Fitzgerald: Bernard Lewis and his influence

Hugh Fitzgerald comments on the influence Bernard Lewis wields, and does not wield:

Many have spoken approvingly of Bernard Lewis’ influence in the Islamic world, and of the power of that influence when he claims that “suicide bombing” is un-Islamic. But in reality, Bernard Lewis has no influence among the Muslim masses. Prince Hassan, Halil Inalcik, Fouad Ajami, and others of that ilk are hardly the Muslim masses who need to be persuaded that Lewis’ position on "suicide bombing" is correct from an Islamic point of view.

Lewis's real and only audience, at this point, are intelligent Infidels. The effect of his enthusiasm for the Oslo Accords, and for the Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project which he now claims was "mishandled," has been disastrous. He has contended that it was merely a matter of botched execution, and not of something that was always messianic, silly, and missing-the-point. The point in fact was not to make a Muslim state a splendid example of what could be done if only an entire Infidel army came in, overturned the regime, and spent a few hundred billion dollars. Rather, it was, or should have been, to create the conditions in which the camp of Jihad would be divided and demoralized. Instead, as of now, the camp of Infidels is divided and demoralized. And the warriors of Jihad are successfully exploiting, in Western Europe, the pre-existing mental conditions of antisemitism and anti-Americanism in order to divide the two parts of the Western Alliance, America and Europe.

Lewis may believe he can have some effect on Muslims worldwide. He can't. But he has an effect on Cheney and others in the Administration. Instead of distancing himself now from the policy about which he was such an enthusiast (or at least, that is what so many took him to be), he ought to explain that the Iraq business was a mistake. He should explain that the hostility between Shi'a and Sunni cannot be overcome, and that he grossly underestimated both the Shi'a resentment and the crazed Sunni determination not to give up political (and therefore economic and every other kind of) power. And that he underestimated the willingness of the Kurds to continue to remain in an Arab-ruled state. He should acknowledge that he had not given much thought to the exploitation of the situation in Iraq, which turns out to be the ideal place to allow sectarian and ethnic fissures within Islam to fester and to grow, and to hope that outside Muslim states, chiefly Iran and Saudi Arabia, would in turn be forced to use up men, materiel, money, and attention in helping their respective sectarian sides within Iraq – instead of using up men, material, money and attention in the Jihad against the West.

He could say this. He could admit to it, instead of refusing to discuss Iraq in public at all, except to allude to the "mistakes" of others -- always of others, never of Bernard Lewis.

He could.

In making claims belied by Muslims themselves, enough of whom engage in the logic-chopping necessary so that attacks that kill Infidels, even if suicidal in nature, are no longer considered "suicide," Lewis may indeed be trying to somehow create a new form of Islam that will be less lethal to the West. But this is, if not his own private Islam, certainly an Islam that Muslims themselves will, en masse, not agree to -- for the hysteria of suicide-bombing is clearly permitted by all too many religious authorities. In doing what he does, at this stage of the game, Lewis does not change a single Muslim mind. But he does continue to contribute to keeping Infidels less alarmed, more unwary, more touchingly convinced that if only enough good things are done to and for Muslims (make them prosperous, bring them good government, satisfy their every local grievance which can always be presented not as prompted by the unassuagable demands that Islam makes, but by assuagable desires for "self-determination" or "nationalism" by local Muslims), everything will be all right.

Lewis, enthusiast for the Oslo Accords, enthusiast (now backing away, blaming all the "mistakes" in execution by the Bush Administration, and refusing to admit that his own enthusiasm was wrong) for the Light Unto the Muslim Nations Project in Iraq, liked to pretend that he was simply a scholar in the stacks, unaccustomed to influencing those in power, a man au-dessus de la melee. It was nonsense. But perhaps in light of the consequences of his two major ventures (the third, his attempt to help some of the outwardly more plausible "reformers" in Egypt, such as Saad Eddin Ibrahim also has been misplaced, for it assumes that reform, and not establishment of the conditions that will force Muslims to constrain Islam, is the answer, and that the way to do this is not to threaten a small reduction, but to end altogether the Jizyah of foreign aid, and not just to the Mubarak regime, but to Egypt), it will become true at last.

Fitzgerald: The destruction of the monuments

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the larger issues involved in the Azeri destruction of an Armenian cemetery:

Islam, like other religions, was ruthlessly suppressed in the Soviet Union. For some this suppression apparently took. This forcible break with Islam was something that only a regime such as the Soviet Union could allow itself to enforce. But there were many – in Azerbaijan as well as elsewhere – among whom it did not take. And so now Islam is at work again in Azerbaijan, with the destruction of the ancient Christian cemetery. The destruction of one or two graves might be the work of vandals. If an entire ancient cemetery disappears -- the way the Jewish tombstones on the Mount of Olives were pulled up by British-led, British-trained and supposedly well-behaved Jordanians, and used to line the floors of their army latrines -- then something else is at work: complete disrespect, even hatred, for those who are not Muslim, and for everything that might conceivably be sacred or important to those non-Muslims.

Of course in the mists of time, when no one was looking, no doubt Muslims destroyed monuments, churches, temples, cemeteries, statuary and artifacts of every kind.

One opens "The World of Islam" by Ernst J. Grube (Curator, Islamic Department, Metropolitan Museum of Art), part of the series "Landmarks of the World's Art," and finds on p. 165 a picture of the "Kutb Mosque (Quwaat al-Islam) Delhi" shown and described:

Built by Kutb al-din Aibak in his fortress of Lallkot near Old Delhi in 1193. This mosque is the earliest extant monument of Islamic architecture in India and its combination of local, pre-Muslim traditions and imported architectural forms is typical of the earliest period. The mosque is built on the ruins of a Jain temple...

So the earliest "extant monument of Islamic architecture in India" was "built on the ruins of a Jain temple" -- that temple being made into "ruins," of course, by the Muslim invaders.

But that was then, you think to yourself.

And this is now. And now, in the full light of history, knowing that they are being watched, surely they will not do such things. Surely, in this new 21st century, Muslims everywhere will watch their steps, and not desecrate, vandalize, destroy as before.

But then you look only at what has happened since the new century began, since 2000. And here is a tentative list off the top of my head:

• Bamiyan Buddhas, 1,500 years old, in Afghanistan, destroyed by Taliban with explosives, and technical help from Saudi and Pakistani engineers.

• Tomb of Joseph in Israel, reduced to rubble by the "Palestinians," despite that site supposedly being sacred to Muslims as well as to Jews.

• A Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur, where Hindus and Chinese both labor under the disguised Jizyah of the Bumiputra system.

• Orthodox churches and monasteries, destroyed in Kosovo and Bosnia, in full view of NATO troops, the U.N., and the world's media.

• And then, of course, the thousands of churches destroyed in Indonesia, as recorded by the Barnabas Fund.

• The remaining Greco-Bactrian artifacts among the tiny holdings in the Kabul Museum.

• The damage done to the Temple Mount structure by the excavations and vandalism to Solomon's Stables from the "Palestinians."

• Statuary vandalized by Muslims -- both Christian statuary in a church in northern France, and pagan statuary in the Piazza del Popolo.

Oh, these are just things that come off the top of one's head. Should one recall the damage done to the Parthenon by Turkish Muslim troops, or to the Sphinx by generations of Muslim Arabs in Egypt? Or the damage done to the monuments of classical antiquity or left by other pre-Islamic civlizations, all of which are, in the Muslim view, worthless, part of a general Jahiliyya (time of ignorance), and not to be treated with respect or interest?

Start your own list. Do what Sita Ram Goel and Indian scholars did in compiling merely a list of the thousands of Hindu temples destroyed by Muslim invaders. Make up a list, for example, of the Christian churches of Constantinople, for five hundred years the richest, most important city in all of Christendom.

Go ahead. Now look that list over. Now think about the Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery, the Uffizi, the Alte Pinakothek, the Rijksmuseum. Think of what those who followed the strictures of the late Sheik Bin Baz, or the still-living Al-Qaradawi, or the primitive Ahmadinejad, would do to the contents of all those.

What do you propose to do about it?

John Updike pens a "sympathetic, loving" portrait of a jihadist

In my younger days I used to look forward eagerly to the next John Updike novel, until he became little more than an upscale pornographer. I haven't read anything he has written in years, and this one looks supremely missable -- unless one wants an insight into how wealthy postmodern Americans view with careful, studied generosity and understanding the mujahedin who have vowed to destroy their comforts. Updike may indeed be the harbinger of a new radical chic that focuses not on the Black Panther Leonard Bernstein celebrated in Tom Wolfe's memorable piece, but on the mujahedin.

"In 'Terrorist,' a Cautious Novelist Takes On a New Fear," from the New Duranty Times (aka New York Times), with thanks to David:

John Updike's 22nd novel, "Terrorist," about a Muslim in a city that is much like Paterson, N.J., will go on sale next week.

For his new novel, "Terrorist," however, he ventured onto the Web to research bomb detonators. He was fairly certain, he remarked recently during an interview in Boston, that the only detonator he could recall — the one that Gary Cooper plunges in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" — must be out of date, but he was also reassured to discover, as he put it, that "the Internet doesn't like you to learn too much about explosives."...

And he hired a car and a driver to take him around some of the seedier neighborhoods in Paterson, N.J., and to show him some churches and storefronts that had been converted into mosques. "He did his best, but I think I puzzled him as a tour customer," Mr. Updike said.

"Terrorist," which comes out from Alfred A. Knopf next week, is set in Paterson — or, rather, in a slightly smaller, tidier version of the city, called New Prospect — and is about just what the title says. Its protagonist is an 18-year-old named Ahmad, the son of a hippie-ish American mother and an Egyptian exchange student, now absent, who embraces Islam and is eventually recruited to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel.

The new novel is Mr. Updike's 22nd and in some ways a departure....Originally, though, he imagined the protagonist as a young Christian, an extension of the troubled teenage character in his early story "Pigeon Feathers," who comes to feel betrayed by a clergyman. "I imagined a young seminarian who sees everyone around him as a devil trying to take away his faith," he said. "The 21st century does look like that, I think, to a great many people in the Arab world."

When Mr. Updike switched the protagonist's religion to Islam, he explained, it was because he "thought he had something to say from the standpoint of a terrorist."

He went on: "I think I felt I could understand the animosity and hatred which an Islamic believer would have for our system. Nobody's trying to see it from that point of view. I guess I have stuck my neck out here in a number of ways, but that's what writers are for, maybe."

And we do need to understand this. We do not need to sympathize with it.

He laughed and added: "I sometimes think, 'Why did I do this?' I'm delving into what can be a very sore subject for some people. But when those shadows would cross my mind, I'd say, 'They can't ask for a more sympathetic and, in a way, more loving portrait of a terrorist.' "

Ahmad is lovable, or at least appealing; he's in many ways the most moral and thoughtful character in the entire book, and he gains in vividness from being pictured in that familiar Updikean setting, the American high school....

When he was in high school, Mr. Updike added, his own head was "in The New Yorker instead of the Koran," and so while working on "Terrorist" he again picked up that religious text, a book he first read when learning how to impersonate Colonel Ellelloû, the narrator of Mr. Updike's 1978 novel, "The Coup."

"A lot of the Koran does not speak very eloquently to a Westerner," he said. "Much of it is either legalistic or opaquely poetic. There's a lot of hellfire — descriptions of making unbelievers drink molten metal occur more than once. It's not a fuzzy, lovable book, although in the very next verse there can be something quite generous."

"Terrorist" even includes some Koran passages in Arabic transliteration; Shady Nasser, a graduate student, helped Mr. Updike on those sections. "My conscience was pricked by the notion that I was putting into the book something that I can't pronounce," he said, but he added: "Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot. My feeling was, 'This is God's language, and the fact that you don't understand it means you don't know enough about God.' "

If Updike really means that, he should convert to Islam. But of course a hallmark of his set is that they never quite mean what they say.

For all its theological concerns, "Terrorist" is also an authentic Updike novel, and, thankfully, includes some sheet-rumpled, love-flushed sex scenes between Ahmad's mother, Teresa, and Jack Levy, a guidance counselor at the high school.

Ah. So it will not be all that much of a departure after all -- it is starting to sound like a standard Updike novel.

"I was happy — because there was so much shaky ground in the writing of this novel — when Jack began to hit on Terry Mulloy," Mr. Updike said. "I felt I was in a scene I could handle. That little romance was very real — to me, at least. I liked those two because they're normal, godless, cynical but amiable modern people."

Which, of course, describes Updike himself, and his audience, to a T: normal, godless, cynical and amiable. Such people believe they are being broadminded and generous when they paint sympathetic, loving portraits of terrorists. In fact, of course, they're just being suicidal.

Pakistan: Around 600 people a year are forcely converted to Islam

Forced conversion is forbidden by Islamic law. However, it has been a constant of Islamic history, and continues today. "Around 600 people a year are forcely converted to Islam," from AsiaNews, with thanks to Liberal Muslim:

Lahore (AsiaNews) – The same Islam that pronounces death for conversion to another religion, forces women married to Muslims to become Muslims too. Forced conversions figures reach between 500 to 600 people a year in Pakistan, although “national media report only 100 such cases” that police and the courts “treat prejudicially”. This was the most significant conclusion of a meeting on “Forced Conversion of Women and Minorities Rights in Pakistan” held on 26 May in a hotel in Lahore.

More than 50 human rights activists, lawyers and representatives of religious minorities from four provinces of Pakistan participated in the consultation organized by the Minority Rights Commission of Pakistan (MRC).

Khaliq Shah – MRC member – outlined the aims of the meeting: to highlight this important issue at national level; to launch a campaign against forced conversions; to analyze the causes and to review the law. Shah, who has been researching the topic for a long time, said: “The problem is especially present among poorer and marginalized social groups”.

I.A. Rehman, member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said that according to the Universal declaration of Human Rights, every individual can join any faith of his choice and practice that faith freely, and no one can force him to change his belief. “From this perspective, free conversion is no problem but forced conversions should be banned; this issue must be debated,” he said.

“In Pakistan we do not have any law against forced conversion and converting from Islam to any other religion means death. To change this state of affairs, we must consider the issue as a struggle for democracy and invite Muslims as well to these meetings, so they can help us to better understand all points of view of the argument”.

Mgr Joseph Coutts, bishop of Faisalabad, was also present at the meeting. “This is a delicate problem and each of us should contribute towards resolving it. At the root of the problem are factors like feudalism and the country’s socio-economic structure. When we discuss forced conversions, we must talk about these aspects too.”

Kalyan Singh, a Sikh participant said one of the toughest challenges to overcome was the “subjection of judges to Islamic clerics. Judges do not manage to deal with such cases neutrally because they are scared of the revenge of religious extremists.”

American Linguist Noam Chomsky: Hamas Policies Are More Conducive to a Peaceful Settlement than Those of the U.S. or Israel

In my 2003 book Onward Muslim Soldiers, I skewer Chomsky and the Left's general eagerness to unite with the jihadists who will, if given the chance, happily subjugate their allies along with the rest of us. Here is more evidence.

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

Following are excerpts from an interview with the American linguist Noam Chomsky, which aired on LBC TV on May 23, 2006.

Interviewer: Do you consider Hizbullah to be a terrorist organization?

Chomsky: The United States considers Hizbullah a terrorist organization, but the term terrorism is used by the great powers simply to refer to forms of violence of which they disapprove. So the U.S. was of course supporting the Israeli invasions and occupation of southern Lebanon. Hizbullah was instrumental in driving them out, so for that reason they are a terrorist organization.

[...]

It's an interesting dilemma. Personally I'm very much opposed to Hamas' policies in almost every respect. However, we should recognize that the policies of Hamas are more forthcoming and more conducive to a peaceful settlement than those of the United States or Israel. So to repeat: the policies, in my view, are unacceptable, but preferable to the policies of the United States and Israel.

So, for example, Hamas has called for a long-term indefinite truce on the international border. There is a long-standing international consensus that goes back over thirty years that there should be a two-state political settlement on the international border, the pre-June 1967 border, with minor and mutual modifications. That's the official phrase. Hamas is willing to accept that as a long-term truce. The United States and Israel are unwilling even to consider it.

The Hamas is being... The demand on Hamas by the United States and the European Union and Israel... The demand is first that they recognize the State of Israel. Actually, that they recognize its right to exist. Well, Israel and the U.S. certainly don't recognize the right of Palestine to exist, nor recognize any state of Palestine. In fact, they have been acting consistently to undermine any such possibility.

This is so contrary to fact it is astounding. The U.S. and Israel agreed to the Oslo accords and to so much else dedicated to helping "Palestine" exist. And what did the Palestinians do in response? Stepped up the jihad attacks.

The second condition is that Hamas must renounce violence. Israel and the United States certainly do not renounce violence.

Sure. It would be foolhardy to renounce violence unilaterally while the other side pursues it. But Hamas need have no such concerns; it is abundantly clear that the U.S. and Israel would abide by peace accords. It is only one side that has broken them.

The third condition is that Hamas accept international agreements. The United States and Israel reject international agreements.

International agreements issued by the UN at the behest of the OIC bloc? Sure. And they should reject them.

So, though the policies of Hamas are, again in my view, unacceptable, they happen to be closer to the international consensus on a political peaceful settlement than those of their antagonists, and it's a reflection of the power of the imperial states - the United States and Europe - that they are able to shift the framework, so that the problem appears to be Hamas' policies, and not the more extreme policies of the United States and Israel.

In this, of course, he ignores Hamas' repeatedly stated vow to destroy Israel altogether.

Electing a New People: The Leftist - Islamic Alliance

A new essay by the European writer Fjordman:

Bertolt Brecht wrote a satirical poem after the 1953 East German risings:

"The solution
After the uprising of 17 June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the People
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?"

At the beginning of the 21st century, electing a new people seems to be exactly what Socialist parties in Europe are doing. Perhaps the greatest idea of the Leftist parties after the Cold War was to re-invent themselves as Multicultural immigration parties and start importing voters from abroad. In addition to this, they have managed to denounce the opposition as racists, bigots and extremists. A new alliance of convenience between Leftists and Muslim immigrants is taking shape in Europe. I think the deal is that the Leftist parties get a number of new clients, I mean voters, in return for giving Muslims privileges and subsidies, as well as keeping the borders more or less open for new Muslims to enter. As one Muslim put it: "I vote for the Socialists because they give me more money." The Leftists are, in essence, electing a new people, replacing the one already there with one more supportive of their agenda.

There is, of course, nothing new in buying votes and "clients" by promising them access to other people's money. This was the essence of Leftism in the first place. However, although this is probably a flaw in the democratic system, democracy has still functioned within the borders of stable nation states. This flaw gets a lot more dangerous when combined with massive immigration, where certain political parties simply import people from other nations, even vocal enemies of their country, to shore up their own short-term support in elections. This will in the longer term breed resentment among the native population, who will in this way be forced to fund their own colonization. In the context of Europe, Muslim immigration could turn democracy into a self-defeating system that will eventually break down because native Europeans no longer feel that it serves their interests.

Leftists and Muslims have a mutual short-term interest in keeping the Leftist parties in power, and a mutual long-term interest in weakening the traditional, Judeo-Christian culture of Europe, which Socialists at best view with indifference, at worst as an evil obstacle blocking the road to the Socialist Utopia. Besides, Socialists traditionally place little ideological importance on such trivial matters as national borders. I believe Lenin said that borders between Soviet Republics were unimportant, as Socialism would transcend all national and religious boundaries and render them a thing of the past, anyway.

Many Marxists still haven't given up that ideal, after a century of failures. Hanne Andersen, a Danish Social Democrat, thinks that people from, say, Yemen or Pakistan should have as much right to live in Denmark as native Danes:

"I have for many years been of the opinion that it is incomprehensible that some people (especially from
the Danish People's Party) think they have a greater right than other people to live in a specific part of the earth. All people, all over the world, who have respect for others, their religion, culture, history and values have, as far as I'm concerned, an equal right to live wherever they want to."

Omer Taspinar describes how "Europe's Muslim Street," the 15 million or more Muslims of the European Union, is becoming a more powerful political force than the fabled Arab street: "This political ascendance threatens to exacerbate existing strains within the trans-Atlantic relationship. The presence of nearly 10 million Muslims versus only 700,000 Jews in France and Germany alone helps explain why continental Europe might look at the Middle East from a different angle than does the United States. Indeed, French and German concerns about a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq or Washington's blind support for Israel are at least partly related to nervousness about the Muslim street at home." "In Germany and elsewhere in Europe, a Muslim swing vote is already having a critical impact."

Iranian-in-exile Amir Taheri, too, has noticed this "red-black" cooperation. According to him, Europe's hard Left "sees Muslims as the new under-class" in the continent: "The European Marxist-Islamist coalition does not offer a coherent political platform. Its ideology is built around three themes: hatred of the United States, the dream of wiping Israel off the map, and the hoped-for collapse of the global economic system."

This cooperation has received support from Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. Carlos has said that
Islam is the only force capable of persuading large numbers of people to become "volunteers" for suicide attacks against the US. "Only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the US," he said. As Christopher Hitchens put it, "once you decide that American-led "globalisation" is the main enemy, then any revolt against it is better than none at all. In some way yet to be determined, Al-Qaeda might be able to help to stave off global warming."

Christopher Caldwell, writing about this Islamic-leftist alliance, tells of how the second annual European Social Forum in 2003 was held in three Communist-controlled suburbs around Paris. "Muslims were hugely overrepresented among the Social Forum's delegates." The yearnings of radical Muslims are now at the core of the Social Forum's universe. "They have jostled aside the left-wing economics and focus on global markets that once dominated." The key sign of this shift was the Forum's anointing of Tariq Ramadan as the event's co-star. Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies in Geneva, Switzerland, is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and a hero to Muslims in Europe.

The Muslims are quite happy with this collaboration, at least for now: "We say to anyone who hates the Americans and wants to throw the Jews out of Palestine: ahlan wa sahlan (welcome)," quipped Abu-Hamza al-Masri, the British Islamist firebrand who is awaiting extradition to the US on various criminal charges. "The Prophet teaches that we could ally ourselves even with the atheists if it helps us destroy [the] enemy."

The American William S. Lind calls this "the Marx-Mohammed Pact:" "What made possible the recent bombings in London (July 2005), and the many more that almost assuredly will follow in Europe and the United States, is the Marx-Mohammed Pact. Once again, two sworn enemies, Marxism - - specifically, the cultural Marxism commonly known as Political Correctness - - and Islam, have made a Devil's bargain whereby each assists the other against a common enemy, the remnants of the Christian West." "London was only a foretaste of what those policies will bring to Europe and America. If we dare rip down the camouflage nets cultural Marxism has erected to blind us we see Europe has two real choices: an infinity of Londons or second expulsion of the Moors."

Of course, the same collaboration happened in Iran, where popular "reformers" such as Ali Shariati in the years before the 1979 revolution infused Islam with aspects of Western thought and made the Marxists believe that they could coexist with Islam. So they cooperated in overthrowing the Shah - and then all the godless Socialists were the first ones to hang from lamp posts around the country when Khomeini and his Islamic cronies seized power. The secular Leftists in Europe know fully well that they do not agree with religious Muslims on some issues, but they believe they are the senior partners in the alliance and that they can "ride the tiger." That may be true now, but for how long will the situation remain like that?

In Denmark, writers Helle Merete Brix, Torben Hansen and Lars Hedegaard think the Muslim immigration and the clashes we are witnessing now is part of a third Islamic Jihad, a third attempt to conquer and subdue the West. The fist one came with the Arabs more than a thousand years ago, the second with the Turks in the early modern era. Will three times be the charm for the Muslims? Will they succeed this time?

During the first Jihad, Charles Martel, "The Hammer," brilliant general and founder of the Carolingian Empire, the first Western power after the fall of Rome, defeated the Arabs in the Battle of Tours (or Poitiers) in 732, thus saving Western civilization, and by extension much of the world, from Islam. The Muslims underestimated the strength of the Franks, who they considered barbarians, and allowed them to pick both the time and place of the battle. The Muslims were also burdened with booty. During the battle, members of the Frankish army began freeing prisoners, and fearing loss of their riches, a significant part of the Muslim army abandoned the battle to protect their plunder. Although they managed to conquer Spain, Muslims thus lost the first shot at subduing the European heartland because they were too arrogant and underestimated the strength of their Western opponents, and were too weighed down by and concerned with their riches to fight effectively. Is the same thing happening now, only in reverse, with the arrogant West underestimating their Muslim opponents until it's too late?

During the second Jihad, Jan Sobieski, king of Poland, routed the Ottoman armies that had laid siege to Vienna in 1683. Leading a combined force of Polish, Austrian and German troops, Sobieski attacked a numerically superior Turkish army until their lines were broken and the Turks fled in confusion. This was the last time Muslims came close to threatening the West in traditional warfare. They now prefer demographic warfare through migration, combined with terrorism.

The third Jihad started with the oil embargo, the influx of Saudi petrodollars and the beginnings of Eurabia and Muslim immigration to the West in the 1960s and early 70s. During the third Jihad, Leftists all over Europe seem to be opening the gates of Europe from within. "You want to conquer Europe? That's ok. Just vote for us and help us get rid of capitalism and eradicate the Christian heritage of Europe, and we'll let you in. In the meantime, you can enjoy some welfare goodies, and we will ban opposition to this undertaking as racism and hate speech."

The basic trends are remarkably similar throughout Western Europe. I will start with describing the situation in the Scandinavian countries, as I'm Norwegian myself and thus have the most detailed knowledge of this region.

You know you have entered a strange, Eurabian world when leading politicians from Norway, a country straddling the Arctic Circle and with no colonial history, begin their election campaigns in the Pakistani countryside. Before Norway's national elections in 2005, the leader of the Socialist Left party, Kristin Halvorsen, praised all the "blood, sweat and tears Pakistanis in Norway have spent on building the country." While the deputy leader of the Socialist Left party has stated that he wants to abolish private property, its leader Kristin Halvorsen is in 2006 Norway's Minister of Finance. 83 percent of Muslims in Norway voted for Leftist parties in 2005. The Labor Party got a majority of these votes, whereas the Socialist Left Party got 30, 5 %, more than three times the percentage it got among the general populace. Psephologist Anders Todal Jenssen pointed out that parties such as the Socialist Left party had the most liberal immigration policies, and that this probably contributed to this tilt towards Leftist parties among immigrants. Likewise, the Labor Party is seen as the primary guarantor of the generous welfare state. The Leftist parties won a very slim majority (in fact, a minority of the votes) in parliament in 2005, and formed a coalition government that has been notoriously anti-Israeli and critical of the USA, as well as appeasing towards Palestinian Hamas terrorists.

Before Norway's Constitution Day, May 17th, in 2006, the Multicultural lobby in the country wanted to celebrate the day by singing the
Norwegian national anthem - in Urdu. The idea was that an Urdu version of the anthem would allow many immigrants from Pakistan, for example, to more easily express their love for Norway. The title of Norway's national anthem is "Ja vi elsker," which in English translates to "Yes we love (this country)." It may sound ridiculous to sing Urdu in Norway, but the capital city of Oslo in particular has a significant and fast-growing Pakistani community. In fact, it is expected that native Norwegians will be a minority in their own capital city within a generation. American writer Bruce Bawer, who lives in Norway, has pointed out in his book While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, that there are now more direct flights from Norway to Pakistan than from Norway to the USA.

Samira Munir, Norwegian politician of Pakistani origins, received many death threats against herself and her family because of her work as a champion of the rights of Muslim immigrant women. She was found dead under strange circumstances in November 2005 at Kolbotn station, one of the suburban lines outside Oslo. Earlier in 2005, Munir had claimed that there was widespread cooperation between the Socialist parties and Muslim communities during that year's elections in Norway. "The heads of families and the mosques would decide how entire groups of immigrants would vote. They made deals such as "How much money will we get if we get our people to vote for you?", and the deals were always made with the Socialist parties" said Munir. It should be noted that her own, Conservative party was not innocent of this, either. Akhtar Chaudhry, politician for the Socialist Left party, stated that Norway with its welfare state was pretty close to the Muslim idea of Paradise, and that the welfare state was similar to Islamic concepts of social justice. Of course, he failed to mention that according to "Islamic justice," non-Muslims should pay Muslims tribute as a sign of submission, and that undoubtedly many Muslim immigrants view the infidel welfare state in this way. He also failed to explain why Muslims cannot create such a "paradise" in their own countries, or whether the Scandinavian "Paradise" can survive a massive influx of Muslim immigrants.

In Denmark in 2005, less than five percent of immigrant voters supported the centre-right government, which had taken some steps in recent years to limit Muslim immigration. The country's Leftist parties had the near unanimous support of Denmark's immigrants. According to the Copenhagen Post, "over 95 percent of non-ethnic Danes with the right to vote say they support left-leaning opposition parties." The most popular party with immigrants was the Social Democrats. The second largest party in parliament drew the support of 47.6 percent of immigrants. Second most popular was the Social Liberal Party, polling at 21.4 percent. This trend has not gone unnoticed by those wanting to limit Muslim immigration, such as the Danish People's Party and its leader Pia Kjærsgaard: "Let's be honest. The Radicals are not just café latte-sipping people from the creative class. To a large degree, it is also largely composed of immigrants, and one could fear the result of the upcoming local elections in large cities, where there are large concentrations of immigrants that the Social Liberals pander to,' Kjærsgaard said. In the Scandinavian and Nordic countries, non-citizen immigrants gain voter rights in local (but not national) elections after living in the country for three years.

A vitriolic row erupted into the heart of Denmark's general election campaign early in 2005 when Islamic leaders urged the country's Muslims to vote against the ruling centre-right coalition. Kasem Said Ahmad, a prominent Muslim community spokesman, said he "advised all Muslims to oppose the government." Mr Ahmad organized a gathering of imams in an anti-government message during that week's Friday prayers. Danish Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen, who was eventually re-elected, responded angrily and immediately to the proposed intervention of Denmark's imams: "They should keep their fingers out of politics," Mr Fogh Rasmussen said. "In Denmark we keep politics and religion separate. Imagine if Danish priests were to use church pulpits to urge people to vote for particular parties," he said. Morten Messerschmidt, a member of Denmark's Parliament for the Danish People's Party, says that "everybody should have expected that the leftwing would be the first to cry out against the Muslim intolerance. But for some reason only a few have done so. It has to do with a screwed up idea of cultural relativism." "Secondly I believe it has to do with power – it is well known that the Muslim minorities in Denmark are voting for leftwing parties. And some politicians – in Denmark as well as in many other European countries – are deliberately campaigning for these votes. Of course you wouldn't like to disturb the people handing you your paycheque."

In the spring of 2006, Sweden's largest Muslim organisation demanded in a letter, signed by its leader Mahmoud Aldebe, that Sweden should introduce separate laws for Muslims. The letter was a list running over several pages with aggressive demands for just about everything; separate family laws for Muslims, regulating marriage and divorce, that public schools should employ imams to teach homogeneous classes of Muslims children in their religion and the language of their original homeland. Sweden's Equality Minister Jens Orback called the proposals "completely unacceptable."

However, it looks increasingly as if the election in September will be a very close race, and the Leftist parties will be dependent upon the support of immigrants to remain in power. As Nima Sanandaji points out in FrontPage Magazine, "Swedish public television exposed that the leading Social Democratic party had started fishing for votes with the help of radical Muslim clergies." For several years the Christian wing of the Social Democratic party, called The Brotherhood, has been working with the influential Muslim leader Mahmoud Aldebe, president of Sweden's Muslim Association. Already in 1999, Aldebe proposed that sharia, Islamic law, should be introduced in Sweden. After the last election in 2002, Sweden's Muslim Association sent a congratulation letter to the re-elected Social Democratic Prime minister Göran Persson, congratulating him on his victory and hoping that Persson would work for implementing some of the demands of the Association in the future. The Muslim Brotherhood has earlier stated that for them, "Sweden is in many ways an ideal country, [and it] shares the ideals of the [Swedish] Social Democrats in their view of the welfare society. Leading figures in Muslim congregations are also active within the Social Democratic [Party], and have very good relations with Sweden's Christian Social Democrats. "The Social Democrats have, in turn, and perhaps as thanks for the support they receive from the mosque leadership, shown a tendency to shy away from the fact that there is extremism in some of our mosques. This has given the Muslim Brotherhood the freedom to force its ideology upon [the mosque's worshippers]." Israeli authorities in 2006 called Sweden "the most anti-Israeli country in Europe." The number of rape charges in the country has quadrupled parallel with Muslim immigration in recent years.

During the elections in the United Kingdom in 2005, the Labour Party tried hard to win back the traditional support from Muslims in Britain, many of whom threatened to leave the party in favor of anti-war Respect Party candidate George Galloway or even the Liberal Democrats because of Tony Blair's support for the war in Iraq. The most visible result of this was the attempts to pass a law banning incitement to "religious hatred." Prominent Muslims have stated their hope that according to this new law, it would be a crime to use terms such as "Islamic terrorism." The bill has been proposed in the British Parliament several times, but stranded on opposition from the House of Lords. As newspaper the Daily Telegraph stated, "it is a bone tossed to those who claim to speak on behalf of a Muslim community that overwhelmingly resides in Labour inner city heartlands." "If such a law had existed in the 1980s, Salman Rushdie might have been prosecuted for writing Satanic Verses rather than being protected by the British state." A local Labour candidate in London, Oona King, who eventually lost her election to Galloway, was accused of double standards after dropping references to Muslims in leaflets for predominantly white areas. One of the leaflets stated: "Oona voted to protect Muslims from hate crimes." But in the other leaflet it said: "Oona voted to make incitement to religious hatred a crime." One of her colleagues tried to lure British Muslims back into the fold with the following arguments: "Labour and British Muslims: Can we dream the same dream?" "Are you still unconvinced that the Muslims need or should want a Labour Prime Minister in Downing Street? Tony Blair is the first Prime Minister to have ever read the Qur'an, to quote from it and to talk about it." "The Muslim Council of Britain has been at the forefront of lobbying the Government on issues to help Muslims. Recently Iqbal Sacranie, the General Secretary of the Council, asked Tony Blair to declare that the Government would introduce a new law banning religious discrimination. Two weeks later, Tony Blair promised that the next Labour Government would ban religious discrimination. It was a major victory for the Muslim community in Britain."

Gordon Brown, Blair's PM-successor-in-waiting, paid tribute to British Muslims as "modern heroes" who brought hope and idealism to the country. He said they had "contributed to Britain spiritually and economically because Islam was a religion that encouraged fair play, social justice and equality." Labour PM Tony Blair himself called Islam "progressive" and praised the Koran for being "practical and way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance." This was after the Jihadist terror bombings in London in July 2005, and while several Muslim clerics in the UK were openly calling for overthrowing the West and British democracy. Maybe Blair, Brown and their ilk didn't read writer Spengler of the Asia Times Online, who, while reviewing Melanie Phillips' book "Londonistan," noted that "revulsion and contempt color Muslim attitudes toward the British leftists who most desire to appease them." In all fairness, it should be mentioned that even Conservative Party leader Michael Howard in 2005 spoke of the "immense" contribution Muslims have made to British life. Mr Howard said the "economically vibrant, culturally creative, socially aware" British Muslim community enriched modern Britain." This attempt of flirting with Muslims voters met with little success, however. The Tories complained in 2005 that it was difficult for them "to win the cities." As elsewhere in Europe, Muslim immigrants in Britain tend to be concentrated in major cities, thus consolidating the grip Leftist parties had on these areas. In the Netherlands, the municipal elections in March 2006 were won by the Labour Party, the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA). The balance was tipped by the Muslim vote. Eighty percent of the growing immigrant electorate voted for the PvdA, while the remaining Muslims voted for smaller parties of the extreme left. This phenomenon prompted De Telegraaf, the largest paper in the country, to write that the immigrants have become a "power block." A case in point was the Amsterdam borough of Geuzenveld-Slotermeer. Here the PvdA won 54% of the votes. Of their 13 seats, however, 5 were won by Turkish and 2 by Moroccan candidates. This means that more than half the seats of the largest party were won by Muslims. The situation resembled that in the regional parliament of Brussels, Belgium, the so-called "capital of Europe," where the Parti Socialiste was the largest party. Over half its 26 seats were held by Muslim immigrants. As the online Brussels Journal noted, "the electoral strength of the Left in Western Europe is increasingly based on the immigrant vote, as the Left caters for voters who favour extensive redistribution of taxpayers' money to so-called "underprivileged" groups such as immigrants." "In many West European countries the parties of the Left are actively catering for the growing Muslim vote. The Left realizes that the Third World immigrants guarantee its power base because these immigrants moved to Western Europe attracted by the generous welfare benefits that the parties of the Left promote."

The PvdA leader Bos was worried about the poor competence of many of these newly elected immigrants. He said that "our new immigrant councillors" are bound to cause trouble because their "political culture" is often incompatible with Dutch politics: "They conduct politics according to the culture of their home countries, where clientelism is the norm." Bos's words were widely reported by the Dutch media and caused anger among the newly elected PvdA councillors, some of whom hinted that Bos had made a racist remark. According to the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies of the University of Amsterdam 80% of the non-indigenous electorate voted for Labour. This explains why cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Breda and Arnhem succumbed to the Left.

In Germany in the general election in 2002, numbers have indicated that about up to 90 percent of the Muslim voters backed Schröder's left-wing coalition. "Some 200,000 German Muslims voted for Schroeder in the elections which he won by only 9,000." Poll data from 2005, when the Social Democratic SPD narrowly lost the election to the conservatives and joined in a coalition with Angela Merkel as Chancellor, indicate that 77 percent of Turkish voters planned to vote for the Social Democrats, followed by 9.2 percent for the Greens and 7.8 percent for the Left Alliance. Pundits said that the Muslim vote was likely to reward Schröder's Social Democrats (SPD) for its anti-Iraq war position and pro-Muslim policies. A meager 4.8 percent said they would cast votes for the conservative CDU. Cem Özedmir, a member of the European Parliament for Germany's Green Party, said the Christian Democrats had made a strategic decision in not trying to attract Turkish voters. "It is too high a cost," he explained. "For every Turkish voter the party might win, it would lose two or three German voters because of the party's conservative attitudes toward immigration and its social base." Guelay Yasin, manager of the Turkish-German Chamber of Commerce, made it clear for which party most of her members would vote. "We will vote for the party which supports Turkey's membership to the EU," Yasin said. The Social Democrats would profit from this since Schröder had personally supported Turkey's becoming a member of the EU.

In fact, the major challenge to the Social Democrats in vying for the Muslim vote in Germany, especially the country's 2.6 million Turks, 840,000 of them with German passports, comes from other Leftist parties. Some warned that the SPD could lose a number of Turkish voters to the newly formed and immigrant-friendly Left Party, a group born out of the marriage of former East German communists and Oskar Lafontaine, the ex-chief of the Social Democrats. Hans-Christian Ströbele, a member of parliament for the Green Party, in 2006 triggered a debate by calling for an official Turkish translation of the German national anthem. Conservatives worried it would send the wrong signal about integration. A Turkish version, Ströbele said, could demonstrate how multicultural German society has become. "I would see it as a sign of integration if citizens of Turkish descent could sing the third verse in Turkish."

Early in 2006, the secretary general of Italy's largest Muslim organisation, the Union of Islamic communities in Italy, called on Italian Muslims to vote for the Party of Italian Communists at the general election. The leader of UCOII said that their party's willingness to accommodate the needs of the Muslim community was a good reason to vote for them - even placing at the end of his email the logos of the Party of Italian Communists and its allies at the Senate, the Greens, both members of the center-left coalition. Just weeks after Italian Muslims recommended voting for the Communist Party, a Communist minister in the newly elected Leftist coalition of Romano Prodi, super-Eurocrat and former President of the European Commission, which won a very slim majority and ousted right-winger Berlusconi, decided to make it easier for immigrants from North Africa to enter the country. Italy's new Social Solidarity Minister, Paolo Ferrero, touched off an immigration controversy by announcing that under Prodi's new center-left government, "any foreigner with a job should be allowed to stay in the country." "The declarations of Minister for Social Solidarity Paolo Ferrero on the delicate issue of immigration were met enthusiastically by the people who are waiting to set sail from other shores of the Mediterranean" said deputy Senate speaker Roberto Calderoli, who belonged to Italy's anti-immigrant Northern League. "Announcing the closure of temporary shelter camps and the abolition of the Bossi-Fini law will unleash an invasion." Italy is facing a growing number of illegal workers from North Africa. There has been an increase in arrivals to Italy by sea, as "Moroccans who used to cross into Spain to get into the rest of Europe are changing tactics and now going by boat from Libya to Italy." Libya has become the bottleneck of much of the immigration from Africa and of a large part of the Middle East.

Leading Sunni Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi and others have hailed the coming Islamic conquest of Rome, just like Constantinople was conquered in 1453. "Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice. Islam entered Europe twice and left it… Perhaps we will conquer these lands without armies." The Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Arifi, imam of the mosque of King Fahd Defense Academy, concurred: "We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians (…) will yet pay us the Jiziya [poll tax paid by non-Muslims under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…"

Given the actions of European Leftists, Qaradhawi could end up being right in his predictions.

An Islamist human rights activist

In "Omani dissident promises to keep speaking out" from Agence France Presse (thanks to DFS), Taiba al-Mawali is called both an "Islamist" and a "human rights activist." And, apparently with abundant justification, a "very unusual woman."

It would be interesting to know whether she thinks general equality of rights should be accorded to women in Oman, or to non-Muslims, and if Amnesty International knew or cared about her positions on these matters before floating her name for the Nobel Peace Prize. It seems from her statement about changes in Islam that she opposes any attempt at softening Sharia provisions. But the Sharia-inspired violations of human rights are so far off the radar screen for most people that I think it is highly doubtful that these matters came up at all.

MUSCAT: For an Omani, Taiba al-Mawali is a very unusual woman. She is a militant human rights activist, unafraid to say what she thinks in a country where any criticism of the authorities is considered heresy. "I always say what I think is good for the country - and they don't like it," the former teacher and official radio journalist told AFP in an interview.

A fervent Islamist, Mawali, 42, has paid dearly for her beliefs - she spent six months in prison for criticizing the trial last year of 31 Islamists for having "plotted the overthrow of the government by force of arms ... by forming an illegal underground organization."

They were sentenced in May 2005 to prison terms ranging between one and 20 years but pardoned a month later.

The Islamist affair has left its marks on Mawali, a mother of six who is married to a policeman, turning her life upside down. Mawali says she has been under surveillance by the security services since her membership in the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Council) from 1994-2000....

Then, at the beginning of 2005, dozens of people suspected of being part of an Islamist plot were interrogated, and 31 were later charged.

"I knew them personally. I had read their books and visited them in their homes. They love their country and His Majesty," she said of Sultan Qabous bin Saeed, whom she says is misled by his advisers. Her friends, she said, had merely been trying "to teach religion to people as it should be taught." Mawali claims the Omani authorities have changed "many things" in the teaching of Islam "in the cause of the Americans."...

Last July, Mawali was sentenced to 18 months for her Internet articles and criticizing the authorities. She appealed. But she was afraid of being thrown in jail before this was heard, and fled to a friend's house where she hid for 17 days. The day before the appeal hearing, she returned home "disguised as a man."

Six months in prison was the verdict, and she was immediately taken into custody. She was freed a few days before the full term of her sentence, and believes this was done to avoid any public demonstration of support upon her release.

According to Amnesty International, which called her a "prisoner of conscience," Mawali's name has been put forward for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mawali says prison made her more determined.

"We want proper and free elections," she said, "[and] we have to have an independent judiciary. Because I know my religion, I fight for the rights of man and for justice."

Man, yes. But woman?

Azerbaijan 'flattened' sacred Armenian site

The Azeris deny that they have destroyed the site. But everyone is just going to have to take their word for it; no one can go look for himself.

To destroy the site, of course, would be in keeping with the Islamic concept of jahiliyya, pre-Islamic ignorance. This site has no value: it is not Islamic.

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

Fears that Azerbaijan has systematically destroyed hundreds of 500-year-old Christian artefacts have exploded into a diplomatic row, after Euro MPs were barred from inspecting an ancient Armenian burial site.

The predominantly Muslim country's government has been accused of "flagrant vandalism" similar to the Taliban's demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.

The claims centre on the fate of rare "khachkars", stone crosses carved with intricate floral designs, at the burial ground of Djulfa in the Nakhichevan region of Azerbaijan, an enclave separated from the rest of the country by Armenia.

The works - some of the most important examples of Armenian heritage - are said to have been smashed with sledgehammers last December as the site was concreted over.

The Azerbaijan government, which denies the claims, is now at the centre of a row with MEPs, some of whom it accused of a "biased and hysterical approach". Its ambassador to the EU also says the European Parliament has ignored damage to Muslim sites in Armenia. Azerbaijan has refused to allow a delegation of Euro MPs permission to visit the 1,500-year-old Djulfa cemetery during their trip to the region last month.

Most of original 10,000 khachkars, most of which date from the 15th and 16th century, were destroyed by the early 20th century, leaving probably fewer than 3,000 by the late 1970s.

According to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos), the Azerbaijan government removed 800 khachkars in 1998. Though the destruction was halted following protests from Unesco, it resumed four years later. By January 2003 "the 1,500-year-old cemetery had completely been flattened," Icomos says.

Witnesses, quoted in the Armenian press, say the final round of vandalism was unleashed in December last year by Azerbaijani soldiers wielding sledgehammers....

Hannes Swoboda, an Austrian socialist MEP and member of the committee barred from examining the site, said he hopes a visit can be arranged in the autumn. He added: "If they do not allow us to go, we have a clear hint that something bad has happened. If something is hidden we want to ask why. It can only be because some of the allegations are true."

And he warned: "One of the major elements of any country that wants to come close to Europe is that the cultural heritage of neighbours is respected."

Mmm hmm.

Dhimmi NY prof: Bible, Qur'an are violent, but 'read between lines'

Here is yet another moral equivalence argument, the likes of which we have seen many times before, from a professor in New York State. I continue to point out the weaknesses in these arguments because the idea that Christianity and Islam are equal in their capacity to incite violence is not only false, but it distracts from the reality and magnitude of the global jihad -- and weakens our ability to resist that jihad, since if all religions are equally likely to inspire this sort of thing, we can not legimately do anything to limit the spread of the jihad ideology in the West.

"Bible, Koran are violent, but 'read between lines,'" from the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to Mathew:

THE Bible has as many invocations to violence as the Koran, if not more, says an American biblical scholar and peace activist. There is a darker side to the sacred text that many Christians will not admit.

"If not more"? Please tell me more about this, Dr. Stanley. You only quote four below. Here, on the other hand, are eighteen invocations to violence from the Qur'an: 9:5, 9:29, 2:190-193, 2:244, 3:125-126, 3:169, 3:195, 4:71, 4:74-77, 4:84, 4:89-91, 5:33, 5:35, 8:9-10, 8:15-17, 8:39-40, 9:123, and 47:4. Now, I am fully aware that a single newspaper article cannot possibly contain the entire substance of your argument. So please send me the other Bible verses you have in mind (I can be reached at director@jihadwatch.org), and I will then post the more than 100 other Qur'an verses that incite or encourage violence. And then we'll tally them up. I look forward to hearing from you.

Alongside passages exhorting believers to love their neighbour and turn the other cheek are verses that refer to hellfire, encourage acts of violence or call for God to carry out acts of vengeance against sinners.

If you want to add in hellfire verses or calls to God to carry out acts of vengeance, the Qur'an has plenty of those as well. I'll add them to my list

Even the Book of Psalms, generally regarded by Christians as uplifting and comforting, referred to the dashing of "little ones" against rock, said Chris Stanley, a professor of theology at St Bonaventure University in western New York state.

This is the point at which those in Stanley's audience should have asked him, "Where are the Jewish and Christian terror groups that dash little ones against rock and point to this verse as their inspiration and justification? What, there aren't any? What about in history? No, Jews and Christians never took this verse as a mandate for violence? Why is that, exactly? You mean it's always been understood as rhetorical excess, not as a call to action? Then how does it compare to verses of the Qur'an that exhort Muslims to 'slay the unbelievers,' (9:5), a verse for which Osama bin Laden praised Allah?"

"There is the angry violent god of the Old Testament, but there is plenty of language in the New Testament that portrays God as a violent judge, and some that can be taken that human violence is something that God would ordain," Dr Stanley said.

"Can be taken"? Possibly. "Have been taken or are being taken"? No.

Dr Stanley spoke at a two-day seminar hosted by the United Theological College that explored how religious texts have been used to validate violence - and can be reinterpreted to encourage dialogue between faiths.

This month, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, was criticised by Islamic leaders when he said the Koran was riddled with invocations to violence and described the central challenge of Islam as the struggle between moderate and extremist forces.

Dr Stanley said religious violence was not distinctively a Muslim problem and those who engage in violence and claim support from scripture are not necessarily twisting words, but picking up on past elements.

False opposition. To say that religious violence is distinctively a Muslim problem would be asinine, and unsupported by history. But to suggest that all traditions have this problem equally would be also asinine, and unsupported either by history or the situation of the present day.

Christians and Jews each had to face up to, not paper over, their violent antecedents, and no religion could claim the moral high ground.

That's true as far as it goes: Muslims need to face up to, not paper over, the violence in their theology and history. But here again, the equivalence is faulty. Christians and Jews and everyone else have done evil things. But there is no doctrine of warfare against and subjugation of unbelievers in Christianity or Judaism. In Islam there is. This is a matter of fact, abundantly established by the texts not just of the Qur'an, but of Hadith and fiqh.

It was, however, sometimes harder for Muslims to deal critically with the violent statements in the Koran because of the belief that every word of the Koran is spoken by God.

The challenge, he said, was to have people follow those parts of the scriptures that espouse non-violence....

Indeed. But then there are people such as the Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia arguing that the elements of the Qur'an that espouse non-violence, such as the 109th sura, have been superseded by the violent verses. Nor is he the originator or sole proponent of this concept. This kind of exegesis is what needs to be addressed by people like Stanley and self-professed Muslim moderates. The world is still waiting.

The things that you're liable to read in the Bible …

Psalms 137:9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

See above.

Matthew 10: 34-36 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Uh-oh. Get ready for the Christian jihad against mothers-in-law!

Seriously, here we have no command to violence, nothing like "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Qur'an 9:29). We have, instead, a verse that has been traditionally interpreted by all Christian sects as referring to differences between people that would be created by the Christianity of one and the non-Christianity of the other. Nothing to do with fighting or killing people at all.

Deuteronomy 7:2 And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.

This one would be frightening indeed if it were an open-ended, universal command for all believers to wage war against all unbelievers, such as is found in the Qur'an (9:5, 9:29, etc.). But in fact, it refers to the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. And it is not in force for all time, but only until the Israelites take possession of the land God gave them. Evidence for this is found in the fact that no Jewish or Christian group that committed acts of violence in any context ever invoked Deuteronomy 7:2 to justify their actions. The contrast with the Qur'an and contemporary jihad groups couldn't be more stark.

Psalms 58:10 : The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked

Here again: when we see Jewish and Christian terror groups washing their feet in the blood of the wicked, we may have something to be concerned about. Until then, we can rest on the assurance that Jewish and Christian interpretative traditions -- mainstream traditions -- mitigate the force of the literal understanding of this in various ways. Again, the contrast with mainstream Qur'anic interpretation couldn't be more stark.

Bernard Lewis backs Bush: Suicide terror a perversion of Islam

"Lewis backs Bush: Suicide terror a perversion of Islam," from the World Tribune, with thanks to Mathew:

Princeton historian Bernard Lewis, a foremost authority on Islam and the West, said recently that the Bush administration needs to better identify its global campaign against terrorism.

“I feel that while we are indeed engaged in a war against terror, it is inadequate and even misleading,” Lewis said recently at a forum. “If Churchill had informed the country in 1940, we are engaged in a war against bomber aircraft and submarines, that would have been an accurate statement but not a very helpful one. To say we are engaged in a war against terror is of the same order. Terror is a tactic. It's a method of waging war. It is not a cause, it is not an adversary, it is not anything that one can identify as an opponent, and I think we need to be more specific in fighting a war. It's useful to know who the enemy is.”

That part is great. In fact, it sounds as if Bernard Lewis has been reading my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) in which I make precisely this point.

(Note for the literal-minded: no, of course I don't think Lewis has read any of my books.)

Lewis, speaking at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life last month, agreed with President Bush that Islamist extremism is a perversion of Islam.

“Take, for example, the suicide bomber. Classical Islamic legal and religious texts are quite clear on the subject of suicide. Suicide is what Christians would call a mortal sin. Even if a man or a woman had lived a life of unremitting virtue, by committing suicide they forfeit paradise and go straight to hell, where, according to the sacred texts, the eternal punishment of the suicide consists of the eternal repetition of the act of suicide," he said.

Under Islam, a person who poisons himself will experience “an eternity of bellyache.”

Suicide terrorism is a recent development that has come in stages. Islamic jurists recently ruled that throwing oneself to death against a superior enemy was permissible.

“And that was where it stood for centuries and centuries,” Lewis said. “Even the famous Assassins of the Middle Ages never died by their own hands and never killed anyone but the marked target.”

Recently, however, Islamist extremists were able to change the law to allow taking one’s life while taking a sufficient number of the enemy as well. Lewis called it a “radical departure” from past Islamic practice and theology.

Suicide terrorism emanated from Wahabism, in Najd, part of Saudi Arabia in the 18th Century.

All right. Just a couple of points here, Professor Lewis. As I have noted before, John Paul Jones encountered suicide attacks by Muslim Turks in 1788 -- a time when Wahhabism was an Arabian movement opposed by the Ottomans. Jones described a naval encounter between the Turks and the Russians that took place when Jones served in the Russian Navy:

“…for it was the intention of the Turks to attack us and board us, and if we had been only three versts further the attempt would have been made on the 16th [June 1788] (before the vessel of the Captain Pacha ran aground in advancing before the wind with all his forces to attack us,), God only knows what would have been the result…The Turks had a very large force, and we have been informed by our prisoners that they were resolved to destroy us, even by burning themselves, (in setting fire to their own vessels after having grappled with ours.) [note added by Jones: Before their departure from Constantinople, they swore by the beard of the Sultan to execute this horrible plan…if Providence had not caused its failure from two circumstances which no man could forsee.”]

That's from John Paul Jones’ Letter to Prince Potemkin, June 20, 1788, from Life and Character of John Paul Jones-A Captain in the Navy of the United States, John H. Sherburne, 1825, p. 308 (thanks to Andrew Bostom).

Now why would these almost certainly non-Wahhabi Muslim sailors do such a thing? Could it be because At-Tauba 111, chapter 9 verse 111 of the Qur'an, is in their Qur'ans as well as in Wahhabi Qur'ans? That verse promises Paradise to one who "kills and is killed" for Allah. Such a death is not considered suicide, and so Lewis is noting Islamic prohibitions of suicide even though they simply don't apply to jihad/martyrdom attacks.

Here and here are Hugh Fitzgerald's tributes to Bernard Lewis.

UPDATE: Andrew Bostom has alerted me to the fact that Professor Franz Rosenthal, the great American scholar of Islam who 50 years ago translated Ibn Khaldun's classic Muqaddimah, wrote this in his 1946 essay "On Suicide in Islam":

While the Qur'anic attitude toward suicide remains uncertain, the great authorities of the hadith leave no doubt as to the official attitude of Islam. In their opinion suicide is an unlawful act....On the other hand, death as the result of "suicidal" missions and of the desire of martyrdom occurs not infrequently, since death is considered highly commendable according to Muslim religious concepts. However, such cases are no[t] suicides in the proper sense of the term. (Rosenthal, Franz, "On Suicide in Islam," Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 66, pp. 243, 256.)

What would Lewis say to Rosenthal? Would he consider that an accurate or an inaccurate summation?

Bostom himself notes what has often been noted here, about Qaradawi and others:

That is why even clerics such as the popular Al-Jazeera personality Yusuf Al Qaradawi openly sanction murderous Palestinian homicide bomber "martyrdom" operations against innocent Israeli citizens (all of whom are considered "combatants" who obstruct the "call to Islam") during fatwa councils convened in the heart of Europe.

(UPDATE: I took out my quip about Edward Said and Lewis. It was a little attempt at a joke, based on Lewis' strange wobbliness on key issues in recent years. I think the wobbliness is well attested, but nobody liked the joke, so I have removed it. For the record: Lewis is in many areas a great scholar, a hero of scholarship, and his work should be read by all -- especially The Political Language of Islam.)

Imposition of Shariah on non-Muslims proposed in Aceh

Islamic Tolerance Alert from Ekklesia, with thanks to Mathew:

A bill proposed by lawmakers in the Indonesian province of Aceh would impose Shariah law on all non-Muslims, the armed forces and law enforcement officers, a local police official has announced.

The news comes two months after the Deutsche Presse-Agentur warned of “Taliban-style Islamic police terrorizing Indonesia's Aceh”.

Shariah took effect in 2005 in Aceh, a predominantly Muslim region on the northernmost tip of Sumatra. But it only applied to Muslims....

Alyasa Abubakar, head of the relevant local government office, declared recently: "Based on equality in law, Acehnese people have formally proposed ... to apply the Islamic Shariah Law to all those residing in Aceh, including military, police and non-Muslims."

The provincial Islamic law department has called a further crackdown on 'immorality' - alcohol, gambling, women appearing in public without headscarves or venturing out at night without a male escort.

Recently a young Acehnese woman was allegedly publicly flogged for kissing her boyfriend in public, while another 23-year-old has been locked up in Acehnese jail for more than two weeks without access to an attorney after being caught drinking beer.

Shariah police are said to have barged into the lobby of a leading Banda Aceh hotel to arrest three women attending an international conference because they were not wearing headscarves.

Fitzgerald: Dismay and fury

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses official Washington's continuing misapprehension and dhimmitude:

The army is full of officers and men who, even if they once were sturdily willing to do what they saw as their duty, after their second or third tour in Iraq have come away, despite their best efforts at times to remain quiet about it, disgusted with the waste and the stupidity of the effort. They are now full of justified loathing not only for the Sunni insurgents or the Mahdi army boys, but also for so many in the general population who clearly are collaborating with those trying to kill the Americans, and who do so little, so unwillingly, to defend their own "Iraq." So as the army becomes demoralized, more and more people are realizing that the Administration did not commit a few "mistakes" in the execution of the war, but rather misconceived the entire war as "a war on terror" -- rather than as a war of self-defense against Islamic jihad. To understand this would mean to understand that no Muslim state can be permitted to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was, despite all this "secularist" business, a Muslim state, its not unrepresentative regime infused with the attitudes and atmospherics of Islam in the version that we all "Pan-Arabism."

And so now many of the best young officers leave, and soldiers do not re-enlist, and the recruitment standards are dangerously lowered, and those who signed up for the Reserves or the National Guard in a burst of patriotism in 2002 and 2003 are disgusted by the behavior of so many of the generals who "do not get it" and keep prating about "winning hearts and minds" in Iraq, or Afghanistan. They are disgusted by leaders who are afraid to state clearly that not only did the Administration fail to identify the enemy, it also got Iraq entirely wrong. Those leaders miscomprehended the depth of the Shi'a resentment of Sunnis, which is not merely a result of Saddam Hussein, nor of the past 50 years (i.e., since the coup that overthrew the monarchy and Nuri as-Said) of Iraq's history, but of 1300 years of Sunnis and Shi'a being at each other's throats. They failed as well to realize that the Sunni Arabs will never reconcile themselves, whether in or out of Iraq, to the Land of the Two Rivers being dominated by Shi’ites. The Sunni Arabs will never be disabused of their crazed conviction that they constitute 42%, and not 19%, of the population.

Nonetheless, the Administration keeps chasing the will-o'-the-wisp of an "Iraqi" army and an "Iraqi" police force. It risks the lives of American soldiers who are told to train those "Iraqi" forces and even be embedded with them. But the notion that Sunni Arabs and Shi'a Arabs, and Arabs and Kurds, could fight in a cohesive unit, trusting one another with their lives, is nonsense. And the Americans there have no ability to detect the Muslim they can trust from the one they can't. They certainly cannot know which Sunni Arab will suddenly turn on his Shi'a fellows, or vice-versa, or both, at different times, or else will turn on the American whom equally they detest. All this is making officers and men sacrifice possibly their lives on the altar of Administration stupidity, timidity, cupidity, and obstinate refusal to see how wrong it is -- 180 degrees wrong – to decline to defend ourselves by exploiting, instead of trying against all odds to heal, those ethnic and sectarian fissures.

And now that the same madness is reflected in the State Department. Had Ambassador John Evans, the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia who was fired for referring to the Armenian genocide, not been forced to apologize for speaking the truth, had he not been forced to resign, had Turkish protests been met with steely indifference, it would have been good for American relations with Turkey. The Turks must in any number of ways be made to realize that a series of events has demonstrated that Turkey is not the ally that the United States thought it was. These include its refusal to allow the fourth division to enter Iraq from bases in Turkey, and the disgusting remarks of an important Turksih official declaring American soldiers in Iraq "worse than Nazis," and the Turkish film that became a box-office smash depicting those soldiers as Nazis (and with a Jewish doctor who harvests organs from Iraqis supposedly murdered at Abu Ghraib prison). Then there was the best-sellerdom of Mein Kampf in Turkey. All of this shows that the Turkey of the Ankara generals (it just a few years ago that both Douglas Feith and Richard Perle were registered agents of Turkey) is a thing of the past under Erdogan. Kemalism is transient; Islam is forever. That is the lesson of Turkey. And if Islam is not bound hand and foot, as Ataturk tried to do, it will keep coming back, like Rasputin.

It was important to signal to both Armenia and Turkey that the genocide would be called what it is. It was important for Ambassador Evans to be celebrated. It was even more important to begin to tell the Turkish government and people that they have to face up to this history, and in so doing, should put the blame right where it belongs: not on some fault inherent in Turks, but on Islam, which made Muslim Turks willing to massacre Christian Armenians whom they deemed in violation of their dhimma. In that way, secularist Turks can claim that in taming or distancing themselves from Islam, they have tried to tame the ideological source for those mass murders in 1894-96 and then the later genocide (in its intent and scope, by many of those involved) of 1915-1920.

In the State Department, among the decent, there must be dismay. And at the European desks, there must be alarm at how the islamization of Europe proceeds without any signaling from the American government that it understands this problem, and a sentiment that NATO must meet (without Turkey) to discuss this matter, that it cannot wait.

Dismay among the soldiers. Dismay among the diplomats.

And fury, absolute fury, among the American people who watch the idiocy continue.

Denmark Condemned for Mishandling Cartoon Crisis

Danish dhimmitude from IslamOnline, with thanks to Inexion:

COPENHAGEN, May 26, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Denmark was condemned Thursday, May 25, in an official report for its mishandling of the cartoon crisis sparked by the publication of 12 caricatures that lampooned Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) in Danish mass-circulation Jyllands Posten in September.

"The government's management of the Muhammad (cartoon) affair was a bigger problem than the caricatures themselves and the prime minister ... should have entered into dialogue with the Muslim ambassadors," said the government-sanctioned study, a copy of which was obtained by Jyllands Posten, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP)....

What absurdity. Fogh Rasmussen, you may recall, refused to meet with the ambassadors because he said, correctly, that it was not his province to limit freedom of the speech or freedom of the press. But for this "official report," evidently, those freedoms matter less than appeasing those whose reaction to these cartoons was so insanely disproportionate as to include multiple murders of innocent people.

The study said that the Danish government has not proved forthcoming and responded negatively to Muslim bids to break the standoff.

"Denmark, in practice, did not want dialogue," said the Danish university researchers who wrote the study.

"It did not acknowledge the points of view of the other party (Muslim nations) and ... saw being open to dialogue as compromising its own values."

Danish Muslim leaders had taken pains to settle the crisis, but they were given the could shoulder by the government.

This is nonsense. They didn't want to settle it. They wanted to stir it up -- remember the three more incendiary cartoons, which did not appear in the newspaper, that somehow made it into the dossier they circulated in the Islamic world.

They would only have wanted Fogh Rasmussen to kowtow and demands that the newspaper and cartoonists kowtow also.

They then took their case to the Muslim world, embarking on a multi-leg Arab tour that outraged the government which accused them of "internationalizing" the issue and inciting anti-Danish hatred.

No mention in IslamOnline, you'll notice, of the three additional cartoons.

Canada's largest bookstore chain cowers before the specter of Islamic violence

More Cartoon Dhimmitude. "Indigo pulls controversial Harper's off the shelves," from the Globe and Mail, with thanks to m3:

Canada's largest retail bookseller has removed all copies of the June issue of Harper's Magazine from its 260 stores, claiming an article by New York cartoonist Art Spiegelman could foment protests similar to those that occurred this year in reaction to the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Indigo Books and Music took the action this week when its executives noticed that the 10-page Harper's article, titled Drawing Blood, reproduced all 12 cartoons first published last September by Jyllands-Posten (The Morning Newspaper).

The article also contains five cartoons, including one by Mr. Spiegelman and two by Israelis, “inspired” by an Iranian newspaper's call in February for an international Holocaust cartoon contest “to test the limits of Western tolerance of free speech.”...

In a memo obtained by The Globe and Mail that was e-mailed to Indigo managers yesterday about “what to do if customers question Indigo's censorship” of Harper's, employees are told to say that “the decision was made based on the fact that the content about to be published has been known to ignite demonstrations around the world. Indigo [and its subsidiaries] Chapters and Coles will not carry this particular issue of the magazine but will continue to carry other issues of this publication in the future.”...

“I'd expect an American company to do this, not a Canadian,” Mr. MacArthur said yesterday. “Even though you have tougher libel laws than us and your own versions of political correctness, to my mind [Canada] has always been a freer place for political discourse.”

The U.S. news media have become “terribly prone to self-censorship,” especially after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, he said. “There's a more wide open debate [in Canada] than in America.”

That is, there was.

U.S. Ambassador to Armenia fired for referring to Armenian genocide

Dhimmitude at State. A press release from the Armenian National Committee of America (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

REP. MARKEY LEADS CONGRESSIONAL OPPOSITION TO WHITE HOUSE RECALL OF U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA

ANCA Calls for Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Hold Hearing on Firing

WASHINGTON, DC – Over 60 Members of Congress, led by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking for clarification on reports of U.S. Ambassador to Armenian John Evans’ recall over his forthright remarks about the Armenian Genocide, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

The letter was sent on the eve of a May 23rd White House announcement nominating Richard Hoagland to serve as the new Ambassador to Armenia. Amb. Evans will be relieved of his duties as soon as Hoagland's Senate confirmation process is completed.

The Administration has recalled Amb. Evans over his February 2005 statements at Armenian American community functions, during which he properly characterized the Armenian Genocide as ‘genocide.’ Following his statements, Amb. Evans was apparently forced to issue a statement clarifying that his references to the Armenian Genocide were his personal views and did not represent a change in US policy. He subsequently issued a correction to this statement, replacing a reference to the genocide with the word “tragedy.” The American Foreign Service Association, which had planned to honor Amb. Evans with the “Christian A. Herter Award,” recognizing creative thinking and intellectual courage within the Foreign Service, reportedly rescinded the award following pressure from the State Department a few days before Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Washington, DC to meet with President Bush.

“Ambassador Evans has been recalled for doing nothing more than honoring the forsaken pledge of his president,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “We want to thank Congressman Markey and his 59 colleagues for calling for a clarification and rejecting the Armenian Genocide ‘gag-rule’ imposed by the Turkish government and, sadly, enforced by our own State Department.”

"Armenian Americans truly regret that the Administration lacks the courage to speak honestly about its reasons for firing Ambassador Evans," added Hamparian. "We call upon the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - the Congressional panel constitutionally charged with oversight of diplomatic appointments - to hold a hearing thoroughly examining the reasons behind this firing, the role of the Turkish government, and the broader implications for the future of the Foreign Service that a senior American diplomat's career has been ended simply for speaking the truth."

Iran: Palace of Darius the Great Discovered, Vandalized

"...archeologists believe that illegal diggers cannot be held responsible for destroying of this palace by bulldozers, and it was a deliberate act by an unknown person or group of people who intended to devastate this place for a reason that is not clear for archeologists."

Since some of the archeologists are apparently Muslims, they should not be so puzzled about this. They would find the mystery cleared up by the traditional Islamic idea that all artifacts of pre-Islamic civilization are manifestations of jahiliyya, the pre-Islamic period of ignorance, and as such are so much trash. They are not to be valued, venerated, respected in any way. It is likely that the people who did this damage in Iran believe these things.

"Palace of Darius the Great Discovered in Bolaghi Gorge," from the Cultural Heritage News Agency, with thanks to Dafydd:

Tehran, 15 May 2006 (CHN) -- Iran-French joint archeology team at Bolaghi Gorge succeeded in discovering and identifying the remains of a gigantic palace, believed to be from the Achaemenid era (648 BC–330 BC), during their second season of excavations in the area.

“Before the start of this season of excavations, our geophysical tests in area number 33 of Bolaghi Gorge had revealed to us the possible existence of a huge building near the Sivand Dam. Clay artifacts found in this area showed that this building used to be the residential palace of the Achaemenid kings. With the start of the new excavation season, we resumed our excavations in area number 33 with this attitude,” said Mohammad Taghi Ataee, head of the Iran-French joint archeology team at Bolaghi Gorge.

“After we started our excavations in the historic hill where this monument is located, we realized that it consisted of one historic layer only. Since no other layers were constructed on top of this layer, archeologists were hoping to unearth the entire palace intact. However, after they made their trenches they got to a number of wells which had been dug by illegal smugglers and also traces of bulldozers which had caused serious damage to this ancient Achaemenid palace,” said Ataee.

Plundering of archeological sites by the smugglers has become a common issue in archeology. However, according to Ataee, archeologists believe that illegal diggers cannot be held responsible for destroying of this palace by bulldozers, and it was a deliberate act by an unknown person or group of people who intended to devastate this place for a reason that is not clear for archeologists.

Fitzgerald: Why didn't we know?

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald wonders why recent revelations about Saudi textbooks actually surprise some people:

In the three decades plus since the quadrupling of oil prices, the 10 Arab or Muslim member-states of OPEC (which is to say, all the members of OPEC, save Venezuela) have received about $9-10 trillion dollars. The figure I have previously used of $5-6 trillion was too low. For more on this, google "OPEC" and "annual revenues" and do your own calculations.

Some of that money could all along have been saved, through the recapture of oligopolistic rents, simply by taxing ourselves. At any point, Saudi Arabia has an "ideal" price -- i.e., the price at which the value of its reserves, by its own calculation, is maximized. This is based on the energy market, at present and in the future, including the development of other oil fields, or of alternative sources of energy, or of elasticity of demand. Whatever that "ideal" price X, at any one time, the addition by the consuming nations of a tax Y will force the Saudis either to lower their own prices (up to the full amount of "Y" if they wish to keep their ideal price "X" for consumers), or to see the market shift away from oil too rapidly.

This was not understood back in 1973, when much could have been done (a few trillion dollars saved -- think what that could have done for Social Security, education, alternative energy, for a start). The fact that it was not done reflects the Saudi success in buying up the services of a small army of apologists, including ex-ambassadors and C.I.A. agents. Attention has been paid to Edwin Wilson and Fran Terpil, who were involved with Khaddafy; no attention has been paid to Raymond Close, who "retired" early in 1977 from being Station Chief in Saudi Arabia to go into business with some Saudis, and who has been dutifully involved in all sorts of activities, including BCCI, and has been working as an "international business consultant" ever since -- dutifully giving the Saudi take on everything. The Saudis have also paid journalists and of course well-connected political figures and hangers-on. (The Kennedy apparatchik Fred Dutton should not be overlooked). These people, like others all over the Western world, took in some tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, several trillion dollars might have been recaptured from OPEC if Saudi Arabia had been seen, accurately, not as a friend but as a mortal enemy of Infidels --whatever plausible Prince "we-are-all-men-of-the-world-have-some-port-have-a-Havana-cigar" Bandar assured successive American governments. And of course no one bothered to ask about Saudi Arabia's funding of mosques and madrasas all over the world, with their close connection -- see the Freedom House Report -- to inculcation of hatred toward all Infidels. After all, that bought-and-paid-for army of apologists was there to parrot the Saudi view, and to tell us again and again that Saudi Arabia is America’s “staunch ally” -- beginning as always with that picture of Ibn Saud and Roosevelt meeting on a ship.

One would not have expected any alarms about Saudi money (nearly $100 billion worldwide) going to fund mosques, madrasas, and hate literature (with Infidels being the hated) to come from the likes of Raymond Close, or James Akins, or the late John C. West, or West's friend Crawford Cook, or the entire host of Saudi hirelings (direct or indirect). Nor would we have expected any alarms to come from those who have simply been given gigantic honoraria for this or that "speech" to an Arab audience in Kuwait or the U.A.E., or at an Arab-funded lecture series at places such as Tufts. George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton have both pocketed large sums from the latter. Few can 'scape whipping -- or should.

As part of the 9/11 report, Congress ought to have investigated the role of Saudi money in creating these apologists, in putting so many on the payroll, and in buying up and controlling academic centers for "Islamic Studies" -- or at least setting up individual chairs. The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Both conveniently at Georgetown, in Washington. The Saudi funding for a chair (or was it a "center"?) in Islamic Studies, establishedat the University of Arkansas when Clinton was president. The money for Presidential libraries: Bush, Carter, Clinton. The money for King Abdul Aziz Chairs hither and yon. The $20 million just given to Esposito's operation, and then to Harvard. The support for Professor Frank Vogel, recipient of Saudi largesse at Harvard Law School as "The Guardian of the Two Noble Cities Adjunct Professor of Islamic Law" --- a little "adjunct" sum to supplement his regular chair's emoluments. And so many others, at Exeter and Durham in England, for centers, departments, individual chairs, all keeping the discussion of Islam carefully within the MESA Nostra bounds, so that were a potential Joseph Schacht or a Snouck Hurgronje or an Arthur Jeffrey to come along as a student, he would not be nurtured but stymied, his scholarly investigation limited (no following in the footsteps of Bat Ye'or for further work on treatment of non-Muslims under Islam, no discussion of the immutability of Islam when "reform" is all the rage, no investigation of the doctrine of Jihad as it is understood at al-Azhar, or the seminaries of Qom, or by the good doctors of Saudi Islamic universities. Whether the money is used to create a "center" or to go to a pre-existing department, or merely to fund an individual "scholar" who will keep things under control it all amounts to the same thing. And it's worked. MESA Nostra rules. The great scholars of Islam who lived between 1880 and 1960 have been replaced by -- something else. Here and there an individual carries on, but that is despite all the odds, and certainly not at the "great" universities where the situation is the worst. The Saudis, for more than 3 decades, have been getting their money's worth.

And they still are.

Remember that all these "bad things" about Saudi textbooks that we are suddenly getting glimpses of, all that indoctrination in hatred of Infidels, was always there -- it did not suddenly enter the curriculum. It is we who simply, over a longer period, knew nothing about it.

Why didn't we? Who kept us from knowing? Where was the C.I.A.? The American ambassadors? The journalists? Why was it not understood in 1950, or 1960, or 1970, or October 1973 when OPEC prices were quadrupled, that much of the money would inevitably be spent on those mosques, those madrasas, that Da'wa, demography, and dhimmitude?

Why?

Iraqi tennis players shot 'for wearing shorts'

Sharia Alert from the Brave New Liberated Iraq. "Iraqis shot 'for wearing shorts,'" from the BBC, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The coach of Iraq's tennis team and two players were shot dead in Baghdad on Thursday, said Iraqi Olympic officials.

Coach Hussein Ahmed Rashid and players Nasser Ali Hatem and Wissam Adel Auda were killed in the al-Saidiya district of the capital.

Witnesses said the three were dressed in shorts and were killed days after militants issued a warning forbidding the wearing of shorts.

Other Iraqi athletes have been targeted in recent incidents.

In this case, according to accounts, the men dropped off laundry and were then stopped in their vehicle by gunmen.

Leaflets

Two of the athletes stepped out of the car and were shot in the head, said one witness. The third was shot dead in the vehicle.

"The gunman took the body out of the car and threw it on top of the other two bodies before stealing the car," said the witness, who requested anonymity.

He said leaflets had been recently distributed in the area warning residents not to wear shorts.

Hugh Fitzgerald's Douce France in German

A special service for German-speaking visitors. Translation by Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:

Douce France, eine treffend scharfsinnige Betrachtung unserer Freunde im Lande Lafayettes:

Stell Dir vor Du wärest ein verwöhntes Mitglied der französischen Elite. Ein Kind macht gerade die khâgne, und peilt rue d’Ulm an. Ein anderes ist derzeit politechnicien. Du geniesst ein gutes Auskommen und bist verbeamtet. Du und Deine Gattin, ihr seid Journalisten oder Schriftsteller oder einer aus den grossen Heeresscharen die “recherches” ausführen, und das Leben ist gut, kommod, wie es sein sollte. Ja nun, Du bemerkst zunehmend mehr Muslime um Dich herum wo immer Du umher gehst, nicht länger auf den banlieues, aber im Zentrum von Paris, oder Toulouse, oder Lyon. Und weist Du noch wie unbehaglich Dir zumute wahr, vor vier Jahren als Du zufällig über die Cannebière in Marseille spazieren gingst. Du hast sogleich einen Entschluss gefasst dann und damals, Du würdest nie dorthin zurückkehren.
Und Du hast Freunde die im Süden wohnen. Und sie erzählen Dir, dass die beurs – einige nennen sie die maghrébins – allen das Leben zur Hölle machen. Sie greifen französische Kinder auf dem Schulweg an. Sie zerstören mutwillig Personenwagen. Sie bedrohen, und noch mehr viel mehr als zu bedrohen sie jeden der noch immer so töricht ist mit einer Kippa oder einem Kreuz herauszugehen. Ganze Bezirke von Städten im Süden wie auch im Norden und Osten und Westen, wurden zu Tabuzonen für nicht–Muslime. In den Schulen ist den Lehrern die Autorität abhanden gekommen. Sie können sogar die Spezialgebiete des Zweiten Weltkrieges, der Resitance und der Ermordung der Juden nicht behandeln, wie vom Staat verordnet; mit Recht befürchten sie die gewalttätige Reaktion der mohammedanischen Schüler.

Und während die Schulen für nicht–muslimische Schüler und Lehrkräfte zunehmend gefährlich werden, während mehr Zeit und Ressourcen der Disziplin statt dem Lernen gewidmet werden, derweil rechnen sich im stillen französische Eltern und werdende Eltern, die künftig zu erwartenden Kosten ihrer Kinderplanung aus und schlagen auf ihre Budgets jetzt den Barwert der wie sie feststellen müssen, erforderlichen Hinzurechnung: das Schulgeld für Privatschulen. Und das wiederum bedeutet, dass diese französischen Menschen kleinere Familien planen werden. Und sie werden in ihre Rechnung den wachsenden Aufwand einbeziehen müssen, diese französischen Steuerzahler, die Auslagen die sie leisten werden müssen für das steigende Gebilde der Sicherheit, für die Wächter in den Schulen, die Aufpasser in den U-Bahn Stationen und métros und Flughäfen und für das Bewachungspersonal auf Regierungsämtern, überall, den Aufwand zur Vorbeugung gegen die Vandalisierung der Grabsteine, zum Schutz der Synagogen und der Kirchen, die Umtriebe für all die Telefon-Abhörungen und die Agenten in den Moscheen, und Subventionen für Rechtsanwälte und Richter für die Anhörung von Anklagen gegen Muslime, und die Kosten zur Überwachung von Da’wa in den Strafanstalten (über 50% Muslime). Doch den Muslimen sind die Aufwendungen des französischen Staates gleichgültig. Frankreich ist Teil der Welt und die gehört Allah und seinen Gläubigen. Diese Doktrin ist seit 1400 Jahren unveränderlich geblieben. Imam Bouziane, derjenige den sie seit Jahren versuchen auszuschaffen, hat 16 Kinder von zwei Ehegattinnen, alle auf Kosten des französischen Staates lebend; ein charakteristischer muslimischer Mann. Mit der Zeit, steigt die Differenz zwischen der durchschnittlichen Familiengrösse von Muslimen und nicht-Muslimen stetig. Und mit der Zeit, zerfällt das Bildungswesen. Eben jetzt kannst Du es vielleicht nicht sehen. Deine Kinder besuchen die besten Schulen, gefolgt durch die besten lyceés. Du machst Ferien in der Normandie oder Bretagne, oder der Ile de Ré. Und Du benützt die metro nicht oft genug, oder Du gehst durch die richtigen Quartiere, oder arbeitest in den richtigen Fabriken oder Büros um je zu verstehen was zehnlige von Millionen Deiner französischen Landsleute ertragen müssen. Du, im Moment, bist noch immer immun, bist immer noch mit Absicht unwissend. Du hast die letzten Jahrzehnte damit verbracht Dich über die islamische Welt von Eric Rouleau zu informieren und von seinen Nachahmern (nachdem sie Peroncel-Hugoz, den einen Journalisten der die Wahrheit berichtete zum Schweigen brachten) in Le Monde. Du bist zutiefst bewandert in der ständig berichteten, endlos ausufernden Niederträchtigkeit des mächtigen Imperiums Israels. Dir ist bekannt was uns allen eingepfercht wurde: dass die arabischen Muslime vernünftige Menschen sind, mit klar berechtigten Beschwerden, so mässige und eingeschränkte Beschwerden, das Recht gebietet, dass sie zufrieden gestellt werden. Alle sind sich bezüglich der „Lösung“ einig. Sie wird die „Zwei Staaten Lösung“ genannt, und gewiss ist sie eine „Lösung“ den sonst, freilich würde sie nicht als eine „Lösung„ bezeichnet.

Und alles sieht aus wie früher: die Lindenbäume, der Fluss, die Brücken, die étalage in der boulangerie im Wohnviertel. Douce France, cher pays de mon enfance. Am Ende des Schultages versammeln sich chic-feine Mütter wie auch schon, in den Ortschaften oder on den Kleinstädten vor dem Schulgebäude – vor jener oder der anderen Ecole Jules Ferry – und warten darauf ihre Kinder abzuholen. Da kommen die aller kleinsten aus Maternelle, da laufen sie – schau wie niedlich sie sind. Und da ist die CE1 Gruppe, mit den riesigen cartables auf ihren kleinen Rücken. Lauf, lauf lauf zu Mammi. Hoppla. Und dann Jahre des büffelns, büffelns, büffelns, gekennzeichnet durch immer grössere cahiers -- "cahier" und "cartable" diese Worte erfassen das französische DNA besser als Piaf oder gauloises, nicht wahr? Und nun lasst uns die Bücher lesen und die Lehrfächer studieren die ja so vollständig und präzise vom Bildungsministerium festgelegt sind. Und nun sind wir bereits am Endexamen am letzten Jahr, wir bereiten uns auf das Bac vor, mit Kopien von blau markierten BALISES, Handbücher zu Les Châtiments und La Peau de Chagrin. Und sieh Mal die Ergebnisse werden in der Zeitung gebracht: Claire-Alix erhielt eine mention très bien. Fantastisch. Alles ist perfekt, alles wird ewig so bleiben, ganze Länder können sich gar nicht wandeln. Es geht gar nicht.
Aber es ändert sich doch, es löst sich auf, leise, langsam – lasst uns bloss nicht zu nahe hingucken, wir dürfen dem nicht zuviel Beachtung schenken - die Strassen, die Schulen, die Spitäler, das Vermögen die Wahrheit über Dinge auszusprechen, über das Leben wie es gelebt wird, la vita vissuta wie sie im Nachbarland zu sagen pflegen. Dominique de Villepin wusste schon immer dass man sich keine Sorgen machen musste; er wurde schlussendlich in Salé, in der Nähe von Rabat geboren, er verbrachte sogar einige Jahre seiner frühen Kindheit dort; natürlich kennt er seine Araber, seine Muslime. Und Eric Rouleau sicherlich, Jahrzehnte lang alteingesessener Experte im Le Monde für den Mittleren Osten (so sachkundig war er, dass er die Lehren des Koran und der Sunna nie auch nur zu erwähnen brauchte), gewiss wusste er alles nicht doch? Und diese französischen Übersetzungen von Edward Said die mit solcher Leidenschaft die Islamophobie anprangerten, und die böswilligen Zerrbilder mit der der blinde und verrottete Westen schon seit jeher, die arabisch mohammedanische Welt lächerlich machte. Ach, wir waren so schrecklich zu den Arabern, wir Kolonialisten, wir Franzosen, wir Abendländer. Und dann gibt es noch diese unendliche Gemeinheit Israels, dieser immerwährende kolonialistische Wundherd. Natürlich haben sie jedes Recht, die Muslime um hier her zu kommen, nach Frankreich. Einst gingen wir zu ihren Ländern, nun kommen sie zu uns. Und sie haben jedes Recht uns zu hassen, oder?

Und jetzt sind wir entschlossen nicht mehr zu verstehen, und alle Bänder der Sympathie mit Israel abzuschneiden, -- und wieso hegten wir überhaupt jegliche Sympathie zu ihnen eigentlich, wie einige unserer Eltern damals in 1948 oder 1956 oder 1967? Konnten sie nicht sehen was das „Palestinensische Volk durchmachen musste? Hanan, Yassir, Said, Saeb, Aziz, Walid, Rashid, Mohammed – Du hast unsere Herzen und unsere
Überzeugungen erobert. Nimm uns, mach mit uns was Du willst.
Keiner sagt was sich abspielt oder welche Überlegungen wir anstellen sollten darüber nachzudenken was zu tun wäre damit wir uns retten können. Niemand mit jeglichem Anstand. Und was immer Le Pen und Megret sagen, wir müssen das Gegenteil bewähren (ausser, natürlich wenn sie ihre Feindlichkeit gegenüber „den Juden“ zum Ausdruck bringen). Mach nicht darauf Aufmerksam, denk nicht daran. Freie Gedanken mögen in der Theorie recht sein, aber wahrhaftig – überleg doch die Konsequenzen. Wage nicht ausserhalb des Rahmens zu denken, der läuft über mit idées reçues. Défense de penser au dehors du box.

Nein. Alles wird in Ordnung sein, während Du entlang des Boulevards Stralemann flanierst. Diese Moslems werden uns nie gewachsen sein. Sieh Mal, schau doch wie diese legionnaires marschieren à pas lent, die Champs-Elysées herab, denk doch an die Reihe der Wüsten Siege. In unseren Köpfen ist 1930 und da gleich ist die Exposition coloniale. Erinnerst Du dich, tu t’en souviens, das Gemälde von le Douanier Rousseau, oder? Mit dem Araber mit dem Burnus der neben dem farbigen Senegalesen steht? Stimmt doch, ich hab doch recht? Frankreich wird immer Frankreich bleiben. Nichts wird sich ändern.

An einem gewissen Punkt, und trotz allem was Dich davon abhält nicht das zu sehen was Dich ins Gesicht anstarrt, realisierst Du, dass etwas furchtbar schief gelaufen ist mit Deinem Land und, dass Du und Deine Kinder Gefahr laufen das Land zu verlieren, bis aufs letzte Dorf und Haus, qui m’est une province et beaucoup davantage. Und Du weisst nicht was zu tun oder wie dieses Gefühl anderen zu vermitteln oder denen den Du Deine geheimen Ängste anvertraust, oder was zu tun wäre. Es ist so konfus und so ärgerlich. Du kannst nicht für Le Pen wählen. Du kannst „Cowboy“ Bush nicht befürworten oder diese unmöglichen Amerikaner. Du kannst Dich nirgend wo hinwenden.

Und dann erfährst Du was Jacques Chirac – der bereits ein muslimisches Enkelkind hat -- und Dominique de Villepin, nicht möchten, dass Du erfährst. Denn falls Du es solltest, könntest Du sehr aufgebracht werden. Du entdeckst, dass 1 von jeden 3 Babys die in Frankreich heute geboren werden, ein Moslem Baby ist. Und das bedeutet, dass in 20 Jahren, einer von jeden drei 20-jährigen ein muslimischer zwanzig-jähriger sein wird. Und das heisst, dass zwanzig Jahre später danach, mit den heutigen Geburtsraten, Frankreich eine muslimische Mehrheit haben wird. Wo werden wir die Statuen aus Marly-le-roi verstecken? Und die Venus de Milo? Und was soll aus diesen Bildern von lebendigem Leben – all diese Portraits im Louvre, und dem Grand Palais, und dem Musée Guimet dort in der Linden-gesäumten Aix, und überall in dem mit Kunst gefüllten kunstvollen Frankreich, mère des arts, des armes, et des loix – welche ausgesprochen verboten sind gemäss den unveränderlichen Beschränkungen des Korans. Sollen sie zur Verwahrung verschickt werden zu diesen Amerikanern in Übersee? Bis dann werden die meisten Juden Frankreich bereits verlassen haben, über die Meere für ihr eigenes Wohl, nach Israel oder ins englischsprachige Kanada (Sie machten sich Sorgen über die moslemische Bevölkerung von Quebec, weisst Du, welcher gestattetet wurde heranzuwachsen, unter der Politik der Provinz von Quebec die frankophonen Einwanderer zu fördern, und Nord Afrikaner vorzuziehen anstelle von potentiellen Einwanderern aus Italien, Griechenland, Spanien), und vor allem nach Amerika. Welch Glück die Amerikaner hatten. Keine Legate mehr für Frankreich von den ihresgleichen der Rothschilds oder der Nissim Camondos. Keine Spenden eines anderen Pierre Lévys. Geniesse die kufische Kalligraphie; einige finden unendliche Faszination daran.
Für den Moment erlaubst Du Dir die Vorstellung, es wird schon wieder werden. All diese Muslime werden höchstwahrscheinlich einfach konvertieren. Ich meine doch, das tun sie, nicht wahr, recht leicht, so sagt man mir. Natürlich, wieso habe ich nicht gleich daran gedacht, genau so wird es sein. Die Lage immer im richtigen Moment gerettet. Genau wie im Krieg. Keine Sorgen zu machen, Gar keine.

Anmerkung

Dieser Artikel von Hugh Fitzgerald wurde 2004 erstmals veröffentlicht.

Your tax dollars at work: House committee approves $1.7 billion in aid to Egypt

According to USAID, "the United States and Egypt have collaborated closely in economic development and regional stability... U.S. economic assistance through USAID has totaled almost $26 billion since 1975."

And here's $1.7 billion more. From AP: "House committee approves foreign aid bill"

WASHINGTON - A House committee approved a bill Thursday that would give Egypt $1.7 billion after rejecting a Democratic lawmaker's effort to withhold some of the aid until the country makes political reforms.

[...]

On Egypt, the bill fully funds President Bush's request, including $50 million for programs encouraging democratic reforms and $50 million for education. Money would be withheld until Egypt reformed certain parts of its financial sector.

Administration officials and lawmakers on Capitol Hill call Egypt an important ally in the Middle East. Nevertheless, they have called for greater democracy in the Arab nation and have raised concerns about Egypt's human rights record.

[...]

Rep. David Obey, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, sought to send a message about Egypt's record on democracy. His amendment would have withheld $200 million intended for new weapons and equipment for the Egyptian military until Congress determined progress has been made on political reforms.

Democracy is not the panacea that Obey may believe it is, as demonstrated by Islamist exploitation of the democratic process, but there are plenty of reasons to withhold aid from Egypt.

"It is absolutely urgent that we send some signal to the Egyptian government that they've got to change ... before it's too late to matter," Obey, D-Wis., said.

Indeed.

But Kolbe called Obey's amendment "the wrong approach" and said that Egypt would just get the money for new weapons and equipment from other countries. "That means China, that means Russia," Kolbe said.

That means their money, not ours.

Bush: Jizya for Iran if Thug-In-Chief nixes nukes

Contradicting Rice. "Bush to talk incentives if Iran halts nuclear moves," from Reuters, with thanks to JE:

WASHINGTON, May 25 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Thursday he would consider providing incentives to Iran if it agreed to abandon nuclear enrichment activities that the United States believes is aimed at producing a nuclear bomb.

Bush called a recent letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- the first publicly announced official Tehran-Washington communication since the 1979 Islamic revolution -- "interesting."

But Bush, at a White House news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, stressed that the Iranian leader "didn't address the issue of whether or not they're going to continue to press for a nuclear weapon. That's the issue at hand."...

Bush said he and Blair spent a lot of time discussing strategy on the nuclear crisis and how to persuade partners like Russia that the issue must be acted on by the U.N. Security Council if Iran remains defiant.

"The Iranians walked away from the table. They're the ones who made the decision, and the choice is theirs. If they would like to see an enhanced package, the first thing they've got to do is suspend their operations, for the good of the world," Bush said.

Meanwhile, "we've got to continue to work to convince them that we're serious, that if they want to be isolated from the world, we will work to ... achieve that," Bush said....

The package would offer Iran a light-water reactor, nuclear fuel from abroad, a regional security dialogue that includes the United States and other inducements if Iran abandons weapons-related activities, diplomats said.

Kurds converting to Christianity, doing away with Sharia

Good news indeed. "'Good news' from northern Iraq," from the Washington Times, with thanks to DFS:

Retired Iraqi Gen. Georges Sada, a former fighter pilot-turned-Christian evangelist, says Kurds are converting to Christianity "by the hundreds" in northern Iraq.

Gen. Sada earlier reported that he had been told that Iraqi pilots, flying private planes, took weapons of mass destruction to undisclosed locations in Syria in 2002.

The "good news" from Iraq's turbulent religious scene, consisting mainly of Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim militias battling each other, is from the Kurds, he said. Kurds are creating a constitution that does away with Shariah, or Islamic law, a move counter to trends in other Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Iran, where leaving Islam is a capital offense and Christian converts are often killed.

"No Christians in the Kurdish territory are persecuted," he said yesterday in an interview.

Gen. Sada, 66, who lives in Baghdad, cited growing numbers of evangelical Christians in the Kurdish city of Irbil and a recent church conference of 854 Christians at the city's Salahaddin University as demonstrations of the Kurds' willingness to protect religious freedom.

Australia: Hate books seized

An update in the ongoing Australia jihad book follies. "Hate books seized," from the Daily Telegraph, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BOOKS that glorify suicide bombings, jihad and anti-Australian conspiracies, collected by The Daily Telegraph, were again seized by federal authorities yesterday.

Australian Federal Police officers took the books of hate just days after two ministers -- Acting Prime Minister Mark Vaile and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock -- expressed dismay that the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions found the books did not breach the new sedition laws by inciting violence.

It is the second time federal police have seized the books, first discovered by The Daily Telegraph in Lakemba and Auburn book stores last year.

Israel 'to allow arms to Abbas'

More surrendering to terror. For these arms will almost certainly not just be used against Hamas, but against Israeli civilians. From the BBC, with thanks to Mackie:

Israel says it will allow security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to be supplied with weapons from third countries.

The announcement follows clashes between Mr Abbas's supporters and rivals from the Hamas militant group.

But Mr Abbas's office denied the story. A BBC correspondent said he might not want to be seen accepting Israeli help.

Earlier, Mr Abbas challenged Hamas to accept a joint political programme with his Fatah faction or face a referendum.

The plan, drawn up by jailed Palestinian leaders from all the main factions, says attacks on Israel should be limited to the land occupied by it since 1967 - implying recognition of Israel within its pre-1967 borders.

Olmert Proclaims He Won't "Surrender To Terror" Yet Announces Huge Concessions To Hamas Terror Regime

The Zionist Organization of America points out Olmert's inconsistency:

New York -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in his speech before a joint session of the United States Congress yesterday that, "we will not surrender to terror, we will not yield to terror…we will never capitulate to terrorists or terrorism."

But then Olmert stated, "we will remove most of the settlements which are not part of the major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria."

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein said, "We are a little perplexed. How can Israel claim on the one hand that they will never surrender to terror, then on the other hand announce the unilateral surrender of over 90% of Judea & Samaria to the Hamas terror regime while forcibly removing at least 60,000 Jewish men, women, and children from their homes and schools. Isn't surrendering all this land to the terrorist Hamas/Palestinian Authority nothing less than capitulation and surrender. Would Olmert be doing this if there were no Palestinian Arab terrorism. Of course not. Olmert is rewarding terror, and making clear that terrorism pays and pays well. This policy also harms the international war against Islamic terrorism. And Olmert's demographic argument simply doesn't make sense. The 42% of Judea and Samaria and 100% of Gaza already given away by Israel is where 98% of all Palestinian Arabs live. The 58% of the land still under Israeli control is virtually free of Palestinian Arabs. Also, if there really is going to be peace, why can't Jews live under Palestinian rule. One million Arabs live peacefully under Israeli rule."...

Meanwhile, Bush also wants to reward terror. "Bush Promises To Back Israel, Yet Stated No Deal Without Agreement By Palestinians," again from the ZOA:

President Bush said, "We reaffirm the deep and abiding ties between Israel and the US, which include growing trade and economic relationships…Israel is a close friend and ally of the US, and in the event of any attack on Israel, the US will come to Israel's aid. The US is strongly committed and I'm strongly committed to the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state."

Nevertheless, ZOA is concerned about a report in Agence France-Presse (5-22-06) that said, "Israel and the US are locked in disagreement over the warplane of the future after Washington refused to let Israel upgrade the aircraft with its own technology. The US is refusing to allow Israel to install any more advanced systems in their batch of the F-35 planes - no navigation, sighting or fire control systems, or Israel-developed missiles…This could diminish the qualitative advantage of the (Israeli) air force over its regional rivals."

The ZOA was also concerned that despite Israel's apparent goal of retaining a small portion of Judea and Samaria while forcibly evacuating tens of thousands of innocent Jewish men, women and children, President Bush stated that "no party should prejudice the outcome of negotiating on a final status agreement." And that "agreement will be only achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes, "meaning that President Bush will not be supporting even this final huge Israeli concession unless Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) support the Israeli policy of keeping only minimal parts of Judea and Samaria."

President Bush also stated that "Hamas must accept all previous agreements between the PA and Israel."

But, the ZOA pointed out, this implies that Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas accepted and fulfilled their agreements with Israel. The fact is that Arafat and Abbas fulfilled none of their Oslo or Wye or Road Map agreements. Bush should be demanding a full and complete fulfillment of all the agreements by the PA, before there can be any negotiations or concessions by Israel.

Another statement by President Bush was not accurate. He stated that "the Palestinians want to live in peace." and that "our beef is not with Palestinian people but with the government." We must understand that the Palestinians knew that Hamas was a terrorist group devoted to Israel's destruction when they voted them into power. If the people really wanted peace with Israel, they never would have voted for Hamas. It's like saying all the white people who voted for David Duke in Louisiana several years ago have nothing against black people. In addition, polls show that 75% of the Palestinians support acts of terror against Israel, while 65% of Palestinians support al-Quaeda attacks against Europe and the US.

Another recent poll by Bir Zeit Palestinian University showed that 85% of Palestinians said they would want conflict against Israel to continue even if a Palestinian State was created with Israel as its capitol as long as Israel still existed in any form. In addition, different polls show that between 45% to 80% of Palestinians don't support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State. (Source: Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, FAFO Norwegian polls)

ZOA President Morton A. Klein said, "Clearly, the Palestinian people are not much better than their Hamas terrorist government and must be held accountable for their votes and their views, and do not deserve President Bush's praise."

Muhammad's birthday celebrated in German Protestant church

Eurabian dhimmitude alert: "Muhammad Takes Over Protestant Church," from Brussels Journal, with thanks to Laurence:

A German reader informs us that it is not just the Catholic Church that has its quislings selling out to the Muslims. On Palm Sunday (9 April) a Protestant church in Bochum/Germany celebrated Muhammad’s birthday. The church invited the local Turkish community and the Turkish Consul, Munis Dirik, to attend the service. A Turkish music band played sufi music during the service, in which Protestants and Muslims joined together in honour of Muhammad.

In his sermon, Fred Sobiech, the protestant vicar, tried to link the figures of Muhammad and Jesus, saying: “Today we remember the birth and life of Muhammad and the beginning of the week of the passion of Christ, leading to Good Friday, the day Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.”

Muhammad himself might not have been so happy to see his "birth and life" celebrated in conjunction with the crucifixion of Christ, since "they slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so unto them" (Qur'an 4:157).

German court bans data trawl for Qaeda "sleepers"

Why? Because such measures could "reinforce prejudices and stigmatise the affected social groups in the perception of the public." Horror of horrors! Better to have another jihad terror attack in Europe than...the perception of Islamophobia!

From Reuters, with thanks to Romy:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A Moroccan man won a landmark legal victory on Tuesday when Germany's highest court set strict limits on the ability of police to trawl electronic databases at random in search of possible terrorists.

The Constitutional Court said such data trawling, for example to identify foreign male Muslim students, was only lawful if there was a concrete threat to Germany or one of its regions, or a danger to human life or freedom.

"A general threat situation, of the kind that has existed continuously in regard to terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001, or external political tensions, are not sufficient," the court said.

"The pre-condition is, rather, the existence of further facts pointing to a concrete danger, such as the preparation or commission of terrorist attacks."

The case arose from a complaint brought by a Moroccan student after the September 11 attacks on the United States, when German police began scanning local authority and university databases to identify Muslim men aged 18 to 40 who were current or former students.

Men who met that description were then subjected to further police checks in an attempt to uncover more al Qaeda "sleepers" like the three Hamburg-based Arab students who led the suicide hijack attacks on America. None were actually found....

The German court ruling said general police trawling of electronic records exposed the people concerned to an increased risk of further investigation.

It added that if such measures became publicly known, they could "reinforce prejudices and stigmatise the affected social groups in the perception of the public".

CAIR propaganda on "Islamophobia" spread by VOA

Islam has a negative image all because of American ignorance, you see. "Is Islam Misunderstood in America?," from the VOA, with thanks to LGF:

A new survey of U.S. public attitudes toward Muslim-Americans and Islam finds that a majority of Americans -- 55 percent -- regard Muslim-Americans favorably, but that smaller numbers - only 41 percent -- have favorable impressions of Islam as a religion. The study by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center indicates that many Americans perceive a link between Islam and violence, with more than one in three saying Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers. Experts on Islamic-American relations believe such negative views stem from American ignorance of Islamic culture.

Muslims and Islamic culture have long been an integral part of American society. But today, almost years after the 9/11 attacks by radical Islamists and the start of America's war on terror, many Americans associate Islam with violence and extremism....

The Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center did a more scientific survey. Gregory Smith, who co-authored the study say, "Only about four in 10 say they have favorable views of Islam, and there is also a minority of the public - but a substantial minority, about one third in our survey last summer - who say that they are concerned that Islam encourages violence among its believers."

American Muslim leaders blame the US news media for generating what Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council for American Islamic Relations calls "Islamophobia".

"The kind of coverage that the American audience has been receiving about Islam and Muslims leads one to just one conclusion, that Islam is bad and Muslims are violent," he said. "The media has failed to capture the reality of the Muslim world and only focused on the actions of the few."

Charles Johnson puts it well:

The “actions of the few” include those of CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad himself, who during a 1994 speech at Florida’s Barry University stated, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”

This Voice of America article, like almost all mainstream media pieces that cite the Council on American-Islamic Relations, doesn’t bother to mention Nihad Awad’s statement supporting a genocidal terrorist group. Mainstream media also think you don’t need to know that at least five of CAIR’s employees and board members have been arrested, convicted, deported, or otherwise linked to terrorism-related charges and activities.

But oddly enough, even though the media are keeping us ignorant of these facts, Americans seem to have increasingly negative opinions about Islam. Go figure!

Catholic group invites speaker from group linked to Al-Arian and Osama

Charles Johnson at LGF has outrageous but unsurprising news from the Catholic Information Center in Washington DC. "Catholic Group Invites Radical Islamic Speaker":

Wednesday, May 24th

“Revering Mary: Islamic & Catholic Perspectives in Dialogue”
Time: 6:00-8:00 pm (two 20-25 minute presentations, followed by Q&A, and a light non-alcoholic reception)

Speakers:
Fr. Francis Tiso works on interfaith dialogue in the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the USCCB and is responsible for representing the American bishops in dialogue sessions with Muslims.

Khaled Troudi will be the speaker from The International Institute of Islamic Thought. IIIT is located in Herndon, VA.

The International Institute of Islamic Thought has figured in several posts at LGF and was one of the North Virginia radical Islamic front groups raided by the Treasury Department in March 2002. An article about the raids from the Wall Street Journal links the group to Islamic Jihad kingpin Sami al-Arian and Osama bin Laden.

Hmmm. Tiso. I wonder if Fr. Francis Tiso is any relation to Fr. Jozef Tiso.

Eurodhimmis: Boldly pursuing appeasement against all odds

This comes in spite of the fact that Iran has already rejected incentives.

From AP: "European nations draw up Iran compromise"

LONDON - Key European nations put finishing touches Tuesday on a proposal meant to enlist the support of Russia and China for possible U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran should Tehran refuse to abandon uranium enrichment, diplomats said.

The compromise — which would drop the automatic threat of military action if Iran remains defiant — is part of a proposed basket of incentives meant to entice Iran to give up enrichment, a possible pathway to nuclear arms. It also spells out the penalties if it does not.

The Incentive Basket: Order now for Ayatollah Appreciation Day (every day in Iran)!

France, Britain and Germany discussed the final form of the package Tuesday ahead of submission for hoped-for approval Wednesday at a formal meeting of the five permanent Security Council members and Germany.

Google dumps news sites

Search giant axes another news page, calls terrorism discussion 'hate content' from WND, with thanks to AD.

Search engine giant Google has cut off its news relationship with a number of online news publications that include frank discussions of radical Islam – the New Media Journal becoming the latest termination, as its owner just discovered.

Frank Salvato, who began the agreement with Google News last September, said he received a reply from the company's help desk Friday indicating there had been complaints of "hate speech" on his site, as first reported by media watchdog Newsbusters.org.

The e-mail, which cited three articles that dealt with radical Islam and its relationship to terrorism, read:

Hi Frank,
Thanks for writing. We received numerous reports about hate content on your site, and after reviewing these reports, decided to remove your site from Google News. We do not allow articles and sources expressly promoting hate speech viewpoints in Google News (although referencing hate speech for commentary and analysis is acceptable).

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Iran: How not to win friends and influence people

UPDATE: Iran closes the paper in a damage control effort. (Never mind that it's a state-run paper.)

A frequent component of da'wa sales pitches is the notion of Islam as an egalitarian religion, where ethnic differences do not matter. Tell that to the mullah-controlled press in Iran, which, of course, cannot really afford to make any more enemies at the moment, particularly within its own borders.

It is worth noting that, like the rest of Iran, the Azeri minority is predominantly Shia Muslim. But in a projection of the Arab-supremacist mentality that pervades Islam-- particularly Sunni Islam-- apparently the Azeris, by not being Persian, are second-class Shia as well.

From Reuters: "Iran's Azeri minority protests mocking cartoon"

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Members of Iran's Azeri minority hurled stones in violent protests on Monday, enraged by a newspaper cartoon they said insulted them, a semi-official news agency and a witness said.

The ILNA labor news agency said thousands protested in the northwestern city of Tabriz and that police used teargas to try to disperse the crowd. The exact number of demonstrators could not be confirmed.

A resident said furious protesters threw stones at banks and smashed windows.

"They are angry because ... we (Azeris) are insulted by a cartoon," Soraya, a 40-year-old mother, told Reuters by telephone from Tabriz.

I suppose there's ample precedent for this sort of reaction to a cartoon.

The cartoon, which appeared in Friday's edition of the official Iran newspaper, showed a boy repeating the Persian word for cockroach in different ways, while a cockroach in front of the boy asked "What?" in Azeri.

EU Conference to discuss "Islamophobia," but not anti-Semitism

Eurabia Alert: "EU 'regrets' Israeli snub of racism conference," from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Fjordman:

European officials responded with "regret" Monday to Israel ambassador to Austria Dan Ashbel's decision to boycott a conference on racism in the media in Vienna Monday because of concern in Jerusalem that anti-Semitism was getting short shrift at the meeting.

"The European Commission regrets the decision of Israel's ambassador to Austria not to attend the public session of the conference since it would have been an opportunity to raise the concerns of the Government of Israel as regards manifestations of anti-Semitism in the media both in Europe and in the region," one European Commission official said.

The official said that anti-Semitism was not taken off the agenda of the conference, entitled "Racism, Xenophobia and the Media: Towards respect and understanding of all religions and cultures," and that the meeting was "primarily a dialogue between the media representatives of all the Euro-Med partners on the problems that beset their profession. These include xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. All these issues will be discussed freely and openly.

The Euro-Med partners include all the 25 EU countries plus Israel, the Palestinian Authority and eight Arab countries in the region.

The official said that Monday's keynote speech by European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner made "repeated specific references to the need to battle anti-Semitism alongside other forms of religious and ethnic bias."

Israel was angered that while the description of the conference it received in March said the conference would deal with various forms of racism, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, a later description sent to Jerusalem in May eliminated references to anti-Semitism, while the program still included a report on Islamophobia.

Teaching Johnny About Islam

I was an expert witness in this case. The ruling, of course, is unconscionable, and completely inconsistent with the general anti-religious fanaticism of American courts over the last few decades. But of course that fanaticism has been directed toward Christianity.

From Investors Business Daily, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Education: In our brave new schools, Johnny can't say the pledge, but he can recite the Quran. Yup, the same court that found the phrase "under God" unconstitutional now endorses Islamic catechism in public school.

In a recent federal decision that got surprisingly little press, even from conservative talk radio, California's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it's OK to put public-school kids through Muslim role-playing exercises, including:

Reciting aloud Muslim prayers that begin with "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful . . . ."

Memorizing the Muslim profession of faith: "Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger."

Chanting "Praise be to Allah" in response to teacher prompts.

Professing as "true" the Muslim belief that "The Holy Quran is God's word."

Giving up candy and TV to demonstrate Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Designing prayer rugs, taking an Arabic name and essentially "becoming a Muslim" for two full weeks.

Read it all.

Iranian badge confusion

As I noted here, there is nothing implausible about the Iranian badge story -- not because they are imitating Hitler's Germany, but because the Iranian regime is clearly interested in implementing Islamic law in its fullness, and special clothing for dhimmis has been a recurring, if not absolutely constant, feature of that law.

Andrew Bostom amplifies that point in this article, and now Melanie Phillips has provided a useful summation of all the strange zigs and zags this story has taken. The Iranians are now vehemently denying that the story is true, and that may well be the case -- but as Phillips shows, it seems to be very hard to get to the truth about this one.

Fitzgerald: Scholarship and sensitivity

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the state of scholarship about Islam and jihad in American universities today:

Asked about his experience after a year of teaching in America, a famous Russian scholar of my acquaintance said: "A strange place. In America, the best Russian scholars are spread out at very small schools. They are not in the big famous schools." I leave it to others to judge the accuracy of that remark, or its possible applicability to other fields.

Particularly to the field of Middle East Studies. Of course, it is well known that some professors in American universities regularly intimidate, mock, and otherwise make life most unpleasant for their students who do not accept their propaganda. Several of them teach in the Middle Eastern and Asian Languages Program (MEALAC). There are numerous complaints about their behavior: start by googling "George Saliba" and "Hamid Dabahi" or "Joseph Massad". Don't think you can conceivably take a course on Islam, or anything to do with Muslim history, and dare to raise in class or anywhere else, such subjects as the dhimmi, and Muslim subjugation of non-Muslims. Nor should you show too great a knowledge of certain events in the life of Muhammad, or of the sayings of Muhammad. Best to stick to the Qur'an; better still, to the Michael Sells bowdlerized version, "Approaching the Qur'an: The Lyrical Suras."

Students who nonetheless enroll in these courses, should take careful note of what is said and how they themselves are treated -- especially when it comes to papers and exams.

One example: a student who graduated from in 2003 from a celebrated American university, and who had taken the course on Islam, reports that he was asked, on the final examination, to define the "Miraj." He answered, correctly, that the Miraj is the Night Journey of Muhammad, one which Muslims believe took place from a site referred to in the Qur'an as al-masjid al-aksa -- the furthest mosque -- and that on his fabulous winged steed, Al-Buraq, Muhammad within the space of 24 hours ascended all the way into the sky as far as the Seventh Heaven, and then returned to the same spot.

The grader (a Muslim) gave him a failing grade for that answer, and a C overall. The grader wrote on the margin: "Why do you say that Muslims "believe" this? And you didn't tell us that Jerusalem was the site of the Farthest Mosque. Why not?"

Now that blue book has been preserved, xeroxed, and some day it may come back to haunt that particular grader.

But the point here is that thought-control and intimidation are rampant. Yet the only professors who come close to being disciplined are the likes of Indrek Wichman, who made the mistake of sending an email critical of Islam in the heat of anger. Wichman was not intimidating students. He was not forcing them to study a subject and to report on it AS IF the student fully accepted the received Muslim version of events. He was expressing an opinion that was both rational and amply justified.

And if it was amply justified before, how much more justified is the opinion he expressed now that we have seen the hysterical and bullying and sinister reaction of local Muslims to it. Muslim students even demanded that he undergo “sensitivity training." "Sensitivity training" about what? Was Professor Wichman not entitled to express his opinion? Should he be "trained" in a Re-education Camp, like the kind set up by Communist regimes, such as that of North Vietnam for the benefit of insufficiently-enthusiastic South Vietnamese?

Anyone in the Administration of that college who did not stand firmly behind Wichman deserves to be discharged. Alumni, take note.

As for the whole sinister idea about this enforced "sensitivity training" -- one has to ask, what should one say about those who are raised up to hate Infidels? See Qur’an 9.29, see all of Sura 9, see a hundred passages in the Qur'an, see several hundred of the isnadically "authentic" Hadith. Should one say nothing at all about the aggressive demands by Muslims in the West to change the laws, customs, manners, and understandings of non-Musliims, in this country which possesses a political and social order based on the Constitution, a Constitution which in every important respect is flatly contradicted by the Shari'a or Holy Law of Islam?

Professor Wichman and others like him have nothing to apologize for. Their colleagues should rally round them. And so should the Administration of their colleges. No "sensitivity training" is called for, save perhaps for those Muslim students who have a hard time grasping the nature of free speech -- but should start getting the hang of it, and accepting it, and all the other freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and especially by the First Amendment.

And anyone else who fails to understand sufficiently those rights has no business running a university.

Fitzgerald: A tribute to Ibn Warraq

The "tributes" published at Jihad Watch by Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald (you can find them in the articles list here) have up to this point been of the deconstructive variety. Not this one.

Ibn Warraq is one of the most meticulous, articulate, amusing and altogether delightful writers of the present age. It is a privilege to have him on the Jihad Watch Board. His books are at last selling widely (Why I Am Not a Muslim is a best-seller in Denmark). At least one or two of them should be assigned in any course on Islam that purports to be something other than the usual apologetics, with the sanitized-by-Sells-Qur'an and the rest of it. Indeed, students -- and faculty, and administrators -- should be wary indeed of anyone offering instruction on Islam who deliberately leaves Ibn Warraq or Bat Ye'or off the syllabus entirely.

Why I Am Not a Muslim is one of the most acute analyses available of Islam as an intellectual system. It also discusses the misdeeds that are committed in its name (misdeeds which logically follow from its teachings); the variety of apologetics made on its behalf (including that of Montgomery Watt, the Anglican clergyman, who believed that faith in Islam was better than no religion at all); the exaggerated claims made for the achievements of "Islamic civilization"; the baleful model of Muhammad (whether he existed or not); the real significance of those figures who, routinely invoked as representatives of Islamic achievement, in fact were often skeptics, close to apostasy themselves -- Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Al Razi. And there is much more.

His other books are anthologies of scholarly writings, together with his own lucid, meticulous, and enlightening introductory essays and appendices: The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, What the Koran Really Says, and The Origins of the Koran. His articles all deserve to be read. One of the most amusing is his dismemberment of the "intellectual thug" Edward Said, which can be found in Spencer’s The Myth of Islamic Tolerance. Even more important is his essay on what a real reformation in Islam would entail. This is vital, given that an "Islamic reformation" seems to be the pet project of breezy young American law students, unaware both of the near-impossibility of its being achieved even by Muslims. For if it could have been achieved, it would have been, in the many centuries of trying, by perfectly intelligent Muslims who understood what needed to be done but kept coming up against the wall of text, the reality of immutable doctrine. Ibn Warraq, who as a child attended a madrasa, and who understands the effect of Islamic teachings from within, is properly skeptical.

Admirers of assorted "reformers" of Islam -- Soroush or Noah Feldman or others -- still in the afterglow of their year of teaching at Harvard Divinity School, or giddy with expectation for their coming year at Yale Law School (and if the little matter of reforming Islam can't be achieved, oh well -- perhaps as a consolation prize someone can be awarded tenure instead), would do better by immersing themselves in Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye'or, Reza Afshari, Ali Sina, and many others, including the scholars who can be easily retrieved from the CD-Rom of the Index Islamicus.

The idea that Westerners can "create the conditions that will empower the reformers" to achieve the "reformation" that has eluded Islam for 1350 years is startling. And more recently, at least one Muslim scholar now entrenched at an American law school appears to believe, or to want her audience to believe, that somehow the Qur'an can be treated like the American Constitution, and she will be the Chief Justice Marshall of her day ("It is a Qur'an we are expounding..."). No, the Qur'an is not the Constitution, still less the hadith and the sira. Back to the old drawing board -- preferably the one that Ataturk used.

One would do better to read and reread Ibn Warraq. And to his books, add those of Reza Afshari (on human rights and Islam), of Bat Ye'or (on the institution of dhimmitude), and of others who have a less sanguine view, informed by long study, of Islam's compatibility with human rights.

Those who read Ibn Warraq's The Origins of the Koran, What the Koran Really Says, and The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, all of them splendid anthologies of scholarly articles, with his own introduction and other glosses, will not be disappointed. Then there is the vitally important Leaving Islam, a clarion call for the freedom of conscience. And coming soon are two more: Which Koran?: Variants, Manuscripts, And the Influence of Pre-islamic Poetry and Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. No one who reads any of Ibn Warraq's books with attention will regret it. And now he is doing groundbreaking work on the origins of Islam, which will help Infidels (and some Muslims) to understand how this belief-system, concocted to justify and promote conquest of far more civilized, settled, wealthy, advanced, and numerous peoples by primitive Arab tribes, became fixed and immutable. It will help them understand how and why it now threatens -- with its blend of thwarted world-conquering ambition and fury that the "religion" which is supposed to dominate in fact seems to everywhere bring failure -- to damage all the rest of us, as it has been damaging Infidel peoples and polities, for 1350 years.

Fitzgerald: The answer is More Islam

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explains why corruption in states like Egypt is unlikely to result in larger-scale reform, and why Muslims who may oppose attacks on tourists and pre-Islamic monuments seem powerless to stop them:

Islam simplifies the Universe for the Believers: it reduces the world to Islam and nothing but Islam. The ongoing attacks on tourists in Egypt are not merely attacks on Infidels, and Infidel ways. They are also attacks on the Infidel state.

Why is the state "Infidel"? Because Mubarak and his Friends-and-Family plan are corrupt. And for Muslims, everything must be reduced to Islamic terms. In India, a corrupt state governor might simply be called "corrupt"' and not "un-Hindu." A corrupt big-city machine in the United States might be called "corrupt" but there would be no need to identify the corrupt politician as "un-Christian." But in the world of Islam, everything must be reduced in the end to Islamic terms: Islamic and non-Islamic, Believer and Infidel. It is what neatly and simply divides the universe. That is why all rage at government corruption will, in Muslim states and for Muslim minds, unfortunately end up connected to the answer: the answer is even more Islam.

And since that Answer of More Islam has terrible consequences for non-Muslims both within the country in question and without, the effort of Infidels must not be to encourage those who, whatever else they promise, also promise more Islam. And as the Islamic Republic of Iran demonstrates, the clerics can be just as corrupt as the Al-Saud princelings and princelettes, or as the chocolate soldiers of Mubarak's army. Instead, efforts should be made to create conditions in which an enlightened despot (Ataturk or Bourguiba or the late Shah of Iran) can find enough support to either ignore or systematically limit the power of political Islam. Ataturk did this, but the beneficiaries (secular Turks) were outmaneuvered, and in some cases simply did not realize what kind of constant vigilance was necessary to foil the permanent threat of a renewal of Islam -- just look at Turkey now).

Bourguiba's Destour Party ruled in Tunisia, where Ben Ali now rules the same kind of quasi-enlightened police-state -- a police-state that is nonetheless freer in many ways than other Muslim Arab states, save possibly for Oman, like Tunisia a place where an enlightened ruler (Sultan Qaboos) is able to keep things reasonably decent.

In Egypt, the sporadic, recurring attacks on tourists and tourist sites manifest several core assumptions:

1) Infidel lives are of no value.

2) Infidels bring corruption.

3) Those involved in serving the needs of Infidel tourists are themselves corrupt and offend against Islam.

4) The corrupt government derives benefits from the tourist trade, so that trade must be diminished.

5) Tourism keeps the minds of Egyptians on the monuments of the pre-Islamic period, monuments which have no value whatsoever -- save that of bringing in mere money. The pyramids, the Sphinx, all those mummies and mastabas, are of no interest.

Were the Bamiyan Buddhas worth preserving after 1,500 years? The Taliban did not think so. The Saudi and Pakistani advisers they called in to help deploy the 100,000 pounds of explosives didn't think so. The Muslims who destroyed everything they could of the Greco-Bactrian civilization of Afghanistan over many centuries did not think any of those artifacts, temples, manuscripts, stupas, monuments, were worth preserving. Why should they? The Muslims in India who built their first known mosque right over a Jain temple they destroyed, and then went on to destroy tens of thousands of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain sites, did not think that non-Muslim sites were worth preserving. If the odd site has escaped such destruction, that testifies only to local syncretistic conditions or specific circumstances (as in Indonesia, where the predominately Hindu peoples and their civilization were conquered not outright by an invading army but through slow penetration, by military colonies established in the wake of trading outposts, and the conversion of important local rulers -- and hence of those they ruled).

Of course the indifference or hostility to pre-Islamic civilizations in Egypt is modified by the desire for the money that those monuments and artifacts bring in. But Muslims never displayed an interest in those artifacts for other reasons. It was Western students of Egypt's past who created Egyptology -- from the Rosetta Stone to the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, from Champollion through Lepsius to Howard Carter. It was Austen Henry Layard and other Westerners, right up to Henry Woolley at Ur, who discovered and recovered and collected and catalogued and studied the artifacts from the pre-Islamic past of Mesopotamia. The museums of Cairo and Baghdad were founded by Westerners -- the Cairo Museum was founded by a Frenchman, and the museum of Baghdad developed out of Gertrude Bell's Department of Antiquities. What museological coherence they now possess (as museums, rather than as mere warehouses) is due to Westerners. Those who have taken up the study of pre-Islamic artifacts (in Egypt, in Jordan, in Iraq) would likely have to be largely indifferent to the teachings and attitudes of Islam toward all non-Islamic things. But even these self-described "secular" or "cultural" Muslims may harbor a loyalty to Islam, either filiopietistic (memories of a pious grandmother or Iftar dinners), or one based on ethnic pride and identification (for the idea of an "Arab" is inextricably linked with the idea of Islam -- something that Arab islamochristians have been made to feel deeply). Will they be able to stand up to the destruction of the monuments, or will their Islamic loyalties dictate their acquiescence?

The answer to that question determines the fate of all Islamic reformers and attempts to clean up “corruption” in Islamic lands.

Rice: No jizyah for the Thug-In-Chief

Contrary to what the EU is likely to do. "No Assurances for Iran, Say US," from AFP, with thanks to JE:

The United States will not offer security guarantees to Iran to end its nuclear program, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

"Iran is a troublemaker in the international system, a central banker of terrorism. Security assurances are not on the table," she told a US TV station on Sunday (local time).

The top US diplomat spoke as Iran again said it would not suspend uranium enrichment despite European Union plans to offer incentives to the Islamic republic if it halts the sensitive nuclear work.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claimed Iran could obtain a nuclear bomb in "months" and vowed that Israel would take the "necessary measures" to stop this from occurring.

More hate books found in bookstores

An Australian judge recently ruled that books that teach Sharia supremacism, the subjugation of Jews and Christians, and the ultimate replacement of Australian law with Islamic law are not "hate books" and can be sold freely in Australia.

Now more such books have been found, and they raise some important questions.

From the Herald Sun, with thanks to Rosie:

ISLAMIC hate books that advocate jihad have been found in Melbourne bookstores.

The Federal Government wants to create an offence to outlaw the glorification of suicide bombing, the Sunday Herald Sun said.

Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock said the Government "did not want people encouraged to go out and think about suicide bombing on the basis that it's going to benefit them in the afterlife".

Will he then outlaw the Qur'an, since it promises Paradise to those who "kill and are killed" for Allah (9:111)?

The books were found at the Islamic Clothing and Book Store in Coburg and Brunswick's Michael Street mosque.

World Arrogance, a book written by Professor Ahmad Zidan, is anti-Semitic and said Western culture bred venereal disease, broken homes, suicide and homosexuality.

Another book, Jihad in the Qu'ran [sic] and Sunnah, encouraged the use of force.

"When you meet those who disbelieve, smite at their necks `til when you have killed and wounded many of them, then take them as captives," the book said.

"The book" said that, eh? Does Ruddock, and does the Herald Sun, believe that such expressions originate with whoever wrote Jihad in the Qur'an and Sunnah? Well, in fact, this one is in the Qur'an also: "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them)" (47:4).

This is a nettle that Western governments sooner or later will have to grasp -- that what they persist in assuming is a benign book teaching high-minded spiritual principles has been shown again and again to incite to violence. Will they ban it?

Mr Ruddock said censorship laws could allow a loophole to be closed, which would effectively ban the books.

"We may not want to prosecute publishers or book stockists for having books of this sort, if we can have matters of glorification of suicide bombing looked at in the context of whether or not a book should be allowed to be sold under the classification regime," Mr Ruddock said.

We'll be watching this one closely.

Save Nazanin!

Here (thanks to Spipou) is a link to a comprehensive page on the case of "the 18-year old Iranian girl Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi, who has been sentenced to death by hanging. Nazanin's 'crime' was killing a man who ambushed and tried to rape her."

More background from that page:

At January 3, 2006, Nazanin was sentenced to death for murder by a criminal court. The Court of Appeal will review her sentence, and if upheld there, it must be confirmed by the Supreme Court, before she can be executed.

According to the Iranian daily Etemaad, then 17-year-old Nazanin and her niece had been spending some time in a park west of Tehran with their boyfriends, when three men started harassing them.
The girls` boyfriends fled from the scene, leaving them helpless behind. The men pushed Nazanin and her niece down on the ground and tried to rape them, and to protect herself, she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand.

The girls tried to escape, but the men overtook them, and at this point, Nazanin stabbed one of the other men in the chest, which eventually killed him. According to the newspaper, she broke down in tears when she told the court: "I wanted to defend myself and my niece. I did not want to kill that boy. At the heat of the moment I did not know what to do because no one came to our help." Nevertheless, the court sentenced her to death by hanging.

In a western country Nazanin would probably be acquitted or at most receive a short prison sentence, as she obviously acted in self-defense. Furthermore, since she was only 17 years old, she would be treated as a minor. In Iran however, the minimum age for the death penalty is 15 years for males, and 9, yes nine years for females. Although there is no record of girls that young being executed, the fact that the law opens for this speaks clearly about what kind regime Iran is.

Another point worth noticing, is that if Nazanin had let the men rape her, she could in the worst case have been arrested for extra-martial sex, which carries a maximum penalty of 100 lashes.

Fitzgerald: A comical-tragical farce

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald exposes the dhimmi idiocy of all too many "expert" analyses of "terrorism":

The solemn analyses we frequently see in the media by "terrorism experts" who flail furiously to explain terrorism and suicide bombing in terms of anything – anything -- except Islamic jihad are comical, or tragical, or both at once.

They are comical because of such things as the list that some "experts" have offered up as delineating the different "kinds" of terrorists, according to this BBC story:

the entrepreneur
the protégé
the misfit
the drifter

These are very large categories indeed. Who could not be, at one time or another, described as a "misfit" if he does not fit into a pattern of complete and total success? Who could not, at some time in his life, be described as a "protege" of some more powerful and seductive influence (presumably, in the case of jihad terrorists, those who are the imparters of what they describe as “real Islam” to others who fall under their spell)? Who could not be described as an "entrepreneur" if that means…well, means what? Perhaps it means an "entrepreneur" in the sense of one who exploits a situation for his own advantage. Could it mean someone who becomes a "terrorist" for financial or other worldly gain, rather than for those six dozen virgins waiting on the other side of that famous singles bar, the Pick-Up Styx?

The point is that such categories are so broad that they could include almost everyone. And that's the point. Almost everyone, rich or poor, successful or unsuccessful, if a deep believer in the tenets of Islam, could become a terrorist --or, at least as importantly, could support and defend terrorists. All those parents who made the name "Osama" the most popular name in the Arab Muslim world after 9/11/2001 -- what are they? Are they "drifters" or "misfits" or "entrepreneurs" or "proteges"? Or are they just normal, Allah-fearing Muhammad-worshipping Muslims, exhibiting the attitudes that come naturally if you take your Qur'an and Hadith seriously?

That is why this solemn taxonomy is so telling -- not because it is helpful, but because it isn't. Because it includes, in its categories, almost everyone at one time or another in their lives. Infidel "drifters" and "misfits" and "proteges" and "entrepreneurs," lacking the belief-system of Islam, are not a threat. But those who view the world through the prism of Islam, a prism that was handed to them often at birth, and through which others they know are also viewing the world, teaches them, encourages them, reinforces in them at every step to view that division between Believer and Infidel as the one that matters, and to work, not always violently, but still to work, for the goal of spreading Dar al-Islam until Islam everywhere dominates.

That is the comical aspect.

2) The tragical aspect of these meetings of "terrorism experts" is that they focus attention not on the most effective and dangerous weapons of Jihad -- demographic conquest, Da'wa, and the use of the "wealth" weapon to fund mosques, madrasas, and to buy armies of Western hirelings, as well as to fund propaganda campaigns at the E.U., at the U.N., and within the individual countries of the Western world. Conferences on "terrorism" or even on "Islamic terrorism" miss much of the point about the Jihad, and reinforce the wrong idea that this is a "war on terror" -- which, if such were to be believed, would ignore the behavior of Muslims within Europe which, while not to the level of terrorism, have deeply unsettled, and caused changes to be made, in those European societies.

Attacks on Western ideas of free speech, on Western ideas of freedom of conscience, and on Western notions of the importance not of the collective but of the individual, are all now under permanent Muslim attack. They are being undermined whenever Westerners refuse to defend them, or to recognize the superiority of their own civilization compared to that of Islam, which has been a political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failure.

Yet this is a failure that we are not allowed to perceive or discuss. It is a failure that is hidden, in large part, only because of the accident of geology that has supplied ten trillion dollars since 1973 -- and as someone who spent years in Saudi Arabia once said to me in summing up his experience, "money can buy everything -- except civilization."

Comical and Tragical.

Shakespeare has already been here:

"The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral...." says Polonius to Hamlet.

But Polonius in his listings merely rings the changes. The "terrorism experts" provide a telling example of the "comical-tragical."

A comedy of errors blending with a tragedy of terrors into a "comical-tragical" farce that 'taint funny, McGee.

Muslim student, ACLU fight graduation prayer

Attempt at cultural intimidation in Louisville, Kentucky. From WorldNetDaily, with thanks to Tombeth:

A federal judge in Louisville, Kentucky, granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting a prayer from being said during graduation ceremonies at an area high school after a Muslim student on the planning committee objected and garnered the help of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Arshiya Saiyed, a senior at Russell County High School, said she was working on plans for the ceremony, scheduled for last night, with the senior panel when the issue came up, according to WHAS-TV in Louisville.

"Terms like Jesus Christ, heavenly father, I talked about the fact I was Muslim and the prayers in the past were offensive to me," the 17-year-old said.

Saiyed claimed that almost immediately after objecting to the prayer, she was harassed by a group of students. One student told her he wanted her out of the country, she related to WHAS.

European anti-jihadists in flight or in hiding

The mujahedin are much more assertive against their foes in Europe than they yet dare to be in America, and Eurabian dhimmi pols are moving against European anti-jihadists with more dispatch than they have ever shown against the jihadists. "Islamist Threats To Dutch Politician Bring Chill at Home: Ms. Hirsi Ali Quits Parliament, Plans to Resettle in U.S. After Losing Safe House; A Debate Over Extremism" from the Wall Street Journal, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Across Europe, dozens of people are now in hiding or under police protection because of threats from Muslim extremists. Dutch police say politicians reported 121 death threats last year. The number this year will likely be much higher. Geert Wilders, a right-wing member of parliament who also lives in a high-security apartment owned by the state, says he has received 120 menacing emails and letters since January. One of the latest reads: "Oh you cursed infidel! Don't think you are safe from our mighty organization....It is our wish to kill you by decapitation. Your infidel blood will flow freely on cursed Dutch streets!"

In Germany, several researchers, journalists and members of Parliament receive police protection because of threats by radical Muslims. Hans-Peter Raddatz, an Islamic-studies expert under police protection, recently moved to the U.S.

Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, is also mulling a move to America, at the urging of friends and security contacts. He set off a global storm by publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Twelve Danish cartoonists who drew the caricatures are staying out of public for fear of attack.

Mr. Rose complains that Europe is going wobbly. At the height of the cartoon furor in February, Danish businessmen who criticized their publication were denounced as traitors to free speech. Since then, a segment of the public, eager for a return to calm, has favored a more conciliatory approach toward Muslim anger, Mr. Rose says.

"I think it is very dangerous to give in to intimidation, because it sends a signal: If you threaten enough, we will do as you please," says Mr. Rose.

Yes.

Afghans continuing Dublin protest: Hunger strikers in St Patrick's Cathedral

Why so many Westerners, such as the befogged members of "Residents Against Racism," seem to assume that anyone and everyone has a natural right to immigrate to the Western country of his choice is beyond me. It is also beyond me why officials in Western countries evaluate immigration applications with virtually no attention to the questions of whether the applicant poses an immediate security risk and whether or not he intends to aid in the subversion of the government and civilization of his new country and their replacement with something quite different: Islamic law.

If Ireland were determined to resist Islamization, it would evaluate the status of these 41 hunger strikers in light of their adherence to the Sharia, and desire (or lack thereof) ultimately to live under it in Ireland. It would accept them into Ireland only if they are determined to become Irish, not if they wish to form a political and social Islamic enclave within Ireland. And if they are accepted into the country, they should be immediately deported if they begin activities that promote Sharia.

But as you can see from this article, such considerations are nowhere on the radar screen. And they won't be. From the BBC, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Talks have been taking place to end a seven day long hunger strike by Afghan asylum seekers in a Dublin cathedral.

Forty-one men began their protest at St Patrick's Cathedral last Sunday.

They have vowed to starve themselves to death unless they can stay in Ireland, claiming they fear being tortured in their homeland....

Some of the men were said to have tied ropes around their necks and threatened to jump from the organ loft.

A number have also again began to refuse water as part of their protest....

"I understand there are ropes tied around their necks in a dramatic fashion. I also understand that they have knives or they certainly claim to have knives," a Church of Ireland official told the AFP news agency.

Rosanna Flynn, of campaign group Residents Against Racism, claimed some of the children inside the cathedral had attempted suicide during Thursday night.

The group has organised a support rally for the men at 1400 BST on Saturday.

The Irish government is refusing to negotiate on the men's asylum claims....

Supporters of the men have hung a banner on railings outside the cathedral, stating: "No-one is illegal."

The men began their protest on Sunday afternoon.

Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell urged the men to stop the protest but said he would not negotiate with them.

He said the men had not yet exhausted the asylum appeals process.

The Afghans say they are from a mixture of ethnic and political backgrounds and have denied that any of them were Taleban members.

Banks seek Islamic scholars versed in finance

Islamization of Europe Update: short-sighted money-lusting dhimmis scramble for Islamic scholars to help them conform to Sharia. From the Financial Times, with thanks to Teri:

A talent war for financially-literate Islamic scholars has erupted as Western investment bankers rush to sell their services to devout Muslims.

Leading banks are scrambling to find Islamic experts who can issue religious edicts (fatwas) approving new financial products, such as "Islamic" bonds, hedge funds or loans.

Temporary marriage catches on in Afghanistan

I discuss the concept of temporary marriage, or mut'a, in my book Islam Unveiled. This is the practice of entering into a marriage with a time limit: the couple is married only for a night, or a week, or whatever time period their agreement specifies. So in other words, it is prostitution under the guise of morality. Temporary wives are found in large numbers in seminary towns where young clerics-in-training are away from home and lonely. It is a Shi'ite concept that mainstream Sunnis reject; the Shi'ites point out that it was allowed by the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, while the Sunnis maintain that he later abolished the practice. In any case, here is evidence that it is catching on among Sunnis in Afghanistan. From AFP, with thanks to Fjordman:

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan -- Twenty-nine-year-old mechanic Payenda Mohammad was married last month in a simple ceremony in this northern Afghanistan town, but the marriage only lasted four hours.

Which was exactly what he wanted.

"Nobody would give me their daughters to marry because I didn't have family or money," says Payenda, who ended up in Iran after his parents and a sister were killed in a bombing raid about 15 years ago.

"I started doing short marriages in Iran," he says. "When I came back to Mazar-I-Sharif, I continued," he says. He has now been married 20 times.

In a country where most marriages are for life and all divorces are a scandal, the idea of the contract or temporary marriage is beginning to catch on.

Afghanistan's majority Sunni Muslims ban the marriages, known as fegha in the main Dari language, but the Shias accept them and some people here, like Payenda, got the idea from Iran.

Such marriages were rare in Afghanistan before the Sunni-dominated Taliban regime was overthrown in late 2001, ending 25 years of war.

But with the return of many of the nearly 2 million Afghans who fled to Shia Iran during the conflict, contract marriages have been gaining popularity - although they are still unusual.

The process is simple. To get married, a couple takes an oath in front of an imam that makes them man and wife for a stipulated period of time - from a few hours to a few years.

Read it all.

EU asks US to consider plane sales to Iran

Eurabian Dhimmitude Alert from Reuters, with thanks to JE, who quips: "Osama might want some more airliners, too."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European countries have asked the United States to consider selling new airplanes to Iran as part of a proposed package of incentives aimed at resolving the nuclear crisis with Tehran, diplomats said on Friday.

The Europeans have also proposed a regional dialogue that some hope could eventually draw the Washington and Tehran, adversaries for a generation, into direct talks.

The package was formally presented to the United States, Russia and China shortly after it was agreed on Thursday by Britain, France, Germany and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, one diplomat told Reuters....

One question for Washington now is "could we go beyond spare parts and consider providing Iran with new planes, which would necessarily need acceptance by the U.S.," a senior European diplomat told reporters.

Another European diplomat said the package "will have some element concerning airplanes ... The proposal is framed toward what the Iranians told us they were interested in last year before negotiations ended."

Paradise lost in the Netherlands

In the Christian Science Monitor (thanks to Andrew Bostom), Bruce Bawer, author of the essential While Europe Slept, skewers Dutch dhimmitude in the Hirsi Ali affair. It's nice to see the normally reliably dhimmi Monitor publishing something like this.

OSLO – If there's anything in Europe today that's more alarming than the number of European Muslims who hold radically undemocratic views (40 percent of British Muslims would like to see Britain under sharia law), it's the feckless way in which government officials tend to respond to those views. Particularly if they include explosions of public complaints and protests.

More often than not, most officials choose appeasement over standing up for democratic values. The exceptions are rare. One of them is Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen - who, faced with the Muhammad cartoon riots, strongly reaffirmed Denmark's commitment to freedom of speech. Another is the Netherlands' Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Muslim turned outspoken critic of Islam. Ms. Hirsi Ali, who has been confronted with a relatively sudden and stunning challenge by her country's minister of immigration to her Dutch citizenship, resigned this week from her seat in the Dutch parliament.

Read it all.

Aussie PM Howard compares Iran to Nazi Germany

More on the Iranian dhimmi badge story. As I said below, it is like Nazi Germany, but it is much more like ancient laws for dhimmis.

"Howard compare s Iran to Nazi Germany," from the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to JE:

Prime Minister John Howard was among three world leaders who today said an Iranian bill, which reportedly would force non-Muslims to wear coloured badges in public, was akin to Nazi Germany.

However, Teheran emphatically denied the report, in a Canadian newspaper, that the law would force Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians to wear a yellow, red or blue strip of cloth, respectively, on their clothes....

"If that (the report) is true, I would find it totally repugnant," Mr Howard told reporters before the report was debunked.

"It obviously echoes the most horrible period of genocide in the world's history and the marking of Jewish people with a mark on their clothing by the Nazis, and anything of that kind, would be totally repugnant to civilised countries.

"If it is the case, it's something that would just further indicate to me the nature of this regime.

"It's a calculated insult, if it's true, not only to Christians but most particularly to Jews."...

In Teheran, MP Emad Afroogh, who sponsored the bill and chairs the parliament's cultural committee, said today there was no truth to the Canadian newspaper report.

"It's a sheer lie. The rumours about this are worthless," he said.

"The bill is not related to minorities. It is only about clothing," he said.

"Please tell them (in the West) to check the details of the bill. There is no mention of religious minorities and their clothing in the bill," he said.

We'll see.

Experts say report of badges for Jews in Iran is untrue

Untrue, or too hot for public consumption at this time? That remains to be seen. While Nazi analogies dominate analyses of this, as I pointed out yesterday it is actually a revival of traditional elements of Islamic law for dhimmis. That makes it entirely reasonable that an aggressive Islamic state like Iran would reinstitute such laws; but now that international attention has focused upon them for contemplating doing so, it is likely not that they will abandon the project, but simply implement it when the world media has turned to other matters.

From the National Post, with thanks to Filtrat:

Several experts are casting doubt on reports that Iran had passed a law requiring the country’s Jews and other religious minorities to wear coloured badges identifying them as non-Muslims.

The Iranian embassy in Otttawa also denied the Iranian government had passed such a law.

A news story and column by Iranian-born analyst Amir Taheri in yesterday’s National Post reported that the Iranian parliament had passed a sweeping new law this week outlining proper dress for Iran’s majority Muslims, including an order for Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians to wear special strips of cloth.

According to the reports, Jews were to wear yellow cloth strips, called zonnar, while Christians were to wear red and Zoroastrians blue.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre and Iranian expatriates living in Canada had confirmed that the order had been passed, although it still had to be approved by Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect.

Hormoz Ghahremani, a spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa, said in an e-mail to the Post yesterday that, “We wish to categorically reject the news item.

“These kinds of slanderous accusations are part of a smear campaign against Iran by vested interests, which needs to be denounced at every step.”

Sam Kermanian, of the U.S.-based Iranian-American Jewish Federation, said in an interview from Los Angeles that he had contacted members of the Jewish community in Iran — including the lone Jewish member of the Iranian parliament — and they denied any such measure was in place.

Mr. Kermanian said the subject of “what to do with religious minorities” came up during debates leading up to the passing of the dress code law.

“It is possible that some ideas might have been thrown around,” he said. “But to the best of my knowledge the final version of the law does not demand any identifying marks by the religious minority groups.”

Ali Reza Nourizadeh, an Iranian commentator on political affairs in London, suggested that the requirements for badges or insignia for religious minorities was part of a “secondary motion” introduced in parliament, addressing the changes specific to the attire of people of various religious backgrounds.

Mr. Nourizadeh said that motion was very minor and was far from being passed into law.

That account could not be confirmed.

Meir Javdanfar, an Israeli expert on Iran and the Middle East who was born and raised in Tehran, said yesterday that he was unable to find any evidence that such a law had been passed.

“None of my sources in Iran have heard of this,” he said. “I don’t know where this comes from.”

Well, all this bewilderment and denial follows a consistent pattern; this is how mujahedin have consistently behaved when caught red-handed. So I don't think that it means that this law doesn't exist or will not be implemented. And I wouldn't be in the least surprised if it is implemented, quietly, and soon.

Iran eyes badges for Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians

The dhimma is making a strong comeback in Iran. The idea that dhimmis must wear distinctive clothing so that they can be easily recognized as non-Muslims in Muslim societies goes back to the ninth-century caliph Al-Mutawwakil, and possibly earlier. Many Islamic apologists and politically correct historians would have us believe that such measures are a relic of history. They aren't.

"Iran eyes badges for Jews," from the National Post, with thanks to Tim:

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

Hier is right, but as I explained above, this is not something that Iran is getting from the Nazis. This is part of the earliest Islamic laws of dhimmitude.

Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments."

The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.

Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth....

This color coding also has deep roots in Islamic tradition regarding the treatment of the dhimmis. Although the colors assigned to each group sometimes change, the idea of a distinctive badge worn by the dhimmis is virtually as old as the dhimma itself. You can find abundant confirmation of this in Bat Ye'or's books.

Ali Behroozian, an Iranian exile living in Toronto, said the law could come into force as early as next year.

It would make religious minorities immediately identifiable and allow Muslims to avoid contact with non-Muslims.

Mr. Behroozian said it will make life even more difficult for Iran's small pockets of Jewish, Christian and other religious minorities -- the country is overwhelmingly Shi'ite Muslim. "They have all been persecuted for a while, but these new dress rules are going to make things worse for them," he said.

The new law was drafted two years ago, but was stuck in the Iranian parliament until recently when it was revived at the behest of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Chesler: Priorities Out of Order

Phyllis Chesler asks, "Where are the feminists?" in this article at NRO:

The Dutch people have driven the heroic Aayan Hirsi Ali out of parliament, out of Holland, and out of Europe. Their shameful appeasement of murderous, totalitarian Islamism has accomplished what the jihadists could not do: sadden one of Europe’s most important critics of jihad. Bat Yeor, the author of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, tells me that this confirms “how low Europe has sunk. Instead of being grateful to Hirsi Ali, she is banned.” Robert Spencer, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide To Islam, assures me that “Holland would rather become a Sharia state than have to put up with someone who is trying to stop that from happening.” To be fair, Holland has recently strengthened its immigration policies in ways that Muslims claim are “offensive” and “discriminatory.” Would-be immigrants will now have to pay 350 euros ($430) to take a “civic integration examination,” must already speak Dutch, and must indicate a willingness to live in a country in which nude beaches and homosexual marriage are legal.

This represents a late-in-the-day, but serious, effort to control immigration. But Holland has also just sacrificed and exiled their most important prophet. Theo von Gogh, Hirsi Ali’s collaborator on the film Submission, was murdered by a second-generation Dutchman of Moroccan origin. Since then, Hirsi Ali has lived under 24-hour guard. Her Dutch neighbors did not want to live near such a high security risk (which also lowered their property values) and brought a lawsuit to have her evicted. On April 27, they succeeded. Then, a documentary aired in Holland which alleged that Hirsi Ali had “lied” in order to be granted political asylum and Dutch citizenship. Former Immigration Minister Hilbrand Nawijn called for Hirsi Ali to be “stripped of her Dutch nationality and deported.” Nawijn was head of Immigration and Naturalization Service when Hirsi Ali applied for asylum. Hirsi Ali’s own family provided “evidence” against her in the film. According to the Wall Street Journal, on May 15, Holland’s current immigration minister, told Hirsi Ali that “her passport, granted in 1997, would be annulled.”

Like Oriana Fallaci, who dares not travel to her beloved native Italy or to Switzerland lest she be arrested and tried for her views about Islam, Hirsi Ali will now also be living in exile in America—the last, and perhaps only, bunker against jihad. Will she be granted political asylum in America? And if so, on what grounds?...

Read it all.

Saudi Says 16 to Be Freed From Guantanamo

Why these men? Why Saudis? Who made this decision? Under what circumstances, and under what pressure? What steps will be taken by our Friend and Ally to ensure that they never return to the jihad?

From AP, with thanks to the Constantinpolitan Irredentist:

The United States will release 16 Saudi Arabian nationals this week from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for suspected terrorists, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Wednesday.

An estimated 100 Saudis are being held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba, some of them for more than four years. Their detention has been an irritant in the otherwise improving relationship between the Bush administration and the Saudi kingdom, which U.S. officials say has been helpful in tracking and stopping terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Most of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.

"It took us how many years to get them back?" Saud told reporters. "It hasn't been easy."...

Saud told reporters that the 16 men are the first Saudis to be released, but another Saudi had said late last year that a handful had already been released.

The 16 will be jailed upon their return to Saudi Arabia. Some may eventually go on trial if there is evidence against them, or they could be released after a judicial review, Saud said. He would not release the men's names.

Don't exercise, girls; you might become lesbians

Women's Rights In Islam Alert: "Exercise a Challenge for Saudi Women," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Under their modest flowing robes, two-thirds of Saudi women are too fat. They can try dieting, but you won't find many in aerobics classes or power-walking along this city's walking trails. And very few of their daughters attend schools that have physical education classes.

There are no laws against women exercising outside their homes, but in this conservative society many are influenced by scholars and clerics who argue against it.

In Riyadh, hotel gyms and pools are off limits to women. Along the city's walking trails, where the women walk covered in the mandatory black cloaks, they are sometimes harassed by the muttawa.

Rana al-Abdullah said one such official ordered her to go back to her car when she was out walking one day and wouldn't leave her alone until she did. She now walks in malls.

Many Saudis say they are baffled by the religious arguments.

At a clinic that treats obesity-related diseases, a booklet left by a writer named Muhammad al-Habdan, warned that if girls' schools began P.E., Saudi girls would have to change into workout gear _ and good girls should not disrobe outside their homes. Changing in a locker room might cause them to lose the shyness that is the hallmark of good morals, the booklet warned.

It went on to say that the girls might become attracted to each other after seeing their classmates in tight leotards and tops.

Fjordman: Marrying a Muslim Man? Read the Fine Print

In a Jihad Watch essay, the European writer Fjordman, whose blog illumninated the Islamization of Europe for quite some time, describes the plight of all too many non-Muslim women who marry Muslim men:

There are significant numbers of non-Muslim women who have become involved with Muslim men through marriage. An extremely high percentage of these relationships break down. It could be a good idea to take a look at certain Islamic ideas regarding relations with non-Muslim women, some of them not always openly expressed, so that other women may gain some insight into what to expect if they do get involved in such a relationship.

The Norwegian organization Human Rights Service, dealing with issues related to immigration and women's rights in particular, features an essay online written by a Norwegian woman, for security reasons using the pseudonym "Marie." She tells of how, when the relationship with her Muslim husband ended, he signalled quite clearly that their child was "his property." He also threatened her physically if she disobeyed him, and has threatened repeatedly to kidnap the child and bring it to his Islamic home country. In an article in the Middle East Times entitled "Beyond homesickness: Western wives in Egypt," American "Karen" tells of her experiences in Egypt:

With Karen's niqab (veil) covering up most of her face, you can still see bitterness in her eyes. You can hear resentment in her voice as she tells her story. She claims to speak on behalf of many Western women living in Egypt, married to, or divorced from, Egyptians. After converting to Islam, Karen moved to Egypt with a few other women who shared with her idealistic ideas about living in a Muslim-majority country. They were soon confronted with the reality about the people's "ignorance of Islam" and deviation from its teachings. "It's a men's country, [where] men don't take women seriously ... and tend to take advantage of them." (…) She decided she couldn't stay in Egypt unless married and she accepted a marriage offer by an Egyptian man, a decision that she regrets. Cultural differences made Karen feel "oppressed" in her marriage. (…) Karen chose to remain in Egypt after her divorce. She likes the religious basis that bounds them. It was her decision to wear niqab -- uninfluenced by her ex-husband -- out of religion-related motives. Karen also likes the "healthy family structure" in Egypt.

Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch has written several insightful essays about this topic:

Fitzgerald: The marriage game

"I was just a stepping stone to a green card," said one victim of visa fraud. "I married a terrorist. I married somebody who did not like America, who didn't like Americans." I have known one or two of these stepping-stones. Some are complete innocents, others don't want to know. But it is not always the Green Card alone. Sometimes it is the Green Card, and the stepping-stone's property, or even inheritance, as well. And it happens all over Europe as well as in North America and Australia. Indeed, one can find guides on Muslim websites for the "muhajiroun" (Holy Warriors) as to the advantages of marrying an Infidel woman. And since women are essentially chattel, who really cares what happens to them?

Civilizational slumming

There is something not neutral, not innocent, something disturbing, about the Western women who choose to live in Muslim countries for a short or long period, and when they do, and find it necessary (or sometimes even without finding it necessary) to the dress code for local women, do so uncomplainingly, willingly adapt, at times with a certain secret pleasure. The most advanced women born into Islam (starting with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Homa Arjmand, Azam Kamguian) try to become free of this male-imposed dress when they can; the most un-advanced, most primitive women in the non-Muslim world, on the other hand, find themselves not only finding nothing wrong in "Islam's treatment of women," but justifying and even celebrating what some of them call a "portable seclusion," instead of addressing the attitudes and behavior of Muslim men toward women (any female traveller to Muslim countries can be called to the witness-stand) that might make such "portable seclusion" necessary. You see: it's fun. It's a kind of civilizational slumming, or rather, a rapid abandonment of all supposed principles that supposedly meant so much to them at home. Where be that famous feminism now?

It is highly recommended for non-Muslims to read some of the Islamic websites giving online fatwas, religious rulings on specific matters related to Islamic law. Be aware that some of the ones in English are "softened" in tone to cater to a non-Muslim audience and give them a "positive" image of Islam, but there are still some that give a fairly accurate picture of Islamic thinking. One such websites is Islam Q&A. This is not an extremist website, but rather a site that provides a good insight into Islamic mentality, based on authentic Islamic texts. Here is a small selection of quotes about marriage to non-Muslim women that any Western woman getting involved with a Muslim man should read and understand:

The married woman should remember that obedience to her husband takes precedence over obedience to her parents. (…) sharee'ah almost commanded women to prostrate to men, were it not for the fact that it is not permissible for anyone to prostrate to any human being. 'Umar ibn al-Khattaab said: "Marriage is slavery, so be careful with regard to whom you give your daughter for enslavement." In al-Tirmidhi and elsewhere it is narrated that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "I urge you to treat women well, for they are prisoners with you." So a woman is like a slave or prisoner of her husband, and she cannot go out of his house except with his permission."

It is not obligatory for the Muslim husband "to have the approval of his first wife if he wants to marry a second wife." Moreover, Allah "has enjoined disciplining women" by hitting them, when they do not obey their husband, for instance by going out of the house without his permission. This is based upon verse 4.34 in the Koran: "Men are overseers over women, by reason of that wherewith Allah hath made one of them excel over another, and by reason of that which they expend of their substance. Wherefore righteous women are obedient, and are watchers in husbands absence by the aid and protection of Allah. And those wives whose refractoriness ye fear, exhort them, and avoid them in beds, and beat them; but if they obey you, seek not a way against them; verily Allah is ever Lofty, Grand."

One of the conditions for a Muslim man to marry a Christian or Jewish woman is that "the Muslim man should be in charge of the family." This includes bringing up their children as good Muslims. What the woman thinks of the choice of religion is completely irrelevant in this regard. She is little more than his servant and a machine for making Muslim babies to expand the Islamic Ummah:

The husband "does have the right to forbid her to go out of the house, even if she is going to go out to go to church, because she is commanded to obey him. He also has the right to forbid her to commit evil openly in the house, such as setting up statues or ringing bells. That also includes celebrating innovated festivals, such as Easter, because that is an evil action according to Islam." It is not permissible for a Muslim "to allow his wife from among the People of the Book to celebrate her festivals in his home, for the man is in charge of that woman and she does not have the right to openly celebrate her festivals in his home, because of the resulting effects of corruption, forbidden things and display of the symbols of kufr (disbelief, infidelity) in his home. He should keep his children from taking part in those innovated festivals, because the children belong to the father and he should keep them away from these forbidden celebrations."

This condition of the children being raised as Muslims is absolute, and "a Muslim should not put himself in a position where he will be forced to raise his child as a kaafir (infidel) in a non-Muslim country, where a child may be forced to study something about Christianity, for example, or he may be taken to church on Sundays, or the law may be on the side of the non-Muslim woman, allowing her to raise him in her family's religion, etc." IslamOnline, too, agrees: "If a Muslim man marries a non-Muslim woman, then their children should be raised up as Muslims."

One of the most frequent warnings to Muslim men planning to marry women from the People of the Book, the Koranic term for Christians and Jews, dhimmis or second-rate citizens in an Islamic society, is that "the states and governments of these women will give them custody of the children. This will cause these children to be lost and to fall into kufr." With this in mind, it is recommended that the Muslim "should try to move to a Muslim country where you will be able to give your children a sound upbringing, because staying in the kaafir lands is not permissible except in cases of necessity or where it serves the interests of the Muslims."

Many Western or non-Muslim women have noticed that their previously charming Muslim boyfriend suddenly became a lot more possessive once they had married or got a child. As one of them tells, "when they are engaged, they promise you everything, but after you are married, they give you nothing. After marriage, you are like a slave---supposed to be ready at their every beck and call!" This is what I will call the Reverse Frog Syndrome. Young girls have fantasies about finding a prince to marry, especially a frog that turns into a prince when kissed by the right girl. But sometimes you can also marry a prince that turns into a frog. This can happen in all countries, of course, but it seems to be much more frequent in some cultures than in others. One well-known case of a woman that married a charming, seemingly Westernized man in the USA who turned into The Muslim From Hell as soon as they went to his home country is Betty Mahmoody, made famous through the book and the movie "Not Without My Daughter." During a summer "vacation" in Iran, her Iranian husband suddenly turned around 180 degrees and became a very conservative Muslim. For a year and a half, Betty and her daughter were held hostage by her husband and his family. He forced her wife to wear a veil, informed her that they would never return to the United States and threatened to kill her if she should try to escape.

This is not at all uncommon. These aggressive, Islamic traits are see most clearly once a relationship between a Muslim man and a non-Muslim woman breaks down. To a Muslim, it is simply intolerable that an inferior woman, and a non-Muslim one to boot, can defy his authority in such a way. It's an insult to his integrity and his honor that cannot go unpunished. If they have children, it is his right, indeed duty as stated by Allah, to ensure that these children, his rightful property, are given an Islamic upbringing. If that means taking them by force from the mother, so be it. Helge Tangen in the Norwegian police section Kripos says that there has been an explosive increase in the number of abduction cases in recent years. Statistics from Denmark show that these children are usually taken to countries in the Middle East. Tangen does not doubt that "Multicultural marriages" increase the risk for such child abductions. In June 2004, Swedish mother Elizabeth Krantz's five children were kidnapped from Sweden by Krantz's estranged Palestinian husband Ismail Nowajah. The children were taken to the Gaza Strip against their will and in contravention of Swedish law. Ismail Nowajah said he disapproved of the upbringing his children were getting in Sweden, where they were born, and that he wished to bring them up according to a stricter Islamic code. Nowajah signalled, however, that he was willing to release the children back into the custody of their mother in exchange for five million Swedish kronor (about 720,000 US dollars).

This is why the Vatican has warned Catholic women to think hard before marrying a Muslim. Calling women "the least protected member of the Muslim family," it spoke of the "bitter experience" western Catholics had with Muslim husbands, especially if they married outside the Islamic world and later moved to his country of origin. What about Christian men who may marry Muslim women? Not a problem: such marriages are forbidden by Islamic law. A Muslim man can marry a non-Muslim woman, but not vice versa. Even Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat married a Christian woman. This is, as we have seen, to ensure that the head of the household is always a Muslim, and to ensure that any children born from an inter-religious marriage will be raised as Muslims, thus contributing to advancing the cause of Islamic supremacy on earth. If a non-Muslim woman gets children with a Muslim man, she basically becomes a tool of Jihad.

Abduction cases are even worse in countries where Muslims form an overwhelming majority. In 2004, two Pakistani children were snatched away from their Christian mother by their Muslim father. As a teenager of 17, the children's Christian mother, Maria Samar John, had been abducted and held prisoner for five months until her Muslim captors literally sold her for the equivalent of $2,000, her name was changed to Kalsoom and she was forced to thumbprint a certificate of so-called "conversion" to Islam. For the next two and one-half years, she was a virtual slave, locked in the house and beaten by both her husband and mother-in-law for refusing to say the Muslim prayers. She had borne a son and was pregnant for the second time when she found a mislaid house key and managed to flee her captors to return home. Soon afterwards, her husband sent men to recapture her.

The situation is even more difficult for non-Muslim women who not only marry a Muslim man, but also convert to Islam, sometimes due to pressure from his family. On the Internet, a German woman who has married a Saudi man, converted to Islam and moved to Saudi Arabia wrote a post on her blog titled "A good fake Muslima:"

I only became a Muslima because my husband asked me to. (…) I hadn't problems respecting Islam. Unlike Christianity it doesn't come along with a shameful history and more skeletons in the cellar than the human mind can imagine. It might have had its fair share of idiots and culprits marching over dead bodies in order to conquer new grounds but compared to Christianity their numbers were small. Throughout centuries, Islam presented itself as an enlightened and rather peaceful religion.

Now, what happens if this "fake" Muslima decides that she no longer wants to be a fake, and that Islam is not quite as "enlightened and peaceful" as she had been told? Well, according to traditional Islamic law, a man leaving Islam should be executed, as Muhammad himself said: "Whoever changes his religion [leaves Islam], execute him." A woman leaving Islam gets slightly softer treatment, she is after all only a women and thus with a mental capacity closer to that of a child. Some argue that it will suffice to "just" imprison her in the house until she repents or death takes her.

If she lives in a non-Muslim country, she may be slightly less in danger of being killed, but her marriage to the Muslim man will in any case be finished. The man should divorce her and leave her. A Muslim man may be married to a Christian of Jewish woman, but not one that is considered a non-believer. If she leaves Islam, their marriage becomes null and void, because the Koran says: "Likewise hold not the disbelieving women as wives"

Muhammad has said that "war is deceit." Lying to non-Muslims in permitted in Islam if this helps to advance the Islamic cause. Another quote by Muhammad is that to tell a lie is forbidden in Islam except on three occasions: In war, to reconcile two opposing parties and to your women. This means that non-Muslims, and non-Muslim women in particular, should never take anything said by Muslims at face value. To get some insight into what many Muslims really think of Western women, notice the extremely high number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western countries. If "Marie" had done more research before she got too involved with a Muslim man, perhaps she wouldn't be a virtual prisoner in her own home now. It is possible for non-Muslim women to gather information from the Internet about the darker sides of Islamic culture, and learn from the bitter experiences made by others. If they fail to do so, they could find themselves entangled in something they cannot easily escape from, perhaps trapped in it for the rest of their lives.

British financing of "Da Vinci Code" questioned

"Will Christians pay Mohammed to attack Jesus?" by Dr. Ted Baehr in WND, with thanks to Dr. Andrew Bostom.

Mohammed Yusef, the founder of Invicta Capital in Great Britain, is using a government tax-incentive program to fund the movie version of the anti-Christian "Da Vinci Code" novel for Sony Pictures.

According to the Times of London, the London-based Invicta is taking advantage of British tax rules to provide Sony with 100 million pounds of the 114 million pounds that the movie reportedly cost. The capital allows Sony to dramatically reduce its cost of borrowing money to produce and market the movie.

The "Da Vinci Code" movie qualified for an outgoing regime of tax breaks because it was partially shot in the United Kingdom. The British government is phasing out the tax incentives because of allegations of abuse.

Mohammed Yusef, chairman of the advisery firm Invicta Capital, previously noted:

"We are delighted to have successfully concluded the largest-ever film sale and leaseback in the UK. 'The Da Vinci Code' is a very exciting film and we have seen strong demand from our clients looking to invest in it."

According to the Times, Invicta buys the entire movie from Sony with its money, then leases it back to the producer. Invicta covers its 100 million pounds investment by raising cash from wealthy investors, usually in amounts ranging from 2 million pounds to 3 million pounds. Sony will then guarantee these individual investments by providing a steady stream of payments over a 15-year period. This allows the investors to defer tax bills running into hundreds of thousands of pounds, and even have access to some of their investment money before the tax bills finally come due.

The British government thus is helping Mohammed to conduct a jihad against Christians by promoting the Bible bashing, anti-Christian propaganda in "The Da Vinci Code."...

Muslims Kidnap, Force Christian Girls to Convert

From CBN:

STONETOWN, Zanzibar - Welcome to the island of Zanzibar. Anchored in the Indian Ocean 50 miles off Africa's east coast, Zanzibar is one of the few places that can truly be called paradise on Earth.

But there is more to this tropical island than meets the eye.

Zanzibar was once East Africa's main slave-trading port. By the mid-1800's, 50,000 slaves were bought and sold each year. The dealers sailed here from across Asia and the Middle East. They returned with their boats filled with men, women, and children. The practice was eventually outlawed.

But two centuries later, the brutal trade has taken on a new dimension. Young Christian girls are being abducted, forced to convert to Islam and, in some cases, shipped to parts of the Islamic world.

Flora Davidson knows how it feels to have a child disappear. "I looked everywhere for her, but I could not find her. Even the police gave up looking for her," Flora said.

In July 2004, Flora's 14-year-old Christian daughter Joyce was kidnapped by members of UAMSHO, a radical Muslim group on the island.

"I was told that from this day on, I would not be going back home to my family. You will become a Muslim," Joyce said.

Her kidnapper was Mariam, a 45-year-old Muslim woman. Mariam refused to talk to CBN News on camera, but she insisted that Joyce had voluntarily become a Muslim...

Read it all.

Egypt: Court Suspends Ruling Recognising Bahai Rights

From IRIN:

Cairo - Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court decided on 15 May to suspend the implementation of an earlier lower court ruling that allowed Bahais to have their religion recognised on official documents.

"While [we are] disappointed by the decision to suspend the administrative court ruling it is important to note that the Supreme Administrative Court has yet to decide on the merits of the case," read a press statement issued by the Cairo-based Egyptian Initiative for Private Rights (EIPR).

The earlier ruling, made on 4 April, was passed after a case was filed by a Bahai couple whose official documentation - on which their affiliation to Bahaism was stated - had been confiscated by the state. The ruling quickly became the epicentre of controversy in parliament, led by members of both the ruling National Democratic Party and the banned-but-tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, after which the interior ministry quickly filed an appeal to overturn the ruling.

"We have no issue with people describing themselves as followers of beliefs not recognised by Islam," prominent Muslim Brotherhood member Abdel Moneim Abul Futouh said on 7 May. "What must be appealed is a ruling allowing followers of unrecognised faiths to describe themselves as followers of a religion in official documents when it's not technically a religion."

Why Mr. Futouh, what a novel idea! Not technically a religion, you say? Hummm...

Baku Says Cemetery Still Intact

Update on our earlier report that this precious Medieval cemetary had vanished from AP:

BAKU, Azerbaijan -- An aide to Azerbaijan's president on Tuesday denied a report that a centuries-old ethnic Armenian cemetery had been destroyed.

The report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting said the medieval Djulfa cemetery in the exclave of Nakhichevan, which once included thousands of intricately carved crosses, had vanished. The report said its journalist was not allowed by accompanying security forces to go to the cemetery site, but that the journalist was near enough to see the cemetery was gone.

"This is an absolutely lying publication and statement," said Ali Khasanov, an aide to President Ilham Aliyev. "Not one cultural-historical monument, not one Armenian cemetery in the autonomous Nakhichevan republic has been destroyed."

Accusations that Azerbaijan had destroyed the cemetery have raised tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which are at odds over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been under control of Armenian and local Karabakh forces since a separatist war ended with a shaky cease-fire in 1994. The Djulfa cemetery site is generally off-limits because it lies in a security zone along the Iranian border...

I'd feel much better if this report had included some time-stamped pictures of the cemetery showing it to be untouched as claimed.

Sharia in Baghdad: meet the new, free, democratic Iraq

Before American troops entered Iraq I wrote that any democratic initiative would always be under pressure from adherents of Sharia. Well, I don't like to say, "I told you so," but I told you so -- read the "YES" and "NO" sections of that article (I wrote the "NO" part) and tell me who was proven right.

"Beer bombers set tone for Islamist Baghdad," from Reuters, with thanks to Twostellas:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Leaflets threaten women who do not wear veils. Militias bomb and burn beer shops and music stores at dawn. Rumors swirl of men shot... for wearing shorts.

Hopes for secular democracy in Iraq three years after U.S. forces invaded are being challenged by militants seeking to impose their own strict version of Islamic sharia law on the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

In the latest attack against alcohol sellers in Baghdad, bombs on Tuesday damaged three shops that sold beer and other liquor in the central commercial district of Karrada.

The explosions wrecked the stores' frontages and an advertising display for beer but killed no one. But for the shop keepers, from Iraq's Christian minority, the message was clear.

"I shut down the shop last year after I received threats by gunmen to stop selling alcohol and just reopened last week," Asaad Aziz, 56, owner of the Gazal liquor store told Reuters.

"Armed gangs are now ruling Iraq. There is no rule of law. I used to feed two families with this store. What am I going to do now?" Aziz said as he surveyed the destruction.

"Everybody is talking about banning alcohol sellers. The government doesn't say anything but clearly it is their militias who are playing a role in a secret way."

Saudi king to papers: Stop showing photos of women

I'm warning you: this is another one of those things that makes you immediately "Islamophobic" if you tell anyone about it. Of course, King Abdullah himself is immune to the charge. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

King Abdullah has told Saudi editors to stop publishing pictures of women as they could make young men go astray, newspapers reported Tuesday....

In recent months, newspapers have published pictures of women, always wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf, to illustrate stories with increasing regularity. Usually the stories have had to do with women's issues....

"One must think: do they want their daughter, their sister, or their wife to appear in this way. Of course, no one would accept this," the newspaper Okaz quoted Abdullah as saying.

"The youth are driven by emotion ... and sometimes they can be led astray. So, please, try to cut down on this," he said.

Fitzgerald: Social justice in Islam

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald borrows a title from Sayyid Qutb in addressing a common dhimmi misconception:

We often hear that Islam has a rich tradition of fighting against "inequality" and for "social justice." These claims need to be held up to the light. In fact, Islam is based on "inequality." It is the only belief-system in the world that recognizes, and legitimizes, for all time, slavery -- because slavery was good enough for Muhammad, al-insan al-kamil, the Perfect Man.

The Arabs were the first and the last and the most aggressive and cruel of slave traders in black Africa. The Arab enslavement of black Africans never ended; it continues today, most notably in the Sudan and Mauritania. Slavery was outlawed in Saudi Arabia officially only in 1962, and only because of Western pressure -- just as a century before, the African slave trade by the Arabs was severely curtailed only by the power of the British navy. Even today there are reports that indicate that slavery is still unofficially practiced in Saudi Arabia, behind those tall walls of the compounds of the rich who run and own everything in that country. For more on the enslavement of black Africans, see J. R. Willis, or Jan Hoogedorn's "The Hideous Trade" (about the seizure and castration of young blacks whose survival rate was 10%).

Of course, the Muslims also raided Western Europe for slaves. Europeans built the palace of Moulay Hassan in Morocco (see "White Gold" by Giles Milton, about Thomas Pellow). Muslim slave raiders also ventured into Eastern Europe, including the territories of the Slavs (Slaves), seeking more slaves. Finally, women were seized from Georgia and Circassia to fill the harems (and harems were not limited, as some Westerners appear to think, to the Muslim rulers).

But even without the long and continuing history of slavery or near-slavery, the nonsense about "equality" and "social justice" can be shown for what it is by the example of all the wage-slaves who occasionally manage, in London or New York, to run away from their cruel Saudi or Kuwaiti masters. Then the tales of what they endured are fleetingly the subject of attention, and then the door into Arab Muslim reality is slammed shut by some well-paid lawyers and other fixers.

In the Gulf states, the treatment of Filipino workers (Pinoys) and especially nurses, as well as of Indian and Pakistani and Sri Lankan and Thai workers, has been hair-raisingly horrible. They suffer both as non-Muslims and as non-Arabs, for the Arabs are careful to make not one distinction, but several: 1) Muslim or non-Muslim 2) if Muslim, Arab or non-Arab 3) if Arab Muslim, what kind of Arab Muslim? These distinctions are made at every level, in every encounter, in every situation. Even the governments of the Asian countries whose nationals are treated with such cruelty have on occasion protested.

As for "social justice" in the sense of economic justice, one wonders what those who have swallowed this line actually know about the Muslim countries, where despots and a handful of the rich rule and simply steal the country's wealth. In Pakistan, a handful of zamindars and generals rule over a primitive and self-primitivizing population. In Iran, the main objection to the rule by mullahs is their vast corruption. In Kuwait, the U.A.E., and all the other statelets of the Gulf, while there is so much money coming in that everyone gets a cut, the ruling family -- the Al-Sabah in Kuwait, the Al-Thani in Qatar, the Al-Maktoum in Dubai -– gets the largest share. And of course, the most fantastic thievery, the greatest theft in history, was that by the House of Saud in the country they named after themselves, "Saudi" Arabia.

As for the related myth of Muslim lack of materialism, those who believe in that nonsense have apparently wandered into the wrong room in the Museum of Religions and mistaken the exhibit on Buddhism for that on Islam. There is only one serious pastime in every rich Muslim country: shopping. And more shopping. Shopping in the gold souk. Shopping in the clothes stores. Shopping for electronic gewgaws. Shopping for the very latest in computer stuff. Going to Europe for more shopping: London, Paris, Rome. Via Condotti, rue du Faubourg St.-Honore, Fifth Avenue, Rodeo Drive. Shop, shop, shop.

Read any of the accounts by those who lived in Saudi or the Gulf statelets -- for example "Money Rush," or the novel "Eight Months on Ghazzah Street" by Hilary Mantel. There you will see that the rich Arabs in their buying habits, men and women, resemble no Westerner so much as Paris Hilton. Whole countries full of hypocritical, meretricious, vicious, brutal, corrupt, Jihad-funding people -- and with the buying desires of Paris Hilton or Michael Jackson, or both of them combined.

Then finally there is the grinding poverty in much of Saudi Arabia, endured by those who have the misfortune to be unconnected to the ruling family or any of their hangers-on. They endure this poverty out of the way of prying Western eyes, in districts where only the poor themselves, and those trusted to tell no tales, may venture. This is a story yet to be told.

So much for "equality." So much for "social justice" under Islam.

Fitzgerald: Truces and tribute

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the peculiar unreality that pervades Western dealings with Hamas:

Islam does not command Muslims to allow the Infidels to retain some territory as long as they yield other territory. It does not say that any land once part of Dar al-Islam can ever be relinquished. For that matter, it does not say that there is any part of Dar al-Harb that can remain forever outside Dar al-Islam. The duty of every Muslim is to engage in jihad fi sabeel Allah, Jihad in the way, in the path, of Allah, whether individually or as part of a collective, and whether by active participation or by supporting and protecting those who do actively participate.

Treaties can be made with Infidels, but they are not treaties that will last indefinitely. They should last, at most, 10 years, although in some cases they may be "renewed" until such time as the Muslim side is stronger, and the Infidels have become weaker -- weaker because of those very treaties they signed.

"Treaties are to be obeyed" -- Pacta sunt servanda -- is a concept in Western jurisprudence. Western leaders need to understand it is not part of Islam. This is not a secret. They can begin with Majid Khadurri's "Law of War and Peace in Islam" and read about the accepted Muslim understanding of treaties made with Infidels.

There is no ambiguity about it. None. Treaties are not "peace" treaties but "truce" treaties. That's it.

And "war is deception." It is all laid out, by the way, in books and articles by Arab strategists. They don't hide it. They assume, and so far have assumed rightly, that the Israelis and the Western world will simply ignore those books and articles and will ignore what Islamic treaty-making is all about, because it is just too painful to contemplate. But what is too painful to contemplate, because it happens to be true, is exactly what must be contemplated. All Infidels must share that pain, and make policies, accordingly.

“War is deception.” What Hamas has been asked to do is merely utter some words that will satisfy, in the most obviously unsatisfactory manner, the minimum demands of those who see nothing wrong with what is nothing more than the payment of Jizyah. American and European Infidels make payments to the local Arabs, who were renamed after 1967 the "Palestinians." But in reality those "Palestinians" are merely the Arab shock troops, plausibly decked out as a "nationalist" movement (nonsense), in the Lesser Jihad against the Infidel state of Israel.

Such aid is a classic form of Jizyah in every sense. First, it is a payment from Infidels (Americans, Europeans) to Muslims. It is a payment made for which those Muslim recipients feel not the slightest gratitude, but regard as theirs by right, as owed to them by the Infidels. Indeed, the merest hint that such payments might end sends those Muslim Arabs into a paroxysm of rage, as if such aid was not aid at all, but the tribute that simply must be paid by those Infidels. Finally, the Infidels themselves are afraid to discontinue such payments, and are trying desperately to find every possible way they can not to end them, but to continue them -- including accepting mere words that obviously are not meant, and that, because of the belief-system of Islam, cannot be meant. But Infidel governments cannot tell their long-suffering taxpayers that those who run those governments have undertaken to commit to paying this Jizyah without the permission of the taxpayers who are, unwittingly, now -- and for some time have been -- the real payers of such Jizyah.

Many Infidels in the Western world have a better sense of things than their ignorant (because they lead lives of hectic vacancy and have no time to study Islam) and corrupt (because it is officials, and former officials, who are the ones whom the Saudis and other Arabs pay to promote the Arab and Muslim cause in various ways) officials. Those officials are often implicated, in ways they cannot now admit to themselves or to the electorate, in actions that allowed millions of Muslims into the Lands of the Infidels. What's more, they have failed completely to plan and execute, as should have been done starting in 1973, an energy policy designed not to achieve the meaningless (if perhaps psychologically appealing) goal of "independence from Middle Eastern oil" but rather the goal of diminishing the total revenues of Muslim states, so that there is nothing left over for the funding of mosques and madrasas, or for an army of Western hirelings, or for purchases of military equipment and advanced technology -- in short, nothing left to fund those conducting Jihad worldwide in a hundred different local theatres.

Our governments are forcing us to pay the Jizyah. In Italy, in France, in England, in Germany, in Spain, in Denmark, in Norway, in Holland, in every country of the E.U., taxpayers are being forced to pay the Jizyah. And they are being forced to do so as well in the United States.

If a single Congressman can be made to understand that these payments to the "Palestinians" are a classic Jizyah, and can articulate that and hammer it home, he can stop it, and could be the leader of a new group -- not defined as Democrats, or as Republicans, but as those who see things clearly. And that is what everyone is longing for.

EU offers Iran access to 'safe' nuclear technology

One man's incentive is another man's tribute. A nation that offers incentives lacks the will to stand up and defend itself, come what may. Aethelred the Unready and Neville Chamberlain can bear witness. Peace In Our Time Alert from the TimesOnline, with thanks to JE:

Europe will help Iran to develop a "proliferation-proof" nuclear power programme in exchange for the regime agreeing to halt uranium enrichment on its own soil.

The offer is one of a series of incentives unveiled in Brussels today which are designed to succeed in reining in the Islamic republic where the faltering threat of sanctions has failed.

In advance of a general meeting of EU foreign ministers this afternoon Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, told reporters that the package would include also include financial aid and possibly defence assistance.

Does that mean that the EU is offering to help Iran fight Israel and the U.S.?

Muslim clerics' anger delays Saudi plan to let women sell lingerie

Muslim clerics' anger. Don't they understand that Islam honors women?

If Islam is the religion of peace, tolerance, and equality that apologists in the West make it out to be, one thing is certain: it is also the religion that fails more miserably than any other to inculcate its true teachings in its adherents.

From The Telegraph, with thanks to Bryce:

Saudi Arabia has postponed plans to replace male sales staff in lingerie shops with women.

The move had been its first cautious attempt to bring more women into the work-place.

But even minor reforms have incurred the wrath of ultra-conservative religious leaders, such as the Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdel-Aziz al-Sheikh, who has denounced them as "steps towards immorality and hellfire".

In a country that requires women to cover up in public, and bans them from driving, shop assistants are invariably men - even in stores selling women's underwear and cosmetics. The kingdom's sole exceptions are the few all-female shopping centres.

King Abdallah's government last year ordered lingerie shop owners to hire all-female sales staff by next month. In 2007, the policy was to have been extended to stores selling dresses and abayas (the black robes worn by women for modesty).

Pope Urges Muslims to Respect Christians

An ambiguous series of statements. From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI urged Islamic countries to ensure religious rights for Christian migrants Monday while also saying Christians should continue welcoming Muslim immigrants with open arms.

It's good to see the first part, although it will fall on deaf ears; but what about Muslims who do not respect Christians in their home countries and then immigrate to Western countries? Should they really be welcomed wholeheartedly by Christians in the West?

Benedict stressed the need for "reciprocity" in Christian-Muslim relations during a speech to members of the pontifical council for migrants. The Vatican office is studying the issue of migration to and from Muslim countries during its annual meeting this week.

Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the migrant office, has complained recently that while Muslim immigrants are often welcomed into largely Christian countries in Europe and allowed to practice their faith freely, Christian immigrants in the Islamic world are denied those same rights.

Benedict said Christians were called to "open their arms and their hearts to everyone," regardless of their countries of origin.

"Obviously, it is also to be hoped that Christians who emigrate to countries with an Islamic majority find welcome and respect of their religious identities there," he said.

"More and more the importance of reciprocity in dialogue is felt."

Well, certainly reciprocity would be a step in the right direction. Shouldn't Muslim countries therefore welcome Christian immigrants, including missionaries?

Danish Islamophobia conference fizzles

It was a gala event: a conference in Denmark trying to add some heft to the trumped-up, politically manipulative concept of "Islamophobia," and featuring some leading dhimmi speakers: Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein; Bob Hawke, former Prime Minister of Australia; Phil Rees of the BBC; and London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Then there was the celebrated convert to Islam Yvonne Ridley.

"Islam conference fizzles," from the Copenhagen Post, with thanks to Fjordman, who comments: "Maybe the infidel Danes are a little bit fed up with Islam following the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons case, no?"

It seems that Fjordman is right.

British television station The Islam Channel hoped to capitalise on the infamy brought upon the city after the publication of the Mohammed cartoons by holding the international conference 'Islamophobia: a dilemma in the West' as a way to create a dialogue and debunk myths.

[...]

Despite being billed as an international conference, and the largest of its kind since the row over the Mohammed cartoons exploded this winter, the majority of those participating were Muslim.

Organisers had invited a broad spectrum of Danish politicians, members of the press and other public figures, but only a handful of ethnic Danes were to be found amongst the 900 people in attendance.

'We had hoped to see more Danes take part in the debate. We invited the prime minister to open the conference and all Danish ministers to participate. We invited political parties, even the Danish People's Party, the mayor of Copenhagen - and the Queen,' Ali said.

Bostom: Cardinal Questions for Muslims

Andrew G. Bostom in FrontPage discusses Cardinal Pell's anti-dhimmitude (many important news links in the original):

At the close of a compelling, thoroughly documented address (delivered April 2, 2006, at The Legatus Summit, Naples, Florida) entitled, “Islam and Western Democracies,” Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, posed four salient questions for his erstwhile Muslim interlocutors wishing to engage in meaningful interfaith dialogue:

1) Do they believe that the peaceful suras of the Koran are abrogated by the verses of the sword? (see here, pp. 67-75)

2) Is the program of military expansion (100 years after Muhammad’s death Muslim armies reached Spain and India) to be resumed when possible?

3) Do they believe that democratic majorities of Muslims in Europe would impose Shari’a (Islamic religious) law? (see here)

4) Can we discuss Islamic history (here and here) -- even the hermeneutical problems around the origins of the Koran (see here, here, here, and here) -- without threats of violence?

Media attention was focused almost exclusively on the Cardinal’s statement that, “In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages”—an unassailable observation, given, for example that sura (chapter) 9 alone comprises in its entirety a series of timeless war proclamations against Jews, Christians, and pagans (i.e., the latter being Hindus, Buddhists, and Animists)—recording, as per believing Muslims, the “uncreated word” of Allah himself. (See Robert Spencer’s insightful analysis of the detailed Koranic musings and resulting justifications for violence penned [especially p. 4 of this letter] by University of North Carolina [UNC] jihadist, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who tried to slaughter UNC students by running them over with a rented SUV).

These discussions on Koranic incitement to violence by Muslims (I participated in one such brief discussion, here, on the Bill O’Reilly Show, Wednesday May 10, 2006), unfortunately, overshadowed the crux of Cardinal Pell’s speech—framed by his closing questions to Muslims—questions which Muslims must address without equivocation if they are in fact ready for honest dialogue with those of other faiths. Moreover, I would add two “preliminary” questions to the Cardinal’s four if the goal is to transcend the usual Muslim da’wa (i.e., proselytization) sessions and engage in a forthright discussion of the profound differences between Islam’s perception of Judaism and Christianity, and how believers in these two faiths perceive their own religious traditions. Specifically:

i) What are the implications of these Muslim beliefs vis a vis Jews: Koranic verses labeling Jews as malevolent enemies of Islam, and disobedient slayers of their own prophets who suffered justifiable abasement, including, for some, transformation into apes and swine; or the more profoundly hateful oral tradition, preserved in the hadith, which maintains that the perfidious Jews caused Muhammad’s protracted, excruciating death from poisoning, and fomented sectarian strife in early Islam by promoting heresies that threatened the unity of the Muslim community (umma)?

ii) What are the implications of the Muslim belief that “Isa”—the Muslim Jesus—is merely a Muslim prophet whose ultimate “job description” includes the destruction of Christianity (i.e., the canonical hadith that this Muslim Jesus—who was never crucified—the perfidious Jews prodding the Roman’s to kill Isa’s “body double”—will return as a to break the cross, kill the pig, and end the payment of the (humiliating) jizya- “He will fight the people for the cause of Islam. He will break the cross, kill swine, and abolish jizyah. Allah will perish all religions except Islam.”)?

Dr. Habib Malik, in an eloquent address delivered February 3, 2003 at the at the 27th annual Council for Christian Colleges and Universities Presidents Conference decried the platitudinous “least common denominators” paradigm which dominates what he aptly termed the contemporary “dialogue industry”:

We’re all three Abrahamic religions, we’re the three Middle Eastern monothesims, the Isa of the Koran is really the same as the Jesus of the New Testament…. This is politicized dialogue. This is dialogue for the sake of dialogue. Philosophically speaking, this is what Kierkegaard called idle talk, snakke in Danish; what Heidegger called Gerede; what Sartre called bavardage. In other words, if this is dialogue, it’s pathetic… it needs to be transcended, and specifically to concentrate, to focus on the common ethical foundation for most religions can also be very misleading. Because when you get into the nitty-gritty, you find that even in what you supposed were common ethical foundations, there are vast differences, incompatibilities. Suicide bombers is one recent example. Condoned by major authoritative Muslim voices; completely unacceptable by Christianity.

Over three years later Cardinal Pell’s unanswered questions highlight the predictable failure of the feckless “We’re all three Abrahamic religions”, “dialogue for the sake of dialogue” approach to both Muslim-Christian, and Muslim-Jewish dialogue. Until Muslims are willing to address with candor these admittedly wrenching questions, Dr. Malik’s sobering conclusions from his February 2003 speech will remain apposite: "One certainly needs to be open at all times to learn from the Other, including to learn at times that the Other right now has nothing to teach me on a particular issue."

Australian state premier "puzzled" by ruling allowing publication and distribution of jihad terror manuals

So am I, Iemma. So am I -- particularly when all over the Western world, including Australia's Victoria State, frank Islamocritical discussion of the origins of the global jihad is being deemed unfit for public eyes and ears. An update on this story: "Iemma puzzled by terrorist manual ruling," from AAP, with thanks to JE:

NSW Premier Morris Iemma wants to know how books setting out how to conduct terrorist attacks do not breach sedition laws.

The Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions have ruled that a number of controversial books found in bookstores in Lakemba and Auburn, in Sydney's west, late last year did not incite violence.

One of the books, Defence of the Muslim Lands, carried an endorsement from al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden on its back cover and promoted "wiring up one's body" with explosives, according to reports today.

Mr Iemma today said he had asked the federal government to review the DPP's ruling.

"Whether it is a book or a manual or other material that is publicly available, that gives people information on how to construct a bomb or commit a suicide bombing or some other form of terrorist act, (that) is a huge concern," he told reporters.

of course is. Or ought to be.

British Media Invade the U.S.

I preferred the days when "British invasion" meant the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Now it's dhimmi media -- the BBC and the Guardian. This report does not explain how they will be bringing their own ingenious ways to ignore and downplay the Islamic jihad, but of course they will -- along with, as this report does make clear, their reinforcement of the tired political divisions of today, despite the fact that both sides are increasingly proving themselves inadequate to meet this threat. "AIM Report: British Media Invade the U.S. - April A," an Accuracy in Media Report by Jonathan Boyd Hunt:

Two immensely influential and politically motivated British news organizations are currently establishing serious bridgeheads in the United States, namely: the world's most influential news broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation; and its mentor: the scheming, anti-conservative, anti-American ideologue The Guardian.

With an annual income of $6.5 billion, the BBC certainly has the financial muscle to establish itself in America. The Guardian also has more than enough means to become a player, with assets approaching $3 billion.

Beware, patriots of all hues, you have good reason to be fearful. Like the classic sci-fi movie "The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers," the infecting of America's national psyche has already begun but almost nobody has noticed.

Since its inauguration in 1998, the cable channel BBC America has grown such that by July 2004 it was available in 40 million U.S. homes, and it's growing further. In January 2006 the BBC announced a deal with Discovery to bring its 24-hour news channel, BBC World News, to every American home.

As part of its own global expansion, last September the BBC's guru, The Guardian, began rolling off its New York presses. And, like in Britain, it's been focusing its marketing on capturing the hearts and minds of America's youth. It is bearing fruit already: in December last year Apple, Inc. revealed that The Guardian's Podcast of the hit BBC comedy "The Ricky Gervais Show" had taken the No. 1 spot of its Top Subscribed Podcasts both in the U.K. and in the U.S.

Read it all.

Australia: Muslim 'books of hate' can be sold

These books are written and distributed to the end of subverting Western states and aiding Muslim violence against them, with the ultimate goal of establishing Islamic states in their place. If that isn't sedition, I don't know is. "Muslim 'books of hate' can be sold," from the Daily Telegraph, with thanks to J.J.:

BOOKS of hate promoting suicide bombings, anti-Australian conspiracies and racism can be freely sold in the Muslim community after a ruling that they don't breach sedition laws.

The material, found by The Daily Telegraph in bookstores in the Sydney suburbs of Lakemba and Auburn last year, was judged by federal authorities not to incite violence in the first known test of anti-terrorism laws.

Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said last night he felt uneasy about the continuing threat posed by such material remaining on the streets.

But he said NSW Police would abide by the "qualified and considered legal opinion" offered by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and Australian Federal Police.

The ruling comes despite British police establishing strong links between three of the suicide bombers involved in the July 7 London blasts and an Islamic bookstore in Leeds.

There have also been links in Australia between the suburbs where these books were on sale and alleged terrorist plots here.

One of the books, Defence of the Muslim Lands, carried an endorsement from Osama bin Laden on its back cover and promoted "wiring up one's body" with explosives for "martyrdom or self-sacrifice operations".

That one was written by Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, cofounder of Al-Qaeda.

The Criminal West, written by Australian Muslim Omar Hassan, claimed to be called Australian was something to be ashamed of and Western culture is the culture of wolves, injustice and racism.

It also claims Australian police are rapists who bash young boys and spoke of a conspiracy involving politicians to turn young Muslims into drug addicts.

The Ideological Attack claims there was a barbaric onslaught against Muslims by Jews, Christians and atheists.

AFP spokeswoman Rebecca Goddard said the Commonwealth DPP found no offence had been committed under last year's anti-terrorism Bill....

Goddard, that's insane. And Australia will be paying the price for this, as more and more young Muslims read these books and then act upon their teachings.

Fitzgerald: Turkey, Rice, and Kurds

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the contemporary prospects for an independent Kurdistan:

The Kurds in Kurdistan are surely capable of figuring out for themselves how to proceed, and what will most likely promote, and possibly ensure, their long-term desires. 98% of the Kurdish voters who voted for independence when they took part in the January 2005 referendum. Many have expressed great anxiety about their representatives in Baghdad being insufficiently tough in standing up for Kurdish rights. The Kurds have been the only signficant part of the population in Iraq that the American military have been able to count on, the only people exhibiting unfeigned support for the Americans.

Kurdistan was promised independence by the Great Powers after World War I, but that promise was quashed by a combination of Turkish pressure and the British desire to incorporate the former Ottoman vilayet of Mosul into an "Iraq" that was created (with an out-of-work Hashemite, looking for rule in all the wrong places, plumped conveniently onto the throne) through the forced yoking together of the former vilayets of Mosul, Baghad, and Basra. The promise of a Kurdish state was entirely omitted from the Treaty of Sevres. The Kurds never forget that promise. It was one of several made by the Great Powers after World War I, in the first flush of Wilsonian "self-determination." There were promises that the collapsing Ottoman Empire would result in an "Arab state," a "Jewish state," an "Armenian state," and a "Kurdish state." Had they realized what pressure the Christians in the Middle East would come under, they might have designated Lebanon as a "Christian state" and, in North Africa, had they foreseen the French exit, possibly as well a "Berber state."

In any case, it was not wrong to promise or foresee the creation of such states. What was wrong was to ignore the Armenians and the Kurds. What was wrong was for Great Britain to accept the Mandate for Palestine, and to solemnly commit itself, thereby, to ending all barriers to Jewish immigration and to faciliating "close Jewish settlement on the land," so as create a Jewish National Home -- but then, having pocketed that Mandate, having done everything possible to make that goal more difficult rather than less. This began with the unilateral amputation of all of Eastern Palestine to form the Emirate of Transjordan, and with limiting rather than encouraging Jewish immigration (Macdonald's White Paper of 1939). Finally there was the British training and equipping of the armies of several Arab states -- Egypt, Jordan, Iraq -- while imposing a complete arms embargo on the Jews at the time of maximum peril, in the months before and then during the Arab attack of May 1948.

In passing, one might note that while the Jews did, through their own efforts, obtain a state on 20% of the territory originally contemplated by the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, and while the Armenians did get something rather imperfect within the Soviet Union, that single "Arab state" became, in time, what we see today, with 22 members of the Arab League. But there has never been a Kurdish state, not even a small and permanently imperilled one like Israel, or one under Soviet control, like the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. Nothing. But now that situation can be changed.

But it cannot be changed as long as people meet that suggestion of American support for a "free Kurdistan" with the mechanical response that "Turkey will never allow it." The Americans have not yet made clear to Turkey just how angry they are. They were denied the use of their own bases -- what are those bases for, now that the Cold War is over? -- to send a fourth division into Iraq from the north. The Americans have seen Turkish parliamentarians describe American soldiers in Iraq as "worse than Nazis." They have seen how Mein Kampf has become a best-seller in Turkey. They have seen how the new Turkish movie, depicting those American soldiers as "Nazis," and adding in, just for fun, a Jewish American doctor who harvests organs from prisoners killed at Abu Ghraib (this movie has everything -- everything that Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered) has done boffo all over Turkey, and with Turkish audiences in European countries. They have seen, and finally are beginning to recognize, that "Kemalism" is under assault and Islam is resurgent. They have realized that the love affair with Turkey was based on the permanence and continued vitality of that Kemalism. It was assumed Turkey's secularism was not only here to stay, but would continue to strengthen its hold on the Turkish population. The reverse has happened.

But we don't need Turkey. We don't need Turkish help, Turkish bases, Turkish listening-posts against Russia. If such bases are not to be available for use against Islmaic states (and Turkey has flatly turned down American requests for the use of such bases against, for example, Iran) then what good are they? And just how is Turkey our "ally" in the way it was in 1960 or in 1950? Countries change. In 1944, the Soviet Union was our ally -- but not in 1946, or 1956. If Turkey has changed, that change should be recognized. If Islam is a permanent feature of Turkey and there is little from the outside that can be done about it, then that should be recognized. Our interests, the interests of Infidels, and those even of Turkey, not only are not the same, but they clash. We should be promoting our interests, and there are ways to make Turkey listen.

As for the belief that Russia’s $3.2 billion pipeline through Turkey demonstrates Turkish power, that is nonsense. What it demonstrates, if anything, is the fact that Russia, the historic enemy of Turkey, the Russia that in 1914 still coveted Constantinople, or Tsargrad (at a time when 50% of that city's population was non-Muslim, it did not seem fantastical) can now turn on or off that pipeline. A story published at the time of the pipeline’s inauguration explains that "Washington had balked at proposals to build the pipeline and has warned Turkey about its dependence on Russia, which now supplies 60 percent of the country's gas and 20 percent of its oil."

Does that new dependence suggest a strong Turkey, or a weaker one, vis-a-vis Russia?

I repeat: the most intelligent people in Turkey now realize that the E.U. dream is over. Turkey has no chance of being admitted, now, or in ten years, or in twenty years, to the E.U. The beneficiaries of secularism, promoted systematically by Kemal Ataturk, and then by the Cult of Ataturk that followed upon his death, cannot want Turkey to turn to Iran or to the Arabs out of spite. They sense, rightly, that that would completely undo Kemalism and drag Turkey down to the level either of the despised Arabs or to the level of the despised Islamic Republic of Iran. What to do? Return to some kind of understanding, and help, from the Americans. And the Americans, in turn, are the only ones who can force an independent Kurdistan not to make territorial claims on the parts of Anatolia where the Kurds dominate. The Turkish government will have to listen if the American government insists that it do nothing to squash an independent Kurdistan. Will it necessarily obey? No. But it will have to factor into its calculations what it means if it permanently alienates the United States -- no favored-nation, no resupply of military equipment, no nothing.

And Russia is so very close, and now the Russians control the supply of energy to Turkey. Even Brent Scowcroft, now the head of some U.S.-Turkish group (and how much is he paid? Was he working for Turkey, or other Muslim countries, at Kissinger Associates? Is he now a Registered Foreign Agent? Congress should find out, for Scowcroft is quite free with his supposedly disinterested influence -- is he being paid, directly or indirectly?) was not able to prevent this, nor others like him.

Let the Kurds themselves figure out whether they are happy with this "Federal democracy under construction" in "Iraq" that so many people still have such faith in. If they are, fine. And if they aren't -- then help them achieve that independence, instead of lecturing and hectoring them on every occasion, as Condoleeza Rice has been wont to do.

It is she, in her refusal to see the larger anti-Jihad picture, and her inability to comprehend how leaving Iraq and exploiting the ethnic and sectarian divisions within Islam exposed there will aid that anti-Jihad, who won't do.

Fitzgerald: The shame of corporate America

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the hirelings and traitors who deal with the chief financier of the global jihad:

The Saudis are looking to implement a border surveillance program. Raytheon is “reportedly showing interest in the contract estimated to worth between $7 to $8bn.”

Why is Raytheon dealing with the Saudis? Why is anyone?

Saudi Arabia has spent untold sums on behalf of precisely the same ultimate goal as Bin Laden: the submission of the non-Muslim world to Islam. His main weapon is terrorism, paid for by many rich and not-so-rich Saudis, as well as by residents of the U.A.E., which deserves to come out and take a bow as well; the Saudis’ main weapon is propagation of the faith through the building and staffing of mosques (not only in all the historic capitals of Christendom, but all over the United States); of madrasas (which busily churn out people in poor Muslim countries incapable of anything other than Jihad -- the Taliban emerged from Saudi-financed mosques for Afghani refugees in Pakistan, for example, and then went back and with Saudi help and diplomatic recognition, seized control of Afghanistan); and of bribery, direct and indirect, of ex-diplomats and ex-C.I.A. agents.

Congress: look at the dispatches sent back from Saudi Arabia from 1970 to 1977 by Mr. Raymond Close, until he quit to go into business with two Saudis, later ending up in the BCI mess, and tell us what how well, or ill, he was informing the American government about the nature of Saudi Arabia. And what about the American ambassador in the same period -- James Akins. What was he reporting during and after the 1973 price rise about what that money would likely be used for, with suggestions as to energy policy and the wisdom of relying on that "staunch ally" Saudi Arabia. Compare, please, what Close reported, and Akins reported, with what was offered in J. B. Kelly's Encounter article from 1979, "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies".

It would be salutary to expose the workings of the hirelings and traitors who prevented the United States from seeing that Saudi Arabia was never an ally, and never a friend, and could not be, given the nature of its ruling belief-system. And in failing to understand that, the government failed to come up with policies, three decades ago, that could have recaptured oligopolistic rents and saved this country and the West several trillion dollars. The behavior of those who made their millions and tens of millions from the Saudis by promoting them, defending them, and obscuring their real attitudes and of course the use to which much of that OPEC money was put, are collective participants in one of the greatest acts of perfidy, as yet unrecognized, in the history of the United States. Certainly what they have done and continue to do -- all while receiving Saudi and other Arab sums, either directly, as noted, or indirectly, is notin the interests of the United States, or of Infidels anywhere.

Perhaps there should be a citizens' lawsuit, intended to recover the sums paid out to all these ex-diplomats and ex-C.I.A. men and others who abused their offices and deliberately misled the American government about the nature of Saudi Arabia -- often, while they were still in office.

This scandal is as yet completely unremarked by official Washington. Other things -- liquor and wild women at Watergate parties -- apparently are of greater moment. What Congressman, what candidate, will make the buying-up of influence, through former diplomats and intelligence agents, journalists and diplomats and heads of false academic centers, as well as through corporations, a matter for public discussion, formal investigation by Congressional committees, and media attention? The oil money will not stop, and the Saudis and other Arabs will not cease to try to buy influence wherever they can. Things can only get worse -- if spotlights are not brought in.

The men at Raytheon, for example, or all those who came out in force to lobby for the AWACS sale a quarter-century ago (Whitney, United Technologies) and who are in the thick of bidding for this or that contract in Saudi Arabia, ought to get out of their corporate headquarters in Lexington and take a walk at lunchtime. In one direction, they can visit the homestead not only of Capt. John Parker, but that of his grandson, the noted abolitionist Theodore Parker. Neither would have found anything to approve in Saudi Arabia -- and just as Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and so many others took the measure of Islam, they would have taken the measure of Saudi Arabia.

If they followed in the footsteps of these men there would no bidding on contracts by American defense contractors such as Raytheon and many other eager suppliers of advanced technology, in the eager effort directed at "recycling petrodollars" rather than at diminishing the total amount of those petrodollars available to be recycled. And there would be no doing the bidding of the Saudis by so many former diplomats, journalists, businessmen, academics, who are directly or indirectly recipients of Saudi and other Arab largesse.

And in the other direction, on another day, the "Corporate Relations" people who have decided to curry corporate favor with the sheikhs by doing nothing to displease and everything to please them, could go into town and visit the scene of the first battle of the American Revolution. There they could gaze at the statue of that same Captain Parker standing, musket in hand, on the Battle Green.

Try, and not only at Raytheon though Raytheon is physically closest, in assorted corporate suites, to think about Capt. John Parker, and of his grandson Theodore Parker. And then think about the American soldiers who are in Iraq and Afghanistan being asked to deal in one way with only one instrument of the Jihad. Then think about all the varied instruments of Jihad. And think about Saudi ideology -- behind the smiling facade that Prince Bandar used to offer. And then think about what the future will bring, beginning with the islamization of Western Europe. Give it a try.

Corporate America should be brought to account: what has Saudi Arabia done for you? And what, since 1973, have your companies done in lobbying, in contributing to a general misperception of Saudi Arabia, in official Washington? What have you done to promote, or to disabuse people of, the idea that Saudi Arabia is our "ally," our "staunch ally"? What have you done to make sure that our leaders would decide that no coherent energy policy, no steadily increasing taxes on gasoline, no taxes on oil, no subsidies to mass transit, no government investment in nuclear, wind, solar energy -- during this past one-third of a century of energy-policy paralysis -- were necessary?

Did Saudi Arabia make you an offer you couldn't refuse? A little shame, Raytheon? A little compunction, Exxon-Mobil and all those other oil companies that should long ago have been urging taxes on gasoline, and should long ago have transformed themselves into "energy" companies -- for who knew better the real Saudi malevolence toward Infidels than those with experience in Saudi Arabia? And all those arms sellers -- Grumman, Lockheed, United Technologies -- should they have done a little more than do Prince Bandar's bidding when various measures came up? Should they have been a little less willing to contribute funds to what in the end are institutions that promote Saudi interests, including a sanitized version of Islam and of the House of Al-Saud?

A little embarrassment at this point? The beginning of a hint of a glimmer of a little concern beyond third quarter earnings? Anything?

Memo to EU: we call it Islamic terrorism because it is terror inspired by Islam

Most welcome anti-dhimmitude from Nick Cohen in The Observer (thanks to Olivia):

The United Nations held 'World Press Freedom Day 2006' earlier this month. I don't know why. Maybe the UN realised that so many of its member states stifled press and other freedoms they needed encouragement to do better. If so, the day was a wretched failure.

It began promisingly. At a meeting in Westminster, Roger Koeppel, editor-in-chief of the centre-right German paper Die Welt, gave a classic defence of freedom of expression. He had done what no British editor dared do and printed the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. He received the customary death threats, but didn't regret it, because 'it is essential to protect freedom of expression because of all the pain we have invested to keep our liberal, secular society'.

Dr Maleeha Lodhi, the Pakistani High Commissioner to Britain, opposed him. She denounced 'the tendency in the West to say, "We insult our own, so we can insult yours, too." Well, no. We do have a problem with that and we demand respect'. Her 'demand' for censorship was a faithful reflection of her masters' policy. The Pakistani military dictatorship not only has blasphemy laws, but also forces journalists to resign, arrests them and holds them in solitary confinement. The monitoring agency Freedom House succinctly describes the Pakistani media as 'not free', and they aren't.

So, on the one hand, we had an editor from a liberal democracy saying: 'I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it' and, on the other, the servant of a military junta that says: 'We may disagree with what you say and if we do, we will send you to prison.' What division could be more natural?

Yet once you got closer, the contrast between liberal democracy and military dictatorship was nowhere near as stark. As Dr Lhodi made her argument that respect could be 'demanded' rather than earned, she cited with approval articles by Simon Jenkins, a columnist for the liberal-conservative Sunday Times and liberal-left Guardian.

If she had researched further, she would have found support from Europeans with far more power. Next week, the Council of Europe is holding hearings on whether freedom of expression should include the right to offend religions. It is already clear that the tide is with the supporters of suppression.

Meanwhile, Franco Frattini, the EU's Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, has already banned the use of the phrase 'Islamic terrorism' to describe Islamic terrorism. 'You cannot use the term "Islamic terrorism",' he insisted. 'People who commit suicide attacks or criminal activities on behalf of religion, Islamic religion or other religion, they abuse the name of this religion.'

I was brought up as a democratic socialist and abhorred the crimes committed in the name of the left. But I would always agree that Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were inspired by a version of socialism, just as the most liberal American Christian would accept that fundamentalists who bomb abortion clinics are inspired by a version of Christianity.

This, of course, is just absurdity. No Christian sect endorses such actions, no warrant for them can be found in the New Testament, and there is no sizable Christian movement advocating such actions. That's three stark contrasts with Islamic jihad, which is endorsed by all the mainstream sects of Islam, finds abundant justification in the Qur'an, and is being pressed forward by movements all around the world.

Yet the EU wishes to deny that political Islam inspires terrorists to blow up everything from mosques in Baghdad to tube trains in London, even when Islamist terrorists say explicitly that it does. You should always pay your enemies the compliment of taking them seriously. The EU can't understand what its enemies are saying, because it won't call them by their right name.

Absolutely. Read it all.

Australia: Bibles banned from hospital bedsides for fear of offending non-Christians

In the same state that convicted two Christian pastors of "hate speech" for quoting from the Qur'an.

"Bible ban uproar," from the Herald Sun, with thanks to JE:

BIBLES have been banished from Victorian hospital bedsides and some schools because they may offend non-Christians. Almost all Melbourne's major hospitals have withdrawn the Holy Book from rooms and several schools have refused to allow their students to be given free Bibles.

The Gideons International Australia, which distributes Bibles free to hospitals, schools and motels, blames political correctness.

"The reason most often given is that 'We are a multicultural organisation and we don't want to offend anyone'," Gideons' executive director Trevor Monson said.

"It is a terrible shame because we get lots of letters from people who say having a Bible by their hospital bed has been a great comfort to them during their darkened days."

The Catholic Church condemned the ban and labelled arguments that Bibles could offend non-Christians as "silly".

"To say that other faiths might be offended if a Bible is there is nonsense," Archdiocese of Melbourne auxiliary bishop Christopher Prowse said.

Hospitals including the Royal Melbourne, Royal Children's, Austin, The Alfred, Monash Medical Centre, Box Hill, Maroondah, Dandenong and Casey have all removed Bibles. Royal Melbourne spokesman Rod Jackson-Smith denied a ban, but said: "We don't (have Bibles in each room) any more.

"Because we have so many people from different religious backgrounds it is considered inappropriate.

"It is also an infection control measure."

What kind of infection do you mean, Rod?

Revealed: Blair attack on human rights law

A small bit of anti-dhimmitude from the largely hopeless Blair. Of course these laws need overhauling -- and it needs to be done in a very careful manner, so as to assuage any legitimate human rights and civil rights concerns. Blair is right that the Afghan hijacker ruling is "barmy" -- but so is his bland and evidence-free assumption that most Muslims in Britain are loyal and pose no actual or potential terrorist threat. His unwillingness to face the scope and implications of the jihad ideology presents a problem far larger than that represented by the misuse of human rights law.

From the Guardian, with thanks to JE:

Tony Blair is planning a radical overhaul of Britain's controversial human rights legislation after claims that the present laws put the rights of criminals above those of victims.

In a move which brought immediate criticism from human rights' experts, the Prime Minister wants the government to have the power to override court rulings. The move comes only days after Blair criticised a senior judge for preventing the deportation of nine Afghan refugees who hijacked a plane to Britain. Downing Street said he was determined to find a way around such 'barmy' court rulings.

Blair unveiled his plans in a letter to the new Home Secretary, John Reid, in which he set out his 'most urgent policy tasks'. Legal experts and civil liberties groups accused Blair of playing politics with fundamental rights. The Observer has obtained a copy of the letter, which says it is essential to 'ensure the law-abiding majority can live without fear'.

Gaza: Gunmen raze Morag hothouses

Isn't the New Era of Peace that was ushered in by the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza just wonderful? You may recall that some American Jews raised millions of dollars to buy the greenhouses and give them to the Palestinians, so that the poor things wouldn't suffer any economic difficulties. Moral blindness, dhimmitude, naivete, and more -- as I said at the time.

From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Several greenhouses belonging to the former settlement of Morag in the Gaza Strip were destroyed over the weekend during an attempt by dozens of gunmen to take control of the area.

The Palestinian Company for Economic Development, which is in charge of thousands of greenhouses that used to belong to Morag and other settlements in Gush Katif, said the attack, which took place on Friday, was the latest in a series that began almost immediately after the settlements were evacuated.

The company revealed that hundreds of greenhouses and other agricultural installations have been sabotaged over the past few months, expressing its outrage over the recurring phenomenon. The company issued an urgent appeal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Interior Minister Said Siam to intervene to halt the attacks on the lands belonging to the former settlements.

"These greenhouses and other installations and projects provide a source of income for over 4,500 families," company officials said. "We are very disturbed by the recurring attacks and thefts. Such actions jeopardize the largest agricultural project carried by the Palestinian Authority after the Israeli withdrawal."

No jizya, please, we're nuclear-powered

The Thug-In-Chief rejects Eurodhimmi bribe offers.

"Iran Rejects Incentives to Halt Enrichment," from AP, with thanks to JE:

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's president said Sunday that any European proposal that demanded an end to his country's uranium enrichment activities would be unacceptable.

"They (must) know that any proposal that requires a halt to our peaceful (nuclear) activities will be without any value and invalid," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on state-run television. "They want to offer us things they call incentives in return for renouncing our rights."

[...]

But later a well-placed diplomat accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency said the level was below that, although higher than the low-enriched material used to generate power and heading toward weapons-grade level.

"I have not heard that," Ahmadinejad said Saturday when asked about the claims, saying the world had no reason "to become nervous ... The nuclear program of Iran is totally peaceful."

Sure, Mahmoud. Tell it to the Israelis.

Abu Dhabi: no divorce for woman beaten, cheated on and deserted

But at least she doesn't have to live with him. Women's Rights In Islam Update: "Divorce plea rejected, but alimony raised," from the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

ABU DHABI — The Federal Supreme Court has rejected a plea for divorce by a wife who was beaten, cheated and dumped by her husband after 21 days of marriage. The court granted the wife a Dh2,000 monthly alimony, while quashing a previous verdict forcing her to return home and be obedient to her husband.

Omaya Abdulazeez filed a lawsuit before the Abu Dhabi Court of First Instance, demanding a monthly alimony, divorce and all her rights from the abusive husband Husam Alyan. She claimed that after the marriage, her husband refused to support her financially, beat her up and kicked her out of his house, all because she did not accept his misbehaviour, including having sex outside marriage. However, the husband filed a counter suit demanding that his wife be forced to return home and be obedient to him.

EU to make nuclear offer to Iran

The Eurodhimmis are preparing a nice gift package for Iran in an attempt to bribe it to give up its nuclear ambitions. No doubt Iran will end up both with the Eurodhimmi gifts and the nukes.

From the BBC, with thanks to Rog:

The European Union is drawing up new proposals to offer to Iran to get it to halt its nuclear programme.

The package, believed to include freer trade and political incentives, is to be discussed by permanent UN Security Council members and Germany next week.

Iran responded by insisting that it had a "right" to nuclear technology.

Tehran has dismissed Western concerns saying its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, and has rejected calls to stop uranium enrichment.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said there was no need for anyone to be nervous about the programme.

"All of them know 100% that the nuclear programme in Iran is totally peaceful," he said at the Developing Eight summit of Muslim nations in Bali, Indonesia.

Mr Ahmadinejad repeated that Iran was ready to hold dialogue with any country except Israel but not with "bombs over our heads".

"If they want to resort to the use of force we will not go into dialogue with them," he said.

Incentives

The EU has not given details of the new offer to Iran being considered, but diplomats describe it as a mixture of "the carrot and the stick"....

"The EU would be prepared to support Iran's development of a safe, sustainable and proliferation-proof civilian nuclear programme if international concerns were fully addressed," says a draft EU statement obtained by Reuters news agency.

Desperation

The package would expand on an offer made last August, which Iran rejected.

Our correspondent says it is a measure of the West's desperation that it has had to resort to such an offer.

The chances of getting tougher wording on a UN resolution to threaten Iran appear slim, he adds....

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is bored:

Meanwhile Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in Bali that any proposal that did not include Iran's right to nuclear technology would not be acceptable.

"No incentive can be interesting for the Iranian government and the Iranian nation unless it includes Iran's right to benefit from peaceful nuclear technology."

Movie on Jewish-Muslim love challenges taboos, provokes ire

In the fabled Moderate Morocco, a movie depicting a romance between a Jewish boy and a Muslim girl offends sensibilities -- after all this is forbidden by Islamic law, and that matters even in Morocco.

From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

CASABLANCA, Morocco -- In a darkened lane the young lovers crouch and caress. The girl leans to kiss the boy, then hesitates. He removes the Star of David pendant hanging from his neck and fastens it around hers, where she can no longer see it.

"This way, you'll think of other things," he says gently.

The scene is just one of many provocative moments in the movie "Marock," a story of Jewish-Muslim love challenging taboos in this traditional Muslim society and provoking Islamic politicians' ire.

The movie only won general release on screens here this week -- nearly a year after it showed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 -- following a long vetting by government censors, who made no cuts.

Prior to public release, the movie also appeared in festivals in Casablanca and Tangiers, provoking both critical acclaim and debate over whether it was appropriate for Moroccan audiences.

Acclaimed Moroccan director Mohamed Asli said "Marock" did not deserve inclusion in the festivals because it was "not a real Moroccan film," although he subsequently told a magazine that he welcomed the public release because it would open debate. Some critics claimed to detect sinister Zionist propaganda in the depicted Jewish-Muslim romance.

The Justice and Development Party, Morocco's increasingly popular Islamist political party, has led the charge against "Marock," claiming that it breaks a Moroccan law forbidding offense to Islam. The party plans to press the government on whether it has fully upheld the law.

"It's a mockery of Moroccan spiritual life," said Abdelkader Amara, a member of the PJD's general secretariat. "It presents Moroccans as if they don't adhere to their religion. But that's not true."

The film follows Rita, a rebellious daughter of Casablanca's thin upper crust, as she and her friends approach the end of high school, and then adulthood. Along the way, they gulp whiskey, smoke hashish, party, eat during Ramadan, and indulge in romantic intrigue.

Rita's youthful hedonism gets complicated when she falls for handsome daredevil Youri, a Jew. While her friends accept the affair, she must hide it from her tradition-bound parents and religiously conservative older brother.

"I don't care about religion," Rita tells Youri. "I just want to be able to kiss you where I want and when I want."...

In the cinema, the mostly young audience sighed during the tender scenes in which Rita and Youri managed to snatch a few happy moments alone. But for some of them, the symbolism of the Star of David went too far.

"That the girl accepted (the necklace), that bothers me" said Amal Rohda, 17. "I would never have done that."

"My son was killed, declared Muslim, buried"

Outraging the dead for the political purposes of the living. "MLA: My son was killed, declared Muslim, buried," from The Asian Age, with thanks to Twostellas:

Lucknow, May 12: "They dragged my son Triloki out of the house and stabbed him to death. Then they ignored the ‘Om’ tattoo on his hand, declared he was a Muslim and buried him. To substantiate their claim, they even circumcised his dead body. All this was done because the officials wanted to prove that only Muslims had been killed in the Aligarh riots. One man even tried to claim my son’s body so that he could get the compensation," said BJP MLA Devki Nandan Kori, and then broke down in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly on Friday.

The legislator’s son, Triloki, had been killed in Aligarh riots and it was only when the family saw his body’s photograph in a newspaper that they realised he was dead....

"The intentions are more than clear. This is not an oversight but a deliberate attempt to insult people of a particular religion. The role of IG Kanpur zone in the Aligarh riots is suspicious and why was no action taken against one Banney Khan who made a futile attempt to claim the compensation for the boy’s death?" he asked....

Senior BJP leader Kesri Nath Tripathi finally lost his patience and accused the government of indulging in minority appeasement. "If a Hindu is killed in Mau riots he gets Rs 1 lakh as compensation but if a Muslim is killed in Aligarh, he gets Rs 5 lakhs as compensation."

Iranian rights group urges EU to pressure Iran to stop execution

Watch the European dhimmis quail over this one. "Rights group urges EU to pressure Iran to stop execution," from Iran Focus, with thanks to Mackie:

London, May 13 – A Tehran-based human rights group has called on the European Union to pressure Iran to suspend the imminent execution of a long-time political prisoner.

In a letter to the Austrian embassy in Tehran, a copy of which was emailed to Iran Focus, the group calling itself Human Rights Activists in Iran said that the lives of seven political prisoners were in danger after they were issued death sentences. Austria currently holds the EU’s rotating Presidency.

The letter highlighted the case of Valiollah Feyz-Mahdavi, a 28-year-old member of Iran’s main opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI).

Feyz-Mahdavi was arrested in 2001 for sympathising with the PMOI and has endured torture in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran.

“In the last measure of the mullahs' regime, prisoner Vali Ollah Feiz Mahdavi, was forced to sign the commandment to his execution in Gohar Dasht Prison in Karaj, which was put into place by the Judgment Enforcement of the Court of Justice and brought to him by Ali Mohammadi, the director of the Gohar Dasht, Karaj Prison”, the group said, adding that Feyz-Mahdavi had been scheduled to be executed on May 15.

The group called on the EU Presidency to refer the case to the European Parliament so that pressure could be put on Tehran to prevent the execution.

West: Financing terror

The inestimable Diana West once again speaks truth to the dhimmis in power. From the Washington Times:

If democracy makes leaders accountable to the people who elect them, it works the other way as well: People are also accountable for their elected leaders. Which is why the United States, in agreeing to provide a $10 million care package to the Palestinian Authority, is so dangerously wrong in failing to hold the people of the PA accountable for the democratically-elected terror chieftains of Hamas.

Here's what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week when she announced the U.S. would provide medical and other supplies to the PA, which, after two months of no American or European Union aid, has run desperately low on such necessities: "The Hamas-run Palestinian Authority government bears sole responsibility for the hardships facing the Palestinian people and the international isolation that the PA is now experiencing due to its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce terrorism, and abide by previous agreements and obligations."

That's a lot of refusal, but never mind. The real here question is, Why does the Hamas-run government bear "sole" responsibility? What about its supporters, i.e. the Palestinian voters who gave that Hamas-run government a landslide victory? In the world according to the Bush administration, they remain voiceless victims even after exercising their political will at the ballot box, voting into power an outlaw organization whose charter unfolds under a statement by Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." Regardless of whether this heinous call to jihad leaves any peace for the so-called "Quartet" to process, Ms. Ricecontinued: "Hamas' policies and actions should not deprive the Palestinian people of their legitimate humanitarian needs."

Why ever not? Why shouldn't Hamas' "policies and actions," driven by a Hitlerian plan to "obliterate" Israel, deprive Hamas constituents of their "needs," humanitarian or otherwise — particularly when it comes to support from civilized nation-states spilling blood and treasure to fend off Islamic jihad in the so-called "war on terror"? There is a strategic and moral senselessness to the administration's willful disconnect. After all, the U.S. and the EU cut off aid to the PA two months ago in order to extract concessions — like, for instance, on Israel's right to exist. Hamas' response? No concessions. The U.S. and EU are now cranking aid back up, in humanitarian dribs and drabs, but this is probably just the beginning and still no concessions. This doesn't sound like successful statecraft.

Read it all.

The power of a lone dhimmi

Or two, from the looks of the voting. Here's how Moussaoui "won": "Moussaoui 'saved by lone juror,'" from the BBC, with thanks to Rog.

Only one juror prevented Zacarias Moussaoui from being sentenced to death for his role in the 9/11 attacks, the Washington Post has reported.

The paper says it was contacted by the jury forewoman from the trial, after which Moussaoui was given life in jail.

She said that in secret votes on three terrorism charges, the jury repeatedly voted 11-1, 10-2 and 10-2.

A unanimous vote on any of the charges would have condemned Moussaoui to a lethal injection.

The forewoman complained that the dissenter who kept holding out on the first charge never identified him or herself, and never put forward their arguments for discussion, he says.

'No scrutiny'

"I felt frustrated," the forewoman said, "because I felt that many of us had been cheated by the anonymity of the 'no' voter.

"We will never know their reason. We will never be able to hold their reason up to the light and the scrutiny of evidence, fact, and law," she told the Post.

Dhimmi UK analysts "startled by speed of conversion from citizen to killer"

Why does this surprise them? Because they haven't learned the lessons of Maher Hawash, or Fawaz Damra, or Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar. What are those lessons? In Hawash's case, it is either that sleeper cells do exist, or that even aside from them Muslims can be convinced that their path to Paradise is through violence -- as Muhammad said, "Paradise is under the shade of swords." Sometimes the change from peaceful Muslim to mujahid can come by means of a moment of personal crisis. Taheri-azar, on the other hand, was convinced of that, by his own account, by reading the Qur'an; he apparently required no group affiliation. And the lesson of Damra is that some moderates" are just dissemblers.

Which of these is applicable in this case? I don't know. But if I were the British investigators, these would be the avenues I'd be pursuing in my investigation. There is no need for head-scratching puzzlment over this transformation. One need only discover how they came by the jihad ideology, and then the transformation becomes a matter of inevitability.

"Agencies 'startled by speed of conversion from citizen to killer,'" from Financial Times, with thanks to Mackie:

The police and security services were startled by the speed with which citizens turned to violent extremism that was manifested in the July 7 attacks in London, a parliamentary committee said yesterday.

They also appear to have underestimated the risks posed by home-grown terrorism, the intelligence and security committee said.

As expected, it said in a report that the security services had not been negligent in failing to follow leads that might have prevented the attacks on the transport system that killed 56 people including the four bombers.

But it expressed concern that the development of the home-grown terrorist threat and the radicalisation of citizens "were not fully understood or applied to strategic thinking" by the counter-terrorism services.

You can say that again. As long as they have to believe in the great unicorn of the Vast Majority of Loyal Muslims, they will never be able to understand how this ideology can spring up anywhere -- in places such as Taheri-azar's Chapel Hill flat, as he quietly read his Qur'an.

Another honor killing in Pakistan

Future of Eurabia Alert from Pakistan. This one happened because she eloped. "Boy kills elder sister for honour," from the Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

LAHORE: A boy killed his 22-year-old newly wed elder sister in Mohlanwal village in Manga Mandi police precincts on Wednesday. Police said Kishwar (22) from Sahiwal had an affair with her neighbour, whom she eloped with to Lahore. The couple married and was living in Kishwar’s aunt Razia’s house. When Irfan arrived at Razia’s house and found his sister, he quarrelled with her and shot her. The body has been sent for autopsy and Irfan has surrendered.

Hijackers have a right to live in Britain

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

Nine Afghan asylum seekers who hijacked a plane at gunpoint to get to Britain should have been admitted to the country as genuine refugees and allowed to live and work here freely, the High Court ruled yesterday.

In a decision that astonished and dismayed MPs, the Home Office was accused of abusing its powers by failing to give the nine formal permission to enter Britain, in breach of their human rights.
The hijack at Stansted
A police marksman walks past the hijacked plane during the February 2000 stand-off at Stansted

It is the second time human rights laws have worked to the advantage of the hijackers.

Two years ago, attempts to eject them from the country were thwarted when an immigration court said this would expose them to the risk of inhuman or degrading treatment in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention.

The Afghanis argued that their lives would be in danger - even though in late 2001 British troops had helped topple the Taliban from whom they said they were fleeing.

The hijackers, armed with handguns and explosives, took control of a Boeing 727 on an internal flight from Kabul in February 2000 and ordered the plane to be flown to Britain.

It was directed to Stansted in Essex, where the hijackers gave themselves up after a 70-hour stand-off with police and the SAS.

They were later jailed for various offences but the convictions were quashed in 2003 on the grounds that the law of duress had not been properly applied at their trial.

After the Home Office subsequently failed to have them deported in 2004, they were granted temporary admission to the country for themselves and their families.

Charles Clarke, the then home secretary, declined to give them full refugee status, fearing this would send out the wrong message and be seen as a "licence to hijack".

Yep.

Pakistan: Christian inmate beaten on offering his prayers in jail

More jihadist persecution of Christians in Pakistan. "Christian inmate Mobeen Boota beaten on offering his prayers in Kasur Jail," from the Pakistan Christian Post, with thanks to Wally:

Kasur: April 27, 2006. Mobeen Masih a Christian prisoner is confined in District Jail Kasur and facing a trial of lawsuit pending with session court District Kasur. A criminal case was registered against him vide FIR No. 157/2003 offence under section 395 with police station Mustafa Abad.

Sharing Life Ministry’s team met with Mobeen on 15th April 2006 during the jail visits of Easter Day’s project. Team was shocked when Mobeen showed his injuries. There were about 20, 20 stitches on his right and left arms. About 10 to 15 stitch on right and left upper side of chest and abdomen was also injured and there were also about 10,10 stitches on right and left side of abdomen. All the wounds are very deep and filled with puss. He has infection in his wounds. Mobeen was shivering with pain.

Sharing Life Ministry’s team members asked him that why he was tortured. He told,

“I was praying in my cell. Some Muslim prisoners came there and started teasing me. I begged them not to disturb me that I am praying but they started abusing me passed desecrating remarks about Christianity. Before this occurrence Muslim prisoners and some of jail staff members used for force me to convert into Islam. They said you’re your name is Mobeen and it is very respectful name for Muslim as this name is used in Holly Quran. I refused them many times. Meanwhile Chief of the jail staff came there and asked about the matter. Muslim prisoners falsely told the chief and I abused them. Chief took me away from the cell to condemn cell. He also abused me and tortured me. He locked me in a dark cell and went away. At about midnight the Assistant Superintendent of the jail named as Tahir Bhatti along with deputy Superintendent named Shiekh Khalid, Chief named Majeed, Chaker Munshi (Clark) named Ashfaq and Head Warden came there and started beating me. They were armed with sharp big blades. They gave me deep cuts on my both arms, chest and abdomen.

Next morning they spread false news that I have injured by myself. Then jail doctor sew my wounds. I made a noise that aforesaid jail staff injured me but all in vain. Even jail authorities did not produce me before the court on my date of hearing”.

Egyptian Cleric and Former Islamic Lecturer in the U.S.: "82% of All Attempts to Corrupt Humanity Originate From the Jews"

And saying that UN documents establish this. Anti-Semitic Paranoia Update: "Egyptian Cleric and Former Islamic Lecturer in the U.S. Hazem Sallah Abu Isma'il on Al-Risala TV: Lectures on the Jews' Conflicts With Islam's Prophet Muhammad, Stating U.N. Documents Assert "82% of All Attempts to Corrupt Humanity Originate From the Jews"

From MEMRI, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

In the April 14, 2006, edition of his weekly show on Al-Resala TV, The Raids,in which he discusses the battles of the Prophet Muhammad, Egyptian cleric Hazem Sallah Abu Isma'il explains to his audience that, according to U.N. statistics, "Jews produce more than 82% of the video clips in the world," and adds that "82% of all attempts to corrupt humanity originate from the Jews."

Isma'il, a wealthy lawyer and businessman [1] who is also, according to Al-Jazeera TV, head of the Committee for Implementation of Shari'a of the Egyptian Lawyers' Union, [2] was a strong Muslim Brotherhood candidate for the Dokki district in the November 2005 elections in Egypt, but lost in a surprise upset to a member of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's party. [3]

According to the Saudi channel Iqra TV, Isma'il is the son of former Egyptian MP Sheikh Sallah Abu Isma'il, and spent some time in the U.S. with his mother Dr. Nawwal Nur, who lives in Los Angeles, with whom he preached and taught Islam there. In a July 15, 2004 interview with Iqra TV on the subject of 9/11, Isma'il stated that he believed that "these events [i.e. 9/11] were fabricated from the outset as part of the global groundwork for the distortion of Islam's image [...] a comprehensive global plan that includes a media aspect," and that "the authorities there [i.e. in the U.S.] don't want to conduct an investigation."

The following are excerpts from the April 14, 2006 lecture by Sheikh Hazem Sallah Abu Isma'il, which aired on Al-Risala TV.

TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1129.

It is followed by excerpts from the July 15, 2004 interview with Hazem Sallah Abu Isma'il and his mother Dr. Nawwal Nur, on Iqra TV.

TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=168.

Note his invocation of the Battle of Badr and attention to Muhammad's example:

..."As I've told you, following the great victory at the Battle of Badr, the Muslims felt joy and enjoyed stability, but the Jews, the hypocrites, and the infidels felt boiling rage and fury towards Islam. For instance, if they encountered a Muslim woman in the market, they would harass her. As you know, things like that have also happened recently, following 9/11. Muslims were harassed in the markets of America and Europe. There were some incidents, although not many, in which a man would strip a Muslim woman of her veil in the market."

[...]

"82% of All Attempts to Corrupt Humanity Originate From the Jews"

"The Jews are determined to own the media, in order to control the ears and eyes of the youth. Do you know that all those songs that appear in movies... The percentage of Jewish-produced video clips worldwide, according to statistics from 2003... Jews produce more than 82% of the video clips in the world. The Jews! These are not Islamic statistics, but statistics by the U.N. organization for media, culture, and science. Eighty-two percent of all attempts to corrupt humanity originate from the Jews. You must know this so that we can know what should be done.

"The Jews' control of the media involved poets, like Ka'b Ibn Al-Ashraf. He was a well-known poet. Like the international actors, he was tall, fair-skinned, handsome, good-looking, and perfumed - the pinnacle of splendor and glory. A beautiful sight! He was a poet, and he began writing poems about... Have you heard of Salman Rushdie? Have you heard about that woman from the Indian Peninsula or Bangladesh, who wrote against Islam? He wrote against Islam just like they do today.

[...]

"This guy Ka'b began publishing poems about the wives of Muslims. He referred to the wives of Muslims, and damaging their honor. In other poems he would curse the Prophet, ridicule him, and say improper things about him. In a third type of poem, he would curse the Prophet's companions, and compare them to animals - dogs, sheep, and camels. This was a type of insult. The Arabs of those times loved poetry, as the verse says: 'Poetry is the language of the Arabs.' For Arabs, poetry is sharper than the sword."

And Ka'b was murdered on Muhammad's orders.

Read it all.

Dhimmi Carter: Punishing Innocent Palestinians Is a Crime

In "Punishing Innocent Palestinians Is a Crime" in Der Spiegel (thanks to DFS), the great ex-President and Nobel laureate demonstrates a persistent, incorrigible unwillingness or inability to see what is in front of his face:

Depriving the people of Palestine of their basic human rights just to punish their elected leaders is not a path to peace.

Where is there established a basic human right to live off the largesse of others while spending all one's time plotting the downfall of a sovereign state?

Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life.

Treated like animals? Because they were for an all-too-brief period refused money they have done nothing to merit and which only encourages them to continue down their murderous path?

Overwhelmingly, these are school teachers, nurses, social workers, police officers, farm families, shopkeepers, and their employees and families who are just hoping for a better life. Public opinion polls conducted after the January parliamentary election show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a peace agreement with Israel based on the international road map premises. Although Fatah party members refused to join Hamas in a coalition government, nearly 70 percent of Palestinians continue to support Fatah's leader, Mahmoud Abbas, as their president.

If all this is true, these nurses and shopkeepers shouldn't have voted for Hamas.

US, Russia, EU, UN agree to resume jizya to Palestinians

It was only a matter of time before they caved. And now they have. "Quartet agrees to channel aid to Palestinians," from Reuters, with thanks to LGF:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The quartet of Middle East peace brokers agreed on Tuesday on a way to channel aid to the Palestinians for a trial period to ease a financial squeeze on the new government following the election of Hamas.

The group of international mediators -- the United States, Russia, the
European Union and the United Nations -- issued a statement after a day of talks in which Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia warned of a civil war if the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority was left to collapse.

"The quartet expressed its willingness to endorse a temporary international mechanism that is limited in scope and duration, operates with full transparency and accountability," said the quartet statement.

The move came after the World Bank warned on Monday that the Palestinian Authority could face a breakdown in law and order and basic services unless foreign donors step in to pay the salaries of about 165,000 civil servants.

Jailed rock star converted to Islam for better jail food

And why exactly do Muslims get better jail food?

"Brown's Islamic Conversion," from PR Inside, with thanks to Nick:

Former STONE ROSES frontman IAN BROWN told prison authorities that he was Muslim so he could get better food in jail.

The rocker, who in 1999 served two months in a Manchester, England, jail for threatening an air stewardess, didn't fully convert to Islam - he just wanted to eat the food on the Muslim menu.

Brown says, "My sister bought me the Koran in 1990. I always thought the stories in it were magical.

"So I'd already had a love affair with it, but when I got in jail the first day, I saw what everyone else was eating. I didn't know what the f**k was in the pies, but the lads said if you were Muslim you got chickpeas, lentils, rice, chicken curry on a Friday.

"So I said my religion was Muslim."

If Brown is no longer saying he's a Muslim, I hope he has hired a few bodyguards.

Fitzgerald: Let them ask the Saudis

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald pleads again for an end to the jizyah payments made by Western states to the Palestinians and others:

Saudi Arabia alone takes in nearly $1 billion a day. Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and the other seven Muslim or Muslim-ruled states in OPEC -- ten of the eleven fall into that category -- could with a snap of one Al-Saud princeling's finger pay the $55 million monthly that Arabs have already pledged to the Hamas government -- or ten times, or fifty times, that, if they cared to do so. But they don't. They want to make sure that the Infidels keep paying, and that no Infidel gets it into his head that the rich Muslims should pay for the poorer Muslims, especially when those poorer Muslims can only survive on a permanent dole, for they are where they are, in the condition of economic paralysis that they are, because they choose to be. They are encouraged by all the Arabs and Muslims to be nothing more than the shock troops of the Lesser Jihad against Israel.

It is madness for Infidels, who are now spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the Muslim world, to continue to pay what is a Jizyah. (The figure for the American taxpayers alone, in Iraq alone, is now close to $400 billion -- if we include as sunk costs that of treatment for wounded veterans and replacement of desert-degraded equipment.) Aid to the “Palestinians” is not sort of, or kind of, a Jizyah. It is a classic Jizyah. It is payment from Infidels to Muslims, who take the money in a spirit not of gratitude, but as of right, and are infuriated that the Infidels would dare not to continue such payments wherever they have been instituted. Just look at the howls of indignation over the past few months from the Hamas government and from other "Palestinians," other Arabs, and from their supporters and collaborators all over Europe -- such people as Alistair Crooke, the former British agent who became such an enthusiastic supporter, cheerleader, praiser and promoter of Hamas.

The West has got to kick the Jizyah habit. It is absurd that hundreds of billions are spent to counteract, however clumsily, the Jihad by attempting to create this impossible dream of Iraq the Model, Iraq the Light Unto the Muslim Nations. It is absurd that the West risks lives all over Afghanistan to make that country safe for non-Taliban Muslims who would, nonetheless, condemn an apostate to death, and who have no love for Infidels at all. And on top of that the entire Western world now must spend gigantic sums, everywhere, and permanently, to secure churches, synagogues, Hindu temples, Buddhist temples, airports, metro stations, railroads and railroad stations, sea ports, bridges, government buildings, brave and outspoken political figures (see Geert Wilders, see Ayaan Hirsi Ali), all because of the Muslim presence in those countries.

And yet, on top of it, the long-suffering Western taxpayers are now asked to support the shock troops of the Jihad against Israel -- the so-called "Palestinian people," even though the billions (and where did those billions go? And why does Sura Arafat apparently have hundreds of millions of dollars in her Parisan possession?) that simply disappeared when Arafat died have yet to be recovered? Why are Infidels supporting Muslim states or people anywhere, when those same Muslim states and people by their behavior and clearly expressed attitudes of menace and hate are costing hundreds of billions -- and at the same time, through no effort on their own part, the rich Arabs have been, and continue to be, the recipients of the largest transfer of wealth in human history?

Our goal, the Infidel goal, should be to diminish that Arab and Muslim "money" weapon that helps fund the Jihad. One way is to reduce the sums received. Another way is to make sure that claims to part of that money is made, and made noisily, by the poor Arabs and Muslims. Let the rich Muslims share their wealth with fellow members of that supposed umma al-islamiyya. Let them pay for the "Palestinian" Arabs. Psychologically it is important to break the notion that we Infidels owe them, owe any Muslims, a thing. We don't. And if we can cause a little internecine rancor, as usually happens when the donor does not give the donee what he think he deserves, being never quite satisfied, and the donor in turn becomes more and more enraged at the seeming ingratitude of the donee, with his hand perennially out, and if both donor and donee are Arab Muslims, won't the ensuing and permanent bad feeling (Arafat, to extract money from rich Arabs, made all kinds of threats) isn't that a good thing for Infidels? Don't Infidels need to buy time, and don't they wish for dissension and division in the camp of Islam? Or are they convinced, in the Bush manner, that they are still merely fighting a "war on terror" that has little to do with the tenets or promptings or attitudes that Islam contains or fosters?

No Jizya. Not to Hamas, and not to the "Palestinians" who may not prefer to the Fast Jihad of Hamas the Slow Jihad of Abbas. Not to any Muslim state or people. The Saudis (and the Arabs in the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, and many other Muslim oil states, including Iran) can take care of them. They have plenty of money.

Let the "Palestinians" ask the Saudis. Let all the poor Muslims ask the Saudis and other rich Arabs. And whether the answer is a Yes or a No, Infidels will be the winners. That's it.

Israeli woman attacked in Berlin

Eurabia Alert from YnetNews, with thanks to Ben-Hur:

BERLIN – A serious anti-Semitic assault took place in Berlin last week, when an Israeli medical student was attacked at night by a group of young women after they heard her talking in Hebrew on her mobile phone. The Israeli woman was beaten and wounded.

The incident happened last week after the 26 year-old student attended a party at the house of friends in the Steglitz neighborhood in south-west Berlin, where a large Muslim community resides. At about 2 a.m., the woman, who holds a dual Israeli-German citizenship, decided to walk back to her apartment after she missed the last bus home, Israel's leading daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

While she was walking home and holding a conversation in Hebrew with a friend from Israel on her cellular phone, the student passed by a group of young women.

When they recognized the language the student was speaking as Hebrew, one of the girls suddenly walked up to the Israeli woman and slapped her in the face. The other women then joined in, pulled her hair, beat her up and kicked her. The abuse eventually stopped when the attackers thought they heard a police car approaching, and they fled the scene....

The women's identity has not been established thus far, but they were apparently Muslim.

Dhimmitude from the director of United 93

Well, I had been planning to see United 93. I even told Tammy Bruce that I would see it and then come back on her show and talk about it. But now I'm not so sure that I want to plunk down ten bucks for a ticket, in light of this item from Horsefeathers.

It seems that the movie's director, Paul Greengrass, said this on the Rush Limbaugh Show:

"..Here's the thing. I think what they managed to do in this film, something I'm so proud of them for doing, they convey something I think is really important for us. There were two hijacks on the morning of 9/11. There was the hijack that we know about, the hijack of the airplanes, of the innocent people, that flew into the buildings and all that terrible death and destruction that occurred as a result. But there was a second hijack that took place that day. The hijack of a religion by a bunch of young men who twisted and perverted it in order to create a creed and an ideology to justify the slaughter of innocent people, and that's a hijack that is still out there today. It's still going on today, and it's going to be very hard for us to work out what to do to deal with that..."

It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that Greengrass would think this way. After all, it is still the prevailing mainstream view. But it is founded on a fiction. The twisting and perverting of Islam by terrorists is something that virtually everyone assumes, and no one has ever proven. As I have established again and again and again, the jihadists are the ones who use detailed arguments from the Qur'an and Sunnah to justify their positions, and the putative moderates have never refuted those arguments.

Why does this matter? Because we cannot win this great war if we fail to see the enemy realistically. If we deceive ourselves into thinking that we can count on tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of Muslim allies, we will be surprised and possibly dangerously compromised. Certainly hundreds of millions of Muslims are not waging the jihad today. But it has never been established even that a majority disapproves of it, or that there even exists any established form of Islam that teaches that non-Muslims and Muslims should live together as equals on an indefinite basis.

Until we come to grips with the implications of that fact, we will be much more vulnerable than we should be.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali interview

Watch her at LGF (thanks to all who sent this in), and go see her tomorrow at Harvard.

Moving in with the dhimmis

"Death to Israel -- oh, and what's the rent on this place?" Here is an interesting story in light of the barrage of outrage to which we are constantly subjected from Palestinian Arabs about the Jewish presence in the lands of Israel. That avalanche of rhetoric doesn't stop the more pragmatic among them to choose to live a better life and settle in Israel.

"Jerusalem barrier prompts Arabs to move across town," from the Washington Times, with thanks to M615.

JERUSALEM -- An unanticipated consequence of Israel's West Bank security barrier has been an influx of Israeli Arabs into Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem who hope to remain on the Israeli side of the barrier.

Salam Kusideh is one of a growing number of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship who have moved across the highway from Arab neighborhoods of Beit Hanineh and Shuafat in search of cheaper housing and a better quality of life in the Jewish suburb of Pisgat Ze'ev.

After eight months in his five-bedroom duplex, Mr. Kusideh is encouraging other Palestinians to follow.

"I tell them the conditions are excellent here," the 38-year-old carpenter said without hesitation. "Everything is orderly."

The security barrier, designed to seal off Jerusalem from the West Bank, has driven up real estate and rental prices in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem as thousands of Palestinians return to the city limits.

Fearing that they may be stripped of residency rights that give them access to Israeli government social services, they are willing to pay higher prices for small dwellings on the Israeli side of the barrier.

"They want to escape the wall," said Jamal Natsche, a real-estate broker from Beit Hanineh. "If you're stuck on the other side, in the long run, you'll lose your ID."

The rising prices in Arab neighborhoods are prompting people such as Mr. Kusideh to consider Pisgat Ze'ev, which was developed as a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem in the 1980s. There, an influx of Palestinians is driving prices in the opposite direction.

Only a few hundred Arabs live in the neighborhood of 45,000 residents, but the flow is increasing.

"I didn't expect that they would sell it to us. There are a lot of Jews that won't sell apartments to Arabs," said Mr. Kusideh's wife, Grace, who hails from a Christian Palestinian village near the West Bank city of Jenin.

Britain caves in to Hamas, resumes jizya

It was only a matter of time for the dhimmi British government caved. "Britain backs Palestinian trust fund," from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

A PROPOSED trust fund for donors to pay overdue Palestinian salaries would undercut Hamas, not strengthen it, says a British document meant to increase pressure on the US to drop objections to the plan.

Britain circulated the memo on the proposal, aimed at averting a collapse of basic services provided by the Palestinian Authority, to major donors before tomorrow's meeting of the Quartet of Middle East mediators.

The four-page document argues, in response to US efforts to block creation of such a fund, that it "will not undermine the diplomatic effort" to persuade Hamas to renounce violence, recognise Israel and abide by interim peace accords.

The US is concerned that allowing the international community to pay Palestinians' salaries would take pressure off Hamas, Western diplomats said.

But Britain argues that if Palestinians end up receiving crucial aid through channels other than Hamas, the Islamic militant group stands to lose "a big part of its street credibility and hence have an incentive to come closer to what the international community wants".

Let me get this straight: if we resume paying them after making the payments conditional on their changing, even though they haven't changed, they will be compelled to change in the future?

What utter, stupid, suicidal nonsense.

The Belgian church takeover story

Many, many people are emailing me about a church in Belgium that has been given over by the Belgian bishops to illegal immigrants, and essentially transformed into a mosque. It's being covered by Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, and others.

And it's an important story. What I don't know is why it is making the rounds now, when it is over a year old. I posted about it here in April 2005. Sometimes these things take on a life of their own and I am not faulting anyone who is posting it now, but since so many people are sending it to me I thought I would put up this note so that you know that I am not ignoring the story.

Anti-dhimmitude at...Harvard??? Hirsi Ali to speak Tuesday!

One of the heroes of our age is coming to the green pastures of Harvard University.

If you are in the Harvard area, and have a Harvard ID (note the fine print on the poster), don't miss this. And please send us reports, photos, etc.

ADDENDUM: Public Event:
The Coop at Harvard Square
1400 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA, 02238

May 9
Discussion with Ayaan Hirsi Ali ; 12 noon at The Harvard Coop
Ayaan Hirsi Ali will discuss "The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam"
Location: Level 3

Fitzgerald: What the Israelis don't understand

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the dire consequences that ignoring the contents of the jihad ideology has had and continues to have for Israel:

Many in Israel do not want to investigate Islam. They do not want to find out why there is such a relentless Jihad against them. That Lesser Jihad, which is only one front of the Greater Jihad against the entire non-Muslim world (chiefly the United States), is itself divided into the proponents of a Fast Jihad (nonstop warfare and terrorism) and those who favor (because they are more patient and realistic) the Slow Jihad of diplomatic pressure. That Slow Jihad features noises about seeming acceptance of compromise, accompanied by every conceivable kind of pressure from Arab Muslim states on Israel's few supporters, and constant agitation for one concession after another, each of which in turn whet rather than sate the Muslim appetite.

The division of the world between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb does not have some kind of special exemption that reads: "And if the Infidels give up much of what they possess they will be allowed to keep the rest." No, there is no such clause. Whatever Israel gives up, it will still be required to give up more and more and more. Ultimately the entire world, by all that is right and all that is just, must be ruled by Islam and Muslims. And on the To-Do list of Islam are all those Infidel polities that were created on land once possessed by Islam, whether a century ago or five centuries or a thousand years ago. Israel, the Balkan Greece, much of the Caucasus and southern Russia, Sicily, Sardinia, of course Spain and much of India head the list. But France, England, Italy, Germany, Spain, and all the rest of Europe, and of course black Africa and North America and South America and China and Korea and Japan and Australia -- ultimately, all of Dar al-Harb must be incorporated into Dar al-Islam.

What part of this don't the Israelis understand? The same part that is also misunderstood by all the other Infidels who cannot be bothered to investigate the tenets and history of Islam, or who are fearful of what they might find out and could no longer deny. But Israel is immediately threatened. The asymmetry of money and power here make that threat ever more immediate. Think of those trillions flowing from that accident of geology, year by year, think of those billion Muslims, think of the vast campaigns of propaganda, think of the fellow-travelers and arabisant sympathizers, think of the irreducible percentage of any Western population suffering, at any one time, from the pathological condition known as antisemitism (which, in the counter-Jihad, makes antisemites a security risk to the West, as they were during the period 1935-1945).

Infidels outside Israel can learn a lot from the Infidels in Israel -- a lot about what not to do, how not to act, how not to negotiate with Muslims (or, in the absence of negotiation, to give them what they want anyway -- "we'll show them"). Not everyone in Israel is as foolish as the deplorable Olmert. (Olmert is an Israeli Carter, but without the holier-than-thou attitude, and probably more corrupt -- Olmert's financial status as indicated by the several million dollars he received from the sale of his house, considering the salary he has received over the past several decades, suggests that something is very wrong.) But in Israel's press, television, and government, a great many people are. They are harming their own country -- and they are harming Infidels everywhere.

Among the Infidels who are most immediately threatened are the Christians of the Middle East. Many Arabic-speaking Middle Eastern Christians may wish to remain in their countries, but not under Muslim rule. Assyrians in Iraq, some Maronites and other Christians in Syria, and Copts who are fed up with the Egyptian Muslims and the government's failure to protect them and use of hostility against them as one more tactic to divert attention away from the Mubarak regime's corruption, might be willing to move. At the same time, Israel (perhaps not openly supported, but at least not opposed, by other Western governments) should keep up the pressure that will encourage local Arabs ("Palestinians") to leave. For if it is made clear that never again will that outside Infidel Jizyah be arriving -- whether or not the Hamas government either cosmetically changes views, or whether the master cosmetician Abbas regains real power should be irrelevant. Without any resources, and without a population that is wiling to work but instead has relied during its decades of pseudo-existence on the absurd support of first the U.N. (where the rolls of the "refugees" continually swell, as all kinds of local Arabs have signed on, and where no one ever seems to die and be removed from those UNRWA rolls), the local mujahedin might as well leave. Keep up the pressure for another few years, move in those who have suffered most immediately from Islam, and who will not be inclined to forget it, and that could do wonders -- for Israel and for other Infidels, whether Christian or post-Christian, who need to understand why denying Muslim control of the Holy Land is so important to the survival of the West as an idea, as a reality.

Some may not understand that -- well, too bad. Most will.

Iran's Jews face growing climate of fear

"Life for Iran's 25,000 has become even more precarious..." They already faced all manner of humiliations, discrimination, and harassment, in accord with traditional dhimmi laws. And now on top of it all they are being treated practically as enemy combatants.

From The Scotsman, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

FOR the dwindling Jewish community in Iran, a sacred ritual is observed at 6.30 every evening as shortwave radios are switched on to listen to the daily Farsi broadcast from Israel.

Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power last June, life for Iran's 25,000 Jews has become even more precarious as the president defiantly pursues a nuclear policy while declaring Israel should be "wiped off the world map"....

"It is becoming a serious matter of concern for Iranian Jews should there be any military action between Iran and Israel," said Israeli broadcaster Menashe Amir.

"The Iranian regime says it does distinguish between Judaism and Zionism, but the local Jewish community knows that is a lie since it has been frequently written by extremists in religious circles that 'every Jew is a Zionist'."

While it is still the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel, a vast number of the population have fled Iran.

Similar scenarios, played out in a thousand different circumstances, along with conversions induced by the harsh deprivations of the dhimma, account for the present tiny populations of Christians and Jews in the countries known as "the Islamic world."

British Home Office loses court battle, must resume process of making Gitmo detainee a British citizen

David Hicks once wrote: "Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan (will) join together in a true Islamic state. The Islamic state is nearly completed....As a Muslim, I believe in destiny. I will always fight for the truth, Islam." He has fought for British citizenship because he believes it will win him release from Guantanamo -- not because he has any allegiance to the British crown, or respect for British history and culture. His attachment to Islam and declared enthusiasm for the Islamic state makes it overwhelmingly likely that he has no affection for Britain at all, and no intention of ever being loyal to Her Majesty's government. If he is freed and actually goes to Britain, he will most likely only work for jihad and the overthrow of the British state, and its replacement by a Sharia state.

Are British officials somehow barred from considering these facts? Do they even have any idea of what constitutes citizenship? In past ages it was taken for granted that citizenship was not merely a matter of location or parentage, but of one's loyalties and sensibilities. That's why citizenship was granted only after the passage of sometimes rather stringent civics exams -- at least in the U.S. But now the British are being compelled -- by their own courts -- to accept as one of their own a mujahid whose life is dedicated to destroying the system he is currently exploiting for his own advantage?

On what grounds? What possible advantage for Britain and its people is there in granting David Hicks citizenship?

Note, finally, that David Hicks is a white, blond-haired Australian. This yet again gives the lie to the knee-jerk "Islamophobia"-hunters who constantly characterize any resistance to the global jihad as "racism." If that charge were true, anti-jihadists would welcome Hicks into England, while opposing, say, Pakistani immigrants who share Hicks' faith. But that would be absurd. Britain has no more business welcoming Hicks than it does welcoming any other person, of whatever race, who holds to Hicks' totalitarian supremacist ideology that would overturn British society and destroy British culture.

But few in Britain seem to care.

"Hicks wins citizenship fight," from the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to David:

THE British Government has reached a legal dead end in its attempts to deny Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks his claim for British citizenship.

Lawyers were advised in London early yesterday that the British Court of Appeal had refused to allow any further appeals from the British Home Office in the long-running case.

The news means the Home Office, which has twice lost to the Hicks legal team, must resume the process of making Hicks a citizen.

D. C. Watson: A message to our grandchildren

Here's one to print out and put in your hope chest, to pass along to your grandchildren along with your diamond broche: D. C. Watson writes to the future.

You may read this today, or you may not read it for years, or even decades. I hope that your parents will pass it down to you. You see, you are the future of freedom.

As I write this, some of you haven't even been born yet. Some of you may be too young to remember the Islamic attacks against our nation nearly five years ago. You were just babies then. Some of you may be old enough to remember some of what happened that day, while the rest of you will learn more about September 11, 2001 from your parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles.

Either way, I write this message to you so that if by the time you read this Islam has not been reformed or its bellicosity neutralized, and this deadly, ongoing war of ideology (civilized vs. barbaric) continues after we're gone, you will be informed. You will be prepared to confront the challenges you'll face from those who threaten your happiness, wellbeing, and ability to choose how you want to live your life.

It is May 7, 2006. For the last few decades, in particular the most recent one, the United States of America and many other free, democratic nations have accepted millions of immigrants who practice Islam.

While it is unfortunate, it is certainly true that these people, not all but far too many, have come into our lands with the expectation of being catered to, of eliminating the national pastimes and traditions of their host nations, and of ultimately compelling our nations to follow Islamic laws.

They arrive to live among us under the guise of fleeing oppression in their homelands. Yet they claim to be offended by the most trivial, petty items, issues and actions -- in an attempt to compel Westerners through guilt-manipulation to conform to their behavioral norms. They have no respect for the hard work that has been put in to building our nations, nor do they have an ounce of respect for all of the members of our respective Armed Forces who have fought and died for our freedoms.

If your parents happen to tell you that the teachings of Islam encourage violent behavior, and your schoolteacher tells you that they do not, by all means…listen to your parents, and make them aware of any school activities that pertain to the subject of Islam. They need to know, so that you aren't inadvertently indoctrinated. If you end up going to college, there's a good chance that one or more of your professors, who have been safely tucked away on a college campus for years, may attempt to tell you that the United States and its people are the world’s oppressors. You may hear the same thing being said in an Islamic Studies Center located on campus. Please don't allow yourselves to fall into this false mindset. It is a lie.

You may hear a teacher, talk show host, news anchor, or politician argue that Islam is a religion of peace. While some Muslims desire harmony, be assured that Islam is not and has never been a religion of peace. Its holy book contains numerous exhortations to violence. For the past 1400 years, if Muslims haven't been at war with non-Muslims, they've been killing each other.

While you're in school, you may be given textbooks that portray Islam positively and Christianity negatively. These books present a fanciful, fictionalized, propagandistic view of history, designed to manipulate you.

In the first Islamic centuries, after Muhammad claimed to have received a message from God, Islam was spread not by teachings of peace, but by violence. In modern times, little has changed.

No matter what some may try to tell you, the following is the truth about the Islamic faith. You, as the future defenders of freedom and equality, deserve to know it:

1) At the time I write this message, concerns about Islamic extremism are overwhelmingly high in the West.

2) Negative perception of Islam is increasing at a substantial rate.

3) Since Muslims attacked the United States on 9/11/2001, as of today they have carried out 4,828 terrorist attacks around the world, killing and wounding many people who have done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This number does not reflect the more than 25,000 attacks that have been carried out against the people of Israel.

4) Muslims have been the cause of social unrest in the majority of Western nations to which they have sought refuge.

5) Islam began nearly 1,400 years ago. Yet after all of this time, even in modern society, women are still oppressed, non-Muslims in Islamic lands are still persecuted for practicing non-Islamic religions, and millions of Muslims remain committed to establishing the Islamic social order everywhere in the world.

They are incapable of accomplishing this militarily. So they attempt to do it by:

-- Bushwhacking innocent men, women and children.

-- Posing as Muslim civil rights organizations, then manipulating the media and elected government officials who were voted into office to represent the interests of the United States and the American people.

-- Labeling anyone who confronts them as racists.

-- Mass birthing.

-- Converting non-Muslims to Islam.

-- Using oil as leverage.

Someday, you may read about, see on the news, or even be approached by a Muslim or member of a Muslim organization. He or she will smile, speak softly, and tell you that Islam poses no threat to freedom. If this were true, they wouldn't need to say it.

They may be wearing expensive suits. In any case they will be sharp, well-spoken, articulate. They will tell you that all they want is to coexist in America and the West. They may even offer you a copy of the Qur'an. They will tell you that we all believe in the same God, and that Islam is similar to Christianity.

If this day ever comes, I ask you to use your common sense, to remember your national traditions and values, to think about the sacrifices made by so many in order to solidify the freedoms you enjoy today, and to realize that there's a deceitful manipulator standing in front of you who'd just as soon see your head on a stick. Why do I say that? Because of what is written in their holy book:

Qur'an 5:51: "O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other..."

Qur'an 9:5: "So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush."

Qur'an 48:29: "Muhammad is God's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another."

Qur'an 4:34: "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other….Good women are obedient. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them."

Your future depends on you. It is important to understand that while trading goods with other nations is healthy, becoming dependent on, or being held hostage by, nations that control resources that you need (such as energy), is not only foolish, but potentially deadly. This is especially true when these nations are run by fanatics who want to spread their backward, brutal version of culture all over the world.

If you cannot obtain or produce the energy you need from your own homeland, its territories, or nations closer to home, then learning to further develop and utilize alternative sources of energy, making oil a thing of the past, will be of the utmost importance.

Lastly, many elected government officials have become out of touch with the interests of the American people. They have ignored the fact that they work for the people who voted them into office. Unless the American Bill of Rights is somehow eliminated by those who are more interested in internationalism than they are nationalism, you, with your votes, will have the power to either remove them from office, or prevent them from winning office in the first place. Please pay close attention to their words and actions, so that America stays………America.

Thank you. And remember, you are the future. With knowledge, backbone, and the willingness to listen to American patriots and your informed family elders, you win.

References:

Pew: Concerns about Islamic Extremism

CBS: Sinking Perceptions of Islam

Washington Post: Negative Perception of Islam Increasing

Frontpagemagazine: Islamic Indoctrination in American Public Schools

9/11: Remember the Blood of Heroes

WorldNetDaily: Author sees Islam's 20-year plan for U.S.

Jihad Watch

Anti-CAIR

Faith Freedom

The Religion of Peace

Fitzgerald: Jefferson, the Adamses, and making sense

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald ponders why early American statesmen saw clearly about Islamic jihad, but their dhimmi successors of today do not.

In a recent article prompted by his reading of Joshua London’s Victory in Tripoli, Andrew Bostom, who compiled The Legacy of Jihad, adduces from London’s text a number of telling descriptions of Islam and of Muslims by some of the most important figures in American history. Two of them were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, in 1786 ambassadors (Jefferson in Paris, Adams in London) from the newly-established American Republic still under the Articles of Confederation (the Treaty of Paris had been signed in 1783, the Constitution was ratified only in 1787). They had a meeting with the representative of Tripolitania (present-day Libya) then in the Great Britain, Sidi Haji Rahmand Adja. Like other Christian maritime powers, the American state had suffered from the state-piracy of Muslim corsairs. The word “piracy” implies mere seeking at random for booty, and is inadequate to describe the formal system by which Muslim corsairs had for centuries been making war on Christian shipping, with the foreknowledge (indeed, often registering in advance either the places their ships would be going, or what Infidel shipping they intended to attack) and support of the Muslim rulers of the North African states -- which, in turn, were ostensibly under the control of the Ottoman rulers in Istanbul.

Both Jefferson and Adams were learned men. Take a tour in Quincy or at Monticello and look at their libraries, and then imagine the reading material that sustains the current, or the last few, American presidents. But they had no reason to know about Islam. They were interested in the civilization of the West, to which they belonged. Islam was merely a disturbing and violent intruder, to south and east, of that West. The notion that someday Muslims in the Western world would be insisting that the Western world owed so much to Islam, that the Renaissance was practically a Muslim invention, that without Islam the great civilization of the Western world was unthinkable, would have been regarded by them as what it is: absurdity, from first to last, a travesty of history.

But did they know much about what prompted Muslim behavior? No. So they asked why the Barbary states (present-day Morocco, Algerian, Tunisia, and Libya) would continually attack American and all other Infidel shipping, seize the cargoes and the sailors, taking both back to Islamic lands and enslaving those Christian seamen who sometimes could be ransomed, sometimes not. So they asked the ambassador, Mr. Adja, why the Muslims of the Maghrib, the “Barbary pirates” as they were known in the West, did as they did.

He had no trouble answering them, as the report written by Jefferson and Adams to the Continental Congress shows:

“…that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Nothing surprising here to any contemporary Muslim, though many will wish that Americans will never read that paragraph above, especially since it was written by two of the Founders, two of the Framers of that Constitution which is so flatly contradicted by the principles and Holy Law of Islam. It is easy to denounce this or that truth-teller about Islam today, but not quite so easy for Muslims to denounce or attempt to belittle a report written by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Bostom also quotes London quoting William Eaton, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, who later became the U.S. consul in Tunis, and who in 1799 reported on his meeting with the Dey of Algiers, Bobba Mustafa:

“…we took off our shoes and entering the cave (for so it seemed), with small apertures of light with iron gates, we were shown to a huge shaggy beast, sitting on his rump upon a low bench covered with a cushion of embroidered velvet, with his hind legs gathered up like a tailor, or a bear. On our approach to him, he reached out his forepaw as if to receive something to eat. Our guide exclaimed, “Kiss the Dey’s hand!” The consul general bowed very elegantly, and kissed it, and we followed his example in succession. The animal seemed at that moment to be in a harmless mode; he grinned several times, but made very little noise. Having performed this ceremony, and standing a few moments in silent agony, we had leave to take our shoes and other p roperty, and leave the den without any other injury than the humility of being obliged in this involuntary manner, to violate the second commandment of God and offend common decency. Can any man believe that this elevated brute has seven kings of Europe, two republics, and a continent tributary to him when his whole naval force is not equal to two line-of-battle ships? It is so.”

Not exactly one of those Western ambassadors – a John C. West or James Akins or an Andrew Kilgore or a Eugene Bird – full of salaam-aleikum lecca-leccas for their Arab counterparts. No, it was a no-nonsense early American, sure of himself, and equally sure that he could recognize a comical primitive when he saw one – and saw no need to pull any rhetorical punches. One wonders how many today would report back in a similar fashion on the absurdities, say, of Arafat and company, or the pretensions of the ludicrous Arab regimes and Arab-League officials who have been allowed to believe in their own significance and importance, when their only significance and importance is that supplied by an accident of geology and the complete failure of even these recipients of the largest unearned wealth in history to create modern polities and modern economies. The fact that these regimes remain morally and intellectually paralyzed should show those who, in the Western world, ought to know a little something about what makes the West the West, just a little something about what the civilizational fruits of Islam are – or rather, about the absence of those civilizational fruits.

In his review-article Bostom also spatchcocked on, from a period later than that of the Barbary Pirates episode in American geopolitical life, a piercing, no-nonsense quote from John Quincy Adams, writing in about 1829 after his retirement from public life:

“….he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God…the faithful follower of the prophet may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.”

The “command” to Believers to engage in “perpetual war” -- performed “alike by fraud or by force” – against the Infidels, the Unbelievers, was no secret to the well-traveled (St. Petersburg, among other places he was stationed) and well-read John Quincy Adams. In a previous article Bostom had quoted John Quincy Adams comparing the essence of Christian doctrine with the essence of Islam.

This was John Quincy Adams on Christianity:

“And he [Jesus] declared, that the enjoyment of felicity in the world hereafter, would be reward of the practice of benevolence here. His whole law was resolvable into the precept of love; peace on earth – good will toward man…On the Christian system of morals, man is an immortal spirit, confined for a short space of time, in an earthly tabernacle. Kindness to his fellow mortals embraces the whole compass of his duties upon earth, and the whole promise of happiness to his spirit hereafter. THE ESSENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE IS, TO EXALT THE SPIRITUAL OVER THE BRUTAL PART OF HIS NATURE [Capitals in original].”

And this was John Quincy Adams on Islam:

“Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST; TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE (Capitals in original)...Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant...While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.”

And Adams concluded:

“As the essential principle of his [Muhammad’s] faith is the subjugation of others by the sword; it is only by force, that his false doctrines can be dispelled, and his power annihilated.”

As one reads and ponders these remarks by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and John Quincy Adams, one is struck by the self-assurance that they represent civilization, and that Islam and its representatives did not, and it would have been ludicrous to pretend otherwise. Islam did not change between 1786 or 1805 or 1830 and today. The doctrine of Jihad did not change. The Qur’an was not a different Qur’an; the Hadith were not differently ranked from the way muhaddithin had ranked them, according to various levels of authenticity, nearly a thousand years before. If anything, the forces of Islam were far weaker then, and far less able, therefore, to conduct Jihad. The only instrument available was military, and in military matters the Muslims were hopelessly surpassed by the technology of a much more advanced civilization – more advanced in every possible way. So what happened? How is it that today no Western leader can bring himself to write about Islam as Jefferson, Adams, John Quincy Adams, or even in modern times, as Churchill did in The River War?

What happened are any number of things, beginning with an entirely different class of rulers. What a falling-off, intellectually, there has been since the days of the Founders and the Framers. The self-assurance and leisure necessary to learn about things, the absence of breathless, round-the-clock news, the fantastic piling-up of duties so that no leader can conceivably read, and take in, once he has risen to the top, the very things he most needs to know -- all this has contributed to that falling off. And right now, of course, the thing that leaders and elites all over the Western world most need to know is all about Islam, its tenets, its history of Jihad-conquest, its subjugation of all conquered non-Muslims, and its recommended instruments of Jihad that go far beyond either “terror” or even military means. This conquest is promoted now in Western Europe mainly by demographics -- the numbers of Muslims multiplying at a rate far faster than that of the indigenous Infidels -- and Da’wa. That Da’wa is targeted at prisoners, and at others who are economically and psychically marginal, and inclined to embrace a belief-system that can be viewed as a vehicle of protest against “the System,” and also supplies, for those who need it, a Complete Regulation of Life and Total Explanation of the Universe. There are plenty of weak-minded people around, their numbers increased by the sometimes intolerable stress and stupidity of frantic getting and spending, or not getting, and not spending.

What happened? Why could Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and John Quincy Adams and so many others in American history have understood Islam, and also understood that there was no possibility of, and no need to even attempt, to “win hearts and minds” of Muslims, but rather to obtain their cooperation, to force changes in their behavior? The latter is a very different thing from winning hearts and minds, and is grounded in the reality of what Islam teaches its adherents to believe. When Theodore Roosevelt demanded from a Moroccan bandit chief the return of Ion Perdicaris (who at the time was not even an American citizen, though few paid attention to that -- he did have a long American connection) with that famous phrase about “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead,” he too understood that dealing with such people required that kind of attitude.

Jefferson and Adams and Quincy Adams read. They thought. They studied. They learned things directly. They did not have staffs that attempted to supply their every mental need by supplying little 1- or 3- or 5-page summaries of information, offered up in bite-size bullets that were not even sentences. They were well-traveled. They all had the habit of study and of thought, and would not have wasted the kind of time that our leaders, in and out of office, waste on meetings, and meet-and-greet sessions, and smiles, and wiles, and all the intolerable nonsense that modern political life requires of those who can endure it, and that often drives away the best people because, in the end, they cannot.

Just imagine that in the previous administration, one of the “experts” called on for his “expertise” on Islam was that supreme and sinister apologist, John Esposito. Jefferson, Adams, and Quincy Adams would have seen through him in a moment’s time. When they were writing, they were not worried about “offending” Muslims. They could afford to speak the truth. But so could Western leaders today, if only they would begin to do it. The Muslims have very little hold over us. Yes, they have oil. And they desperately need to sell that oil. And they are terrified that the West could begin to find other sources of energy, or that the West could begin to tax oil use themselves in ways that would dampen demand. And the Arabs and other Muslims do not “have the Gatling-gun” and militarily could be laid waste overnight. They have money with which to buy influence, but if all over the Western world those on the take were relentlessly exposed, ridiculed, held up for inspection (and that would include a good many ex-diplomats, journalists, academics and others), then that army of apologists could lose its effectiveness. There is no “oil weapon” and never was. There is a financial weapon, but it is in Western and chiefly American hands. What would the rich Arabs do if the Western world decided to seize their property in the West as the assets of enemy aliens, just as was done to the property owned not only by the German government, but by individual Germans, during World War II? And what would they do if they were to be permanently deprived of easy access to Western medical care? (How would you feel if someone threatened to deprive you of the possibility of seeing your Western doctors or being treated in a Western hospital? That might get your attention.) What would they do if they were deprived of access to Western education (for their children, especially), or if they lost any chance of moving to the West? What would they do if they began to see a relentless campaign to remove, as a security threat, Muslims from within Dar al-Harb, where they have been allowed to settle, through negligence, by the tens of millions?

What has happened is not merely a kind of cretinising of our political class, but also a laziness. This can be seen from those who are not in the executive branch, and who could, if they chose, study the contents of Islam, learn about Jihad and about the dhimmi, and never be fooled again. But do you know of any Senators and Congressmen who, over the past few years, have decided to study such matters? Do you have the feeling that John Kerry, with no money worries whatsoever and a good deal of time, has been burning the midnight oil reading Robert Spencer, or Bat Ye’or, or Ibn Warraq’s Why I Am Not a Muslim, so that he won’t and can’t be fooled? Do you think any of the Democrats, so critical -- for all the wrong reasons -- of the war in Iraq, will ever be able to criticize the war for the right reasons, as has been done here for more than two years?

Sometimes it is fun to imagine a figure from the past suddenly coming to life. I have always imagined John Keats suddenly appearing, and my taking him to Macdonald’s, and trying to explain it to him. Imagine Jefferson and Adams coming to life. Imagine what they would make of all kinds of things, but imagine in particular what they would make of people all over the Western world who had now allowed, within their midst, millions of people who, as a matter of belief, were taught to hate those people among whom they lived, and to work to destroy those Infidel institutions, laws, customs, manners, until Islam dominated and some form of the Holy Law of Islam could be established? What would they make of this? What would they make of the $400 billion in sunk costs spent or committed in the near-term to the war in Iraq, as we try to create out of three separate groups of Muslims a nation-state that supposedly will serve as a “model” for other Arab Muslims, a kind of Light Unto the Muslim Nations? They would rub their eyes in disbelief. They would wonder – how did this happen to the country they helped to found and nurture? Where did things go wrong? And then they would have questions. “What’s a speechwriter?” “You mean, you actually have someone else write words you present as your own, fashion your thoughts, express what should be your views?” “And what are ‘bullets’ used in these pages of Daily Briefings?” “And what is a ‘Daily Briefing’”?

They would be quite capable today, as they were in their own day, of reading and finding out about Islam – through books and through the evidence of their senses. They didn’t have CNN, Fox, spy satellites, and an army of CIA agents. But they knew what Islam was all about. It is we, with all that paraphernalia, seeking complexity when things are perhaps too obvious, too worrisomely simple for many to wish to grasp the matter, who are the innocent ones. It is Jefferson and Adams and Quincy Adams and many others, right up to Churchill, who had an unobnubilated grasp of Islam and of Muslims. They were not distracted. They were not charmed by a Saudi oil minister, or by someone at the “Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.” They had the leisure to read, to think, and even to ponder, slowly, what it was they read, and make it their own. The hectic vacancy of official Washington is scandalous -- especially when one rises to the very top and learns only from those briefest of briefings, and even that only when it is too late, or treated as if it is too late, or perhaps beneath the dignity of the highest officials (“As for study, we’ll let our valets do that for us”).

And this is how it has become nearly impossible to get their attention, to get them to start making sense.

Australia: Jihad terror suspect gets charter jet to dying brother

An $8,000 chartered jet, courtesy the dhimmi Australian taxpayers, for a suspected mujahid who is accused of aiding in plans for violent jihad attacks in Australia.

Everyone responsible for this should be immediately thrown out of office. But they won't be.

"Terror suspect gets charter jet to dying brother," from the Herald Sun, with thanks to Cathy:

A MILITARY-scale operation, funded by taxpayers, has begun to allow a Melbourne terror suspect to visit his dying brother interstate. Izzydeen Atik, 25, will make a mercy dash to Sydney on an $8000 chartered jet to farewell older brother Merhy, who is stricken with liver disease.

Melbourne Magistrates' Court heard Mr Atik will be in the custody of up to 10 federal agents and will be under guard at secret locations in Melbourne and Sydney for his flights.

More than 20 officers are expected to guard Sydney's Westmead Hospital, where the final goodbyes will probably take place today.

Estimates of the trip's costs ranged in the tens of thousands of dollars.

The court heard a chartered plane was necessary because commercial airlines would not take Mr Atik.

Corrections Victoria and Victoria Police also refused to be involved in the transfer operation.

Prosecutor John Champion, SC, said federal police had grave concerns about the trip's hefty price tag and maintaining safety.

"It is a very expensive exercise, which ultimately is to be paid for by Australian taxpayers," he said.

Det-Insp Steve Clark said police were extremely uncomfortable with the prospect of supervising Mr Atik, and worried about his NSW associates.

"There is a significant imposition on police resources," he said.

"We would be concerned, particularly with the publicity surrounding the matter, of people knowing he might be returned to NSW, and they might want to assist him in escaping."

Defence lawyer Theo Kassimatis said the bail application was made unapologetically on compassionate grounds.

He said Mr Atik, a paranoid schizophrenic, should be allowed to grieve with his family....

Mr Atik, of Williamstown, is accused of acting as a travel agent for an alleged terror cell planning violent jihad in Australia....

He and 12 other Melbourne men face charges including providing membership, support and funds to a terrorist group.

Aussie Muslims seethe, dhimmi demands Cardinal Pell's resignation; he refuses to back down

Predictably, Muslims and dhimmi Leftists in Australia are enraged by Cardinal George Pell's truth-telling address in Florida, and -- again predictably -- labeling the entirely accurate information he presented about Islamic theology and history as a manifestation of his "ignorance" of Islam. But so far he is refusing to back down.

"Pell denies ignorance about Islam," from Australian ABC, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, says he is committed to maintaining a positive dialogue with Muslims.

Cardinal Pell has come under fire for comments on Islam he made to a group of Catholic businessmen in the United States earlier this year.

In the speech, Cardinal Pell urged Christians to read the Koran to better understand Islam.

But he said the sacred book repeatedly incited violence and that Islam was not tolerant of other religions.

Rahim Ghauri, from the Federation of Islamic Councils, says Cardinal Pell's comments are disappointing.

"I wish people of his calibre would give some positive statements so the world can come together," he said.

New South Wales Greens MP Lee Rhiannon says Cardinal Pell should resign.

"He is the leading Catholic he should be working for tolerance and respect."

'Open to dialogue'

However, Cardinal Pell has rejected suggestions he is uninformed about Islam.

"Isolated suggestions that I am uninformed on Islam are cliches, smokescreens to distract, to divert attention rather than address basic issues which need to be discussed," he said in a statement.

"Islamic terrorists are not a figment of anyone's imagination and the history of relations with Islam is full of conflict.

"I continue to be completely committed to dialogue with Muslims, to supporting moderate forces on all sides."

Cardinal Pell says people should read the Koran and his article in Quadrant and judge for themselves.

"We need a lot of continuing dialogue, based on truth, history and the current situation," he said.

Yes: read the Qur'an, and have a dialogue based on truth. How simple, how commonsensical, and how refreshing.

Israel Offers Outline to Divide Jerusalem

Israel, like Europe and America, still labors under the delusion that peace can be won through concessions and negotiated settlements. This is a fundamental and ultimately lethal misapprehension. The jihad ideology stipulates that Muslims must strive to establish the hegemony of the Islamic social order over the world, offering non-Muslims conversion to Islam, subjugation as inferiors -- dhimmis, or protected (or guilty) people -- under Islamic law, or war. This imperative does not stem from outrages committed by the infidels, although such outrages, whether imagined or real, are used as pretexts to stir up support for the jihad at hand.

If Israel gives up part of Jerusalem, peace will not come. The Palestinian mujahedin and their allies will have fresh demands. And Jerusalem itself will become more dangerous and uncomfortable for free people who believe in the equality of rights of all people.

From AP, with thanks to Teri:

JERUSALEM - Israel's new government is drawing up a blueprint for dividing the holy city of Jerusalem — a once inconceivable notion — giving the Palestinians nearly all the Arab neighborhoods while holding onto Jewish areas and disputed holy shrines. Otniel Schneller, an architect of the plan, described it in interviews this week with The Associated Press, giving the clearest picture yet of how Israel plans to separate from the Palestinians, abandoning most of the West Bank.

"We will not divide Jerusalem, we will share it," he said.

Most of Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods would go to the Palestinians, he said. "Those same neighborhoods will, in my assessment, be central to the makeup of the Palestinian capital ... al-Quds," Schneller said, calling Jerusalem by its Arabic name.

Israel would keep Jerusalem's Old City with its shrines sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians alike — an unacceptable plan to Palestinians, particularly if carried out unilaterally.

See? The next round of demands is already taking shape.

Sweden Backs Down, Grants Hamas Visa

Vile Eurabian Pusillanimity and Dhimmitude Update. From Israel National News, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

(IsraelNN.com) Sweden has granted a Hamas leader a visa to enter the country, less than 48 hours after the country's prime minister insisted the visa would not be granted. Swedish media reported that its consulate general in Jerusalem issued the visa even though Sweden is "full square behind" western leaders' demands that the Hamas terror organization renounce violence and recognize Israel.

Bostom: America’s First War on Terror

Dr. Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad, writes in Frontpage:

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then serving as American ambassadors to France and Britain, respectively, met in 1786 in London with the Tripolitan Ambassador to Britain, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja. These future American presidents were attempting to negotiate a peace treaty which would spare the United States the ravages of jihad piracy—murder, enslavement (with ransoming for redemption), and expropriation of valuable commercial assets—emanating from the Barbary states (modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, known collectively in Arabic as the Maghrib). During their discussions, they questioned Ambassador Adja as to the source of the unprovoked animus directed at the nascent United States republic. Jefferson and Adams, in their subsequent report to the Continental Congress, recorded the Tripolitan Ambassador’s justification:

… that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Thus as Joshua London’s Victory in Tripoli elaborates in lucid prose, an aggressive jihad was already being waged against the United States almost 200 years prior to America becoming a dominant international power in the Middle East. Moreover, these jihad depredations targeting America antedated the earliest vestiges of the Zionist movement by a century, and the formal creation of Israel by 162 years—exploding the ahistorical canard that American support for the modern Jewish state is a prerequisite for jihadist attacks on the United States...

Read it all.

Anti-dhimmitude from Australia's Cardinal Pell

One of the clearest, most honest, and best-informed statements about Islam that I have ever seen from a contemporary Christian prelate. George Cardinal Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, speaks at the Legatus Summit in Naples, Florida, on "Islam and Western Democracies" (thanks to all who sent this in):

September 11 was a wake-up call for me personally. I recognised that I had to know more about Islam.

In the aftermath of the attack one thing was perplexing. Many commentators and apparently the governments of the “Coalition of the Willing” were claiming that Islam was essentially peaceful, and that the terrorist attacks were an aberration. On the other hand one or two people I met, who had lived in Pakistan and suffered there, claimed to me that the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims.

Although I had possessed a copy of the Koran for 30 years, I decided then to read this book for myself as a first step to adjudicating conflicting claims. And I recommend that you too read this sacred text of the Muslims, because the challenge of Islam will be with us for the remainder of our lives – at least.

Can Islam and the Western democracies live together peacefully? What of Islamic minorities in Western countries? Views on this question range from näive optimism to bleakest pessimism. Those tending to the optimistic side of the scale seize upon the assurance of specialists that jihad is primarily a matter of spiritual striving, and that the extension of this concept to terrorism is a distortion of koranic teaching[1]. They emphasise Islam’s self-understanding as a “religion of peace”. They point to the roots Islam has in common with Judaism and Christianity and the worship the three great monotheistic religions offer to the one true God. There is also the common commitment that Muslims and Christians have to the family and to the defence of life, and the record of co-operation in recent decades between Muslim countries, the Holy See, and countries such as the United States in defending life and the family at the international level, particularly at the United Nations.

[...]

On the pessimistic side of the equation, concern begins with the Koran itself. In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages. I will return to the problems of Koranic interpretation later in this paper, but in coming to an appreciation of the true meaning of jihad, for example, it is important to bear in mind what the scholars tell us about the difference between the suras (or chapters) of the Koran written during Muhammad’s thirteen years in Mecca, and those that were written after he had based himself at Medina. Irenic interpretations of the Koran typically draw heavily on the suras written in Mecca, when Muhammad was without military power and still hoped to win people, including Christians and Jews, to his revelation through preaching and religious activity. After emigrating to Medina, Muhammad formed an alliance with two Yemeni tribes and the spread of Islam through conquest and coercion began[3]. One calculation is that Muhammad engaged in 78 battles, only one of which, the Battle of the Ditch, was defensive[4]. The suras from the Medina period reflect this decisive change and are often held to abrogate suras from the Meccan period[5].

The predominant grammatical form in which jihad is used in the Koran carries the sense of fighting or waging war. A different form of the verb in Arabic means “striving” or “struggling”, and English translations sometimes use this form as a way of euphemistically rendering the Koran’s incitements to war against unbelievers[6]. But in any case, the so-called “verses of the sword” (sura 95 and 936)[7], coming as they do in what scholars generally believe to be one of the last suras revealed to Muhammad[8], are taken to abrogate a large number of earlier verses on the subject (over 140, according to one radical website[9]). The suggestion that jihad is primarily a matter of spiritual striving is also contemptuously rejected by some Islamic writers on the subject. One writer warns that “the temptation to reinterpret both text and history to suit ‘politically correct’ requirements is the first trap to be avoided”, before going on to complain that “there are some Muslims today, for instance, who will convert jihad into a holy bath rather than a holy war, as if it is nothing more than an injunction to cleanse yourself from within”[10].

Be sure to read it all.

Wilkes University: Muslims protest criticism of Saudi students; cause of protests stands firm

Stephen Lawrence is refusing to bow to intimidation. Would that we had 300 million more people like him in America. "Criticism of Saudi students sparks protest at Wilkes: Students object to a letter in the Times Leader portraying Saudi students as a potential danger," from the Times Leader:

WILKES-BARRE – A letter to the editor in Sunday’s Times Leader blasting Saudi Arabia and criticizing the paper’s decision to run a story about Saudi Arabian international students at Wilkes University sparked a protest at the college Wednesday.

Nearly 300 students attended the hour-and-a-half exposition outside the Henry Student Center Wednesday afternoon to protest the letter written by Forty Fort dentist Stephen M. Lawrence referencing 9/11, honor killings and the treatment of women and Christians in Muslim states.

“It is said we are having a clash of civilizations, but as we can plainly see, only one side is civilized,” he wrote. “Wake up Americans. We are letting the barbarians in and we must be diligent.”

The letter responded to an April 9 story that followed 15 Saudi Arabian students’ acclimation into an American university.

Interviewed Wednesday, Lawrence stood by his views, calling the religion of Islam “a political and religious system that is against everything that Western values stand for.”

Salman Punekar, 19, a business major at Wilkes University and a naturalized American citizen of Saudi Arabian decent, organized the peaceful protest that drew out many students on the final day of classes. He said he learned about the letter earlier this week and began circulating e-mails to fellow students.

“His statements undermine American values,” Punekar said of Lawrence. “I’m a naturalized citizen now and there’s no difference between me and anybody else. We came out here so that he (Lawrence) knows there’s a strong opposition to his views. He’s exercising his freedom of speech and so are we.”

Fair enough. But I wish Punekar would expand on his statement that "there's no difference between me and anybody else." If he is trying to tar Lawrence as a racist, and making a counter-racist statement, his assertion must be accepted as true while his implication about Lawrence's remarks must be rejected as false. For Lawrence plainly spoke about the teachings that Saudi students may have imbibed in Saudi mosques, not about their race. And his questions deserve answers. No attempt is made to determine what Muslim students studying in the U.S. believe about jihad, Sharia, and Islamic supremacy. Since Khaled Sheikh Muhammad and so many other jihadists have studied here, is that really wise?

Or does Punekar mean that he accepts American values of pluralism, and the indefinite peaceful coexistence of Muslims and non-Muslims as equals? If so, he should regard the ways in which jihad terrorists behave as just as abhorrent as Lawrence does, and he should say so plainly and stand with Lawrence against this barbarism, recognizing that it is not unreasonable to ask whether Saudi students hold such views.

Punekar and friends also circulated a petition questioning Lawrence’s statements and the Times Leader’s decision to run his letter. Punekar said he received 350 signatures by 1 p.m. He plans to send copies of the signed petitions to Lawrence and the paper....

Lawrence said he pulls much of his information about Islamic societies from the Internet and books written about the Quran. He wrote that 14 of the 19 suicide bombers in the 9/11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia and many of them came to this country on student visas. He sees a risk in other extremists falling through the system’s cracks again....

Communications studies professor Evene Estwick, a former international student from Barbados, is one of several Wilkes faculty members who oversee the university’s international student program. She said that while many of the items cited in Lawrence’s letters might be facts of life in some Islamic states, they don’t represent the majority population of Muslims and people from Saudi Arabia.

“In the way you can’t blame individuals for actions of an entire group, you cannot judge an entire country based on the actions of several people,” she said. “Just be mindful. We’re all different.”

Sure we are, Evene. But what about the ideology? Does the fact that we are all different, and each wonderful in his or her own way, somehow make a totalitarian, genocidal, supremacist, expansionist ideology disappear?

Trifkovic: Jihad's Fellow-Travelers

Serge Trifkovic, author of the essential Sword of the Prophet and the equally essential new book Defeating Jihad, speaks about the unreality and self-deception that still prevails among most dhimmi Western analysts. From FrontPage:

The following address was given to the Wednesday Morning Club at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on April 28, 2006. -- The Editors.

Exactly twenty years ago the Soviet leadership was in deep denial about the catastrophe that had struck Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. It pretended that life could go on as before, that nothing of great importance had happened. The Comrades hoped, absurdly, that Chernobyl’s awful consequences could be concealed from all those untold millions of people doomed to suffer its short and long-term consequences.

Two decades later, Western elites are behaving in exactly the same manner on the subject of Islam. It is ironic that the misnamed National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and various lesser organs of the dominant cultural Nomenklatura, have devoted so many minutes and column-inches to the criminal myopia of the Kremlin two decades ago, while remaining…not oblivious, but actively supportive, of the ongoing criminal betrayal of trust and responsibility, of which the political, academic and media elites on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean are guilty.

I am not going to waste your time this morning with yet another treatise on the nature of Islam, with yet another refutation of the alleged dichotomy between "true Islam" (peaceful, tolerant, etc.) and its supposedly aberrant terrorist fringe. We are way beyond that, or at least we should be: had Americans agonized, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, whether Shinto war actually good but only Bushido was bad, the Greater Asian Co-prosperity Sphere would be going strong to this day. Those who still have doubts on this score should read not only my books, but also those by Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or…and above all, they should read the Koran.

I am also not going to talk about something called "Global War Against Terrorism" because "GWAT" is itself a misnomer indicative of the pathology of the elite class. Its squeamishness in naming the enemy is but one sign of a malaise that hampers a coherent effort. Had Scipio issued a rallying call for the War on Elephants, Hannibal would have marched into Rome in triumph. Had World War II been waged against Guderian’s Blitzkrieg, rather than against Nazism, the Reich would still have 927 years to go.

It is in the inability and unwillingness of the elite class to confront jihad that Western Europe and North America most tellingly certify that they share the same chromosomes, that they belong to one culture and constitute one civilization.

Hilaire Belloc, in The Great Heresies (1938), presciently wondered, "Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Muhammadan world which will shake the dominion of Europeans—still nominally Christian—and reappear again as the prime enemy of our civilization?" Seven decades later, the same traits of decrepitude are present in Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Canada – and here in the United States, including both the primary cause, which is the loss of religious faith, and several secondary ones.

The latter include elite hostility to all forms of solidarity of the majority population based on shared historical memories and common culture; the loss of a sense of place and history; rapid demographic decline, unparalleled in history; rampant Third World immigration; collapse of private and public manners and morals; imposition of "diversity," "multiculturalism," "sensitivity"; and demonization and criminalization of any opposition to any of the above.

One consequence is the Westerners’ loss of the sense of propriety over their lands. Before 1914, both the West and the Muslim world could define themselves against each other in a cultural sense. What this elite-mandated is to cast aside any idea of any specifically "Western" geographic and cultural space that should be protected from those who do not belong to it and have no rightful claim to it.

Another result is an elite consensus that de facto open immigration, multiculturalism, and the existence of a large Muslim diaspora within the Western world are to be treated as a fixed given, and must not be scrutinized in any anti-terrorist debate. That consensus, I contend, is ideological in nature, flawed in logic, dogmatic in application, and disastrous in its results. It needs to be tested against evidence, not against the alleged norms of acceptable public discourse imposed by those who either do not know Islam, or else do not want us to know the truth about it.

There is a problem, however. It is that a depraved mass culture and multiculturalist indoctrination in state schools have already largely neutralized the sense of historical and cultural continuity among young West Europeans and North Americans. By contrast, the blend of soft porn and consumerism targeting every denizen of the Western world, every day from millions of flickering screens and printed pages, have not had the same effect on the Muslim diaspora in the West. The roll-call of Western-born and educated Muslims supportive of terrorism confirms that failure.

The loss of a sense of place and history experienced by millions of Westerners, whether they are aware of that loss or not, follows the emergence of a trans-national hyper-state in Europe and the notion of "benevolent global hegemony" in Washington. These two mindsets, seemingly at odds, are but two aspects of the same emerging globalized universe. The former advocates "multilateralism" in the form of an emerging "international community" controlled by the United Nations and adjudicated by the International Criminal Court (ICC), with the EU acting as an interim medium for transferring sovereign prerogatives to a supra-national body; the latter prefer to be the only cop in town. Both share the same distaste for traditional, naturally evolving societies and cultures. Echoing the revolutionary dynamism and historicist Messianism of their common Marxist roots, Michael Ledeen asserted that "creative destruction" is America’s eternal mission: "We have a glorious opportunity to improve life on our planet, and we are the right people, at the right time, to pull it off. The most dangerous threat to our success is limited vision and insufficient ambition. If we act like the revolutionary force we truly are, we can once again reshape the world…"

American proponents of this breathtakingly hubristic agenda have de facto allies among Europe’s neo-Marxist leftists of Prodi’s and Solana’s ilk. Divisions between them refer not to the common goal of advancing a global revolutionary project but only to the ways and means of doing so. The end of the Cold War has cleared the way for them to move beyond the Gramscian "long march." In the apparent defeat of revolutionary struggle – epitomized by the triumph of liberal capitalism over Bolshevism – the neo-Marxist axis has found the seeds of future victory for their universalist paradigm, which globalization makes possible by eradicating traditional structures capable of resistance.

Globalization, both in its Eurocratic and pax Americana guise, is "objectively" an ally of the revolutionary change desired by neo-Marxists, not only because it destroys the remnants of the old order, as Ledeen gloats, but also because it contains the germ of another form of globalization: the counter-Empire that will be made possible by the ongoing rapid demographic change within the Western world.

The revolutionary character of the project is revealed in the mantra of Race, Gender and Sexuality, now elevated to the status of the post-modern Philosopher’s Stone. Race, Gender and Sexuality are the Force that moves the linear historical process forward, towards the grand Gleichschaltung of nations, races, and cultures that will mark the end of history. Race, Gender and Sexuality have replaced the Proletariat as both the oppressed underclass (hence the cult of the non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual victimhood), and as the historically preordained agent of revolutionary change.

Classical Marxist political economy found the dynamics of revolution in the inevitable conflict between the owners of the means of production and the proletariat that has nothing to sell but its labor and nothing to lose but its chains. The system was self-referential and therefore fatally flawed; but in the late 19th century it seemed to possess a degree of quasi-scientific neatness. Latter-day Marxist revolutionaries go beyond any recognizable variety of dialectical materialism, however, by introducing a wholly metaphysical concept of victimhood and an array of associated special-rights claims that have worked such wonders for Islam all over the Western world. Majority populations of Europe and America, in this insane but all-pervasive paradigm, are guilty of oppression by their very existence and must not protest the migratory deluge.

The fruits are with us already. Gibbon may have had today’s Antwerp or LA in mind when he described Rome in decline, its hoi poloi morphing "into a vile and wretched populace." On present form, within a century the host-country majorities will melt away: "child-free" is used as a legitimate yuppie lifestyle term, on par with "fat-free" and "drug-free." But whereas the threat of extinction of an exotic tribal group in Borneo or Amazonia – let alone a species of spotted owl or sperm whale – would cause elite alarm and prompt activism, it is deemed inherently racist to mention the fact that Europeans are, literally, endangered species.

There will be no grand synthesis, no civilizational cross-fertilization, between the West and Islam. It’s kto-kogo. Even the ultra-tolerant Dutch have seen the light after Theo van Gogh’s murder, but they are hamstrung by a ruling class composed of guilt-ridden self-haters and appeasers. Their hold on the political power, the media, and the academe is undemocratic, unnatural, obscene. If Europe is to survive they need to be unmasked for what they are: traitors to their nations and their culture. They must be replaced by people ready and willing to subject the issues of immigration and identity to the test of democracy, unhindered by administrative or judicial fiat.

The war against jihad can and must be won. The first task is to start talking frankly about the identity and character of the enemy and the nature of the threat. It is essential to discard the taboos and to discuss Islam and the Muslims without fear or guilt, or the shackles of mandated thinking. The obligation to do so is dictated by morality no less than by the need for self-preservation. "Historians in free countries have a moral and professional obligation not to shirk the difficult issues and subjects that some people would place under a sort of taboo," Bernard Lewis warned over two decades ago, "not to submit to voluntary censorship, but to deal with these matters fairly, honestly, without apologetics, without polemic, and, of course, competently."

"If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles," says Sun Tzu. We know the jihadist enemy. We know his core beliefs, his role models, his track-record, his mindset, his modus operandi, and his intentions. We also know his weaknesses, which are many, above all his inability to develop a prosperous economy or a functional, harmonious society.

The main problem is with ourselves, with those among us who have the power to make policy and shape opinions, and who will reject and condemn our diagnosis. Having absorbed postmodernist assumptions, certain only of uncertainty, devoid of any serious faith except that in their own infallibility but loath to be "judgmental," members of our own elite class treat the jihadist mindset as a pathology that can and should be treated by treating causes external to Islam itself. The result is a plethora of proposed "cures" that are as likely to succeed in making us safe from terrorism as snake oil is likely to cure leukemia.

Abroad, we are told, we need to address political and economic grievances of the impoverished masses, we need to spread democracy and free markets in the Muslim world, we need to invest more in public diplomacy. At home we need more tolerance, greater inclusiveness, less profiling, and a more determined outreach to the minorities that feel marginalized and threatened by the war on terror.

The predictable failure of such cures leads to ever more pathological self-scrutiny and morbid self-doubt. This vicious circle is untenable and must be broken.

The deadlock on the Somme in 1916, or at Verdun a year later, could not be broken with the ideas and modus operandi of Messrs. Haigh, Foche, or Hindenburg. It could have been unlocked, however, had Lidell-Hart, de Gaulle, or Guderian held their ranks and positions. Winning a war demands "knowing the enemy and knowing oneself," of course, but it also demands "thinking outside the box." This cliché is apt: the magnitude of the threat demands radical responses that fall outside the cognitive parameters of the elite class. Let us start our specific policy recommendations with the complex and emotionally charged issue of constitutional rights versus national security.

In December 2005 it was disclosed that soon after the September 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency "to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying." Quoting unnamed government officials The New York Times revealed that, under a presidential order signed in 2002, the National Security Agency (NSA) has monitored the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of potential terror suspects.

A remarkable feature of the 3,800-word article, which focused on the legal, constitutional and operational issues implicit in the case, was its failure to explore the identity of those "Americans and others inside the United States" who have been subjected to NSA’s surveillance. This failure created the impression that just about any "American" may be subjected to such unwarranted and possibly illegal intrusion. The ensuing controversy was presented by the mass media to the nation through the inflammatory headline, "Bush authorized spying on Americans."

The unwillingness of the mainstream media to disclose the exact identity of the NSA eavesdropping subjects was reminiscent of its refusal to disclose the religious identity of tens of thousands of rioters who wreaked havoc in dozens of French suburbs last fall. In both cases the mainstream media were guilty of misconstruing reality for reasons rooted in their ideological prejudices and political preferences.

Within America, glossing over the surveillance targets’ identity has two objectives. First of all, it presented President Bush as an out-of-control autocrat-in-the-making whose hoods may be eavesdropping on any one of us at any time. Secondly, it also implied that a Muslim who has become a naturalized American citizen is so thoroughly and irrevocably "American," that no hyphenated designation or qualifier is called for.

Abroad, concealing the rioters’ identity fits in with the liberal world view that reject the notion that faith can be a prime motivating factor in human affairs, or that importing Muslim immigrants may be in any way disadvantageous for the host country. Having reduced religion, politics and art to "narratives" and "metaphors" which merely reflect prejudices based on the distribution of power, the elite class saw the rioters’ shout of "Allahu akbar!" as a mere idiosyncrasy that would be cured if the French state gave those "youths" more jobs, dark-skinned TV anchors, and, of course, lots of "affirmative action" in employment and education.

The legal and constitutional dilemma over whether the government should spy on "Americans" at home or not and whether a court warrant is needed or not, is worthy of debate in principle. It is both false and unnecessary under the circumstances. Radical solutions are needed for radical challenges, and they do exist. If and when all persons engaged in Islamic activism are excluded from America, there will be no need for such instrusive domestic surveillance. We don’t need any legislation to protect CAIR’s clients’ privacy, we need the law that will treat any naturalized citizen’s or resident alien’s known or suspected adherence to an Islamic world outlook as excludable – on political, rather than "religious" grounds.

For starters, it is essential to refuse or rescind U.S. citizenship to Islamic activists. All Americans – real Americans, that is, and not those who falsely take the oath of citizenship but continue to preach jihad and Sharia – will be spared the worry about Mr. Bush listening in to their phone conversations if Islamic activism is treated as grounds for the loss of acquired U.S. citizenship and deportation. The citizenship of any naturalized American who preaches jihad, inequality of "infidels" and women, the establishment of the Shari’a law etc., should be revoked, and that person promptly deported to the country of origin.

A foreigner who becomes naturalized has to declare, on oath, "that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

For a Muslim to declare all of the above in good faith, and especially that he accepts the Constitution of the United States as the source of his highest loyalty, is an act of apostasy par excellence, punishable by death under the Islamic law. The sharia, to a Muslim, is not an addition to the "secular" legal code with which it coexists with "the Constitution and laws of the United States of America"; it is the only true code, the only basis of obligation. To be legitimate, all political power therefore must rest exclusively with those who enjoy Allah’s authority on the basis of his revealed will. America is illegitimate.

So how can a self-avowedly devout Muslim take the oath, and expect the rest of us to believe that it was done in good faith? Because he is practicing taqiyya, the art of dissimulation that was inaugurated by Muhammad to help destabilize and undermine non-Muslim communities almost ripe for a touch of Jihad. Or else because he is not devout enough and confused, but in that case there is the ever-present danger that at some point he will rediscover his roots, with a whole array of predictably unpleasant consequences for the rest of us.

As for the illegal immigration from Islamic nations, it is a major terrorist threat that can and should be eliminated. New immigration legislation should include laws to exclude all persons engaged in Islamic activism from America. Such activism should be defined as the political act of propagating, disseminating or otherwise supporting "Jihad" (in its primary sense of divinely sanctioned war against non-Muslims), discrimination against Christians, Jews and other "infidels," discrimination and violence against women and sexual minorities, sanction of slavery, poll tax, etc. This definition of Islamic activism would be a major step in the direction of denying actual or potential terrorists a foothold on American shores.

New legislation should treat a resident alien’s or prospective visitor’s known or suspected adherence to an Islamic world outlook or affiliation with the propagators of Jihad, sharia, etc. as excludable – excludable, let us re-emphasize, on political, rather than "religious" grounds. The broad model is provided by the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA, the McCarran-Walter Act), mandating the exclusion or deportation of any alien who engaged or had purpose to engage in activities prejudicial to the public interest or subversive to national security.

Islamic activism should be treated as the grounds for the exclusion or deportation of any alien, regardless of his status or ties in the United States, because such activism is inherently prejudicial to the public interest and injurious to national security. Useful precedents exist. Keeping out and facilitating the expulsion of politically undesirable foreigners has been at the heart of this country’s immigration legislation since 1903 when Congress barred the admission of anarchists in response to President McKinley’s assassination. "Ideological" grounds for deportation were on the statute books until 1990, when they were repealed by Congress. After the Russian revolution foreign communists were singled out for deportation. One night alone in January of 1920, more than 2,500 "alien radicals" were seized in thirty-three cities across the country and deported to their countries of origin. Those who preach Jihad and Sharia can and should be treated in exactly the same manner.

Conditio sine qua non all along is to accept and declare that the First Amendment does not protect Jihadists. It is in the American tradition that nothing ought to protect those who advocate the overthrow of the United States Government by force and violence, and, at bottom, that is what the Jihadists are up to. Legal regulators need to grasp that Islam itself is a radical, revolutionary ideology, inherently seditious and inimical to American values and institutions.

Acceptance of these proposals would represent a new start in devising long-term defense against terrorism. We are in a war of ideas and religion, whether we want that or not and however much we hate the fact. This war is being fought, on the Islamic side, with the deep conviction that the West is on its last legs. The success of its demographic onslaught on Europe enhances the image of "a candy store with the busted lock," and that view is reinforced by the evidence from history that a civilization that loses the urge for self-perpetuation is indeed in peril.

These proposals are not only pragmatic, they are morally just. They will elicit the accusation of "discrimination," even though no such label is applicable. Targeting people for screening, supervision and exclusion on the basis of their genes would be discriminatory indeed, but doing so because of their beliefs, ideas, actions, and intentions is justified and necessary.

Islamic beliefs, ideas and intentions as such pose a threat to our civilization and our way of life, and not some allegedly aberrant variety of Muhammad’s faith. The elite class rejects this diagnosis, of course, but among reasonable, patriotic, and well-informed citizens the debate on Islam’s nature should be long over. Americans did not agonize over communism’s "true" nature during the Berlin air lift in 1949, or at Pusan in 1950, but acted effectively to contain it by whatever means necessary.

Yes, back then we had a legion of Moscow’s apologists, character witnesses, moles and fellow-travelers, assuring us that the Comrades want nothing but social justice at home and peaceful coexistence abroad. They held tenured chairs, staffed the New York Times’ Moscow bureaus, controlled many Hollywood studios, and dominated all smart salons on both coasts. They explained away and justified the inconsistencies and horrifyingly violent implications of the source texts of Marx and Lenin. They explained away and justified the appalling fruits: the bloodbath of the Bolshevik Revolution itself, the genocidal crime of the great famine, the show trials and purges, the killing machine that destroyed millions of innocents known as the Gulag, the pact with Hitler, the works.

Today their spiritual heirs in politics, the academy and the media establishment act as Islam’s apologists, character witnesses and fellow travelers. They explain away, with identical scholastic sophistry and moral depravity, the dark and violent implications of the source texts, the Koran and the Hadith, the deeply unnerving career of Muhammad, and 14 centuries of conquests, wars, slaughters, subjugation, decline without fall, spiritual and material misery, and murderous fanaticism.

Some eighty years ago Julien Benda published his tirade against the intellectual corruption of his times, The treason of the intellectuals. For generations prior to the twentieth century, Benda wrote, members of the Western intellectual elite ensured that "humanity did evil, but honored good." The "Treason" of the title occurred when they gave up promoting lasting civilizational values and allowed short-term political preferences to distort their understanding of the intellectual vocation as such. Benda’s argument found wide resonance at a time when fascism, nazism and bolshevism dominated Europe’s political and intellectual scene. Today the "treason" of the elite class takes a different but essentially similar form. It upholds the allegedly universal values of multiculturalism, inclusiveness and antidiscriminationism to the detriment of the particular value of our civilization and all its fruits. The propensity of the elite class to the betrayal of culture – Benda called it "a cataclysm in the moral notions of those who educate the world" – remains the same, however.

The fact that normal people don’t realize the magnitude of the problem works to the advantage of the people like Blair, Soros, Zapatero, Prodi, or Kerry. Their ideas, which but two generations ago would have been deemed eccentric or insane, now rule the Euro-American mainstream. Only a society inured to the concept of a "open borders" can be unblinkingly told that Islam is good and tolerant, that "we" (the West) have been nasty and unkind to it over the centuries – remember the Crusades! – and that "terrorism" needs to be understood, and cured, independently of Islam’s teaching and practice.

At the root of the domestic malaise is the notion that countries do not belong to the people who have inhabited them for generations, but to whoever happens to be within their boundaries at any given moment – regardless of his culture, attitude, or intentions.

Another pernicious notion is that the resulting random melange of mutually disconnected multitudes is actually a blessing that enriches and elevates an otherwise arid and monotonous society.

A further evil fallacy is the dictum that we should not feel a special bond for any particular country, nation, race, or culture, but transfer our preferences on the whole world, "the Humanity," equally.

Such notions have been internalized by the elite class in America and Western Europe to the point where they actively help Islamic terrorism. In America the process has been under way for decades. By 1999 then-Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott felt ready to declare that the United States may not exist "in its current form" in the 21st century, because the very concept of nationhood – here and throughout the world – will have been rendered obsolete.

A generation earlier such uttering from a senior government official would have caused a scandal. By the end of the 20th century it bothered only the unsophisticates who persisted in assuming that the purpose of what Dr. Talbott was doing at the Department of State was to ensure the survival, security and prosperity of the United States within the international system, rather than its eventual absorption by the system. But his was an exultant prophecy, not an impartial assessment. The ideological foundation for Talbott`s beliefs was stated bluntly: "All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary."

To the members of his class in Washington, New York, Brussels, London and elsewhere, all countries are but transient, virtual-reality entities. Owing emotional allegiance to any one of them is irrational, and risking one’s life for its sake is absurd.

The refusal of the elite class to protect Western nations from Islamic terrorism is the biggest betrayal in history. It is rooted in the mindset that breeds the claim that "force is not an answer" to terrorism, that profiling is bad and open borders are good, that Islam is peaceful and the West is wicked. The upholders of such claims belong to the culture that has lost its bond with nature, history, and the supporting community. In the meantime, thanks to them, the quiet onslaught continues unabated, across the Straits of Gibraltar, through JFK and O’Hare, Heathrow and Schiphol. Far from enhancing diversity, it threatens to impose a numbing sameness and eradicate the identity of target-populations, to demolish their special character and uniqueness.

That supporting community, the real nation, is still out there, in North America and Western Europe alike, working and paying taxes. When it is told of Islam’s "peace and tolerance," or when its children are forced to recite Muslim prayers at school, it grumbles about someone’s stupidity or ineptitude, but it still does not suspect outright betrayal. The betrayers, meanwhile, promote an ideology of universal human values, of a common culture for the whole world. In reality, however, the proponents of politically correct "diversity" are creating its exact opposite: a soul-numbing monism. They may not even realize why they abet Islam. For all the outward differences, they share with the mullahs and sheikhs and imams the desire for a monistic One World. They both long for Talbot’s Single Global Authority, post-national and seamlessly standardized, an ummah under whatever name.

Those Americans and Europeans who love their lands more than any others, and who put their families and their neighborhoods before all others, are normal people. Those who tell them that their attachments should be global and that their lands and neighborhoods belong to the whole world are sick and evil. They are our main enemies and jihad’s indispensable allies. The elite class, rootless, arrogant, cynically manipulative, and irreversibly jihad-friendly, has every intention of continuing to "fight" the war on terrorism without naming the enemy, without revealing his beliefs, without unmasking his intentions, without offending his accomplices, without expelling his fifth columnists, and without ever daring to win.

It is up to the millions of normal Americans and their European cousins to stop the madness. The traitor class wants them to share its death wish, to self-annihilate as people with a historical memory and a cultural identity, and to make room for the post-human, monistic Utopia spearheaded by the jihadist fifth column. This crime can and must be stopped. The founders of the United States overthrew the colonial government for offenses far lighter than those of which the traitor class is guilty.

Morocco women preachers appointed

This is a story to watch. From the BBC, with thanks to Samson:

Morocco has appointed 50 women as state preachers for the first time as part of the government's drive to promote a more tolerant version of Islam.

The Islamic guides, called Mourchidats, will be able to give basic religious instruction in mosques.

But they will not be able to lead Friday prayers, which will remain a male preserve.

Since suicide bombers struck Casablanca in 2003, there has been a crackdown on suspected Islamic militants.

The country has also been attempting to modernise its human rights, especially for women, while not alienating conservative Muslims.

What's that, BBC? You mean to say there is tension between human rights and Islamic "conservatism"? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe?

As well as teaching in mosques, the women preachers will be able to support to people in prisons, schools and hospitals.

"It is a big responsibility for me to give more to our country," 26-year-old Karima Errejili told Reuters news agency at her graduation ceremony on Wednesday.

"We want to correct the image of Islam, the religion of tolerance and pity."

Here again, I wish Errejili would share her Qur'anic exegesis with the world. This kind of thing is asserted hundreds of times a day, but never established -- which of course makes this whole enterprise look like so much window dressing.

The ceremony was attended by Morocco's minister of Islamic Affairs who told the graduates to remain committed to their faith and the politics of the state.

"Your duty... is to prevent intrusion by foreign agents trying to violate our values and traditions," Ahmed Taoufiq is quoted by AP news agency as saying.

I thought that was his duty. But never mind. Generally, Morocco is indeed more moderate than many other Muslim countries. The reaction from "conservatives" to all this will be interesting.

How the Pope sees Islam

From the looks of this article by Father Samir Khalil Samir, S.J., Pope Benedict XVI has a realistic understanding of Islam and the challenge it poses to the West today.

"When Civilizations Meet: How Joseph Ratzinger Sees Islam," from Chiesa, with thanks to Tom Syseskey:

Benedict XVI is probably one of the few figures to have profoundly understood the ambiguity in which contemporary Islam is being debated and its struggle to find a place in modern society. At the same time, he is proposing a way for Islam to work toward coexistence globally and with religions, based not on religious dialogue, but on dialogue between cultures and civilizations based on rationality and on a vision of man and human nature which comes before any ideology or religion. This choice to wager on cultural dialogue explains his decision to absorb the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue into the larger Pontifical Council for Culture.

While the pope is asking Islam for dialogue based on culture, human rights, the refusal of violence, he is asking the West, at the same time, to go back to a vision of human nature and rationality in which the religious dimension is not excluded. In this way – and perhaps only in this way – a clash of civilizations can be avoided, transforming it instead into a dialogue between civilizations.

Islamic totalitarianism differs from Christianity

To understand Benedict XVI’s thinking on Islamic religion, we must go over its evolution. A truly essential document is found in his book written in 1996, when he was still cardinal, together with Peter Seewald, entitled “The Salt of the Earth”, in which he makes certain considerations and highlights various differences between Islam and Christian religion and the West.

First of all, he shows that there is no orthodoxy in Islam, because there is no one authority, no common doctrinal magisterium. This makes dialogue difficult: when we engage in dialogue, it is not “with Islam”, but with groups.

But the key point that he tackles is that of shari’a. He points out that:

“the Koran is a total religious law, which regulates the whole of political and social life and insists that the whole order of life be Islamic. Shari’a shapes society from beginning to end. In this sense, it can exploit such freedoms as our constitutions give, but it cannot be its final goal to say: Yes, now we too are a body with rights, now we are present [in society] just like the Catholics and the Protestants. In such a situation, [Islam] would not achieve a status consistent with its inner nature; it would be in alienation from itself”.

This alienation could be resolved only through the total Islamization of society. When for example an Islamic finds himself in a Western society, he can benefit from or exploit certain elements, but he can never identify himself with the non-Muslim citizen, because he does not find himself in a Muslim society.

Read it all.

The Foreign Brides

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal (thanks to PRCS), whose news pages are generally better than its dhimmi Opinion pages, speaks about a problem that few dare to discuss:

They are called Die Fremden Bräute -- the foreign brides. This year, thousands of teenage girls, very few past the age of consent, will arrive in Germany from Turkey for arranged marriages and lives of domestic servitude enforced by tradition, isolation and fear. It's a thriving one-way trade that has been going on for more than three decades, and it sits at the core of Europe's greatest predicament today: the widening gulf between an increasingly postmodern society and its often premodern immigrants.

The subject of foreign brides broke wide in the German media last year, when a 28-year-old Turkish man took his 11-year-old wife to a registry office in Düsseldorf to get her an ID card. On that occasion, the girl was detained by the authorities and deported to Turkey. But according to the Turkish-born German sociologist Necla Kelek, that is more often the exception than the rule. Ms. Kelek, 48, is one to know: In two bestselling books, "The Foreign Bride" and "The Lost Sons," she has exposed Germans to the lives of their 2.6 million-strong Turkish community in a way few of her German-born peers would have dared.

Read it all.

What's so wrong with encouraging immigrants to speak English and understand liberal values?

In "Open market on democratic ideals: What's so wrong with encouraging immigrants to speak English and understand liberal values?" in The Australian (thanks to Snowman), Janet Albrechtsen asserts what used to be taken for granted of immigrants ought to be taken for granted again. After all, the countries from which the immigrants come jealously guard their identity and values. Why should Western countries be denied the same right?

MAYBE, just maybe, the long, slow surrender is over. Instead of raising the white flag through silence, more political leaders are realising that not enough is being done to defend Western values. Last week, it was Andrew Robb's turn.

At the Sydney Institute, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs suggested that immigrants to Australia should pass a new citizenship test. From the reaction in some quarters, you'd think he wanted immigrants to recite verbatim, in a plum Tory accent, Robert Menzies' speech on Freedom in a Modern Society. Or recount word-perfect the first three chapters of Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

No, Robb had something less exacting on his mind. He flagged the need for immigrants to have a more functional level of English and an understanding of Australian values.

Immediately, Robb's proposal was subjected to the standard leftist values guessing game. Speaking for the Sikh community, Bawa Singh Jagdev told the ABC's AM program: "I don't understand very much what do they mean by Australian values." Federation of Islamic Councils president and long-time Australian citizen Ameer Ali said he had no problem with universal values, "but when you say Australian values, no one knows what those values are".

It was a predictable response and neatly proved Robb's point: that Australian values are not proclaimed enough to new immigrants. Robb defined Australian values as including core Western values such as "our respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, our commitment to the rule of law, our commitment to the equality of men and women", then added some particularly Australian attributes such as "the spirit of the fair go, of tolerance and compassion to those in need".

Read it all.

Boy, 16, executes father's killer -- as ordered by Islamic court

Of course, this contradicts...Of course, we condemn....Of course, we abhor...

And the BBC calls this a "semblance of order."

Sharia Alert from Somalia: "Boy, 16, executes father's killer," from the BBC, with thanks to Jihad Watch Junkie:

A teenage Somali boy has stabbed to death his father's killer in a public execution ordered by an Islamic court.

Large crowds gathered at a Koranic school in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, to watch Mohamed Moallim, 16, stab Omar Hussein in the head and throat.

Hussein had been convicted of killing the boy's father, Sheikh Osman Moallim, after a row about Mohamed's education.

Islamic courts have brought a semblance of order to Mogadishu, imposing Sharia law after years of rule by warlords.

Under Sharia law those who commit murder are punishable by death.

Keeping the peace

Hussein was tied to a stake and had his head covered by a bag ahead of his execution.

He shouted "There is no God but Allah" as Mohamed Moallim stepped up to take his revenge.

Speaking afterwards, the boy said he felt satisfied that Hussein was dead.

"I am happy now because I killed the man who killed my father," he told the Reuters news agency.

The execution marked the first time the local court in the Bermuda district of Mogadishu had handed down a death penalty, local media reported.

Residents in the nearby area have reported a drop in robberies, murder and general lawlessness since the court began its work, Radio HornAfrik said.

Sure. But that isn't a sign of a return to morality. That is just a sign of naked, abject fear. This is something that often clouds men's minds -- especially those on the Right who think that the moral puritanism of Islam make Muslims their natural ally. But this is the morality of terror, not of the values of love and respect that form the foundations of Christian moral teaching.

Anti-dhimmitude from the New York Daily News

Maybe the world is beginning to wake up. The New York Daily News (thanks to DFS), which has hitherto never shown much interest in departing from the mainstream media lockstep about Islam as a religion of peace, has now published "The Muslim world's new martyrs," a piece by Richard Z. Chesnoff that identifies the oppression of Christians in Islamic lands as a manifestation of orthodox Islamic law.

It's one of today's most compelling news stories, yet it's all but ignored by most of the international media. I'm talking about the growing persecution of Christian minorities in the Islamic world.

It briefly made headlines last month when machete-armed Egyptian fanatics attacked worshipers in three Coptic churches in Alexandria and murdered one aged man at prayer. Then of course, there was March - when an Afghan man escaped a death sentence for the "crime" of converting to Christianity.

But how many people heard about the recent arrest and jailing in Saudi Arabia of a group of Filipino guest workers for holding Christian prayer services in the privacy of their home? Or who knows about the three Sunday School teachers charged in Indonesia last year with the crime of "Christianization" and summarily sentenced to three years in prison?

The story is similar wherever Sharia - orthodox Islamic law - reigns supreme. From Pakistan to Darfur, Christians have become regular targets for Islamic gangs who shoot at worshipers, then torch their houses of worship.

Even in Islamic countries not strictly run by Sharia law, pressures mount on local Christians to leave the homes they've known for centuries. Iraq's Christian sects, among the oldest Christian communities anywhere in the world, have been directly targeted by terrorist bombs, and Christians are now high on the list of those fleeing Iraq's sectarian strife. Thirty years ago, Lebanon was 60% Christian. Since then, an estimated 3.5 million Christians have emigrated, reducing the country's Christian population percentage to barely 25%. And in the Palestinian territories, direct and indirect pressures have also led to an increasing Christian exodus. One striking result: Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus and once a predominantly Christian Arab community now has an overwhelming Muslim majority.

Read it all. There's a small nod to that fictional golden age of Islamic tolerance in there, but it's otherwise a good piece.

Egypt: Popular TV series slurs US, Israel

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald recently gave us ten good reasons to stop the jizyah to Egypt. Here's another.

Tiny Minority of Extremists Update, "Egypt: Love USD, Hate America, Israel, and the West," from Israel National News, with thanks to Romy:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has spent years convincing world leaders of his commitment to peace - and winning millions of dollars in foreign aid from the U.S., says Palestinian Media Watch.

Despite his bonhomie, however, a television series produced by the government-owned and controlled Egyptian Radio and Television Union and shown on the PMW website tells a very different tale of how Egypt really sees its role in history and world politics, and that of the U.S.

“Man in the Era of Globalization” is a popular Egyptian television series that recently finished its second season on Palestinian Authority TV. Video clips from the program are available on the Palestinian Media Watch website. Its name belies its intent, however. The series presents, in a sitcom setting, a dialogue of distortions and outright lies which are calculated to create negative images of the United States, as well as Israel, in the minds of the viewers.

The U.S. is depicted as a leader of imperialist forces in the world, leading the viewer to blame America for the serious problems that plague the Arab world today. Israel is shown as a world-class terror group, with a clever dialogue that has a boy raising the question of whether “the Zionists” were responsible for the attack which destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, murdering more than 3,000 people in less than an hour’s time. Dialogue response to the question: “It’s not impossible,” says his father, thoughtfully.

Muslim Reformist Irshad Manji Compares Islamist Khameinists to Christian Evangelicals

Title and link courtesy Jeffrey Imm, who also wrote a superb letter to Manji explaining what is wrong with this comparison, and how it ultimately detracts from the resistance to the global jihad.

First, Manji on Ahmadinejad:

As a zealous Shia Muslim, he is eagerly awaiting the return of the “hidden imam”. Popularly known as the Mahdi, this is the spiritual guide who, according to Shia tradition, mysteriously went missing hundreds of years ago. Orthodox Shias believe that the Mahdi’s reappearance will herald an era of peace and security worldwide. All injustices will disappear — including American power.

It is not unlike the way in which millions of evangelical Christians in America feel about the Second Coming. They want Jesus to show up as soon as possible. That’s why many of them oppose environmentalism — saving the Earth’s resources can only slow down Armageddon, and global warming is God’s will.

I’m not claiming that all Shias or all evangelical Christians march in step. Dissent does exist. Surveys suggest that 70 per cent of American evangelicals think that global warming will soon be a problem and 63 per cent say that it needs to be addressed immediately. The Southern Baptist Convention, say, may be complacent but there is the Evangelical Environmental Network to challenge such passivity.

And a selection from Imm's letter to Manji:

Your argument is, in effect, that anyone who believes in any type of messianic beliefs in their religion is essentially the same as Iran's Ahmadinejad and Khameinists who seek nuclear weapons for aggressive goals to wipe countries off the face of the Earth. To any reasonable person, this would seem an extreme comparison and ridiculous, to say the least.

Moreover, there are other messianic groups, including messianic Jews, and other branches of Judaism that believe in a messiah, so using your convoluted argument, would you also argue that they too are the same as Iran's Ahmadinejad and Khameinists? Or are Christian evangelicals just a popular target?

Note that I am not a Christian evangelical myself.

However, the absurd comparison in your article really does your efforts in trying to explain the challenges of Islamist extremism a great disservice. Furthermore, the entire basis for your "argument" is that evangelical Christians oppose environmentalism because they seek the second coming of their messiah. Since when?

There are dedidated evangelical groups rooted in environmentalism issues, such as vangelical Environmental Network & Creation Care Magazine, What Would Jesus Drive, etc.:
http://www.creationcare.org/
http://whatwouldjesusdrive.org/

The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) affirmed the commitment of evangelicals to the environment in a recent meeting where they have adopted guidelines for evangelicals to support environmentalism in "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility", where they state:
http://www.nae.net/images/civic_responsibility2.pdf#search='or%20the%20Health%20of%20the%20Nation:%20An%20Evangelical%20Call%20to%20Civic%20Responsibility'

"We labor to protect God's creation As we embrace our responsibility to care for God's earth, we reaffirm the important truth that we worship only the Creator and not the creation. God gave the care of his earth and its species to our first parents. That responsibility has passed into our hands. We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part....

But you totally disregard all of this in your London Times article today, to find a way to compare Iran's Ahmadinejad and Khameinists (who unambiguously seek nuclear weapons for aggressive goals to wipe countries off the face of the Earth) to Christian evangelicals who you claim are anti-environment.

You have not done your research on this issue, and your slur of Christian evangelicals will only prevent more individuals from taking what you say about Islamist extremists seriously. You have made a significant mistake with this London Times article, as any casual researcher can readily refute your points with facts.

Certainly, you can claim that these evangelical environmentalists (like the National Association of Evangelicals?) are exceptions to some unknown rule of Christian evangelicals who you claim (without substance) are anti-environment for Jesus. You have no examples or proof, just your "feelings".

However, can you provide the exceptions that show Islamist Khameinists are not "really" for nuclear weapons or for destruction of Israel and the west? I didn't think so.

Remember that when you slur Christian evangelicals.

It is peculiarly telling that Irshad Manji, despite superficial and facile equations such as this one, which -- along with her advocacy of a return to Islam's Golden Age -- demonstrate that she has no deep or comprehensive awareness of what within Islam gives rise to violence, is nevertheless the media's foremost (and virtually only) moderate Muslim. Despite my reservations about her analyses I support her wholeheartedly and wish her all success; I only wish that she had more of a following, and weren't such a lone wolf within the Islamic community. Playing moral equivalence games like this one doesn't help her credibility.

Chirac Wants World Bank to Funnel Cash to Palestinians

The prospect of ordinary Palestinians starving has the power to cloud men's minds, and make them forget that any dollar (or euro) sent to the PA will free up another dollar or euro to be spent on the jihad against Israel, and more murderous jihad terror attacks on Israeli civilians. The solution? Remove the Hamas government and replace it with one that explicitly renounces the global jihad and the imperative to destroy Israel. And of course, that will happen around the time that Al-Zarqawi knocks on my office door here and tells me that he has been involved in great evil, and wants to stop fighting jihad and become a crusader (heh) against the jihad ideology.

"France: Chirac Wants World Bank to Funnel Cash to Palestinians," from AKI, with thanks to Johnathan:

Paris, 28 April (AKI) - France will push for the World Bank to create a fund to pay the salaries of Palestinian officials, French president Jacques Chirac said Friday after he met Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. France will raise the issue during talks on May 9 with the so-called "Quartet" - the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia - the negotiating group which is attempting to revive the stalled Israeli-Palestinian "Road Map" peace plan, Chirac's spokesman Jerome Bonnafont, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

Chirac's call comes after France and other EU nations earlier this month cut off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) government after Hamas' election victory. The European Union is the largest donor to the Palestinians, with aid totaling more than 600 million dollars a year.

The EU said its decision was prompted by Hamas failure to meet three international conditions: recognise Israel, denounce terrorism and honour previous international agreements made by the PA.

The PA is facing enconomic collapse with the government unable to pay salaries to 165,000 Palestinian government employees.

France believes aid "must be maintained for humanitarian reasons, as well as for political reasons," Chirac said before going into the talks with Abbas. "And it will push for this continuance (of aid) within the international community and notably within the European Union."

Fitzgerald: Europe's slow death

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the crisis in Europe and the European unwillingness to face its causes:

"Ercan Yasaroglu, a sociologist who came to Germany from Turkey as a political refugee..." -- from this article

What kind of "political refugee" was that? Too secular for Erdogan, or too Muslim for the Kemalists? Only those who have jettisoned Islam and who, therefore, are fleeing Muslim regimes, should be allowed into Infidel countries. The word "refugee" should not be allowed to cover those whose belief-system is not merely an alien creed, but a hostile one, and who want to be, paradoxically, given refuge by the very Infidels whom they have been taught to hate (see Qur'an, see Hadith, see the history of the treatment of the non-Muslims, whether Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Other Non-Muslim).

No one has a divine right to enter into and settle in any other country. It is absurd for the Germans, as it is for the French, the Spanish, the English, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Swedish, the Italians, to think that they have some obligation to allow in people from Muslim lands, carrying Islam, Sharia and jihad -- undeclared and overlooked by almost everyone – in their mental baggage. Some unpack that Islam right away. Some store it away and then bring it out when the occasion warrants -- when things are not going as swimmingly as they appear to think they should, then out comes Islam, as they find solace and an explanation for everything that is wrong. And there is no way of knowing when even the outwardly most secular of people who continue to call themselves Muslims (whether out of filial or civilizational piety, or a fear of jettisoning it altogether, is unclear) may turn to Islam, Islam, Islam as the Answer.

If "Islam is the Answer," Infidels have to be aware of what that must, sooner or later, mean for them.

The answer has already been given. The large-scale presence of Muslims in the countries of Western Europe everywhere has meant the creation of a situation far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for indigenous Infidels than it would be without such a large-scale presence. The inability of many to recognize that truth prevents them from taking the minimal measures that, were they to be taken, could head off far more drastic action, or damage, later.

"Integration" is one more will-o'-the-wisp. It is based on the idea that teaching Muslims the languages and cultures and laws and mores and customs and understandings of the Infidel lands in which they have come to settle will cause them to become better citizens, more accepting of those laws, customs, and understandings. It is based on the idea that there is no real problem with Islam itself, with the tenets of Islam, with the model of Muhammad, with not only the teachings but also the attitudes and atmospherics of Islam, but only a problem of “ignorance.” There is no basis for such a hope: not in the texts, not in history.

It is one more attempt to avoid discussing the nature of Islam and of the uncompromising hostility that must exist between the two regions of the world, the Dar al-Islam (the lands where Islam dominates and Muslims rule) and Dar al-Harb (where Muslims do not yet dominate or rule, but eventually will). That hostility must also exist everywhere in the world, whether in Dar al-Islam or Dar al-Harb, where Believer and Infidel are found. This is not something fictional drummed up by those who wish Muslims ill -- it is in Islam, and not tangentially but centrally. And the history of Jihad-conquest and of subjugation of the non-Muslims conquered, offers, from Spain to the East Indies, and over a span of 1350 years, himalayas of evidence, decumans of data, that cannot be ignored.

It cannot be ignored in Germany, in France, in England, anywhere. The refusal to recognize this causes the confusion and chagrin. What German in the post-Nazi era wishes to support measures that appear “racist” or “xenophobic”? But that is because Muslims have cleverly presented themselves as akin to victimized Jews rather than as those bearing a totalitarian belief-system that, if imbibed in its fullness, shares the characteristics of Fascism or, in many respects, of Nazism.

This Infidel timidity, based on this willful misperception, must end. For if it does not, then either the Infidels will suffer much greater damage when the inevitable clash comes, or still worse, may be in no position to define their own civilizational legacy as it is leached away, and Europe slips into a slow death that is not even recognized until the final stages.

Fouad Ajami and Hugh Fitzgerald lionize Bernard Lewis

Jihad Watch reader scaramouche has kindly alerted me to Fouad Ajami's hagiographical "A Sage in Christendom: A personal tribute to Bernard Lewis," in Opinion Journal.

For a more realistic view of this man's assuredly monumental work, see Hugh Fitzgerald's tribute to Lewis here, and his follow-up here.

Chaos in German school

This TimesOnline article, "Migrant ghettos anger Germany," (thanks to Liliana) doesn't, of course, pinpoint the reason why these Turkish and Arab children act this way in school: because they don't have the slightest respect for the authority of the school, or for the teachers, or for the culture the school represents.

A TALL woman of 36 with long, dark hair, Greta Sommer dreads going to work each day at the Rütli school in Berlin where she teaches English. The only English words that her unruly pupils seem prepared to remember are obscenities that they shout out during class.

During a break on Wednesday she admitted: “I’m not sure how much longer I can go on.

“They turn up without pens or books,” she added of her pupils, most of them the children of immigrants from Turkey or the Arab world. “They fight, they set off fireworks, they kick in doors. There’s no point in trying to teach. If you hang up a poster, they tear it down.”

Her fellow teachers — all native Germans — feel the same way and have begged the government to close the Rütli school. “We’re completely exhausted,” they wrote in an open letter. “More teachers are off sick than students. This is a sign of unbearable pressure.”

Their plight has pushed the subject of Germany’s immigrant community to the top of the political agenda.

Government officials argue that Germany must absorb its immigrants rather than isolate them in ghettos where they may fall prey to Islamic fundamentalist groups. “The government sees it as a security issue,” said Tanja Wunderlich, an immigration researcher for the German Marshall Fund think tank.

Although there is widespread agreement on the need for more integration, opinion is divided on how to bring it about.

Angela Merkel, the chancellor, has convened an “integration summit” for this summer. On the agenda is whether the “naturalisation tests” being pioneered by two German states should be adopted nationwide.

An exam for immigrants in Hesse has prompted accusations that it is hostile to Muslims. The test includes questions such as: “In your eyes, were the perpetrators of 9/11 and the 2004 Madrid attacks terrorists or freedom fighters?” Ercan Yasaroglu, a sociologist who came to Germany from Turkey as a political refugee, said the tests were a mistake. “Immigrants who are trying to fit in feel knocked out,” he said. “They think that this country doesn’t want them.”

The country doesn't want them, or shouldn't, if they don't want to adopt the general values of the country.

The same charge has been made against the Netherlands, which raised eyebrows by encouraging would-be immigrants to watch a video about Dutch society that included homosexual men kissing and a topless woman. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, last week invited those who were “uncomfortable” living there “not to feel uncomfortable about leaving”....

However, awareness is growing that the problem in Germany can only get bigger. Few politicians dare to utter the truth that the country needs more, rather than fewer, immigrants. This is because Germany has one of the lowest birth rates in the world.

Even if the annual influx were to double to 200,000, the population would still shrink by 8.5% by 2050.

The country is struggling to integrate the immigrants already there. The children and grandchildren of 1960s “guest workers” often speak little German and have limited chances of finding a job. Unemployment among immigrants is 26%. Their chances of discovering a role model are just as remote. “School for them,” said Petra Eggebrecht, former director of the Rütli school, “is simply a place to fight for peer recognition, where young criminals become idols.”

Young people are also easy targets for Islamist organisations. Outside the Rütli school last week there was something defiant about the way the children greeted visitors, not in English or German, but in Arabic.

Audio: 'Andrew Bostom: Jihad in Europe: Past as Prologue?'

Friday evening I was in Washington listening to Richard Miniter at the America's Truth Forum. While the America's Truth Forum symposium was great, I would have preferred to be in Harvard listening to Andrew Bostom tell the truth rather than to Miniter talking about how Islam is a religion of peace. Bostom, the editor of The Legacy of Jihad, was speaking at an event in commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.

Happily, his address, "Jihad in Europe: Past as Prologue?" is now available in audio form over at Solomon's superb weblog.

So pop open a cold Carlsberg, put your feet up, and spend an evening with Andy.