depends on the reader's ignorance of the 450 years of jihadist aggression that preceded the Crusades and obliterated the Christian cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, and which today's jihadists consider to be the direct antecedent of their own efforts. Against what were the initial conquerors of Syria, Egypt, Constantinople, Spain and all the rest defending? What is the significance of the fact that today's jihad terrorists hold to the same ideological and religious imperatives? You won't find the answers by reading James Carroll.

Having forgotten the deeper history, nervous Europeans seem also to have forgotten how large numbers of Muslims settled in the continent's cities in the first place. In the 1960s and 1970s, Turks, Arabs, and North Africans were welcomed as ''guest workers," taking up menial labor with the implicit understanding that they could never hope to be received as citizens of the nations that exploited them. The rank injustice of a system depending on a permanent underclass was bound to issue in political resistance, and now it has, but with a religious edge.

There is no doubt that Europe encouraged Muslims to come. It's all in Bat Ye'or's Eurabia. Carroll doesn't mention, of course, that these immigrants were also encouraged not to assimilate, and to hold tightly to their Islam -- ignoring the fact that Islam is inherently political, a fact to which Europeans are just awakening today.

The point is that this conflict has its origins more in ''the West" than in the House of Islam. The image of Muslims as prone to violence by virtue of their religion was mainly constructed across centuries by Europeans seeking to bolster their own purposes, a habit of politicized paranoia that is masterfully continued by freaked-out leaders of post-9/11 America.

I doubt if Carroll has read a page of the Qur'an, or knows that Qur'anic verses such as 9:5 and 9:29 and many others are not just isolated, ignored religious texts, but have become the basis for an elaborate legal superstructure mandating warfare against unbelievers and endorsed by all the major schools of Sunni jurisprudence (as well as by the Shi'ites.)

They, too, like prelates, crusaders, conquistadors, and colonizers, have turned fear of Islam into a source of power. This history teaches that such self-serving projection can indeed result in the creation of an enemy ready and willing to make the nightmare real.

Carroll has worked hard to create his enemy -- Western defenders against the jihadist threat -- and make his nightmare real. If there weren't so many people in government who believe as he does, he would be beneath notice.

Denmark: Imam offers blood money to family of murdered man

Islamization of Europe update: Blood money is specified for murder in Islamic law. "Politicians reject Imam's proposal of blood money," from DR Nyheder, with thanks to Filtrat:

Integration Minister, Rikke Hvilshøj, has rejected a proposal from Imam Abu Laban that blood money be paid to the family of a man who was killed in Nørrebro last weekend and whose funeral takes place today.

Since the shooting of the 24 year old and the wounding of his older brother, there has been much speculation among police and in the press about when revenge would be taken.

But according to the Imam, who is conducting the funeral ceremony today, the thirst for revenge could be cooled if 200,000 kroner were paid either by the family of the doorman who fired the shots or by the Islamic community. He said the practice of paying blood money to the family of a deceased person was normal in Muslim societies. Rikke Hvilshøj says such action could harm the entire integration process in Denmark.

Uh-huh.

Sweden: Muslim schools seek Saudi funding

While Saudis persecute Christians at home and then lie about it, Muslims in Sweden are seeking their oil billions to help fund their schools. And with their money, of course, comes their curriculum. "Muslim schools seek funding from Saudi 'fundamentalists,'" from Sweden's The Local, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The Swedish Radio programme 'Kaliber' reported on Sunday that "almost all" Islamic schools and congregations in Sweden have contacted potential sponsors in Saudi Arabia. Many of these Saudi foundations ask for influence in return. However, an expert thinks the chances are slight that violent organisations will gain a foothold in Sweden's muslim communities.

Close your eyes and wish as hard as you can...

Islamic organisations have received help from the Saudi embassy in Stockholm to find potential donors. Many community groups can only afford simple basement premises. But with Saudi money, they can build mosques.

'Kaliber' featured the Al Salam school in Örebro, which takes children from nursery age to Year 5 and receives between 150 and 200,000 crowns a month from an Islamic foundation.

In return for their money, sponsors often demand a seat on the board or the right to appoint imams or school leaders. Saudi Arabia practices the strict Wahhabi and Salafi traditions. Women are required to be completely covered and are not allowed to socialise with men outside the family. Men must have long beards and dress in the style of the prophet Muhammed. Music and art are banned.

Those last three sentences sum up the future of Sweden and Europe in general.

What are you gonna believe? The myth of Islamic tolerance, or your lying eyes?

The myth of Islamic tolerance is invoked as proof that all the recent (and older) stories about Saudis persecuting Christians must be wrong.

"The Christians of Saudi Arabia, they's a happy people. Always smilin', always dancin'. It would upset 'em to be granted equal rights. They'd rather be dancin' and singin' than takin' care of all the ree-sponsibilities they'd have in that case..."

"Saudis Deny Persecuting Christians," from AP, with thanks to LGF:

CAIRO, Egypt - A Saudi official denied allegations that the kingdom has arrested and tortured Christians, saying such actions run counter to Islamic tolerance.

The remarks to the official Saudi Press Agency came in response to reports in Iranian papers of recent arrests.

The official, who spoke to SPA on condition of anonymity, said the allegations "don't go with the principals [sic] and values of the kingdom and above all our tolerant Islamic belief which guarantees the rights of Muslims and residents of different religions and ethnicities alike."

That official was later seen with a nose grown to at least six feet long. Even granting that Islamic belief allows for the practice of non-Muslim religions, albeit severely circumscribed, Saudi Arabia has always been different -- ever since the Prophet Muhammad told his followers to allow only one religion on the Arabian Peninsula. And this official knows that. He is banking on Western ignorance and naive multiculturalist good will. And he will be able to get a lot of mileage out of those things.

British MP George Galloway: We Need Al-Jazeera in English to Win Hearts in the US

Galloway might as well wear the zunnar, he's got the dhimmi act down so well. "British MP George Galloway: We Need Al-Jazeera in English to Win Hearts in the US; We Need Another Abd Al-Nasser; Britain Should Pay Compensation to Palestinians; G-8 Leaders Come to Scotland for Their 'Trial,'" from MEMRITV, with thanks to EPG:

The following are excerpts from an interview with British MP George Galloway, aired by Al-Jazeera TV on June 1, 2005.

Galloway: I am speaking for tens of millions, and maybe more, around the world, who know the truth about Iraq. Who know that the real criminals are in Washington. Not in the United Nations. The real criminals are in the White House, not in the Elysee Palace. The real criminals are in the Congress, not in the anti-war movement. So I have no respect for this...

This is one of the reasons why we need Al-Jazeera in English, so that we can reach the people who, if you can reach them, you can win their hearts. They are not bad people. The American people are not bad or evil people. But they are ruled by bad people.

Female Genital Mutilation and African AIDS

Marion D. S. Dreyfus raises important questions in FrontPage (thanks to EPG):

In Frontpage’s recent symposium, The Radical Lies of Aids, I was dismayed and surprised that, in a roundtable discussion on the current state of HIV/AIDS, no mention was made of Islamic cultural habits and African tribal customs.... All viruses and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) picked up from the unfaithful sexually active mate find a hospitable environment in the misused wife and incubate into various forms of sexual disorder or, of late, especially into HIV. Sadly, the now visibly-ill women are frequently blamed for initiating the disease: beaten, divorced or otherwise abused. This is a frequent Islamic reaction from husbands, brothers, fathers, even sons, to the perceived ‘dishonoring’ of the family or rape of their (innocent) women.

More relevant in this cultural inplication is that more than 100 million, even as many as 140 million -- that is correct -- African girls and women are estimated by WHO and ReligiousTolerance.com (among many others) as victim/recipients of female genital mutilation (FGM, also called infibulation). Infibulation in the medical literature or public arena is so widespread and so taboo that it assumes a special place in the history of hushed-up critical problems in the world. Like not mentioning that woolly mammoth smack in the middle of your living room.

Because it is considered a private, 'social' or often a “religious” issue, one that riles up many Muslim (male) “authorities” and average healthcare practitioners, infibulation –FGM -- is a major third-rail political agenda, one vociferously denied and hotly “debated” in outrage with anyone intrepid or foolhardy enough to bring up such a detonating topic.

Read it all.

Discrimination against non-Muslims in Malaysia

A revealing summary of how non-Muslims in supposedly moderate Malaysia still are denied equality of rights with Muslims. From Biography.ms, with thanks to Bamsterkins:

The constitution of Malaysia provides for freedom of religion, although Islam is the official religion. However, there exist certain laws and practices which in effect discriminate against non-Muslims in Malaysia....

In September 2001, the then Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad declared that the country was an Islamic state (negara Islam). The opposition leader at the time, Lim Kit Siang, is actively seeking support to declare Mahathir's move as unconstitutional by repeatedly clarifying that Malaysia is a secular state with Islam as its official religion as enshrined in the Constitution. However, the coalition government headed by Mahathir at the time held more than two-thirds of the seats in parliament. It requires a two-thirds majority vote for constitutional amendments in Malaysia. No proposed constitutional amendments by the Barisan Nasional government have ever failed to pass parliament since the Barisan Nasional came into power in 1957 until the time of the remarks.

Government funds support an Islamic religious establishment (the Government also grants limited funds to non-Islamic religious communities), and it is official policy to "infuse Islamic values" into the administration of the country.

The nation mantains two parallel justice systems in the country. One is the conventional justice system based upon laws gazetted by parliament. The other is syariah or Islamic law. Ostensibly syariah courts only have jurisdiction over persons who declare themselves to be Muslims. Consequently, this results in non-Muslims not having legal standing in syariah courts. Where decisions of the syariah court affect a non-Muslim, she can seek recourse in the secular courts who theoretically trump the syariah courts. However, this has often resulted in complications.

The rules of Syaria are set by the various sultans of the states. Historically a sultan had absolute authority over the state. Prior to independence Tunku Abdul Rahman got the sultans to cede authority to the federal government. One of the terms of this agreement is that the sultans still are the ultimate authority of Islamic law in their respective states.

Constitutionally, one of the four tests for being Malay in Malaysia is that one must be a Muslim. Therefore, all Malays are regarded to fall under Islamic law. The rationale for this is that Islam is considered intrinsic to Malay ethnic identity.

Read it all.

Bush urged not to play the dhimmi

"Bush urged: 'Never apologize' to Muslims," from WND, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Some members of the Bush administration have taken a cue from a classic John Wayne Western and are advising their boss to take the film's advice – "Never apologize" – when dealing with Muslims, reports geopolitical analysts Jack Wheeler....

It's that attitude that some employees of the Pentagon, State Department and White House are urging President Bush to take when dealing with charges of Quran desecration and other allegations from radical Muslims. They've even sent a DVD copy of the film to the commander in chief.

"Their numbers are small," explains Wheeler, "but they are seriously sick and tired of squishing-out to the hadjis (the nickname our soldiers give the Muslim terrorists in Iraq and their sympathizers – pronounced 'hah-geez,' referring to the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca called the hadj). These sympathizers now include not just rioters on Pakistani streets but Newsweek magazine and Amnesty International.

"'The more we kiss the hadjis' tushes, the more they denounce us and the less they respect us,' one of them told me. 'Just take a look at the DOD's procedures for the handling and inspecting of detainee Korans . You won't believe how impossibly respectful and careful they are. What good does this do us? All we get is lies, lawsuits and riots in return.'"

Indeed. Conciliation is only seen as a sign of weakness. And in this case, it may be just that: weakness.

"Europe likes appeasement very much; this is one of the most important differences between us and the States"

Jose Maria Aznar, one of the last non-dhimmis in Europe, speaks out: "Spain's ex-PM to Israel: Ignore Europe," from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Andrew Bostom:

Israel need not pay much attention to Europe, which is using its Middle East policy to separate itself from the US, has a tendency toward appeasement and is largely pro-Palestinian, former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar told The Jerusalem Post Monday.

"Europe likes appeasement very much; this is one of the most important differences between us and the States," Aznar said in an interview on the Bar-Ilan University campus. "Europeans don't like any problems. They prefer appeasement."

The strongly pro-American Aznar, who bucked public sentiment in Spain and backed US President George W. Bush's war in Iraq, served as prime minister from 1996-2004. He is currently in the country for Bar-Ilan's jubilee celebration, at which he will receive an honorary doctorate on Tuesday.

Aznar said Europe had no chance of independently impacting on the situation in the Middle East and would be wise to work closely with the US. "Do we Europeans have the capacity to change the situation and influence this area? The answer is no," he said.

Aznar said that European policy was "not favorable to Israel," and that different political leaders in Europe used the Middle East question as a way to establish a different identity from the US.

"In Europe, Israel is not very popular, not only this government, all governments," he said. "Most Europeans support the Palestinian cause. Europeans sincerely wish for a peace agreement and support the peace process, but the reality is that the peace process is closed. At this moment I think that Europe should work closely with the States, because that is the only opportunity to change the region."

Asked if Israel should, as a result, pay attention to the US, but not necessarily to Europe, Aznar succinctly replied: "Certainly." He said that the French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution last week provided the EU a good opportunity to reform its polices and move away from the isolationist, anti-Americanism that he said defined much of its foreign policy....

"For me Hamas has always been a terrorist group," he said, adding that it is the Palestinian Authority's responsibility to deal with the organization.

Watson: Forget us now, we'll remember you at the election

DC Watson's letter to his Congressman:

April 29th, 2005

To: Ms. Angela Klemack
Office of the Honorable Patrick J. Tiberi
United States Congressman, 12th Congressional District (Ohio)

Dear Ms. Klemack,

Per our 4/25/05 telephone conversation, attached is the information you requested regarding the issues we discussed.

Islam & Militant Islam. I'm completely aware that there are many decent Muslims in this country. Many of them, the peaceful, refined, intelligent ones, have been shuffled out of the mosques by militant Muslims because they don't buy into the worn out, 7th century version of Islamic fundamentalism. Like it or not, much of the evidence involving the militant Islamic mindset points directly to our "Saudi friends", as will be demonstrated further into this letter.

I'm not much of an advocate for the phony "political correctness" facade, so please forgive my bluntness. If our government believes that Americans think of Islam as being completely benign, especially with so many Islamic militants running loose, the comments attached to some of these articles should shed some light on the opinions of millions of hard working Americans, as should this Cornell University poll.

44% of Americans would curtail Muslim civil liberties.

Perhaps Islamic Imams in America like this one are a good reason for this: Muzammil Siddiqi.

While I respect our government, it appears to be completely out of touch with the American people with regard to the negative impact that militant Islam and illegal immigration have on the United States. Here are some of the examples I provided during our telephone conversation.

Islamic indoctrination taking place in American schools: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36118 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/580789/posts http://www.anti-cair-net.org/press_040_0 http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/005919.php

With the exception of the less fortunate among us, shouldn't this nation once again run on the idea of equal treatment for everyone, and special treatment for no one?

From President Bush's inaugural speech: "In America's ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character - on integrity, and tolerance toward others, and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before - ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever".

Was the President referring to...these words?

Qur'an 9:5: "So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful".

Qur'an 9:29: "Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection".

Qur'an 48:29: "Muhammad is God's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another."

Qur'an 8:12: "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them."

Qur'an 5:51: "O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people".

Qur'an 4:34: "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them".

It is what it is.

Religious freedom in America is a wonderful part of our culture. However, should it not then be made clear to everyone that this is contingent on the practices of the religion being acceptable and adhering to the laws of the U.S. Constitution?

Freedom of speech, our first Amendment: College Republicans attacked at San Francisco State University, perpetrated by Arab Students.

Loyalty to the American Constitution: Here are some quotes from the leaders of the Council on American Islamic Relations, headquartered not far from your office.

1994: CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, at a Barry University forum: "I am in support of the Hamas movement."

1998: CAIR Board Chairman Omar Ahmad, at a Flamingo Palace Banquet Hall event in California: "Muslim institutions, schools and economic power should be strengthened in America". "Those who stay in America should be "open to society without melting (into it)."

"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."

Reference column: "American Muslim Leader Urges Faithful to Spread Word" by Lisa Gardiner San Ramon Valley Herald July 4, 1998

1993: CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future." "But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."

Omar M. Ahmad: Suicide bombers "kill themselves for Islam" and so are not terrorists".
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/c172.html

Nihad Awad wrote in the Muslim World Monitor that the World Trade Center trial, which resulted in the 1994 conviction of four Islamic terrorists, was "a travesty of justice." Despite the confessions of the terrorists from the 1993 attack.
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/news1/an010929-14.html

And our government has this organization training our law enforcement officers on Muslim sensitivity? Our State department entertains this organization every time they complain of what they call increased “Islamophobia” in America? Forgive us if we fail to see the logic in this. Law is law, and shouldn’t be diverted by the consistently skewed accusations of profiling by this group.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17874

The article above refers to a few of the CAIR members that haven't been convicted of terror or fraud crimes, and aren't in prison or deported.

Here are a few who have been:

Randall "Ismail" Royer: former CAIR Communications Specialist. Timelines listed in Royer's indictment, specifically September of 2001, and a news article that demonstrates Royer speaking as a representative of CAIR (9/18/2001) are on record as occurring during the same timeframe, and can be matched at the links below.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2001-09-19-harassment.htm#more (09/18/2001 - Updated 07:08 PM ET) http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/usroyer603ind.pdf (p.15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)

Ghassan Elashi: Founder of the Texas chapter of CAIR, and Chairman of the Holy Land Foundation. His cousin is Nadia Elashi, (aka) Nadia Marzook, the wife of Mousa Abu Marzook, (aka) Abu Omar, the Deputy Chief of the Hamas terrorist organization's Political Bureau. http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/infocom/uselashi121702sind.pdf
http://www.4law.co.il/hlf2.htm (p. 6, 7, 8, 9)
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13175

Bassem K. Khafagi: 2003, visa and bank fraud. At the time of his arrest, Khafagi was Community Affairs Director with CAIR. Sentence: 10 months (Time served), and deportation back to Egypt.
http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/acair.htm

CAIR has also been named a defendant in a class action lawsuit regarding the 9/11 attacks. How do you think this looks to American taxpayers when the American government interacts with organizations such as these?
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/520
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/394
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/004526.php

Not employed with CAIR, but rotten nonetheless:

Abdurahman Alamoudi:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/31/saudi.plot/

The "Lackawanna six":
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/extra/lackawanna/0520story3_news.shtml

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/069642.php

Sadeq Naji Ahmed:
http://discoverthenetwork.com/individualProfile.asp?indid=1901

Bashir Noorzai:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/005900.php#comments

Ali al-Timimi, an Imam no less:
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/11071

Ibrahim Al-Niqrish:
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050426/NEWS03/504260344

Fawaz Damra, another Imam:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-06-17-imam-convicted_x.htm

Clayton Morgan, aka Isamu Dyson, aka Cayson Bin Don:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17863

Ahmed Ressam:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/trail/inside/cron.html

Ali bin Mussalim:
http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2005/04/new_indictments.html

Sami Al-Arian:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=6307

Nuradin Abdi:
http://www.ice.gov/text/news/newsreleases/insideice/InsideICE_062104_Web1.htm

A double dose of stupidity: A Nazi-Islamist Hate fest
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17849

Saudi Arabia: Saudi funded Islamic schools operating inside the United States are teaching their students that Christianity and Judaism are false religions, and demanding allegiance to the Qur'an, not the U.S. Constitution, while Saudi provided literature has been located in American mosques that preaches hate for the West, and for America.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,46610,00.html
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8715
http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/publications/Saudi%20Report/FINAL%20FINAL.pdf
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/in_the_media/in_the_media_show.htm?doc_id=180218
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17519

Saudi Chief Justice urges fighting U.S.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/005910.php#comments
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43995

One could easily assume that all of this is happening somewhere in the Middle East. But it is all happening inside American borders.

You had asked me for recommendations to remedy some of these problems. With careful consideration, this is the top of the list.

If the American government truthfully wants to promote moderate Islam, then organizations such as CAIR and groups like them should be shut down, or their personnel should be replaced with proven Islamic moderates.

American government officials should put a halt to kissing the cheeks and holding the hands of Saudi Princes who, along with everything else they do, arrogantly arrive late for a meeting with the President of the United States. Although some of our elected officials may do personal business with them, we don't. To us, they are nothing more than oil and terror vendors. If Americans want Saudi influence in their lives, they'll take a trip to Saudi Arabia.

Acknowledge that Shari'ah law, which is, and always will be incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and other democracy driven bylaws, governs Islam.

Acknowledge that the Saudis, who fund Wahhabism in American mosques and madrasses with petrodollars, need to be forced to cease this activity.

Acknowledge that Saudi-funded madrasses in America are teaching allegiance to the Qur'an and not the American Constitution.

Suspend all foreign financial aid to terror sponsoring states until they've cleaned their houses, and can prove it.

Suspend all funding to the United Nations until they've cleaned their house, and can prove it.

Stop attempting to cram Islam down the gullet of the American public. This is not a Muslim nation, and never has been. If Muslims wish to practice Islam here peacefully, they should have that right. However, the Islamist groups who pose as Muslim civil rights and charitable organizations should be blacklisted from interacting with American government agencies, and then targeted for closure. They are the barking dogs of militant Islam. They make all of the noise, file all the frivolous lawsuits, and advocate the undermining of this country. American law is for everyone living in America, and this includes Muslims. If they want to live under the Shari'ah, then they should move to a nation where it is practiced.

Government officials should stop making the claim to the American people that there isn't a problem within Islam, while at the same time they're spending millions of American taxpayer dollars overseas to change the very face of Islam. If there were no problems, then why would anything need to be changed?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17828

Touch base with the U.S. State Department and advise them to discontinue their attempts to re-write American history to where it includes Muslims.
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2004/08/state_plays_orw.php

If mosques in America have nothing to hide, then they -- both the Saudi and the Iranian funded ones -- should have no trouble with being monitored.

Government officials should remind themselves that American tax dollars pay not only their salaries, but also pay for the daily operations of this country both domestic and foreign. American government officials should also remind themselves who put them into office, and that they represent the American people, not those from the Middle East and Mexico.

Our careless immigration policies have allowed radical Islam to inject itself deeply into our nation's heart. The earlier referenced list of arrests, indictments and convictions of Muslim terrorists inside America, the majority of them occurring post 9/11, should provide validity to the claim that the problem is here.

So don't the American people deserve to have their tax dollars used to eject Islamic militancy from inside our borders first, before their money is spent doing it in the Middle East? Rebuilding mosques in Asia isn’t affecting the Islamic threat that’s already here. The protection of the American people comes first. Especially when Americans foot the bill for it.

In closing, if I know about all of this, I have no doubt that our government already knows it too. The question is, will our elected officials do right by the American people and eliminate this element from our society, or will it continue to play the game of political correctness and keep the American people at risk, for the sake of future votes?

I do not expect this information to be swept under any rugs. I love the United States unconditionally, as do tens of millions of others. This information will be saved. I would like a response as to what is going to be done to solve this obvious problem. This column is subject to and approved for publication if deemed fit.

My many thanks and respect to you.
D.C. Watson USA

P.S. These links will attest to the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are fed up with the U.S./Mexican border situation.

84% of Americans worry about illegal immigration. Of those, thirty-seven percent worry a "great deal" about it.
Gallup Poll, March 8-11, 2004
Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll
ABC News/Washington Post Poll, January 2005
RoperASW Poll
http://www.numbersusa.com/interests/publicop.html

Italy: Minister urges fines over Muslim robe

From Reuters, with thanks to Twostellas:

ITALY'S justice minister, a member of the right-wing Northern League party, was today accused of fuelling anti-Islamic sentiment in Italy after saying he would fine women wearing the all-covering burka.

Roberto Castelli said an Italian law banning the covering of a person's face in public would be applied to women wearing the full-length religious robe that hides the head and face. "To go around with your face covered is a crime, you can't do it," he told
reporters.

"Women who do so must be reported to the police and fined."

Mr Castelli's outburst is the latest in a series to make headlines as overwhelmingly Catholic Italy comes to grips with a growing Muslim
population some see as a blessing for the economy and others as a threat.

Opposition politicians demanded his resignation and that of other Northern League ministers, whose party has come to be defined by its anti-immigrant rhetoric...

Italy, with a population of 57 million, is home to an estimated one million officially registered Muslims, making Islam the country's second-largest religion.

But social services groups say the number is much higher and growing...

And Castelli also had something to say about the Fallaci trial travesty:

A judge last month ordered celebrated Italian writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial on charges of defaming Islam in a recent trilogy written in response to the September 11 attacks on US cities.

In the books, which sold more than one million copies in Italy, she
complained that Muslim immigrants had "multiplied like rats".

Mr Castelli said the author, who lives in New York, would not be found guilty because the Government would change the defamation law to clear her, local news agencies ANSA and AGI reported.

More addlepated dhimmi lunacy from the State Department

Hair-pulling stupidity and ignorance from the State Department. From "'Real Men Moisturize'" by Mona Charen at Townhall, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

"Real Men Moisturize." So begins an article on "Sharp Dressed Men" that appeared in a State Department funded magazine aimed at youth in the Arab world. The magazine, called "Hi" is published in Arabic and English. A State Department website explains that Hi is published "with the hope of building bridges of greater understanding among our cultures."

The article continues: "In fact, some of them, like Michael Gustman, a 25-year-old public relations account executive from Boca Raton, Fla., even have separate moisturizers for the face and body. Facial pores can clog with too heavy a salve, it seems. Not long ago, these and other habits would have been considered odd for a male. Gustman exfoliates. He gets manicures. He gets pedicures. He gets facials. He gets his hair done every two weeks. He accessorizes. He puts effort into getting ready for a date. He loves cooking complex dishes. He's a refined, evolved, sensitive guy. In a word, he's a metrosexual."

The photo accompanying the story pictures the male author seated in a pedicure chair, pants rolled up to his knees, along with half a dozen women enjoying the same treatment. (The women's faces aren't visible, but we can guess that they look puzzled or possibly even repelled.)

First things first. Is this what the U.S. State Department thinks America is really like? How many men, outside a tiny subset in major cities, are the primping, feminized "metrosexuals" the article lauds? Not many. You cannot enhance understanding between one people and another by presenting a false version of one side.

But more importantly, is this the way to "build bridges" between the Arab world and ourselves? Does the State Department believe that Arab males -- some of whom do not permit their wives and daughters to go out in public without a male family member as escort, others of whom think nothing of killing a daughter who dishonors the family by fraternizing with a boy -- are going to be impressed with a vision of America in which males are feminized "exfoliated," smooth-skinned eunuchs?

The State Department is apparently so delighted with the Hi Magazine approach that they are translating it for use around the world.

"We realized that most of the articles in Hi were suitable for youth anywhere in the world," said Christopher Datta, the director of special projects at the State Department's International Information Programs." A State Department website quotes a Hi Magazine contributor enthusing, "This is now everybody's world." Oh? What was it before?

Read it all.

Reluctant U.S. shows signs of shift on Hamas

Dhimmitude at the White House update from Reuters, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - The Bush administration is showing signs of easing its hard-line approach toward Hamas, in response to the militant group's rising political clout in the Palestinian territories and appeals for flexibility from European allies, officials and diplomats said.

The White House acceded to Hamas running candidates in Palestinian elections, even though the group has refused to disarm and Washington lists it as a major terrorist organization.

Senior administration officials said they may be open to contacts with some of Hamas' political affiliates, and would not rule out dealings with the group if it gave up its weapons and ended violence.

U.S. officials and diplomats cast any shift as pragmatic: Hamas-funded social services are popular with many Palestinians; it is winning local races and was expected to make a strong showing in newly postponed parliamentary elections, and some Hamas-backed politicians and affiliates are seen as moderates.

The shift also follows a behind-the-scenes push by European allies, including Britain and France, for Washington to drop its call to dismantle Hamas. European diplomats have warned Washington that its hard-line approach could be a "disaster" for Palestinians who benefit from Hamas aid, sources said.

Within the Bush administration, said a European diplomat, "There is now a realization that they (Hamas) do have a role to play ... that if you can bring them into the political fold, then you'll be marginalizing the military elements of those groups."

Good luck with that. Only if Hamas alters its charter and renounces what has been its goal from its inception -- the complete destruction of Israel -- would any renunciation of violence on its part be anything but a tactical move to achieve the same goal it has tried to achieve up to now by violence.

Turkish columnist: "Hitler did not do enough to these Jews"

A Let Them Into the EU update: "Antisemitism in the Turkish Media (Part III): Targeting Turkey's Jewish Citizens," from MEMRI, with thanks to a tea-loving snail:

Columnist Fahri Guven wrote in the Islamist daily Milli Gazete:(4) "[…] The Ottomans saved the Jews from the hands of Christians, who murdered them along with the Muslims in Endulus [Muslim Spain]. When Russia and Hungary persecuted the Jews, again the Ottomans saved them. The Muslim Turks rescued Jews yet again, from the hands of Hitler, who was himself a hidden Jew […]. From the beginning, the Ottomans showed hospitality, seemingly even by allotting the best homes to the Jews – along the Bosphorus, in Istanbul's most luxurious area.

"And, characteristic of their savage, treacherous [nature], in return they [the Jews] first overthrew Sultan Abdulhamid and destroyed the Ottomans;(5) [then], like insects, they ate away at the Ottoman [Empire]; and as if this were not enough, they stabbed the Muslim Turkish soldiers in Palestine in the back.

"'Judaism' is synonymous with 'treason' […] They [the Jews] even betrayed God […] When God told them to bow their heads while entering Al-Quds [Jerusalem], they entered with their heads up. The prophets sent to them, such as Zachariah and Isaiah, were murdered by the Jews […] In fact, no amount of pages or lines would be sufficient to explain the Koranic chapters and our Lord Prophet's [Muhammad's] words that tell us of the betrayals of the Jews. […]"

"Here is the Real Jew!"

Columnist for the ultra-nationalist daily Ortadogu Selcuk Duzgun, in an article titled "Here is the Real Jew," wrote:(6) "Salamon [a Jewish name often used in a derogatory way] is on his deathbed. He asks his wife about each member of his family and wants to know if they are present. When the wife assures him that all his loved ones are beside him, he is angered and shouts at them for leaving the shop unattended.

"This is a clear example of what the real Jew is. While we read and laugh at our jokes about the Jews, they [the Jews] are enjoying themselves by fooling the entire world.

"[…] Oh my naive people – you have elevated so many of these [Jews], and you have given an identity to so many [who had none]. You have saved, protected, and fed so many of them!... […] and they have created the [country's] agenda and continued their march to [their] 'Promised Land.' While we were calling them Masons, Sabbateans, Rotarians, etc., they had the privilege of ruling our country. Whatever name we call them, we always are faced with the truth that they are the 'JEWS.'

"[…] We are surrounded. Wherever we look we see traitors. Wherever we turn we see impure, false converts. Whichever stone you turn over, there is a 'JEW' under it. And we keep thinking to ourselves: 'Hitler did not do enough to these Jews.'[…]"

Fitzgerald: Columbia Teaches "Hate"

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald writes in FrontPage about Columbia prof Gil Anidjar, teacher of "Hate":

Gil Anidjar is an Assistant Professor at Columbia, with his primary responsibility the teaching of Comparative Literature – but there is a lot of comparison, and very little literature, in his writing. He offers two Comparative Literature courses. One is on Freud and Derrida. The second, a course that is listed as part of Columbia’s Middle East offerings, is called, dramatically, “Hate.”

The course on “Hate” is not really about the history or literature of the Middle East at all. It is an extended rumination upon two matters. The first is the evil of Europe, which has for its own purposes not merely created “the Other” (or rather, being especially awful, as Europe will be, creating two “the Others” – “Arab” and “Jew”), and subjecting both of them to identical diabolical persecution.

The second is that in creating, and persecuting, these inoffensive Arabs throughout Europe (and those inoffensive Jews) Europe is largely responsible for the otherwise harmonious relations between Arab and Jew, and which were disrupted only by Europe’s colonial project, and attempts to separate, and “create difference,” as with, for example, the loi Crémieux (1870), which gave French citizenship to Sephardic Jews in Algeria.

Read it all.

Qatar Rejects U.S. Rights Report

I Know Nothing! An update on this story, from Reuters.

DOHA - Qatar insisted its laws prohibited human trafficking and said it was not aware of any such rights violations on Sunday after the Gulf state was criticized in a U.S. report.

"These claims are totally unexpected and are something we disagree with completely," a senior Qatari official said.

"The laws of Qatar are strong and we have taken many steps to ensure equal rights for all. We are not aware of any human trafficking."

The State Department downgraded regional allies Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in an annual report on Friday, making them subject to sanctions if they do not improve their records in three months.

Such sanctions have rarely been applied and would have little effect on the wealthy Gulf Arab oil producers.

The report said boys are trafficked to be used as camel jockeys in Qatar, while male and female domestic servants can fall victim to "involuntary servitude" through excessive work hours and the withholding of wages and passports.

Expatriates, mostly workers from Asian and Arab countries, make up more than 75 percent of Qatar's population of 800,000...

Muslim Feminist Faces Ostracism and Death Threats for Praying Among Men

Asra Nomani is courageous, and deserves full support. "The Woman Who Went To the Front of the Mosque: Feminist Faces Ostracism -- or Worse -- for Praying Among Men," from the Washington Post, with thanks to Ruth King:

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. It was two days after she appeared on "Nightline" talking about her fight to change her mosque that the death threats began. The first call came on her cell phone. The caller left a message, in Urdu: "If you want to stay alive, keep your mouth shut." Otherwise, he said, he would "slaughter" her, halal style, saying a prayer as he slid a knife across her throat. If she didn't shut up, he'd slaughter her mother and her father, too. Think before you speak, he said. I know where you live. I know where your parents live.

Then he called her parents' home 10 minutes later. Just to reinforce the message.

It's not a message that Asra Nomani, Muslim, unwed mother, former Wall Street Journal reporter, author and left-leaning feminist, is planning to heed (although she did contact the FBI and her local police). Yes, she's started locking her doors now, a rarity for her here in her hilly home town. But she won't be shutting up, definitely not, never.

There are those who see Nomani, a self-described "overambitious child of immigrants," as a crusader, an activist lobbying for the right of Muslim women to pray side by side with men. This spring she launched the Muslim Women's Freedom Tour, traveling from city to city (including a stop in April at the Islamic Center of Washington on Massachusetts Avenue NW) to encourage Muslim women to assert themselves in their mosques. As part of the tour, women pray in halls usually reserved for men and participate in mixed-gender prayer services led by women.

"It's about time," says religious scholar and historian Reza Aslan. "This conception of the separation of men and women is something that never occurred during the prophet's lifetime." He adds, "What she has done is perfectly in line with Islamic values, traditions and the prophet's own desire to have men and women working side by side, praying side by side and even fighting side by side."...

Asra Nomani is courageous, and deserves full support. Reza Aslan is another matter. Here he continues his now well-established practice of asserting what Hugh Fitzgerald would call his Own Private Islam, a fantasy that has little or no resemblance to actual Islam values and traditions, or to the actual example of Muhammad.

It is because Muslims themselves are well aware of this that she gets reactions like this:

"She's like a troublemaker," says Gamal Fahmy, 31, a British-born, Egyptian-raised assistant professor at West Virginia University and a mosque member who once clashed with Nomani and her father in a study session. "I don't think she's that religious, she's that zealous about Islam and being a Muslim," he says. "Bottom line, I believe she's doing this for profit reasons."

Drama follows the Bombay-born and Morgantown-bred Nomani: Thirty-plus members of her 200-member mosque, the Islamic Center of Morgantown, the mosque her father, Zafar, helped found in 1981, are petitioning to have her banished for "disrupting worship and spreading misinformation about Islam."

Then there are the threatening e-mails; the articles, published around the world, accusing her of being a spy in cahoots with the CIA and Israeli intelligence; Jihadist message boards demanding that a fatwa be issued against a woman who led the first mixed-gender prayers and those who participated. An editorial writer for the India-based Web site Greater Kashmir writes that because Nomani had a child out of wedlock, "in Islam, punishment for an act for [which] Asra is proud of, is stoning till death."...

At the book reading in April in the District, one reader said he really didn't like her "Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom," in which she asserts, among other things, that Muslim women have an "Islamic right to respectful and pleasurable sexual experience" and a right "to make independent decisions about their choice of a partner."

Horror of horrors!

Even more egregious to her detractors is the fact that she had a child out of wedlock, in direct defiance, they say, of Islam's dictates....

"I feel like I'm doing my heart's work," Nomani says. "I think it's incumbent on Muslims with intellect, hope and love in our hearts . . . to go into the houses of worship and really try to transform the Muslim house from within. We have to take on this machine of extremism that's trying to take over the world."

Hear, hear.

But there are powerful forces against her:

She says there is a "Muslim Mafia" in town, a group aligned with Saudi Wahhabism, a fundamentalist branch of Islam. They bring sacks filled with cash to the mosque, she says. You have to challenge the power and control of those who run the society, she says....

And even her father sounds as if he's been taking lessons from Reza Aslan:

Earlier her father had said, "Muhammad was one of the greatest feminists. Islam first gave rights to women 1,400 years ago. . . . When I see Islam today and the way people behave towards women, I am very sad. I am for women's rights, respect, women's equality. Islam teaches that."

The indefatigable Dr. Andrew Bostom succinctly sums up the problem with this: "If 'reformers' would simply acknowledge the ugly truth---that the orthodox Muslims have more than ample justification for their views -- based on Muslim sacred texts and Law -- and then say that they, the reformers, wish to change that tradition of 14 centuries by offering a modern, alternative approach, I would say, 'Great, go for it!' But the reformers never do this. They simply engage in historical negationism and invent a past that never existed."

Filipino Muslims poised for independence

From AP via the StarOnline, "Muslim Filipinos optimistic long quest for homeland nearing end," with thanks to Fjordman.

COTABATO, Philippines - They came by foot, some arriving days early - men taking time off from work and veiled women in long dresses with children in tow, lugging bottles of water and baskets of food under the scorching sun.

The goals of peace, a Muslim homeland and perhaps even prosperity - such elusive dreams for so many years - seemed almost within grasp.

No one wanted to miss out on having their voice heard by the Muslim negotiators working on a peace deal with the Philippine government.

The rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front's first congress drew an estimated 100,000 people to Camp Darapanan in the southern Philippines' Sultan Kudarat town this week as peace talks to resolve the region's decades-old Muslim separatist conflict enter what may be the final stretch...

"We are confident, by the grace of Allah, that we will succeed,'' presidential adviser on the peace process Teresita Deles said in a speech.

But Abhoud Syed Lingga, executive director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies, believes that much remains to be ironed out.

"What are the hard facts that would tell us (peace) is already at hand? So far what they have shown us is only a joint statement which is very broad,'' he told The Associated Press.

"There might be an agreement within this year, but I don't think there will be a final agreement,'' he said, cautioning that "political statements'' from both sides may be sparking "false hopes.''

The three-day consultations yielded a resolution granting the MILF leadership full authority to negotiate for self-rule.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said the mandate allows the leadership to pick from a number of proposals, ranging from full independence to a federal state, a commonwealth state or a free association state...

Kristof: A Policy of Rape

Echoing Robert Spencer's excellent FP piece from last September, Nicholas D. Kristof writes in the New Duranty Times:

All countries have rapes, of course. But here in the refugee shantytowns of Darfur, the horrific stories that young women whisper are not of random criminality but of a systematic campaign of rape to terrorize civilians and drive them from "Arab lands" - a policy of rape.

One measure of the international community's hypocrisy is that the world is barely bothering to protest. More than two years after the genocide in Darfur began, the women of Kalma Camp - a teeming squatter's camp of 110,000 people driven from their burned villages - still face the risk of gang rape every single day as they go out looking for firewood.

Nemat, a 21-year-old, told me that she left the camp with three friends to get firewood to cook with. In the early afternoon a group of men in uniforms caught and gang-raped her.

"They said, 'You are black people. We want to wipe you out,' " Nemat recalled. After the attack, Nemat was too injured to walk, but her relatives found her and carried her back to camp on a donkey.

A neighbor, Toma, 34, said she heard similar comments from seven men in police uniforms who raped her. "They said, 'We want to finish you people off,' " she recalled.

Sometimes the women simply vanish. A young mother named Asha cried as she told how she and her four sisters were chased down by a Janjaweed militia; she escaped but all her sisters were caught.

"To this day, I don't know if they are alive or dead," she sobbed. Then she acknowledged that she had another reason for grief: a Janjaweed militia had also murdered her husband 23 days earlier.

Gang rape is terrifying anywhere, but particularly so here. Women who are raped here are often ostracized for life, even forced to build their own huts and live by themselves. In addition, most girls in Darfur undergo an extreme form of genital cutting called infibulation that often ends with a midwife stitching the vagina shut with a thread made of wild thorns. This stitching and the scar tissue make sexual assault a particularly violent act, and the resulting injuries increase the risk of H.I.V. transmission.

Sudan has refused to allow aid groups to bring into Darfur more rape kits that include medication that reduces the risk of infection from H.I.V...

Read it all.

Norway: Doctors warn against child exam

A parliamentary majority for obligatory checks of all young girls to reveal instances of female circumcision has caused concern in medical circles. From Norway's AftenPosten, with thanks to T.

Norway's parliament, the Storting, recently resolved to ask the government to introduce the mandatory examination of the genitalia of small children in order to overcome the problem of female circumcision in some communities.

Magnhild Meltveit Kleppa of the Center Party insists that this is not a gynecological check and said that professionals could detect sexual mutilation with the naked eye, something experts dispute.

"I believe it is difficult to defend such a resolution. The child can become an innocent victim and it can also make necessary contact with the health system difficult later," Torkild Aas at the social pediatrics ward of Ullevål University Hospital told newspaper VG.

Director Bjørn Busund at the gynecological ward at Ullevål agreed that in difficult cases doctors would have to touch the child's sex organs to carry out an investigation.

"Just putting a little girl on her back and explaining that 'Now we are going to check what kind of parents you have' can be difficult," Aas said...

Britain to ask Arab world to help Africa

From Reuters:

LONDON - Britain, seeking to salvage its planned debt relief deal for Africa ahead of next month's rich nations' summit, is to ask oil-rich Arab states to contribute more, the Observer newspaper said on Sunday.

The current holder of the G7 presidency, Britain has declared 2005 a make-or-break year for Africa but its proposals for easing the burden of African debt have been coolly received by its partners including the United States.

"It is critical that all wealthy countries, including the richer, oil producing states join in," Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown wrote in the newspaper.

Despite their oil wealth, the Gulf states have had little tradition of donating overseas aid...

A YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph newspaper on Saturday found 83 percent of Britons were not confident that money given to Africa would be spent wisely.

Jeb Bush sends letter of support to CAIR

"Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist Send Letters of Support to "Hamas Front," a press release from Americans Against Hate:

(Coral Springs, FL) On May 28, 2005, the Florida Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL) held its annual banquet at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. The fundraiser asked patrons to help in the establishment of a CAIR office in Orlando. While they did not attend the event, numerous high-ranking local and state government officials, including the Governor of Florida Jeb Bush, sent letters of support to CAIR.

Governor Bush's letter stated, "It is a great pleasure to extend greetings and best wishes to all attending the Florida Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL) annual banquet." The letter goes on to say, "I commend your contributions to the protection of civil rights and freedom of religion." And it concludes with, "Once again, congratulations on your accomplishments and my warmest greetings and best wishes on your continuing success."

Also sending a letter to CAIR was Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist. Crist's letter stated, "Thank you for your kind invitation to attend the CAIR Annual Banquet on May 28, 2005. Unfortunately, previous commitments will keep me from joining you." And it ends, "I extend best wishes for a wonderful event… Sincerely, Charlie Crist."

In addition, letters of support were sent from Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, FBI Special Agent Robert E. Haley, Florida State House Representative David Mealor, State Attorney Lawson Lamar, and Orange County Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles.

CAIR is currently the defendant in a multi-billion dollar lawsuit filed by the family of former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O'Neill, who lost his life during the September 11th attacks. United States Senator Chuck Schumer said that CAIR has "intimate links with Hamas," and "ties to terrorism." Steven Pomerantz, former FBI assistant director and chief of the FBI's Counter-Terrorism Section, stated, "CAIR, its leaders, and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups" and "CAIR originated from the Hamas front group, Islamic Association for Palestine, and has evolved into a propaganda arm for Hamas and other militant fundamentalists."

Joe Kaufman, Chairman of Americans Against Hate (AAH) stated, "Our organization expresses its deep disappointment that our state's leaders would send letters of support to a group such as CAIR. We find it especially counterproductive, during our country's war against terrorism. We ask all those that sent letters of support to retract the statements made in those letters."

"Muslims and the F.B.I. have the same problem. They both feel they are very misunderstood."

The New Duranty Times continues its groundbreaking anti-anti-jihad coverage with this piece, "You Can't Talk to an F.B.I. Agent That Way, or Can You?," about how Muslims suffer under anti-terror efforts. (Thanks to Jerry Gordon for the link.)

Dressed in a navy suit and red tie, his hair parted neatly on the side, Special Agent Charles E. Frahm sat with practiced calm as Muslims rose, one after another, to hurl raw complaints at him. Mr. Frahm, who heads the counterterrorism division of the F.B.I. in New York, was at a banquet hall in the Midwood section of Brooklyn on Thursday night to listen, he had told the hundreds of residents gathered there.

And they responded. They were tired of being held for hours at airports when their names resembled those of suspected terrorists, they said. They were tired of seeing Muslims arrested on immigration charges. They were tired of having their mosques watched, their businesses scrutinized.

"America is our land!" Faruq Wadud, a Bangledeshi man, hollered hoarsely into the microphone as the room broke into a thunderous applause. "We are not foreigners! Our children, this is their motherland!"

Two different issues here. America may well be his land, and his childrens', but unfortunately that has not sufficed as an assurance that Muslims would not engage in jihadist activity. There were a couple of American citizens arrested quite recently. But about that case, read on:

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the relationship between Muslims and law enforcement agents has been predictably fragile. The two groups have engaged in a delicate dance, balancing self-interest with political calculation.

People on both sides acknowledge a need for meaningful cooperation. But the relationship has frayed - and the voice of dissent among Muslims grown more audible - as a result of a series of criminal cases that have raised questions about the methods used by authorities in their fight against terrorism.

The government's focus on undercover sting operations and the recruitment of a network of Muslim informers has provoked the sharpest criticism. The most recent sting, which produced arrests last week in New York and Florida, has further stirred debate, although many details of the investigation, which led to charges that two American Muslim men conspired to aid Al Qaeda, remain unknown.

They are, of course, innocent until proven guilty. But the community should not be too hasty to charge injustice. Certainly the feds have bungled several cases in the past; but also Muslim groups have charged railroading and discrimination in cases where the accused turned out to be guilty: Mike Hawash is a notable example.

But, of late, perhaps no case has caused more ire than that of two teenage Muslim girls who were detained on immigration violations in March after the F.B.I. became concerned that they might be planning to become suicide bombers. After six weeks in detention the girls were quietly released, and officials have declined to comment on the case....

Not enough information here to know what is going on.

"It's nerve-racking that every time you hear there was a sting operation you start praying it won't be an Arab," said Antoine Faisal, the publisher of Aramica, an English and Arabic newspaper in Bay Ridge. "There has been no disassociation between individuals and the community itself. It's, 'Those Arabs did it again.'"...

Obfuscation. This is not a racial problem. It is an ideological problem.

By the time Mr. Faruq stepped up to declare America "our land," the temperature had risen markedly, but Mr. Frahm responded as he did throughout the evening: he rose, offered an understanding smile and stood his ground.

"I hear you, and I will continue to hear you," he said. "I can also say we make no apologies for actions we must take to protect Americans."

Good. Those Muslims who are truly law-abiding Americans will have no problem with this at all. However, there is a lingering trace of dhimmitude:

At the urging of the Muslim members, the F.B.I. re-examined the list of scholars it relied on for information on Islam.

I imagine that revised list of scholars is much like General Vines' reading list: long on apologists, short on substance and honesty about Islamic teachings.

"Muslims and the F.B.I. have the same problem," said Wissam Nasr, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations in New York, who spearheaded the effort. "They both feel they are very misunderstood."

Since I am counted among the foremost misunderstanders, I ask again: please show me a version of Islam that refutes the jihadist version. Assertions are easy. Documentation is harder.

Hanson: Our Strange War

Victor Davis Hanson writes in NRO, with thanks to TR.

The three-year-plus war that began on September 11 is the strangest conflict in our history. It is not just that the first day saw the worst attack on American soil since our creation, or that we are publicly pledged to fighting a method — “terror” — rather than the concrete enemy of Islamic fascism that employs it.

Our dilemma is that we have not sought to defeat and humiliate the enemy as much as wean a people from the thrall of Islamic autocracy. That is our challenge, and explains our exasperating strategy of half-measures and apologies — and the inability to articulate exactly whom we are fighting and why.

Hello Victor, and welcome to the discussion. We've missed your input.

Imagine that a weak Hitler in the mid-1930s never planned conventional war with the democracies. Instead, he stealthily would fund and train thousands of SS fanatics on neutral ground to permeate European society, convinced of its decadence and the need to return to a mythical time when a purer Aryan Volk reigned supreme. Such terrorists would bomb, assassinate, promulgate fascistic hatred in the media, and whine about Versailles, hoping insidiously to gain concessions from wearied liberal societies that would make ever more excuses as they looked inward and blamed themselves for the presence of such inexplicable evil. All the while, Nazi Germany would deny any connections to these “indigenous movements” and “deplore” such “terrorism,” even as the German people got a certain buzz from seeing the victors of World War I squirm in their discomfort. A triangulating Mussolini or Franco would use their good graces to “bridge the gap,” and seek a “peaceful resolution,” while we sought to “liberate” rather than defeat the German nation.

An interesting analogy, but not really applicable here because the "ideology" supposedly being introduced is, in this case, simply the religion-in-action of well-nigh 100% of the inhabitants of Muslim lands. It doesn't need an introduction.

So to recap: The real enemy is an Islamic fascist ideology that is promulgated by a few thousand. They wear no uniforms and are deeply embedded within and protected by Muslim society.

Oh, a tiny minority of extremists, is it? I'm so relieved. Let's see now, by Daniel Pipes' estimate, 10-15% of a billion is...100-150 million. Oops, that's a lot more than "a few thousand," eh, Victor?

Beyond the terrorists, a larger percentage of Middle Easterners, if it cost them little, gain psychological satisfaction when fellow defiant Muslims (terrorists or not) “stand up” to Westerners, who enjoy power, status, and wealth undreamed of in the Middle East.

"wealth undreamed of in the Middle East"?? Victor, are you insane? Some of these people have more money than God. Osama bin Laden once bankrolled the entire public debt of Sudan!

Even if they would hate living under Taliban-like theocrats, millions at least see the jihadists as about the only way of “getting back” at the Western world that has left them so far behind. This passive-aggressive sense of inferiority explains why millions of Muslims flock to Europe to enjoy its freedom and prosperity, even as they recreate there an Islamist identity to reconcile their longing and desire for what they profess to hate.

Oh, come on, Victor. This old "they hate us because they envy us" is starting to wear pretty thin. It's another grasping at straws approach we see in all commentators who profess to understand the conflict without understanding Islam. Give it up.

Still, most in the Middle East wish simply to embrace the human desire for prosperity, freedom, and security within the umbrella of traditional Muslim society — and will support American efforts if (a) these initiatives seem to be successful, and (b) are not seen as American.

Here's another one: We can figure out a way to make our initiatives in the Middle East look like they are not our initiatives, but ones coming from the natives instead. Good luck with that.

Consequently, the United States has not been able to bring its full arsenal of military assets to the fray. It is nearly impossible to extract the killers from the midst of civilian society. Too much force causes collateral damage and incites religious and nationalist anti-American fervor. Too little power emboldens the fascists and suggests America (e.g., Nixon’s “pitiful, helpless giant”) cannot or will not win the war...

Let me offer another suggestion here, our problem is not extracting "the killers from the midst of civilian society," our real problem lies with the religio-social system that produces those killers-for-Allah in the first place. Your analysis has not correctly identified either the jihadists' motivation or their inspiration. Hint: it has nothing to do a)poverty, b)envy or c)feeling politically powerless because they live under dictatorships. Identifying the motivation and goals of the enemy is paramount, and yep, you're going to have to study Islam in order to understand it. Grade: C minus - you will have to study harder to pass this test.

UNCHR: Protecting Religion– Specifically Islam

Elizabeth Kendal of World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission writes in AssistNews, with thanks to LH.

AUSTRALIA -- In an astonishing move on 12 April 2005, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) moved from promoting respect for human rights (the rights of humans) to promoting "respect for all religions and their value systems".

On Tuesday 12 April 2005, the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), meeting for its 61st session in Geneva, Switzerland, passed Human Rights Resolution 2005/3 entitled, "Combating Defamation of Religions". The text can be found at:
http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/E/CHR/resolutions/E-CN_4-RES-2005-3.doc

Islam On Line (IOL) reported it this way: "The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted on Tuesday, April 12, a resolution calling for combating defamation campaigns against Islam and Muslims in the West."

IOL quotes Cuba's delegate, Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez, who claimed that Islam has been the subject of a "very deep campaign of defamation". According to IOL, it is this defamation that breeds disharmony, hatred and discrimination.

Ehtasham Khan reports from Geneva for Rediff.com (India), "The resolution was pushed forward by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). It was put under Agenda Item 6 that deals with racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and all forms of discrimination."

It took a month of diplomatic lobbying, but the OIC nations managed to gain majority support and the resolution, which failed last year, was passed this year with 31 countries for, 16 against, five abstentions and one delegation absent.

Khan reports that the United States, United Kingdom and Israel were amongst those nations that voted against the resolution on the grounds that it was unbalanced and biased. Russia and China voted in favour while India was among those who abstained.

UNCHR Resolution 2005/3 is flawed and dangerous. It completely fails to address the issue of human rights violations that are legitimised by discriminatory and barbaric religious mandates. Thus it protects the religious mandate above humans' rights...

Read it all.

U.S. criticizes Gulf allies on trafficking

From Reuters via CNN with thanks to Two Stellas.

WASHINGTON -- The United States criticized four Gulf Arab allies as some of the world's worst offenders in permitting human trafficking Friday in a rebuke Washington hopes will promote improved human rights in the Middle East.

The State Department downgraded Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the lowest level of compliance in the report, which evaluates countries' efforts in fighting the trafficking of thousands of people forced into servitude or the sex trade every year.

Victims in the region were mainly domestic servants and laborers but also included boy camel jockeys, according to the report.

It cited the case of a 17-year-old orphan, Lusa, kidnapped from Uzbekistan and was sold into a slavery ring in UAE. She was eventually "no longer usable" as a prostitute and the emirates' immigration service said she should serve a two-year prison sentence for entering the country illegally.

Officials from the Gulf countries were not immediately available to comment on the one-step downgrade, which ranks them with such countries as Burma, North Korea and Sudan.

"This report shows that in this administration we will not pull our punches even with our friends. We appreciate their cooperation in other areas but they just don't have a good track record fighting this," a State Department official said on condition of anonymity...

Dutch Withdraw Salvation Army Subsidy Over Hiring Practices

In unofficially translated news from the Netherlands Trouw:

Amsterdam - Secretary de Geus of Social Affairs withdraws 200.000 euros subsidiaries from the Salvation Army. The Army refuses to hire two muslimas who are currently employed as volunteers for one of their projects. The Army only hires Christians. De Geus has, so he says, insisted in vain on a solution. "It is a pity the Salvation Army does not want to hire the women after all."

The Army wanted to employ the muslimas elsewhere, so they could be "detached" to work on the Army project. Lieutenant-Colonel Ine Voorham of the Army was happy with this solution. "We could have helped them to get started".

According to the director of Welfare & Health of the Salvation Army in Dordrecht, Harry de Heer, is adapting the hiring policy no option.

Secretary De Geus does not want to use the term "religious discrimination". He does say the Salvation Army disregards the agreement that it must hire "allochtone" (not original Dutch) women per 1 July 2005. Lt.-Colonel Voorham says she will appeal against the withdrawal.

Turkey: Prez Vetoes Bill to Relax Gov't Control Over Religious Schools

From Islamonline, "Sezer Vetoes Penal Code Over Religious Schools," with thanks to KAOSKTRL.

ANKARA - Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer Friday, June 3, vetoed a government-sponsored law reducing penalties for unauthorized religious schools teaching the Noble Qur'an, arguing that it infringed on the secularist principles of the Muslim-majority country.

The provision was part of a package of amendments to the Turkish penal code, spearheaded by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The article, which would have enabled those convicted of opening and running "illegal" educational institutions to escape with a fine rather than a jail term of up to three years, triggered accusations that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government is condoning "religious fundamentalism", according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Sezer, a staunch secularist who has often clashed with the government, said in a statement that he had returned the law to parliament for reconsideration because it "is encouraging the opening of illegal educational institutions."

The principle of secularism "is the cornerstone of the values on which the Turkish Republic is founded," he said.

"It is obvious that the country's unity in the future will be endangered by the perverted mindsets of citizens educated in illegal separatist and religious educational institutions," he said.

The parliament will now review the law, and if it passes it for a second time unchanged, Sezer has no other option but to approve it. He can, however, ask the constitutional court to annul the legislation...

The chip, chip, chipping away of secularism in Turkey continues...stay tuned for future developments.

UK: 'Offensive' hospital bibles may be banned

Political correctness run amok in the UK, from the Telegraph, with thanks to MJ.

The century-old tradition of bibles in hospital bedside lockers could be ended in one health trust today after officials decided they might offend ethnic minorities.

Senior executives at the University of Leicester NHS Trust said it was also concerned that the books helped to spread the MRSA bacteria and it would rule on whether to remove them from wards...

Leicester has one of Britain's largest ethnic minority populations and the trust is concerned that the many non-Christian patients might be offended. A spokesman refused to say who suggested the ban, but said that she was "not aware" that any complaints about bibles had been made.

"Discussions are still in the early stages,'' she said. "Regardless of the outcome, patients can be reassured that religious texts will continue to be made available at hospitals through the chaplaincy."

Gideons International, the missionary organisation whose bibles are placed at patient bedsides, said the proposal was "sad" and "ridiculous". Iain Mair, an executive director, said the charity commissioned a surgeon and microbiologist to carry out a study on the risk of infection as soon as it learned that a ban was being considered.

"Doctors told us that to claim an MRSA risk is nonsense - and it is ridiculous to think having bibles in lockers discriminates against other religions," said Mr Mair.

"We have told the trust that we will put a note beside our Testament to advise patients who to contact if they wish a book of another faith."...