Judge Cuts Sentences In 'Virginia Jihad' Cases

From NBC4, with thanks to Two Stellas.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A judge reduced the sentences of three U.S. Muslims convicted for their roles in a conspiracy that began with paintball games in the woods and evolved into a plan to join the Taliban and fight U.S. troops. Two of the three still will serve life sentences.

A federal appeals court ordered the new sentencing hearings for Masoud Khan, of Gaithersburg, Md.; Seifullah Chapman, of Alexandria; and Hammad Abdur-Raheem, of Falls Church; following a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that reduced the role of federal sentencing guidelines from mandatory to advisory.

Khan had been sentenced last year to life plus 65 years in prison, while Chapman had been sentenced to 85 years.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said at the time she imposed those sentences that they were "draconian" and "sticking in my craw" but that she had no choice because of congressionally mandated minimum sentences for certain firearms convictions...

As a result, Khan's sentence was reduced only to life plus 45 years. Chapman, 32, had his sentence reduced from 85 years to 65 years. There is no parole in the federal system, so both will have to serve the vast majority of their terms.

"I have a limited ability to impose what I consider to be an appropriate sentence," Brinkema said. "These statutes are really draconian. I've said it before and I'll say it again."

The sentence reductions could be useful to Khan and Chapman only if the firearms convictions are overturned on appeal. If that occurs, each would serve only a 10-year sentence, which Brinkema said she considered appropriate...

Some group members turned their attention against the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. At a meeting on Sept. 16, 2001, the group's spiritual leader, a Fairfax Islamic scholar named Ali al-Timimi, warned that an apocalyptic battle between Muslims and nonbelievers was at hand and urged the group to engage in holy war. He specifically said fighting for the Taliban against U.S. troops was a legitimate jihad, according to some witnesses who struck plea bargains.

Khan spoke briefly, urging those in the courtroom to fear God.

"Through trial and injustice one comes to know and love his creator," Khan said. "Those who have brought upon this injustice have only hurt themselves."

In all, 10 men were convicted for their roles in the conspiracy, including al-Timimi, who was sentenced to life in prison for soliciting treason and other counts. Two who were charged were acquitted.

Muslim hardliners torch 'sinful' TV sets in northwest Pakistan

From Arab Times, with thanks to Nicolei.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, July 30 (AFP) - Hundreds of Muslims in Pakistan's staunchly conservative northwest have set ablaze dozens of TV sets following a cleric's ruling that watching television was a sin, police said Saturday.

The men congregated in a park after Friday prayers and piled up about 25 TV sets, doused them with fuel and set them on fire, said witnesses from the Charsadda district of the North West Frontier Province near the Afghan border. "These people actually responded to a cleric's call," said district police chief Muhammad Iqbal, after a local mullah had said on radio that watching TV was a sin and declared a jihad or holy war against vulgarity and obscenity.

The park echoed with shouts of "Allah-o-Akbar" (God is greatest) and "Islam zindabad" (long live Islam), while the emotional crowd also decried an ongoing crackdown on suspected extremists following the London bombings.

Parliamentarian Maulana Gohar Shah addressed the crowd and called the 800 arrests and series of raids on Islamic seminaries ordered by President Pervez Musharraf a "conspiracy of the infidel (non-believer) world"...

Bail set for Saudi man accused of raping, enslaving housemaid

An update on the Al-Turki case from the Denver Post, with thanks to Two Stellas.

Despite strenuous objections from prosecutors, a federal judge set bail Thursday for a Saudi Arabian man who is accused of raping his housekeeper and holding her as a virtual slave in his Aurora home.

U.S. District Judge Walker Miller set bail at $400,000, which is the amount the Saudi government has put up so Homaidan Al-Turki can bond out on related charges in state court. He will have to post $400,000 bail for each case.

"It was a close call, given the serious nature of the charges and the fact that he is a foreign national," Miller said. "We are an open society, and it's not too hard to get out of here."

Miller said that while the crimes were serious, the evidence presented thus far did not weigh heavily against setting bail. Also, Al-Turki had received extraordinary support from his community and academic peers. The decision overturned a ruling issued this month by a federal magistrate who denied bail in the case...

Italian anti-terror law enacted

From the BBC, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The lower house of the Italian parliament has approved new measures to combat the threat of terrorist attack, which means they have become law.

The bill includes surveillance of the internet and phone networks and making it easier to detain suspects.

Those who hide their features from the public - including through wearing the Islamic burqa - also face punishment.

A number of Western countries have introduced extra measures after the London bombs this month.

The BBC's Jacky Rowland notes that explicit threats against Italy have appeared on a number of extremist websites...

[Giuseppe Pisanu Italian Interior Minister said], "The terrorist threat with Islamic origins has a world-wide dimension, it could materialise everywhere and no corner of the planet is immune."...

Louvre to have Islamic Art Wing

"Prince Walid Helps Set Up Islamic Art Wing in Louvre" from IslamOnline, with thanks to Fjordman.

PARIS , July 27, 2005 – Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Walid Bin Talal has donated a multi-million-euro gift to finance the construction of a new Islamic art wing in the Paris-based Louvre Museum to show off the bright face of the Muslim world.

The 4,000-square-meter wing in the world's largest museum will showcase up to 10,000 pieces, one of the greatest concentrations of Islamic art in existence, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported Wednesday, July 27.

Financed by 17 million euros from the Saudi business tycoon, the Islamic art wing is designed by architects Mario Bellinin from Italy and Rudi Ricciotti from France . It is scheduled to open in 2009.

Only some 1,300 objects from the Louvre's Islamic collection are currently on display.

The new rooms will have 36,000 square feet of display space, about four times the current area.

The donation is one of the biggest cultural gifts in France 's history.

"Your gesture is a testament to the generosity of the Islamic world," the French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres told Prince Walid in a ceremony on Tuesday, July 26...

Cliff May: "America is not fighting a war against Islam. America is fighting a war against Islamism"

I respect Cliff May's work. I think his article on the Palestinians was an absolute knockout punch, and I applaud much of what he has accomplished with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. But his latest article is one of the most appalling things I have read in a long time -- principally because it comes from Cliff May, who should know better.

It isn't that Cliff goes out on a limb in this one -- oh no, his position here is the easiest one to take in the world. He simply seems with his Islam/Islamism distinction here to repeat the dogma that currently goes unchallenged in official Washington and the mainstream media: that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists. But what is most disheartening about this piece is not that; it is that May asserts this and never offers a scrap of evidence for it. He even acknowledges that the fabled Vast Majority of Moderate Muslims Who Abhor Terror has been singularly inactive against it. Through it all, however, he doesn't seem to notice that there are no clothes on his emperor: that he hasn't given his readers even one reason to believe that what he is saying is true.

I think May's column here is indicative of a much larger tendency. Most people, inside and outside of Official Washington, believe that Islam is peaceful at its core not because of any evidence, but because they really, really wish it were. And because those who have come to a different conclusion after examining the Qur'an and Sunnah, or who simply note that the jihadists make copious use of the Qur'an and Sunnah, are branded as racists and hatemongers, they just can't bear to come to that conclusion. Well, if we are going to face squarely what we are really up against and come up with viable defensive strategies, we better start getting over that, and fast.

From "The War Against the Free World," by Clifford D. May:

America is not fighting a war against Islam. America is fighting a war against Islamism.

The difference between Islam and Islamism is straightforward: Islam is a religion, a faith, the basis of a great civilization and culture, one that once dominated the world.

By contrast, Islamism is an “ism” – a theory, a doctrine, a political movement. Islamists believe that Muslims have a God-given right to dominate the world; or, as the Islamist theorist Abdullah Azzam phrased it, a duty to establish “Allah's rule on Earth.”

Sure, Cliff, big contrast there. Now let me ask you this: when did "Islamism" develop? Did not Muhammad himself teach that "Muslims have a God-given right to dominate the world" After all, he said: "It is reported on the authority of Abu Huraira that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah, and he who professed it was guaranteed the protection of his property and life on my behalf except for the right affairs rest with Allah." (Sahih Muslim, book 1, no. 30). Doesn't the Qur'an command Muslims to "fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah" (Qur'an 8:39)? Could I not quote hundreds of other passages to support this? And no, Cliff, I would not be pulling them out of context. All the schools of Sunni jurisprudence, as well as the Shi'ites, say the same thing.

Scholar and former Pakistani diplomat Husain Hoqqani quotes a booklet by Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), an Islamist group reportedly linked to the recent London bombings, which declares “the U.S., Israel and India as existential enemies of Islam,” and lists among its goals “the restoration of Islamic sovereignty to all lands where Muslims were once ascendant, including Spain, Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Sicily, Ethiopia, Russian Turkistan and Chinese Turkistan. . . Even parts of France reaching 90 kilometers outside Paris."

Theoretically, it is possible to be an Islamist and not support terrorism. An Islamist might believe there are peaceful ways for Muslims to achieve the power and glory to which they are entitled. In practice, however, it is an exceptional Islamist who scruples about the killing of “infidels.”

Yes, Cliff, but you still haven't explained what evidence establishes that Islam is distinct from Islamism. And you can't -- which is one reason why what you mention next is true:

Egyptian-born journalist Mona Eltahawy has lamented the fact that even many Arab and Muslim intellectuals can't quite bring themselves to condemn suicide bombings carried out in the name of Islam. Though they call themselves moderates, she writes, they “are little more than apologists for a terrorism that not only kills innocents in the dozens but ruins the lives of the millions of Muslims living in the West.”

Islamists have been waging war on America for more than a generation. The seizing of the U.S. embassy in Tehran was an act of war perpetrated by the Islamists who came to power in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Hezbollah bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 also was an act of war, as were other attacks in that decade and the 1990s.

After Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden became the world's best-known Islamist. The sophistication and lethality of his attacks made the hostage-takers and truck-bombers look like dilettantes. But long before we were surprised by bin Laden's capabilities, we should have been aware of his intentions. In 1996, bin Laden had published his “Declaration of War Against the Americans.”

America's leaders failed to respond to that threat as they failed to respond two years later when bin Laden wrote: “There are two parties to the conflict: World Christianity, which is allied with Jews and Zionism, led by the United States, Britain and Israel. The second party is the Islamic world.” For good measure, bin Laden issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, in which he called on Muslims to kill Americans – civilians and military alike.

The vast majority of Muslims did not heed his call. But some did. And too few Muslims – too few religious leaders, in particular – stood up to say forcefully that bin Laden was a renegade, an enemy of Islam who brings shame to the faith.

Why not, Cliff? Because they knew that Osama was acting in accordance with traditional Islamic law. They knew they had no leg to stand on against him. It is true that they were afraid. But that is not all.

One reason that did not happen is fear. Harvard scholar Ahmed H. al-Rahim notes that some Muslims who criticize Islamism – the writer Farag Fouda, for example -- have been assassinated. Others – Sayyid Mahmud al-Qimany, for example – have been threatened, and so “to spare his family the fate that befell Fouda's, Mr. Qimany recanted all his writings, promising never to write again… his only weapon was his pen, which alas he surrendered to the Islamists as others before him surrendered their lives.”

At this point, scholar Mamoun Fandy has written, “we desperately need a series of fatwas that assert that Islam does not condone violence against innocent people. …We also need to exclude those among us who believe that violence is the way to defend Islam. … It is also time to remove the title of 'mosque' from any place in which Molotov bombs are prepared.”

No, Fandy, we are getting those "fatwas that assert that Islam does not condone violence against innocent people." They are not enough. We need a clear declaration that Islam considers the aggregate of civilians in America, Britain, Israel and elsewhere to be civilians. We need this because it has been explicitly denied by jihad terrorists. Those terrorists would have no trouble endorsing fatawa that condemn attacks against innocent people. What we need are fatawa that they would not be able to endorse -- that they would see as condemning their actions. We have not seen such fatawa.

A war is being waged against America and, indeed, against the entire Free World, nations the Islamists view as decadent, weak and Satanic. Mr. al-Rahim has proposed that Muslims who reject the bellicose Islamist interpretation of Islam need to find the courage to say so unambiguously and publicly.

Indeed. But Cliff and others like him also need to face up to all the reasons why they haven't done so already.

“Why not a ‘Million Muslim March' on Washington,” he wrote, “of law-abiding Muslim citizens clamoring to reclaim their faith from those who would kill innocents in its name?”

And if there were a serious “peace movement” would its members not march with banners saying, “Stop the War Against the Free World”?

Would they not be demonstrating outside the embassies of Iran and Syria and other nations ruled by terrorist masters? Would they not be protesting, too, outside London's Finsbury mosque, one of a number of “houses of worship” where an ideology of hatred and murder is preached and, on occasion, practiced?

OK, let's see such marches. Let's see Muslims protest outside the Finsbury Park mosque. Let's see the Million Muslim March. If what Cliff May says here is correct, we should have already seen these things. Why haven't we?

UK: Apology after bacon found in library's Koran

Over the years I have come across many, many defaced books in libraries. Defaced in all sorts of ways, for all sorts of reasons. There are all sorts of jerks and dweebs everywhere who do this sort of thing. What is noteworthy about this story is not -- horror of horrors! -- the slice of bacon in the Qur'an, but the furious dhimmi overreaction of Sandra Barnsley. They are not going to "win"? Who? The pork lobby? No, of course she means the fiendish defacers of Qur'ans. But how does she propose to make good on her assurance that "nothing like this ever happens again"? Is she going to post a full-time anti-bacon guard in front of the library's Qur'ans? Will police search all those who enter the library and confiscate any stray rashers? (I guess you could call those strip searches.)

Maybe Prince Charles could get involved in this. He could appoint a whole Qur'an-protection force. They could be outfitted like the guards in front of the Buckingham Palace, except that their uniforms would feature brown-and-beige stripes, a la a slice of bacon. He could call them The Royal Qur'an Bacon Guards, and commission them in an elaborate ceremony at the Palace, after which they would march in formation to the nation's libraries and take up their exalted posts. Retirees from the Bacon Guard would, of course, be awarded the United Kingdom's highest honor, The Sacred Order of the Dhimmi. From Rugby Today, with thanks to JS:

THE ANGRY manager of Rugby Library has apologised to Muslims after a slice of bacon was found in a copy of The Koran.

The rasher had been placed in the pages of a reference copy of the book, which is available for general use.

Library manager Sandra Barnsley said: "I cannot believe anyone would do this, but they're not going to win.

"I apologise to all members of the Muslim community and we will do everything in our power to prevent any repeat of this incident."

A customer who was using the book for research found the bacon on Monday.

He alerted library staff, who got rid of the book immediately.

Under the terms of Islam, Muslims do not eat any pork-based products.

Sandra said: "We don't know how long the bacon had been there but obviously we were all very upset by this incident as well.

"We welcome all faiths and cultures into the library and we have never had any problems of this nature before."

"It is difficult to be vigilant at all times but I can assure all our customers we will make every effort to ensure nothing like this ever happens again."

Hyping Islam 's role in the History of Science

Jonathan David Carson in The American Thinker (thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald) unmasks some dhimmitude in Science magazine about the historical role of Islam in scientific development. I also discuss this in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) claims for its journal Science

“the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million.”

Thus when it publishes a politically correct history of the relationship between science and Islam, as filled with errors as a garbage can left too long in the sun is filled with maggots, its falsehoods enter credulous and influential minds on every continent, including Antarctica.

“Science in the Arab World: Vision of Glories Beyond” by Wasim Maziak in the June 3, 2005, issue of Science, cites as its sole source for Islamic history “the historian James Burke.” Burke has written that the invention of lens-grinding lathes led to hairdressing, that Mozart's Marriage of Figaro brought about the development of the stealth fighter jet, and that the Boston Tea Party caused the invention of contact lenses. One can easily and quickly verify that Mr. Burke is no historian, but a television star, by pulling up information about him on Amazon.com, where even his admirers admit to his "snarkiness."

Rather than refuting all of the snarky errors in this snarky history, I will focus on a single snarky paragraph:

Of equal importance to the Arab-Islamic scientific discoveries on the European Renaissance was the reintroduction of ancient Greece’s natural philosophy by way of translations by Islamic scholars. The historian James Burke identifies several knowledge shocks that ignited the Renaissance. One was delivered by Ibn-Sina (Avicenna, 980 to 1037), whose Kitab Al-Shifa (“The Book of Healing”) introduced medieval Europe to the principles of logic and their use to gain knowledge and understanding of the universe. Another major shock was delivered by Ibn-Rushd (Averroes, 1126 to 1198), whose writings and commentaries reintroduced to medieval Europe the Aristotelian approach to studying nature by observation and reasoning.

The “Islamic scholars” who translated “ancient Greece’s natural philosophy” were a curious group of Muslims, since all or almost all of the translators from Greek to Arabic were Christians or Jews, as were the translators from Arabic to Latin. Consider the astonishing statement of Bernard Lewis in The Muslim Discovery of Europe:

We know of no Muslim scholar or man of letters before the eighteenth century who sought to learn a western language, still less of any attempt to produce grammars, dictionaries, or other language tools. Translations are few and far between. Those that are known are works chosen for practical purposes [philosophy being considered a practical discipline] and the translations are made by converts [who knew western languages before conversion] or non-Muslims.

According to Franz Rosenthal in The Classical Heritage in Islam,

“Almost all of the translators [from Greek into Syriac or Hebrew or from Greek, Syriac, or Hebrew into Arabic] were Christians.”

One possible exception is Masarjawaih, who may have been a Jew. Another is Thabit b. Qurrah (ca. 834-901 A.D.), a “heathen” Sabian from Harran.

Similarly, “Aristoteles latinus” by Bernard Dod, a chapter of The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, provides a comprehensive list of medieval translations of Aristotle from Arabic into Latin, none by Islamic scholars—unless by “Islamic” one means “Christian or Jewish.”

But if Islamic scholars did not actually translate ancient Greece’s natural philosophy from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic into Latin, didn’t they at least preserve these works? Didn’t they rescue Plato and Aristotle from oblivion? They “ignited the Renaissance.” Didn’t they?

No, they did not. Plato did not make the long journey from Greek to Syriac or Hebrew to Arabic to Latin, and Western Europeans preferred [surprise!] translations of Aristotle directly from the Greek, which were not only superior but also more readily available.

Read it all.

Fitzgerald: Blame the Experts

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses a favored proposition of official dhimmi Washington -- that we should work together with the Saudis to combat terrorism:

Blame the "experts." Blame C.I.A. intelligence agents who operate at the level of Michael Scheuer: a schoolboy, with a schoolboy's understanding of Islam, and his worldview vitiated by his peculiar views on assorted Jewish cabals here and there. Blame the former National Security Council "senior director for Middle Eastern affairs" who continues to suggest (see Flynt Leverett, "Ambassador with Portfolio" in The New Duranty Times, July 26, 2005) that we should work to "combat terrorism" jointly with the Saudis and should reach out to the new Ambassador Prince Turki, and who repeats phrases about "access to oil" and the oil market that show he hasn't the faintest idea how the world oil markets work, or what the role of Saudi Arabia has been in oil-pricing over the past third of a century, and who even believes that the "war on terrorism" is "at its heart, a war on Al Qaeda." Naturally, such a person has no conception of why the islamization of Europe, even if it occurred in a completely peaceful fashion, would be a mortal threat to the United States and to Western civilization. When such a person talks about reestablishing our "strategic partnership" with Saudi Arabia (by which one assumes he is referring to the fact that the Saudis wanted to help, for their own Muslim reasons, defeat the Russians in Afghanistan, and for their own Wahhabi and Al-Saud reasons, wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein and were thrilled to have the Americans do it -- just as twenty years ago they were happy to help, with the Americans, resupply Saddam Hussein with American tanks, their Saudi markings painted over by, among others, an acquaintance of mine), let us take it with a large grain of salt.

Flynt Leverett is a great believer in appeasement of the Saudis, which he thinks is necessary. It is contained in a sentence toward the end of his Op/Ed piece: In order to win over Prince Turki to join the fight against terrorism, he says, “the United States would need to be prepared for a serious conversation about modifying its policies toward regional security, stability and peacekeeping in Iraq and the Arab-Israeli peace process to recognize Saudi interests and initiatives -- a conversation that Prince Turki could facilitate."

This is the same mixture as before: more of the same appeasement that has been tried for the past 33 1/3 years. Yet a different strategy toward Saudi Arabia was set out brilliantly by J. B. Kelly in his detailed "Arabia, the Gulf, and the West." But we would never put in place taxes, ever-increasing, on gasoline at the pump, or on oil, in a way that would have allowed us to recapture oligopolistic rents (perhaps several trillion dollars) because we were all so busy with the “expert” opinions of Western hirelings: lawyers, public relations agents, businessmen who wanted to sell arms and others who did not want to diminish those petrodollars because they derived such individual profit from "recycling" them, diplomats, intelligence agents who lacked intelligence, and the likes, it seems, of this Flynt Leverett.

And this Flynt Leverett, who let me remind you is the "former senior director for Middle Eastern Affairs at the National Security Council," ends his Op/Ed with this remarkable paragraph:

"The 60-year partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia was not, as President Bush alluded [sic] in a 2003 speech, a mistake. It was, and remains, an indispensable element in America's quest for a mroe stable regional and international order. The administration should take advantage of Prince Turki's presence in Washington to give that partnership the attention it deserves."

What deserves attention is how someone capable of thinking that there has been a "partnership," and not a consistent snookering, of Infidel America by malevolently anti-Infidel Saudi Arabia, was ever allowed near a government office, much less allowed to become the "senior director for Middle Eastern affairs at the National Security Council." I can hear Kelly's scorn and bitter laughter now. With this kind of "expert" helping direct or form our policy toward Saudi Arabia, we are lost.

The Flynt Leveretts of this world, who so misunderstand Saudi Arabia and the nature of that hollow "partnership," do not realize that the Saudis have never been our allies. Sometimes there has been cooperation when, for their own interests, they wished to back Iraq against Shi'a Iran, or the muhajedin against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, or were happy to see the Americans remove Saddam Hussein. But that is very different from saying we have been partners. In Afghanistan, once the Soviets had gone, the Saudis backed to the hilt (and so did the U.A.E.) the regime of the Taliban. The Taliban, in turn, gave aid and comfort and refuge to the Saudi-financed Al Qaeda forces of Bin Laden. While the Saudis dislike the Shi'a of Iran, they do not dislike them because they find the Islamic Republic of Iran hideous in its imposition of the Sharia and in its totalitarianism, but merely because the Iranian Shi'a and the Saudi Wahhabi are mortal enemies. If the Saudis were happy to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, it is not because he massacred nearly 200,000 Kurds -- the Saudis saw nothing wrong with that, and never mentioned it. Nor did they care about his massacres of the Shi'a. No, all they cared about was Saddam Hussein's threat to them.

It is the same with terrorism. They are indifferent to terrorism, except that which is directed at them, and their interests. Why should they care if Al Qaeda, or Hezbollah, or Jaish-e-Mohammad or Laskar Jihad, attacks Hindus, Jews, Christians? Why? It would violate everything the Saudis so deeply believe in, even if some smoothy, with liquid brown eyes and a soft voice (is Prince Turki one of those, one of those whose daggers-and-dishdasha war dances of triumph are only behind the scenes?) assures us, or some Barbara-Wawa level of interviewer, otherwise.

There is no need to appease Saudi Arabia on anything. In fact, we should be letting them know that the continued existence of the House of Al-Saud, or of its control over the Al-Hasa Province, and its continued belief that the Americans will protect them, can no longer be taken for granted. And one test will be whether the Saudi funding for mosques, madrasas, Da'wa of every kind (look at the Freedom House report on Saudi anti-Infidel hate literature all over American mosques) ends. Because if it doesn't end, we can regard Saudi Arabia as the declared enemy, and begin to seize its illiquid assets. Such talk will get their attention. It is the only way, in fact, to get their attention.

Will someone in the Pentagon please bring J. B. Kelly over for a little walk down Memory Lane, about Sheik Zayed, and Pachachi in Abu Dhabi back in 1971, and why Oman and Sultan Qaboos are not getting their due, and why Saudi Arabia is by far the most malevolent state in the entire area? What would it cost? A plane ticket? A hotel room for a week? Bring him over. If someone in the Pentagon sufficiently high up is reading this, you know what to do. And while you're at it, how about having Bat Ye'or come in to discuss the islamization of Europe -– that is, Eurabia? Another ticket, another hotel room. Last I looked, the Pentagon was spending half-a-trillion. Has it gone up? Can you afford two tickets, and two hotel rooms, possibly with a Saturday-overnight so that you can save a little on the Pentagon budget, for more rah-rah propaganda about the Democracy Is On the March stuff?

C'mon Pentagon, you can take a moment from your busy busy schedule to listen to J. B. Kelly and Bat Ye'or in the flesh -- can't you?

LA psychologist clashes with Algerian jihadist over Islamic teachings and terrorism

We need more interviewers like Wafa Sultan who aren't afraid to challenge jihadist distortions, obfuscations, and sleights of hand. Instead, the mainstream media is awash with dhimmis on both the left and the right. "LA Psycohologyst [sic] Wafa Sultan Clashes with Algerian Islamist Ahmad bin Muhammad over Islamic Teachings and Terrorism," from MEMRITV, with thanks to Alain:

Wafa Sultan, a psychologist from LA, here speaks with Dr. Ahmad Bin Muhammad, an Algerian professor -- this was aired on Al-Jazeera on July 26, 2005. Sultan starts out by asking him why Muslim men become suicide bombers. She speaks plainly about the role of Islam:

Wafa Sultan: [...]In our countries, religion is the sole source of education, and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched. He was not born a terrorist, and did not become a terrorist overnight. Islamic teachings played a role in weaving his ideological fabric, thread by thread, and did not allow other sources – I am referring to scientific sources – to play a role. It was these teachings that distorted this terrorist and killed his humanity. It was not (the terrorist) who distorted the religious teachings and misunderstood them, as some ignorant people claim.

When you recite to a child still in his early years the verse: "They will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off," regardless of this verse's interpretation, and regardless of the reasons it was conveyed or its time – you have made the first step towards creating a great terrorist...

In response, Dr. bin Muhammad plays the deflection game, or tu quoque, as Hugh Fitzgerald has labeled it:

Bin Muhammad: The guest from America asked how a young man could blow up a bus. If only she had asked how a president could blow up a peaceful nation in Iraq. How does a president help the arch-killer of occupied Palestine? Why doesn't she ask from where Hitler was brought up – Hitler, who murdered 50 million innocent people. Why doesn't she ask where the people who dropped two atom bombs on Japan were educated? Who killed three million innocent Vietnamese? Who annihilated the Indians? Who maintained imperialism to this day? Who waged the Spanish civil war, which exacted a toll of 600,000 in 36 months? Why don't we ask these questions? Who has over 15,000 nuclear warheads – Muslims or the non-Muslims? The Muslims or the Americans? The Muslims or the Europeans? We want an answer. Where was Bush educated – if education is really what makes a person a criminal?...

But Wafa Sultan, unlike so many others, is not about to let him get away with it:

Wafa Sultan: Murder is terrorism regardless of time or place, but when it is committed as a decree from Allah, this is another matter...

The Crusader wars about which the professor is talking – these wars came after the Islamic religious teachings, and as a response to these teachings. This is the law of action and reaction. The Islamic religious teachings have incited to the rejection of the other, to the denial of the other, and to the killing of the other. Have they not incited to the killing of Jews and Christians? If we had heard that a tribe in a distant corner of China has a holy book and religious teachings calling to kill Muslims – would the Muslims stand idly by in the face of such teachings?

The Crusader wars came after these Islamic religious teachings. When these Islamic teachings were delivered, America did not exist on the face of the earth, nor was Israel in Palestine...

Why doesn't he talk about the Muslim conquests that preceded all the wars he is talking about? Why doesn't he mention that when Tariq bin Ziyyad entered Andalusia with his armies, he said to his people: "The sea is behind you, and the enemy is in front"? How can you storm a peaceful country, and consider all its peaceful inhabitants to be your enemies, merely because you have the right to spread your religion? Should the religion be spread by the sword and through fighting?...

Stunned, the good doctor flails about:

Bin Muhammad: Who invented slavery in recent centuries? Who colonized the other – us or them? Did Algeria colonize France, or vice versa? Did Egypt colonize England, or vice versa? We are the victims...

I am not saying that killing innocent people is nice. I say that all innocent people should be protected. But at the same time, we must start with the innocent among the Muslims. There are millions of innocent people among us, while the innocent among you – and innocent they are – number only dozens, hundreds, or thousands, at the most...

Wafa Sultan: Can you explain to me the killing of a hundred thousand children, women and men in Algeria, using the most abominable killing methods? Can you explain to me the killing of 15,000 Syrian civilians? Can you explain to me the abominable crime in the military artillery school in Aleppo? Can you explain the crime in Al-Asbaqiya neighborhood of Damascus, Syria? Can you explain the attack of the terrorists on the peaceful village of Al-Kisheh in Upper Egypt, and the massacre of 21 Coptic peasants? Can you explain to me what is going on in Indonesia, Turkey, and Egypt, even though these are Islamic countries which opposed the American intervention in Iraq, and which don't have armies in Iraq, yet were not spared by the terrorists? Can you explain these phenomena, which took place in Arab countries? Was all this revenge on America or Israel? Or were they merely to satisfy bestial wild instincts aroused in them by religious teachings, which incite to rejection of the other, to the killing of the other, and to the denial of the other. When Saddam Hussein buried 300,000 Shiites and Kurds alive, we did not hear a single Muslim protesting. Your silence served to acknowledge the legitimacy of these killings, didn't it?...

Vatican, Israel in terror spat

This is a disquieting sign of resurgent Vatican dhimmitude. If the Vatican really thinks Israel violated international law, Navarro-Valls should specify when and where. If he cannot do so, he shouldn't make such statements. Otherwise, all a flat, non-specific statement does is lend support to the idea of moral equivalence, and give aid and comfort to the jihad terrorists.

From Al-Jazeera, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The dispute erupted on Monday, when Israel summoned the Vatican envoy to complain that Benedict had "deliberately failed" to include a "suicide bombing" in the Israeli city of Netanya when he listed countries recently hit by terrorist attacks....

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls made an unusually harsh rebuttal on Thursday, issuing a two-page list of the times John Paul condemned attacks against Jews and calling Barkan's accusations "groundless" and invented.

"The attacks against Israel sometimes were followed by immediate Israeli reactions not always compatible with the rules of international law"

Vatican statement

He said the Vatican couldn't condemn every attack against Israel because often Israel would respond in ways that violated international law.

"It would consequently have been impossible to condemn the former and remain silent on the latter," he said in a statement.

"It's not always possible to immediately follow every attack against Israel with a public statement of condemnation, and for various reasons, among them the fact that the attacks against Israel sometimes were followed by immediate Israeli reactions not always compatible with the rules of international law," a statement from the Vatican press office said on Thursday night....

Seymour Reich, who has been involved in Jewish-Vatican negotiations in the past, said both sides had overreacted and urged them to "take a deep breath and look at the bigger picture regarding Israel-Vatican relations and the Vatican's world Jewry relations"....

He said he also didn't think the spat would affect celebrations this fall commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Vatican's "Nostra Aetate" declaration that revolutionised relations with Jews.

In the document, the Vatican rejected anti-Semitism and the notion that Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Christ.

Saudi women are driving all over the place - Princess

They just have to make sure nobody sees them. From Pakistan's Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

WASHINGTON: Princess Loulwa Al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia denied here on Thursday that Saudi women were not allowed to drive, saying they drove all over the place except in the cities.

She told a meeting that in the desert they all drive and it is women who are standing against the right to drive in cities. “It will be good for us if all women were driving,” she added.

The Princess, a daughter of the late King Faisal and sister of Turki Al-Faisal, the Kingdom’s ambassador-designate to Washington, was speaking at the Middle East institute.

Bangladesh Islamic group protests US lawmaker's remark

Maybe I was wrong here: maybe the threat to target Muslim holy sites would be an effective deterrent to terrorist activity. Certainly if it has jihadist thugs like the Hizb-ut-Tahrir gang in a froth, it demonstrably rattles them. In any case, I firmly believe there should be a free and open discussion of this question, not a witch-hunt targeting Congressman Tancredo.

From the IANS, with thanks to Nicolei:

Hundreds of Islamic fundamentalists took to the streets in this Bangladeshi capital Friday denouncing the remarks made by a US congressman against Muslim holy cities of Makkah and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

Led by Islamic outfit Hizbut Tahrir, they took out a procession after the noon prayer and held a rally near the national mosque in downtown Purana Paltan.

They chanted slogans against the US, India and Israel branding them anti-Islamic forces.

Hizbut Tahrir leaders urged the Muslim community to stand up against the US threat of aggression against Islam. They said Muslims of the world would protect their holy places with their blood, if needed.

France ejects 12 Islamic 'preachers of hate'

A welcome bit of French anti-dhimmitude. And there is no legitimate reason why the British can't do this too -- except perhaps suicidal impulses. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Nicolei:

The gulf between British and French treatment of preachers of hatred and violence was thrown sharply into focus yesterday when France announced the summary expulsion of a dozen Islamists between now and the end of August.

A tough new anti-terrorism package was unveiled by Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and a popular centre-Right politician.

His proposals reflect French determination to act swiftly against extremists in defiance of the human rights lobby, which is noticeably less vocal in France than in Britain.

Imams and their followers who fuel anti-western feeling among impressionable young French Muslims will be rounded up and returned to their countries of origin, most commonly in France's case to its former north African colonies.

Mr Sarkozy also revealed that as many as 12 French mosques associated with provocative anti-western preaching were under surveillance. Imams indulging in inflammatory rhetoric will be expelled even if their religious status is recognised by mainstream Muslim bodies.

Those who have assumed French citizenship will not be protected from deportation. Mr Sarkozy said he will reactivate measures, "already available in our penal code but simply not used", to strip undesirables of their adopted nationality. "We have to act against radical preachers capable of influencing the youngest and most weak-minded," Mr Sarkozy told the French daily Le Parisien.

Clueless at the Financial Times

In "Ethnic communities can be devout and good citizens" in the Financial Times (thanks to EPG), Krishna Guha falls into the extremely common error of thinking of the problem of Islamic terror as a racial one, and failing to recognize or understand the significant differences between the suspicions leveled at the Islamic community today and that directed toward other immigrant communities in the past: Muslim immigrants in the West are the first large-scale community of people whose religious tradition mandates warfare against unbelievers that the West has had to deal with.

Full citizenship carries responsibilities as well as rights. The right to freedom of speech and religion confers a duty to accept the free speech and religion of others.

Most liberal values are process values: people of faith can look to change society through politics. Yet some things are sacrosanct, including equal rights for women. Those who cannot accept this should exercise their right to exit western society.

Obviously the identity crisis is most extreme and dangerous among young Muslims – partly because Islam is a resurgent faith, partly because Sunni theological debate has been stifled, partly because of Muslims’ suffering in the Middle East and the Balkans.

And partly because of the imperative to impose Sharia -- but that goes unmentioned.

Yet lest anyone think that the fundamental question – can someone be a devout believer and a good British citizen? – is unique to Islam it is worth remembering that for centuries Protestant England agonised over whether it was possible to be Catholic and a loyal subject. As late as 1960 some Americans questioned whether Catholic John F. Kennedy could be president.

Yes, they did. But the fact that that happened and was groundless in that instance doesn't mean that similar concerns about a very different group are groundless now.

The horror of the London attacks is one of super-empowerment of a tiny handful in whom the identity crisis was twisted into murder. There have been white bombers too – David Copeland, the Soho nailbomber in Britain, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber in the US.

I couldn't care less if they were purple. Their color has absolutely nothing to do with it. John Walker Lindh was a "white" jihadist, and there are others. Also, is this really a question of "identity crisis"? The jihadists seem quite certain and firm about their identity.

There is much work to be done. Yet none of this proves Islam is incompatible with western society.

Sure, Krishna, because you haven't discussed the real issues that raise questions about that compatibility.

Britain has 1.6m Muslims and four bombers.

Don't count your chickens.

There was great anger within this community about the war in Iraq and what did they do? They marched from Speaker’s Corner to Trafalgar Square and elected a firebrand Scottish leftist MP for Bethnal Green in London’s East End. Nothing could be more British.

Well, all the readers of FT feel greatly reassured now, but in reality, Guha has offered them nothing in the way of genuine evidence that they need not be concerned.

WMAL succumbs to dhimmitude, suspends Michael Graham

This is yet another sad story, and it bodes ill for our freedom in America: Graham's words were inflammatory, but he had perfectly cogent and reasonable arguments to back them up. When WMAL brushes that aside and caves in to intimidation by CAIR -- and falls for its false fatwa -- it becomes that much more difficult to speak about the roots of Islamic terror, and how we must meet its threat.

Also, see this Daniel Pipes article, CAIR Founded by “Islamic Terrorists”? (thanks to waterdragon52 and all who sent this in), which expands upon information in this Dhimmi Watch post, for more about where CAIR is really coming from.

"630 WMAL Suspends Michael Graham," from WMAL, with thanks to Tim:

In a statement released last night, 630 WMAL president and general manager Chris Berry announced midday personality Michael Graham would be indefinitely suspended pending an internal investigation into Graham's July 25th remarks that Islam is a terrorist organization.

"Talk radio is an excellent forum to discuss issues important to our society. Nevertheless, the statements that Michael Graham made on July 25 crossed the line," Berry said. "He has been suspended pending an internal investigation. We do not condone his position, and we believe his statements were irresponsible."

Shortly after the second round of bombings in London last week, Graham began telling listeners Muslim leaders were complicit in terrorism, since they had not said or done enough to curb extremism.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a press release late Monday condemning Graham's remarks and urging the station to repremand him. The station has received hundreds of emails and calls since then, both supporting and criticizing Graham.

Yesterday, CAIR and other American Muslim leaders gathered in Washington to announce a fatwah, or religious edict, against terrorism, citing criticisms that Muslim leaders had not said or done enough to curb extremism.

Basayev broadcast enrages Russia

Maybe ABC was playing the dhimmi. On the other hand, I think it's good for Americans to hear Basayev saying what he is saying. It counters a bit of the "Islam is peace" propaganda that continues to inundate us. From the BBC, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Russia says it is outraged by an interview with Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev broadcast on America's ABC television network.

The Russian foreign ministry summoned a senior US diplomat in Moscow to express its "strong indignation" over the show....

The interview with Shamil Basayev - recorded at his hideout in Chechnya - was aired on ABC's Nightline programme on Thursday.
Many children were hurt in a gun battle as the Beslan siege ended....

In the interview, Mr Basayev - speaking through an interpreter - admitted that he was "a bad guy, a bandit".

"Ok, so I'm a terrorist, but what would you call them (the Russians)?

"If they are the keepers of constitutional order, if they are anti-terrorists then I spit on all these agreements and nice words," he said.

The warlord accused Russia of killing thousands of Chechen women, children and old people in what he described as "a colonial war".

When asked if Beslan-style attacks could happen again, he said: "Of course they can. As long as the genocide of the Chechen nation continues... anything can happen."

The warlord also refused to accept responsibility for the deaths of children killed in Beslan, blaming instead Russian authorities.

Hispanic, Muslim Groups Call on Colorado Congressman to Resign

Should he resign? Of course not. Has he done anything wrong? Of course not. All options should be discussed -- and discussed openly. I have been bitterly attacked here and elsewhere today, and even called a dhimmi (which really is just about the worst thing you can call me, as opposed to the terms of honor the jihadists keep bestowing on me) for my article on Tancredo. However, most people are misreading it. I was discussing the value of the threat as a deterrent. I don't think this threat would work to deter terrorism. Someone just wrote me saying we should instead threaten to occupy Mecca. On first thought I suspect that the threat that infidels would tread on the sacred soil might be far more effective than the threat that the sacred site would be annihilated.

But in any case, all this is well worth thinking over carefully and discussing calmly and rationally. These groups that are calling for Tancredo's head are trying to prevent that and make us all play the dhimmi -- for real. Congressman Tancredo is to be commended for having the courage to bring this discussion into the public forum.

From AP, with thanks to The One Who Must Not Be Named:

DENVER (AP) - Hispanic and Muslim groups called on Rep. Tom Tancredo to resign Monday, saying he has embarrassed Colorado by suggesting that Americans bomb Islamic holy sites if terrorists launch a nuclear attack on the United States.

They also criticized the GOP congressman's staunch advocacy of tougher immigration controls.

"Enough is enough. We're here to say 'Stop,'" Hispanic activist Manolo Gonzalez-Estay told a crowd of about 200 people at the state Capitol.

Abdur-Rahim Ali, imam of the Northeast Denver Islamic Center, said Tancredo's statement that "you could take out" Islamic holy sites in a retaliatory attack was unacceptable.

"What would happen if a prominent Muslim made that statement about Catholic holy places like the Vatican?" asked Ali.

They don't have to, Ali. They are sure they will take it peacefully:

Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Arifi, Imam of the mosque of King Fahd Defense Academy, discussed the coming Muslim conquest of the Vatican. Citing a Hadith in an article posted on the Kalemat website in 2002, he stated: "… We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians, who carve crosses on the breasts of the Muslims … will yet pay us the Jiziya [poll tax paid by non-Muslims under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…"

Doublespeak Unveiled: Muslim “moderates” are true to spirit of Islam

Bruce Thorton makes numerous important observations about the dhimmis in the Administration and some revealing behavior on the part of "moderate Muslims" in Private Papers (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

As stalwart as the Bush administration has been in the current conflict with Islamic jihadists, judging from the op-ed in last Saturday's New York Times by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend, it still entertains dangerous illusions about the enemy we are facing.

Hadley and Townsend reprise the narrative the administration has used all along in making sense of our adversary. Those wishing to destroy us are enemies of freedom who espouse a totalitarian ideology akin to fascism and communism. As such, they are driven by a diseased passion for domination that will brook no dissent nor allow for ideals such as tolerance and human rights. And they gain traction from “conditions of despair and feelings of resentment where freedom is denied.” Thus America must promote democratic freedom and prosperity to remove those conditions, for “people everywhere prefer freedom to slavery and will embrace it whenever they can, because freedom is the wish of every human being.” Finally, since these terrorists are enemies of Islam as well, we must support those Muslims who “are speaking the truth about their proud religion and history, and seizing it back from those who would hijack it for evil ends.”

The key to this mistaken interpretation is the short shrift given to the power of spiritual needs — an omission surprising given how religious the media keeps telling us this administration is. That ignoring of spiritual reality is what makes the analogy with fascism and communism false. Both of those ideologies were anti-Christian: fascism was a species of debased Romantic neo-paganism, and communism was blatantly atheist. As such, both ran counter to the powerful Judeo-Christian forces that shaped European and Russian civilization, and so could not satisfy for long the spiritual yearnings of the people, yearnings denied their traditional expressions. Thus these ideologies were doomed because they denied not just political freedom, but the powerful human need for religious expression and spiritual experience.

The jihadist enemy, on the other hand, is operating on principles and values squarely in the tradition of Islam, and thus unlike fascism and communism is expressing a spiritual need and an orthodox religious mandate: to fulfill by force the will of Allah that all the world be subject to Islam and an Islamic state, the caliphate, ruled by sharia, Islamic religious law. Those conquered infidels who refuse to convert are reduced to dhimmi, subordinated and humiliated peoples whose restricted rights, diminished lives, and circumscribed behavior testify to the superiority of their Muslim overlords and their divine right to oppress the infidel and exploit him economically. This dynamic of jihad and dhimmitude has been extensively documented by Bat Ye'or and other scholars, and is apparent on every page of Islamic jurisprudence, theology, and history from the eighth century to today....

In fact, the obsession with the Palestinians is the smoking gun that reveals the jihadist sentiments of double-talking “moderates.” Consider how many British Muslims, supposedly opposed to homicide bombings, praised Hamas founder Sheikh Yassim, who engineered the murder of over 500 Israelis in furtherance of his organization's long-term goal to destroy Israel. After the Israeli Defense Forces killed him, a memorial service was held in London, an event attended by “moderates” like Muslim Council Secretary General Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who called Yassim a “renowned Islamic scholar,” an estimation shared by Inayat Bunglawla. Think about the implications: respected, Westernized “moderate” Muslims praise a terrorist murderer as an “Islamic scholar,” and we are supposed to believe that “fanatics” have “hijacked” and “distorted” Islam?...

Read it all.

Coptic TV Show Causes Controversy in Egypt

Unlike many other Middle Eastern Christians, Fr. Zakaria Boutrus is not afraid to speak the truth. From MEMRI, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The weekly show "Questions About Faith" on the Egyptian based Christian Al-Hayat satellite channel features an Egyptian Coptic priest residing in the United States. Father Zakaria Boutrus, the show, and Al-Hayat TV itself, have come under harsh criticism in the Egyptian press. Boutrus and his show have been accused of attacking Islam; of being supported by the U.S. to sow division and strife; and of "mocking the verses of Allah."

Al-Hayat TV has been accused of being the work of foreign agents collaborating with the U.S., and Pope Shenouda III reportedly announced his opposition to the station's broadcasts, and denied that the station was in any way connected with the Egyptian Church. [1]

One episode which aired on July 4, 2005, discusses anti-Christian verses that, according to Boutrus, should be struck from the Koran. Another episode aired on June 27, 2005, discusses a Hadith, which according to Boutrus, is "reminiscent of Hitler." An episode from June 16, 2005, talks about how Islam is spread by the sword.

Clip 1 - Coptic Priest Zakaria Boutrus: Verses Must be Struck from the Koran; I Demand an Official Apology from Muslim Governments to Christians

TO VIEW THIS CLIP: http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=753

Boutrus: "I live in a country (the U.S.) that respects freedom of speech. I exercise my freedom of speech and talk, and no one can deny my free will. Gone are the days of the sharp sword that cut off the tongues of our people and forefathers to prevent them from speaking in the Coptic language. Gone are the days people's heads would be chopped off if they did not convert to Islam."

Interviewer: "What should the Muslims do to make you stop saying these things?"

Boutrus: "My demands involve ten important issues. Let's call it ten demands. The first demand... They are not for my sake, but for the sake of truth, belief, and Jesus. First, striking out all the Koranic verses that deny the divinity of Jesus and the revelation of God in him. Second, acknowledging that Jesus is the spirit and word of God, as they truly believe, without hiding this fact. Third, striking out the Koranic verses and hadiths that incite to kill Christians, like in the Al-Tawba chapter, v.29: 'Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in Judgment Day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His messenger have prohibited, nor do they follow the religion of truth' – that is, Islam. Among whom? 'Among the People of the Book.'

Interviewer: "Who are..."

Boutrus: "The Christians and Jews. 'Until they pay the Jizya poll tax in submission.' This is murder. Number four, striking out the Koranic verses and Hadiths that incite to terrorism and oppression in all their forms."

Muslim spokesmen in America assure us that Muslims don't believe in these things, so actually they should have no trouble striking them out.

Interviewer: "What do you mean by terrorism and oppression?"

Boutrus: "Terrorism – 'Urge the believers to fight,' and the hadith: 'I was commanded to fight people until they say: There is no God but Allah.' All this is terrorism and murder. Number six:Stopping the attack on Jesus and the Holy Book in mosques and in all the media. Number seven: Giving people and Muslims the freedom of... You may ask what do I care about the Muslims? No! They must have the freedom to choose their religion and the freedom to express their belief. Number eight:To abolish the punishment for apostasy, to stop torturing people who convert to Christianity, and to stop imprisoning or even killing them. Number nine:Formal apologies must be made by leaders throughout the Arab world for the murder of Christians in countries invaded by Islam. Number ten: Leaders throughout the Arab world should make formal apologies for the insults directed against our faith throughout Islamic history. The viewers may say: 'Is this priest crazy, or what? These demands could only be made by an insane man... To strike out Koranic verses... Does this make any sense? What is he going on about?' OK, if you cannot change (the Koran), why are you asking us to change our beliefs? Why do you demand that we say what you say, or else - the sword?

"(Al-Halabi) says: ' If the Prophet wanted an available woman...' – in other words, an unmarried woman, a widow, or a single woman – '...he was allowed to enter her...' I don't like to use the word i-n-t-e-r-c-o-u-r-s-e. '...without her guardian and without witnesses...' Without witnesses. '...and against her will.' Against her will. 'If he desired a married woman, her husband had to divorce her for him. And if he desired a servant-girl, her master had to give her to him. He can even marry off the woman to whoever he wants, against her will.'"

Interviewer: "We know that the Prophet is allowed what others are not."

Boutrus: "Why? Is he made of different stuff than the rest of mankind?"

Clip 2 - Coptic Priest Zakaria Boutrus: The Prophet Muhammad's Hadith Is Reminiscent of Hitler

TO VIEW THIS CLIP: http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=751

Boutrus: "A hadith by the Prophet Muhammad says: 'Two religions will not exist together in the Arabian Peninsula.'"

Host: "Is this not a type of racism?"

Boutrus: "This is Hitler. This is Hitler, whom we despise. Who destroys entire nations? The (Jewish tribes of) Bani Qureiza and Bani Nadhir, and Najran... It is forbidden. Murdering people because they don't have the same beliefs as you..."

Clip 3 - Coptic Priest Zakaria Boutrus on the Spreading of Islam By the Sword

TO VIEW THIS CLIP: http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=718

Boutrus:"Islam, as portrayed in the encyclopedia of Islam, in the Koran and the Hadith, was spread by means of the sword. 'The sword played a major role in spreading Islam in the past, and it is the sword that preserves Islam today. Islam relies upon Jihad in spreading the religion.' This is very clear in the encyclopedia. This appears in section 11, page. 3,245. It says: 'Spreading Islam by means of the sword is a duty incumbent upon all Muslims.' Thus, Islam is spread by means of the sword.

"Another thing is the punishment for apostasy. 'The punishment of killing any Muslim who abandons Islam is one of the most important factors terrifying all Muslim. He does not dare question the truth of Islam, so that his thoughts will not lead him to abandon Islam. In such a case, he would receive the punishment for apostasy: He would lose his life, and his property and wives would permitted for all.'

Read it all.

Moroccans Beat Up van Gogh's Son, 14

You'd think the vast majority of decent, law-abiding Muslims (about whom we hear so much, but whom we never see taking action against the jihadists) would be coming up to Lieuwe van Gogh, son of the murdered Theo van Gogh, expressing their sorrow, and offering their condolences. Instead, this. From Rogier Van Bakel's Nobody's Business blog (thanks to JS):

Since the murder of Theo van Gogh, last November, his now 14-year-old son Lieuwe has twice been physically attacked by young Moroccans, or (more likely) Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent. [Link, in Dutch.] Van Gogh's parents said this in an interview on national television.

They insisted their grandson had done nothing to provoke the assaults. In one incident, recalled Anneke van Gogh, Theo's mother, "[Lieuwe] was walking the dog in the Watergraafsmeer area of Amsterdam, and they came up to him and said, 'Is your name van Gogh?' Lieuwe said no, of course, but they beat him anyway."

She also recounted how, some time after Theo van Gogh's assassination, a group of Moroccans appeared in the street where he had lived, inquiring about Lieuwe's whereabouts. It was the neighbors' impression that the visitors weren't there to offer condolences, and the police were called — but according to the filmmaker's mother, no one bothered to show up. That would have been in keeping with local officers' alleged non-action after the two beatings Lieuwe received. The cops were called then, too, Anneke van Gogh told the TV interviewer, but they declined to make an appearance.

Recently, Lieuwe was transferred to another class, in another building of his school, after he'd been repeatedly bullied by Muslim pupils. His grandmother said that Lieuwe had had to endure taunts like "Good thing they killed your dad."...

The Real Suicide Bomb

From the superb Cox and Forkum (thanks to Solomon).

The D.C. Watson Invitational: A Politically Incorrect Poll on Islam

DC Watson reacts to this poll with his own poll:

The recently published Pew poll has announced that fewer Americans are linking Islam with violence, dropping from 44% in 2003 to 36% presently. No surprise here: the Council on American Islamic Relations has welcomed the results of this survey, which is in sharp contrast to their reaction to the Cornell University Poll, which resulted in 44% of Americans wanting the civil rights of Muslims curtailed.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Dec04/Muslim.Poll.bpf.html

The Pew survey results can be reviewed here: http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=89

Forget the phone surveys. Americans, and our many friends abroad, since these pollsters never seem to call YOUR house, this is a chance to be open and honest, and make your opinions known. Let not the politicians dictate what is good for you and what is not. This is an open survey, not a limited one. All opinions on Islam are welcome, and everyone is welcome to participate.

1. Agree or Disagree

Islam promotes peace and tolerance of all people, Muslim and non-Muslim, and promotes equal rights for both men and women.

2. Agree or Disagree

Muslims do not commit terrorist acts any more frequently than Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists.

3. Agree or Disagree

Many Muslim immigrants living in Western nations have refused to integrate into the societies of their host nations.

4. Agree or Disagree

Many Muslims living in Western nations are disrespectful to the citizens of their host countries.

5. Agree or Disagree

Muslims living in Western nations would benefit, and better assimilate into Western societies if the constant interference of sneaking, lying Islamic civil rights and advocacy organizations, radical Muslim street barkers, and fanatical Imams in the mosques were eliminated.

Post your answers as comments below.

Fallaci: The Enemy We Treat Like A Friend Part II

Here is Part II of Oriana Fallaci's latest (part I is here), again from the Mystery Achievement blog (thanks to JS):

Will the massacre touch us too?--will it really touch us the next time? Oh, yes. I haven’t the slightest doubt. I’ve never had the slightest doubt. I’ve been saying this, too, for the last four years. And I add: They have not yet attacked us [only] because of their need for a landing zone, a bridgehead, a handy outpost named “Italy.“ Geographically handy because it is the closest one to both the Middle East and Africa; that is, to the countries that supply the greatest number of troops. Strategically handy because we offer succor and collaboration to those troops.

But soon, they will go on a rampage. Bin Laden himself has promised it--explicitly, clearly, precisely. More than once. His lieutenants (or rivals) have done likewise. The Corriere itself demonstrates this with its interview with Saak Al-Faqih, the exiled Saudi who became friends with Bin Laden during the conflict with the Russians in Afghanistan and who, according to the American secret services, a financer of Al Qaeda. “It is only a question of time. Al Qaeda will strike you soon,“ said Al Faqih, adding that the attack upon Italy is the most logical thing in the world. Is not Italy the weak link in the chain of allies in Iraq? A link comes soon after Spain and was preceded by London only out of pure convenience. Then [he said]: “Bin Laden well remembers the words of the Prophet: “You will force the Romans to surrender. And he wants to force Italy to abandon its alliance with America.“ In sum, [and] emphasizing that similar operations will not be carried out [by Muslims] who have just arrived at Lampedusa or Malpensa; but instead after having achieved a mature familiarity with the country, after having penetrated its social fabric: “[The only problem with] recruiting the needed manpower will be the embarrassment of riches.“

Many Italians still don’t believe this. Notwithstanding the declarations of the Minister of the Interior, Rome and Milan are at risk; and look out--so are Turin, Naples, Trieste, and Treviso; not to mention the cities of art like Florence and Venice. [But] the Italians carry on like children for whom the word “death” has no meaning. Or like the scatterbrained to whom death seems to be a stroke of bad luck that only happens to other people. In the worst case, a stroke of bad luck that will save them for last. Worse: they believe that to avoid it they only need to be clever; that is, to kiss butt. Vittorio Feltri was right when he wrote at “Libero” that the decadence of Westerners is to be identified with their illusion of being able to deal amiably with the Enemy, and even less with their fear. A fear that induces them to meekly host the enemy, to attempt to conquer him with sympathy, hoping that he will allow himself to be absorbed; while [the enemy] is the one who wants to absorb.

Read it all.

Would-be London bombers were on the dole

"The benefit bombers who repaid help with hatred: They came into this country as child refugees but grew up to plot mass murder," from the Times Online, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

ON THE rundown North London housing estate where they lived, they were known as idlers and petty criminals who passed their time playing football and smoking marijuana.

Residents of Curtis House in New Southgate regarded Muktar Said-Ibrahim and Yasin Hassan Omar as feckless young men living aimlessly on state benefits.

Ibrahim had served time in Huntercombe Young Offenders’ Institution, Oxfordshire, according to Whitehall sources, and Omar, was known as a shoplifter.

As children, both fled civil war and bloody conflict in Eritrea and Somalia for the safe refuge of Britain. Yet they came to hate their adopted homeland so much that they volunteered for suicide bombing missions.

In preparing for “martyrdom” Ibrahim, 27, and Omar, 24, had turned the tower block that they shared with hundreds of people into a terrorist safe house and a bomb factory. Forensic science teams have found traces of explosives in flat No 58 and the rubbish chute as well as a substantial cache of bombmaking chemicals in a lock-up garage.

Read it all.

"Jihad" reference prompts complaint

Oh brother. Why doesn't he complain to Osama bin Laden and Omar Bakri about THEIR use of the word "jihad"? From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

SALEM, Ore. — A Portland Muslim leader is asking a pesticide-industry lobbyist to retract a statement in which she warned that Senate Democrats had declared "jihad" against Republicans over an environmental dispute.

Shahriar Ahmed, president of the Bilal Mosque in Beaverton, said use of the term in an e-mail dealing with a controversy over a pesticide-use reporting program perpetuates negative stereotypes about Muslims.

"The term 'jihad' here was used intentionally to aggravate the situation," Ahmed said during a news conference yesterday.

The word has been used by Muslim extremists to describe holy war, but Ahmed said mainstream Muslims use the Arabic word to describe a person's internal struggle to do good.

Ahmed went to the Capitol to criticize an e-mail sent by lobbyist Paulette Pyle of the pesticide-user group Oregonians for Food and Shelter.

In a July 15 e-mail to about 500 farmers and foresters, Pyle warned that "the Senate Democrats have declared 'JIHAD' against the Republicans because they are opposed to [Pesticide Use Reporting System] funding."

Pyle said she meant nothing derogatory about Muslims and only used the term in an e-mail to members and supporters of the pesticide group as a way to highlight the issue.

"When I wrote that e-mail, it was like, 'I've got to say something to get your attention,' " she said, referring to farmers who she said were busy with harvest.

Courtney Campbell, chair of the philosophy department at Oregon State University, said many Muslims would be offended by how the word is used in Pyle's e-mail because it has a deep meaning in their religion.

"It really is using a pretty central term in the religion in a completely inappropriate context," Campbell said. He compared it to the significance of the word Israel, which he said has a similar meaning to the Jewish faith.

Ahmed was joined at yesterday's news conference by Sen. Frank Shields, D-Portland, who said it appeared that the word was used in the e-mail in a "racist and religionist" way.

"Religionist"? I see the PC drones are catching on to the fact that Islam is not a race, but to get at what they want they have to invent a whole new word.

But Pyle said Shields is blowing the statement out of proportion.

"Good grief. Are you kidding? I never even thought about it in that context," she said.

They should be kidding. Any sane and reasonable person would be kidding. They are not kidding.

Poll: Fewer People Link Islam, Violence

Watch for the sleight of hand. From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

WASHINGTON - The percentage of Americans who believe Islam is more likely than other religions to inspire violence has declined in the past two years, according to a poll taken after the London bombings.

Just over a third, 36 percent, now say the Islamic religion is more likely to inspire violence, while 44 percent said that in July 2003, according to the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

"This may have to do with some backing off of negative opinions the American public had of Muslims in 2002 and 2003," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

The poll found that recent terrorist bombings in London have had no noticeable impact on the public's view of Muslim-Americans or of Islam.

Just over half in the poll, 55 percent, said they have a positive view of Muslim-Americans. That's roughly the same number who felt that way in July 2003 and higher than the number who said they have a positive view of Muslim-Americans in March 2001, before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

About the same number in the poll, 57 percent, said they have a favorable view of evangelical Christians. Three-fourths had favorable views of Jews and Catholics.

"The more people know about Islam, the less critical they are," said Kohut.

People who were more knowledgeable about Islam tended to have a more positive view of Muslim-Americans and their religion. Only a third of Americans said they have some knowledge or a lot of knowledge about Islam.

OK. If a third of Americans say they have some knowledge or a lot of knowledge about Islam, although a large percentage of them may have gotten it from Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, that means that two-thirds own up to being ignorant of Islam. But since only 36% think that Islam is more likely than other religions to inspire violence, we may surmise that almost two-thirds of Americans don't think that Islam is more likely to inspire violence. Then we are asked to believe that this is because those who are more knowledgeable about Islam know that it doesn't inspire violence.

ACLU Sues N.C. To Allow Qur'an For Oaths

Other texts are mentioned here, but the one that caused the controversy in the first place was the Qur'an. Why is this a bad idea? Because, as I discuss in reference to Islam in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), the idea that all these texts teach the same values is a multiculturalist dogma with no basis in fact. "ACLU Sues N.C. To Allow Various Religious Texts For Oaths," from WRAL.com, with thanks to Tim:

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The religious texts of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and faiths other than Christianity should be allowed in North Carolina courts for oaths promising truthful testimony, the ACLU argued in a lawsuit filed against the state Tuesday.

State law allows witnesses preparing to testify in court to take their oath either by laying a hand over a "Holy Scripture," by saying "so help me God" without the use of a religious book or by using no religious symbols.

"We hope that the court will issue a ruling that the phrase "holy scripture" includes the Quran, Old Testament, and Bhagavad-Gita in addition to the Christian Bible," said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina....

The ACLU last month called on the state Administrative Office of the Courts to adopt a policy allowing use of the Quran and other religious texts in North Carolina courtrooms. The request came after the two top judges in Guilford County decided that Muslims could not legally take an oath on the Quran.

Criticism of suicide bombers censored at the UN

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) is the World Union of Humanist, Secular and Rationalist organisations, with 100 member organisations in about 40 countries. Here is a press release from them (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

CRITICISM OF SUICIDE BOMBERS CENSORED AT THE UN

IHEU today attempted to call on the United Nations to condemn
killing in the name of religion, but were prevented from doing so by the heavy-handed intervention of Islamic representatives. The IHEU call, at today's meeting of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, follows moves by Islamic clerics to legitimise the current wave of terror attacks.

At this afternoon's meeting, IHEU representative David Littman attempted to deliver a prepared text in the joint names of three international NGOs: the Association for World Education, the Association of World Citizens, and IHEU, but was prevented from doing so by the intervention of Islamic members of the Sub-Commission. After repeated interruptions he was unable to complete his speech.

The Islamic members of the Sub-Commission objected to the speech as an
attack on Islam. The text however is a report on recent critical comment on Islamist extremism by a number of notable Muslim writers and is a call to the UN Human Rights Commission by the NGOs "to condemn calls to kill, to terrorise or to use violence in the name of God or any religion".

The text referred to recent decisions by high-ranking Muslim clerics
confirming that those who carry out suicide bombings cannot be treated as apostates and remain Muslims(1), a fatwa by a Saudi cleric that innocent Britons were a legitimate target for terrorist action(2), and remarks by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, dean of the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Qatar University who has visited Britain, that terror attacks are permissible.

Commenting on this censorship, Roy Brown, President of IHEU said:

"This is part and parcel of the refusal by the Islamic representatives at the UN to condemn the suicide bombers, or to accept any criticism of those who kill innocent people in the name of God.

These actions follow the refusal of the Islamic states at the meeting of the Commission in April to condemn those who kill in the name of religion, and to categorise their attempts to criticise Islamic terrorists as "defamation of religion".

"It is high time", Mr Brown insisted "that the Islamic States at the UN recognised that the suicide bombers are acting in the name of their
religion, and to unequivocally condemn their actions."

Iran: Public execution for the teenagers convicted of rape

Sharia alert: teenagers hanged. I am not minimizing the heinousness of their crime, if they really committed it. I am questioning the punishment, particularly if Outrage!'s accusations are true. From the TimesOnline, with thanks to all who sent this in:

IRAN has publicly hanged two male teenagers convicted of raping a 13-year-old boy at knifepoint. After the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of child rape, they were executed on Tuesday in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad.

The British gay rights group Outrage! has accused Iran of torturing the two into confessing that they had homosexual sex. It believes that the assault charges were a smokescreen to justify killing homosexuals.

Pictures of the hangings, on the ISNA student news agency website, showed the terrified young men crying as they were interviewed by state media in a lorry on the way to the gallows. Another picture showed hangmen in balaclavas tightening the nooses around their necks.

Iran’s religiously conservative judiciary decided that the pair had raped the 13-year-old at knifepoint while he was out cycling in the northeast province of Khorassan. The young men’s ages were not released but Ruhollah Rezazadeh, the lawyer for one of them, told ISNA that he was under 18, yet the judiciary had refused to spare him for being too young. The other accused was said to be 18 years old.

Iranian newspapers reported that the two were also given more than 200 lashes for theft and drinking alcohol.

Pope won't call Islam religion of peace

Many people have sent me reports on the Pope's words. Some have bewailed his apparent lapse into dhimmitude. I tend to think that his reluctance here to "apply generic labels" is actually a sign of just the opposite: after all, this is a man who chooses his words very carefully. From WND, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Pope Benedict XVI yesterday refused to declare Islam "a religion of peace."

Asked by reporters whether Islam could be considered a religion of peace shortly before entering a meeting with priests and deacons of Valle d'Aosta in northwest Italy where he is spending a brief holiday, the pontiff refused to reply positively.

"I would not like to use big words to apply generic labels," he replied. "It certainly contains elements that can favor peace, it also has other elements: We must always seek the best elements."

Muslims Call Comments by WMAL Host 'Hate-Filled'

CAIR continues its efforts to limit free speech and open discussion about Islam and the elements of Islam that give rise to terrorism. From the Washington Post, with thanks to all who sent this in:

A local radio talk show host touched off complaints from an Islamic civil rights organization yesterday after repeatedly describing Islam on the air as "a terrorist organization" that is "at war with America."

The organization, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), asked the station to take disciplinary action against Michael Graham, who hosts WMAL-AM's late-morning call-in program.

A station executive, Randall Bloomquist, said yesterday that Graham's comments were "amped up" but justified within the context of the program. He said the station, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co., had no plans to reprimand Graham.

The show host touched off the flap during a discussion of the Muslim community's response to recent acts of terrorism. Graham suggested the fault lies with Muslims generally because religious leaders and followers haven't done enough to condemn and root out extreme elements. "The problem is not extremism," Graham said, according to both CAIR and the station. "The problem is Islam." He also said, "We are at war with a terrorist organization named Islam."

CAIR denounced the comments yesterday as "hate-filled" and "Islamophobic" and asked its members to contact the station's advertisers to express their dismay.

"It's amazing," said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's communications director. "I talked with Mr. Bloomquist and asked him if he would reprimand someone who used the n-word on the air. He said yes. I asked him if he would reprimand someone who read [approvingly] from the [anti-Semitic] 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' He said yes. So I asked him if he would do the same if someone had called Islam a terroristic organization. Well, he said, it's all about context, but he never quite explained it to me."

Added Hooper, "The First Amendment allows people to be idiots and bigots. All you can do is embarrass people and have them defend their reputation. If WMAL doesn't feel embarrassed and doesn't want to defend its reputation in the face of anti-Muslim bigotry, then there's not much we can do about it."

The question is: what is Hooper doing, what is CAIR doing, what are Muslims doing to fight terrorism within Islam? Not just words, but deeds. If they are indeed doing little or nothing, on what grounds can they protest rhetoric such as this?

ADDENDUM: Here is Graham's explanation of his words:

If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 Scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language that justified and defended murder -- and the scoutmasters responded by saying "Could be" -- the Boy Scouts would have been driven out of America long ago.

Today, Islam has whole sects and huge mosques that preach terror. Its theology is openly used to give the murderers their motives. Millions of its members give these killers comfort. The question isn't how dare I call Islam a terrorist organization, but rather why more people do not.

Fallaci: The Enemy We Treat As A Friend

Wake up! Wake up! From the Mystery Achievement blog (thanks to Andy) comes this translation of a column by Oriana Fallaci that ran in Corriere della Sera:

Now, I ask myself: “What do you say, what do you have to say, about what happened in London?” They ask me face-to-face, via fax and email; often scolding me because up until now I have remained silent. Almost as if my silence were a betrayal. And each time I shake my head and murmur to myself: what else should I say?!? I’ve been saying it for four years--that I fight against the Monster that has decided to eliminate us physically and, along with our bodies, to destroy our principles and values. Our civilization. For four years I’ve been talking about Islamic Nazism; about the war against the West; about the death cult; about European suicide. About a Europe that is no longer Europe, but Eurabia, and that with its feebleness, its inertia, its blindness, its servitude to the enemy is digging its own grave. For four years, like another Cassandra, I’ve been shouting until I’m hoarse “Troy is burning! Troy is burning!” and I despair of the Danaids for whom, like Virgil in the Aeneid I weep for a city entombed in its torpor. [A city] that, through its wide-open doors receives fresh troops and joins complicit parties [inside]. For four years I’ve been repeating to the wind the truth about the Monster and its accomplices; that is, the accomplices of the Monster who, in good or bad faith, open wide the doors--who, like [those] in the Apocalypse of John the Evangelist, throw themselves at his feet and allow themselves to be stamped with the mark of shame.

I began with “The Rage and the Pride.“ I continued with “The Force of Reason.“ I followed [those] with “Oriana Fallaci Interviews Oriana Fallaci,” and “The Apocalypse.” And in each one I preached, “Wake up, West! Wake up!“ The books, the ideas, for which in France they tried me in 2002, accusing me of religious racism and xenophobia. For which Switzerland asked our Minister of Justice to extradite me in handcuffs. For which in Italy I will be tried for vilifying Islam; that is, for an offense of opinion. (An offense that carries a sentence of three years in prison; none of which will be served by the Islamist caught with explosives in his cantina). Books, ideas, for which the “Caviar” left, the “Fois Gras” right, and even the “Prosciutto” Center have denigrated and vilified me, putting me in the stocks together with all who think as I do. That is, together with the sensible and unprotected people who are defined by the radical-chic in their frivolous talk as “the riff-raff of the Right."

Read it all. Read it all. Read it all.

A word from Matthias Küntzel

Not long ago I commented here on an article by Caroline Glick in which she attributed to scholar Matthias Küntzel the idea that "the notion of a violent holy war or jihad against non-Muslims was not a part of any active Islamic doctrine until the 1930s." I remarked: "If Küntzel means that violent jihad was invented in the 1930s, he betrays his ignorance of Muhammad's own career, and of Islamic history."

Yesterday Matthias Küntzel kindly sent me this clarification, indicating that his views on this matter are in fact entirely correct:

Caroline Glick’s essay “The beginning of the reckoning” deserves indeed much praise. The tiny correction I want to add does not reduce her merit at all. I did not write that “the notion of a violent holy war or jihad against non-Muslims was not a part of any active Islamic doctrine until the 1930s.” My essay states: “The Moslem Brotherhood was the organization which first developed the concept of a belligerent jihad FOR OUR MODERN TIMES and which turned the longing for death into an Islamic ideal. … Whenever their bataillons marched down the boulevards of Cairo in semi-fascist formation, they sang: ‘We are not afraid of death, we desire it. Let us die in redemption for Muslims.’ THIS PARTICULAR INTERPRETATION OF THE MEANING OF JIHAD did not arise until the 1930s.” (See www.matthiaskuentzel.de or Antisemitism International, An Annual Reseach Journal of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2004, pp.44-52)

In my book “Djihad und Judenhass” (Jihad and Jew-hatred) the English
version of which will be published soon, I refer to El-Awaisi’s
important book about “The Muslim Brothers and the Palestine Question
1928-1947” (London-New York: Tauris Academic Studie, 1998):

“Al-Banna called the Muslim Brothers’ concept of Islam ,the Islam of
Muslim Brothers’, as it represented a new understanding of Islam at the time. What concerns us here about this new understanding is the concept of jihad, which has been almost absent from Islamic education before the foundation of the Muslim Brothers. Muslim groups of the time paid no attention to it. Political parties were involved with political struggles and mosque Imams and preachers treated jihad as irrelevant to their religious brief. “ (p.124)

This is accurate, but it describes a quite temporary condition in the history of the Islamic world.

In analyzing the roots of Islamism ­ a modern mass movement which came into being during the same decade as Fascism and National Socialism I am concentrating on the particular. This does not mean to excuse or ignore Mohammed’s wars or the anti-Jewish suras of the Koran which I cite in my writings.

However, anti-Judaism as laid down in the Koran, is not the same as
antisemitism as laid down in the “Protokolls of the Elders of Zion”. My particular topic is not the root cause of dhimmitude but the root cause of modern antisemitism within the Islamic world which has resulted in the desire not to oppress but to annihilate Jews.

My most recent paper on “National Socialism and anti-Semitism in the
Arab World” discusses in detail why and how the decisive transfer of a Nazi-like antisemitism to the Muslim world took place between 1937 and 1945. See “Jewish Political Studies Review” 17:1 (Spring 2005), pp. 99-118 or: http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-kuntzel-s05.htm

Indonesia: Christians face jail for giving treats to children of Muslims

How dare these dhimmis dare to step out of line? From the TimesOnline, with thanks to all who sent this in:

THREE Indonesian housewives face up to five years in prison for allegedly trying to lure Muslim children into Christianity at a Sunday School “Happy Week”.

Senior Christian figures claim that the prosecution is politically motivated and part of a campaign of persecution by Islamic fundamentalists against Indonesia’s Christian minority — about 8 per cent of the Muslim-majority population.

The three women faced threats from a yelling mob of 150 fundamentalists during a court appearance in West Java last week. It is claimed that the women were teaching lessons in reading and writing to mixed classes of Christian and Muslim children, taking them on trips to parks and swimming pools, and rewarding them with treats such as pencils for memorising Christian prayers and Bible verses. Many of the alleged offences took place at a special Happy Week earlier this year, although the lessons began in 2003.

A claim of “Christianisation” was made against the women by a chapter of the Indonesian Council of Muslim Clerics, which alleged that they enticed Muslim children to participate and that they had tried to convert the children to Christianity by giving them gifts.

The three, Rebekka Zakaria, Ratna Mala Bangun and Ety Pangesti, have been held in prison since May, charged under Indonesia’s criminal law with using lies, deception or enticement to change a child’s religion. They are evangelical Christians who belong to the Church of David’s Camp in Haurgelis, a strongly Muslim fundamentalist area in West Java which is about 2 per cent Christian.

They say that the Muslim children were friends of Christian youngsters and were attending with the consent of their parents. No attempts were made to convert them, they say.

Bambang Widjaya, the chairman of the Indonesian Council of Evangelical Churches, said: “The main motive behind this is political. Fundamentalists want to use this case to launch a political campaign and rally support for their goal of implementing Sharia (Islamic law).

“The Government is too scared of Muslim voters to intervene. In many areas Muslims are tolerant, but in other areas where there are fundamentalists there is discrimination. Fundamentalists are growing in influence in our country.

“These women have been terrorised by mobs, who have even tried to hit them. They are not scared, however. They are very tough women.”

Anti-dhimmitude from a letter in The Guardian

"Muslims and violence," a refreshingly honest letter, apparently from two Muslims, in The Guardian, with thanks to John, who notes that "this sort of thing used not to get into the 'Guardian,' but there have been several such recently."

For Muslim religious leaders to condemn the London bombings is commendable. But to support this by saying Islam is unequivocally a religion of peace is disingenuous (Comment, July 22). The prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him) himself, while at times preaching tolerance, also ordered the murder of all the men of a belligerent Jewish tribe and the enslavement of all its women and children, following the seizure of Medina - irrespective of whether they were combatants or not. In similar manner, many Muslim leaders justify the killing of Israeli civilians by Muslim suicide bombers and some also justify the terror on the tube because of the UK's role in the invasion of Iraq.

Over and above this all-pervasive contradictory attitude within Islam are Islamic laws which are even more straightforwardly barbaric on a host of topics, such as holding a women's testimony in a court of law to be worth less than a man's, or the mandatory death penalty for practising homosexuals and Muslims whose conscience tells them to leave Islam (apostates).

Some Muslims choose to turn a blind eye to the uncomfortable words that stare them in the face. But as people who (along with hundreds of others) narrowly escaped death on the underground, we strongly feel that this conspiracy of silence about the very real violence in religious texts needs to be broken.

Raza Griffiths
Shahzad Ahmed
Address supplied

Jihadist Guardian trainee may sue over firing

Dilpazier Aslam update: of course, he knows how to exploit the system. Note also that The Guardian didn't know what Hizb-ut-Tahrir is. "'Guardian' trainee may sue over sacking," from The Independent, with thanks to Filtrat:

A trainee journalist at The Guardian newspaper is considering legal action after being sacked for refusing to give up membership of a radical Muslim organisation, first revealed in The Independent on Sunday.

Dilpazier Aslam, 27, was sacked on Friday after refusing to give up membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The organisation is banned in Germany and elsewhere. Although Hizb ut-Tahrir is non-violent and legal in this country, The Guardian said it considered the organisation to be anti-Semitic....

"There was a failure of understanding about what this organisation was," a Guardian source said. "It just shows the media's lack of understanding of Muslim life. It was much more Guardian cock-up than conspiracy."

UK: Change foreign policy, say top Muslims

British Muslims attempt to dictate the UK's foreign policy. From the Evening Standard, with thanks to Andrew Bostom.

Senior Muslims have warned the Government that it needed to revise British foreign policy if it wants to put an end to the violence.

Dr Azzam Tamimi, from the Muslim Association of Britain, said the country was in real danger and that this would continue so long as British forces remained in Iraq.

He described the July 7 bombings and the attempted attacks in London on Thursday as "horrifying" but said it was not enough to simply unite in condemnation of the bombers.

Dr Tamimi, speaking after a Sky News debate in Birmingham, said: "The latest developments very clearly show this is a very big thing. It's not just a few individuals from Leeds. I think it's time everybody got serious and engaged in an attempt to prevent it. Part of that would be to understand what's going on.

"7/7, 21/7, and God knows what will happen afterwards, our lives are in real danger and it would seem, so long as we are in Iraq and so long as we are contributing to injustices around the world, we will continue to be in real danger.

"Tony Blair has to come out of his state of denial and listen to what the experts have been saying, that our involvement in Iraq is stupid." His comments were echoed by the marketing manager for The Muslim Weekly newspaper.

Shahid Butt said he believed the threat to Britain would reduce if it pulled its troops out of Iraq. He said: "At the end of the day, these things [violent incidents] are going to happen if current British foreign policy continues. There's a lot of rage, there's a lot of anger in the Muslim community.

"We have got to get out of Iraq, it is the crux of the matter. I believe if Tony Blair and George Bush left Iraq and stopped propping up dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world, the threat rate to Britain would come down to nearly zero."

Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, also called on the Government to take responsibility for creating the "political environment" in which these attacks have happened.

Faith leaders in Leeds shocked, shocked by police raids

"We demand you raid our churches as well! Go on, turn the 'ole thing inside out!"

"Faith leaders in Leeds shocked by police raids," from Church Times, with thanks to Mark:

CHRISTIAN LEADERS in Dewsbury and Leeds have pledged to stand together with their Muslim neighbours this week, after police raided homes in both areas and named the London suicide bombers as local residents.

The Revd Nigel Stimpson, Vicar of Ravenhill and Thornhill Lees, where police raided houses on Tuesday, said there was a feeling of unease.

Speaking on Wednesday morning, he said: "I have just returned from taking a school assembly, and one of the children was related to one of the men who has been arrested. At leadership level, we have very good relations with Muslim leaders, and there is a feeling of disbelief that this could happen on our doorstep."

"This" -- the bombings? Or the raids? He seems to be referring to the latter. Was he as indignant at the bombings? That is not recorded.

Serious concern was expressed about the effects of the news among extremist groups, particularly the British National Party, which has already used an image of the bus blast for an election leaflet.

That is unfortunate. But it is a result of mainstream politicians' unwillingness to deal honestly or forthrightly with the issue at hand. When they fail, groups like the BNP can capitalize upon the resentment among the public. If they want to neutralize the BNP, let them deal with the jihad threat.

The Bishop of Pontefract, the Rt Revd Tony Robinson, who co-chairs the North Kirklees Inter-Faith Council, said on Wednesday that since the raids he had been in constant touch with Muslim leaders.

"There is obviously concern among the Muslim communities that the BNP will use this as ammunition. We are standing together with them, and this afternoon the Bishop of Wakefield and I will visit Dewsbury Mosque."

The Bishop of Wakefield, the Rt Revd Stephen Platten, said: "The Muslim community is bound to feel alarmed by what has happened and we will stand with them on this."

The Revd Neil Bishop, secretary of the group Faith Together in Leeds 11, said on Wednesday: "Christian-Muslim relations are almost unique in this part of the world, and we are upset.

"Our Muslim colleagues are very disappointed and sad about what has happened. It seems to negate everything they have been working for: presenting a compassionate face of Islam, active in the local community."

You want to present a compassionate face of Islam? Easy: cooperate with anti-terror efforts. Turn jihadists over to the authorities.

Bolt: Importing hatred

Andrew Bolt writes in Australia's Herald Sun, with thanks to Andrew Bostom.

It's time we accepted the difficult truth: many of the Muslims we invite to live in Australia want to destroy us.

FOR four years, since the September 11 attacks, I've begged our Islamic leaders to drive extremists from their mosques.
For four years I've also reassured you that most Muslims here are moderate.

I've even insisted they have some moderate Muslim leaders, and last week again endorsed Sheik Fehmi Naji El-Imam of Preston mosque as a man of peace.

How eager I was to praise. Heavens, I described as "moderate" the Melbourne-based Islamic Information Services Network of Australia (IISNA), which purged from its website articles I'd noted claiming democracy was a sin, Jews were behind September 11 and Western society was a pollution.

But was I just kidding myself? Isn't it becoming terribly clear that Islam -- at least the Islam of Australia's Arab sheiks and imams -- is hostile to our society?

Isn't it now obvious we should never have let into our country those imams who now preach hate?

Isn't the evidence that some cultures -- Muslim Arab ones -- pose more problems than their importation at this rate is worth? Isn't multiculturalism making these problems worse?

I know these are dangerous, hurtful questions. I also know many Muslims will feel deeply offended, loving this country and obeying its laws, and I wish only I heard from them far more often.

But the London bombings, perpetrated by home-grown Muslims, makes our silence on such issues not a sign of civility, but suicide.

So let me admit that the past few days have been terrible for those of us who thought we could count on Muslim leaders for real help against the Muslim extremists who threaten us...

Read it all.

Why it's time for Dutch justice to get tough

Expatica takes a tough editorial line, with thanks to Dutch Cares.

Mohammed B. is a scary individual and society must take whatever measures necessary to ensure he never gets another opportunity to menace the public.

He has made very clear this is precisely what he intends to do if he is ever gets the chance again. And he has made no secret of wanting to die as a martyr for Islamic extremism - just so long as he can take some of those he has branded as enemies with him.

It is anomalous situation, therefore, that we still have to wait until late July to find out what sentence the Jihadist with a death wish will receive for murdering filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

The prosecution service (OM) has asked the judges to jail B. for life because his dogged adherence to Islamic extremism ensures he will remain a danger for a long time to come.

This appears to be the only logical sentence.

Leaving aside the uncertainty of what the judges will do, another of the scariest aspects is the statement from OM that it is "worried" and "afraid" about how B. will behave in jail after the probable conviction and sentence.

Mohammed B. faces a potential lifetime behind bars and yet the people responsible for protecting society are the ones showing fear?

Who is in the driving seat here?...

Good question. Read it all.

Canada: Imams won’t let woman leader use mosque’s front entrance

Sharia alert from the Daily Times, with thanks to Twostellas:

WASHINGTON: Canadian imams who gathered in a Toronto mosque on Thursday to denounce London bombings and distance themselves from extremism, refused to allow the woman president of a progressive Muslim organisation to enter the mosque through the front door.

They insisted that Niaz Salimi, president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, enter through the side door reserved for women. According to Tarek Fatah, a Muslim writer, broadcaster and activist, the action demonstrated the “misogyny” that has become the “defining trait” of these leaders of the Islamic community.

Salimi said she was not allowed to enter the mosque which was the venue of the press conference held by the imams and had to use an entrance reserved for women. She said, “It may be too little and I hope it is not too late,” pointing out that conservative, even extremist, versions of Islam had been preached in Canadian mosques in recent years and many of the imams who signed the statement released at the press conference had “encouraged segregation, extremism, misogyny and homophobia on an unparalleled scale.” She said that to fight extremism, imams must not stop at the “mere condemnation of terrorism but demonstrate pluralism by turning mosques into community centres that are open to all members of the Muslim community, irrespective of their gender, ethnicity, sect, class, disability, or sexual orientation.” She noted that no women were invited to speak at the news conference.

I would go farther than that, but that would be a start.

Dilpazier Aslam Leaves Guardian

An update on the journalist who authored the "We Rock the Boat" editorial right after 7/7. It seems people are starting to ask questions they may not have asked before the bombings. From the UK Guardian News Blog, with thanks to D.M.

Trainee journalist Dilpazier Aslam had his contract with the Guardian terminated today.

The move followed an internal inquiry into Aslam’s membership of the political organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir.

A statement said: “The Guardian now believes continuing membership of the organisation to be incompatible with his continued employment by the company.”

“Mr Aslam was asked to resign his membership but has chosen not to. The Guardian respects his right to make that decision but has regretfully concluded that it had no option but to terminate Mr Aslam’s contract with the company.”

The inquiry followed a piece written by Aslam for the Guardian’s comment pages entitled “We rock the boat”.

The statement added: “The Guardian accepts that it should have explicitly mentioned Mr Aslam’s membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir at the end of his comment piece.”

U.S. Guards Not Allowed To Touch Koran

"U.S. Guards Said to Stop Abusing Quran" From AP, with thanks to Scaramouche.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan man released from Guantanamo Bay said he saw guards throwing the Quran, but all such abuse stopped late last year after a loudspeaker announcement that U.S. soldiers have no right to touch Islam's holy book.

Moheb Ullah Borekzai made the comments Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press, three days after he was freed from the prison camp in Cuba and flown home to Afghanistan.

There have been repeated accusations of Quran abuse at Guantanamo, including an allegation last month by a Russian Muslim cleric formerly held at the prison that guards regularly put the holy book in a toilet, although he said he never witnessed that himself.

Borekzai said that during his three years at Guantanamo he never saw or heard claims from other prisoners of guards abusing the Quran by placing it in toilets. But he said he had seen guards throw the Quran two or three times.

"We would always put the holy Quran in a high place, for example, in a drawer or on a shelf," he said, speaking in a guesthouse in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "They (the guards) would just throw it on the ground or on the bed. ... I, myself, have seen them throwing the Quran."

Such mistreatment of the Quran made the prisoners "very angry," he said, adding that late last year guards "changed their procedures."

"The Americans made a promise that U.S. soldiers have no right to touch the Quran ... They announced (it) on loudspeakers," Borekzai said. "There has been no abuse of the Quran since last year."

During Muslim prayer times, guards now are silent and are "not even talking to each other," Borekzai said...

Get Rummy on the phone. We need to have a little talk.

Kramer: Inspector Cole on London assignment

Martin Kramer writes in the Sandbox:

One of my missions is to save readers of Juan Cole's weblog from his errors. (This has the potential of becoming a full-time job.) The latest one comes in today's posting about Shehzad Tanweer, 22, one of the British-born suicide bombers from Leeds. Cole first announces that his investigation is in full swing: "I have been trying to trace the influences on and organizational contacts of the July 7 bombers in London." This intensive Ann Arbor-based Google sleuthing produces the following:

His family is originally from a Punjabi village near Faisalabad, Kottan (Chak number 477). When he first visited his ancestral village with his father in 2002, aged 18 or 19, Tanweer was working with Tablighi Jamaat. This organization is peaceful and devotes itself to recovering lapsed Muslims for a fundamentalist version of Islam. [Cole's links--MK]

Cole then goes on to speculate that Tanweer probably was recruited by a leading member of Jaish-e Muhammad, which is connected with Al-Qaeda. Cole: "The evidence [!] I can find is that Tanweer's passage into terrorism began with Jaish-e Muhammad and its allies, one of which is al-Qaeda."

But what if Tanweer's "passage" began even earlier, with the "peaceful" Tablighi Jamaat in London? In fact, no serious terror analyst today accepts Cole's simple characterization of the Tablighi Jamaat, which is spread through Europe and America. Two full years ago, the New York Times ran a front-page story on the Tablighis: "A Muslim Missionary Group Draws New Scrutiny in U.S." It offered this quote from the deputy chief of the FBI's international terrorism section: "We have a significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States, and we have found that Al Qaeda used them for recruiting, now and in the past." Six months back, the Middle East Quarterly ran an article assembling a mass of evidence on the involvement of Tablighi Jamaat activists and alumni in a stunning range of terrorist groups and operations. (Most famously, the Tablighi Jamaat looms large in the saga of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban.") According to the MEQ piece, "Tablighis preach a creed that is hardly distinguishable from the radical Wahhabi-Salafi jihadist ideology."...

So error compounds error in the Cole-mine. Two weeks ago, while Britain's top forensics experts were just setting to work, Cole offered this: "Britain's South Asian Muslim community is almost certainly not the origin of this attack." In this latest posting, the professor again sends us to the wrong starting gate. The clueless Cole is the Inspector Clouseau of Middle Eastern studies...

Read it all.

West: Reality and Islam

Diana West writes in the Washington Times, with thanks to Andrew Bostom.

Last week, I outlined the problem of the age: the incompatibility of Islam with a multicultural West that hides away inconvenient history and disturbing doctrine under layers of political correctness. Without stripping them off to examine the problem, all we get is a lot of wishful thinking.

Historian Niall Ferguson, writing in the Telegraph on the intensifying "Muslim colonization" of Europe, has decided that such "demographic shifts" are not "invariably a bad thing." After all, seven centuries of jihad-imposed dhimmitude for infidels in Muslim Spain gave us the Alhambra, or something. It's that pesky "ideology" of conquest that follows all the shifting that's the problem — something he thinks European Muslims ought to take "a much closer look at." Really stern stuff.

Over at the Boston Globe, a lefty editorial mantra turns culture clash into harmonic convergence: "European Muslims and non-Muslims must learn to live together. Each will have to practice the tolerance that [Theo van Gogh] assassin Bouyeri proudly scorned." They must, must they? As sharia law becomes a democratic option, who will enforce such tolerance?

As conservatives, columnist Charles Krauthammer and blogger-cum-radio host Hugh Hewitt still fight the good fight, but, in these multicultural days, that means sorting through "extremism" and finding nothing too terribly Islamic about it. Mr. Hewitt writes that my arguments of last week were wrong, citing "functioning democracies in Turkey and other predominantly Islamic countries" as evidence of Islamo-Western compatibility. He throws in the loyal host ("millions of loyal British and American citizens") for good measure. Problem is, the extent to which Turkey — where, just incidentally, "Mein Kampf" was a top 10 bestseller this spring — has ever functioned as a democracy is directly related to the efforts of a strong man, Ataturk, to constrain Islam's grip on the country's institutions, replacing religion with a doctrine of Turkish racial and civilizational supremacy. And while it tugs on the heartstrings, the loyalty of individual Muslims fails to neutralize or reform the institutions of jihad and dhimmitude that rise from Islamic teachings. That I even raised the issue, Mr. Hewitt writes, "underscores the almost desperate need for Muslim leaders in the West again and again, to denounce, without argument or sidebar mentions of Israel, etc., the use of terrorism as a weapon." Almost desperate is right...

Read it all.

Rajaram: A Quranic concept of terrorism

N.S. Rajaram writes in The American Thinker, with thanks to Andrew Bostom.

Jihad is the ‘evil ideology’ that is driving terrorism. Muslims should take the lead in rooting out this barbarism.

Early reports indicate that there were no fatalities from four coordinated explosions that again targeted Londons’ transit system yesterday, July 21, 2005, exactly two weeks after the Islamikaze carnage of July 7, 2005 that killed over 50 persons. Perhaps we will also be spared the surreal drama that is enacted each time there is a major Islamikaze terrorist attack: politicians and various other “experts”—non-Muslim and Muslim alike—start praising Islam. They tell us that Islam is a noble religion that stands for peace and compassion and abhors violence. This is what Mr. Tony Blair did immediately following the London bombings of 7/7/05. It is now all but an obligatory ritual.

The major players in this post-attack drama are Muslim leaders and academics. They voice apprehensions about the possible ‘backlash’ against innocent Muslims, resulting from the terrorist acts of a minority. They assure us that the terrorists are acting against the teachings of Islam. This is soon followed by a third act, an airing of Muslim grievances— the war in Iraq, the Palestinian problem, and of course the oppression of Muslims in non-Muslim countries like Britain. The talk is always about backlash and grievances, rarely about their own responsibility in allowing fanaticism to flourish in their midst.

In all this there is an unstated assumption that the root causes of terrorism lie outside the teachings of Islam. If that is the case, how are we to explain the fact all the terrorist attacks—from New York to London to Bali—have one thing in common: that they were perpetrated by groups acting in the name of Islam? It is hard to believe that the Bali bombings had anything to do with Iraq or Palestine.

In this drama of denial and diversion, there is always a reluctance to mention the one word that goes a long way towards explaining terrorism: Jihad. While Mr. Blair talked about an evil ideology of hate, he did not mention Jihad. Neither did the British Muslim leaders who promised full cooperation. All spoke in vague terms— about fighting ‘extremism and fundamentalism’ without telling us how.

At this moment of crisis, what the world needs is clarity, not obfuscation. Fortunately, we have a lucid explanation of Jihad and terrorism by one of the founding fathers of modern terrorism, the late General Zia-ul-Haq, former president of Pakistan. He sponsored one Brigadier Malik to produce an authoritative military manual on Jihad called The Quranic Concept of War...

Read it all. Robert Spencer discusses Malik's book in Onward Muslim Soldiers as well. Mr. Spencer's book is recommended reading for those who want a thorough understanding of jihadist doctrine.

London: "This has nothing to do with Islam"

How long will Muslims and multiculturalists keep saying this? How long will a gullible public keep buying it? When will the denial end about exactly why these bombers are killing themselves and others, and how such bombers are recruited? Is Britain and the West going to play the dhimmi intellectually and morally all the way up to the time that it becomes necessary to assume the dhimmi role not just in metaphor but in reality?

"Concern at rise in racial attacks," from the BBC, with thanks to Skeetstreet, yet another backlash and nothing-to-do-with-Islam story:

Muslims in the South West are calling for calm following the bomb explosions on 7 July in London.

Police said the number of racist attacks was up since the attack on the capital which left more than 50 dead.

In one incident a 20-year-old Muslim youth received serious head injuries after he was attacked by a group of white youths in Central Park, Plymouth.

Some Senior figures in the Islamic community are warning Muslims to keep a low profile while tensions are so high.

Eleven cases of suspected racist attacks have been reported to Devon and Cornwall's Police Diversity Unit since 15 July....

Deplorable indeed -- although other parts of the story suggest that some of these "racist attacks" (what race are Muslims again?) consist of rude remarks. Read on.

The type of person who is being attacked has also raised concerns in the unit.

PC Simon Hardwick said: "All the victims are of Asian or Muslim description which is unusual. That raises concerns about a backlash."

The young Muslim attacked in Central Park had his head stamped on by a group of thugs who attacked him near basketball courts.

He is too scared to be identified, but he said he now planned to leave and he would not go out alone anymore....

Sayed Wahid, who owns the Jaipur Palace restaurant in Bretonside, Plymouth, said the atmosphere had changed dramatically since the bombing.

He said: "We have a person stand outside our restaurant with traditional Indian costume and he had never been abused before.

"They stopped the car and said 'Paki go home' and other abuse. It is since the bombing in London."

Golly, that's terrible. People from among your group blow a few people up, you do little or nothing to head off future attacks, and people start yelling at you. Those British -- they're such racists.

Mr Wahid, former chairman of the Islamic Centre and instrumental in creating the city's new Mosque in North Road East, said: "I think people should calm down. What happened in London we utterly condemn. This is nothing to do with Islam."

Sure, Wahid. Sure. But one of the bombers' family and friends say he was "a good Muslim" who wanted to wage jihad. What about that? Wht would you say to them to convince them of the error of their ways? How come no moderate Muslim has ever come forth with a convincing plan for fighting against the jihad ideology?

One of his daughters said since the bombings there had been an undercurrent of fear and suspicion in Plymouth where there are thought to be about 450 Muslims, including university students.

Wasia Wahid said: "It's not pleasant at all, especially because I was born in Plymouth and have grown up in Plymouth. My childhood, everything was here.

The bombers grew up in Britain, too. So what?

"But since this has all happened, it doesn't make you feel comfortable. It makes you feel like you're a stranger in your own home town. It makes you feel a little bit isolated."

Her undergraduate sister Shahnaz, who wears a Muslim headscarf, has suffered verbal abuse.

She said: "One young chap who was walking by he actually said, 'Are you sure you don't have a bomb on you? No?'. I was actually really stunned."

Why? How exactly are non-Muslims in Britain or anywhere else supposed to determine whether or not any given Muslim is carrying a bomb? What criteria can they use? What are Muslims in Britain doing to drive those who would carry bombs out of their community?

Australian politician: multiculturalism is to blame for London bombings

John Stone is a former treasury secretary and National Party senator in Australia. And he seems to be a clear-eyed and courageous thinker. "John Stone: One nation, one culture," from The Australian, with thanks to Buck:

SINCE the London bombings several columnists - from Tariq Ali in The Guardian to Phillip Adams in The Australian - have argued that the British brought them on themselves because of Britain's intervention in Iraq. Well, they're half right. The British (more precisely, their ineffectual governments) did bring those bombings on themselves.

The Blair Government's intervention in Iraq is not to blame. Rather, successive British governments have persisted in the multiculturalist folly that a nation can be built on separate but equal cultures. Moreover, under Tony Blair in particular, Britain's immigration policies and border controls against illegal immigrants have become international jokes, and now a national tragedy.

And the lessons?

Debate has begun over a possible Australian identity card. While necessary, that misses the larger issue: can we any longer pretend that our official multiculturalism policies, introduced by Gough Whitlam and assiduously pursued by all his successors, are in our national interest? More pointedly, how are we to handle our growing, self-created Muslim problem?...

First, official multiculturalism policies must be abandoned outright. That does not mean we should cease receiving immigrants (albeit more selectively). It does mean all official multiculturalism's appurtenances (for example: SBS, government grants to ethnically based councils) must be abolished.

Second, we must sharply reduce, indeed virtually halt, Muslim immigrant inflow.

Third, the precious gift of Australian citizenship must be harder to obtain. The permanent residence requirement for citizenship is a derisory two years. If we value citizenship so lightly, how can we expect newcomers to do otherwise?

Fourth, citizenship should be conditional on reasonable fluency, appropriately tested, in English. If ethnic ghettos are to be avoided, newcomers must learn our language.

Fifth, citizenship applicants should also have to pass a reasonable written test of citizenship's meaning: parliamentary democracy, respect for others' rights, the rule of law and a general understanding of the Australian values to which they swear commitment.

Sixth, emphasis on English in our immigration policy should be enhanced. Today, English-language proficiency earns points towards an applicant's overall score. It should be made an absolute requirement (including, in other than exceptional cases, for our humanitarian intake).

All this has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with culture, and particularly with people whose culture is such that they are unlikely readily to integrate into society. For the world's problem today, whence the London bombings derive, is that Islam has become a failed culture....

Only one misstep in this otherwise fine piece: Stone suggests that it is the decline of the Islamic world that has given rise to the jihad ideology, when actually it is the resurgence of Islam that is responsible. If Stone's assessment below is true, the massive jihad conquests of the great Islamic empires cannot be explained.

That was not always so. But for 500 years now Islam has turned in on itself and lost its way, while the post-Reformation West has forged ahead. It is that sense of greatness lost, of declining significance more generally, that loss of pride, that has evoked the bloody frustrations we now confront.

The roughly 330,000 Muslims in Australia today include, of course, many or even most who are thoroughly law-abiding. The problem -- which those also seemingly law-abiding young men in London have revealed to the world in all its stark reality -- is not only that we don't any longer know that they are, but also that we can't any longer be sure they're going to stay that way....

Ultimately, only Islam can reform itself. But in the present struggle within Islam, moderates have been steadily losing to (largely Saudi Arabian financed) fundamentalists. We would be insanely complacent to assume that even those moderate Muslims now among us (and already there are those who are not) will not, over time, produce from their ranks the equivalents of the London bombers (previously, apparently, moderates to a man). Meanwhile, we must accept that we are at war and start behaving accordingly before, as in London, it's too late.

Bravo.

Flying pigs alert: anti-dhimmitude from...Jacques Chirac?

I dunno. It's early in the morning and all, but I keep reading over this story and it keeps saying the same thing. Could the London bombings have awakened Jacques Chirac? Or does he find it expedient to appear as if that were so? Or is it something he ate?

"Chirac: Iran's nuclear plan may lead to sanctions," from Haaretz, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

French President Jacques Chirac has told Haaretz that if European negotiations with Iran fail to eliminate the threat of nuclear proliferation, then the issue will have to be moved to the UN Security Council.

Chirac's statements regarding the possibility of imposing sanctions on Iran, which, according to observers, is the first time he has taken such a firm position in the matter, came in an interview with Haaretz on the eve of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's state visit to France Wednesday....

And that's not all:

The French president, meanwhile, spoke highly of Sharon and Israel, in preparation of the premier's upcoming visit to Paris.

"I wish to convey my profound admiration and friendship I feel toward the State of Israel and the Israeli people - a great people of tradition and culture, which is looking to the future," Chirac said.

"In welcoming Prime Minister Sharon to Paris, France is sending its friend, Israel, a message of trust: A profound belief that peace is possible, a desire to contribute to the peace, an aspiration to be Israel's top-ranked partner politically, economically, and culturally, in keeping with the depth of the ties uniting our peoples and in accordance with the lofty mission assigned to both peoples because of their common heritage."

Officials in Jerusalem were highly gratified by Chirac's warm and unusual statements. A Prime Minister's Bureau source said that "Sharon intends to respond to Chirac in kind," and that the visit - Sharon's first state visit to Paris since 2001 - is expected to be "a visit of agreement" that will reflect the substantial warming of bilateral relations over the past two years.

And even that is not all:

In the same vein, Chirac said that "mothing can justify terror... We understand well [Israel's contention with Palestinian terrorism], and we have always condemned the acts of terror of which Israelis are the victims." Asked specifically about Israel's "targeted assassinations" in the territories, Chirac opted to avoid addressing the question and not to repeat previous condemnations.

Chirac also took a categorical and surprising stance against Hamas in the interview. "Hamas is a terrorist organization that cannot be an interlocutor of the international community, as long as it does not renounce violence and does not recognize Israel's right to exist. This is the unambiguous position of the EU and it will not change."

But alas, poised on the brink of the abyss, Jacques drew back:

However, like British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chirac believes that when it comes to terrorism, "We must deal with all the factors that nourish the hatred and the frustrations: the unresolved conflicts, the religious intolerance, the rejection of the other, and the economic instability."

The jihad ideology? Mais non!

British intelligence units to track Muslims across Britain: report

From AFP, with thanks to J.K.

LONDON - The British government is planning to set up special intelligence units to monitor Muslims nationwide to better detect extremists and thwart eventual attacks, a newspaper reported.

The Muslim Contact Units, staffed by London's Metropolitan Police Special Branch officers, will be established in areas including Yorkshire, northwest England and parts of the Midlands, the Guardian reported.

"Deep knowledge of Muslim communities is rare in the service," a senior police officer with knowledge of the scheme told the Guardian.

"If you are going to understand who is extreme and who is dangerous, which are different (ideas), you have to understand the community," the officer was quoted as saying

"Unless you know the subject well and what they are saying, often in Arabic or Urdu, and what the context is, you are not going to get a feel for it," the source said.

He stressed that the squads would be open about their work. "It is not about spying."

The police and Home Office said a Muslim Contact Unit operating in London has already helped thwart extremist attempts to recruit young British Muslims to violent jihad, by working with Islamic communities, the Guardian said...

FBI Agent Speaks at Press Conference of CAIR

Press Release from Americans Against Hate:

Coral Springs, FL - Following the London suicide bombings that claimed the lives of 50-plus people, on Friday, July 8th, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) held a press conference at the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida to "condemn" the attacks. Speaking at the press conference was the Special Agent in charge of the FBI's Jacksonville, Florida office, Robert Cromwell.

Since CAIR was created in 1994, the organization has had numerous officials associated with terrorist activity convicted by and/or deported from the United States. Prior to their [the charities'] closure by the United States government, CAIR was soliciting funds for terrorist charities intimately linked to HAMAS and Al-Qaeda. CAIR's parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine - known to be a HAMAS front - recently lost a $156 million lawsuit for the murder of a young boy, David Boim, during a HAMAS terrorist operation that took place in Israel. CAIR's Executive Director, himself, has publicly stated his support for HAMAS.

This was not the first time that Special Agent Cromwell had participated in a CAIR sponsored event. In December of 2004, CAIR held a diversity training workshop on Islam and the American Muslim community at the FBI's Jacksonville Division All Employee Conference. According to CAIR's website, CAIR's Florida Communications Director (and the unofficial spokesman for Sami Al-Arian) Ahmed Bedier and CAIR's National Chairman Parvez Ahmed were "recognized by FBI Jacksonville Special Agent in Charge Robert Cromwell for the diversity workshop."

Joe Kaufman, Chairman of Americans Against Hate (AAH), stated, "We still don't get it! How is it possible for our government to fight terrorism, when we have government officials partaking in events sponsored by groups that are connected to terrorism themselves? Diversity training and condemnations of terrorist attacks are exemplary initiatives. However, groups such as CAIR use these initiatives to take heat off their own troubled pasts. When government officials show up to these events, even if it's done unintentionally, their presence acts to legitimize the organizations. We call on Special Agent Cromwell to never partake in a CAIR sponsored event again, no matter what the cause. CAIR is part of the terror support network, and it should be treated as such."

Attending the July 8th event, as well, was Jacksonville Sheriff John
Rutherford...

Blair more willing than Bush to discuss Islam

But how will he keep from being deceived at his international conference on Islamic extremism? Will he settle there simply for more high-sounding words condemning terrorism, or will he insist there that Muslims acknowledge that jihad terrorists are using the Qur'an and Sunnah to recruit terrorists, and that they develop an effective plan to convince their fellow Muslims that the jihadist understanding of Islam is false and even heretical? Will he insist that this plan, if it is developed at all, be implemented in mosques worldwide?

I like the idea of addressing this problem, and agree that it is preferable to Bush's squawking parrot Islam-is-peace act, but I fear that this conference will give us on a large scale what we have been getting all along from the likes of Ibrahim Hooper: bland assurances that Islam actually teaches peace, tolerance, mutual respect, harmony, love for the People of the Book, etc. etc. All of this pabulum served up, of course, with no recognition whatsoever of how these worldwide terrorists actually developed their allegedly twisted version of Islam, or how it can be untwisted today.

But that is the only possible good that could come of a conference like this: active efforts by Muslims to eradicate "extremism" within their own communities. Anything short of this will show once again that the non-Muslim world simply cannot afford to depend on these empty condemnations, and must maintain a strong defensive posture, restore sanity to immigration policies, monitor mosques, and more.

"Blair takes on Islamic extremism," from the Washington Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who yesterday called for an international conference on Islamic extremism, is proving far more willing than President Bush to demand that Muslim leaders confront their own failings in the global war on terror.

In the two weeks since coordinated suicide bombings killed at least 56 persons on London's subways and a bus, Mr. Blair has repeatedly said the Islamic community and scholars face a special responsibility to curb the "evil ideology" behind the attacks.

Britain's Muslims must "confront this evil ideology, take it on and defeat it by the force of reason and argument," Mr. Blair told reporters in London on Monday.

Mr. Blair should also remember, as he attempts to emulate Mr. Churchill, that while reason and argument have a crucial place, Mr. Hitler was not defeated by them alone.

British officials said details of the proposed conference remain sketchy, but Mr. Blair told the House of Commons yesterday that it would address head-on the sources of Islamist violence, such as Muslim religious schools in Pakistan and other countries that have a violently anti-Western bias.

The British prime minister noted that more than two dozen countries have been attacked by al Qaeda and its affiliates, and Britain cannot defeat the threat alone.

"Though the terrorists will use all sorts of issues to justify what they do, the roots of it do go deep, they are often not found in this country alone, [and] therefore international action is also necessary," he said.

Mr. Blair's response contrasts with the language used by Mr. Bush after the September 11 attacks, also engineered by al Qaeda and its sympathizers.

Despite leading military coalitions to oust regimes in overwhelmingly Muslim Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Bush repeatedly insists that his global war on terror is not a war on Islam.

"The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace," he said in a visit to Washington's Islamic Center just five days after the 2001 attacks.

Fitzgerald on Ken Livingstone

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald profiles one of the contemporary scene's leading dhimmis, London mayor Ken Livingstone, and his friend Shiekh Qaradawi:

Ken Livingstone, who presumes, has always despised America (although that does not keep him from hiring an American expert to make those underground trains run on time). And of course he is also a great beater-upper -- ca va sans dire -- of Israel. Like "Gorgeous George" Galloway, the Glaswegian hireling of Saddam Hussein (whose money many believe helped Galloway buy his modest vacation retreat in Spain), Ken Livingstone has earned his own moniker: Red Ken.

Red Ken, or Redken as some prefer to call him, when not being mayor of London, is also a well-known shampoo. One can only wish that London voters will wash that particular shampoo right out of their hair. And then vigorously apply some anti-Jihad conditioner.

I just bought shampoo (the brand is “Marc Anthony” -— it was not so much the reduced price as the hint of Shakespeare’s paraleptic Roman that clinched the sale), and the bottle promises that its contents will, like a passing beauty who leaves one hot and bothered, “soulève, gonfle, et épaissit” (lift, volumize, thicken). And this brings relevantly to mind, in regard to that not-so-odd couple, the Mayor and the Muslim, those unforgettable lingerie ads that line the walls circumjacent to the escalators – those that go up, and those that come down -- of the London Underground.

Now as Ken Livingstone proudly showed his honored guest round and about old Londinium, did he by any chance show off that Underground, and therefore those lingerie ads, or was it limousines all the way for the Salon Bolshevik and the Quran-quoting Qaradawi? If Red Ken, in the same spirit as the Commissars who in the 1930s liked to bring Western tourists to view the gleaming Moscow Metro (“But where are the trains!” those tourists would ungratefully point out), did offer Q. such a tour, one would like to know how Monsieur Q. reacted to those advertisements, which can leave even an unaccustomed American blushing and flustered. Perhaps if his furious reaction were to have been translated, Red Ken might have looked a bit more closely into the previous protests of women’s groups, might have found out more about Qaradawi’s strictures on women’s dress, and women’s behavior, and the need for women to submit to their Qur’an-designated superiors, that is to say -- men.

And even if R. K. and Q.-q. Q. did not visit the Underground together, possibly they had a chance to take in the National Gallery. It would have been fascinating to hear Q. explain to K. through a seamlessly-bowdlerizing translator why all the statues needed to be broken or defaced if they were even to be permitted to continue to exist at all, and why, under Islam, all the paintings other than landscapes, all the depictions of famous personages, and of course anything that had a Madonna, with or without a bambino in her lap, would have to go, along with all paintings showing a saint, or a Biblical figure, or a king, or a general, or a nobleman, or any historical personage, or any non-historical figure not being held up to ridicule, because such depictions are haram, haram, haram, and don't you forget it. Perhaps Q. could then have given K. a copy of his own guide to righteous Quran’ic living, What is Halal and What Haram, even pointing out the passages that explain this unassuagable hostility toward sculpture and portrait paintings in great detail. Of course, Ken, you dimly recall what happened to the Bamiyan Buddhas, and to the frescoes formerly on the walls of the Byzantine churches of Constantinople, and to those tens of thousands of Hindu temples, and to churches all over North Africa, and Mesopotamia, and Syria -- or do you? Perhaps Ken Livingstone, a compleat homo politicus (which makes any Jack a dull boy) is not fond of art himself; he may see it as a luxury item, after all. And much of Western art, as the Kens of this world see things, corresponds to the taste of rich patrons only trying to immortalize or flatter themselves, in their commissioning of paintings and sculpture and furniture and garden follies, all paid for with the loot, as seen through the narrow lens of a narrow Ken Livingstone, accumulated through the exploitation of the working class, or the exploited colonials beyond the seas. Just look at that arch-connoisseur Kenneth Clark’s family fortune, no doubt the result of Lancashire girls spinning thread from dawn to dusk, or the liquor-store fortune of Bernard Berenson, or of course those impossible and intolerable Medicis, all those sinister Lorenzos and Cosimos. What decent human being (I quite agree, Ken) -- what decent human being can even stand to look at the paintings and sculptures that were produced for those Medici, those rich Florentine swine?

Yes, Ken, on second thought, probably you and Q. would have had much to nod in agreement about, as you walked through the National Gallery, or the Tate, or any of those other decadent centers of intolerable Western art. And Ken, wasn't it your favorite Russian writer who said that a good shoemaker was worth more than Pushkin, than everything that Pushkin had ever produced? Isn't that a world-view, isn't that an aesthetic creed, Ken, expressed so memorably and succinctly, that makes you a brother under the skin of Q-q. Q.?

And since Islam is now the vehicle of choice for those wishing to express their fury at their own perceived marginalization (psychic or economic), their own often self-induced alienation and hatred of Capitalism, of The System, of The West, of Amerika with a “K”(shudders of dismay may be inserted here), Mr. Q. came to the right place, and was made much of by the right host. Indeed, we are told that you liked Mr. Q. so much that you have invited him to return, any time he feels like it.

Ken, Redken, Mr. Livingstone, Lord Mayor of London, turn again, like Dick Whittington, if you possibly can. There may still be time. Think of those sculptures and those paintings. Do you really want Qaradawi and his ilk to have their way? Think of the freedoms built upon, and enjoyed, by those who now live in Old Londinium. Think of Bracton. Think of Coke. Think of Locke. Think of of John Stuart Mill. Think of Harry Lauder, and Al Bowlly and Jack Buchanan and Elsie Randolph. Think of Vera Lynn. Think of Sigmund Freud, and Lucien Freud, and Emma Freud, and any damn Freud who comes to mind. Think of Peter Sellers. Think of Frank Muir. Think of the Goon Show. Think of My Word, and all the gentle people who listen to My Word. Think of Alastair Sim and Alec Guinness. Think of The Bells of St. Trinian’s. Think of Wee Geordie. Think of 23 Laburnum Grove. Think of Dennis Potter -- think of Pennies From Heaven, and The Singing Detective, and Lipstick on Your Collar. Think of Keats on Hampstead Heath. Think, Ken, even of those buying bespoke at a tailor's on Jermyn Street, or the Burlington Arcade. Think about what London means, or should mean, to you, and think about the London that would exist if the likes of Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, and his followers, now well-ensconced, were to have their way – in London, in England, in Europe, all over the world. Forget about what you think about Bush, or what you think you should think of him. Think about what Q.-q. Q., if he had half a chance, would do to everyone and everything in free-spirited, silly, often deplorable, sometimes lovable London, over which you preside.

Forget about contriving always to act so as to annoy the Americans, the London Board of Rabbis, the leader-writers on The Telegraph. Try to have some gratitude to the Great Dead who created the civilization of which you and those who live in London are inheritors. Not one of those Great Dead (of England, of Europe, of the Western world)would have lasted a minute under Islam, under the likes of Al-Qaradawi and his grim little world of the shari’a, his Total Regulation, his manichaen assignment of everything to one or the other column: Haram over there, Halal over here. You owe those Great Dead of the Western world something. You owe Q-q. Q. nothing.

Please, Ken, please Mr. Livingstone, please Mr. Lord Mayor, turn again, even if that means you will have to turn against every cliché and received idea in the seemingly-immutable bolshevist banality of your mental universe. Get With the Program. And that program, if you need a hint, is not “Friends” but, rather, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Yet after a terrorist attack by Muslims, for Muslim causes, prompted by the teachings of Islam that are to be found in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, Ken Livingstone yet again decided to welcome Sheikh Qaradawi to London. He, Redken, was not in the slightest apologetic about this. The trip was cancelled, at the last minute, but not because of Ken Livingstone.

He proceeded to tell us that there is a moral equivalence between Hamas, a group of terrorists who shoot their weapons and scream with hysterical joy whenever news of some great "victory" -- say, the shooting a pregnant women in her car, and the murder, one by one by one by one, of her four little girls -- comes across the wires. Such behavior is just par for the Hamas course, and the Likud, a political party that has the temerity to suggest that Israel has a considerable legal (the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine), historical (the buying of land, steadily, from both the Turkish authorities and absentee landlords, and the inheriting of the nearly 90% of the land that was owned by the Ottoman state, then by the Palestine Mandatory authority, and then by its rightful and intended successor, the State of Israel), and moral (about this, if Ken Livingstone knows nothing of the history of the Jews, nor of the Muslim conquerors, nor of what happened to those Jews who remained, as dhimmis,under Muslim Arab rule, or who left to live in Europe, then he knows nothing) right to exist.

So he did not turn again, like Dick Whittington. Not worth a whisker on Dick Whittington's cat is Redken, now the mayor of the largest city in still-as-yet-incompletely-islamized Europe. But he is a portent of things to come. And how he is regarded by people in London, in England, in Europe, will tell us much about the willingness of the Infidels not to "stay the course" of appeasement and dhimmitude, but to change the course, to recover their senses, to become quick studies when it comes to Islam, and to rescue themselves, their children, and the cultural and civilizational legacy that their ancestors left them with -- and so far too many have proven to be complete ingrates.

Some gratitude please. Some common sense. Some sense of self-preservation. A modicum will do.

UK bars over 200 foreign scientists

This is the result of a 1994 law. From the Pakistan Daily Times with thanks to Two Stellas.

LONDON: Security services have barred more than 200 foreign scientists from studying at British universities over the past four years, amid fears they could present a terrorist threat, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The Guardian newspaper said the scientists were among more than 2,000 vetted after applying to universities to do postgraduate or post-doctoral research in fields such as chemistry, microbiology and biotechnology.

The figures were released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act as police continue to search for those linked to the London terror bombings on July 7. The British authorities started taking greater security precautions in response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States.

Universities have long been seen as attractive to potential terrorists because of the high level of scientific training on offer, the Guardian said. Institutions can refer potentially suspect applicants for security clearance via the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s voluntary vetting scheme, which was set up in 1994 to prevent foreign scientists learning skills on British soil that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction...

Britain Takes Step Toward Deporting Radical Clerics

From the New Duranty Times:

LONDON, July 20 - Britain took the first step today toward deporting firebrand clerics to Arab and other countries, striking a preliminary agreement with Jordan that could lead to the expulsion of a suspected close ally of Osama bin Laden.

After the London bombings, the move was the latest sign that - belatedly in the eyes of its critics - Britain is cranking up antiterrorist procedures, moving away from a longstanding policy of offering sanctuary to Muslim radicals who might face torture or the death penalty in their own countries.

Britain's home secretary, Charles Clarke, also said he had authorized a global list of suspects likely to be expelled from or barred entry into Britain if they were found to be "preaching, running a Web site or writing articles which are intended to foment or provoke terrorism."

The measures against what the police here call "preachers of hate" follow years of taunts by foreign intelligence services that British tolerance of radical clerics and terror suspects wanted in other places had turned London into "Londonistan" or "Beirut-on-Thames."...

Australia's Mufti: Deport the clerics of hate

Al-Hilali seeks to solidify his "moderate" credentials and he also calls for a ban on Muslim hate speech and literature. From The Australian, with thanks to W.R.

THE country's highest-profile Islamic leader has called for the deportation of clerics who preach violence, as part of a push to rid Australia of the "disease" of fundamentalism.

Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali compared the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Australia to AIDS, and said he and other moderate clerics across the country must take firm steps to win the hearts and minds of impressionable young Muslims.

"They are a disease like AIDS and you can't cure them with Panadol," Sheik Hilali said of radical clerics.

In some of the strongest public comments yet by a senior Islamic figure in Australia, Sheik Hilali also told The Australian the sale of Islamic literature preaching hatred or violence should be banned. But the call was flatly rejected yesterday by Australia's most senior fundamentalist Islamic cleric, Sheik Mohammed Omran...

"A small number of Muslims do have a disease of the mind," Sheik Hilali told The Australian at his office attached to Sydney's largest mosque, in the southwestern suburb of Lakemba.

"The ASIO, the other authorities and the journalists know who they are. They don't pray here (at Lakemba Mosque), they don't respect us, they have in the past called us disbelievers."...

"It's like they are remote-controlled. They could be steered down the wrong direction," he said, stressing that the numbers of such Muslims in Australia was small. He said he sometimes went to the homes of young Muslims developing fundamentalist ideals, to try to turn them around. Their thinking had created tension and conflict with their families...

"They (fundamentalist clerics) try to motivate them with aggressive speak rather than teach them about their religion. And boys love conflict."

Sheik Hilali said Muslim community groups should work together to develop strategies to educate and inform young people about their religion.

His call for extreme books to be banned was welcomed yesterday by the Muslim community umbrella body, provided that it extended to all hate literature and not just Islamic texts.

This seems to be welcome news, but we have had our hopes dashed before in our search for the true "moderate" Muslim leader. The Mufti has in the past praised suicide bombers in Israel, said that Australian hostage in Iraq Douglas Wood, was in "honest hands," said that an attack in Australia would be "reckless," called Australia "Muslim land" and called Sept. 11, "God's work" As always we will continue to monitor developments and keep you informed.

Mercer: 'Islamikazes' in our midst

Ilana Mercer has an excellent column in WND, with thanks to The One Who Must Not Be Named.

Those who talk up the root causes of Muslim disaffection are cultural relativists with a difference. For example, they'll be the first to point to how ignorant we are of the centrality of honor in Arab culture. And they'd be right. "It is better to die with honor than live with humiliation," goes an Arab saying. To Muslims, there's no pride in being democratized by the West–only humiliation and shame. Conveniently, however, these Rousseauists ignore the less flattering aspects of a culture and a religion that has yet to undergo an Enlightenment.

Individualism is, at best, negligible. The ummah – the community of believers or the "Nation of Islam" – is pre-eminent. Infinitely less eminent is the infidel, whose inherent inferiority, codified in elaborate dhimmi jurisprudence, makes him fair game. Responsibility is always externalized. Muslim savagery toward innocents has been felt from Beslan to Bali, from Kashmir to Casablanca. Yet, they'll invariably shift the blame (successfully, I might add) to Israel, America, Russia and other "occupations."

Helping to make the "Islamikazes'" case are countless liberals and libertarians, as well as elements on the American right. They lay the blame for the killers' latest actions exclusively on American and British foreign policy: foreign forays begat the suicide bomber; case closed.

Our adventurous foreign policy might be a necessary condition for Muslim aggression but it is far from a sufficient one. Muslims today are at the center of practically every conflict in the world. They were slaughtering innocent, pacifist Jews in Israel well before the Jewish state was a figment in the fertile mind of Theodor Herzl (and well before the "occupation" of 1967: in 627, Muhammad decapitated 900 Medina Jews. The women were only raped). Governments, abetted by the Fourth Estate (and a fifth column), have framed strife in Sudan, East Timor, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Philippines, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, the Balkans and Russia as sectarian or regional. The struggle in these spots, however, has more to do with the overriding refusal of the one faction to abide the others (unless they've been conquered or preferably killed)...

Please read it all.

Indonesia bans Ahmadiyah teachings

The people mustn't be allowed to learn about a reformed form of Islam. From Antara News, GOVT BANS AHMADIYAH TEACHINGS IN INDONESIA, MINISTER SAYS, with thanks to Two Stellas.

Jakarta - The government has banned the Ahmadiyah, a splinter group of Islam which believes Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as a prophet after Prophet Muhammad, from propagating their teachings as they are against Islamic tenets, a minister says.

"The religious ruling is that the teachings of Ahmadiyah is against Islam and therefore we forbid the propagation of this misleading faith," Religious Minister Mahtuh Basyuni said after meeting with the president at his office here on Tuesday.

According to him, the prohibition of Ahmadiyah to propagate its teachings has been specified in a decree of the religious minister.

"We have already had a ruling on this matter, and therefore there is no need to issue another one," he said.

The Religious Affairs Ministry on September 20, 1984 issued a circular directed to provincial offices throughout Indonesia declaring Ahmadiyah as misleading and against Islam on the grounds that its teachings believed in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as a prophet after Mohammad.

A study on Ahmadiyah teachings concluded that it was against Islam as the faith believes in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as the last prophet, not Muhammad.

In addition, the religious affairs ministry also banned Indonesian Ahmadiyah followers from propagating the teachings, as it may create a conflict," said a circular signed by Director General for Islamic and Hajj Affairs A Qadir Basalamah...

Hardline Muslim cleric Qardawi scraps plans to visit Britain

They say he scrapped his plans because of pressure from the Daily Express newspaper. From ZeeNews:

London - A hardline Muslim cleric based in Qatar has scrapped plans to speak to Muslims in Britain following an outcry in the wake of the July 7 London terror attacks, a newspaper reported.

Qatar-based Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi, a prominent member of the Muslim brotherhood, dropped plans to visit Manchester next month, the Daily Express reported.

It said the cleric's office in Qatar confirmed yesterday that he would not attend a Muslim unity convention organized by the Ramadhan Foundation, a British-Islamic education group, on August 7...

Prime Minister Tony Blair's government is considering new anti-terrorist measures, including strengthening procedures to exclude or deport people who incite religious hatred.

Qaradawi, who has condoned Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel, was viewed as a test case for the measure.

India: Victim ordered to wed rapist

Imrana update and Sharia alert from the Washington Times, with thanks to Ruth King:

BOMBAY -- Hard-line Islamic clerics in a northern Indian village have declared that a woman's 10-year-old marriage was nullified when her father-in-law raped her -- and ordered the mother of five to marry the rapist.

The fatwa, or religious edict, was issued by Darool Uloom Deoband, South Asia's most powerful Islamic theological school known for promoting a radical brand of Islam that is said to have inspired the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The decision has outraged both Muslim and Hindu leaders and prompted a fierce debate that has dominated the front pages of national newspapers across India.

The fatwa ordered Imrana Ilahi, 28, to separate from her husband and treat him as her son because she had sex with his father.

"She had a physical relationship with her father-in-law, and it nullifies her marriage," said Mohammad Masood Madani, a cleric at the theological school. He said it made no difference whether the sex was consensual or forced. The village council then decreed that Mrs. Ilahi would have to marry her father-in-law.

Feminists and liberal Muslims reacted with fury, staging nationwide street protests.

But Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh on June 29 supported the fatwa, saying: "The decision of the Muslim religious leaders in the Imrana case must have been taken after a lot of thought. ... The religious leaders are all very learned and they understand the Muslim community and its sentiments."

Pressure on British government to ban cleric Qaradawi's entry

More on Qaradawi's attempted return to Britain. A spokesman for Blair said, "It is not enough just to condemn. The Muslim community needs to act. Words, while welcome, are not sufficient." From the Deccan Herald:

British politicians are calling on the ruling Labour government to ban the entry into the UK of a radical Muslim cleric who has praised suicide bombing by Palestinians as “martyrdom in the name of God.”

Egyptian-born Yusuf Al-Qardawi is due to address a public meeting in Manchester soon, but his critics say the man who once declared, “Oh God, destroy the usurper Jews, the vile crusaders and infidels”, should be barred from the UK, just as he is barred in the US. Opposition Conservative Party vice chairman Andrew Rossindell, who is leading the calls to block Al-Qardawai’s visit, said, “There has been a lot of tough talk from Mr Blair, but if he was a tough Prime Minister, he would have acted immediately to stop this man from coming into the country. I think Tony Blair should act now.”

Adding her voice to the calls for an entry ban, former Conservative cabinet minister Ann Widdecombe said, “This man would not be allowed in if I was Home secretary. To say he condemns the London attack while advocating suicide bombing in Israel is being mealy-mouthed and just playing with words. There is a moral dimension to this and he should not be allowed to enter the UK.”

The controversy about Al-Qardawi’s forthcoming visit came ahead of Tuesday’s meeting between Mr Blair and leaders of the British Muslim community. Among the items on the agenda were suggestions for Muslim clerics to start preaching only in English and banning the sale of extremist leaflets at book stores and malls near mosques...

In London a spokesman for Blair said, “It is not enough just to condemn. The Muslim community needs to act. Words, while welcome, are not sufficient. We need to have action within the community to take on in a reasoned argument the false propaganda.”

The invitation to meet Mr Blair aroused a mixed response from Muslim community leaders. Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain said, “Muslim youths are generally underachieving with high rates of unemployment.” “There has been a clear increase in disenchantment,” he added, pointing to a recent think tank report that asserted the Iraq war had made it easier for al-Qaeda to exploit a sense of grievance among the Muslim community. “It’s fair the government should ask itself whether policies such as those involving the Iraq war have contributed to this”, Mr Bunglawala said.

...Another British Muslim leader, Anjem Choudary al-Muhajiroun, said he was against any Muslim leaders meeting Mr Blair. Mr Choudary declared, “The British government wants to show they are on the side of justice whereas in reality the real terrorists are the British regime who have tried to divide the Muslim community into moderates and extremists.

Qaradawi's planned return visit to London will test British resolve

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who has endorsed suicide attacks, wants to return to Britain. So we'll see how stiff the upper lip of those blighters really is, eh wot? "Extremist cleric puts terror laws to the test," from The Guardian, with thanks to Filtrat:

A planned visit to Britain next month by a Muslim cleric who has praised suicide bombings against Israel will become the first test of the Government's promised clampdown on extremist preachers after the London terrorist attacks.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 79, who is due to speak at a conference in Manchester, is banned from visiting America because of his links with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

But although Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, has the power to exclude individuals whose presence is judged not to be conducive to the public good, there is no suggestion that the controversial Qatar-based imam is to be banned.

Last Friday the Home Office outlined proposals aimed at restraining militants by making it a crime to glorify or condone terrorism. Ministers said that would cover statements suggesting that suicide bombers were martyrs.

Although Qaradawi's supporters said he had condemned the Tube and bus attacks, he has praised suicide bombings against Israel.

Last year he told the BBC's Newsnight: "It is not suicide; it is martyrdom in the name of God. I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an indication of the justice of Allah almighty. Allah is just.

"Through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak what the strong do not possess and that is the ability to turn their bodies into bombs as the Palestinians do."

Qaradawi's visit to London last year at the invitation of Ken Livingstone, the mayor, outraged gay and Jewish groups because of his attitude to homosexuals and Jews.

He is due to address the Muslim Unity Convention in Manchester on Aug 7 unless Mr Clarke excludes him.

Show some spine, Mr. Clarke. This will be good opportunity to make some important moral distinctions that are currently obscured.

Watson: Muslims condemn terror attacks? Really?

DC Watson discusses Muslim condemnations of terror attacks:

Well, it appears that all of this remains our fault. Apparently, we just don’t get it. According to the Council on American Islamic Relations, they’ve continued to condemn terror attacks carried out by their fellow Muslims, but we just aren't hearing them. This issue was again brought to the forefront in a July 13, 2005 article from the Florida Times-Union, entitled “Muslim leaders condemning terror to deaf?”. The author, Mark Woods, apparently feels that accurate information regarding Islam can be obtained through the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) filter:

In the wake of the London bombings, I called Parvez Ahmed, a Jacksonville resident who three months ago became chairman of perhaps the best-known Muslim organization in America, and asked him that. And there was silence.

Well, just when the phone cut out.

Once I got him back on the line, the University of North Florida professor who is the new chairman of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, did what he has been doing ever since he woke up Thursday, logged onto his computer and saw the news.

He condemned the bombings. He condemned the people behind them. He did it immediately and unequivocally.

"This is just absolute madness," he said. "It does not make any sense whatsoever.”

You want a Muslim condemnation of terrorism?

How would you like it delivered?

Well, Parvez, certainly not like this: "The term 'civilians' does not exist in Islamic religious law," according to Hani Al-Siba'i, head of the Al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies in London.

Or this from Syrian-born Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed: "We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no sanctity." "We will use your democracy to destroy your democracy."

Or this: Siraj Wahhaj was the Imam of Masjid Al-Taqwa in Brooklyn, New York. “Take my word; if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us."

Or this: "Imam Zaid Shakir was the former Muslim chaplain at Yale University, and political science professor. He believes that the Quran ‘pushes us in the exact opposite direction to the forces at work in the American political spectrum.’…As a result he maintains that Muslims cannot accept the legitimacy of the existing system.”

Or this: "Ahmad Nawfal, a well-known Jordanian speaker, “if fundamentalist Muslims stand up, "it will be very easy for us to preside over this world once again."

Or this: "At a Muslim convention held in San Jose, just one month after the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001: "By the year 2020, we should have an American Muslim president of the United States."

(When pigs fly, and Hell gets hit with an ice storm.)

Or this: Muslim Cleric Sheikh Abu Hamza (Aug. 2002) “told young British supporters that murder, bank robbery and looting are legitimate weapons against the enemies of Islam.”

"But a struggle means sometimes arguing to convey the message. Even if it means you convey the message by carrying a sword. "Allah wants to know who will sacrifice for him." “Robbing them and kafirs, or unbelievers, could be acceptable because they were not protected by Allah” He said: "I say go and do it (steal), take shoot and loot.”
_http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12146169&method=full&siteid=50143_

“So why don't we hear Muslim leaders condemning terrorism?”

“Maybe we're not listening.”

This would be comical if it weren’t so asinine. Since 9/11, there have been in excess of 2400 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Muslims all around the world.
_http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/_

How many of them have been condemned by name by CAIR? How many imams and clerics have we caught preaching hate during their sermons and speeches, or lying on their visa applications?
_http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-06-17-imam-convicted_x.htm_

Why condemn them, when they can write one of their Islamic puff piece letters to the editors of local newspapers, stating that terrorism goes against the teachings of Islam?

Oh, no, it doesn't. Aren’t the men I quoted above Muslims -- Muslim leaders? Radical Imams and their followers have, for the most part, driven the more moderate Muslims out of many of the mosques. Yet, these same fanatical Imams are permitted to reside here on religious visas as they upchuck their hate, for us.

There are many in the American media who continue to jump at the chance to obtain their information from CAIR. As the evidence continues to stack up against groups such as these, evidence clearly demonstrating that they are not a friend to this nation, they are still a main source of information as it pertains to Islam.

Shouldn’t Mr. Woods, and others in the media instead be asking CAIR about the link on their website that appeared after the 9/11 sneak attack, which called for donations to help the 9/11 victims, yet lead to the Holy Land Foundation site?

_http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12470_

Shouldn’t our friends in the mainstream media be asking CAIR about Ghassan Elashi, the founder of CAIR's Texas chapter, convicted for selling technology, goods and commodities to designated terror-sponsoring states, related the Deputy Chief of the Hamas terrorist organization’s Political Bureau, and the Holy Land Foundation’s Chairman of the Board?

_http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43805_

_http://www.4law.co.il/hlf3.htm_

Parvez Ahmed said: “No ideology can even remotely justify what's going on."

While this is true, Muslim fanatics, with their own whacked-out sense of reality, justify all of their violence by blaming it on their victims. Victims labeled by them as occupiers, infidels, invaders, non-believers, Islamophobes, bigots, racists, intolerants, etc.

Has the CAIR organization publicly condemned those who worked for them who have been convicted on terror charges? Any condemnation of Royer, Elashi, or Khafagi? Have they publicly condemned Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbollah, or the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade?

Perchance it would be beneficial to them if we truly were deaf. Dumb and blind too. Unfortunately for them, we see and hear everything. This routine has far surpassed the stage of being tiresome. However, with that being said, so long as their facade and games continue, Muslim organizations, Islamic Imams, Muslim Clerics, and “scholars” can count on being confronted at every turn they make, every word they speak, and every tactic they employ.

Malaysia 'teapot cult' attacked

It seems the "humiliation to Islam" caused by the giant teapot got it torched. From the BBC, with thanks to Bamsterkins.

Arsonists have attacked the base of a small inter-faith sect in Malaysia called the Sky Kingdom. The sect is noted for building a giant teapot to symbolise its belief in the healing purity of water, and is accused of luring Muslims away from Islam.

A lawyer for the sect, Haris Mohamad Ibrahim, said that about 30 armed men dressed in Arab robes had attacked the commune with Molotov cocktails.

No-one was injured in the attack, which caused a small fire.

"The roof of the teapot structure is... slightly charred, but since it is made of concrete, the damage is not extensive," firefighter Ahmad Fakarudin told Reuters news agency...

Iraq's Christians Fearful of Islamic Law

We have posted many stories here over the last year and a half about the persecution of Iraqi Christians by a resurgent pro-Sharia militancy. This one comes from the Zenit News Agency, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

LONDON, JULY 16, 2005 (Zenit) - The long-awaited constitution now being prepared in Iraq could effectively turn the country into an Islamist state, warns the auxiliary bishop of Baghdad.

In a letter presented July 14 to the British branch of the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Bishop Andraos Abouna expressed his concerns that this new constitution could also include automatic discrimination against non-Muslims.

The letter was signed by the leaders of nine Christian denominations, and it makes a desperate plea for equality of all religious groups.

Underlying the leaders' concerns are reports that Shiite Muslims -- Iraq's largest religious group -- are pressing for a permanent constitution that enshrines Shariah, or Islamic law.

The Church leaders are fearful that their faithful could become victims of the discrimination and persecution that Christians face in other places where Shariah is imposed.

And there can be no serious doubt that if it were imposed, they would indeed face such discrimination.

Canadian Islamic organization retracts smears of Daniel Pipes

One of the chief weapons that American Muslim advocacy groups use to control the public debate about Islamic terrorism is argument by slur: those who dare to defend the equality of dignity of all people against the threat posed by Sharia and jihad are routinely called "bigoted," "hatemongering," "reckless," etc. This is a very clever tactic on their part, for the mortal sin of American politics is bigotry; by employing such language the groups can effectively render many people of good will too afraid to examine the genuine arguments of those so tarred. But here is one instance in which those tactics backfired. From "An Islamist Apology?" by Daniel Pipes in FrontPage:

Something possibly unprecedented has occurred in the battle with radical Islam. A leading Islamist organization has retracted its slurs against me and issued a public apology. This offers a small but important step in blocking the advance of Islamic extremism....

Wahida Valiante of the Canadian Islamic Congress, an Ontario-based group, took this step on April 29, 2005, writing in her organization’s weekly bulletin that I am a follower of Hitler, that I use the tactics of Hitler, and that I want “to ethnically cleanse America of its Muslim presence.”

Did I really need to point out that this representation of me is, in the words of a National Post editorial, “a vicious calumny that Ms. Valiante plucked from thin air”? Must I insist that I really do execrate Hitler? Aver my horror of genocide? Protest that I never espoused expelling or murdering Muslim Americans?

I thought not. Rather than take these demeaning and surely futile steps, I took a different route. Backed by the Heenan Blaikie law firm of Toronto and the CanWest Global Communications Corporation, Stan Fisher of Heenan Blaikie sent a libel notice in early May to each of Valiante, the CIC, and CIC chair Mohamed Elmasry.

On June 10, the CIC published an apology and retraction: “The Canadian Islamic Congress and Ms. Valiante apologize without reservation and retract remarks in the column that suggest that Dr. Daniel Pipes is a follower of Hitler or that he uses the tactics of Hitler or that he wants to ethnically cleanse America of its Muslim presence.” The CIC also sent funds for my legal expenses and made a donation in my honor to a Canadian charity.

The CIC’s action is, to the best of my knowledge, without precedent.

Western Islamist organizations until now have relentlessly attacked, successfully extracting apologies from media figures like Paul Harvey and Mortimer Zuckerman, from businesses like Amazon and Nike, from pastors, columnists, and even from state politicians, a top U.S. general, and the president of the United States.

Never before have they apologized for having libeled a person. The CIC retraction breaks the Islamists’ spell of privilege and their miasma of immunity. It establishes, at least in Canada and at present, that Islamist groups do not have impunity to fabricate lies about their opponents. The rule of law does prevail and it applies even to them.

For those who fear the growth of radical Islam, this episode offers encouragement that its forces can be contained and defeated. I hope others will join me in standing up to the new totalitarianism.

And that is precisely what it is.

Nelson: Time to rethink our multicultural society

We may well think about reviving the melting pot ideal ourselves as Fraser Nelson writing in the Scotsman suggests for the British.

TONY BLAIR faces two enemies in his new war against British terrorism: the seed of jihad, and the fertile ground on which it is sown. The last mission of his premiership will be finding policies to neutralise both.

The response to the July 7 attacks was always going to be determined by the life story of the culprits. If they were foreigners, it would have been easy to restrict visas and tighten security. But the truth is grotesquely more complex.

Britain is incubating its own suicide bombers and has become the European headquarters for people seeking to indoctrinate them. It is not enough for Blair to "uproot this evil ideology"; he must also treat the soil from which it springs...

Those close to Blair say it is now time to ask whether multiculturalism is to blame - and to accept that pockets of Muslim Britain have been allowed to become isolated and radicalised, thinking they live in an enemy state.

It is a sign of the paucity of debate in Britain that multiculturalism is used interchangeably with 'immigration'. It is, instead, a specific form of immigration where the foreigners are not encouraged to integrate.

The alternative is the "melting pot" method of integrationism used by the United States, whose newcomers must learn English, salute the flag and sign up to a set of values. They must buy into a basic idea that they have to belong.

This would be seen as cultural imperialism in Britain, where a mosaic-style of immigration has been preferred. The natural consequence has been segregated ghettos - and pockets of radicalism, left alone to seethe. Americans look on aghast at the Britain's immigration mismanagement. "You seem to shun these folks off to the side, and let them behave as if they never left Islamabad," says Deroy Murdock, fellow at the Atlas Foundation...

Lack of social cohesion has been the curse of Blair's premiership. Britain has grown richer, but the underclass has remained down - as Labour tested the materialist theory that welfare and the tax system buy social cohesion.

This idea has never looked more naïve than it does now. After locking up the jihadists, ministers have little choice but to find ways of piecing society back together in northern English cities. And this will be the hardest task of all.

Akhtar: The backlash has begun, and I fear for the innocent

Rajnaara C Akhtar, a British Muslim activist and the acting chair of the Assembly for the Protection of Hijab, writes in the Independent, with thanks to Nobody's Business.

When the reports of the bombings initially emerged on 7/7, sadness was followed by anger, a sinking heart and a silent prayer: "Please don't let it be Muslims who are responsible." The tragic events were an attack on more than the citizens of London; they were an attack on Britain's cohesive community, unparalleled in Europe and most of the wider Western world.

It has emerged since then that perhaps the trust and respect between Britain's diverse communities are likely to break down. As the rest of the country attempts to come to terms with the catastrophic events, how does the Muslim community, with a triple burden, begin to recover, with the trauma of terrorist attacks, the task of addressing the reality that terrorism was perpetrated by British Muslims, and the spiralling reprisal attacks?

Since 10am on 7/7, the Muslim community has been on high alert. Parents in London rushed to take children out of schools and to safety. The Islamic Human Rights Commission issued a warning and advice to Muslim women to ensure their security. Many Muslim women took the advice not to travel alone, with even the known independent and tenacious women becoming alive to the seriousness of the situation...

Once again, it seems the main people Ms. Akhtar is worried about are her fellow Muslims, not her fellow English citizens.

West: "In not discussing the roots of terror in Islam itself, in not learning about them, the multicultural clergy that shepherds our elites prevents us from having to do anything about them"

I couldn't have said it better myself. From Diana West's "Burnt offerings on the altar of multiculturalism" (thanks to EPG):

In not discussing the roots of terror in Islam itself, in not learning about them, the multicultural clergy that shepherds our elites prevents us from having to do anything about them. This is key, because any serious action -- stopping immigration from jihad-sponsoring nations, shutting down mosques that preach violence and expelling their imams, just for starters -- means to renounce the multicultural creed. In the West, that's the greatest apostasy. And while the penalty is not death -- as it is for leaving Islam under Islamic law -- the existential crisis is to be avoided at all costs. Including extinction.

Was jihad invented in the 1930s?

Is the Islamic jihad ideology newly minted? It's easy to be misled into thinking so, given the jihadist propensity to explain their actions as defensive responses to non-Muslim provocations. A fresh example comes from B. Raman in Asia Times: he associates the radicalization of Britain's Muslim youth of Pakistani origin with British and U.S. actions in Serbia in the early 1990s.

And in the this generally good article in the Jerusalem Post about the kinship between Nazism and Islamic anti-Semitism, Carolyn Glick cites a work by German political scientist Matthias Kuntzel, "Islamic anti-Semitism and its Nazi Roots." This again is to mistake a secondary cause for a root cause. Islamic anti-Semitism found a kindred spirit in Nazism, but it did not spring from Nazism. One need only recall the virulent anti-Semitism of the Qur'an itself, particularly as it is understood by mainstream Muslims today, to say nothing of Islamic tradition (especially the story about how at the end of the world, the stones will cry out, "Oh Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me! Come kill him!"), to realize that. Says Glick:

As Kuntzel argues, the notion of a violent holy war or jihad against non-Muslims was not a part of any active Islamic doctrine until the 1930s and, as he notes, "its concurrence with the arrival of a newly virulent anti-Semitism is verified in no uncertain terms." Husseini's gangs in the Palestine Mandate were joyously praised by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which held mass demonstrations with slogans like "Jews get out of Egypt and Palestine," and "Down with the Jews!"

There is no doubt that there was a resurgence of jihadist violence in the 20th century. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 as a direct reaction to the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, and its violent activity, as well as its propagandizing, makes it true in a sense that the doctrines of violent jihad were newly present among Muslims beginning in the 1930s. But they were not new in the 1930s. The Ottomans declared jihad (futilely) as late as 1914. Jihads are found throughout Islamic history. If Kuntzel means that violent jihad was invented in the 1930s, he betrays his ignorance of Muhammad's own career, and of Islamic history.

Australia: jihad books sold openly

Of course, they're also sold openly in the United States and other Western countries. "Secret books of hate on sale," from AAP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

BOOKS endorsed by Osama bin Laden and discussing the effectiveness of suicide bombings are on sale in Australian bookstores - and authorities say they are powerless to act.

While a Muslim community leader today called for the books to be confiscated, the New South Wales Government said it was unable to enforce a ban.

An investigation by Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph found the Islamic Bookstore at Lakemba, in Sydney's southwest, carried a book titled Defence of the Muslim Lands, which has an endorsement from Osama bin Laden on the cover.

The book, by Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, discusses the effectiveness of suicide bombings....

I discuss this book in detail in Onward Muslim Soldiers.

A spokesman for The Islamic Bookstore at Lakemba today would not to comment on the News Ltd reports it was selling books attacking Western culture and discussing the effectiveness of martyrdom and suicide bombing.

Asked whether the shop intended to continue selling the material, the spokesman said: "We're not talking to any media ... we hope to put out a press release early tomorrow."

Well, I look forward to seeing that.

Lappen: Libel Wars

I had begun to write an article on this case, but have been delayed by travel and various unavoidable matters; this morning when I saw Alyssa A. Lappen's piece in FrontPage I saw that the job had been done better than I could have done it. Introducing British libel tourism:

When billionaire sheik Khalid Salim a bin Mahfouz uses the London courts to attack his critics, there is little most people can do. In dozens of cases to date, reporters and newspapers have apologized, settled or backed off completely from stories critical of bin Mahfouz. But one truth-seeker isn't backing down.

In December 2004, investigative reporter and American Center for Democracy director Rachel Ehrenfeld bucked a dangerous trend and responded to a preposterous allegation with her own U.S. lawsuit. In Rachel Ehrenfeld v. Khalid Salim a bin Mahfouz, the author seeks a declaratory judgment that her assailant could not prevail against her in the U.S. on libel charges arising from her 2003 book, Funding Evil. The case was assigned to Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Casey, who is also handling the bulk of the 9/11 lawsuits.

Ehrenfeld's attorney, Daniel Kornstein, considers her suit as important as New York Times v. Sullivan—the 1964 case in which the courts decided for the first time “the extent to which the constitutional protections for speech and press limit a State's power to award damages in a libel action brought by a public official...”

“Sullivan established the modern ground rules of libel actions and they have been in place since 1964,” says Kornstein. Those standards, very friendly to reporters and writers, have put the onus of proof on libel plaintiffs. In this case, 23 copies of a book published in America were picked up in a foreign jurisdiction, which was used to seek judgment against an American. “The question is,” Kornstein concludes, “do the Times Sullivan rules mean anything in a world so dependent on the Internet, instantaneous communication and international process that did not exist in 1964.” Do they carry the same weight they were meant to carry 40 years ago?

Among those supporting Ehrenfeld in an amici filing with the U.S. District Court in New York are Amazon.com and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Her legal expenses are expected to top $300,000--although she has to date received no financial backing from the publishing industry. According to the friends of the plaintiff,

When a wealthy businessman succeeds in using a carefully chosen foreign forum to attack the credibility of an American investigative author and her work, it harms that author directly and immediately. It also sends an unmistakable message to other writers and publishers that scrutinizing the activities of that businessman, and others of similar resources, is a perilous legal and financial course. American authors must have a means to affirmatively counter such attacks, relieving themselves of the stigma and the financial threat posed by such foreign judgments obtained in jurisdictions lacking free speech protections.

This need is particularly urgent today. Rarely in the history of the United States have the principles underlying our First Amendment - the need for vigorous, open debate, particularly of matters of such vital public concern as the book at issue here - been more important. The energy, drive and credibility of our investigative journalists and book authors are critical to understanding and coping with international terrorism and other threats to our society. The dangers of foreign litigation against publishers, authors and journalists become more acute daily, in direct proportion to our society's increasing reliance on the Internet for dissemination of information and publications.

Bin Mahfouz, claiming the case is inadmissible because he does not live or work in the U.S., has moved for dismissal. But until August 2004, bin Mahfouz owned two New York City condominiums worth some $3.6 million and he reportedly continues to conduct stateside and New York business. Moreover, Ehrenfeld has been harassed on her own turf, and her reputation has been damaged.

Read it all. And buy a copy of Funding Evil.

Swedish journalist: Islam is a dangerous religion

Here is a translation of this Swedish article, courtesy a tea-loving snail. There are several imperfections in this article, but it is nonetheless refreshing to see this coming from Europe, which is still generally manifesting a dangerous unreality about the overall situation:

Ulf Nilsson: Islam is a dangerous religion.

A great victory for terrorism, it said on DN's [Det Nye, a magazine]
front page a week ago on Friday.

Wrong!

Terrorists expose the world's leaders as powerless, proclaimed a headline in the newspaper above an article submitted by Wilhelm Agrell.

The most important fact that we perceive about the terrorists is namely this: they cannot win.

They can murder, maim, hurt and unfortunately drive through exaggerated countermeasures, but they can't win.

Sweden will not, I dare to say never, come to be a country ruled by
misogynous priests like Khomeini or Khameini. The same holds true for the entire West.

No one will ever succeed at forcing us to stick our bottoms up in the air and pray with our faces pointing towards Mecca.

On the other hand it is important that we defend ourselves. This can be done is many ways. First and foremost we must realize that Islam is a dangerous religion. Most Muslims in Sweden and other countries are perfectly okay, but just now there are the most dangerous extremists found within Islam. There have been Western extremists, nazis, communists, Christian and Jewish fanatics, but just now after New York, Madrid, Bali, London and dozens of explosions in Jerusalem, it is amongst Muslims that the most dangerous are to be found.

Säpo [Swedish security police] think that there are lots of activists in Sweden. This is surely true. Recently I met a Muslim, he was Swedish as it happens, who refused to shake my wife's hand because women for him are obviously unclean. People with such views we can't accept of course and it is quite simply the police's duty to hold extremists under surveillance.

We must also demand of our government that Sweden, like braver Denmark, commits itself 110% to the war on terror.

We don't need to send troops to Iraq (even if I'd be all for it) but we ought to by all ways and means support attempts to introduce democracy to Pakistan, Iran and the Arab world.

In connection it would be nice if some debaters stopped ranting that it is poverty that creates terrorism. Al-qa'ida and other murder gangs bathe in Saudi oil money. A powerful blow against terrorism would for this reason be to introduce a sensible energy policy. More nuclear power, less oil dependency. Look at what petrol cost in the petrol-station, and look at the unemployment figures, then you will surely understand. And whilst we are on the subject of nuclear power strengthen our protection of Ringhals, Oskarshamn, and Forsmark. An idiot can see that power stations are ideal terrorist targets, thousands of victims, panic, economic damage and chaos!

Terrorists still shouldn't win but far too many Swedes will lose far too much and shouldn't think in any part that Islamic fundamentalist approve of a single Swede, Christian or other infidel.

Let us, before we forget London as we more or less have forgotten New York and Bali, stiffen our attitudes, honour killings and gang rape are forms of terrorism that we must stop accepting and glossing over. Religion is one thing, distorted and stinking varieties of religion are something completely different. The overwhelming majority of Swedes stand by Tony Blair's side and yes! even George Bush's. Men who murder exclusively for the pleasure of seeing us suffer and bleed we must fight with all means available.

Moscow to spend $2.3b on border security project

From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to JS.

MOSCOW Russia is spending 65 billion-ruble (US$2.3 billion) to strengthen its southern border security, which officials see as a weak point in the sprawling nation's defenses, Russian news agencies reported Saturday.

Border authorities briefed Putin the program's progress on Friday during a visit to southern Russia, ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti quoted Putin spokesman Alexei Gromov as saying.

Russia plans to establish 72 border posts by the end of next year along the frontier spanning from the Black Sea to the Altai mountains, according to the reports. Putin visited one of eight posts that have already been built, they said.

The stretch includes the border with Georgia and Azerbaijan, which officials say militants cross to carry out attacks in Chechnya and elsewhere. It is also a route for militants' weapons and cash.

The southern frontier also includes the long border with Kazakhstan, which separates Russia from the rest of ex-Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan - Russia fears the border is an entry point for drugs and Islamic militants.

The report suggested the program does not include the border with China, which has been a state border longer than the former internal frontiers that became international boundaries after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

In addition to the new border posts, Gromov said Russia plans to establish two military brigades that will be based in the mountains of Karachayevo-Cherkessia and Dagestan - two republics in the North Caucasus, the volatile region that includes Chechnya and borders Georgia and Azerbaijan...

Hollywood to fete "son of al Qaida"

Tha Canadian jihadi Abdurahman Kadr cashes in on movie deal. From WND, with thanks to Maharishi Hashish Ben Yogourt.

A Hollywood film in the works will depict a Canadian formerly detained at Guantanamo as a reformed young man who now rejects terrorism and his family's ties to al-Qaida.

But there's evidence 21-year-old Abdurahman Khadr's true story doesn't fit the feel-good script proposed by Paramount Pictures, according to Andrew Walden, writing in FrontPage magazine.

Khadr is the son of Ahmed Saeed Khadr, a Canadian citizen whom the U.S. has accused of having direct ties to Osama bin Laden. He also is the brother of Omar Khadr, who, as WorldNetDaily first reported exclusively, is accused of killing a U.S. Special Forces medic.

Another brother is Abdullah Khadr, who, according to a Taliban spokesman, was the suicide bomber who killed Canadian Forces Corporal Jamie Murphy in Kabul Jan. 27.

Omar Khadr was released from the prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because the U.S. had no charges and believed he no longer was an intelligence asset.

Abdurahman Khadr returned to Canada in October after he was captured in Afghanistan and escaped the CIA, with whom he had made a deal to provide information undercover. That included a stint as a prisoner at Guantanamo and a mission to Bosnia, where he abandoned the CIA by entering the Canadian embassy in Bosnia.

After returning home, Abdurahman admitted he had been trained at an "al-Qaida-related camp" for three months in 1998, but played down his family's suspected ties to bin Laden...

Abdurahman could earn as much as $500,000 from the project, scheduled to debut next year. According to Variety, the film apparently will follow the storyline that makes Khadr "look best."

Vincent Newman, president of Vincent Newman Entertainment, which owns the rights, calls it a "classic black sheep story -- a story about the rebel of the family."

The producer is considering actor Johnny Depp as the lead, Variety says...

Enchin: A religion of peace vs. apologists for terrorism

Harvey Enchin writes in the Vancouver Sun, with thanks to Boomeros.

Hours after the terror attacks on the London subway and a bus last week, the Canadian Islamic Congress issued a brief statement that condemned the bombing.

It offered no condolences, expressed no grief, displayed no shock; it was instead a directive to the public not to blame Islam.

"We hope Canadian Muslims are not found guilty by association," said its national president, Mohamed Elmasry.

Criticism forced him to subsequently toss in some disingenuous sympathy, but he'd shown his true colours. That Elmasry should be speaking as the head of any Islamic organization is an affront to what its followers call a religion of peace.

Last year, he suggested all Israelis over the age of 18 should be murdered, arguing that because Israel has a civilian army they are legitimate targets for Palestinian suicide bombers. There were calls for his resignation, which Muslim leaders refused. Later, on a CBC radio program, he defended Islamic terrorism, saying the colonial powers committed worse atrocities and deserved what they got....

As long as apologists for terrorism like Elmasry are allowed to be spokesmen for Islam, all Muslims are vulnerable to being found guilty by association...

What is obvious is that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Iraq, where the U.S. and its allies ousted a repressive regime and have invested billions of dollars to rebuild the country while putting their citizens' lives at risk to establish democracy.

Nor has it anything to with the Palestinians to whom the G-8 leaders have committed another $3 billion US to help establish an independent state even though the Palestinian Authority has done nothing to dismantle its vast terrorist network as it is obliged to do under the "road map."

Neither can Islamic terrorism be linked to the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, where the U.S. liberated a people from tyranny, giving them the right for the first time to choose their government; or to the West's encouragement of the fledgling human rights movement in the Muslim world, where the concept has been unknown.

No, the terrorists despise the West because it is there, because its principles of religious freedom, democracy and equality are anathema to them.

So moderate Muslim leaders have to do more than grudgingly concede that blowing up innocent people on a subway train is bad. They have to rout out the evil in their midst.

Most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims. There is no place in civil society for an ideology that celebrates mass murder or deems suicide bombing a sacred act.

Moderate Muslim leaders must take aggressive steps to ensure that Islam proves to be what they keep telling everybody it is -- a religion of tolerance and peace.

NYT: Anger Burns on the Fringe of Britain's Muslims

Hassan M. Fattah writes this in-depth article on the British bombers and barely touches on religious motivation at all. In the New Duranty Times:

LEEDS, England, July 15 - At Beeston's Cross Flats Park, in the center of this now embattled town, Sanjay Dutt and his friends grappled Friday with why their friend Kakey, better known to the world as Shehzad Tanweer, had decided to become a suicide bomber.

"He was sick of it all, all the injustice and the way the world is going about it," Mr. Dutt, 22, said. "Why, for example, don't they ever take a moment of silence for all the Iraqi kids who die?"

"It's a double standard, that's why," answered a friend, who called himself Shahroukh, also 22, wearing a baseball cap and basketball jersey, sitting nearby. "I don't approve of what he did, but I understand it. You get driven to something like this, it doesn't just happen."

To the boys from Cross Flats Park, Mr. Tanweer, 22, who blew himself up on a subway train in London last week, was devout, thoughtful and generous. If they understood his actions, it was because they lived in Mr. Tanweer's world, too.

They did not agree with what Mr. Tanweer had done, but made clear they shared the same sense of otherness, the same sense of siege, the same sense that their community, and Muslims in general, were in their view helpless before the whims of greater powers. Ultimately, they understood his anger.

The news that four British-born Muslim men from neighborhoods around Leeds were suspected of carrying out the bombings in London has made the shared dissatisfaction of boys like these and the creeping militancy of some young British Muslims an urgent issue in Britain.

The bombers are an exception among Britain's 1.6 million Muslims. But their actions have highlighted a lingering question: why are second-generation British Muslims who should seemingly be farther up the road of assimilation rejecting the country in which they were born and raised?...

Oh I know, I know! Let me guess, is it because of political frustration and the feeling of social alienation? Read it all in order to see the absurd lengths the New Duranty Times will go to deny the plain truth of the situation. Walter, you taught them well.

Bomber's family: why we fear the racial backlash

From the UK's Independent Online:

The family of one of the London suicide bombers has revealed how it has become "criminalised, persecuted and vilified" amid growing fears of a racial backlash in the wake of the atrocities.

The despair expressed by Mohammed Sidique Khan's family is the first tangible evidence of how the blasts have affected those close to the bombers.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, revealed the experiences of Khan's family after meeting the bomber's mother-in-law, Farida Patel, 65, at her request. "Not only do they have to face the loss and what has happened," Sir Iqbal said, "but they now feel utterly vilified. The son-in law might be a criminal but they feel the family has been criminalised. [Mrs Patel] is afraid to go home. [It's] an area where the BNP exist in big numbers."

Hasina Khan, estranged wife of the bomber, and her mother- a former secondary school teacher - are both too frightened to return to their homes in Dewsbury for fear of retribution in a community where racial tensions have been tangible in the past 48 hours.

The family's fears were revealed as a clearer picture emerged of Khan's transition from respected family man to the suicide bomber responsible for the Edgware Road blast that left seven people dead. The Independent has learnt that Khan separated from Hasina late last year, around the time she fell pregnant with their second child, because they had so many disagreements about his "approach to life". A source said a critical factor in the separation was his growing religious fervour...

Sir Iqbal visited Leeds yesterday to begin an investigation into radicalism among Muslim youths. He visited four youth centres in 24 hours and said he had found no evidence of extremism. But he said many youths had expressed their frustration over issues including British foreign policy and the political conflict in the Middle East, and felt that their opinions were not being heard...

It is interesting to note that the bombers themselves claim they do it for Islam, but Muslim representatives claim they do it out of political frustration.

One city, two worlds

Muslims in Leeds don't integrate into English society according to this report from AP, with thanks to Skeet Street.

LEEDS, England - Young men wear tight jeans and T-shirts, their black hair gelled. The heavy and distinct Yorkshire accent — gruff with flat vowels — may be just as deceiving.

Despite their outward Western appearance, the second and third generation Muslim Asian community in this northern town has barely integrated into British society — although many have never visited their ancestral homes of Pakistan, Bangladesh or Kashmir either.

The working-class neighborhood of Beeston, which came to world attention after at least two of its sons were involved in the July 7 suicide bombings in London, is one of many districts here where Asians from the Indian subcontinent have settled in the past 40 years...

Elders — many of whom do not speak English well even though they have lived here for decades — maintain their strict customs. Perhaps more so as they regard the society here as alien, immoral and corrupting for their children.

They rarely mix with the English, even with next-door neighbors. Each sit on their porches, hardly communicating with one another, according to residents...

“My parents forbade me to speak English at home,” Tanver Akhtar, who was born here 33 years ago, said in her strong Yorkshire accent. Her parents still have difficulty speaking the language of their adopted country...

She speaks Urdu to her neighbors, to the local butcher and grocer, and even to her 4-year-old daughter, Suman.

She said she would certainly allow her daughter to go to university, but not to date boys or marry an English man. “It’s totally wrong because he won’t be a Muslim,” she said...

Read it all.

Bat Ye’or’s theory of the British collapse

Writing to View From the Right from Europe, Bat Ye’or, the author of Eurabia, explains Britain’s total surrender to Islam in terms of dhimmitude and particularly Britain’s dhimmi-like betrayal of Israel:

Dhimmitude is characterised by the victim’s siding with his oppressors, by the moral justification the victim provides for his oppressors’ hateful behavior, and by the destruction of the victim’s own self by a mental enslavement of love and admiration toward his oppressors. Willfully serving his oppressors, the dhimmi loses the sense of his own rights and humanity. He loses the possibility of revolt because revolt arises from a sense of injustice, and the dhimmi justifies the injustices done against him because he is utterly destroyed as a human being. Perfect examples of this are Edward Saïd, Christian janissaries, and dhimmi Churches throughout history till today. I studied this mentality in all my books.

Mental dhimmitude has been implemented in Europe over the course of 30 years by politicians, intellectuals, the Churches, and the media, all of whom sided with the jihadist Palestinians terrorists against Israel's wars of liberation from dhimmitude. Europe's uncritical alliances with and support for the Arabs' jihad involved a self-inflicted dhimmitude, since Christians are treated the same as Jews under Islamic law. The Europeans' justification of jihad and of Jewish dhimmitude explains their current lack of reaction. A dead body does not react. European governments, especially the British, have bought their security from the terrorists--starting with the Palestinians in 1973--by promoting an anti-Israeli and anti-American policy and an anti-Semitic hate campaign. Tony Blair's posturing in the wake of the London bombings is the cover-up of this cowardly policy that seeks protection from the terrorists by offering them Britain as a safe haven, from where they have sent killers in Israel, America, Bali, and other places. Having for so long and continuously justified injustice against others, the British people go along with the same injustice when it turns against them. For thirty years, Europeans were taught that they have to love Muslims and Islam, and now they are receiving back the exchange for this love which is nothing less than the other face of their hate of Jews and Israel.

Fighting Terror: We Need to Deal With Underlying Causes, Factors

Ali Kazak, head of the General Palestinian Delegation to Australia & New Zealand and Ambassador of Palestine to Vanuatu & East Timor writes in Arab News, with thanks to Skeet Street.

Attacks against Muslim minorities and their mosques and schools whenever there is a terrorist attack in the West illustrate the dangerous level of hatred and racism that exists in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Italy and elsewhere.

Arabs and Muslims have been subjected, and still are, to invasions, aggressions, occupations, oppressions and acts of state terrorism from the Western nations and the Jewish state closely allied to them. This has resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of victims, whether in the recent past in Palestine, Egypt, Sudan and the Arab Gulf countries under the British occupation, or Lebanon, Algeria, Syria, Tunisia and Morocco under the French or Libya under the Italians, or at present in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.

For example, during the Great Uprising against the British occupation in Palestine in 1936, 20 percent or one-fifth of the Palestinian people were killed, wounded or arrested.

But we are yet to hear Britain express regrets nor apologizing for giving our country away to the European Zionist Jewish settlers and creating the Palestine-Israel conflict.

And in the last four years alone 4,036 Palestinians have been killed, including over 620 children, more than 40,000 have been wounded, 8,000 arrested and 7,500 houses demolished.

Over 100,000 Iraqis have so far been killed in the war. Of course all of these victims had names, faces and loved ones who grieve and mourn their loss.

But never did we hear of Christian and Jewish minorities in Arab and Muslim countries being attacked, nor their churches, synagogues and schools being torched and vandalized by the local populations; nor should they be. Yes, there have been disturbances between Christians, Jews and Muslims and even between Muslims and Muslims from time to time, but these are sectarian conflicts and they are a new phenomenon caused by the religious tensions created around the world...

Humm. If Mr. Kazak had done a quick search of our Dhimmi Watch archives, he would see many, many examples of Christians and Jews being attacked in Muslim countries. This kind of thing might lead one to believe the editors of Arab News are not being totally impartial.

Dear Moderate Muslims

Doug Giles writes in Townhall:

Dear Moderate Muslims,

What’s up? I see that you guys have been in the news a lot lately. I thought I’d write you a letter and ask you some questions because it seems as if some Muslims are involved in some very bad stuff around the globe, i.e. targeting and killing innocent people and all in the name of your god...

Please indulge me, moderate Muslims. I have two simple questions regarding your current religious beliefs, as we would not want you to be confused with the aberrant devotees with whom, we were told, you wholeheartedly disagree.

1. Seeing that you differ with the radical lunatic fringe players in your religion, we can safely know and state that you do not view the West and those who do not share your religious beliefs as “The Great Satan,” correct?

I mean . . . I know we eat pork, watch PG-13 movies, dance to Michael Jackson, believe Hillary Clinton [at least some do on the left] and watch Paris Hilton . . . it’s bad, I know. But c’mon . . . “The Great Satan”??? Thank God, that as a moderate Muslim, you do not go so far as to label the entire Western Civilization as satanic just because it isn’t based on an Islamic worldview. Amen?

2. What are you going to do about all the verses in the Quran that instruct Muslims to convert, conquer or kill those who will not bow their knees to Allah? You don’t believe that stuff, do you? You don’t believe that peaceful Jews, Christians and secularists are belligerent infidels, right? I would think not, because that would be extreme.

As a moderate Muslim, can we rest assured that you do not believe that warfare and terror are any way to establish your religion in people’s lives? Can we also be certain that those of us who do not believe and will not believe your particular take on divinity can feel completely safe around you and that we can confidently expect you to work with us to build our world into a better place without condemnation being breathed down upon our heads?...

Logon to ClashRadio.com to hear Doug's interview with Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer.

Gartenstein-Ross: Toward Intelligent Anti-Terror Policing

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross writes in FrontPage:

Twice since 9/11 we have witnessed high-profile reminders of our mass transit system’s vulnerability to terrorist attack. And while the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings and the July 7 atrocities in London loom largest in our memory, they are not the only indications that such attacks are possible in the United States. Chechen terrorists have bombed the Moscow subway system with alarming frequency over the past several years, and in late August of last year two men were arrested in an alleged plot to blow up a Manhattan subway station.

Commentators have spoken frequently of how our open society is vulnerable to terrorism. But al-Qaeda derives particular advantage from the fact that one of its goals is to cripple our economy: To the extent that our anti-terror measures overreact to the terrorist threat, we may unwittingly do al-Qaeda’s work for it. For example, if we tried to protect New York’s subway system through anti-terror measures similar to those used on airlines, complete with metal detectors and wandings, traveling by subway would become so inconvenient that many people would no longer do it. The resulting traffic congestion and delays would have a significant economic impact.

In light of this dilemma, some commentators have concluded that nothing can be done. For example, the talented Newsday columnist Ellis Henican wrote on the day after the London attacks:

Every day, 4 1/2 million men, women and children climb aboard [the New York City subway] trains. Add another half-million or so for the commuter rails, another 2 1/2 million if you count the buses. You’re gonna strip-search every one of them? You’re gonna walk them through metal detectors and wand their bodies when the magnetometers ring? You’re gonna rifle every briefcase, knapsack and gym bag? Impossible!

Henican is right that we cannot protect ourselves 100 percent from the threat of terrorism. However, we can improve our odds. In writing of the impossibility of protecting the subways, Henican takes as a given our current one-size-fits-all model of anti-terror policing wherein every passenger must be treated equally. In this model, everyone must be equally inconvenienced by metal detectors, wands, and bag searches. Yet it is precisely from this policing model that we must move away if we’re to have a realistic chance of preventing an attack on the mass transit system right here in the United States...

Read it all.

Parker: If Islam is not the problem, then what, pray tell, is?

Kathleen Parker writes in her syndicated column carried in the Houston Chronicle, with thanks to all who sent this in.

As Brits stiffen their upper lips and politicians hustle to reiterate that Islam is not the problem, cognitive dissonance grips the planet.

If Islam is not the problem, what is? And are we not inviting self-defeat by refusing to recognize that Islam is at least part of the problem?...

Our diversity training, our cultural predisposition for tolerance, our heritage of immigration and America's characteristic good nature make criticism of minorities and minority beliefs unpalatable.

Which is why moderate Muslims must be unrelenting in eliminating — not just condemning — Islam's bad actors.

When a Muslim cleric urges jihad against infidels, it falls to fellow Muslims to clean out the mosque, to rid Allah's kingdom of radicals. Otherwise, it becomes increasingly difficult for non-Muslims to wrap their minds around "Islam isn't the problem."

It's not enough to assert that 12 million hate-filled zealots who advocate murdering Americans and Europeans are a minority and then, feeling virtuous, return to the business of registering Muslim voters and issuing press releases about insults to Islam.

Fifty years ago when American "radicals" burned crosses and lynched blacks in organized, choreographed acts of terror, the Ku Klux Klan was only a tiny minority of white Christians. The vast majority of whites, like the vast majority of Muslims, would never do such a thing. And yet for too long, decent whites weren't activist enough in purging the evildoers from their midst.

Zero tolerance is what we're looking for here.

Youmans: Blaming Islam is the wrong way to fight terrorism

William Youmans of CAIR (San Francisco Bay Area chapter) writes in San Francisco's SFGate:

British officials deserve praise for their responsible remarks following the attacks in London last week. By embracing the views of Islam's moderate majority, they steered clear of the trap American commentators often fall into -- holding Islam and Muslims accountable for the acts of an extreme fringe. It is not only factually accurate to dissociate Islam from these horrendous crimes, but also an important strategic step in the war on terrorism.

Asked whether the bus and subway bomb blasts were acts of Islamic terrorism, London Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair responded that the culprits were certainly not "Islamic terrorists." He stated that Islam and terrorism are incompatible. The commissioner echoed the sentiments of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said, "The vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims both here and abroad are decent and law-abiding people who abhor this kind of terrorism every bit as much as we do."

During a private meeting with American Muslims, Sir David Manning, British ambassador to the United States, was emphatic in distancing the London terror bombings from Islam, which he described as a faith of "peace, reconciliation and tolerance." British officials recognize that promoting these views undermines the aims of extremist groups.

This important outlook is largely absent in political rhetoric on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, however. It is quite common to see terrorism committed by Muslims referred to as "Islamic terrorism." Similarly, pundits and military leaders often depict Islam as a religion with members more prone to violence than others. The California National Guard recently stirred a controversy over a flyer in its offices suggesting that dipping bullets in pig's blood and burying dead terrorists with pig entrails could be tactics in the war on terrorism. This rests on the notion that U.S. Armed Forces should demean Islam's sacred values...

Heaven forbid we offend anyone we are at war with.

As author Karen Armstrong recently noted in Britain's Guardian newspaper, when "incorrect statements about Islam" have such currency, it sends a negative message to its 1.3 billion practitioners worldwide. Armstrong pointed out that acts of terrorism by the Irish Republican Army were not referred to as "Catholic terrorism." This month marks the 10th anniversary of the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, an act of barbarism that was never attributed to any religion, despite the overlap between partisan lines and religious divisions in the former Yugoslavia. Americans should likewise avoid treating Muslims who attack civilians as representatives of the entire religion...

That would be much easier to do, Mr. Youmans, if the perpetrators were not such ordinary Muslim boys.

Cleric who defended suicide bombers allowed into Britain

Qaradawi, of course. Another sign that Britain simply isn't facing this threat in its fullness. From the TimesOnline, with thanks to a tea-loving snail:

A MUSLIM cleric who has defended suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq is to be allowed into Britain next month for an international conference.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 79, who has a visa to come to Britian but is banned from entering the United States, has been asked to attend the conference in Manchester.

The invitation will be seen as the first test of the Government’s promise after the London bombings to clamp down on hardline Islamic preachers and other extremist clerics.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, is expected to let Dr Qaradawi enter Britain despite having the power to ban him on the grounds that his presence is not “conducive to the public good” and is a threat to public order.

Dr Qaradawi is banned from the United States because of his pronouncements on suicide bombs and his links with the Muslim Brotherhood, believed to be the religion’s oldest fundamentalist organisation.

Bombers' ideology 'evil' says PM

Tony Blair teeters on the brink of having an idea. From the BBC, with thanks to Rebecca Bynum:

Prime Minister Tony Blair has hit out at the "evil ideology" behind the London bomb attacks which killed at least 55 people. The PM said it was vital to confront the bombers' beliefs as well as introducing anti-terrorist measures.

"This is the battle that must be won. A battle not just about terrorist methods, but their views," he said.

"It cannot be beaten, in my view, except by confronting it, symptoms and causes, head on," he added.

Right. I couldn't agree more, Tony, old man. But will you be willing to allow some of your most cherished assumptions to be challenged by this confrontation? Assumptions like these?

The prime minister denied there was a "clash of civilisations" and that all people - including Muslims - were united in their abhorrence at terrorist activities.

He said they had to work with the Muslim community in Britain to take on the extremists.

"It is a battle of ideas and hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it," said Mr Blair.

I am quite certain that some Muslims oppose terrorism. But neither Iqbal Sacranie nor anyone else has articulated a theology of Islam that refutes the terrorist version. Why not?

The Prime Minister was speaking to Labour party members in London, shortly after the number of people who in died in the tube and bus attacks rose to 55.

I wonder if Jon Trickett was there.

CBS/Infinity Radio blacks out anti-terror conference

This is one at which I am speaking. From WND, with thanks to tc:

CBS/Infinity Radio has refused to air paid commercial announcements for an upcoming non-partisan symposium on terrorism, claiming "people might be too emotionally affected" by it.

The People’s Truth Forum, which is sponsoring the symposium titled The Radical-Islamist Threat to World Peace and National Security to be held in Connecticut on Sept. 21, was rebuffed by CBS/Infinity Radio when the PTF’s president, Jeffrey Epstein, tried to purchase commercial time to publicize the event.

The official statement from CBS/Infinity Radio said, "Too many people might be emotionally affected by the subject matter. … It's too controversial to be aired at this time."

Yes. Jihad terrorists and their sympathizers might get reeeaaall upset.

CBS/Infinity Radio's decision comes on the heels of the recent terrorist bombings in London which claimed over 50 lives.

"The commercial segments were to commence on July 18. They were considered critical to the success of our symposium, which has received quite a bit of favorable response from the 'First Responder' community," Epstein said. "We have people coming from as far away as Australia to attend the event."

The symposium is scheduled to feature lectures by Dr. Harvey Kushner, noted terrorism expert; Brigitte Gabriel, a former anchor for world news in the Middle East and a prominent Arab-American journalist; Robert Spencer, noted author on the subject of terrorism and publisher of JihadWatch – published weekly in Human Events; and Laura Mansfield, author and counterterrorism expert.

Terrorist at journalists' party

And speaking of Westerners buddying up to Islamic jihad terrorists, here's another example from YnetNews, with thanks to Jay:

TEL AVIV - Close buddies? Top terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi made a “guest appearance” in a video prepared by the staff of Reuters news agency in Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a “going away” gift for a colleague, Ynetnews has learned.

Zubeidi, who heads Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin, has been named by security officials as a key figure in organizing terror attacks on Israeli civilians.

Zubeidi’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have claimed responsibility for more than 300 terror acts in the last five years.

A Reuters spokeswoman confirmed the video’s existence, but said the London-based news organization is “not associated with any group or faction in any conflict.”

The screening, which occurred in a Jerusalem restaurant last March, involved the showing of a video during a private party.

"The video's theme was what Israel would be like in 10 years," said an Israeli government official who attended the party and viewed the video.

"All of a sudden, at the end, there is Zakaria Zubeidi, playing the head of Reuters. Zubeidi was sitting in Reuters' Jenin office, saying he was Reuters’ chief,” the official said.

'They thought video was hilarious'

The party included guests from the BBC, ITN, the Independent newspaper, and French journalists.

"They all thought the video was hilarious," the official said. He added that only a few individuals did not seem amused during the screening.

France 'to expel radical imams'

Here's a heartening and long-overdue development that will no doubt be assailed by the addlepated multiculturalists as more evidence of "Islamophobia." These people would not fend off a knife-wielding attacker for fear of committing daggerophobia. From the BBC, with thanks to Filtrat:

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to deport any Muslim cleric preaching violence.

Speaking after meeting his Spanish counterpart in Madrid, Mr Sarkozy said he would seek the expulsion of imams in France "whose sermons are radical".

Mr Sarkozy said France and Spain had agreed tougher joint measures against Islamic militancy.

Two days ago, France reimposed border controls with its EU neighbours following the London bombings.

Call for unity

After meeting Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso, Mr Sarkozy told reporters radical preaching would no longer be tolerated in France.

"The [French] republic is not a weak regime and it does not have to accept speech which on the pretext that it is happening in a place of worship calls for hate and murder.

"Those who persist in this way will systematically be the object of an expulsion procedure."

Over the past decade France has expelled several foreign-born Muslim preachers after accusing them of abusing their positions by inciting violence.

The minister said Western countries must unite in the fight against al-Qaeda.

"I know of only one policy against these people - firmness, arresting them, punishing them, penalising them, in Madrid, London, New York, everywhere.

"We must never allow ourselves to give them the satisfaction of a division between us," he said.

Bomber was given House of Commons tour by a Labour MP

Yes, of course it was after they found out about his terrorist ties -- making it clear that in their all-powerful lust for votes they simply don't take this threat seriously. From The Scotsman, with thanks to Filtrat:

ONE of the London suicide bombers was allowed to tour the Houses of Parliament as the guest of an MP months after police and intelligence services became aware of his links to another alleged bomb plot, it emerged last night.

Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, was a guest of the Labour MP Jon Trickett in July 2004, four months after he had been identified by intelligence officials as a "criminal associate" of one of the subjects of a major counter-terrorism operation that had resulted in several arrests.

The extraordinary visit emerged as an Egyptian biochemist who may be linked to the bombers was arrested in Cairo, where he was due to be questioned by Scotland Yard detectives.

The astonishing revelation about the killer's Commons visit throws into question previous assertions that none of the bombers was known to police in connection with terrorist allegations and comes amid growing concerns about how the bombers were allowed to strike.

Britain's "slack" border controls were already in the spotlight after it became clear that a significant al-Qaeda suspect had entered the country undetected and slipped away again hours before the London suicide attacks, which claimed the lives of 54 people.

The suspected terrorist was not put under surveillance after entering Britain, but is now being urgently sought by the intelligence services in connection with the bomb blasts.

Phillips: A sermon of peace?

Melanie Phillips writes in her diary, with thanks to Andrew Bostom.

We have heard much from Muslim leaders about how Islam is a religion of peace, that it specifically rules against the taking of innocent life, that the word ‘jihad’ is a media invention, that imams preach only sweetness and light and that the terrorists who bombed London last week were acting so much against the tenets of the faith that they weren’t really Muslims at all. Well, here’s the text of a sermon delivered in March last year at the Grand Mosque in Leeds, the area from where three of those bombers came:

‘We learnt, from last Friday’s speech, how the rulings of Islam are based on great considerations and objectives, and we mentioned that they are represented in the preservation of the deen (religion), preservation of life, preservation of intellect, preservation of lineage, and preservation of wealth. The speech last week was about preserving the deen and preserving life, and we learnt how Islam commands its followers to fulfil their obligations towards preserving their deen, adhering to it, and establishing its rites, by performing the acts of worship, fulfilling the obligations, leaving what is prohibited, calling people altogether to the great shade of this deen with its wide space, its abundant justice and its great tolerance. If the forces of evil stop and intervene between the people and them entering this deen as Allah, exalted is He, loves for them, it is legislated for those who call, when they face these oppressive forces, to fight Jihad in the path of Allah, and it is legislated for them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of this deen and for the sake of making the da'wah of Islam reach every heart. (my emphasis)

‘The preservation of the deen comes before the preservation of life because if the deen goes and imaan is absent, obedience is abandoned and tawhid of the All-Merciful is not found, and the worshippers of the Shaytan appear, great corruption spreads in the earth, which Allah made a resting place for His servants who He created to worship Him alone and it is upon them to care for it, cultivate it, and bring forth its bounties. You learnt, O beloved brothers and sisters, how Islam forbids the killing of the self, and destroying it and damaging it without right, for whoever kills for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth (my emphasis) it is as if he has killed all of mankind, and whoever gives a self life it is as if he has given life to all of mankind. And you learnt how Islam forbids transgression and prohibits the killing of the weak, from the women and children, and non-combatants, in the battlefields.’

Now, my reading of this is that the preacher was saying that it was expressly permitted for Muslims to kill in order to prevent ‘corruption in the earth’, which itself includes any (unspecified) obstacle to Islam.

He then went on to link this to the Israeli killing of the Hamas ‘spiritual’ leader Sheikh Yassin, and used this to justify the killing of Israelis -- employing the most vile and hysterical libels against Israel and the Jews:...

This sermon is on the Mosque’s website. Do our police or security services actually read open websites? If so, why wasn’t this preacher arrested and prosecuted for racial hatred and incitement to violence? Why isn’t anyone raising this now, after three local men committed their unspeakable acts in pursuit of the very objectives laid out in this sermon? How many other imams are saying similar things or worse? When will the mainstream media wake up from their ‘Islamophobic’ trance and start investigating what is happening here?

Leiken: Europe's Angry Muslims

They are dangerous and committed -- and can enter the United States without a visa. So writes Robert S. Leiken in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, with thanks to Mark Krikorian.

Fox News and CNN's Lou Dobbs worry about terrorists stealing across the United States' border with Mexico concealed among illegal immigrants. The Pentagon wages war in the Middle East to stop terrorist attacks on the United States. But the growing nightmare of officials at the Department of Homeland Security is passport-carrying, visa-exempt mujahideen coming from the United States' western European allies.

Jihadist networks span Europe from Poland to Portugal, thanks to the spread of radical Islam among the descendants of guest workers once recruited to shore up Europe's postwar economic miracle. In smoky coffeehouses in Rotterdam and Copenhagen, makeshift prayer halls in Hamburg and Brussels, Islamic bookstalls in Birmingham and "Londonistan," and the prisons of Madrid, Milan, and Marseilles, immigrants or their descendants are volunteering for jihad against the West. It was a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent, born and socialized in Europe, who murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam last November. A Nixon Center study of 373 mujahideen in western Europe and North America between 1993 and 2004 found more than twice as many Frenchmen as Saudis and more Britons than Sudanese, Yemenites, Emiratis, Lebanese, or Libyans. Fully a quarter of the jihadists it listed were western European nationals -- eligible to travel visa-free to the United States.

The emergence of homegrown mujahideen in Europe threatens the United States as well as Europe. Yet it was the dog that never barked at last winter's Euro-American rapprochement meeting. Neither President George W. Bush nor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice drew attention to this mutual peril, even though it should focus minds and could buttress solidarity in the West...

Saudi Columnist: Terrorists Mistreat Their Wives and Children

It seems that terrorists are living, or attempting to live, according to Sharia Law. No surprises here for Jihad Watch readers. This comes to us from MEMRI:

In a column titled "Women, Children, and Terrorism" in the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, columnist Badriyya Al-Bashar describes terrorists' contemptuous treatment of their wives and children. This behavior, she says, reflects the "flaw that has taken root in their psychology with regard to their understanding of life, and in their view of the individual and his rights."

The following are excerpts from her column:

The Terrorists Have Sworn an Oath to Die and Take No Interest in the Needs of Their Wives and Children

"The most amazing thing about terrorist hunts and the killings [of terrorists] that we have become accustomed to hearing about is that amongst the terrorists, there are women who act as spouses and maintain family life, giving birth to children under conditions of murder, terrorism, and hunts, in the absence of security, stability, a natural family environment, and an atmosphere for educating and raising the children...

Wives and Children – Part of the Terror Society, Yet Not Members of It

"Wives and children are part of the terror society, yet they are not members of it, and did not choose it. They came to it via marriage and family. They did not adopt its ideas, but they defend them. They did not take part in its crimes, but they find themselves in the hands of the police when the hunts end, without a clear ruling as to whether they are criminals or victims.

"[One example of the terrorists' treatment of their families is] the bitter end of the son of one of the terrorists in clashes [between terrorists and Saudi security forces] in the city of Al-Qassim [in Saudi Arabia]. The clashes led to the killing of Abd Al-Karim Al-Mujati, and to [Al-Mujati] himself exploding his own son's head as his son raised his hands in surrender.

"This clarifies that the terrorists treat wives and children as personal property, and as objects with no right to choose [their own way of life], and no right to live in dignity and security...

"Future literary works may reveal to us the inhuman and irreligious deeds that they are carrying out, as has happened with the confessions of people who quit the terrorist groups in Egypt. One of them acknowledged that the leaders of [the Egyptian terrorist group] Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya, to which he had belonged, [forcibly] divorced him from his wife after he left them and a week later, married her to the head of the group, without the obligatory interval before a new marriage. They did this claiming that [the option] of stopping a pregnancy in a hospital fulfils the [Islamic] stipulation [of an interval between marriages for a woman, so she can ascertain] that she is not pregnant…...

Pew Poll: Support for Terror Wanes Among Muslim Publics

A new poll by the Pew Research Center reports on "Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics," with thanks to Mark Krikorian.

Concerns over Islamic extremism, extensive in the West even before this month's terrorist attacks in London, are shared to a considerable degree by the publics in several predominantly Muslim nations surveyed. Nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries. At the same time, most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam.

Nonetheless, the polling also finds that while Muslim and non-Muslim publics share some common concerns, they have very different attitudes regarding the impact of Islam on their countries. Muslim publics worry about Islamic extremism, but the balance of opinion in predominantly Muslim countries is that Islam is playing a greater role in politics – and most welcome that development. Turkey is a clear exception; the public there is divided about whether a greater role for Islam in the political life of that country is desirable.

In non-Muslim countries, fears of Islamic extremism are closely associated with worries about Muslim minorities. Western publics believe that Muslims in their countries want to remain distinct from society, rather than adopt their nation's customs and way of life. Moreover, there is a widespread perception in countries with significant Muslim minorities, including the U.S., that resident Muslims have a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity. For the most part, this development is viewed negatively, particularly in Western Europe. In France, Germany and the Netherlands, those who see a growing sense of Islamic identity among resident Muslims overwhelmingly say this is a bad thing.

The latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted among more than 17,000 people in 17 countries this spring, finds that while many Muslims believe that radical Islam poses a threat, there are differing opinions as to its causes. Sizable minorities in most predominantly Muslim countries point to poverty, joblessness and a lack of education, but pluralities in Jordan and Lebanon cite U.S. policies as the most important cause of Islamic extremism.

The polling also finds that in most majority-Muslim countries surveyed, support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has declined significantly. In Turkey, Morocco and Indonesia, 15% or fewer now say such actions are justifiable. In Pakistan, only one-in-four now take that view (25%), a sharp drop from 41% in March 2004. In Lebanon, 39% now regard acts of terrorism as often or sometimes justified, again a sharp drop from the 73% who shared that view in 2002. A notable exception to this trend is Jordan, where a majority (57%) now says suicide bombings and other violent actions are justifiable in defense of Islam.

Despite the headline, these numbers are very revealing. The British estimate for its terrorism supporting Muslim minority is 1%, or a "mere" 16,000 out of 1.6 million British Muslims. But if we take the lowest number of terrorism supporters, (15% in Morocco) and averaged it with the highest number, (57% in Jordan) then we have a possible 36% average for Muslim support for terrorism. 36% of 1.6 million in Britain comes to 576,000 potential terrorism supporters. In America we don't actually know how many Muslims are living here, but if we take Daniel Pipes' estimate of 2.6 million and average it with the CAIR estimate of 7 million, we get 4.8 million. If, of these, 36% support terrorism, then we have 1,728,000 Muslims living in the US who potentially support terrorism.

When it comes to suicide bombings in Iraq, however, Muslims in the surveyed countries are divided. Nearly half of Muslims in Lebanon and Jordan, and 56% in Morocco, say suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable. However, substantial majorities in Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia take the opposite view.

Read it all.

West: Facing hard facts

Diana West writes in the Washington Times, with thanks to Andrew Bostom.

Only one faith on earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it — without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same — the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that. To live among the believers — the multiculturalists — is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place, unrepulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal.

I'm not talking about our soldiers, policemen, rescue workers and, now, even train conductors who bravely and steadfastly risk their lives for civilization abroad and at home. I'm instead thinking about who we are as a society at this somewhat advanced stage of war. It is a strange, tentative civilization we have become, with leaders who strut their promises of "no surrender" even as they flinch at identifying the foe. Four years past September 11, we continue to shadow-box "terror," even as we go on about "an ideology of hate." It's a script that smacks of sci-fi fantasy more than realpolitik. But our grim reality is no summer blockbuster, and there's no special-effects-enhanced plot twist that is going to thwart "terror" or "hate" in the London Underground, any more than it did on the roof of the World Trade Center. Or in the Bali nightclub. Or on the first day of school in Beslan. Or in any disco, city bus or shopping mall in Israel.

Body bags, burn masks and prosthetics are no better protections than make-believe. But these are our weapons, according to the powers that be. These, and an array of high-tech scopes and scanners designed to identify retinas and fingerprints, to detect explosives and metals — ultimately, I presume, as we whisk through the automatic supermarket door. How strange, though, that even as we devise new ways to see inside ourselves to our most elemental components, we also prevent ourselves from looking full face at the danger to our way of life posed by Islam.

Notice I didn't say "Islamists." Or "Islamofascists." Or "fundamentalist extremists." I've tried out such terms in the past, but I've come to find them artificial and confusing, and maybe purposefully so, because in their imprecision I think they allow us all to give a wide berth to a great problem: the gross incompatibility of Islam — the religious force that shrinks freedom even as it "moderately" enables, or "extremistly" advances jihad — with the West. Am I right? Who's to say? The very topic of Islamization — for that is what is at hand, and very soon in Europe — is verboten...

Read it all.

New Duranty Times: Sharia? What Sharia?

In this "Q&A: Islam and Europe" (thanks to Anthony), the New York Times discusses "the differences between conservative Islamic values and Europe's traditionally secular liberalism" and gets expert opinions from people like Mark LeVine.

No hint whatsoever that there might be any desire by any Muslims in Europe to obliterate Europe's traditionally secular liberalism. The word "Sharia," in any spelling, does not appear in the piece.

Why do we call the New York Times the New Duranty Times? See here.

BBC: Terrorists? What terrorists?

From "BBC language that Labour loves to hear," in The Telegraph, with thanks to all who sent this in:

When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When he is on the BBC, of course. Where - according to the corporation's editorial guidelines - "the word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than aid to understanding". Bomber, attacker, insurgent, militant - all are fine by the Beeb because they carry no "emotional or value judgments". And heaven forbid anyone get emotional about the deaths of at least 52 people in the London bombings last week.

Within hours of the explosions, a memo was sent to senior editors on the main BBC news programmes from Helen Boaden, head of news. While she was aware "we are dancing on the head of a pin", the BBC was very worried about offending its World Service audience, she said.

BBC output was not to describe the killers of more than 50 in London as "terrorists" although - nonsensically - they could refer to the bombings as "terror attacks". And while the guidelines generously concede that non-BBC should be allowed to use the "t" word, BBC online was not even content with that and excised it from its report of Tony Blair's statement to the Commons.

UN effectively blames West for London bombings

This Reuters story (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist) is entitled, "UN seeks to bolster ties between West and Islam." Now look at how they're going to do it. How many of those do you think apply to the West, and how many to the Islamic world?

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations, acting after deadly suicide bombings apparently driven by Muslim extremism hit London, launched an initiative on Thursday to build new bridges between the West and Islam.

The campaign's aim was to "bridge divides and overcome prejudice, misconceptions, misperceptions, and polarization which potentially threaten world peace," U.N. chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

"Prejudice, misconceptions, misperceptions, and polarization." Looks to me as if the UN has swallowed the Saidist idea that the West creates and demonizes the "Other" in the Islamic world.

To drag out this little chestnut of propaganda and suggest that it caused the London bombings is nothing short of grotesque.

Recent events had "heightened the sense of a widening gap and lack of mutual understanding between Islamic and Western societies -- an environment that has been exploited and exacerbated by extremists in all societies," he said.

Extremists in all societies, eh? What British extremists drove these poor jihadists around the bend? No stories of mistreatment have surfaced. They were living comfortable middle class lives.

Lack of understanding? I'll agree with you on that one, Kofi. I think the West needs a much better understanding than it currently has of Islamic jihad. Call me, Kofi, and I'll send you a copy of my forthcoming book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

New Duranty Times: Lives of Three Men Offer Little to Explain Attacks

Why do we call the New York Times the New Duranty Times? Walter Duranty was the Times reporter who went to Stalin's Ukraine and somehow didn't notice the famine Stalin engineered. The Times nowadays is having a hard time noticing a little thing called the global jihad -- witness the ridiculous head-scratching in this article (thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald):

LEEDS, England, July 13 - In the gritty, working-class suburbs of Leeds, Shahzad Tanweer, 22, was the fun-loving, rich kid of the neighborhood, the son of a savvy, Mercedes-driving shop owner.

First puzzle for the Times: these guys weren't poor. But doesn't poverty breed terrorism? After all, look at all those Haitian suicide bombers!

Hasib Hussain, 18, who lived nearby, was the impressionable one, a charming young man who had been drifting into a reckless teenage life until religion set him straight.

Yeah, good thing religion saved him from a reckless life. He could be sitting in some bar right now, nursing his sixth beer and muttering about The Man instead of enjoying his 72 virgins, awarded for the wanton murder of London infidels. "Set him straight." You just can't parody this stuff.

And Mohamed Sadique Khan, 30, was the grown-up one, with a wife and a baby daughter at home.

Another puzzle for the Times. How could he leave them behind? They can't fathom an imperative that values death more than life, despite the plain words of the jihadists.

The three men used to work out together at the Hardy Street mosque in Beeston, the Leeds neighborhood that two of the suspects called home.

They used to work out! They were regular guys!

As the identities of these suicide bombing suspects slowly emerged Wednesday behind a thicket of disbelief, the question that nobody in these neighborhoods could answer was this: What kind of radical force threw the three men together, with another bomber, to commit such a heinous crime against their country, the one they rooted for in soccer matches, and their people?

Um, I think that radical force is called Islamic jihad.

"It still hasn't sunk in yet that these people could have perpetrated something like this and actually came from our community," said Hanif Malik, spokesman for the Hamara Community Services Center in Beeston. "The tensions in this town are not based on religion, but on economics and culture."

Might be time to revise that assessment.

Bradford, a community nearby, had riots a few years ago, as did Leeds, though on a smaller scale, and tensions between whites and South Asians often run high in the Holbeck and Beeston neighborhoods, home to many of Leeds' Muslims, residents said.

Here the Times is trying desperately to turn this into a racial matter, which is something they understand.

Many local businesses are owned by people of South Asian origin, a source of resentment among many whites. Last year a white teenage boy was stabbed to death by a group of South Asian teenagers, and the hard feelings have deepened since then.

Some whites make no attempts to hide their disaffection, and say relations are only likely to worsen. "Make them all go back," said David Swaine, 23, of Beeston.

In many ways, the two youngest suicide bombing suspects, Mr. Tanweer, 22, and Mr. Hussain, 18, were British to the core, shaped by their diverse, rough neighborhoods, where flashy cars, petty teenage battles and designer clothes jostle with the Muslim values of work, family and religion. But in the last year or two, friends said, they had noted a turn toward Muslim piety in each man; nothing shocking or obnoxious, just something plain to see.

Hmmm. Here's where they might try looking for that elusive "radical force." But of course they can't admit it to themselves.

Mr. Tanweer, a university-educated cricket fanatic who also excelled in soccer and whose father ran a successful fish and chips shop, had taken to praying five times a day, something his relatives did not do, and attending a number of mosques regularly, acquaintances said. He even went to Pakistan last year to visit relatives and study religion, and some media reports said he visited Afghanistan on the same trip.

"He went to Pakistan," said a friend who works for a local greengrocer in Beeston and asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals. "But a lot of people go to Pakistan. So? The lads used to tease him that he was going there to get married. I think he went for six weeks or something."

Forensic evidence indicates Mr. Tanweer was on the subway train at Aldgate.

"The family is shattered," said Bashir Ahmed, 65, Mr. Tanweer's uncle, who walked toward Mr. Tanweer's house, which was roped off by police tape. Mr. Tanweer "loved his country," he said. "He loved this community. I thought his only interest was cricket. He was not especially religious. Our family does not have a future in this community now."

He was not especially religious? That contradicts many other statements in this and other reports.

Mr. Hussain, an average student who graduated from Matthew Murray Vocational School in 2003 and was attending Thomas Danby College, the equivalent of the last two years of high school. He had also begun to shake off Western habits, even more abruptly than his friend Mr. Tanweer. A tall, shy teenager, Mr. Hussain, who lived in Holbeck, had taken up with a rough Pakistani crowd in his high school years, the kind of young people who brawled with white kids over girls and perceived slights. Classmates said he was relatively docile, until provoked, then he could become violent.

Then, about 18 months ago, he went on the hajj to Saudi Arabia, neighbors said, and returned a changed person, less aggressive and keenly interested in religion. He began going to the mosque. Sometimes, he even wore flowing baggy Pakistani pants and shirt. He, too, went to Pakistan, the BBC reported. The adults around him, who had been concerned that he was veering out of control, seemed pleased at the change, neighbors said....

"Less aggressive" is important to note. This is not something that necessarily springs from a violent impulse. It can come from a deep piety, although in such cases of course the two are closely intertwined.

In some ways, the men, particularly the youngest ones, fit neatly into the stereotype of a suicide bomber: They are the right age. They grew up in neighborhoods where no jobs, or bad jobs, are just as common as steady jobs. They lived on blocks where people from all over the world - from Pakistan to Kosovo, Jamaica to Uganda - do not so much live together as collide with one another or, at best, keep a separate peace.

This "stereotype" has been disproven by study after study, as we have noted here many times.

Small-time drug dealing and drug use have increased in Beeston, residents say.

But the men, particularly Mr. Tanweer, are also sharply at odds with common notions about the profile of a suicide bomber. While not rich, his family is certainly not destitute. Mr. Tanweer's father, a successful local businessman who moved to Britain in the 1960's, is an immigrant success story.

Common, but erroneous.

Mr. Tanweer lived in a large house and drove his father's red Mercedes on occasion. He wore brand-name clothes, worked out at a gym and took classes in the martial arts. He studied sports science at Leeds Metropolitan University, and when he could, he worked at his father's fish and chips shop for extra money.

Everyone who knew him described him as infinitely likable. Terrorism seemed the farthest thing from his mind, his friends said. "He was a good lad, so down-to-earth," said a friend who played cricket with him the day before the bombing. Although the neighborhood is poor, people of South Asian origin own most of the businesses. There is a sense, at least among these families, that they were moving up the ladder, rather than down it.

They said this sort of thing about Hitler. Being likable doesn't mean anything about whether or not you will be violent.

Mr. Hussain's father works in a factory. His son finished vocational school. It was clear that the teenage dangers here - gangs, drugs and other troublemaking - posed more of a threat than extremist ideologies.

Many in the neighborhood theorize that the men must have been "brainwashed," as Adrian Healy, a neighbor, put it. "That may sound extreme," he added. "But then so is blowing people up."

Brainwashed by what? You won't find out from the New Duranty Times.

Muslim leaders denounce some violence

From the Too Little, Too Late Department (why? Read on to the end) via the Dallas Morning News, with thanks to dwntmpo. Here is the statement in full.

Days before the London bombings, many of the Muslim world's top religious leaders declared that much of the violence committed in Islam's name is not spiritually legitimate.

More than 150 Muslim imams and scholars met in Jordan, called by King
Abdullah II. The unprecedented statement they released could drain some of the faith-based power behind wars between Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere, some experts say. The impact on attacks like the ones against non-Muslim nations - the U.S., Spain and England, among others - are less obvious. It does not disavow all acts of violence.

The uniqueness of the Jordan announcement lies in the broad base of its support.

Imagine the pope, Billy Graham, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention, Pat Robertson and 150 other assorted Christian preachers and educators getting together - and then hammering out a communiqué.

The Jordan statement, issued on July 6 with little notice outside the Muslim world, said Muslim religious rulings, called fatwas, have no religious validity unless issued by people who have the appropriate, defined training or authority. And it says that all major branches of Islam - including Sunni, Shiite (also known as Shia) and Sufi - are essentially valid. (Sunni and Shiite Muslims are often violently at odds in the Middle East, and their agreement on the Jordan statement is one of the things that makes it remarkable.)

Terrorist justifications

By implication, both assertions reject the religious justifications often offered by Islamic terrorists, who proclaim fatwas to condemn other Muslims as heretics, or "apostates." Islamic law says that Muslims, as a general rule, should not attack other Muslims. But terrorists say that it's a religious duty to attack apostates.

And to the extent that faith is used to recruit fighters, inspire attacks and raise money, the document strikes directly at that support.

Osama bin Laden declared a fatwa to justify the attacks on Americans, though he doesn't have the religious credentials called for in the Jordan statement. Various groups in Iraq have issued their own fatwas to justify killing Iraqis who cooperate with the American-backed government - fatwas that under the Jordan agreement are clearly invalid. Fear of such declarations from local self-styled imams - and the violence that could follow - stifles some moderate Muslims in many countries, experts say.

Nobody believes that Mr. bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or other Islamist terrorists will read the statement, slap their foreheads and exclaim, "How could I have been so wrong?" And nobody is suggesting that any effect of the document will be quickly apparent.

But some experts say that the statement and the attention it is getting in the Muslim world may deter less hard-line Muslims who are considering joining terrorists - or who stand in quiet sympathy when terrorists strike.

"It is not fully appreciated how vulnerable movements such as al-Qaeda are to criticisms concerning their doctrinal propriety," said Stephen Ulph, the London-based editor of the online journal Terrorism Focus and analyst of Islamic affairs for Jane's Information Group.

Muslim world buzzing

All but ignored so far by Western media, the conference has been discussed on several Arab and Muslim Web sites. Reports about it have appeared on the Kuwait and Jordanian official news services, and several Middle East TV and radio networks, including al-Jazeera.

"It happens one step at a time," said Joseph Lombard, an American-born
adviser to King Abdullah, who helped organize the conference. "With this, there will be one person somewhere who will get a doubt in his mind and won't do something he otherwise would have done. Then there will be five people and 100 people and so on."

Supporters of the Jordan conference and statement include:

.Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq. Shiite Muslims form the majority in that country and control the U.S.-supported government.

.Grand Imam Sheik Al Azhar Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi and Grand Mufti Ali Jumaa, both highly respected Sunni leaders in Egypt.

.Sheik Yusuf Al Qaradawi, the controversial Egyptian-born cleric who has issued a fatwa declaring the legitimacy of Hamas attacks on Israel.

.The Islamic Fiqh Academy of Saudi Arabia, that nation's highest religious body; and the Grand Council for Religious Affairs of Turkey, that nation's top religious body.

Two Americans participated: Brooklyn-based Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Ingrid Mattson, an Islamic studies professor at Hartford Seminary.

Attacks on Muslims

The conference statement most clearly applies to Muslim-on-Muslim violence. During 14 centuries of Muslim history, dozens of wars and battles have been religiously justified by one side declaring the other excommunicated, or takfir.

But the Jordan document says that those who follow any of eight
long-standing schools of Islamic jurisprudence cannot be declared outside the faith.

The communiqué's application to violence committed against non-Muslims is less clear...

Survey of Human rights violations perpetrated against Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Jammu & Kashmir

The Hindu American Foundation has released its first annual survey of Hindu human rights (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

TAMPA, FL: The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) released today its first annual report on the status of Hindu human rights in Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Entitled “Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Kashmir: A survey of Human Rights 2004”, the report was prepared by HAF and compiles media coverage and first-hand accounts of human rights violations perpetrated against Hindus because of their religious identity. The 71-page report was delivered prior to its release to the co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), who endorsed the report.

“The human rights violations that are occurring against Hindus must no longer be ignored without reprobation,” said Rep. Ros-Lehtinen after reviewing the HAF report. “Hindus have a history of being peaceful, pluralistic and understanding of other faiths and peoples, yet minority Hindus have endured decades of pain and suffering without the attention of the world.”

The human rights of Hindu citizens are consistently violated in three regions where Hindus constitute a minority: Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Jammu & Kashmir.

PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BANGLADESH

Over 400 documented attacks have taken place on Bangladeshi Hindus between January and November 2004.

These attacks include the day to day acts of murder, rape, kidnapping, temple destruction, and physical intimidation.

Hindus are labeled as “enemies” of Bangladesh. The Enemy Property Order II of 1965, under which property belonging to Hindus was identified as enemy property, was renamed as Vested Property Act in 1972, and under which, the Government of Bangladesh vested itself with alleged enemy properties. Still in force, this Order of the President and the Enemy \ Vested Property Act has not been subjected to any judicial review.

Hindus, who comprised nearly 30% of Bangladesh’s population in 1947, now constitute less than 10% of the population.

By 1991, 20 million Hindus were unaccounted or “missing” according to expected population trends.

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF PAKISTAN

Hindus, who constituted between 15% and 24% of Pakistan’s population in 1947, now comprise less than 1.6% of the population.

Nearly 2 million people, many of them Hindus, are held as slaves in “bonded labor” in southern Pakistan.

Kidnapping of vulnerable Hindus is a well-established multi-million dollar industry.

Pakistan officially discriminates against non-Muslims through a variety of laws and strictures. Discriminatory laws include the “anti-blasphemy law” under which anyone who is accused of criticizing the Prophet Muhammad is imprisoned without trial for long periods of time, and mandatory religious identification in passports. Specific discriminatory laws are the Hudood Ordinance of 1979 (offence of Zina, offence of Qazaf, execution of punishment of whipping ordinance), the Qanoon-i-Shahadat Order of 1984 and Qisas & Diyat Ordinance (Section 306 C) of 1991.

JAMMU & KASHMIR

Over 300,000 Kashmiri Hindus have been forced to leave due to ethnic cleansing abetted by Kashmiri Muslims.

These 300,000 Hindus are refugees in their own country, sheltered in temporary camps near Delhi and elsewhere.

More than 3,000 Hindu civilians have been killed, and thousands more Hindu police and army personnel have succumbed to terrorist violence.
There are virtually no Hindus left in the Kashmir Valley; they have all been driven out...

UK turns down French proposal on surveillance of mosques

From IRNA, with thanks to Anthony:

British Home Secretary Charles Clarke has poured cold water over a French proposal to control all mosques in EU in the aftermath of last week's terror attacks in London.

Clarke told a press conference after the extraordinary session of the EU Justice and Home Affairs ministerial Council in Brussels Wednesday evening that French interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy had made the proposal in the meeting.

"He (Sarkozy) has to think what is best for the security in France.

From my part, in the UK, we are considering the position of some of the preachers in certain circumstances because it is necessary to do so," said Clarke.

"But I think that to move to an overall position that says surveillance is the right way is a big step that we will need to consider very carefully."

"It is important that in everything we do we work with the legitimate mainstream Muslim community," stressed the British Home Secretary.

Clarke said the Muslim community in Britain are committed to working very strongly to protect the democratic system.

I sure hope he's right about that.

"Sassy" suicide bombers

Today's Muslims aren't prepared to ignore injustice. So says Dilpazier Aslam in "We rock the boat," a piece published in the Guardian (thanks to Scott Burgess, who blogs superbly on this here).

The Guardian is hanging with an interesting crowd these days. Aslam apparently also writes for the Hizb-ut-Tahrir pro-Sharia, pro-caliphate site Khilafah.com. In this piece, he says the British shouldn't be shocked by the bombings: they're all their fault:

If I'm asked about 7/7, I - a Yorkshire lad, born and bred - will respond first by giving an out-clause to being labelled a terrorist lover. I think what happened in London was a sad day and not the way to express your political anger.

Then there's the "but". If, as police announced yesterday, four men (at least three from Yorkshire) blew themselves up in the name of Islam, then please let us do ourselves a favour and not act shocked.

Shocked would be to imply that we were unaware of the imminent danger, when in fact Sir John Stevens, the then Metropolitan police commissioner, warned us last year that an attack was inevitable.

Shocked would be to suggest we didn't appreciate that when Falluja was
flattened, the people under it were dead but not forgotten - long after we had moved on to reading more interesting headlines about the Olympics. It is not the done thing to make such comparisons, but Muslims on the street do. Some 2,749 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. To discover the cost of "liberating" Iraqis you need to multiply that figure by eight, and still you will fall short of the estimated minimum of 22,787 civilian Iraqi casualties to date. But it's not cool to say this, now that London's skyline has also has plumed grey.

Shocked would also be to suggest that the bombings happened through no
responsibility of our own. OK, the streets of London were filled with
anti-war marchers, so why punish the average Londoner? But the argument that this was an essentially US-led war does not pass muster. In the Muslim world, the pond that divides Britain and America is a shallow one. And the same cry - why punish us? - is often heard from Iraqi mothers as the "collateral damage" increases daily.

Shocked would be to say that we don't understand how, in the green hills of Yorkshire, a group of men given all the liberties they could have wished for could do this.

The Muslim community is no monolithic whole. Yet there are some common
features. Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the
don't-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We're much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks or not.

Consider the British boat rocked, you sassy suicide bombers.

Prince Charles: "Some may think this cause is Islam. It is anything but. It is a perversion of traditional Islam"

It is not up to Prince Charles or any other non-Muslim to say what "true" Islam is. But I still don't see that anything good can come out of ignoring that the jihad terrorists are motivated by the Qur'an and Sunnah -- and Sir Iqbal's remarks below are particularly un-reassuring. Still, I don't see any problem with calling on Muslims to "root out extremist preachers" or trying to "tackle the evils within the Muslim community," if it is undertaken honestly and thoroughly. "Root out extremists, prince urges," from the BBC, with thanks to Anthony:

Prince Charles has urged "every true Muslim" to root out extremist preachers in the wake of the London bomb attacks.

An "evil influence" appeared to have been brought to bear on the suspected bombers, whose "atrocities" must be condemned, he told the Daily Mirror.

Others must resist the temptation to condemn the Muslim community for the actions of an evil minority, he added.

Tony Blair has said talks will start on new laws to make it easier to deport people trying to "incite hatred".

Muslim leaders say they are "shocked" British Muslims may have been behind last Thursday's attacks.

'No link to faith'

"Some may think this cause is Islam. It is anything but. It is a perversion of traditional Islam," Prince Charles said.

The prince said Muslim leaders were right to point out the attacks had no link to "true faith".

"Those who claim to have murdered in the name of Islam have no care for the lives they have so brutally destroyed.

"Offended by the good relations between faiths and cultures, the extremists seek to break up the communities that make up our modern, multi-cultural society," the prince wrote.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie said Islam could never justify the killings.

He said Britain's tradition of welcoming new communities had to be upheld to prevent the bombers achieving their aim of dividing the community.

Now that's counterintuitive, as well as false. The bombers don't want to divide the community. They want to subjugate it under Islamic law. And to import more immigrants at this point, instead of becoming more careful about the values of those who are brought in, would seem to me to be foolish.

On Tuesday, the Muslim Council of Britain's secretary general, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, said: "Nothing in Islam can ever justify the evil actions of the bombers.

"They happen to be Muslims and it's not that Islam is the problem, it is those individuals, it is the criminality that is there," he said.

This is disingenuous on two counts. Sir Iqbal obviously has not proven to the jihadists' satisfaction that "nothing in Islam" can justify what they're doing. He needs to do so now more than ever, if he can. And it isn't that they "happen to be Muslims" who committed murder. They did the bombing because they were Muslims -- by the account of all the groups that claimed credit, they did it working from Islamic principles to advance the aims of the jihad as they see them. Let Sir Iqbal address that honestly, and he will have earned the trust of all Britons. But at this point they should receive him with extreme reserve.

On Wednesday, Mr Blair met Muslim MPs to discuss how to tackle "this evil within the Muslim community".

"In the end, this can only be taken on and defeated by the community itself," he said.

Combined with strong law-enforcement measures by British authorities.

Oh -- this is why they call them moonbats

A Jihad Watch reader pointed out to me today that the silly anti-"Islamophobia" site that criticized me for being unsophisticated has taken exception to my post here, in which I note the New York Times' January 2005 characterization of the now-disbanded Al-Muhajiroun as "Britain's largest Muslim group."

Now, this "Islamophobia" site generally isn't worth replying to: the writer there seldom if ever presents any evidence for his positions, and contents himself with presenting things that people like me and Daniel Pipes have written as if they were self-evidently false. So I am not posting this to refute him -- there's no there there, as Gertrude Stein might say -- but to point out his indulging in a particularly common type of smear.

Here is his post:

Britain's biggest Muslim group were Al-Qaida admirers – Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer has words of advice for Tony Blair: "I'm sure many Muslims in Britain are indeed decent and law-abiding. But I see no indication that Blair has considered the implications of the New York Times' January 2005 assertion that the now-disbanded jihadist group Al-Muhajiroun was Britain's largest Muslim group."

Perhaps that is because Blair's advisers, unlike this self-styled expert on jihad and Islamic terrorism, are not so gobsmackingly ignorant as to believe that Omar Bakri's tiny band of Al-Qaida admirers was ever anything of the sort.

The link to the Times (which you can find above) is not in his piece. This indicates how gobsmackingly ignorant he must take his readership to be, in trying to pass off something the New York Times said as if it popped out of my own head.

Is the New York Times gobsmackingly ignorant? I don't think so -- not about simple matters of fact like that. I take issue with their analyses, as any regular reader of this site well knows, and with their selective portrayals of many incidents, but I find it striking how matter-of-factly they present this assertion about Al-Muhajiroun. It is, of course, inconceivable that the Times cooked this up out of "Islamophobia" or "ignorance."

This kind of sleight-of-hand is common. When I repeated on an MSNBC TV show Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani's 1999 assertion that 80% of American mosques were controlled by extremists, CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper, who was on the show with me, dismissed this as a fabrication of "hatemongers" like me. Never mind that I am not a hatemonger, and more importantly, that I did not originate the figure. Hooper wanted to deflect attention away from Kabbani's statement, and he largely succeeded, although I did get a chance to emphasize the real origin of the assertion.

In the same way, this "Islamophobia" character evidently hopes that no one will notice that it was not I, but the Times, that said this -- and tries to use it as an example of my "Islamophobia" in the process. He is constructing an edifice without a first floor. It is useful, I think, to note such flights from reality (moonward flights, no doubt) on the part of our Politically Correct friends, and not to let them get away with it.

A call for realism is in order

A call to reject intellectual dhimmitude, from Herb London's superb FrontPage piece, "Fighting a War Against Fanatics" (thanks to Lawrence Auster):

A call for realism is in order. We can no longer tolerate sermons from mosques that justify slaughter or martyrdom. We can no longer allow fanatics to live in our nation or any civilized nation where they plan attacks or marshal support for attacks. We can no longer simply assume that through Herculean effort radical Muslims will embrace the essential creed of our civilization. We can no longer allow our Constitution to be used against Americans. Freedom of religion is not freedom to promote carnage. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

Blair: "This is a small group of extremists"

"Blair shocked 'bombers' were British," from CNN (which did indeed put the sneer quotes around "bombers"), with thanks to Anthony:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair has expressed his shock that the four men believed to have carried out last week's deadly terrorist attacks on London's transit system were British nationals....

...because he refuses to acknowledge that the ideology that fuels suicide bombing could possibly be taught in British mosques.

"This is a small group of extremists. Not one who can be ignored, but neither should it define Muslims in Britain who are overwhelmingly law-abiding, decent members of our society," he said Wednesday....

I'm sure many Muslims in Britain are indeed decent and law-abiding. But I see no indication that Blair has considered the implications of the New York Times' January 2005 assertion that the now-disbanded jihadist group Al-Muhajiroun was Britain's largest Muslim group.

He told the Commons the government had a four-point plan, in which it would:

• Begin the process of consultation on planned counter-terrorism legislation within the next couple of weeks, with a priority being measures to combat the incitement and instigation of terrorism.

• Look urgently at how to strengthen the process for excluding from the UK those who incite hatred, and make it easier to deport such people.

• Start discussions immediately with Muslim leaders on combating "the perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of Islam" which lay behind the attacks.

• Talk to other nations on how to mobilize the "moderate and true voice of Islam."

Moderate Muslims haven't managed to combat "the perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of Islam" or mobilize the "moderate and true voice of Islam" since 9/11. Why not, Mr. Blair? And why will they start now?

Political Islam in the heart of secular Europe

Maryam Namazie speaks the truth fearless at the International Humanist and Ethical Union Congress in Paris on July 6, at a session entitled "Women’s rights in religious and secular societies." From Scoop, with thanks to Joe:

· Sweet 16 year old Atefeh Rajabi was publicly hanged in the city centre in Neka in Iran on 15 August 2004 for "acts incompatible with chastity".

· In April this year, Amina was publicly stoned to death in Argu district, Afghanistan after being accused of adultery by her husband.

· This month, physicians have been beaten for treating female patients and women have been brutally attacked for not being veiled in Basra, Iraq.

The list is endless.

These examples are only some of the most visible and heinous aspects of the situation of women and girls living in Islam-stricken societies and under Islamic laws - burqa-clad and veiled, bound and gagged, and without rights.

It is truly the outrage of the 21st century.

But it is no longer only in places like Neka, Argu, or Basra where political Islam and religious rule are wreaking havoc but also in the very heart of the secular west and Europe albeit in different and more subtle ways but outrageous nonetheless.

Here the Islamists are ‘more civilised’.

They demand the ‘right’ to veil for women and children in France when in the Middle East they impose compulsory veiling by throwing acid in the faces of those who refuse and resist. In Britain, they cry racism and Islamophobia against anyone who speaks out against Islam and its political movement, whilst in Iran and its likes they hang ‘apostates’ and ‘Kafirs’ from trees and cranes. Here, they demand the prosecution of those who ‘incite religious hatred’ when everywhere it is they themselves who incite hatred and violence than can be articulated or imagined. Here in the EU, they call for tolerance and respect of their beliefs, when it is they who have issued fatwas and death threats against anyone who they deem disrespectful and intolerable. Here, they call for ‘equal’ rights demanding a Sharia court for ‘Muslim minorities’ in Canada and Britain whilst it is their very Sharia courts that have legalised Islamic injustice and barbarity in the Middle East.

Steadily, political Islam, using rights language, and cries of racism and Islamophobia - and now incitement to religious hatred in order to silence any opposition and criticism - is gaining ground and hacking away at secularism in Europe even though criticism or even 'phobias' of ideologies, religions, cultures or political movements are not racism.

Read it all. I disagree with the recommendations about driving religion out of society, but there is some useful material here.

Fitzgerald: A simple test needs to be performed

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald proposes a means to evaluate the religious hatred law that yesterday passed in the British House of Commons:

A simple test needs to be performed. Someone should compile relevant passages from Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira -- the ones that describe non-Muslims being killed (as the Banu Qurayza, or the Jewish tribe in the Khaybar oasis), as well as Muhammad's least attractive deeds, such as his evident pleasure when someone assassinated, to curry favor with him, the mocking Asma bint Marwan, or his sexual intercourse with nine-year-old bride Aisha, or quite a few other things that one can find proudly set out in Sira and Hadith, or in the biographies, such as that by Sir Wiliam Muir, or Tor Andrae, or Arthur Jeffery, not to mention those by worshipful Muslims.

These passages then should be read aloud in the House of Lords. One should then inquire if the reading aloud, or other distribution of these passages, together with appropriate commentary, such as "This is what Islam teaches" or "Islam commands that Muslims bear implacable hatred toward non-Muslims" or some such, and then ask representatives of the British government if these passages would be considered actionable under the proposed new legislation.

Ask if a rabbi, or a minister, or a former Muslim, who simply passed around the passages, without any commentary, would be prosecuted under the new law.

Then ask what would happen if a Muslim, an imam in a khutba, were to recite, or refer to, any of these passages. Would he be prosecuted under the new law?

One wishes to know, in advance, before such a law is passed. But of course we know already: Home Office Minister Paul Goggins has “reiterated that what the bill would do is criminalise incitement to religious hatred against individuals."

So it would be licit to quote Qur'an 9:29 about "smiting the Unbeliever" as long as no particular individual is meant, and one could tell one's followers that the tree in that Hadith told Muslims to come and kill the Jews hiding behind it, and one could urge Muslims not to take friends "among the Jews and Christians, who are friends only to each other" (Qur’an 5:51) and in general, to hate the Christians and Jews (but let them live), but to kill right off the bat any other group (Hindus and Sikhs).

Just as long as the Muslims do not refer specifically to nice Mr. Rosenbaum the grocer who lives at 88 Laburnum Lane, or those uppity college boys, the twins Vijay and Vikram who are proudly Hindu, or Mrs. Singh whose husband is on the police force and just last week dared to arrest one of the brothers -- just as long as no "individuals" have hate directed at them, and the hate is directed at Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, and the like, it's okay. Got that?

But if anyone should quote the same verses by way of suggesting that Islam is a religion of hate, that would be hateful, very hateful. And not to be allowed.

What if instead of the odious Sir Bob Geldof, there were someone cleverly genuine, genuinely clever -- Rowan Atkinson, or Stephen Frear, let's say, who would organize a Free Speech Aid Comedy-In, right in the Albert Hall, or some other welcoming place. And it would have Steve Martin and Billy Crystal and John Stewart and Jay Leno and Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and Jerry Seinfeld, and another few dozen, on stage, making jokes all about Free Speech, and what happens when first this person says something, and then someone else recites the same thing, but in a different tone, with different facial expressions, and then, all over the hall, and easily picked up by the television cameras that will beam this show all over the non-Muslim world, there will be huge blow-ups of Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers, and Laurel (Stanlio) and Hardy (Olio) and Toto, and Alberto Sordi, and Peter Sellers and the rest of the Goon Show, and ditto with the cast of Alto Gradimento, and Fernandel, and Gracie Allen and George Burns, and Max Linder and Jackie Gleason and Art Carney and -- well, you can each contribute another few names.

And in a parody of the pretentious Live Aid Concerts (where all the billionaire celebrities would have to do is simply shut up, take out their own checkbooks, and write checks amounting to 5% of their total wealth, and they would raise far more than their concerts, and it would be far more fitting for these rich businessmen still parading as rebels and outlaws and wild in the street, when they are the spoiled children of the West -- oh, the same goes for Sir Bob Geldof, who is not in want of much these days), these comedians would make fun of the "Hate Law" legislation, by reading out selected passages from Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and then comparing them with well-known passages in Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh sacred texts -- and the differences would startle. And then they might take terms reciting still more passages, or trying in mock-puzzlement to figure out what a passage like Qur'an 9:29 could possibly mean, about fighting the Unbelievers until they “feel themselves subdued,” and what kind of deconstruction would lead us to understand that such a text required the application of post-colonial discourse with just a dash of the male gaze thrown in.

Mock them, mock them again and again. Laugh them out of Parliament, out of court, out of civilized society, these intolerable and sinister primitives with their monstrous beliefs.

UK: Religious hate law clears Commons

Over the last few days some have argued that the London attacks would stiffen the British spine; others predicted that the appeasement would accelerate. Now here is the first indication that Britain is choosing the dhimmi path. This is the first step toward the death of what was once a great civilization -- unless the House of Lords can save the day. From the BBC, with thanks to TS:

Government attempts to clamp down on expressions of religious hatred have cleared the Commons, but are set for a rocky ride in the House of Lords.

MPs gave the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill a third reading by 301 votes to 229, a majority of 72.

Shadow minister Dominic Grieve said the bill would not improve race relations.

But Minister Paul Goggins said: "I believe we need to take on the hate mongers, whether they are terrorists or whether they are extremists."

'Catastrophically flawed'

The bill would create a new offence of incitement to religious hatred and would apply to comments made in public or in the media, as well as through written material.

The plans, which have failed to make it through Parliament twice before, cover words or behaviour intended or likely to stir up religious hatred. Jews and Sikhs are already covered by race-hate laws.

They will now undergo scrutiny in the House of Lords.

Home Office Minister Mr Goggins described the bill as small, tightly focused with "not much room for manoeuvre", although he accepted it was "not the whole answer".

"But there is a gap and we seek to close that gap through this legislation," he said.

But shadow attorney general Mr Grieve warned that the legislation remained "catastrophically flawed".

Satanists protected?

It would not improve race relations and would prevent the lawful expression of differences of view, he said.

"If the government really wants to tackle this issue, it is going to have to get away from the promises made to various people of some equal playing field, accept that religion and race are different, start to look at the real nature of the problem and try to come up with some constructive solutions."

He also argued that a failure to define religion in the bill meant sects, including Satanists, Scientologists and believers in female genital mutilation would be protected.

He said the measures could struggle to get through the House of Lords....

Liberal Democrat spokesman Alistair Carmichael said he was "embarrassed" that elected representatives were sending a bill to the Lords "that is so bad at this stage" when so much time had been spent on it.

"It is a bill that's ill-conceived in its thinking, it will be dangerous in its execution and I'm confident we have not seen the last of it," he said.

ADDENDUM: When I saw Hugh's comment below I realized I had forgotten an essential part of this story. Some have suggested that the Qur'an itself, with its violent hatred of non-Muslims, would be banned by this new law. However, that is not the case. The Muslim Council of Britain, evidently fearing the same thing, laid aside its Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace dogma long enough to obtain a specific exception for the Qur'an -- a telling indication that they know full well what it really says. From The Muslim Weekly, with thanks to Nicolei:

A delegation of Muslim leaders and senior scholars met Home Office Minister Paul Goggins this week to seek clarification on the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill.

The delegation requested the meeting to seek clarification on a number of matters relating to the bill. Recent confusion regarding freedoms to deliver khutbahs and to recite and quote from the Qur'an and ahadith had raised concerns in the community that dawah and propagatory practices may be curtailed under the new legislation.

The Minister assured the Muslim community that there was nothing in the bill that would prevent scholars from delivering their sermons or from reciting from the Qu'ran and ahadith. The Minister reiterated that what the bill would do is criminalise incitement to religious hatred against individuals.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie stated that he was at eased that matters that had caused some obfuscation in the community had been cleared.

'We're happy that the Home Office has agreed to consult the faith communities when preparing the guidelines to the bill. Muslim scholars may proceed uninhibited in the performance of their duties', he said. The delegation made suggestions to the minister to [the effect] that it may be preferable to totally exempt the holy text, which will include the Qur'an and the hadiths from the remit of the Act.

The minister said, it would be difficult to exempt scriptures because there is likelihood that extreme groups like the BNP may use verses of the Qur'an to incite hatred against the Muslim community. Therefore, the very purpose of the Act would be defeated.

Ah. So whether or not the Qur'an incites religious hatred all depends on who is reading it.

Watson: Risk management: Islam, the West’s unmanageable liability

DC Watson on reality and dhimmi wishful thinking:

The warnings came for decades. The threats of Islamic terrorism in the West, once thought to be empty, have become all too real for everyone living in the civilized world.

While it is absolutely appropriate for Westerners to practice tolerance of immigrants, Islamic migrants, not all but many, bring with them a duty to participate in Muhammad’s fantasy of an Islamic planet earth. There is no sense in wasting time trying to “change the mindset” of this culture. They are a driven people. Driven by a backward, racist, sexist ideology, directed by the Qur’an -- with terror networks, Muslim advocacy organizations, imams, and clerics serving as reminders to Muslims who may happen to enjoy freedom that their central duty is to Allah, and Allah only.

Islamophobia, paranoia, and intolerance have nothing to do with it. The facts speak plainly for themselves. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, the Philippines, Sudan, or Nigeria have nothing to do with it either. These are merely feeble excuses, cloaked in an “American foreign policy” shroud. Excuses they use to further Muhammad’s plan. Not all Muslims appear to be so hell bent on this, but since they sit silently on the sidelines, deciphering the difference between them shouldn’t be our responsibility.

While it’s nice to be nice, why would anyone want to demonstrate kindness to those who would just as soon cut our throats to obtain what the Qur’an commands them to obtain?

While tolerance is a good thing, tolerance of the intolerant is suicidal. There comes a time when we must recognize a threat which, if not eliminated, could end our existence as we know it. That time would be right about now.

Let no soft spoken Muslim representative fool you into believing that Islamic law, known as the Shari’ah, is in any way compatible with democracy. It is not. Let no smiling Muslim representative fool you into believing that Islam is a religion based on tolerance. It is not. Muslim groups, especially ones under scrutiny for their questionable ties and methods, not only have no business operating here, but also have no business speaking to unassuming American school students about Islam.

American public school systems and their administrators have a difficult job to do, and they should be commended for their work. However, they should know that with regard to Islam, on many occasions, their guest speakers have been among those who wish to implement Islamic law in the United States.

While we argue amongst ourselves in Western society, those who follow the fundamentals of Islam wait to pounce. We cannot allow our political differences to destroy what so many have sacrificed for. Elected officials in the West are counting only votes. Some are so self-absorbed that they appear to be willing to sacrifice the safety of America and her allies to avoid being falsely labeled as bigots. They're putting everyone in jeopardy. While we’re spending countless billions in Iraq, we’re also spending billions here at home.

Due to Islam, not Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, or little old ladies in wheelchairs, but only Islam, the West is on alert and has been for a substantial amount of time. Ridiculously long waits at airports, bus stations, and train stations, stepped-up security at sporting and entertainment events, additional police patrols, you name it. This doesn’t come cheap, and we’re footing the bill. A bill with a sum reaching into several billion dollars per annum.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13384051,00.html
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13383485,00.html
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1188565,00.html
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/007047.php
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/007046.php
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/chi-050707cta,1,2130500.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
http://www2.kyw1060.com/news_story_detail.cfm?newsitemid=47644

It’s quite a shame because the billions of dollars spent babysitting this particular community would be much better spent on programs that would benefit American families.

This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. Frankly, I voted for representatives of both parties at various levels of government in the last election, and I carry no water for either side of the aisle. This is an American issue. Left or right is irrelevant. Islamic law would obliterate the freedoms that all of us are offered and enjoy.

Due to Muslim immigration policies, and the fact that these billions of dollars are now being spent monitoring them, we’ve become the world’s largest day care center. We can’t even get straight answers out of the organizations who claim to represent Muslims in the West. Although they’ve made clear their intentions of converting America to Islam, our government allows them to train our own law enforcement on “Muslim sensitivity.” Our media takes statements from them whenever a damaged Qur’an is found on the ground, or when a Muslim is arrested on terror charges. “Reality shows” utilize them as when they produce shows about Islam.

Meanwhile, nearly four years after 9/11, Islamic fanatics are still here and all over the world:

Evil across our planet

So the question for all of us, and for our governments, is this: what is it that Islam brings to the West that makes all of these expenditures and security risks worth it?

Pakistani author: Islam is the antidote to terrorism

Haider Zaman writes in Dawn, with thanks to Leslie:

SOME of the major problems besetting human society these days are terrorism, disrespect for the basic human rights and disregard for fair and impartial justice. Islam is the outstanding religion which provides the most appropriate and effective guidance for overcoming all the these problems.

In whatever way the term "terrorism" is defined and whatever its cause and motive may be, it does involve commission of excesses or crossing of limits, in one way or the other, as its main constituent element. The Holy Quran enjoins us to avoid the commission of excesses in several ways. One is when it expressly enjoins us not to commit excesses (5:87). The other is when it enjoins us not to disturb the balance (55:8). The balance is invariably disturbed through the commission of excesses. Therefore what the Quran emphasises by enjoining us not to disturb the balance is to avoid the
commission of all kinds of excesses including the acts of terrorism.

Secondly, the Quran expects the community of true believers i.e. those who follow its teachings in letter and in spirit, to be the people who are justly balanced (2:143). The people being justly balanced mean the people who follow the principle of golden mean, the people who are given to do justice to every one, in every matter everywhere. Such people have been further categorised as the people who enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong (9:71). Since the commission of excesses could be a wrong act by itself it cannot be said to have the sanction of the Quran whatever may be the motive behind it.

The Quran enjoins the prohibition of that which is wrong but it does not allow the removal of a wrong with another wrong. It specifically enjoins repulsion of evil with goodness (41:34), moderation as a way of life (31:19), doing of justice even to enemies (5:8) and kindness even to non-believers (60:8).

As regards the respect for the basic human rights, the most important of these is the right to equal treatment in certain matters and aspects of life. For example, our Constitution provides that all citizens shall be treated equally before the law and that there should be no discrimination on the basis of sex. But the Quran deals this issue in a more natural, realistic and broader sense when it says that all human beings are equal because they are born of the same male and female couple (49:13)...

Sometimes you just have to shake your head.

Saudi police arrest imitator of singer and male belly dancer

Sharia alert from the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

DUBAI - Saudi police arrested and were investigating two Saudi men, one who was imitating a well-known Emirates singer and the other who was disguised as a woman and dancing as a belly dancer.

Saudi newspaper Arab News reported Sunday the incident took place in the Saudi city of Qateef where a young man was imitating Emirates singer Abdullah Balkheer in his own private concert in a local amusement park.

It said a number of visitors reported the man to police who came to the park and found the man dancing. He was also wearing makeup so that he would look like the singer.

Police also arrested a belly dancer on stage who turned out to be a man in disguise wearing an abaya or black robe as worn by Saudi women. Those present were so convinced by his performance they thought he was a woman, the paper reported...

UK: Stop giving to charities that back jihad, says Muslim editor

From The Telegraph, with thanks to Anthony:

The editor of the world's leading Arab newspaper has launched a scathing attack on Muslims in Britain for turning a blind eye to terrorist fund-raising activities on their own doorstep.

Why can he say this and Blair can't?

Writing in the wake of Thursday's bombings, Tariq Al-Humayd, the editor-in-chief of London-based Al-Sharq Al Awsat (The Middle East), claimed that collections were frequently held in the capital's Arab areas for jihadi causes in the guise of charities.

In a strongly worded editorial, he said that those enjoying the freedom of life in Britain had a "responsibility" to scrutinise such collections carefully, and if necessary prevent them taking place.

"In London, we have seen, and are seeing, the money being collected in the streets, and the conventions under various titles, and everyone is inciting jihad in our Arab countries and cursing the land of unbelief in which they live," he wrote.

"When you express amazement [at this], they tell you that this is freedom. Has freedom no responsibility? No one answers."

Police in Pakistan Raid Catholic Bookstore

And no doubt found weapons caches similar to what you might find in an Iraqi mosque. After all, both religions inspire violence equally, don't they, and Pakistani Christians feel under siege as much as Iraqi Muslims, don't they?

From Zenit, with thanks to Daryl:

KARACHI, Pakistan, JULY 5, 2005 (Zenit) - Archdiocese of Karachi Protests. The Archdiocese of Karachi condemned the media accusations against a bookstore run by the Daughters of St. Paul.

The accusations in the press appeared to trigger a police raid of the bookstore in Saddar, near Karachi, on June 13. Police seized the store's merchandise on the pretext that it was blasphemous.

A shop salesman was held for questioning for more than 24 hours, while the women religious were intimidated, reported AsiaNews.it.

The raid came after an article appeared in a national Urdu daily and after accusations by Muslim extremists.

On June 12, the Nawa-I-Waqt newspaper denounced the sale in open markets by Christians of audio and video tapes. The article claimed that some CDs amounted to character assassination of Islamic religious figures.

The daily also reported the reactions of Muslim clerics, who issued an edict and called for the opening of a blasphemy case.

London: Calderoli, Answer Illegal Islam with Crusades

Now here's a non-dhimmi politician. From AGI, with thanks to Anthony:

(AGI) - Rome, Jul 8 - "Islam has to be declared illegal until Islamists are not prepared to renounce to those parts of their pseudo political and religious doctrine glorifying violence and oppression of other cultures and religions. Islam promotes hatred and we now, after having tried the way of love, have to answer with the crusades of western peoples who still remember the battle of Lepanto", wrote Roberto Calderoli, Northern League coordinator, in an editorial published today on the party's daily newspaper "La Padania". "Battles are not only won by armies but also by values, unfortunately we lost those values when we gave up our Christian roots, our identity, our culture. The West is losing its battle. A world condemning Oriana Fallaci and approving a judge who frees terrorists taking them for soldiers already lost the game. We are facing a real war where the enemy uses terrorism and we answer with flower power. Terrorism cannot be fought by offering peace but only by striking back the same way. Today we're crying for the victims of London attacks together with their families and we suffer with those wounded, but tomorrow we have to fight back using the same arms".

Calderoli also commented on the Italian presence in Iraq: "Tomorrow we'll have to react also with a progressive withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, the resources employed in today's peace mission could more usefully be employed to fight terrorism in our country. We have to get prepared to answer in the same language, maybe in this way we will win the war".

Holland: No monument for Theo van Gogh

News from Cid Martel:

No monument for Theo van Gogh, from Fok:

There will be no monument for Theo van Gogh where he was killed. Council member Martin Verbeet (social-democrat) says such a monument could lead to provocations and unrest in the neighbourhood. They would like to remember him every year but the emphasis then needs to be on freedom of speech and the provocative way in which Theo van Gogh used to express himself.

In other words: "They killed him, and if we memorialize him, they may kill us. Let's just forget the whole thing."

Belgian prof: 'Muslims feel discriminated against'

Some interesting observations from Cid Martel:

Here’s some more disingenuous claptrap, this time coming from Belgian professor (international politics) and ‘terror-expert’ Rik Coolsaet. Rik is working at the University of Gent and he is the director of the Royal Institute for International Relations. This is from an interview he gave with the PC Dutch newspaper Volkskrant:

Don’t mention ‘Muslim terrorism’ to professor Coolsaet. “I hate that word! In Holland everyone uses it. In Belgium we call it ‘jihad extremism’. It has nothing to do with being a Muslim. That wording, it started with Pim Fortuyn, is part of the problem, not of the solution. You’re implying something you should not imply.”

So, according to Coolsaet, Jihad is not a central duty of every Muslim. This sounds like an attempt to whitewash Islam and Islamic history. In my opinion it would be a part of the solution if Muslims acknowledged that violent Jihad is a central part of Islam, that it has always been a part of Islam, and that it has to be eradicated if they want to stop fellow Muslims from killing people in the name of Islam.

There’s more: Coolsaet also blames the West for these attacks, saying that Muslims feel discriminated against.

The Royal Institute for International Relations concluded that the ‘root causes’ on the ground may vary. In Palestine it’s the Israeli occupation. In Egypt it’s the bad social-economic situation young people find themselves in.

Coolsaet: “So it’s very different from Belgium and the Netherlands. The second and third generation is mostly from North-Africa. Young Muslims can’t identify with the country from their ancestors but at the same time they’re being shunned for having a strange sounding name. Unlike their peers they’re being discriminated against, like on the work floor. A small part radicalises because of that and an even smaller part resorts to violence.

Now wait a second. Chinese immigrants and children of Chinese immigrants have ‘strange sounding’ names, and they’re not being discriminated against. The same goes for Hindus. And if they are being discriminated against, why are there no Chinese and Hindu radicals trying to kill people and blow stuff up?

Coolsaet paints himself into a corner. In the same interview he says that these terrorists commit terror to ‘free the ummah’. He says there’s this ‘feeling’ among Muslims that they’re being threatened and humiliated by the West. How does that explain attacks in the Middle East, in India, in Thailand, in Indonesia? How does that explain Beslan? Yes, ‘root causes’ may very (Amir Taheri calls them ‘strategic goals’ in his article in the Times Online) but at the basis of this struggle lies Jihad. It’s a struggle against ‘unbelief’, against anything that doesn’t submit or conform to Islam. It’s a struggle against anything that stands in the way of the spread of Islam.

And this struggle is central to a Muslim’s life. It’s that doctrine of Jihad that is passed onto the Muslims living in Europe. It’s that doctrine that needs to be fought and eradicated. And this is a battle Muslims have to fight. Coolsaet is looking for excuses outside of Islam, and he’s not doing anyone a favour.

Indeed.

Moore: "If they really, truly think that the words 'Islam' and 'terrorism' must not be linked, then we have little hope of catching the killers, of understanding how the terrorism works, or of preventing new atrocities"

Charles Moore tells the truth in The Telegraph: "Where is the Gandhi of Islam?," with thanks to Daryl:

...Yet there seems to me to be a radical disjunction between our heroic capacity to deal with the immediate effects of terrorism and our collective refusal to confront what lies behind it. The effects of this disjunction are, literally, fatal.

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was in Singapore on Thursday, having helped London's successful Olympic bid. His stricken face showed his shock, and of course he condemned the attacks. Then he analysed them.

They were not, he said, attacks "against the mighty and the powerful", but against "working-class Londoners". Would they have been all right, one wondered, if they had been against the mighty and powerful, or if they had cleverly found a way of killing only middle-class Londoners?

Then Mr Livingstone said: "This is not an ideology or even a perverted faith." Why did he want to say that? How - if, as the authorities tell us, the attacks were carried out by Islamist extremists - could this be true?

The main spokesman for the Metropolitan Police on Thursday was Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick. He also complained about attacks on "purely innocent members of the public", thereby making one think that there might be other people (police? soldiers? politicians?), who are not purely innocent and should have been attacked instead. Asked about the nature of the terrorists, Mr Paddick said: "Islam and terrorism don't go together."

It is true that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, or involved in terrorism, and this needs to be said strongly if people assert otherwise. But if the Metropolitan Police really believe what Brian Paddick says, if they really, truly think that the words "Islam" and "terrorism" must not be linked, then we have little hope of catching the killers, of understanding how the terrorism works, or of preventing new atrocities.

You can show this with a simple comparison. When Britain was afflicted by Irish republican terrorism, most Irish people repudiated that terrorism. It was nevertheless the case that the great majority of the terrorists - more than 95 per cent - were Irish, or of Irish origin, and they drew overwhelmingly on Irish people to help and hide them.

This was not a funny coincidence. It was because the IRA preached a doctrine about Ireland and called on the loyalty of a perverted version of Irishness. Therefore, the words "Irish" and "terrorist" went together, hard though this was on the majority of Irish people. The Brian Paddicks of the day would have been appallingly negligent if they had not concentrated their investigations among the Irish. And the vigilance of the public, which the police then and now rightly call for, inevitably directed itself towards Irish neighbours, Irish accents, Irish pubs.

So it must be with Muslims in Britain. In fact, the situation is more serious because we are dealing with a religion, not merely a national aspiration, and the demands of a religion are more absolute than anything else. If fanatics can persuade people that their religion insists that they kill others (and often themselves) in its service, then they will obey. And whereas the IRA, though utterly sadistic and fanatical, kept in mind a political aim which, once achieved, would mean that they need kill no longer, the religious fanatic lacks even this check on his behaviour....

What strikes one again and again about the reaction of the public authorities, of commentators, of the media, is the terrible lethargy about studying what it is we are up against. We are dealing with an extreme interpretation of one of the great religions of the world.

The theology that forms the basis of the terrorists' self-justification is not actually all that extreme in Islam.

We flap around, looking for moderates and giving them knighthoods, making placatory noises, putting bits of Islam on to the multi-faith menu in schools, banishing Bibles from hospital beds, trying to criminalise the expression of "religious hatred", blaming George Bush and Tony Blair. But if we do not know the way the faith in question works, its history, its quarrels, its laws and demands, we will not have the faintest chance of distinguishing the true moderate from the fellow-traveller or of bearing down on the fanaticism.

If you look at the Koran, you will find many glorifications of violence. In Sura No 8, for example, God is quoted as saying: "I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers!" This punishment comes to them for having "defied God and His apostle". It seems reasonable to ask Muslims what this sort of remark means in the modern world.

Read it all. I don't agree with all of its assessment, but it is sound in the main.

Lebanese Daily Star: Why the bombings in London are not the work of 'Islamic' terrorists

A classic dhimmi editorial from the Daily Star, with thanks to Designnut:

When asked whether the simultaneous bombings across London yesterday were the work of Islamic terrorists, London's metropolitan police commissioner responded that there was not enough information yet to point fingers, but that the culprits certainly were not Islamic terrorists, because Islam and terrorism simply don't go together. He could not have been more accurate in his response. And such a fair and objective answer was especially welcome after Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the terrorists had acted "in the name of Islam," (although Blair admitted - almost as an afterthought - that most Muslims around the world would "deplore this act of terrorism.")

The truth is that no religion - including Islam - condones the killing of innocent people.

Sure, but the jihadists do not consider them innocent.

Already, Muslim clerics and leaders as well as countless Islamic groups around the world have condemned the London attacks on moral, humanitarian and religious grounds. All agree that there is nothing Islamic about killing ordinary civilians taking the subway or bus to work or school. And there is nothing in the Koran or the Hadiths that could possibly condone such a deplorable and calculated murder. In fact, Islamic texts clearly condemn the killing of innocents. Such acts of terrorism are both morally reprehensible and in direct violation of Islamic teachings.

Why distort or dissemble? Mawardi in al-Akham as-Sultaniyyah (4.2) allows for the killing of women and children who are perceived as aiding the war effort against the Muslims (cf. 'Umdat al-Salik o9.10) -- in other words, non-combatants.

Switzerland didn't get invaded by the Nazis, either

Robert Fisk, predictably enough, recommends dhimmitude in the face of the London bombings. "The reality of this barbaric bombing," from The Independent, with thanks to The One Who Must Not Be Named:

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us think insurgency won't come to us?

"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.

And it's no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali....

But here's the problem. To go on pretending that Britain's enemies want to destroy "what we hold dear" encourages racism; what we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a "war on terror" which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has locked us into. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden asked: "Why do we not attack Sweden?"

Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair.

Europe adapts to allow for Islamic polygamy

"Two wives," from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Leslie:

Marry women of your choice. Two, three, or four. However, if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly [with them], then only one or [a captive] that your right hand possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice. (Koran, 4:3)

Over the centuries, the phenomenon of polygamy has captured the attention of Westerners – diplomats, travelers, writers and artists – who found themselves in the East. The enigmatic and enticing harems of Arabian Nights, the beautiful concubines and the wily eunuchs of The Thief of Baghdad gave polygamy an exotic eastern flavor for those who saw "the Orient" as nothing more than an exciting and distant fairy tale.

Today, there are no longer harems or eunuchs, but polygamy is still very much alive. It exists in a vast majority of Islamic countries, where it is permitted by law. And in the 20th century, it reached European and American shores with the massive wave of immigration from Islamic countries. Interestingly, Europe, while welcoming the reform of the Family Law in Morocco that made polygamy almost impossible, and pressuring Turkey to put an end to the practice (the country's ban on polygamy is commonly overridden), is at the same time turning a blind eye to the existence of the practice within its own borders.

Like many Muslim men, Muhammad, an immigrant from Pakistan, first came to Norway alone. After building a career, he found a wife, a Norway citizen, and obtained citizenship himself. Soon enough, his astonished new bride learned that Muhammad was in the process of bringing his first wife to Norway, along with their nine children, all of whom were considered Norwegian citizens by law.

Immigrants from Mali, Egypt, Mauritania, Pakistan and other countries who come to live in Europe often bring along their extended families, which may contain two, three and even four wives, and all of their offspring.

There are no official statistics, but some sources claim there are up to 10,000 polygamist families in France. The average size of such a family is up to 15 people, which means that about half a million French are living in polygamous families. There are also hundreds of polygamous families in England, Germany and Norway.

The law in all of these countries forbids the practice of polygamy, but local authorities are in a bind, faced with issues of freedom of religion. And aside from the social and cultural problems of polygamous families, there are legal questions surrounding issues of inheritance, taxation and property registration.

Jacques Kossowki, the conservative mayor of Courbevoie in France and an MP, believes that the choice is quite simple.

"It's a disaster. We don't even have housing big enough for these people. We have to accept polygamy exists in other countries, but it is not recognized by French law, so I don't see why we should accept it." But British legislators have chosen to adopt a more liberal approach, and have already begun amending existing laws in an effort to accommodate the needs of the local Muslim population.

"The Inland Revenue is considering recognizing polygamy for some religious groups for tax purposes. Officials have agreed to examine family friendly–representations from Muslims who take up to four wives under Sharia, the laws derived from the Koran," The Sunday Times reported last year.

Read it all.

Charen: Our enemies are stupid

Mona Charen sounds an optimistic note in this syndicated column (thanks to all who sent this in). But this appeared on the 8th; in the intervening days, it looks more likely that the 7/7 bombings will just win the jihadists more concessions.

By committing such atrocities, the Islamists manage to stiffen whatever small residue of resolve remains in flaccid Western civilization. Before the vicious attacks on London civilians, the G8 conference in Scotland focused primarily on global warming, poverty in Africa, and economic matters. But now the leaders of the industrial giants will inevitably turn their attention to the war on terror.

The Islamists could make huge strides in their campaign to undermine Western societies if they used any tactic other than terror. And, in fact, in Great Britain, they have made incredible progress by playing upon Britain's overindulgence of any minority complaint. Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes keeps a running chronicle of British abjectness on his website (Danielpipes.org).

Example 1: The University of Leicester NHS Trust is considering removal of Gideon Bibles from its hospital rooms, out of concern that their presence might "offend" non-Christian patients.

Example 2: Pipes quotes the Sunday Times to the effect that the British equivalent of the IRS, the Inland Revenue, "is considering recognizing polygamy for some religious groups for tax purposes. Officials have agreed to examine 'family friendly' representations from Muslims who take up to four wives under sharia, the laws derived from the Koran. Existing rules allow only one wife for inheritance tax purposes. The Revenue has been asked to relax this so that a husband's estate can be divided tax free between [sic] several wives."

Example 3: The warden at Belmarsh Prison, temporary quarters of Abu Hamza Al-Masri, the Islamist leader charged with crimes ranging from inciting racial hatred to murder, has plans to spend $3 million on a mosque for the prison. The facility already maintains a multi-denominational chapel. But this is unacceptable to the Muslim inmates, some of whom are suspected Al Qaeda members, because it contains crosses.

And speaking of Al-Masri, the British taxpayer has been most generous to the accused terrorist who blew off his own hand and lost an eye making a bomb. Example 4: Masri plans to sue the British government for the £200 a week in welfare he says he is owed for almost three years. This would complement the other benefits he receives. Pipes reports that al-Masri receives a rent-free £500-a-month house in which his wife and eight children live; £2 million of taxpayer funds to pay for his now-seven-year legal battle against deportation; special help in jail to bathe, dress, and eat due to his disabilities, as well as a personal nurse who visits him daily; and a new hook.

Example 5: A pizzeria in Scotland applied for a permit to place tables on the sidewalk outside its restaurant. This met with angry resistance from two Muslim charities who objected that the plan was "offensive" because alcohol would be served out of doors.

If the Islamists had but the patience to play upon the guilt-ridden West's weakness, they might have their victory in a few decades. Leaning over backwards has become so common in the West that its enemies could reasonably wonder whether any spine remained at all. Brutal attacks like that in London snap us back to reality and remind all but the most weak-minded Europeans and Americans that appeasement is nothing less than slow surrender.

Free Speech Near Death in Holland

From Rogier Van Bakel at Nobody's Business:

This one slipped by me when it happened three days ago, but it's still plenty jawdropping today, so what the hell. A Dutch public prosecutor is seeking a two-week suspended prison sentence and 40 hours of community service for a man charged with discrimination. The suspect's crime: displaying, in the immediate wake of the murder of Theo van Gogh, a pamphlet in his home's window that read "Stop the tumor that is Islam." (link to news article in Dutch)

Were a Dutch person to display a pamphlet reading "Stop the cancer that is Christianity" or "Stop the baby-killing atheists," it's highly unlikely that said prosecutor — or anyone, for that matter — would bat an eyelash. Good thing, too. But from the looks of it, Muslims receive special protections not granted to others, equality and free speech be damned.

Bruno: Advice to President Bush

The insightful European analyst Wolfgang Bruno offers the President some much-needed advice:

Dear Mr. Bush: I was one of the Europeans who supported your re-election the past fall. In my view, a good leader needs at least two basic qualities: The courage to do the right thing, and the wisdom to understand what the right thing is. John Kerry didn’t have an ounce of either and would have been a disaster as president. I still believe, or at least hope, that you possess the spine necessary to do the job. But I’m not equally convinced you fully understand the nature of your enemy. For you, a devout Christian, religion is something inherently positive. Perhaps that makes you misjudge Islam. Perhaps you view it as a religion currently beset by many problems and aggressive groups, but still one that can offer comfort and moral guidance to millions of people. That is a fundamental mistake. Islam is not an addition to the American diversity rainbow. In fact, it wants to scrap the diversity rainbow and replace it with an Islamic cave. Ataturk’s Turkey has tried for generations to enforce Western-style democracy and secularism, and the experiment is failing. You should listen more to the likes of Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina and Robert Spencer, and less to Bernard Lewis.

The most important military task in the immediate future is preventing the mullahs in Iran from getting nuclear weapons. This has to be done at all cost, even if it means armed strikes against Iranian nuke facilities. Such a move will meet stiff international opposition, but it is of critical importance. The downside is that we may risk ordinary Iranians rallying behind otherwise disliked leaders. A strike against Iran should be combined with steps to weaken the foundations of the Islamic Republic, and encourage the people to overthrow their oppressors. Ironically, the election of hardliner Ahmadinejad for president just made this easier. Rafsanjani is more cunning and could have fooled both Europeans and Iranians for a few more years. Ahmadinejad is a brute who will kill off the illusion of "reform" and the deceptive "good cop - bad cop" game his predecessor Khatami kept alive for eight years. The time is now right for toppling the mullahs.

However, in the ideological battle against Islam, little has happened in the four years since 9/11. We are treading water, and as the London bombings showed, we don't have time to do that. If anything, it has become even more difficult to openly criticize Islam in infidel nations. The Islamic world, supported by Saudi petrodollars, is working tirelessly to subvert our freedom of speech. It is understandable that a person as powerful as the US President cannot and should not say everything, even when it’s true. But you should quietly start preparing people and open their eyes to what we are facing. If the traditional media hesitate to deal in a straightforward manner with Islamic issues, then we have to bypass them and bring the message directly to the people. Concentrate on the Western nations first, and Europe in particular.

Many Americans are tired of watching the back of a continent that always seems to get itself into more trouble. Given the bad press President Bush receives in European media, any open efforts on your behalf could anyway prove to be counterproductive. If done in more subtle ways, it is not as impossible as some people think. The referendums about the proposed EU constitution in France and Holland demonstrated that there are now two powerful and sometimes contradictory currents at work in Europe: Anti-Americanism, partly a reflection of Socialist instincts, but also carefully nurtured by the elites as glue in their Euro-federalist project. The other is increasing disillusionment with European political leaders. Instead of a Europe united against the USA, the elites are creating a Europe united in common opposition to their neo-feudalist leaders and the oligarchs in Brussels. Americans can play these two impulses against each other. There are many Europeans who are more negative towards their own leaders than the USA. Hook up with some of them. Encourage them as a counterweight to the biased Eurabian media. This is also important for what we might label as “civilization awareness”. Multiculturalism and anti-Americanism have greatly weakened the sense of belonging to a shared Western civilization. It needs to be rebuilt, by establishing ties between Americans and groups of Europeans ordinary Americans can relate to.

Show Europeans that their elites are indeed selling them out. Buy the copyrights to Bat Ye’or’s book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. Translate it into as many European languages as possible, and make sure that many websites have it available for free online, both in the full version and in a summarized version. Since American media are hardly much better when it comes to writing about Islam, many Americans would benefit from this, too. Europe still has a window of opportunity to act, but it is closing fast. A decade from now, the combined forces of neo-feudalism, resurgent nationalism and right-wing extremism, Marxism, and Islam could be too strong for level-headed Europeans to withstand. Either Europe’s home-grown totalitarian impulses will fuse with Islam, completing Europe’s transformation into Eurabia, or they will compete for the spoils, tearing the continent apart. Europe will burn again, for the third time in a century.

Give stipends and all the library resources needed to people such as Ali Sina and Ibn Warraq, to write about Islam. You should also encourage websites by ex-Muslims, and the best websites by non-Muslims. Make a selection of the best critical books written about Islam. The books in their full length should be made available on the Internet in major languages They can also be downloaded and reprinted in countries where the reach of the Internet is still limited. Start with supporting those who are already in the business. Give them grants to do their work on a semi-professional basis, and help increase their reach. The websites could be in English or bilingual, catering to both national and international audiences. Jihad Watch and Faith Freedom International should be used as the cyberspace version of Radio Free Europe, and the cornerstones in a global network of similar websites.

I am not saying that the Internet alone will do the trick. But it is the least censored medium and still largely outside the control of the politically correct elites. It can and should be spearheading the efforts. The entire operation could be done quietly and unofficially without spending too much money. Freedom of speech is the lifeblood of Western civilization. It doesn’t matter if we capture Al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq and Afghanistan if Islam strangles our freedom at home. Likewise, we can’t win a fight against Islam unless people are made aware of the true nature of Islamic teachings. This part of the struggle has been neglected so far. It is my hope that you, Mr. Bush, can help in dealing with this during your second term. Much depends upon it.

Boylan: London Bridge is Falling Down…Falling down…

Patrick Boylan has kindly sent us this piece about intelligence failures among our dhimmi leaders, subtitled "A Brief Analysis of Intelligence Failures And Terrorist Attacks on London."

As Imam Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of England, declared that terrorists “act in the name of Islam,” ignorantly confident that most Muslims throughout the world deplore such acts of barbarity, a supposedly unknown terrorist group calling itself “The Secret Organization of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe” proudly took claim for killing dozens and maiming hundreds. Now Imam Blair has read the Koran, the Hadith, the … He hasn’t? Come now, he like our good leader Sheikh Bush, is sure that Islam is a religion of peace! He must know!

There is a massive denunciation of the attacks by Muslim groups in England, all of whom were eerily silent after the US 9/11, and Spanish 3/11. Is it possible these groups have seen the error of their ways, or is it just fear and self preservation?

Many talking heads on TV and so called “experts” are declaring emphatically that the terrorist group claiming responsibility has never been heard of before. Yet on April 18, 2004, Reuters reported “Several Islamic militant groups are preparing attacks on London.” The rabidly anti-Christian and anti-Jewish London-based Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad named one of the groups as “al Qaeda Europe.” Sounds the same as the nasty little buggers who just brought London to a standstill with murder, but let’s not jump to conclusions.

Now this sheikh, Omar Bakri, is a genuine sheikh who has been arrested and speedily released 16 times. He is a Syrian-born cleric and one time head of the al Muhajiroun organization, which joyously praised the 9/11 attacks. He dreams of flying the black flag of Islam over Imam Tony Blair’s residence at 10 Downing Street.

Another Sheikh, or rather, Sir Ian Blair, London’s politically correct Metropolitan police commissioner, according to the Guardian “seemed in confident mood when he assured radio listeners that the capital would be able to counter the threat of terrorism at the 2012 Olympics,” shortly before the terrorists attacked. After all, London has the most sophisticated, large-scale snooping capability, with peeping-Tom cameras everywhere you look…hmm… and the terrorists had no idea they might be photographed. Brilliant Sherlock, well done old chap!

Interesting how Sheikh Sir Ian was totally unaware of the impending doom, yet according to AP, Israeli authorities (who vehemently deny this) were warned. This warning stopped the Israeli finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from attending an economic conference in a hotel over the London subway. How intelligent can an intelligence community be if the threat level had been lowered shortly before the G8 summit!

That is not intelligence, it is arrogance. It is whistling while passing the cemetery in the dark. It is the knowledge that no one will be held accountable, just like what happened after 9/11. Nothing is as it seems. Is the war on terror really a war, or a political and economic maneuver? In Islam, war is deceit. In the West, war is intelligence failure, just like Iraq and no WMDs.

Too much importance given to ‘kufr’(infidel) London hosting the G8 summit and being selected for the 2012 Olympics, you think? Well now, those nasty little terrorists would have none of that gloating. They decided the Imam Blair and Sheikh Bush were imposters and it was time to break the “Covenant of Security” between Islamic terrorists and Britain immediately.

What is the Covenant of Security? It is an unwritten agreement, according to Islamist terrorist sympathizers, that keeps England safe from terrorist attacks. As long as the British government, its Intelligence agencies, and the police leave Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers alone, the citizenry of England will be safe. Interestingly, Sheikh Bakri confirmed the presence of this covenant of security. Then in January 2005, he declared the covenant had been broken due to anti-terrorist legislation in Britain. How convenient.

As long as Islamic apologists, concealed in the garb of political correctness and hidden among law enforcement, intelligence organizations, educators, and of course politicians all over the world, continue to try to compel us to hide our heads in the sand, such terrorist acts are going to be a feature of everyday life for most nations. Making excuses about not being able to prevent such attacks because of the nature of terrorism, and trying to tie all terrorists to Zarqawi or bin Laden, while ignoring the meaning of Islam and Jihad, all those entrusted with our safety are guilty of dereliction of duty and not just ignorance. The best they can do is study the numerology involved in 7/7, 9/11, and 3/11, despite the fact that, as even the beginning scholar of Islam knows, Islamic terrorists do not follow the Christian Crusader calendar.

From the tragedy of 9/11, the first WTC bombing, the murder of children in Oklahoma and Beslan - Russia, the Bali Bombing, jihad from Chechnya to Thailand, and Israel to Kashmir, the Madrid bombings, and now London, Western intelligence agencies have been caught with their pants down, grinned, and gone on “as usual.”

When the head of the FBI and President Bush are unable to use the words Islam and terrorism in the same sentence it is time for all concerned non-Muslims, and moderate Muslims if they truly are some out there, to search for the truth themselves. We find Mueller of the FBI saying it’s really not important for agents to have any experience in the counter-terrorism section, they can always get it on the job! That’s akin to a major hospital saying, we don’t need cardiologists in our cardiology department, they can be gynecologists, it’s all the same anyway, and they’ll get experience on the job.

Of course, in America we have people in intelligence who have over twenty five years of experience dealing with communists and narco-terrorists. England has all that experience with the IRA, Spain has the experience with the Basques, and Israel has Hizbullah and Hamas; but do they understand the concept of Dar ul harb(Land of Disbelief) and Dar ul Islam (Land of Islam)? Strange how the nations who claim the greatest experience with terrorism have sacrificed the greatest number of their citizens to the unholy altars of Islamic terrorism by refusing to believe and face the truth.

These same nations do not want to understand that the enemy is committed to worldwide jihad. They have not studied the true teachings of Islam. Such scholars like Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom, Daniel Pipes, Ibn Warraq, Bat Yeor risk their lives, as did Theo Van Gogh, to let the truth be known. To get the truth to those who should be paying attention - our politicians, the intelligence community, and law enforcement- before it’s too late. But it seems ignorance is bliss. We can always fall back on the tried and true mantra of “religious tolerance.”

G8 offers $9 billion to Palestinians

Tripling their earlier pledge of $3 billion in tribute, or jizya. From WND, with thanks to Kemaste:

In a direct response to the terrorist attacks on London, world leaders of the G8 nations yesterday doubled their commitment to African relief and offered the Palestinian Authority some $9 billion.

The Palestinian Authority, particularly under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, was accused of siphoning off billions in foreign aid into private bank accounts. Arafat was one of the richest men in the world when he died last year.

The money was dubbed by the group an "alternative to the hatred" and came along with a pledge to address "global climate change."

"We speak today in the shadow of terrorism, but it will not obscure what we came here to achieve," British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the summit host, said as he closed the three-day Group of Eight summit. "It is in the nature of politics that we do not achieve absolutely everything we hope to achieve, but nonetheless I believe we have made very substantial progress indeed."...

Karen Armstrong: The label of Catholic terror was never used about the IRA

More fantasy-world moral and theological equivalence from the world's greatest dhimmi, Karen Armstrong. "The label of Catholic terror was never used about the IRA," from The Guardian, with thanks to Nicolei, Eric and Scaramouche:

Last year I attended a conference in the US about security and intelligence in the so-called war on terror and was astonished to hear one of the more belligerent participants, who as far as I could tell had nothing but contempt for religion, strongly argue that as a purely practical expedient, politicians and the media must stop referring to "Muslim terrorism". It was obvious, he said, that the atrocities had nothing to do with Islam, and to suggest otherwise was not merely inaccurate but dangerously counterproductive.

She was astonished, mind you, not because this analysis is absurd, but because she was amazed to hear it from the bull-necked hawks she expected to find. This is a common thing to hear, but no matter how common it is, it makes about as much sense as saying, "Now, we must not refer to 'Nazi anti-Semitism.'" The Nazis were anti-Semitic because of core Nazi teachings. The Muslim terrorists are committing acts of terrorism, by their own account, because of core Islamic teachings. Saying that we are supposed to ignore that is tantamount to saying that we must ignore what the enemy tells us about himself, who he is, what he wants, why he is fighting. Which is tantamount to saying that we should surrender. We cannot defeat an enemy we are afraid to name.

Rhetoric is a powerful weapon in any conflict. We cannot hope to convert Osama bin Laden from his vicious ideology; our priority must be to stem the flow of young people into organisations such as al-Qaida, instead of alienating them by routinely coupling their religion with immoral violence. Incorrect statements about Islam have convinced too many in the Muslim world that the west is an implacable enemy. Yet, as we found at the conference, it is not easy to find an alternative for referring to this terrorism; however, the attempt can be a salutary exercise that reveals the complexity of what we are up against.

I see, Karen: "Lie about Islam or you will make more Muslims into terrorists." Got it. Ignore the elements of Islam that give rise to terror, and they will stop giving rise to terror. Got it. I contend on the contrary that if we are to have any hope of stemming "the flow of young people into organisations such as al-Qaida," it can only come from speaking forthrightly about what it is in Islam that makes them flow into such organizations, and calling upon Muslims who call themselves moderate to renounce those Islamic teachings, while alerting non-Muslims to the existence of such teachings so that they can take realistic actions against the threat in its true dimensions. No problem can be fixed by denying that it is a problem.

We need a phrase that is more exact than "Islamic terror". These acts may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate essential Islamic principles. The Qur'an prohibits aggressive warfare, permits war only in self-defence and insists that the true Islamic values are peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. It also states firmly that there must be no coercion in religious matters, and for centuries Islam had a much better record of religious tolerance than Christianity.

It is not enough any longer, if it ever was, simply to assert that the terrorists "violate essential Islamic principles" and talk about self-defense and peace. The jihadists have again and again characterized their struggle as defensive. Let Ms. Armstrong demonstrate, if she can, from the Qur'an or Islamic tradition why their characterization is in this case inaccurate, and how moderate Muslims today can refute it. But I do not think she can.

Like the Bible, the Qur'an has its share of aggressive texts, but like all the great religions, its main thrust is towards kindliness and compassion. Islamic law outlaws war against any country in which Muslims are allowed to practice their religion freely, and forbids the use of fire, the destruction of buildings and the killing of innocent civilians in a military campaign. So although Muslims, like Christians or Jews, have all too often failed to live up to their ideals, it is not because of the religion per se.

Lots of sleight-of-hand in that paragraph. In the first place, the problem within Islam is not that of a few aggressive texts in the Qur'an, just like the Bible has. In the Bible there are indeed aggressive texts, but there is no open-ended and universal command to all believers to make war against unbelievers, a la Qur'an 9:29. Nor is that an isolated text: Islam, unlike Christianity, has a developed doctrine sanctioning and calling for this warfare.

Also, look closely at her wording: "Islamic law outlaws war against any country in which Muslims are allowed to practice their religion freely." This is similar to the statement of Mufti Ebrahim Desai of South Africa: "if a country doesn't allow the propagation of Islam to its inhabitants in a suitable manner or creates hindrances to this, then the Muslim ruler would be justifying in waging Jihad against this country, so that the message of Islam can reach its inhabitants, thus saving them from the Fire of Jahannum. If the Kuffaar allow us to spread Islam peacefully, then we would not wage Jihad against them."

A central part of the Islamic religion is its prescriptions for governance. Would opposition to Sharia be hindering Muslims from practicing their religion freely? The problem with such statements -- both Armstrong's and Desai's -- is that they are so elastic as to be meaningless in terms of restricting Muslims from waging war. The "war on Islam" rhetoric coming today from jihadists is a case in point. They assert that America is waging war on Islam, despite Bush's dhimmitude, and thus justify waging war against us.

Likewise Armstrong's statement that "Islamic law...forbids the use of fire, the destruction of buildings and the killing of innocent civilians in a military campaign." Innocent civilians. Were the office workers in the World Trade Center innocent? Osama says no. Can Armstrong refute him on Islamic grounds?

We rarely, if ever, called the IRA bombings "Catholic" terrorism because we knew enough to realise that this was not essentially a religious campaign. Indeed, like the Irish republican movement, many fundamentalist movements worldwide are simply new forms of nationalism in a highly unorthodox religious guise. This is obviously the case with Zionist fundamentalism in Israel and the fervently patriotic Christian right in the US.

Indeed. It was not essentially a religious campaign. The IRA was not claiming to blow things up in the name of their religion, justifying their actions by reference to Christian scripture, etc. The jihad terrorists today, however, explain that they are acting in the name of Islam, and quote Qur'an copiously.

Nor was the IRA an international movement with a program calling for the subjugation the world under its system of law and societal mores. Islamic terrorism is.

In the Muslim world, too, where the European nationalist ideology has always seemed an alien import, fundamentalisms are often more about a search for social identity and national self-definition than religion. They represent a widespread desire to return to the roots of the culture, before it was invaded and weakened by the colonial powers.

Quite so. That's what concerns me.

Because it is increasingly recognised that the terrorists in no way represent mainstream Islam, some prefer to call them jihadists, but this is not very satisfactory. Extremists and unscrupulous politicians have purloined the word for their own purposes, but the real meaning of jihad is not "holy war" but "struggle" or "effort." Muslims are commanded to make a massive attempt on all fronts - social, economic, intellectual, ethical and spiritual - to put the will of God into practice.

They call themselves jihadists -- mujahedin. I do not call them that because I think they do not represent mainstream Islam, but because that is their own usage. Nor does the multiplicity of meanings of the word "jihad" in Islamic tradition amount to anything: jihad as warfare is an unbroken tradition since the time of Muhammad.

Sometimes a military effort may be a regrettable necessity in order to defend decent values, but an oft-quoted tradition has the Prophet Muhammad saying after a military victory: "We are coming back from the Lesser Jihad [ie the battle] and returning to the Greater Jihad" - the far more important, difficult and momentous struggle to reform our own society and our own hearts.

Ms. Armstrong, Osama and his ilk would say precisely that a military effort is a regrettable necessity today in order to defend decent values. Please explain how Muslims can refute that, if they can.

And as for that Hadith, Ms. Armstrong may not be aware that attacks upon it form a central part of jihadist polemic. Abdullah Azzam and Hassan Al-Banna argued that it was a weak hadith, and thus should not be followed by Muslims. They argued that jihad was primarily warfare and that Muslims should understand it as such. And indeed, this statement of Muhammad does not appear in the hadith collections that Muslims consider most reliable. Ms. Armstrong, please explain why you accept this as an authentic hadith, and how Muslims can refute the arguments advanced by Azzam and Al-Banna.

Jihad is thus a cherished spiritual value that, for most Muslims, has no connection with violence. Last year, at the University of Kentucky, I met a delightful young man called Jihad; his parents had given him that name in the hope that he would become not a holy warrior, but a truly spiritual man who would make the world a better place. The term jihadi terrorism is likely to be offensive, therefore, and will win no hearts or minds.

At our conference in Washington, many people favoured "Wahhabi terrorism". They pointed out that most of the hijackers on September 11 came from Saudi Arabia, where a peculiarly intolerant form of Islam known as Wahhabism was the state religion. They argued that this description would be popular with those many Muslims who tended to be hostile to the Saudis. I was not happy, however, because even though the narrow, sometimes bigoted vision of Wahhabism makes it a fruitful ground for extremism, the vast majority of Wahhabis do not commit acts of terror.

Wow. So even the Wahhabis, with their violent contempt for non-Muslims, are good guys to Armstrong. But in any case, the idea that Wahhabism is violent and the rest of Islam is peaceful is simply false. The doctrines of violent jihad are found among all Muslim sects.

Bin Laden was not inspired by Wahhabism but by the writings of the Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by President Nasser in 1966. Almost every fundamentalist movement in Sunni Islam has been strongly influenced by Qutb, so there is a good case for calling the violence that some of his followers commit "Qutbian terrorism." Qutb urged his followers to withdraw from the moral and spiritual barbarism of modern society and fight it to the death.

It is at least good of Armstrong to acknowledge that Qutb was not a Wahhabi. Other Islamic apologists are not so willing to do so.

But what Armstrong has not demonstrated, and cannot demonstrate, is that "Qutbian terrorism" represents in any way a departure from traditional Islamic teaching.

Western people should learn more about such thinkers as Qutb, and become aware of the many dramatically different shades of opinion in the Muslim world. There are too many lazy, unexamined assumptions about Islam, which tends to be regarded as an amorphous, monolithic entity. Remarks such as "They hate our freedom" may give some a righteous glow, but they are not useful, because they are rarely accompanied by a rigorous analysis of who exactly "they" are.

The story of Qutb is also instructive as a reminder that militant religiosity is often the product of social, economic and political factors. Qutb was imprisoned for 15 years in one of Nasser's vile concentration camps, where he and thousands of other members of the Muslim Brotherhood were subjected to physical and mental torture. He entered the camp as a moderate, but the prison made him a fundamentalist. Modern secularism, as he had experienced it under Nasser, seemed a great evil and a lethal assault on faith.

Precise intelligence is essential in any conflict. It is important to know who our enemies are, but equally crucial to know who they are not. It is even more vital to avoid turning potential friends into foes. By making the disciplined effort to name our enemies correctly, we will learn more about them, and come one step nearer, perhaps, to solving the seemingly intractable and increasingly perilous problems of our divided world.

I couldn't agree more, Karen. Let's name our enemies correctly. And speak the truth about Islam.

BBC inflating backlash reports

Jihad Watch reader Granny Weatherwax was intrigued when she read this in "UK Muslims 'feel more vulnerable,'" a BBC report:

The Muslim News has reported three further attacks on mosques, one in east London and two in Bristol, and the Muslim Council of Britain has reported several attacks on mosques in north west London.

Turning to the Muslim News itself, she found this in an article entitled "Grand Mufti, others denounce London bombings":

The East London Mosque in Whitechapel, a stone’s throw from Aldgate, one of the underground station affected by the attacks, has received anonymous threatening letters.

Those "anonymous threatening letters" seem to be what the BBC is terming a backlash attack. In that case, I've received a few backlash attacks in my email.

Merryl Wyn Davies: Islam is a religion of peace... But how do we convince you?

A Welsh convert to Islam, Merryl Wyn Davies, wrings her hands in the Sunday Herald, with thanks to Anthony:

ON Thursday, a well-rehearsed rescue operation swung into action. In the face of terror, the emergency services knew how to cope. Now the question is: are we as well rehearsed to cope with securing community harmony? Have we actually got a rescue plan to eradicate terror and its perpetrators?

That's just what I wonder, Merryl.

After each atrocity, the Muslim community holds it breath and waits for the backlash. I am a British Muslim who is Welsh. Like all Muslims, I'm practised at the condemnation of outrages. But it still disturbs me that the reassurance of our condemnation is so eagerly sought, as if over condemnation might be in doubt rather than being the most natural human response to incomprehensible acts by people I don't know.

The monsters who planned and executed the attacks so callously are
supposedly Muslims. Faith is between each individual and God. What is in the hearts of these terrorists, God alone knows - I certainly don't. But by their deeds I know they are nothing of me, the faith that is my secure handhold on life, the unequivocal morality it teaches.

These evil-doers violate every principle and precept I cherish. To condemn such fanatics is no test. To ask how such horrors make me feel is more telling. Where do I begin? And more importantly, will you hear what I mean? What stands between us is a function of terror. It creates awful facts and great challenges to mutual understanding.

It is also a function of history. European history has been written through the lens of a clash of civilisations in stereotypes, negatives and black propaganda. It creates a glib assurance that you know Islam and Muslims better than Muslims know themselves or Islam. It is a false per ception that forecloses communication, prevents understanding. You can never be reassured until you overcome this legacy...

"You?" I suppose becoming a Muslim made Ms. Davies non-Welsh. But anyway, there is a simple solution to her problem. Charles at LGF headlined a story about British Muslims fearing a backlash this way: "Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims March in London to Denounce Terrorist Attacks." Underneath, he wrote, "Just kidding," with a link to the backlash story. With this little bit of irony he injected a much-needed dose of common sense into an area in which people seem to lose their heads all too easily. If hundreds of thousands of Muslims did march, and acted against terrorists in their midst, we might be convinced that it's a religion of peace.

We are told again and again that Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance and pluralism. Yet where is the evidence for this? Why must we accept this in denial of what is before our face every day? Why can't the peaceful and tolerant ones show some peace and tolerance, instead of violence abroad and intimidation at home?

Ms. Davies, it is not because of centuries of European prejudice that I am not convinced. My ancestors aren't even from Europe. They are from the Islamic world. And I am not convinced because of what they experienced, and because of what I see today.

Memo to US Military: Be careful! CAIR is watching you!

"U.S. Army struggles to grasp foreign cultures," from Reuters, with thanks to Sparta:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army plans to train its officers to think like their enemies and better understand foreign cultures after an Army report found that no one could have envisioned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Think like their enemies? Really? So they will be undertaking in-depth studies of jihad theology and ideology? Somehow I doubt it: if they really did this, it could lead to conclusions that will be at odds with fundamental dogmas that currently go unquestioned in the military and the government.

Small groups of officers soon will take classes in cultural anthropology and cross-cultural communication as U.S. troops continue to battle insurgents daily in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Who's teaching about Islam? John Esposito and Karen Armstrong?

Academic experts welcomed the move, but said reshaping the U.S. military would be difficult, given continuing reports of religious intolerance at military institutions and charges of detainee abuse abroad.

The Army's report, released last month, concludes that even seasoned analysts failed to predict a strike of the magnitude of the 2001 attacks because they based their assessments on U.S. culture, values and reasoning....

That continues to be a fundamental problem. Witness this clueless head of Army Intelligence:

Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, head of Army intelligence and President Bush's nominee as director of the National Security Agency, recently highlighted efforts to improve Army intelligence through better technology and improved training.

After spending time in the Middle East, Alexander told reporters he concluded that anti-U.S. sentiment in the region was complex and cumulative after years of negative perceptions, some dating back to the creation of Israel in 1948.

Alexander, if you don't know by now that they're a lot older than that and arise from causes that have nothing to do with Israel, I doubt you will ever learn.

"This is going to be a war not of technology, but of people," he said, adding, "Most of the Arabs that I talk to really want to forge a friendship."

I doubt the Lt. General is familiar with Qur'an 5:51 ("take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors") or 3:28 ("Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them" -- in other words, pretend to be their friends to gain an advantage over them). And that's not all he's unfamiliar with:

Even as Alexander cited the need for better cultural understanding, he called the language spoken in Iraq "Iraqi" instead of Arabic, and repeatedly called potential suspects "Abu," a honorific title meaning "father" in Arabic....

Yvonne Haddad, professor of history at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, faulted U.S. officials for alienating people in Islamic countries with speeches geared to appeal to the U.S. Christian right.

"Every time President Bush speaks, he creates more enemies," she said. "People think he has declared a war on Islam."...

It is breathtaking that Bush could take such pains to emphasize that he has not declared war on Islam, and people like Yvonne Haddad and Zarqawi can brush it all aside and maintain that he has declared war on Islam. How? By pandering to shady American Muslim advocacy groups? By having CAIR give sensitivity training to FBI and DHS?

And CAIR has made it known that they are still watching:

The Council on American Islamic Relations welcomed efforts to better understand other cultures, but said it was continuing to monitor the U.S. military after reports of inappropriate proselytizing by evangelical Christians at the Air Force Academy, said spokesman Ibrahim Hooper.

Nigeria: Man faces death for sodomy

From News.Au, with thanks to Two Stellas.

A UN human rights expert raised the alarm today over the case of a man who is on death row in northern Nigeria awaiting execution by stoning after a Sharia court found him guilty of sodomy.

Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, called for the entire process that led the man's sentencing to death to be reviewed immediately.

"Sodomy cannot be considered one of the most serious crimes for which, under international law, the death penalty can be prescribed. The punishment is wholly disproportionate," Alston said in a press statement at the end of a visit to Nigeria.

Africa's most populous country, with 140 million inhabitants, is split about evenly between Muslims in the North and Christians in the South...

Twelve northern states introduced Sharia, or Islamic law, in 2000, shortly after Nigeria returned to civilian rule following 15 years of military dictatorship.

Alston said he had no way of knowing if the case was an isolated one as he had stumbled upon the man by chance while investigating death row in the Kano prison. While no other sodomy convictions had been brought to his attention, it was possible there were other cases.

Ten Nigerian women have been sentenced to death by stoning for having sex outside of wedlock since Sharia was brought in. The sentences sparked international outcries and all were overturned on appeal.

The introduction of Sharia alienated Christians living in northern regions and led to inter-religious fighting that has killed thousands of people.

Pope: "Stop in the name of God"

"UK faith leaders condemn attacks," from the BBC, with thanks to Granny Weatherwax.

UK religious leaders have issued a rare joint statement condemning Thursday's "evil terrorist" attacks in London. Figureheads from the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths each read out parts of the statement.

"It is an evil that cannot be justified and that we utterly condemn and reject," said Sheikh Zaki Dr Badawi, of the Council of Mosques and Imams.

Earlier, Pope Benedict VXI spoke of his "profound sadness" at the "repugnant terrorist actions"...

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks said the leaders had come together to commemorate the end of World War II and the "courage, commitment and sacrifice by which the evil of Nazism was resisted and ultimately overcome 60 years ago".

"We stand together now for a further purpose: to express our shared commitment to resisting and overcoming the evil of terrorism," said Sheikh Dr Badawi. "It is an evil that cannot be justified and that we utterly condemn and reject."

They were joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Free Churches Moderator Dr David Coffey at Lambeth Palace in London...

In the Vatican City, Benedict XVI called on the faithful to pray for the attackers and told the bombers to "stop in the name of God".

His comments, during the traditional Sunday blessing in St Peter's Square, came as prayers for the 49 killed and 700 injured were said across the UK.

The Pope said: "To those who foment feelings of hatred and to those who carry out such repugnant terrorist actions, I say to you: 'God loves life, which he created, not death. Stop in the name of God'."...

Rushdie: India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor

Salman Rushdie writes in the New Duranty Times, with thanks to all who sent this in.

IN honor-and-shame cultures like those of India and Pakistan, male honor resides in the sexual probity of women, and the "shaming" of women dishonors all men. So it is that five men of Pakistan's powerful Mastoi tribe were disgracefully acquitted of raping a villager named Mukhtar Mai three years ago. Theirs was an "honor rape," intended to punish a relative of Ms. Mukhtar for having been seen with a Matsoi woman. The acquittals have now been suspended by the Pakistan Supreme Court, and there is finally a chance that this courageous woman may gain some measure of redress for her violation.

Pakistan, however, has little to be proud of. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that there were 320 reported rapes in the first nine months of last year, and 350 reported gang rapes in the same period. The number of unreported rapes is believed to be much larger. The victim pressed charges in only one-third of the reported cases, and a mere 39 arrests were made. The use of rape in tribal disputes has become, one might say, normal. And the belief that a raped woman's best recourse is to kill herself remains widespread and deeply ingrained.

For every Mukhtar Mai there are dozens of such suicides. Nor is courage any guarantee of getting justice, as the case of Shazia Khalid shows. Dr. Khalid was raped last year in the province of Baluchistan by security personnel at the hospital where she worked. A Pakistani tribunal failed to convict anyone of the crime.

Dr. Khalid says that she was subsequently "threatened so many times" that she was forced to flee Pakistan. "I was hounded out," she says, expressing dissatisfaction that the government neither brought her attackers to justice nor protected her from the threats that followed.

That is the same government, led by President Pervez Musharraf, that confiscated Mukhtar Mai's passport because it feared she would go abroad and say things that would bring Pakistan into disrepute; and it is the same government that has allied with the West in the war on terrorism, but seems quite prepared to allow a war of sexual terror to be waged against its female citizens...

Read it all.

Dagestan: a new front in Caucasus war

Another jihad front opening up in Russia. Oliver Bullough writes in Dawn, with thanks to Two Stellas.

MOSCOW: Take Chechnya’s embattled police force, corrupt government, poor population and violent Islamists, then add dozens of feuding ethnic groups. Welcome to Dagestan, the new front in Russia’s spreading Caucasus war.

Unlike the Chechens, who have fought Moscow’s rule for a decade, the Dagestani peoples stayed largely peaceful after the Soviet collapse in 1991. They are not any more.

“There are attacks on police, terrorist acts, attacks on deputies and ministers,” said Saigidpasha Umakhanov, the ethnically Avar mayor of the town of Khasavyurt, who says the government is too corrupt to stop the carnage.

“The government has seized the whole republic, so as to divide up all the money for itself. Well, for the people that is a problem,” he said by telephone. “The government is fighting the people.”

On Thursday, a train was derailed by a bomb north of regional capital Makhachkala. The blast followed a gun battle in the town centre on Wednesday, and an explosion in the town last Friday that killed 10 Russian servicemen.

Police say they have lost at least 28 officers to attacks this year. Militants and federal forces have lost many more, and civilian losses are unknown.

“There is 60 per cent unemployment, there is uncertainty about the government, there is tension between the Avars and the Dargins, who are the two main peoples who want their representative (as local leader),” said Alexei Malashenko, an analyst from the Moscow Carnegie Centre think tank.

“The situation is just getting worse, in every way. This terrorism is a war against the police by the Islamist groups, who are getting bigger alongside their criminal allies.”...

I wonder what South America and Mexico are going to look like in 25 years...

Thornton: Jihad Is Knocking

Another Episode in the War between Christendom and Islam. Here's Bruce Thornton in Victor Hanson's Private Papers, with thanks to all who sent this in.

The slaughter in London is another grisly wake-up call that likely will go as unheeded as earlier ones. Already the standard narrative is being trotted out: evildoers created by what the New York Times predictably called the “root causes of terrorism”: autocracy, or economic stagnation, or Palestinian suffering, or globalization's dislocations, or Western historical sins, or the war in Iraq (the cause will depend on the political prejudices of the pundit) have “hijacked” Islam and distorted its peaceful message. And now they are using Islam to justify murder in order to further their own ambitions or dysfunctional psychic needs. Given this explanation, so the story goes, we must be careful not to demonize all Muslims and assure them that we respect their religion and culture. The tale is then wrapped up with fierce threats against the terrorists and protestations of admiration for Islam.

Believing this delusion requires that one ignores fourteen centuries of Islamic jihad against the West, a war of conquest and colonization ratified by centuries of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Indeed, what we call Islamic radicals are in fact Islamic traditionalists; it is the so-called “moderates” — those wanting to compromise Islam so it can coexist with Western ideas such as secular government, separation of church and state, and human rights — who are the radicals and innovators. The terrorists are simply fulfilling the traditional and orthodox command of their religion to battle the infidels who resist the revelation of Mohammed and the global socio-political order mandated by Islam.

Listen to one of the most respected and influential of Muslim clerics, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, on the legitimacy of jihad: “It has been determined by Islamic law that the blood and property of people of Dar Al-Harb [the Domain of Disbelief where the battle for the domination of Islam should be waged] is not protected. Because they fight against and are hostile towards the Muslims, they annulled the protection of his blood and his property." (See Andrew Bostom:).This interpretation is entirely consistent with fourteen centuries of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, which in turn is based on the Koran's injunction to “slay them [infidels] wherever you catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter . . . . Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.” And this jihad is to continue “until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah.”...

Read it all.

London Muslims Fear Backlash After Bombs

Why don't UK Muslims fear more terrorist attacks? Why don't they concentrate on rooting out jihad terrorists from their ranks? If they did, they would find a great deal less to fear from any backlash. From AP, with thanks to Anthony.

Thousands of Muslims crowded London mosques for Friday prayers, condemning the bombings, but also wary they could be made scapegoats and fearful of reprisals against their growing and vibrant community.

At the East London Mosque, near the site of one of Thursday's attacks, an imam told the 8,000 worshippers to be "confident in our identity" as part of London's multicultural fabric.

The mosque said it had received hate e-mails and a telephone threat to disrupt Friday prayers. A few police officers stood outside during the prayers, which ended peacefully.

Outside, some Muslims said the attacks had made them more cautious on the streets, but others said they were secure in their identity as Londoners confident of the city's tolerant traditions.

"It will have some impact on people. But this is London, a cosmopolitan city," said student Ali Ayubi. "Maybe after one or two months it will go back to normal."

A related story, "Arson suspected in mosque fire" from Al Jazeera.net, with thanks to Skeet Street.

Suspected arsonists have set a mosque in northwest England on fire, police said.

Police said on Saturday that a man living in a flat above the Shahjalal Mosque, which is part of an Islamic centre in Birkenhead, was treated for smoke inhalation, but there were no other injuries.

The mosque door was burnt and there was some smoke damage inside, a Merseyside police spokesman said. He declined to comment on reports that a petrol bomb was used.

The attack comes two days after bombings in central London killed more than 50.

Mosque chairman Abdul Munim said: "What happened here was a dreadful act that could have been far worse had it not been for the fast actions of the police, fire and ambulance services."

Police said they were hunting two white men in their early 20s seen in the area just before the incident...

US mosque incident

In a separate incident in the US, someone tried to set fire to a mosque in Bloomington, Indiana, in the early hours of Saturday.

A rock was thrown through a window, then a flammable liquid was poured into the building and ignited, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said.

A burned Quran was found outside the mosque.

FBI Special Agent, Wendy Osborne, said agents and members of a Joint Terrorism Task Force were investigating it as a hate crime.

Watson: Other than our Governments, who do Muslims think they’re fooling?

DC Watson wonders where to find any evidence supporting the "religion of peace" line we dhimmis are supposed to swallow:

On Thursday, July 7, 2005, adherents of Islam, the “religion of pieces,” once again demonstrated their expertise in sneak attacking innocent, unsuspecting people. This time in London, England. Dozens were murdered, while hundreds were injured.

Last year, on March 11/2004, it was Madrid, Spain. On October 12, 2002, it was Bali, Indonesia. Although Muslims have committed other atrocities as well, Western governments are quick to jump to their defense, proclaiming that most Muslims are good, law-abiding people. Ever since September 11, 2001, we’ve had to listen to President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and other world leaders describe Islam as a “religion of peace” and tell us that “the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims both here and abroad are decent and law abiding people who abhor this kind of terrorism every bit as much as we do."

There’s one question that they should be answering. Where is the evidence of this? Where is the evidence that Islam is a peaceful religion? What have Muslims done to demonstrate to the civilized world that they have come in peace?

If they aren’t blowing things up, they’re whining to Western governments, attempting to garner special privileges just for being Muslims. All one has to do is look at the current conflicts around the world to see who's involved.

Darfur, Sudan, the Philippines, India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, Nigeria, Kosovo, Egypt, Indonesia, and Algeria. All of these conflicts involve Muslims.

In the West, Muslim immigration has brought about turmoil and crime to secular nations, where Muslims work to implement Islamic law. They refuse to follow the laws of the lands they’ve infiltrated. When their numbers grow, so do their demands and intolerance. The Muslims are fighting two wars: one is military, and the other is political.

While many Muslims will not strap a bomb belt to themselves or to their children, the fact remains that they have done nothing to eliminate these heartless murderers from their communities.

There is no legitimate excuse for this. Their silence should tell us that something is awry in the Islamic community. American Muslims are no different from their Islamic brothers around the world. Muslim groups in America, namely the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and others have “condemned” the bombings in London, while CAIR even urged Muslims to offer “condolences.” Excuse me, but isn’t that like asking termites to offer condolences to homeowners after they ate away the wood that was holding their house together? This is an insufficient response. These are spokesmen for the Muslim community. They should be sharply questioned about what they are doing to keep this kind of thing from happening again. Even worse is that their primary concern seems to be with "backlash" against Muslims in response to this attack, just as they were larger concerned only about “backlash” after all the other Islamic atrocities.

Muslims who have migrated to Western nations should be asked one simple question: why did you come? Why have you migrated away from your precious Islamic states? Muslim immigrants in the West should be asked for what purpose they have come to live in Western societies. Is it because where they come from is so oppressive and barbaric that they had to seek refuge in the West? If this is the case, you’d think they’d be somewhat more respectful of those who’ve granted them their safety.

Have they migrated from Islamic States to the West for a higher quality of life for themselves and their children? If this is the case, you’d think they’d be somewhat more respectful of those who’ve granted them this opportunity.

Or, have they migrated to the West for the purpose of increasing Muslim population figures, armed with mouthpieces posing as Muslim civil rights groups, all for the sake of spreading the Islamic ideology of bigotry and disrespect of all other faiths and cultures, all over the world? If this is the case, the elected leaders of Western societies need to be tapped on the shoulder and then sat down to be truly educated about this intolerant sect.

The complaints and blatant disregard for the law of the land by those of the Islamic faith is inexcusable. Muslims in America have been:

• Walking off their jobs because they can’t pray at work except for when they’re on their scheduled breaks.

• Suing employers, accusing them of religious bigotry.

• Pressuring elected officials at local levels to amend noise ordinances to allow the Muslim call to prayer over loudspeakers five times every day.

• Breaking city ordinances by hanging Ramadan banners on poles where it is prohibited, and then complaining to city government after being made to take them down. Complaining to the point that the same city government gives in and allows them to hang them back up.

• Exiting their taxi cabs to pray in areas where it is prohibited to do so, then complaining that they were ticketed for breaking the law.

Yet they wish to be respected and well thought of. They wish for Westerners to revere their so-called “holy scriptures,” the Qur’an. So long as Muslims refuse to stand up against Islamic fundamentalism, refuse to shut down Islamic groups who have questionable ties to terror networks, refuse to turn in Imams and Muslim clerics who preach hate for non-Muslims and for the West, refuse to turn in the madrasses operating in America who demand allegiance to the Qur’an and not the U.S. Constitution, and refuse to obey US Constitutional law and the laws of all free nations, the American people and our friends in Europe have no obligation to attempt to distinguish the good from the bad in the Muslim community.

The game isn’t paddy cake. The game is cultural survival, and our starting line up, our governments, appear to be shaving points.

G8 pays jizya to Palestinians

The day after the London bombing, the Group of Eight pledged to give $3 billion to the Palestinians. This would have been a perfect opportunity for them to say, "You won't get a penny until you stop teaching jihad in your schools and preaching it in your mosques." This would have been a perfect opportunity to call upon the Saudis to divert some money from their global jihad funding to pick up the tab.

"G8 pledges 3 billion dollars to Palestinians," from Al-Jazeera, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The Group of Eight (G8) has pledged a $3bn aid package for the Palestinian Authority.

"The G8... agreed a substantial package of help for the Palestinian Authority, amounting to up to three billion dollars in the years to come ... so that two states, Israel and Palestinian, two peoples and two religions can live side by side in peace," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Friday at the end of the Gleneagles summit.

Blair said last week that he wanted the summit to focus on Palestinian living standard and aid its government after Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip.

U.S. frees more Taliban suspects in Afghanistan

More idiocy from military officials who refuse to understand that jihadists will perceive demonstrations of compassion only as weakness. From Reuters, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military freed 76 Taliban suspects on Saturday as part of an effort to encourage rank and file guerrillas to lay down their arms, the latest batch freed this year despite a surge in militant violence.

The men, detained at various stages in the U.S.-led battle against Taliban guerrillas since toppling the fundamentalists from power in 2001, were freed from a U.S. military detention center at the main U.S. base at Bagram to the north of Kabul.

"I am very happy that today some of our brothers have been freed and are joining their families," Sibghatullah Mojadidi, a former president who heads the government's reconciliation initiative, told the former prisoners at a ceremony in Kabul.

Most were from southern and eastern Afghanistan, where Taliban guerrillas remain most active.

They were the latest freed since President Hamid Karzai called for release from custody of all Afghan prisoners in U.S. detention following an outcry over reports of abuse, including the deaths of two inmates at Bagram.

Another group of 57 were freed early this month, 53 in June, 86 in May and 81 in January.

Female rights activist, daughter shot dead in Pakistan

More Islamic peace and tolerance in the Pure Land. From AFP, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

Peshawar, PAKISTAN -- Unidentified gunmen shot dead a women's rights activist and her daughter in deeply conservative northwestern Pakistan, police said on Tuesday.

Zubeda Begum, 40, was killed on the spot late on July 1 while her 17-year-old daughter Shumyla died in hospital on Monday following the attack in the town of Dir, 250 kilometers (156 miles) northeast of Peshawar.

Begum was working for private women's rights group the Aurat Foundation. Aurat means woman in Urdu, Pakistan's official language.

"We have launched a search for the suspects and raided a few places, but so far no arrests have been made," said Dir's deputy superintendent of police Hafeez-ur-Rehman.

The policeman said that the victim had never reported any threats and that the motive was more likely to be linked to a family feud, although that had not been confirmed.

Religious groups oppose the presence of nongovernmental organizations and foreign aid workers in the area and four years ago some agencies removed their staff following protests by locals.

Accused Pakistani woman has feet chopped off

Of course, this has nothing to do with Islam. If she committed adultery, Islamic law would dictate that she be stoned to death. By that standard, the men who chopped off her feet were being humane. From Reuters, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

ISLAMABAD, July 9 (Reuters) - A Pakistani man and some of his relatives chopped off his wife's feet after accusing her of being promiscuous, police said on Saturday.

The woman survived the gruesome attack, the latest in a wave of assaults that have raised international concern about the plight of women in Pakistan, particularly in conservative rural areas.

"It is a shameful act of cruelty against a woman and we are taking it seriously," said Talat Ali, a senior police official in Punjab province. "Those who have carried out this crime will not be spared."

The 32-year-old woman told police her feet were chopped off on June 24 by her husband, her father-in-law, a brother-in-law and two others after they accused her of being "of bad character", a euphemism for promiscuous.

Madany: Turkey Persists in Denying the Armenian Genocide

The Rev. Bassam Michael Madany details Turkey's continued shameful refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide:

The first well-documented genocide in modern times took place in the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey, as a successor state, persists in refusing to acknowledge that genocide almost one hundred years after it had taken place. Not only that, but it pressures world bodies to refrain from admitting those horrible events that took the lives of one and a half million Armenians in 1915.

In mid June, I noticed an item about this subject in a French language web site. The following is my English summary of the report, “The German Parliament and the Armenian Genocide.”

Turkey has criticized a German resolution that almost recognized the Armenian genocide during the First World War, describing it as “irresponsible” and manifesting a “narrow spirit.” The Turkish Foreign Minister commented, “The German Parliament has adopted a resolution regarding the events of 1915 that we deplore and strongly reject.” Should this resolution be adopted by Germany, he added, “it will sow chaos in our relations.”

This condemnation of Turkey took place when the Bundestag voted Thursday [June 16] on a historic resolution affirming that the government led by the Young Turks [Party] had almost destroyed the totality of the Armenian people; and [the resolution] regrets the German responsibility in this extermination. This motion, as submitted by all the parliamentarian groups, was unanimously adopted. Furthermore, it pointed to the fact that it is still impossible to conduct a discussion of this extermination in Turkey today. Various terms were used in this resolution to describe the genocide, such as “mass murder,” “extermination,” “destruction,” “deportation-displacement,” and finally, the very word “genocide.”

After reading that report in the French web site, I reflected on the fact that the Armenian genocide of 1915 was to become the first in a series of unimaginable horrors that took place in the 20th Century. I thought the crimes of Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Pol Pot. Those horrific events are all acknowledged now in Russia, Germany, and Cambodia. The books of Alexander Solzhenitsyn tell of the tortures and deaths that occurred in the Gulags of the USSR. Museums dedicated to those who perished in the Holocaust exist in Jerusalem, Washington, and elsewhere. The movie “The Killing Fields” chronicles the savagery of the Khmer Rouge. So why does Turkey continue to deny a historical fact witnessed by many, including some American missionaries?

As a child, I met survivors of the Genocide and their children. From them, I learned the Turkish words “sefer berlik.” Literally, these words translate into “travels or wandering in the wilderness.” Actually, they refer to the enforced deportation, and subsequent elimination of millions of Armenians. It is high time that Western political leaders, on both sides of the Atlantic, insist that if Turkey is to be counted as a truly democratic nation, it may no longer deny the Armenian Genocide. A confession of such a national sin is long overdue.

Bostom: Jihad terrorism in London

While various spokesmen and analysts reflect on the poverty and injustice that led to 7/7, Andrew Bostom looks at the real cause that the dhimmi experts don't want to face -- the jihad ideology -- and shows that jihad terror is nothing new. From The American Thinker:

As the toll of deaths and injuries mounts from these horrific blasts—aptly termed by London emergency management officials as, “A callous attack on innocent members of the public”—the intent of the self-proclaimed “mujahadeen” perpetrators merits examination within the overall strategy of Islamic jihad. Indeed to sow terror, and thus promote the Islamization of infidel territories, is consistent with jihad tactics that date back well over a millennium.

Ibn Hudayl, a 14th century Granadan author of an important treatise on jihad, explained the original methods which facilitated the violent, chaotic jihad conquest of the Iberian peninsula, and other parts of Europe, during the prior six centuries:

"It is permissible to set fire to the lands of the enemy, his stores of grain, his beasts of burden – if it is not possible for the Muslims to take possession of them – as well as to cut down his trees, to raze his cities, in a word, to do everything that might ruin and discourage him, provided that the imam (i.e. the religious “guide” of the community of believers) deems these measures appropriate, suited to hastening the Islamization of that enemy or to weakening him. Indeed, all this contributes to a military triumph over him or to forcing him to capitulate."

And the 20th century historian Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq characterized the impact of these repeated attacks, indistinguishable in motivation from modern acts of jihad terrorism, such as the Madrid bombings on (3/11/04), or yesterday’s London bombings (7/7/05):

"It is not difficult to understand that such expeditions sowed terror. The historian al-Maqqari, who wrote in seventeenth-century Tlemcen in Algeria, explains that the panic created by the Arab horsemen and sailors, at the time of the Muslim expansion in the zones that saw those raids and landings, facilitated the later conquest, if that was decided on: ‘Allah,’ he says, ‘thus instilled such fear among the infidels that they did not dare to go and fight the conquerors; they only approached them as suppliants, to beg for peace.'"...

Read it all.

The Sun: No jihad in Israel

Charles at LGF points out that Britain's Sun tabloid has a world map showing "terror attacks by Islamic extremists since 1993": "Evil across our planet."

Here is its lead paragraph:

MORE than 4,000 people have died as Islamic terrorism has spread across the world over the last decade. Here we highlight some of the worst atrocities:

However, none of these "worst atrocities" takes place in Israel. Like the Saudis, the Sun seems to have forgotten that for years now, that tiny nation has borne the brunt of an Islamic terror assault by which attacks against other countries pale in comparison.

London bombs: "I don’t think it’s al-Qaeda, I think it’s someone more powerful, like the Israelis"

The first Blame-the-Jews Alert of the London bombing comes from a young Muslim in Britain via today's TimesOnline, with thanks to Effractor:

Out on Aylward Street, Kadar Duale, 19, and Hussain Amir, 18, both Muslims, both A-level students in nearby Newham, both born in Stepney to families originating in Somalia and Bangladesh respectively, stopped to talk, albeit briefly and reluctantly. “I feel bad, obviously,” Mr Duale said, “some people are dying. I phoned to check my friends were OK. They shouldn’t do this to get their point across. I don’t think it’s al-Qaeda, I think it’s someone more powerful, like the Israelis.”

Mr Amir agreed. “They’ve been ignored. To commit suicide is the only thing they can do to get their point across.” Mr Amir was grinning throughout this exchange.

Putting Islam on the Stand

From Legal Times, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

In a recent criminal trial in Virginia, the prosecutor told the jury that the defendant couldn't be trusted to tell the truth, that he would lie to their faces -- all because of his religious beliefs.

That's entirely reasonable. The Qur'an says that "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). So those who utter unbelief under compulsion are exempt from the dreadful penalty. How can someone who believes this be expected to honor an oath to tell the truth on the witness stand, when to do so could put him in jeopardy?

The defendant, an American citizen accused of supporting terrorism, was convicted. The religion in question, of course, was Islam.

Now, the Virginia attorney representing Ali Al-Timimi is pushing for a new trial, saying that prosecutors secured the guilty verdict by appealing to religious bigotry against Muslims.

Is it bigotry to be aware of Qur'an 16:106 and point out its implications? I didn't make up those implications. The classic Qur'anic commentator Ibn Kathir says that this verse makes "an exception in the case of one who utters statements of disbelief and verbally agrees with the Mushrikin [polytheists] because he is forced to do so by the beatings and abuse to which he is subjected, but his heart refuses to accept what he is saying...The scholars agreed that if a person is forced into disbelief, it is permissible for him to... go along with them in the interests of self-preservation..."

Might perjury then be justified "in the interests of self-preservation"? Is it "bigotry" to wonder about this? Or dhimmi idiocy not to?

The case illustrates the difficulty in prosecuting suspected terrorists who subscribe to a form of militant Islam, without airing tenets of the religion itself before a jury. And it raises the question of how far is too far when it comes to using a defendant's religious beliefs as evidence of criminal intent. The issue will likely continue to confront judges as more cases against accused terrorists come to trial.

Timimi's lawyer, Edward MacMahon Jr., is seeking to overturn Timimi's conviction, citing prosecutorial misconduct and the prejudicial impact of statements he says portrayed Islam as a violent religion. One specific objection: that Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg instructed the jury in his closing argument that Timimi, a devout Muslim, would lie to jurors because the jurors were "kafir" -- or nonbelievers.

New Duranty Times joins Galloway in calling for dhimmi capitulation in the face of the London bombings

Why do we call the New York Times the "New Duranty Times"? See here. Also, read "Blair's Rising Star Runs Into a Treacherous Future" by Alan Cowell, which appears in today's edition. Cowell repeats Vidkun Quisling Galloway's contention that the bombings were the "price" of "ignoring" the "warnings" that had been issued about Britain's involvement in Iraq. In other words: play the dhimmi, accede to jihadist intimidation and grant them all they demand, and this kind of thing won't happen.

LONDON, July 7 - It is said, usually as a kind of joke, that a day is a long time in politics. Rarely has that been so true - and so bloodily so - as in the past 24 hours of Prime Minister Tony's Blair's roller coaster ride from triumph to tragedy....

Perhaps the crudest lesson to be drawn was that, in adopting the stance he took after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Blair had finally reaped the bitter harvest of the war on terrorism - so often forecast but never quite seeming real until the explosions boomed across London.

The war in Iraq has been increasingly unpopular here, with taunts that Mr. Blair had become President Bush's poodle. The anger about Iraq led to Mr. Blair's shaky showing in the May elections: a third term with a severely reduced majority. Now, as long predicted and feared, his support of the war appears to have cost British lives at home. Thursday was a day of rallying behind the leader, but there were indications that the bombing could take a political toll.

No mainstream politician would say so out loud, but George Galloway, the maverick, onetime Labor legislator who had met with Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war, had no hesitation. "We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain," he said. "Tragically, Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings."...

"We argued, as did the security services in this country, that if we fought the jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq, they would fight back in Britain. Tragically, Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings. Let us not resist the jihadists, and all will go well for us."

This is how this curious piece ends:

Mr. Blair said Thursday that "the vast majority" of Muslims opposed terrorism. Indeed, Musa Admani, a Muslim scholar at Metropolitan University in London, told the BBC that support for militant Islam among young British Muslims was "on the decline."

Glad to hear it. I suppose British Muslims are energetically hunting down the jihadists. But I also wonder what this paragraph is doing in a piece scolding Blair for Iraq. Is Cowell trying to suggest that really, if we do capitulate, it won't be so bad for us -- the militants are "on the decline," after all?

London Mayor Defended 'Theologian of Terror'

As we noted here at the time. From CNSNews, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

(CNSNews.com) - London Mayor Ken Livingstone's previous support of a Muslim cleric who advocates suicide bombings may cause him some embarrassment as he now must speak for the city in the wake of Thursday's terrorist bombings.

Livingstone condemned the Thursday attacks as "mass murder," and added that "this was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners."

Yet Livingstone has in the past labeled Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi a "man of peace" and a "moderate," despite the fact that Al-Qaradawi has supported suicide bombings and the targeting of American allies.

Livingstone welcomed Al-Qaradawi to London's City Hall last year as an honored guest, and the mayor appeared in a video shown at a solidarity conference for the sheikh on Feb. 17 of this year in Doha, Qatar. Livingstone has publicly defended the sheikh against critics in the media and various grassroots organizations.

The Anti-Defamation League has labeled Al-Qaradawi the "Theologian of Terror," while the website GayEgypt.com has dubbed him the "Dr. Goebbels of modern Egypt," for Al-Qaradawi's anti-homosexual rhetoric.

British Muslims fear blast backlash

A predictable piece from Al-Jazeera (thanks to Skeetstreet), focusing more on fears of retaliation against Muslims rather than the real victims.

British Muslim groups have condemned Thursday's series of blasts in London and appealed for calm amid fears of an anti-Muslim backlash.

"These evil deeds make victims of us all," the Muslim Council of Britain said in a statement on Thursday.

"The evil people who planned and carried out these series of explosions in London want to demoralise us as a nation and divide us as a people. All of us must unite in helping the police to capture these murderers," it said.

Mark those words. It will be very interesting to see how the Muslim community in Britain responds. If the now-disbanded Al-Muhajiroun was indeed Britain's largest Muslim group, as the New York Times reported in January 2005, than Sacranie's appeal might not be altogether welcome among Muslims in Britain.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he welcomed the council's statement.

"We know that these people (perpetrators of the blasts) act in the name of Islam, but we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims, here and abroad, are decent and law-abiding people who abhor this act of terrorism every bit as much as we do," he added.

Some London Muslims said they feared they would be targeted as a result of the explosions.

"Everyone is subdued, and people are wondering what has happened. People are asking how will it affect us, are we going to be treated in a nice way after this?" restaurant manager Karim Mohammed said. "We have nothing to do with this."

Great. Then I trust you will be energetically helping authorities identify and incarcerate jihadists among British Muslims.

Meanwhile, the jihadist Hizb-ut-Tahrir group isn't even sure Muslims did the deed:

However, the British branch of the Islamist movement Hizb ut-Tahrir warned Muslims against blaming fellow believers for the bomb attacks.

"Condemnation with scant information will only aid the leaders of the West who want to use fear as a tool as well as allow them to arrest more Muslims unjustly under draconian terror laws," it said in a statement on Thursday.

"Yes, the rules of Islam do not allow the harming of innocent civilians, but at the same time the rules of Islam do not allow us to condemn Muslims with little evidence in order to remove the pressure from ourselves."...

The group told British Muslims to beware of revenge attacks after the blasts.

"It is possible in the days ahead that symbols of the Muslim community such as mosques and schools may be targets for vandalism," it said.

"It is also foreseeable that our Muslim sisters may be at the forefront of verbal abuse or even attack."

Meanwhile, the Vidkun Quisling of 2005, George Galloway, recommended dhimmi capitulation:

In his reaction, controversial UK lawmaker George Galloway said Londoners had "paid the price" for Britain sending soldiers into Iraq and Afghanistan and warned there was more to come. "We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain," Galloway said in a statement on Thursday.

Later, the Respect Party MP told parliament the attacks were despicable but entirely predictable.

"Let there be no equivocation: The primary responsibility for the bloodshed this morning lies with those who carried out the acts.

"But it would be utterly crass to ... separate these acts from the political backdrop against which they took place.

"They did not come out of a clear blue sky, any more than those monstrous mosquitoes that struck the twin towers and other buildings in the United States on 11 September 2001."

This kind of talk will continue and likely increase, making it altogether possible that the London bombings will end up winning more concessions for Muslims in the UK than they would have won otherwise. The idea that they are lashing out in frustration because their legitimate grievance is not being redressed, combined with utter ignorance of the jihad ideology, could make 7/7 the end of resistance to the proposed religious hatred law, and the beginning of more accommodations.

Five Pakistanis arrested over 'honor' rape

From Reuters, with thanks to Doc Washburn:

MULTAN, Pakistan - Pakistani police have arrested five men on charges of kidnapping and gang-raping a woman in the latest of a string of so-called honor crimes.

The married woman was attacked because one of her male cousins had an affair with a women whose father disapproved of the relationship, police said on Wednesday.

"The accused say they carried out this horrible act as an act of honor," said police official Mohammad Mumtaz.

The incident took place in the central Punjab province where the
high-profile gang-rape of a woman, Mukhtaran Mai, on the orders of a village council triggered an international outcry.

Mai was attacked because her brother had befriended a woman from a power clan, offending male members of the clan.

Violence against women is common in rural Pakistan where tribal and feudal customs hold sway.

Hundreds of women are raped or killed every year by men intent on restoring honor after behavior -- by the woman or a male relative -- deemed inappropriate in the male-dominated society.

In the latest incident, eight men kidnapped the woman, Fauzia Altaf, in the town of Chiniot in late June after the main suspect, Anwar Ali, got angry about an affair between her cousin and his daughter.

Ali was among the five men accused of raping and torturing the woman for two days. Two other suspects had absconded while one had turned himself in and been released on bail, Mumtaz said...

Exposed in Translation

An article on how crucial MEMRI's translation work is for exposing the real sentiments of Muslim spokesmen -- including those whom witless dhimmis accept as "moderates." From Steven Stalinsky in FrontPage, with thanks to a tea-loving snail:

Within weeks of September 11, 2001, an Egyptian sheik serving as Al-Azhar University's representative in America and an imam at the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City, Muhammad al-Gamei'a, was interviewed at an unofficial Al-Azhar University Web site, www.lailatalqadr.com. Sheik al-Gamei'a returned to Egypt shortly after his interview was translated. Many of his friends in the interfaith community were shocked at what this "moderate" said.

In the interview, he claimed the Jews were behind the September 11 attacks and offered the following as evidence: "four thousand Jews did not come to work at the World Trade Center," and "Jews control decision-making in the airports and in the ... White House and the Pentagon." Another outrageous statement: "Muslims do not feel safe even going to the hospitals, because some Jewish doctors in one of the hospitals poisoned sick Muslim children, who then died." Sheik al-Gamei'a also predicted the collapse of America.

Almost four years after Sheik al-Gamei'a made headlines, another influential Egyptian-born New York imam gave a series of interviews to the press in his homeland. He also did not expect his words would be translated by MEMRI.

An imam at the Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan and a lecturer on Islamic studies at Manhattanville College, Ahmad Dewidar, was recently called "the face of the next generation of Muslims in America." He has met with President Bush, Mayor Giuliani, Governor Pataki and U.N. Secretary-General Annan.

Recently, Dr. Dewidar attended the annual Conference of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs in Egypt, where he gave a series of interviews. In one that aired on MBC TV on June 9, he discussed the spread of Islam in America. He referred to sermons he had heard in 1995 that stated, "We are going to the White House so that Islam will be victorious, Allah willing, and the White House will become Muslim House." To view the broadcast, visit www.memritv.org.

On June 15, Dr. Dewidar was interviewed by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's Web site, www.ikhwanonline.com. When asked about how the attacks of September 11, 2001, impacted the spread of Islam in America, he said that he witnessed hundreds of Americans converting to Islam. Hinting at an American government conspiracy related to the attacks, he said, "Whether or not these events were planned, or pinned on the Muslims, or something else - [it] provided an opportunity for [the American government] to legislate dubious laws that restrict the growth and presence of Islam in the U.S."

Regarding American skepticism toward Islam following September 11, 2001, he said, "The media - most of which is under Zionist control - has helped to spread this perception." Later in the interview he said that "the Jews" control the press.

Yes, and Coca Cola too.

New Duranty Times zeroes in on ethnic conflicts in Thailand and Sudan

New Duranty Times? Why do we call the New York Times by that name? Read here and here. Duranty, you see, glossed over Stalin's Communist genocide in the Ukraine. And the Times is doing it again, missing today's jihad almost completely -- note these two stories from today's fresh steaming pile of newsprint:

Schools in Thailand Under Ethnic Siege

YALA, Thailand - On the weekends now, the military firing range here is crowded with teachers - in shifts of 50 - trying out their pistols, an essential new accessory in a place where teaching school has become one of the most dangerous professions.

In an escalating campaign of violence here in the largely Muslim south of mostly Buddhist Thailand, government-run schools and the teachers who work in them have become particular targets of bombs and gunmen.

"Bombs" thrown by whom? "Gunmen" adhering to what religion and ideology?

In the past year and a half, dozens of schools have been damaged or destroyed by arson. The local teachers union said 18 teachers had been killed in that period in the three most dangerous southern provinces, an average of one a month. Some give higher figures.

A long-simmering separatist movement in this former Malay sultanate lies at the heart of the violence, hand in hand with resentment at discrimination against Muslims and attempts at forced assimilation by the government....

A harsh, militarized approach by the government has generated its own spiraling dynamic of violence and revenge. Experts say that there is no evidence yet of direct involvement by foreign Islamist groups but that fertile ground is being created for them.

Ah. It is all a reaction to discrimination against Muslims, you see. Jihad? Sharia? Caliphate? Pah.

And meanwhile, in Sudan:

Children of Darfur Know About Life Amid Carnage

A crayon drawing by "Taha," who is 13 or 14 and lives in North Darfur, showed helicopters in the sky and houses engulfed in flames. "Now my nights are hard because I feel frightened," says the label accompanying the drawing. "We became homeless."

And on another label there was this from 13-year-old "Salah," from West Darfur, who drew men mounting women or pointing guns at one another: "The women were screaming. They seized them, they took them by force. The pretty ones were taken away ... girls were taken, small girls, too, I think 5 and 7 and 14. Some came back after four or five hours. ... Some we haven't seen again."

The 27 drawings that went on display yesterday at New York University depict the world of the young artists, Darfur refugees who escaped the killings in Sudan. So their crayon and pencil offerings show rape, men on horseback with guns, burning villages and helicopters raining weapon fire from the sky....

The group's goal is to focus attention on Darfur, a western Sudanese region the size of Texas. In a conflict that pits the Sudan government against rebel groups from Darfur, the United Nations estimates that as many as 200,000 have starved to death or been killed and 2.4 million have been displaced since the conflict began in February 2003.

The militia, composed of Arabs known locally as "janjaweed," has hurled racial insults at the black Sudanese as it has committed the atrocities depicted by the young artists. Those atrocities have included reports of children being raped or castrated, or having their eyes gouged out.

Racial insults. It's all racial, you see? And it is to a degree, but once again the Times makes no mention of the jihad element, which has been affirmed by a Sudanese general.

Walter Duranty would be proud.

CAIR, Muslims To Call For Celestica Prayer Accommodation

Dude! It worked at Dell!

A CAIR press release (thanks to Twostellas):

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- (OfficialWire) -- 07/05/05 -- On Wednesday, July 6, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will hold a news conference in Minneapolis, Minnisoda, to call on Canada-based electronics manufacturer Celestica Inc. to provide reasonable religious accommodation for its Muslim employees.

The Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group says some 60 Somali Muslim workers at Celestica's Arden Hills facility are not being allowed to offer religiously-mandated prayers. CAIR says a number of the Muslim workers have been suspended or fired as a result of the prayer dispute. (CAIR Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar and representatives of the Muslim workers are scheduled to appear at the news conference.)

In a letter sent last week to Celestica, CAIR requested that the company offer religious accommodation as required by law and sought compensation for the Muslim workers who lost their jobs.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires an employer to accommodate an individual's religious practices unless the company can demonstrate that the accommodation causes an "undue hardship." CAIR has successfully resolved similar prayer disputes at facilities owned by Dell Inc. and Solectron Corporation.

Justice Department Awards Terror Supporting Group with Grant

A press release from Americans Against Hate:

(Coral Springs, FL) According to the website of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has recently selected the group to receive an outreach grant. The grant is being awarded to ADC through the Office of Special Counsel For Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices. This comes after years of stated support from ADC for overseas terrorist organizations.

In June of 1993, then-ADC President Albert Mokhiber stated, "Most outrageous of all the allegations 'reported' by [Patrick] Symmes was his opinion that 'Hamas is a band of murderers.'"

In November of 1994, then-ADC President Hamzi Moghrabi stated, "I mean, I know many people in Hamas. They are very respectable. They don't accept violence. And I don't believe Hamas, as an organization, is a violent organization."

In August of 1996, then-ADC President Hala Maksoud stated, "Hezbollah is a Lebanese resistance organization… This hardly qualifies as terrorism."

In May of 2000, then-ADC Spokesman Hussein Ibish stated, "Everywhere Hezbollah fighters, derided by the Israeli and U.S. governments as 'terrorists,' conducted themselves in an exemplary manner... [Hezbollah is] a disciplined and responsible liberation force."

The announcement of this grant followed ADC's own award having been presented to DOJ official Rene Alexander Acosta - the 2005 'Friend in Government Award - at ADC's 25th Year Silver Anniversary Convention just one month ago.

Joe Kaufman, the Chairman of Americans Against Hate (AAH), stated, "For the Department of Justice to give any type of financial support to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee is an outrage! How do we ever expect to win the war on terrorism, when our own government works to assist groups that defend the terrorists we're supposed to be fighting?! We demand that this grant be rescinded immediately!"

AAH calls on all concerned citizens to contact the Department of Justice, at (202) 616-5594.

Additional information on this subject can be found on Militant Islam Monitor.

Muslim site endorses destruction of non-Muslim houses of worship

Some Islamic apologists have asserted that the dhimma is a relic of history (here is my reply to that argument). But it isn't at Islam Web, where this fatwa (dated 30 Muharram 1423, or April 13, 2002) still appears (thanks to Satinder for the link):

Fatwa No. : 2860 Fatwa Title : Temples into mosques, mosques into temples Fatwa Date : 30 Muharram 1423 Question

During the Islamic rule in India some of the temples were converted to mosques by the rulers. Is this acceptable in Islam? And what if a mosque which was built at a place where there was a temple earlier and now when Hindus demolish the mosque, should the Muslims oppose and sacrifice their lives for it? Please answer in detail with Qur'an and Sunnah.

Fatwa

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the World; and may His blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.

From Islamic point of view, there are three kinds of countries where non-Muslims live.

First, countries established by Muslims. In such countries, non-Muslims are allowed to live, but they are not permitted to build temples, churches or synagogues. Also, they are not allowed to eat pork or drink wine in public. In addition, even if they had an agreement with an Imam allowing the eating of pork and drinking wine in public such an agreement is not valid because such an agreement is unsound. Ibn al-Qayyim said: 'There is no disagreement concerning the above ruling among Muslims'.

It is reported form Ibn 'Abbas as presented by Abu Yusuf in his book "al-Kharaj: land tax". 'Non-Muslims are not allowed to build some temples in a country that is built by Muslims and are not allowed to toll a bell nor to drink wine in public or raise pig'.

Imam Ahmad (May Allah's Mercy be upon him), while answering a question about churches and synagogues built by Zimmis (non-Muslims in a Muslim country), said: 'churches and synagogues should be destroyed, and they are not permitted to build a new one in a country that is built and inhabited by Muslims. They are not allowed to do what is mentioned above except what they have reconciled with and agreed upon with Muslims. It is said to Abu Abdullah : 'What is the evidence that prevent, them from building a synagogue or church if the land is theirs and they pay Jizyah (poll tax) and they are not a source of mischief?' He answered: the Hadith of Ibn 'Abbas (Radiya Allahu Anhu) mentioned above.

Ibn al-Qayyim said: 'The above ruling rendered by Sunnah is established by virtue of Shari'a rules and fundamentals, since allowing non-Muslims to build temples constitutes a banner of disbelief and such a work is worse than establishing bars and brothels constitutes a banner of dissoluteness. Thus, the ruler of Muslims is not allowed to reconcile non-Muslims to produce rites of disobedience and lewdness, not to speak of producing a location for disbelief and polytheism'. We exclude from the above-ruling only places of worship that were built in the desert, and then, Muslims settled around them, i.e. such buildings are not to be destroyed.

Second, countries established by non-Muslims, and then, Muslims conquered them by force. In such countries, it is Haram to give rise to any place of worship for non-Muslims. As for places of worship that were established before conquest, Muslim scholars have two opinions:

1) All such places are to be destroyed; it is Haram to leave them as they are, since possession of such countries is conveyed to Muslims. So, it becomes Haram to maintain, in such countries, any places that show the banner of disbelief, just as the countries that are established and inhabited by Muslims. Another reason is that possession of places of churches and synagogues is conveyed to Muslims. This means that if we allow non-Muslims to establish their rites of disbelief, then it becomes like selling or renting out those places, and that is Haram. In addition, Allah has legislated Jihad until all kinds of worship are for Allah alone. If we help or allow them to establish their rites of disbelief in such places, then all kinds of worship will be for others, not for Allah.

2) It is permissible to leave places of worship as they are. This opinion is based on the Hadith stated above from Ibn 'Abbas . This Hadith reads: "In a country that was established by non-Muslims, and then, Muslims conquered it, non-Muslims have the rights mentioned in their agreement with Muslims, who are to honor their agreement with non-Muslims. The Muslims have no right to put on non-Muslims a burden greater than they have strength to bear" .

In the same vein, the Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam) did not destroy Jewish places of worship after the conquest of Khaibar, but he left them as they were. The Prophet's (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam) companions did not destroy churches after conquering many countries. Such old places of worship exist at the present time.
Umar Ibn 'Abdul 'Aziz sent his officials the following: 'Do not destroy a church or synagogue or a temple of fire worshippers'.

Ibn al-Qayyim said: 'The sound judgment concerning the above-stated issue is that the Muslim ruler is authorized to do what is more suitable on behalf of Muslims. So, he can decide to take hold of non-Muslim places of worship or to remove them depending on Muslims' need of such place, paucity of non-Muslims and numerous temples. But, if he finds it is better to leave such places as they are due non-Muslims' need and Muslims' sufficiency, then he has to do so'. This is the superior saying.

Third, countries captured through reconciliation. If an agreement of reconciliation states that Muslims are only entitled to receive Kharaj (land tax) and the land is for non-Muslims or both parties have a truce only, then places of worship of non-Muslims are to be kept safe and non-Muslims can build new ones, since the land is theirs. This last picture of reconciliation was done with Najraan Christians by the Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam), and he did not stipulate prevention of building a new church or abbey.

On the other hand, if an agreement of reconciliation states that the land is for Muslims and non-Muslims are to pay Jizyah (poll tax), then Muslims, (in case of ability) a