Muslim gang forces Paris cafe to censor cartoon show

Eurabia Alert from the Middle East Times, with thanks to Kaiser:

PARIS -- A gang of young Muslims wielding iron rods has forced a Paris cafe to censor an exhibition of cartoons ridiculing religion, the owners of the establishment said on Friday.

Some 50 drawings by well-known French cartoonists were installed in the Mer a Boire cafe in the working-class Belleville neighborhood of northeast Paris, as part of an avowedly atheist show entitled, "Neither god nor god".

The collection targeted all religions - including Islam - but there were no representations of the Prophet Mohammed such as sparked the recent crisis between the West and the Islamic world, according to Marianne who is one of the cafe's three owners.

"We used to give glasses of water to a group of local boys aged between 10 and 12 who played football across the street. On Tuesday a few came in, flung the water on the ground and accused us of being racists," said Marianne, who did not wish to give her family name. "Later more of them came back with sticks and iron rods and tried to smash the pictures. They managed it with a few of them. With the customers we chased them away, but they kept coming back," she said.

Later the cafe-owners were approached by a group of older youths. "They said they did not approve of what the youngsters had done. But what we were doing was unacceptable, too. They warned us that if we didn't take down the cartoons they would call in the Muslim Brothers who would burn the cafe down," said Marianne. "They kept saying: 'This is our home. You cannot act like this here'," she said.

Refusing to dismantle the exhibition, the owners have placed white sheets of paper inscribed with the word 'censored' over the cartoons that were targeted by the gang.

"To take down the cartoons would have been a surrender. But on the other hand we cannot expose ourselves to this kind of violence. This way you can still see the pictures if you lift the paper," said Marianne.

One of the cartoons that aroused the wrath of the youths was a bar scene, in which the barman offers a drink to an obviously inebriated man who says "God is great". The caption is: "The sixth pillar of Islam. The bar pillar." In France a "bar pillar" is a barfly or drunk.

The aim of the exhibition was to poke fun at all religions, according to cartoonists who took part.

"Putting on this type of show in this place was not in the least a provocation. Unless you think that freedom of expression in itself is a provocation," the cartoonist Charb told Le Parisien newspaper.

Jill Carroll: "The Mujahedeen are merciful and kind that’s why I’m free and alive"

Never mind that they murdered her interpreter. Jill Carroll seems to have a full-blown case of Stockholm Syndrome, and/or advanced dhimmitude. Sandmonkey presents the whole sorry transcript of her defenses of the murderous jihadists who held her captive, and comments: "This makes me want to shoot myself for ever supporting her release!"

UPDATE: Carroll spoke under duress, as we noted here on April 1.

Fitzgerald: The errors of the deux-rivistes

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald exposes the fallacies of Deux-Rivisme:

"…still did not fully understand the complexities of the Mediterranean." -- from this article, describing Josep Borrell, president of the European Parliament

Perhaps Josep Borrell can begin to understand the complexities of the Mediterranean starting with the following:

In France successive governments over the past 35 years thought that France, and through France Europe, could be strengthened, could become a counterweight to mighty America, if there were some kind of alliance with the newly-rich and therefore newly-powerful (so it was felt) Arabs. They believed in the policy of "Deux-Rivisme," in which both banks (rives) of the Mediterranean would be seen to have much in common, with the only thing dividing them of importance being the Mediterranean itself. In other words, a feature of geography, and not much more, divided France from, say, Algeria.

That was the theory. On that theory, the French allowed millions of Algerians, and large numbers of Moroccans and Tunisians, to settle within Metropolitan France. The promoters of this policy never thought to ask themselves what Islam was all about, even as millions of Muslims made their taciturn way into France. Of course they were there for economic reasons. Of course it was easy for the French to assume, without more, that these Muslim Arabs would in the end integrate into society, just the way the Portuguese immigrants in the 1950s had, or the Vietnamese immigrants. It was not to be. The strength of the belief-system of Islam, which works against integration, works against acceptance of Infidel neighbors and against loyalty to the institutions of the Infidel nation-state, its laws, its customs, its understandings. But this was not made clear to the rulers by those they counted on for advice. A case of criminal negligence, at all levels of government.

Yet these deux-rivistes are still in power, and it is they who danced to the Arab tune (Mr. Josep Borrell should be sent, posthaste, a copy of Bat Ye’or’s seminal Eurabia). They were hoping, in many cases, to be able themselves, or to have their friends, relatives, and business associates recycle petrodollars, which would naturally be directed to those toward whom the Muslim Arabs felt had done the most to promote Arab interests and the Muslim agenda. And that included giving the Arabs a large say in who taught what about Islam, and where, in France. And this too had consequences.

The deux-rivistes -- of whom Dominique de Villepin is a perfect example, with his gush about Islamic greatness, his conceit that because he was born in 1953 in Sale, next to Rabat, he therefore "understands" the Arabs -- are coming a cropper today. But they still do not realize it. Nor do those who in other countries parroted the same nonsense, the nonsense which says: the only real division between Europe and North Africa is that pesky Mediterranean sea.

No, that sea is the least of it. There is a gulf that divides North Africans from Europeans. That gulf is called Islam. That is what Josep Borell should be studying -- but who can he trust to guide him through the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and understand their effect on Believers, when a small army of apologists for Islam has been deployed all over Western Europe, and now constitutes an army of occupation that controls much of what it is possible to learn about Islam, and what is off-limits for investigation and discussion?

In the 1970s, at the end of his life, the distinguished French scholar of Islam Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq foresaw the terrible consequences of the heedlessness of French immigration policy, and the madness of believing that any Euro-Arab Dialogue could lead to anything but another occasion in which the persistent, relentless, and cunning Arab side would wear down or trick the European side and gain every advantage. And that is exactly what happened, and happens still. The Arabs and Muslims were given a large say in how Islam would be perceived and taught in France and elsewhere in Europe, and they took full advantage of that. Meanwhile, those who had nothing like the scholarly background of Dufroucq, Abel, Fagnan, and other French Orientalists, managed to rise high as advisors on Islam. Deplorable and missing-the-point researchers (conductors of state-supported "recherches" on this and on that) such as Gilles "Wrong Again" Kepel and Olivier "Always Wrong" Roy rose high and are still in place, misleading yet another group of French leaders who, no matter what good grades they may have obtained at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), never learned to think for themselves.

D.C. Watson: Borders & Waldenbooks: Understanding Islam better than we thought

D. C. Watson discusses the recent dhimmitude displayed by America's beloved bookstore chain.

Should Muslim organizations such as the Council on American Islamic Relations be proud? Or should they be ashamed?

Borders and Waldenbooks have made headlines for choosing not to carry the April-May issue of "Free Inquiry" magazine because this particular issue contains cartoons of Islam's prophet, Muhammad.

CAIR had no trouble posting this Associated Press article on their website, either.

Shouldn't this story fall under the CAIR website's "Incitement Watch" instead? Since Islam is a "religion of peace," shouldn't CAIR be adding Borders and Waldenbooks to its long list of "Islamophobes"?

From the column: Beth Bingham, Borders spokesperson: "For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority."

Has CAIR viewed this as some sort of a victory? In truth, it is a defeat.

It is a defeat for this organization and others like it because Borders and Waldenbooks didn't choose not to carry "Free Inquiry" out of respect for Islam, but out of the fear of repercussions being carried out by Muslims against the bookstores' customers, property, and personnel.

If CAIR were anything close to a legitimate civil rights group operating in the United States, they would be encouraging two things:

1) That Borders and Waldenbooks feel free to carry any publication of their choosing, no matter the content, or whom it may offend.

2) That all Muslims living in America should respect free speech and expression, as it is guaranteed to all Americans by the U.S. Constitution, and that there should never be the slightest hint of retaliation against anyone for exercising this Constitutional right.

What a shame it is that right here in our own nation, there has to be a fear of Islamic retaliation over such trivial matters. It should come as little surprise, however, after Americans have learned about Mohammedans like Ali Warrayat, a student at Arizona State, who had a Qur'an and a Palestinian flag in his trunk as he rammed his car through the doors of an Arizona Home Depot store, drove his car through the store to the section that stocks the flammable liquids, and then set it ablaze.

Or about Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, a Mohammedan born in Iran, a current resident of Chapel Hill, NC, and recent UNC graduate. He plowed a rented SUV into a crowd of pedestrians at the UNC at Chapel Hill, injuring nine people, stating that he was "seeking retribution for the treatment of Muslims around the world," and that he wanted "to spread the will of Allah."

Yes, Americans, winners like these are here in our neighborhoods. The "Islamophobia" that groups like CAIR whine about doesn't exist: the discomfort that people have with Islam has continually been demonstrated to be for good reason. These two men are prime examples and living proof that Islam, as it is practiced by all too many Muslims today, and freedom are incompatible, and that immigration from Islamic states should be stopped. Islam is not a religion of peace or tolerance. It could be, maybe, if it jumped forward about fourteen centuries. Until it does, through badly needed reform, Islam will handle its business as it has from its beginning: with violence, and with the additional strategy of playing the poor, oppressed, innocent victim.

If our friends at the Council on American Islamic Relations would like to refute this, they are free to do so. We're all ears, Ibrahim. What we see all over the world, however, is not a figment of our imagination; it is sadly, all too real.

Back to Borders and Waldenbooks: A letter from a Borders employee was recently published at Little Green Footballs. The letter describes Borders receiving past complaints from Muslims that the Qur'an was stocked on the bottom shelf, and that it is now the Borders policy to stock the Qur'an only on the top shelf. If I owned a bookstore, I surely know where I'd stock them.

Fear, not respect, has created this policy at the bookstore. Is this the message that CAIR wants to see being sent?

This is a defeat for any Islamist puppet whose job it is to push Islam as a peaceful, benign faith. When it comes to winning Americans over with Islam, CAIR and groups like it are batting .000.

State Department criticizes Russia for religious intolerance; praises Afghanistan for religious freedom

It's buried at the end of this report, "Church to Open a Rights Center," from The Moscow Times, with thanks to Daryl:

Also, Kirill criticized a recent U.S. State Department report that criticized religious tolerance in Russia while praising Afghanistan for its religious freedom.

I hereby nominate Abdul Rahman to man State's Afghanistan desk.

Euro-Med Assembly condemns Danish cartoons

Eurabia Alert from the EU Observer, with thanks to Fjordman, who remarks: "Those who still think Eurabia is 'just a conspiracy theory' should read the news more closely. Notice how they only refer to the Arab world as 'the Mediterranean.'"

EUOBSERVER/ BRUSSELS- MEPs and national MPs from the EU and Mediterranean countries have approved a resolution which "condemned the offence" caused by the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed as well "as the violence which their publication provoked."

The two-day plenary session of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, held in Brussels, also urged governments to "ensure respect for religious beliefs and to encourage the values of tolerance, freedom and multiculturalism."

Speaking during the parliamentary assembly, Egyptian parliament speaker Ahmed Sorour insisted that the cartoons published in Denmark and other recent events showed the existence of a cultural deficit.

Jordanian MP Hashem al-Qaisi also condemned the cartoons while remarking that it is not sufficient to deplore the cartoons as these things might occur again in another country.

But Danish parliamentarian MP Troels Poulsen, reacting to extensive criticism on Danish society over the issue, insisted that Danish society is based on both freedom of expression and religious tolerance.

He added that the government can not influence the media.

The Danish MP also said the violent reaction to the cartoons was disproportionate....

Addressing the assembly, European Parliament president Josep Borrell referred to the Mediterranean as "a concentrate of all the problems facing humanity."

He said that after one year presiding over the assembly he "still did not fully understand the complexities of the Mediterranean."

Yes, it's especially tough when you ignore the implications of the evidence that is staring you in the face.

Bruno: Will the Internet Slay Islam?

Another provocative essay from Wolfgang Bruno (news links in the original):

A remarkable testimony to the power of the modern mass media revolution was noted in the complaints of an Egyptian cleric in 2005:

Leading Egypt Cleric Wants Fewer Frivolous Edicts

The chief Muslim cleric in Egypt wants tighter controls on who may issue religious edicts, or fatwas. Egypt's Grand Mufti says more fatwas have been issued in the past 10 years than in the previous 1400 years. Modern technology has made it easier than ever to issue or receive a fatwa, one of the religious edicts that guide Muslims' interpretations of Islamic law. Someone with a specific question about what Islam allows can get a personalized fatwa on the matter over the Internet, through television or via cellphone. The number of religious edicts keeps growing, and because Islam has no central authority there is no set system for governing who is allowed to issue them.

This explosion of unorthodox religious activity can only be compared to that of Christian Europe in the early 16th century. Just as Gutenberg’s invention marked the first mass media revolution in the West, the Internet and satellite TV are now doing the same thing in the Islamic world. However, the outcome may be very different, and the parallels between the Protestant Reformation and what is happening in the Islamic world now shouldn’t be pushed too far. The introduction of the printing press was delayed by several centuries in the Islamic world because of religious resistance and never had the same effect there as it did in the Christian West, which should strongly indicate that although technology is important, it isn’t everything. Culture matters. Islam does not have quite the same centralized hierarchy as the Catholic Church had in Europe, which means that the change cannot be linked to a specific date as it did with Martin Luther’s 95 theses. Although it did ultimately have consequences far beyond the borders of Europe, and although it did happen at a time of Ottoman Muslim expansion in the Mediterranean, the Reformation was primarily an internal, Christian and European affair. The turmoil in he Islamic world now affects more or less the entire world, and many of the critics are based in rival civilizations. And last, but not least: The religions are entirely different. Christianity was reformable, whereas Islam probably isn’t.

Does this mean that the current information revolution will destroy Islam? That is the view of David Wood:

Islam Beheaded

The truth about Muhammad has been one of the world's best-kept secrets. For centuries, it has been virtually impossible to raise objections about the character of Muhammad in Muslim countries, for anyone who raised such objections would (following the example set by Muhammad himself) immediately be killed. Outside the Muslim world, there has been little interest in Islam. But things have changed. Now many people are interested in Islam, and Muslims aren't able to silence everyone. Moreover, with the advent of the Internet, it is now impossible to keep Muhammad's life a secret. The facts about the founder of Islam are spreading very rapidly, and Muslims are frantically scurrying to defend their faith. But the information superhighway is paving over the ignorance that has for centuries been the stronghold of Islamic dogma. In the end, Islam will fall, for the entire structure is built upon the belief that Muhammad was the greatest moral example in history, and this belief is demonstrably false.

This optimistic view ignores several important facts. Many of the worst Islamists have above average education, as did many supporters of Communism in the West. Which shows that, unfortunately, increased knowledge does not always translate into increased wisdom. The second catch is that Muslims do not view the world in the same way as Westerners of infidels do. In his book The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam, renowned cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi explains how Islam has restricted the authority to legislate the haram and the halal (forbidden and permitted), taking it out of the hands of human beings and reserving it for the Allah alone through explicit verses of the Qur'an and from clear ahadith of the Prophet Muhammad. The jurists' task does not go beyond explaining what Allah has decreed to be halal or haram. Prohibiting something which is halal is similar to committing shirk (idolatry).

According to traditional Islamic law, and confirmed by leading scholars today, it is perfectly allowed for a Muslim man to have forced sex with the infidel concubines he just captured by massacring their relatives in front of their eyes. Muhammad himself did this several times. You just shouldn’t wear a silk tie while doing it. Likewise, it is perfectly permissible, halal, to behead a Buddhist schoolteacher in southern Thailand, but haraam to wear a gold ring at the same time. This thinking is why slavery was eventually abandoned and forbidden by the Judeo-Christian West, where the emphasis is on what’s moral or immoral, but only banned through external pressure by the same West in the Islamic world, where the emphasis is on what’s permitted or forbidden. It also explains why Qaradawi himself is reputed to be married to a girl in her pre-teens, 60 years his junior. He is perfectly aware of the fact that Muhammad had sex with a 9-year-old child, and has confirmed, in Arabic, but not in English, that this is allowed even today. To say that “Muhammad was immoral” just won’t wash with a truly devout Muslim, who is trapped in a circular thinking where the very concept of “morality” begins and ends with the example of Muhammad, his Sunna.

The website Islam Q&A gives an explanation of why it is forbidden for Muslim men to wear silk in this life, but permitted in Paradise, just as the case is with wine, which is also forbidden on Earth but exists in abundance in the afterlife. Islam is adept at taking something away from its Believers, but promising lots of it to them after death. Again, it doesn’t matter to a true Believer whether this makes any sense. Islam means “submission,” so you should simply submit to the wisdom of Allah:

Why are men not allowed to wear silk?

It is not right to make following a command or prohibition dependent upon knowing the wisdom behind it; rather we should hasten to carry out the commands of sharee’ah, regardless of whether the wisdom behind it is clear to us or not. If it is clear, then praise be to Allaah, and if it is not, then the Muslim should not let the fact that he does not know it prevent him from acting in accordance with the ruling of sharee’ah. Islam means submission to Allaah, may He be exalted, and obeying Him. If a person makes his actions dependent on understanding matters which may or may not convince him, he is in effect following his own thoughts and desires, not his Lord and Master. (….) (silk) was basically created for women, as is the case with gold jewellery, so it was forbidden for men because it can corrupt them by making them resemble women. (…) when it touches the body, it makes a man effeminate and goes against his masculinity and manliness, so if he wears it his heart gains the characteristics of femininity and softness. There is no doubt that wearing silk will diminish manly characteristics(…) Whoever is too dense to understand this should just submit to the Wise Lawmaker.”

Yes, the Internet is important in this struggle, but it is at least as important for informing non-Muslims about the true nature of Islam as enlightening Muslims, many of whom will be mentally immune to criticism of Islam. Some of them, however, can be reached. There are approximately one billion nominal Muslims in the world. How many of these are secret ex-Muslims? Ibn Warraq has estimated that 10- 15% of the Muslims in the UK are actually apostates. If that percentage reflects the Islamic world as a whole, we are talking about a number of people the equivalent of a country the size of Japan. Even half of this is a country the size of Britain. Although only a (fast-growing) minority of Muslims around the world have access to the Internet, simple mathematics indicate that there are already hundreds of thousands, probably millions or maybe even tens of millions of ex-Muslims in cyberspace. This, as well as additional tens of millions of Muslims who already have at least some doubts, is the soft underbelly of Islam.

We’re now stuck in a race against time, and Muslims know it. That’s why they are working so hard to shut down freedom of speech and any “mockery” or rational criticism targeting Islam in infidel countries. Will Muslims bomb away freedom of speech in the West before we detonate this unexploded bomb underneath Islam’s feet? Every time they hit us with a terrorist attack, we should respond by increasing the volume of criticism of Islam in circulation on the Internet. Some would claim that this isn’t our fight. It is now. Ernest Renan has said that if there ever was something like a Reformation in the Islamic world, the West should gracefully stay out of it. However, he lived in the 19th century and could not have imagined that we would be stupid enough to let millions of Muslims settle in our major cities. We are implicated now, whether we want to or not. We are no longer just fighting against Islam but for our own freedom of speech, and thus democracy itself. Maybe we cannot slay this dragon, but we can certainly help the people who can.

Muhammad and his thugs went to great lengths already in the early days of Islam to shut up critics. The punishment for leaving Islam is death, a fact which has largely kept organized groups of ex-Muslims from forming. Until now. With a significant Muslim presence in the West, we see elements of such groups forming for the first time in history. Secret ex-Muslims around the world are quietly watching these developments. Some are stepping forward.

Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles until she blasted Islam on Aljazeera. TV is a powerful medium, and has a stronger immediate impact than the Internet. However, many ex-Muslims will probably prefer to hide on the Internet rather than showing their face in front of millions of Muslims, many of whom think they deserve to die. It takes the extraordinary courage of someone like Wafa Sultan to do so, and it takes a TV station to air these views in the first place. For these reasons, this movement may best be nurtured and spearheaded through the Internet, the way Ali Sina and Ibn Warraq are doing now, and let the ripples spread to other media.

I have earlier stated that Islam is a “dinosaur in the age of mammals.” I believe this is true. However, it is still a big and bad beast, even more dangerous and angry now precisely because it is wounded. We cannot allow such a creature to roam the streets where our children are growing up. We need to cage it, and hope that rational criticism, which its immune system cannot in the long run withstand, will slowly wear it down. This is a world war, and the best thing we can hope for is a prolonged “cold” war, with many minor clashes but no huge, cataclysmic hot war. This will require a global containment of the Islamic world, the expulsion of any Muslims in the West deemed to be a security threat and strong support to the movement of ex-Muslims. All of these steps will have to be implemented soon, or we will have no other options left but a full-scale war, with massive casualties. We will probably win such a war if it comes to it, but the death toll will exceed that of any other war in human history, and leave scars for generations to come. Time is growing short. Are we up to the job?

Creating the Online Infidel Library

An anti-dhimmitude initiative from the European author Wolfgang Bruno (news links in the original):

Fatima Houda-Pepin, raised a Muslim and active in the struggle against the use of sharia in Canada, warns that the public should make an effort to get to know those in the Muslim community who are lobbying for application of Shari‘a: “One of the strengths of Islamists is that they know you very well. They know our history, they know our culture, they know our justice system.” The reason why so many Westerners reacted with defeatism and despair over the Muhammad cartoons affair is because we are mentally on the defensive. We are reacting more than acting, waiting passively for the next Islamic move. We haven’t even named the enemy yet. The attacks of 9/11, the London and Madrid bombings were reduced to the work of “evildoers who had hijacked a great religion,” not Islam itself. Muslims have been carefully studying our weak points for decades, to find ways to exploit them. Meanwhile, we have largely been ignoring them, first because we didn’t take them seriously, and later because we would not want to get involved in a global clash with the Islamic world. Get real: This is a world war, at least a cold one. War has already been declared upon us, and it is irrelevant whether Westerners and infidels like this or not. We need to recognize this and start fighting back, before we lose this fight without ever having admitted that we were in it.

It’s time to turn the tables. We’re the most powerful civilization in human history. We’ve split the atom and sent men to the moon. We can deal with a cult from 7th century Arabia, if we put our minds to it. Yes, they have a head start, but they have weak points, too. Many of them, and sometimes huge ones. Find a pressure point and squeeze. As philosopher Eric Hoffer has said, you can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. If we had some basic understanding of our enemy and watched him closely, we would see that he made at least two major mistakes during these recent cartoon events that we could exploit. First, he showed us his hand and his true intentions, thereby waking up millions of infidels just a little bit too early. Second: He also clearly demonstrated some of his weak points, both the extreme arrogance and the ridiculous hypersensitivity to even the slightest criticism. During the Muhammad cartoon affair, the Islamic world might as well have worn a gigantic neon sign saying: “We fear freedom of speech above all else. Give us bombs, just don’t send us rational criticism or mockery.” They scream “We love death,” yet cringe like shivering Christmas puddings in front of a few cartoons. If this is what they fear most, then this is where we should push harder.

Jihadist Muslims are war fetishists. Their obsession with orgies with virgins in the heavenly Islamic brothel and the close connection between death and orgasm borders on necrophilia. You don’t frighten a war fetishist with war, and you don’ scare a death cult with death. Although the use of force will sometimes be necessary to win this fight, it is important to understand that this is not Islam’s weak point. Islam is a warrior creed, a very good one. War, death and mayhem are its home ground. Free speech is ours. We should draw the enemy away from his home ground by teasing his arrogance, lure him out into the open and over to our home ground, where we have the natural advantage.

Now is the perfect time to launch an ideological counter-offensive, using the Internet. Internet censorship is still less effective in most Muslim countries than in China, and there is now a critical mass of ordinary Westerners who understand that Islam constitutes a mortal threat to their freedom. Many of them could be mobilized, if somebody leads them and shows them how. The key to winning this struggle is not to engage the silent majority in the Islamic world, but to mobilize the silent majority in the West and in the infidel world, and perhaps the minority of ex-Muslims within the Islamic world.

The idea of using the Internet to spread critical thinking isn’t new, although it is not always directly linked to Islam:

In Arabic, "Internet" Means "Freedom"

Somewhere in Baghdad a man is working in secrecy to edit new Arabic versions of liberal classics. He has made Arabic translations of more than two dozen articles and nine books and booklets. Sponsored by the Cato Institute, he joins a small but growing assortment of Arabic-language blogs promulgating liberal ideas. "No more than 10,000 books were translated into Arabic over the entire past millennium," says the U.N., "equivalent to the number translated into Spanish each year." "The Internet is a historical opportunity for Arab liberalism," Pierre Akel, the Lebanese host of one such site, metransparent.com, said. "In the Arab world, much more than in the West, we can genuinely talk of a blog revolution." The U.N. report notes that in the Arab world—a region of 284 million—a book that sells 5,000 copies qualifies as a best-seller. The Internet, in contrast, makes possible worldwide, instant distribution, at a nearly negligible cost.

However, some books critical of Islam are already available online, and more will probably be added:

Call for Internet Publication of Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam.

This is a call for the Internet publication (and eventual translation) of the book Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam by Marywan Halabjaye. The book concerns how Islam is allegedly used to oppress women. Halabjaye’s book is based on an analysis of the Qur’an as well as recognized Sunnah and Hadith. This call for Internet publication is based on the belief that the best response to those who would suppress publication of a book is to increase publication, promotion and distribution of that book. The most efficient way to do that is on the Internet. This request is also based on the belief that it would be a powerful and timely lesson if the only thing accomplished by those who seek to suppress publication of the book Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam is to cause it to be published to the entire world.

I have advocated the idea of creating an organized network to promote Islam-critical books in cyberspace. Maybe a dozen or more blogs and websites could form the global backbone of this network, the cyberspace version of Radio Free Europe. This to make it more difficult for hackers to block the efforts, and to disseminate the books as much as possible. The websites should preferably be based in the USA, since it has the strongest protection of freedom of speech, or at least outside of the jurisdiction of the Eurabian Union. Start with those who are already in the business, for instance Jihad Watch, Faith Freedom International, Little Green Footballs, Michelle Malkin and others. These “backbone” websites should receive financial compensation for this task. Anybody, anywhere should be able to download the books or republish them at their own websites. This would bypass media censorship and create an Online Infidel Library. It would mirror the online library Google is trying to create now, but with books about Islam only. The information would spread around the planet faster than CAIR can say “Islamophobia”. The genie would be out of the bottle, and no amount of intimidation, hacker attacks or “hate speech” lawsuits could return it to the bottle.

I have been contacted by at least one person who was pondering the possibility of financing and hosting critical books on Islam on the Internet, and wondered whether this was feasible. To publish in English a handful of these books on the Internet isn’t too complicated, it just requires some private individual or group of people with sufficient means to buy the copyrights and support the backbone websites and it could be done quickly. I don't know all of the practical details of how much such an operation would cost. But since the entire text of these books would be put online for free, I reckon one would have to pay significant sums to buy the copyrights. The good thing about starting out with private citizens is that we would directly engage the silent masses who are fed-up with Islam and Islamic demands. If our so-called leaders won’t lead this fight, then we will have to push them and force their hand. They only feel pressured by Muslims now, it’s time they feel some pressure from infidels, too. That goes for European politicians in particular.

However, when you increase the number of books and thus costs, and certainly when you start with translations into multiple languages, it probably becomes too complicated and time-consuming for private citizens to undertake. I have suggested publishing Bat Ye’or’s book “Eurabia” online, both in the full version and in abridged versions, translated into multiple European languages. Some of the most important Islam-critical books should also be translated to major non-Western languages, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and so on. I envisioned this to receive clandestine support of, for instance, the US government. It is unlikely whether they can or want to do so openly, but the amount of money it would cost would be peanuts compared to what the Iraq campaign costs on a single day and could be provided secretly. This could be called Operation Theo van Gogh, or perhaps Operation Asma bint Marwan, after the poetess who was murdered by Muhammad’s thugs for mocking Islam.

NOTE: The following list of books is based solely on my own subjective views. The authors have not been consulted about whether they would agree to publish their books on the Internet, and it is quite possible that some of them might object to this. However, it is likely that several of them would agree to this, provided that they get adequate financial compensation for this. The number of suggested titles could easily be doubled, but any such Online Infidel Library would probably include some of the books I have listed here. I have read most of these books myself, but include some by reputation or recommendations from people I trust:

Group 1:

"Leaving Islam - Apostates Speak Out" edited by Ibn Warraq

“The Islam Threat” by Ali Sina from www.faithfreedom.org, whenever it gets published. I have had the pleasure of reading it, and it is good.

“The Legacy of Jihad” by Andrew G Bostom

"Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis" by Bat Ye'or

"Onward Muslim Soldiers" by Robert Spencer

“The Force of Reason” by Oriana Fallaci

"Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries" by Paul Fregosi

“While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within” by Bruce Bawer

"Mohammed and the Rise of Islam" by David S. Margoliouth

“American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us” by Steven Emerson

Group 2:

"Why I am not a Muslim" by Ibn Warraq

"What the Koran Really Says" edited by Ibn Warraq

“The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam And the Crusades” by Robert Spencer

“Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples” by V.S. Naipaul

“Militant Islam Reaches America” by Daniel Pipes

“Islam and Dhimmitude” by Bat Yeor

“The Sword of the Prophet” by Serge Trifkovic

“Rage Against the Veil” by Parvin Darabi

"Women and the Koran" by Anwar Hekmat

“View from the Eye of the Storm: Terror and Reason in the Middle East” by Haim Harari

Group 3:

“The Quest for the Historical Muhammad” by Ibn Warraq

”Twenty Three Years” by Ali Dashti

“The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?” by Tony Blankley

“The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat” by Roger Scruton

"Muhammad" by Maxime Rodinson

"Among the Believers" by V. S. Naipaul

“The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs” by David Pryce-Jones

“Menace in Europe : Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too” by Claire Berlinski

Western Standard sued for publishing cartoons

An update on the victimization of the courageous Ezra Levant, one of the few Canadian media figures to stand up for free speech. From the Western Standard blog (with thanks to all who sent this in):

Earlier this month, the Western Standard was sued in human rights court for publishing the Danish cartoons. It's been ten years since I've graduated from law school, and I've never seen a more frivolous, vexatious, infantile suit than this.

But that's the point -- this complaint is not about beating us in the law. Freedom of speech is still in our constitution; we'll win in the end. It's a nuisance suit, designed to grind us down, cost us money, and serve as a warning to other, more timid media.

The hand-written scrawl and the spelling errors were what first disgusted me with the suit; but the arguments were what really got me. The complainant, Imam Syed Soharwardy, a former professor at an anti-Semitic university in Saudi Arabia, doesn't just argue that we shouldn't have published the cartoons. He argues that we shouldn't be able to defend our right to publish the cartoons. The bulk of his complaint was that we dared to try to justify it.

He argues that advocating a free press should be a thought crime.

Here is a letter I sent out to our e-mail list, explaining our legal situation.

Here is the formal response I shall file with the human rights commission tomorrow.

And here is where you can chip in to our legal defence fund if you want to support us. Our lawyers tell me we'll likely win, but it could cost us up to $75,000 to do so -- and the case against us is being prosecuted by government employees using tax dollars.

We're a small, independent magazine and we don't have deep pockets to fight off nuisance suits, so please chip in if you can.

Borders will only stock Qur'ans on the top shelf

Little Green Footballs has published a letter from a Borders employee showing that the corporate dhimmitude there extends to far more than their refusal to stock a magazine that has reprinted the Muhammad cartoons. They also make sure that their Qur'ans appear only on the top shelf in all their bookstores:

I work for Borders Books and after reading the article you posted on Wed. 3/29 about our company not carrying the magazine due to it showing the dreaded cartoons of blasphemy, I thought I should write with another tidbit of information I learned about my company the other week.

I was shifting rows of books in our religion section and it happened to be that all of our Koran books (a section on its own) ended up on the bottom shelf. The next day I was informed by my General Manager that it is Borders policy as a whole (not my particular store) that due to complaints in the past from Muslim customers, we are not allowed to put our copies of the Koran on any shelf other than the top.

When I heard of this I became so infuriated that the company I work for (and I do love working for it) has caved in to Islamic pressure and is still continuing to do so. I love my job and my company but it does deeply disturb me to see what is happening to it.

Imagine, as Charles Johnson points out, if a Christian group demanded that Bibles be placed only on the top shelf. I expect that the mainstream media might even find that newsworthy enough to engage in a bit of ridicule and scare-mongering. But when it comes to Muslims demanding special treatment for the Qur'an, and Borders readily caving, that's just business as usual.

Islam humiliates religious freedom of Christians and human rights of Muslims. It’s time for change

Samir Khalil Samir, SJ is one Catholic priest who isn't afraid to speak the truth about Islamic oppression of non-Muslims and denial of the freedom of conscience. From AsiaNews, with thanks to Uncle Jeff:

The ordeal of Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan is shared by many converts from Islam and poses the problem of Islam’s systematic violation of human rights. If Sharia kills a man who changes religion, it is to be condemned and cannot be the principle inspiring law, in that it destroys any ideal of coexistence and contradicts the UN declaration on human rights, approved in 1948 by almost all Muslim countries.

Rome (AsiaNews) – Abdul Rahman, the Afghan who converted from Islam to Christianity, was released from prison with a juridical ploy: deemed to be mentally unfit and thus incapable of undergoing trial, he was able to avoid the death penalty foreseen by sharia in the case of apostasy. But his ordeal is just one case in tens of thousands each year. In Egypt alone there are at least 10,000 Muslims who convert to Christianity each year. At the same time, there are at least 12,000 Christians who become Muslim.

This phenomenon of conversions from Christianity to Islam is rampant throughout the Middle East and in the world. Fundamentalist violence that currently characterizes the Muslim world brings many to ask themselves: can such a violent religion truly come from God? But what is the lot of former Muslims? That of having to flee, hide, emigrate.

A friend of mine who wanted to be baptized was forced to flee from his university friends because one day they found a pocket-sized Gospel in his room. They began to threaten him with death and he fled, abandoning his university studies.

The solution found in Afghanistan is the best one, but is a compromise. It must serve to lead us to a radical question: what takes precedence in Islam? Internationally recognized human rights or Islamic sharia? And if sharia runs counters to human rights, is it not time that the international community condemns it? And if sharia is inscribed – as fundamentalists maintain – in the Koran, there are two things to consider: either the Koran denies human rights, or it must be reread to purge it of false and violent incrustations.

Read it all.

Planned Mother Teresa statue irks Albania Muslims

Islamic Tolerance Alert from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

SHKODER, Albania (Reuters) - Muslims in Albania's northern city of Shkoder are opposing plans to erect a statue to Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian Catholic nun in line for elevation to sainthood by the Vatican.

The dispute is unusual for Albania, where religion was banned for 27 years under the regime of dictator Enver Hoxha and where religious harmony and mixed marriages are the norm.

Seventy percent of the population are liberal Muslims, the rest are Christian Orthodox and Catholic.

But Muslim groups in Shkoder rejected the local council plan for a Teresa statue, saying it "would offend the feelings of Muslims."

"We do not want this statue to be erected in a public place because we see her as a religious figure," said Bashkim Bajraktari, Shkoder's mufti or Muslim religious leader.

"If there must be a statue, let it be in a Catholic space."

UK cemetery bars burials of all but Muslims

4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, and in not one of them can a non-Muslim be buried. "Confusion as mourners are turned away," from the Times Online, with thanks to Douglas Murray:

A COUNCIL was accused last night of responding to the local government strike by barring burials at its cemetery for anyone who was not Muslim. Funeral directors who attempted to arrange Christian interments at the council-run cemetery in Blackburn, Lancashire, were told that it would be closed throughout yesterday due to the industrial action.

Families were forced to re-arrange funeral plans and other mourners were told that they would not be allowed to visit the cemetery to read its book of remembrance.

Undertakers were subsequently outraged to discover that the closure would apply only to Christian burials.

The local authority had ruled that an emergency service would be provided for Muslims, who — by religious tradition — must be buried as soon as possible after their death.

Borders won't carry magazine containing prophet cartoons

I heard enough stories of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) being hidden away in dark corners at Borders not to be surprised by this latest bit of dhimmitude.

From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

In other words, we are afraid, and we are caving in to violent intimidation.

US bans contact with ruling Hamas

A welcome bit of anti-dhimmitude from Washington. Let's hope it lasts. From Reuters, with thanks to JE:

THE United States has ordered its diplomats and contractors to cut off contacts with Palestinian ministries after a Hamas-led government was sworn in, the State Department said today.

A directive, distributed to diplomats and other officials in the region by email, instructed them with immediate effect not to have contacts with Hamas-appointed government ministers or those who work for them, whether they are members of the Islamic militant group or not, officials said.

Hamas is formally committed to the destruction of Israel and is classed by the US government as a terrorist organisation. It won a landslide victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections in January.

"We will not have contact with members of Hamas, no matter what title they may have," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

Danish Muslims sue newspaper over cartoons

Defamatory? Certainly not. Some of them showed a connection between Islam and violence, which Muslims around the world have daily been bearing out -- not least by means of cartoon rage itself. Injurious? Yes, they were, but only indirectly. They did grave damage to the image of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance, by giving rise to an orchestrated campaign of violent intimidation and an ongoing assault on the principle of freedom of speech. The eyes of many have been opened.

From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - A group of 27 Danish Muslim organizations have filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper that first published the caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, their lawyer said Thursday.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday, two weeks after Denmark’s top prosecutor declined to press criminal charges, saying the drawings that sparked a firestorm in the Muslim world did not violate laws against racism or blasphemy.

Michael Christiani Havemann, a lawyer representing the Muslim groups, said lawsuit sought $16,100 in damages from Jyllands-Posten Editor in Chief Carsten Juste and Culture Editor Flemming Rose, who supervised the cartoon project.

“We’re seeking judgment for both the text and the drawings which were gratuitously defamatory and injurious,” Havemann said.

Straw asks European leaders to learn more about Islam

Because gee, Islam is really swell. And of course, I'm all for European governments learning more about Islam. In fact, I think they should devote an enormous amount of attention to learning about Islam. They just shouldn't trust Jack Straw's favorite authorities to tell them anything useful about it.

I hereby volunteer my services to any European government that wants to learn more about Islam. I will travel to your country at my own expense for meetings with government officials. I will take you step-by-step through the Qur'an and Sunnah, and introduce you to Sharia and fiqh. I will work strictly from Islamic sources, so that you can see for yourself whether or not what I am saying is accurate. Give me a week or two, and you will be quite familiar with the essentials of Islamic teaching and practice. Contact me at director@jihadwatch.org.

Straw, by the way, also comes out here against freedom of expression.

From the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

LONDON — British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has asked European governments to learn more about Islam and “protect the rights of every citizen irrespective of their faith and creed.”

Addressing an award ceremony organised by the Muslim News in the capital, Straw said European governments have to provide a space in which the rights and diversity of people of all faiths are protected....

“My point is this: the story of Europe is not a simple, linear one of secular values steadily pushing out and eroding religious ones. Rather the European experience is one of an accommodation between faith and modernity. And it is the future of Europe too.”

Straw said the reason for singling out of Islam as a target of attack might be due to its reputation as a new European religion.

“There have been Muslim communities in Europe for centuries,” said Straw. “But it is true that in recent decades those communities have grown in size and that Islam is now the fastest growing religion here. Another reason might be the feeling that many people seem to have that Muslims are in some way more religious than followers of other faiths. Again, I think it is probably undeniable that for most of the Muslims whom I know their faith is more obviously apparent in their daily actions and rituals than it is in the daily lives of the majority of people in Britain.”

Straw also condemned the decision of some European newspapers to reprint the controversial Danish cartoons by claiming the right to freedom of expression.

“I said at the time that the cartoons were reprinted in Europe — though not here in the United Kingdom — that doing so was needlessly insensitive and disrespectful,” said Straw. “The right to freedom of expression is a broad one and something which this country has long held dear. It was the focus of our human rights work during our recent Presidency of the European Union. But the existence of such a right does not mean that it is right — morally right, politically right, socially right — to exercise that freedom without regard to the feelings of others."

“A large number of Muslims in this country were upset by those cartoons being reprinted across Europe and at their deeply held beliefs being insulted. They expressed their hurt and outrage but did so in a way which epitomised the learned, peaceful religion of Islam. In doing so they were not being 'unreasonable' or 'un-European'. They were not threatening anyone's values.”

Qaradawi to Arla Foods: Good dhimmi!

Of course, Arla had nothing to do with the cartoons in the first place, and should not have been victimized. But now that they have kowtowed and apologized, Qaradawi is magnanimous in victory. "Qaradawi lifts curbs on Arla products," from The Peninsula of Qatar, with thanks to Interested:

DOHA: Islamic scholar Dr Yousuf Al Qaradawi has stated that curbs imposed on Danish firm Arla will be withdrawn. The firm had been blacklisted by retailers in Qatar following the uproar over the publication of offensive cartoons against the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) in a Danish newspaper.

Qaradawi made the announcement at an international Islamic conference being held in Bahrain. He praised Arla’s stand for stating that there was no need to publish such cartoons unnecessarily. Because of this stand, he said that curbs should be withdrawn and the company’s position would enable the opening of the avenues of dialogue for further such initiatives.

The company had announced its position in a 52-page insert in an Arabic-language magazine. Further, representatives of the firm also interacted with the Bahrain conference attendees and made their opposition to publication of such cartoons clear....

Qaradawi had been at the forefront of protests against Danish products followingthe publication of the cartoons. Addressing a congregation in Doha on February 3, during Friday prayers, he urged people to boycott Danish goods. “Today is the day of anger, a day to express our fury on behalf of Allah and His Prophet (PBUH),” Qaradawi had said.

British govt moves to block probe in £60m BAE ‘luxury’ fund for Saudi royal family

Don't investigate how we bribe them! They may get angry! From the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

LONDON — The attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, has been asked to block a criminal investigation into allegations that Britain's biggest defence company ran a £60 million slush fund to support the extravagant lifestyle of Saudi businessmen and members of the Saudi royal family.

Goldsmith has been asked by government officials to examine whether the inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into the slush fund allegedly run by BAE Company is “in the public interest.”

They fear it could provoke Saudi Arabia into pulling out of Britain's biggest export contract.

Well placed legal sources say that the Saudis are becoming increasingly alarmed about the inquiry, which is examining how the fund was used to provide Saudi princes and princesses with luxury holidays, Rolls-Royces, rented apartments and other perks. The government decision was taken after the Saudi government had expressed dissatisfaction over the investigation.

Afghanistan: More Christians Arrested In Wake of ‘Apostasy’

It looks as if many in Afghanistan believe that the local Christians have violated their dhimma. From Compass Direct, with thanks to all who sent this in:

March 22 (Compass) – An avalanche of media coverage of an Afghan man facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity has apparently sparked the arrest and deepening harassment of other Afghan Christians in the ultra-conservative Muslim country....

During the past few days, Compass has confirmed the arrest of two other Afghan Christians elsewhere in the country. Because of the sensitive situation, local sources requested that the location of the jailed converts be withheld.

This past weekend, one young Afghan convert to Christianity was beaten severely outside his home by a group of six men, who finally knocked him unconscious with a hard blow to his temple. He woke up in the hospital two hours later but was discharged before morning.

“Our brother remains steadfast, despite the ostracism and beatings,” one of his friends said.

Several other Afghan Christians have been subjected to police raids on their homes and places of work in the past month, as well as to telephone threats.

There is much more. Read it all.

Time Magazine Smears Afghan Christian Convert

In "Abdul Rahman's Family Values," Time Magazine (thanks to all who sent this in) reveals "an official police report on the Christian convert in Afghanistan" which "alleges a tawdry domestic life."

It never seems to occur to Time that anyone in Afghanistan might have any interest in blackening Abdul Rahman's name, and they retail these stories from supposedly disinterested officials and family members (that's right, the family that turned him in for apostasy) without critical comment.

Most importantly, these stories are a gigantic red herring, of interest only to the most befogged dhimmis. It doesn't matter if Abdul Rahman is a deadbeat dad, a father stabber, a mother raper, or the second coming of Adolf Hitler. If he is any of those things, of course he should be prosecuted in a sane society by a sane court system. But ultimately whether he is or is not those things is irrelevant to the question of whether or not he is free, or should be free, to leave the Islamic religion in Afghanistan.

He said he was a Christian, you see, so Time Magazine has to portray him in a negative light. Time's enemy, after all, is Christianity, not the global Islamic jihad.

By attempting to divert attention away from that central question, Time Magazine deserves the opprobrium of all free people everywhere.

Western leaders breathed a sigh of relief yesterday at the release of Abdul Rahman, a Christian convert who had faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic law for renouncing his Muslim faith. Rahman, 40, has become the poster boy for the Christian right and for religious freedom. Closer up, however, the picture painted by the local police who arrested him shows a candidate not quite ready for family values. Rather, a portrait emerges of a deadbeat dad with psychological problems who couldn't hold down a job, abused his daughters and parents and didn't pay child support.

Colonel Mohammed Saber Monseffi, the chief crime officer at the 15th district police station in Kabul, brought Abdul Rahman in for questioning after a domestic dispute turned violent late last month. Says Monseffi, "He told me, 'I'm a Christian,' and I said that is not of any interest to me. I asked him why did you beat your father, why did you beat your daughters?" The fact that Rahman was Christian was secondary to his family's desire to get him out of the house, said Monseffi, who adds that his own wife is a Russian Christian.

Witness statements by his teenage daughters Mariam and Maria, aged 13 and 14, on the night of his arrest appear to detail his failures as a parent. "He behaves badly with us and we were threatened and disgraced by him. He has no job and has never given me a stitch of clothing or a crust of bread. Just his name as a father," said his 13-year-old daughter Mariam in a statement signed with her inky fingerprint.

Both his daughters mentioned that he had converted to Christianity and abandoned the religion of Islam but also described him as "jobless, lazy and cruel." His 14-year-old daughter Maria said that when her father returned to Afghanistan three years ago after spending many years in Germany and Pakistan he was a stranger to her. "He said he was my father but he hasn't behaved like a father since he came back to Afghanistan. He threatens us and we are all afraid of him and he doesn't believe in the religion of Islam," her statement said.

Abdul Rahman's parents did not appear to help his cause. A statement by his mother Ghul Begum reads: "We brought up his children and for eight years he didn't come home. Because he has converted from Islam to another religion we don't want him in our house." His father Abdul Manan's statement says, "(Abdul Rahman) wanted to change the ethics of my children and family. He is not going in the right direction. I have thrown him out of my house." Abdul Rahman's own statement does not dispute his financial straits. "Since I am jobless my family is with my children. I had economic problems with my familiy and my father has many complaints about me. He has warned me if I don't become a Muslim, I will be driven away from the house."

Now, both his daughters and the rest of his family are in hiding in Kabul, fearful that they could be targeted by a now liberated Rahman or by Islamic extremists. On Monday several hundred clerics, students and other protestors gathered on the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif calling for his execution and shouting "death to Christians." Afghanistan's deputy attorney general Mohammed Eshaq Aloko said Rahman would be allowed overseas for medical treatment but that the case could be reopened "when he is healthy."

Brussels Prosecutes Aramaic Priest and Fugitive for Islamophobia

From Paul Belien at the Brussels Journal, with thanks to all who sent this in:

One of the rare Belgian churches that is packed every weekend is the church of Saint Anthony of Padova in Montignies-sur-Sambre, one of the poorest suburbs of Charleroi, a derelict rust belt area to the south of Brussels. Holy Mass in Montignies is conducted in Latin and lasts up to four hours. Yesterday over 2,000 people attended the service by Father Samuel (Père Samuel). The priest’s sermon dealt with his persecution. The Belgian authorities are bringing the popular priest to court on charges of racism.

Father Samuel has been prosecuted for “incitement to racist hatred” by the Belgian government’s inquisition agency, the so-called Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR), because of a remark he made in a 2002 television interview when he said:

“Every thoroughly islamized Muslim child that is born in Europe is a time bomb for Western children in the future. The latter will be persecuted when they have become a minority.”

Read it all.

Canada Suspends Aid to Hamas-Led Gov't

Anti-dhimmitude from an unlikely place. Let's hope other Western nations swiftly follow suit. From AP, with thanks to Shinolite:

TORONTO - Canada said Wednesday it was suspending assistance to the Palestinian Authority because the new Hamas-led government refuses to renounce violence and recognize Israel. Hamas responded that Ottawa's decision was hasty and unfair.

It was the first government besides Israel to cut off financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority since Hamas won the legislative elections in January, and other nations were expected to follow suit.

Hamas formally took power Wednesday, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swearing in its 24-member Cabinet.

Hamas and new Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh insist they won't soften the militant group's violent ideology or formally recognize its longtime nemesis.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said in a statement that Canada had no choice but to suspend assistance and decline any contact with the new Hamas Cabinet.

"The stated platform of this government has not addressed the concerns raised by Canada and others concerning nonviolence, the recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the roadmap for peace," MacKay said. "As a result, Canada will have no contact with the members of the Hamas Cabinet and is suspending assistance to the Palestinian Authority."...

But some money will still flow:

Ottawa has said, however, the Palestinian people should not be penalized over the actions of the group and currently provides $22 million in annual humanitarian aid through various United Nations and non-governmental agencies....

"Working with our partners and through the United Nations, its agencies and other organizations, Canada will continue to support and respond to the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people," Verner said. "Canada will also continue to work with the voices of moderation within Palestinian society."

Bawer: Norway's immigration policy claims another victim

Also at Bruce Bawer's site today is this harrowing confirmation of everything he warns us about in While Europe Slept, which if you have not read, you should obtain and read immediately:

Norway's asylum policy claimed another victim today. This time it was somebody I knew. Stein Sjaastad (58) was a good friend of, and the primary-care physician for, several of my best friends in Oslo. I met him several times. He was always gentle and soft-spoken, and always had a warm, slightly wry smile and a genial twinkle in his eye. He was by all accounts a wonderful, caring doctor, and when one of my best friends in Oslo was going through the worst crisis of his life, Stein was extraordinarily understanding, considerate, and helpful, going out of his way to help him through it. He was what every doctor should be.

Today an Algerian national who has been living in Norway for about a year, and whose asylum application was apparently denied (but who, as is the usual practice, simply remained here anyway), walked into Stein's office and stabbed him several times in the chest and neck with a knife that he had brought along. Apparently he had been a patient of Stein's. This afternoon, when his name surfaced in connection with the murder, several Oslo doctors told police that they had experienced this man's aggressiveness firsthand. But of course nothing had been done. Nothing is ever done. After all, lots of asylum seekers are aggressive.

One was reminded at once of August 3, 2004, when another aggressive asylum seeker -- this one from Somalia -- murdered 23-year-old Terje Mjåland on a downtown Oslo tram, the same tram my partner takes to work every day. That murderer, as it happens, was released by the authorities only two weeks ago, on March 15, on his own recognizance. He can't be held responsible for the crime, they say, because he was insane at the time. Now, apparently, he's OK.

This evening, on Tabloid, Norway's premier news-discussion program, Mullah Krekar was interviewed. He offered his views on Islam and the West, the main point being that the former will eventually conquer the latter. No mention of Stein's murder.

Stein leaves two sons and a partner, Egil.

Bruce Bawer fisks the Bandar Beacon

At his blog, Bruce Bawer, author of the stunning and essential book While Europe Slept, responds to a typically irresponsible and silly review of his book in the Washington Post, aka the Bandar Beacon. A sampling (first the review, then Bawer's comments):

The presence of imperfectly integrated communities of highly traditional Middle Eastern and North African Muslims in Europe, as well as the chasm that separates many European Muslims from the cultural norms of their adopted countries, were familiar well before Bawer arrived,

"Familiar" to whom? Not to most Americans, certainly. It was all but impossible to find mention of the situation in the European or American media.

even if Christian Europeans had no idea how to cope with them.

Indeed, Bawer's complaint was vividly and conspicuously personified by
the populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. A proud homosexual, he was
assassinated by an animal-rights activist in 2002.

An "animal-rights activist," that is, who was infuriated by Fortuyn's stance on Islam, and who killed him after having been brainwashed by Dutch media and politicians into viewing Fortuyn as a dangerous, racist extremist.

His right-wing, anti-immigration stance rested on the insistence that
Islam was too socially retrograde to be integrated into liberal Dutch
culture.

For the millionth time, Fortuyn was not "right-wing." His concern about the influx of Muslims into the Netherlands was based on the fact that many of them were incorrigibly right-wing -- and not just right-wing, but reactionary to a degree beyond the imagination of most Westerners.

So there's not much new here,

"Preaching to the converted," "not much new here" -- move along, folks. Don't worry. Be happy.

No, not much new. Funny, then, how I keep getting emails -- from extremely intelligent people who read newspapers like the Washington Post every day and consider themselves well-informed -- and yet have been stunned by what they've learned from this book.

Read it all.

Berlusconi Warns Against Multiculturalism

Anti-dhimmitude from the Italian Prime Minister. From AP, with thanks to Marisol Seibold, who comments: "There's a fair amount that's not being said in this article with respect to who would like to set up camp in Italy (i.e., waging jihad by migration to infidel lands), and what dangers that would entail -- including the establishment of a home base for terrorism within that country, and all the crime and legal wrangling that has afflicted other European countries in recent years. Near the end of the article, it is mentioned in passing that significant numbers of immigrants from North Africa land in Italy on a regular basis. But that mention comes long after what is apparently the central point, that Berlusconi is against both the enshrined notion of multiculturalism and a "multiethnic" demographic shift. Then surely he hates rainbows and puppies, too."

ROME - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he does not want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country, drawing plaudits from a right-wing ally and criticism from center-left opponents....

"We don't want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country. We are proud of our traditions," Berlusconi said Monday on state-run radio.

Berlusconi's government has put in place a tough immigration policy, including legislation cracking down on illegal immigration. The 2002 law allows only immigrants with job contracts to obtain residency permit.

"We want to open (our borders) to foreigners who flee countries where their lives or liberties are at risk," said Berlusconi, adding those who come to Italy to work also are welcome. "We don't want to welcome all those who come here to bring about damage and danger to Italian citizens."

Thousands of illegal immigrants come to Italy every year, mostly crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa on rickety boats. The latest group of more than 200 landed Monday on Lampedusa, a tiny island off Sicily.

Most immigrants, if they elude police, move on to other European countries.

The Northern League, a right-wing anti-immigrant party, welcomed Berlusconi's remarks.

"Here's the Berlusconi we want," said Roberto Calderoli, a Northern League leader who was forced to quit as reforms minister last month after he wore a T-shirt on state TV decorated with caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. "Our values, our identity, our history, our traditions" must be defended against immigration, the Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying....

Academic Apologists for Shariah: The Real Meaning of the Abdul Rahman Case

Irfan Khawaja gives some Islamic apologists and dhimmi fellow travelers a well-deserved skewering in this HNN piece (thanks to Andrew Bostom). News links in the original:

I suppose by now we've all heard of the case of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan convert to Christianity now on trial for what Afghan law regards as the capital offense of apostasy. The case evokes the same response from me as does every case of its kind: a sense of indignation at the injustice involved, and hope for the victim's eventual exoneration. (As of this writing, Abdul Rahman's mental fitness to stand trial has been challenged by the government—no less a rights-violation than its having put him on trial for apostasy.)

In a recent post at Liberty & Power, David Beito suggests that the Abdul Rahman case is somehow a problem for those of us who backed the war on Afghanistan. I disagree, and will deal with that claim in a subsequent post. But it seems to me that the case is much more obviously a problem for people in Near East and Islamic Studies who have been trying for so long to split the difference between liberalism and Islam. Political Islam, they keep telling us, is a more benign thing than we secularists are willing to admit. Well, let's consider.

The basic lesson to be learned from the Abdul Rahman case is eloquently expressed in a pair of sentences in this March 24 article in The New York Times by Abdul Waheed Wafa and David Rohde:

The case illustrates a central contradiction of the compromise Constitution that Afghanistan adopted in 2004, which has been cited as an example for other Islamic countries. One passage declares Islam Afghanistan's supreme law, while another states that the country grants its citizens religious freedom.

Fleshed out a bit, I think, we can draw five further lessons from the passage in the Times story.

1. It's irrational to compromise on fundamental issues. 2. Constitutional issues are fundamental to governance. 3. The choice of secularism versus religion is a fundamental constitutional issue—hence not one where compromise is acceptable. 4. It is a fundamental mistake to expect religious freedom to be secured by a sectarian constitution, or by attempts to compromise with one. 5. Contrary to those who "cited" it "as an example for other Islamic countries," the Afghan Constitution is not worth emulating, and little different in principle from the constitutions of failed Islamic states like Pakistan or Iran.

Who, exactly, would be discomfited by having to confront the preceding lessons? Well, philosophical and political pragmatists would contest the "absolutism" of lessons (1), (2) and (3). Apologists for religion would contest (4), and apologists for the Afghan constitution would contest (5). What's amazing is how many "informed" and "authoritative" experts on the Islamic Near East fall into one of those five categories.

For instance: I can readily think of one person who simultaneously falls into all five of the preceding categories: Noah Feldman of New York University.

Consider this 2004 interview with Feldman on "constitutionalism in the Muslim world":

Question: I understand that the high court is going to be a combination of secular law judges and Islamic judges. Are you optimistic that will work?

Dr. Feldman: It's an experiment. It has the possibility of working, but there are certainly no guarantees. It's an experiment with a body that will be able to mediate between those two different sets of values, and do it in a way that is perceived as legitimate by the rest of the Afghan people.

So: a contradiction has "the possibility of working" if only we'll give it the chance to. Unfortunately, that only "works" if you're willing to split the difference between faith and reason, or between illogic and logic. Noah Feldman is a smart and talented man, but unfortunately for him (and for the people of Afghanistan) intelligence and talent don't add up to the capacity to square the constitutional circle.

Close behind Feldman, I think of the vaunted "experts" in the fields of Near East and Islamic Studies who would object to lesson (4) above—principally by accusing its defenders of "bigotry."

Consider the case of Mark LeVine, who makes just that claim in this post on his HNN blog. He's referring here to an anti-Islamist manifesto written and signed by a group of Muslim and apostate intellectuals.

Equally troubling…a group of well-known intellectuals, including some prominent secular Muslims such as Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji, issued a statement that mirrored the bigoted language as the United American Committee at UCI. In it they called Islamism "the new global threat," and condemned it as a "totalitarian and… reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present."

I'm curious to learn where LeVine finds the "mirrored bigotry" in the statement he describes. I've read and commented on the statement, and I simply don't see what bigotry there is to be found in it. It's an instructive sign of the times that one can make accusations of bigotry in this way without offering the slightest hint of an argument for one's claims.

At any rate, LeVine continues:

Such a base reduction of Muslim religious belief to one simplistic and in many ways artificial category called "Islamism" (a term which, it should be noted, most of the ultra-conservative Muslims against whom the statement was directed, do not even use to describe themselves) generalizes the worst aspects of one expression of Islamic faith as if it encapsulates the entire breadth of Muslim belief. It betrays an utter ignorance of the complexity of contemporary Islam, and the reality--which the Left as much as the Right seems to have a hard time accepting--that there is a growing body of Muslims who are both religious and progressive.

Ironically, it is precisely these people who, in the words of the Swiss Muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan (who has been attacked by the Left and Right for allegedly misleading the West about his "true motives"), are engaged in the process of secularizing Islam that the supposed defenders of "universal values" seem totally unaware of. It seems that Muslims, and their non-Muslim allies, can be as ignorant of their religion, and willfully so, as everyone else.

LeVine's website describes him as having "a command of Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, and Persian, as well as Italian, French and German." I wonder if the omission of English from the list is intentional: how could a historian read so simple a document in his native tongue with such brazen ineptitude?

For starters: the document to which LeVine refers doesn't equate Islamism with Islam; it's LeVine who does that, and falsely ascribes his own equation to the document. As for the reference to "Islamism," it may be true that "ultra-conservative Muslims" don't refer to themselves as "Islamists," but then, they don't refer to themselves as "ultra-conservatives," either. The point is, an ideological group doesn't have a monopoly on the labels that can legitimately used to describe it. Nor is a label "wrong" simply because the group labeled doesn't use it. (Never mind that it is Islamists who characteristically equate Islamism with Islam.) As for LeVine's charge of ignorance, in fact it exemplifies ignorance: he seems ignorant of the possibility that the signers know something about "the growing body of Muslims who are both religious and progressive" and reject their claims.

Consider in similar vein the apologetics of John L. Esposito of Georgetown, who speaks darkly of "the dangers of secular fundamentalism," and tells us, blithely, that "Contrary to what some have advised, the United States should not, in principle, object to the implementation of Islamic law or involvement of Islamic activists in government" (The Islamic Threat, Second Edition, p. 245). I would have thought that the First Amendment objects, in principle to the implementation of any religious law in government; I guess the advisors to whom Esposito alludes would include Locke, Jefferson and Madison, whose advice we ought to throw out on his say-so.

"Too often," Esposito sighs,

analysis and policymaking have been shaped by a liberal secularism which fails to recognize that it too represents a worldview which, when assumed to be a self-evident truth, can take the form of a 'secular fundamentalism.' Secularism or liberal democracy is no longer regarded as 'a' way (one of many possible paradigms, albeit for some the best way) but "the" way, the only true path for political development….Alternative paradigms, especially religious ones, are necessarily judged as abnormal, irrational, retrogressive (249).

Translation: Liberal secularism is a worldview. A worldview affirmed dogmatically is a form of fundmentalism. Hence, liberal secularism affirmed dogmatically is a form of secular fundmentalism. From this banal series of truisms, Esposito somehow manages to infer (only God knows how) that religious political "paradigms" are normal, rational, and progressive. Reflect a bit on the predicament of Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan. Then ask yourself how to gauge John Esposito's distance from reality.

But if "distance from reality" is what you're after, you couldn't do much worse than to peruse the writings of Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, apologist for theocracy, zealous critic of secularism, and (not coincidentally) darling of the liberal media establishment. Behold the man as he dresses down secularist writer Ibn Warraq in an essay entitled "On Revising Bigotry".

Misery loves misery, and so Pipes teams up with Ibn Warraq, a pitiful figure inviting Muslims to liberate themselves from their religion and their Lord. Earlier on, Ibn Warraq fascinated us with his ranting about why he is not a Muslim. Of course, his title came from Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian, but while Russell wrote philosophy, what Ibn Warraq wrote is an inanity, and an utter intellectual bore. This time the man with the funny name collected a bunch of articles and published them under the title The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. One of the two introductions to the book is written by a fellow with the pathetic pseudo-name Ibn Rawandi. Perhaps, our contemporary authors are alluding to friendship between the historical Ibn Rawandi and al-Warraq, both from the third Islamic century. The Manicheism and heresy of the historical figures is debated, but compared to the originals, our modern authors are unfortunate mutations and intellectual trolls.

The passage begins with a conspiracy theory about Ibn Warraq's relation to Daniel Pipes. In fact, there is no such relation (or in fact, any relation); but never mind. Facts don't matter when venom is at hand. El Fadl goes on to tell us that Ibn Warraq is a "pitiful" figure. In fact, since El Fadl doesn't know a thing about Ibn Warraq, he has nothing of a factual nature to tell us about why Ibn Warraq is so "pitiful." This doesn't seem to matter, either. Next we're told that Ibn Warraq's book doesn't match up to Bertrand Russell's, that it's an "inanity" and "bore": oddly, El Fadl doesn't try his hand at refuting any of it.

Fast-forwarding, we get to El Fadl's dehumanizing reference to Ibn Warraq as a "mutation." This metaphor might perhaps remind you of the prosecutor in the Abdul Rahman case, who referred to the defendant as a "microbe." It might also call to mind the procedures of the Afghan court system, which would now like to declare Abdul Rahman mentally incompetent. All of that might also justifiably remind you of the Nazi use of metaphors of disease and mental incompetence for purposes of dealing with dissidents and race-enemies. It is, at last, the same mentality at work in all three cases: a mentality that equates intellectual challenge automatically with evil, and the challengers themselves with vermin. We might very well expect such beliefs from the semi-literate morons who populate the Afghan government. It comes as a bit of a surprise to hear them expressed by a fully literate professor of law at UCLA.

But only the utterly naive will be completely surprised. For the sad fact is that however hard El Fadl tries to mask his differences from the inquisitors in Afghanistan, he cannot mask his fundamental agreement with them. He shares their faith, shares their moral verdict on apostasy, and shares Islam's view of the eventual fate of the apostate. He may not want to kill an apostate with his own hands, or even want one to be killed by any actual government. But in compliance with the wishes of his "Lord" and master, he can't help acquiescing in the thought that the apostate deserves to be damned to Hell for eternity.

"In the end," God tells us in the Quran, the unbelievers "will have only regrets and sighs; at length they will be overcome; and the unbelievers will be gathered together to Hell" (8:36). As for Hell, in it (we are told) the skins of the unbelievers will be roasted and renewed (4:56), they will drink boiling fetid water (14:16), they will wear garments of fire (22:19), they will neither live nor die (20:74), they will be "broken to pieces" (99:4), etc. etc. etc.

I would insist that even the likes of Saddam Hussein deserves a fair trial and a measured punishment for his crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, Professor El Fadl, Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Fellow in Islamic Law, defends a doctrine according to which it is permissible to torture someone for eternity for having the wrong beliefs. Excuse me, but who is the bigot among us?

If there is a useful lesson for Americans in the Abdul Rahman affair, it's this: what the fields of Islamic Studies and Near East Studies need today--but completely lack--are scholars who are willing to give Islam the frontal challenge it so richly deserves. And by "challenge," I decidedly don't mean the milquetoast sort of "challenge" one finds in writers like Daniel Pipes or Bernard Lewis, who criticize Islamism but leave Islam itself untouched. Nor do I even mean the sort of "challenge" one finds in scholars like Patricia Crone or Michael Cook, whose muted criticisms of Islam come in the form of indirection and insinuation. I mean scholars capable of entertaining the hypothesis that Islam is false and irrational as such, and are willing to deal with it accordingly.

Faced with such critics from outside of the field, the reigning stars of the field have nothing to offer in rebuttal but defamation. But for precisely that reason, they have nothing to offer in defense of the Abdul Rahmans of the world. We hard-core secularists are the only critics of Islam capable of offering the sort of defense that the Abdul Rahmans of the world deserve—the one that cuts to the heart of the matter. The principle in question is succinctly stated by the philosopher Ayn Rand in the climactic speech of her epic novel, Atlas Shrugged: "The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments." (Atlas Shrugged, p. 944). A word of advice for the apologists of Islam, Muslim or non-Muslim: bring forth a sura like that one, if ye can…(cf. Qur'an, 10:37).

NYU Surrenders in Mohammed Cartoon Dispute

Not long ago I was contacted by a representative of the Ayn Rand Institute and invited to be part of a panel discussion, "Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons," which was to be held at NYU. Unfortunately I was unable to take part, but the panel will include Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad. And it looks as if they will have a lot to talk about, because NYU is not letting them display the cartoons as they discuss them.

"NYU Surrenders to the Heckler’s Veto in Mohammed Cartoon Dispute," a press release from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:

NEW YORK, March 29, 2006—In violation of its own policies, New York University (NYU) is refusing to allow a student group to show the Danish cartoons of Mohammed at a public event tonight. Even though the purpose of the event is to show and discuss the cartoons, an administrator has suddenly ordered the students either not to display them or to exclude 150 off-campus guests from attending. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is urging NYU’s president to reverse course and stand up for freedom of speech.

“NYU’s actions are inexcusable,” declared FIRE President Greg Lukianoff, who is slated to speak at the event. “The very purpose of this event is to discuss the cartoons that are at the center of a global controversy. To say that students cannot show them if they wish to engage anyone outside the NYU community is both chilling and absurd. The fact that expression might provoke a strong reaction is a reason to protect it, not an excuse to punish it.”

Earlier this month, the NYU Objectivist Club decided to hold a panel discussion entitled “Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons,” at which the cartoons will be displayed. Similar events, sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), have taken place on several other campuses. Like previous NYU Objectivist Club events, the discussion was to be open to the public.

However, on Monday afternoon, NYU Director of Student Activities Robert Butler sent an e-mail requesting a meeting with the leaders of the Objectivist Club the next day. He also informed them that NYU would now “require that this event be open only to members of the NYU community.” Butler cited “the campus climate and controversy surrounding the cartoons,” ordering the students to inform the “non-NYU people” who had already registered that they “should not plan on attending.” He concluded, “This is not negotiable.”

Following the meeting, Butler sent another e-mail clarifying that the students have two choices: they must either not display the cartoons, or not allow anyone from off campus to attend the event. Approximately 150 off-campus guests are currently registered to attend.

“This is a classic case of the heckler’s veto,” noted FIRE’s Lukianoff. “NYU is shamelessly clamping down on an event purely out of fear that people who disagree with the viewpoints expressed may disrupt it. These immoral, last-minute restrictions must be lifted.”

FIRE was informed of NYU’s actions just yesterday. Hours later, Lukianoff called NYU President John Sexton to remind him that NYU’s own policies recognize student groups’ right to open events to the public and proclaim that “the use of physical force or other disruptive means to obstruct and restrain speakers” is “destructive of the pursuit of inquiry and learning in a free and democratic society.” FIRE has not yet received a response.

NYU’s actions notwithstanding, Lukianoff still plans to speak at the event, which will take place at 7 p.m. tonight in the Eisner and Lubin Auditorium of NYU’s Kimmel Center.

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. FIRE’s efforts to preserve freedom of expression on college campuses across the country during the cartoon controversy can be viewed at thefire.org/cartoons.

CONTACT:
Greg Lukianoff, President, FIRE: 215-717-3473; greg_lukianoff@thefire.org
Yaron Brook, President, ARI: 408-206-7756; ybrook@aynrand.org
John Sexton, President, NYU: 212-998-2345; john.sexton@nyu.edu
Robert Butler, Director of Student Activities, NYU: 212-998-4718; bob.butler@nyu.edu

New U.N. Draft on Iran Softens Condemnation

Hello, uh, Mr. Ahmadinejad?...Yes, this is Kofi...Fine, fine, thank you...Yes, that's right, alhamdulillah...Oh, Kojo is just fine as well, thank you very much...Alhamdulillah, yes...Alhamdulillah indeed...Look, Mr. Ahmadinejad, I just want to give you an update...In the Security Council we've managed to weaken the language condemning your nuclear program...Yes, yes, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah...But Mahmoud -- may I call you Mahmoud?...Thank you...Mahmoud, the resolution still calls upon you to abandon uranium enrichment activities...What's that? The Great Satan? No, not exactly...It was Britain and France...Mahmoud, calm down...Mahmoud? Mahmoud?

From the New York Times, with thanks to JE:

UNITED NATIONS, March 28 — European and American diplomats circulated a new draft statement to the Security Council on Tuesday evening that weakens language condemning Iran's nuclear program but still calls on Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment activities, which the West believes are intended to make weapons.

The new draft, written by Britain and France and supported by the United States, eliminates or softens elements in earlier drafts that had raised objections from China and Russia.

The three Western nations hope the new version can be adopted Wednesday, a day before the foreign ministers of the five permanent Council members and Germany meet in Berlin to discuss strategy on Iran.

Release of Christian convert condemned by Afghan MPs

This only highlights the fact that the release of Abdul Rahman has done nothing to solve the larger problem of Sharia in the Afghan Constitution. From Reuters, with thanks to JE:

Members of the Afghan parliament condemned the release of a man who denied Islam, insisting on Wednesday he should not be allowed to leave the country, as Italy appeared ready to offer him asylum.

Abdur Rahman, 41, was jailed this month for converting to Christianity, and could have faced trial under Islamic sharia law stipulating death as punishment for apostasy or departure from original religion.

He was freed from prison on Monday after pressure from Western countries whose troops helped bring the Afghan government to power.

"The release of Abdur Rahman was contrary to the existing laws of Afghanistan," Yunus Qanuni, president of the lower house of parliament, told the assembly during an unscheduled debate on the case.

"Abdur Rahman should not flee and should not be allowed to leave Afghanistan ... he should be kept under supervision," he said.

Muslim woman who refuses to shake men's hands wins case against Dutch school

Eurabia Alert from AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A Muslim woman who refuses to shake men's hands for religious reasons cannot be barred from a Dutch teacher-training program.

The Dutch Equal Treatment Commission found Monday that the Regional Education Center in the city of Utrecht illegally ''discriminated, indirectly, on the basis of religion,'' when it rejected Fatima Amghar for its program.

Amghar, 20, said her religious beliefs forbid her from having physical contact with men over the age of 12.

The school rejected her application, arguing that shaking hands was routine for a teaching assistant in Dutch society.

But ''there are other conceivable manners of greeting that can be considered proper and respectful,'' the commission ruled.

It warned that Dutch schools risk excluding Muslim women from society unless they find a way to accommodate their beliefs.

And that accommodation, of course, is all one way.

India: Muslim man divorces his wife in his sleep

Sharia Alert: "Divorce Granted for Muslim Couple," from AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

Islamic leaders in India have ordered a Muslim couple to divorce.

The wife told friends that her husband had uttered the word "talaq" three times in his sleep.

"Talaq" means divorce.

When the story reached religious leaders, they said his words constituted a divorce under an Islamic procedure known had "triple talaq" and they ordered the split.

They had been married eleven years. Now according to Islamic law they cannot remarry until the wife marries another man, consummates the marriage, and is again divorced.

Uganda: Danish Embassy apologises to Muslims over cartoons

Nobody seems to have grasped the absurdity of an apology in Old Kampala for cartoons printed in a free and independent newspaper in Denmark -- not by representatives of the paper, of course. From the Monitor Online, with thanks to Twostellas:

THE Danish Ambassador, Mr Stig Barlyng, yesterday met Muslim leaders and apologised for the publication of cartoons ridiculing Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

The meeting took place at the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council headquarters in Old Kampala.

Barlyng’s visit to the council was in response to a threat by Ugandan Muslims to stop buying Danish products until Denmark apologises for the publication.

McCarthy: Cold Comfort on Islam and Apostasy

Former federal prosecuter Andy McCarthy has a must read piece at NRO:

Here’s a riddle: What begins with words “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” a formal Islamic salutation also commonly used by militants in their warnings, fatwas, and claims of responsibility regarding terrorist acts?

What extols the virtues of “rightful jehad” (also known as jihad) in its very first sentence?

What in its first article declares its sovereignty to be an “Islamic Republic,” and in its second installs Islam as the official “religion of the state”?

What, in its third article announces to the world that, within the territory it governs, “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam”?...

The answer, which will come as no surprise to followers of the Abdul Rahman apostasy trial in Kabul, is the Afghan constitution. This is the celebrated foundational law which came into force on January 4, 2004, to the ringing praises of Zalmay Khalilzad, then the American ambassador under whose kneading the drafting process was completed....

Read it all.

As a Synagogue Comes Down, a Culture Disappears, Too

The New York Times covers the demolition of the last synagogue in Tajikistan, which we noted here several weeks ago.

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Even during Sabbath services on a Saturday in early March, as Rabbi Mikhail Abdurakhimov read Hebrew prayers and the faithful followed along using Russian transliterations, the rumble of construction was distracting.

This is a synagogue in its last moments of existence. While the congregants prayed, a bright orange bulldozer growled outside, continuing its work at the synagogue's edge.

"They could do this anytime," whispered David Kiselkov, 56. "But of course they choose to do it now."

The synagogue is the last in Tajikistan, and will soon fall victim to redevelopment and the declining Jewish population in this remote post-Soviet state....

And, evidently, to the shifting of Tajikistan back to a more overtly Islamic identity:

Dushanbe, a quiet, verdant capital with a single central boulevard, is slowly changing, struggling to emerge from isolation, state Socialism and civil war.

Lenin's statue was recently replaced by a towering golden monument to Ismail Samani, a 9th-century Persian shah reborn as a Tajik hero. A sparkling green bank stands next to an imposing Stalinist government building, freshly painted peach.

Swedish government funds Malmö mosque repair

From our Feeding the Hand That Bites You Department, via The Local, with thanks to Fjordman:

The Islamic Centre in Malmö is to receive three million kronor in government funding for rebuilding and repairing damage caused in the latest attack on the mosque.

The government said that the donation was based on the fact that the Islamic Centre is important and contributes to creating the image of Islam in Sweden.

"The Islamic Centre is a significant player in integration work and its work, religious, social and cultural, reaches many people in southern Sweden," said Lena Hallengren, minister with responsibility for religious issues.

Turkey: Muslims accused of killing 'unclean' dogs

Sharia Alert from Enlightened Secular Turkey. "Once Gabriel promised the Prophet (that he would visit him, but Gabriel did not come) and later on he said, 'We, angels, do not enter a house which contains a picture or a dog.'" (Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 54, no. 450)

But killing them? Sure. "Ibn Mughaffal reported: The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) ordered killing of the dogs, and then said: What about them, i. e. about other dogs? and then granted concession (to keep) the dog for hunting and the dog for (the security) of the herd, and said: When the dog licks the utensil, wash it seven times, and rub it with earth the eighth time." (Sahih Muslim, bk. 2, no. 551)

"Muslims are accused of killing 'unclean' dogs," from the Telegraph, with thanks to Twostellas:

Pro-islamic municipalities in Turkey are killing stray dogs, animal rights groups claim.

Municipal workers are hunting, torturing and killing the animals by the hundreds, the campaigners say....

Animal rights campaigners who accompanied Miss Isikalp last week said that at least two of the dogs had been sexually abused.

The mayor of Mamak, Gazi Sahin, of the ruling pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party, has denied responsibility.

Fitzgerald: The sad state of American education

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald adduces some examples illustrative of the current crisis in American higher education:

A miscellany of indictments of the current state of American education:

1) The alacrity with which Princeton University hired Cornel West as a university professor, and the delight expressed by the Provost and others in the Princeton administration at this great catch.

2) The elevation of Maria Rosa Menocal, author of a book that purports to study the wonders of the "convivencia" in Islamic Spain, to the supreme authority on this subject.

Menocal’s book itself is sentimental nonsense, not only in form but content. It is a perfect compendium of all the twaddle that has been passed off as history about Andalucia. Her bibliography, incidentally, fails to mention any of the authoritative sources on the history of Muslim Spain -- in particular, it does not even list (much less give any sign of her having actually read) Evariste Levi-Provencal. Nor does it show any sign that she has read Dufourcq.

Instead, her notions of Spain are right out of the works of romantic fiction -- Irving's Tales of the Alhambra (tales indeed) and Chateaubriand's Le Dernier des Abencerages. What is fine for Chateaubriand is not fine for what is supposed to be an historical study. I mean, for god's sake, some of his best passages in the Memoires d'Outre-tombe are entirely fictional: see his sonorous sentences about his visit to "les champs de Lexington," where he never was. And that’s not all: there is also much more fantasy about il sospiro del Moro, the nobility of those Muslims, the wonderful way Maimonides was treated (why, then, did he flee Moorish Spain?), on and on.

The failure to list, or even be aware of, the most authoritative studies of Moorish Spain would be disturbing in a high school paper. What makes it more worrisome, and perhaps representative of the age in which we live, is that Menocal, in her dreamy desire to emphasize convivencia, ignores the realities of Muslim rule and the real status of non-Muslims subjugated to that rule. She has not the slightest idea of what dhimmitude entailed, or why a Jew could be a court doctor or even high-ranking official, while all of his co-religionists would still be subject to humiliation, degradation, and the permanent insecurity that was apparent, for example, in the massacre of Grenada's Jews in 1066 -- and he himself could in a New York or Cordova minute be thrust down himself.

Yet she is no goofy armchair historian, without access to a library. No, she is presented to us as the Director of the Whitney Center for the Humanities at Yale. Yale, as I understand it, likes to think of itself as having some standards. Where are they?

The latest issue of the Yale Review tells us proudly that four professors have been appointed to Sterling Professorships. Three were in science. The only one from outside science was Maria Rosa Menocal.

3) The delight expressed by Stephen Greenblatt at the appointment of Homi Bhabha to a professorship at Harvard a few years ago. Bhabha, who is a professor of English, cannot express himself clearly in written English. Not because he comes from abroad. No, his prose has won prizes because of its impenetrable jargon, its postcolonial projects of phallic hegemony, things like that. Things like the quintessence-of-nonsense paragraph specially written for the "MESA Nostra Contest" (which google).

4) Then there is Fawaz Gerges. It is stunning to think that Gerges has managed to climb the greasy pole at Sarah Lawrence, where Adda Bozeman, the unacknowledged source for much of Samuel Huntington's work, and herself the keenest early warner about Islam's threat to everyone else, once held sway.

5) There is also the entire disgraceful operation of lean, mean, jogging John Esposito, head and master of all he surveys at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown.

6) And finally, there is the MEALAC Program at Columbia. It is not possible, at Columbia's MEALAC program, to learn much of anything about the all-important subject -- Islam, its tenets, or the history of Muslim conquest and subsequent treatment of non-Muslims. So much attention is given by Saliba, Dabashi, Khalidi, El-Haj, etcetera etceterum to one subject -- "Palestine" – that they simply have no time for larger investigations.

Columbia once had the most distinguished scholars of Islam -- Joseph Schacht and Arthur Jeffery come swimmingly to mind. Now? Now it is the kind of place, in its MEALAC program, that only Adel Jubeir, and Saeb Erekat, and Amr al-Moussa, and of course 80% of the membership of MESA (the Middle East Studies Association of America, a de facto subsidiary of the Arab League in collaboration with Al-Azhar University and Hamas) could love -- or even take seriously.

In his "Edward Said" Chair, Khalidi is giving his crude money's worth. Why, he even takes part in panel discussions, sponsored by the New Yorker, on the Middle East. Everything, everything but Islam will be discussed, but especially the problem of Isr...oh, you know what I mean.

Could a professor at Columbia simply be a propagandist whose every sentence is a half-truth that keeps his audience from ever learning about Jihad, or about what really underlies the Arab refusal to contemplate a permanent acceptance of an Infidel state, mighty Israel, in its midst?

Jacques Barzun must not be pleased. Nor, one is glad to report, are many alumni. And the beating heart of Columbia, as at every American university, is its Development Office. Alumni, give that Development Office palpitations. Force them to spend on an in-house defibrillator. It may be the only way to get the attention of the trimmers and time-servers, those who rose to the top of academic administration without thinking clearly about their own duty to be informed, and to instruct, and not merely to deliver themselves of Comnmencement Speech pieties as they "take a leadership role." But their attention it will get.

Hundreds protest reports Afghan convert to be freed

Query for Brian Whitaker: where are the hundreds protesting Abdul Rahman's imprisonment and apostasy charge?

More evidence that the fundamental assumptions of dhimmitude are still alive and well in Afghanistan. From CNN, with thanks to all who sent this in:

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Hundreds of people protested in a northern Afghan city following reports that a man who faced a possible death penalty for converting to Christianity would be released, officials said.

About 700 Muslim clerics and others chanted "Death to Bush" and other anti-Western slogans in Mazar-e-Sharif on Monday, officials told The Associated Press.

Clerics have called for protests across Afghanistan against both the government and the West, which had pressured President Hamid Karzai's administration to drop the case against Abdul Rahman.

On Sunday, a Western diplomat and Afghan officials close to Karzai told CNN that Rahman would be released soon.

Other sources in the Afghan judiciary said the case against Rahman had been thrown out on technical grounds and sent back to prosecutors to gather more evidence.

Those same sources said Rahman may not be released.

Karzai has been under growing international pressure to find a way to free Rahman without angering Muslim clerics who have called for him to be killed.

The Afghan Cabinet discussed the case Saturday, but results of that meeting were unknown. A government source familiar with his case said on Friday he would be released in the coming days....

"The court dismissed today the case against Abdul Rahman for a lack of information and a lot of legal gaps in the case," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. AP said the official has been closely involved with the matter.

"The decision about his release will be taken possibly tomorrow," AP quoted the official as saying. "They don't have to keep him in jail while the attorney general is looking into the case."

Abdul Wakil Omeri, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, confirmed to AP that the case had been dismissed because of "problems with the prosecutors' evidence."

He said several family members of Rahman have testified that he has mental problems.

"It is the job of the attorney general's office to decide if he is mentally fit to stand trial," he told AP.

A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said questions were now being raised as to whether Rahman would stay in Afghanistan or go into foreign exile, AP reported....

Earlier Sunday, AP quoted prosecutor Sarinwal Zamari as saying that doctors would examine Rahman on Monday to determine whether he was mentally fit to stand trial.

"It has been said that he has mental problems," the prosecutor said. "Doctors will examine him tomorrow and will then report to us."...

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she could not confirm that an Afghan court had dismissed the case and stressed the U.S. needs to respect the sovereignty of Afghanistan, which she called a "young democracy."

"Unlike the Taliban, it actually has a constitution to which one can appeal," she told CNN's "Late Edition." "We as Americans know in democracy, as it evolves, there are difficult issues about state and church -- or, in this case, state and mosque.

"We expect that, given our own history, that we would know Afghans have to go through this evolution."...

Yes, I remember the bad old days when converting to another religion was a federal crime. We've come a long way!

Rahman, 41, faces trial on charges of converting to Christianity -- a death-penalty offense under Afghanistan's constitution, which is based on Islamic law....

"We've been very clear with the Afghan government that it has to understand the vital importance of religious freedom to democracy," Rice said....

Also on Sunday, AP quoted officials as saying Rahman had been moved to a notorious maximum-security prison outside Kabul that is also home to hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda militants.

Rahman was moved to Policharki Prison last week after detainees threatened his life at an overcrowded police holding facility in central Kabul, a court official said on condition of anonymity, AP reported.

Pacifist hostage thanks his rescuers, reluctantly

Here is an interesting piece in the Sunday Australian revealing the split within the infidel ranks over Christian pacifism.

Freed British hostage Norman Kember arrived home at the weekend, and tried to defuse a row over his response to the SAS mission that rescued him.

Speaking at Heathrow airport after being reunited with his wife Pat, the retired professor of medical physics issued a statement to address criticism that he had failed to thank his rescuers.

"I do not believe a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue," he said.

Mr Kember was responding to remarks by General Mike Jackson, chief of the British general staff, who suggested he had failed to thank the SAS and other troops for rescuing him and two other hostages after four months in captivity.

Before his capture, Mr Kember had said that if he were kidnapped he did not want to be rescued by the military. Thanking the people of many faiths who had prayed for his release, Mr Kember said the world should focus on the plight of the ordinary suffering Iraqis...

Sources close to the SAS said the peace activists who sponsored Mr Kember's visit to Iraq repeatedly failed to co-operate with special forces trying to locate and rescue him. They said that after he was kidnapped last November, the religious group declined to provide information that could have helped find him.

Well-placed sources said members of the Canadian group in Baghdad failed to provide the SAS with the number of the mobile phone Mr Kember was using on the day he was kidnapped, which could have helped trace his last movements.

Doug Pritchard, co-director of the CPT worldwide, said the group had refused to meet any of the military rescue team, preferring to deal with diplomats.

"We said from the outset we didn't want a military raid and we wouldn't work with the military," he said. Relations with the British embassy became tense after members of the group told officials it was reluctant to enter the green zone, and declined to allow diplomats with military escorts to visit their offices outside the zone...

Jack is a man of straw when Muslims talk of killing converts

Charles Moore skewers the dhimmi Jack Straw, whose misadventures have often shown up on this site, at the Telegraph (thanks to DFS):

When the row about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed broke, no one was quicker out of the traps than our Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. He roundly condemned what he saw as the irresponsibility of their publication.

It was not clear why Mr Straw felt the need to speak up. Britain has no responsibility for independent, democratic Denmark, nor for the European countries in which the cartoons were republished.

We do, however, bear considerable responsibility for Afghanistan. We helped invade it in 2001 to overthrow the Islamist Taliban government, and ever since then we have helped rebuild government and society there, including the framing of a new constitution. The other day, we sent yet more troops to help keep the uneasy peace. We boast, with some justice, that we have set Afghanistan free.

So the news that a Muslim is threatened with death by an Afghan court simply because he converted to Christianity should surely alarm Mr Straw. So far - and the case has been in the press for more than a week - we have heard nothing audible from him. President Bush has said he is "deeply troubled" by the case. Condoleezza Rice and many European governments have put strong pressure on the Afghan authorities to release the man, Abdul Rahman, citing Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes, in its definition of freedom of conscience, the right to change one's faith.

But Britain's mighty response has been left to one of Mr Straw's juniors at the Foreign Office, Kim Howells. Mr Howells has sought "urgent clarification" from Kabul.

It may provide Mr Howells with some of the clarification that he needs to point out that Mr Rahman's case was predictable. Islamic law (sharia) is enshrined in the new Afghan constitution. All the four schools of law in the majority Sunni Islam agree that the penalty for "apostasy" - abandoning one's Muslim faith - must be death. One states: "When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasises from Islam, he deserves to be killed" and recommends that, when he is killed, he should be "neither given a bath, nor any funeral prayer". Much the same applies in Shia Islam.

Read it all.

Afghanistan: Many Convert to Christianity In Secret, Says Author

Islamic Tolerance Alert from AKI, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Rome, 22 March (AKI) - Abdul Rahman, the man condemned to death for having abandoned Islam, is just one of many Afghanis who decide to convert to Christianity, but most are forced to do so secretly, argues Arab Christian author Camille Eid. In an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI) Eid, author of "The Christians who come from Islam", said during a recent trip to Afghanistan he met many similar cases. "They are Christians who have sprung out of nowhere and it's unclear how they have decided by themselves to convert" he added. The US, Italy, Germany and Canada have all expressed concern over the fate of Rahman who converted to Christianity 16 years ago.

"I also spoke to a priest who had passed through Kabul and he said he was amazed that women sitting on the ground at the local market saw he was a foreigner and a Christian, by the cross he was wearing, and attracted his attention to them by making a sign of the cross with their fingers. He was convinced that they were trying to send him a coded message" said Eid, a Lebanese Maronite who lives in Italy.

According to the author, Abdul Rahman is not the first Afghan citizen to have been sentenced to death for apostasy since the fall of the Taliban regime.

"The Islamic Taliban militias who still control entire areas of the country issued a statement in June 2004 in which they referred to a death sentence handed down to an Afghan converted to Christianity, Moulawi Asad Allah."

St. Paul City Office Boots Easter Bunny

It's funny how symbols of the secularization of Christian holidays -- Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny -- that some Christians have regarded with a certain distaste for many years, are now regarded as patently and overtly Christian in a way that simply cannot accord with modern sensibilities.

From AP, with thanks to Hutchrun:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - A small Easter display was removed from the City Hall lobby on Wednesday out of concern that it would offend non-Christians.

That means You Know Who.

The display - a cloth Easter bunny, pastel-colored eggs and a sign with the words "Happy Easter'' - was put up by a City Council secretary. They were not purchased with city money.

Tyrone Terrill, the city's human rights director, asked that the decorations be removed. Terrill said no citizen had complained to him.

Council Member Dave Thune called it a shame.

"This has just gone too far,'' he said. "We can't celebrate spring with bunnies and fake grass?''

Blair - The Qur’an "is practical and way ahead of its time"

From the Muslim Weekly, with thanks to RB who advises it might be best to "have a lie down before you read this."

The Prime Minister during his speech "Not a clash between civilisations, but a clash about civilisation" spoke forcefully about the problems of terrorism.

The talk given to the Foreign Policy Centre and Reuters also included his praise of the Holy Qur’an.

"The most remarkable thing about reading the Koran – in so far as it can be truly translated from the original Arabic - is to understand how progressive it is.

"I speak with great diffidence and humility as a member of another faith. I am not qualified to make any judgements. But as an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins, rather as reformers attempted with the Christian Church centuries later. It is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance," he said.

He added that under the guidance of the Qur’an, the spread of Islam and its dominance over previously Christian or pagan lands was "breathtaking".

"Over centuries it founded an Empire, leading the world in discovery, art and culture. We look back to the early Middle Ages, the standard bearers of tolerance at that time were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian," he declared.

Afghanistan: More Christians Arrested In Wake of ‘Apostasy’

Far from inspiring contrition and a readiness to show themselves to be the worthy owners of a brand new free society, the Abdul Rahman apostasy case seems to have inspired in Afghans only a desire to crack down on the uppity dhimmis.

"More Christians Arrested In Wake Of ‘Apostasy,’" from Compass Direct, with thanks to AJ:

March 22 (Compass) – An avalanche of media coverage of an Afghan man facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity has apparently sparked the arrest and deepening harassment of other Afghan Christians in the ultra-conservative Muslim country.

Authorities arrested Abdul Rahman, 41, last month for apostasy, a capital offense under strict Islamic laws still in place in Afghanistan, which four years ago was wrested from the Taliban regime’s hard-line Islamist control.

During the past few days, Compass has confirmed the arrest of two other Afghan Christians elsewhere in the country. Because of the sensitive situation, local sources requested that the location of the jailed converts be withheld.

This past weekend, one young Afghan convert to Christianity was beaten severely outside his home by a group of six men, who finally knocked him unconscious with a hard blow to his temple. He woke up in the hospital two hours later but was discharged before morning.

“Our brother remains steadfast, despite the ostracism and beatings,” one of his friends said.

Several other Afghan Christians have been subjected to police raids on their homes and places of work in the past month, as well as to telephone threats.

"March for Free Expression" goes wobbly

I have received a few emails asking me to publicize an upcoming March for Free Expression to be held soon in the UK, and I have not yet done so only because a particularly heavy crush of work lately has prevented me from posting everything here that I would like to. But in this case, I'm glad I didn't. Today the March's website (thanks to FS) carries the following headline:

Muslims are Welcome: No Danish cartoons, please

Muslims are welcome? Great. But "no Danish cartoons, please"? Consider that request in light of the March's own "Statement of Principle":

The strength and survival of free society and the advance of human knowledge depend on the free exchange of ideas. All ideas are capable of giving offence, and some of the most powerful ideas in human history, such as those of Galileo and Darwin, have given profound religious offence in their time. The free exchange of ideas depends on freedom of expression and this includes the right to criticise and mock. We assert and uphold the right of freedom of expression and call on our elected representatives to do the same. We abhor the fact that people throughout the world live under mortal threat simply for expressing ideas and we call on our elected representatives to protect them from attack and not to give comfort to the forces of intolerance that besiege them.

Why then no cartoons at the March? Here's an excerpt from the explanation:

In practice, Muslims who wholeheartedly endorse our statement of principle, as quoted below by Peter Tatchell in his superb essay, who abhor the threats made against Danish cartoonists and believe people should have the right to publish things they themselves find offensive or abhorrent would be UNABLE to come to our rally on Saturday, because to be surrounded by these cartoons, now, in the present context when the BNP are using them as a rallying point, would be intolerable.

So I now appeal to people not to bring the cartoons on T-shirts or placards.

So Muslims who accept in principle that people should be able to publish things they themselves find offensive or abhorrent should not in practice have to accept that people should be able to publish things they themselves find offensive or abhorrent.

Wouldn't it be a much stronger statement if Muslims who believe that people should be able to publish things they themselves find offensive or abhorrent actually appeared together with people carrying those things they found offensive and abhorrent, so as to emphasize that they accept, and believe others should accept, that in a free society we may offend each other all the time but we nevertheless do not resort to violence or intimidation in response?

How disappointing.

Fitzgerald: Algeria, Christianity, and Islam

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald examines Algeria's renewed Christianophobia:

Algeria is, like Egypt, a stratokleptocracy, a word that first appeared at Jihad Watch. It was invented to describe those regimes, in countries such as Algeria, where a thieving (kleptos) military (stratos) ruling class runs things for its own benefit. The FLN still runs Algeria; the tutelary spirits are Boumedienne and Ben Bella.

But in Algeria, along with the Arabs, a very large number of Berbers also live. And Berbers live in France as well. And those Berbers are keenly aware that before the Arabs arrived, this was Berber territory. And Islam encourages looking constantly backwards, for one is stuck in a rut, and that rut is what was said and done, or thought to be said and done, round about 620 and 630, and then 650 and 660 A.D., and then a century or two or three for Islam's shakedown cruise, until everything was just as it should be in the eyes of the Qur'anic commentators, and the gates of ijtihad were shut, and the cry was "all thoughts aboard that are getting aboard." No more thoughts were to be allowed on beyond the original. Those original thoughts were now codified, making for as rigid a creed as possible. E la nave va -- the ship of Islam set sail, or rather, because there was no water, it simply sat there, stranded in a desert of its own choice, the desert it carried with it, a desert both inherited and of its own making.

Muslims, just like Japanese businessmen, or faddists at American business schools, look to Best Practices. And what are Best Practices in Islam? They are the practices, the acts, the words, the silences, of Muhammad himelf, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil. If he did it, if he said it, if he permitted others to do or say it by remaining silent and not condemning or contradicting, why then it was right for All Time, for All Mankind. That is what Believers in Islam mean when they talk about Best Practices. They abhor the new -- bida, or innovation -- but not in the trivial sense of new gewgaws, the products of others, which of course may and should be exploited for the wellbeing of Islam, the furtherance of Islam.

In a mental universe like this, where someone from 1350 years ago is the Perfect Man and there is an uncreated and immutable text (even if that text is in many places simply incomprehensible, or was until Christoph Luxenberg came along), Muslims will naturally want to look backwards. They will want to remember or summon up with greatest interest what happened in the days of Muhammad and the Four Rightly-Guided Caliphs, and for Shi'a, what happened to Hussein and Ali and woe, woe, woe, is us.

And in addition, whatever of civilizational interest was achieved in the first few centuries of the Islamic conquest, whatever products of the artistic or scientific impulse might have been created, must be harped on in a constant effort at self-reassurance. One must engage in a comical and exaggerated insistence on the greatness of "Islamic civilization" that does not withstand scrutiny or comparison with not just the West, but with China, India, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of America. All of these are more and more being revealed to have been more impressive than whatever was "Islamic" in Islamic civilization. At long last it is becoming clear that during the first few centuries of Islamic conquest, when there were still large numbers of Christians and Jews in the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain, that many of the most important achievements of that period, including the translation of Greek texts forgotten in the West, were entirely the work of Jewish and Christian translators. The handful of famous intellectual figures in Islam, when examined, always turn out to have been either non-Muslim, or a generation or two away from being non-Muslims (so still raised in an intellectual environment of some non-Muslim mental freedom), or if Muslim and from a Muslim family, than very likely a heretic or a freethinker, like ar-Razi.

Now we come to North Africa. Peopled once by Berbers, it is a land where the Arabs invaded. With Islam goes the cultural, linguistic, and political imperialism of the Arabs. As they islamized peoples, they also arabized them. For little Muslim children in Pakistan or Indonesia want desperately to be Arabs, to have an Arab lineage, but no Arab wishes to be a Pakistani or an Indonesian. No Arab wishes to be a Berber or a Kurd. In the past, a good many Kurds and Berbers were persuaded to drop their non-Arab identities and to think of themselves as Arabs. How many of those Algerian "Arabs" in fact are Berbers, and do not realize it, and would be furious to find that out? Yet it is possible to find out, for there are certain DNA markers that are linked to Berbers and Berber ancestry (see the results of genetic inquiries in Tunisia, by French investigators, including Dr. Semana, some years ago).

In Algeria, it is primarily the Berbers who are the converts to Christianity. It is the Berbers who, in France, most readily adapt to French ways, and who join small but significant groups such as "maghrebins laiques." For it is at least possible for non-Arab Muslims to see islamization as Arab imperialism. They experience Arab contempt for non-Arabs, for their languages and cultures. Arab Muslims spend fortunes trying to prevent this intellectual awakening by non-Arabs tired of having their own local customs, languages, and pre-Islamic or non-Islamic elements in their culture (as in Indonesia) simply regarded with contempt by Arabs. The Arabs say: “Don't listen to the Infidels when they raise this issue. They are only trying to divide us. They are whispering the whispers of Shaytan." But we Infidels don't have to say a thing. The more non-Arab Muslims can look at the treatment of the Kurds by Arabs, at the treatment of black African Muslims by Arabs, at the treatment of Berbers by Arabs, the more they will begin to realize what game is being played. After all, it was only recently, after decades of unrest, including riots in Tizi-Ouzou, that the right of Berbers to use their own language, Tamizight, was finally recognized, reluctantly, by the Arab stratokleptocrats.

Of course the Arabs in Algeria are worried about Christianization. They are worried about it in the same way that they worry that Berbers in France who start to read Kateb Yacine (the Berber writer who refused to write in Arabic, and denounced the Arab masters of the Berbers, the Arab supremacists, whenever he could) will get ideas. But some of them already have, and many more of them should. Why is there such a difference between the Berbers and the Arabs? Why do the Berbers, or some of them, actually integrate into French society when the Arabs seldom do? Is it not for the same reason that the Kurds have a chance to make a decent state for themselves, and to offer Americans unfeigned gratitude quite different from what the Arabs, both Sunni and Shi'a, in Iraq offer? Why does one know with a certainty that if American troops seized Darfur and the southern Sudan, in the only move that will save the lives of people in both places from the attacks, the deliberate starvation, the looting, rapes, and mass murders, carried out by Arab Muslims, that the Muslims in Darfur would, in numbers, if there were missionaries, throw off the belief-system of their Arab masters? And so would many of those non-Arabs upon whom Islam was inflicted a century or a thousand years ago, if things are done rightly.

And that is one reason why the government of Algeria, the corrupt generals and the handful of technocrats (also corrupt) they hire, are worried about the appeal of Christianity. They should be. Non-Arab Muslims in North Africa and elsewhere are becoming ever more keenly aware of the idea that Islam, whatever its universalist pretensions, is the Arab national religion.

And why should Berbers in Algeria wish to continue to believe in the Arab national religion, when it stunts cultural achievement, limits artistic expression, discourages free and skeptical inquiry, and offers nothing like what the French language, French literature, French "Que scais-je?" offers?

This week, all over the world, was la Journée de la Francophonie. Yes, if ever the French had a mission, it is to show the Berbers that between the poverty of Islam, the Arab religion, and the French language and culture, there is no contest. The "universal language" of Rivarol, with a universal vocation that makes the Arab Muslim enterprise look ridiculous, offers not only French, but through the French, all of European, and indeed all of Western culture -- a superior culture.

French or Arabic? Christianity or Islam? World civilization, with at least the possibility of many kinds of artistic expression, and of free and skeptical inquiry necessary for science or, instead, the Total Regulation of Life, with its constraints on the impulse of art, and the inculcated habit of mental submission? No contest. None.

Coptic Egyptian Website: Mubarak's Recent Decree Allowing Church Renovation and Rebuilding is "Toothless"

I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to hear that Mubarak has not actually done anything substantive to ease the plight of the Copts. His relatively secular regime exists in uneasy counterpoise with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose adherents he has to keep happy or else face their wrath. From MEMRI, with thanks to Fjordman:

In early December, 2005, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak issued a presidential decree easing the severe restrictions on repairing and rebuilding churches in Egypt. [1] In an editorial in the Coptic Internet weekly Watani, editor Youssef Sidhom stated that the decree would deliberately be implemented in a way that would render it meaningless, and cited a letter by an Egyptian governor substantiating this claim.

The following are excerpts from the editorial, which was posted in English on Watani: [2]

"Previous Presidential Decrees Which Eased Restrictions on Church Building Have Frequently Been Implemented in a Manner That Emptied Them of Their Content"

"[After the issuing of Decree 291,] the media rushed to praise [Mubarak's] move, asking Copts of their opinion and pushing them to express their gratitude. Some even went to the length of deluding the public into believing that the decree put an end to all the problems of building churches. They claimed the Himayouni Edict - which pre-requires a presidential decree for the building of any new church - was abolished once and for all, and that complete equality among Egyptians as regards building and restoring places of worship has been attained.

"While some Copts adopted a pessimistic stance and argued that the decree offered nothing new, Watani was keen to objectively analyse the move. We wrote that the decree was a good step forward on the road towards a unified law for places of worship and, if properly implemented, could alleviate many of the hardships of church building. We argued that the presidential authority over licensing new churches - as opposed to mosques, the building of which was subject to no restrictions whatsoever - violated equality among Egyptians. We wrote that the new decree should be taken with caution, since previous presidential decrees which eased restrictions on church building had been frequently implemented in a manner that emptied them of their content. Security authorities, Watani wrote, should not be allowed to interfere in the process, because they have been notorious in their restrictive domination of church building."...

Read it all.

Taliban Man at Yale

John Fund updates us on Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former Taliban spokesman now Yale undergrad, in the Opinion Journal:

Something is very wrong at our elite universities. Last month Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard; today Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi will speak by video to a conference at Columbia University that his regime is cosponsoring. (Columbia won't answer questions about how much funding it got from Libya or what implied strings were attached.) Then there's Yale, which for three weeks has refused to make any comment or defense beyond a vague 144-word statement about its decision to admit Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi--a former ambassador-at-large of the murderous Afghan Taliban--as a special student.

The three backers of the foundation that, along with Yale, is subsidizing Mr. Hashemi's tuition have told the Yale Daily News that they are withdrawing their support. But the university remains mute and paralyzed. "The intelligentsia haven't told Yalies what to think yet, because even they haven't made up their minds," says Yale professor David Gelernter. He clearly has: He calls the Taliban "an evil and macabre terrorist group. . . . The fact that Hashemi didn't do actual killing does not absolve him. Goebbels didn't shoot anyone either."...

Given his record as a Taliban apologist, Mr. Hashemi has told friends he is stunned Yale didn't look more closely into his curriculum vitae. "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay," he told the New York Times. So how did he end up in the Ivy League? Questions start at the State Department's door. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the Judiciary Committee's border security panel, has asked the State Department and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to explain exactly how Mr. Hashemi got an F-1 student visa. Yale's decision tree is clearer. Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions until he took the same post at Stanford last year, told the New York Times that Yale had another foreigner of Mr. Hashemi's caliber apply but "we lost him to Harvard" and "I didn't want that to happen again." Mr. Shaw won't return phone calls now, but emails he's exchanged with others offer insights into his thinking...

Read it all.

Algeria bans Muslims from learning about Christianity

George, Condi, this sounds like a regime right up your alley. Why not shoot them a few billion? From ArabicNews, with thanks to Fjordman:

The Algerian parliament has approved a law banning the call to embrace other religions than Islam.

This law states to jail anyone "trying to call on a Muslim to embrace another religion," in remarks to the Christianizing (evangelize) campaigns taking place in the country.

The Algerian Ummah council (Senate) approved this decision on Monday. This decision which was approved by the national people's council ( parliament) on March 15th is an attempt to withstand the Christianizing campaign which had witnessed a notable activity recently especially in al-Qabayel area east of the country.

The ratified law stated to sentence imprisonment for two to five years and a fee between 5 to 10 thousands EURO against "anyone urging or forcing or tempting, to convert a Muslim to another religion."

The same penalty applies to every person, manufacturer, store or circulate publications or audo-visual or other means aiming at destabilizing attachment to Islam.

The law also bans practicing any religion "except Islam" "outside buildings allocated for that, and links specialized buildings aimed at practice of religion by a prior licensing."

Charting the lost innovations of Islam

The next time you enjoy a baked potato and some green beans with your t-bone, be sure to utter a quiet prayer of gratitude to Allah for the portentious invention of the three-course meal.

But of course, there are many more things for which we owe gratitude to Islam, cars, carpets, and cameras among them -- at least according to a new exhibition in Al-Britannia: "1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World," which has gotten support from the Home Office and the Department for Trade and Industry.

I have several reactions to this. The first is skepticism. In my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), I examine several of the most common inventions and innovations attributed to Muslims and find that actually they are the work of Christians and Jews who lived in Muslim societies. Does this mean that Muslims aren't capable of creating something on their own? Of course it doesn't. But it does mean that for various purposes, political and otherwise, the historical achievements of Muslims have been exaggerated. This exhibition is not the first time it has happened. So caveat emptor.

Second: cars and cameras? I am no expert on the genesis of either one, but I don't recall ever hearing about Henry Ford or Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre working closely with Muslims who gave them a few tips about how to get where they wanted to go. I don't remember ever seeing photos of, say, the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II (d. 1839) or Muhammad Ali of Egypt (d. 1849) -- or even a photo of people tooling around Constantinople or Cairo in automobiles circa 1890 or 1900.

Of course, the exhibition most likely intends to establish that Muslims invented not the car or camera as such, but some component of each, without which the thing itself could not have come into being. But such an argument is extremely tenuous. It depends, in the first place, on the assumption that those who actually came up with the finished product could not have developed on their own whatever component Muslims supposedly supplied. But if the infidels were able to take this component so much farther than Muslims ever could -- using it to develop cars and cameras, both of which originated in the West, not in the Islamic world -- is that a fair assumption?

Second, such an argument is subject to endless atomization. If Muslims developed some key element of the car and the camera, were they perhaps building upon earlier discoveries made by non-Muslims? If so, would this vitiate their achievement in the minds of those who mounted this exhibition? If it wouldn't, but were instead discounted as irrelevant, than would not the the development of these key components of cars and cameras by Muslims also be irrelevant?

And third, in what way did the Muslim development of these key components depend on their Islam? Did these putative innovators innovate because they were Muslim? There is some considerable evidence that if any actually did innovate, they did it in spite of being Muslim -- I explain why in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). But even leaving that aside, were they Muslim inventors or inventors who happened to be Muslim? This is a fair question to ask whenever inventions are attributed to any group: i.e., if Daguerre was a Christian, that still wouldn't make the daguerrotype a Christian invention, because his creed is simply irrelevant to his development of a practical process of photography -- except in the most indirect or contextual way, as it may have made for a cultural environment in which such investigations were desirable and welcome. So if we owe cars and cameras to Muslims, it is fair to ask whether or not that is because of their Islam, or if their Islam is incidental to whatever it was they contributed.

Ultimately, the question that must be asked of this exhibition is: so what? What if Muslims really did give us all things? What point is being made? Professor Mark Halstead sums it up at the end of this article: "Islam needs to take its place alongside other historic groups, such as the ancient Romans and Greeks. When Europe was living in the dark ages, Islamic civilisation was blossoming, and the advances during this period are more relevant to the modern world than those of the Ancient Egyptians and Aztecs."

Of course they're more relevant to the modern world, because there aren't any ancient Romans or Greeks or ancient Egyptians or Aztecs immigrating to Western countries in large numbers today, but there are Muslims. The point of this exhibition is to lessen anxieties among Western non-Muslims about this immigration, and to turn their attention away from honor killings, boasts about the coming domination of Islam, and jihad violence -- all of which we are already seeing in Western countries.

But you see, we're told, that isn't the true face of Islam. The true face of Islam is the car and the camera and the three-course meal. Aside from the What-Have-You-Done-For-Me-Lately aspect of this, which is an important question in light of the relative development of Islamic societies today, ultimately this is completely irrelevant -- as The Religious Policeman riotously pointed out in his Muslim Offense Level chart. He explains the "Elevated -- Quite Offended" level as: "We are definitely cross, because people keep blaming us for 9/11, Parisian cars getting torched, Saudi women getting stoned." And the non-Muslim response? "Pretend that these things have nothing to do with Islam or Muslims, tell everyone how we brought algebra to 9th Century Spain."

So what if Muslims did bring algebra to 9th-century Spain and three-course meals to gourmands everywhere? Would that change the jihad ideology? Would that eradicate the traditional Islamic imperative, affirmed by all the schools of Islamic law, to fight to impose Sharia and the hegemony of the Islamic social order everywhere?

Of course it wouldn't. It would just make that hegemony easier to live under. This UK exhibition is offering the British public a spoonful of sugar to help them swallow the idea of imminent Islamic supremacy more easily.

From The Guardian, with thanks to Sandi:

It is the thread that links cars, carpets and cameras and is also responsible for three-course meals, bookshops and modern medicine.

The Islamic civilisation, according to the curators of a national exhibition that opened this week, has made an enormous but largely neglected contribution to the way we live in the west.

The project, 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World, supported by the Home Office and the Department for Trade and Industry, uncovers the Islamic civilisation's overlooked contribution to science, technology and art during the dark ages in European history.

It lifts the veil on hundreds of innovations - from kiosks and chess through to windmills and cryptography - that are often popularly associated with the western world but originate from Muslim scholarship and science.

Based on more than 3,000 peer-reviewed academic studies, the exhibition charts Islamic innovations during ten decades of "missing history" spanning from the 6th to the 16th century and covering an area stretching from China to southern Spain.

Tailored to appeal to school children and their teachers, and accompanied by a book and online resource, the project was launched at Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry and will tour the country.

Professor Salim al-Hassani, who has led a five-year project to collate and validate the research behind the exhibition, said: "If you ask the average person where their spectacles or camera or fountain pen come from, few people would say Muslims.

"A lot of these scientific and cultural developments are accepted as fact in the academy, but the vast majority of people - because of the nature of the education system - are completely unaware of their origins."

In his own field, mechanical engineering, Professor al-Hassani has used original 13th century manuscripts to produce virtual reconstructions of sophisticated water pumps and cranks.

"The technology behind these mechanisms was incredibly sophisticated for its time and eventually gave birth to pioneering machinery which still features in every single car," he said.

A central theme is the exchange of knowledge and culture between civilisations and their lasting significance today.

For example, the 9th century musician and fashion designer known as Ziryab, who travelled from Iraq to Andalusia in Spain, is said to have introduced the concept of the three-course meal.

Meanwhile, it was Caliph al-Ma'mum's interest in astronomy that led to the development of large observatories, sophisticated astronomical instruments and a rigorous analysis of the stars.

The organisers, the Manchester-based Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, hope to use the compilation to bring about an audit of the national curriculum to ensure it recognises Islamic achievements and the full extent of knowledge transfer between civilisations through the ages.

"For a lot of children in schools, the history of science seems untouchable and remote," said Yasmin Khan, the exhibitions project manager. "We need to change the way we explain civilisation's progress in our schools."

Last year, the government's preventing extremism working group on education proposed that the entire education system should be instilled with "a more faithful reflection of Islam and its civilisation".

Professor Mark Halstead, a lecturer in moral education at Plymouth University, said there was scope in the existing curriculum to teach the contributions of Islamic civilisation, but teachers required better training.

"Islam needs to take its place alongside other historic groups, such as the ancient Romans and Greeks," he said.

"When Europe was living in the dark ages, Islamic civilisation was blossoming, and the advances during this period are more relevant to the modern world than those of the Ancient Egyptians and Aztecs."

UK: School wins Muslim dress appeal

Some anti-dhimmitude in, of all places, Al-Britannia: the House of Lords has ruled that the existing concessions to Muslim sensibilities made by the school were quite sufficient, and no more need be made. "School wins Muslim dress appeal," from the BBC, with thanks to Interested:

A school which was told it unlawfully excluded a Muslim pupil for wearing a traditional gown has won its appeal at the House of Lords.

The Court of Appeal had said Denbigh High School had denied Shabina Begum the right to manifest her religion in refusing to allow her to wear a jilbab.

But in a unanimous ruling, judges at the House of Lords overturned that.

They said the school had "taken immense pains to devise a uniform policy which respected Muslim beliefs".

It had done so "in an inclusive, unthreatening and uncompetitive way".

Fitzgerald: Musical apologies

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald continues in his recent regretful vein with a spate of apologies for various musical offenses to Sharia propriety:

I apologize to the Muslim Community of Europe and North America for that B-Minor Mass they have to endure, should they accidentally turn the dial to the last classical music stations standing in the Western world round about Christmas. I apologize for all those pesky Christmas carols which still seem to have something to do with Christmas as a celebration of the Birth of Christ ("Silent Night," "O Little Town of Bethlehem") -- though of course not for “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as sung by Gene Autry or “Jingle-Bell Rock” as sung by anyone. I apologize for Bach in general. I apologize for Monteverdi (not "Montiverdi," as his name was long ago engraved on the wall of Paine Hall, at a certain famous university that does not know how to spell).

I apologize for Isaac Watts and the entire contents of all hymnals in, as Gabby Hayes used the say, the whole United States -- and Texas. I apologize for other hymnals, whether in Europe, Africa, or Latin America, or Asia, or Australia, wherever hymnals can -- so sorry -- still be found. I apologize for the Andrews Sisters, and especially for "Bei Mir Bist Du Shon" (put the diaeresis in yourself, please, I can't be expected to do everything). I apologize for Palestrina, but if one takes out that "r" -- see -- does that make you feel better?

I apologize for all those songs which appear to suggest that men and women can flirt, dance, sing, do all kinds of things, and even not impossibly live happily ever after, if they've a mind to, but meanwhile are having a good time anyway. For this view of things is one that does not get a whole lot of air-time on the Muslim International Satellite Channel, though let's not forget that in the very distant past, there were poets in Dar al-Islam who had something to say on these matters. Many were Persians: Hafiz, Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, amidst all the real and imaginary roses and bulbuls of Gulistan, where the fountains gurgle and gazelle-like girls wander among those roses and listen to those nightingales. Arabic-language poets as well, but in even more distant days. Pre-Islamic Qays, for example, or possibly not pre-Islamic at all, depending on when you date the Mu’allaqat, or “Hanging Poems,” and who you think wrote “Ed I miei occhi piangono d’amore” (sounds like an aria, doesn’t it, when given in Italian? So let's stick to Italian for our titles). And since I’ve already imagined that sweet gazelle of Gulistan, let's add that Siculo-Arab (“hey, Gennaro, you want a piece of me?" he used to ask his Christian neighbors, whenever he wanted to start trouble in the mean streets of Palermo) Al-Billanubi, with “Oh gazzella mia ammaliante”), or Al-Tubi (“La tua belleza”) but I won’t mention Abu Nuwas -- not only because Qaradawi might not be pleased, but also because it gets us away from the main theme, to wit: Men and Women.

Of course there was a whole lot of other kinds of poetry, that had nothing to do with love: panegyrics to potentates, designed to obtain a hoped-for place or payment or preferment. And if it was not forthcoming, those panegyrics would be followed by -- same poet, same potentate -- venomous attacks. See al-Mutanabbi, after whom that street with the booksellers in Baghdad is named. But there was stuff that, while it observed the outward rules of decorum, would offer another meaning (see more on this at "Call Us Prudes: A Note on Verbal Decorum" and thread following). For example, Faris al-'Arab, who ends "La donna mi dice" with "(ma ora, chi sa, fermi in una bassura,/se ancora m'accogli..., che galoppata dura.") Well, I'll leave that "bassura" and that implied accogliamento up to you to figure out, but that "galoppata dura" at the end says it all. Horseman -- what of that night? Call in the cavalry.

Now let me get back to apologizing, if you don't mind. I apologize for "You Were Meant For Me/And I Was Meant For You." Puts women on the same level as men, and suggests that love has something to do with it, and what, asks Islam, does "love have to do with it?" So I apologize. And I apologize for Fats Waller's "The Porter's Love Song to a Chambermaid." Puts Porter and Chambermaid on an equal footing: "I will be the dustmop/You can be the broom/We will sweep together/All around the room." "Sweeping" here may anticipate, or hint at, the later Italian slang involving the words "scopa" (broom) and "scopare" (to sweep), but I wouldn't bet a dustmop on it.

I apologize for "(Let's Build) A Stairway to the Stars." No one can do that except Muhammad, on his winged quasi-steed al-Buraq. I apologize for "I Hear You Knocking But You Can't Come In." Sounds like a woman has a right to Say No, and that just isn't true. I apologize for Ethel Waters's rendition of "Mr. Iceman." And "Mr. Coalman." I apologize for Billie Holiday. I apologize for Ruth Etting and "Ten Cents a Dance." I apologize for Joyce Kane with her brazen betty-boop routine. I apologize for flappers, for the songs to which people danced the chicachoca samba or the Lindy Hope or the Charleston or the Fox Trot or the Waltz or the high lavolt.

I apologize. I apologize. I apologize. And if you have your way -- you people to whom I have been so busy apologizing, in this article and this one before it -- and in so doing I am merely joining a cast of thousands of Infidel political and religious leaders who presume to speak in the name of all of us when they too apologize -- there will be, in the end, no songs, no books, no paintings, no sculptures, for which they, or I, or any other Infidel, will have to apologize, apologize, apologize.

Fitzgerald: More apologies needed

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald proposes that more apologies be made after the example of the one recently accepted in Dubai by the illustrious Juma Al Salami:

“Juma Al Salami, Assistant Under-Secretary of the Private Education Department affiliated to the Ministry of Education (MoE), met yesterday the regional manager of Pearson Education Company who came from the publisher's main office in London to deliver a written apology for offence caused to Arabs, Muslims and Islam by material included in a book called ‘The cultures of the world’.

“This book was circulated and distributed to a number of private schools in the country. The regional manager was accompanied by the director-general and representative of the company in the UAE. Al Salami accepted his apology.” -- From this news story

It was well for Juma Al Salami to accept this apology, but there is a great deal more apologizing that must be done. Just survey for a moment the larger state of affairs. Things need not stop with textbooks. Think of famous writers, who wrote in a period -- that period that we will all soon become used to referring to as the Age of Jahiliyya, or the Pre-Islamic Period of Ignorance -- when no one yet understood what constituted Islamically acceptable behavior. The Estate of James Joyce should send someone to Kuwait to apologize for making Leopold Bloom the co-hero of Ulysses and portraying him so sympathetically. And then there's the matter of Joyce's friendships with so many Jews, including Italo Svevo (Ettore Schmitz) in Trieste, and then Paul and Lucie Leon in Paris, and...well, just too many. If Giorgio Joyce is no longer alive, then perhaps the lawyers for the estate can appear in person. Don't want to cut into those potential sales of Ulysses in Saudi Arabia, now that the book has finally been translated into Arabic. I’m sure the lines are forming around the block even now in Jiddah -- but oh, the horrific offense that awaits these unsuspecting Saudi Bloomsburyans!

And Dmitri Nabokov may wish to visit and apologize for his late father's mentioning, in the class list in Lolita, a boy named Irving, and for having Humbert Humbert, in going down that list, note "Irving, for whom I am sorry." And then there is that check written by Nabokov to an Israeli charity, and his renewal of contact with a former classmate at the Tenishev School, who later became an architect in Tel Aviv. And then also is that Jewish character in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and others like him, and the depiction of the antisemite, the stepfather of heroine Zina Mertz, in The Gift, and the notes on antisemitism by Kinbote in Pale Fire to be found in the notes about "two historical hells." On second thought, the son should ask Ms. Nafisi to accompany him. She might come in handy.

And then there is Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote not one but two poems celebrating Israel's victory in the Six Day War, and who liked to claim that he must have "some Jewish ancestry." And how often, in his work do we run across themes of the Zohar, and Luria, and the Kabbala! Again, his still-young widow Maria Kodama perhaps should be asked to be-burqa herself, and appear before some informal pack of mutawwa in Riyadh, and beg forgiveness for her late husband's transgressions, and mention that he also liked to refer to Arab texts and tales, and then beg forgiveness, and hope. All is not lost. There is, of course, “The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim.”

Possibly Robert Craft should show up as well, once he receives a letter asking him to please explain -- because the Ministry of Pen and Speech wishes to know the exact meaning of a certain sentence in one of the Stravinsky-Craft diaries, in which, after a visit to Israel, Stravinsky comments on the Israelis as these "most egalitarian" and at the same time "most aristocratic of peoples." This is a phrase not likely to help his music rise to the top of the pops in Jiddah or Damascus or Ramallah. Let Mr. Smartypants Robert Craft try to explain that little remark away, if he possibly can.

And don't stop with writings. Demand that the Head of the Rijksmuseum, accompanied by the Queen of Holland, fly to Riyadh to present personal apologies at the next meeting of the O.I.C. for all those sympathetic portraits of aged rabbis that Rembrandt painted. And along with that apology the O.I.C. representatives will be expecting a promise that the offending paintings will be removed from view and put into permanent storage, although occasionally they may be sent on loan to provincial museums in Manitoba -- lest something untoward happen to them.

Just a start. But a good one.

Child Bride

With Muhammad's marriage to nine-year-old Aisha, and the Qur'an's approval of wife-beating (4:34), what is to prevent there from being many, many more Gulsomas? From The Hotzone, with thanks to JE:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Eleven-year old Gulsoma lay in a heap on the ground in front of her father-in-law. He told her that if she didn't find a missing watch by the next morning he would kill her. He almost had already.

Enraged about the missing watch, Gulsoma's father-in-law had beaten her repeatedly with a stick. She was bleeding from wounds all over her body and her right arm and right foot had been broken.

She knew at that moment that if she didn't get away, he would make good on his promise to kill her.

* * *

When I meet her at the Ministry of Women's Affairs I'm surprised that the little girl, now 12, is the same one that had endured such horrible suffering. She is wearing a red baseball cap and an orange scarf. She has beautiful brown eyes and a full and animated smile. She takes one of my hands in both of hers and greets me warmly, without any hint of shyness.

"She looks healthy," says Haroon, my friend and translator. I nod. But she looks older than her years, we both agree. In orphanages — first in Kandahar, then in Kabul — she has had a year to recover from a lifetime's worth of unimaginable imprisonment, deprivation and torture.

In one of the ministry's offices she sits in a straight-backed wooden chair and tells us the story of her life so far. She is stoic for the most part, pausing only a few times to wipe her eyes and nose with her scarf.

Her story begins in the village of Mullah Allam Akhound, near Kandahar.

"When I was three years old my father died, and after a year my mother married again, but her second husband didn't want me," says Gulsoma. "So my mother gave me away in a promise of marriage to our neighbor's oldest son, who was thirty."

"They had a ceremony in which I was placed on a horse [which is traditional in Afghanistan] and given to the man."

Because she was still a child, the marriage was not expected to be sexually consummated. But within a year, Gulsoma learned that so much else would be required of her that she would become a virtual slave in the household.

At the age of five, she was forced to take care of not only her "husband" but also his parents and all 12 of their other children as well.

Though nearly the entire family participated in the abuse, her father-in-law, she says, was the cruelest.

"My father-in-law asked me to do everything — laundry, the household chores — and the only time I was able to sleep in the house was when they had guests over," she says. "Other than that I would have to sleep outside on a piece of carpet without even any blankets. In the summer it was okay. But in the winter a neighbor would come over and give me a blanket, and sometimes some food."

When she couldn't keep up with the workload, Gulsoma says, she was beaten constantly.

Read it all.

Malaysia: Jail threatened over Islam insults

Islamic Tolerance Alert: "Jail threatened over Islam insults," from AFP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

MALAYSIA'S de facto law minister has threatened to jail or fine non-Muslims who insult Islam, amid concern over recent articles perceived as attacking the religion.

Mohamad Nazri Abdul Aziz said the country's sedition act could be used on non-Muslims who make comments construed as belittling Islam.

"We will not think twice about using this law against anybody who incites," Mohamad Nazri, a minister in the prime minister's department, was quoted as saying in the Star newspaper today.

The minister said he was concerned over recent articles written about Islam by non-Muslims, and warned there was a limit to what could be said in the Muslim-majority country.

"I want to remind non-Muslims to refrain from making statements on something they do not understand," he said.

"We do not want to take away your rights but religion is an important matter, especially to the Muslims."

We do not want to take away your rights, but we will if you cross us. The good minister here is speaking in strict accord with classic dhimmi laws, in which the dhimmis forfeit their "protection" if they are perceived as having insulted Islam.

Swedish FM resigns over website closure

From the BBC:

Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds has resigned in a row related to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. She has been strongly criticised in the press after the foreign ministry ordered the website of a far-right party to be shut down.

The site had been due to publish the cartoons, which sparked a furore after their initial publication in Denmark...

Ms Freivalds was rounded on by the press when a far-right website was forced to close on 9 February, after a foreign ministry official contacted the site's hosting company.

Critics said this was an intrusion on the freedom of speech.

The minister said she did not order the official to contact the company, but a later report from the ministry said she was involved in the decision.

"Free Word" indeed

Not so free anymore. "Church recalls 'Prophet' magazine," from the BBC, with thanks to Steven:

The Church in Wales has appealed to 500 subscribers to its magazine to return copies after it printed a cartoon caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad.

The editor has resigned after the cartoon was published in the Church's Welsh-language magazine Y Llan.

Some see the cartoon as an attack on Islam and there have been violent demos after they appeared in European papers.

The Archbishop of Wales apologised to the Muslim Council of Wales, which accepted the "unfortunate mistake"....

The Church in Wales printed the cartoon to illustrate an article in the February edition of Y Llan - or Church in English - about the shared ancestry of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

The drawing - which was from the French magazine France Soir - shows the Prophet Muhammad sitting on a heavenly cloud with Buddha, and Christian and Jewish deities.

He is being told "don't complain...we've all been caricatured here".

The Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan told the BBC: "The article was perfectly ok, but for some reason, the editor decided to print one of these cartoons which was a gross error of judgement.

"It no way reflects the policy of the church in Wales and when I saw it I was totally horrified.

"We recalled all the papers, I personally picked up some from some churches and they have all been pulped.

"I've unreservedly apologised to my Muslim colleagues and they've been very gracious and I've said to them this in no way reflects the policy or attitude in the Church in Wales."

Dr Morgan also personally contacted Saleem Kidwai, the Muslim Council of Wales' general secretary, to apologise and to assure him that no offence had been intended.

'Unfortunate mistake'

Mr Kidwai said he regarded the latest publication as simply an "unfortunate mistake" and said inter-faith relations were very good in Wales and need not be jeopardised by the incident.

In a statement, the Church said it was "thoroughly investigating" how the cartoon came to be reproduced.

The Bishops of the Church in Wales have already made it clear that "they regret the publication of the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in various European publications, and the offence that these have caused the Muslim community", the statement added.

Last month, a Cardiff University student union newspaper was withdrawn after it printed a different cartoon.

Gair Rhydd - Welsh for Free Word - recalled 8,000 copies, suspended its editor and issued a public apology.

Charles criticises cartoons on Middle East tour with Camilla

England's Prince Charles picked up an honorary degree from Al-Azhar University in Cairo and delivered an "impassioned" speech as well. From the TimesOnline:

The Prince of Wales took a swipe today at the publication of the Danish cartoons which sparked a wave of violent protests in the Islamic world for their satirical treatment of the Prophet Muhammad. On a visit to Egypt, the Prince, who is touring the Middle East with the Duchess of Cornwall, expressed concerns over the "failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others".

The heir to the throne addressed more than 800 Islamic scholars at Cairo's al-Azhar University, the world's oldest university, and called for greater tolerance between different religions - especially the three great "Abrahamic faiths": Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

"The roots of the faith that we share in the One God, the God of Abraham, give us enduring values," he said. "We need the courage to speak of them and affirm them again and again to a world troubled by dissension."

The Duchess, who had earlier removed her shoes and donned a veil to tour the elaborate al-Azahr mosque, watched from the audience as the Prince delivered his serious, impassioned 30-minute speech which he had titled "Unity in Faith".

The Prince said: "The recent ghastly strife and anger over the Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes of our failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others. In my view, the true mark of a civilised society is the respect it pays to minorities and to strangers."...

Man found with wife's head in bag

"A motive for the attack is still unclear." Maybe, but I can hazard a guess as to the larger motivation: another honor killing in Germany?

Note also that like Muhammad Reza Taheri-azar and others, he readily turned himself in. From the BBC, with thanks to Dan:

A man is being held by German police after walking into a petrol station with his wife's severed head in a bag.

The 40-year-old man, of Turkish origin, was covered in blood when he approached the night counter at about 0400 GMT and asked the attendant to call the police.

Hamburg police said officers found the head in a bag on a grass verge and arrested the man, who was in a confused state and admitted killing his wife.

The body of the woman, aged 39, was found in their nearby flat.

Hamburg police spokeswoman Ulrike Sweden said the man seemed "a bit crazy" and may have to see a doctor before charges can be brought....

She said police found a large knife in the flat in Eissendorf, in the south of the city.

"It seems he used the knife to kill his wife and cut off the head," she told the BBC News website....

"It seems they didn't see the body or what was going on," the spokeswoman said. A motive for the attack is still unclear.

Both the man and his wife were of Turkish origin, with German citizenship.

Palestinian Imam: "Praise Allah the bird flu has hit the Jews."

From World Net Daily:

Sheikh Abu Muhammed, an imam at the popular Al-Tadwa mosque in Beit Lahia north of Gaza City, went on to ask Muslims at his Friday night sermon to pray for the sexual organs of Jews to "dry out" so they cannot reproduce, a Palestinian in attendance at the mosque services told WorldNetDaily.
"Praise Allah the bird flu has hit the Jews. It came because of their sins against the Palestinians; because they are the most cruel enemy of humanity; because they are themselves the enemy of humanity; because they don't believe in Allah; because they falsify the book of Allah; because they cheated the prophet Muhammed; and because they cheated Allah and even their own prophet, Moses," Sheikh Muhammed was quoted as saying.

Very good dhimmi! Publisher travels from London to Dubai to apologize for textbook offensive to Muslims

What did the book contain that was so offensive? According to an earlier Khaleej Times article, nothing but the truth:

It has been accused that chapter 25 of the book running from page 599 to 614 contains a deluge of derogatory remarks against Islam and the Muslim world, for example, dubbing Middle East as one of the most dangerously explosive areas in the world and the Muslim conquest of India as the most bloodiest in the world history, to mention a few.

The sub chapters clubbed under the title 'North Africa and the Middle East' also elaborate on the religion and life-style of Israel with pictures. "Israel is one of a few democracies in North Africa and the Middle East today. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco are all kingdoms; the country of Syria has sponsored terrorism by giving aid to radicals in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, known as the PLO," read excerpts from page 610 of the book, copies of which Khaleej Times possess.

"Publisher of ‘offensive’ textbook apologises," from the Khaleej Times, with thanks to all who sent this in:

DUBAI — Juma Al Salami, Assistant Under-Secretary of the Private Education Department affiliated to the Ministry of Education (MoE), met yesterday the regional manager of Pearson Education Company who came from the publisher's main office in London to deliver a written apology for offence caused to Arabs, Muslims and Islam by material included in a book called ‘The cultures of the world’.

This book was circulated and distributed to a number of private schools in the country. The regional manager was accompanied by the director-general and representative of the company in the UAE. Al Salami accepted his apology.

Mighty big of you, Salami.

Thousands of Pakistani women face charges under Islamic laws

As I noted in Islam Unveiled, most of the women in jail in Pakistan are there because they are victims of rape. Islamic evidence laws make the fact of rape all too easily into a crime committed by the woman.

From Deutsche Presse Agentur, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

ISLAMABAD - Nearly 80 per cent of the more than 6,000 women and juvenile girls on trial in Pakistan are facing charges under the controversial strict ’Hudood’ Islamic laws that mainly deal with crimes of adultery and rape, said a human rights report published on Monday.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) report also noted an increase in the killings of women in the name of honour, English ’Daily Times’ reported. Most such killings targetted women and girls who contracted marriages against family’s will.

Human-rights and civil-society organizations are demanding the repeal of the Hudood laws that were introduced by late military dictator Zia-ul-Haq, in 1979, to gain support of Muslim clerics for his rule....

The HRCP report quoted the findings of the government’s National Commission on Status of Women, which said that 50 per cent of the inmates of a government-run shelter house for women, called ’Darul Amin’, were implicated under Hudood laws.

The commission has suggested repeal of the laws, while the hard-line Islamists, including the six-party religio-politico alliance of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, strongly oppose any change.

The HRCP has accused policemen of frequently violating the legal restrictions on keeping women overnight at police stations, saying that juvenile girls are held in various jails despite a ban on holding them alongside adult criminals.

International organizations estimate that up to 90 per cent of Pakistani women face domestic abuse. HRCP data showed that 96 cases of women suffering from severe burns had been reported between November 2004 and August 2005.

Plans to turn Britain into the most Islam-friendly economy in the western world

Eurabia Alert: "Brown to boost Islamic banking," from the TimesOnline, with thanks to Charles Martel:

GORDON BROWN is drawing up plans to turn Britain into the most Islam-friendly economy in the western world.

The chancellor has given Muslim leaders private assurances that he wants to create a “level playing field” in the economy, so that more and more “sharia compliant” financial products can be offered to British Muslims.

To comply with sharia law, financial products must not charge or earn interest, which is regarded as usury.

Brown hopes his proposed changes would remove barriers to many British and foreign Muslims participating fully in the financial system. They would help make London the natural home for Islamic funds from around the world, and increase the inflow of investment from oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.

UN: Denmark should have played the dhimmi and thrown free speech overboard

"UN: Denmark Acted Irresponsibly in Cartoon Crisis," from Zaman.com, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, which prepared a report about the cartoon crisis, breaking out after the publication of insulting images of Prophet Muhammad, accused the Danish government of acting irresponsibly during the crisis period.

UN Higher Commissioner Louis [sic] Arbour’s special reporter Doudou Diene made harsh criticisms in his report about the Danish government and intellectuals along with the Danish daily Jyllands Posten, which published the blasphemous images first. The report stressed that “beliefs should not be humiliated under the veil of freedom of expression” as it dwelled on the importance of fighting against Islamophobia.

Why has the UN never issued the shadow of a hint of a peep about the many, many insults to Christianity that are published routinely in the West? The answer, of course, is because Christians don't murder innocent people over such things.

Diene remarked that xenophobia and taking sides before Islam reached an “alarming” level in Denmark with the publication of the insulting images admitting that, “When political leaders do not fulfill their responsibility about xenophobia and insult to religion, Europe has entered a path, which will confirm the thesis of “clash of civilizations”. The reporter emphasized that Jyllands Posten daily attacked Muslim believers by “showing Islam equal to terrorism”, which is an old prejudice and it acted under the veil of auto-censorship and freedom of expression. “The cartoons are absolutely insulting” said the reporter as he directed his criticisms towards the Anders Fogh Rasmussen government, which did not fulfill its responsibility. Diene’s report highlighted the violation of international agreements by the Danish government guaranteeing freedom of expression and respect to thoughts and beliefs.

Diene showed no trace of irony in scolding those who equate Islam with terrorism after months of international riots and murders of innocent people around the world by Muslims enraged at these cartoons.

The UN report said the Danish government had to make decisions against the cartoon crisis for its international responsibility and responsibility to 200,000 Muslims in the country. It also noted that the Danish Government’s lack to show sensitivity for insulting religions and Islamaphobia as it showed against anti-Semitism was dreary. Emphasizing the cartoon crisis arose in Denmark due to rising xenophobia, the UN report stated Jyllands Posten stands against tolerance and supports the clash of civilizations. The Senegalese reporter said “Their defense that freedom of speech is limitless contradicts international rules. There is a great need to establish a balance between freedom of speech and freedom of faith. This publication explicitly shows a lack of understanding and emotion for believers. The newspaper also helped Islam and terror to be likened.”

No, the newspaper didn't do that. Those who responded to the cartoons with irrational violence did that.

Danish intellectuals were criticized in the report. The UN reporter emphasized that it was wrong to divide the world into two as secular and modern society on the one side and undeveloped Muslims on the other. The reporter addresses UN at the end of his report and called it to struggle against Islamaphobia and insulting religions. It also demanded repercussion for people who see Islam equal to terrorism.

"Repercussion for people who see Islam equal to terrorism"? So in the face of worldwide violence by Muslims, including not only murder but the burning of embassies and other destruction, the UN wishes to punish those who see in Islam something that incites to violence? "Say Islam is peaceful, or we'll kill you" -- it's an increasingly popular sentiment.

Separation of Mosque, State Wanes in Indonesia

Islamic Tolerance Alert from "moderate" Indonesia, from the LA Times, with thanks to Data:

MALANG, Indonesia — Yusman Roy, a former boxer and a convert to Islam, is serving two years in prison because he believes that Muslims should pray in a language they can understand.

Roy, who led bilingual prayer sessions at his small East Java boarding school, is seen as a heretic by conservative Muslims here. They believe true prayer can be conducted only in Arabic.

Roy's desire to pray in Indonesian has sparked such an outrage that he was convicted last year in criminal court of "spreading hatred." Animosity toward Roy ran so high that police posted guards to keep an angry mob from torching his house and school.

Read it all.

Fitzgerald: Indian dhimmitude -- remedies and responses

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses India's dhimmitude, how it can be reversed, and how the U.S. should respond:

Disseminating, or even discussing respectfully, the work of K. S. Lal, Francois Gautier, Koenraad Elst, and especially those too-easily dismissed as Hindutva fanatics, such as Sita Ram Goel -- that is impermissible in India. Even noting the 60-70 million Hindus killed under Muslim rule is considered bad form. Daring to ask Indian Muslims if they have ever bothered to think about what must have been the conditions that led their ancestors to convert to Islam, or raising the matter of how unique Akbar was, or how common were the cruel Aurangzebs, or wondering why the Hindu population of Afghanistan almost completely disappeared under the Taliban, why the Hindus went from 15% to 1.5% of the population of Pakistan, why non-Muslims went from 34% to 8% of the population of Bangladesh -- these are all impermissible questions. No Indian should raise them, for to do so is to be guilty -- as Hindus and Sikhs apparently so often are -- of "communalism."

The failure of the Indian Establishment to encourage Indians to study their own history, the treatment that the "intellectual Kshatriya" (Kshatriya being the warrior caste) Sita Ram Goel had to endure, and that any educated Hindu scholar must endure, is to be labeled as some Hindutva or BJP "fanatic" guilty of "communalism" -- a crime that is charged only against Hindus and Sikhs; Muslims are apparently never guilty of "communalism" -- they're just being Muslims when they make the most outrageous demands on behalf of Muslims and of Islam.

Some Indians abroad, once they become famous in the West, either forget or never knew and refuse to learn the history of India. V. S. Naipaul was a great exception. He should be honored and heeded. Many departments supposedly devoted to Sanskrit and Indian Studies (and certainly the original nineteenth-century donors who support the professorships in such departments) are now full of Indian Muslims and Pakistanis who push aside, or overwhelm, the Hindu contingent. See, for example, the current makeup of the Department at Harvard -- where Professor Asani, and not a successor to Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, appears to be ruling the local roost. Sometimes the Indian "scholar" -- like Professor Bakhle (Mrs. Dirks) at Columbia -- will for a time parrot the general Middle Eastern views of those colleagues in the departmental or administrative company she has been forced to keep. Who knows what her real views are, or what they would be if she were allowed just to study Indian music and not drag in idiotic phrases and ideas like "post-colonialism." One wonders also what her work would be like if she had not been forced as well to ignore the only deep and true and long-lasting and disastrous colonialism innocent India ever experienced -- which is to say, the Muslim kind.

One would like to see Indian scholars, in India and without, object articulately to this state of affairs. They don't have to join the BJP. They don't have to raise their voices at all. But they should not shun the work of K. S. Lal, of Francois Gautier, of Koenraad Elst, and yes, of Sita Ram Goel. They could start with Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization and Among the Believers and Beyond Belief. Then they should work their way backwards -- backwards through the Raj, all the way to "Oriental" Jones, that sympathetic student of Hindu law, and see how the English conquest made possible the rediscovery of Hindu India, smothered by the Muslims and their indifference or even hostility to the Hindu (and Buddhist) culture of Mother India. (Biruni was the sole great exception, a thousand years before, during the first Muslim conquest.)

But Muslims are blameless. The Muslim conquerors, the Muslim conquest, the destruction of temples and people -- that is not to be discussed. What Ibn Battuta so matter-of-factly recorded is not to be discussed.

The advanced world means more than a rise in GNP. It means more than Infosys, more than Azim Premji talking to Charlie Rose, more than those Bangalore computer-and-tutor companies. It means, for India, no longer letting the attitude of accommodation to Muslim demands to continue. It was forced by Muslim masters in their centuries of rule, and is perpetuated now by an official thought-control policy of "tolerance" (one-way tolerance) and absence of "communalism" (an absence only on one side) that will somehow buy -- but for how long? -- a semblance of civil peace.

If the United States is to entrust nuclear and other knowhow to India, it has to be sure that the India it entrusts such secrets to, and cooperates with, is not secretly or openly islamizing, or is permanently in thrall to fear of Muslim mob violence.

Muslims, Jews Open Congress to Talk Peace

And the whole thing is enveloped in dhimmi fiction right from the start: "Seville was chosen to host the meeting because of its rich symbolism as one of the Spanish cities where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in harmony under Moorish rule that began in the 8th century and lasted more than 700 years."

No doubt the Muslims and Jews there have no idea whatsoever that that harmony was based on the institution of the dhimma: Jews and Christians lived in Muslim Spain as second-class people whose contract of "protection" could be revoked at any time by their Muslim masters. Even Maria Rosa Menocal in her whitewash The Ornament of the World, the book that has become a principal foundation of this myth and which I discuss in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers, acknowledges this.

"Muslim, Jewish Open Congress to Talk Peace," from AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

SEVILLE, Spain (AP) -- Muslim and Jewish leaders meeting in a rare face-to-face forum appealed Sunday to their faithful not to view each other as enemies and keep religion from being hijacked by extremists.

''We have more common elements than elements which pull us apart,'' the chief rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, said as a four-day congress of imams and rabbis opened in this southern Spanish city. ''We have to continue to prove that Jews and Muslims are not enemies.''

Metzger, I hope you will be able to get that message through to those who believe things like this.

The meeting, called the Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace, is being sponsored by Hommes de Parole, a peace foundation based in Paris....

Seville was chosen to host the meeting because of its rich symbolism as one of the Spanish cities where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in harmony under Moorish rule that began in the 8th century and lasted more than 700 years.

The first version of the congress was held last year in Brussels and since then ''things have not gone in the right direction,'' said Andre Azoulay, a Moroccan Jew who is an adviser to King Mohammed VI, apparently alluding to Muslim extremism.

''Our voices are not listened to, compared to those who can mobilize hundreds, thousands or millions with their message of hate,'' Azoulay said.

And why is that, Azoulay? When are you going to face the root causes?

Metzger said Judaism has fanatics, too. He noted an attack last August in which an Israeli soldier opposed to Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip opened fire on a bus in the town of Shfaram, killing four Israeli Arabs.

Metzger, to imply that such incidents, as few as they are, are remotely comparable to the global jihad network that has murdered thousands around the world since 9/11, is simply obscene.

Ahmad Taoufiq, the religious affairs minister of Morocco, condemned Islamic terrorism and said Muslim leaders are sometimes silent when attacks occur.

''We have to separate ourselves from trends which are dividing the world into darkness and light,'' he said.

Metzger also addressed the issue, saying Muslim leaders have failed to criticize al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

''Why don't you speak out when bin Laden evokes your religion to justify terrorism? Why don't you express yourselves in a loud voice?'' he asked.

Why indeed?

'Only a fraction of Teheran's brutality has come to light'

Wafa Sultans are blossoming all over. May there be ten thousand more. Sharia Alert from The Sunday Telegraph, with thanks to Mackie:

She is the female figurehead of what she hopes will become a new Iranian revolution. Now, after almost 25 years in exile, the world is beginning to beat a path to her door.

Maryam Rajavi wants those who visit her near Paris to know what sort of regime Iran's mullahs are running.

As the leader of the largest exiled Iranian opposition group, she talks angrily of the 15-year-old boy flogged to death for eating during Ramadan, and the girl of 13 buried up to her neck and stoned for a similarly trivial "crime".

When she describes the punishments meted out by Iran's rulers, a picture of the limp bodies of two hanged men suspended from a crane is projected onto a screen.

She waves a large bound book that, she says, contains the names of 21,676 people who have died resisting the clerical regime. Another 120,000 people have been executed since the mullahs took power in 1979, she claims. Now Iran's rulers are trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

"We have always said that a viper cannot give birth to a dove, but nobody believed us," she told the Sunday Telegraph. "Only a fraction of the true nature of this regime, which is a brutal dictatorship of religious fanaticism, has come to public attention."

Read it all.

Vatican change of heart over 'barbaric' Crusades

Anti-dhimmitude in the Vatican: a rehabilitation of the Crusades. Hmmm. Has someone there been reading my last book? From the TimesOnline, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

THE Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.

The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.

The late Pope John Paul II sought to achieve Muslim- Christian reconciliation by asking “pardon” for the Crusades during the 2000 Millennium celebrations. But John Paul’s apologies for the past “errors of the Church” — including the Inquisition and anti-Semitism — irritated some Vatican conservatives. According to Vatican insiders, the dissenters included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Benedict reached out to Muslims and Jews after his election and called for dialogue. However, the Pope, who is due to visit Turkey in November, has in the past suggested that Turkey’s Muslim culture is at variance with Europe’s Christian roots.

At the conference, held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”...

UPDATE: Imagine my surprise when I happened to see Interested's comment below and looked back at the original article to discover that I myself was at the Conference!

The American writer Robert Spencer, author of A Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, told the conference that the mistaken view had taken hold in the West as well as the Arab world that the Crusades were “an unprovoked attack by Europe on the Islamic world”. In reality, however, Christians had been persecuted after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.

Apparently this Conference was so secret that even the speakers didn't know they were there. Or perhaps it all happened in a dream -- a winged white horse carried me to Rome, where I defended the Crusades and was back in time to update Jihad Watch before the morning commute. Anyway, while I do hope this means they're reading the book in Rome, the Times has it wrong: I was not in fact there.

Swiss documentary on Afghanistan: Pakistani, Saudi engineers helped destroy Buddhas

Islamic Tolerance Alert revolving around two of our friends and allies. From the Daily Times, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

WASHINGTON: The Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban with the help of Pakistani and Saudi engineers.

According to an account published here on Saturday, a local Afghan told the makers of a Swiss documentary on the giant statues which had stood there, carved in the side of a mountain for hundreds of years, had been destroyed by engineers from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The dynamiting of the statues took place in March 2001. Swiss documentary filmmaker Christian Frei, who has made several documentaries that have won praise at various international film festivals, shot ‘The Giant Buddhas’ in Afghanistan. The film is due to be shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on 26 March.

The Taliban went ahead with the destruction of the giant statues, revered for centuries, because they considered them “offensive to Islam”. They ignored appeals from around the world, including UNESCO and an appeal from the then Government of Pakistan, made, it would appear now, more “for the record” than any serious intent to stop the Islamist zealots from destroying what the rest of the world considered mankind’s heritage.

Women at war with the mullahs

More on Wafa Sultan from the UK Sunday Times, with thanks to Granny Weatherwax.

It would be hard to imagine a place more remote from the violence and turmoil of the Middle East than this quiet cul-de-sac in the southern suburbs of Los Angeles. But as David Sultan opens the front door of his home he glances up and down the street anxiously.

He has good reason to be nervous: ever since Dr Wafa Sultan, his wife, appeared on Al-Jazeera, the Arabic television network, last summer she has been receiving death threats. During that and a second broadcast in February Dr Sultan, who was brought up as a Muslim in Syria, denounced the teachings and practice of Islam as “barbaric” and “medieval”.

The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilisations,” the impassioned 47-year-old told Al-Jazeera’s stunned audience across the Arab world. “It is a clash between civilisation and backwardness, between the civilised and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between human rights on the one hand and the violation of these rights on the other, between those who treat women like beasts and those who treat them like human beings.”

The broadcasts have caused an unholy stir in the Muslim world and virtually overnight have turned Sultan, previously known only to a few for her writings on www.annaqed.com, a small Arab-American website, into one of the most controversial figures in the international debate about Islam. The broadcasts have been downloaded more than 1m times from the internet and she has been interviewed on CNN and profiled by The New York Times and Le Monde.

While some acclaim her as “a voice of reason” others have denounced her as a “heretic” and insist that she deserves to die. What seems to have most infuriated many Muslims were Sultan’s comparisons between how Jews and Muslims have coped with the tragedies that have befallen them.

“The Jews have come from tragedy and forced the world to respect them,” she said, “with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling.

“We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.”...

Read it all.

Fitzgerald: A "Palestinian nationality"?

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the "Palestinian nationality" and suggests a new strategy for dealing with the "Palestinian people":

A poster at this website recently asserted, in response to my assertion that there are no “Palestinians”: "A nation is an idea, a shared identity, and Palestinians have that in spades. They are not going away. Even when they travel the world, they consider themselves refugees and maintain their national consciousness."

But this does nothing to establish that the “Palestinian nationality” is not a politically-motivated construct. And that that politically-motivated construct of a “Palestinian people” out of local Arabs (those in Gaza and the area renamed by the Jordanians in 1948 as "the West Bank"), can be undone by non-Arabs and non-Muslims. Simply expose the idea for what it is. Refuse to write the phrase without quotation marks: "Palestinian people." Quote endlessly from all the Arabs who made quite explicit why this phrase, and this idea, was developed. It has been foisted on the West. So was, in 1938, great sympathy, and understanding, for the campaign of Henlein and his master Hitler to achieve "the legitimate rights" of the "Sudeteners."

Once the understanding spreads that the war against Israel is a classic Jihad, and is not, and never has been, a "clash of two tiny peoples" etc., this will bring a greater clarity not only to the confused Israeli public (and its largely unimpressive political leaders), but also to the larger Infidel world. The world needs to comprehend how that Jihad against Israel is only a subset of the more general, worldwide Jihad effort. That effort is expressed locally, and uses different instruments depending on what is possible, and effective, taking into account local conditions and the nature of the local Infidels.

Here's a sample of what should be better known:

Before the Six-Day War, not a single Arab spokesman, at the U.N. or anywhere else, and not a single Arab document, referred to the local Arabs as the "Palestinian people." They appeared, as if by magic -- summoned by the public-relations advisors to Arafat -- only after that war made clear that the Arab dream of going in for the kill had been dashed, and that a different, long-term effort was necessary.

The intention of that effort was to persuade former supporters of Israel in the Western world that Israel had won territory to which it had no legal, moral, or historic claim. Since the area had been known in the West as "Palestine," then the local Arabs would become the "Palestinian people." As the older and better-educated generations died out, the young, the naive, the uninformed, would come to think something along the simple-minded lines of "well, there's a place called Palestine, and there's these people who are the Palestinian people, so of course they must be the ones whose land it is."

It was at that level that the “Palestinian people” was created -- a level that required an absence of any historic sense, any real and detailed knowledge of the history of that area, and of the Middle East, not merely in the 20th century, but during the 1300 years before. The men who served on the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, none of them Zionists, had a much better sense of why the Mandate's aims -- the establishment of a Jewish National Home -- were not only justified, but also admirable. That is why those who had a wider sense of history, and who were untainted by that widespread mental pathology that takes different forms in different people (even the form fruste can be deadly), such as Churchill and Smuts, were Zionist sympathizers to a man.

While the Shukairy "drive them into the sea" line was muted for the Western world, and the "Palestinian people" theme drummed into Western minds, in black Africa, where the Israelis had had a very effective foreign-aid program before 1967, things went more quickly. All that was needed was bribery of key government officials and diplomats; and overnight most African states cut relations with Israel. Those agricultural projects, those irrigation projects, that had been so useful, were forced to end. There was, of course, no real Arab aid ever given. It was only bribes to particular officials, and then, of course, money to extend the reach and power of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa. One result was the revolt of Nigeria's Christians against the new Muslim militancy -- the Jihad, as Col. Ojukwu called it, against those Christians.

Western leaders, as well as Israeli leaders, should cease to use the phrase "Palestinian people." Instead, they should start to use such carefully-constructed phrases as "the autonomy for local Arabs will of course depend on to the extent that such autonomy is commensurate with Israeli security, since there are already twenty-two Arab states. Also, we cannot remain unaware of the doctrine of Jihad as a permanent duty, so that opposition to Israel as an Infidel state should not be expected to diminish no matter what its borders. Indeed, we have every reason to believe that further territorial concessions that cause Arab Muslims to perceive Israel as more vulnerable will only increase the likelihood of open warfare, and will whet rather than sate the desire for combat to further the aims of Jihad."

Who writes or says anything like that? It's all true, and necessary, but no one does. But perhaps they will start, as they realize that they, the entire West, the entire Infidel world, are in the same boat with Israel, and this is no time for that boat to become a ship of fools.

Sistani: "Sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible"

Here is yet another one for those who say that Christian and Muslim "fundamentalists" are essentially the same: no Christian leader is calling for the killing of homosexuals, while the "moderate" Sistani doesn't hesitate. This may also deal a slight blow to the National Review/Tom Friedman "Sistani for Nobel" campaign.

"Sistani: 'Gays Should Be Killed in Worst Way Possible,'" from the Healing Iraq blogspot, with thanks to LGF:

His Eminence, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the supreme religious authority for Shi'ite Msulims in Iraq and worldwide, decrees that gays and lesbians should be killed in the worst manner possible, according to this news article from a London-based gay rights group.

A quick search through Sistani's official website turns up this page, translated as:

Q: What is the judgement on sodomy and lesbianism?

A: "Forbidden. Those involved in the act should be punished. In fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible."

Turkey: Intruder Threatens Catholic Priests and Youths

"You are not a human being!" You are just a dhimmi.

"Intruder Threatens Catholic Priests and Youths," from Compass Direct, with thanks to Leslie:

March 16 (Compass) – A Turkish Muslim shouting insults against Christianity pulled a long butcher knife on two priests and a group of teenagers last Saturday evening (March 11) at a Latin Catholic church in Mersin, threatening them and their families.

In a 30-minute standoff in the town on the southern coast of Turkey, Erdal Gurel entered the parish convent of St. Antoine’s Catholic Church while 25 of the church’s young people were rehearsing for an Easter passion play.

“I was in my church office about 7:30 p.m. when I heard someone shouting and looked out in the hall to see what was happening,” Brother Hanri Leylek later told the police in a recorded statement.

Leylek, a Turkish citizen and brother in the Capuchin order, said he offered to help the stranger. But the man insisted with strong language, “I want to see the fat bearded priest.” Then he started to swear loudly and “talk nonsense,” Leylek said.

Telling the frightened parish youth to go back and lock themselves in their rehearsal room, Leylek tried to talk with Gurel and asked him to go outside. When he began to shout insults and refused to leave, the priest went to a hallway telephone to call the police.

Before the priest finished dialing, the church young people shouted a warning. He turned around to see the intruder approaching him, brandishing a 30-inch butcher knife that had been hidden behind his back.

“He started to threaten me with the knife and curse against Christianity and the church,” Leylek said.

Just then Italian priest Roberto Ferrari entered from the kitchen door. Gurel turned and dashed toward him, waving the knife and declaring in vulgar terms, “You are not a human being! I will violate your mother, your sisters, your children.”

Read it all.

When Danes Pay Danegeld:­ The End of the Scandinavian Model

Fjordman, who has contributed so much valuable information about the Islamization of Europe to this site and to his own much-missed blog, sends in this essay:

One thousand years ago Scandinavians were the barbarians of Europe, spreading fear and extracting "Danegeld" from their more civilized neighbors. In the 21st century Scandinavians are peaceful and soft-spoken, and the roles seem to have been reversed with certain newly arrived immigrants. There are claims that immigration costs Sweden 40 to 50 billion Swedish kroner every year, perhaps even several hundred billions, and has greatly contributed to bringing the Swedish welfare state to the brink of bankruptcy.

In Denmark right-wing politicians are already debating the threat of immigrant "welfare tourists," should the Swedish system collapse. In Norway almost half of all children with a non-Western background claim social security benefits. This is ten times the rate of the native population. A Danish commission concluded that Denmark could save 50 billion kroner every year by 2040 if it shut the door to third world immigration. At the same time, statistics indicate that Scandinavians will become a minority in their own countries within a couple of generations, if the current trends continue. While their political elites insist that immigration is "good for the economy," Scandinavians are in reality funding their own colonization.

Although the cost of welfare is significant, it pales in comparison to the price paid through rapidly declining social harmony and increasing insecurity caused by Muslim immigration. Some of the increase in insecurity is due to the rise of mafia groups and organized crime, but most is mainly due to terror threats and intimidation of critics of Islam and Muslim immigration.

It is true that the Scandinavian countries have much in common, but the differences that do exist should not be underestimated. It was no coincidence that the issue with the Muhammad cartoons started in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, as Denmark is probably the one Western nation where the debate surrounding Muslim immigration is most mainstream and open. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's centre-right government has imposed some of the toughest regulations in the EU on asylum seekers.

Unfortunately, this does not mean that Denmark's problems are over. In 2005 attackers set fire to the immigration minister's car. A leftist group calling itself "Beatte Without Borders" said it carried out the attack, condemning the government's "racist immigration policies." Muslim extremists have declared that the Danish PM and Defense Minister are legitimate terror targets because of Denmark's participation in Iraq. Members of Denmark's moderate Muslim community say they are reluctant to speak out with critical observations of their religion, fearing social isolation, threats and violence, and a Danish Jew was even attacked for reading from the Koran.

Imam Abu Laban was one of the prime movers in making the cartoons a major international issue: "We want to internationalize this issue so that the Danish government will realize that the cartoons were insulting, not only to Muslims in Denmark, but also to Muslims worldwide," Abu Laban said. He has earlier tried to implement sharia practices in Denmark. In one prominent case, two men were killed in a row involving a group of second generation immigrants in Copenhagen. According to Imam Abu Laban the thirst for revenge could be cooled if 200,000 kroner in "blood money" were paid to the victims' families.
The 200,000 Danish kroner is approximately the value of 100 camels, the stipulated sharia price for a Muslim man's life.

Meanwhile, there is growing fear amongst politicians that the immigrant environment in the Nørrebro area in Copenhagen, which has been unofficially declared an "Islamic state" by some of its residents, is developing into a parallel society where ancient traditions threaten Danish law. Professor of Islamic studies Mehdi Mozaffari tells of how he and thousands of others have fled burkas, sharia, blood money, muftis and Islamism in the Middle East, only to witness the same beast rear its ugly head in Europe. And he warns of the consequences: "Historical experience has shown that those whom people fear will win, eventually. We saw this in Nazi Germany. There were too many Nazis, and people were scared. I fear that this is where we are heading, once more."

The most immediate victims of this climate of fear are Muslim women. A Pakistani man in Denmark recently murdered his sister in the street outside a train station because she had married a man against her family's orders. Meanwhile, Muslims in Denmark do not hesitate to exercise their right to free speech. In 2004 a leading Danish mufti said that Danish women not wearing the veil "were asking for rape," a comment seemingly less offensive to the Muslim community than a few cartoons. The twelve Muhammad cartoonists now live underground and with police protection.

In Norway Bruce Bawer, the author of the recent book While Europe Slept, tells on his website of the capitulation of Velbjørn Selbekk, the editor of the tiny Christian periodical Magazinet ­-- the first publication to reprint the now famous Muhammed cartoons. He had firmly resisted pressure by Muslim extremists (who made death threats) and by the Norwegian establishment. But then Norway's Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion hastily called a press conference at a major government office building in Oslo. There Selbekk issued an abject apology for reprinting the cartoons. At his side, accepting his act of contrition on behalf of 46 Muslim organizations and asking that all threats now be withdrawn, was Mohammed Hamdan, head of Norway's Islamic Council. In attendance were members of the Norwegian cabinet and the largest assemblage of imams in Norway's history. It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom, with the Muslim leader declaring Selbekk to be henceforth under his protection.

Two representatives from the Islamic Council for Norway and a senior pastor representing Oslo's bishop then visited Qatar, where they were to meet the top Muslim leader Dr Yusuf Al Qaradawi. The trip, partially funded by the Norwegian authorities, was a public relations effort on the part of Norway, which had suddenly found itself the target of Muslim outrage because the cartoons that originated in Denmark were reprinted in a Norwegian publication. Qaradawi has supported suicide bombings, and has publicly bragged about how "Islam will conquer Europe." The "moderate" Sheikh Qaradawi was not satisfied with the apology from the Norwegian editor who printed the Muhammad cartoons. He wanted to dictate that Norway adopt Islamic blasphemy laws. Qaradawi's website IslamOnline later claimed that Norway agreed to do this, which is totally untrue. Local Muslims led by the lawyer Abid Q. Raja, however, have pushed for such an option: "The point is not to restrict freedom of speech but to give it direction so that weak groups do not feel insulted or mocked. If we do nothing the differences within Norwegian society will increase in the future."

Mullah Krekar, the former leader of the Islamic terror group Ansar al-Islam, still lives in Norway, even though he has pretty much openly threatened the country with terror attacks and has called Osama bin Laden "the jewel of Islam." At the same time, Krekar denies he is a threat to national security in Norway. "I only know five streets in Oslo," he said. "How can I be a threat?" He has written a book about himself, which was published by a man called William Nygaard, who was shot at and almost killed in the early 90s for having published the Norwegian translation of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses. A Norwegian NGO called the Freedom of Expression Fund supports the translation and publication of bin Laden's speeches.

Meanwhile the Norwegian translation of Oriana Fallaci's latest book remains unpublished in Norway, even though her two previous books about Islam and the West sold in large numbers. FOMI, a Norwegian anti-Islamic website, was recently charged with "racism and spreading Islamophobia" for translating an article from Frontpage Magazine, with comments, about a Muslim rape wave in the West. The number of rape charges in Sweden has quadrupled in just over twenty years, parallel with Muslim immigration.

In 2005 Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament, passed a new Discrimination Act. The act says in pretty clear words that in cases of suspected direct or indirect discrimination based on religion or ethnicity, native Norwegians are guilty until proven otherwise. The immigration spokesman for the right-wing Progress Party, Per Sandberg, feared that the law would jeopardize the rights of ordinary, law-abiding Norwegian citizens. Reverse burden of proof is combined with liability to pay compensation, which means that innocent persons risk having to pay huge sums for things they did not do. In 2005 the Norwegian police issued a mobile security alarm to Progress Party leader Carl I. Hagen. Hagen had criticized Islam, and could see no similarity with the concept of morality and justice found in Christianity. Hagen also said that if Israel loses in the Middle East, Europe will succumb to Islam next. He feels that Christians should support Israel and oppose Islamic inroads into Europe. In an unprecedented step, a group of Muslim ambassadors to Norway blasted Carl I. Hagen in a letter to the newspaper Aftenposten, claiming that he had offended 1.3 billion Muslims around the world. Other Norwegian politicians quickly caved in and condemned Hagen.

Unidentified assailants fired shots at an Oslo restaurant owned by the family of a Pakistani-born female comedienne who has achieved prominence for lampooning conservative Islam. The comedienne, Shabana Rehman, described the incident as "an appalling act of terror" and said it would not deter her from continuing her work. Samira Munir, a Norwegian politician of Pakistani origin, was found dead under suspicious circumstances at a train station outside Oslo in November 2005. She had received death threats many times from the Pakistani community in Norway because of her courageous fight for the rights of Muslim immigrant women, and for banning hijab, the Islamic veil. The leader of the Socialist Left party and now Norway's Minister of Finance, Kristin Halvorsen, praised all the "blood, sweat and tears Pakistanis in Norway have spent on building the country" when she started the party's election campaign in the Pakistani countryside in 2005.

If the reaction of the Norwegian authorities to the cartoon case has been weak, that of the Swedish government has been downright appalling. The ruling Social Democratic party went to the drastic length of closing down the website of a competing political party that featured a Muhammad cartoon online. Sweden, an extremely authoritarian country, has national elections this year. Probably no other Western nation has more problems with, yet less debate about Muslim immigration than Sweden, and the only thing the elites are doing about this is demonizing neighboring Denmark for "xenophobia." The Swedish security services (Säpo), in collusion with Foreign Minister Leila Freivalds, forced the website SD-Kuriren offline for publishing the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. SD-Kuriren is the house publication of the hard-right Swedish Democrats. Freivalds stated that "it is terrible that a small group of extremists are exposing Swedes to danger [by reprinting the cartoons]." The party's secretary, Björn Söder, says the site has been reopened by moving it to another server, although the pictures of Muhammad have been removed. The Sweden Democrats and SD-Kuriren received threats after the publication of the pictures.

Violent assaults and life threatening attacks against members of the Swedish Democrats, by Muslims or "anti-Fascists," have taken place many times, but are rarely mentioned in the media. No dissent is tolerated in Sweden.

Jonathan Friedman is a New York Jew, now living with his Swedish wife in the southern Swedish city of Malmö where he teaches socio-anthropology. According to him, "no debate about immigration policies is possible, the subject is simply avoided. Sweden has such a close connection between the various powerful groups, politicians, journalists, etc. The political class is closed, isolated." Friedman thinks circumstances in Sweden are special also because Sweden has a long tradition of maintaining a correct surface. Two Swedish girls were sent home from school for wearing sweaters showing a tiny Swedish flag. The headmaster was concerned that this might be deemed offensive by some immigrants. Helle Klein, political editor of the newspaper Aftonbladet, boasts: "If the debate is going to be about whether there are problems with immigrants, we don't want it." Hans Bergström, former editor-in-chief of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, worries that Sweden has become "a one-party state."

In a sermon at Filadelfia church in Stockholm in March 2005 the Norwegian celebrity evangelist preacher Runar Søgaard, repeated his declaration that Muhammad was "a confused pedophile" since his wives included a girl aged nine years old. Søgaard was placed under police protection after receiving death threats. The sermon triggered fears of a religious war in Sweden. Muslim radicals posted a very explicit threat to launch a wave of terrorist attacks against Sweden for the "insult." In February 2005 a Swedish museum removed an erotic painting plastered with verses from the Koran from an exhibition about AIDS. Some vocal members of the Muslim community launched a letter-writing campaign that resulted in hundreds of e-mails, among them messages along the lines of "remember what happened in Holland." The museum, however, insisted that the "threats" it received had nothing to do with the removal of the work. At the same time, the Swedish historian of religion Matthias Gardell claims that Islamophobia is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy in the Western world today. The Swedish writer and leftist intellectual Jan Guillou has stated that the rhetoric employed by the Nazis against Jews is now used to target Muslims. In Sweden an anti-Semitic crime is reported to the police once every three days. The Jewish congregations in the major cities of Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö are forced to spend up to 25 percent of their membership fees on security and hired guards. Most of these hate crimes are perpetrated by Muslims.

Just as the country is in the midst of the worst crime wave in modern history, with a desperately underfunded police force, the Swedish Social Democrats have announced that cheaper public dental care would be a major issue in this year's election campaigns. There could hardly be a better symbol of Europe's love affair with the welfare state and "social security" in an age where physical security is rapidly disappearing through runaway Muslim immigration. "Eurabia: You may get your teeth kicked in, but at least you have cheap dental care" could become the slogan for the entire continent.

Scandinavians, too, were once involved in blood feuds and fanaticism. That time is called the Viking Age, and we left it behind a thousand years ago, as Muslims should have done. We have no particular urge to return to being a primitive tribal society. Yet too many of our "new countrymen" seem to insist on bringing one into our living room. They might get their way. Perhaps, in reaction to the pressures from Muslims, native Scandinavians will "rediscover their inner barbarian" and history will go full circle: from tribalism to cappuccino and back again. Who knows? If Arnold Schwarzenegger fails to get re-elected as Governor of California he may like to do a sequel to "Conan the Barbarian." He could shoot it in Malmö, Sweden, which is set to become the first major Scandinavian city with a Muslim majority. Chances are he'd be surprised at how well he fits in.

Danish Muslims take cartoon rage to UN

I'm not sure why this is news now, since as far back as December the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, was poking into the controversy. "Danish Muslims sue over Muhammad cartoons," from the TimesOnline, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Danish Muslim groups are to report Denmark to the UN Commissioner on Human Rights for failing to prosecute the newspaper that first published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The 27 Muslim groups also plan to sue the newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, for defamation in a Danish court, according to their lawyer, Michael Christiani Havemann.

"Denmark is obliged through the UN to secure the civil rights of its citizens," Havemann said by telephone. "The national prosecutor won’t pursue the case and, therefore, acts as a barrier to justice to the complainants."

Danish paper faces no charges over Muhammad cartoons

A small spot of anti-dhimmitude: Denmark refuses to kowtow. From the Times Online, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Denmark’s chief prosecutor says that he will not press charges against the newspaper that first published the Prophet Muhammad cartoons that angered Muslims worldwide.

The Foreign Ministry warned that the decision could cause "negative reactions" against Danes, and warned citizens to be cautious when traveling in Muslim countries.

Henning Fode, the Director of Public Prosecutions, upheld the decision of a regional prosecutor who ruled that the drawings published in Jyllands-Posten on September 30 did not violate Danish law. Mr Fode’s decision cannot be appealed.

His ruling said that the 12 cartoons, one of which shows the Prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb, did not violate bans on racist and blasphemous speech.

Gay-vs.-Muslim Soccer Set in Netherlands

Of course! A soccer game! Why didn't we think of it before? Why, this will nicely expunge all Sharia-inspired sentiments that homosexuals deserve to be murdered. Next up: the State Department squares off against the Taliban on Field 3. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

A Dutch multicultural group is organizing a soccer tournament between gays and Muslims, hoping to counter what a study published on Thursday said was a rising tide of fear among gays.

A nationwide survey by the Police Research Academy said that most gays questioned feel unsafe and reported experiencing verbal attacks in the last year.

Of the 776 homosexuals who responded to an internet questionnaire, 80 percent said they believed their safety was threatened at some time during the year, said academy director Frits Vlek, who commissioned the research.

Only 3 percent said they were physically assaulted, Vlek said in an interview, but some 40 percent claimed they had been insulted or verbally abused.

Youths from Moroccan and Turkish backgrounds often were blamed for the incidents, Vlek said, since homosexuality is not widely accepted in many Muslim cultures.

"Parts of the Muslim community still resist homosexuality and receive little education about it," he said.

Oh, I am sure they receive plenty of education about it. It's just not the kind of education that this multicultural group likes, and they can't bring themselves to admit that there could be a problem that doesn't stem from ignorance, and that can't be solved by an introduction to liberal pieties (with a few welfare benefits thrown in).

Muslim-gay tension is the theme of the soccer tournament organized by the Institute of Multicultural Development, to be held next week.

An organizer of the group, Suzanne Ijsselmuiden, said she hoped the competition will "help ease these tensions so that people can openly talk about homosexuality."

Gay Muslims can take their choice of teams, she said. "People can have many identities."

How nice.

Dutch Immigrants Must Watch Racy Film

This is just silly. What mechanism do the Dutch have in place to ensure that someone won't watch the film and then determine to enter and destroy the society that produced it? Also, licentiousness is not the key point. What mechanism do the Dutch have in place to ensure that they will not admit those who would still want to conquer and subjugate them under Sharia even if they were as strait-laced as the Amish?

From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The camera focuses on two gay men kissing in a park. Later, a topless woman emerges from the sea and walks onto a crowded beach. For would-be immigrants to the Netherlands, this film is a test of their readiness to participate in the liberal Dutch culture.

If they can't stomach it, no need to apply.

Despite whether they find the film offensive, applicants must buy a copy and watch it if they hope to pass the Netherlands' new entrance examination.

The test — the first of its kind in the world — became compulsory Wednesday, and was made available at 138 Dutch embassies.

Taking the exam costs $420. The price for a preparation package that includes the film, a CD ROM and a picture album of famous Dutch people is $75.

Fitzgerald: Greek and Armenian dhimmitude

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the peculiar lack of understanding of their own experience that pervades Greek and Armenian diaspora communities:

The United States is home to many descendents of victims of Islamic jihad –- among them sizable communities of Armenians and Greeks. But merely being a victim or the descendant of victims is not enough, if one fails to understand the impulse that gave rise to the behavior that caused those victims. Thea Halo’s moving work documenting the ordeal of her family at the hands of the Turks, and her stubborn determination to cling to politically correct niceties and to refuse to face the root causes of that ordeal, is a dispiriting case in point.

One also wonders what the Greek government comprehends about Islam. It has offered no objection to, and even seems to be supporting, the admission of Turkey to the E.U. (though Greek Cypriots are not). Does it not worry about 80 million Muslim Turks being free to move about the E.U.? Successive Greek governments have also pursued pro-Arab and anti-Israeli policies, which perhaps can be explained by payoffs to certain individuals and businesses. Or perhaps these policies reflect the inability to connect the Lesser Jihad against Israel with the Jihad, within the Ottoman Empire, that was directed at Greeks as well as other non-Muslims.

And there is not one Armenian community in exile, but several different communities. There are always those who do not consider themselves part of a "community" and should not be placed in it without their express permission. Culturally most advanced are those who received solid Soviet educations, having arrived either from former Soviet Armenia itself, which is now an independent country worth supporting (worth supporting a lot more than Iraq is worth supporting, or Egypt, or Pakistan, or certainly "Palestinian" entities).

Others may have arrived from Paris, as part of the Armenian diaspora now leaving Europe, as the countries of that continent worrisomely islamize. Others are the descendants of those who arrived in the United States in the first few decades of this century. Still others arrived during and after the Lebanese Civil War between Christians and Muslims, from Beirut. And still others have come from Haleb (Aleppo) and other places in the Middle East, including Iran, which is turning out to be for Armenian Christians what it was for them in Tabriz during the reign of Shah Abbas, and not like Tabriz in the fond childhood memories of Vartan Gregorian.

Some are keenly aware of the massacres that were begun in 1915 by Muslim Turks, but remain less aware of those committed in 1894-96 by the Muslim Kurds. Some who ended up in the Christian parts of Haleb may be well aware of the problem of Islam, knowing that if the Alawite rule is overturned and the "real Muslims" take over, it's over for the Armenians. Some, who ended up in Beirut, may have internalized certain dhimmi attitudes, and may think that while the Turks were bad, they still must identify themselves and their people with the larger Muslim community, since they ended up in Beirut and swallowed some of the islamochristian nonsense going around. Of course, such people would have had to forget the least discussed part of the Armenian genocide -- which is that which continued as Armenian female refugees, often with few men along, were kidnapped, raped, or murdered by Arab marauders as they straggled through the Syrian desert before reaching the safe haven either of Christian villages or Christian quarters of Beirut and Haleb.

It is not enough to have been a victim of the Ottomans. One needs to know what prompted such behavior, by Kurds, by Turks, by Arabs. Why did the Kurds (and Turks) in 1894-96 do what they did? For that matter, why did the massacres of the Maronites in Damascus in 1860, when it was under Ottoman rule? What prompted the Turks to massacre Armenians, especially priests and their wives, with such glee, and also to kill 300,000 Greeks in Smyrna while Western warships rocked on the waves just offshore? What prompted the Arab marauders who saw the Armenian women and girls as fair game, as loot to be seized, just like the Janjaweed do today with the non-Arab, and therefore inferior, black African Muslims of Darfur?

Islam. Islam. Islam. Christian men can be killed, and their women, and their property, taken, once they have lost their status as "protected people." And it is very easy to lose that status. It could be wartime panic, as some suggest. It could be peacetime planning to get rid of a pesky Christian presence. It could be because there is that line of refugees, and they are Christians, and we are Muslims, and their men are gone, and no can stop us or even see us, so what more do we need by way of justification?

Thea Halo, who a few years ago wrote a moving memoir of her Pontic Greek family, Not Even My Name : From a Death March in Turkey to a New Home in America, a Young Girl's True Story of Genocide and Survival, and others like her seem much more upset with the American government than with those who actually caused her family such suffering. They should instead be full of indignant fervor at the belief-system that impelled those Turks, and Kurds, and Arabs in the Syrian desert to act as they did against not only Pontic Greeks, but against non-Muslims in Constantinople, in Anatolia, and in Europe -- with taxes and the human tax of the devshirme. There were the attacks on thousands of Greek shops in Istanbul in September 1955, and on more than a million Armenians, murdered, some tens of thousands in 1894-96, and then perhaps as many as a million in the period 1915-1920.

That she apparently is unconcerned with why all this happened is another measure of the thickness of the fog that envelops so many.

Norway: Krekar can be expelled soon

The Norwegians have been performing this charming little dhimmi dance for quite some time. Krekar, you will recall, has quite recently been praising Osama and boasting about the imminent Islamization of Norway. Now will someone please explain to me why the Norwegians are obligated to continue to play host to him?

From Aftenposten, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion Bjarne Håkon Hanssen said that controversial mullah Krekar can be on a plane back to Iraq within two months....

"We are approaching the point where the conditions are in place to begin negotiating the return of mullah Krekar with Iraq's government. This is the first priority for me," Hanssen told newspaper Dagbladet.

Hanssen sees no reason to wait for the Court of Appeals to handle Krekar's plea.

The minister did emphasize that he will need a guarantee from Iraq that Krekar will not face the death penalty before he will finally eject the controversial mullah.

Why of course. We wouldn't want any harm to come to him. He needs to stay alive and to continue to preach the conquest and subjugation of the West.

Dhimmitude at the BBC and the Telegraph: A case study

Jihad Watch reader Null has alerted me to a superb example of how the mainstream media -- in the case in Britain -- misleads the general public. In two recent stories about the female Afghan warrior Kaftar, neither the BBC nor the Telegraph quotes her own words about who she is and why she does what she does.

Today the BBC identifies her as "Afghanistan's only female warlord" and refers to the fact that "she insists that a male relative accompany her into battle" as a "concession to social mores" that is "in line with Afghan tradition for women outside the home." It analyzes her phenomenon as arising from Afghanistan's "old feudal order" which "persists." It is "an often violent culture of blood feud and local justice where the reach of central government is weak or non-existent."

What is the ultimate motivation for it all, according to the BBC?

"Zar, zan, zamin" - gold, women, land - in the words of the old Afghan proverb provide the motivation for the violence that underpins local life.

"People get killed over little things, water and land," said Kaftar with a shrug.

Ah. Feuding tribal people. Of course. Education and welfare benefits will take care of this problem forthwith.

The same author wrote much the same things in a Telegraph piece from last month. Kaftar is "Afghanistan's only female warlord." She "joined the resistance during the Soviet invasion, she claims. Her father was a powerful tribal leader and she had a naturally warlike temperament." Her "only concession to gender roles on the battlefield is that she requires a male relative to be present when she is fighting, in line with Afghan tradition for women outside the home."

The UN disarmament program inside the country faces immense problems "because outside Afghanistan's cities the government's control is weak and armed confrontation is a way of life."

And what is the root cause of all this fighting?

In the words of the old Afghan proverb, "zar, zan, zamin" - money, women and land - are the root of most of the feuds which dominate life. The tribal system of Loya Jirga, conflict resolution through councils of elders, is the only means of settling the frequent outbreaks of violence. The exchange of money or women is often the preferred alternative to reciprocal killings over generations.

But neither in the BBC nor in the Telegraph did the author, Tom Coghlan, have the courage or perspicacity to pick up on some choice quotes from Kaftar herself on who she is and what her motives are -- as reported by the Times in October 2004. And who is she? Why is she fighting? You guessed it:

“We Mujahidin have not been given our rights,” she complains, her face framed by thick braids beneath an open scarf. “We fought for so long but this Karzai Government has given us nothing.”

She is as untroubled as Umm Nidal Farhat by the deaths of her children:

The death of two of her boys along with one of her brothers, slain in combat with the Taleban, appears not to trouble her. It was the death of her commander, the iconic Ahmad Shah Masood, assassinated by a suicide bomber in September 2001, that now shadows her days.

“Oh, Masood!” she sighs. “I smiled as I buried my sons, because they died in the way of God fighting a jihad, and I was proud of them. But Masood was my leader and was murdered. It was the saddest day of my life.”

Now why wouldn't the BBC and the Telegraph care to mention that she is a jihad warrior? Wouldn't her ultimate motivations and goals -- beyond the quaint primitivist evocation of zar, zan, zamin -- be important to tell their readers? Or do both the BBC and the Telegraph wish to downplay the prevalence of jihadist sentiments?

It seems that they do -- for this is not an isolated case. They of course are breathing the same zeitgeist as are we all, and are in fact responsible for it to a tremendous degree. As the jihad in the West intensifies, they and others like them will bear increasing responsibility for the general ignorance and unpreparedness of Western non-Muslims for what is coming upon them.

Coptic Orthodox Church Leader Blasts Egyptian Anglican Bishop

For dhimmitude. "Coptic Orthodox Church Leader Blasts Egyptian Anglican Bishop In Letter to Williams," from VirtueOnline, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The Most Rev'd & Rt. Hon Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace, London, SE1 7JU.

Your Grace, dear Brother-in-Christ,

Last month at Trinity College, Dublin, a meeting was held to launch a resource pack "The Hand of History (Exploring Christian/Muslim Dialogue)" attended by the Grand Mufti of Egypt & Rector of Al-Azhar University in Cairo; the President of the Dialogue with Monotheistic Religions at Al-Azhar and Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis, the Anglican Bishop in Egypt.

Whilst recognising the great importance of continuing dialogue in this vital but difficult area and valuing the contribution of Christians of all traditions, there were statements made by Dr. Mouneer which caused me some concern. When asked to comment on the issues of conversions from Islam and the increase in attacks on Coptic Orthodox churches, Dr. Mouneer replied by:

stating that the Egyptian Constitution guarantees freedom of religion; quoting the Quran that "there is no compulsion in religion"; stating that most of the problems with conversion issues were within families rather than from outside agencies; and observing that, in his experience, the situation has improved greatly in the past 20 years.

It is certainly true that Article 46 of the Egyptian Constitution theoretically guarantees freedom of belief and the practice of religious rites; however, the Government places restrictions on these rights in practice, so it is misleading to quote this article without further qualification. Islam is not only the official state religion but, since the 1980 Constitutional amendment (article 2), Shari'a is the primary source of legislation effectively superseding article 46. Indeed, article 151 concerning the binding nature of International Laws and Treaties ratified by the Egyptian government, includes the qualification "taking into consideration the provisions of the Islamic Shari'a".

Dr. Mouneer's quotation from the Koran "Let there be no compulsion in religion ...." (Sura 2.256) is rather misleading as he must be aware that is a verse which is considered as abrogated (an-nāsakh wa'l'mansūkh) and is, at the very least, ambiguous.

Whilst there are undoubtedly many problems within families as a result of individual conversions, Dr. Mouneer must also know that current legislation makes conversion a dangerous course, at least for those converting from Islam to Christianity. There is no legal process by which religious identity can be officially amended, resulting in harsh measures against those who obtain illicit identity papers. Those who convert also lose many of their civil rights regarding inheritance, property rights and custody of children. Such inequalities in civil rights are the fundamental cause of problems for converts, rather than mere family tensions.

Since the violence and murders at El-Kosheh on New Year's Eve 1999, instances of violence against Coptic Christians and Coptic Churches have increased both in frequency and in number. Several weeks of public rioting and sectarian protests in Alexandria last November does not suggest an improvement. On the contrary, international human rights groups are unanimously agreed that the situation has become more serious in the past few years.

As Your Grace well knows, the Coptic Orthodox Church under His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, has continued to pursue a positive and constructive dialogue with Islam and has actively supported the current Egyptian government in eschewing all forms of violence and extremism. The path of reason and moderation means that the Church prefers not to dwell on negative or divisive issues but equally the Pope's measured yet unequivocal pronouncements against injustice and repeated assaults on Coptic Christians show the depth and potency of his concerns.

I am saddened that Dr. Mouneer has chosen to contribute to this dialogue with what some may see as a lack of frankness about the complex and profound problems faced by the Coptic Christians. Brotherly support from the Anglican community worldwide, and especially in Egypt is something much to be valued, but if it is to be of lasting value in enabling the diverse religious communities to live together in harmony, it is also necessary to highlight the source and reality of the problems which militate against this.

Commending myself to Your Grace's prayers.

Yours very sincerely in XP,

Metropolitan Abba Seraphim
Metropolitan of Glastonbury

Cc. His Grace Bishop Angaelos
H.R.H. The Prince of Wales

Fitzgerald: What have they learned at UNC?

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald asks some questions about what students at the University of North Carolina learn about Islam -- questions that have become more pointed in light of the actions of distinguished Tarheel alumnus Muhammad Reza Taheri-azar.

What have University of North Carolina students learned about Islam -- before Muhammad Reza Taheri-azar’s grim lesson? UNC students are no doubt now wandering about, wondering where their former fellow student, that "nice guy, but a loner" Taheri-azar got his strange ideas. And they will wonder, because nothing any of them had ever been taught in classes would lead them to think that there's much to worry about from ordinary Muslims, from plain old Islam itself. It was just those "radicals," "extremists," "Wahhabis," "Salafists," those who "would pervert a noble religion" as Bush and Rice like to put, that anyone had to be concerned about. And of course there none of them could possibly have been admitted to UNC.

Carl Ernst supposedly enlightens UNC students on the nature of Islam. Does he tell them that it is a literal-minded religion in which the Qur'an is the immutable and uncreated Word of God? Does he introduce students to the contents of the Qur'an and the Hadith? What's that? -- his students reading this now ask. What's the Hadith? Oh, he gave us two of those and told us not to bother to read any others because they wouldn't be on the test. Does he assign to them the Sira? (What's that?). Okay, but at least they know what's in the Qur'an, right?

No. To read the Michael Sells version of the Qur'an, the one forced on innocent incoming freshman at UNC/Chapel Hill a few years ago (and may still be forced on them) is not to become acquainted with the Qur'an. In fact, one will learn next to nothing valuable without reading several versions synoptically, without understanding the principle of abrogation or naskh by which the milder verses (such as they are, and few as they are) are cancelled out by the harsher later verses (especially the last of the Suras in time -- Sura 9). And if further you do not realize how mild even the best English translation of the Arabic Qur'an makes it sound (the word "punishment" or "punish" in English does not convey the full meaning of the Arabic word or words it is used to translate), then that course is a guide to nothing and nowhere.

Carl Ernst was a great pusher of the Sells version. What else is he pushing on his students? And who is minding the store at UNC/Chapel Hill to make sure that the apologists for Islam, who are light on the real thing, and certainly will not inform their students fully either about the tenets of Islam or about the history of Muslim conquest and subsequent subjugation of all conquered non-Muslims (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists), are reined in? Perhaps sensible people in the administration can, if there is a separate department of Islamic or Middle Eastern Studies, place it under the careful jurisdiction of a larger department unlikely to be full of such apologists, and at least some of whose members will not be dissuaded from such oversight by cries of "faculty autonomy" -- nor intimidated by the claims of "professional expertise" that turn out to be false.

Easy question: is the Sells version assigned to students at UNC/Chapel Hill in courses? Yes or no? If it is, then the President, the Trustees, and various interested faculty members should now take it upon themselves to read the Qur'an with the necessary guides to interpretation, so that such seemingly innocuous phrases as "in the path of God" are given their real meaning -- and by "guides" one does not mean Michael Sells at Haverford or those who backed the use of his sanitized Qur'an as required reading for those hapless, trusting Freshman. And they should, while they are at it, read the Muslim biography of Muhammad, and read as well the biographies of Sir William Muir, or Tor Andrae, or Arthur Jeffery, or other Western scholars of Islam. They should read a few hundred of the Hadith (the sayings and acts of Muhammad), which are as important, for most Muslims, as a guide to existence, as the Qur'an itself -- and indeed the Qur'an without the Sunnah, it has often been said, could hardly be understood, but the Sunnah without the Qur'an is another thing.

And then there are the books of Robert Spencer, and Bat Ye'or, and Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not a Muslim, and the anthology of Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad. Start reading, all over the campus -- and compare what you learn with what certain professors have been assuring you, with their highly selective reading lists (if Sells is on it, can Maria Rosa Menocal be far behind? And what about Said's "Orientalism"? And Khaled Abou el Fadl as a Young Star in the Firmament of -- well, of something). All so predictable.

Google "MESA Nostra" and start there. It's a big problem. It's all over the place. But on each campus, some faculty members, and some members of the Administration, and some trustees and alumni, and even some students, have got to grab hold of this problem, and not let go.

College paper's editor fired over Mohammed cartoons

Instead of the Fighting Illini, now they can call themselves the Dhimmi Illini. From AP, with thanks to Steve:

CHAMPAIGN, Illinois (AP) -- An editor who chose to publish caricatures of Prophet Mohammed in the University of Illinois' student-run newspaper last month has been fired, the paper's publisher announced Tuesday.

Acton H. Gorton was suspended, with pay, from The Daily Illini days after the Feb. 9 publication of the cartoons, which sparked Muslim protests around the world after they first appeared in a Danish newspaper.

At the time, Daily Illini publishers said the action was taken against Gorton not for publishing the cartoons, but for failing to discuss it with others in the newsroom first.

The Illini Media Co. board of directors, which comprises students and faculty, voted unanimously to fire the editor after a review "found that Gorton violated Daily Illini policies about thoughtful discussion of and preparation for the publication of inflammatory material," according to a statement.

Gorton has said he sought out advice from The Daily Illini's former editor-in-chief and others before deciding to run the cartoons. He has said that accusations he tried to hide his decision were wrong.

On Tuesday, he called his firing a blow against free speech on college campuses.

"If I can be fired, what will other students think who maybe want to challenge the status quo?" said Gorton, who had briefly addressed a board meeting the previous night. "This is a bad precedent."

It certainly is.

Norway: Man jailed for beating daughter

Eurabia Alert: "Man jailed for beating daughter," from Aftenposten, with thanks to Fjordman:

A court in Kristiansand, southern Norway, has sentenced a man to 120 days in jail for beating his teenage daughter with straps and a metal rod. The beatings were sparked by her admission that she no longer was a virgin.

The 49-year-old man, who emigrated to Norway from Iraq, claimed he'd done nothing wrong. He told the court that he was "much kinder" than many other fathers from his culture would have been.

He claimed most other men would have killed the girl, instead of "just beating her."

Oh. I guess that makes him a moderate.

Fitzgerald: Turkey vs. free speech

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses Turkey's demand that the EU adopt Islamic blasphemy laws:

Abdullah Gul, who works for Erdogan, both of whom have absurdly described Europe as being a "Christian club" -- even as they belong to the "Muslim club" of the O.I.C. -- is now trying to demand changes in the right of freedom of speech as understood within Europe. He and Erdogan are doing this despite the fact that Turkey has not yet been admitted to the E.U. One would think that at this point they would be trying to be on their best behavior, instead of issuing demands and veiled threats.

The E. U. will not, and should not, permit Turkey’s admission. Too many, during the Cold War, were willing to believe that Turkey was permanently on the road to ever more secularism, ever more Kemalism. Too many thought that the Cult of Ataturk -- and not everyone recognized that it was merely a replacement for the only conceivable alternative, the Cult of Muhammad -- was itself permanent.

It was not to be. The beneficiaries of Kemalism may now be about one-quarter of the population. But they were never sufficiently grateful to him to continue his practice of pushing Islam to the side of Turkish life. They never realized, for example, that instead of forever pretending that the Armenian genocide did not take place, they should have worked to have the question forthrightly studied, and once studied recognized -- but recognized not as some fault inherent in "the Turks" but rather, as the result of Islamic teachings. Those teachings also explain the massacres of the Greeks in Smyrna, the anti-Greek violence in Istanbul in 1955 (in which 4,000 Infidel-owned businesses were destroyed), and the World-War-II era legislation, the Varlik Vergesi, that was in effect a kind of Jizyah imposed on non-Muslims (and on this, see the conclusions of a study by Faik Okte, who had been put in charge of collecting the tax).

The Turks, both Ottomans and Kemalists, have seen to an ever-diminishing population of non-Muslims in their midst. They have accomplished this through genocide, as with the Armenians; and through massacres, riots, forced conversions and exiles, as with the less numerous Greeks. Those Greeks now, in a population of 70 million, amount to just a few thousand. Now non-Muslims live in Turkey in a dangerously threatening environment, as is the case with the Jews there -- whose supposed benign treatment in the Ottoman Empire has been a staple of Turkish self-preening and self-justification, and has proven in the past to be useful with quite a number of people influential in Washington. One staple of Turkish self-aggrandizement has been the invocation of the refuge found, and given, within the Ottoman Empire to Jews expelled from Spain: "look at how we gave them refuge in Salonika when they were hounded out by Christians in Spain" is a statement one hears endlessly.

But what one waits for, and does not hear, is mention of several other relevant facts. First, Jews may have been forced to leave Spain, but they were welcome elsewhere in Christian Europe, in Amsterdam, also part of Western Christendom. There their presence, and influence in Dutch society at its very best, can be observed visually in the paintings of Rembrandt (not that paintings should be studied as sociological artifacts), and in the fact of Spinoza -- and in the beginnings, in Holland, of the Enlightenment. Second, the Ottomans who settled Jews in Salonika were replacing one Jewish community -- which had been forcibly removed prior to this -- with another. Third, the Ottoman Muslims never regarded the Jews as a threat. They were too small, and too weak, and their talents as traders, interpreters, dragomans, or as court physicians were too much needed: a plaque alluding to the tradition of Jewish physicians for successive padishahin can be found in the Topkapi complex itself. And though Jews were allowed to live as Jews in the Ottoman lands, it was as Jews, or as non-Muslims, that they also suffered from the usual disabilities that dhimmis could expect. In the European territories of the Ottomans, this in places included being subject to the devshirme. For more on the unvarnished history of the treatment of Jews, see Joseph Hacker's essay (the best one) in the Braude and Lewis collection.

During the Cold War American governments saw Turkey as a provider of stalwart troops. And so they were. They were stalwart because they were fighting their historic enemy, Russia, in its embodiment of that time, the Soviet Union. Some, besotted by the ideology of progressivism, saw Turkey as permanently on the path to Westernization, the logical end result of the systematic constraints placed on Islam as a political and social force. John Foster Dulles was pleased to consider Islam as "a bulwark against Communism." Turks fought bravely and stolidly in Korea (they also left behind what has now become tens of thousands of Korean converts to Islam).

The Cold War is over. Those once-valuable listening posts, those bases, are not quite so necessary. And in any case, they are not quite so useful -- we were not allowed to use such a base for that famous fourth division that never arrived in Anbar Province from the north, because Turkey "surprised" the Pentagon by not permitting it. Not the last of the surprises. In the past Richard Perle and Douglas Feith have both been registered agents for Turkey. The Turkey they saw consisted largely of those wine-and-dining Turkish generals in Ankara. This was in the pre-Erdogan days. But now Kemalism has been shown to be transient, subject to constant wearing-down, and Islam turns out to be permanent.

Wherever a country has been Muslim, there will always be far more adherents of the primitive consolations of a Total Regulation of Life and Complete Explanation of the Universe that Islam can at least theoretically provide, and always far fewer prepared to jettison it completely, so that at least in one's own family-line there is much less danger of it reoccurring, a symptom of mental disarray, in one's children or grandchildren. Unless one takes steps to distance oneself permanently from it, it remains -- an emotional and quasi-intellectual temptation. Imagine the horror of educated Iranian exiles living in, say, Los Angeles, upon discovering that their shy and awkward son has turned forcefully to Islam, the very thing which they fled, but still insisted, out of some kind of misplaced piety, to identify with -- they still called themselves "Muslims" because they felt they had to call themselves something and, besides, they kept dreaming that Khomeini was an aberration, and that the benign Islam of their imaginings would some day come into being. In much the same way, those Turkish beneficiaries of secularism were insufficiently energetic and vigilant, while the party of Islam never let up, and is recovering ground, cunningly and surely.

The West cannot ignore all the telltale signs. It cannot ignore the power of Erdogan, or the attacks on this or that secular university rector. It cannot ignore the fact that the Turkish movie doing boffo box office depicts American soldiers in Iraq (the same ones who got rid of the Saddam Hussein regime, and then stayed only to rebuild schools and hospitals, and hand out candy and soccer balls, and to get a rudimentary democracy going, and -- absurdly -- to prevent civil war) as "worse than Nazis." It also shows a "Jewish doctor" who traffics in organs taken from prisoners put to death, according to the movie, in Abu Ghraib. And if that same Turkey has at the top of the best-seller lists Mein Kampf, and if it furthermore has all kinds of politicians making the most absurd anti-American, anti-Israel, and now, added to them, anti-European remarks, then one would be a fool to ignore all this.

Well, perhaps it is fitting after all. By what Joyce with his Anna Livia Plurabelle would call a commodius vicus, the attempt by Turks to undo the rights of the Enlightenment takes us back to the Amsterdam of Rembrandt and Spinoza. Spinoza, the man who helped give Enlightenment ideas their earliest formulation -- an Enlightenment which led, inexorably some might think, to the rights of the individuals, including the right of free speech. That right is only to be limited in this country when it is used to incite imminent and lawless violence. In Europe, for quite obvious and justifiable reasons, it is also off limits in a few places (e.g., Germany and Austria) to deny that the mass murder of Jews (the "Holocaust") took place. This is a reasonable limitation, and does not alter the central importance of freedom of speech to Western societies.

Yet now Abdullah Gul, representing and expressing a primitive and permanently menacing view of the universe -- menacing to free and skeptical inquiry -- dares, when one might think Turkey would we walking on eggs, to demand a change in the rights protected by European countries, and by the European Community.

The request is absurd. Even daring to make the request is disgusting, and telling.

Dhimmitude on the march in France

Here (thanks to David) is a text recently submitted to the French National Assembly by a member of parliament. It proposes an amendment to existing law, making it a crime to insult or defame a religion. It specifically mentions that no cartoons mocking religious beliefs will be tolerated. The author of the proposed law makes specific reference to the Danish cartoon controversy, and says that the amended law is needed to protect “religious beliefs.”

Or, that is, at least one religious belief.

Germany’s Carnival — OK to Bash Catholic Church but Islam off Limits

German Dhimmitude Alert from Catholic Exchange, with thanks to David:

Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday and Pancake Tuesday are among the many names for the custom of keeping a festival on the last day before the beginning of the Christian penitential season of Lent. In most countries that have European roots, Mardi Gras has always included elements mocking Catholic ceremonies and customs.

But the tone has changed since the growth of what Christians are recognizing as a new militant secularism that specifically fosters hatred of Christianity. One skit planned for Cologne features the Pope and the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne as homosexual pop stars who end up in bed together. Last year, a float in the Dusseldorf parade showed Cardinal Meisner striking a match to a pregnant woman tied to the stake, the words "I had an abortion" written on her. The float’s caption read, “Fostering Tradition.”

The custom for making fun of Cathlic symbols goes back to the Middle Ages said Matthias von der Bank, a historian from Cologne's Carnival Museum said, “In the Middle Ages, carnival was a festival of reverse worlds and a playful expression of this," von der Bank said. "So Christian symbols, for example, were turned upside down.”...

Although the rule of the Düsseldorf carnival committee was that there would be no floats dealing with religion this year, parade organizers seem to feel that Catholicism does not qualify. A float in the Dusseldorf parade featured a statue of Pope Benedict wearing the jersey of the often-defeated soccer team Fortune. The message was clear: the Catholic Church is the losing team and attacking it is acceptable.

Bernd Jost, spokesman for the Dusseldorf carnival committee said that the religion the committee wants to exempt is Islam. “In view of the current debate, we will be keeping very clear of things related to Muslims,” Jost said. “We don't want to fuel hatred,” Jost said. But he admitted that the real motive is the need to keep parade spectators safe.

Of course. If you make fun of Catholicism, nothing will happen. If you make fun of Islam, you're taking your life into your hands.

Saudi embassy warns against entry of non-Muslims in Mecca

Islamic Tolerance Alert from ABS-CBN News, with thanks to Twostellas:

The Saudi Arabian Embassy in Manila has issued a warning that entry of non-Muslims into the cities of Mecca and Medina, the two holy places in Islam, is strictly prohibited, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Tuesday.

Oscar G. Valenzuela, DFA Assistant Secretary for Middle East and African Affairs, said transgressors are subject to severe punishment if caught.

He said the Saudi Arabian Embassy has warned that such infractions may have serious religious repercussions.

Reports reaching the DFA said false certificates of Muslim identity have been used by some overseas workers to illegally enter Saudi Arabia as umrah and hajj pilgrims. The Office of Muslim Affairs earlier warned that persons found in possession of or attempting to obtain false certificates of Muslim identity will be prosecuted.

Rice: We want to pay the jizya...we really do

Not only does the U.S. not want to cut off aid to a Palestinian Authority led by what is still listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization. It wants to increase that aid -- in exchange for what could only be transparently hollow assurances. "Rice: U.S. Wants to Give Palestinians Aid," from AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The United States hopes to find a way to increase humanitarian donations to the Palestinians following Hamas' election victory, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday....

Rice said she will ask Indonesia, a moderate Muslim nation, to help press the message that the Palestinians must remain committed to peace with Israel even though Hamas refuses to accept the Jewish state's right to exist.

"We are looking at ways to even increase our humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people during this period of time," Rice said.

Rice was not specific. But her comments suggested that the United States intends to replace money it once gave directly to the current moderate and secular Palestinian government with grants for charity work or other projects that are independent of the new government.

U.S. officials have nearly finished an extensive review of aid to the Palestinians that was intended to ensure that future aid does not flow to Hamas.

Hamas, which refuses to renounce violence and has claimed responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings against Israel, is listed as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the European Union.

Fitzgerald: New Duranty dhimmitude

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald surveys the New York Times' (a.k.a. the New Duranty Times) "coverage" of the global jihad:

Read the absurd justifications by various editors at The New Duranty Times for their failure to exhibit the courage displayed by all sorts of European newspapers and print the Muhammad cartoons. The Duranty editors don’t even have the courage of many smaller American papers and campus newspapers. Make those editors of those papers the future editors of The Bandar Beacon (a.k.a. The Washington Post) and The New Duranty Times (a.k.a. The New York Times). And columnists at the NDT dutifully followed suit in this lack of courage. One example that sticks in mind and craw was Michael Kimmelman's indignation about the supposed offensiveness of those Danish cartoons, followed by some faint praise for the principle of free speech.

There is Tom Friedman, who if he knew anything was supposed to know about the Middle East, and who made his name as a reporter. Yes, he was a mere reporter. He had and has no understanding of the men and events he reported on, because he was reporting without any reference to, or understanding of, what Islam does. He had and has no idea of how it affects everything, from the slight differences in position of Maronites and Greek Orthodox in Lebanon, to the behavior, often otherwise inexplicable, of the Alawite military caste that controls Syria and must simultaneously be alert to challenges from local Sunni Muslims, and yet at the same time is willing to promote the Muslim agenda with unusual ferocity. This is as if to prove that Alawites are, despite their worship of Miriam, plus islamiste que les islamistes. So he didn't understand Lebanon, and he didn't understand Syria. But he wrote a book, and won a prize for a book, on the war in Lebanon. And that is the book, and the prize, that won him his column, and his ability to pontificate on the entire world (about which he knows even less than he knows about Lebanon), and to play the officious fool at all sorts of settings, from Davos to the $45,000-per-lecture audiences of the innocent, who come to hear the world simplified and made plain to them, by simple-minded Tom Friedman, a monstrous product of The New Duranty Times.

And there is another columnist, Nicholas Kristof, who has described the mass murders in Darfur by Arab Muslims of non-Arab (black African) Muslims, but who appears to be constitutionally unable to understand why what is happening in Darfur is simply the expression of Arab supremacism that is part of Islam, for which Islam is a vehicle. He doesn't get it, or doesn't want to. He cannot relate the Arab looting, raping, and killing of black Africans, and their status in Arab Muslim eyes as inferior Muslims, not-conceivably-complete Muslims, because they are not Arabs, to the attitude of Arabs in Iraq toward the Kurds -- and the complete indifference of the Arab League to the Al-Anfal campaign of Saddam Hussein's Arabs carried out against the Kurds. Nor does Kristof manage to relate what is happening in Darfur to another example of Arab supremacism: the cultural and linguistic imperialism on display in Algeria against the Kabyles, or Berbers. Over the past decade or two they have been rioting in Tizi-Ouzou and elsewhere, demanding that the Berber language, Tamazight, be permitted in public places. Nor can Kristof relate any of this to the ruling Arab generals who run a stratokleptocracy (rule by thieving military) in Algeria, not unlike that of Mubarak, but with a greater infusion of French-trained technocrats and dipomats than the stolid Egyptian can call on.

Unless and until Kristof begins to connect the Arab supremacism for which Islam is the vehicle, to what is happening in Darfur, he should not be taken seriously. And just why, his readers have a right to ask (and to be given his answer), do Egypt and Libya so strongly oppose any introduction of effective, i.e. Western, troops, who might actually put paid to the Janjaweed? For the Janjaweed is now apparently conducting their freewheeling murders over the border in Chad. But what are borders to the umma al-islamiyya? What are the borders for doing what one believes is God's work, which is to spread Islam, preferably by taking the loot of Infidels? If you have a lot of oil money flowing, then you don't have to resort to that -- but in the Sudan they are impatient, and can't wait for the oil revenues to flow. Full-fledged attacks on Infidels in southern Sudan have been temporarily halted because of Western pressure and interest and publicity. Jihadists have therefore sought a substitute, and the substitute at hand are those quasi-Muslims, those Muslims who, not being Arabs but mere blacks, cannot possibly rank as high, or be as good Muslims as any Arab on a camel can, shooting his rifle, smashing that baby's skull with the butt.

No, none of that has appeared in Nicholas Kristof's many anguished reports from Darfur. He cannot connect the Arab mistreatment of Darfur blacks to Arab mistreatment of Berbers, or Kurds, or any other non-Arab Muslims. He cannot make the connection, just as Tom Friedman cannot explain the absurdity of the "two-state solution" and other things about which he, Friedman, has been so excitably enthusiastic. That is Friedman: excitable, an enthusiast above all for whatever little title-shtick he comes up with -- "the world is flat" or "the lexus and the olive-tree" or... well, I have a good one for Friedman, but as he comes to this site to be horrified at what is said about him, I won't bother helping him out.

The New Duranty Times, The New Duranty Times.

Jock Whitney's Herald-Tribune, the Boston Evening Transcript that the son of the St. Louis furrier used as the title of a poem, and for that matter hundreds and hundreds of other newspapers have lived and then have died. So also magazines have lived and died: the North American Review, Judge, Hound and Horn, and thousands of others. Even Punch, the famous Punch that seemed as if it could not possibly sink, finally did -- glug, glug.

Ubi sunt? They ask that of men, and also of newspapers. And it will be asked, sooner than people realize, of The New Duranty Times.

EU call to weed out textbooks offensive to Muslims

Eurabia Alert: "'Weed out textbooks offensive to Muslims,'" from the Telegraph, with thanks to Filtrat:

School textbooks should be reviewed for intolerant depictions of Islam and other faiths by experts overseen by the European Union and Islamic leaders, the European Parliament was told yesterday.

The call for a special committee to examine religious education in schools came from Hans-Gert Pöttering, the German Christian Democrat, who heads the largest group of MEPs. But the proposal was immediately condemned as "appeasement" by Charles Tannock, a British Conservative MEP.

Right you are, Tannock.

Fitzgerald: Paid to be dhimmis

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses some important questions that are not being asked in regard to the dead Dubai deal:

A larger question in the now-dead Dubai deal revolves around the large number of people who received large sums of money, as always happens when the Arabs and petro-dollars are involved, to push for the deal. Madeleine Albright, of "the Albright Group," seems to have been in on it. Bill Clinton, he of the "Clinton World Initiative," also. I don't know if Kissinger of "Kissinger Associates" was in on it, but possibly Brent Scowcroft of that same "Kissinger Associates" was. Nor do I know about William Cohen of "The Cohen Group."

The scandal is that any high officials were paid anything to push for that Dubai port deal.

Clinton is hardly alone in accepting money from the U.A.E., although his fantastic greed and willingness to be so cavalier in this as in so many other areas causes him to stand out. A long line of Democrats and Republicans is involved, including the former Kennedy apparatchik Fred Dutton (hired by the Saudis when the Democrats were still running things), as well as those who were hired not as full-time employees but were put on retainers as "consultants" or called in for "special missions" -- such as the Dubai Ports deal. Then there are the huge sums for lectures. American soldiers freed Kuwait from the Iraqi invaders during the Gulf War. But it was not any of those soldiers, individually or collectively, but rather the ex-president, George Bush, supposedly full of Yankee rectitude, who personally cleaned up. He delivered a single lecture in Kuwait, which was so eager to "express its gratitude" that it paid Bush $1 million.

Such sums have had, and are having, a direct and damaging influence on the formation of American policy. For decades Arab money has been distributed to former officials in Washington and London and Paris. Some are former diplomats, from ambassadors to lesser fry, keenly aware what opportunities might come their way later on if, while they were still supposedly in the service of the American government, they promoted and parroted Arab views and interests. One suspects that a careful student of the post-government careers and clients of such former diplomats as James Akins, Charles Freeman, John C. West, Andrew Kilgore, Eugene Bird would find ample evidence of this phenomenon.

How much has Bill Clinton received in lecture fees -- at Tufts, in the richly-endowed-by-an-Arab businessman Faris lecture? In Qatar a few weeks ago? And in "consultant's fees" for such things as the Dubai project? How much has Madeleine Albright of "The Albright Group" received for her lobbying on behalf of the Arabs of Dubai? How much money have all kinds of people received, in payment for their usefulness in ensuring the continuation of the global Jihad?

These are traitors. They deserve to be named and exposed. They include a great many people in official Washington. So what? They deserve to be named and exposed -- with Democrats in Congress not trying to protect Democrats, and Republicans not trying to protect Republicans. Since OPEC oil wealth will continue to gush, we need to know the ways in which it is used to penetrate and influence our government, our media, our universities. It is not merely what has happened in the past. That army of apologists for and promoters of Saudi Arabia prevented, for more than 30 years, the putting into place of an energy policy that, instead of relying idiotically on our "staunch ally" Saudi Arabia for its supposed "moderation" in oil pricing, would have sensibly been based on a steady rise in gasoline taxes, and on other uses of oil, and on allocation of all such taxes to subsidies for mass transit, the building of newer, and safer, nuclear power plants, and the widespread introduction of solar and wind energy.

Those who have made out like bandits -- those government officials, those corporations -- from "recycling petrodollars" -- have made, for themselves, perhaps some hundreds of millions, and a few billions for their corporations. Very well. But in doing the Saudi bidding, they prevented the implementation of an energy policy that could have saved a trillion dollars in the recapture of oligopolistic rents, over the past 33 years. We, the many, have had to pay an extra trillion. They, the well-connected and very greedy few, in earning their millions for themselves and their relatives and friends, prevented the policies that, had they been put in place in 1973, might have saved that trillion.

Their behavior, which continues, disgusts. Was it worth it? One wants to ask all those receiving Saudi and other Arab oil dollars: Are you proud of yourselves?

Turkey's foreign minister asks the EU for blasphemy laws to protect Islam

The cartoon-rage-based war on free speech spreads, and is still based on the fiction that Christianity and Judaism are somehow protected from criticism by European laws. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Abdullah Gul, the Turkish foreign minister, sparked disagreement among his EU counterparts at a weekend meeting in Austria, when he called for European nations to review existing laws, to ensure they outlawed the "defamation" of all religions.

Mr Gul told a meeting of EU and Balkan foreign ministers in Salzburg that many Muslims believed that European laws amounted to a double-standard, protecting established Christian religions, and banning anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, while doing nothing to defend Muslims who felt offended....

However, Bernard Bot, the Dutch foreign minister, told reporters: "We have freedom of speech. That means that Mr Gul can say what he wants and I can say what I want. And I think that this [Mr Gul's idea] is superfluous."

Bot, I hope you win.

Fitzgerald: Call humanitarian aid what it really is: jizyah

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald renews his plea for an end to the jizyah:

The Jizyah -- that is, the payment by Infidels to Muslims, in order to buy a temporary "protection" from Muslims themselves that will cease just as soon as the payment of that Jizyah ceases -- needs to be stopped everywhere.

To be stopped, however, it first needs to be seen as Jizyah, which is exactly what it is, although it is described as "foreign aid" or "humanitarian aid." "Humanitarian aid" goes to those who have suffered some disaster -- drought, say, or tsunami. It is a temporary thing. It is given because the people who receive it will gratefully take it, use it to get back on their feet (or should), and certainly not pocket it as if it belongs to them by right and can rightfully be taken from those whose laws, customs, and manners they have been instructed since birth to hate and to wish destroyed. That is absurd.

There are many examples of this Jizyah being paid. To Egypt, not our "ally." To Pakistan, not our "ally." To Jordan, not our "ally." Most of the Muslim inhabitants of Egypt, Pakistan, and Jordan, as well as of other states that have been receiving the Jizyah, do not support, and are not genuinely friendly towards the Infidels. That doesn't mean they don't want to move to the Lands of the Infidels, and in those lands to earn money, to settle in, and to behave as no other immigrants voluntarily allowed to settle in history have behaved: as entitled to transform the societies, in order to remove any barriers to the spread of Islam and the power of Muslims, so that "Islam may dominate and is not to be dominated." This is something a great many people cannot quite understand. They cannot quite figure out how it is that, for example, a few hundred thousand impoverished Somalis, who would seem to be reasonable recipients of visas, turn out to bring with them in their mental baggage an alien and a hostile creed -- a creed hostile, in the first place, to the idea of the worth and significance of the individual, and of the rights that, consequently, have been established to protect individuals.

The most egregious and outrageous example of the Jizyah is that which goes to the local Arabs who after 1967 renamed themselves, for clearly political reasons. Google "Zuheir Mohsen" and "There is no such thing as the Palestinian people" to see what the leader of one of those terror groups admitted in a moment of candor.

It should be stopped. These people hope, dream, and intend sooner or later to wipe out Israel and to seize the Holy Land for Islam. Hamas has failed to disguise, when given opportunity after opportunity, its clear intent. Only a complete fool could fail, at this point, to grasp that intent, and only an antisemite could ignore it.

Huge sums are now being paid, all over the Western world, to monitor Muslim communities. Huge sums are being paid for security measures, for guards at churches and synagogues and Hindu temples, for guards at airports and metro stations and bus stations. For guards at every government office building and high-profile target. For monitoring the Internet, for tapping phones, for doing all the things we are now forced to do, and would wish did not have to be done, but from now on out will have to be done. Why? Because of the presence of that population that unlike all others, did not jettison that hostility when it arrived. And, indeed, many of those who may have come only with economic improvement in mind have turned out to produce children who, in their inability to adopt or adapt, always seem to return to Islam -- the full Islam. And that is something we can't tolerate, and should not be asked to.

Meanwhile, Muslim-majority states make up 10 of the 11 members of OPEC. Arab and Muslim states have received, for nothing at all, for not a single effort by a single Arab or Muslim, more than 10 trillion dollars since 1973. They have helped to make the entire world more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous. We have just spent $400 billion trying, trying, trying, to bring some slight decency to Iraq. This will fail. Among those who were behind this policy, their initial messianism has sunk into mere sentimentalism about how "everyone loves freedom." Yet despite all this money, all this effort, ultimately the sectarian and ethnic fissures that were not brought into being or even exacerbated by the Americans (unless one counts the removal of the murderous despot who held things in check through murder), but have existed since virtually the beginning of Islam, will simmer. Then they will perhaps explode.

Let the "poor" "Palestinians" get no Jizyah. Period. Not from the E.U. Not from the United States. Not from any Infidels. Let them go to those fabulously rich fellow members of the umma al-islamiyya, the daggers-and-dishdasha boys in Saudi Arabia, the louche wheeler-dealers of the U.A.E., the real estate moguls, putting up their Persian Gulf versions of Las Vegas-cum-Disneyworld-cum-Rodeo-Drive, giving the lie to all those who keep telling us that Islam is "unmaterialistic" unlike other religions. No end to this nonsense.

There is no distinction between "humanitarian" aid and other kinds in this case. The aid is meant to sustain a warlike and violent group who at this point cannot be transformed, but can be weakened, can be made to work merely to survive so that there will be no time whatsoever for fun-and-games with black balaclavas and kalashnikovs.

Make them beg from the Saudis. Make them go to work. Make them leave the area in search of work elsewhere, the way people have done since the beginning of time, and the way some of their ancestors, who arrived earlier in this century from Iraq and Egypt, or those who arrived in the last century with the veterans of Abd el Kader and Mehmet Ali, or who were transplanted by the Ottomans from Muslim villages in Europe, did. Only this time in reverse.

There are many people worthy of charity. Bolivian Indians. Black Africans in the Sudan and Congo. Hindus being murdered in Bangladesh. The Arab Muslims, all or any of them, the recipients of the greatest unearned transfer of wealth in human history, are at this point not among them.

Stop the Jizyah. And put whatever money is saved into solar and wind energy projects, and whatever else comes fittingly to mind.

UK: 'Sue Bin Laden Over Bombs'

Sue bin Laden?? Sue a dead suicide bomber?? McTaggart, you're right. The responsible people here are criminals. But this is just another example of the official unwillingness to treat jihad terrorism as anything but a series of isolated incidents apparently designed solely to wreak havoc. There is no recognition of the larger jihad agenda, or any coherent effort to oppose its many non-military manifestations. "Sue Bin Laden Over Bombs," from SkyNews, with thanks to Twostellas:

...One man who lost his son in a suicide bombing in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh has been told to seek damages from "the perpetrator".

Trevor Lakin, 56, told the paper how ministers responded when he asked for help to bury his son Jeremy.

He said: "It's just stupid. You can't just go off and sue suicide bombers can you?

"I certainly wouldn't want to approach the terrorists - and I think they're dead anyway."

Jeremy was on holiday with his girlfriend Annalie Vickers when three bombs hit the resort. Both were killed....

Home Office minister Fiona McTaggart told the BBC's Real Story programme: "Let's be very clear, the person who is responsible for this dreadful act is the criminal."

Avi Davis: Awaiting the new fall of Rome

Avi Davis is a journalist based in Los Angeles. Here is his keen-eyed assessment of the situation in Europe:

In his work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the historian Edward Gibbon describes how a vacillating Roman Senate, with the army of the Barbarian Goths at its city gate, debated fretfully about the Roman Empire’s future. Apparently unknown to them, a civil rebellion, led by slaves and domestics, had erupted within the city walls, leading to anarchy. Days after the appearance of the enemy, the gates were opened from within and the Barbarians poured in to pillage Rome. Within a week, 1100 years of empire building had come to a close.

Sixteen hundred years after that epochal event, it should surprise no one that new barbarians threaten the safety and security of the continent Rome once controlled When the body of Ilan Halimi turned up last week on a railway track outside of Paris the group responsible was identified as the Barbarians. Yet these were not Goths, Huns or Vandals of ancient times, but Muslim criminals whose intent was clearly to commit a racial murder. The torture to which Halimi was subjected and the methods with which he was eventually dispatched should remind everyone in Europe of the original provenance of the term “barbarian” -- that of men intent on destruction of centers of Western culture and civilization.

The actions and justifications of the present day Barbarians are of course more than a match for their ancient predecessors. The brutal slaying of Halimi, a young French Jew of no particular importance, has opened the eyes of the European public to the dangers of the Muslim jihadist culture as no other act of terrorism or criminality has done until now. Tens of thousands protested the murder – recognized universally as an attack -- not on just a Jew, but on France itself. Not even the brutal slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh or the murder of the gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn has quite provided the same political impact. That is because in the wake of the recent French riots and the worldwide disturbances caused by the publication of the Danish cartoons, European politicians now recognize that radical Islamic sentiment is no longer confined to a few scattered sects, focused on anti-Semitic provocations, who can be tamed through dialogue and discussion. It rather represents an ideological pandemic spreading voraciously in European cities, which vouchsafes the notion that the murder of Jews, gays, conservatives, journalists, editors -- and in fact anyone who is perceived as a barrier to Islam’s advance, entitles those with requisite religious belief to issue and execute death warrants. And further, that flimsy, ignorant response and the cognitive dissonance of denial only fans these flames higher.

A word should certainly be offered to those secular humanists who still believe that amelioration of the economic plight of Islamic urban centers will substantially change the attitudes of the jihadists in their midst. This view not only ignores the historical pattern of the jihadist culture and motivation; it is a sop to the Islamists -- clerics and leaders -- who see such soft-pedaling as a weakness to be exploited. One must wonder at the blindness of European politicians who still believe that the fire bombings of synagogues, the murder and harassment of Jews or the torching of Jewish businesses are merely isolated examples of urban unrest, economic disenfranchisement or even latent anti-Semitism. They are, in fact blows, aimed against Western civilization. Imams and Islamic clerics throughout Europe have prophesied for years about the West’s imminent collapse. They do this while employing the liberal values of tolerance, openness and dialogue to protect their mosques while propagating hatred, racism and incitement to murder beneath the shield of freedom of speech.

Most Western countries have not, as yet, recognized the profundity of the threat. But for some there is a growing measure of clarity. Last week Peter Costello, the Australian treasurer, made public his government’s opinion that those who do not subscribe to Australian values or deny the supremacy of Australian law over Islamic law should be denied both citizenship and the right to enter Australia. Costello went further, in an interview on television, in declaring that even Australian citizens who fail to pass this basic litmus test should be subject to deportation. The Australian government, particularly its feisty Prime Minister John Howard, have been well ahead of the rest of the world in legislating firm controls against incitement and racism emanating from their country’s mosques. But few Western leaders have been as forthright as Costello in recommending deportation as a measure against a country’s citizens for denying the basic values upon which their own societies are founded.

Meanwhile, time is running short for Europe. Without recognizing that an unbalanced emphasis on pluralism at the expense of security, will gradually erode the moral superstructure of liberal democracy, there will be thousands more Ilan Halimis -- Jew and non-Jew alike -- tortured in third-floor apartments and dying on the streets of restive Islamic communities.

For that reason, no one should be deceived. Barbarism has returned to Europe. But this time the barbarians are not just outside the city, battering at the walls. They are inside it, with sufficient political clout and public sympathy to open the gates from within.

Bostom on Bawer: Eurabian nightmares

In "Eurabian Nightmares" at FrontPage, Andrew Bostom, editor of the superlative Legacy of Jihad, reviews Bruce Bawer's equally important While Europe Slept:

Bruce Bawer’s 1997 Stealing Jesus decried the “claustrophobic narrowness” in American fundamentalist Christianity’s conception of the spiritual and divine. Bawer further maintained that its votaries “…breath taking combination of historical ignorance and theological certitude” had engendered a reductio ad absurdum literalist understanding of religion, effectively “..dispiriting…denying and dispelling…life’s mysteries.”

By September 1998, Bawer and his male partner decided to relocate permanently to Europe, initially Amsterdam. The Netherlands sociopolitical discourse, Bawer believed, had transcended “culture war platitudes” and “…the foolishness of fundamentalism”. Bawer recalls candidly his own angry assessment of the contrasting American discourse at the time he departed for Europe:

Yes I loved my country, but I also realized that I wanted to be away from it—away from the idiocy, the intolerance, the Puritanism. More and more, I felt I belonged in Europe.

While Europe Slept chronicles Bawer’s personal encounter with Europe’s ongoing Islamization since late 1998. And his riveting narrative is a testament to Bawer’s intellectual honesty. Shunning glib moral equivalences between America’s Christian fundamentalist movement, and the infinitely more radicalized and destructive Islam rapidly transforming a self-deluded Western Europe into Eurabia, Bawer was acutely aware, even prior to September 1, 2001 that

Europe was falling prey to an even more alarming fundamentalism whose leaders made their Protestant counterparts look like amateurs…Western Europeans had yet to even acknowledge that they had a Religious Right. How could they ignore it? Certainly as a gay man, I couldn’t close my eyes to this grim reality. Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me. I wasn’t fond of the hypocritical conservative-Christian line about hating the sin and loving the sinner, but it was preferable to the forthright fundamentalist Muslim view that homosexuals merited death.

The book is divided chronologically into three sections: prior to 9/11/01 (“Before 9/1: Europe in Denial”), in the immediate aftermath of 9/11/01 through March 10, 2004 (“9/11 and After: Blaming Americans and Jews”); and from the March 11, 2004 Madrid bombings through August 2005 (“Europe’s Weimar Moment: The Liberal Resistance and Its Prospects”).

Early in the opening section, Bawer’s reaction to reading John Esposito’s transparent apologetic on Western Muslims struck a familiar cord—Esposito’s denial of any threat posed by European Islam (as Bawer aptly observes, a “…fundamentalist Islam [that] was on the march and wasn’t adapting to democratic values”) is consistent with the same author’s whitewashing of the brutal living legacy of the Islamic jihad conquests. A unique strength of While Europe Slept is that Bawer complements such perspicacious observations with hard data. Thus section one also introduces the reader to important information on Muslim demography and use (and abuse) of the Western European social welfare system. Although Muslims comprise (officially) between 2 and 10% of the population in most West European nations, France is already 12% Muslim and Switzerland 20%. But as Bawer notes, these statistics are merely the tip of the steadily emerging demographic iceberg:

Already, in most of Western Europe, 16 to 20 percent of children are Muslims…within a couple of generations many [Western European] countries will have Muslim majorities.

Cognizant of this phenomenon, a Danish Muslim leader, typical of many European imams, declared triumphally in 2000, “Muslims have a dream of living in an Islamic society…This dream will surely be fulfilled in Denmark…We will eventually be a majority”. And such demography is already destiny in Islamic satellite colonies interspersed throughout Western Europe where demands for sovereignty began well before the recent Muslim intifada in France this past fall, 2005. Bawer provides these alarming examples from across Western Europe:

In France, a public official met with an imam at the edge of Roubaix’s Muslim district out of respect for his declaration of the neighborhood as Islamic territory to which she had no right of access. In Britain, imams have pressed the government to officially designate certain areas of Bradford as being under Muslim, not British, law. In Denmark, Muslim leaders have sought the same kind of control over parts of Copenhagen. And in Belgium, Muslims living in the Brussels neighborhood of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek already view it not as part of Belgium but as an area under Islamic jurisdiction in which Belgians are not welcome.

These burgeoning Muslim communities are also consuming disproportionate amounts of state sponsored welfare benefits. For example, Danish Muslims comprise 5% of the population, yet they receive 40% of the governmental outlays. And despite this largesse, facilitated by sympathetic social workers, the social workers themselves are often tyrannized by their Muslim clients. Bawer describes the chilling situation in Denmark:

Some clients lay waste to social security offices and hit social workers—not out of frustration, but because they’ve learned that such bullying gets them what they want.

Bawer further documents how Norwegian (Oslo) imams preach brazenly that Muslims should expect such welfare benefits—and feel justified in supplementing them by stealing from stores—as a form of jizya* extracted from their infidel “host” societies—societies that have not yet accepted their requisite subservience to Islamic Law!

The final two sections of While Europe Slept elaborate how even two cataclysmic events—the 9/11/01 and 3/11/04 mass murdering acts of jihad terrorism—failed to alter Western Europe’s self-destructive capitulation to Islamic atavism. Bawer recalls that a mere 36-hours after the devastation of 9/11/01, vitriolic anti-American attacks resumed unabated in the mainstream Western European media. He identifies one plausible source of this ignorant and seemingly implacable contempt:

The intensity of the European establishment’s anti-Americanism is matched only by the intensity of its nostalgia for the good old days of Soviet Communism. Few politicians, professors, or journalists will admit to missing Communism. But most of them are awfully quick to say that, well, at least when the Soviet Union was around, it provided a counterweight to American power. This despicable, but now standard line, turns Cold War history on its head.

Bawer also describes the resurgence of raw Antisemitic rhetoric, and anti-Jewish violence fomented, in part, by “poisonous, fraudulent reportage” throughout Western Europe. And when blatantly Judenhass crimes committed by Muslims are grudgingly reported by this same media, critical details routinely omitted in such accounts, include:

(a) that Muslims in Europe have not been attacked by Jews; (b) that unlike anti-Semitic acts, which are encouraged and applauded by influential figures within the Muslim community, anti-Muslim attacks are isolated events that no respected person or institution approves of; (c) that the number of anti-Muslim attacks is dwarfed by the number of attacks on Jews

The third (and last) section of While Europe Slept analyzes the moribund responses to the 3/11/04 Madrid bombings, in addition to subsequent lesser traumas such as the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the 7/7/05 London bombings. Bawer excoriates these grossly inadequate reactions as tantamount to “…a chorus singing hymns of brotherhood and eager to convert the entire world to its religion of eternal peace”, concluding,

It’s a pretty delusion. In reality, Europe is even now entering another chapter in its long history of violent struggle. The enemy can’t be wished or talked away. And what’s at stake isn’t just sovereignty of one or two nations but modern democratic civilization.

Nearly 30 years ago, in 1978, Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq, the great historian of Medieval European Islam, was concerned (even then) that historical and cultural revisionism might precipitate a recurrence of

…the upheaval carried out on our continent (i.e., Europe) by Islamic penetration more than a thousand years ago…with other methods

By the early 1990s, Bat Ye’or had already observed that European Islam was adhering to its traditional supremacist orthodoxy making no effort to eliminate doctrines incompatible with true ecumenism and core Western Enlightenment values:

I do not see serious signs of a Europeanization of Islam anywhere, a move that would be expressed in a relativization of religion, a self-critical view of the history of Islamic imperialism...we are light years away from such a development...On the contrary, I think that we are participating in the Islamization of Europe, reflected both in daily occurrences and in our way of thinking...All the racist fanaticism that permeates the Arab countries and Iran has been manifested in Europe in recent years...

Bat Ye’or’s seminal 2005 Eurabia—The Euro-Arab Axis elucidated the ideological underpinnings and resultant sociopolitical developments which had transformed Western Europe into a hemi-continent of dhimmitude. The fruition of this hideous utopian contruct—Eurabia—is a Western Europe rife with Judenhass Anti-Zionism, Anti-Americanism, and a perverse, self-loathing denigration of its own Western heritage, firmly rooted in both Christianity, and the Enlightenment.

Bruce Bawer’s independent research and keen, unflinching observations put flesh—much like the tortured flesh of the recently murdered Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi—on the bones of Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia. Bawer’s informed and gripping narrative makes clear the disturbing unwillingness of Muslim immigrants en bloc to accept foundational Western principles of equality, and integrate peacefully into their host societies. While Europe Slept demonstrates that continued denial of any Islamic etiology for the major problems confronting Western Europe begets more Islam as the “solution,” and accelerates the hemi-continent’s apparently inevitable trajectory towards Lebanonization, and/or complete Islamization, with implementation of the Shari’a.

[*Note on jizya : Under the Shari’a (Islamic Law) regulations, either the non-Muslim infidels must convert to Islam, or they pay the blood ransom jizya—classically, in a humiliating public ceremony which often involved blows to the head or neck—and their life and belongings are protected. The nature of such “protection” is clarified in this definition of jizya by the seminal Arabic lexicographer, E.W. Lane, based on a careful analysis of the etymology of the term:

The tax that is taken from the free non-Muslim subjects of a Muslim government whereby they ratify the compact that assures them protection, as though it were compensation for not being slain [An Arabic-English Lexicon (London, 1865), Book I Part II, Jizya, p. 422.]

The “contract of the jizya”, or “dhimma” encompassed other obligatory and recommended obligations for the conquered non-Muslim “dhimmi” peoples. Collectively, these “obligations” formed the discriminatory system of dhimmitude imposed upon non-Muslims – Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists – subjugated by jihad. Some of the more salient features of dhimmitude include: the prohibition of arms for the vanquished non-Muslims (dhimmis); the prohibition of church bells; restrictions concerning the building and restoration of churches, synagogues, and temples; inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims with regard to taxes and penal law; the refusal of dhimmi testimony by Muslim courts; a requirement that Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims, including Zoroastrians and Hindus, wear special clothes; and the overall humiliation and abasement of non-Muslims. It is important to note that these regulations and attitudes were institutionalized as permanent features of the sacred Islamic law, or Shari’a. Islam manifests itself as a political ideology, not merely a religion, when its teachings are followed on these and other prominent and enduring features.]

Wafa Sultan in her First English Language Interview

Wafa Sultan speaks to Tovia Singer. Audio here.

"They (i.e., Muslims) have been hostages of their own beliefs for 14 centuries"

"I used to believe Jewish people were not human creatures"

Interviewer: "Is the problem rooted in religion?" Sultan: "Yes it is."...

Chechnya starts demanding women wear headscarves

This is an order from the pro-Moscow Chechen government -- evidently in an attempt to co-opt its Islamic opposition. From Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

GROZNY, Russia, March 10 (Reuters) - The pro-Moscow Chechen government has started to demand that female state workers wear headscarves, women in the turbulent Muslim region said on Friday.

"I received a verbal warning that if I did not wear a headscarf, I would lose my job. I had to wear it the next day so as not to bring trouble on my head," said one woman who works in the regional administration and asked not to be named.

A spokesman for the region's new prime minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, who has pushed through a series of Islamic decrees, denied the headscarves were compulsory and said women were merely encouraged to cover their hair.

But women used to the rough tactics of Kadyrov's government, which is accused of mass abduction and torture in its hunt for separatist rebels, took the suggestion as law.

Polygamy to be celebrated in new HBO series

Making Mormon and by pure coincidence, Muslim polygamy acceptable to the masses, Burbank is doing its part. From the Salt Lake Tribune:

PASADENA, Calif. - Imagine a Hollywood meeting where the pitch is " 'The Brady Bunch' times three!" and you see why polygamy has never been the subject of a TV series or movie.

The practice of plural marriage has been featured in just a handful of Z-grade films, from the outrageous 1922 British propaganda short "Trapped by the Mormons," in which a maniacal polygamist lures unsuspecting girls into forced marriages, to the 2000 comedy "My 5 Wives," starring Rodney Dangerfield as a man who inherits multiple wives.

But despite its dramatic possibilities, polygamy always has been perceived as too unsavory for a weekly TV series.

Somehow, that all changed two years ago on a Pennsylvania highway. During a drive to New York City, television producers Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer began talking about the storytelling potential of polygamy, eventually deciding to turn it into a new series called "Big Love."

The hourlong series premieres tonight at 11, after the critically acclaimed mob drama "The Sopranos."

"Big Love" stars Bill Paxton ("Titanic") as Bill Henrickson, owner of a home-improvement store and husband of Nicki (Chloe Sevigny), Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), the matriarch of the family of sister-wives...

McCarthy: Sanctimony and Silence

Andrew McCarthy asks the tough questions at NRO no one in the Bush administration or its defenders wants to answer about that little Dubai port deal. Bush was re-elected in large measure due to public support for the Bush doctrine, a doctrine that seems to have been abandoned the day after the election. Here's McCarthy:

I have this simple question that no one seems to want to answer.

Thankfully, the five-alarm debacle that was the lucrative deal to permit a company wholly owned by the United Arab Emirates to manage stevedoring operations at several U.S. ports has been averted. Backstage pressure induced the UAE to withdraw, avoiding further, immense embarrassment to President Bush, who inexplicably raised the stakes of this blunder by threatening a veto — his first, and what a bizarre cause to take that maiden voyage over.

The end has unleashed another torrent of censorious caterwauling from the “Let’s Make a Deal” Right — an amalgam of free-trade-at-any-cost business interests and starry-eyed democracy-builders who see in every apparent moderate throughout the Islamic world a James Madison waiting to happen. This morning’s latest philippic from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is case-in-point.

Objection to the deal, we’re told, was a “political stampede” manufactured out of the worst kind of chauvinism — just because it was an “Arab-owned company buying port operations.” Yes, this was a wanton “mugging of a foreign investor.” It marks the “the re-emergence of the ‘national security’ protectionists.” (The “they’re delusional” quotes around national security are the Journal’s, not mine.)

So I’ll ask the same question I asked last week on NRO’s Corner. The same question a number of us have been asking for the last several weeks, with deafening silence the lone response: Does it matter that the UAE appears to be in violation of our fundamental antiterrorism law?

We’re told there’s a Bush Doctrine. That our national security is singularly dependent on communicating to the world — a world full of shady regimes and deadly terror networks — a simple, elegant message: If you are with the terrorists, you are not with us. If you are with the terrorists, we are going to treat you as a hostile. Period. Full stop. End of story...

Read it all.

No cheer for Muslim women

From with The Star Online with thanks to Mentat.
Marina Mahathir is an author, newspaper columnist and social activist, a Muslim, and the daughter of a former Prime Minister of Malaysia.

With the end of that racist system, people may be forgiven for thinking that apartheid does not exist anymore. While few countries practise any formal systems of discrimination, nevertheless you can find many forms of discrimination everywhere. In many cases, it is women who are discriminated against. In our country, there is an insidious growing form of apartheid among Malaysian women, that between Muslim and non-Muslim women.

We are unique in that we actively legally discriminate against women who are arguably the majority in this country, Muslim women. Non-Muslim Malaysian women have benefited from more progressive laws over the years while the opposite has happened for Muslim women.

For instance, since the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976, polygamy among non-Muslims was banned. Previously men could have as many wives as they wanted under customary laws. Men’s ability to unilaterally pronounce divorce on their wives was abolished and, in its place, divorce happens by mutual consent or upon petition by either spouse in an equal process where the grounds are intolerable adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion of not less than two years, and living separately for not less than two years. Compare that to the lot of Muslim women abandoned but not divorced by their husbands.

For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats

The New Duranty Times is carrying profile on Wafa Sultan, the brave Los Angeles psychologist who gave an interview to Al Jazeera, for which she is receiving threats.

LOS ANGELES, March 10 — Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.

In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.

She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.

In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.

"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.

Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."...

Read it all.

Germany to outlaw the Qur'an?

A translation of this Jyllands Posten article, "The Quran reported to the Police" is here, with thanks to all who sent this in.

A broad alliance of grass-roots movements have gone to the prosecutors of several states to hinder the dissemination of the Quran. According to the indictment, the Quran is not just a religious and historic book, but also a political book, which is incompatible with the constiution.

At the prosecutor’s office at Gorch-Forck-Wall 15 in Hamburg, an unusual letter was received Monday morning, containing an indictment filed this weekend. The indictment targeted the Quran, charging that the holy book of the Moslems, according to the accuser, is incompatible with the German constitution.

The accuser is “Bundesverband der Bürgerbewegungen (BVB)”, which concerns itself with, in its own words, “defending basic rights and freedoms” against Islam. The extensive international furore, allegedly caused by the Muhammed cartoons, has made clear the relevancy of the alliance. Its homepage is decorated with a Danish flag with the words “Support Denmark! Defend the Free World.” superimposed on it.

The indictment has been filed in several states, including Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bayern and probably more.

In several talkshows on German TV, conservative politicians have pointed out that the Quran is incompatible with the German constitution. The Turkish-born writer Serap Cileli said on January 29 this year that “the Quran must be considered a historic document. It is not compatible with our constitution and Human Rights.”

Now the alliance wants the matter tried at the courts.

Potent Political Book
The author of the indictment in Hamburg, Jutta Starke, says that the Quran was reported to the police two or three years ago, but that the report was dismissed on the grounds that it was a book of only historical interest.

“The events of the last months have made clear that the Quran isn’t just a historical book, but very much a potent political book, a thing which we document extensively in the indictment,” Jutta Starke says.

She says it is a task of sisyphean dimensions to inform the media, politicians and churches of the true intentions of Islam in the enlightened world of the West.

“We are grateful to Jyllands-Posten that discussions about Islam have now become possible,” says Jutta Starke....

India: Muslim family shunned because daughter studies Indian social dance

All non-Muslim cultures, from the perspective of traditional Islam, are worthless trash. Jahiliyah. Not to be valued. Certainly not to be studied or celebrated. Islamic tolerance alert: "Muslim girl dances social divide," from the BBC, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The family of a young Muslim girl in India's southern state of Kerala say they are being shunned by the local mosque committee (mahallu) because she is practising Indian classical dance.

VP Rubiya, 16, came first in Bharatnatyam, Kerala natanam and folk dance competitions at the recent Kerala School Festival....

Now she has an offer from the celebrated Indian dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai's dance academy, Darpana, her father Syed Alavikutty says.

'Outcasts'

The local mosque committee at Valluvambram, however, is not impressed by Rubiya's feats, says her father, a clerk with a travel agency.

"If she had won prizes in 'oppana' and 'mappila pattu' [traditional Muslim art forms], she would have been flooded with gifts by now. The mahallu leaders would never openly admit that it is her dance that makes them treat us as virtual outcasts," says Mr Alavikutty....

Rubiya is the darling of her teachers and friends at the Veeran Haji high school.

"God is one. When I pay ritualistic obeisance through mudras [hand signs], I am imploring not just the Hindu gods but the supreme creator, which we call by different names," she says.

It is the Hindu worship content in the classical dances that her family says has driven a chasm between her and conservative elements in the community.

KP Raihemath, a teacher who takes her to competitions, says there is nothing un-Islamic in Bharatnatyam dance....

Membership of a particular mosque committee for Muslim families depends on where they live.

"If you are not a mahallu member, the kazi [priest] will not bless your child's marriage. Worse, you are even denied a slot in the local cemetery," said Mr Alavikutty, who has also dabbled in acting with a troupe in Kerala....

But the family is not deterred by this.

"The parish doors might never open for us, but the world is not too small for the brave," he says.

West: The media and Islam

One of the most perceptive and courageous commentators on the scene today, Diana West, skewers the New Duranty Times and the mainstream media in general for their dhimmitude in the face of the jihad, in the Washington Times:

Way back when I was a cub reporter at this newspaper, I got hold of a book about the "art" of interviewing. It was a thin book. There was no use spending thousands of words to tell a reporter, cub or old Grizzly, to bone up on a subject and let natural curiosity take its course.

That thin book came to mind on reading a three-part series in the New York Times about an imam named Reda Shata who presides over the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, N.Y. As far as the art of interviewing goes, the reporter got it exactly backward: Thousands of words; negligible expertise; and no curiosity.

Both the New York Post and the New York Sun have already pounced on the most egregious flaw of omission: not a mention, in 11,000-plus words, of the day in March 1994 when a man walked out of that same Bay Ridge mosque and, inspired by the anti-Jewish sermon of the day (delivered by a different, unidentified imam), armed himself and opened fire on a van carrying Hasidic Jewish children. Ari Halberstam, 16, was killed. The Times series, as it happened, concluded on the 12th anniversary of his death.

Such journalistic jaw-droppers abound: gaping holes, like the one above, but also dead ends that leave countless questions that the female reporter, it seems, never thought to ask. For example, she notes, over six months of interviews, the Egyptian-born imam refused to shake her hand. "He offers women only a nod," she writes. Why is shaking hands with a woman "improper"? What does the imam think about sexual equality? She doesn't tell us. In Belgium last year, she doesn't mention, the female president of the parliament made headlines for canceling a meeting with an Iranian delegation over this same refusal to shake a woman's hand (the parliamentarian's own), while in Holland, the English-language blog Zacht Ei reported, a Muslim man lost a month's worth of welfare benefits for not only refusing to shake hands with female municipal employees, but also refusing to acknowledge their presence. This is supposed to be "the story of Mr. Shata's journey west," but the story bypasses such landmark issues.

Instead, we get a load of happy talk: "Married life in Islam is an act of worship," Mr. Shata says. So impressed were the editors of the New York Times by this load that they ran the quotation, not just above the fold, but across the very top of the front page over a gold-bathed family photo four columns wide. Does Miss Reporter ask the imam to reconcile this ecstatic notion with the Islamic custom of arranged and forced marriages, the spate of spousal abuse and "honor killings" within European Muslim communities -- as recounted in clarifying detail in Bruce Bawer's important new book, "While Europe Slept" -- or the tradition of polygamy which exists to this day in portions of Islamic society?

Read it all...Read it all.

Cyprus: Portrait of a Christianity Obliterated

Islamic tolerance alert from Sandro Magister in Chiesa (thanks to Tom Syseskey): "In the northern part of the island, occupied by Turkey, the churches have become stables or mosques...."

ROMA, March 9 2006 – The island of Cyprus was the first destination of the “special mission” that the Holy Spirit entrusted to Paul and Barnabas, according to what is written in the Acts of the Apostles, in chapter 13.

On the island they found a Roman governor, Sergius Paulus, “an intelligent man who wanted to hear the word of God and believed, deeply shaken by the teaching of the Lord.”

But if Paul and Barnabas were to return to Cyprus today, to the northern part of the island, they would find not the Romans as governors, but the Turks.

And instead of a Christianity being born, they would find a dying Christianity, with the churches and monasteries in ruin, or else transformed into stables, hotels, and mosques.

This is documented in a startling report from Luigi Geninazzi, who was sent to Cyprus by “Avvenire,” the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference.

Cyprus became part of the European Union on May 1, 2004. But this was true only for the southern part of the island, which is Greek and Christian.

The northern part was occupied by Turkey in 1974, with 40,000 soldiers. The Turkish occupation caused death, destruction, and a forced relocation of populations. About 200,000 Greek Cypriots of the Christian Orthodox faith who lived in the north of the island fled to the south. And likewise, the Turkish Cypriots of the south, Muslims, moved to the north.

In 1983 Turkey consolidated the occupation by creating a Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is internationally recognized only by the government of Ankara: 180,000 persons live there, 100,000 of whom are colonists originally from Anatolia.

This is a recurring phenomenon of Islamic history, albeit quite little noted: population transfers for purposes of colonization. In Caesarea last fall I visited the Bosnian mosque, built for Muslims forcibly resettled there by the Ottoman Turks. There are innumerable such examples.

Read it all.

Minnesota Prof Censored for Posting Mohammed Cartoons

This is a press release from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

MINNEAPOLIS, March 9, 2006—The uproar over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed may be fading in some places, but not at Century College in Minnesota. After repeatedly encountering censorship of her display of the cartoons on a hallway bulletin board, Professor Karen Murdock finally posted them behind a curtain so that passers-by would not be offended. Yet even after assuring Murdock and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) that free speech is valued at Century, administrators allowed censors to tear down the hidden cartoons and insisted that she not put them back up.

“Karen Murdock bent over backwards to make sure that students who disapproved of the cartoons would not be exposed to them, but this was still not good enough,” remarked FIRE Interim President Greg Lukianoff. “Sadly, the college has sided with the proponents of suppression rather than the advocates of open, meaningful, and informed dialogue.”

At the height of the international controversy surrounding the Mohammed cartoons, adjunct professor of geography Karen Murdock was concerned that most students at Century had not even seen the cartoons and would therefore be unable to evaluate them intelligently. On February 7, she posted the drawings, related newspaper articles, and blank comment sheets on a bulletin board near her office where various faculty members post items of interest. The cartoons were repeatedly and anonymously torn down, and she replaced them each time. Finally, she says, her academic division head, David Lyons, removed the cartoons himself, and Vice President of Student Services Mike Bruner asked that she not repost them. Vice President of Academic Affairs John O’Brien then called a meeting with Murdock...

Murdock has expressed great frustration with the situation. “We are a college. We are supposed to be a forum for the free exchange of ideas,” she said. “If we can’t talk about this controversy at a college, where are we supposed to talk about it?” She continued, “We are supposed to be able not merely to deal with controversy but actually to welcome it!”...

Australia: Imams urged to preach in English

From The Australian, with thanks to LS.

The Howard Government has called for Muslim clerics to preach in English in mosques.

Attorney General Philip Ruddock, in London for anti-terrorism talks, was told by Islamic leaders moderate Muslims had complained about fiery UK clerics using Arabic to incite followers against the West.
He said a key aspect in preventing radicalisation and home-grown terrorism was education and improving understanding between imams and the communities they worked in.

"To surmise that you would only speak in Arabic or Urdu leaves others who are entitled to worship at the mosque disenfranchised," Mr Ruddock said...

Australian Arabic Council chairman Roland Jabbour also criticised Mr Ruddock, saying diversity in language reflected a multicultural community.

"I wasn't aware there are languages we are not permitted to use," Mr Jabbour said.

"The language of the Koran is Arabic ... things are getting out of context, (the Government) is overreacting."

Oh noooo, things are getting out of context!

Clarke criticises Danish 'mistake' over cartoons

Britain's Home Secretary criticizes Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for not throwing freedom of speech overboard and rushing into dhimmitude. From The Guardian, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

The British government has accused its Danish counterparts of making "a serious mistake" in the way it handled relations with Muslim countries after the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

The home secretary, Charles Clarke, criticised the decision by the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to snub a request from 11 Muslim countries for a meeting after the cartoons were published in the Jyllands Posten newspaper in September.

Mr Clarke told a public meeting in Willesden Green - primarily held to discuss law and order issues - that Mr Rasmussen had not even responded to the request.

Admitting it was a "political point", Mr Clarke said: "I think that was a serious mistake which you could not imagine happening in other countries ... certainly not in this country. It is a question of respecting others, and that means do not provoke or challenge the deeply-held views of others."

His comments appeared to contradict Downing Street's supportive line towards the Danish government.

The prime minister, Tony Blair, last month said it was important to be seen be standing alongside Denmark following worldwide protests and riots over the cartoons last month.

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said he had never, and nor would he, criticise the Danish government.

However, it appears government officials hold private misgivings about the Danish failure to restore relations with the Muslim world last autumn. Mr Straw's office this morning said Mr Clarke's comments chimed with his own views.

UK: Terror suspects to get laptops

Here's one from our Here-Is-The-Rope-You-Can-Use-To-Hang-Me Department: "Terror suspects to get laptops," from UPI, with thanks to Latifah:

LONDON, March 8 (UPI) -- London's Belmarsh prison will provide laptops to 28 top terror suspects, a decision that has shocked critics.

Officials at the facility -- which holds those arrested under the anti-terror law -- say the computers are needed to help the suspects prepare their legal defense, reports The Mirror.

The laptops will not provide Internet access to the suspects, but critics say they can still be used for criminal activity.

"The prisoners could easily make CD-Roms, which could be handed to visitors, and orchestrate criminal activity from the inside," said one. "Inmates are incredibly resourceful. It wouldn't surprise me if they eventually managed to get the Internet on their laptops."

Other irate critics say the nearly $50,000 to be spent on the computers can be better used to increase security. The Mirror said the facility currently is about a third understaffed.

Inmates at the prison include those accused of the July bombings in London, al-Qaida suspects and members of a Muslim bully boys' gang, the report said.

Muslims ask French to cancel 1741 play by Voltaire

Voltaire, given modern technology, could have been the Salman Rushdie of his day. Now Muslims not only want to censor criticism of Islam and Muhammad; they want the West to forget that such criticism has ever, ever been made in history. From The Wall Street Journal, via the Post-Gazette, with thanks to all who sent this in:

SAINT-GENIS-POUILLY, France -- Late last year, as an international crisis was brewing over Danish cartoons of Muhammad, Muslims raised a furor in this little alpine town over a much older provocateur: Voltaire, the French champion of the 18th-century Enlightenment.

A municipal cultural center here on France's border with Switzerland organized a reading of a 265-year-old play by Voltaire, whose writings helped lay the foundations of modern Europe's commitment to secularism. The play, "Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet," uses the founder of Islam to lampoon all forms of religious frenzy and intolerance.

The production quickly stirred up passions that echoed the cartoon uproar. "This play ... constitutes an insult to the entire Muslim community," said a letter to the mayor of Saint-Genis-Pouilly, signed by Said Akhrouf, a French-born cafe owner of Moroccan descent and three other Islamic activists representing Muslim associations. They demanded the performance be cancelled.

Instead, Mayor Hubert Bertrand called in police reinforcements to protect the theater. On the night of the December reading, a small riot broke out involving several dozen people and youths who set fire to a car and garbage cans. It was "the most excitement we've ever had down here," says the socialist mayor....

Editors in France, Germany and elsewhere have explained their decision to reprint the drawings by pointing to principles enshrined in a statement often attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Voltaire said something similar, but the phrase was coined in 1906 by a biographer of Voltaire to sum up the French writer's views.

"Fanaticism," the play that stirred the ruckus in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, portrays Muhammad as a ruthless tyrant bent on conquest. Its main theme is the use of religion to promote and mask political ambition.

For Voltaire's Muslim critics, the play reveals a centuries-old Western distortion of Islam. For his fans, it represents a manifesto for liberty and reason and should be read not so much as an attack on Islam but as a coded assault on the religious dogmas that have stained European history with bloody conflict....

The night of the reading, riot police took up positions outside Saint-Genis-Pouilly's cultural center. An hour into the performance, the mayor got called out of the hall because of street disturbances. The mayor says the mood was "quasi-insurrectional," but damage was minor. Police chased Muslim youths through the streets.

Now that tempers have calmed, Mayor Bertrand says he is proud his town took a stand by refusing to cave in under pressure to call off the reading. Free speech is modern Europe's "foundation stone," he says. "For a long time we have not confirmed our convictions, so lots of people think they can contest them."

Fitzgerald: A tribute to John Esposito

With dhimmi scholar John Esposito in the news again, Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald offers this homage to the great man:

John Esposito did not start out as anything more than a mild-mannered low-level academic; one suspects he had no strong feelings about Islam, and was not prompted by any of the mental pathologies -- antisemitism, hatred of America -- that can produce the apologist for Islam. But as one crook of the Gilded Age, of the kind of Tammany Hall variety, said in his own defense, Esposito has "seen his opportunities, and he took 'em."

If ever that silly bumpersticker "Question Authority" was appropriate, it is in relation to the likes of Esposito, and Michael Sells, and tutti quanti. Whether on the take, or simply ill-informed, or lazy, or stupid, or some combination, they are guides to nothing and to nowhere. But their books could be given as incentives to those who sign up for Al-Jazeera on cable -- the perfect coffee-table accompaniment to so many of its programs.

Esposito has come a long way, the mediocre producer of nondescript texts and prettified couleur-locale "studies" of Islam, those coffee-table concoctions in which the pictures first overwhelm the reader -- those blue mosques, those Iznik tiles, those colorfully turbaned Turks -- and prevent any sober recognition of just how empty or misleading so many of the texts offered in these anthologies, or by Esposito himself, really are. All those pretty pictures make the reader swoon and overlook the fact that he has learned nothing about the actual contents of Qur'an, hadith, and sira.

No one of sense -- no one -- takes John Esposito seriously anymore. Esposito's loaded title The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? pointed the way to his vacuous conclusion -- of course it is a "myth" and not a "reality." That was the book in which he mentioned the word "Jihad" exactly twice. He has tried to do a little better since, but now it is all about blaming one particular group of Muslims, the "Wahhabis."

Of course it was not a "Wahhabi" Muslim who murdered Theo van Gogh. It was not "Wahhabis" who have been killing Christians and Confucians in Indonesia, by the hundreds of thousands, over the past few decades, and destroying, in 2003 alone, more than 3,000 churches. It is not "Wahhabi" Muslims in Bangladesh who have been murdering Hindus -- 3 million since the 1971 war against West Pakistan. It is not "Wahhabis" who conducted, in Col. Ojukwu's words, the "Jihad" against the Christian Ibos in southern Nigeria who felt compelled to declare the independence of Biafra. It was not "Wahhabis" who have been making war on black Christians and animists in the southern Sudan, or now insufficiently "Arab" Muslims in Darfur. It was not "Wahhabis" but that severe and learned theologian of Shi'a Islam, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who set up the murderous, fanatical Islamic Republic of Iran -- about which, if you can stand it, you can find a great deal from many Iranian exiles, at www.faithfreedom.org.

Nobody needs Esposito’s writings. Margoliouth and Schacht have recently been reprinted. Antoine Fattal's book on the legal status of non-Muslims under Islam never went out of print. K. S. Lal is easily obtained. Tritton, Arthur Jeffery, Armand Abel, Georges Henri Bousquet, Snouck Hurgronje -- they are all about to be reprinted, at least in relevant part. Of course, I don't think for a minute that Esposito, or any of his crew, are familiar with any of these great scholars, and dozens more. I doubt they've even read them. They seem actually to believe that the only person to have written about dhimmitude is Bat Ye'or, whom they like to airily dismiss as "polemical" so that they will not have to confront her meticulous, scrupulous, and irrefutable scholarship.

But what may be most interesting is the reply Esposito gave at a Muslim website some months ago, in which he noted that after 9/11 he -- John Esposito -- was "pleasantly surprised" to see that there had been no diminution in the number of "reverts"(or converts) to Islam.

Now we all know how keenly interested Muslims are in the rate of conversion, how important Da'wa is, how much an instrument of conquest it is believed to be -- for one is swelling the ranks of the recruits into the umma al-islamiyya, the Community of Believers, who owe their loyalty to that Community alone, never to the Infidel nation-state. We recall, do we not, that the very first thing Osama bin Laden inquired about on that first tape filmed after 9/11, and which pleased him mightily to discover, was the rate of conversion of Infidels. He was told, and gave a smile when he heard the news, that "people in Holland were converting at an even faster pace" than before.

Now here is John Esposito, now of Georgetown, formerly of Holy Cross. One might expect that he would be a student of Islam, but not an enthusiast, not someone delighted to receive news of the swelling of Muslim ranks. But this is what he said at this website:
"I was pleasantly surprised" to discover that the numbers of conversions [to Islam] have not gone down, but increased."

"Surprised" -- sure.

But "pleasantly" surprised? Why? Why would a certain John Esposito of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (or whatever it is called) be "pleasantly surprised" that there had been no diminishment, because of 9/11, in the number of converts to Islam?

In other words, why did John Esposito express precisely the same reaction as -- Osama bin Laden?

Were I the president of Georgetown, or an alumnus, or a parent, or a Congressman, or a journalist who had been told to "interview John Esposito," that is the question that I would first wish to have answered.

He's got a good thing going. $20 million for his "Georgetown" Center, which means a lot more for lean, mean, jogging John Esposito, and John Voll, and Yvonne Haddad.. And of course John Esposito is hardly alone in having earned, on some future gravestone, that epitaph which so many in the Western world over the past thirty years have earned, in Washington and London and Paris, in their own ways, as they did nothing to prevent Muslim immigration, nothing serious to limit OPEC revenues, and thought only of how to obtain some of those revenues for themselves, their friends, their relatives, their companies:

Shilling for Islam, undoing the West,
Radix malorum cupiditas est.

Dhimmi Esposito: Pipes an agent provocateur

The dhimmi Saudi shill John Esposito, whose word still reigns supreme in the White House, and who has praised the suicide-terror-endorsing Sheikh Qaradawi as a "reformist," has now fallen so low as to echo paranoid conspiracy theories about Daniel Pipes being behind the printing of the Danish cartoons.

He also recommends that Muslims promote themselves more aggressively in the West. And I'm sure that he will be ready to help with that promotion.

"Lack of Arab, Muslim lobby in West blamed on authoritarian regimes," from the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Olivia:

“How many Muslim countries have vibrant, aggressive exchange programmes?” he asked. Esposito noted that in contrast to this, the Jews have fared better by bringing together scholars, intellectuals, journalists etc for dialogue, not only in the US, but also in Israel.

“Arab and Muslim governments have not promoted that as aggressively as they should. If anything, they wind up looking as if they used their money to promote their brand of Islam, which is often exclusivist vis-a-vis other brands of Islam in America and Europe, and also vis-a-vis Christians and Jews,” he pointed out. There are exceptions to this though, he added. He noted that Waleed Bin Talal has started two American study programmes at AUC Cairo and AUB in Lebanon, where Arabs can learn about America.

“He is giving $20 million each to Harvard and Georgetown University in order to promote relations between the Muslim world and the West. How many Arabs and Muslims have done it? Some have done it, but not in a concerted way. They never have, even though the wealth is there,” he said.

Why don't you just shout, "Show me the money!!!," John?

Responding to a KT question on the onus of solutions to all problems being shifted to the Muslims, Esposito said that there are those who can interpret it that way. “And clearly, I say elements in the European media, and European and American society do feel that way,” he said. He noted that when there are Western intellectuals like Salman Rushdie and others like him who tend to talk in a way that they shift the onus, “not to say that both sides are a part of the problem and that both should be part of the solution. I would say that the western media and western secular fundamentalists are part of the problem... the cartoon issue was an unwarranted level of provocation and it doesn’t take much to know what is happening there,” he said.

An "unwarranted level of provocation." Just get rid of that freedom of speech thing and nobody will get hurt.

“First of all, it’s a very small and not that consequential newspaper, but it is generally a right wing anti-immigrant newspaper, and clearly what the European Press was saying reflected a growing anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attitude in sectors of Europe,” he said. He surmised that this attitude is behind the reasoning that if someone wanted to live in the West or be a part of that society, they better put up with the values. “Well, a part of our society means being this: ‘You can be a Muslim, but you have to be a Norwegian first or a Dane first, and being a Dane means that you have to accept this kind of ‘cartooning’, and I think that’s provocative. In fact, the editor of the newspaper said that is what he wanted to do,” he said.

He added that he had heard from many reputable sources in Washington that when the editor of the Danish newspaper (that published the cartoons) came to Washington last time, he met with Daniel Pipes and spent a fair amount of time. ‘Esposito’ [sic] described Pipes as an agent provocateur. According to him, a lot of what was involved in the cartoon situation was basically secular fundamentalist Europeans who are anti-immigrant and as an extension of that, clearly anti-Islam.

“And yet, they are hypocrites because the German newspaper that published those cartoons would never publish cartoons that dealt with the Jews of the Holocaust; that would be unacceptable,” he explained.

He added that Europe has what it calls hate speech legislation, “and what this means is that in parts of Europe, you cannot do this ridiculing of Christianity and Judaism, but you can do it with Islam,” he said.

Oh come now, Professor. In this article you will find a Christian in Britain lamenting the daily ridicule to which his religion is subjected. Only one group is seeking protected status, to be placed beyond criticism. And it isn't Jews or Christians.

Crusaders were 'terrorists'

An obscenely dhimmified and politically correct textbook in Australia's state of Victoria, where two Christian pastors were convicted of hate speech for teaching out of the Qur'an: "Crusaders were 'terrorists,'" from The Australian, with thanks to all who sent this in:

A TEXTBOOK widely used in Victorian high schools describes the Crusaders who fought in the Holy Land in the Middle Ages as terrorists, akin to those responsible for the September 11 attacks.

The Year 8 textbook Humanities Alive 2 says that the Crusaders, like Muslim terrorists, "believed they were giving their lives for a religious cause".

"Like the Crusaders ... they were told they would go straight to heaven when they died," the book says. "Those who destroyed the World Trade Center are regarded as terrorists. Might it be fair to say that Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem were also terrorists?"

The textbook has been criticised by Melbourne University historian Barry Collett, a specialist in medieval history, for being "historically inaccurate" and "grossly misleading" in its depiction of the Middle Ages.

"The Crusaders felt they were intervening to stop the bloodshed that was already going on," he said. "I would tend to compare them more with Australian troops intervening in East Timor."...

"It's very out of date, this view of the church as being fiendishly power-hungry," said Dr Collett, a visiting scholar at Oxford University.

"The church's activities were far more humane and pastoral than you would guess from reading this."

For the real story, consult my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

University of South Alabama student paper prints Muhammad cartoons, will not apologize

Sweet Home Alabama Update: anti-dhimmitude in Mobile. I hope Bill Clinton will remember: a Southern Man don't need him around anyhow. "Cartoon upsets Muslim students," from The Montgomery Advertiser, with thanks to Twostellas:

MOBILE -- The University of South Alabama's student newspaper will not apologize for reprinting one of the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have spurred protests throughout the Muslim world, the paper's editor said.

Muslim students at the school have sought an apology since the cartoon appeared in the paper's Feb. 13 edition.It depicts Muhammad, holding a curved sword, with a black bar over his eyes and flanked by two women wearing burkas.

Jeff Poor, editor in chief of the Vanguard, said the newspaper printed the cartoon in support of freedom of speech and has no intention of apologizing.

Dutch consider burqa ban to Muslim dismay

Anti-dhimmitude in Holland. From Reuters:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - If the Netherlands becomes the first European country to ban the burqa and other Muslim face veils this month, Hope says she'll resort to wearing a surgical mask to dress in accordance with her religious beliefs.

"I'll wear one of those things they wore during the SARS epidemic if I have to," said the Dutch-born Muslim, one of about 50 women in the Netherlands who wear the head-to-toe burqa or the niqab, a face veil that conceals everything but the eyes.

"I'm very practical," the 22-year-old added.

Last December, parliament voted to forbid women from wearing the burqa or any Muslim face coverings in public, justifying the move in part as a security measure.

The cabinet is awaiting the results of a study into the legality of such a ban under European human rights laws, before making its final decision. The results are expected in the second half of this month.

Poller: Antisemitism in Non-Antisemitic France

In a Jihad Watch exclusive, the incomparable Nidra Poller discusses the prevalence of antisemitism among Muslims in France:

Heard on Jewish radio this morning: an interview with the rabbi of the Sarcelles synagogue. He says that relations between the communities (meaning Muslim and Jewish) were fine until recently. The atmosphere got tense after the November riots, and has been particularly hostile since the Halimi case hit the news.

Dig that jihad logic! Muslims go on the rampage, burn cars, schools, fire stations, attack the police and, as a result, get angry at the Jews of Sarcelles. Muslims and their accomplices abduct, torture, and murder a Jewish man, so other Muslims beat up Jewish men in Sarcelles.

The rabbi has been with the congregation for three years. My hunch is that his predecessor made aliyah. I also have doubts about the good relations that prevailed until recently. When Roger L. Simon came to Paris a few short years ago, Bruno Lebeau took us on a tour of Sarcelles. We weren’t exactly in a Humvee but we did not mingle with the crowd. When you get out of the RER at Garges les Gonesse it is distinctly creepy Jewish Sarcelles is another world. Decades ago the atmosphere was carefree. Not today.

The rabbi gave some important details about this weekend’s antisemitic attacks. There were, in fact, three attacks within 24 hours. One victim had a broken nose, another had a dislocated soldier. The third, a young father, was attacked as he was putting something in his car trunk; his child was already in the car! The rabbi remarked on the cowardice of the thugs--four or five against one. In one incident some kids came by in the bus, saw the guys beating up a Jew, jumped out of the bus and joined the attack. Arrests have been made. Apparently the Jew-thrashers are Muslims from sub-Saharan Africa. One of them promised his victim, “we’re going to do you like they did Ilan.”

Youssof Fofana, the new role model in the banlieue?

The Sarcelles rabbi has reached out to the wider community, with good results. He wants neighbors to visit the synagogue, get to know the real Jews. “We are not all rich, we are not Tsahal.” The government has promised to provide more police, more surveillance cameras. The rabbi thinks it would be a mistake for young Jewish men to form a militia.

And I am wondering if it might not be a good idea for them to dress up in Tsahal uniforms. Or invite the US Marines to land in Sarcelles.
Chaib Zehaf, 42, was shot dead outside a bar in Oullins, near Lyon. Friends, family, and the Libération reporter who covered the story are furious that the crime has not been defined as racist. The victim’s cousin, who was wounded in the apparently unprovoked attack, claims the murderer shouted something like “F---k the Arabs,” before firing his gun. For some reason the police are treating the killing as a “simple” crime. The gunman was drunk.

But somehow, once again, it’s all the fault of the Jews. Was the suspected gunman Jewish? No. He was a Frenchman named Jean-Marie Garcia. But friends, relatives, and neighbors are up in arms. When Jews are attacked in Sarcelles, it’s front page news. A Jew is murdered, and thousands of people demonstrate. Chirac recieves the victims of antisemitism but when an Arab is murdered because he is Arab, he gets no more consideration than a dog.

Well, the public should know more about this Jean-Marie Garcia and the motives for his heinous crime.

As for competition in victimhood, I think that every Jew in France would prefer to lose hands down.

Bennett and Dershowitz on the dhimmitude of the media

A useful summation of the cartoon controversy. From "A Failure of the Press" by William Bennett and Alan Dershowitz in the Washington Post, with thanks to DFS:

What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists -- their threats more than their sensibilities. One did not see Catholics claiming the right to mayhem in the wake of the republished depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, any more than one saw a rejuvenated Jewish Defense League take to the street or blow up an office when Ariel Sharon was depicted as Hitler or when the Israeli army was depicted as murdering the baby Jesus....

When we were attacked on Sept. 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms. What we never imagined was that the free press -- an institution at the heart of those virtues and freedoms -- would be among the first to surrender.

Last Tajik synagogue demolished

Islamic Tolerance Alert from Tajikistan, from the BBC, with thanks to LGN:

The authorities in the central Asian republic of Tajikistan have started to demolish the country's last synagogue.

It is being destroyed to make way for the construction of a new presidential complex in the capital, Dushanbe.

Members of Tajikistan's ancient Jewish community say they have not been given adequate compensation to enable them to build a new synagogue.

Jews have lived in Tajikistan for many centuries, but the community declined after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Bulldozers have already destroyed part of the compound. The demolition of the synagogue building itself is expected to go ahead later in the year.

Dushanbe's small Jewish community, mostly poor and elderly, have almost resigned themselves to losing their only place of worship.

But they say the distant plot of land the government has given them in exchange is inadequate compensation.

They cannot afford to build a new synagogue, and they say the new land, on the edge of the city, is too far away.

Afraid to speak out

The current synagogue sits on a prime site in the middle of the capital, where the government is building a large new office complex for the president.

The rabbi says the community still hopes the government, or international Jewish groups, will help them to acquire an appropriate building for a new synagogue.

But people familiar with the Jewish community in Dushanbe say those opposed to the demolition had been threatened by officials and most of the congregation are afraid to speak out.

"I'm not some Jew to be treated this way by Arabs. I'm just a Shiite"

In this story about Sunni-Shi'ite strife in Baghdad, Rasoul Shahir Radhi takes for granted that Arabs will mistreat Jews. But Shi'ites? That's going too far. "Evictions May Foreshadow Iraq Civil War," from AP, with thanks to Hugh:

Hammar's nephew, 24-year-old Rasoul Shahir Radhi, head of a family of 10 since his father died, voiced the deep frustration of the dozens of refugees, using stark language that ranged across the variety of troubles plaguing the Middle East.

"I'm not some Jew to be treated this way by Arabs. I'm just a Shiite," Radhi said.

Bad dhimmi! Czech documentary angers Muslims

The Muslims interviewed said embarrassing things. Now they are blaming the interviewer. "TV documentary angers Muslims," from The Prague Post, with thanks to all who sent this in:

A Czech Television (TV) documentary is threatening to raise tensions within the country's Muslim population to a level not seen here during weeks of recent global unrest over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Ambassadors to the Czech Republic from Arab nations and members of the Czech Muslim community say they are outraged by a documentary aired on TV last fall that used hidden camera footage of conversations in a Prague mosque and spliced it — they say unfairly — with images of terrorism.

"The reaction is usually immediate, while in this case it took a month for any reaction to appear and two months for it to grow," says....the documentary's producer. "It was the same with the Muhammad cartoons."...

Members of the Muslim community first filed a complaint with the Czech Radio and Television Broadcasting Council (RRTV) that month, claiming the program is biased, provokes fear and manipulates footage to promote false stereotypes.

"It was made in a confrontational style," says [the]...head of the Islamic Center in Prague. "We see it as a one-sided documentary, which evokes a distorted look at Islam in the eyes of the Czech public."...

The footage in I, Muslim shows a reporter pretending to be someone interested in converting to Islam. He conducts several conversations with members of the mosque...about Islam, Europe, terrorism and the role of women.

...says he stands behind his choice to use the hidden camera footage.

"I wanted to get real opinions of the local Muslim community on the issue — find out what the differences are between Czech and foreign Islam," he says.

One Muslim in the documentary compares Islamic terrorists to Jan Palach, the Czech student who committed suicide by setting himself on fire in protest of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Another says Islamic law should be implemented in the Czech Republic, including the death penalty for adultery...

"I have to say with 100 percent certainty that by using hidden camera I have learned things that I would never have learned otherwise," he says. "The result was alarming, and if not for the hidden camera, I would have never had any of this footage."

UK Parliament hosts Hizb ut Tahrir

From the Birmingham Post, "MP Short in banned group row"

Clare Short was under fire again yesterday after she invited an "extremist" Muslim group into the Commons. [note the sneer quotes - RB]

The Birmingham MP hosted a meeting for Hizb utTahrir, which Tony Blair has announced is to be banned under anti-terror laws...

Ms Short was also criticised by gay rights campaigner and former Labour parliamentary candidate Peter Tatchell, who said Hizb ut-Tahrir had sent him death threats.

In an open letter, he said he read with alarm "that you are hosting a meeting of the misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic Muslim fundamentalist group, Hizb utTahrir, at the House of Commons."

He went on: "If this is true, I am very surprised. Perhaps you are not aware of the true nature of this group, and its anti-democratic and anti-humanitarian goals?"

Mr Tatchell said he had suffered death threats from members of the group in the early to mid 1990s.

Ms Short is known for her outspoken views. In one inter-view two years ago, she condemned terrorist violence as "profoundly, morally wrong" but said al Qaida's anger was justified...

Harry's Place has an account by an eye-witness who handed out copies of the HuT constitution to the Parliamentarians. Interesting reading with thanks to GB.

Al-Arian's Christian champion

An entry for our Useful Idiots Department from the St. Petersburg Times, with thanks to Olivia:

TEMPLE TERRACE - During his seminary days, Pastor Warren Clark earned the nickname "el hippie."

An avowed pacifist, he also believed the ministry should promote nonviolence and social justice. He worked in shanty towns in Argentina during the time of the "disappearances," when thousands vanished at the hands of the military.

When he resumed the pulpit seven years ago, he chose First United Church of Tampa, whose core missions closely matched his own convictions - to be open and affirming to individuals of any sexual orientation, and to actively promote peace with justice.

Today Clark, 58, has taken on a cause that some perceive to be outside the Christian mainstream: He is an outspoken supporter of Sami Al-Arian.

Al-Arian is the former University of South Florida professor who was tried on charges that he supplied money to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Clark, and several church members, were very visible during the trial, from attending court proceedings, to holding prayer vigils, and staging rallies for a fair trial.

The church council also passed a resolution on human rights and issued a call for a fair trial, which it then submitted to the prosecuting attorney, the attorney general and the judge.

It is not always an easy position to defend....

You can say that again.

Clark does not believe Al-Arian has received a fair trial.

Still, he points out that Al-Arian was cleared of the "major charges" against him. In those on which the jury could not agree, only two out of 10 jurors found him guilty.

"Helloooooo," Clark said. "He's been found by a jury of his peers, after a lengthy trial, to be innocent on all major charges, and hung on the others because of only two votes. Gosh, I think he should be a free man."

Subsequent court hearings have focused on whether the prosecutor will attempt to retry Al-Arian, so for the meantime, he is still being held in jail....

Clark believes Hamas' recent political victory is a positive sign for peace.

"One thing you can say about Hamas is that they're honest," he said. "Let's let the process work, and let's see what good will come of that. They will not be able to lead and still advocate terrorism because the majority of the Palestinian people want an end to the violence."

Yes, that must be why they voted in such large numbers for a murderous terrorist organization.

As for Al-Arian, Clark said he feels the issue has already grown to unreasonable proportions. Al-Arian, he said, was just a flash point. People should refocus their energies on the real problem, which is securing a lasting peace with justice for the Palestinian people, and for Israel.

"It's a much broader issue than just Sami Al-Arian," Clark said. "Get off it already. Let's use our energies for what will help to bring peace. Sami would say that too."

Yes, I'm sure he would, in between shouts of "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!"

Caffery caves

You can find an update on this story at the Beaumont Enterprise, with thanks to PRCS.

Those things I said about John Caffery? Never mind.

Dutch Immigration Minister to send gay Iranians and Iranian converts to Christianity back home to almost certain death

Why not? After all, Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. What possible harm can come to these people? Media Dhimmitude Kills Alert: "Verdonk to send gay Iranians home," from Expatica, with thanks to Anna:

AMSTERDAM – Immigration minister Rita Verdonk says gay asylum seekers from Iran should be sent back home. Six months ago she had refused to send them back because two gay Iranian men had been executed there.

Verdonk said in a letter to the Second Chamber that there was no question of anyone being executed or sentenced to death purely on the basis of their being gay, although she did concede that gay sex was punishable by death by Iranian interpretation of Islamic law.

Even so, gay asylum seekers should be returned, she said, based on information from the Foreign Office about the actual situation in Iran. The two gay men were executed not for their sexuality but because they had robbed, kidnapped and raped a minor....

Verdonk says that asylum-seeking Iranian Christians who have converted from Islam, who also face strong societal disapproval, can also safely be sent back.

D66 has requested a debate next week over Verdonk’s decision. The party is not convinced that the repatriation is as safe as she suggests.

Gee, ya think?

Magazine editor held in Delhi over Prophet cartoons

Indian dhimmitude. From Express News Service, with thanks to RZ:

New Delhi, February 22:1 THE editor of a magazine being published under the banner of a news channel has been arrested for reprinting the controversial cartoons of Prophet Mohammad. The cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper last September, have caused outrage among Muslims and led to violent protests in many countries.

However, Vijay Dixit, group chairman of Senior Media Ltd, said the cartoons were merely part of an article by Senior India editor Alok Tomar which set out to criticise the Danish cartoons.

The February 28 edition of Senior India had already reached Delhi newsstands and police had to rush to seize copies of the magazine today before matters got out of hand. Senior officers have told police in other states to seize copies of the magazine.

Dixit said: “Our purpose was not to publish the cartoons to make fun of the Prophet. Alok Tomar had written an article denouncing the publishing of the cartoon strip. His only fault was that he published the controversial cartoon strip too.”

Author sees growing Muslim enclaves hoping to rule Europe

Bruce Bawer lives in Norway and has lived in The Netherlands. He has seen the creeping Islamization of Europe in chilling detail, and he has now chronicled it in While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within. This book is essential reading -- where Eurabia explicates the theory, Bawer shows that theory being put into harrowing practice.

Here's a review of Bawer's book from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

If the ongoing "Battle of Khartoon" (let's give it some historical resonance) proves anything, it's that many otherwise well-educated Westerners remain illiterate about Islam.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the editors of Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper didn't understand when they published their visual bombshells that some strains of Islam (but not all) oppose depiction of Muhammad. Consider that just one gap in knowledge that new books like Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept help close....

Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept, published this month, provides an extraordinarily timely and incisive complement to such works. His topic is far fresher, one rarely explained to Americans because of our shrinking coverage of Europe: the astounding growth of Muslim communities there over the last 30 years, and how they interact with traditionally Christian societies.

Bawer, a gay, neoconservative American literary critic from New York who has lived in Amsterdam (now more than half non-Dutch) and, since 1997, in Oslo, energetically reports here what happens between the terrorist incidents that prod mainstream American media to brief coverage: the everyday tensions of a Europe that, for the first time in many centuries, must face substantial Islamic populations and ambitions.

In Bawer's view, Western Europe is becoming a "house divided against itself." On the one hand, the educated European elite maintains an unshakable "belief in peace and reconciliation through dialogue," a faith (their only remaining faith) that every issue can be resolved without violence.

Read it all.

Fitzgerald: Fogh Rasmussen and his jizya payments

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's initially declared intention to continue payments to the Palestinians despite cartoon rage, and offers him a speech, free of charge:

Fogh Rasmussen: "We won't change our policies. It's now time to calm the waters, not cut funds. In the long-term, it would be in our own best interest to rebuild our good relationship with the Arab world." -- from this article

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, even he, who has been so steady, in this case is wrong. There is no "good relationship." Muslims are not taught to have "good relations" with Infidels but to regard them as the permanent enemy, their lands only in their possession temporarily, for everything belongs to Allah and to the best of people, the Believers. Infidels by right possess nothing. If, in Europe, Muslims are not paid the Jizyah, they may take -- by what the Infidels call stealing -- what they wish from those Infidels. So said an imam in Oslo not long ago, according to Bruce Bawer’s new book. It is a kind of informal Jizyah. They may help themselves to Western women, the Infidel women. So have said some of the Muslim rapists arrested in Europe and Australia. That is the theory that some imams have presented to justify acts which Infidels regard as criminal, but at least some Muslims do not -- for it fits in with their own carefully-inculcated view of the universe.

Fogh Rasmussen's assertion is that aid is legitimate to the shock troops of the Lesser Jihad: the one that began early in the last century, and was designed first to prevent the buying of land by Jews, and then to snuff out the life of the nascent Jewish state, and then when that failed, to conduct on every level and with every instrument -- military, economic, diplomatic, propagandistic -- the Jihad against Israel.

The Lesser Jihad continues, carefully disguised since 1967, with the invention of the "Palestinian people." Younger people may not realize that this phrase was never uttered or written by any Arab spokesman or leader prior to the Six-Day War. It took a few years for the phrase to enter general circulation; it was the most successful propaganda effort since Hitler pled with such feeling for the "legitimate rights of the Sudeteners" against those monstrous Czechs. This enabled Muslim Arabs (aided in prominent positions by a facade of islamochristians doing the Muslim bidding) to hide their inability ever to accept a permanent Infidel state of Israel. Now their jihad could be presented as a "nationalist" cause that would eventually be satisfied if Israel kept giving and giving and giving – although its demands always remained impossible for Israel to satisfy.

Fogh Rasmussen may feel betrayed by many in the Western world. But he fails to understand how Western Europe, and how his own statement, shows another, longer-lasting and even more troubling betrayal. For it is not hard to pierce the veil of Arab and Muslim propaganda. It is not hard to realize that there is a point at which Israel could become so shrunk as to be incapable of defending itself. No other country would have given up what Israel has already given up; would the United States, to "trade land for peace," have stationed enemy troops up and down the Mississippi River, and then in the Rockies, and the Appalachians -- and even that does not convey the danger that results form Israel's narrowness, and the Judean hills overlooking the coastal plain, and the hightest ratio of length-of-border to land-area of any country in the world, and of course the fantastic asymmetry in populations, and land area, and resources, that characterize this Lesser Jihad.

It is not hard to realize that the easy assumption that there is a "two-state solution" has no basis, given the fact that there is no evidence that the Arabs and Muslims can conceivably give up their view, not only of Israel's non-right to exist, but more generally of the right to spread Islam and the rule of Muslims. They must spread Islam first to other lands once ruled by Muslims (for these stick in the craw) such as Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and a large amount of central and southern Europe (Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece, Albania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and even as far north as Hungary) and, of course, not only the Caucasus now possessed by Russia, but a large amount of Russia itself, and then extend the Islamic social order outward to other lands.

Fogh Rasmussen may not regard this "aid to the Palestinians" as Jizyah, but that is exactly what it is. It is not foreign aid, received by recipients who are filled with gratitude. Not at all. It is money that they believe the Infidels owe them, for they, those Infidels, are all connected. Any perceived wound to Muslims, or thwarting of their worldwide aims, is seen as linking all Infidels. Cartoon protestors in various countries have shouted “Death to Israel.” What does Israel have to do with the cartoons? Nothing – except that it is all, both Israel’s existence and the blasphemous cartoons, the work of the Infidel.

If Fogh Rasmussen or others think that they will buy any kind of goodwill, they are mistaken. He would have done far better, for Denmark, for the Infidels, and for moral and intellectual clarity all way round, if he had announced quite the opposite. He might have said something like:

We have been among the largest supporters of what has been called the "Palestinians." Yet we see that the fanaticism, the hatred, so quickly whipped up all over the Muslim world, and which includes death threats to Danish citizens, as well as the meretricious behavior of Muslims who have been offered refuge and support by Denmark, have caused us to rethink certain things. We have begun to realize that perhaps the war against us and the war against the Jews of Israel, are related -- related in certain ideas which we hope, but are not sure, are not immutable and essential to Islam. We await clarification from the O.I.C. on this: we wish to know, for Denmark and for the other countries of Western Europe, what precisely is the present view, and textual support for or against, for the notion of a permanent conflict between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. We wish to know, further, from Muslims, whether or not they will accept the permanence of Infidel states -- whether that Infidel state be the state of Israel, or Spain which was once under Muslim rule, or Bulgaria which was similarly under Muslim rule, or for that matter Denmark, France, Italy, and England, which never were.

We need to clarify things.

We await that clarification.

We have chosen, given the attacks on Danish targets, and mob cries for further attacks on, and even the murder of, on Danish citizens in Gaza and the West Bank, not just to pull out our citizens. We are now announcing an end to the aid that for so many years, at such great cost to Danish taxpayers, with no evident sign of gratitude, has been received by the "Palestinian" authority. This is not being done because of the fantastic corruption in that authority and the disappearance of billions in the aid provided by Danes, and other Europeans, and Americans. No, it is being done as a sign of our displeasure, our dismay, and our anger.

Yes, we Danes can feel anger. When our flags our burned, when our embassies attacked, when Danes are shot, and others threatened with having their throats slit all over the Muslim world, when no Dane can now feel safe traveling to much of that world without having to disguise his country of origin, when we find that Muslims who have been offered so much help by Denmark, not least a home within Denmark, turn on us and try to whip others up against us, then we are angry.

Our anger is not of the fanatical kind. We are not out in a mob. We are not screaming. But we have taken it all in. We are beginning to study matters that we did not study before. We are beginning to understand that perhaps we were negligent in opening our free societies up to those who do not share, and cannot conceivably be made even to understand, our notions of free speech, of the free exercise of conscience, of the very idea of individual liberties.

No, we have heard, over the past few weeks, voices quite different from what we expected. And we are listening to those voices, and reacting accordingly and realistically.

Where is the Western leader who will speak this way? Is there none? Why not? How long will it be, how much more will we have to lose, before someone has the courage to deliver this kind of speech?

Anti-dhimmitude: Bereaved parents call on Oscars to drop suicide bomb movie

"Bereaved parents call on Oscars to drop suicide bomb movie," from The Telegraph, with thanks to Solomon, who has more details, including a petition you can sign:

The families of three Israeli teenagers who were killed in a suicide bombing are appealing to the organisers of the Oscars to drop a film from the nominations because they say it glorifies terrorism.

Paradise Now, a film about two friends from the West Bank who decide to carry out a joint suicide attack in Israel, will compete in the best foreign language category at Sunday's Academy Awards.

Sunday is also the third anniversary of a attack by terrorists on a bus in the northern Israeli town of Haifa, which killed 17 people and wounded 53 others.

Among the dead were Yuval Mendelvitch, a 13-year-old boy whose parents yesterday sent a petition to Sid Gains, the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures, calling for Paradise Now's nomination to be withdrawn.

They are supported by the parents of Tal Kehrmann, a 17-year-old girl, and Assaf Tzur, a 17-year-old boy, who were among the dead.

Yossi Mendelvitch described the controversial film, which follows the two would-be bombers as they prepare to carry out their attack, as "dangerous propaganda". His petition will be presented in Los Angeles on Friday.

Arab-American Psychologist Wafa Sultan: There Is No Clash of Civilizations but a Clash between the Mentality of the Middle Ages and That of the 21st Century

More courageous statements from the outstanding Wafa Sultan. From MEMRITV, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Wafa Sultan: The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: "I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger." When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to start this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.

My colleague has said that he never offends other people's beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them Ahl Al-Dhimma, another time he calls them the "People of the Book," and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians "those who incur Allah's wrath." Who told you that they are "People of the Book"? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them "those who incur Allah's wrath," or "those who have gone astray," and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?

I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it.

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Are you a heretic?

Wafa Sultan: You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural...

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran...

Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you.

Bravo! What a courageous and brilliant answer to an intimidating question and statement.

Wafa Sultan: The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.

Read it all.

Europe objects to El Al's anti-missile shield

European countries set to bar Israeli aircraft equipped with ant-missile system from landing at their airports. From Ynet, with thanks to GB.

El Al passenger planes will be barred from landing in some European countries because they have been equipped with defense systems against shoulder-held missiles, German newspaper Der Spiegel reported. The Swiss aviation authority has already barred El Al aircrafts equipped with the new system from landing in the country, and the German paper said more countries are expected to soon follow. "If we catch Israeli planes fitted with this system in our airports, they will be grounded," a spokesman for the Swiss aviation authority told Der Spiegel.

The "Flight Guard" defense system is a military system that has been modified to fit civilian aircraft.

This battle-proven system is capable of detecting an approaching missile, warning the crew and automatically activating countermeasures in the form of flares that will divert the missile from its course.

The system has already been installed on a Boeing 767, and will soon be fitted on other planes as well.

'System will cause no damage'

According to defense sources in Israel, the European ban is "odd and based mostly on a misunderstanding." The officials say European countries are primarily concerned about false alarms that will result from the launching of decoy flares over central airports.

"Because these are unique flares, such a malfunction will cause no panic or collateral damages. Instead of thanking Israel, some countries prefer to stick their head in the sand," an Israeli source said...

Bruno: Defeating Defeatism - The End of the Phony War

A new piece by the European essayist Wolfgang Bruno:

I have stated before that we in the West need to face down our internal enemies, the twin trolls of Denial and Defeatism, before we can have any chance of dealing with Islam. Yes, the Islamic threat is very real and could lead to a cataclysmic world war unless stopped. No, it's not too late to win this. Not yet. Writer Mark Steyn does a good job at devouring the former troll, but insists on feeding the latter. As Lawrence Auster demonstrates, Steyn continues to claim that we have in fact already lost, and must settle for "a Muslim majority world." He talks as if he is the Churchill of our age, yet displays a resigned defeatism that would have made even Neville Chamberlain blush.

Contrary to the views expressed by many, the madness of the Muhammad cartoons issue can in hindsight turn out to have been a blessing in disguise. Eurabia's legions of spin doctors were quite successful in placing the blame for 9/11, the Madrid and the London bombings on US and Israeli foreign policies. These attacks may actually have strengthened Eurabia. Not so this time. The first cracks in this wall came with the murder of Theo van Gogh. With the Danish cartoon case, these cracks have now grown into a chasm.

The Phony War was a phase in early WW2 marked by few military operations in Continental Europe, in the months following the German invasion of Poland. What we have witnessed during these past few months is the end of the Phony War against Islamic Jihad. The election of hard-line president Ahmadinejad in Iran and of Hamas in the Palestinian Territories, the Muslim riots in France and the international unrest triggered by the Muhammad cartoons case mark a watershed in this battle. After having carefully, and one must admit skilfully, built up the mythology of Islamic tolerance for decades, Muslims now blew their own cover. This is end of taqiyya, and from the Muslim point of view, it probably came too soon. It is indeed possible for Muslims to win this, but it would have made more sense for them to lay low for another couple of decades, and quietly continue the demographic Jihad through migration conquest. Of course, being Muslims, they have to boast and brag all the time, and haven't got the patience to wait that long. This critical character flaw, more than infidel strength, is why they will most likely lose. Just like the Japanese during WW2, who hailed the attack on Pearl Harbor as a great victory, the sheer arrogance of their creed blinds them from realizing when they make huge mistakes that could eventually cost them victory.

There is now a critical mass of Europeans who see clearly that Islam and Muslim immigration constitute a mortal danger to their freedom and their civilization. They feel confused and scared, but first of all angry. If this is the true face of Islam, doesn't that mean that our academic elites, our media and our political leaders have lied to us systematically for decades? Muslims misunderstand the mentality and potential response from the infidels because they see mainly the appeasement of the political class. What they don't see is the simmering defiance that is growing at the grassroots level.

What we need now is not another column by Mark Steyn telling us that all is lost and we might as well surrender pre-emptively. What we need now is anger. Anger gives you energy, instead of the resigned passivity bred by defeatism. However, we should be careful not direct this anger towards that favorite Eurabian boogeyman, the USA and Israel, nor should we resort to the time-tested European tradition of targeting random "foreigners." It wasn't the Americans or the Israelis who brought us into this mess, and it certainly wasn't the Indian dentist or the Chinese shopkeeper down the corner. It was in fact our very own EU elites.

Americans tend to consider the EU as a joke. It's not, because it's not funny. Apart from a few vague statements, the EU has largely abandoned Denmark during the cartoon incident. "European unity" only exists whenever Brussels wants to subvert the democratic process in individual member states and force more Islam down our throats, selling us out behind our backs through the intricate networks of the Euro-Arab Dialogue. The Danish embassies had hardly burnt down before Javier Solana, the "Foreign Minister" of the European Union, promised his real masters the Saudis that the EU would henceforth work to limit freedom of speech for half a billion people. And he can't be held responsible for this by the European public, since he doesn't answer to any democratically elected government. The EU is not a joke, the EU is evil, destroying freedom across an entire continent and spreading instability far beyond the borders of Europe. The Cold War was won when Ronal Reagan publicly labelled the Soviet Union "the Evil Empire." A generation later, we are witnessing the rise of another Evil Empire. Not the Soviet Union, but the European Union. It's time to bring this one down, too. The European Union, not the USA and definitely not Israel, is the greatest threat to world peace today. It is appeasement by the EU that has emboldened the Islamic Jihad, and not just in the West. The EU is an increasingly totalitarian entity that is post-democratic and neo-feudalist. The buildings of the European Commission should be turned into a museum of the history of dhimmitude and Jihad across the world. Parts of it could be torn down and displayed next to pieces of the Berlin Wall, symbols of past tyranny and oppression and the ultimate triumph of freedom. Javier Solana, Chris Patten and their ilk should be tried for treason in public trials to reveal the full scale of the Eurabian project.

There is a growing estrangement between the peoples of Europe and their elites. People sense that they are not being told the truth, and feel betrayed. Somebody needs to show them just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Publish Bat Ye'or's book Eurabia online, both in the full version and in abridged versions of 50 and 5 pages. Pay the author whatever she wants for the copyrights, and encourage the translation of the book into multiple European languages. Store it online on websites such as Faith Freedom International and Jihad Watch, as well as major blogs based outside of Eurabian jurisdiction, and encourage visitors to download the text or display it on their own websites.

This principle could be repeated with a number of books critical of Islam, creating a flood of information bypassing politically correct media and official censorship. Such an operation could receive clandestine support of the Bush administration. It would cost a fraction of the war in Iraq, and achieve a lot more, both in the West and in the world in general.

Perhaps instead of pinning our hopes on an Islamic Reformation that will probably never materialize, Westerners should rather focus on an Enlightenment and a new Renaissance. Not in the Islamic world, but in Europe and the West. Wishful thinking, you say? Well, although the situation is now very serious, it is in fact not impossible to imagine such an outcome. Moreover, it is important that somebody formulates an alternative, positive vision to rival that of Islam and Eurabia, or the only alternatives ordinary Europeans will be stuck with are extremist political movements. And then we will end up with a Clash of Fascisms and the death of European democracy. Hope is important. Without formulating a positive vision of hope we can never win this.

Muslims always claim that the West owes much to Islam, and that Islamic influences triggered the Renaissance. That's not true. But maybe it will be this time. It is true that the West in general and Europe in particular has lost its way at the beginning of the 21st century. Perhaps this life-and-death struggle with Islam is precisely the slap in the face that we need to regroup and revitalize our civilization. Europe will now be forced to rethink her culture and the entire basis of Western civilization, if she is going to cure the weaknesses that are currently making her vulnerable to Islamic infiltration. We need to rebuild a stronger sense of Western unity, much fractured by the Eurabian Union and the anti-Western, pre-Enlightenment ideology of Multiculturalism. If so, Islam would indeed be responsible for triggering a Western Renaissance, the Second Renaissance. Ironically, Islam itself would be critically, perhaps mortally wounded by this struggle, and Bernard Lewis would be proved wrong. Europe, or at least most of Europe, will not be Islamic by the end of his century. It is more likely that Islam itself will have ceased to be a global force of any significance by that point. But it is important to realize that such a result will not come by itself. It will require Europeans, Westerners and infidels in general to grow some backbone, end appeasement and openly confront the very real Islamic threat we are now facing. If we do so, I remain confident that we will prevail. We just have to listen a bit less to the defeatist siren song of Mark Steyn.

Iranian police attack female soccer fans

Women's Rights Under Sharia Alert from the Islamic Republic of Iran: "Iran police prevent women from watching football match," from Iran Focus, with thanks to Mackie:

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 02 – Iran’s State Security Forces attacked female football fans in Tehran on Wednesday after they held a defiant protest against the government decision to ban women from football stadiums.

Dozens of young women, who had bought tickets and hoped to cheer on their national team, were all banned from entering Tehran’s Azadi Stadium. The ban has been in force for years, but a few dozen women have challenged it in recent months. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard-line government recently decided to enforce the ban more strongly.

After being refused entry into the stands, the women organised a demonstration outside the stadium and quickly brought to the scene banners which read, “Azadi Stadium: 100,000 men-only arena” and “We also want to cheer on our national team”

They were immediately threatened with arrest by police who had been placed on standby.

Within minutes, the security forces started to attack the teenage girls and young women. They were all forced into a bus and driven away.

Anti-dhimmitude from one man in Texas

John Caffery is no coward, and he is ready to defend the core principles of our civilization. Sir, I tip my hat to you. If only there were tens of millions more like you. "Cartoon flap no joke for resident," from the Beaumont Enterprise, with thanks to LGF:

BEAUMONT - John Caffery called it an act of cowardice by U.S. newspapers for not publishing controversial Muslim-based cartoons, so the local resident decided to take matters into his own hands.

On the corner of Daisy and Norwood drives, Caffery erected a large sign Sunday afternoon with one of the cartoons. It also carries a message about the subsequent rioting throughout the world caused by the publishing of the cartoons in a Danish newspaper.

Caffery couldn't understand why American newspapers opted to omit the cartoons but write about the rioting. He said newspapers were not giving the public all of the information they needed to understand.

So he decided to be a source of information, he said, because it's a matter of free speech. At the very least, he can let his local community know the rioting, violence and denouncement of the United States is over a cartoon.

"It's cowardly for (a) newspaper giving in to the pressure from the Muslims for these so-called offending cartoons," Caffery said. "Most of the cartoons are pretty silly. The one out there on the sign is probably one of the least offending cartoons."

The sign is four feet by eight feet, according to Caffery's estimation, and was made as "large as it feasibly" could be made, he said. A cartoon of Muhammad's head shaped like a lit bomb is depicted to the left and a statement on the right reads "For This Cartoon In Danish and Nowegian [sic] Newspapers Muslems [sic] Worldwide Have Rioted, and Killed and Now Offer $11 Million Reward to Kill The Cartoonist."

At the beginning of the statement, an arrow points to the cartoon.

Caffery, 67, lists his e-mail address and phone number. He said he encourages people to call or write him to receive information about the cartoons.

"It's not that I'm anti-Islam," he said. "It's that I'm anti-anybody who says you have to do as they insist or they're going to kill you."

Bravo.

Bostom on the Islamic concept of freedom

Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, delineates the Islamic concept of freedom, which is considerably different from what the President probably has in mind when he proclaims the advent of freedom in the Islamic world. "In No 'Hurr(i)y(ya)' for Freedom," from The American Thinker:

During several notable speeches since 2003, including both inaugural and State of the Union addresses, President Bush has repeatedly stressed the paramount importance of promoting freedom in the Middle East. Speaking in an almost messianic idiom, he has termed such a quest

“the calling of our time …the calling of our country.”

Most recently, he reiterated this theme while speaking to The American Legion on February 24, 2006, and offered the following sanguine assessment of progress:

“Freedom is on the march in the broader Middle East. The hope of liberty now reaches from Kabul to Baghdad, to Beirut, and beyond. Slowly but surely, we’re helping to transform the broader Middle East from an arc of instability into an arc of freedom. And as freedom reaches more people in this vital region, we’ll have new allies in the war on terror, and new partners in the cause of moderation in the Muslim world and in the cause of peace.”

Despite President Bush’s uplifting rhetoric and ebullient appraisal of these events—which epitomize American hopes and values at their quintessential best—there is a profound, deeply troubling flaw in his (and/or his advisers) analysis which simply ignores the vast gulf between Western and Islamic conceptions of freedom itself.

Hurriyya (Arabic for “freedom”) and the uniquely Western concept of freedom are completely at odds.

Hurriyya “freedom” is – as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the lionized “Greatest Sufi Master”, expressed it - “being perfect slavery.” And this conception is not merely confined to the Sufis’ perhaps metaphorical understanding of the relationship between Allah the “master” and his human “slaves.”

The late American scholar of Islam, Franz Rosenthal (d. 2003) analyzed the larger context of hurriyya in Muslim society. He notes the historical absence of hurriyya as “…a fundamental political concept that could have served as a rallying cry for great causes”. An individual Muslim

“…was expected to consider subordination of his own freedom to the beliefs, morality and customs of the group as the only proper course of behavior…”.

Thus politically, Rosenthal concludes,

“…the individual was not expected to exercise any free choice as to how he wished to be governed…In general, …governmental authority admitted of no participation of the individual as such, who therefore did not possess any real freedom vis-à-vis it.”

Bernard Lewis, in his analysis of hurriyya for the venerated Encyclopedia of Islam, discusses this concept in the latter phases of the Ottoman Empire, through the contemporary era. After highlighting a few “cautious” or “conservative” (Lewis’ characterization) reformers and their writings, Lewis maintains,

“…there is still no idea that the subjects have any right to share in the formation or conduct of government—to political freedom, or citizenship, in the sense which underlies the development of political thought in the West. While conservative reformers talked of freedom under law, and some Muslim rulers even experimented with councils and assemblies government was in fact becoming more and not less arbitrary….”

Lewis also makes the important point that Western colonialism ameliorated this chronic situation:

“During the period of British and French domination, individual freedom was never much of an issue. Though often limited and sometimes suspended, it was on the whole more extensive and better protected than either before or after.” [emphasis added]

And Lewis concludes with a stunning observation, when viewed in light of the present travails in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world, President Bush’s optimistic assessment notwithstanding:

“In the final revulsion against the West, Western democracy too was rejected as a fraud and a delusion, of no value to Muslims.”

Hamas’ resounding victory in the January, 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections represents, unfortunately, a much wider trend in the Islamic Middle East. Each time open or even relatively open elections occur, authentic Islamic movements either emerge with outright electoral victories—as in Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco, and the West Bank/Gaza—or at minimum, bolster their representation dramatically, as happened in Egypt under more controlled (i.e., governmentally constrained) circumstances. Historian Meir Litvak notes aptly that this consistent contemporary phenomenon,

“..highlights once more the power of Islam as the primary framework of identity in the Arab world, and the structural weakness of non-Islamist ideologies and political movements.”

The great 20th century scholar of Islamic Law, G. H. Bousquet, wrote in 1950,

“Islam first came before the world as a doubly totalitarian system. It claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also, by the divinely appointed Muhammadan law, by the principles of the fiqh, to regulate down to the smallest details the whole life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer….the study of Muhammadan law (dry and forbidding though it may appear to those who confine themselves to the indispensable study of the fiqh) is of great importance to the world today.”

Bousquet’s admonition to study Islamic Law (Shari’a), or at least recognize the profound importance of its influence on basic Muslim conceptions, has perhaps even greater urgency more than a half-century later, in 2006. While electoral processes in the Islamic Middle East may have further enfranchised the Shari’a-based understanding of hurriyya, it is delusional to equate this conception with the freedom espoused by John Stuart Mill in “On Liberty.”

EU to Muslims: We're so sorry. Please don't hurt us

"EU calls for end to 'bitterness' with Muslim world," from DPA, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BRUSSELS - The European Union on Monday said it was time for an end to "bitterness" between Europe and Islamic countries over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

"We must concentrate on the next steps and future activities to reduce tensions and become more aware of what unites us rather than what divides us," Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik told reporters.

Both sides must make a "real effort to put some of the bitterness behind us," Plassnik underlined. Austria is current president of the 25-nation EU.

Diplomats said a statement on the issue released by EU foreign ministers was the result of a compromise between governments like

Britain which wanted more conciliatory language towards Muslim countries and others, including the Netherlands, which insisted the bloc must not be seen to be apologising on the issue.

The final statement voiced "deep concern at the events that followed the publication of cartoons" and said EU governments "acknowledged and regretted" that the caricatures were considered offensive and distressing by Muslims across the world.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the 25-nation bloc strongly supported freedom of the press and the freedom of expression but added: "We regret that other people's religious feelings have been hurt."

Hamas warns EU: your money will not make us change

Well, they can't say they haven't been warned. But the dhimmi leaders of Eurabia, desperate to maintain their illusions and delusions, will no doubt keep the money flowing anyway. "European aid cannot buy Hamas: Meshaal," from AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

MOSCOW (AFP) - European aid to Palestine could not persuade the Palestinian group Hamas to change its policy positions, a leader of the radical Islamic movement due in Moscow for talks this week said in an interview.

"The Palestinian people cannot sell their legitimate claims," Khaled Meshaal said in an interview with Russia's Vremya Novostei daily, responding to a question on the European Union's decision to unblock financial aid for the Palestinians.

"There can be no trading on that, with money on one side and on the other side our homeland and our rights... Humanitarian aid should not be given with conditions. It's inadmissible," he said.

On Monday, the European Union released 120 million euros (143.2 million dollars) to help the transitional Palestinian government fund its basic needs for about two months.

Fitzgerald: The Times piles folly upon folly

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the New York (New Duranty) Times' puff piece last Sunday on Rahmatullah, former Taliban spokesman and current Yalie:

Let us suppose that this former defender of the Taliban has a complete change of heart. Let us suppose he comes to realize that the Taliban was awful, that his role in supporting it was itself intolerable, that equality for women is necessary and desirable, that the Taliban's worst features were a bad thing, and so on.

Let's assume Rahmatullah changes. It is doubtful that he could ever give up Islam altogether, and that means he is not giving up a lot. His comment about rational Western, non-Muslim man is truthful, and his observation that in Afghanistan everything comes down to religion is also truthful. But what will he make of that observable truth? What might he himself throw out of his mental baggage? Might he come to believe that the very idea of "Jihad" to spread Islam is wrong? Might he even come to the conclusion that perhaps Islam is not so wonderful, and that the brainwashing of the Taliban was simply an extreme form of the ordinary brainwashing that those born into Muslim societies must endure, and which has such a remarkable and long-lasting effect? And would he ever conclude that he, and others born into Islam, have a perfect right to cease to believe, to no longer call themselves Muslims?

Well, let's pretend that all of this could happen. Let's pretend, in other words, that he could come to accept the very notion of the equality of Believer and Infidel (the division that underlies all of Islam), and that, further, he could somehow make his way to the notion of freedom of conscience. It could happen.

And then? Then what? What is the lesson to be learned? Is the lesson to be learned that if you take the Taliban equivalent of the Wild Boy of Aveyron, the boy supposedly taken in infancy by wolves, and raised by them (see Roger Shattuck's book), and then take him and give him the best that the Western world presumably has to offer, a Yale quasi-education, then he, Rahmatullah, will find his way to civilization, will leave behind his Taliban ways, and perhaps the rest of his Islam-based comprehension of the universe, and accept the animating ideas of Western Man, ideas that too many Western men now take for granted? Let's suppose he did. Then what? What is the significance of what is, in fact (and this may be the most amusing part of all), a tacit recognition by the Times of his primitiveness, and of the need to "save his soul" (every bit as much as the Reverend George Fortune, of Shona-Grammar fame, or other missionaries in the African bush). And suppose it worked? Suppose at fantastic expense ($100,000 or so), this one soul were to be saved, by getting him to see the world differently by being plucked out and given every chance (chances not available to the children of many non-Muslims in this country, who are so boring, well, so ordinary, compared to the exotic former Taliban spokesman, Rahmatullah). Then what?

Shall the Infidels of this world take, as their task, to do the same for other Muslims? And how many of the world's 1 billion Muslims would be offered the kind of thing offered to this boy, who has taken a place that might also have been filled, for example, by a poor immigrant from Siberia, or one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan, for there is only so much money and attention and time to go around? Is that our task? The Infidel Man's Burden? That is what we are now doing with our $450 billion in Iraq (and Afghanistan) -- trying to make these countries (despite Islam, which reinforces despotism and inshallah-fatalism and susceptibility to violence, to aggression, to conspiracy-theories) into places that are acceptable in a way that only Turkey, after 80 years of sustained and systematic Kemalism imposed from the top down, has yet managed among Muslim states to achieve.

And this assumption of the Infidel Man's Burden takes place at a time when we in the Western world are being subject to every kind of internal challenge by Muslims, especially in Western Europe, to the laws, customs, manners, understandings that make the West the West. Everywhere in the Western world the large-scale presence of Muslims has created lives, for the indigenous Infidels, that are much more unpleasant, much more expensive (the expense of all that monitoring, all that extra security everywhere), and much more physically dangerous. Ask the Jews of Paris, who turned out in force for a march in memory of Ilan Halimi two days ago. Ask Geert Wilders or Jyllands-Posten cartoonists or Will Cummins or, for that matter, Magdi Allam and Ayaan Hirsi Ali about the security details assigned to them.

We can't rely on this one-by-one saving of Muslim souls from Islam. We don't have the time. Da'wa and demographics are against us. We don't have the money. We are not doing things properly. Our leaders, our Great and Good, are not thinking properly. They have to start.

As for The New Duranty Times, the story of this student -- the Wild Boy of Aveyron for our times -- not only committed great errors, but in committing those errors, lost a chance to enlighten its hapless readers about Islam.

For example, the writer (Chip Brown) tells us that "the international image of the Taliban was increasingly dominated by the Vice and Virtue busybodies who were checking the lengths of beards and thrashing women with leather straps and herding crowds into the Kabul soccer stadium to witness lashings, amputations, and executions."

Stop right there. Notice how one sentence is given over to the Taliban regime and what it did. It starts with the problem of "image" -- the "international image of the Taliban" -- which already deflects attention from what they did. It was not an "image" problem. There was no hint of the Taliban merely having their sins exaggerated and their presumed virtues ignored. Why use that distracting phrase about an "image problem" at all? And why use the word "busybodies" to describe the Vice-and-Virtue police who merely enforce the strictest strictures, as strictly as they can -- but what strictures? The strictures of Islam. The strictures that forbid, for example, music, so that the wedding-singers are banned. The strictures against activities that do not promote Islam. In Islam, sports of a martial cast, because they prepare the young for the Jihad, are allowed -- wrestling, archery, etc. But those that do not enforce martial sensibilities are generally forbidden. Was the banning of kite-flying, one of the few things available to poor Afghanis, simply a Taliban whim, or did it have support in Islam? The author should have told us. He did not.

And when he tells us that crowds were herded in to a "Kabul stadium to witness lashings, amputations, and executions," he goes entirely too fast. How many thousands of people watched as women accused of adultery, for example, were not merely "executed" but stomped to death until they were just small puddles of flesh and blood? Give us the full story. Don't be so quick. Don't just race through it, the way some people in their reporting, or even in books, about World War II, would simply, in the old days, give a sentence or a paragraph about the "destruction of the Jews." Not so fast, buster.

And later on we read that "if part of being a good Muslim means always telling the truth, as he was raised to believe, he was learning how hard it is to be virtuous and a government spokesman at the same time." This is simply stated. Yet there is example after example of Rahmatullah, as a spokesman for the Taliban, displaying all the art and craft of Taqiyya, the religiously-sanctioned dissimulation, to protect the Faith by lying about either its contents, or about what he himself believed. This doctrine originated in Shi'a Islam (as a way of dealing with persecuting Sunnis) but is now commonly employed by Sunni Muslims in their dealings with Infidels, for as Muhammad said (and Muhammad is the Perfect Man), "war is deceit." And Jihad is war, and participation in Jihad to spread Islam until it covers the globe, until it "dominates and is not to be dominated," is a duty, sometimes only collective, sometimes individual, of every Believer. One sees examples of such rhetorical trickery in Rahmatullah’s debate with Harold Koh of Yale Law School (now the dean), who to his credit would have none of it.

The New Duranty Times' coverage, or failure to cover, Islam is by now world-famous. Take a look in the search engine for stories here about "The New Duranty Times." And just today, both the title and the story by Craig Smith about the French police harrying those who would distribute pork soup is couched in such terms as to make us think that the organizers are deliberately attempting to offend, in equal measure, Muslims and -- of course -- Jews. But though a quote is carefully adduced to show anti-Jewish sentiment from one of the soup distribution’s far-from-gentil organisateurs (for they are opposed, you see, to the deux-rives Club Mediterranee that Dominique de Villepin and others until recently saw as the future of France, and Europe, together with their putative natural allies, the Arab Muslims of the Maghreb -- as if it merely an inland sea, and not an inner belief-system, separated the two), the whole thing was clearly directed at helping the French poor, not Muslim immigrants who are regarded by those distributing the soup as a menace, a weight, a drain on France. Not all of the people handing out the soup are pleasant. So what? Does everyone have to be perfectly wonderful, well-educated, tactful in expression, in order to express fears about, or opposition to, the Muslim invasion of France or of Europe? Why? If that were so, no war of self-defense could ever be fought.

But I've saved best for last. It is this (on p. 90 of the Sunday Duranty Magazine):

"That spring and summer of 2001, from a Western perspective at least, Mullah Omar and the hard-line Taliban seemed driven by a perverse desire to pile folly upon folly. In May, having blown up the Buddhas, hounded girls from school and implemented laws and practices that in some cases violated the principles of Islam, they took a page from the Nazis and proposed that non-Muslims wear identity labels on their clothes."

Now read those two sentences. They are emblematic of everything that is wrong with this article, everything that has been so wrong for decades but especially in the last few years, when there is no excuse, in the coverage, in the sense of responsibility, of the editors and writers and reporters at The New Duranty Times.

Let's go through those two sentences bit by dismal bit, shall we?

"That spring and summer of 2001, from a Western perspective at least [why this clause that simply reflects, and promotes, a dangerous relativism in readers' response?] Mullah Omar and the hard-line ["hard-line" in what sense? In the sense that they wish to fully, rather than incompletely, have lives ruled by the dictates of Islam? Or "hard-line" for some other reason? The epithet needs either to be removed, or to be explained. As it now stands, it sets up in readers the idea that this Taliban consists not only of unpleasant characters, but of people who are not unpleasant because they are merely insistent on following all, and not merely some, of the dictates of Islam -- i.e. they are insistent on being fully-observant Muslims] Taliban seemed driven by a perverse desire to pile folly upon folly. ["…a perverse desire to pile folly upon folly" -- or simply a desire to do what for 1300 years Muslims have been doing everywhere, which is to destroy, or to vandalize so that they are no longer objects of reverence, all statues. Just read Qaradawi, quoting Muhammad, who would not enter a house with "dogs or statues." Find out why the Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed. What texts, what tenets, made them do it? Don't merely reduce it all to an inexplicable and "perverse desire."]

“In May, having blown up the Buddhas” [two giant statues, important to everyone interested in the world’s artistic heritage, blown up, the blowers-up prompted by nothing more, apparently, than a “perverse desire to pile folly upon folly”], the same Taliban, prompted by that “perverse desire” that could not be sated, “hounded girls from school.” [Is it possible that there is something in the Islamic texts that might explain this, as it might explain the inability of women in Saudi Arabia to leave their homes without a male chaperone, or the inability of women in Iran and Sudan and Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan to be free of the chador, the burkha, whatever it may locally be called?]. They “implemented laws and practices that in some cases violated the principles of Islam.”

Now let’s take a breather. Look at the last phrase above: that phrase is simply thrown in, just after the business about the blowing up of Buddhas, and the hounding of girls from school, neither of which is attributed or connected in any way to Islam. But this next phrase suggests, in fact, that they are connected to, or attributable to, the tenets and attitudes of Islam, for this phrase refers to other things that were done and that the writer, Mr. Chip Brown, regards as “laws and practices [not the destruction of the Buddhas, not the hounding of the girls from school} that in some cases violated the principles of Islam.”

I know what you are all thinking. You are now waiting to hear, Gentle Reader, what those “cases” that “violated the principles of Islam” are? You think Chip Brown, given the time and space for the cover story in the Sunday Magazine Section of The New Duranty Times, is now going to tell you about the “laws and practices” put in place by the Taliban that “in some cases violated the principles of Islam.”

But you will be disappointed. For not a single such case, not a single such practice, is offered in evidence by Chip Brown. Apparently not a single one of the many careful, thoughtful editors, editors of the text as a whole, editors who checked the other editors, and the line editors, never thought to ask, never thought this would be place to put in for the edification of readers even one or two examples to illustrate this assertion that “in some cases” the “laws and practices” were in violation of Islam. We still don’t have any idea what those might be. We await clarification from The New Duranty Times.

And then, as the last nail in the coffin of the alarmingly slimming-down (Craigslist and the Internet perhaps being able to inflict more damage on The New Duranty Times than all of us who have been so infuriated at its failure to measure up, over so many years) New Duranty Times – alarming to the owners and staff, not to us who regard its travails with glee – there is this: “they took a page from the Nazis and proposed that non-Muslims wear identity labels on their clothes.”

Stop right there. “They took a page from the Nazis.” Did they now? So there is nothing in the 1350-year history of Muslim conquest of non-Muslim lands, and subjugation of non-Muslim peoples, that ever required identifying marks on the dwellings, or the persons, of non-Muslims? What about the blue belt, the zunnar, traditionally required of Christians? What about the yellow identifying mark of Jews, that came not from Adolf Hitler but from the Court of Haroun al-Raschid in Abbasid Baghdad? And what about the turbans of different colors, assigned early on, as early as the 9th century by the Baghdad Caliph Mutawakkil? (That swirling minaret of sand that stands next to the bombed mosque of Al-Askariya is named after Mutawakkil.)

Chip Brown apparently is completely unaware that non-Muslims, dhimmis, had to wear identifying garb. What about all of those many editors who should have been going through such a major piece with a fine tooth comb? They were, every man or woman jack of them, so ignorant of Islam that they had no idea that the dhimmis, the non-Muslims permitted to stay alive under Muslim rule, had to wear identifying garb -- either the wide cloth belt, the zunnar (blue for Christians, yellow for Jews), or the identifying scrap of cloth on the clothes, the “ghiyar,” or both? Why is it that people who choose to write on a subject that requires a knowledge of Islam feel no need to learn about Islam? Wouldn’t one have thought that the editors of The New York Times would, given all the discussion of Islam, and given the failure of that paper even now to print even one of those famous Danish cartoons even as it continues in seemingly unselfconscious fashion to prate about freedom of speech (a subject on which The New Duranty Times has lost the moral right to proffer an opinion, much less preach to anyone, until it manages to show a reasonable sampling of those cartoons) take some care at least in this particular?

The New Duranty Times carried a story on May 24, 2001 about the proposals by the Taliban for identifying marks on the clothes of Hindus This was presented by the Taliban as not so much an imposition as “for their own good” – if identified as Hindus, they would not be harassed, so it was claimed, by the religious police. Of course it was nothing of the kind. It went back to the time of Al-Mutawakkil, back to the earliest centuries of Islam and the disabilities imposed on the non-Muslims in the lands conquered by Muslims for Islam.

Surely Chip Brown might have done a little investigation. And if he looked beyond The New Duranty Times, he might have found in Ahmed Rashid’s piece on this Taliban proposal in “The Telegraph,” the correct reference to established (over 1300 years, and counting) practice by Muslims, a practice put paid to only by the pressure and presence, and overwhelming power, of the outside Western (Infidel) powers. Rashid reported as follows:

Taliban officials said yesterday that they would promulgate a religious edict, forcing Hindu women to veil themselves like Muslim women in Afghanistan. Hindu men would be forced to wear special colours or marks on their clothing.

Mohammed Wali, a minister of the Taliban's religious police, announced in Kabul: "The decision is in line with Islam. Religious minorities living in an Islamic state must be identified.”

A decade ago tens of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs lived in the major cities of Afghanistan, but their numbers have fallen to fewer than 5,000 since the Taliban took over Kabul in 1996. Jews and Christians also lived freely in Afghanistan during the Mujahideen guerrillas' war against the occupying Soviet army in the 1980s.

The Taliban proposal angered Indian officials. "We deplore such orders which discriminate against minorities," a Foreign Ministry official said in New Delhi. "It is further evidence of the backward ideological underpinning of the Taliban."

The drive against Hindus is likely further to isolate the Taliban, which already faces sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. Hindus in Kabul said that wearing an identifying mark would make them vulnerable to further repression by Taliban soldiers and police and would turn them into social outcasts.

This makes sense. This relates what the Taliban did to the only true source of their “laws and practices.” The members of the Taliban didn’t need Hitler or the Nazis to drive out those Christians and Jews who had once existed in Afghanistan. In The Road to Oxiana Robert Byron refers to the Jewish traders in lambskins and wool who were once so prominent in Afghanistan, when Islam was still “village” or “peasant” Islam, not yet reawakened by videocassette, by audiocassette, by satellite channel, even by the Internet -- which have now penetrated to the most remote Muslim communities.

But Chip Brown did not know this. He was too busy, apparently, to relate what the Taliban did to their belief-system. Or perhaps he found the task of reading Qur’an (with comprehension, which takes time, and some guidance) and Hadith just too taxing. Besides, just how important could it be?

And possibly that attitude is what explains the gigantic, and embarrassing, failure of The New Duranty Times to make any attempt to make clear to its readers why, for example, so many in Europe, so many hyper-tolerant Europeans oppose Muslim immigration. And that opposition is not made up merely of the kind of semi-fascists whom Craig Smith and others go out of their way to dredge up and present as the “opposition to Muslims” in France or Holland. Remember that ludicrous Homeric epithet, “right-wing,” affixed to that amused and amusing libertine Pim Fortuyn? What made Pim Fortuyn “right-wing”? Was it worry over the Total Belief-System of Islam, the totalitarianism and emphasis on the collective, and indifference to, or even hatred of, freedom for the individual, that is such a distinctive feature of Islam? Could that have made Pim Fortuyn “right wing” in the editorial eyes of The New Duranty Times?

Eventually readers are not going to be able to stand it. Eventually it will not merely be a case of this or that disgruntled group of people, disgusted with the coverage of, say, Israel. Eventually the entire scandal of how The New Duranty Times, and other newspapers, cover -– or fail to -– and make sense -– or fail to -– of Islam, and how it connects to the observable demands, and acts, of Muslims, not least in the Lands of the Infidels, in Europe and North America, will simply attract too much attention, and then too much contempt, for the editors to stand it.

When will that be? Will it be next week? Next month? Or will it come very s-l-o-w-l-y, so that in 2010, perhaps, we will begin to read the home truths that clear away confusion, and make clear what seem to be discrete and inexplicable acts, born as Chip Brown says of “perverse desires” to “pile folly upon folly”?

No, it is the editors of The New Duranty Times who have been exhibiting to all of their readers the “perverse desire” to become permanent laughing stocks, as they, in the full light of history and of you, pile folly upon folly.

Dhimmitude at the White House: no jihadists in anti-terror plan

Just when I thought we were making progress, what with Bush's talk a few months ago about the caliphate. But now it looks as if the Administration is back in full dhimmi mode. "Too Many Cooks, and So Far No Broth," from US News and World Report (scroll down), with thanks to Angie:

Infighting is plaguing revision of the administration's three-year-old National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. An implementation plan now under debate calls for heavy emphasis on waging an ideological war against radical Islam, promoting democracy, and stopping weapons of mass destruction. But the plan is bogged down, mired in interagency squabbling over turf and tasking, sources say. "There are just too many chefs," says one observer. At least the participants have agreed on one key change: Worried that they will offend Muslims, they've replaced the word "jihadist" with "extremist."

Yes, we must not offend Muslims by calling our enemies what they call themselves and formulating our policies accordingly. Oh, no. It is much preferable to lose the war than to offend anyone.

Lose the war? Certainly. Not militarily. Culturally. Socially. You cannot possibly defeat an enemy whom you are afraid even to name.

Australian Muslim lawyer: hey, Sharia isn't so bad

In "A soulless distortion of Islamic law," Australian lawyer Irfan Yusef argues that Australian Treasurer Peter Costello was wrong to say that Muslims who wanted to see Australia become a Sharia state should leave the country. Why? Because Sharia, you see, has been misunderstood. From The Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to JE:

Costello says most migrants become Australian citizens because they want to embrace the things this country stands for. He lists six core Australian values, including economic opportunity, security, democracy and personal freedom....

In the annual CIS Acton Lecture, on the topic of sharia and pluralism in Indonesia, Falaakh listed five basic values of sharia, agreed on by sharia scholars from all schools of Islamic law. If one compares the five principles of sharia to the six values espoused by Costello, one finds they are virtually identical.

Perhaps for Muslims, anyway. But to claim that Sharia upholds the ideals of democracy and personal freedom, for Muslims as well as non-Muslims, flies in the face of the evidence of Sharia states in history and of the present-day Sharia states of Saudi Arabia and Iran. It ignores the elements of Sharia that mandate inequality for religious minorities -- elements which manifest themselves in discrimination against non-Muslims today in every Muslim state, even those in which Sharia is not fully enforced.

Perhaps this is what Australian imams mean when they state in their sermons that Australia is a more Islamic country than most Muslim-majority states.

But this should be of no surprise. After all, sharia is not the name of a draconian system of legal punishments. It is not a synonym for amputations and beheadings. Rather, sharia is a legal tradition, a set of legal principles based on certain values. And those values are identical to those expressed in the Old and New Testaments.

Further, legal scholars in the East and West agree that the traditions of sharia, English common law (from which our legal systems are derived) and European civil law have borrowed from, and influenced, each other.

Some commentators present sharia as a system of medieval criminal punishments. But for Australian Muslims, sharia represents little more than ethics (honesty, enterprise) and liturgy (how to perform prayers, weddings, funerals). Costello's comments on sharia are, in effect, an attack on liturgy that should concern followers of all faiths.

Indeed, Costello's comments about those seeking to establish sharia in Australia do not go far enough. What he should have said was that those seeking to establish only sharia (outward liturgy) without its spirit (inner liturgy or the spirit of the law) should find another country and another religion.

Christ castigated rabbis who followed the letter, but ignored the spirit, of sacred law. Muslims believe the sharia to be an updated version of the same law, the outer manifestation of the same Abrahamic values. However, this must exist in tandem with an inner manifestation - given a variety of labels by Muslims and commonly known in the West as sufism.

A minority of Muslims seek to establish sharia without sufism across the world. They are the source of virtually all terrorist groups in the Muslim world. Their theology is regarded by mainstream Muslims as isolationist and fringe. They distort sharia by imposing it on people without the inner discipline of sufism. They are openly hostile to sufi tradition.

These people seek to destroy Islam from within. They are arguably more of a threat to Muslims than non-Muslims. Hence, the majority of their victims are Muslims. Costello would like to see such people leave Australia. Most Muslims, on the other hand, would prefer to see these people leave our planet.

These people distort our perceptions about sharia. Most Australians regard sharia as purely consisting of draconian medieval punishments. Costello's own inaccurate comments about sharia are a manifestation of distorted perceptions.

All this would hold up fine if the "Sufis" to which Yusef refers actually rejected those draconian punishments -- but supplementing them with some "inner law" is not the same thing. In fact, Sultanhussein Tabandeh, the author of A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was a Sufi leader -- and in that book he defends those punishments and says: "Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them."

Note that even Yusef doesn't say that the draconian punishments are actually rejected by adherents of Sharia. He knows better.

Universities taking Saudi money

In "Has the ANU got sand in its eye?" in The Herald Sun (thanks to Rosie), Andrew Bolt takes the Australian National University and other universities in Australia and the U.S. to task for accepting Saudi money:

I don't say the ANU is unusual in accepting Middle Eastern cash to teach about Islam and its lands.

Melbourne University, for one, was so grateful to get $1.5 million from the Sultan of Oman that it agreed to name its chair in Arab and Islamic Studies after him.

It's the same story at top universities in Britain and the United States, where tankers of Arab money have been shipped to fund the teaching of tomorrow's Middle East analysts. And so Exeter University's Chair of Arabic Studies is named after the Emir of Sharjah. The University of Southern California's King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture is named after the late Saudi ruler.

FrontPage Magazine two years ago listed just some of the other American universities funded by the Saudis: the University of Arkansas, which received $27 million for its Middle East Study Centre; Cornell, which got $15 million; and Rutgers, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, UCLA and others.

What do the Saudis want for all this cash? Academics warning about Arab autocracies and Muslim hate-preachers? I don't think so.

But I repeat: I'm sure the ANU's Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies does not tailor its teaching in exchange for Arab dollars. Why would it, when it tends to teach already from an Arabist, Muslim and anti-American perspective without any encouragement?

That perspective may be best judged from the writings of the centre's director, Prof Amin Saikal, brother of Afghanistan's Deputy Foreign Minister.

Here is a sample of his brand of Muslim victimology from his recent lecture on the war on Islamic terror.

"Key figures in the Bush Administration -- specifically neo-conservatives and reborn Christians who have assumed the dominant role in the Administration -- have overlooked some of the more salient points about Islam as a religion advocating nothing less than virtuous living, peaceful coexistence and societal harmony," he sighed. Sweet Islam. Bad Christians.

"Starting with the Crusades and European colonialism and finally the US's rise to globalism following World War II, the Muslim domain has been constantly subjected to suppression and humiliation," he added, skipping over the fact Muslims sacked Rome, invaded France, held Sicily, ruled Spain and as recently as 1683 besieged Vienna. Poor Islam. Bully Christians....

Read it all.

UN-sponsored conference blames the West for cartoon rage

It certainly is a symptom of a more serious disease; but what disease is that? When Aydin says that the problem stems from "ignorance, arrogance, insensitivity and festering political differences that fuel hostilities," clearly he is placing the responsibility for cartoon rage on the West: if only the Danes and others had been more sensitive and knowledgeable, all this wouldn't have happened.

No one seems to have had the common sense or courage to explain that free societies allow for the giving of offense and require peaceful responses to such offenses. Or that to kill people across the world who had nothing to do with the cartoons because of those cartoons is sheer madness.

"Tutu: Muslim Anger Not Just About Cartoons," from AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

DOHA, Qatar - The furor over the Prophet Muhammad drawings is a small part of an expanding divide between Islam and the West, or what international leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu described as the "symptom of a more serious disease."

Attending a U.N.-sponsored conference aimed at healing the deepening rift, Tutu and 19 other delegates agreed that key ways to bridge the chasm were reaching out to young people and providing more education. Even then, they agreed it would take years of dialogue and practical steps before the rift can be healed.

More education about what? Which young people will be educated? Will Muslims be taught that peaceful responses to offenses are a requirement of pluralism, and that pluralism is a requirement of the modern world? Or will Westerners be educated about the necessity to put Islam and Muslims in a privileged position, and not to criticize or denigrate them in any way?

"What we face nowadays is not a clash of civilizations but a clash mostly caused by ignorance, arrogance, insensitivity and festering political differences that fuel hostilities," Turkish minister of state Mehmet Aydin said....

"What has happened and the aftermath has been seen as a symptom of a more serious disease," said Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. "Had relationships been different, one, the cartoons might not have happened, or if they had, they probably would have been handled differently."

Handled differently by whom? Let's remember why the cartoons "happened" in the first place: a Danish author couldn't get anyone to illustrate his book about Muhammad. A Danish newspaper decided to print the cartoons, nine of which were completely inoffensive and three of which mildly noted the connection between Islam and violence, which Muslims around the world have been making every day. The intention was not to provoke people to irrational violence, but to reassert Western principles of free speech, which -- as cartoon rage itself shows vividly -- are being threatened by the intimidation and intransigence that some Muslims are now bringing to the West.

The European Union on Monday said that although it regretted the cartoons were "considered offensive" by Muslims, freedom of expression "is a fundamental right and an essential element of a democratic discourse."

Opinions like that angered former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who complained at the meeting that "we already have enough misunderstandings in our world today."

"Insulting the beliefs and customs of people and religions is not freedom of speech. This is not only related to Islam. We must respect the beliefs of other nations and religions whether we believe in them or not. If we don't believe or approve of them, we must challenge them through