Eulogy at his brother's reburial

This is about one small human tragedy in Gaza, but in a larger sense it is about dhimmis and potential dhimmis everywhere, whether Jewish or Christian, Hindu or Buddhist, atheist or whatever.

"We believe that from this terrible destruction we will see a great revival, of the Torah, of the Nation, of the Land..." And of the human spirit, in all its manifestations. The boot on the face cannot prevail forever. The trampling of the aspirations of the soul cannot win forever. Willful lies, polite PC niceties and evil-hearted propaganda cannot prevail forever. The truth will out, and the truth will win.

The Gobi family, from what used to be N'vei Dekalim, buried its son Elkanah yesterday at the Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem. His brother delivered a comprehensive and moving eulogy.

Elkanah Gobi, a student in the Sderot hesder yeshiva where he combined military service with Torah study, was killed in March 2002 during a terrorist attack at the Kisufim Crossing. He was mistakenly run over by an army jeep when he got out to fire back at a terrorist who had shot at him and was preparing to shoot at other Jewish motorists.

The Gobi family sat for the required abbreviated mourning period at the Western Wall plaza yesterday afternoon. Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch had asked the family not to do so, but the family agreed only not to erect a mourners' tent.

One of Elkanah's brothers delivered the following eulogy at the burial site:

Elkanah, my dear brother, I stand here and simply cannot believe it. It's impossible to believe that this is happening to us. Three and a half years ago, we were all stunned and pained, as we accompanied you to eternal rest on the beloved land of Gush Katif. I was sure that that the was the most difficult day of my life - but a week and a half ago, I realized otherwise.

I walked around with Adiel the day before the expulsion and thought to myself, 'Could there possibly be a more fantastic place to grow up than here in Gush Katif?' We returned from the festive Torah Scroll ceremony in the synagogue, an amazing and powerful experience, and suddenly thousands of soldiers were flooding the town. They poured onto the streets, the paths, the lawns and the beautiful gardens, and the next morning, they started coming into the houses. The curse of expulsion had begun...

This so-beautiful neighborhood, beloved and central to N'vei Dekalim, became a jungle of soldiers. They surrounded the Nissim family house, and we see Yechiel coming out surrounded by dozens of soldiers, the perpetual smile on his face having disappeared, replaced by a sea of tears... Then we see them evicting the Golan family, with Ika coming out and saying words that could split rocks. Then they rush to the Ohayon family, where Rabbi Ohayon was sitting and explaining to the soldiers how we must accept Divine decrees the way we accept decrees of someone's death. And then another family and another eviction, and then I see the Naumberg family coming out, embracing each other, with Reb Shabtai - whose every word over the past year was a lesson in faith - coming out holding a Torah scroll, with Mordy standing near the mezuzah and reciting Shma, accepting the yoke of Heaven with cries reaching up to the Heavenly Throne. Then the Cohen family, sitting and singing last songs of prayer, filled with tears of the Holy Land. And then we see the Achituv children being dragged out, and then the expulsion of Rabbi Tal from his house; he comes out looking like an angel, enwrapped in tallit and adorned in tefillin, kissing the beloved land of Gush Katif. And then they get to Rabbi Gavrieli, who remains amazingly serene as is characteristic of the tzaddik he is, and everything is so fast so that no one will be able to wake up or scream out accidentally - for this is the way of deception and lies, always rushing in fear of being discovered.

And then, it just happened. They came into our house, dozens of them, and we sat down opposite them in the living room, with the big picture of you in my hands, and I started to talk... I told them about how our parents came here 22 years ago when there was only sand, sand and sand. They left a thriving farm in Kfar Achim and came to Katif with a sense of mission and faith to make the desert bloom! ...

But mostly I told them about you. How you grew up here amidst the golden sand, and learned Torah and Derekh Eretz [the right way to behave], and were a dedicated youth leader in Bnei Akiva, and studied in yeshiva and enlisted in the Duvdevan unit of the army. And I told about that black Saturday night, how you were dressed in your Sabbath clothes and went to take Boaz who had been urgently called to the army, and suddenly an accursed terrorist lying on the side of the road opened fire. The reinforced army jeep that passed by went to get help, or who knows what - and you, instead of pressing on the gas and getting out of there, you remembered all the people driving behind you and about the holy land below you, and you decided not to give in! You went out with Boaz, with heroism that we learn about only in the books, and stormed towards the terrorist. The bulletproof jeep that returned didn't think to do the same, but rather to run over the source of the shooting - which, unfortunately, was you.

I remember that night that we decided to bury you in Gush Katif! It was clear to all that this would be your wish; your connection to this place was something that could not be detached.

...I looked those soldiers in the eye and said, 'I'm sure that the grandfathers of each and every one of you... on the day that you enlisted in the army, were proud of you, soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces. But today, as you stand here in that uniform and follow this criminal order to expel Jews and to destroy, to an order that gives our house as a gift to the terrorist who caused the death of Elkanah and other thousands - I hope that your grandfathers are not turning over in their graves...'

But we will go ahead, with our faces turned to the future. Before we were thrown out of our house, I stood with a Lt.-Col. who was there, and I asked him with tears, 'Tell me, what are they doing to us?' And he said to me, 'They are trying to break you.' And he started to cry and say, 'I see you and I discover people that I never merited to see before. For two days, I have been going into houses, and I see the truth. I see you from inside, the education of your children, your faith, your inner strength, and I know that you are the salt of the earth. The lying bloodthirsty media made sure to paint you black, as violent Messianic crazies. They said there would be dozens of dead and the like. They caused us to hate you without knowing who you really are - but today I feel that I love you so much. How I wish that my children would be like yours... Just don't give up! You must not break!'

I told him that they can throw Jews out to the street, and uproot entire families, and dismantle cohesive communities, and destroy houses and greenhouses, and turn Paradise into desolation and destruction, and even blow up synagogues and remove bodies from their graves - but it's impossible to break our spirit, our dedication, our valor, our spirit of life. This can never be broken!

Darkness is not banished with sticks, but rather by adding light. We will add light with new communities, and new families, and bringing children into the world, and love of Land and willingness to fight for it, and love of nation... We will continue to connect with genuine Jewish identity, to the real reason we have come home to this land... We will continue because the People of Israel did not start yesterday; we draw strength from our glorious history, from our holy forefathers...

One woman who was thrown out of her home in Gadid went outside and looked Heavenward, and said, "Master of the Universe. I gave you my house, now You please give us Your house!"

We believe that from this terrible destruction we will see a great revival, of the Torah, of the Nation, of the Land..."

EU to force dhimmitude on UK

By making rules disallowing the expulsion of preachers who spread hatred and jihad. "EU to set down rules for expelling extremists," from the Telegraph, with thanks to Daryl:

Britain is facing a clash with Brussels over EU plans to grant sweeping rights to foreigners ordered to leave - whether failed asylum seekers or Islamic extremists facing deportation. The Home Office is expected this week to begin proceedings aimed at removing foreign nationals who fall foul of a new list of "unacceptable behaviours" that give backing to terrorists.

At the same time, however, the European Commission is preparing to publish a new directive that will effectively bar EU states from sending people back to countries where they could face persecution or torture.

It will also limit the length of time people can be detained pending their deportation.

Proposals to be unveiled tomorrow will set out rules for returning illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers to their home countries.

They are part of a common asylum policy for the EU that Britain has strongly supported in the past but which may conflict with plans outlined by Tony Blair and Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, following the London terrorist attacks.

The new "returns directive" would include the right to be detained for no more than a year after a court had ordered removal - a provision that could trigger chaos in Britain, where lengthy appeals have seen some individuals remain in detention for years.

EU sources said they were keen to end the situation where failed asylum seekers and other foreign nation also found themselves in limbo, for prolonged periods.

The directive would give every unwanted foreign national an explicit right to appeal their removal, separate from any appeals involving their original asylum application, or refugee status.

In addition, all those ordered removed would be allowed to ask a judge to suspend or stay their deportation pending appeal.

The directive also gives judges the right to refuse to grant such a stay, meaning expelled imams or other extremists could find themselves contemplating the progress of an appeal from a foreign jail cell.

UK picks Tariq Ramadan for anti-terror panel

Inayat Bunglawala is also part of this panel. Fox Guarding the Henhouse alert from IslamOnline, with thanks to Sr. Soph: "UK Picks Ramadan for Anti-terror Panel: Report":

CAIRO, August 31, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The British government has named famed Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan as one of a government committee set up to address the underlying causes of terrorism in Britain, a leading British newspaper reported Wednesday, August 31.

The academic attended a meeting at the Home Office last week to discuss extremism among British Muslims as part of the group's work, well-placed sources told the Guardian.

The 13-member taskforce is comprised of Muslims from community groups, like Inayat Bunglawala from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), academics and the MP Shahid Malik.

[K]nown as the working group on tackling extremism, the taskforce is part of the government's response to the July 7 attacks on London, and was announced by (Prime Minister) Tony Blair. Its 13 members had been chosen by the Home Office.

The group will report to the home secretary and prime minister by late September and make proposals to stop British Muslims turning to violence, according to the paper.

Right Person

Ramadan’s appointment to the committee was hailed as the right person for the right job and evidence of the government's willingness to stand up to rightwing tabloids that had savaged the moderate scholar.

"It sends all the right messages that the government is engaged in a real search for answers, rather than pandering to kneejerk elements in the rightwing press and their prejudices," Labour MP Sadiq Khan told the paper.

"It's important for the government to listen to people who have scholarly knowledge of the issues."

IslamOnline doesn't mention that Ramadan was barred from entering the United States. Those right-wing tabloids must have a lot of clout.

Kenya: Muslims push for Sharia

And Christians are resisting the call, of course. Would you want to be a despised inferior class in your own country? From Inter Press Service of Johannesburg, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Religion is playing a major role in undermining Kenya's draft constitution. Christians and Muslims, who have lived peacefully for decades, have now suddenly found themselves at loggerheads over the document.

Muslims are insisting that Islamic sharia (laws), which call for floggings for consuming alcohol and stoning to death for committing adultery, be enshrined in the new constitution.

This has angered Christians who make up about 85 percent of Kenya's estimated 30 million people.

A referendum is set for November to resolve the dispute.

But the government is worried because members of 'The Kenya Church', who met in the capital Nairobi Aug 25, said they would mobilise their congregations to vote 'no'.

"We are saying that all religious courts and traditional courts not be included in the constitution. These courts are out-rightly unconstitutional," David Githii, chairman of The Kenya Church, an umbrella for 40 church groups, said during their meeting last week.

Clause three of article 179 of the proposed constitution provides for traditional and Sharia courts, while at the same time the first clause of article 10 stipulates separation between the state and religion.

"We have strategies of getting right to the village level to get the persons there to vote 'no' to this constitution. We have branches down in the villages and we interact with the grass-roots almost on a daily basis. This campaign for a 'no' vote will go on even after the referendum. It will continue up to the next general elections in 2007," Bishop Margaret Wanjiru of 'Jesus is Alive Ministries', a charismatic church, told the gathering.

"Our vote and that of our congregations remain 'no' until clause 179 changes. If the government chooses to remain adamant, it is their choice. The ball is in their court," she said.

Pope meets controversial critic of Islam

An interesting development from AFP, with thanks to Stephania.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI held a meeting at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, a strident critic of Islam, Vatican sources confirmed.

The 76-year-old writer, who describes herself as an atheist Christian and was sued in Italy for insulting the Muslim faith in one of her books, asked to meet the pope, a source said.

The meeting on Saturday between Benedict XVI and the former war correspondent became public only after Fallaci's associates let slip that the meeting took place.

Based in the United States where she is being treated for cancer, Fallaci once said in a newspaper interview that she was comforted by the writings of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became pope after the death of John Paul II.

"Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense," Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal on June 23.

"Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty," she said.

"I feel less alone when I read Ratzinger's books," the journalist added...

Pipes: Islamists, Get Out

Daniel Pipes writes in the New York Sun and his website about the growing anti-dhimmitude in Europe, the UK and Australia and asks, "where are the Americans?"

As the full implications of the London terrorist attacks by domestic jihadis sink in, Westerners are speaking out about the problem of radical Islam with new clarity and boldness.

The most profound development is the sudden need of the British and others to define the meaning of their nationality. In the face of the Islamist challenge, historic identities once taken for granted must now be codified.

This can be seen on a diurnal level, where Islamist assertion has provoked a new European willingness in recent months to stand up for tradition – as seen by the banning of burqas in Italy, requiring a German school boy to attend co-ed swimming classes, and making male applicants for Irish citizenship renounce polygamy. When a ranking Belgian politician canceled lunch with an Iranian group after its members demanded that alcohol not be served, his spokesman explained, "You can't force the authorities of Belgium to drink water."

As shown by two statements on the same day last week, August 24, leading Western politicians are going beyond these minor specifics to address the civilization at the heart of the matter.

The British shadow education secretary and one of the Conservative Party's bright prospects, David Cameron, defined Britishness as "freedom under the rule of law," adding that this expression "explains almost everything you need to know about our country, our institutions, our history, our culture - even our economy." The treasurer of Australia, Peter Costello, who is regarded as heir apparent to Prime Minister Howard, said, "Australia expects its citizens to abide by core beliefs – democracy, the rule of law, the independent judiciary, independent liberty."...

Read it all.

Beslan children still tormented

A disturbing story from the BBC:

In the basement of his Beslan home, seven-year-old Chermen is kicking boxes with a surprising energy given his age and his tiny frame.

His face is tense and betrays the turmoil he is feeling.

But when we sit down to talk, he regains his composure. Looking straight into my eyes, he answers my questions with clarity and confidence.

"There is no God. There is only military force. I believe in Russia and in our armed forces.

"That's what I believed in during the terrorist attack."

Chermen is a survivor of last year's attack. On 1 September, pro-Chechen gunmen seized School Number One in Beslan. More than 1,000 adults and children were held inside for three days.

When the siege finally ended, 171 children and more than 200 adults were dead.

A year on, he seems to be coping well. He has started to play his beloved computer games again and he smiles frequently.

But as he recalls those three days in hell, his memories are as vivid as ever and reveal that his pain is unresolved.

"After the first explosion, a terrorist's grenade was hit by a bullet. They all had grenades slung round them. He blew up and his brains hit me in the face. It was horrible. It was fatty and slippery."...

A familiar tension reappears on his face.

"I feel pain. And also rage. And since then I want to avenge Oleg's death. If I were president, I would order them to send unarmed terrorists to me and I would, with my bare hands, using a knife, slit their throats."

In a small flat in one of Beslan's characterless compounds, nine-year-old Laima draws a picture. It shows an armed terrorist, his face covered by a mask.

She draws several pictures until she is finally happy with the result. Then she picks it up, tears it to pieces and sets it on fire with matches.

"I draw the terrorist and burn them for all the children who died in the school. I want to take revenge on them for killing those children."...

Since her lucky escape, Laima has been engaged in drawing and burning these pictures almost every day.

"It's never enough. It is impossible to get enough revenge. All my life I will have to do it, because of how they held us for three days."...

Dhimmitude at the Guardian: political Islam is ok, as long as there's no terrorism

In "Creating Islamist phantoms: We dreamed up 'al-Qaida': Let's not do it again with 'evil ideology,'" Adam Curtis of The Guardian (thanks to Fjordman) posits that "we may not agree with its reactionary vision of the political use of Islam and the pessimistic, anti-progressive beliefs that lie at the heart of Qutb's teachings, but it is essential to realise that there is no inherent link between these ideas and terrorism."

Well, of course not. Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the leading theorist of the Muslim Brotherhood, taught a totalitarian, expansionist ideology that viewed any political power other than Sharia states as illegitimate. If those who adhere to this ideology can attain what they want by peaceful means, then Curtis is right: they will do so, and there will be no terrorism. Sure, there will be a few small matters of subjugation of women and infidels, but who's counting?

This underscores why it is so misleading to say that our fight is against "terrorism." That leads to this kind of thinking -- but would Curtis really consider the peaceful imposition of Sharia in Britain or anywhere else to be a benign development, as long as it involved no terrorism?

Denmark Tries to Act Against Terrorism as Mood in Europe Shifts

Denmark struggles with speech issues. What is sedition? What constitutes incitement? These issues will be paramount in the western world for a long time to come. From the Washington Post, or as Hugh Fitzgerald calls it, the Bandar Beacon, with thanks to Kemaste.

COPENHAGEN -- Said Mansour, a slightly built man with a bushy beard, believes Muslims have a right to kill Americans in Iraq because, he said, "This is war; it's not a picnic."

So, he explained in an interview last week, he had no qualms about downloading and burning CDs of Internet videos depicting beheadings in Iraq and speeches by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the terrorist mastermind behind much of the Iraqi insurgency.

Now, Danish police intend to make Mansour, 45, a Moroccan-born Danish citizen, the first person ever charged under an anti-terrorism law enacted in 2002 that forbids instigation of terrorism or offering advice to terrorists. Police sources said Mansour would probably be charged for distributing CDs that contained the inflammatory jihadist speeches and gruesome images.

The law contains curbs on free speech that are remarkable in a country famous for tolerating all points of view. It illustrates how democracies across Europe are adopting tougher measures in an era of rising extremist violence, despite protests that civil liberties are being sacrificed in the process.

The 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people, and the London bombings last month, which killed 56 people, including the four bombers, have added new urgency to the issue.

"We have to look at reality," said Rikke Hvilshoj, Denmark's minister of refugee, immigration and integration affairs, noting that some have abused Denmark's free speech guarantees to encourage violence and killing. "The day we don't have freedom of speech, the fundamentalists have won," she said. "On the other hand, we can't be naive."

Experts said the debate about how to balance anti-terrorism protections with individual freedoms is at the top of the agenda for European nations. The issue is particularly acute in Denmark, Italy and Poland -- which have troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led military coalition and fear they could be the next target -- and in Spain, following the train attacks there.

"The mood has shifted in Europe more toward security than it was before the London bombings," said Daniel Keohane, senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London. "The Europeans have always been very nervous about infringing on civil liberties. But when you experience terrorism, it changes your views."...

Fitzgerald: Why we need reconciliation with France

Jihad Watch's Hugh Fitzgerald explains why it's time to patch it up with France:

France's policies were never quite as intolerable as depicted. Chirac is a crook, DdeV a preener, a poseur, and a poetaster. Nicholas Sarkozy, the unbeatable future president, has his embarrassments with a wayward wife, but when it comes to Islam, he is somewhat less foolable that the others. He left Tariq Ramadan exposed and humiliated on television, every taqiyya-fiber shredded. But Sarkozy also still believes that "integration" of Muslims is the key -- failing to comprehend, or not allowing himself to comprehend, that "integration" is not the key (above all, not the kind of "integration" that will make Muslims better able to manipulate the minds of Infidels, which the kind of knowledge of language and moeurs can do, akin to what was taught in those KGB spy villages).

Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the head of anti-terrorism efforts within France, does not tolerate -- nor need he -- the kind of things that the British have permitted. The French, though they have the disadvantage of idiotically allowing in so many Muslims, nonetheless have a few advantages when it comes to listening in and monitoring. Not everyone who fled North Africa was an Arab or a Muslim. There are among the pieds noirs some who knew some Arabic. Arabic-speaking Jews, and Berbers of a secular bent, hardly wishing to have Arabs and Islam imposed on France, the country in which they now live, are all pools of talent from which to draw.

Compare the level of the intelligence of our intelligence agents with what the French possess. Think, for example, of that simpleton Michael Scheuer, who was actually put in charge of something called the "Bin Laden" desk, and who knows nothing, absolutely nothing, about Islam. What's more, he appears to be touched by the same pathological view of "Jewish power" which, by now, we all recognize not as something merely unpleasant, or deplorable, but nowadays, as in the 1930s, given the nature of the enemy, renders Scheuer and others like him positive security risks. The French media's coverage of the Middle East is intolerable, but that does not mean that among those casting a beady eye on domestic Muslims there is any illusion that this is merely a matter of "Palestine," or that once they throw Israel to the wolves (i.e., give the Arabs and Muslims what they want in their Lesser Jihad) that the Greater Jihad against all Infidels will cease, or that those Muslims will do anything in response to the sacrifice of Israel but display increased triumphalism and determination.

But the French still think that the intervention in Iraq was "pire qu'un crime" -- worse than a crime, it was a mistake, in the phrase of Talleyrand (the same Talleyrand who was booed in New York, incidentally, by American supporters of the Revolution -- see the "Travels of Moreau de St.-Remy"). As to the original intervention, one can still maintain that that was rational and was worth it. But as to the rest of it, the sticking around for what no one could describe as even a reasonable facsimile of "democracy" but rather ethnic and sectarian power-seizing at its most obvious, there the French, it is clear, have a point. We should put down the silly Infidel Man's Burden, cease to watch America Being Held Hostage In Iraq, and get on with the thousand things that could be done, that make sense to have done, to contain Islam and to diminish the power of Muslims and the presence of Muslims behind enemy lines. (And no, that is not too strong a way to describe the Lands of the Infidels, for those who take just a moment out of their busy Washington schedules, photo-ops, reading of 2-page summaries of the world every morning, to read Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, even in abridged form).

Of course the American government has learned a lesson that it will not admit to having learned. It knows it must never again try to refashion a Muslim country by sending large numbers of troops, for by now 425,000 Americans in the regular military, in the Reserves, and in the National Guard have served in the Iraq theatre. Not all of them are mindless. A good many can compare the Iraqi reality with what the Administration and some -- but not all -- of the dutiful generals insist, in hallucinatory fashion, is that reality.

And that is a lesson that France, possibly for all the wrong motives, understands. The way to deal with Islam is to recognize what Islam is all about, recognize the immutability of the doctrines, recognize that the only "moderate" Muslims one can really rely on not to relapse into "immoderate" Islam, or to be true "moderates" in any useful sense, are those who are not really Muslims at all, but rather what I continue to call "Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only." In other words, these are the ones who essentially do not believe in Islam at all, but are too afraid, or too wary of offending family members, or even who hold to Islam as a career move: one can do well as a "good Muslim" but outright apostates tend not to be given the hearing, the respect, and the financial support that "good Muslims" busily "reforming" Islam find so available.

The islamization of Europe, and not who wins or loses in Iraq is the real issue before us. In Iraq, in any case, the war is not between the "freedom-loving Iraqis" (good god) and the "terrorists" but, in the main, between the Sunnis and Shi'a. It is a fight for power, for who rules over whom, for what Lenin called Kto Kovo: "Who -- (does it to) -- Whom?"

Europeans are now coming out of a deep dream of peace. There is no peace. They have done something tremendously stupid, and more than stupid, by allowing in people who bear in their mental luggage something inimical to Western ways, who are hostile to Western political and social understandings, and who -- save for a few who will leave Islam altogether -- cannot be integrated. These people, now close to 20 million, also reproduce at rates three to four times higher than the indigenous Infidels. The mathematics of this, and the misery of this, and the menace of this, is clear.

Let Iraq be Iraq. That is, let "Iraq" the pseudo-nation devolve into, dissolve into, the three vilayets put together by Sir Percy Cox back in 1920. The last 80 years of the "nation" of Iraq under Sunni rule did nothing to diminish, and everything to increase, the Shi'a resentment and hatred of Sunnis, and the Kurdish resentment and hatred of Arabs.

Yet instead of taking advantage of this, our President continues to prate about "democracy" and "freedom-loving" people in Iraq, while avoiding carefully the subject of Islam which he still sees as through a glass darkly. For his claque he can do no wrong. He must be right, if for no other reason -- and there now is no other reason -- that Cindy Sheehan is a sinister simpleton, and so are all those who are like her. But so what? Stalin was sinister, and no simpleton, and we worked to defeat Hitler with him, and it might have appeared to the Man from Mars that we were on the same side. But we weren't.

The E.U. bureaucracy is as hopelessly philo-islamic, anti-American, and anti-Israel as the U.N., and should simply be ignored. But the days of Javier Solana, Chris Patten, and so on are numbered. The E.U. has been permanently weakened as an institution, and Muslim attacks within Europe have made its bureaucrats even more distasteful to European publics, more unrepresentative, than they were before -- for they are the complete Eurabians.

We need to remove ourselves from Iraq, and cease to claim that "democracy" will bring a better outcome for Infidels. We can see already that if the Americans remain to keep Iraq together, and to keep an Iraqi state together, it will perforce be much more Muslim than it was before. Is this what the Administration wants? Well, if it thinks that the problem is not Islam, if it continues to pretend otherwise, because it lacks the wit to discuss the problem in terms that could be plausibly presented (the words "Jihad" and "Anti-Jihad" scream out for use; so do such phrases as "we are not against Islam, but only against those who apparently believe in the Jihad to force their own beliefs on the rest of the world, which of course the vast and overwhelming majority of law-abiding Muslims do not" (this is nonsense, and false, but useful nonsense, useful falsity).

A little reconciliation with Europe needs to take place. But the Administration, for all of its tough-guy rhetoric, is timid about Islam, afraid of offending Muslims, afraid to recognize that a belief-system is a permanent menace, and therefore keeps clutching at the straw of "democracy" in Iraq. In the process of herding those Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurdish cats, it shows us, and shows the Europeans, that some in this Administration, despite their boots and spurs and swaggering walk, are All Hat, and No Cattle.

Rushdie: "Any system of ideas that decides...that you cannot discuss it in fundamental terms, that you can't say that this bit of it is junk, or that bit is oppressive ... we are supposed to respect that?"

Occasionally Salman Rushdie says some very sensible things, and here is one occasion of that: he challenges the egregious George Galloway, who would forbid criticism of Islam and honest discussion of the roots of Islamic terror. "Rushdie dismisses Galloway's claims," from The Guardian, with thanks to Danielle:

Salman Rushdie clashed with George Galloway yesterday in a debate about TV and religion and a hypothetical small-screen adaptation of the novelist's controversial book The Satanic Verses. Mr Galloway, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, said TV executives had to be "very sensitive about people's religion" and if broadcasters did not show sufficient sensitivity they "had to deal with the consequences".

He said: "You have to be aware if you do [offend people's beliefs] you will get blowback. You should do it very carefully, especially if you are a public service broadcaster."

"Is that a threat?" asked Rushdie during the debate at the Media Guardian Edinburgh international television festival.

Describing Mr Galloway's argument as "craven", the author said: "The simple fact is that any system of ideas that decides you have to ringfence it, that you cannot discuss it in fundamental terms, that you can't say that this bit of it is junk, or that bit is oppressive ... we are supposed to respect that?"...

He claimed that Islam was "backsliding into bigotry" and described Muslim leaders in Britain as "a joke, because no one follows them".

Saudi clerics declare football un-Islamic, tell youths to wage jihad instead

"...and other constructive activities." From the Daily Times, with thanks to MB:

LAHORE: Ulema in Saudia Arabia have issued a fatwa (religious decree) declaring football an un-Islamic sport, and have urged the youth to quit it immediately, BBC radio reported on Saturday.

According to the report, the clerics urged the youth to indulge in jihad and other constructive activities that could help the Muslim ummah, the radio reported. The ulema argued that football wastes a lot of time and the participants wear shorts, which they said was an un-Islamic dress, the radio reported.

Young men are heeding the call:

Following the decree, some players of the famous Taif Football Club have quit the game, the report added.

Australia: MP backs headscarf ban

Why may only Muslims assert their cultural integrity and identity? Australian MP Bronwyn Bishop comes out for Australian culture. "Bishop backs school headscarf ban," from The Australian, with thanks to Voltaire:

LIBERAL MP Bronwyn Bishop has backed a push to ban Muslim girls wearing headscarves to school.

Speaking in support of her like-minded colleague Victorian Liberal MP Sophie Panopoulos, Ms Bishop yesterday warned it was time to debate the issue.

"When you have a clash of cultures, the dominant culture is the one that you follow and that's ours," she told the Nine Network's A Current Affair.

"That's the one that makes us free, and I'll fight for it."

So will I.

PA wants Arafat tomb on Temple Mount

Oh, this will contribute to peace and harmony. More Islamic supremacism from the PA, from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Fjordman:

The Palestinian Authority will continue to work toward moving Yasser Arafat's tomb to the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem, Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Department, announced Sunday.

Erekat, who was speaking during a meeting with PA security officers in Jericho, said the issue of transferring the late Palestinian Authority Chairman Arafat's grave from Ramallah to Jerusalem was a "trust" deposited with the PA.

"From the Israeli perspective the issue is not on the agenda and neither do I expect it to be on the agenda," said Mark Regev, Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman in response to a query by The Jerusalem Post last night.

"Arafat's legacy is one of political extremism, terrorist violence, and an inability to be flexible at crucial points in the negotiations. Instead of putting him up on a pedestal, thoughtful Palestinians should be thinking critically of his failures and how not to repeat the same mistakes," remarked Regev.

Good, Regev. But Arafat's ideological heir, Abbas, still enjoys a mantle of respectability. Instead of putting him on a pedestal, shouldn't you be encouraging Palestinians to think critically about his failures and not to repeat the same mistakes?

Did Italy's Red Cross trade jihadists for hostages?

It has long been suspected that some deal was made. The Danegeld in this case turns out to have been rather steep. "Italy Red Cross May Have Hidden Insurgents," from AP, with thanks to a tea-loving snail:

ROME (AP) - Italy's Red Cross treated four Iraqi insurgents with the knowledge of the Italian government last year and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two kidnapped aid workers, a top Italian Red Cross official said in an interview published Thursday.

Maurizio Scelli, the outgoing chief of the Italian Red Cross, told the Turin newspaper La Stampa that he kept the deal secret from U.S. officials, complying with "a nonnegotiable condition" imposed by Iraqi mediators who helped him secure the release of Italians Simona Pari and Simona Torretta. They were abducted in Baghdad Sept. 7 and freed Sept. 28.

"The mediators asked us to save the lives of four alleged terrorists wanted by the Americans who were wounded in combat," Scelli was quoted as saying. "We hid them and brought them to Red Cross doctors, who operated on them."

They took the wounded insurgents to a Baghdad hospital in a jeep and an ambulance, smuggling them through two U.S. checkpoints under blankets and boxes of medicines, Scelli said.

Also as part of the deal, four Iraqi children with leukemia were brought to Italy for treatment, he said.

Scelli said he informed Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government of the deal and of the decision to hide it from the United States through Gianni Letta, an undersecretary in charge of Italy's hostage crises in Iraq.

"Keeping quiet with the Americans about our efforts to free the hostages was an irrevocable condition to guarantee the safety of the hostages and ourselves," he told La Stampa. He said Letta agreed.

Al-Qaeda Nuclear Threat: A Modest Proposal

Rachel Neuwirth in ChronWatch satirizes the philosophy behind the Gaza withdrawal by applying the same notions to the United States:

This article is satirical and relates to the current expulsion of Israeli Jews from their homes by their own government. It is written in the manner of Jonathan Swift’s famous satire, A Modest Proposal.

America could be facing a potential catastrophe from nuclear weapons that may have already been smuggled inside this country by al-Qaeda. Sleeper cells may already be positioned inside as many as twenty major cities.

The danger is real and awareness is increasing. World Net Daily (www.wnd.com) has reported on revelations contained in the upcoming book The al-Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime and the Coming Apocalypse, by former FBI consultant Paul L. Williams. Edited excerpts from a World Net Daily report of July 18 follow:

Osama bin Laden is planning what he calls an "American Hiroshima," the ultimate terrorist attack on U.S. cities, using nuclear weapons already smuggled into the country across the Mexican border along with thousands of sleeper agents. The series of attacks is designed to kill 4 million, destroy the economy, and fundamentally alter the course of history.

Al-Qaeda's prime targets for launching nuclear terrorist attacks are the nine U.S. cities with the highest Jewish populations, according to captured leaders and documents.

The cities chosen as optimal targets are New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Boston, and Washington, D.C. New York and Washington top the preferred target list for al-Qaeda leadership.

Our own security officials have also told us repeatedly that it is not a matter of “if” but rather of “when” the next major attack will occur. An update on this threat was published by World Net Daily on 8/18/05.

Many American lives could be at stake here, and what is needed is bold thinking on how to avert such an attack, or to at least reduce its likelihood. In that spirit, this article presents “A Modest Proposal” which advocates a two-part response. Part I proposes to reduce the attractiveness of the potential targets. Part II proposes to make the targets additionally undesirable and to also reduce enemy hostility.

Part I. Nine large, American cities are prime targets because of their size, importance, and their concentrations of Jews. If the presence of Jews in these cities increases their appeal as targets then logically the absence of Jews would decrease that appeal by a comparable amount. The security of three hundred million Americans must not be kept at risk merely for the sake of not inconveniencing Jews who comprise barely two percent of our population. Because the potential danger is so immense and so imminent, the relocation of American Jews must be expedited.

Removal of Jews should not be too difficult. Jews want to be seen as loyal Americans. Most would cooperate, if reluctantly and emotionally, in their removal as their patriotic duty to increase the safety of their fellow Americans. Jews are accustomed to relocating and have done so repeatedly from biblical times. In recent times, nearly a million Jews were expelled from Arab countries and more than a million Jews have also left the former Soviet Union. Even inside America, Jews often move for purely personal reasons. Relocation is a familiar Jewish experience.

Then there is the question of propriety. Is it proper to compel Jews to relocate--especially after they have become so comfortable in this country? Fortunately this question has already been answered. For security reasons, and for the greater good, none other than Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is even now in the process of expelling eight thousand Jews from their homes in Gaza and is using the Israeli army and police to do it. And more than ten times that number of Jews are likely to face expulsion from the West Bank later on.

The number of Israeli Jews targeted for expulsion in both Gaza and the West Bank is proportionally equivalent to America relocating about five million American Jews. This forced relocation has been ruled to be a perfectly legal action taken by the Israeli government, and President Bush, who is considered to be a great friend of Israel, supports it.

Relocating American Jews will be far easier than expelling Jews in Israel. American Jews tend toward pacifism, are highly law-abiding and non-confrontational--except for the highly vocal Jewish leftists who, in this case, would likely support Jewish expulsion.

Furthermore, the American Jewish leadership has already endorsed the principle of forced expulsion of Jews in Israel as the legal right of that government to act in the interests of security and the greater good. Thus American Jews cannot now object to being subjected to the same requirements in the interest of U.S. national security.

Necessary expertise in Jewish relocation procedures can be borrowed from Israel. The Sharon government knows how to recruit, screen, and train thousands of men and women from the Jewish community to form police expulsion units and cope with the related logistics and media management. As in Israel, these expulsion police would be well paid, not be required to identify themselves to the expellees, and the courts will go easy on any charges of police brutality.

Any manifestation of Jewish protest will be quickly put down. Protesters, including teenagers, would be placed in administrative detention and held without charges for up to six months. Unlike in Israel, there are no Palestinian Arab equivalents in America to rain down rockets on the expulsion process and requiring army units to protect the evacuation. As in Israel, there will be at most peaceful, completely non-violent protests, perhaps combined with a little civil disobedience of the most harmless and easily suppressed kind. Since most American Jews will peacefully board the busses and trains carrying them to their new homes, whatever protests may occur will be conducted by evangelical Christians--the most law-abiding segment of the American population, who will easily be dissuaded from violence or seriously disruptive behavior by their ministers.

We cannot deny that 1.3 billion Muslims comprise a formidable world force that is in the ascendancy while Jews are a tiny minority that is in decline, especially in America. America has suffered politically from the general perception that the interests of Israel and Jews are favored over the interests of Muslims and Arabs. This is an opportunity for American policy to become more even-handed and to gain the respect of the Muslim world.

As in Israel, U.S. Jews who voluntary sign up early for expulsion will receive extra benefits while those who object or delay could face fines or even prison. The American Jewish leaders must demonstrate their national loyalty by signing up early and encouraging their followers to do likewise.

American Jews wield influence far exceeding their numbers which is viewed as a provocation to many in the Muslim world. The expulsion must include all Jews, including elected officials and those of influence....

The entire Muslim world would then have to reconsider its anti-American animosity. We will have demonstrated that we are reasonable and respectful toward our Muslim brothers and sisters. We will have shown our willingness to be even-handed in redressing the old imbalance where Jews, being but two percent of America, had wielded such disproportionate influence in the culture, in the business sector, and on its policies. Relocation of Jews would be a very small price to pay for the prospect of avoiding a devastating attack which would consume Jewish lives as well as those of other Americans. We could then open a new chapter in Muslim-American relations and together strive for a more peaceful and just world.

Read it all.

Muslim banned from US offered post at Oxford

Dhimmitude in Britain and Tariq Ramadan updates from expressindia, with thanks to Fanabba:

London, August 27: A Muslim scholar banned from the United States is to take up a post at Britain's prestigious University of Oxford, his college said today.

Tariq Ramadan has been elected to a visiting fellowship (general) at St Antony's College for the coming academic year and is expected to begin work in October.

"Professor Ramadan is an internationally-recognised scholar," St Antony's College, Oxford, said in a statement.

"He was named by Time magazine as one of 100 innovators of the 21st century for his work on creating an independent European Islam.

"He was recently appointed to a prestigious chair in Islamic studies in the University of Notre Dame in the US."

In late July 2004, Ramadan's US visa was revoked and he was forced to return to his native Switzerland.

NY Times wrings its hands about Italian intolerance of Muslims (after they plotted to blow up the local cathedral)

And why are the citizens of Cremona being so unfriendly? Well, there is that small matter of Muslims plotting to blow up the local cathedral. And imagine! After that, when Cremona non-Muslims hear the word "Muslim," they think, "terrorist"! What Islamophobes! "Flow of Muslim Immigrants Strains the Reputation for Tolerance of a Small Italian Town," from the New Duranty Times (here is why we call it that), with thanks to Van Impe:

CREMONA, Italy - After the bombs in London in July, the first offer from the new Muslim leadership here was to form posses to keep an eye on possible militants. This city, gentle and refined, the home of Stradivarius, declined.

Another idea that did not work was a possible service by both Muslims and Christians in the treasure of a cathedral here - which, prosecutors say, Muslim militants considered blowing up three years ago.

But Sadiq el-Hassan, a leader at Cremona's mosque, insisted that because the London bombings made future attacks in Europe a near certainty, something long overdue had to happen: Muslims, finally, needed to take a stand.

"Our mistake is that we were quiet," said Mr. Hassan, 40, a Tunisian who in dress and speech seems nearly Italian. "After all that happened after Sept. 11, we never came out and said, 'These things are bad.' But it's not too late."

It may not be too late, but Muslim leaders here worry that time is nonetheless running out on Italy's patience with them - and that worry has set off an unusual degree of self-criticism.

It has not happened much in Europe, but Mr. Hassan is now planning for the Muslims of Cremona to show publicly that they are as much against terrorism and violence as Italians are. In coming weeks, Muslims will march - in numbers, Mr. Hassan hopes - against extremism carried out in the name of Islam.

"If the million Muslims who live in Italy don't say anything, it means we are giving a green light to the terrorists," he said....

"Cremona is a racist city," said Tamsir Ousmane, 44, from Senegal, whose languages include Italian, French, Russian and English, and who runs a call center downtown. "If I want to rent a house, I can't. They won't rent to me. Unfortunately, it is like this. But we are here. We work here. And we pay taxes."

Maria Anselmi, 64, sitting on a park bench with five other older women, spoke of her fear of a terrorist attack, more acute after the bombings in London, and about her anxieties about immigrants in general. "In a while there will be more of them than of us," she said. "They are going to squash us."

But relations with Muslims have been especially difficult. Nearly a dozen members of a former mosque were arrested in recent years, and two were convicted in July for belonging to an extremist cell plotting to carry out terror attacks. The plots included blowing up the cathedral here, which dates from 1107.

"The city found itself at the heart of a series of investigations that suggested it was a crossroads of international terrorism," said Andrea Gibelli, a legislator from the Northern League, a conservative party that has advocated a hard line on immigration. "It was very uncomfortable."

The League has been instrumental in closing several mosques. While it has not moved against the new and more moderate mosque here, where Mr. Hassan is vice president, Mr. Gibelli is skeptical - and not only because of the specific terrorist threats. Muslims, he said, have been reluctant to integrate. Mosques, he said, "are not places of prayer - they are for politics."

"They want to create areas where they can hide behind the protection of religious freedom, completely detached from the rest of the city," Mr. Gibelli said.

While the Northern League is on the far right, there seems to be a broader and growing opinion that Muslims in fact need to do more. One priest who is highly supportive of the Muslim community here conceded that in joint prayer groups against violence, perhaps only 10 percent of participants were Muslim. There has been talk for more than a year about a Muslim march against violence, but it has not yet happened.

Mr. Hassan concedes the criticism is valid. "Integration is difficult," he said, "because when you integrate, that is when you have identity crises. But we have to try."

And in this corner of Italy, which he says has been good to immigrants like him, he is hoping that the planned march makes a clear, page-turning statement to change what it means to be a Muslim in Europe. At the moment, he said, Italians "don't trust us anymore: they hear 'Muslim,' and they think 'terrorist.'"

NPR hires virulent anti-Semite, MSA member

The indefatigable Solomon (thanks to all who sent this in) tells the story of Mariam Sobh, who during her college career was a member of the Muslim Students Association and an inventor of vicious anti-Semitic falsehoods including fabricated statements by Ariel Sharon in which he vowed to kill Palestinian children and rape Palestinian women.

And what is she doing now? Why, working for NPR, of course!

Magdy Khalil: Who is responsible for abducting Coptic girls?

Magdy Khalil is an Egyptian writer and analyst residing in the USA. Here he calls attention to an international scandal:

"The bottom of hell is held in reserve for those who take a neutral stance when values are at risk" -- Dante

Abducting a female is one of the most awful crimes in the civilized society, which is met by a stern punishment. Respect for women, children and minorities as the weak entities of society is a quality that distinguishes the civilized society from the primitive one, to the point that even harassing a female is in itself a crime that is strictly sentenced. And before starting any job in America whether small or big, one must sign a statement, agreeing to abstain from sexual harassment, punishment is so stern to those who violate these regulations and varies from dismissal from the job to criminal trials, and if the female is a minor, i.e. "less than 18 year old" harassment becomes a very big problem, as for abducting and raping her, it is the gravest crime against the Western societies.

What happened to Egypt? And how the most despicable form of crimes is being committed against the Coptic girls without any moral, conscience, or legal deterrence, nor social restrictions? What are the causes of such evil phenomenon? How would a society that is considered to be the cradle of human civilization and the dawn of consciousness agree to such heinous crimes?

Is it a phenomenon?

The first question to be raised: Has abducting Coptic girls and forcing them to convert to Islam constituted a phenomenon or isolated cases?

If a phenomenon is a pattern of behavior frequently repeated throughout a long period, then what is happening in Egypt against Coptic girls is definitely a phenomenon, it is a phenomenon that the Coptic Church protested against over quarter of a century ago, and specifically in Alexandria conference held under the auspices of H.H. Pope Shenouda on December 17th, 1976 who stated in the conference that "There is pressure being practiced to convert Coptic girls to embrace Islam and marry them under terror to Muslim husbands" and demanded to bring back the abducted girls to their families. So we are facing a phenomenon that is more than three decades old in its modern form, but of course it has been taking place throughout fifteen centuries since the Arab invasion of Egypt.

The second question: Is it a widespread phenomenon?

The answer to this question is a complex one, if we talked about the pressure and the enticement practiced to convert Coptic girls to Islam, then we are facing a widespread phenomenon. But if we are talking only about the abduction of Coptic girls and forcing them to convert to Islam then we are discussing a limited phenomenon.

The Third Question: Is it a pre-planned Phenomenon?

Certainly it is a pre-planned phenomenon, and -- later on -- we will discuss the extent of this scheme. But another question to be raised; that is whether the government is planning that phenomenon?

This is another complex question, as the government does not meet to plan how to abduct Coptic girls, but it is a conniver and a collaborate partner that contributed in creating this environment. As for the actual planning, it is carried out by individuals, groups, associations, as well as Egyptian and regional organizations. What the government plans for and implement is the lateralization of the Copts within the Egyptian society, which leads us to the key question: What are the main reasons behind the phenomenon of abducting and converting the Coptic girls to Islam?

1- Responsibility of the government:

It is well known that one of the main tasks of the state -- according to its modern definition -- is to uphold law and order, as the need for security and safety is the second need of humanity according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, therefore the main task according to the virtual social contract between a citizen and the state, is to keep the internal and external security, keeping internal security is carried through what is called "preventive security" and the strict penal codes "to those who violate the peace and security of the society."

The government provides neither preventive security nor the strict legal security to the Copts; therefore it bears the prime responsibility for what is happening to the Copts in Egypt. It is a partner in the crime by its negligence in carrying out its tasks, and also a partner in the crime by its collaboration with the criminal killers and abductors, because its active security system knows a great deal about the crimes being committed against the Copts including the abduction of the Coptic girls and yet it conceals it. Ponder what Esaam Ul Deen Hassan, -- one of the activists of the Egyptian Human Rights Organization -- wrote: "The government is responsible for the protection of its citizens against the violation of their rights from other citizens, despite that, the organization observed that the government -- generally -- acts only when it feels that it is threatened or when the regime and its authority is threatened, and on the contrary it stood by idly watching the radical Islamic groups use violence and coercion, which leveled to hijacking the legislative authority in many villages and carried on holding trials and executing the verdicts."

The government is responsible for its shortcomings and for the collaboration of its security system, and responsible through the involvement of elements of its own security system in the crimes against the Copts. And as it is widely known and circulated, some members of the police took part in the murder crimes committed against the Copts in El Kusheh, and in El Zawya El Hamra where more than a hundred Coptic victims were slain; El Nabawy Ishmael, the then Minister of the Interior announced that police did not intervene in the beginning for political reasons, and the Copts understood that the "political reasons" meant providing a chance for the extremists to revenge against the Copts to quench their thirst and to experience the ecstasy of victory. I was an eyewitness to two incidents involving Coptic girls, where the Egyptian police did not interfere -- even though it knew everything -- unless the matter was raised before the El Azhar Imam and the high authorities in the government through the intervention of Pope Shenouda, and in less than 24 hours the two girls were returned. What can we call this? And what about the poor and those who have no connections?

What is more dangerous is that within three decades, the government did not bring to justice one single suspect accused of kidnapping Coptic girls despite the numerousness and multiplicity of incidents and the gravity of the crime. Does not this represent a shameful act from the government that smears it with reproach?

Protecting and preserving the national unity is the responsibility of the president as stated by the constitution, and according to the oath taken by the president before the people; that is why Mr. Muhammad Hassanein Heikal demanded that the president himself should oversee the national unity issue and should not leave it to the security agencies as it is his constitutional responsibility. The overall conditions of the Copts are the responsibility of the "Coptic division" of the State Security Intelligence headed by a brigadier officer with a group of lesser rank officers, is it logical to leave the most important Egyptian file in the hands of a number of small officers? Turning this file completely to the president is the first step, if we seriously want to begin discussing this issue away from the abuse of the security agencies.

2- Deadly religious incitement:

Anyone who monitors the media and different aspects of culture and education in Egypt will find an endless number of edicts (Fatwas) provoking the public against the Copts. Those edicts range from considering them infidels who should be fought and subjected to all kinds of injustices they are persevering to the incitation of kidnapping their daughters. Those who issue such edicts commit a crime against Copts and against the country; afterwards, carrying out such edicts becomes a religious duty.

Extremists and those who incite them follow a weird god who justifies all their flagrant deeds and lustful desires; it's a pet god that follows all their wicked whims.

Let us ponder some of those deadly, venomous edicts:

· Sheikh Abdel Haleem Mahmood, the former Imam of Al-Azhar wrote in his book "Believing in Allah" saying: "Christians are like a malignant and contagious disease. Muslims should be unjust to them, they should despise them , treat them roughly and boycott them to force them to convert to Islam"

• Sheikh Muhamed Metwaly El-Shaarawy wrote in Al-Ahram newspaper on 9/2/1992 saying: "Having sex with female POW's bestows honor on her since the master does to her what he does to his wife."

Why was he then screaming and complaining along with his clique when the Serbs raped the Bosnian women? Or is it permissible for Muslims but forbidden for others?

These are horrifying crimes against humanity that should be condemned regardless of religion or race.

• The Imam of the mosque of the Juristic Society in Assiut repeated publicly and for many years in his Friday sermons that: "Christian women are a loot for every Muslim."

• I personally heard one of those obsessed religious extremists preaching in a small mosque saying: "Raping Christian women is permissible to oblige them to convert to Islam."

• Another example is the edict issued by Sheikh Gad-El Haq, the former Imam of Al-Azhar, when answering a question regarding the marriage of a Muslim woman from a Christian man. To answer that question, the former Imam of Al-Azhar issued an edict based on thorough Islamic jurisprudential research which concluded that Jews and Christians are infidels therefore a Muslim woman should not be given into marriage to a non-Muslim whether a Christian or a Jew or others, and the followers of both religions are considered infidels and polytheists.

(Consultant Mohamed Said El-Ashmawy, in "An edict and an article" in El-Ahaly newspaper 10/4/1996).

• One of these edicts is the one issued by Al-Azhar Committee of Edicts in 1996 concerning the legality of marrying a Christian man to a Muslim woman: "This is forbidden since Islam is superior to all other religions. And children should follow the better religion of the parents according to the jurisprudential rule."

-Hisham Khalifa, an attorney and in Al-Ahram newspaper on 9/16/1996 "Legal Matters" column says: "an act that involves disbelief such as going to church."

"Islam is unique amongst world beliefs being the only one that we can call a 'religion.' Also, Christianity as sent by God to Issa" (Jesus) -- Peace be upon him -- was lost after his death." (Hussein Moaness in October magazine on 15/3/1992.)

• In dealing with Christians, a Muslim feels supremacy and does not consider those infidels worthy of any respect or appreciation -- they cannot be admired or held in high esteem. On the contrary, they are like cattle or even worse, regardless of any successful worldly achievements. (The Muslims Magazine on 10/29/1993).

• Look at the venom propagated against non-Muslims by Zaghloul El-Naggar in his weekly article in Al-Ahram newspaper:

"Infidels, polytheists and hypocrites, especially the people of the book who falsified their religion, and the Jews, those criminals who were the pivot of disbelief throughout history, as they are still today, and will be until the end of days?they represent the woorst image of disbelief." (Al-Ahram 7/15/2002)

"The positions of some of the people of the book towards their pacts and the devastation incurred on the infidels due to their breaching of treaties such as the followers of both Moses and Issa (Jesus) --Peace be upon them -- then the exoneration of Jesus from the false claims of divinity." (Al-Ahram 1/1/2002)

It becomes clear that Judaism is not a religion but rather a sickness that infects the sound natural instinct and causes it to deviate from its humane track to fall into the demonic circle." (Al-Ahram 7/22/2002)

• Abdel Gawad Yassin says: "From a national perspective, a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian and atheists are all the same, but according to Islam, they are not at all the same. And they lie under a category different than that of Muslims under Islamic Sharia Laws. In an Islamic state -- whatever its name is -- they should be made to pay the jizya (special taxes paid by non-Muslims), they should not share in ruling the country and there should not be any reliance on them in Jihad or defense. They should always be in a status that makes them feel the strength of Islam and its greatness, righteousness, generosity, dignity, benevolence and tolerance, i.e. they should be kept in a position that compels them to convert to Islam." (Source: Abdel-Gawad Yassin, A Prologue to the jurisprudence of contemporary pre-Islamic Ignorance, 1986)

• Another example is the statement of Mostafa Mashhour, the previous leader of the "Muslim Brotherhood" issued in Al-Ahram Weekly on 4/3/1997, where he said: "Copts should pay the jizya instead of joining the army to avoid their alliance with the enemy in case of fighting against a Christian country."

• Let's also read what the students in Assiut University, Suhag branch, had to study in their book "Basics of Education":

1. Christianity hallowed Jesus exactly as the Marxists did.
2. Christianity, just as Judaism is an Egyptian Judaic concoction.
3. Christianity is based on Judaism and the latter is not a religion.
4. Christianity was inoculated with paganism.
5. Christianity has turned into a pagan religion.
6. Human fiddling around with Christianity changed it into a mixture of both Judaism and paganism.
7. The Apostle Paul pretended to be a Christian to distort Christianity.

• You can imagine what the children are taught in what are called Islamic schools and also public schools (by the way 22% of the educational system in Egypt is Islamic education set on infusing hatred against followers of other religions calling for their expulsion and eradication). We read in one of the books of the children's curricula:

1. A Muslim washes his hands before and after eating.
2. A Muslim walks quietly and with dignity.
3. Christians are the misguided.
4. The only religion accepted by Allah is Islam and no religion other than Islam satisfies Allah.

If Muslims followed those venomous edicts they would have totally eradicated Copts from Egypt, but thank God that many Muslims are more humane and civilized than their Imams and their traditions. No wonder that the extremists are called "The Friday Party," since the Muslim would be a normal person until he starts to frequently attend the Friday prayer behind one of these Imams. Then he turns into a strange creature who wants to prey on anyone who is not a Muslim and if he does not find one he will prey on his own community and even himself as was the case in Afghanistan, Algeria and Sudan, etc.

What do we expect from the criminals and the culprits who are waiting for a legal excuse to accomplish their vile and despicable desires? Isn't it true that these edicts and venomous writings created the "Permissibility" principle, which is: "Confiscating the properties of the Copts and exterminating their souls and daughters is permissible."

The culprits are not the sole villainous criminals, but those who throw such edicts at their feet are integral partners of the crime.

3-Racist Judicial Verdicts

It is not just edicts and writings that incite against everything Coptic, but the judicial system also contributed in this auction with a countless number of racist verdicts. The comical verdicts against the murderers of Copts throughout half a century are enough of indications that the judicial system is not acquitted from what is happening to the Copts, take these examples:

In one verdict, it was pronounced that a Muslim is the honorable person and a non-Muslim lacks honor (Case number 2473, the year of 1953 El Sayeda Zeinab court). A ruling to end the custody of a Coptic mother to her Muslim son when her husband converted to Islam, the court stated in it justification that "it is feared that the child might be affected by the customs of disbelief had he stayed with his mother" (Case number 17 of the year 1961, Alexandria court of appeals). The custodianship of a Coptic father to his two children was cancelled when the mother converted to Islam, as according to the court ruling, "The children must follow the better religion and Islam is the best of religions" (Case number 462 of the year of 1958, Alexandria Lower Court).

As for the witnesses in the case, they are all non-Muslims, whose testimonies are not acceptable as their testimony is against a Muslim according to the Hanafi School of jurisprudence that is agreed upon, as testimony is part of the authority, and a non-Muslim should not have any authority over a Muslim. (Ruling 221 of the court of cassations of the 40 year, Division of Civil Affairs, May 19, 1970)

Those who embrace Islam are subject to the second article of the constitution which states that Islam is the state religion and the Islamic Sharia Law is the main source of legislation, therefore he has no right to revert back to Christianity, otherwise the apostasy law applies on him (Executive court ruling dated 4/8/1980).

The husband leads his wife to bed, therefore he must not be of a lower faith than hers, Allah almighty said Surah 2:221 "Do not marry (your girls) to Unbelievers until they believe" and the messenger of Allah said "Islam is superior and it should not be inferior". The Islamic jurisprudence derived a consensus from it that a Muslim woman should not marry and infidel, therefore it is a must to separate between the couple and the non-Muslim should be punished in case of consummation, and the Muslim woman should be acquitted, if he converts to Islam after marriage, he should not be relied on with such marriage as it is invalid since the very beginning and will not be rectified by his conversion to Islam. (Alexandria court ruling, issued on April 21, 1957).

A person that converts from Islam is dead in the eyes of the law (Report of the Alexandria general prosecution, 5/29/72).

These are just examples of the racist judicial verdicts, and there are much more up for grabs.

4- Abducting girls is an organized crime

Abducting and converting Coptic girls to Islam is not only a result of the paranoid and racist incitation against the Copts, but it is an organized and pre-planned process by associations and organizations inside Egypt with domestic and Arab funding, as the main role in seducing and luring Coptic girls is carried through cunning, deceit, and enticement or through force if required.

In a lecture delivered by the departed Archbishop Athanasious, the former archbishop of Beni Sueif, he exposed some of the tactics of these organizations in abducting the Coptic girls by containment through friendship that leads at the end to sexual seduction or abduction or involuntary detention in many homes scattered allover Egypt and forcing them to convert to Islam. His Grace pointed out through the narration of one of the Coptic girls who was able to flee, the extent of degradation and decadence of this age, in his lecture, which is considered as a witness against an entire era and I have a copy of, he exclaimed: "Lord, when are you going to save us from this humiliation".

We have heard before about the "Islamic Guidance Society" established by Hussein El Shafei, the former vice-president and its role in the Islamization process. It is circulated that one of the centers that carries the name of a Palestinian town, is currently carrying out the same role.

The late Dr. Farag Fouda, in his interview with DER SPIEGEL German magazine, exposed the amount of funds flowing to those Islamists from Saudi Arabia, Libya and from wealthy Arabs.

It is odd that 16 years after the interview of the late Dr. Fouda, the French Le Monde in an article -- on 9/25/2001, right after September 11th events -- entitled "The financial arm of Bin Ladin extends from the Gulf to Europe," reported on the amounts of funds flowing to the pernicious Islamists in Egypt and around the world from a financial network with virtual body consisted of tens of companies, charity organizations, and banks. Amongst the banks mentioned were "The Islamic Solidarity Bank", "Faisal Islamic Bank", "Dubai Islamic Bank", " Dar Al-Maal Al-Islami Trust, and "Islamic Relief Organization" among the aims of these funds was to proselytize for Islam with all means, much of the money flowed to Egypt to convert the Copts to Islam and eradicate this minority that is deeply rooted in the Egyptian history and the Egyptian soil.

What a deplorable goal! How can we envision the Middle East without Christians? Truly stated by Muhammad Hassanein Heikal, the writer, along with prince Talal Bin Abdel-Aziz. The number of Muslims increased by hundreds of millions within the last five decades as a result of reproduction and conversion, as Huntington said, yet their poverty, misery, weakness, and tyranny multiplied. Do they so feel the lack of a few million Copts that they must pressure them through all shameful means to abandon the faith of their ancestors?

5- The conscience of the Muslim majority

Unfortunately, and with the exception of a very a small number of Egyptians, the conscience of the majority is too sensitive when it comes to what happened to the women of Bosnia, Kosovo and the extremists of Afghanistan and the Chechen Mujahideen. Yet it's an expansive conscience that swallows the camel when it comes to the Copts, their problems and the attacks on their daughters. Their religious fanaticism has blinded them from seeing the dangers threatening the country and from feeling the pain that their co-citizens feel, it has also debilitated their humane sense shared by all human beings.

Humanity was there before religions and nations. Jalal Amin says, "Muslims and Copts are not sects, but a majority and a minority: and the majority is responsible for safeguarding security more than the minority as the majority controls the police, the government, the newspapers, radio, television and schools. The majority is ought to be more capable of self control out of its feeling of self confidence being a majority, and it is supposed to hold more power to practice patience and tolerance with a higher degree, because the stronger ought to accommodate the weaker."

But unfortunately, dear Dr. Jalal, the majority created the unrest and the Coptic minority kept the stability of the country through its excessive tolerance, its absorption of crises and its continuous perseverance against the silliness of the majority... What the majority is doing could be called "The collaboration of the silent majority." The late Dr. Farag Fouda was right when he said "Cairo will be completely consumed with fire if a Muslim doorman converted to Christianity." Let me add that Egypt will be completely consumed with fire if a Coptic young man abducted a minor Muslim girl, raped her and converted her to Christianity, but of course when the opposite takes place, the government media cheers it and the fanatic mind gets exuberant.

When we expose -- with documents -- the shameful acts of fanaticism against the Copts, the juveniles of the security agencies in the media rush to incriminate and insult the victim!

6- Negativity of the Copts

The diminished Coptic trust in all government institutions and their feel of discrimination from the policeman to the judicial personals has increased their negativity and their perplexity, which led them to look for external help or await a heavenly miracle.

Last year, I was awakened at five o'clock in the morning by a phone call from a Copt in Beni Sueif, Egypt, who was crying out saying, "Help me get my only daughter back, she is studying at the college of commerce and she was abducted by one of the Muslims, his wife came to the phone who started crying and weeping." I felt the extent of injustice when the government, with all its might collaborates against a helpless citizen. Despite the fact that we are doing all we can to help those poor people, the Copts should abandon their negative attitude and protest against all the unjust practices with all peaceful and legal means domestically and internationally.

What is left for this citizen and others after losing his only daughter? Why can't he go on food strike with his wife in front of the presidential palace? It is his legal right after all: to awaken the human conscience to his tragedy. Why don't they go and protest in front of the United Nations headquarters in Cairo? Why don't they go to the foreign media networks and press reporters heavily present in Cairo?

Amid the government's inaction and its collaboration, awakening the international conscience is the more effective mean in exposing these wolves and those who support them.

The United States has dedicated its gigantic media system to expose one villain, that is Uday Saddam Hussein, but who will help the poor Copts in exposing tens of villains widely spread inside the Egyptian body?

Glick: "The deportation of the Jews from the Gaza Strip...[has] put paid to two of the foundational myths of...the Israeli and international Left"

A must-read column from Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Ruth King): "Column One: The end of mythology":

The deportation of the Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria over the past week and a half and surrounding events have put paid to two of the foundational myths of the narrative that has been propounded for the past 30 years by the Israeli and international Left. In attempting to analyze these traumatic events in a manner that will – at least to a degree – mitigate the dangers to Israeli security that the expulsions have engendered, it is important to identify these myths and dispel them now. For if we do not do so, we will find ourselves, again, waging an uphill battle to dispel these lies after the next die has been cast in favor of still more Israeli retreats and expulsions – this time from Judea and Samaria.

And so, even as our souls cry out in pain as we stare wild-eyed at the sight of 8,000 Jewish patriots, transformed in a moment into homeless, wandering Jews in the Land of Israel, our duty is to soldier on and work to preempt further destruction.

The foundational myth of the Left is that Jewish extremism, not Palestinian terrorism, is the cause of Israel's present security woes and the source of the constant wars that have plagued us since the dawn of modern Zionism. What we saw this week was that these people – whom one British reporter standing outside the synagogue in the now-ruined Neveh Dekalim so eloquently referred to last Thursday as "the hardest of the hard-line settlers" – are anything but extreme.

The expelled residents of Gush Katif – from the farmers of Atzmona, Katif, Netzarim, Netzer Hazani and Kfar Darom, the surfers and fishermen of Shirat Hayam, the Torah scholars of Neveh Dekalim and the mothers of Gadid – are not "hard-line" or "extremists." They are the finest sons and daughters of Israel. They are the bravest soldiers in the IDF and the most patriotic citizens that Israel has produced.

Read it all. Please.

Get out if you want Sharia law, Australia tells Muslims

From the Daily Times, with thanks to all who sent this in:

CANBERRA: Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks.

A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown.

Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament.

“If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you,” he said on national television. “I’d be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false. If you can’t agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practises it, perhaps, then, that’s a better option,” Costello said.

Fitzgerald: Muslims in the West

Jihad Watch's Hugh Fitzgerald comments on the Al-Massari case and other elements of contemporary Western dhimmitude:

Those who despise the manmade law of Infidels are nonetheless prepared to use every scrap of those laws, every bit of the individual rights guaranteed by Infidels, to remain in Infidel lands -- so as to work in every way possible to undermine and overturn those laws, and the society that gave birth to those laws, and the social and political understandings that formed, and have in turn been continuously formed by that very society. In the same way, Muslims in the West will take full advantage of all the pieties about "pluralism" but work toward extinguishing such pluralism, as they have over 1350 years everywhere that Muslims rule and dominate.

One has only to look at Turkey, where 50% of the population was non-Muslim in Constantinople in 1914, and is now about 1%. Similar, though not quite as dramatic, changes have come about -- mostly through mass murder of non-Muslims, accompanied or followed by persecution -- in the country as a whole. In Alexandria, where the Italian poet Ungaretti and the Greek poet Seferis were born, nothing remains -- just as nothing remains in Cairo of the Jewish, Greek, Armenian, Italian, and other non-Muslim populations whose families had lived in Egypt for generations (and sometimes for far longer). Their goods were simply seized by the Egyptian government under Nasser, leaving many penniless. This treatment forced them to leave.

In Pakistan (formerly West Pakistan) in 1947 15% of the population was Hindu; now it is 1.6%. In Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) the non-Muslim population has been reduced in the same period from 35% to 8%. This has happened everywhere that Muslims have ruled over non-Muslims.

But everywhere in the Infidel lands into which Muslims have been heedlessly allowed to penetrate and to settle, they have taken advantage of everything -- the laws, the entitlement programs -- and exploited them to the fullest, while never once dropping their loyalty to Islam or their lack of feeling for Infidels or the Infidel nation-state from which they receive benefits. They offer nothing in return save "We are here. This is our country. We are not leaving." Or, as a Muslim in Dearborn, Michigan said recently on the occasion of the dedication of the grand new mosque there: "We want people to know we're here, and they should get used to it." That is not exactly an expression of loyalty, but rather something else, something to the effect that: "You can't get rid of us, no matter what. We will use every single one of your so-called rights against you. We are here. This land, like others, belongs to Allah. It is only a matter of time."

How much will just the single case against this one primitive subversive and enemy, al-Massari, cost the British taxpayers? Will it be half-a-million pounds in legal folderol? Will it be a million pounds? And how many such cases need to be brought? And how much is the monitoring of mosques going to cost? The monitoring of Islamic schools? Of Islamic meeting-places? How much money, and how much effort, and how much tolerance, must Infidels show for this unique group -- unique because neither the Buddhists from Vietnam, nor the Chinese, nor the Hindu immigrants, nor those from the Caribbean or Latin America, refuse to integrate as a matter of ideology, or inculcate hatred for the indigenous people and their culture, their laws, their history, their attitudes. No, this is not an "immigrant" problem. It is a Muslim problem.

This is not a "British" problem with Muslim immigrants, because Muslim immigrants everywhere in Europe -- in France and Spain, in Belgium and Italy, in Sweden and Denmark and Germany -- show remarkable similarities in their inability, their refusal, to "integrate." How can they, after all, given what Islam teaches them to think about non-Muslims? How? This is a problem that cannot be wished away, contrary to the fond assumptions of those who put their hopes on classes in language and civics, and who think that good jobs will make a difference. All of that will only help Muslims more fully root themselves and more capably conduct Da'wa among the marginal and vulnerable Infidels, and more efficiently spread propaganda among the other Infidels to keep them from taking the obvious defensive measures that, were they properly informed about Islam, its theory and history, they would take.

So tell us again -- how much is this al-Massari, who has lived undisturbed for 11 years in the United Kingdom -- going to cost in trying to evict him from his squatting, and claiming squatters' rights, Muslim rights, to the lands, the countries, of those unworthy Infidels. How much?

D.C. Watson & Kevin Montavon have just a few questions

More anti-dhimmitude from DC Watson and Kevin Montavon:

A case and a half of cold beer later, we have some important questions.

Shouldn't the core of America's Homeland Security efforts be to institute responsible immigration policies and border enforcement? Wouldn't it be more difficult for Islamic terrorists to carry out an attack on U.S. soil if they were unable to get into the United States in the first place?

Is the communication gap so wide that even after 9/11, our government authorizes a Muslim organization like the Council on American Islamic Relations to conduct "Muslim sensitivity" training for American law enforcement personnel, even after the same government has successfully prosecuted several of CAIR's own (now former) officers on terrorism- and fraud-related crimes? (These officials are now in prison or have been deported.)
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/usroyer603ind.pdf
http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/infocom/uselashi121702sind.pdf
http://www.4law.co.il/hlf2.htm
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=9981

Should our public schools be allowing these people to speak to American school students about Islam?

Why should the Qur'an be used in American courtrooms for Muslims to swear upon to tell the truth, when the book itself permits them to lie?

Qur'an 3:28: "Let not the believers take the disbelievers for friends rather than believers. And whoever does this has no connection with Allah unless it is done to guard yourselves against them, guarding carefully. And Allah cautions you against His retribution. And to Allah is the eventual coming."

Qur'an 16:106: "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."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166307,00.html
http://www.islamreview.com/articles/islamicterrorismprint.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya

Why should anything Islamic be instituted in any American governmental venues when Islam has had nothing to do with the founding, advancement, or successes of the United States?

CAIR's mission statement states that the organization strives "to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding." After nearly a dozen years of tumultuous existence, when might they begin this mission?

"Since its establishment in 1994, CAIR has worked to promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America."

"CAIR seeks to empower the American Muslim community and encourage their participation in political and social activism."

So when they say "work to promote a positive image of Islam," and "encourage participation in political and social activism," is it fair to say that their idea of this consists of:

-- Calling on American employers to reprimand or fire their American employees who criticize Islam?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19234

Harassing the American advertisers of American media outlets in an attempt to damage the media outlet financially, or give them unwarranted negative publicity because their American employees speak negatively of Islam?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/28/AR2005072802241.html

Filing lawsuits against their American critics who point out their questionable ties to Islamic terrorist networks?
http://www.anti-cair-net.org/AmendedMotion
http://www.anti-cair-net.org/Law3.html
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35942

Inventing words such as "Islamophobia" and "Islamophobe" in order to attack American critics of Muhammad and his bloody, ruinous life on earth?

(For all peaceful Muslims -- those who are decent people and don't mean any harm to anyone -- this is not meant to disrespect you personally. However, the organizations that claim to be protecting you appear to be using you to advance an agenda not of diversity, but one of Shari'ah law, oppression, and bigotry.)

You know, this agenda: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." ~ Omar Ahmad-CAIR

"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future." ~ Ibrahim Hooper-CAIR

While many Muslims can co-exist in the West, Islam itself, as it is practiced by so many fanatics, absolutely cannot. It simply isn't formatted to integrate into free societies, and is in direct contradiction with democracy. Muslim women already know this.

-- Press for the Qur'an to be used in American courtrooms although this book offers nothing to anyone who wants to live in freedom and democracy, while at the same time telling non-Muslims that Islam is peaceful as the bombs continue to go off and the throats continue to be slashed?
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/default.htm#attacks

Why would a board member and co-founder of the Council on American Islamic Relations, who publicly stated in 1994 that he was "in support of the Hamas movement," be permitted to serve on Vice President Al Gore's Civil Rights Advisory Panel to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security in 1997?

Why, since he publicly stated that he is a supporter of Hamas, a network that the United States government has designated as a terrorist organization, has Nihad Awad been a regular participant in the U.S. Department of State's "International Visitors Program," which welcomes foreign dignitaries, journalists and academics who are currently visiting the President of the United States?
http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=Board&person=Nihad

As CAIR claims that their mission is to "build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding," why would they appoint to their board Ihsan Bagby, who stated that "ultimately we can never be full citizens of this country, because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country"?
http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=Board&person=Ihsan
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34024

Why would members of our own government stand before the nation and label Islam a religion of peace shortly after Muslims murdered three thousand people on September 11th, 2001, and continue to tell Americans this while certain Muslim organizations have spent the past four years calling names and tattling as if they're in the third grade?
http://www.fdnylodd.com/BloodofHeroes.html

Why do certain Muslims, still angry about the Crusades after 900 years, push the myth that the Crusades were an attempt at genocide, when in fact it was they who engaged in genocide up to and during the time when Europeans realized the threat of Muslim aggression and fought back?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895260131/103-2790246-4106217?v=glance
http://www.wndbookservice.com/products/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6805

At what point did Islam become a race?

Why do Islamist organizations inflate Muslim population figures? Where are the official census figures to support their inflated claims?
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/76

The population of the United States includes people who follow several various religions. So why is it that it is only certain Muslim organizations that create so many problems for everyone else? How can so many people from so many other religions live in America with little to no difficulty, while Islamic groups continue with so many questionable complaints?
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=7553
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=15901

Are these organizations simply demonstrating their inability to coexist with Americans and Westerners in general?

Do we ever hear from any Council on American Jewish Relations, Hindu Relations, or Buddhist Relations, calling Americans Judeophobes, Hinduphobes, or Buddhophobes?

Muslim mouthpieces: If you want to live under Islamic law, then haul yourselves off to an Islamic nation. Free speech will continue to be practiced in the United States. Just as this column has been published, countless more, authored by an endless number of American patriots, will follow. The truth is not bigotry or hate speech. It only hurts those with thin, spindly skin, or those who have something to hide.

Over the airwaves, on the web, and in the streets, the truth will continue to be told.

West: The war of words

Diana West refuses to capitulate, and has some words for those who do so:

Unbowed,if unemployed, Michael Graham issued a thought-provoking challenge as his airtime on "The O'Reilly Factor" ran down to a break. The topic under discussion was the conservative radio host's firing by Washington's WMAL — egged on by the terrorist-linked Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) — for having made his case, logically, forcefully, even regretfully, that "Islam is a terrorist organization." Before discussing Mr. Graham's final words on "O'Reilly," it's worth mentioning that Mr. Graham's argument linking terrorism to Islam is posted at JewishWorldReview.com in a column he wrote after the second London Underground bombing. Sure, the stand-alonescare quote ("I. is a T. O.") collides head-on with 21st-century sensibilities, but Mr. Graham builds his argument carefully. He makes the politically incorrect kind of sense, supported by fact (e.g., more than one-in-four British Muslims said they wouldn't tell police of a planned terrorist attack) and observation (Islamic teachings drive terrorist jihad), that the open-eyed child in "The Emperor's New Clothes" would instantly recognize. But not his bosses at WMAL — not, it seems, after CAIR objected. When Mr. Graham refused to "apologize," the ABC-Disney-owned station fired him.

All of which is what he went on "O'Reilly" to discuss, offering a factually reasoned discourse on the controversy. (Good stats, conceded an outgunned Bill O'Reilly.) And then, in closing, Mr. Graham said this: Tell me one terrorist attack that's going to be stopped by ending this conversation — that is, by WMAL taking Mr. Graham off the air.

An interesting notion. WMAL is no bureau of Homeland Security, but given the line the radio station decided Mr. Graham crossed over global terrorism (jihad) and its central role in Islam, maybe it's worth wondering whether we are safer because Michael Graham isn't pursuing his on-air line of inquiry. Surely, we are more "sensitive," meaning more guarded, even nervous about what is currently permissible to say, at least according to CAIR's enforcers. Even so, ending a conversation about jihad and Islam doesn't end Islamic jihad. Nor does cutting the talk about links between Islam and terrorism cut the links between Islam and terrorism. The fact is, the train of logic doesn't change its destination no matter how many of us — radio stations, pundits, academics, politicians — hop off.

As I see how many media outlets on the Left and Right continue to ignore my book, even as it remains on the bestseller lists, I can't help but wonder myself at the large numbers of those who have jumped off the train of logic. Read it all.

Naomi Ragen: A Fantasy Victory over a Fantasy Reality: Disagreeing with Amos Oz

Israeli author Naomi Ragen discusses some prevailing dhimmi fantasies in this new column:

I read Mr. Amos Oz's recent article: A Bloodless Victory Over Fanaticism with great interest. I too, am an Israeli author. And, according to the majority of our Palestinian neighbors who view both Jerusalem and Arad (my home and Mr. Oz's home respectively) as occupied territory, I guess we are both settlers.

Mr. Oz, in his description of "settlers'" dream for the future of Israel, has created a totally fictional Jewish opponent, the same way he has created totally fictional Palestinian peace partner, willing to live together with him peacefully in the secular democratic state of his dreams. Yes, I consider myself an Orthodox Jew. But I too view a state run by Rabbis as a nightmare. In the State of Israel I have lived in for the past 35 years -- and which as far as I know all Jewish settlers live in -- Palestinians are doctors, engineers, builders, gardners, delivery men, electricians, plumbers, actors, musicians and handymen, not the hewers of wood and water-carriers he accuses us of wanting. Yes, I believe that one day the Messiah will come and redeem this world, but last I checked that wasn't a crime, or else we'd need billions of places in jails for Christians too. I also believe that religion is a private matter, and that however I choose to live my life, I can have no control over how people like Mr. Oz lives their's. This is true even when my Sabbath tranquility is blasted away by my neighbor's high volume music, and malls that insist on keeping people working seven days a week.

In Mr. Oz's fantasy of the fanatic, hate-filled ultra-religious settler, there is no place for people like me, who constitute the majority of the people of Israel, including the peaceful settlers of Gaza who, without any reasonable expectation of better security, better lives, or benefit to their country, had their lives and livelihoods destroyed to fulfill Mr. Oz's fantasies.

I too, Mr. Oz, want to live in peace and freedom, not under the rules of the Rabbis (read my books and you'll see how long and hard I've struggled against them).

You want to be free from the "lasting occupation of Palestinian
territories?" Then I suggest you move back to Europe, or to America, or South America, because I have yet to hear any Muslim leader suggest that you are not, by your very existence on Middle Eastern soil, occupying land that does not belong to you.

The settlers "pushed forward their vision and trampled over our dreams."

And what then, was Oslo? Was it not your dream, Mr. Oz, the idea of land for peace? Were treaties not signed? And would it have been possible if settlers were truly, as you say, "lords of the country?" And did not the realization of that dream result in national tragedy on a scale never before experienced by Israeli civilians or civilians anywhere? Over twenty thousand terrorist attacks, thousands upon thousands injured, over a thousand murdered in one of the biggest orgies of terrorist bloodshed in human history? You believe that the struggle against Orthodox Jews in Gaza was a struggle between Church and State. What, then, is the struggle between Israel and it's neighbors if not a struggle between Mosque and State? All over the world, Muslims kill, maim and threaten mankind in the name of their religion. If you think clerics have no place running a state, then what have you accomplished by throwing out the Jews of Gaza only to replace them with the fanatic Imams of Hamas?

As always, you try to portray yourself as rational and pragmatic, and your fellow Israeli opponents as fanatics. But what is rational about ceding land to the Palestinian Authority while it is still overwhelmed by terrorist groups over which it has yet to demonstate control? What is pragmatic about turning thousands of productive citizens into homeless, jobless drains on Israel's just recovening economy? What is "rational and pragmatic" about planning the next stage of withdrawals and the next round of destruction before there is any indication whatsoever that this round has not been a total disaster that will, as many fear, fuel terrorism? You plan this even
as you yourself ask the unanswered questions: "Will they (the Palestinians) reciprocate by taking bold steps against their own fanatics?" If you can't figure out the answer to that question after signing a peace treaty that was followed by four years of absolute hell on earth for all Israelis, then might I suggest that your fantasy of Israeli settlers, is only matched by your fantasies about your enemy and the world you live in? People like yourself, who live in a fantasy world, should not be involved in politics.

Palestinians: Israel poisoned Gaza land

More paranoid anti-Semitic propaganda, ultimately to be used to justify murder. From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Kemaste:

Representatives of various Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday accused Israel of burying "toxic materials" under the rubble of dismantled settlements to prevent Palestinians from exploiting the land.

The allegations were made during a press conference in Khan Yunis that was organized by the Popular Committee for Defending Palestinian Lands.

Committee coordinator Abdel Aziz Qadih claimed that the IDF and the settlers had buried the toxic materials six meters under the rubble of the settlements that were evacuated last week. He did not specify the type of toxins, but claimed that they were placed in large barrels underground.

"They want to destroy the land to prevent the Palestinians from using it after it's handed over to the Palestinian Authority," he said. "We call on all those who support our people to expose this matter and to help us deal with it."

Qadih also claimed that Israel was stealing water and sand from Gush Katif.

Islamic Slant In Charter Decried

Here's a welcome mainstream media notice of how the coming of Sharia to Iraq will erode rights for non-Muslims and women. From the LA Times, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BAGHDAD — As Iraq's transitional National Assembly prepares to approve a new draft constitution as early as today, legal experts and some political leaders warned Wednesday that the charter's explicit endorsement of Islam could give religious hard-liners a tight grasp on a country that was once one of the Middle East's most secular.

In an effort to strike a compromise between the nation's religious and secular communities, Iraq's proposed constitution reserves a central place for Islamic law in the legal system while safeguarding personal freedoms and democracy.

But the text's ambiguous language and apparently conflicting provisions left neither side particularly happy, and if approved, the document probably will be the subject of heated debate in Iraqi courts for years to come.

For instance, the draft constitution makes Islam the "official religion" of Iraq and "a main source" of law rather than "the" source, as many Shiite conservatives sought. But secularists remain concerned about a clause that prohibits any law that "contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam."

Critics fear the provision could be used by religious hard-liners to impose a strict version of Islamic law, such as banning alcohol, restricting women's rights and imposing harsh Koranic punishments such as stoning.

The Iraqi draft constitution also calls for gender equality and privacy rights and prohibits laws that contradict democracy or "basic freedoms" guaranteed by the charter.

"It's not a workable document," said Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, an Islamic scholar and law professor at Emory University. "They brushed their differences under the carpet and crafted language that they could vote for. It's a time bomb that will explode as soon as it's enacted," he said.

An-Naim said a similar move to make laws conform to Islam by Sudan's Arab-dominated government in the 1980s sparked a 20-year civil war when southern Christians rebelled. "It was a disaster."

In Iraq, Iyad Jamal Din, a Shiite Muslim cleric and political activist who opposes mixing religion and government, voiced similar concerns. "It tries to preserve human rights, but within a choking religious society that is a clone of the Iranian system," he said. "I fear this constitution will lead us into a dark society controlled by extremists."

Although Iraq's charter does not envision installing a "supreme leader" like Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, questions are already emerging about certain provisions. For example, what are the "undisputed rules" of Islam? What constitutes "contradicting?" Since alcohol is banned in the Koran, should Iraq become a dry nation? Are women required to cover their heads? Does a prison sentence for a thief contradict the Koran, which calls for amputation of the hand?

"The problem is that there are no agreements on these questions," said Peter W. Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia who advised Kurdish politicians on the constitution. "It allows any cleric to make his own interpretation of the law and opens the door to a whole range of abuses."

Galbraith said the draft fell well short of the sort of democratic government the Bush administration hoped to install in Iraq. "The U.S. now has to recognize that they overthrew Saddam Hussein to replace him with a pro-Iranian state," he said....

I tried to tell you.

In Iraq, non-Muslims said they were anxious about their rights under the proposed constitution. Standing in front of a row of amber scotch and whiskey bottles, Baghdad liquor store clerk Bassam Aboudi, a Christian, is bracing for further intimidation by religious zealots.

Already hundreds of liquor store owners have closed shop or fled the country amid bombings and assassination attempts by Islamists. If the country officially embraces Islamic law, Aboudi said, he will join the exodus. "This is what is driving so many people out of the country," he said.

U.K. to Deport Terrorist Supporters

"New Guidelines Target Those Who 'Foment, Justify or Glorify' Violence," from the Washington Post, or as Hugh calls it, the Bandar Beacon:

LONDON -- People who "foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence" will be deported and banned from Britain under new guidelines released Wednesday by the country's top law enforcement official.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke outlined new guidelines in the most detailed explanation to date of proposals announced earlier this month by Prime Minister Tony Blair.

On the new list of "unacceptable behaviors" announced by Clarke is using Web sites, writing, preaching, publishing or distributing materials that "seek to provoke others to terrorist acts" or "foster hatred."

"Individuals who seek to create fear, distrust and division in order to stir up terrorist activity will not be tolerated by the government or by our communities," Clarke said, in a statement detailing measures that are a direct result of last month's subway and train bombings in London, which killed 56 people, including four presumed bombers, and injured 700.

While human rights activists and others have criticized the measures, polls have shown overwhelming public support for tightening laws against religious extremism, even if that means limits on free speech and other civil liberties in a nation with a long tradition of tolerance.

"We recognize the sensitivities around the use of these powers and intend to use them in a measured and targeted way," Clarke said. "These powers are not intended to stifle free speech or legitimate debate about religions or other issues. Britain is rightly proud of its openness and diversity and we must not allow those driven by extremism of any sort to destroy that tradition."

Clarke also said a "database of individuals around the world who have demonstrated these unacceptable behaviors will be developed" and made available to immigration officers monitoring those entering Britain. He did not specify who would compile the list or how extensive it might be.

Clarke's statement did not refer to any particular religious or ethnic group, but all nine men suspected by police of carrying bombs last month are Muslim. In his statement on Aug. 5, Blair said he would ban two Islamic organizations from Britain and he said he planned to bar Muslim clerics who were "not suitable to preach."...

Asher Ragen: The Unbearable Ease of Destruction

Asher Ragen is a Ph.D candidate at Harvard's School of Near Eastern Studies, and a reservist in the IDF. Here he offers an indelible perspective on the Gaza withdrawal.

As family after family is evicted from a home and a community, as the synagogues are emptied and the nurseries abandoned, the scale of destruction and suffering seems overwhelming. Equally overwhelming is the ease with which four decades of work and love invested in communities can be effaced. Is it really that easy to destroy what we have built? Is nothing about this state permanent?

Destruction on this magnitude demands an explanation. Yet search as one might through the "critical" analysis of the barrage of experts and pundits, no rational explanation is to be found. Hopefully the magnitude of suffering witnessed now daily will warn us of those flippant, vacuous answers heard too often. One needs to do better than callously remark, "Well, we couldn't stay there forever". None of us will live forever, either. The "forever" argument, intimating a knowledge of a future decades away, sounds doubly strange coming from a leadership that lacks a vision for the coming January, let alone "forever." It does not explain why this had to happen; why now? Why in this manner? Why was this done without elections? Why did the people not even get a chance to plead for themselves? Surely if forever is our time scale, a few more months would hardly matter.

Perhaps sometimes it is necessary to destroy. But the previous occasion -- the destruction of Yamit -- should serve as a yardstick. When Yamit was destroyed, it was done for the sake of a peace agreement with the largest Arab nation and the bitterest of enemies. It was done after Saddat arrived in Jerusalem, and after the peace agreement was ratified by an overwhelming majority in the Knesset. There was a real sense that the Middle East was about to change forever. Against such a background, the pain and suffering experienced in Yamit could be contextualized. It offered such tremendous benefits to the entire state, that it truly seemed wrong to let the settlements of Yamit stand in the way.

But what benefits are being offered here? The Palestinians have patiently explained, repeatedly, that this will change nothing. On the contrary, they are now assured of two crucial facts: Terrorism works, and there is no limit to what Israel will give. Some people believe that "at least no soldiers will have to die in Gaza". While I admire a fervent belief in the powers beyond our control, such religious zeal should really not interfere with rational security considerations. When the qassam missiles fall again in Sderot and beyond (and fall they will), Israel will immediately wait until there are significant civilian casualties. It will then threaten to really, really, retaliate. And when (surprise!) this threat is ignored, it will once again send soldiers into Gaza. Except this time they will face a well armed and prepared enemy, intent on exacting the highest price. And as for Sharon's threats -- well, not everyone is as frightened by the old man as his party yes-men.

The final straw being grasped at simply illustrates the disengagement from logic that this process entails. We are now told that we must leave Gaza because of the "demographic threat." Demography never killed anyone, however. And drawing artificial lines in the sand will not reduce the number of Arabs intent on murdering Jews. Slice and dice the state of Israel as you like, the Jews will remain a miniscule minority in the Middle East. And at any rate, "demographic threats" materialize over generations. Or not. If one insists on looking for a rational within the confines of academia, he would do better to turn to the department of Psychology.

Because not everyone watching the scenes from Gush Katif is moved to
tears. Some people have complaints about the aesthetics of the
deportation. These multiple "Miss Manners" have very clear ideas
about the etiquette of being thrown out of your home. They lament
the "barbaric" lack of decorum exhibited by parents who have just had
everything taken from them.

Perhaps this reaction is the most revealing of all. It comes closest to explaining why this is all happening. The rational underpinnings for the "disengagement" are slim indeed. But the irrational, violent hatred aimed at the victims of this madness compensate adequately.

The rhetorical arsenal deployed against the citizens of Gush Katif is
overpowering. For the most part, these people have never been
convicted of crimes, they serve in the army, run productive business
and pay taxes. They have been described alternately as messianic
fanatics, religious zealots, or violent threats to democracy. Mostly
they are farmers. Throughout these difficult days they behaved with
a dignity of spirit that strangely enough is uplifting.

As much as we are learning about the settlers (though anyone who
spent any time with them is hardly surprised), we are learning quite
a bit more about the Israeli left. To anyone who thought the people
on the left simply possess a soul deeply attuned to human suffering;
to anyone who believed their cries of empathy for every displaced
Palestinian, every uprooted olive tree, were born of a basic human
solidarity that just cannot overlook a suffering human being,
regardless of the context; this week was an eye-opener. It seems
that they are quite able to look upon human suffering and dismiss it
with the quip, "Well, they had it coming".

Since the destruction of Gush Katif is not a means to anything, it
must be the end in itself. There is a desire, a yearning even, to
"take on the settlers" and destroy these communities regardless of
any political advantage. The battle has been described by some as
"Israelis vs. the Jews." This formulation is worth noting. One might think there was no dichotomy between Israeli and Jew. Israel is the Jewish State, is it not? But for some creating this dichotomy, this clear distinction between Israeli and Jew, is actually the purpose of this entire exercise.

To these people, the main obstacle to achieving peace is the pesky Jewish-ness of the conflict. Israelis, Jordanians, and Lebanese
could get along just fine. It's the Jews and Arabs who can't live in
peace. It is not quite that the settlers are being singled out because they are Jewish. Or that everyone who supports their eviction is somehow not Jewish. But the willingness to inflict so much pain, without even telling them why, bespeaks of a fundamental disconnect within the nation. Of people who insist on not viewing the settlers are their own people.

At its core the disengagement is a literary move. The settlers, with
their long beards and multiple children, represent the unmistakable
Jewish-ness of the nation. The thousand of soldiers and police men
represent the Nation. By manufacturing these images that pit Israeli
soldier against Jewish settler, a distinction is created that can
never again be ignored. It is the most painful literary exercise in
history.

The irony is that on one level they are correct. The core of the
problem is the Jewish-ness of the nation. But by seeking to rip it
out of their own body, they are making the most typically Jewish move
of all. In this century the assimilated Jews of Germany reacted to
the virulent anti-Semitism of the Germans by attacking the uncultured
oustenjuden from Poland. It was because they insisted on being so
damn different that the Germans hated the Jews. But of course when
the time came, the Germans made no note of this internal Jewish
hairsplitting. The Palestinians are equally unimpressed with this
display of enmity that the Jewish state has put on. They are all
Jews and they are all settlers, and their fate should be the same.
When Abu Mazen speaks of marching to Jerusalem, he is not thinking of
just East Jerusalem.

Among the numerous tragedies that unfolded this week, there is also
this: in a year, all of the politicians who supported this plan will
be gone. Just like the architects of Oslo, they will be relegated to
the overflowing dustbin of Israeli political failures. But the self-
inflicted wounds of this psychotic episode will continue to bleed.
One can only hope that they have not been fatal.

UK: jihadists "like Nazis"

There is no doubt that failing to confront them will be fatal. There is also no doubt that Cameron will be excoriated for saying this, just as if he had said this of "all Muslims" rather than "Islamist extremists" -- even though he did not do so. "Islamist extremists 'like Nazis'," from the BBC, with thanks to Uajeg:

A senior Conservative is to liken Islamist extremists to Nazis and warn failing to confront them will be fatal.

Leadership hopeful David Cameron will say the rise of Hitler showed that a willingness to give ground and avoid confrontation was seen as weakness.

In a speech to the Foreign Policy Centre, he will urge the government to do more to counter extremism.

The shadow education secretary will also call for more funding for the security services.

'Tough too'

Other measures he will urge include a dedicated border police force and 24-hour security at major ports.

He will also say Britain should withdraw entirely from international human rights conventions if they prevent the deportation of Islamic radicals.

Mr Cameron will warn a strain of Islamist thinking has developed which, like Nazism and Communism, offers followers redemption through violence.

"Just like the Nazis of 1930s Germany, they want to purge corrupt cosmopolitan influences," he is due to say.

'No surrender'

He will also say that the West's failure to act in the 1990s fed Osama Bin Laden's belief that it lacked the strength to defend itself.

"The lesson from all of this with respect to our presence in Iraq is clear.

"Premature withdrawal - and failure to support the Iraqi authority - would be seen as a surrender to militant Jihadism. Nothing would embolden the terrorists more."

CAIR Crows over Graham Firing

"CAIR Hails Firing of Michael Graham" from CNS, with thanks to Andy Bostom.

An Islamic civil rights group Monday praised the firing of a Washington, D.C., radio talk show host it criticized for claiming that "Islam is a terrorist organization."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) welcomed Michael Graham's ouster from WMAL following his initial suspension without pay for controversial remarks against Islam.

"Just as Michael Graham has the right to hold bigoted views, so, too, does our society have the right to live free of hatred and incitement," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad in a statement.

"We are saddened that Michael Graham would not take responsibility for his hate-filled words, but we do welcome WMAL's action as a step toward reducing the level of anti-Muslim bigotry on our nation's airwaves," said Awad...

Australia: Summit leader's 9/11 'plot' theory

From the Australian, with thanks to all who sent this in.

ONE of the Islamic leaders meeting John Howard today suspects September 11 was a conspiracy and asks "why did 4000 Jews not show up for work" on the day of the attacks?

Abdul (Ray) Rahman Deen also says there were no black box flight recorders found in the wreckage of the World Trade Centre after hijacked planes were flown into the twin towers, killing thousands.
Mr Deen, who is a development officer for the Liberal Party, says it was therefore wrong to blame any group for September 11 "without full facts and evidence".

The comments are contained in a letter sent recently to the nine core members of the peak Muslim body, Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.

Mr Deen, whose family operates a demolition company in Queensland, issued a statement saying the comments were views expressed in the community about conspiracy theories, rather than his own.

Mr Howard said he was pleased Mr Deen had clarified the comments, but AFIC president Ameer Ali, who received the letter, disagreed with Mr Deen saying the comments in the letter were clearly Mr Deen's personal views.

"There are many people who believe this in the community. This a problem and one that we need to confront," Dr Ali said.

His comments are a severe blow to the 13 Muslim leaders arriving in Canberra for today's summit with the Prime Minister.

The summit, announced in the wake of the London bombings, aims to tackle the spread of intolerance and hatred - and thereby reduce the threat of a terrorist attack in Australia...

Pipes: How Terrorism Obstructs Radical Islam

Daniel Pipes writes in the New York Sun and his website:

Do terrorist atrocities in the West, such as the attacks of September 11, 2001 and those in Bali, Madrid, Beslan, and London, help radical Islam achieve its goal of gaining power?

No, they are counterproductive. That's because radical Islam has two distinct wings - one violent and illegal, the other lawful and political - and they exist in tension with each other. The lawful strategy has proven itself effective, but the violent approach gets in its way.

The violent wing is foremost represented by the world's no. 1 fugitive, Osama bin Laden. The popular and powerful prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, represents the lawful wing. Even as "Al Qaeda has more state adversaries than nearly any force in history," as Daniel C. Twining observes, political imams like Yusuf al-Qaradawi instruct huge audiences on Al-Jazeera television and visit with the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. As Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr skulks around Iraq, looking for a role, Ayatollah Sistani dominates the country's political life.

Yes, terrorism kills enemies, instills fear, and disrupts the economy. Yes, it boosts morale and recruits non-Muslims to Islam and Muslims to Islamism. It creates an opportunity for Islamists to fight for their favorite causes, such as the elimination of Israel or the disengagement of coalition forces from Iraq. It provides, as Mark Steyn notes, intelligence information on the enemy. And yes, it prompts politically correct talk about Islam being a "religion of peace," with Muslims portrayed as victims.

But for two main reasons, terrorism does radical Islam more harm than good.

First, it alarms and galvanizes Westerners. For example, the July 7 bombings took place during the G8 summit in Scotland, where world leaders were focused on global warming, aid to Africa, and macro-economic issues. In a London minute, the politicians then redirected their attention toward counterterrorism. Thus did the terrorists stiffen, as Mona Charen points out, "whatever small residue of resolve remains in flaccid Western civilization."

More broadly, Mr. Twining notes, "Al Qaeda's rise has produced the kind of great power entente not seen since the Concert of Europe took shape in 1815." (Even the Madrid bombings, an apparent exception, led to a marked strengthening of counterterrorism measures by Spain and other European countries.)

Second, terrorism obstructs the quiet work of political Islamism. In tranquil times, organizations like the Muslim Council of Britain and the Council on American-Islamic Relations effectively go about their business, promoting their agenda to make Islam "dominant" and imposing dhimmitude (whereby non-Muslims accept Islamic superiority and Muslim privilege). Westerners generally respond like slowly boiled frogs are supposed to, not noticing a thing...

Read it all.

U.S. Muslim leader embraces Orthodox rabbi whose group opposes Israel

Chasing the ever vanishing chimera of peace, some Jewish groups propose nothing less than the road to subjugation and dhimmitude as a solution. From Haaretz, with thanks to Sr. Soph.

NEW YORK - A small rally to support the Israeli pullout from Gaza ended Monday with a Muslim leader embracing an Orthodox Jewish rabbi whose organization opposes Israel's right to exist and supports a Palestinian state.

Ghazi Khankan, who was executive director of the regional Council on American-Islamic Relations from 2000 to 2004, approached Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss and hugged him after appealing for an evenhanded U.S. foreign policy and a state where Muslims, Jews and Christians can live together peacefully.

Weiss, looking somewhat surprised, returned the hug with a smile.

The organization he represents, Neturei Karta International, claims Zionism is against Jewish law written in the Torah and says the creation of Israel has exacerbated anti-Semitism.

It called the rally to express gratitude for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which Weiss said is a "token beginning" of righting a historic wrong - a view supported by Khankan, who was also president of the National Council on Islamic Affairs for 10 years...

At Monday's rally, more than 40 Orthodox Jewish men in black hats and long black coats from Neturei Karta stood in the summer heat in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the United Nations, some holding placards saying "Torah Forbids Any Jewish State" and "Judaism Rejects Zionism and the State of Israel." One held a placard with a Palestinian state including all of Israel, and a young boy held a Palestinian flag.

Before Zionists started pressing for a Jewish state in the early 1900s, Weiss said, Jews lived in harmony with Muslims.

"Zionism brought about this terrible rift, this mistrust that we can't live in Muslim lands," he said. "It's a terrible tragedy. We can live together."

"We pray everyday for the speedy dismantlement of this rule of the state of Israel so that it should be transformed into the rule of the Palestinian people, so Jews can live together with Arabs, Muslims in harmony. ... Nothing else will bring an ongoing long-lasting peace," Weiss said.

Graham: My CAIR-Inspired Firing

Michael Graham explains how and why he was fired by WMAL in Townhall via FrontPage, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The First Amendment and I have been evicted from ABC Radio in Washington, DC.

On July 25th, the Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that I be “punished” for my on-air statements regarding Islam and its tragic connections to terrorism. Three days later, 630 WMAL and ABC Radio suspended me without pay for comments deemed “hate radio” by CAIR.

CAIR immediately announced that my punishment was insufficient and demanded I be fired. ABC Radio and 630 WMAL have now complied. I have been fired for making the specific comments CAIR deemed “offensive,” and for refusing to retract those statements in a management-mandated, on-air apology. ABC Radio further demanded that I agree to perform what they described as “additional outreach efforts” to those people or groups who felt offended.

I refused. And for that refusal, I have been fired.

It appears that ABC Radio has caved to an organization that condemns talk radio hosts like me, but has never condemned Hamas, Hezbollah, and one that wouldn’t specifically condemn al-Qaeda for three months after 9/11.

Read it all.

Ancient practices still a threat to Iraqi women

Another story about the horrific practice of female genital mutilation, or FGM, now occuring with alarming frequency in the American fostered democracy of Iraq. The Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations seems to be snuffed out before it was ever lit. From the Washington Times, with thanks to JMP.

GERMIAN, Iraq - Set on the arid, pebble-strewn plain southeast of Kirkuk, Hasira looks like a place forsaken by time.

Fat-tailed sheep amble past mud-brick houses and brushwood pens. The odd sickly palm tree provides shade for children's games. There is no electricity.

Germian and 39 other villages in this region of Iraqi Kurds have made their small place in history.

Surveyed by WADI, a German nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in Iraq for more than a decade, the region has provided the first statistical proof of the existence of female genital mutilation in the Middle East.

"We knew Germian was one of the areas most affected by the practice," said WADI director Thomas von der Osten-Sacken. "But the results were a shock."

Of 1,554 women and girls aged 10 or older interviewed by WADI's local medical team, 907 -- more than 60 percent -- said they had undergone the operation...

Posted at 8:19 PM | Comments (15)

Red Ken's true colors

Here is an interesting profile of London's dhimmi mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone, whom Hugh Fitzgerald has pilloried before in these pages. From Haaretz, with thanks to Sr. Soph.

Ken Livingstone was born in Stratham, in south London, in June 1945, one month after the end of World War II. "I grew up in a world in which all the horror of what the Nazis did unfolded over the years," he said in a newspaper interview six months ago. "For all my generation, we defined evil by that: that this is the absolute worst in human history."

His world of images is anchored in that war and its horrors, from which he also occasionally draws some of his controversy-sparking expressions. In 1984, as a member of Camden borough council of London, he attacked the Board of Deputies - the umbrella organization of the Jewish communities in Britain - describing it as being "dominated by reactionaries and neo-fascists." Three years later, he compared Camden's housing policy to the persecution of homosexuals by Hitler's regime of terror. In 2000, he commented, "Capitalism has killed more people than Hitler."

But his sharp tongue reached the height of vulgarity of historic memory one evening last February. Livingstone was in an especially ebullient mood that night, and some say he was a trifle too ebullient due to having had a few too many drinks (he denies this) at a political get-together. Waiting outside the party was Oliver Finegold, a Jewish reporter for the Evening Standard, who peppered Livingstone with questions. The mayor responded by comparing the reporter to a kapo, a guard at a concentration camp.

This caused a huge storm. Holocaust survivors demonstrated outside his office. Synagogues called for a boycott of the mayor. Some observers feared the incident could hurt London's efforts to win the right to host the Olympic Games. Prime Minister Tony Blair phoned and asked Livingstone to apologize, but the mayor refused, with characteristic stubbornness. "Why should I say words I don't believe in?" he railed. But at the same time, in an effort to fend off the criticism, he also attested that "The Holocaust infuses all my politics."

After high school, Livingstone completed a teacher's certificate, but never used it. From a relatively young age he had worked as a technician in the cancer research laboratory of a hospital, was active in the Labour Party, and was drawn to its more radical circles. His political consciousness was etched by the protest movement of the 1960s. The two mainstays of his worldview emerged from that era. One was reflected in his opinions on foreign policy, in which it was always clear who were the bad guys (European colonialism and American imperialism) and who were the good guys (the repressed Third World). It comes as no surprise that in 2002 and 2003 he described Ariel Sharon as a "war criminal."

When George W. Bush was due to arrive in London on a visit, Livingstone called him "the most dangerous man in the world." Sharon and Bush are in good company in Livingstone's vocabulary. They are there together with the Saudi royal family, about which he said that he hoped to see its sons "swinging from lampposts."...

Oh, and the temple was destroyed, but that's not important...

From "Royal Mosque, a testimony to 700 years of history," in Newindpress, with thanks to Kskat:

RAJAHMUNDRY: The simple and unostentatious exterior of the Royal Mosque of Rajahmundry belies its uniqueness and historicity. It stands as a testimony to history spanning seven centuries.

The Royal Mosque or Shahi Jamia Masjid is among the oldest mosques constructed in Andhra Pradesh and dates back to the Tughluq era.

It was constructed by Suleiman Humayun Ulugh Khan, son of Ghiasuddin Abdul Mujaffar Tugluq - the Sultan of Delhi - on August 20, 1305. According to historians, the Tugluqs converted Venugopala temple into this mosque.

More important, however, is the uninterrupted history of Namaaz (prayers) for the past 700 years.

Really? More important to whom? Why?

Muslim Association of Britain reacts to BBC report: it's all because of the "Zionist lobby"

The Muslim Association of Britain (thanks to Ana) has issued a statement complaining about this BBC report, without offering any specifics to refute it. The last line of the MAB's statement is most telling:

The attacks on the MCB by the Zionist lobby in the last few weeks have been nothing short of scandalous.

Sure. When all else fails, blame the Jews.

Anti-dhimmitude at (gasp) the BBC: honest program about Muslims in Britain

This program isn't perfect, but it is good to see Sacranie and Co. being asked some hard questions for a change. Now if only the American mainstream media would follow suit. "Programme transcript: What follows is a transcript of 'A question of Leadership', first broadcast Sunday 21 August 2005, 22:20 BST on BBC One," with thanks to all who sent this in:

Unidentified speaker: It's a great honour to kill these people¿ Islam not a religion of just you speaking we got to people of action.

John Ware: Two British Muslims prepare to go on a suicide mission. They're sent on their way to the strains of a song hailing them as heroes fighting for the homeland.

But it wasn't their homeland. Their target was a seaside bar in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

3 civilians were killed and more than 50 injured.

The British bombers' sole connection with Palestine was that they were Muslim.

Yet they were prepared to kill civilians for their Palestinian brothers overseas. Then came London: again the bombers were British born Muslims.

Again their target was civilians - but this time it was their fellow citizens.

Leaders of the Muslim communities were summoned to Downing Street by the Prime Minister who called on them to help root out what he termed this "evil ideology" of Islamist extremism.

Tony Blair, Prime Minister: We all accept and advocate a society of tolerance and respect for people from whatever race or religious background they come from.

John Ware: Sir Iqbal Sacranie, on the left, is generally presented as the Muslim community's main representative. He certainly has the ear of government.

He's the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain. After the British bombing of the bar in Tel Aviv, Sir Iqbal said it hadn't marked a growth in Islamist extremism here.

Now he does admit there is a problem.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: The Muslim community is determined to deal with this issue head on. And it will now come up with various pro active measures. That means we go into the community to address that issue.

John Ware: Extremism feeds off a conviction that Islam is a superior faith and culture which Christians and Jews in the West are conspiring to undermine.

My journey through Muslim communities since the London bombings suggests their leaders have not acknowledged the extent to which these views are held in Britain.

TITLE: A QUESTION of LEADERSHIP

John Ware: Britain has around 2 million Muslims.

Muslim leaders have condemned utterly the bombings.

And yet this murderous rage grew from within their communities.

Some influential Muslims believe the time for a full and frank debate about where Islam is going here is long over due.

Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Muslim Institute: I think the British people may give us benefit of doubt once this time, but if this were to be repeated, then I think the Muslim position ¿ future is very bleak. And knowing our community, the amount of fundamentalism and extremism that exists, I'm not quite sure that this will not happen again. "

John Ware: Dr Siddiqui is not alone in believing that sectarian attitudes extend beyond the small number of extremists.

Others doubt the Muslim Council of Britain has grasped the scale of this problem.

Mehboob Kantharia, Founding Member, Muslim Council of Britain: A lot of them still live in a state of denial. It is my personal belief that because they are in this state of denial, they cannot become real, you know, sort of like, forthright, really forthright about wanting to do something about the kind of extremism that prevails.

John Ware: Mehboob Kantharia was a founding member of the Muslim Council of Britain; generally regarded as the moderate face of Islam speaking for the Muslim community.

On its website the MCB emphasises it's working for better community relations and for the good of society as a whole.

It's an umbrella for around 400 mosques, and other Islamic groups.

But Mr Kantharia says that within the MCB a distaste for western secular culture still exists.

Mehboob Kantharia: One of the most powerful strands, and many will tear me up and say, 'sorry, you've got it completely wrong', has been an anti-British, anti-Western stand. We are now British, therefore this is our home, this is our country, this country is not our enemy.

John Ware: Several MCB affiliates do have links to anti western ideologies from abroad.

The Deputy General Secretary of the MCB is Dr Abdul Bari.

He's also Chairman of the East London Mosque which has maintained good relations with other local faith groups.

Last year a £10m new Islamic centre was opened.

The guests included Christian leaders. The Chief Rabbi and Prince Charles also sent goodwill messages.

The guest of honour was one of the most prominent clerics from Saudi Arabia - the most austere Islamic state in the world whose ideology is the polar opposite of secular Britain.

But London's East End is home to many faiths and the Sheikh's theme was tolerance.

Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais, Imam, Ka'ba, Mecca, Saudi Arabia: The history of Islam is the best testament to how different communities can live together in peace and harmony. Muslims must exemplify the true image of Islam in their interaction with other communities.

John Ware: Sheikh Sudais is a leading Imam from the great mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest city.

He had one voice for his Western audience - another for his followers in Saudi. Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais: The worst ... of the enemies of Islam are those... whom he... made monkeys and pigs, the aggressive Jews and oppressive Zionists and those that follow them: the callers of the trinity and the cross worshippers¿ those influenced by the rottenness of their ideas, and the poison of their cultures the followers of secularism... How can we talk sweetly when the Hindus and the idol worshippers indulge in their overwhelming hatred against our brothers... in Muslim Kashmir...

John Ware: The East London mosque received $1m from the Saudis towards their new centre. The mosque's links to Saudi go back many years.

The mosque's Chairman Dr Bari remains to be convinced that his honoured guest Sheikh Sudais has repeatedly vilified other faiths.

John Ware: Do I take it that if you were satisfied he had said such things you would not have invited him over?

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Chairman, East London Mosque, Deputy Secretary General, Muslim Council Of Britain: Well of course if it was proved that he exactly said this thing that you mentioned then why do you invited people who would be saying like this?

John Ware: I mean, let me say what else he's reported to have said, he said: 'There should be no peace with the rats of the world.' Again he refers to Jews as the scum of the human race, offspring of apes and pigs, and he has also referred to Christians as worshippers of the cross.' You don't see Christians in those terms?

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: I don't see Christians in those terms.

John Ware: You don't see Christians in those terms?

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: No.

John Ware: No. And idol worship¿ you don't see Hindus as idol worshippers, do you ? I'm sure you don't, do you? Do you?

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: Well... why are you bringing all this?

John Ware: You, er, I mean you do not regard Hindus as idol worshippers?

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: Well Hindu... you mean the definition? When it's idol worshipper, different people worship God in different manners.

John Ware: Mmm.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: Once again you are entering into the theological debate and Muslims worship one monotheistic God and many other communities may have different versions of God.

John Ware: No, I understand that.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: The Trinity may be one of them.

John Ware: I understand that.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: And it all depends how you use the word and explain the word.

John Ware: Sure, but this is harsh.. you wouldn't... I mean no, I accept all that, but this is different, isn't it. This is very harsh language; this in effect denounces other faiths, Hindus, Christians and Jews.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: Well denouncing any faith is not acceptable in Islam, that's not the Prophetic teaching. We need to know the source of this and this is very dangerous thing, that character assassination of Muslim scholars and leaders are getting very widespread.

John Ware: I'm not trying to assassinate his character I'm simply trying to deal with the facts. That's all I'm trying to do.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: No, I know, you are mentioning... you are saying facts but we have a question whether these are facts.

John Ware: The facts are easily checkable - we found a selection of the Sheikh's sermons on a Saudi website covering mosques in the holy cities of Medina and Mecca - with English translations.

Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais: Monkeys and pigs and worshippers of false Gods who are the Jews and the Zionists¿

John Ware: The $1m gift from the Saudis to the East London Mosque is but a drop in the ocean compared to the billions they've spent spreading their narrow form of Islam around the world.

Some of the Saudi millions have been spent on new translations of the Qur'an which are less tolerant of other faiths.

Take a look at this popular English version of the Qur'an not translated by the Saudis.

It translates this verse as saying: "Those who follow the Jewish (scriptures)¿ and the Christians.. any who believe in Allah¿and work righteousness.." can go to paradise.

Now look at this more recent version of the Qur'an, by Saudi appointed translators.

The same verse suggests Jews and Christians would only go to paradise if they "believed in Allah ¿and worked righteousness.."

Other recent Saudi translations of the Qur'an make the change to the past tense even more starkly.

One of the leading British experts on the Qur'an is Professor Neal Robinson.

He says this difference in translation may seem subtle, but today casts non Muslims in a completely different light.

Professor Neal Robinson, University Louvain, Belgium: The recent Saudi translation gives the impression that only Jews and Christians before the rise of Islam could be admitted to Paradise not Jews and Christians today who believe in God, look to the coming day of judgement and do goods works.

John Ware: What do you think of this?

Professor Neal Robinson: I think this is a regrettable narrowing. They've not changed the interpretation of the Qur'an, this was the prevalent view in the middle ages; just as mediaeval Christians believed that outside the church there was no salvation."

John Ware: Muslims regard the Qur'an as infallible - because they believe the texts are the divine revelations from God.

Over the last 20 years, the Saudis have flooded the world with harsher interpretations of the Qur'an, cut price and often free.

What message has this missionary zeal reinforced to Muslims about other faiths?

Professor Neal Robinson: That a Muslim cannot be a genuine friend of a non-Muslim.

Professor Neal Robinson: Their whole ideology is one of Arab and Islamic supremacy and they have little room for other more liberal Arab interpretations of Islam and no room at all for West. The West is just dismissed as decadent and secular. They have no understanding of the way in which modern secular societies have carefully separated the domains of religion and state and kept certain areas of public life free of religious influence."

John Ware: I've come to Oxford to meet a Muslim academic who's lived here for most of the last 30 years. He believes imported ideologies have hindered the development of Islam in Britain.

He doesn't believe Britain can have a Saudi Islam, a Pakistani Islam, or any other sort of Islam that isn't indigenous to this country. That way lies an isolated, ghettoised society.

Dr Taj Hargey runs a centre that promotes what he calls "progressive inclusive Islam."

He says there's a virtual apartheid in parts of Britain - self imposed by those Muslims who regard non Muslims as Kaafir - in the sense that they are inferior.

John Ware: Have you heard Muslim leaders use the word Kaafir in private to you? I mean you're a Muslim, would they use that word to you?

Dr Taj Hargey, Chairman, Muslim Education Centre Oxford : Yes, absolutely, I've heard it many, many a time.

John Ware: Because they don't use it to non-Muslims.

Dr Taj Hargey: No, but¿I've just mentioned that, we have a one vocabulary in private and we have another vocabulary for the public domain, and that's why you don't hear it because you're the public domain.

John Ware: You've heard it in mosques yourself?

Dr Taj Hargey: Ad infinitum and ad nauseum, it's there, it's with us. We see it from the time you're a child, you're given this idea that those people they are Kaafir, they're unbelievers. They are not equal to you, they are different to you. You are superior to them because you have the truth, they don't have the truth. You will go to heaven, they will go to hell. So we have this from a very young age.

John Ware: Further evidence of Saudi influence is the Ahl-e-Hadith organisation, a major affiliate of the Muslim Council of Britain. Based in Birmingham, and with 41 branches across Britain it is inspired by puritanical Saudi ideology.

One part of its website tells readers their fellow citizens are "Kuffaar". "Be different from the Jews and Christians"

"Their ways are based on sick or deviant views concerning their societies¿"

Muslims are also warned that imitating the Kuffaar and attending "Christmas .....First of April lies, birthday parties.." may lead to "permanent abode in the Hell Fire"

The Secretary General of the MCB, Sir Iqbal Sacranie must perform a difficult juggling act.

The MCB is an umbrella group embracing many diverse strands of Islam. But should he also be providing a stronger lead?

John Ware: I'm quoting from Ali Hadith. As I say it's quite an important affiliate of yours and just to give you one example from their website, they say of Jews and Christians: 'Their ways are based on sick or deviant views' and that 'imitating the Kuffaar leads to a permanent abode in hellfire.' That's a 'Them and Us' culture, isn't it, that's a slippery slope.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain: It's a view that they hold, it's a view which¿

John Ware: Do you subscribe that view?

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: I don't subscribe to that. I'm not a member of Ahle Hadith but it's a membership that we have, it's diversity that exists in the community, having different views on life.

John Ware: Isn't it a form of diversity that you should disown?

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: Well we must accept the reality on the ground that the diversity that we have with the Muslim Community in the UK and as long as they subscribe to our constitution, which is very clear, which is on the website and it's totally transparent in terms of its activities of a work which is through the teachings of the Quran and upholding the principles of Islam; then what they do outside the Council, there is no control that we have on them.

John Ware: Let's talk turkey here, you said outside downing street you're going to deal with this problem head on. I'm not suggesting they're your views. But if you're going to deal with this problem head on, don't you need to start with organisations that hold Jews and Christians for a start in such contempt? I mean that's the slippery slope. That's the slippery slope that people who become extremists start to go down.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: Well you presumably have that knowledge, I don't think that that is one clear avenue to bringing about the conclusion that we're trying to get to. What I'm saying is that there are of course different views being held. We would now¿

John Ware: But this is an objectionable view.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: It may have well been objectionable view but the fact is it exists within the community."

John Ware: While the MCB tolerates an affiliate that denounces other faiths, Iqbal Sacranie was famously intolerant when his own faith was insulted.

In 1989 Muslims burned copies of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses which ridiculed the Prophet Mohammed.

But while Muslims exercised their right to protest, they did not believe Rushdie had a right to free expression.

They demanded the government ban the book

Iqbal Sacranie was one of the joint protest leaders.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: Attempting to insult the blessed prophet, peace be upon him, is the most serious crime in the eyes of Islamic law. The crime is considered as transgressing the limits and is worse than treason and is a capital offence.

John Ware: The Iranians had already passed the death sentence on Salman Rushdie whom they regarded as a Muslim.

Their Fatwa said every Muslim had a duty to execute it.

Mindful perhaps of British law, Iqbal Sacranie was reported as saying:

"Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him?" but he still expected Rushdie to be mentally tormented for the rest of his life.

John Ware: Today you still believe that if 'Satanic Verses' was published again, you would expect the government of the day to put pressure on the publishers to withdraw it?

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: Well I¿

John Ware: Would you?

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: There is no¿

John Ware: But would you?

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: There is no law at the moment, sadly, that would enable me to pursue with a legal course of.. of seeking its withdrawal.

John Ware: If by 'sadly' - I take it you wish there was a law which would allow you to withdraw a book of this kind should it be published again. Is that right?

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: If the law that we would like to sort of see appear, a law does not prevent totally, it's a very powerful message that goes out in type of what sort of society we have. We respect the freedom of expression but we expect freedom of expression to be exercised with responsibility."

There is much more. Read it all.

WMAL fires Michael Graham, earns the opprobrium of all free people

Joel Mowbray tells the shameful story in "CAIR 1, Free Speech 0" in
FrontPage this morning. I hope you will let WMAL know -- calmly and politely -- what you think about this.

After a three-week suspension, mid-morning host Michael Graham was fired over the weekend for his comment on July 21 that “Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization.” According to formal statement issued by the host last night, Disney-owned WMAL terminated him for the original remarks and his refusal to apologize for them....

Here are Graham’s remarks, with full context:

“Because of the mix of Islamic theology that—rightly or wrongly—is interpreted to promote violence, added to an organizational structure that allows violent radicals to operate openly in Islam’s name with impunity, Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization. It pains me to say it. But the good news is it doesn’t have to stay this way, if the vast majority of Muslims who don’t support terror will step forward and re-claim their religion.”

Plenty of people can—and do—take issue with the framing of the religion itself as a “terrorist organization.” But his surrounding comments have more than a ring of truth. Islamic theology is used to promote violence. And in many parts of the world, radicals have taken control of Islam—and the moderates have been effectively silenced.

And Graham’s desire that moderates re-claim control of Islam is shared by many, though likely not by CAIR or groups of its ilk.

CAIR was founded in 1994 by two former high-ranking officials with the Islamic Association of Palestine, a rabidly anti-Semitic organization known as Hamas’ biggest political booster in the United States.

Since 9/11, CAIR officials have been careful to avoid the appearance that they support Islamic terrorism. But not before 9/11. In November 1999, CAIR President Omar Ahmad addressed a youth session at the IAP annual convention in Chicago, where he praised suicide bombers who “kill themselves for Islam”: “Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam – that is not suicide. They kill themselves for Islam.” (Transcript provided by the Investigative Project.)

Though CAIR’s mission is not to serve as an overt Hamas partisan, the organization has refused to specifically condemn the terrorist organization. Ditto for Hezbollah, which is responsible for murdering more Americans than any other terrorist group besides al Qaeda. And CAIR refused to condemn bin Laden or al Qaeda by name until three months after 9/11.

The Washington Post in November 2001 asked a CAIR spokesman to condemn Hamas or Islamic Jihad. He refused, explaining, “It’s not our job to go around denouncing.” Asked a similar question about Hamas and Hezbollah by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in February 2002, Hooper called such queries a “game” and added, “We’re not in the business of condemning.”

Of course, CAIR is very much “in the business of condemning.” The group gleefully slams critics of radical Islam, television shows, and talk radio hosts. But when it comes to Islamic terrorist organizations or prominent Muslims who endorse terrorism or embrace radical Islam, CAIR’s silence is deafening.

To provide cover—and further perpetuate the myth that CAIR and other American Muslim organizations are genuinely “moderate”—various fundamentalist Muslim leaders recently issued a fatwa against “extremism” and “terrorism.” It was classic CAIR obfuscation: it condemned terms that were intentionally not defined. Not coincidentally, no terrorist organizations were named. Sadly, many media outlets were snookered.

WMAL now appears to be the most recent media outlet duped by CAIR. The station, for its part, refused comment last week before Graham had been fired. No one at WMAL could be reached for comment over the weekend.

The station’s defense would likely be that it gave the host an out by allowing him to apologize. But as Graham notes, “WMAL wouldn’t be asking for apology without CAIR’s pressure. And if I apologize, then I’m admitting that I’m a bigot and wrong. I am neither.”

Now that CAIR can claim success in ousting Graham, it’s only a matter of time before the group launches its next smear campaign. There’s no telling who would be CAIR’s next target, though it is clear who it would not be.

Indonesia: Muslims call for death for Christians

Update on this story. "Islamic radicals demand guilty verdict for Christians," from WND, with thanks to EPG:

An Indonesian correspondent known only as Ibrahim B. says their agenda is spelled out in an Indonesian-language book with an English title, "Jihad and the Foreign Policy of the Khilafah State."

Ibrahim told Assist News Service the book is freely available in Indonesian bookstores and "teaches a vision of aggressive and violent jihad to establish an Islamic caliphate, and from there to launch jihad against other nations to bring them into the Islamic Empire."

"This is the new imperialism and the new colonialism my country is facing, and it is evident in the militant mujahideen who gather at the court in Indramayu each week to demand the death of three accused housewives who cared enough about children to try and save them from a future in prostitution," he said.

According to Ibrahim, "The radicals want Indonesia to be the foundation of a Southeast Asian caliphate that will launch jihad against other nations such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia and Papua New Guinea until they have all submitted to Islam."

To achieve this vision, he said, "all pockets of resistance must be subdued. This is why there have been jihad operations in Maluku and Central Sulawesi in the last few years and why there have been more than 100 churches closed down or destroyed in West Java alone in just the last three years – and over 30 churches in the last month."

Ibrahim says The Indonesian Council of Mullahs, or MUI, has spearheaded the jihad drive and it is they who are demanding that these three housewives be severely punished for allowing Muslim children to attend their "Happy Week" activities.

Ibrahim quotes page 64 of the Jihad book as saying, "It is not allowed for Muslims to fight those whom the Islamic da'wah [preaching] has not reached, rather the unbelievers must first be called to join Islam. If they reject, then they are invited to submit (live under) the ruling of the Islamic State by paying the jizyah tax [protection money – only paid by non-Muslims]. If they reject that, then war must be waged against them in order to remove any obstacle in the way of implementing the Islamic ruling system upon them."

In other words, the three choices are join Islam, pay a protection tax called jizyah or be killed in warfare.

Ibrahim told ANS the book declares Muslims "must remove any obstacle in the way of implementing the Islamic ruling system." These three housewives are seen as an obstacle that must be removed, he said.

Earlier this year, Rebecca Laonita, Ratna Mala Bangun, and Ety Pangesti conducted a "Happy Week" Vacation Bible School-type program in their homes in the village of Haurgelis, West Java. Eventually about a score of Muslim children also attended with permission of their parents. The women were arrested on charges of "Christianization" of Muslim children, and immediately jailed. The court case began June 30....

According to Ibrahim, one of their leaders grabbed a megaphone and shouted, "...You are the ones called to carry out the command of the prophet and you must be just as brave so that you will be able to implement sharia Islam (Islamic law). Are you ready?"

The trucked-in militants responded, "Ready! Allahu akbar! [Allah is Greatest!"]

The Muslim preacher continued, "Every drop of your blood will give birth to many in Islam who will be proved by Allah. Seventy-two houris [fairy women] will bathe you.

"Alhamdulillah! [Allah be Praised!] we have reached the seventh session of the trial. The whole of the Islamic community is again waiting for a just decision [i.e., favorable to Islam], but if this court is not just then we ourselves will act according to our own law. Indeed we have our own plans but we are still holding ourselves back because we respect the law in this nation. But we will not agree if Rebecca and her companions are given a light penalty, or if they are set free.

"Don't think for a moment that Rebecca will be able to return peacefully to Haurgeulis [the village where the Happy Week was conducted]. We have our own just methods according to Islamic law. Allahu akbar!"

The mujahideen responded loudly with raised, clenched fists, "Allahu akbar! Allah is Greater!"

Scotland: Blunt words open up healthy debate

Anti-dhimmitude from The Scotsman, with thanks to Uajeg:

AT LAST, a Christian leader breaks the deafening silence that, for too long, has muzzled those whose duty it was to speak out on behalf of the values of western society. The courageous comments of the Rev David Lacy, Moderator of the Church of Scotland, condemning the Islamist "hypocrites" who treat their hosts as "enemies" while leeching off the National Health Service, will find an echo among many of those people who fill his church's pews - just as they will no doubt be deplored by voices within the liberal Kirk establishment.

We say "courageous" because, in recent decades, a climate has been generated, across all the Christian denominations, enforcing a liberal orthodoxy on church leaders from which they deviate at their peril. Few, indeed, have done so (the late Cardinal Winning being a notable exception) - until today. Rev Lacy's comments, a combination of rational thought, common sense and the application of Christian teachings, stand out precisely because this combination has proven so rare among modern British spiritual leaders.

It should be emphasised that there was nothing uncharitable or un-Christian about the Moderator's remarks, as readers can judge for themselves by reading his exclusive interview with this newspaper. He makes the factual observation about Islamic extremists: "They have been welcomed as brothers and have treated us as enemies. It is hypocrisy, they should leave." Any sane observer knows that is true.

Top job fighting extremism for Muslim who praised bomber

From the Fox Guarding the Henhouse Department, from The Telegraph, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

A Muslim accused of anti-Semitism is to be appointed to a government role in charge of rooting out extremism in the wake of last month's suicide bombings in London.

Inayat Bunglawala, 36, the media secretary for the Muslim Council of Britain, is understood to have been selected as one of seven "conveners" for a Home Office task force with responsibilities for tackling extremism among young Muslims, despite a history of anti-Semitic statements.

Mr Bunglawala's past comments include the allegation that the British media was "Zionist-controlled".

Writing for a Muslim youth magazine in 1992, he said: "The chairman of Carlton Communications is Michael Green of the Tribe of Judah. He has joined an elite club whose members include fellow Jews Michael Grade [then the chief executive of Channel 4 and now BBC chairman] and Alan Yentob [BBC2 controller and friend of Salman Rushdie]."

The three are reported to be "close friends… so that's what they mean by a 'free media'."

In January 1993, Mr Bunglawala wrote a letter to Private Eye, the satirical magazine, in which he called the blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman "courageous" - just a month before he bombed the World Trade Center in New York. After Rahman's arrest in July that year, Mr Bunglawala said that it was probably only because of his "calling on Muslims to fulfil their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere".

Five months before 9/11, Mr Bunglawala also circulated writings of Osama bin Laden, who he regarded as a "freedom fighter", to hundreds of Muslims in Britain....

News of his appointment comes 10 days after he wrote to Mark Thompson, the BBC Director General, accusing a forthcoming BBC1 Panorama programme of possessing "a pro-Israeli agenda".

Although the programme had yet to be completed, Mr Bunglawala said that the BBC had allowed itself to be used by "highly placed supporters of Israel in the British media to make capital out of the July 7 atrocities in London".

The programme, A Question of Leadership, which will air tonight at 10.20pm, seeks to discover whether British Muslim leaders can tackle the extremism in their midst.

It features an interview with Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who says members of the Palestinian terrorist organisation Hamas are "freedom fighters".

Sir Iqbal compares Hamas suicide bombers to Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi.

He says: "Those who fight oppression, those who fight occupation, cannot be termed as terrorist, they are freedom fighters, in the same way as Nelson Mandela fought against their apartheid, in the same way as Gandhi and many others fought the British rule in India."

Sir Iqbal also refers to the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, as "the renowned Islamic scholar"....

The programme also shows a leading Saudi cleric, an honoured guest of the East London Mosque, claiming that Islam is "the best testament to how different communities can live together", while back in his pulpit in Mecca, he has referred to Jews as "monkeys and pigs" and also as "the rats of the world". Christians are "cross worshippers" and Hindus "idol worshippers".

Mr Bunglawala said: "Those comments were made some 12 or 13 years ago. All of us may hold opinions which are objectionable, but they change over time. I certainly would not defend those comments today."

Really? But would you condemn them? Especially since they are founded on the Qur'an (2:62-65; 5:59-60; 7:166, etc.)?

DC Watson: CAIR: Now speaking for the American taxpayer?

DC Watson examines CAIR's request that the US deny Israel any aid for those evicted from Gaza.

August 16, 2005: The Council on American Islamic Relations calls on the Bush Administration to deny Israel's request for financial aid, which would assist in paying for the "withdrawal of illegal settlements on Palestinian territory in Gaza."

News Releases
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
CAIR: No U.S. Tax Dollars for Israeli Settlers

Their statement reads as follows: "American taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the relocation of settlers who, supported and defended by successive Israeli governments, chose to live illegally on land that was not their own. Such funds could be better used to improve conditions for ordinary Palestinians whose lives have been devastated by decades of brutal occupation."

First, I'd like to make it crystal clear to the Council on American Islamic Relations that as an American citizen and taxpayer, I do not, and will not ever, need an organization with a record like theirs to speak for me. If the government wants to use my tax dollars to help these people who have been uprooted, I'm OK with that. If all of this bothers them, then I like the idea even more. It seems that nearly every day this organization is "calling on" someone to act upon their concerns.

Regarding this claim of Israel's "illegal occupation" of Gaza: U.N. Resolution 242 never called for Israel to withdraw from all of the territories that it won, and to return to the 1967 borders. Although Israel wasn't required by this resolution to hand over all the land it won when it easily defeated Muslim aggression during the Six Day War, it did hand over most of it when it withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula. That just wasn't good enough for the Muslims, however, was it?

Who started the Six Day War? It appears that although Israel launched a preemptive strike on Egypt, it was Egypt -- which had a military pact with Jordan and Syria, and which before the war had blocked two of Israel's major shipping ports. Before this war began, Israel was being surrounded by Muslim militarization. Once again, the Muslim sect has turned this situation back to front, portraying themselves as the poor victims of Israeli aggression and occupation. In truth, it was Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser who was pushing the buttons that escalated a minor border skirmish into the Six Day War. Before the Six Day War ever came to pass, Nasser had made his intentions clear with this statement: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."

Well, they wanted to fight, they got their chance, and their defeat was resounding.

"The Meaning of 242" - June 10, 1977

Lord Caradon, author of the draft resolution that was adopted as U.N. Resolution 242, U.K. Ambassador to the United Nations (1964-1970):

"We didn't say there should be a withdrawal to the '67 line; we did not put the 'the' in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately.. We all knew that the boundaries of '67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier... We did not say that the '67 boundaries must be forever." MacNeil/Lehrer Report - March 30, 1978

Additional comments include: Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (1966-1969):

"Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338... rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to 'secure and recognized borders', which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949."

"The Truth About 242" - November 5, 1990 Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. President (1963-1969):

Read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai

If the 242 Resolution rested on Israel's Arab neighbors making peace, then Israel's Arab neighbors have failed to fulfill their responsibility. In fact, since late 2000, Israelis have been the victims of over 25,300 Islamic terrorist attacks.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/337862p-288516c.html

Thirty-eight years later, in yet another attempt at peace, Israel has agreed to uproot its people from Gaza. Now along comes CAIR, "urging" the government not to provide financial aid to help pay for the Israeli withdrawal from an "illegal occupation."

Again, from their statement: "Such funds could be better used to improve conditions for ordinary Palestinians whose lives have been devastated by decades of brutal occupation."

Earth to CAIR: The G8 has already pledged at least $3 billion to the Palestinians.

That pledge will, at least in part, be fulfilled with American tax dollars. Everyone has a right to an opinion, even the members of CAIR. However, they have never been, and never will be the voice of reason. Israel has now offered peace, again. If the Muslims in this part of the world attack them again, should Israel not then be allowed to do what it should have done long ago to secure its own existence?

Pope Urges More Muslims to Fight Terror

Evidently, by calling for Muslim leaders to train young Muslims in Islam, he believes that Islam is peaceful at its core. It's astounding: wishes are everywhere becoming facts. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

COLOGNE, Germany - Pope Benedict XVI decried the "cruel fanaticism" of terrorism Saturday and urged Muslims to join Christians in trying to combat its spread.

In blunt remarks, he told a gathering of Muslim officials in Germany that Muslim leaders had a "great responsibility" in properly educating their younger generations.

"I am certain that I echo your own thoughts when I bring up as one of our concerns the spread of terrorism," Benedict told the Muslim leadership, mainly Turks, in his most extensive remarks on terrorism during his four-month papacy.

"Terrorist activity is continually recurring in various parts of the world, sowing death and destruction, and plunging many of our brothers and sisters into grief and despair."

Benedict did not mention specific attacks or assess blame, but it appeared significant that he chose a Muslim audience for his remarks on terrorism.

"Those who instigate and plan these attacks evidently wish to poison our relations, making use of all means, including religion, to oppose every attempt to build a peaceful, fair and serene life together," he said.

The meeting, during Benedict's four-day trip to Germany for World Youth Day, was part of the pope's outreach to non-Catholics to achieve common positions on social issues and world peace. There are some 3.5 million Muslims in Germany, one of the highest figures in western Europe.

Going into Saturday's meeting, he had been cautious about making any links between terrorism and Islam, rejecting the idea that the world faced a "clash of civilizations" and reportedly overruling an aide who wanted to brand the July 7 London bombings as anti-Christian.

But in warning Saturday that the world risked exposure to "the darkness of a new barbarism," he stressed that Muslim leaders must "guide Muslim believers and train them in the Islamic faith."

"Teaching is the vehicle through which ideas and convictions are transmitted. Words are highly influential in the education of the mind. You, therefore, have a great responsibility for the formation of the younger generation," the pontiff said.

By working together, Catholics and Muslims could "turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people and hinders progress toward world peace," he said....

Benedict also alluded to another of his themes — the need for reciprocity in religious freedom for Christians and other minorities in some Islamic countries. He did not name any but said "the defense of religious freedom ... is a permanent imperative and respect for minorities is a clear sign of true civilization."

Plea for Assyrian Christians and Iraqi minorities

The plight of the dhimmis is increasing. From Ekklesia, with thanks to Nicolei:

As world attention focuses on the struggle to achieve a balance of constitutional interests between Kurds, Sunnis and Shias in Iraq, a human rights group is campaigning to draw fresh attention to the serious plight of Assyrian Christians and other minority groups.

In a letter to the Guardian newspaper in the UK yesterday, Glyn Ford, Labour Euro-MP for South West England, joined former Tribune editor Mark Seddon and Andy Darmoo, head of Save the Assyrians, to ask why no proper attention has been given to minorities who make up 6 per cent of the Iraqi population.

"In particular, what of the Assyrian Christians?", they write. "Prevented from voting in the elections, in recent months many have had their land occupied and stolen, their churches firebombed and their families attacked. Isn't it time that the international community began championing the rights of Assyrians and other minorities before it is too late?"

Until the invasion of Iraq in 2003 there were estimated to be around one million Christians in Iraq. They include the country's original inhabitants, but are wrongly portrayed by militant Islamists as American infiltrators.

Some recent estimates say that between 60,000 and 80,000 Chaldo-Assyrian Christians have fled the country since the fall of Baghdad.

Church bombings in Assyrian neighbourhoods of Baghdad and Mosul in August and October 2004, mortar attacks, raids against Christian homes, and forced conversions have also contributed to the unease of a community that has increasingly felt itself under siege.

At least one militant organisation, The Islamic Mujahideen, has in the recent past demanded that all Mandaeans (another minority group) convert to Islam, leave the country, or be killed.

"Christian women are harassed, have acid thrown into their faces, are kidnapped and raped," says one civil rights activist. "They seek some safety behind the Muslim hajib.”

Read it all.

UK: Newly-arrived hate imams face early expulsion

The replacements for Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza may not get to stay in Britain very long. From the TimesOnline, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A FRESH wave of arrests of Islamic radicals is expected next week when Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, introduces tough new immigration rules to deal with recently-arrived preachers of hate.

Ministers want to see the young foreign imams swiftly thrown out of the country. How they manage the fast-track expulsions will be seen as a test of Tony Blair’s assertion that the rules have changed.

Immigration officials and the security services are understood to have compiled a list of extremist clerics who have moved to Britain in recent months. They are not such high-profile figures as Abu Qatada, who was among the first to be arrested as a threat to national security after the London bombings.

Most of the new wave are believed to come from Pakistan or North Africa and are accused of stirring up hate among young followers in their own communities.

Muslim leaders are said to have helped to identify some of the suspects, although there are concerns about a backlash in some Islamic communities if there is a mass round-up of imams.

The wanted list is said also to include owners of radical bookshops, website operators and a number of teachers of different nationalities. Many are being kept under surveillance for fear that they may go into hiding before the arrest orders are given.

Small groups of extremists are known to target mosques for takeover, driving out worshippers and replacing an imam with their own choice of preacher, who is usually imported from countries such as Pakistan and does not speak English.

The protocols of the elders of the BBC

A (mostly) brilliant piece on the MCB's moral double standard from Rod Liddle in The Spectator, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Sometimes things are altogether more simple than we wish them to be. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the eminent chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, recently refused to attend the Holocaust memorial day. When asked why this was so, he muttered something about how lots of people had been killed all over the place, not least the poor Palestinians and why shouldn’t we remember them, etc., etc. In the liberal press, extravagant excuses were made for Sacranie and his ludicrous chef de cabinet, Inayat Bunglawala. But I suspect that the simple answer, the one we didn’t want to hear, is the most accurate: Sacranie and Mr Bunglawala don’t like Jews. They are both unequivocal anti-Semites. You do not refuse to grieve for one bunch of people because another, much smaller, bunch of people have been murdered as well. Nor should you automatically equate Jews with the right-wing Zionism of Ariel Sharon: that would be like equating all black Zimbabweans with Robert Mugabe.

Come on, Rod. I love you, but Sharon = Mugabe? We could only begin to consider this if Mugabe gives back all the land he has seized from whites in Zimbabwe...I'm not holding my breath.

It’s a racist thesis, isn’t it? Those people who are opposed to Israel’s policies are usually at pains to point out that they are not being anti-Semitic, merely anti-Zionist. It is not the Jews to whom we are opposed, they say — it’s the Zionists. In which case you’d expect them to be happy to spend two minutes in silence commemorating those six million Jews, those non-Israeli citizens by definition, murdered by the Nazis. But Sacranie and Bunglawala wouldn’t even cross the road to attend such a memorial. It wasn’t because there are altogether too many of these sorts of commemoration these days, to the extent that they have become almost meaningless. It was because the commemoration was for the Jews; ergo, in my book, they’re anti-Semitic. They’re Jew-haters. I thought as much at the time and think it even more so now. Sacranie is in a bit of a bait right now because the BBC Panorama team has just completed a programme looking at this false dichotomy I’ve been banging on about for the last couple of years: the New Labour notion that there is moderate Islam, represented by the likes of the Muslim Council of Britain (which speaks for, we are told, some 50 per cent of British Muslims, although by what democratic mechanism we can’t be sure) and the rogue ‘handful’ of extremists who want the rest of us dead; and the idea that Islam, as a religion, had nothing to do with those bombings on 7 July. The journalist responsible is John Ware — a first-rate investigative reporter if ever there was one, but I’m not sure how far his powers of investigation were stretched digging into the background of the Muslim Council of Britain. There’s plenty of stuff on the record which even journalists as hopeless as, say, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown or even Martin Kettle could find, if they cared to look. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Sacranie once said that death was ‘too easy’ for Salman Rushdie; Bunglawala meanwhile has called the creation of Israel a ‘terrible mistake’.

Read it all.

United in hate

Who is united in hate? The British Left and the jihadists. From Douglas Davis in The Spectator, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Stranger still when the odd couple are fundamentalist Islam and the secular Left. The evolving Black–Red alliance is growing in France, Germany and Belgium. But, based on the successful British model, it is now going global to declare war on the war on terror.

No fewer than three international conferences have been convened in Cairo, presided over by the former president of Algeria, Ahmed Ben Bella, under the auspices of the International Campaign Against US and Zionist Occupations. One outcome is ‘The Cairo Declaration Against US Hegemony, War on Iraq and Solidarity with Palestine.’ British signatories included Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn and, of course, the indefatigable George Galloway, whose ‘fiery’ participation won honourable mention in Egypt’s semi-official newspaper, Al-Ahram.

If Iraq was the catalyst for the Black–Red alliance, the Stop the War coalition provided the cauldron in which the union was consummated. The result is a pure gestalt: the coalition allows its constituent parts to pack a far greater collective punch than they could have dreamt of on their own. Putting a million people on to the streets of London is not, after all, small potatoes. The steering committee of the Marxist–Islamist alliance consists of 33 members — 18 from myriad hard-Left groups, three from the radical wing of the Labour party, eight from the ranks of the radical Islamists and four leftist ecologists (also known as ‘Watermelons’ —green outside, red inside). The chairman is Andrew Murray, a leading light in the British Communist party; co-chair is Muhammad Aslam Ijaz, of the London Council of Mosques. Among the major players from the Left are Lindsey German, who resigned as editor of the Socialist Workers’ party newspaper to become convenor of the Stop the War coalition; John Rees, also of the SWP, and, of course, George Galloway. Indeed, the first proud progeny of the alliance is Galloway’s Respect party, which fought and won the London seat of Bethnal Green and Bow, with its substantial Muslim electorate.

Read it all.

Fitzgerald: Telling the truth about India

Jihad Watch's Hugh Fitzgerald sheds the light of truth on another subject about which there is a great deal of misinformation and disinformation: the treatment of Hindus (and Sikhs) by Muslims in India.

In sheer numbers, no group of Believers has suffered from Islam like the Hindus. It is amazing that few Indian-Americans, and few Indo-British, seem to know the history of their own ancestors and of what the Muslim conquest -- or perhaps one should say the Early Conquest and then the Later Conquest -- did to India, which Naipaul accurately described as a "wounded civilization." K. S. Lal writes of the 60-70 million Hindu victims murdered by their Muslim masters. When those Muslim masters ceased the mass killings, it was not out of any sense of mercy, but only to extort the jizya from people who would now be treated in a manner akin to Jews and Christians: dhimmis who would be allowed to live, but would be subject to a series of economic, political, and social disabilities that guaranteed a permanent status of degradation, humiliation, and physical insecurity.

There are those who are morally indifferent to how the Mughal conquerors ruled, or to what happened to the Hindus (or the Sikhs). One thinks of the deplorable William Dalrymple (who is apparently not deplorable enough for the TLS to cease assigning him books to review on the subject) in his popular accounts of the luxury and love-intrigue at Mughal courts, or that other, more scholarly apologist for Islam, Francis Robinson. A number of factors have contributed to the indifference of Hindu intellectuals in India, and outside India, to the real nature of Islam. For the first, there is the common desire to ape the attitudes of so-called intellectuals in London and New York. It would not do, it does not do, to be too exercised about Islam. And of course, all things pertaining to Hindutva, to a sense of Indian nationalism connected to Hinduism, is mocked in the world, though it offers not the slightest threat or menace (unlike Islam) to anyone – anyone, that is, but the Muslims who continue to procreate and "gain market-share" as a percentage of the population in India, even as they harry or persecute or murder the Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan and Bangladesh and, whenever they can, in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.

The astounding ignorance of Indian history that one finds in the Western world, and the supplanting of that history by the ooohing and aahing over Mughal emperors, should stick in everyone's craw. And some sympathetic attention to the claims of Hindus to Hindustan, and to the other non-Muslim populations in that most naturally tolerant of civilizations, should be given in Western universities and in the Western media. Even those newspapers in the Western world that are aimed at an Indian immigrant audience tend to pull their punches about Islam, or perhaps ignore the subject altogether (save in a few cases where the readership is definitely Hindu or Hindu and Sikh). This is done, one supposes, because the newspaper owners do not wish to alienate Muslim Indians in the West who might also read the paper, even if it means ignoring the major issue of our time and possibly of our century: the issue of the world-wide Jihad, from which Indian civilization suffered, and from which Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India itself (including Indian Kashmir), and now in Great Britain, also suffer. Hindus and Sikhs in Britain, having come to the West with its freedoms and opportunities, and who once here have not given any occasion for alarm or offense, now find themselves, thousands of miles from India, subject yet again to the implacable hatred and menace of Islam.

Whenever an Indian (Hindu or Sikh) intellectual becomes known outside of India, he is quick to demonstrate his abhorrence of what is called "communalism" (which always means: those silly Hindus, and Sikhs, who may be too much attached to their own traditions and faiths, and of course are to be regarded with lack of sympathy should they dare to demonstrate any lack of sympathy themselves for Islam). One can see the phenomenon, for example, in the attitudes and rhetoric of Amartya Sen, who has written about the "democracy" within Islam. Sen’s is an entirely ahistorical piece that makes one wish to insist that this particular shoemaker should stick to his last profession, though now he appears to have decided to make shoes for the whole wide world.

Readers should go to the historians of India -- K. S. Lal, Sir Jahundath Sarkar, those who contributed to the 19th-century volume edited by the Englishmen Dowson and Elliot -- as well as to the modern non-Indian scholars Koenraad Elst and Francois Gautier. They will be surprised what they will learn about the history of India. They might even begin with that book with the old-fashioned title "The Wonder That Was India," about pre-Islamic India, written by A. L. Basham. Others might choose to look at the grim list of Hindu temples, thousands of them, destroyed by Muslims, a list compiled by Sita Ram Goel (another author, who along with Ram Swarup is regarded by many Bright Young Indian Things as simply beyond the pale -- and they make this judgment without ever having bothered to read his works), and published in two volumes.

Among those of Indian descent well-known to the outside world, and who cannot be ignored as "Hindu fanatics" (a term thrown around a good deal, even though the most fanatical of Hindus would not come close, in the menace that his worldview would present to non-Hindus, to what the mildest and most "moderate" of Muslims presents to non-Muslims), the only one to tell the truth about Islam has been V. S. Naipaul.

There should be many more.

Pope Warns of Increase in Anti-Semitism

In a synagogue in Germany that was destroyed in 1938. Interesting, since we are today reliving 1938. From AP, with thanks to Mrs. Obelix:

COLOGNE, Germany - Pope Benedict XVI warned Friday of rising anti-Semitism and hostility to foreigners during a visit to a synagogue that was rebuilt after being destroyed during the Nazis' infamous Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938.

Benedict became only the second pope to visit a synagogue, praying and remembering Holocaust victims with Cologne's Jewish community — Germany's oldest.

"Today, sadly, we are witnessing the rise of new signs of anti-Semitism and various forms of a general hostility toward foreigners," he said.

Yes, and those foreigners in Europe are the foremost purveyors of this new anti-Semitism. It would have been good for the Pope to have addressed that.

Denmark targets extremist media

No, not jihadist media: Hizb-ut-Tahrir is still legal in Denmark, despite calling for the killing of non-Muslims. (Since they are a non-violent group, they must be, as Fjordman points out, advocating peaceful killing). But the Danish government has targeted Kaj Wilhelmsen, who has called for the expulsion of Muslim populations in Europe or the extermination of jihadists.

Of course, silencing Wilhelmsen will backfire on the Danish government. His extreme recommendations are born out of frustration that the government is not doing enough to combat the threat of jihad, and is kept from doing so by political correctness and multiculturalism. This action will only reinforce such perspectives. If they really want to discredit Wilhelmsen and strip away any credibility his views may have among Danes, they should move decisively against Hizb-ut-Tahrir and other jihadists in Denmark.

From the BBC, with thanks to Fjordman:

A radio station in Copenhagen has had its broadcasting licence taken away for three months after calling for the extermination of Muslims.

In the controversial broadcast, Radio Holger presenter Kaj Wilhelmsen said: "There are only two possible reactions if you want to stop this bomb terrorism - either you expel all Muslims from Western Europe so they cannot plant bombs, or you exterminate the fanatical Muslims which would mean killing a substantial part of Muslim immigrants."

Following the London bombs on 7 July, at least three extremist websites have warned that Denmark could be the next target.

The reason for such threats is the 500 Danish troops working alongside US and British troops in Iraq....

On Tuesday, the Danish Radio Licence Commission ruled the programme in breach of the Broadcasting Act and decided to withdraw the station's licence for three months.

But Kaj Wilhelmsen has vowed to fight on. He says he will continue to broadcast on the internet, for which no licence is required....

In a separate development, Copenhagen Police charged Kaj Wilhelmsen with breaking the anti-racism law which makes it illegal to incite hatred against groups on the basis of religion, race or sexual orientation.

Henning Koch, a legal expert from Copenhagen University, told Danish Radio he believed Kaj Wilhelmsen was in serious breach of the anti-racism law and faces a possible prison sentence.

'Exterminate your rulers'

Since the bomb attacks in London, there has been an increased focus on extremist groups in Denmark. Only last week, the spokesman for the Danish branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Fadi Abdullatif, was charged with calling for the killing of the Danish government.

On a flyer distributed in Denmark, Hizb ut-Tahrir said: "So, travel to help your brothers in Falluja and exterminate your rulers if they block your way".

Danish Justice Minister Lene Espersen is looking to find a legal way to ban the organisation. Those kind of remarks "have no place in our society", said Mrs Espersen in November.

Hizb ut-Tahrir has already been banned in neighbouring Sweden and Germany.

Copenhagen Police is also investigating another extremist group, according to Politiken newspaper.

The paper says the group is linked to a Copenhagen mosque and its website provides links to an al-Qaeda recruiting video showing Osama bin Laden calling for the killing of non-Muslims and demonstrating how to build a bomb.

UK: Calls grow to deport Saudi who backs jihad

Muhammad al-Massari update from the TimesOnline, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

PRESSURE was intensifying on ministers last night to live up to their promised crackdown on Islamic fanatics by charging or deporting a Saudi radical who backs the killing of British soldiers in Iraq.

MPs from all parties and several foreign governments have demanded action against Muhammad al-Massari, who has asylum in Britain. His radio station, al-Tajdeed, backs suicide attacks and his website shows the beheadings of Western hostages.

This month Dr al-Massari named four Italian cities that are targets for terror strikes.

Britain has previously tried to deport him but the courts intervened to prevent him being sent back to Saudi Arabia.

Hate-India campaign by British jihadists

Muslims preaching hatred and intolerance in British madrassas, while the dhimmi authorities idly stand by. "Hate-India campaign by British muslim radicals," from Asian Tribune, with thanks to Andy:

Britain has suddenly realised that radicalism has made deep inroads among its young Muslims. That would not have come as a surprise to Her Majesty’s government if it had cared to take a serious view of some of the patently objectionable and unacceptable activities of the people who have been preaching hate and intolerance in the island nation for quite some time and also listened to some voices from India. It is hardly a secret in the UK that the most radicalised section among its Muslims citizens are people of Pakistani origin, followed closely by those who trace their roots to Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan.

India has reasons to be concerned about this phenomenon and, in fact, New Delhi should take up the matter with London without any delay. Much to the resentment of the Muslim community as a whole, the Madrassas in the UK have attracted a lot of adverse publicity lately. They are thought to be the main recruiting grounds for Islamists and jehadis who have now brought their terrorist activities to the very heart of the country.

There are about 1000 Madrassas, most of them attached to the mosques, where they impart Islamic history and jurisprudence and teach languages like Urdu and Arabic. Going by the London police claims now, quite a few Madrassas obviously expand their curriculum to include preaching hatred to the young and impressionable pupils.

The clerics in these mosques run schools are often imported from Pakistan, presumably after they have been ‘cleared’ by the ISI. The Muslims from India have kept a remarkable distance from the activities of the extremists. Post-Godhra the ‘imported’ preachers and British advocates of hate and terrorism are targeting the Gujrati Muslim youth in Britain to become the ‘pioneer’ batch of Indian mercenaries of death.

It therefore comes as no surprise that ‘hate India’ lessons form an essential part of the British Madrassa curriculum. Pictures from Kashmir with provocative captions adorn the walls. The ‘serene surroundings’ of the Dal Lake are shown as being surrounded by ‘600,000’ Indian soldiers, a patent Pakistani propaganda. Gun-totting Indian troops are depicted as harassing ordinary Kashmiris by stopping and searching them in bazaars. A Kashmiri youth’s funeral is shown with a perversity that is common in the Pakistani media: ‘one more added to the genocide,’

Of course, there is plenty of ammunition against the West and posters exhort the youth to join the Jehad. Some posters carry ‘interesting’ messages: ‘Show Allah what he loves to see from jehad’. ‘Hurry to rescue your brothers in al-Fallujah and eliminate your rulers if they stand in your way’ and ‘to die for the sake of Allah is better than life and what it contains.’

Read it all.

CAIR and Michael Graham

Joel Mowbray recounts WMAL's scandalous dhimmi treatment of talk show host Michael Graham in the Washington Times (thanks to Ruth King):

Local talk-radio station WMAL is under assault from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that has savaged journalists, critics of radical Islam, even the Fox TV show "24" -- but which just as steadfastly has refused to specifically condemn various Islamic terrorist organizations.

CAIR has instigated a campaign to pressure the Disney-owned WMAL to fire its already-suspended midday host, which came on the heels of its initial effort to have him suspended.

Though the outcome is uncertain in the current situation, two things are certain: 1) CAIR will continue demonizing genuine criticism of radical Islam as "Islamophobia," and 2) it will never specifically condemn radical Islam or Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

At issue are remarks made by mid-morning host Michael Graham, in which he said that "Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization." But what is lost in most media accounts -- and is never mentioned by CAIR -- are the surrounding statements made by Mr. Graham, which put the thrust of his comments in an entirely different light.

Mr. Graham's comments, in fact, were not met with immediate condemnation or outrage. He wasn't suspended until July 28, almost a week after his on-air remarks. In the interim, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper even came on Mr. Graham's show -- telling him that CAIR didn't want him fired, just punished. Once Mr. Graham was suspended indefinitely later that week, CAIR quickly called for his head.

Here are Mr. Graham's remarks, with full context:

"Because of the mix of Islamic theology that -- rightly or wrongly -- is interpreted to promote violence, added to an organizational structure that allows violent radicals to operate openly in Islam's name with impunity, Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization. It pains me to say it. But the good news is it doesn't have to stay this way, if the vast majority of Muslims who don't support terror will step forward and reclaim their religion."

Plenty of people can -- and should -- take issue with the framing of the religion itself as a "terrorist organization." But his surrounding comments have more than a ring of truth. Islamic theology is used to promote violence. And in many parts of the world, radicals have taken control of Islam--and the moderates have been effectively silenced.

And Mr. Graham's desire that moderates reclaim control of Islam is shared by many, though likely not by CAIR or groups of its ilk.

CAIR was founded in 1994 by two former high-ranking officials with the Islamic Association of Palestine, a rabidly anti-Semitic organization known as Hamas' biggest political booster in the United States.

Since September 11, CAIR officials have been careful to avoid the appearance that they support Islamic terrorism. But not before September 11. In November 1999, CAIR President Omar Ahmad addressed a youth session at the IAP annual convention in Chicago, where he praised suicide bombers who "kill themselves for Islam": "Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam ? that is not suicide. They kill themselves for Islam." (Transcript provided by the Investigative Project.)

Read it all.

Rewarding jihad terrorism with charity

Moral blindness, dhimmitude, naivete, and more. Will the recipients of this largesse now realize that the Jews are not as bad as they have thought? No. They will laugh at their weakness and continue the jihad. "How Old Friends of Israel Gave $14 Million to Help the Palestinians," from the New York Times, with thanks to Ruth King:

It was perhaps an odd request to make of a man noted for his commitment to Israeli causes and his fierce criticism of the Palestinian Authority.

Please raise $14 million to help buy the Jewish settlers' lucrative greenhouses in the Gaza Strip so that the Palestinians can take them over when the settlers are gone. Oh, and can you get it done by the weekend, before the pullout starts? If not, the settlers will destroy the greenhouses on their way out of Gaza to keep them out of Arab hands.

Last Wednesday, though, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, real estate magnate and publisher of The Daily News, received just such a pitch from his friend James D. Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, current Middle East envoy for the White House and would-be broker of the deal.

Mr. Zuckerman, who is also former head of the American-Israel Friendship League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Soviet Jewish Zionist Forum, said he thought about the ironies. But not for too long.

"Despite my skepticism," Mr. Zuckerman said in an interview on Tuesday, "I thought to myself, 'This is perhaps the only illustration or symbol of what could be the benefits of a co-operational, rather than a confrontational attitude.' "

So he in turn picked up the phone and called a few of his friends and fellow billionaires, who also happened to be prominent Jewish philanthropists.

Not all of them shared his enthusiasm. "Some people said, 'Well, if these people are so anti-Semitic, why should we do anything to help them?' " Mr. Zuckerman said.

But Lester Crown of Chicago, whose family owns General Dynamics, said yes. Leonard Stern, the chairman of the Hartz Mountain real estate empire and former owner of The Village Voice, called Mr. Zuckerman back from a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and said yes. A foundation that prefers to remain anonymous said yes.

Within 48 hours, Mr. Zuckerman said, he had his $14 million. And the Palestinians had a shot at inheriting relatively intact the greenhouses whose vegetables and flowers have been a major source of Israeli export income, and, not incidentally, about 3,500 desperately needed Palestinian jobs.

Note to the donating millionaires: if at any point in the future you realize the error of your donation, please note that I am accepting donations at Jihad Watch. What we manage to accomplish now is a close-run thing, and we have many plans we are unable to implement for lack of funds. We are a 501(c)3 organization. Please contact me at director@jihadwatch.org for details on how to donate.

Radio jihad broadcasts in Britain

Some are calling to close it down. Why have the British dhimmis allowed it to broadcast for this long? "Calls to close 'dissident' radio," from The Evening Standard, with thanks to Dave Washburn:

The Government is facing demands to close down a London-based radio station broadcasting calls for attacks on British troops in Iraq.

Al-Tajdeed Radio, which is run by a prominent Saudi dissident, has close links with a website carrying films of terrorist bombings and beheadings. It also carries songs calling on Muslims to join the holy war against coalition forces.

The radio broadcasts in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The man behind the station is Dr Muhammad al-Massari.

He has lived in London since first seeking asylum there in 1994. He has frequently declared that British troops in Iraq are legitimate targets.

Patrick Mercer, shadow minister for homeland security, said the Government should close down the station and look at deporting Dr al-Massari.

He said the broadcasts were demoralising for British troops in Iraq.

"To hear jihad talk, albeit in Arabic, being broadcast out to Iraq where you are trying to do your job as a soldier, a policeman or whatever, I think it must be desperately demoralising," he said.

"It should be closed down."

Gee, you think so?

From Cologne to the Conquest of Europe: How the Muslim Brotherhood is Challenging the Pope

An illuminating piece on Islam in Germany and World Youth Day in Cologne, from Sandro Magister in Chiesa (thanks to Paolo):

ROMA, August 18, 2005 – The penultimate event of Benedict XVI's visit to Cologne, before the vigil and Mass with the young people of World Youth Day XX, will be a Saturday, August 20 meeting with the "representatives of some of the Muslim communities."

The meeting will take place at the residence of the city's archbishop. The Muslims asked the pope to visit a mosque, but Benedict XVI declined the invitation.

His prudence is understandable. Cologne and Munich – where Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop from 1977 to 1981 – are the cities in which the Muslim Brotherhood, which has for decades been the main ideological and organizational source of radical Islam in the world, has gained control of most of the mosques and of active Islam in Germany and in Europe.

Mahdy Akef, an Egyptian now residing in Cairo who is the present murshid, or supreme guide, of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide, is an explicit supporter of the suicide terrorists in Iraq. From 1984 until 1987, he directed the most dynamic Muslim center of Germany, in Munich, with its great mosque in the northern part of the city.

Munich was the birthplace of the Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland, IGD, one of the largest Islamic organizations in Germany. The IGD is under the full control of the Muslim Brotherhood and has sixty mosques spread throughout the country.

For a few years, its organizational headquarters has been located in Cologne. The president of this body is Ibrahim Al Zayat, a 39-year-old Egyptian, the charismatic leader of a network of youth and student organizations that are linked to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY, the largest Islamic youth organization in the world. WAMY is financed by Saudi Arabia, bears a strong, rigorist Wahhabi imprint, and produces vehemently anti-Jewish and anti-Christian publications.

Curiously, the commitment to young people on the part of the Roman papacy, which is celebrating one of its key moments in Cologne during these days, has in that same city a parallel in one of the leading centers in Europe for promoting radical activism among young Muslims.

Read it all.

Niger's women and children starve as men hoard food

While this behavior is not sanctioned by anything in Islam, it is a consequence of the dehumanization of women in Islamic law and custom. From The Independent, with thanks to Paolo:

Noura Abdurrahi's four children were crying from hunger, and she knew there was food in the house. But her husband, Musa, had locked it away, out of her reach, when he had left to search for work the previous week.

What happened to Noura at a village near Zinder is replicated through much of the stricken communities of Niger. In the midst of starvation and disease, many men in rural areas are determined to control the meagre supplies, seemingly oblivious to the suffering of their families.

So acute is the problem that Unicef and international charities have launched urgent projects focusing exclusively on women. It is, they say, a far more certain way of ensuring the children and the elderly - the most vulnerable - get at least the very minimum needed for survival.

This extraordinary situation appears to be peculiar to Niger. Neighbouring countries caught up in the crisis caused by droughts and plagues of locusts - Mali, Mauritania and Burkina - are also predominantly Muslim with patriarchal cultures. Yet there, aid workers say, women are not sidelined to anything like the same degree.

In some villages, men have stopped women from having contact with Unicef officials, insisting that only they were entitled to speak for the community. There have also been repeated cases of men selling food given as aid, or passing it on to male members of extended families.

"We have millet and sorghum at the back of our hut, but we are not allowed to get it," 33-year-old Noura said. "The room was bolted by my husband when he went to Nigeria to find a job and his father and brothers have the key. They say it is up to me to feed my children, but that is not easy. A lot of families round here are in the same situation. There is nothing we can do."

Pakistan: Christians protest against official's injustice

Christians in Pakistan face many Sharia-inspired injustices, and often find themselves victimized by police and government officials. Here is yet another example: "Christians protest against ASP," from the Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

LAHORE: A large gathering of Christians on Tuesday protested against Baghbanpura’s assistant superintendent of police (ASP)-Investigation for allegedly supporting a kidnapper. The protestors chanted slogans against police and appealed to higher authorities for justice. They said that Muhammad Abbas, a resident of Gohawa village, had kidnapped 14-year-old Christian girl Asma. They claimed that Asma’s family had appealed to the South Cantt police station to register a case but had been denied. They added that Abbas’s uncle Bashir had assured the family during a ‘Panchaiyat’ that the girl would be returned in a few days. However, Bashir later produced a fake marriage certificate saying Abbas and Asma had wedded. Asma’s brother Nadeem Masih had tried to contact higher authorities but Bashir and Abbas shot him and fled, said the protestors.

D.C. Watson: Updated list: "Tiny minority" of Muslim fanatics in America

DC Watson updates his list. I expect such updates will be keeping him busy in the coming months.

The following is an update to the running list of arrested, convicted, deported, or still at large 'tiny minority' of radical, America-hating Muslims who are out on the fringe on the 'religion of peace' and tolerance, Islam.

Apparently, they just don't get it. They just don't understand that the followers of Islam only wish to coexist with non-Muslims everywhere in the world and live in harmony. At least that's what the fine, outstanding representatives of Islam at the Council on American Islamic Relations would have us believe.

We know better, and we always will. The mainstream media continues to conduct interviews with the fine, outstanding Muslims at the Council on American Islamic Relations, who tell the American public that killing innocent people goes against Islam. While CAIR distracts our politicians and our media outlets with complaints of 'Islamophobia,' Muslims like those on the list below are speaking softly, smiling at you, waiting for their orders. You see, in Islam, non-Muslims just don't meet the 'innocent people' criteria.

Qur'an 5:51 "Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends."

Qur'an 9:29 "Fight against such as those to whom the Scriptures were given (Jews and Christians)...until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued."

Caught:

Randall "Ismail" Royer
Sami Al-Arian
Ghassan Elashi
Nuradin Abdi
José Padilla
Bassem K. Khafagi
Zacarias Moussaoui
Sami Ibrahim Isa Ardel Hadi
Abdurahman Alamoudi
Karim Iraq
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali
Ahmed Barodi
Sadeq Naji Ahmed
Mukhtar al-Bakri
Princess Buniah al-Saud
John Muhammad
Bashir Noorzai
Faysal Galab
Bayan Elashi
Ali al-Timimi
Shafal Mosed
Ibrahim Al-Niqrish
Sahim Alwan
Imam Fawaz Damra
Ihsan Elashyi
Yahya Goba
Ahmed Ressam
Yasein Taher
Ali bin Mussalim
Hasan Akbar
Basman Elashi
Nemr Ali Rahal
Hazim Elashi
Clayton Morgan, aka Isamu Dyson, aka Cayson Bin Don
Tarik ibn Osman Shah
Rafiq Sabir
Samir Yousif Shana
Munir Yousif Shana
Shabbir Ahmed
Arwah Jaber
Sheik Rahman
Hamid Hayat
Umer Hayat
Mohammad Adil Khan
Mansoor Hassan
Mohammad Hassan Adil
Mohammed Khalil Ghali
Samih Fadl Jamal
Hana Al Jader
Ramsey Youssef
Abdul Hakim Murad
Wali Khan
Muhammed Aatique
Nabil Gharbieh
Donald T. Surratt
Hammad Abdur-Raheem
Ibraham Ahmed al-Hamdi
Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem
Seifullah Chapman
Masoud Ahmad Kahn
Dr. Rafil Dhafir
Rabih Haddad
Levar Haney Washington-(convert to Islam)
Gregory Vernon Patterson-(convert to Islam)
Abdullah Alnoshan
Khalid Fadlalla
Karim Ahmed Abdel Latif Ahmed
Mahoud Ahmed Abdel Latif Ahmed
Ahmed Mohamed Atta
Mohamed Ibrahim Gaber
Mohamed Palat Anwar Jozain
Homaidan Al-Turki
Aref Ahmed
Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad
Mahmud Faruq Brent
Shahawar Matin Siraj
Ibrahim Abu Mezer
Hammad Riaz Samana
Abdul Rauf Noormohamed
Naji Antoine Abi Khalil
Imam Jamil Al-Amin

That's interesting. Several of the people on this list are named Mohammed, or Muhammad.

Please teach the children well about the 'religion of peace.'

Massie: We have right to know truth about CAIR

Mychal Massie recounts some characteristic behavior from CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper and asks some tough questions at WND (thanks to DC Watson):

Conventional wisdom would dictate if you, your group-organization and/or religion as a whole were viewed with contempt by some, skepticism by many and distrust by nearly all, it would be prudent to try to diffuse ill-will.

But said logic is not part of a reasoned thought process when it comes to the Council on American-Islamic Relations – at least, it doesn't appear to be part of Ibrahim Hooper's, their director of communication.

Appearing on my talk show "Straight Talk with Mychal Massie," Mr. Hooper displayed the character of a petulant child as he feigned indignation so as to cut short the interview that would have forced him to articulate the truth of his position.

In less than five minutes of air time, the person responsible for putting forth a favorable presentation of CAIR hung up, leaving the audience with nothing to warrant a change in opinion of him, his organization or his religion.

I had assured the gentleman prior to his agreeing to appear that I would not seek to embarrass or diminish him, but I also assured him I would ask straightforward questions. His rhetoric almost immediately degenerated into a puerile phonemic tirade, with him accusing me of "advocating genocide" and of saying "every Muslim on the planet is a member of terrorist organization." He fomented: "You'd kill me, you'd kill my family, you'd kill every member of my mosque ..." – none of which had I even remotely suggested. I submit he is in a much better position to know who within his element is a terrorist than I.

CAIR and Mr. Hooper have an obligation to prove senators like Dick Durbin, D-Ill., wrong when he says: "[CAIR is] unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect." And Sen. Chuck Schumer, when he says: "We know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism."

Read it all.

London mayor likens jihad terrorists to Founding Fathers

As well as to Ian Smith, Nelson Mandela, and Yasir Arafat -- which indicates his utter moral confusion. "Anti-terror plans could be counter-productive, warns London Mayor," from IRNA, with thanks to Nicolei:

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, Monday expressed serious reservations about the government's new anti-terror plans, particularly extending the exclusion and deportation powers of the Home Secretary.

In response to the Home Office's consultation document on the new proposals, Livingstone also raised concern about the government's list of 'unacceptable behaviors' and called people to be allowed to express their views on issues as the Middle East conflict.

"People such as the founders of the United States, the founder of Israel, opponents of Ian Smith's regime in 'Rhodesia' (Zimbabwe), Nelson Mandela and the Yasser Arafat have all been branded terrorists by someone at one time or another," the mayor said.

"But nothing would have been gained by us banning either side in those conflicts. Today it would be totally counter-productive as it would reduce the trust, and therefore the information, from the communities whose help is indispensable to the police," he warned....

Arabian nightmare for 13 girls as grooms flee

Here is more evidence that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is right. ("Pronouncing talaq" is all a Muslim husband need do to divorce his wife. If he says "Talaq" to her, she is divorced.) From the Times of India, with thanks to Vikrant:

HYDERABAD: Plunging the bride bazaar of Old City to newer depths, marriage brokers last month paraded 13 young girls before four Arabs, all aged over 50.

One of the grooms, a 55-year-old sheikh from UAE, chose a 16-year-old girl, married her on July 15, spent two weeks with her and then left the country after pronouncing talaq thrice in a huff.

The marriage was facilitated by Mumtaz Begum of Falaknuma with help from four brokers — Mansoor, Toufiq, Yousuf and Abdullah.

Police officer Sandeep Sandilya said, “The brides were paraded before the Arabs in Toufiq’s house at Kalapathar and the nikah was solemnised by a qazi at his residence in Shalibanda.’’

With her hopes of going abroad shattered, Shameem (name changed) approached the Kalapathar police on Saturday seeking help.

The police acted swiftly and nabbed Mumtaz Begum but the brokers and qazi are still at large. The police recovered three affidavits which claimed Shameem’s age as 22 and stated her consent to marry the aged Arab.

Shameem told police that the brokers pressured her to accept nikah with Mohammad Bakram as he promised to take her to the UAE after marriage.

Symposium on Islamic terror resisted

I wrote an article just last week about how CBS declined to accept paid advertising for this event. That is not all the resistance it is meeting. From WorldNetDaily, with thanks to Sonshiya:

The organizer of a Connecticut symposium addressing the threat of Islamic terrorism to the U.S. has run into resistance from the media, politicians and even a bank.

Jeff Epstein, who is working to stage the conference "The Radical Islamist Threat to World Peace and National Security," is determined to continue to get the word out about the Sept. 21 event, despite roadblocks that have been thrown in his path.

The event is sponsored by the People's Truth Forum.

"This symposium will delve into the minds of those who use terror as a tool," Epstein said in a statement. "It will paint a profile of those who would slaughter innocents, and it will educate both professional and average citizen on how terrorism threatens our way of life today.

"Naïve ideologues contend that Islamic 'freedom fighters' are lashing out at the West – and especially Americans – because of the provocative nature of Western life and/or the Western presence in Islamic states. To hold these short-sighted contentions is to be blind to the truth either through ignorance or deliberate oversight."

Epstein blames resistance to the conference on political correctness gone dangerously mad.

"This is no time to embrace apathy or political correctness," he emphasized, "not when confronting the alarming prospect that thousands of radical Islamists are committed to bringing death and destruction to millions of innocents on our soil."...

Besides the snub by CBS/Infinity Radio, Epstein cites what he considers to be other incidents of bias by the media. He notes BBC has stopped referring to Muslim terrorists as Islamists, even those suspected in the July 7 bombings in London.

"Not to be outdone," Epstein said, "the New York Times reclassified Abu Musab Zarqawi as a 'Jordanian fighter.'"

Epstein says he has contacted politicians of both parties seeking endorsements and video clips to be played at the Plantsville, Conn., event, with mixed results.

While some have been responsive, such as Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Calif., – who Epstein says will attend the conference, schedule permitting – others have been less than cooperative.

The event organizer says the staff of Sen. Hillary Clinton, told him the senator could not attend the conference and that she was "just far too busy" to provide a video greeting – action Epstein says was "not in keeping with her rhetoric pertaining to support for the war on terror."

Epstein notes resistance to the conference has even come from the banking community.

He reports a Connecticut bank manager denied People's Truth Forum's request to open a checking account for the symposium. The banker reportedly feared the media would identify his institution as being supportive of the organization's mission and conference.

Epstein insists the event is non-partisan and non-political, and focuses instead on how Americans can prepare for and counter terrorism on U.S. soil. While citizens are told to be "vigilant," Epstein says no one has ever told the American people what it is they should be looking and listening for. The symposium is meant to help fill that knowledge gap.

Said Epstein: "At the symposium, Dr. Harvey Kushner will present vital information outlining how radical Islamists have succeeded in their quest to infiltrate our political, educational, religious and penal institutions – facts which were previously maintained as 'privy' to selected law enforcement agencies. Brigitte Gabriel, Laura Mansfield and Robert Spencer will contribute substantially to the program by sharing their own personal experiences and professional expertise. In fact, the entire program will be fact-based, non-partisan, provocative and educational."...

WorldNetDaily founder and CEO Joseph Farah expressed support for the event.

"This symposium is a much-needed wake-up call for those who are still blind to the imminent threat of radical Islamic terror hanging over our nation," Farah said. "I commend the event to law enforcement personnel, first responders and concerned Americans who want to take action to protect themselves and their families."

Hirsi Ali: Unfree Under Islam

The heroic Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes in Opinion Journal (thanks to Andy) what I have been saying for quite some time: "Shariah endangers women's rights, from Iraq to Canada."

In every society where family affairs are regulated according to instructions derived from the Shariah or Islamic law, women are disadvantaged. The injustices these women are exposed to in the name of Islam vary from extreme cruelty (forced marriages; imprisonment or death after rape) to grossly unfair treatment in matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance.

Muslim women across the world are caught in a terrible predicament. They aspire to live by their faith as best they can, but their faith robs them of their rights. Some women have found a way out of this dilemma in the principle of separation of organized religion and state affairs. They fight an uphill battle to achieve and hold on to their basic rights. Two cases demonstrate just how difficult that struggle can be, in the context of new as well as established democracies.

The first is the draft constitution of Iraq, now due next week. Iraqi women like Naghem Khadim, demonstrating on the streets of Najaf, are fighting to prevent an article from being put in the constitution that would establish that the legislature may make no laws that contradict Shariah edicts. The second case is the province of Ontario, in Canada. There, Muslim women led by Homa Arjomand, an activist of Iranian origin, are fighting--using the Canadian Charter of Rights--to keep Shariah from being applied as family law through a so-called Arbitration Act passed as law in Ontario in 1992.

It seems strange to associate the context of Canada with that of Iraq, but a closer look at the arguments used to reassure the demonstrating women in both countries reveals the similar ordeals that Muslim women in both countries must go through to secure their rights. It shows how their legitimate and serious worries are trivialized, and how vulnerable and alone they are. It shows how the Free World led by the U.S. went to war in Iraq, allegedly to bring liberty to Iraqis, and is compromising the basic rights of women in order to meet a random date. It shows how the theory of multiculturalism in Western liberal democracies is working against women in ethnic and religious minorities with misogynist practices.

Read it all.

Persecution of Kosovo Christians Said to Reveal Larger Threat

"What is going on in Kosovo today is the future of Europe tomorrow." From CNSNews.com, with thanks to Sparta:

(CNSNews.com) - International intervention to halt the persecution of Christians in Kosovo is a "complete failure," according to a former diplomat and other political analysts who briefed Capitol Hill staff late last week, pointing to the destruction of 150 churches and the simultaneous construction of 200 mosques.

Cybercast News Service obtained video of the burning and desecrating of the churches by ethnic Albanians, most of them Muslim. See Video

The new mosques are funded by "Wahhabist nations," the diplomats said, raising the specter of radical Islam incubating on the doorstep of Europe in a province rife with illegal arms and narcotics trafficking.

The religious persecution is also part of a political strategy of violence, which if rewarded in the granting of independence to Kosovo, could trigger similar violent secessionist movements throughout neighboring states and countries, they warned.

Unfolding events in Kosovo have already sent shock waves to as far away as China, which has now expressed concern to the U.S. over possible copycat attempts at secession in its predominantly Muslim Xinjiang Province.

Kosovo, an international protectorate administered by the United Nations, is part of Serbia and Montenegro, but the legal authority of the region is the U.N. Interim Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

The province is considered one of the jewels of Christian heritage, having served as the "Vatican" of Serbian Christian Orthodoxy from the 12th century onward.

Serbs, who are predominantly Orthodox Christians, constitute a minority, as do Turks, Roma (gypsies) and Muslim Slavs. Eighty-eight percent of Kosovo's population is made up of Muslim Albanians.

The attacks and ongoing persecution are seen by some as the purposeful targeting of the very symbols of Christian European civilization.

Between 1999 and 2004 approximately 150 churches, monasteries, seminaries, and bishop residences were attacked by ethnic Albanian mobs. Many of the churches contained priceless Byzantine frescoes and other religious artifacts dating as far back as the 13th century. Many of the sites were reduced to rubble.

In a Capitol Hill press conference Aug. 11, former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Patrick Melady called for a heightened international presence in Kosovo and the continuation of that presence for another 12 years....

Referring to the destruction of 34 churches in March of last year Melady said, "Thanks to a few amateur films that were made when the protests broke out, we can see how things unfolded. At all the scenes someone would climb to the top and tear down the cross, then stomp on it. Then they would set fire to the church."

During the Aug. 12 congressional staff briefing, Melady's research assistant, Ivan Djurovski, showed footage of the destruction of St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Podujevo.

The 17-minute video obtained by Cybercast News Service shows crowds of men ranging in age from about 15 to 50, calmly and methodically fanning out around the church after marching through town. After setting the church on fire, one of the vandals enters the bell tower to ring the church bell, which draws cheers from the crowd. Men scale the roof of the church to tear down three crosses, resulting in more cheers. Cybercast News Service edited the 17 minute video down to approximately two-and-a-half minutes....

Defense analyst Frederick Peterson said the media around the globe are ignoring the issue of Saudi Arabian and other sources flooding the economically depressed region with money to pay for new mosques as the churches are being destroyed.

"With money comes influence," Peterson told Cybercast News Service. "They are building a substantial ideological and brick and mortar infrastructure there." Peterson is a defense and counter-terrorism analyst with the Institute for Security Studies at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. He also serves as military policy advisor to Joseph K. Grieboski, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy.

Peterson and Djurovski both said many of the new mosques funded by Saudi and Iranian funds are currently empty, but reflect plans to indoctrinate residents with the radical Wahhabist form of Islam. The new mosques carry plaques acknowledging funding from Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, said Grieboski.

"This is a very grave threat," said Peterson. "With final status changing from Serbian Orthodox hegemony into at very best a gray line, the dividing line between the Christian and Islamic world moves closer to the European Union, and we're at great risk of tolerating what should not be tolerated in order to buy some peace in our time."

In the war against an expanding radical Islam, Peterson said, "We have three choices: convert, submit or die. But there's a fourth choice and that's to fight.

"What is going on in Kosovo today is the future of Europe tomorrow," he added.

Seattle: taxpayer-funded discrimination?

This Seattle Times story, "Preserving modesty, in the pool" (thanks to T-ham), emphasizes that the Muslims-only days in Seattle's Meadowbrook Pool are paid for as private rentals:

It's Saturday evening, the end of a hot day, and a group of women and children have gathered at North Seattle's Meadowbrook Pool for their monthly swim.

Most of the pool staff has left, except for two female lifeguards, who on this day will be on duty for the next two hours.

The women and children — all Muslims — have been swimming in private once a month at Meadowbrook as part of a program organized by the North Seattle Family Center.

Because Islam requires Muslim women to fully cover themselves in public, swimming in pools or the ocean is largely off-limits for many.

But across the Puget Sound area, that's starting to change as public and private pools at times are sending home their male staff members, covering up their windows and allowing women of faith to swim alone and in private.

It's occurring here as it has elsewhere across the country, as the Muslim population increases and families seek more ways to stay active.

Access to these pools is not free; the groups, like all others that use these facilities, pay a rental fee.

However, the Sound Politics blog (thanks again to T-ham) has discovered that the Muslims are not the ones paying the rent:

I made some calls and learned that the program, called "Muslim Sister Swim", is treated by the city's Meadowbrook Pool as any other private rental, which would be exempt from the city non-discrimination policy. However, the outfit that organizes and pays for the Muslim Sister Swim is the North Seattle Family Center, a unit of the Children's Home Society, a non-profit that gets most of its money from various government sources. As such, it should strictly comply with non-discrimination guidelines. Nevertheless, the Muslim Sister Swim is open exclusively to Muslims, no infidel women need apply. I asked a representative of the North Seattle Family Center to explain this, and she told me that it was to respect these immigrant women's culture.

But if there's ever a reason for taxpayer dollars to be used to support an immigrant's culture, it should be to support them in learning to shed whatever aspects of their culture are incompatible with American culture. The last thing we need to teach immigrants is to expect publicly-subsidized religious apartheid.

Would the Children's Home Society fund a Whites-Only Pool Night? A Christians-Only Pool Night? Where is the ACLU?

Suicide bomber opera implodes

A negative review of Keith Burstein's vile piece glorifying suicide bombers, which is now playing in Edinburgh. From the Evening Standard, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Edinburgh Fringe Festival: How horribly prescient; Keith Burstein's opera about suicide bombers receives its world premiere a few weeks after 7/7. What a pity it's such a trite affair.

The heroine, Palestinian poet Leila (Bernadette Lord), leaves Daniel, a Jewish composer, to return to her homeland to become a suicide bomber.

Her cell leader Mohammed falls in love with her, sees the error of his ways and, in order to save her, hands Leila over to the Americans. But it's all too much for her, so she tops herself anyway.

The libretto by Dic Edwards is horribly leaden and unmusical and the music uninspiring, save for the odd duet, and full marks to the talented cast of four for carrying it off.

But I found the tone depressingly anti-American, and the idea that there is anything heroic about suicide bombers is, frankly, a grievous insult.

Quite so.

Australia: Muslims meet to combat 'backlash'

"Muslims meet to combat 'backlash,'" from Australia's ABC News, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Sydney Muslims have held a public meeting in Auburn to combat the idea that Islam promotes a "holy war" against the West.

The United Muslim Women Association says it organised the forum, "Jihad: Terrorism or a Muslim's Highest Aspiration?" because Australian Muslims are being hit by a backlash as a result of the London bombings.

One of the keynote speakers, Sheikh Abdul Salam Zaoud, said some media outlets were responsible for whipping up fear about Islam.

"False images like these made us as Australian Muslims feel insecure by our society," he said.

False images, eh, Zaoud? Maybe you could put in another call to Abu Qatada for advice on how to deal with this.

Muslim leaders in feud with the BBC

Why? Because it's too pro-Israel! Yes, they're saying that with a straight face! And this is the "moderate" Muslim group in Britain, although questions are increasing about the accuracy of that. From The Observer, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Britain's most powerful Islamic organisation was accused last night of failing mainstream Muslim Britain after it complained of a 'pro-Israel agenda' at the BBC in a Panorama programme on the faith to be aired next week.

In an extraordinary letter obtained by The Observer, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has told director general Mark Thompson that the Panorama investigation of organisations representing Muslims in Britain, will 'inflame mistrust'.

The letter will be used by critics of the MCB as evidence that it is out of touch amid growing concern that it does not represent moderate Muslims.

A separate Observer investigation into the group has revealed its roots in the extremist politics of Pakistan. Its secretary general, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, and media spokesman Inayat Bunglawala have both expressed admiration for the late Maulana Maududi, founder of the radical Jamaat-i-Islami party, which campaigns non-violently for an Islamic state in Pakistan.

Maududi, a prominent figure in the 20th century Islamic revivalist movement, was a virulent anti-feminist who believed Muslims should struggle to rid their countries of Western influences. The Islamic Foundation, an affiliate of the MCB with close and influential links to the government, was founded by Khurshid Ahmad, a prominent member of the Jamaat-i-Islami.

Lawyers say 'rule of law' is under threat after Bakri is barred

They don't seem to mind how Bakri himself threatened the rule of law by his stated intention to work toward the day that the black flag of Islam would fly over 10 Downing Street. From The Independent, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Lawyers and civil liberties campaigners have warned that the Government is threatening the "rule of law" and very basis of democracy in Britain with plans to tell judges how to interpret the Human Rights Act.

They accused the Government of trying to "beat up" the judiciary and making them choose between "torture and terror" after it warned courts they may have to deport Islamic extremists.

The claims came as the extremist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed was barred from returning to Britain. Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, ruled that his presence was "not conducive to the public good".

The so-called Tottenham ayatollah, who provoked fury when he reportedly referred to the London suicide bombers as the "fantastic four", left last week for a holiday in Lebanon. After days of conflicting signals over the Government's response, the Home Office announced that Mr Clarke had revoked Mr Bakri's permission to live in Britain and that he would be prevented from setting foot in this country.

The move was welcomed across the political spectrum and by moderate Muslim groups, but was condemned by Mr Bakri's spokesman as a defeat for free speech. The announcement means that if he flew to Britain he would be detained and returned on the first flight to Lebanon. Home Office officials believe he fled because of the threat of facing a treason charge for his pronouncements on the London bombings.

Yesterday Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, issued a direct challenge to judges when he warned the Government was planning changes to the Human Rights Act to force the courts to consider "national security" when considering deportations.

"I want a law which says the Home Secretary, supervised by the courts, has to balance the rights of the individual deportee against risk to national security," the minister said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "That may involve an Act which says, 'this is the correct interpretation of the European Convention (on Human Rights)'."

Pakistan: Court gives life term to blasphemy author

Sharia alert from Pakistan from AFP, with thanks to Bryce:

KARACHI: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court sentenced a man to life imprisonment for writing an allegedly blasphemous book about the Holy Qur’an and the Islamic justice system, a lawyer said yesterday.

Police in the Islamic republic arrested 40-year-old writer Younus Shaik early this year in Karachi after he brought out the book called Shaitan Maulvi (Satanic Cleric).

Blasphemy in Pakistan carries a maximum sentence of the death penalty. Although no-one has ever been executed, the country’s harsh laws for the crime have been heavily criticised by rights groups.

“The court has sent him into jail for life as he described the four Imams as Jews in his book,” public prosecutor Naimat Ali Randhawa said after the court in Karachi sentenced the man on Thursday.

The four Imams were the third generation interpreters of the religion after the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and their views on law are widely respected by Muslims, he said.

The writer also committed blasphemy by saying that stoning to death for adultery was not mentioned in the Qur’an, he added.

Once again Muslims persecute someone for telling the truth. Stoning for adultery is indeed not mentioned in the Qur'an, and Islamic apologists in the West have never been shy about pointing that out. However, there is this hadith (among others):

'Abdullah b. 'Abbas reported that 'Umar b. Khattab sat on the pulpit of Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) and said: Verily Allah sent Muhammad (may peace be upon him) with truth and He sent down the Book upon him, and the verse of stoning was included in what was sent down to him. We recited it, retained it in our memory and understood it. Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) awarded the punishment of stoning to death (to the married adulterer and adulteress) and, after him, we also awarded the punishment of stoning, I am afraid that with the lapse of time, the people (may forget it) and may say: We do not find the punishment of stoning in the Book of Allah, and thus go astray by abandoning this duty prescribed by Allah. Stoning is a duty laid down in Allah's Book for married men and women who commit adultery when proof is established, or it there is pregnancy, or a confession. (Sahih Muslim, book 17, no. 4194)

This article concludes:

Pakistan’s national assembly last year passed a bill aimed at reducing abuse of the blasphemy law - under which anyone accused of the offence is immediately arrested and charged before any investigation.

Human rights activists say it is often misused to settle personal vendettas and arguments over property or money, particularly against the minority Christian community.

UK: A citizen dissents from official multiculturalism and dhimmitude

"Dire results of theory of multiculturalism," a letter from a Richard A. McLellan that appeared in The Herald (thanks to Uajeg):

THE THEORY of multiculturalism and its malevolent companion, political correctness, arrived on these shores from North America and was quickly taken up by the liberal, urban political elite. These theories were foisted on the British people without any consultation and the terrible consequences are only appearing now.
Jack McConnell is a typical exponent, mouthing "One Scotland, many cultures". No, it should read: "One Scotland, one culture with little bits added on." We often forget that the last Scottish Census in 2001 only gave a minority ethnic population of 2.01%. The Census gave an Indian population of 15,037 (0.3%), a Pakistani population of 31,793 (0.63%) and a Bangladeshi population of 1981 (0.04%).

Yet we have the nonsense of Christian symbols and Christmas carols being banned in schools and local authority premises in case they offend this minuscule percentage of the population. A Muslim festival like Eid is given as much importance as Christmas or Easter. There is something very wrong here.

Minority groups, especially those from the Indian sub-continent, were encouraged not to integrate or mix, but to keep their own customs as though the UK did not exist. The results can be seen in London, in the northern English cities and, to a much lesser extent, in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Whole areas of these cities were given over to the religion, customs and social practice of rural Pakistan and were encouraged to flourish without any reference to the surrounding white population. If one was brave enough to question this social experiment one was branded a racist. To this day, many of the third generation of these Asian immigrants take their religious leaders, marriage partners and social customs from Pakistan and other parts of the Indian sub-continent. It is apartheid under another name.

So in many of our cities we have a society within the wider society with a religion, Islam, which often seems to the outsider to be more of a political movement than a way to being at peace with God and one's neighbour. This society within a society has been encouraged to revel in its alleged victimhood, and, due to its lack of maturity, has never looked at its own faults but blames outsiders for all its ills. Until these people can think of themselves as Scots or English who are Muslim by religion rather than Muslims who live in Scotland or England we will have no peace.

Muslims seem to be in a constant state of anger. This foments religious fundamentalism or the predictable ranting of the tiresome Aamer Anwar. The day that Muslims can accept rational criticism without the predictable cries of "Islamophobia" will be the day when they are finally accepted into British society like the descendants of other immigrant groups over the centuries.

Fear of western secular society and its achievements is perhaps due to the nature of Islam itself. It is a religion of revelation that was born in strife. I have just read the Koran in translation and it is evident that it is rooted in seventh-century Arabia. There is much for a Christian to admire in the Koran, not least its sense of morality, but there is also much that a Christian would find strange....Unlike Christianity it has not been influenced by Greek philosophy, it has no equivalent of Biblical scholarship and criticism, but, most importantly, it has had no Reformation, no Martin Luther, and no Gandhi.

I had hope that a humane, "European" form of Islam might take root in the west but that is very unlikely....

Church Desecration Video Serves as Jihad Fund-Raiser

A disturbing and equally disturbing footage. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to Jim:

(CNSNews.com) - A violent video showing the desecration of a church and the murder of a Serbian soldier is one of many "jihad" videos currently making the rounds in Western countries to raise funds for Muslim terrorists, according to counter-terrorism experts interviewed by Cybercast News Service.

The graphic footage, stamped Sept. 16, 1995, was videotaped approximately two months before the Dayton Peace Accords, which brought an end to the civil war in Bosnia.

Darko Trifunovic, deputy director of the Center for Security and Investigation of Terrorism at the Belgrade Institute for Political Studies, provided Cybercast News Service with a copy of the video during his recent visit to Washington, D.C. Cybercast News Service has edited the video to remove portions dealing with the killing of the Serbian soldier and other grisly images of corpses.

Trifunovic, an attorney, previously served as first secretary in the Bosnia-Herzegovina Mission to the United Nations in New York City and conducted war crimes research for The Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In the latter capacity, Trifunovic interrogated mujahedeen who were involved in the fighting in Bosnia.

"The video was shot in western Bosnia," said Trifunovic. "It has been shown in Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden and North America for fund-raising purposes."

Evan F. Kohlmann, a Washington D.C.-based terrorism consultant and author, confirmed that videos of Bosnian battles and church desecrations were currently being circulated as inspiration and as a fund-raising tool for jihad-minded terrorists. Kohlmann has previously testified before Congress on terrorism issues.

The video opens with mujahedeen interrogating a Serbian soldier. The soldier was recognized by a relative as 32-year old Rade Rogic, said Trifunovic.

According to a translator consulted by Cybercast News Service, the lead captor asks Rogic, "Do you know who we are?"

"You're the mujahedeen," Rogic replies on the video.

"That's right, we're the mujahadeen." When questioned about his duties, Rogic insists he serves in the "workers' battalion" and only digs ditches. After repeatedly striking the soldier in the face, the interrogator then pressures him to say "Allah is great," before telling the videographer to turn off the camera.

Read it all.

Police in 'Muslim' ribbon gesture

Any ribbons to show solidarity with the victims of the 7/7 attacks and an intention to defend Britain? Nope. From the BBC, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Police in Nottinghamshire are being given green ribbons to show solidarity with the Muslim community after a rise in racist attacks.

The "Good Faith" ribbon is being backed by chief constable Steve Green.

Racially motivated attacks in the county have doubled since the attacks on the 7 July, according to figures from Victim Support.

Twenty thousand of the ribbons have been made to symbolise belief in Muslims as a people of peace.

Mr Green said: "We have a huge number of Muslim citizens in Nottinghamshire who are just going around trying to do their everyday business.

"But they feel intimidated and sometimes ostracised by racist incidents and by the perception that the white community suspects everybody with a brown face of being a suicide bomber.

"Many people feel fully supportive of the Muslim communities but have no way of showing it and this is a way of allowing them to do that."

He added: "Officers will not be compelled to wear these but I have written to my force urging them to take part."

American Muslim group: "Jihad, suicide bombing most abused words in US, West"

The level of denial never ceases to amaze me. "Jihad, suicide bombing most abused words in US, West," from NewKerala.com, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Lahore: An American Muslim rights body has said suicide bombing and Jihad were the most abused words associated with Islam in the United States and the West.

Samina Faheem Sundas, the executive director of the American Muslim Voice, while addressing a function here, said that the two words are so much abused, that a school child who might not have any knowledge about Islam, would know that Muslims are suicide bombers and kill innocents in the name of Jihad.

“An American schoolchild might not have any knowledge about Islam but he knows that Muslims are suicide bombers and kill innocent people in the name of jihad. An average American has doubts about the loyalty of every Muslim with the US,” the Dawn quoted her as saying.

I think this is highly fanciful. In fact, I highly doubt that the average American schoolchild has any idea that "Muslims are suicide bombers and kill innocent people in the name of jihad." An immense amount of effort has been directed to making sure that schoolchild and the American public in general does not associate Islam with terrorism, and it is paying off.

Yet it remains true, however, that some Muslims have become suicide bombers and have killed innocent people in the name of jihad. But you are unlikely to hear any explanation of that, or any effort to combat this kind of thinking among Muslims, from Samina Faheem Sundas.

She said that the situation was so biased that a Christian responsible for the Oklahoma blasts was not labelled a Catholic bomber, because Americans believe only Muslims commit such acts in the name of religion.

“A catholic was responsible for the Oklahoma blasts but he was not labelled as a catholic bomber because Americans argue that only Muslims commit such acts in the name of their religion,” she said, adding that the “Madressah in Pakistan should only impart religious education to their students. The teachers should deliver lectures in their personal capacity and not as teachers of the seminaries.”

That's not bias. That's accuracy. For all the tireless invocation of Tim McVeigh as the lone example of a Christian terrorist, he did not blow up the building in Oklahoma City because of any Christian teaching. Yet the jihadists consistently and routinely invoke Islam to justify their actions. (Watch out! If you take notice of their doing that, you must be a bigot!)

She further said that it was because of this prejudice that Muslims were suffering more than any other community in the Us and the West, post 9/11 and 7/7, because they did not bother to depict the true Islamic way which is non-violent, she added.

Sure. Let Muslims depict that true non-violent Islamic way, and they might find themselves having an easier time.

“The need of the hour is to launch a vigorous campaign to create awareness among the Muslims in the US. They need to know that they have the right to say no and the right to an attorney; they have the right to say no to the search unless the law-enforcers have a search warrant and they will have to get a subpoena to question anyone,” she further said.

Why do we never hear any Muslim spokesman saying this: "The need of the hour is to launch a vigorous campaign to refute the jihad ideology that leads to violence among Muslims worldwide"?

UK Bars Islamic Cleric Bakri in Anti - Terrorism Push

The latest installment of the ongoing Bakri drama brings us a welcome bit of anti-dhimmitude in the UK. From Reuters, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain barred hardline Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed on Friday from returning to the country, part of a government crackdown on Islamic preachers it fears inspire bombers such as those who attacked London in July.

Syrian-born Bakri, 45, left Britain for Lebanon on Saturday, saying he was going on holiday, after British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to silence Islamists who glorify violence.

Lebanese security forces detained him on Thursday for questioning and he is still being held.

Not according to this.

``We don't feel he's conducive to the public good,'' said a Home Office spokeswoman. His family were free to remain in the United Kingdom, she added.

US reporter killed 'because he was to marry a Muslim'

A startling but believable report from The Scotsman (thanks to Eugene) -- Islamic law does forbid marriage between Muslim women and non-Muslim men.

AN American journalist who was shot dead in Basra last week was executed by Shiite extremists who knew he was intending to marry his Muslim interpreter, it has emerged.

Steven Vincent was shot a week before the planned wedding to Nouriya Itais and had already delivered a $2,500 dowry to her family.

The disclosure casts new light on the grip of Islamic religious sects in the British-run south- east of Iraq - raising concern that they will take control once troops start to withdraw. Mr Vincent was abducted from his hotel three days after writing a piece in the New York Times accusing British officials of allowing religious parties to infiltrate the Basra police.

In America, his death was taken as retribution for his article. But in London yesterday, British officials pointed out that the police in Basra believed it was retribution for his affair.

Fitzgerald: The imperialism of Ngolandia

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald introduces you to one of the most powerful nations on the planet today: Ngolandia.

A good many of the so-called "Human Rights" organizations are staffed by those who either see no difference between the moral standing of the West and that of the Islamic world, or never did much like that West.

Many of these people are corrupt morally, intellectually, and in other ways. The biggest NGO of them all, the King of Ngolandia, is the United Nations. Think of what preoccupies it, and what it has ignored. Think of how it has handled, for example, the mass murder in Biafra (1967-1969), or the mass murder and mass slavery in the southern Sudan (1980- present), or the mass murder in Darfur, or the Arab enslavement of blacks in Mali and Mauritania. Think of the amount of attention it gave to the mass murder by Arabs of Kurds, or the cultural and linguistic oppression by Arabs of Berbers. Think of how often the U.N. has addressed the destruction of thousands of churches, and the attacks on Christians, in Indonesia, or the persecution and attacks on Hindus in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Kashmir. Think of how much time has been spent, on the other hand -- is it 1/3 or 1/2 of the total? -- on the issue of the recently-invented "Palestinian people" and The Mighty Empire of Israel, that doth bestride the world like a menacing colossus. Think of the oil-for-food business. Think of the U.N. soldiers and civilians, with their sex slaves in situ, and their use of diplomatic immunity to engage in all sorts of smuggling of valuables. Do you think it is the U.N alone? Those who have made it their business to study the efficacy of NGOs, of their programs, of what they turn a blind eye to and what they pocket while "doing good," know better. (Some, of course, may join NGOs -- the ones that presume to preach to America and the West -- out of less base motives, but many know exactly what is going on.)

A few years ago the British historian of the Empire, Professor David Carradine, noted that imperialism did not always make sense economically for Great Britain as a whole. It was sometimes a drain. But what it did do was provide a rise in status for a great many English men and women who, if they were lower-middle-class at home, could find themselves in Africa, or in India, enjoying a standard of living, and the ability to order around others, that they could not have enjoyed if they had remained at home.

Many of these NGO people, flying hither and yon on expense accounts, presuming to tell this country or that country what it should do, and wrapping themselves in the mantle of righteousness (which, on closer inspection, they often appear not to deserve), have escaped from the more boring lives of those they went to school with, but who are now toiling in the vineyards of law firms or departments of government or economics. And the salaries, and the benefits, and the opportunity for all sorts of lording it over others with all that comes with that, makes many of these waBenzi ("the People of the Mercedes Benz" as they are called by us jaded Swahili speakers in East Africa) of Ngolandia deserve, not automatic respect, but automatic skepticism, and cynicism. A few of these organizations are legitimate, or were -- just look at what the ACLU has become, in its personnel and therefore in its policies. Or perhaps one might say, in its policies, and therefore in its current personnel.

Ngolandia deserves investigation, and not the kind of free pass it has heretofore received. These "new imperialists" -- the American law students brightly spending their summers refashioning the world -- eight weeks here in Moscow, or 4 weeks in Cambodia, or 5 weeks over here in Venezuela -- who of course are simply pad-pad-padding their resumes, and whose proud parents can tell others about how their children spent their summer vacation. The complacency of it all, and the hollowness of so much of it, infuriates.

That dangerous cocktail of false Marxism (because the Soroses of this world have no intention of really changing the system from which they have so handsomely profited, but merely to hand out, to recycle, to "launder" their ill-gotten gains, much as los medicos de Medellin "launder" their drug money), of Third-World-ism (tiersmondisme) in which, somehow, the fabulously and entirely undeservingly rich plutocrats of such Muslim oil states as the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait are allowed to present themselves as members in good standing of this "Third World" without anyone collapsing in laughter, and finally, a dislike of their own societies, or a pretend-alienation which may not really be felt, but which colors what they do, what they say, what they think they should think -- these are the three strands that explain so many of the denizens of Ngolandia.

Presuming to lecture the peoples and polities of Europe as to what they can, or cannot do, to protect themselves from what is both a physical and a civilizational threat is merely the latest example of their tendentiousness, their indifference to reality, their cruel and stupid assumptions about the Western world and its need to make amends.

Meanwhile, these well-paid, plumply self-satisfied "public servants" of Ngolandia -- servants of their own agendas, that is -- are paid for by the long-suffering taxpayers of the Western world. These are the same taxpayers who, by allowing these organizations preferential tax status, are asked by these Ngolandians to refrain from sensible measures to protect themselves.

Taxpayers who, through the jizya of foreign aid to practically every Muslim state that happens not to share in the oil bonanza, help support Arabs and Muslims in their Al-Jazeera and Qur'an-Hadith-Sira-fueled hostility, or even hysteria and hate. Those taxpayers go through the tran-tran of the commute, the job, and sleep, the routine of metro-boulot-dodo, while all over the Arab and Muslim world, there is either the fabulously luxurious life -- entirely the result of an accident of geology -- lives of indolence and luxury. Or there are those who, sitting in cafes playing cards or other games, or lips affixed to hubble-bubble pipes, while the eyes of both game-players and sheesha-sippers remain fixed on the Al-Jazeera programs being blared out from the television that sits atop a shabby shelf, pouring out its hate, its hysteria, its untreatable poison.

Bakri to have heart op on NHS

He may be barred from the country. He may also have a heart operation paid for by the same government that may bar him from the country. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Filtrat:

The Government was under intense pressure last night to carry out Tony Blair's threats to expel extremist Muslim clerics after news that one of them was expected to return for a heart operation on the health service.

Omar Bakri Mohammed, who is in Lebanon, is due to have treatment at St Thomas's Hospital, just across the Thames from the Palace of Westminster.

Bakri, who has said he would never warn police if he learned of an impending suicide bomber attack by fellow Muslims, is in theory free to return to his family in London as he was granted indefinite leave to stay in the 1980s.

Bakri left Britain for the first time in 20 years at the weekend after gaining a Lebanese passport, apparently without the knowledge of the Home Office, to fly to Beirut where his mother lives.

He receives £331.28 a month in incapacity benefit and £183.30 a month in disability living allowance because of a leg injury he suffered in his teens.

Both payments will continue for at least six months while he is abroad, as long as he plans to return, as will the housing benefit on his home in Edmonton, north London, and his council tax benefit.

His wife, who remains in Britain with their seven children, can also continue to claim a benefits package thought to be worth at least £1,300 a month. Bakri drives a Toyota people carrier worth £30,000, paid for under a scheme called Motability.

The preacher is expected to return for an angioplasty procedure. That involves inserting and inflating a balloon in the coronary artery to improve blood flow.

He has been receiving treatment at North Middlesex Hospital, near his home, as well as at St Thomas's.

One of his supporters told The Daily Telegraph yesterday: "He has a heart condition and was scheduled for treatment but I don't know when or if he is planning to return for it."

Bakri, who comes from a wealthy, orthodox Muslim family from Syria, ran a computer business when he arrived in Britain but it collapsed.

As a teenager, he lived in Beirut. He then studied Sharia law at Damascus University before moving to Saudi Arabia.

He was deported and claimed asylum in Britain.

Despite Mr Blair's assurance last Friday that Britain would no longer be a haven for Muslim extremists, John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, said this week that Bakri had committed no offence and was therefore free to "come in and out".

Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak at Toronto Sharia law conference, August 12th

One of the foremost heroes of our age will be speaking next week in Toronto. A press release about the Toronto Conference on "Sharia Law and the Globalization of Political Islam," with thanks to Andy:

Press conference begins at 6:30pm

Together with Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali made the 2004 film ‘Submission’ about the oppression of women in Islamic cultures. Dutch Muslims criticized the film for being disgraceful and blasphemous. Van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri on November, 2nd, 2004. Ayaan now lives under police protection in a safe house in the Netherlands.

Time Magazine named Ayaan one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005.

Ayaan has been a Member of Parliament in the Dutch (Liberal) VVD party in the Tweede Kamer (Lower House) since January 30th 2003.

Irshad Manji and Homa Arjomand will also speak

Irshad Manji author of the #1-bestseller, ‘The Trouble with Islam’, is based in Toronto and hosts TVOntario’s “Big Ideas.” Oprah Winfrey honored her with the first annual Chutzpah Award. Ms. magazine named her a Feminist for the 21st Century.

Homa Arjomand is the Coordinator of the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada. She started her campaign at Toronto in October 2003 with a handful of supporters, and today it has grown to a coalition of 87 organizations from 14 countries with over a thousand activists. Homa is a Toronto based transitional counselor and was a human rights activist in Iran until she was forced to flee in 1989.

About the Conference

The Toronto Conference on 'Sharia Law and the Globalization of Political Islam' will be held August 12, 2005...The ten-minute film ‘Submission’ will be shown and a 30-minute question period will follow the speakers....

The conference is produced and sponsored by the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada.

For more information go to www.nosharia.com.

Female circumcision surfaces in Iraq

When I published Islam Unveiled, which included some discussion of FGM, several commentators criticized my mentioning FGM. They said it was only a cultural African practice and had nothing to do with Islam. Of course, in the book itself I quoted Muslim authorities praising, and here is more evidence that I was correct in discussing it all along, as it is a practice with deep Islamic roots. This Christian Science Monitor piece (thanks to Bev and Satinder) details how FGM is now being found in Iraq and elsewhere in the Islamic world:

KIRKUK, IRAQ - Set on an arid plain southeast of Kirkuk, Hasira looks like a place forsaken by time. Sheep amble past mud-brick houses and the odd sickly palm tree shades children's games. There is no electricity.

Yet along with 39 other villages in this region that Iraq's Kurds have named Germian (meaning hot place), Hasira and its people have become noted for presenting the first statistical evidence in Iraq of the existence of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM), as critics call it.

"We knew Germian was one of the areas most affected by the practice," says Thomas von der Osten-Sacken, director of a German nongovernmental organization called WADI, which has been based in Iraq for more than a decade.

Of 1,554 women and girls over 10 years old interviewed by WADI's local medical team, 907, or more than 60 percent, said they had had the operation. The practice is known to exist throughout the Middle East, particularly in northern Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan, and Iraq. There is also circumstantial evidence to suggest it is present in Syria, western Iran, and southern Turkey.

But while this practice was suspected in the region, there was never solid proof that the procedure was so prevalent.

Controversial findings

When WADI presented the results of its survey in Vienna this spring, Mr. Osten-Sacken recalls, various Iraqi groups accused the group of being an agent of the Israelis. Even the Iraqi Kurdish authorities, who have backed efforts to combat FGM since the late 1990s, were rattled....

But it's not just obstructionism that has held up awareness of the phenomenon. Unlike in parts of Africa, where FGM is practiced relatively openly, in the Middle East it is veiled in secrecy.

"You can't just walk into a village and ask people if they circumcise their daughters or not," says Germian social worker Hero Umar. "These people only talked because we've been bringing them medical help for over a year."

Women in Hasira and the surrounding villages are reluctant to talk. But after long negotiation, Trifa Rashid Abdulkerim agrees to answer questions.

A farmer's wife from the village of Milkhasim, she says she learned the techniques from her neighbor, and took over when she stopped performing the operation. "June is the best time of the year," she says, "and the best age for patients is between 3 and 8."

Anti-FGM campaigners point out that FGM crosses religious and ethnic boundaries.

But as a cleric in Sulaymaniyah puts it, "Islamic scholars have complex views on the phenomenon."

Sitting in his office in the Kurdish city, Mohammed Ahmed Gaznei explains.

"According to the Shafii school, which we Kurds belong to, circumcision is obligatory for both men and women. The Hanbali say it is obligatory only for men."

Personally opposed to female circumcision, Mr. Gaznei has helped in campaigns to stamp it out.

In 2002, he and other senior Kurdish clerics issued a religious edict, or fatwa, supporting the Hanbali practice. He has since appeared on TV several times to preach against FGM.

In Germian, however, information is slow to filter through the population. Women are still thought to be promiscuous if they are uncircumcised, some people here say.

"They say the food an uncircumcised woman cooks is unclean," says Shirin Ali, "and that a circumcised girl has more affection for her family."

WADI workers said that four months ago in a village just north of Hasira, a newly married - and uncircumcised - woman was so badly treated by her in-laws that she performed the operation on herself.

"Human Rights" organizations to EU: don't protect yourself

What do these human rights organizations say about the mistreatment of non-Muslims in Muslim countries? Why do they think that someone who is set against the parameters of the society in which he lives has a natural right to stay in that society? "HR Organizations Warn EU Countries Against Deportations," from zaman.com, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Deporting foreign national Muslims who pose a “terror threat” is becoming a wide spread policy among European governments in the wake of the London attacks.

Following France and Italy, Britain now has declared deportation of radical community leaders who follow a course of violence. Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (AI), however, indicate individual or collective deportations violate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). European countries, which implement that as a measure, may reportedly face many suits on the violation of rights at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Following the July 7 London attacks, many European governments announced possible deportations of those who advocated or encouraged terror. Just after the London attacks, the European Commission announced a project for the integration of radical ideological leaders back to their home countries.

The Union, however, remained reluctant to heed the Commission’s call. In July, France deported 12 Muslim clerics despite their French citizenship.

French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy had assured at that time that they would not allow such hatred inciting clerics to confuse young Muslims’ minds.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s counter-terrorism plan envisaged the listing of radical web sites, bookstores organizations and the deportation of any foreigner involved in them. Italy in turn launched an investigation into about 200 individuals in order to deport the radicals.

Union countries that implement the deportation measure run the risk of facing many suits at the ECHR and paying millions of euros in compensation. As a matter of fact, the subjection of the deported to torture and ill treatment in their home country effects the violation of the ECHR’s third clause. In the Singh Chahal case, a Sikh activist deported by British authorities, in 1996 the Court had ruled that Britain had abused the fundamental rights of the plaintiff. Human rights organizations indicate that this case will constitute an example for others to come. Organizations such as AI, HRW and Liberty react against deportations to such destinations as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Algeria where capital punishment is still in force.

Dhimmitude at Virginia Tech: Classes segregated for Saudi students

All right, let me get this straight: when American troops went to Saudi Arabia, they had to avoid all overt practice of Christianity or Judaism. Why? Because that's their culture, and we have to respect it. And now when Saudis come to Virginia Tech, they're given gender-segregated classes. Why? Because that's their culture, and we have to respect it. So their culture trumps ours both in Saudi Arabia and in the United States.

This reminds me of the British colonial official who outlawed suttee in India. "But it's our culture," an Indian protested, whereupon the official replied: "Yes, and it's our culture to jail those who encourage its practice." But no one today has enough spine to stand up for gender equality or freedom of conscience in the face of Sharia. "Classes for Saudis separated: Gender-specific classes are given at Tech this summer for people from Saudi Arabia," from The Roanoke Times, with thanks to Ixnay:

BLACKSBURG - About 60 faculty members from a Saudi Arabian university are taking courses on Virginia Tech's campus this summer. But the program's setup is a bit different than a typical Tech class.

Men and women from King Abdulaziz University are taking identical faculty development courses at Tech, but meet in gender-specific classes. Tech officials said administrators from the Saudi university separated the sexes to mirror classroom settings at their home institution, which operates separate campuses for men and women.

"This is the way they teach their courses over there, and this is the way they wish their courses to be taught over here," said Tech spokesman Larry Hincker. The university chose to respect the Saudi culture "rather than impress our culture on them," he added.

Canada: A "green light for sharia"

Sharia gains a foothold in Canada in advance of the Bryant report, despite the best efforts of Muslim women. Bravo, Homa Arjomand. "Islamic law course hears opening arguments," from the Globe and Mail, with thanks to Diana West:

Islamic law is coming to the University of Toronto.

Not in the form of sharia tribunals for cheaters or strict dress codes for female students, but in the form of two professors hired to teach the subject at the university's law school.

While students are excited about the opportunity to learn about another legal tradition, especially one that's often in the headlines, groups fighting to keep sharia out of Canada's legal system worry that the hirings are a setback to their efforts.

Bringing in Anver Emon, 34, and Mohammad Fadel, 38, to teach courses in Islamic law is part of a push for a more global focus that students are embracing, says acting law school dean Lorne Sossin. Having two full-time professors will give the law school a bigger concentration on Islamic law than anywhere else in Canada.

"The early indications are that students are going to be beating down the doors, and it's a testament to the timeliness of it, with Islamic fundamentalism in the news abroad and of course the sharia debate in Ontario just this last year bringing these issues close to home," Mr. Sossin says.

Too close to home for Homa Arjomand, who heads the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada, and Alia Hogben, executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women.

Ms. Arjomand has been campaigning to keep Islamic law out of the Canadian system because in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan or Nigeria, women have suffered under strict and violent interpretations of Islamic law. The hirings are "like a green light for sharia," Ms. Arjomand says. "I'm so mad."

Ms. Hogben says she's "concerned about the motivation." Canada's law system should be totally secular so the university shouldn't be seen doing anything to prepare for the possibility that sharia law may make inroads, she says.

The issue of sharia law hit the headlines in Ontario in 2003, after a Muslim lawyer founded the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice to settle family-law and inheritance-law disputes. The move was perfectly legal under Ontario's Arbitration Act, which allows people to voluntarily settle arguments outside the court system using an arbitrator of their choice. The outcomes are binding.

Amid an outcry that raised the spectre of Muslim women in Ontario living under the same restrictions as those under the Taliban, where adultery allegations could lead to summary executions, the Ontario government did what governments do. It commissioned a report.

Marion Boyd, a former Ontario cabinet minister who works as a mediator, spent six months researching the issue before recommending that religious law keep a place in family arbitration as long as safeguards are built in to protect women and children. Ontario's Attorney-General, Michael Bryant, plans to respond in the fall.

Pipes: "Today Gaza, Tomorrow Jerusalem"

Daniel Pipes explains in FrontPage why the Gaza withdrawal is a dhimmi capitulation that will only embolden the jihadists. From FrontPage, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Are Israel’s critics correct? Does the “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza cause the Palestinians’ anti-Semitism, their suicide factories, and their terrorism? And is it true these horrors will end only when Israeli civilians and troops leave the territories?

The answer is coming soon. Starting on Aug. 15, the Israeli government will evict some 8,000 Israelis from Gaza and turn their land over to the Palestinian Authority. In addition to being a unique event in modern history (no other democracy has forcibly uprooted thousands of its own citizens of one religion from their lawful homes), it also offers a rare, live, social-science experiment.

We stand at an interpretive divide. If Israel’s critics are right, the Gaza withdrawal will improve Palestinian attitudes toward Israel, leading to an end of incitement and a steep drop in attempted violence, followed by a renewal of negotiations and a full settlement. Logic requires, after all, that if “occupation” is the problem, ending it, even partially, will lead to a solution.

But I forecast a very different outcome. Given that some 80 percent of Palestinians continue to reject Israel’s very existence, signs of Israeli weakness, such as the forthcoming Gaza withdrawal, will instead inspire heightened Palestinian irredentism. Absorbing their new gift without gratitude, Palestinians will focus on those territories Israelis have not evacuated. (This is what happened after Israeli forces fled Lebanon.) The retreat will inspire not comity but a new rejectionist exhilaration, a greater frenzy of anti-Zionist anger, and a surge in anti-Israel violence.

Read it all.

‘UK’s decision to deport 500 Muslims unjust’

Amazing that Idrees could say this with a straight face after the groups that claimed credit for 7/7 explicitly linked the bombings to Islam. From Pakistan's Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

LAHORE: The UK’s decision to deport 500 Muslim leaders, teachers and owners of Islamic bookshops is hasty, undemocratic and unjust, said a Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) official on Monday.

Talking to a group of Pakistani students studying in Britain and the USA at Mansoorah, Hafiz Mohammad Idrees, JI naib ameer, said Islam had nothing to do with terrorism, but the Western media had been implicating Muslims in every terrorist activity without any proof.

Anti-dhimmitude from Investors Business Daily: Profile CAIR

At last, a mainstream media outlet dares to tell the truth about CAIR. From IBD (thanks to all who sent this in):

An American Muslim pressure group has come out strongly against police profiling of young Muslim men behaving suspiciously at train stations. But the group doesn't have our best interests at heart.

The terror-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, says two New York officials' push for such targeted profiling on city subways is offensive and ignorant.

"Terror comes in all shapes and sizes," insists Wissam Nasr, director of CAIR's New York branch.

Never mind that eight young Muslim men bombed London's tube. Or that 19 young Muslim men attacked New York in 2001. Or that every suspect on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists is a Muslim man, with nearly half going by the name Mohammed.

CAIR's national spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, says police should ignore such obvious terror traits and search riders at random, while paying close attention only to people "sweating." Never mind that during New York's balmy summer months, that would include folks who don't remotely fit the terrorist profile.

CAIR should know better than anyone who does fit the terrorist profile. Three of its own officials were recently convicted of terror-related crimes. One even worked for Hooper. He's now in prison for conspiring to kill Americans.

A lawsuit filed against CAIR by the family of former FBI official John P. O'Neill, who was killed on 9-11, charges that the group, which evolved from a known Hamas front, is "a key player in international terrorism."

Read it all.

D.C. Watson: Nazi, Hitler references are cheap, baseless cop outs

Watson skewers the phony race card:

Surprise! A Muslim spokesperson has played a phony race card and made another inaccurate comparison. In a recent interview, Dr. Mohammed Naseem compared Britain's Tony Blair's crackdown on out-of-control Muslims with the actions of Hitler. Another howl of racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, and of course, Nazism from the Muslim section.

Naseem: "He (Hitler) was democratically elected and gradually he created a bogey identity, that is, the Jewish people, and posed to the Germans that they were a threat to the country," said Dr. Naseem.

"On that basis, he started a process of elimination of Jewish people. I see the similarities."

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/007543.php

Typical, isn’t it? This gentleman has apparently found similarities between what happened to the Jews at the hands of Adolph Hitler, and a crackdown on Muslim “leaders” who happen to be incapable of keeping their mouths shut, and who insist on inciting violence against non-Muslims.

Does history tell us that the Jews in Germany were inciting the same type of violence against the German people that some Muslims have undeniably been inciting in Britain? Were there hijacked planes flown into German civilian targets? Were there Jewish suicide bombers blowing up German buses? Were the synagogues in Germany a haven for radical Jewish nut cases bent on taking over the world?

Cleaning house: Omar Bakri. A career British welfare recipient who praised the 9/11 attacks, and also said “we will use your democracy to destroy your democracy,” has left the UK Of course, the brave Bakri didn't leave due to fear of prosecution for treason. No, way. He left because it was a matter of being able to “practice his religion.” Read more about this parasite here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4133150.stm

Is it bigotry to expect newcomers to the West to learn the spoken language and governing laws of the nation to which they've migrated?

Is it racist to practice nationalism and refuse globalism?

Since when is it bigotry for citizens of the West to want secure borders?

Since when is it Islamophobia for Westerners to expect Muslims to integrate into the society of the nation to where they’ve migrated?

Since when should it be considered xenophobia or Islamophobia when the citizens of Western nations use common sense in making it known that if someone wants to live among us, they should first enter the nation through proper and legal channels, and not preach hatred for the nation to where they've migrated?

Since when is it appropriate for the citizens of Western nations to be expected to learn the languages of immigrants rather than them learning the language of the nation to where they've migrated?

When Americans go to foreign lands, are they provided these services at the expense of the citizens of the lands they visit?

Can a Christian practice Christianity in Saudi Arabia, our “friends,” without persecution? The same question could be asked regarding Jews, but they aren’t permitted to set foot on Saudi soil.

Although Islam has proven itself to be the most intolerant, chauvinistic, bigoted form of beliefs on the planet, when Americans and Westerners decide that Muslims shouldn't be permitted to incite violence and plan a worldwide Islamic takeover, they're labeled as racists.

When was the last time a Muslim was shot, marched into an oven, or locked in a gas chamber? When was the last time Muslims in the West were forced to sit in the back of a bus, or use separate restrooms?

This play by Naseem and many other Muslims is twisted, and a falsification.

The time has arrived for Muslim scholars, Imams, clerics, and “civil rights” organizations to be put in their place. Enough of them have been convicted for terror, fraud, and falsification crimes to demonstrate that they are a problem.

The time has also arrived for the gimps in the mainstream media and our governments to stop pushing the “religion of peace” fairy tale, and portraying Muslims as some sort of victims.

The cards are on the table, and they're face up. All we have to do is look at them. Islam is not a race, it is a political movement cloaked in a religious shroud. For anyone who believes that Church and State should remain separate, that freedom of speech is sacred, and that men and women should be treated equally, those who stringently follow the Islamic faith are the last people to be befriending. Yes, there are Muslims who want nothing to do with Shari’ah law. There are Muslims that have integrated into Western society, and love its freedoms.

While they may be moderate, Islam is not. In public, Muslim leaders will say that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are similar. In Mosques and madrasses, they teach that Christianity, Judaism, and all other faiths are illegitimate. They will say that they appreciate the right to free speech, and they do, as long as it is them, and only them practicing it.

If America is so terrible, why is everyone trying to get in and no one is trying to get out? For those who still are, please, stop being fooled by this ongoing smoke screen.

More and more of the masses are finally coming to realize the problems, and expenses the Islamic belief system in its current state brings with it. Don't fall too far behind the pack. Your lives, the lives of your children, and your way of life just may depend on it.

Egyptian Professor Abd Al-Sabour Shahin: Muslims Had Nothing to Do with 9/11 Attack on the Empire State Building

Yes, he said the Empire State Building. Note that this was broadcast over the airwaves of our friend and ally Saudi Arabia. From MEMRITV, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

The following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian professor Abd Al-Sabour Shahin, which aired on Saudi Channel 1 on August 8, 2005.

Shahin: Our enemies weave many lies about us, which we are not necessarily aware of. For example: One day, we awoke to the crime of 9/11, which hit the tallest buildings in New York, the Empire State Building (sic). There is no doubt that not a single Arab or Muslim had anything to do with these events. The incident was fabricated as a pretext to attack Islam and Muslims. The plan was to take over the world's energy sources, and to achieve this control by force and not by agreement or negotiations, by interests, free trade, or anything like that. This is what they wanted.

So this incident was fabricated - and Allah knows that the Arabs and Muslims are innocent of it - in order to serve as a pretext to attack Islam and the Muslims....

I believe a dirty Zionist hand carried out this act. Zionism has taken the opportunity to escalate the war in Palestine, killing hundreds of thousands so far, while we watch from the sidelines in astonishment and ask: What's going on?

What's going on, sir? Well, for starters, you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and purveyor of politically poisonous propaganda. That's what's going on.

Petition to restore the Hagia Sophia as a church

This is a pipe dream, but then again...the Hagia Sophia as an Islamized museum stands as the foremost monument to dhimmitude and the appropriation of the conquered peoples' culture and history by Islam. If Turkey is really serious about adopting European values as a prelude to EU membership, let the Turks make this gesture of recognition of the equality of dignity of people of all religions.

Of course, they do not need to do this, because the Europeans will most likely let them into the EU without calling them to account in any effective way.

From the Hagia Sophia blog, with thanks to Sparta:

If you believe in the just case that Hagia Sophia should be restored to its proper religious role as a church, for which it was built in the first place, then we ask you to support our petition to the EU Parliament that Turkey should not be admitted as a member of the European Community until it restores Hagia Sophia to its original purpose as a church and not a museum.

We need a minimum of 1.000.000 signatures in order to force the European Union to consider this proposal seriously and debate it immediately as one of the conditions to allow Turkey to be admitted as a new member of the EU.

As you know, Turkey is doing everything it can today to convince the European Union that it is a worthy country to join it. If you agree with us that Turkey should not be admitted to the EU before restoring justice to Hagia Sophia, please click on "Your Signature" and send us your message.

We would be grateful if you could also tell your friends about this site and its purpose.

Angeliki Papagika and partners

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia is not a public building that changed ownership with the conquest of a war. Hagia Sophia is a place of God, Christendom’s grandest place of worship for over 900 years, and arguably the most perfect and beautiful church that has been erected by any Christian people. The splendour of its overall effect, its “paradise-like” beauty and architectural brilliance were often comprehensible only in terms of repeated divine intervention.

The magnificence, spirituality and prestige of the Great Church led to its being appropriated as an imperial and religious symbol by the Ottoman sultans. The church of Christ was possessed and converted into a mosque, until it was decreed a museum. During this long time, it has been subjected to more than its fair share of abuse and denigration.

Hagia Sophia, an essential element of Christianity, a second Jerusalem, the most revolutionary and daring church conceived in Christendom, has been turned into a museum considerably impaired by the loss of all its Christian furnishings and much of its original setting and atmosphere. At present it is part of an increasingly elaborate area of monuments, museums, and rug and souvenir shops. The Great Church, transformed into a monument/museum without life…The conquest of war does not and cannot change its spiritual nature into a civil-cultural-secular institution. For as long as the injustice done to the soul of Hagia Sophia is ignored and forgotten Christianity cannot be whole. Hagia Sophia’s reason for existing is vitally important to restoring religious integrity.

It is a disgrace and disrespect to a religion and god when holy places are unwillingly turned purely into tourist attractions. How would the Muslims feel if one of their holiest places was turned into a museum for tourists by a conquering power?

With its conversion into a museum in 1934, Hagia Sophia was frozen in some past age, vaguely Byzantine. Directed by the then historicist paradigm that saw the past as unchanging, Hagia Sophia was also understood through the aesthetic of the great museum, that is, aloof and imposing. Both traits were useful to a Turkish government that wanted to break with the Ottoman era that lasted until after World War I. The church of Heavenly Wisdom became thus what the official Turkish act of secularisation called a “unique architectural monument of art” and hence was valued more for its age, art and historical value than for its practical and religious use.

Thornton: The Myth of Islam Busted

Bruce Thornton reviews my essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims at Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers:

One of the greatest impediments in our war against jihadist terrorism is the misinformation, half-truths, and outright lies about Islam entertained by many of our public intellectuals. Examples are easy to find; here's one from the otherwise intelligent Gregg Easterbrook, Atlantic Monthly contributor and senior editor at The New Republic, from his recent book The Progress Paradox: “Most Muslims are good-hearted, peace-loving people, just as are most Christians and Jews. A small minority of Muslims are vicious fanatics. But then the Christian ethos has spawned its share of hideous killers, among them the terrorist Timothy McVeigh, and this tells us nothing about the typical Christian.” The obviously false analogy in the last sentence — McVeigh didn't kill with the sanction of Christian theology or belief, which has no doctrine remotely close to jihad, and millions of Christians didn't dance in the streets after the bombing in Oklahoma City — could stand as a textbook example of this logical fallacy.

Such ignorance — on display everywhere in the media, especially among those eager to rationalize away the Islamic roots of the latest terrorist murder — makes a book like The Myth of Islamic Tolerance particularly important. Robert Spencer, in earlier books like Islam Unveiled, Onward Muslim Soldiers, and the recent The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, as well as on his invaluable website Jihad Watch (jihadwatch.org), has already done yeoman's work in documenting Islam's fundamental intolerance, martial aggressiveness, and sanctioning of violence against non-Muslim infidels. The 58 essays in the current book attack root and branch the widespread Orwellian myth, recently given cinematic sanction in Kingdom of Heaven, that Islamic societies have been historically more tolerant and friendly to minorities than has been Western culture.

Spencer sets the stage with an overview of the myth, its political uses, and its refutation by the simple facts of history and Islamic jurisprudence and theology. Politically, the myth provides psychic comfort for jaded Westerners, especially Europeans, who have made the devil's bargain to accept large numbers of Islamic immigrants as a source of cheap labor: “European states eyeing the rapid growth of their Muslim populations console themselves with tales of old al-Andalus, reassuring one another that Islamic hegemony not only wasn't all that bad — it was a veritable golden age.” Thus European and American politicians cater to Islamic immigrants, whom they believe will assimilate into Western society, their “tolerant” and “peace-loving” religion merely enriching the multi-ethnic tapestry.

But as Spencer points out, and as history and Islamic doctrine show repeatedly, “Islam doesn't accept a position as just one among a community of disparate religions but must struggle to make itself supreme.” Unable to prosecute militarily the divine mandate to expand the House of Islam until it encompasses the whole world, modern jihadists have been adept at manipulating the various cultural pathologies of the West. As Ibn Warraq points out in his Foreword, the old myth of the “noble savage,” the habit of idealizing more primitive or alien non-Western cultures in order to castigate one's own, has from the beginning of Western contact with Islam distorted the understanding of it. Later, Great Power geopolitical contests reinforced these European idealizations of Islamic societies, particularly the Ottoman Turks. The result has been centuries of mythic idealizations that continue to obscure the true nature of Islam, leading to the strange phenomenon we see nearly every day: non-Muslim Westerners “hastening,” as Spencer puts it, “to assure the public that the Islam of the terrorists is not the 'true Islam,' which is, they maintain, a benign and tolerant thing.”

Eager to display their sensitivity to and tolerance of the cultural “other,” apologists like those Spencer liberally quotes end up arrogantly asserting that millions of practicing Muslims don't understand their own religion. But of course the jihadists know what their religion teaches about non-Muslims: they are categorically inferior infidels, particularly the “People of the Book,” Jews and Christians, “renegades who have rejected this final revelation [of Muhammad] out of corruption and malice and who have exchanged truth for falsehood.” They are accursed, and as such, it is the duty of every Muslim “to fight them,” in the words of the Qur'an, “until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah.” In a later verse this injunction is specifically directed against Jews and Christians: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya [a special tax on non-Muslims] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

Read it all.

The destruction of Mecca: Saudi hardliners are wiping out their own heritage

From The Independent, with thanks to RB.

Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.

Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.

Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers, with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage.

It is the same oil-rich orthodoxy that pumped money into the Taliban as they prepared to detonate the Bamiyan buddhas in 2000. And the same doctrine - violently opposed to all forms of idolatry - that this week decreed that the Saudis' own king be buried in an unmarked desert grave.

A Saudi architect, Sami Angawi, who is an acknowledged specialist on the region's Islamic architecture, told The Independent that the final farewell to Mecca is imminent: "What we are witnessing are the last days of Mecca and Medina."

According to Dr Angawi - who has dedicated his life to preserving Islam's two holiest cities - as few as 20 structures are left that date back to the lifetime of the Prophet 1,400 years ago and those that remain could be bulldozed at any time. "This is the end of history in Mecca and Medina and the end of their future," said Dr Angawi...

The motive behind the destruction is the Wahhabists' fanatical fear that places of historical and religious interest could give rise to idolatry or polytheism, the worship of multiple and potentially equal gods...

Auster vs. May

We have expressed our differences with Clifford May before, and once again in his latest article, Mr. May succeeds in rousing our collective ire. Lawrence Auster takes on this article at the View from the Right, with thanks to Andrew Bostom.

Dear Cliff,

Your article makes good and welcome points about the actual extremism of today’s Islam, and even about the roots of Islamic violence in the Prophet himself, but I’m surprised at some of the things you say along the way. For example, you argue that the IRA (a leftist, pro-Communist, terrorist organization!) was motivated by Christian belief! This is just ridiculous.

And then you include Timothy McVeigh in your list of Christian extremists. There was nothing Christian about McVeigh, except perhaps by heritage. He was angry at the U.S. government for its acts in Waco, Texas, and conceived a desire to strike back at what he saw as a tyrannical government. He was a sick nihilist. He didn’t represent Christianity in any way whatsoever. I don’t think he said anything indicating that he felt he represented Christianity. As far as I'm aware, he never said anything about his motivations at all, but remained stoically silent from the time of his arrest until his execution.

And John Brown, another of your Christian extremists, did call himself a Christian, but he was not taken by any mainstream people as a representative of Christianity, he was seen as a violent fanatic, though some in the North did say they “understood” (though they didn’t condone) his actions at Harper’s Ferry.

Fortunately, after starting out with these false equivalencies between a supposed Christian extremism and Muslim extremism, you then turn around and show (though you don’t explicitly say so) that there is no equivalence at all, since the Muslim extremism is not extreme within the terms of Islam, but is a normative and dominant voice of Islam. So there’s a complete disjunction between your “equivalence” argument, and the facts you actually adduce about Islam.

And that’s not the end of the confusion. After giving a lot of evidence showing that there is no effectively existing moderate Islam that speaks for Islam, you then call for this non-existent moderate Islam to take the leadership of Islam and banish the extremists! This does not strike me as a serious argument.

So, why tout an equivalence between Christianity and Islam, a false idea that only confuses the issue? Why go searching for Christian and Jewish extremism, when the problem is Islam? And why point out the normative violence in Islam and the normative support for extremism in Islam, and then act as though this normative violence and extremism can be cured by promoting “moderation”?.

The whole point is that Islam is not a religion in the sense that Christianity is a religion. In fact, Islam is not a religion in the usual sense of the word at all. It is, from its inception, along with being a religion, a world-conquering totalitarian movement...

Why America Is More Dependent Than Ever on Saudi Arabia

From the New Duranty Times, with thanks to EPG.

President Bush might not have turned up personally in Riyadh yesterday but he certainly sent a high-powered delegation to pay his respects to the new leader of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah.

The American turnout, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, former President George H. W. Bush, and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, was the latest signal that relations between the two countries have thawed since the strains of 9/11. But it was also an acknowledgment of a simple fact: like it or not, the United States is more dependent than ever on Saudi Arabia.

"The Saudis are in a great position today," said Jean-François Seznec, a professor at Columbia University's Middle East Institute. "We cannot be enemies with everybody. We need their oil desperately."

Indeed, the alternatives to Saudi Arabia are fewer today than seemed to be the case just three years ago. Predictions of a boom in Iraqi oil have been proved wrong; Iran, OPEC's second-largest oil producer, is locked on a collision course with the West; Venezuela is following an erratic path; and Russia's commitment to market reforms and foreign investments seems increasingly unreliable.

All this has added to Saudi Arabia's already impressive clout. What is more, other powers - mainly from Asia - seek greater access to its resources and have been increasingly courting the Saudis. "They can play the United States against other buyers, like China," Mr. Seznec said. "And why wouldn't they?"

American officials, furious over Saudi Arabia's handling of the investigations after 9/11, recognize this new reality. The warmer relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States were on display last April, when Crown Prince Abdullah - who succeeded his half brother, Fahd, on Monday as king - visited President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex. As a sign of public diplomacy, and personal bonds, they kissed on the cheek and held hands...

Yes and after viewing that picture, the entire country cringed in disgust.

Coaches from Kyrgyzstan hope to use sports to fight radical Islam's appeal

Of course we all know Dr. Rice is a sports fan, but we question the effectiveness of spending taxpayer money on these kinds of "free trip to America" programs. From AP via the South Bend Tribune, with thanks to Eschwapp.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Three Indiana universities are helping Kyrgyzstan fight radical Islam with sports.

Ten coaches from the central Asian nation have attended classes on leadership, sportsmanship and tolerance at Purdue and Indiana universities and at Notre Dame as part of a State Department-funded program called the Indiana Sports Project for Osh Regional Tolerance, or ISPORT.

"Sports never discriminates between nationalities or religious beliefs," basketball coach Sergei Chupakhin said through a translator. The group spent Thursday and Friday on the Purdue campus in West Lafayette.

Osh lies in the southwest of the predominantly Muslim nation, which has endured several episodes of violence since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Its former regime was ousted in March, and Kyrgyzstan struggles with multiethnic disputes, as well as economic, employment and environmental problems.

"The country's youth, who now make up about 50 percent of the population, are especially vulnerable to ethnic prejudice, conflict and violence, as well as recruitment for radical militant groups," said Donald W. Mitchell, a Purdue philosophy professor and director of the Indiana Center for Cultural Exchange, a co-sponsor of the ISPORT project.

When the coaches return to Kyrgyzstan, they will work with another ISPORT co-sponsor, Mercy Corps, to train more coaches to build youth sports leagues with local sports academies, public schools, orphanages and Muslim schools. Mercy Corps is funded by U.S. Agency for International Development...

Ban public servants wearing headscarves: opinion poll

Anti-dhimmitude from the Dutch reported in this opinion poll. From Expatica, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

AMSTERDAM — A majority of the Dutch public wants a new law to ban public servants from wearing headscarves or "other Islamic attire", a new poll has found.

Polling organisation TNS Nipo carried out the research for the latest edition of independent magazine Binnenlands Bestuur.

To date, a sizable majority in the Lower House of Parliament, De Tweede Kamer. has been opposed to banning religious expressions, such as the wearing of headscarves, by public servants.

The heads of municipal governments believe Islamic attire must be permitted as long as the person's face is not obscured.

TNS Nipo questioned 433 adults — 292 government employees and 50 municipal aldermen — for the poll.

There has been a growing aversion in the Netherlands in the last two years to attire associated with Muslims. A similar poll in 2003 revealed a majority felt it was acceptable for public servants to wear such garb.

Some 57 percent of the public, for instance, has a fundamental objection to a teacher wearing a head scarf. The new poll also found 77 percent and 81 percent respectively against police officers and judges wearing a headscarf...

Russia's turning Muslim, says mufti

Muslims see strength in numbers from the Australian:

MOSCOW: Russia's leading Muslim cleric has alarmed Orthodox Church leaders and nationalists by claiming the country has 23million Muslims, 3 million more than previously believed.

According to the last census, three years ago, about 14.5 million of Russia's 144 million people were ethnic Muslims. Religious leaders have put the number at nearer 20 million.

But the leader of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Ravil Gaynutdin, said this week the number of ethnic Muslims was 23million and rising.

"They are indigenous residents of our country, not migrants or immigrants, and have been living here from time immemorial," the mufti told a meeting of the European Union of Muslims. "The number of people professing Islam in Russia is constantly growing."

"Time immemorial" implies what Muslims believe, that Islam actually dates from before the 7th Century because it claims to be the original religion of mankind, restored by Muhammad.

Bakri: Deportation not fair

"Deportation not fair, says extremist (on benefits)" from the Daily Mail with thanks to Leveller.

An extreme Muslim cleric whose family have been living on benefits in Britain for 20 years says it would not be 'fair' to deport him.

Speaking after the Prime Minister announced his clampdown, father-of-seven Sheik Omar Bakri said: "I have wives, children, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law. It would be hard on my family if I was deported."

Wives, plural?

Since Syrian-born Bakri settled in Britain, he and his extended family have raked in benefits amounting to at least £300,000.

He is registered disabled because of an injury to his leg during his childhood, and was recently supplied with a £31,000 Ford Galaxy under the Motability scheme.

Bakri, who lives in a £200,000 home in North London, tops up his £250-a-week benefit payments with an extra £50 incapacity allowance.

He has praised the September 11 terrorists as 'magnificent', called Israel 'a cancer' and said homosexuals should be 'thrown from Big Ben'.

In January, he declared that Britain had become a 'land of war', and called on Muslims to unite behind Al Qaeda. He has supported suicide bombings and urged his followers to kill non-Muslims ' wherever, whenever'.

He also claimed he has no wish to stay in Britain, but his family would suffer if he was deported...

CAIR to have use of Broward County Library to spread their ideas

Press Release from Americans Against Hate:

Coral Springs, FL - Starting tonight, Broward County, Florida will be allowing CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) to hold a series of six lectures at the Main Library in Fort Lauderdale. CAIR, is currently the defendant in a lawsuit put forward by the family of FBI agent John O'neill for his murder during the 9/11 attacks. CAIR's parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine, recently lost its own $156 million lawsuit for the death of a young boy, David Boim, during a Hamas terrorist operation. CAIR has had numerous representatives convicted by and/or deported from the United States for terrorist activity, in relation to both Hamas and Al-Qaeda.

Arlandson: Ill legal jihad in the Quran and early Islam (Part 1)

James Arlandson writes in The American Thinker:

Muslim spokespersons who have access to the news media are misleading the public about jihad.

The Council on American Muslim Relations (CAIR ) says the following about jihad at the time this present article was posted:

“Jihad” does not mean “holy war.” Literally, jihad means to strive, struggle and exert effort. It is a central and broad Islamic concept that includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense (e.g., - having a standing army for national defense), or fighting against tyranny or oppression.

In reply, however, while it is true that a Muslim may wage jihad on the excess in his soul or on unbelief by non-violent means like argumentation, jihad must also include a military, violent war.

Also, the clauses that say jihad means the struggle to improve “the quality of life” or the fight against “tyranny and oppression” are ambiguous. Islam expresses the will of Allah, and jihad battles anything that stands in its way.

By any clear reading of the Quran, the hadith (reports of Muhammad’s words and actions outside of the Quran), the histories, the biographies and the law books on early Islam, jihad cannot exclude military warfare in the cause of Allah in order to expand Islam...

One powerful motive for waging jihad is the material benefits. The conquered territories fall under the control of the jihadists, and they are permitted to keep it. If anyone is looking for the reason for the spread of Islam, then this is a solid one, (though other reasons come into play, like following the will of Allah). The newly conquered have the option to convert, in which case they pay a forced “charity” or zakat tax. Or they are allowed to remain in the Biblical faith and pay a jizya or poll tax. Granted, it is often asserted that the jizya is less than the forced “charity” tax, but either way, money flows into the Islamic treasury.

Why would Muhammad receive a revelation that dries up this money flow, especially when it is connected to military war?

Indeed, read it all.

Teenagers to swear allegience at Citizens Days

Will the UK become more like the US, complete with a pledge of allegiance? From the Scotsman, with thanks to Eschwapp.

EVERY youngster in the UK will be required to take part in citizenship ceremonies under a radical government plan to boost "Britishness" and combat extremism, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

Ministers are considering the controversial move following the bomb attacks in London by UK-born Muslims, which have placed unprecedented focus on the question of British identity.

Experts have warned that the bombers are the product of Britain's ghettoised urban culture, which has failed to provide national symbols around which to unite.

Scotland on Sunday can reveal that Britain's first 'Citizenship Day' has been pencilled in for this October, to celebrate the value of community and volunteer work.

Ministers are also consulting on plans to copy citizenship ceremonies in Australia and Canada, where citizens are encouraged to take part in ceremonies pledging their allegiance to their country...

Muslim-Themed 'Beurger King' Opens

I was initially not going to comment on this, since I have mixed feelings about it, but about ten gazillion people have sent it to me, so here goes.

Muslims are in France -- and they have to eat. Some may see this as a sign of the Islamization of France, and that it may be. But there is also a positive side. Instead of agitating the real Burger King or other fast food outlets to accommodate themselves to halal requirements, they are simply starting their own. This is genuine pluralism.

From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

PARIS - Muslims in France are having it their way with "Beurger King" — a new fast-food restaurant that caters to the country's large Islamic population.

The bright and colorful eatery was launched in July in an eastern Paris suburb crowded with immigrants and dilapidated housing projects. Its name plays on the French word "Beur," meaning a second-generation North African living in France.

The menu at Beurger King Muslim, or BKM, is standard fast-food fare: burgers, fries, sundaes and doughnuts, and prices are comparable to those at major chains. But the beef and chicken burgers are halal — meaning made with meat slaughtered according to Islamic dietary laws.

Waitresses wear Islamic head scarves, as do many of their customers.

Blair's measures 'comparable with Hitler'

Dr. Mohammed Naseem knows how to push the West's buttons. Remember that what he is calling Hitlerian are moves to deport preachers who preach violent jihad and the imposition of a Sharia state in Britain. "Measures 'comparable with Hitler,'" from the Evening Standard, with thanks to Scaramouche:

There have already been calls for Dr Naseem's resignation, after he questioned whether Muslims were responsible for the July 7 atrocities and suggested that al Qaida may not exist.

Mr Blair wants new powers to exclude or deport foreign nationals who come to the UK to preach hate, and said he is ready to amend the Human Rights Act in order to do so.

He is consulting on measures to close down mosques and bookshops which are identified as centres where terrorism is glorified or condoned.

And he has announced a ban on two radical Islamist organisations, Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, even though their leadership insist that they do not advocate violence in the UK.

Dr Naseem told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think he is not very wise in the way he did it. I am saying he is not handling the situation wisely, because he says one thing at one time and another at another."

He said there were "similarities" between Mr Blair's approach to Britain's Muslim community and Hitler's demonisation of Jews early in his time as German Chancellor.

"He (Hitler) was democratically elected and gradually he created a bogey identity, that is, the Jewish people, and posed to the Germans that they were a threat to the country," said Dr Naseem.

"On that basis, he started a process of elimination of Jewish people. I see the similarities. Everything moves step by step. I am saying these are dangerous times and we must take note of this."

CAIR condemns Jewish attacker

"Says assault shows terrorism 'can rise out of any faith'"; I say otherwise in this WND article (thanks to all who sent this in):

A controversial Muslim advocacy group quickly condemned the shooting attack yesterday by an "Israeli terrorist," using the opportunity to reinforce its contention that Islam has as much to do with terrorism as any other faith.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said, "This brutal attack on innocent civilians once again demonstrates that terrorism and extremism can rise out of any faith."

As WorldNetDaily reported, Eden Natan Zada, 19, was lynched by a mob of Palestinians after he opened fire on a bus and killed four Arabs, allegedly in protest of the Gaza withdrawal plan.

Police are calling the incident a "Jewish terror attack" and are on high alert for Palestinian revenge attacks, warning of a likely immediate deterioration in Israel's security situation.

CAIR said it calls on "American religious and political leaders to condemn the attack and to repudiate the extremist views that apparently motivated the perpetrator."

"Terror is terror, no matter what faith the terrorist espouses," the statement said.

Responding to CAIR's comment, scholar and author Robert Spencer told WorldNetDaily the group's "rush to condemn this isolated incident only underscores their curious silence after the great majority of Islamic terror attacks."

"Terror is indeed terror, but there is no organized movement of Jewish – or Christian – terrorists using their scriptures to justify that terror," said Spencer, director of Jihad Watch.

"There is such a global movement of Islamic terrorists – and what is CAIR doing to convince them of the error of their ways?" he asked.

Spencer said CAIR "needs to stop engaging in spurious finger-pointing such as this statement and work among Muslims to refute the jihad ideology they claim to reject but so far have done little or nothing to counter."

Blair to toughen rules for 'hate' preachers

"I’m sorry, but this is England, Britain, and we don’t want this fomenting of terrorism to go on." Quite right, old man. From the Times Online, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Tony Blair is expected to give details this morning of proposals to widen the British Government's powers to deport and the block the entry of preachers and extremists who encourage terrorism in the UK.

The Prime Minister will not announce any new powers, rather a clarification and extension of rules that already allow Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, to remove individuals from Britain if they are deemed a security threat.

In the days after the London bombings, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, asked for new rules to proscribe "glorifying terrorism" and to make it easier to prosecute what he called "preachers of hate".

This morning, Sir Ian welcomed the proposed expansion of powers: "It may have been better if it was done before, but let’s do it now," he told GMTV.

Sir Ian also said that he believed that there was now more public support for rules to govern the behaviour of provocative preachers and extremists. In the past, critics have warned that preachers will be imprisoned and persecuted in their home countries if they are removed from Britain.

"One of the difficulties has been this idea about how can we deport people to places where they may suffer oppression," he said. "Well, I think the public mood is shifting. I’m sorry, but this is England, Britain, and we don’t want this fomenting of terrorism to go on."

West: PC war on terror

Diana West in the Washington Times notes that people are getting fed up with politically correct dhimmitude:

But getting back to the best thing that's happened of late: Maybe all the side-stepping euphemisms, from struggle to fatwa, don't matter as much any more. Elites on the left and the right, in the government and in the media, can persist in their PC babble, all of which seems to translate to "Better Dead Than Rude" (slogan attributed to John Derbyshire). But maybe some people — the ones Ronald Reagan always trusted and Abraham Lincoln said you couldn't always fool — are starting to figure things out, and without the help of elites. There is intriguing anecdotal evidence that non-pol, non-pundit citizens are looking for the kind of debate that is beyond the ken of the most prominent officials and journalists.

I say this in light of two very separate incidents — and, more specifically, the reaction to them.

First, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)" by Robert Spencer went on sale at Amazon.com. In advance of a publicity campaign, advertising, interviews or reviews, the book climbed as high as #14 this week on Amazon's sales list. This is significant, not just as a publishing story of a book that made an initial splash before anyone could give it a push. As an entry in Regnery's PIG series (Politically Incorrect Guides), Mr. Spencer's book arrives in the marketplace with an identity, if not an attitude: The reader knows he is going to get the story as it is never told in the mainstream culture. Mr. Spencer, on whose expert analysis at www.jihadwatch.org I have come to rely, seems to have provided a book people are hungry for -— a book that explains, as the president and all his men (and Condi) cannot, why it is that the sharia-spreaders and the murder-bombers and, as Oriana Fallaci vividly labels them, "the head-choppers" do it all for "the religion of peace."

The second incident involves not the appearance of a book, but rather the disappearance of a voice. Last week, WMAL's Michael Graham got his microphone yanked for daring to notice, mention and ponder the links between Islam and terrorism on the air. In an outrage against the First Amendment, the ABC affiliate, directed by its parent company Disney, suspended Mr. Graham without pay for exercising not only his freedom of speech, but also his faculties of logic. Why did WMAL do this? Because CAIR — a Hamas-linked organization with, as Daniel Pipes recently pointed out, "five current or former ... affiliates arrested, convicted or deported on terrorism-related charges" (DanielPipes.org) — put pressure on the station to do so.

The reaction? As of the Saturday morning after the Thursday night Mr. Graham was fired, he took to his blog to thank listeners for the 10,000 emails or so that he estimated had been sent to the station on his behalf. By Tuesday, he was begging people to stop: "The volume of calls and emails is hurting the ability of some very good people to do their jobs, and trust me — your message has been received."

That message was sent because people want facts — hard, non-PC, and vital to their understanding of what we're really up against.

Jatras: Hillary's Islamic Connections

Ready for another presidential election campaign? I'm not either, but Stella L. Jatras points out that Hillary is already running -- and that it is not too early to take note of her pronounced dhimmi tendencies:

Talk is that Hillary "I can't wait till 2008" Clinton may be planning a run for president in the next election. Following my comments is a copy of the 1996 speech that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton gave to the American Muslim Council at the first White House Eid al-Fitr, the holiday which celebrates the end of Ramadan. But before that, a few observations of those who were present for this "historic occasion."

One name Hillary mentions is that of Mr. Khaled Saffuri, the assistant director of the American Muslim Council. It is amazing what you can find on the internet; this is what I came across while surfing: an article entitled "Saffuri's Ties to Terror Suspects; Is Khaled Saffuri, a prominent Palestinian activist with connections to terror suspects, exerting undue influence on the Bush administration, or is he getting a bad rap?" This article says in part:

[Grover] Norquist, the conservative fund-raiser and anti-pork president of Americans for Tax Reform, cofounded the Islamic Institute with Saffuri in 1998. Norquist insists that any attempt to tie Saffuri to terrorist supporters is "guilt by association." Those who make such accusations, Norquist tells reporters, are "racists and bigots."

Another distinguished guest was Rashid Chaudary, a millionaire who deals in diamonds and is Chairman and CEO of Raani Corporation (See "Clinton-Gore fund-raiser skirts coup plot" from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - a "must read.") I'm sure Chaudary will be right there with his wallet open for Hillary.

And let us not forget that also serving Allah is Major Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, the first Muslim chaplain in the US Army. (See "The Chaplain Problem: What gives with imams in the military?" by Kate O'Bierne in National Review.)

Remember, this event was the first time in American history that a Muslim holiday was celebrated in The White House -- and now it is trrrradition!

Now here, from the American Muslim Council Bulletin, is the First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's address at the White House Celebration of Eid al-Fitr on February 20, 1996:

Eid Mubarak. I want to welcome you all to the White House as you and Muslims all over the world celebrate the end of Ramadan. I am honored so many of you could take the time to share part of this holy month with us here.

This is an historic occasion -- the first Eid celebration ever at the White House. It is only befitting that, just as children and families of other faiths have come here to celebrate some of their holy days, so you, too, are all here to mark this important Islamic tradition.

This celebration is an American event. We are a nation of immigrants who have long drawn on our diverse religious traditions and faiths for the strength and courage that make America great. For two centuries, we have prided ourselves on being a nation of plurastistic beliefs, united by a common faith in democracy.

As the fastest growing religion in this country, Islam will only continue to enrich our people and our society. And a greater understanding of the tenets of Islam in our national consciousness will help us build strength and resilience as a nation. That is why the President and I believe this is such an historic and overdue occasion.

Like many Americans, I have only recently gained a full appreciation of Islam. When I was growing up, there were no courses in Islamic history or religion in my schools and the Qur'an was not on too many bookshelves in American households.

Fortunately, that has changed as I know from my own family experience. I have to admit that a good deal of what my husband and I have learned has come from my daughter, who some of you who are our friends know took a course last year in Islamic history. When she and I traveled to South Asia, she provided me with a running commentary on everything we saw and visited.

There we met many Muslim families, some of whom were struggling to make ends meet. But despite their material poverty, the richness of their spiritual devotion -- their faith was overwhelming. Their commitment to their families was impressive.

Last night you ended 30 days of fasting and prayer. During this month of self-denial you have each striven to become wealthier in spirit, to strengthen your commitment to God, to develop greater compassion for the poor, and to nurture your family relationships. The values which lie at the heart of Ramadan -- of faith, family, community and responsibility for the less fortunate, and responsibility for the less fortunate -- resonate with all the peoples of this earth. They are universal values.

But in this era of change, this age of endless possibility and great uncertainty, it is easy to forget our common priorities and shared values, and instead dwell on our divisions.

No matter what religion we follow, we must not allow extremists of any faith to manipulate the priorities and values of the majority of that religion's followers. We have seen what tragedies can happen when religion whether it is Christianity, Judaism or Islam, is exploited for political gains. If we employ religion as an excuse for intolerance, divisiveness, or violence, we betray our purpose. Since coming to the White House, I have been privileged to meet some of the world's great religious leaders, among them Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhist. And despite their profound differences, each speaks from a deep well-spring of love that affirms life and yearns for men and women to open their hearts like children to God and to one another.

So, on this day, I encourage all of us to continue reaching out to both neighbors and strangers to help each other appreciate our faiths and to seek to understand the faiths of one another.

Here in America, it is gratifying to see the great contributions that Muslims have made and are making to this nation. Ramadan celebrates the time centuries ago when the Prophet Muhammad received the Qur'an from God. The Qur'an has touched and enlightened billions, including my own family. As I learn more about Islam and about all of the great religions, I am struck by the remarkable similarities among them. We know that we have so much more in common than what divides us if we seek to celebrate that.

May peace be with all of us, and may God grant us health and prosperity now and in the years ahead.

I would like to introduce some special guests who will take a few minutes to share their thoughts and prayers with us.

The first who will address us is a young woman, Marwa Alkhairo, age 11, who will tell us about the meaning of Ramadan.

She will be followed by Chaplain Muhammad, the first Islamic chaplain to serve the United States military, who will offer a prayer.

Mr. Khaled Saffuri, the assistant director of the American Muslim Council, which is sponsoring this reception, will bring our program to a close.

I also want to thank two dear friends of ours, Mr. Rashid Chaudary and Kamran Khan, for all their help on this occasion.

Now it gives me great pleasure to introduce Marwa to you.

A portrait of The First Lady accompanies her speech, which shows the First Lady holding the Qur'an during the Eid celebration of February 20, 1996. Muslim children are standing in the background.

One can find little fault with The First Lady's speech (although, perhaps with her sincerity). She makes nice-nice with a "Can't we all just git along?" appeal. Now, for a contrasting view of Islam, I leave you with the following, from the Atlantic Monthly of April/May 1995: The Lucifer Principle, an excerpt of the book by Howard Bloom:

Some readers will be outraged by my presumption. How dare I regard any group as barbaric? What appalling ethnocentrism! there are no barbarians. There are simply cultures we haven't taken the time to understand. Cultures to whom we haven't given sufficient aid.

Cultures in need of development. Beneath the skin, all men and women are the same. They have the same needs, the same emotions, and the same ideals. If you simply took those folks you speak of so contemptuously out for a cup of coffee, you would discover that they are just like you and me.

But there are barbarians--people whose cultures glorify the act of murder and elevate violence to a holy deed. These cultures portray the extinction of other human beings as a validation of manliness, a heroic gesture in the name of truth, or simply a good way to get ahead in the world. Islamic societies tend to be high on this list. Holiness, righteousness, and even day-to-day propriety in Islamic cultures are based on the example of Mohammed. Though Islamic literature praises Mohammed as a man of peace, he was anything but.

In A.D. 624, the Prophet announced the concept of the jihad-the holy war. He said in the blessed book the Koran, "Kill those who join other gods with God (e.g., Christians) wherever you shall find them, and seize them and slay them, and lay in wait for them with every kind of ambush." In the next nine years, the man of peace ordered at least 27 military campaigns, personally leading nine of them.

It is not surprising that Moslem jurists would later declare that there are two worlds; the world of Islam, Dar al-Islam, and the non-Islamic World, Dar al-Harb. These two territorial spheres, explained the Moslem scholars, are in a state of perpetual war. According to the Koran, any leader who fails to "make wide slaughter" in the land of the infidel is committing a sin. A statesman is only allowed the temporary expedient of peace if his forces are not yet strong enough to win. This may explain why Elias Canetti, in his Nobel Prize-winning book "Crowds and Power," calls Islam a killer religion, literally a religion of war.

In the West, we think of scholars as meek little men with glasses, leading peace marches. In the lands of Islam, famous scholars often spent years studying every nuance of their Koran, then rounded up an army, and went out to make war in the name of Allah.

In the thirties, one of them labored diligently to become an Islamic scholar. He poured over the Koran for years. As he demonstrated his superior knowledge of Allah's pronouncements, he rose in the ranks of Iranian holy men. Finally, he achieved the penultimate title - ayotollah (roughly equivalent of a Catholic cardinal). His name was Ruhollah Khomeini, and he wrote books, pamphlets, and even taped and distributed his speeches to inspire the citizens of Iran with sacred virtue. The ayotollah's words roused Iranians to overthrow the shah and usher in a government based on strict Islamic doctrine.

What did the ayatollah's pronouncement say? Among other things, that infidels are like dogs. Their existence is an affront to Allah. Here's how the ayatollah himself put it:

"Moslems have no alternative...to an armed holy war against profane governments...Holy war means the conquest of all non-Moslem territories...It will...be the duty of every able bodied adult male to volunteer for this war of conquest, the final aim of which is to put the Koranic law in power from one end of the earth to the other.

"The leaders of the USSR and of England and the president of the United States are ... infidels ... Every part of the body of a non-Moslem individual is impure, even the hair on his head and his body, his nails, and all the secretion of his body. Any man or woman who denies the existence of God, or believes in His partners (the Christian Trinity), or else does not believe in His Prophet Mohammed, is impure (in the same way as are excrement, urine, dog, and wine).

Concluded the ayatollah (Ruhollah Khomeini), "Islam does not allow peace between...a Moslem and an infidel."

(From here, only excerpts are posted because of its length)

The ground is ripe for worldwide Islamic fundamentalist expansion. Mohammedanism is currently the fastest-growing religion on the planet. There are a billion Moslems and that number is increasing daily.

For six hundred years after the fall of the Crusader states, Islamic forces returned to the attack, capturing Greece and chunks of eastern Europe, raiding towns in Sicily and the Italian coasts for goods and slaves, preying on Mediterranean shipping, chaining Europeans like Miguel Cervantes to the oars of their galleys, and until 1826 forcing the Christian citizens of Yugoslavia and Albanian to give up their children to Moslem overlords (who brought up the males on the Koran, then turned them into soldiers known as Janissaries).

Allah is rapidly equipping Khomeini's followers with a sword to carry out their master's wishes. He has offered Islam the fire in which the Koran says those who follow false faiths are destined to burn: nuclear weaponry. He has also provided the long-range missiles needed to use it. According to the late imam's logic, there may be only one just and righteous thing to do; employ this technology to wipe out recalcitrant heathens like you and me. [Adapted from The Lucifer Principle: a Scientific Expedition Into The Forces of History by Howard Bloom (Atlantic Monthly Press).]

DC Watson: Prominent Muslims: Clean your own house first

DC Watson once again skewers the American Muslim spokesmen who have managed to hoodwink the mainstream media:

Another shocker! Prominent Islamic speakers are again whining in public. Not surprisingly, they're offended by what non-Muslims have been saying, despite the fact that they themselves have had no trouble taking the liberty to make one asinine remark after another.

Recently, prominent Muslims floated right over the falls when Congressman Tom Tancredo made remarks about Mecca and other sites that Muslims consider holy being "taken out" in the event of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil. They have called for him to make a public apology. They have called for him to be censored. And, as in the case of radio talk show host Michael Graham, they have called for his job.

Regardless of whether or not Tancredo's, Graham's, or anyone else's comments have been out of line or over the top, this is the United States. They are free to make them. It's our First Amendment right. These Muslims, whose own statements have been much more odious although largely unchallenged, should know this as well as anyone.

They even go as far as hassling the advertisers of radio and television stations about remarks made about Islam by the station's talk show hosts.

If I advertised my business on a radio station, I don't know how much I'd appreciate some Muslim group interrupting my business day to complain about someone speaking poorly about them on the radio.

We are at war. The gloves need to hit the ice at some point. Those who follow the Qur’an word-for-word have declared war on the West, period. Cloak it in a religion, cloak it in a peaceful request for asylum and refuge, the fact remains that we're at war. Muslims declared this war long before 9/11/01. War against non-Muslims was declared centuries ago. Islam has been at war with non-Muslims since its inception. These wars have not been defensive in nature. If Americans speak honestly about Islam and happen to say something negative, too bad. This war isn't just being fought militarily, it's being fought politically -- with attempts to subvert the United States Constitution.

While there have been long periods of time between Islamic attacks, there has always been someone willing to step up and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, encouraging Muslims to continue warring in the name of Allah, rather than to live peacefully.

Courtesy Ali Sina: 1981- On the day of celebration of the birth of Muhammad

"If the Amir al mo’menin [Commander of the Faithful] wanted to be tolerant, he would not have drawn his sword killing 700 people in one go. In our prisons we have more of the same kind of people who are corrupt. If we do not kill them, each one of them that gets out, will become a murderer! They don't become humans." "Why do you Mullahs only go after the ordinances of prayer and fasting?" "Why do you only read the Quranic verses of mercy and do not read the verses of killing? Quran says; kill, imprison!" "Why are you only clinging to the part that talks about mercy? Mercy is against God." "We need a Khalifa who would chop hands, cut throat, stone people." "In the same way that the messenger of God used to chop hands, cut throats, and stone people." "In the same way that he massacred the Jews of Bani Qurayza because they were a bunch of discontent people. If the Prophet used to order to burn a house or exterminate a tribe that was justice. You must put aside these childish sentimentalism." "We believe that the accused essentially does not have to be tried. He or she must just be killed. Only their identity is to be established and then they should be killed." -- Ruhollah Mousavi - Better known as Ayatollah Khomeini

Khomeini, in this speech, said exactly what Muslim groups in the West never wanted us to know about Islam. When we think about it, they have quite an enterprise going here. If you have the wild-eyed dream of converting the world to Islam, that is.

1. Apply for asylum in the West, because the nation you call home is oppressive and barbaric.

2. Migrate to the West, appear to be meek and mild, well-mannered and soft-spoken. Meet with upper levels of your host nation's government, claiming to be an ambassador of pluralism.

3. Then on weekends at Muslim gatherings, promote the implementation of the very same oppressive and barbaric behavior that you claim to have left behind for a better life in the West.

4. When those in your fellowship murder innocent people with airliners and bombs, you throw out a generic public condemnation, making sure that you name no specific names.

5. Disassociate yourselves with the Muslim killers, saying that they are out on the fringe of Islam, and claim that this is only a “tiny minority of extremists” who are committing these crimes -- because killing innocent people goes against the teachings of Islam.

6. No matter how many of your fellow Muslims are convicted of terror crimes, always maintain this story.

7. Oh, and always make sure that you don't let it slip out that no non-Muslim is considered innocent.

8. Always, always, always use religion for protection.

9. Even though your religion is loaded with cutthroats, always compare them to one or two loons from another religion.

10. Even though your book of scripture is chock full of racism and violence, always compare it to the scriptures of other religions, even though you know, like the rest of the world knows, that the believers of these other religions aren't out hacking, bombing, kidnapping and beheading like the believers of yours are.

11. Always remember to play the phony race card. Playing the victim is the best way to keep those who actually worry about hurting your fragile egos from protecting themselves against your deceit and undermining.

12. Remember that every time incitement to violence against non-Muslims slips out of your mouth, always use the excuse that your words were taken out of context. Oh, and be sure to call anyone who challenges you a bigot. Remember, play that phony race card!

The chances are better than average that hundreds of millions are now on to this game, with more and more people learning about what we face. Public opinion about Islam in Europe and the Far East is atrocious, especially in France, Spain, Russia, China, Germany, India and the Netherlands. With the exception of China, what all of these nations have in common is that they have allowed mass Muslim immigration.

So before any of these Islamic organizations, Imams, or clerics criticize someone for speaking out against their “religion of peace,” they should consider that perhaps they're just being oversensitive, and taking themselves far too seriously.

Galloway praises Iraq 'martyrs'

George Galloway continues his ardent pursuit of dhimmitude. From the BBC, with thanks to Zalbion:

MP George Galloway is being accused of putting UK troops at risk after calling insurgents in Iraq "martyrs".

During a tour of the Middle East, Mr Galloway spoke of "poor Iraqis" using the most basic weapons to write the names of their towns "in the stars".

The Respect MP accused the UK and America of "raping" Baghdad and said the US was losing the war.

Labour MP Eric Joyce said the comments endangered UK troops "in a small way" but Mr Galloway held little influence.

Mr Galloway's Respect party stresses that it and the Bethnal Green and Bow MP condemn suicide bombings, whether in London or the Middle East.

Any loss of civilian life is profoundly wrong, says the party, but it blames the US-UK coalition for turning Iraq into a war zone by their invasion.

Mr Galloway claimed the insurgents were ordinary Iraqis defending their country against "foreign invaders".

"It can be said, truly said, that the Iraqi resistance is not just defending Iraq. They are defending all the Arabs and they are defending all the people of the world against American hegemony."

'Martyrs'

In one speech, the MP said: "These poor Iraqis - ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons - are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable.

"We don't know who they are, we don't know their names, we never saw their faces, they don't put up photographs of their martyrs, we don't know the names of their leaders."

Jeff Rubin sent to sensitivity training

Ridiculous dhimmitude in Canada -- as if sheikhs and mullahs didn't control the world's oil supply. "'Sheik' quip lands banker in sensitivity training," from the Globe and Mail, with thanks to waterdragon52:

Jeff Rubin, the famously voluble chief economist of CIBC World Markets, has been sent to sensitivity training after angering Canada's most prominent Islamic lobby group with language he used in a report on the oil market.

In April, he predicted that oil prices would double by 2010. Demand will outstrip supply because "this time around there won't be any tap that some appeased mullah or sheik can suddenly turn back on," he wrote.

While Mr. Rubin used the terms to describe the OPEC-induced price shocks of years past, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) found the language offensive. In fact, CAIR-CAN wrote the bank saying it was "gravely concerned that Mr. Rubin is promoting stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs."

Two weeks after the complaint, CIBC World Markets chief executive Brian Shaw responded.

Mr. Shaw said in a letter to CAIR-CAN that the remarks "were not meant to offend anyone" but "in hindsight, the comments were insensitive."

Mr. Shaw went on to say that "we will be providing him [Mr. Rubin] with training to ensure that this situation does not occur again in the future . . . in addition, Jeff has withdrawn the research report from the World Markets website [and] redrafted the paragraph in question."

CAIR-CAN has posted the text of the exchange with Mr. Shaw on its website and urged its supporters to thank CIBC for excising the mentions of mullahs and sheiks. Mr. Rubin's revised forecast now concludes that "this time around, with suppliers already running full tilt, there's no tap that can suddenly be turned back on."

The controversy went unreported in mainstream newspapers, though one right-wing website that saw CAIR-CAN's statement on the controversy accused the group of going "way, way overboard in the name of political correctness."

You can say that again.

Dershowitz: The Vatican's Terrorism Omission

Alan Dershowitz brings some clear thinking to the Vatican's curious refusal to condemn terrorism against Israel. He correctly notes that this is tacitly approving of terror attacks against civilians in states that allegedly violate international law. The implications are chilling; this stance should be repudiated by the Vatican immediately. From FrontPage (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

Let us now try to understand the Vatican’s bizarre policy on terrorism. Recently Pope Benedict XVI condemned terrorist attacks against civilians in Great Britain, Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey. In a pregnant omission – very pregnant in light of the Vatican’s long history of silence in the face of attacks against Jews – the Pope omitted any mention of the country that has suffered the largest number of terrorist attacks against civilians since 9/11, namely, Israel. When the Israeli government understandably protested the omission, the Vatican’s position became even more troubling. It singled out Israel for criticism, saying that that beleaguered nation’s responses to attacks against its civilians was “not always compatible with the rules of international law.” It then went on to say that the Vatican could not protest every Palestinian attack against Jewish civilians if Israel did not always follow international law.

Let’s try to understand what this means. Unless a country is absolutely flawless in its response to terrorism, the Vatican will not condemn terrorism against its civilian citizens. This seems to justify the killing of civilians as a protest against violation of international law. If that “moral” position is not bizarre enough, let us turn to the actual facts. Egypt’s response to terrorism is far, far more violative of international law than Israel’s. Egypt routinely tortures – I mean really tortures to death – suspected terrorists, to say nothing of mere dissidents. Turkey’s record is not all that much better. The U.S. and Great Britain have killed many more civilians in responding to terrorism in Iraq than Israel has done. So even if the Vatican’s statement of principle were morally acceptable – which it surely is not – that principle would in no way justify leaving Israel off a list that includes many worse violators of international law.

Moreover, the Vatican’s snippy condemnation of Israel for its reprisals is particularly untimely. Israel, unique among nations victimized by terrorism, has refrained from any significant reprisals over the past several months, despite the facts that terrorist attacks against its civilians continue. It has made a point of withholding its right to respond in the interests of facilitating peace.

Fitzgerald: Why don’t Muslims integrate into Western societies?

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the vexing problem of Muslim integration in Western countries:

Islam itself is entirely responsible for the failure of Muslims in Infidel lands to integrate.

And here is why:

1) Islam itself teaches Muslims to be suspicious of, to hate, to refuse to trust, to offer only feigned friendship to, all non-Muslims. There are passages all over the Qur'an and Hadith about this. "Take not the Christians and Jews for friends, for they are friends only with each other." "Smite the Unbelievers wherever you find them." Not much room for nuance there. The stories in the Hadith about the triumph over, and the killing of, and the seizure of women and property from, non-Muslims whom Muhammad believed he and his men were entitled to attack (even if those in question had done nothing to them) further encourages such an attitude.

Then there are all the stories about Muhammad himself. What does it mean to someone to learn that Muhammad watched with satisfaction as 600-800 members of the Banu Qurayza, bound and helpless, were decapitated one by one? Does that encourage peaceful co-existence, or that famous "convivencia" that supposedly was such a heart-warming feature of Islamic Spain -- which for some has become the model of what they apparently see as an inevitably-islamized Europe? If so, they should read a little more deeply into the history of Islamic Spain (hint: do not believe a word from that sentimentalist Maria Rosa Menocal, "Director of the Whitney Center for the Humanities" at Yale University -- ca en dit long about the state of American education).

It may be quite hard to work for Infidel employers, or to get along well with Infidel fellow-workers, if one is constantly offering only ill-concealed -- or at times well-concealed -- hostility. Nor does the Muslim sense of Muslim entitlement make it easy for Muslims to endure, or to endure with good grace, such an arrangement: Islam by right should dominate, Muslims should rule, it is contra naturam, against all that is right and just, for Muslims to have to accommodate themselves to non-Muslim customs and laws and ways of behaving. If they must, they should only do so temporarily -- until Muslims are sufficiently powerful, which can happen long before they are an absolute majority. Just look at all the demands made constantly, so that Infidels begin to behave, even when they need not, as dhimmis: willing to placate, to make excuses for, to bend over backwards for, Muslim outrages in deed or in word or in attitude – outrages that may be obvious to all those who have kept their wits about them.

2) Inshallah-fatalism. The deep belief in the will of Allah, of Allah ta'ala (Allah Knows Best), of references in every greeting, paragraph, sentence,

3) The habit of submission -- of mental submission -- does not encourage skepticism, liveliness, "thinking outside the silly box" and so on. The habit of mental submission encourages -- the habit of mental submission. This can limit entrepreneurial activity, just as the sullen dislike of one's status, of the status of Muslims who do not lord it over non-Muslims but must adjust, can help to explain the difficulty of employing Muslims in a non-Muslim workplace.

4) Why should Infidels wish to employ Muslims? Why should they wish to create an unpleasant work environment for themselves? Fetish-worshippers of diversity may wish to do so: a newspaper, say, that thinks the "best way" to cover Muslims is to hire a Muslim (which is, in fact, probably the worst way, if it amounts to the usual apologetics and misinformation). Sometimes, of course, one is dealing with those who either hide very well, or may in fact not feel -- as "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims -- the hostility toward non-Muslims that Islam inculcates. But even those who never go to a mosque may at times engage in a sudden flaring-up, a sudden note of hysteria, when the subject of Islam is even tangentially raised -- as if it is simply a subject completely off-limits for Infidels. And nowadays, how can one discuss anything in the world's news without discussing Islam? One sees this reaction even in some of the seemingly most Westernized, most sophisticated, and suavest of Muslims -- a sudden rage, a sudden rush of furious defensiveness that overcomes the truth, that makes even someone who a minute ago was so calm, so rational, so seemingly part of the smae moral and intellectual universe -- and who a minute before might have been attacking aspects of Islam himself -- will, if an Infidel agrees with the attack, or dares to add his own two-cents' worth to the discussion, will withdraw into a circling-the-wagons mode.

5) Muslims through time and space lived in the lands they conquered through the loot acquired from non-Muslims, and they continued to exploit those non-Muslims thorugh the jizyah, and in other ways. As historians of India well know, the Hindus were initially subject to mass execution and mass enslavement. Some of those enslaved converted. Others did not wait to be enslaved, but converted after witnessing the realities of life under Muslim rule. But the Mughal -- and even the earliest Muslim rulers from the initial conquests -- realized that if the only possible choices open to Hindus -- as non-People of the Book (ahl al-kitab), they were not permitted to live and practice openly their religion -- were death or conversion, then there would ultimately be no non-Muslims left to be exploited economically for the purposes of the Muslim state. This could end the fabled Mughal luxury, the famed Mughal magnificence that so entrances certain writers (as the upscale, and more scholarly, Barbara Cartland of Mughal India, William Dalrymple). Hindus were accorded "honorary" status as dhimmis, not because of Muslim mercy, but because by so doing, the ruling Muslims could economically exploit them through the jizyah (which the tolerant, syncretistic Akbar managed to temporarily suspend -- one more reason why Akbar is remembered fondly by Hindus, and despised by Muslims).

Another way of finding loot, or slaves to exploit, were the constant series of slaving raids. Islam created slave societies -- slaves on horseback, slaves in the harem, slaves to build the palace of Moulay Hasan or the Taj Mahal. Everywhere, slaves from non-Muslim lands -- from black Africa by the tens of millions, slaves from the Slavic lands and Georgia and Circassia, by the many millions, and slaves taken over centuries by raiding parties that landed, destroyed villages, and seized villagers up and down the coasts of Western Europe. This too was a source of wealth, and in fact the corsairs that left ports in North Africa, especially Algiers, continued to raid Christian shipping until two things -- the American military response to the Barbary Pirates, and then the seizure, by the exasperated French, of Algiers in 1830, which put an end to the corsairs and their officially-sanctioned raids on Christian cargoes and enslavement of Infidel sailors.

The corsair-piracy has stopped, or found new means of expression, but the jizyah, in disguised forms, has continued. Arab and Muslim states have economies that depend heavily on one of two things:

1. The oil and gas-rich Muslim states depend on this manna from Allah -- which is exactly how they see it. They do not regard this accident of geology as an accident of geology, but as a sign of Allah's favor -- why else should so much of the oil lie under the lands of dar al-Islam?

2. The Arab and Muslim states that do not possess oil wealth, instead of having the oil-rich Muslim states share that wealth, have managed to get on the Infidel list of countries deserving of foreign aid. Suddenly that supposed loyalty of the umma al-islamiyya seems to disappear when it comes to oil money, save for the sums given to reward suicide bombers among the "Palestinians," and of course for any significant arms projects. No matter how corrupt, how full of anti-Americanism and antisemitism these societies may be, Western money keeps pouring in: to Egypt ($60 billion from America alone), to Pakistan, to Jordan, and to the shock troops of the Jihad against Israel, the local Arabs who after 1967 were carefully renamed as the "Palestinian people" so as to disguise the essential nature, and ultimate aims (not exactly concealed, by the way) of the Arab war on Israel, an Infidel sovereign state in the midst of dar al-Islam that must, in Arab and Muslim eyes, go -- sooner or later. It is a matter of pride. It is a matter of self-esteem. It is a matter of how the Arabs and the Muslims see themselves. What else could possibly matter?

The $9 billion pledged by the G-8 at Gleneagles to keep afloat a non-viable state, or a state that will only be viable at the expense of tiny Israel, because for some reason everyone has ignored the real history of that area, the demographics, the nature of land ownership, and as well has decided to apply rules about territory either captured from an aggressor, or if not captured directly, assigned to one of the winning members in a coalition -- rules that have been applied after every war. For how else did Italy acquire the Alto Adige, which when it was handed over had a population that was 97% German-speaking and ethnically part of Deutschtum? Yet who among us thinks Italy was not entitled to, and should return to Austria, the Sudtirol it possesses? And what of all the changes in borders after World War II, and the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia (3 million Sudeteners), from Poland, and elsewhere, not to mention land taken (Kaliningrad was once Kant's Koenigsberg)?

Yet the Americans and Europeans pay the jizyah to the "Palestinians" and are fearful of stopping, just as they continue to pay Pakistan, the supporter and promoter of the Taliban, the supporter and promoter of Dr. A. Q. Khan (without whom North Korea would not be the problem it is today). We continue to engage in bribery instead of reading Pakistan the riot-act, threatening to destroy not only its military (withholding all parts, all future deliveries) but also its economy (no one has to buy the child-labor textiles and rugs of Pakistan, and while that economy -- that is, while its zamindars -- are prospering, that can be ended in a minute).

Within Europe, the Muslims have the same attitude. The property and women of the Infidels belongs to them. There is nothing wrong with taking Infidel property. There is nothing wrong with raping Infidel women. It is not an accident that 70% of the prison population in France is Muslim; that 70% of the rapes of women in Scandinavia are by Muslims; that the drug traffickers in Holland, and the spacciatori di droga in Italy, are Muslims -- no, this should not surprise.

What does surprise is the failure of the non-Musli world to understand that this all fits into, and can be explained by, a coherent ideology that makes it virtually impossible for Muslims -- to the extent that they remain full believers, or turn into full believers -- to ever comfortably fit into, or ever accept, Western or other non-Muslim societies, mores, manners, laws, or ever to accept the idea of living in a society where the Infidel ways, the Infidel understandings, are to be permanent. This rankles Muslims. This is not right. The world belongs in the end to Allah, and to his people. It is to them that the property and women of others belongs. Not every Believer feels this, but in the canonical texts, and the tenets logically derived from them, and in the attitudes and atmospherics to which those tenets and the whole system of Islam gives rise, these views are not strange but natural and familiar.

And then there is another problem: the problem of the "moderate" Muslim -- which is to say, the relaxed, or unobservant Muslim, the Muslim who may not act according to the tenets of Islam today, but may suddenly acquire a deep psychic need to return to Islam, for whatever reasons. When one is in mental disarray, and happens to be a Muslim, provided with a Total Explanation of the Universe, and a Complete Regulation of existence, one can quite easily come to view the universe through the prism of islam.

And it need be nothing political -- nothing in the newspapers -- that sets one off. A death in the family, the loss of a job, the failure to get into a certain school, the perception that others do not share one's worldview and see no reason to accommodate themselves, and of course the depression that can come upon so many of us, Muslim and non-Muslim, at any time -- are all cause for alarm. But non-Muslims provide their own answers, their own home remedies, as they can, and those answers, and their affixing of blame for their problems, can be as various as their parents, their spouses, their children, their siblings, their employer, The System, the stars, Fate, their cholesterol level, their serotonin level, even -- at times -- themselves. Muslims have only to look to the one thing that always presents itself to be blamed: the Infidels. Their wiles, their whisperings of Shaytan, their decadence, their indifference, their whateveritis of which Infidels are guilty. And once a non-Muslim Muslim, a "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslim, begins to redsicover Islam, to return to Islam, he can turn into that other thing -- a Muslim Muslim. And that is the problem, the permanent problem for Infidels, who have done nothing to deserve this ever-ready, this omnipresent blame.

There is no solution. Reducing Muslim numbers, and Muslim power, and ensuring that the Infidel lands do not engage in some kind of attempt to win Muslims by changing their own laws and customs, but remain implacably themselves, or perhaps deliberately Islam-hostile rather than Islam-friendly, so that those who now claim that they are "thinking of leaving" really do leave -- would anyone wish to stop them -- should be the goal of Infidels, engaged only in defending themselves against the carriers of Jihad, all over the world.

Bahrain: 'Indecent outfit' worn by athlete angers lawmaker

Sharia alert from Gulf News, with thanks to Eschwapp:

Manama: An outfit worn by a Bahraini athlete last week at an international track meet has caused an outrage in Bahrain.
A leading parliamentarian blasted the sports authorities for "disrespecting Islamic precepts and offending local values".

The published picture of Maryam Jamal dressed in a short sleeveless top and shorts after winning in the 3,000 metres in Oslo.

Islamist lawmaker Hamad Al Muhannadi yesterday said: "We were all shocked by the look of the young woman who was representing Bahrain at the international gathering. The outfit is not in any way related with the normal clothes that Bahraini young women are accustomed to wearing."...

"We are all aware of the mental, emotional and physical importance of sports and we want to promote athletic activities. However, we must ensure that they are within the perimeters of Islam and our local traditions," the legislator said....

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

A friend asked me to reply to this message he received on an email list. Since these themes are constantly repeated, I thought I'd share my response with you.

Here is the message:

In the case of Islam, one must look at the Qur'an; authentic traditions of Muhammed, the principles of the various classical legal schools, and, in the case of the Shiites, traditions of their 12 Imams to say "this is what Islam essentially says."

Now, if we look at any of these sources, we find that Islam DOES NOT prescribe or condone the taregting of civilians; terrorist activity; or genocide. Classical Islam does allow for, or even prescribe, offensive jihad, or wars of expansion. HOWEVER, offensive jihad can, according to traditional Islamic jurisprudence, ONLY be declared by the "Commander of the Faithful." For the Sunnis, that was the caliph, and the caliphate was abolished at the end of World War One. For the Shias, that is the Imam, and the last Imam has been in "occultation" or absent from visible view for the past 1100 years or so.

There are numerous ways in which the actions of Al Qaeda and others contradict classical, traditional, orthodox Islamic jurisprudence.

Would that it were so, but the writer of this message seems to have a knowledge of Islam that is sketchy at best. And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. My response:

Re targeting of civilians:

"It is not permissible to kill women or children unless they are fighting against the Muslims." ('Umdat al-Salik, o9.10).

"It is not permitted to kill women and children in battle, nor elsewhere, as long as they are not fighting..." (Mawardi, Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah, 4.2).

The idea of civilians ("women and children") fighting making it permissible to kill them has led modern jihad terrorists to justify 9/11 etc. by saying that everyone who was killed there was aiding the American war effort against Islam -- and that therefore killing them was ok.

"The term 'civilians' does not exist in Islamic religious law....I'm familiar with religious law. There is no such term as 'civilians' in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar Al-Harb [House of War] or not..." Dr. Hani Al-Siba'i, director of the Al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies, London, July 8, 2005.

Re offensive jihad:

Under ordinary circumstances, what he is saying is true: only the Commander of the Faithful can declare offensive jihad. That's why jihadists are so keen to reestablish the caliphate. Osama even had Mullah Omar of the Taliban proclaimed "Emir al-Momineen" (Commander of the Faithful) in 1996.

Also, the concept of defensive jihad requires no caliph. Jihad is ordinarily fard kifayah: an obligation on the community as a whole, which if some discharge, others are freed from. However, when a Muslim land is attacked, it becomes fard ayn: obligatory upon everyone individually. Abdullah Azzam, a founder of Al-Qaeda, and others have argued that jihad is now fard ayn because of the West's attack on Islam (Azzam was murdered, probably by Osama, in 1989, so he wasn't talking about Iraq).

This places every Islamic jihadist action in the context of the defense of Muslim lands, and so justifies today's jihad according to classical, traditional, orthodox Islamic jurisprudence.

If Osama's contemporary jihad violates "classical, traditional, orthodox Islamic jurisprudence," then let's see moderate Muslims refute his arguments using classical, traditional, orthodox Islamic jurisprudence. If they have done so, please send me their articles. I'm at director@jihadwatch.org.

Dhimmi UK cops: may I please arrest you, sir?

"Cops Must Keep the Faith," from Serious About News, with thanks to all who sent this in:

POLICE have been told to take their shoes off and not use sniffer dogs when raiding Muslim homes.

An 18-point guide issued by Bedfordshire Police lists dos and don'ts when dealing with Muslims who are suspected of terrorist or drugs offences.

The guidelines state that 'the Muslim community feels victimised and suspicious of counter terrorist police operations and in the current climate a search at a British Muslim household has the potential to become a critical incident and come under intense scrutiny'.

It then lists 18 points police officers should note.

These include:

• Rapid entry needs to be the last resort and raids into Muslim houses are discouraged for a number of religious dignity reasons.

• Police should seek to avoid looking at unclad Muslim women and allow them an opportunity to dress and cover their heads.

• For reasons of dignity officers should seek to avoid entering occupied bedrooms and bathrooms even before dawn.

• Use of police dogs will be considered serious desecration of the premises and may necessitate extensive cleaning of the house and disposal of household items.

• Advice should be sought before considering the use of cameras and camcorders due to the risk of capturing individuals, especially women, in inappropriate dress.

• Muslim prisoners should be allowed to take additional clothing to the station.

• If people are praying at home officers should stand aside and not disrupt the prayer. They should be allowed the opportunity to finish.

• Officers should not take shoes into the houses, especially in areas that might be kept pure for prayer purposes.

• In the current climate the justification for pre-dawn raids on Muslim houses needs to be clear and transparent.

• Non-Muslims are not allowed to touch holy books, Qurans or religious artefacts without permission. Where possible, Muslim officers in a state of 'Wudhu' (preparation before prayer) should be used for this purpose.

CAIR fumes at Michael Graham's replacement

Now Geoff Metcalf, Michael Graham's replacement, has annoyed CAIR just as much as Graham did by noting that the Qur'an tells Muslims to lie to unbelievers. Note that in this CAIR press release, Radio Host Claims Quran Teaches Muslims To Lie (thanks to Twostellas), they don't say that what Metcalf said was false. They can't. Why not? Because it's true.

As I explain in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), religious deception of unbelievers is taught by the Qur’an itself: "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" (Qur’an 3:28). In other words, don’t make friends with unbelievers except to "guard yourselves from them:" pretend to be their friends so that you can strengthen yourself against them. The distinguished Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir explains that this verse teaches that if "believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers," they may "show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly." The Qur’an also warns Muslims that those who forsake Islam will be consigned to Hell — except those forced to do so, but who remain true Muslims inwardly: "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" (Qur’an 16:106). Ibn Kathir explains that "the scholars agreed that if a person is forced into disbelief, it is permissible for him to either go along with them in the interests of self-preservation..."

This is not the first time CAIR has protested as "anti-Islamic incitement" a statement about Islam that was simply true.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- (OfficialWire) -- 08/03/05 -- A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on a Washington, D.C., radio station to address the incitement of anti-Muslim hatred caused by its talk show hosts. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued that call after a replacement for a talk show host suspended for anti-Islam remarks made similarly Islamophobic comments.

On Friday, July 29, WMAL-AM replacement host Geoff Metcalf stated: "And by the way, let me just add a sidebar here that's significant, and everybody forgets this, but according to the Quran, believers in Islam are not required to tell infidels, and that's us, the truth. So they apparently have permission to lie when it is appropriate." Most callers to the program expressed similar hostility to Muslims and to the faith of Islam.

Metcalf was replacing host Michael Graham, who was suspended without pay by the station for stating repeatedly that "Islam is a terrorist organization." Graham was suspended when CAIR initiated a public campaign against WMAL and the station's advertisers after receiving complaints from Muslim listeners.

In a statement, WMAL President and General Manager Chris Berry said that Graham would be suspended for statements that "crossed the line." "We do not condone his position and believe his statements were irresponsible," said Berry. (WMAL is owned by the Walt Disney Co.)

"We are strong supporters of the First Amendment, but it is disingenuous to misuse it as a shield for incitement to religious hatred," said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. "WMAL needs to address the promotion of Islamophobia by its talk show hosts if the station is to maintain credibility with mainstream listeners and advertisers." Hooper said CAIR is calling on Washington-area Muslims to contact WMAL advertisers and express their concerns. He added that people of all faiths may obtain a free copy of the Quran, Islam's revealed text.

Get that Qur'an and look up 3:28 and 16:106. CAIR hasn't taken them out of the book.

Multicultural Britain is not working, says Tory chief

Common sense from David Davis: "Muslims in turn have obligations not simply to condemn terror, but to confront it." From the Telegraph, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Muslims must start integrating into mainstream British society, says David Davis, the shadow home secretary and front-runner to take over the Conservative leadership.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph today, Mr Davis signalled a significant shift away from the policy of multi-culturalism, which allows people of different faiths and cultures to settle without expecting them to integrate.

"Often, the authorities have seemed more concerned with encouraging distinctive identities rather than promoting the common values of nationhood," Mr Davis writes.

His call for a rethink of the approach to immigrant communities came as Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, sought to reassure British Muslims that they were not being deliberately targeted by the Government's anti-terrorism powers.

After meeting Muslim leaders in Oldham, Miss Blears said the use of stop and search powers by police had to be "intelligence-led" and carried out in a non-discriminatory way. "The counter-terrorism powers are not targeting any community in particular, but are targeting terrorists," she said.

Her remarks represented a retreat from her earlier support for Ian Johnston, the Chief Constable of British Transport Police, who said young Asian men should be targeted and police should not waste time "searching old, white ladies".

LA Times fooled by fatwa

The LA Times doesn't care about the terror ties of those who issued the recent America fatwa against terrorism. Nor does it care that the statement itself leaves open significant loopholes by not defining who are the "innocent" people that Muslims are forbidden to kill.

Others are fooled, too: I found this article because it is linked at Townhall.com (look under "Also In The News"). I have written repeatedly to Townhall's Jonathan Garthwaite, asking that Townhall pick up my weekly Human Events column. He has never given me even the courtesy of a reply. Now I am beginning to suspect why.

The Times editorial says:

A broad group of U.S. and Canadian Muslim scholars and religious leaders last week issued a fatwa that is as unequivocally anti-violence as those of Khomeini or Osama bin Laden were pro-murder:

"All acts of terrorism are haram, forbidden by Islam. It is haram, forbidden, to cooperate or associate with … any act of terrorism or violence." The declaration then went beyond familiar condemnations to demand action: It is the "civic and religious duty of Muslims to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect the lives of civilians."...

Unequivocal? What is "terrorism" or "violence" in this context? We can't take the ordinary understandings for granted when jihadists have denied that they are committing acts of terrorism or random violence. What's a civilian in this context? What about the London Muslim leader who noted that "civilian" is not a category within Islamic law?

The U.S. and Canadian demand for active Muslim prevention of terrorism is new to most Americans, but a message long stressed by moderate U.S. Muslim groups, including the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council. The council, while also focused on Muslim civil rights, is adamant that Muslims in the United States should be robust participants in politics and society. It has offered help to the FBI and other agencies in anti-terrorism efforts.

Here's an examination of MPAC's commitment to anti-terror efforts.

Notwithstanding events such as the recent terrorism-related arrests of an imam and his 22-year-old U.S.-born son in Lodi, Calif., Muslims are generally part of the mainstream in the United States. European Muslims are more ghettoized, clustered by country of origin and rejected by or rejecting of the mainstream society. As numerous analyses of Britain's accused bombers have noted, such outsider status makes angry young people more susceptible to the simplistic message of the worst hard-line fundamentalists. That makes it all the more worthwhile to support Muslims trying to head off the still small rumblings of youthful alienation in the United States.

Sure. But I am not going to stop asking them to clear up serious ambiguities that remain in this fatwa, and to explain their previous activities and associations.

Muslims who hate us can get out, says Tory

Anti-dhimmitude from the shadow defense minister. Watch for the coming fireworks: Howarth is likely to be excoriated by all. Yet I don't see anywhere in history that a state lasted very long which tolerated large populations that wanted to make it over into another kind of state altogether. From The Scotsman, with thanks to Voltaire:

MUSLIMS who resent the British way of life should leave the UK, regardless of whether they are citizens or not, a senior Conservative said last night in comments that have heightened already tense community relations.

Gerald Howarth, the shadow defence minister, last night told The Scotsman that extremist Muslims who see the Iraq war as a conflict against Islam should be considered as treacherous as Soviet sympathisers during the Cold War. His remarkable claim shatters the tri-party consensus which Michael Howard, the Tory leader, sought to make with Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Howarth said yesterday that he is incensed by suggestions from Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that Britain is "part of the problem" in Iraq - and said that the problem in the UK lies in fanatical Muslims living within our shores.

He is the first mainstream UK politician to suggest that extremist British Muslims should leave for Islamic societies. The government is looking at deporting foreign-born nationals and imprisoning British Muslims who incite or glorify terrorism.

"If they don't like our way of life, there is a simple remedy: go to another country, get out," Mr Howarth said. Asked what if these people were born in Britain, he replied: "Tough. If you don't give allegiance to this country, then leave."

He added: "There are plenty of other countries whose way of life would appear to be more conducive to what they aspire to. They would be happy and we would be happy."

MPACUK: Zionists Behind Terror Attacks

While Britain bends over backward to make sure Muslims don't feel as if anyone thinks they have anything to do with terrorism, the Muslim Public Affairs Council of the UK carries this less conciliatory article at its website, blaming the Jews for terrorism -- and don't miss the accompanying illustration, which is entitled "Great Satan." Do they think Jews have horns at MPACUK? (Thanks to Paul for the link.)

The Jewish campaign to effectively silence any critic of Israel may well be the biggest contributing factor in this birth of world terrorism we see today.

In his weekly radio address, two days after the London bombing attacks, President Bush said: "We are now waging a global war on terror - from the mountains of Afghanistan to the border regions of Pakistan, to the Horn of Africa, to the islands of the Philippines, to the plains of Iraq."

I wanted to scream and yell, "What about Israel, President Bush? If you really want to fight a war on terrorism, then the first place you need to go to is Israel. Stop wasting your time in those places you just mentioned and go to the source of terrorism. Go to where all the terror began. You can bring about a victory on the war on terrorism without sacrificing more than 1,700 American servicemen, and over $1 trillion of U.S. taxpayer money. Iraq isn’t the place where terror began. Go to Israel. Go to where it all began and continues today."

The note on the author at the end of the article reads:

James J. David is a retired Brigadier General and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College, and the National Security Course, National Defense University, Washington DC. He served as a Company Commander with the 101st Airborne Division in the Republic of Vietnam in 1969 and 1970 and also served nearly 3 years of Army active duty in and around the Middle East from 1967-1969. He is a regular contributor to "U.S. Policy in the Middle East has been the greatest recruiting tool that the terrorists could possibly have. Its lopsided support of Israel is the main reason we have so many problems we have today."

If this is true, it is embarrassing that such a man was ever a General, and that he would assert all this in blithe ignorance of 13 centuries of jihad warfare fought before Israel was founded.

ADDENDUM: Charles at LGF has discovered that MPACUK this "Great Satan" image from a Nazi website.

U.K. police told not to use racial profiling

More on the dhimmi outreach in the UK. From CBC News, with thanks to Scaramouche:

British police trying to prevent more suicide bombings must refrain from racial profiling when stopping and searching commuters, the country's Home Office said Tuesday.

Decisions should be based on intelligence information, not on whether someone is of Muslim or Asian origin, Minister Hazel Blears said.

Some of Britain's estimated 1.6 million Muslims feel they are being unfairly targeted for scrutiny after two attacks on London's transit system in July. The government began meetings across the country with Muslim communities Tuesday to improve relations and address concerns of security, education and extremism.

"Picking people up just on the basis that they're Muslim is never going to get the result you want," Blears told the BBC.

Well, that depends on what result you really want: to find and neutralize Islamic terrorists or to further Britain's collapse into dhimmitude.

Britain Begins Reaching Out to Muslims

Does this mean they will begin seriously confronting the jihad ideology? What do you think? From AP, with thanks to Satinder:

LONDON - Britain began reaching out to Muslim communities Tuesday, launching what is likely to be a yearslong effort to confront the resentment and anger that helped breed suicide bombers who attacked London's transit system.

A top law enforcement official also sought to ease fears that anti-terror police will target Muslims for searches.

Good. Be sure to search those Methodists. They're vicious.

Britons were stunned to learn that three of the suicide attackers suspected of killing 52 victims in the July 7 attacks were young Pakistani Britons; the fourth moved from Jamaica as a child. Most of the suspects in failed bombings on July 21 are immigrants from East Africa.

The apparent willingness of men born and raised in Britain to turn to militancy has prompted soul-searching in a nation proud of its diversity and tolerance.

After the attacks, Prime Minister Tony Blair appealed to Muslim leaders for help in combating the "twisted logic" of terrorism. He said later he was considering calling an international conference on rooting out Islamic extremism, particularly in the religious schools known as madrassas, many of them in Pakistan.

Hazel Blears, a minister in the Home Office, met community representatives in Oldham, a gritty former mill town in northern England that was the scene in 2001 of race riots that began when white youths attacked a South Asian family's home. It was the first of a series of gatherings she plans around the country.

Blears said the government and Muslim communities must cooperate to fight the spread of militant ideologies.

"These people who are extremists are a tiny, tiny minority," she said. "We have got to make sure that the mainstream feel strong enough to take them on."

If they're such a tiny minority, why haven't they felt strong enough to take them on?

Black Muslim Extremists, Arab Supremacist Thought, And False Consciousness

We have written here several times about the Arab cultural hegemony that tends to go along with Islam. Here in the same line are some thought-provoking observations about black Muslims from the Booker Rising blog, with thanks to Olivia:

You may remember Richard Reid (pictured), the British-born shoe bomber who tried to blow up an American airliner using bombs hidden in his shoes. Well, the half-Jamaican prisoner has issued a warning to the West - via a Scottish legal magazine - from his cell in America. He states that terrorist attacks on the West would not stop until the "Americans stop their oppression of the Muslims". He specifically cites U.S. foreign policy in areas such as Iraq, Israel, and Afghanistan, as well as hitting out at Western governments which he argues glorify and promote immorality in the name of freedom.

What I am intrigued by is what is missing from his letter. Black Christians have formed a specifically black version of Christianity, which challenged the religion. Black Muslims have done the same (e.g., in Mali, Senegal, and even the Nation Of Islam), which I have previously and controversially argued serve as a moderating influence upon the religion. Let me borrow from Friedrich Engels here for a moment: my critique is black Muslim extremists who have incorporated the tenets of Arab supremacist thought. Their worldview is focused on Arab Muslim issues, and they exclusively see Arab Muslim culture, history, and issues as their cause. In effect, they are "Arabized".

They go off about the Israel-Palestinian issue, but express zero concern for the far more massive genocide of blacks in Sudan. Not even for the black Muslims being slaughtered in that country's western Darfur region. I guess this ain't oppression of Muslims, because blacks don't matter to them. They are obsessed with the treatment of Arab Muslims in faraway lands, but zero concern about Wahhabism in black communities, which undermines black cultures. Let's not forget that many Arab (and Asian) Muslims consider their black peers to be religious heretics (and racially inferior), which explains their constant imperialism and 'Arabization' campaigns on the African continent. It reinforces itself in places like Mali, a mostly black, moderate Muslim democracy which faces a growing threat from Wahabist Islam imported from Saudi Arabia.

Links in the original. Read it all.

Fitzgerald: Anti-Muslim rhetoric? Really?

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the oppressive "anti-Muslim rhetoric" with which Akbar Ahmed takes issue here:

"The anti-Muslim rhetoric, which has saturated public discourse, has left the impression that Islam and its followers are being targeted for annihilation. The reaction from the Muslim community has been to strike out in violence to defend its survival and restore its honor and restore dignity." --- from this article

What "anti-Muslim rhetoric" has "saturated public discourse" would that be? The constant references by every single political figure in the Western world who counts to Islam as a "religion" of "peace" and "tolerance" (Bush, Blair), a "great religion" (Rice), a "proud religion" (Stephen Hadley) whose adherents are horrified by those who do terrible things "in the name of Islam" while they violate the essence of this "peaceful" and "tolerant" and "great" and "proud" religion? Do you, inhabitant of the Western world, feel that anti-Muslim rhetoric has saturated public discourse? Do you feel that way even given how the major newspapers and radio and television can hardly bring themselves even to mention the word "terrorist" (with the BBC being the gold standard of appeasement)? Do you feel that way even after 1350 years of Muslim conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims -- or if we ignore that, after decades of Muslim Jihad in Kashmir, Israel, West Africa and East Africa, India, and within the Muslim lands the continued persecution and murder of non-Muslims (chiefly Christians and Hindus) -- or if we ignore even that, then simply the last four years of attacks, some of them famous, with many victims, some of them hardly noted, with few victims, some of them attacks warded off or foiled so they get no attention at all (there have been 25,000 would-be terrorist attacks in Israel in the past four years)? Anti-Muslim rhetoric has saturated public discourse? This is nonsense.

Muslims are not "striking out" in reaction to any of the quite modest measures undertaken so far to deal with Muslim terrorism. It is fantastic, after all, that many of the mosques tied to terrorism have not been permanently shut, or that all Muslim immigration has not as yet permanently been closed down -- as if we somehow have a duty to allow into our midst those whose belief-system tells them that they must hate us, must not take us as friends, but must only feignedly do so at times in order to further the cause of Islam, and that Muslims everywhere have a duty to participate, collectively and sometimes individually, in the Jihad to spread Islam, using whatever instruments are available and most effective.

Muslims are doing what they have always done whenever they have the chance. What has changed are three things:

1) The permitted migration of large numbers of Muslims into Bilad al-Kufr, the Lands of the Infidels;

2) The gigantic increase in Arab and Muslim wealth, entirely the product of an accident of geology -- with that money providing the wherewithal for the vast support for the building and maintenance of a network of mosques and madrasas all over the world, including the Infidel lands, and money for propaganda: for the hiring of public relations agents, lawyers, businessmen, diplomats, intelligence agents, and academics all of whom work, some in this way, some in that, to be apologists both for Islam. Often they work, more specifically, for Saudi Arabia and its objectives in promoting, as all Muslims inevitably must if they are good Muslims, the Jihad to spread Islam across the globe -- for Islam "must dominate and is not to be dominated";

3) The technological developments that have permitted the spreading of the full message of Islam into every nook and cranny of the Muslim world, so that even the simple illiterate villager, the pious man who might say his prayers but go no further than that, can now be exposed to propaganda on tapes (think of what those tapes did for the Ayatollah Khomeini when he was still in his French exile -- those tapes that spread all over Iran with his violent and implacable message, so thoroughly Islamic) and on videocassettes (now also spread around -- how wonderful to see those decapitations of various Infidels, the knife going in, the blood spurting -- what a recruitment tool! what an inspiration to Muslims everywhere!), and of course satellite channels (such as Rached Ghannouchi’s ongoing attempts to undermine Tunisian secularism via satellite from London).

Unhindered migration behind Infidel lines, vast sums of money, and technological advances in the West and by the West, exploited by Muslims who were themselves completely incapable of such advances, or indeed of creating economies that would earn them the kind of revenues the oil bonanza allows them -- these are the three developments that explain the problem.

Jihad was not born yesterday. The pseudo-moderate Kamal Nawash insisted on the BBC yesterday the the "problem" for non-Muslims with Islam somehow began, for reasons he carefully does not identify, about 20 years ago That’s right: while admitting that the current problem is not to be attributed to this or that specific grievance, whether that grievance is summarily identified as "Iraq" or "Palestine," Nawash carefully insisted to Claire Bolderson that "the problem started about 20 years ago." In other words, even as he goes through the motions of being a "brave" and "outspoken" reformer -- which these days, in order to win the hearts, and mindes, and especailly the pocketbooks of those dispensers of grant money and private contributions and even government funding -- Nawash is clearly diverting attention from, for example, the analysis that correctly labels the Arab Muslim (and Arab islamochristian) war on Israel as a classic Jihad, and would like to make the problem seem to be one that does not extend as far back as the creation of Islam, but is simply a matter of some "20 years." Well, to say such a thing shows the phoniness, or possibly the incomplete miscomprehension (or possibly the complete comprehension) of Islamic doctrine by Mr. Kamal Nawash.

The "problem" did not start "20 years ago." The "problem" -- to which there is no "solution" -- started 1350 years ago, with an ideology. The ability to spread that ideology, the ability to pay for the spread of that ideology by supporting Muslims, and therefore Muslim demands, and conduct of Da'wa, in the West -- that is a function of several things happening all at once, roughly over the past 40 years. First, there was the beginning of North African immigration into France in the mid-late 1960s, after the Algerian War ended, and the nearly-simultaneous beginnings of Turkish gastarbeiter going to West Germany (Ludwig Erhard's wunderbar economic boom, don't forget), and Pakistanis to England. The flow increased, and to it were added Moroccans in Spain, Somalis and North Africans and Egyptians in Italy. Everywhere, Saudi and other Arab money helped to fortify the presence of Muslims and the potential for the future conduct of Da'wa.

That is the how it happened. This is how we got to where we are today.

Galloway: "It's not the Muslims who are sick. It's Bush and Blair and Berlusconi who are sick."

Does the Western world need reform, or the Islamic world? Actually, both, but the champion dhimmi Galloway here brushes aside any necessity for Muslims to confront and eradicate the jihad ideology. "British MP George Galloway in Syria: Foreigners Are Raping Two Beautiful Arab Daughters - Jerusalem and Baghdad," from MEMRITV, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

The following are excerpts from interviews and a speech by British MP George Galloway, which aired on various Arab channels on July 28 and 31, 2005.

Galloway (on Syrian TV, July 31, 2005): Mr. Blair is using this crime and all these dead people as a justification for this absurd idea of a war on terrorism. "Terror" is a word... Terror is a tactic, it's not a strategy. The idea that Muslims have some kind of sickness in their bodies, which must be cured, which is the idea behind Bush, behind Mr. Blair, and behind Mr. Berlusconi's government in Italy - It must be resisted. It's not the Muslims who are sick. It's Bush and Blair and Berlusconi who are sick. It's not the Muslims who need to be cured. It's the imperialist countries that need to be cured.

[...]

The real question is, after the evidence of Sykes-Picot 1, are you ready to accept Sykes-Picot 2? What does Sykes-Picot mean to the Arab world? Nothing except division, disunity, weakness, and failure. Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters. Why? Because they are too weak and too corrupt to do anything about it. So this is what Sykes-Picot will do to the Arabs. Are you ready to have another hundred years like the hundred years you just had?

Trafficking in ambiguities at the Washington Times

This is the sort of thing that has the power to cloud men's minds. In "Saving Islam from itself," a Washington Times column (thanks to Diana West), Islamic apologist Akbar Ahmed and the Middle East Broadcasting Center's Susan Bradford write approvingly of CAIR's fatwa against terrorism without ever noting the fatwa's gargantuan loophole: it condemns attacks against innocents without ever saying whether or not American or British or Israeli civilians are innocent -- and their innocence has been challenged by more than one Islamic jihadist.

That's what gives this op-ed the power to cloud men's minds. Casual readers and those unacquainted with the jihadist denial that various non-Muslim civilians are innocent will see this fatwa and op-ed as positive signs of moderation in the Islamic world. Yet because of the loophole, they are nothing of the kind, and do nothing to address and refute the jihadist ideology. Thus that ideology will continue to spread among Muslims. Is that what Ahmed and Bradford want?

Muslim groups on both sides of the Atlantic have categorically condemned suicide attacks made in the name of Islam, leading us to ask why have they taken so long to address the issue and what needs to be done henceforth to build on this new momentum and craft a peaceful conclusion to the war on terrorism.

Following the London attacks, Britain's largest Muslim groups issued a fatwa condemning suicide missions. Muslim groups in the United States and around the world have followed suit. As noted by Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, terrorism is not consistent with Islam, and "those who try to commit acts of terror in the name of Islam try to misinterpret and misuse certain issues in Islamic jurisprudence and have no authority or qualification except their anger." Their anger is rooted in perceived injustices against Islam, such as the occupation of the Arabian peninsula, the disregard of Muslim civilian life throughout the war on Iraq and the perceived indifference to the Muslim plight in areas such as Kashmir, Chechnya, and throughout the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The anti-Muslim rhetoric, which has saturated public discourse, has left the impression that Islam and its followers are being targeted for annihilation. The reaction from the Muslim community has been to strike out in violence to defend its survival and restore its honor and restore dignity.

Often the rhetoric of radical imams, which is highly politicized and deeply rooted in prejudice, is cited as the true face of Islam. However, unlike Christianity and Judaism, in which religious leaders interpret the holy texts for the faithful, imams lead Friday prayer services. The Koran is instead interpreted by Islamic scholars, whom Muslims look to for guidance — thus instilling the recent fatwas with added significance.

As Mr. Awad said, "these legal scholars come to say that we are the authority on this subject, and we are the ones who determine how to interpret Islam. Therefore, (no) person in the globe can quote the Quran or the traditions of the Prophet to justify the harming and the killing of innocent people." As noted by Salam al-Marayati, the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, "our children need to be very clear on these matters. There should be no confusion and no ambiguities. As we stand together tall as leaders of established Muslim-American organizations, this is a message to our future generations and to our children that this notion that suicide bombing or terrorism has any room in Islam is rejected outright."

Fine, Salam. Then you should have no problem clearing up the remaining ambiguities. I expect you will get right on that.

Hirsi Ali: Muhammad's example

One of the foremost heroes of our age, Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- a name that future generations will venerate if the light of freedom continues to shine anywhere in the world -- discusses something that most of the learned analysts on this side of the Atlantic, both liberal and conservative, dare not discuss: the necessity for Muslims to "think clearly about the Prophet's moral example," and reject that example where necessary.

Most analysts think that if they discuss this, they will be undermining moderate Muslims. If we criticize Muhammad, goes the thinking, we'll just alienate those Muslims who are on our side. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth: it is the politically correct pseudo-experts on both the Left and the Right who are undermining any possible headway that moderate Muslims could make in the Islamic world by denying them the freedom to challenge the root sources of violence within Islam.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one brilliant and fearless exception.

From Prospect, with thanks to all who sent this in:

After the carnage of the terrorist bombings in London, Tony Blair defined the situation as a battle of values. “Our values will long outlast theirs,” he said, to the silent acquiescence of the world leaders who stood alongside him. “Whatever [the terrorists] do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world.”

But which values are we fighting for? Those who love freedom know that the open society relies on a few key shared concepts. They believe that all humans are born free, are endowed with reason and have inalienable rights. Governments are checked by the rule of law, so that civil liberties are protected. They ensure freedom of conscience and of expression, and ensure that men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, are treated equally under the law. People can trade freely, and may spend their recreational time as they wish.

The terrorists, and the Shari'a-based societies to which they aspire, have an entirely different philosophy. Humans are born to serve Allah through a series of obligations that are prescribed in an ancient body of writings. These edicts vary from rituals of birth and funeral rites to the most intimate details of human life; they descend to the point of absurdity in matters such as how to blow your nose, and with what foot to step into a toilet. Muslims, according to this philosophy, must kill those among them who leave the faith, and are required to be hostile to people of other religions and ways of life. This hostility requires them to murder innocent people and makes no distinction between civilians and the military. In Shari'a societies, women are made subordinate to men. They must be confined to their houses, beaten if found disobedient, forced into marriage and hidden behind the veil. The hands of thieves are cut off and capital punishment is performed in crowded public squares in front of cheering crowds. The terrorists seek to impose this way of life not only on Islamic countries, but, as Blair said, on western societies too.

At the core of this fundamental challenge to the west lies a pre-medieval figure to whom the London terrorists—along with all faithful Muslims in our modern world—look for guidance: Muhammad. All faithful Muslims believe that they must emulate this man, in principle and practical matters, under all circumstances. When trying to understand Islamic terrorism, most politicians and other commentators have avoided the core issue, which is Muhammad’s example. The west, before embarking on a battle of ideas, must attempt to understand this figure, and his presence in the daily lives and homes of faithful Muslims today.

It is apparent on reading the Koran and the traditional writings that Muhammad’s life not only provides rules for the daily lives of Muslims; it also demonstrates the means by which his values can be imposed. Muhammad himself constructed the House of Islam using military tactics that included mass killing, torture, targeted assassination, lying and the indiscriminate destruction of productive goods. This may be embarrassing to moderate Muslims, but the propaganda produced by modern terrorists constantly quotes Muhammad’s deeds and edicts to justify their actions and to call on other Muslims to support their cause.

Muslims in Europe and across the world may be divided into roughly three groups. Firstly, there are the terrorists, who resort to violence (and their allies, the fundamentalists, who do not kill or maim, but provide terrorists with material and immaterial assistance). The second group, the reformers, are the polar opposite of the terrorists and may one day provide an intellectual counterweight to them. This group of people—although tiny, it is growing—may be characterised by its questioning of the relevance and moral soundness of Muhammad’s example. I, who was born and bred a Muslim, count myself among them. We in this group have embraced the open society as a true alternative to a society based on the laws of Muhammad—a better way to build a framework for human life.

The terrorists have far more power and resources than the reformers, but both groups vie to influence the thinking of the third group—the vast majority of Muslims. The reformers use only non-violent means to draw attention to debates over core values and the example of Muhammad. The terrorists and fundamentalists, however, use force, the threat of force, appeals to pity (“look at what the west is doing to Islam and Muslims”) and ad hominem smears. Their unwitting allies in the west defend so-called victims of Islamophobia; meanwhile, the reformers are shunned by their families and communities, and may even live under the fear of assassination. In short, the core of the debate is made taboo, and the fundamentalists attain a near-monopoly on the hearts and minds of the largest group of Muslims, the undecided.

Read it all.

Hamas camp: Sun, fun ... indoctrination

Shades of Hitler Youth. From the San Francisco Chronicle, with thanks to Leslie.

Seventeen-year-old Osama Abu Asi knows what Hamas stands for: swimming lessons, horseback riding, potato sack races and other summertime fun -- including religious education and paramilitary training.

This is summer camp in the Gaza Strip, as organized by Harakat al-Moqawama al-Islamiyah, the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas -- which is officially regarded by the United States and many other countries as a terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of Israelis.

All summer long, at camps in playgrounds, in dirt-poor neighborhoods and on glittering Mediterranean beaches, Palestinian boys and young men get together in safe, well-managed, comfortable facilities decorated with the fluttering green flags of Hamas.

"In this camp we learn the important things of life -- good behavior, respect," said Osama, who was spending the summer at a Hamas-run camp on the beach outside Gaza City.

They also learn how to sing "intifada songs," including one urging them to "kill Zionists wherever they are, in the name of God."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Ra'anan Gissin described the summer camps as "indoctrination camps" comparable to the Hitler Youth camps, and accused Hamas of taking advantage of Gaza parents' desperate economic straits by offering to care for and feed their children while concealing the organization's true motives.

"This is where you create cultural hatred, so by the age of 15 or 16 you can send them out as suicide bombers. That's the whole purpose of them," he said...

Other campers gave similar responses when asked what they were learning from the bearded instructors who stood nearby as they spoke and sometimes whispered suggested answers.

"Math, sports, swimming, Islamic behavior," said Ibrahim El-Kanua, 12, at a camp in a playground near the Jabaliya refugee camp where he lives. "I learned how to respect and honor."

For Gaza parents, the camps provide an alternative for their children during the summer school holidays when there is little to offer in the way of recreation on Gaza's dusty streets, and kids are often seen playing in the raw sewage that flows to the sea.

"The Hamas summer camp is teaching them good behavior, teaching them to honor and respect people, instead of losing them to the streets," said 60-year-old Abdullah Fatah, as he came to check on his four grandchildren enrolled in a playground camp near his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

"(Hamas) follows Islam. Because they follow Islam, I trust them. I would follow them anywhere."...

‘Sky’ comes tumbling down

Now that liberal forms of Islam have been banned in Indonesia, the saga of the giant teapot has come to an end, from StarOnline, with thanks to Nicolei.

JERTEH: The giant teapot and other key structures at the Sky Kingdom commune came tumbling down yesterday after the Besut District Council sent in it's demolition squad.

More than 30 followers of the sect, who watched the demolition, did not resist or challenge the authorities.

Several children of sect leader Ariffin Mohamad, known as Ayah Pin to his followers, were among those who watched the Sky Kingdom symbols crashing to earth...

The followers were taken by surprise when the 40 council workers entered the commune with four excavators and five lorries at 2.30pm. About 50 policemen and officers from the state Islamic Affairs department accompanied them.

Sky Kingdom follower Sulaiman Takrib, 56, said the perimeter wall was the first to go, followed by the assembly hall, the boat, the Dewan Bulat, the Dewan Nasyid, the teapot and other structures...

The Terengganu Islamic affairs department had put them on the wanted list for being involved in teachings deviant to Islamic beliefs.

They will be charged at the Lower Syariah Court today under Section 10 of the Syariah Criminal Offences (Takzir) (Terengganu) Enactment 2001...

Al Jazeera Net to offer travel services

The economic analysts here at Jihad Watch think this is a perfect fit. In the words of one analyst we contacted, "We all know how young Muslim men love to travel. This is a just win-win situation all around."

From Qatar's Peninsula:

DOHA: Al Jazeera Net, the electronic arm of Al Jazeera Channel has signed a deal with OctopusTravel.com to offer its website visitors the opportunity to book discounted hotel accommodation and a range of worldwide travel services, including bookings in hotels, villas and apartments, sightseeing tours and private transfers, through Al Jazeera Net tourism page.

From the outset, OctopusTravel will provide links to a co-branded website with special rates and promotions for Al Jazeera Net visitors. The services will range from providing up to 70 per cent discounts on a wide range of hotels in 3,300 cities, in 112 countries, to special offers on 3,000 apartments and villas, said a press statement issued yesterday.

Visitors will also be able to book online, choose a desired reservation preference, hotel rooms, private transfers, and tailor made private sightseeing, and will receive an instant confirmation. In addition, OctopusTravel will provide detailed information, travel guides, weather reports, currency converters, and special events on over 300 cities and countries.

“Prior to signing this contract, it was clear to us that visitors to Al Jazeera.net were very interested in travel, so we decided that it is important for Al Jazeera.net to cater to visitors needs by teaming up with the Middle East’s market leader in discounted hotel bookings on the internet,” states Hamad Yahya Al Nuaimi, Al Jazeera Channel’s marketing director...

Jews are Poisoning Bananas says Imam

"Muslims sound alarm over schools" from Australia's The Age with thanks to all who sent this in.

The teacher could not believe what he overheard. The "visiting" imam was launching into a tirade against the Jews and Americans that bordered on the ludicrous.

But then came the clincher, he recalled. "The imam told the students that the Jews were putting poison in the bananas and they should not eat them."

The imam was told to ease up on the inflammatory language after staff objected.

Werribee College is from all accounts an Islamic school with a difference. According to former staff it was a longstanding practice of the school principal, Omar Hallak, to have Muslim staff sleep on the premises after big international terror attacks such as those in Bali and the London tube bombings to prevent retributive attacks.

The Sunday Age has been told that Werribee College appears intent on exporting its particular brand of Islam to Indonesia, an achievement made possible by generous commonwealth and state grants — estimated to be in excess of $3 million a year.

Canberra's big spending laissez-faire approach to non-government school funding, intended by former education minister David Kemp to boost the numbers of Christian schools, has fuelled an increase in community-based Islamic schools across Australia which qualify for the same subsidies.

Although the vast majority of these schools — established schools such as King Khalid Islamic College in North Coburg or newer schools such as Mount Hira College in Keysborough — are run openly and with regular contact and activities with students from non-Muslim schools, there are a small number, including Werribee, that shun scrutiny and contact...

Indonesian Muslim body forbids liberal Islam

From Reuters:

JAKARTA - Indonesia's top Islamic council issued a religious edict on Friday forbidding any liberal interpretation of Islam in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

"Religious liberalism is haram (forbidden)," said a fatwa, or doctrine, issued by the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) and seen by Reuters.

"This is a reminder for Muslims to follow the religion in a correct way and not to try to deviate from the principles," Ma'aruf Amin, chief the MUI's Fatwa Commission, told Reuters.

Another fatwa banned inter-religious marriages in Indonesia where 85 percent of its 220 million follow Islam.

There is widespread debate in Indonesia over inter-religious marriages with some clerics saying Muslim men can marry non-Muslim women.

But Amin said the MUI had decided to ban such marriages "for the sake of Indonesian Muslims".

"This is the strongest view at the MUI and we are doing this to improve the religion quality of the Muslim," Amin added.

The fatwas underlined the growing influence of hardliners in Indonesia, where most Muslims embrace a moderate form of Islam...

Netherlands faces major terrorist threat: Official

From Reuters, with thanks to the One Who Must Not Be Named.

AMSTERDAM: The Netherlands faces a “substantial” terrorism threat and must stage regular drills to boost readiness to cope with a possible attack, a senior government official told a Dutch newspaper yesterday. Tijbbe Joustra, National Coordinator for Fight against Terrorism, told Algemeen Dagblad in an interview that the government should make greater efforts to prepare and inform the population about the threat of terrorism.

“An attack is quite possible. There are no concrete indications as to when or how, but Al Qaeda’s range of ideas expands enormously,” Joustra said. “There is talk of faster radicalisation. Therefore we speak about a substantial threat.” Following last year’s train bomb attacks in Madrid and London’s transport system bombings, fears have grown of similar attacks in the Netherlands, which supported the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and sent troops there after the war.

Al-Qaeda expert claims 10 terror-linked groups are in NZ

No surprise to Jihad Watch readers from New Zealand Stuff, with thanks to the One Who Must Not Be Named.

A world-renowned al-Qaeda expert is backing New Zealand First leader Winston Peters's claim that Islamic extremist groups are operating in New Zealand.

In a speech to Far North Grey Power on Thursday, Peters raised the spectre of Islamic terrorism among immigrants and revealed that he had written to Muslim leaders, asking them to report "radicals, troublemakers and potential dangers" to the police.

Singapore-based Dr Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, said there were about 10 groups linked to international Islamic terror networks operating out of New Zealand cities.

"There are a number of groups raising funds, doing propaganda and recruiting for jihad groups," he said. "They never operate under their own names, but are in both Muslim and non-Muslim groups."...

'Calgary' forum spews hatred

Licia Corbella writes in the Calgary Sun:

Recently, three members of the Muslim Council of Calgary spent time meeting with our editorial board.

We spent almost two hours engaged in debate and discussion.

Hussein Amery, vice-chair of the MCC repeated how eager he and all Muslims are to be better portrayed in the media...

Hatim Zaghloul, chairman of the MCC said: "We in the west need to encourage Muslim voices. The problem is we don't have a forum for moderates."...

One of the main avenues the MCC does have available to it at all times is the website that is run as the site says "under the direction of Muslim Council of Calgary" (www.calgarymuslims.com).

I logged onto that site and instead of finding moderation and a message of peace, as I had expected and was told was their aim, I was immediately bombarded with vile hatred directed towards Jews -- reams and reams of it and what's worse, there was not one real objection to it listed on the site anywhere.

Right there on the front main page is a contribution by a fella described as "chopchip" under the heading Bismillah 1 (which means in the name of God) which besides saying: "I don't think it's Muslims who are responsible for those bombings (in London)," he goes on to say "but the Jews are really pushing for their final bid to ethnically cleanse the world of non Jews. They think that they are the master race...."

Here's what shah_35 submitted on July 20 under Towards a Positive Thinking!

"For sure this is not the right way to talk about ur (sic) enemy," writes shah_35. "Yes, it is indeed in Quran as well that Jews and Christians can never be ur friends. And indeed if we look behind, we will find out that Jews always plotted against Muslims in a very intelligent way even against our PROPHET MUHAMMAD", he writes.

I found, really very little "positive thinking" at all anywhere on this website.

Lots of excuses and justification for terrorism...

Italy bans Islamic burqas

From the Australian, with thanks to Andrew Bostom.

ITALY has banned Islamic burqas under tough terrorism laws that provide two-year jail terms and E2000 ($3200) fines for anyone caught covering their face in a public place.

The counter-terrorism package, passed by Italy's parliament yesterday, doubles the existing penalty for wearing a burqa or chador -- traditional robes worn by Muslim women to cover their faces -- or full-faced helmets or balaclavas in public.

Police can extract DNA samples without a suspect's consent, detain them for 24 hours without a lawyer present, and deport foreigners suspected of terrorism under the new legislation. Soldiers involved in counter-terrorism have been given the same stop-and-search powers.

The changes, approved in a rare show of bipartisanship, came as Italian police arrested a fugitive hunted by British police over the bungled bombing attempt in London on July 21.

"In the course of the investigation, it has been possible to identify a dense network of individuals from the Eritrean and Ethiopian communities in Italy, believed to have helped the fugitive cover his tracks," Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told the Senate. "We have before us a grave threat that has to be confronted with all the means of prevention and contrast that we have." Italian media yesterday reported that the suspected terrorist, named by British police as Somali-born Hussain Osman, was Hamdi Adus Issac, 27, born in Ethiopia and allegedly granted British citizenship using false Somali documents...

Whitehead: ABC Disney Capitulates to CAIR

Andrew Whitehead writes about the Michael Graham controversy in FrontPage:

Conservative talk-show host Michael Graham was suspended without pay on Thursday, July 28 by ABC Disney following threats by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) over his on-air comments regarding terrorism and Islam.

The suspension came despite repeated statements of support for Graham’s free-speech right by management at 630 WMAL in Washington, D.C.; the ABC owned stations where Graham had worked as mid-morning host. The suspension is pending an “investigation” of comments he made regarding Islam’s ties to terrorism.

"I honestly don't know what Disney is investigating me for, unless it's for doing a compelling talk show that gets people's attention," Graham said. "I thought that was my job."

Graham was harshly criticized by CAIR for public comments linking the current theology and structure of Islam to the repeated acts of terror in its name. CAIR sent mass e-mails to its members urging them to contact ABC and demand the company punish Graham for his remarks.

The statements at the heart of the controversy reflect Graham's opinion that, as he puts it, "Because of the mix of Islamic theology that -- rightly or wrongly -- is interpreted to promote violence, added to an organizational structure that allows violent radicals to operate openly in Islam's name with impunity, Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization. It pains me to say it. But the good news is it doesn't have to stay this way, if the vast majority of Muslims who don't support terror will step forward and reclaim their religion."...

CAIR’s attack on Graham is an insult to all Americans who value the truth for several reasons. First, he didn’t say anything that isn’t true; secondly, he didn’t offer gratuitious pot-shots at Islam designed to inflame or incite hate; finally, CAIR has rarely failed to miss an opportunity to insult America…for them to claim Graham has insulted Islam is beyond laughable…it is disengenous…and dangerous, if CAIR gets its way.

To contact ABC Radio in Washington and express your opinion about their decision to cave into pressure from CAIR, call the General Manager, Chris Berry, at 202-686-3100 or email feedback@630wmal.com.