Swiss charge Pakistani over 'honor killing' of wife

Eurabia Alert from AFP:

ZURICH -- Swiss prosecutors have charged a Pakistani man over the "honor killing" of his wife, according to legal documents published Wednesday [August 23].

Ajmal Butt Aziz, 24, is accused of murdering his 20-year-old wife Khudeja because she refused to follow Islamic tradition and wear a headscarf, according to the charge sheet published by the Corriere del Ticino newspaper.

Aziz's spouse died in July 2005 after he allegedly bludgeoned her to death with a hammer as she slept at the couple's home in Bellinzona, in Switzerland's southern canton of Ticino.

Born in Pakistan, Khudeja Aziz was brought up in Switzerland and was a citizen of the Alpine country.

Aziz claimed that he acted in self-defense after being attacked by his wife.

Prosecutors, however, alleged that he acted because he was opposed to his wife's Western lifestyle and her wish to find a job, and also that she was seeking a divorce.

No date has yet been set for Aziz's trial.

Dhimmi Carter "is open to a meeting if the former president of Iran would like to have one"

The article calls it "an event that would turn a page in American history," but it's really just proof once again that former President Dhimmi Carter learned nothing from the crisis with Iran that occurred during his administration. The Carter Center in Atlanta is making preparations for the possible visit by Khatami, doubtlessly considered another "fellow man of faith," as Carter once referred to Ayatollah Khomeini.

From the Washington Post: "Carter Agrees to Hold Talks With Khatami"

For an event that would turn a page in American history, former president Jimmy Carter has agreed in principle to host former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami for talks during his visit to the United States starting this week.

Carter's term as president was dominated by the rupture in relations after the 1979 Iranian revolution and the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, where 52 Americans were held for 444 days until the day he left office.

Iranians made the overture for the meeting, and the Carter Center in Atlanta is working on the possible timing, said Phil Wise, the former president's aide.

"President Carter, in his role since leaving the White House, has made his office and services and center available to basically anybody who wants to talk. He believes that it is much better to be talking to people who you have problems with than not to, and that's the approach he takes now," Wise said. "I can confirm that President Carter is open to a meeting if the former president of Iran would like to have one."

Despite mounting tensions between Washington and Tehran over the latter's nuclear program, the Bush administration issued a visa for Khatami yesterday, as well as for about a dozen family and staff members, for a visit lasting about two weeks, the State Department confirmed. Khatami is expected to arrive in the United States tomorrow.

Khatami, a reformer who served as president from 1997 to 2005, is scheduled to speak at the Washington National Cathedral on Sept. 7. His schedule may include speeches at the University of Virginia and to an Islamic group in Chicago. He may also pay a private visit to Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello, according to sources familiar with his trip. He will begin his visit in New York at a U.N. conference on the dialogue of civilizations.

The White House said yesterday that Khatami had been invited by private organizations and is not part of the current Iranian government.

[...]

"Carter, who has every reason to be angry about the way in which the Iranian revolution undid his presidency over the hostage affair, is willing to meet, with no hesitation, a person who was president of the Islamic republic and who has never disavowed Ayatollah Khomeini's actions when he was supreme leader," said William Quandt, a national security staffer in charge of the Middle East during the Carter administration.

US grants visa to Khatami

Well, why not? I suppose even Goebbels would have no trouble getting a visa these days. "US grants visa to Iran's former leader," from Reuters, with thanks to Senator:

The United States has issued a visa to Mohammad Khatami, the former Iranian president, to visit next week.

Tom Casey, the US state department spokesman, said on Tuesday that the visa allowed Khatami to make a private visit that would include giving a speech at Washington's National Cathedral next week and attending a UN conference in New York on September 5 and 6.

The Shia Muslim cleric would be the most high-profile Iranian to visit the US since Washington cut diplomatic ties with Tehran in 1979 when 52 Americans were held hostage at the US embassy there after the Islamic revolution.

"The visa for former president Khatami was issued approximately an hour ago and that is in keeping with the functions that he had outlined," Casey told reporters....

"This is an opportunity in part for former president Khatami to hear the concerns of the American people," Casey said. "He is going to get some tough questions."

Yeah, surrrrre.

Pakistan, U.K. target forced marriages

Anti-dhimmitude from the British High Commission, as it steps in to protect British citizens' right to self-determination. From AP:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Her father said it would be a two-week holiday to learn about her Pakistani heritage. But the British woman soon found herself captive in a remote tribal village for over a year and promised in marriage to a first cousin she'd never met.

With the British High Commission's help this month, the woman escaped Pakistan shortly before her planned wedding, avoiding the phenomenon of forced marriage that befalls scores of foreign women, including Americans, annually in this deeply conservative Islamic country.

"My dad made me believe it was just a holiday," said the 20-year-old woman, who declined to reveal her actual name and asked to go by Shazia for her own protection. "But the weeks turned into months and months. I never believed my own father would have a plan to marry me to someone I didn't know, but I was wrong."

More than 100 British nationals of Pakistani descent -- 20 percent of them males as young as 14 -- have been rescued in each of the past two years after being forced into marriages here. Americans with links to Pakistan are also made to marry against their will but in fewer numbers, the U.S. Embassy said.

But this could be just the tip of the iceberg, officials say, as many women forced to marry live in isolated communities or at the mercy of authoritarian families.

Reasons abound for foreigners being forced to wed here. Britain is home to more than 800,000 Britons of Pakistani descent. Many of the first Pakistani migrants to Britain came from rural, conservative backgrounds and oppose letting their children -- particularly daughters -- marry into the more liberal British society.

"It is unacceptable for such fathers living in Britain to allow their daughters to grow up in an emancipated society with more freedom where they could possibly meet men," Sumaira Malik, Pakistani minister for women's affairs, said Monday. "So they force their girls to come back here and marry boys from their village."

[...]

Rape features prominently in forced marriages of foreigners, said Helen Feather, head of consular affairs at the British High Commission. Women forced to wed against their will are often raped so they become pregnant, produce children and, in turn, cement themselves in an unwanted family union. Obtaining British nationality is also sought after by the husband in a bid to improve his economic situation.

In Shazia's case, she was accompanied to Pakistan last year by her father, who was born in Pakistan but migrated with his parents to Britain as a child. After a short time here, her father returned to Britain but ordered Shazia to remain with his family here, despite her protests. "I didn't know what was going on. He never told me anything. But he told all his relatives that the plan was for me to marry some guy in the village," Shazia said during an interview at the British High Commission in Islamabad.

Then for more than a year, Shazia was made to live as a rural Pakistani villager in the North West Frontier Province -- wearing local clothes, cooking food, cleaning the house, fetching water from a nearby well and milking cows.

But all the while, she said she was treated as an outsider by suspicious relatives who were accomplices to the plan to marry her off to a cousin in the same village so he could eventually gain British citizenship.

"They didn't care at all about me, they just cared about that little red (U.K.) passport," she said. "My year here was horrible. I didn't like the food, the way they dressed. I rarely left the house and whenever I did, I was always followed by 20 relatives in case I tried to make a run for it."

About a year later, Shazia's 18-year-old sister was also forced to travel to Pakistan to join elder sibling, believing it would be a short trip. But she too was being groomed for a village marriage.

"I arrived with only British clothes. I don't even own any Asian clothes," said the sister, who also declined to identify herself.

But she was prepared in other ways. She had heard that British authorities had a dedicated team in Pakistan to help British nationals forced to marry here. Once in Pakistan, she got word to British High Commission officials of her and her sister's whereabouts.

At an arranged time, a team of British officials, backed by local police, drove to the house where the sisters were kept and ordered an uncle to give back their passports before driving them away to safety.

They have since returned to Britain and vowed to not contact their father. British authorities are assisting them with initial housing and a loan.

Khalida Salimi, director of the Pakistani anti-domestic violence NGO Struggle for Change, said her workers have retrieved numerous foreigners, including young boys chained in village homes, who had been married against their will.

"It will take some time to make people understand that parents can't treat their children as commodities," Salimi said. "But in Pakistan, women and children are generally considered as possessions, not people."

Malaysia's secular vision vs. 'writing on the wall'

More on the Lina Joy case, and other examples of the "creeping Islamicization" of Malaysia. Sharia Alert, and an Islamic Tolerance Alert, from the International Herald Tribune: "Letter from Malaysia: Nation's secular vision vs. 'writing on the wall'"

KUALA LUMPUR - The idea of a secular state is dead in Malaysia," says Farish Noor, a Malaysian scholar who specializes in politics and Islam. "An Islamic society is already on the cards. The question is what kind of Islamic society this will be."

It is hard to square this view with a drive through modern Kuala Lumpur, its downtown bars and nightclubs not exactly the symbols of a budding theocracy. Yet as Malaysia marks 49 years of independence from Britain on Thursday, lurking behind a cosmopolitan facade is a tense and divisive battle over the country's future.

Those who want to maintain the country's secular roots are fighting what they call creeping Islamicization. Muslim women who at the time of independence often wore silky, tight-fitting outfits today do not leave the house without a head scarf, which is now also required for female police officers of all religions during official functions.

Muslim prayers are piped into the loudspeakers of government offices in the new administrative capital, Putrajaya. And Islamic police officers routinely arrest unmarried couples for "close proximity."

"I see the writing on the wall," said Ivy Josiah, the director of the Women's Aid Organization, a group that lobbies the government on women's issues. "It's only a matter of time before Malaysia becomes another Taliban state."

Malaysia, a multiracial country where just over half the population of 26 million is Muslim, is testing the limits of compatibility between traditional Muslim beliefs and Western- style democracy.

In Europe, the threat of terrorism posed by disaffected Muslims has spurred religious leaders and politicians to wonder whether there is a better way to assimilate Muslim and Western traditions. The experience of Malaysia appears to show that there is no easy solution, even after five decades of trying.

In recent years, a number of high- profile court cases have highlighted the clash between Muslim and secular laws, but none so much as the lawsuit brought by Lina Joy, a computer saleswoman, who is challenging the Malaysian government over its refusal to officially acknowledge her conversion from Islam to Christianity. After two lower courts ruled for the government, Joy awaits a judgment from the country's highest court.

The case has aggravated already mistrustful relations between Muslim, Christian and Hindu communities. It has led to death threats against one prominent lawyer, large protest gatherings and a ban by the government on any further public debate. At the heart of the case is the fundamental question of which is supreme in Malaysia: Muslim law or the country's secular Constitution.

Malaysia has a hybrid legal system that incorporates both Islamic and civil laws for personal and family matters: Muslims are governed by religious laws against drinking, eating during the daylight hours of Ramadan and having close proximity between unmarried women and men. Marriages, divorces, funerals, and inheritance are governed by Islamic laws.

For non-Muslims - Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs - civil laws apply. But the hybrid system is now in crisis and the multiracial fabric could fray.

[...]

"You are seeing worldwide a common thing happening," said Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a Muslim lawyer. "Muslims are defining themselves by their religion instead of their country." Malik recently asked for police protection after receiving death threats for his role in the Lina Joy case: he submitted a brief in defense of Joy's right to convert.

"Lina Joy is important because it's finally brought to light the tensions that exist between those who favor an Islamic state and those who believe in the universal values entrenched in the Constitution," Malik said in an interview.

Lawyers who back the government's position in the case say Muslims in Malaysia are subject to Islamic law. "We are not saying you do not have any choice of religion. But if you want to convert out you must do so in the Islamic court," said Zulkifli Noordin, a lawyer who submitted a brief in support of the government's position.

In reality, converting out of Islam is frowned upon if not actively discouraged in Malaysia. Only one state, Negri Sembilan, allows apostasy and usually after ordering the person through a lengthy rehabilitation program - an attempt to keep them from converting.

Zulkifli says 18 people have successfully left the faith, although many others are thought to have done so unofficially. In the country's most conservative state, Kelantan, local laws call for the death penalty for apostates. The law has not yet been applied.

The context of the tensions in the Lina Joy case is a Muslim community that says it feels under siege and threatened by a thriving evangelical Christian movement. Newspapers cite wild estimates of mass conversions if Lina Joy wins her case and call for a strengthening of religious law.

Saudi clerics want to restrict women praying at Mecca

From Reuters:

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi clerics want to impose restrictions on women praying at Islam's holiest shrine in Mecca, one of the few places where male and female worshippers can intermingle.

But women activists in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the religion where a strict version of Islam is state orthodoxy, say the idea is discriminatory and have vowed to oppose it.

At present, women can pray in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure inside the mosque which pilgrims walk around seven times during the haj pilgrimage according to ancient rites established by Prophet Mohammad.

Plans by the all-male committee overseeing the holy sites would place women in a distant section of the mosque while men would still be able to pray in the key space.

"The area is very small and so crowded. So we decided to get women out of the 'sahn' (Kaaba area) to a better place where they can see the Kaaba and have more space," said Osama al-Bar, head of the Institute for Haj Research.

"Some women thought it wasn't good, but from our point of view it will be better for them ... We can sit with them and explain to them what the decision is (about)," he said. The decision is not final and could be reversed, he added.

Pushing and shoving is common in the tight space around the Kaaba where thousands of pilgrims crowd during the haj season.

The plans are likely to provoke a furore among Muslim women in countries whose Islamic traditions are more liberal than Saudi Arabia.

Ordinary Muslims say it as a basic right to be able to pray as close as possible to the Kaaba which Islam regards as the place where God's presence is most felt on Earth. It is towards the Kaaba that Muslims around the world turn when praying.

"Both men and women have the right to pray in the 'House of God'. Men have no right to take it away," said Suhaila Hammad, Saudi woman member of a body of world Muslim scholars.

"Men and women mix when they circumambulate the Kaaba, so do they want to make us do that somewhere else too?" she asked. "This is discrimination against women."

Nothing new. For example, Bukhari 001.006.301:

Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) o 'Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle ?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."

Surely this contributes to the rationale for freeing up space that would otherwise be taken up by women in the heart of the Grand Mosque.

The Grand Mosque is one of the few places where men and women can pray together in Islam although technically there are separate spaces for each gender throughout the vast complex.

Religious police charged with imposing order according to Saudi Arabia's austere Wahhabi brand of Islam often harass women who decide to pray outside the prescribed areas.

Historian Hatoun al-Fassi said the move to restrict women's prayer in the mosque would be a first in Islamic history.

"Perhaps they want women to disappear from any public prayer area and when it comes to the holy mosques that's their ultimate aim," she said, adding the religious authorities recently restricted women's access at the Prophet's tomb in Medina.

Perhaps.

Pakistan: Pols accused of blasphemy for tearing up bill containing Qur'an quotes

More evidence of the oppressive nature of Pakistan's Sharia-based blasphemy law. "Radical Islamic politicians accused of blasphemy," from Asia News, with thanks to DFS:

Islamabad (AsiaNews) – Ashfaq Chaudhry, head of the Islamabad’s chapter of the Pakistan People’s Movement, has accused members of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA, a political alliance of six radical Islamic organisations), including opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, with blasphemy. Last Wednesday in parliament, MPs for the MMA tore up copies of the Women’s Protection Bill containing verses from the Qur’an. Mr Chaudhry also charged MMA President Qazi Hussain Ahmed, and MMA Deputy Secretary General, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed. In his opinion, their action was offensive to all Pakistani Muslims, and they should be prosecuted under the blasphemy law and receive an exemplary punishment. The infamous blasphemy law refers to Section 295-b of Pakistan’s Penal Code which provides for life in prison for desecrating the Qur’an.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad reacted immediately, rejecting the accusations. The MMA president did confirm the protest action against the Women’s Protection Bill, but insisted that the draft legislation did not contain any verse from the Qur’an.

For Peter Jacob, executive secretary of the National Commission for Justice and Peace (an agency of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference), this episode is but another example of how religion is used and abused for personal reasons.

Yes indeed.

Muslim athletes accuse New Mexico State football coach of religious discrimination

An Albuquerque law firm found nothing to the allegations. That, of course, wasn't good enough for the ACLU. The upshot of this will be politicized "diversity" training at NMSU, spreading CAIR/ACLU propaganda to the unsuspecting dhimmis. From AP, with thanks to Doc Washburn:

LAS CRUCES, N.M. – Three former New Mexico State University football players – all Muslims – on Monday sued the university and coach Hal Mumme, alleging they were dismissed from the team because of their religious beliefs.

The federal lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Mu'Ammar Ali and brothers Anthony and Vincent Thompson. The lawsuit alleges religious discrimination and violations of the athletes' right to freely exercise their religion.

The suit claims that Mumme, who was hired by New Mexico State in January 2005, instituted a “religious brotherhood” within the football team and singled out Muslim athletes on the team.
“Universities are supposed to be places of evolved thinking and reason, not of base intolerance and bigotry” said Peter Simonson, executive director of ACLU New Mexico. “They are supposed to rise above the knee-jerk prejudices that sometimes afflict our society. In this case, the university failed its purpose and a coach indulged in those prejudices to assert his own religious preferences over the players and the team.”...

The lawsuit said Mumme had players recite the Lord's Prayer after each practice and before each game. Ali and the Thompsons said that practice made them feel like outcasts and caused them to pray separately from the other players.

According to the lawsuit, not long after Mumme learned that Ali and the Thompsons were Muslim, he prohibited the Thompsons from attending the team's spring 2005 training camp and questioned Ali about his attitudes toward al-Qaeda.

The lawsuit says the Thompsons were dismissed from the team on Sept. 2, 2005, allegedly because they moved their belongings to an unapproved locker and were labeled “troublemakers.”

The lawsuit said Ali, the Aggies' leading rusher in 2004, found out he was being dismissed from the team via a telephone message from Mumme on Oct. 9, 2005. Ali is currently attending Portland State and is expected to be the Vikings' starting halfback when they open the season Saturday against New Mexico.

The players are seeking compensatory and punitive damages.

The ACLU last year filed a grievance against Mumme, alleging he repeatedly questioned Ali about al-Qaeda.

In response to the allegations, New Mexico State hired an Albuquerque law firm to investigate and the law firm concluded the football program had not engaged in religious discrimination against the three Muslim athletes.

The investigation by Albuquerque law firm Miller Stratvery found that the players were released from the team based on their performance and attitudes, not because of religion. The probe included interviews with the football coaching staff, athletics department personnel and student-athletes.

Simonson at the time questioned the fairness of the investigation.

“I think it's very troubling that the university could not find any basis for these allegations whatsoever when three very sincere individuals came forward with such serious allegations,” he said. “It really raises questions in my mind about the university's commitment to diversity and racial equality and issues of equality.”

The ACLU last year sought a public apology from Mumme and disciplinary action against him. It also asked that the school provide diversity training to all students and employees.

Mumme said during a news conference last November that he apologized to his team for any unintentional actions on his part that may have offended anyone.

Tom and Huck make the hajj

Remember Shakespeare's Macbeth, when Macbeth slays Duncan and proclaims an Islamic republic in Dunsinane?

No, that one is a parody, but it's not too far off from the Turkish versions of Western books circulating now. The good news is that Turkish secularists are taking some Islamic publishers to court for Islamizing Western classics in translation.

"Minister lashes out at publishers for scandalous books," from the Turkish Daily News (coming to us from some Turkish anti-jihadists, via Philip):

Minister of Education Hüseyin Çelik has blasted publishers for distorted versions of books included in a reading list recommended for school children and announced the ministry would bring lawsuits against the publishers involved in the scandal.

"If you like Heidi, don't try to Muslimize her; write your own Heidi book," Çelik said in remarks published in some Turkish newspapers yesterday. He said the publishers would be sued because they used the ministry's logo on the controversial books.

The scandal concerning translations of the books was uncovered when the daily newspaper Radikal recently published citations from the books included on the "100 Essential Readings" list, comprising children's and world literature as well as Turkish classics recommended to school children.

Some publishers had inserted Islamist ideology into the translations, making alterations in such classics as Hugo's Les Miserables, Spyri's Heidi and Collodi's Pinocchio.

[...]

In one translation, Geppetto's little son Pinocchio says "Give me some bread for the sake of Allah," and gives thanks to "Allah" when he becomes an animated marionette.

In Dumas' "Three Musketeers," D'Artagnan while on his way to see Aramis is stopped by an old woman who explains: "You can't see him right now. He is surrounded by men of religion. He converted to Islam after his illness."

Eleanor H. Porter's "Pollyanna" confirms her belief in the Muslim apocalypse, while La Fontaine's fisherman prays using Muslim terminology to catch more fish.

Spyri's Swiss orphan Heidi is told by Ms. Sesasman that "praying is relaxing."

"Invented" phrases employing Muslim terminology were also inserted into classics from masters such as Anton Chekhov and Oscar Wilde.

Ah yes. The Importance of Being Mustafa.

Hamza henchman defies law to praise 7/7 bombers

More jihadist venom from Abu Abdullah. Will the British dhimmis do nothing?

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

AN associate of Abu Hamza, the hook-handed cleric, has defied Tony Blair’s ban on glorifying terrorism by praising the July 7 bombers and describing how he would “love” to kill British troops fighting in Afghanistan.

Abu Abdullah said he supports suicide bombers using “household chemicals” to attack the West and believes the prime minister is a legitimate target for assassination because of his foreign policy.

Abdullah, a former spokesman for Hamza, who was jailed this year for his hate-filled sermons, said the 9/11 attacks were a “deserved punch in the nose” for America. He argues that high street banks ought to be destroyed because they charge interest, which is against the tenets of Islam.

Blair, when announcing the ban in the wake of last year’s London bombings, said Britain was tolerant but that there was “a determination that this very tolerance and determination should not be abused by a small fanatical minority”.

Abdullah, however, is apparently being allowed to operate unchecked by the authorities five months after a law was passed making it a criminal offence to glorify terrorism.

Abdullah, 42, is the self-styled “emir”, or leader, of a radical group called Supporters of Shariah, which Hamza founded when he ran the Finsbury Park mosque in north London.

After Hamza was jailed for seven years in February for inciting his followers to murder non-Muslims, Abdullah has taken over a movement claiming up to 3,000 sympathisers.

Abdullah is barred from preaching in most mosques but he has been spreading his views in private meetings or “study circles” at low-key venues, such as community centres in London and the home counties.

Unlike other so-called preachers of hate, Abdullah, a former youth football coach, was born and bred in Britain.

Read it all.

UN interim force broadcast Israeli troop movements

My Weekly Standard is generally hopelessly clueless about the global jihad, but this piece, "What did you do in the war, UNIFIL?" by Lori Lowenthal Marcus (thanks to all who sent this in) contains important information about UN dhimmitude and complicity with Hizballah.

DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.

UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

This war was fought on cable television and the Internet, and a lot of official information was available in real time. But the specific military intelligence UNIFIL posted could not be had from any non-U.N. source. The Israeli press--always eager to push the envelope--did not publish the details of troop movements and logistics. Neither the European press nor the rest of the world media, though hardly bastions of concern for the safety of Israeli troops, provided the IDF intelligence details that UNIFIL did. A search of Israeli government websites failed to turn up the details published to the world each day by the U.N.

Read it all.

Jihad summer camp: Sand, soccer and the Zionist enemy

"Most important, the children understand that the conflict with the Jews is not over land, but rather over religion."

Why will Rice and Bush and Olmert and everyone else never grasp that? From Haaretz, with thanks to all who sent this in:

GAZA - On Sheikh Ajlin Beach, dozens of Palestinian children are shouting and playing and splashing each other, like children anywhere. They are at summer camp. The lifeguard moves in between them, blowing his whistle and ordering them to stay within the marked-off swimming area. There are always a few who stray, deliberately or not. When that happens the teenaged girls who lead the various activities wade into the water in their long dresses and head coverings to make sure that the future generation of Islamic Jihad does not drown in the ocean. The organization runs the camp for disadvantaged children.

All the Palestinian factions have been talking about social welfare in the past several weeks, including Islamic Jihad. Hisham, one of the camp directors, volunteers to discuss the children's schedule. He prefaces his remarks with the opening chapter of the Koran, Al-Fatiha.

"Gaza suffers from shellings, terrible economic straits and threats to the life of each one of these children day and night," Hisham explains. "So we try to detach them from the bad feelings and the horrors they are exposed to. They come in the morning and have lessons in sports such as soccer or volleyball. Afterward they go to the beach, where they swim and run around, followed by lunch. We don't forget our martyrs, and we teach them about making sacrifices on behalf of the Palestinian people and tell them the truth about Islam."

When asked about this "truth," Hisham launches into a monologue on history from his perspective: "We teach the children the truth. How the Jews persecuted the prophets and tortured them. We stress that the Jews killed and slaughtered Arabs and Palestinians every chance they got. Most important, the children understand that the conflict with the Jews is not over land, but rather over religion. As long as Jews remain here, between the [Jordan] river and the sea, they will be our enemy and we will continue to pursue and kill them. When they leave we won't hurt them."

Australia: Muslim girl in beauty pageant "a slur on Islam"

Sharia Alert from Down Under. Sheik Mohammed Omran is perfectly free to moralize, but bitter experience has shown that slurs on Islam often turn into threats of violence against those who are perceived as doing the slurring. "Beauty queen uproar," from The Herald Sun, with thanks to JE:

THE Islamic community is bitterly divided over a Melbourne Muslim girl's entry into the Miss Teen Australia beauty pageant. Aspiring model Ayten Ahmet, 16, says she wants only to be a positive role model for teenagers.

She believes religion is irrelevant to the competition.

The Craigieburn teenager hopes to be announced as a Victorian finalist in the contest, marketed as the southern hemisphere's biggest teen beauty pageant, at a preliminary event at Federation Square today.

But the pageant, which includes a swimwear section, has been condemned as sinful by some senior Muslims.

Melbourne cleric Sheik Mohammed Omran criticised the event, with his spokesman branding participation by Muslim girls as "a slur on Islam".

"They are ignorant of what their religion teaches and should learn their religion," the sheik's spokesman said.

"The teachings of the prophet and the Holy Koran do not encourage a girl to go out and uncover her modesty in public."

Victorian Islamic leader Yasser Soliman said participating in the contest was not in accordance with the teachings of Islam.

"What Islam teaches is that God-given beauty is only to be shared with the husband. It is not something used as a commercial gimmick, for financial gain, fame or entertainment,' he said....

Anti-dhimmitude from 9/11 families, in defense of Rachel Ehrenfeld

The courageous writer Rachel Ehrenfeld has been subjected to a bullying lawsuit by the Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz. You can find the details here. Now 9/11 Families For A Secure America has written a strong and much-needed letter in her defense:

The members of 9/11 FSA, as direct victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have therefore have a special interest in the uncovering of all those individuals and organizations which played a role, either directly or indirectly, in the conspiracy which led to the mass murders of that day. It is for this reason we support the position of the plaintiff Ehrenfeld.

A decision for the defendant would severely inhibit and perhaps put an end to further investigation into the involvement of persons of wealth or influence who participated in some fashion in the 9/11 plot. Were the defendant to prevail responsible individuals would be far less likely to undertake the research that is essential if all questions about the events of that day are to be answered.

Many facts about the 9/11 conspiracy are beyond dispute and among them are these:

Individuals of Saudi Arabian nationality were among those who actually carried out the hijackings and murders on September 11.

Many of the “masterminds” who originated the plot, directed the planning of the attacks, and who comprise much of the leadership of the terrorist organizations involved are Saudi nationals. These Saudi terrorist leaders maintain operational control over terrorist acts of the organizations they head, and in addition are responsible for raising funds to pay for their activities.

The members of these terrorist organizations are believers in radical Islam which advocates the persecution and murder of non-moslems. One of the most extreme sects of radical Islam is that which is known as “Wahabism.” Many members of the terrorist groups responsible for the 9/11 attacks are either members or sympathizers of Wahabist cells.
Some members of the Saudi government and members of the Saudi royal family (essentially one and the same) and other wealthy Saudis are members of this sect. Despite claims by the Saudis that that they are allies of the United States the Saudi royals, government and associates have supported the spreading of Wahabism through financial support of Wahabist schools and ‘holy men’ in the West.

That financial links exist between members of the Saudi government and its ruling class to groups intent on the murder of Americans has been demonstrated by the 9/11 Commission and private researchers.
FBI Director Robert Mueller has told 9/11 family members that he “is not here to point fingers,” thus indicating that the chief investigative agency of the United States government is not interested in finding all the facts of the 9/11 mass murders.

9/11 family members and members of the public have expressed on numerous occasions that they lack faith in the desire of the members of the 9/11 Commission to fully expose involvement of officials of various governments in the 9/11 plot.

Given these facts it to would be a clear threat to the people of the United States if responsible private individuals lacking governmental immunity were discouraged from pursuing and publishing information that might lead to exposure of individuals involved, whose positions of wealth or power might enable them to intimidate private researchers.

Should defendant bin Mahfouz obtain a favorable judgment, publication of research into 9/11 will be the subject of severe self-censorship. The American people and the 9/11 families have heard repeatedly how segments of the US government did not “connect the dots” prior to 9/11, “dots” which, had they been connected would have led to conclusions and knowledge that would have thwarted the September 11 plot prior to its execution. Had that occurred our 3000 loved ones would still be alive and those of our members facing illness and death from exposure to airborne toxins would not have been exposed.

A decision for defendant bin Mahfouz will mean that in the future, the “dots,” and the individuals and terrorist organizations represented by those dots will be free to exploit the legal systems of nations around the world and through them the courts of the United States, to intimidate those who would find the facts.

In short, a decision for defendant bin Mahfouz will help secure participants in the 9/11 plot and future plots from exposure.

CONCLUSION

For these reasons, 9/11 Families for a Secure America respectfully request that this Court reverse the decision of the district court.

Peter Gadiel, President, 9/11 Families for a Secure America

Bruce DeCell, Vice-President, 9/11 Families for a Secure America

Hindus bolster ranks of Muslim militants

Another kind of useful idiot. From the Toronto Star, with thanks to Scaramouche:

NEW DELHI—When Indian soldiers gunned down Hindu Uttam Singh, along with three Muslim militants in a border district of Indian-administered Kashmir Doda in August last year, the 23 year old was described by the army as a conscript in the ranks of the mujahedeen.

Security forces in Kashmir have insisted such militants fight an Islamic struggle that a Hindu could never support.

But the killing yesterday of another Hindu militant rebel leader lends weight to a growing theory that at least some minority Hindus in Kashmir willingly support the jihad of its Islamic extremists.

The two deaths, plus the arrest of at least three other Hindu militants this summer, are also raising doubts about the government assertion that Kashmir's bloody insurgency is being fought simply in the interests of Islamic militancy.

Acting on a tip, Indian forces trapped two jihadists in Khilandi village in the Indian border district of Doda and killed them yesterday.

After the night-long gun-battle by a team of army and police commandos, it became clear both dead men belonged to the largest rebel group, Hizbul Mujahedeen, but that one — Kuldeep Sharma, 25 — was Hindu.

Eight years ago, police said, school dropout Kuldeep crossed into Pakistan, where he was trained in arms and explosives. Two years later, with the Muslim nom de guerre Kamraan (Success), he returned to India-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, where he was made a deputy commander of Hizbul Mujahedeen, which fights for all of Kashmir's inclusion in neighbouring Pakistan.

Read it all.

Islam's Useful Idiots

Regular readers of Jihad Watch will recognize that many of these useful idiots have passed through here and left comments. From Amil Imani, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among the non-Muslims: A new generation of “Useful Idiots,” the sort of people Lenin identified living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also lives in liberal democracies, but serves the cause of Islamofascism—another virulent form of totalitarian ideology.

Useful Idiots are naïve, foolish, ignorant of facts, unrealistically idealistic, dreamers, willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from the ranks of the chronically unhappy, the anarchists, the aspiring revolutionaries, the neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of the population. Arguably, the most dangerous variant of the Useful Idiot is the “Politically Correct.” He is the master practitioner of euphemism, hedging, doubletalk, and outright deception.

Read it all.

EU and Israel want foxes to guard the henhouse

Turkey, Jordan, Egypt. Will these troops be protecting Israel from Hizballah, or Hizballah from Israel? "EU Wants Mideast Peace Force With Strong Muslim Component," from AP, with thanks to Bill:

The EU and U.N. agree the peacekeeping mission must have a strong Muslim component to give it credibility. But Israel objects to nations that do not recognize the Jewish state, saying such troops would make it impossible for Jerusalem to share intelligence with the U.N. force.

Israel's objection would include Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh, which have volunteered troops. Turkey, meanwhile, which does have diplomatic relations with Israel and would be acceptable to all parties, has not decided whether to join the force.

It was unclear how the United Nations would meet Israel's demand to prevent the Islamic militants of Hezbollah from rearming, including controlling the Lebanon-Syrian border.

"Israel seeks troops from Muslim nations," from AP:

JERUSALEM - Israel said Saturday it was encouraging some Muslim countries to send peacekeepers to southern Lebanon, a contribution that would lend credibility to the heavily European force....

The EU and U.N. agree the peacekeeping mission must have a strong Muslim component to give it credibility. Israel, however, objects to nations that do not recognize the Jewish state, saying such troops would make it impossible for Jerusalem to share intelligence with the U.N. force. That would exclude Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malaysia, which have offered troops.

But Israel said it has been in touch with other Muslim countries to encourage them to participate, particularly Turkey, which has diplomatic relations with Israel.

"If Turkey decides to send a contingent, we would welcome that," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.

Jordan and Egypt also are among Muslim countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Last country with Jerusalem embassy, El Salvador, to move out

Oscar Arias makes it clear below that what Costa Rica has done is back the strong horse, bearing out again Osama's now-famous dictum. "El Salvador to move embassy from Jerusalem," from the Hizballah News Agency, aka Reuters, with thanks to JS:

El Salvador will move its embassy in Israel from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, in a move bound to upset Israel and please Arab nations.

El Salvador would have been the only country in the world left with an embassy in Jerusalem after neighboring Costa Rica announced on August 16 it would pull its diplomatic mission out of the city.

A US ally which has a small contingent of troops in Iraq, El Salvador is governed by conservative President Tony Saca, who is of Palestinian Christian descent....

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, a former Nobel Peace Prize winner, said earlier this month he made the decision to change the embassy's location to win more friends in the Middle East and comply with UN resolutions.

Pak minister of state for religious affairs: Stopping marital rape un-Islamic

Like every other reform proposed in the Women's Protection Bill currently under heated debate in Pakistan, the National Assembly committee member's proposal for criminalizing marital rape is up against the dictates of the Qur'an, ahadith, and Sunnah, and those who follow them as the immutable word of Allah, and his prophet, whom they believe to be uswa hasana and al-insan al-kamil -- the "perfect example", and the "best of men."

The proposed reforms, from the Daily Times: "Sex without wife’s consent rape: Kashmala"

ISLAMABAD: Kashmala Tariq, a member of the NA Select Committee on Women’s Protection Bill, proposed that a husband having sex with his wife without her consent should be tried under rape charges. Kashmala said at a Select Committee meeting that men should not have sex with their wives against their will. She said that married women should not be treated like "buffaloes". Kashmala told Daily Times that committee members Mehnaz Rafi, Zahid Hamid and Wasim Sajjad had endorsed her viewpoint.

And the rebuttal, also from the Daily Times: "No, it is unIslamic to stop husbands: Aamir"

ISLAMABAD: Dr Aamir Liaqat Hussain, minister of state for religious affairs, opposed Kashmala’s proposal that men having sex with their wives be tried under rape charges, saying that it was "un-Islamic to stop husbands from having sex with their wives even if they were doing so without their consent", sources told Daily Times. Aamir quoted Surah Nisah to defend his contention.

Sura 4, "an-Nisah" ("Women"), deals with rules for marriage and inheritance, and contains the verse:

Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great. (4:34)

And confirming the incredibly long odds faced by those who would change the minimum age at which girls can be married (as reported in this story), the article concludes by noting:

Noorul Haq Qadri and Sher Afgan Niazi defended girls’ marriages at an early age. Niazi referred to marriage of Prophet (PBUH) to Hazrat Ayesha (RA), the sources added.

Mullahs tell aid groups in Pakistan to fire women or "face violent protests"

Sharia Alert from AFP: "Mullahs tell aid groups to fire women"

ISLAMABAD: Muslim clerics in earthquake-hit Azad Kashmir have told aid agencies to fire all local women employees or face violent protests, officials and religious leaders said on Thursday.

The threat, given to district officials and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Bagh on Tuesday, will dent hopes that the October 8 quake could have a positive effect on women’s rights in the conservative region. "We have told the administration that we will not allow NGOs to exploit our women and asked them to give a date suitable to them for removal of all female workers," Syed Atta Ullah Shah, prayer leader of the Bagh central mosque, told Agence France Presse.

And if "we" don't get our way:

"If our demand is not met then we will take direct action and extreme steps. There will be demonstrations and damage may be caused to public property and a law and order situation would be created in the area," he added.

The religious leader said locals were angered by "obscene" activities at NGOs. "They hire beautiful girls and take them to Islamabad for enjoyment. They keep women in offices as decoration pieces because we know that women have no work and there is no such work that men cannot do," Shah said. Aid groups say female workers are vital to ensure that religious and social conventions are respected when dealing with women in the devastated region, especially for health matters.

The United Nations, which has coordinated aid efforts after the quake, said it was aware of the issue. "Discussions are going on with the government and clergy. Things are not finalised yet," Raabya Amjad, public information officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP.

Musharraf faces bitter clash over rape law reforms

And democratic reforms are an "attack on Islam." More on this story from the Telegraph, with thanks to JE:

President Pervez Musharraf has opened a new and especially bitter confrontation with radical Islam by trying to rewrite Pakistan's controversial rape laws.

These place an almost impossible burden of proof on women by compelling them to produce four "pious" male witnesses to prove rape or risk being convicted of adultery and face 100 lashes or death by stoning.

This law, known as the Hudood Ordinance, has been regarded as untouchable since its passage 27 years ago.

It is regarded as untouchable because it is rooted in the Qur'an. After Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha, is accused of adultery (it's a long story; get it in my forthcoming book The Truth About Muhammad), he exonerates her with a revelation from Allah requiring four witnesses to establish a sexual offense: "Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah" (Qur’an 24:11). The adoption of this law was part of the long, slow abandonment of secular law by Pakistan.

It also sets no minimum age for sex with girls, saying only that they should have reached puberty.

This too is based on Muhammad's example. According to a hadith attributed to Aisha herself as the source, "the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years" (Bukhari, 7.62.64).

A powerful militant Muslim lobby regards this code as sacred and based on Koranic texts and sharia law. No previous Pakistani leader, not even the country's first female leader, Benazir Bhutto, dared reform it.

But Gen Musharraf's allies in parliament sparked the fury of the militant opposition by introducing a Women Protection Bill. This would remove the requirement for four male witnesses to prove rape and set 16 as the age of consent for sex with girls.

When this measure came before parliament, Islamic radicals responded by tearing up copies of the bill and storming out. "This bill is against the Holy Koran," said Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the leader of the militant opposition. "We reject it and will try to block it in any possible manner." Other MPs chanted "death to Musharraf" and "Allah is great."

There's a preview of what the British parliament will be like in a few years.

Liaqat Baluch, the deputy leader of an alliance of six Islamic parties, pledged to mount a public campaign to show that "under the garb of this bill and women's rights, the government is deviating from the Koran". The prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, countered that the militants had committed "an act of desecration" by tearing up the bill.

Gen Musharraf, who claims to favour "enlightened moderation", has waited until his seventh year in power before venturing into this uniquely sensitive political territory. But western diplomats, who have repeatedly demanded the repeal or reform of the Hudood Ordinance, believe he will succeed. The general's allies have a comfortable majority in parliament. The bill will go before a parliamentary committee, where Islamic radicals could introduce wrecking amendments. Last month Gen Musharraf, a key US ally in the war on terrorism, changed Pakistani law to allow women detained on charges of adultery and other minor crimes to be released on bail. Hundreds of women were later freed.

Until now the general, who has survived three assassination attempts by radical Islamic groups, has preferred to avoid confrontation over an issue that has not, despite an unprecedented publicity drive by the government, caught the popular imagination.

"How can a dictator propped up by the West introduce democratic reforms?" asked Hazat Aman, an official of a social welfare group run by the hardline Islamic Jamaat-i-Islami party. "It is an attack on Islam," he said.

And that's why he may prevail in the short run, in a parliamentary vote or some such, but he is unlikely to do so in the long run unless there is a larger-scale challenge to Islamic orthodoxy than has hitherto existed.

First They Came For the Jews: The Story of Yet Another World War

A new essay from the insightful European writer Fjordman, who deserves all of our support:

Note from Fjordman: It is now more than a year and a half since I started writing essays and posts under the name Fjordman. I have so far never asked for donations, but I am now reaching a point where some financial contributions may be necessary for me to continue doing this. I will be posting at least six or seven more essays over the coming three weeks. However, I have plans for at least a dozen longer essays after this, provided I have the time and financial opportunity to write them. The essays will be dealing with why I find a Reformation of Islam unlikely to happen, why the work of many self-appointed Muslim reformists is inadequate, why Islam probably cannot be reconciled with democracy and how the West should deal with these facts. All of these essays will, if possible, be finished during the fall of 2006 and the winter of 2006/2007. Many of them will be published first here at Jihad Watch, some of them at the Gates of Vienna and republished at Faith Freedom International and other websites. All of my online essays can be republished for free by anybody who wants to, as long as credit is given to the author. Any financial donation, which can be given here, will be greatly appreciated, and should be considered as payment in advance for future essays.

I have seen so many lies and half-truths by Western mainstream media exposed in the blogosphere, especially related to Islam, that I no
longer trust them for information. Leading bloggers such as Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs recently demonstrated this by showing how photos distributed by international news service Reuters from Lebanon had been grossly manipulated to make Israel look bad. Blogger Zombie argued, in a very convincing way, that the story about Israel deliberately targeting ambulances in Lebanon was full of holes, quite possibly a complete fabrication. It proves how easily, willingly, many Western journalists believe every piece of nonsense Muslims feed them, as long as it's directed against Israel, the United States or the West in general.

I do read traditional media still, and it would be a lie to say that I never get any useful information from them, but in general, I read them mainly to know what information they are feeding the general public, those who still haven't switched to the Internet to follow what's happening in the world. Here are some of my notes from Norwegian media during August 2006. I suspect many of the trends described here are pretty similar throughout Western Europe. The number one local issue of discussion in Norway this month has been the reactions to the editorial "God's chosen people," published in newspaper Aftenposten by famous author Jostein Gaarder in reaction to Israel's military actions in southern Lebanon, to protect itself against attacks by Iran and Syria through their puppet organization Hezbollah.

Gaarder became rich by writing the novel "Sophie's World," which doubles as a guide to the history of Western philosophy and has sold tens of millions of copies around the world. His editorial has been strongly denounced as anti-Semitic by some, but also received support from many. "I must admit that the reactions have been stronger than I expected," Mr. Gaarder said, and confirmed that he had been frightened by this. "I have said it countless times and I can repeat it again: I am a humanist, not an anti-Semite."

In the article, Gaarder argued that the State of Israel "will have no peace before it lays down its arms." "Israel is history. We no longer
recognize the State of Israel. There is no way back. The State of Israel has raped the world's recognition and will not receive peace before it lays down its weapons." "We don't believe in the concept of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over their misdeeds. To present themselves as God's chosen people is not just stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism." "There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance..."

Culture journalist Mona Levin considered the editorial to be "the nastiest thing I have read since [Adolf Hitler's] "Mein Kampf." Gaarder makes it easy for himself, there is nothing that can not be said about Jews today. The same people who would not draw Mohammed out of respect for Muslims can safely say things like this about Jews and Israel without receiving death threats. "It is a shame that a presumably intelligent person calls the Ten Commandments "amusing stone tablets" and kicks away at what both the Christian and Jewish civilizations are built upon," Levin said.

Another much-debated topic in Norwegian media during the same period was an unprecedented rape wave in the capital city of Oslo. "We have seen a dramatic increase [in the number of rapes]," said Endre Sandvik, head of the emergency ward. The number of rapes in Oslo this summer was more than twice as high as it was last year. Brit Opjordsmoen from DIXI, support centre for rape victims, stated in a questions and answers session with Aftenposten's readers that they don't know what percentage of these rapes are committed by people with immigrant background, and that most of these speculations are just "prejudice."

With all due respect, I'm pretty sure that's incorrect, since I've been writing about and documenting this issue for so long that I'm almost getting tired of the subject. The situation is even worse in neighboring Sweden.

Aftenposten have conveniently enough forgotten an article they printed five years ago. In 2001, two out of three charged with rape in Norway's capital were immigrants with a non-western background. Another Norwegian newspaper, Dagbladet, quoted Unni Wikan, a female professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo as saying that "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes" because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. One reason for the high number of rapes by Muslims was that in their native countries "rape is scarcely punished," since Muslims "believe that it is women who are responsible for rape." The professor's conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but that "Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it."

The number of rapes, muggings and assaults committed by Muslim immigrants in Western countries is so extremely high that it is difficult to view this only as random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. German journalist Gudrun Eussner considers this to be "sexuality as a weapon against disobedient and non-Muslim women, both categorized as "unbelievers". Against them jihad is the duty, and what to do with women "conquered" in jihad, this may be read in the Qur'an: they become slaves to be used by the victors."

French filmmaker Pierre Rehov states that: "A friend of mine is a retired chief of police, who used to be in charge of the security of a major city in the south of France. He reported to me that his men had to face an average of 10 rapes a week, 80% made by Muslim young men. According to Rehov, "I can see in any raping of a non-Muslim woman by a Muslim male a racist action, and it is high time for us to acknowledge and condemn it. The level of contempt towards non-Muslim women is the reflection of the level of hatred towards the society which creates equality between men and women."

American columnist Victor Davis Hanson noticed how "the Western press -- usually so careful to condemn hate speech -- is utterly silent about Arab racism. But a European paper recently published a cartoon portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a Nazi, secure that no rabbi would issue threats that could cost the editors their heads."

The newspaper he was referring to was Norway's left-leaning, pro-Multicultural Dagbladet, whose cartoonist Finn Graff published a cartoon depicting Israel's PM Olmert as a Nazi concentration camp commander. The scene came from the movie Schindler's List, in which the commander shoots down a Jew from his balcony. Finn Graff declared only half a year earlier that he would not draw a cartoon of Muhammad out of fear and "respect." At about the same time, a Jew was assaulted by Arabs in the streets of Oslo. In response, the Mosaic Community in Oslo sent out a recommendation to its members to leave the kippah at home, or cover it under a cap. It was also warning its members against speaking Hebrew in public.

There are two ways one can interpret this. Newspapers Aftenposten and Dagbladet have both forgotten that they have themselves previously written about the close connection between Muslim immigration, violence and rape. They are thus at best guilty of extremely poor and incompetent journalism. I find this highly unlikely, however, which leaves only one likely conclusion: Leading Norwegian newspapers know that many of the rapes we now are witnessing in Oslo - and in Sweden, France, Holland and the UK - are related to Muslim immigration, but deliberately choose not to write about this and concentrate instead on demonizing Israel and the USA. I don't think they should get away with this, which is why I keep repeating this issue.

Aftenposten can thus publish an article saying that "Israel is raping the world," but refuse to mention which religious group is committing actual rapes in their own country. Dagbladet can print cartoons comparing the Israeli PM to Nazi leaders, but "forget" to mention that Nazi literature such as Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf is widely popular in even "moderate" Islamic countries such as Turkey. We wouldn't want to fuel Islamophobia, would we?

This is a powerful indication that the Islamization of Western Europe is proceeding apace, and that the anti-Semitism and "Palestinianism" found in Arab media is increasingly adopted by European media, just as described by Bat Ye'or in her work about Eurabia. The scary part is that physical or verbal attacks on Jews or de-legitimization of the state of Israel are spreading to countries were Jews were previously safe, such as the USA and Canada.

No, I was not thinking of Hollywood star actor Mel Gibson, who during an arrest for drunken driving said, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and asked the arresting officer, "Are you a Jew?" Australian actress Nicole Kidman and other leading Hollywood figures such as Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis paid a full page advertisement in the Los Angeles Times newspaper condemning "terrorist organisations" such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian Hamas, thus proving that there is still intelligent life left in Hollywood.

Far worse is that columnist Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post that "The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake." Luckily, some individuals such as Canada's Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper still have their judgment intact. Harper stated that Israel's military action against Hezbollah guerrillas was a "measured response" only a day after Israel sent its forces into Lebanon. Historically, Canada's Jewish voters have stood with the Liberal party or left-of-centre parties. This could change, according to Conrad Winn, head of Compas research firm. "Right-wing voters are more favorable to Israel and Jews than left-wing liberals," which could make the Conservative party more appealing to mainstream Jewish voters.

On July 28 2006, on the eve of the Jewish sabbath, a Muslim terrorist of Pakistani origins named Naveed Afzal Haq forced a 14-year-old girl to get him into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building by holding a gun to her back. Haq killed one woman and injured five others. Eye-witnesses reports stated that Haq announced, "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry with Israel." To a 911 dispatcher, Haq announced: "I want these Jews to get out. … I'm upset at your foreign policy. These are Jews. I'm tired of getting pushed around."

In August, a plot to stage perhaps the largest terror attacks since September 11th 2001 was uncovered. British authorities arrested a number of people, many of them Muslims born in Britain, some of them of Pakistani origins, in what they said was a scheme to blow up as many as 10 jetliners flying from Britain to the United States. "The scale is immense. Inquiries will span the globe," one police statement said. Pakistan's Daily Times reported that an Islamic charity organization transferred "a huge amount" of money to the UK terror plotters — and called it "earthquake relief."

At the same time, German authorities discovered a plot by Islamic Jihadists to blow up several trains in Germany. "I have always said we are threatened by terrorism, and the threat has never been so near," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told, calling the case "unusually serious." The month before, Islamic radicals with suspected Pakistani links had set off a series of seven bombs on the Suburban Railway in Mumbai, India's financial capital, killing or injuring hundreds of people.

In Norway, a shoot-out between two Pakistani gangs one crowded Sunday evening at Oslo's popular waterfront complex Aker Brygge left two men wounded. These gangs are so violent that the police are scared of dealing with them. Newspaper VG reported that a policeman had to run for his life from an angry crowd of Pakistanis. The plainclothes policeman was hit in the face and told to leave the Furuset shopping center. VG has found out that he was told that it was none of his business being in this area, and that a gang of young men had basically defined Furuset as their turf and didn't accept "intruders." Norwegian authorities have thus already lost control over significant chunks of their own capital city.

Peaceful rallies denouncing Islamic terrorism or supporting Israel have repeatedly been physically attacked by groups of Muslim immigrants. Newspaper editors complain that much of the public debate has been moved to anonymous debates on the Internet. We are now leaving the rule of law and entering the rule of the mob. This was also what happened with the Brown Shirts in Nazi Germany. Those controlling the streets could very well end up controlling the entire country.

Norway's new center for Holocaust Studies opened in Villa Grande, the former home of Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian Nazi collaborator who was executed by firing squad for high treason following WW2. The HL-Center (The Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious and Life Stance Minorities) tries to embrace the examination of all types of prejudiced persecution, but with a special emphasis on Jews during WW2. That's great. But it would have been even better had it not been at a time when Jews, and indeed Christian Norwegians, are assaulted because of their ethnic and religious background, and when several Norwegian public figures are actively cheering for Hezbollah, Iran and forces who want to wipe out the Jewish state of Israel, the refuge for the survivors of the previous Holocaust.

Meanwhile, the King of Norway took part in commemorating Pakistan's "Independence Day," at the same time as Pakistani gangs were harassing his own people. King Harald failed to mention the struggle of Samira Munir, politician of Pakistani origins, who was found dead under strange circumstances in November 2005. Munir received repeated death threats for her fight against the veil and for the liberty of Muslim women. She was even pressured by Pakistan's ambassador to Norway on several occasions. Earlier in 2006, there were calls for translating Norway's national anthem into Urdu, since this would be "good for integration." Bruce Bawer in his book "While Europe Slept" describes how there are now more direct flights from Norway to Pakistan than from Norway to the USA. It shows.

It could be useful to reflect on exactly what kind of nation some of our leading politicians are "celebrating." Let's quote the writings of
former Muslim Anwar Shaikh on the establishment of Pakistan:

"I regret to say that 1947 was the darkest period of my life. We were told that murdering the non-Muslims, seducing their wives, burning their properties, was an act of Jihad, that is Holy War. And Jihad is the most sacred duty of a Muslim."

"I actually prayed and then I took up a club, and a long knife and I went out in search of non-Muslims. Those days were remembered for the curfew orders and everybody seemed terrified of everybody else. I found two men, Sikhs, father and son […] I killed both of them. Next day I did not go to work, I felt nauseated but I wanted to kill some more non-Muslims. I encountered another Sikh at Darabi Road & I killed him too. Often memories of those terrible days haunt my mind, I feel ashamed, and many a times have I shed tears of remorse. If it had not been for my fanaticism, engendered by the Islamic traditions those people might have been alive even today. And I might not have felt the guilt which I still do."

Apologists would claim that the violence between Muslims and non-Muslims in India was "mutual." Well, it started because the Muslims wanted a Pakistan, a "land of the pure" cleansed of non-Muslims. While India still has a huge Muslim population that enjoys greater political freedom and a better economic position than Muslims in Pakistan or Bangladesh, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians have been virtually eradicated in Pakistan. The few remaining non-Muslims suffer from brutal, daily persecution, as do Pakistani women, in a country that has become one of the most important global centres of Islamic terrorism. Yet hardly anybody in the Western press ever denounces Pakistan as an "apartheid state." That is a term exclusively reserved for Israel, where the significant number of Muslim citizens, just as in India, have a better political and economic standing than Muslims in neighboring states.

In Norway, it is probably unprecedented in the thousand years since the city of Oslo was founded at the end of the Viking Age that the indigenous population is being attacked on such a large and random scale. And the government is doing… well, pretty much nothing really, except for hiding the problem as much as possible and continuing Muslim immigration. This isn't good enough.

We are tired of hearing nonsense about "Islamophobia" while our children live in fear of Islamic terrorism. The purpose of the state
is to uphold law and order and maintain the nation's borders and territorial integrity. Western European governments are doing neither, yet are busy with political censorship and interfering with details of our private lives where they have no business. It's time they are reminded that they are our servants, not our rulers.

There was a common joke in the old Soviet Union that "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." Since the authorities in the European Union now merely pretend to uphold law and order and take care of our interests, maybe Europeans should merely pretend to pay taxes?

Author Jostein Gaarder became a wealthy man by writing about the history of Western thinking for 2500 years, from Socrates to Spinoza.
He apparently understood very little of what he was writing, since he fails to grasp that every single achievement of Western thought is now under threat by the very same Islamic forces that are bragging about their plans to destroy Israel.

It is often said that the West is a Judeo-Christian civilization. I know that there are some people who contest this term, and that not all Jews or Christians share this feeling of connection. I do not think it is a cliché. The modern history of Western civilization would be unthinkable without its Jewish component. It is thus our own identity and survival as a civilization that is under threat from Iran and Hezbollah, not just Israel's.

The first rule for dhimmis, non-Muslims living under the apartheid regime of Islamic sharia, is that they should be unarmed and submissive to their Muslim masters. Even some Hamas members have stated that they may be willing to accept Jews living in their society, as long as they accept their subjugation and inferior status. Muslims may not like Jews in general, but they first of all hate armed Jews. Christians in the West should notice that exactly the same rules
apply to Christians as well. When Gaarder argues that Israel "will have no peace before it lays down its arms," he is doing exactly the same thing as Islamic Jihadists, who demand that non-Muslims lay down their weapons and accept Islamic rule, or face annihilation. I'm not sure whether Mr. Gaarder is aware of the fact that this goes for himself, too.

Is this why Europeans hate Israelis so much? Because they fight Islamic supremacy whereas we seem to meekly accept our future dhimmi status?

We only have the moral right to defend ourselves against Islamization if we give the same rights to Israelis. It is the same religious group
that is harassing non-Muslim in European cities, that wants to blow up planes over American cities and is murdering Buddhist teachers in southern Thailand. It is high time we acknowledge this. Israel is not the aggressor, it is a brave little nation making up the frontline in an Islamic war that is increasingly spanning the globe. First, they came for the Jews, then they came for everybody else, the story of yet another world war.

Molotov cocktail against Christian activist’s home in Bethlehem

Death threats for Samir Qumsieh, after he denounced the persecution of Palestinian Christians. From AsiaNews, with thanks to Mark:

Bethlehem (AsiaNews) – Death threats are getting nastier for Samir Qumsieh. He is the director and owner of the only private Christian TV station in Palestine. Concerned about his family and his business, he has repeatedly called on the authorities to intervene to the little avail.

In 1996 Mr Qumsieh founded Al-Mahed (the Nativity) TV in Bethlehem. He told AsiaNews that he is forced to live with the constant threats against his life and might have to shut down his TV station, which has been well-receivfed by Christian leaders in the Holy Land. In the past, Mr Qumsieh denounced several times the violence inflicted on Christians in the Holy Land.

A few days ago he called on Bethlehem governor, Salah Al-Ta’mari, to investigate a serious incident. After midnight last Thursday unidentified people threw cocktail Molotov into the garden of his house.

“We avoided the worst by a miracle. One of the bottles fell on wet grass causing little damage; the other did not explode,” he said. Never the less, the incident is but the latest in a long string of similar episodes.

Qumsieh said that “in the past defamatory and indimidatory leaflets about him were circulated”. But what is worse is that “despite my pleas that something be done to find those responsible for these acts, the security forces have done nothing.”

In his letter to the governor, copies of which were also sent to the chiefs of local security forces and to Christian leaders, the TV station owner complained that the threats against him are “a serious and dangerous development that must be taken seriously”.

But it won't be.

Pakistani couple killed over 'honour'

A three-year-old girl among those killed. From Reuters, with thanks to JE:

Five people including a teenage couple who married against their families' will have been killed by relatives in the latest incident of so-called honour killing in Pakistan, police say....

The couple - Kamalan and Allah Rakhio - both 18 and from rival clans in the southern province of Sindh, had married about three months ago after eloping, said Usman Subaho, a police officer investigating the case.

"They were killed just a few days after returning to their village after getting married in Karachi," he said....

The girl's family took her wedding as a slight on their honour.

The attackers stormed the couple's house, killing them and three other family members including a three-year-old girl, said Subaho.

Eleven family members were wounded in the attack, he said.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says about 1,000 people are killed in honour-related crimes every year in Pakistan.

UK will tackle "ethnic tensions" with "fact, not myth" -- but will not discuss "perverted form of Islam"

Myth, not fact, from dhimmi British fact-finders who steadfastly refuse to discuss the real source of the troubles of non-assimilation they're scratching their heads over: the teachings of Islam, and their reinforcement by Muslim leaders who have preached against assimilation for years. "UK 'must tackle ethnic tensions,'" from the BBC, with thanks to JE:

Tensions between people of different ethnic groups and faiths in British society must be tackled, says Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly.

Ms Kelly launched a Commission on Integration and Cohesion, calling for a "new and honest" debate on diversity.

The body, which will start work next month, will look at how communities in England tackle tensions and extremism....

The launch of the commission comes amid growing fears of alienation, especially among young Muslims....

In a speech in London, Ms Kelly said the UK had moved away from an era of "uniform consensus" about multi-culturalism.

People were now questioning whether multi-culturalism instead encouraged separateness, she said.

But the new debate had to be based on "fact, not myth".

Ms Kelly promised the commission would not be a "talking shop" and would not focus on tackling the ideology of a "perverted form of Islam" - something the government was examining in other ways.

Once Muslim, Now Christian and Caught in the Courts

Islamic Tolerance Alert from modern, moderate Malaysia: The New York Times (thanks to A.), of all places, has just picked up on a story we first told you about here in September 2005. Better late than never, eh, Pinch?

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug. 19 — From the scant personal details that can be pieced together about Lina Joy, she converted from Islam to Christianity eight years ago and since then has endured extraordinary hurdles in her desire to marry the man in her life.

Her name is a household word in this majority Muslim country. But she is now in hiding after death threats from Islamic extremists, who accuse her of being an apostate.

Five years ago she started proceedings in the civil courts to seek the right to marry her Christian fiancé and have children. Because she had renounced her Muslim faith, Ms. Joy, 42, argued, Malaysia’s Islamic Shariah courts, which control such matters as marriage, property and divorce, did not have jurisdiction over her.

In a series of decisions, the civil courts ruled against her. Then, last month, her lawyer, Benjamin Dawson, appeared before Malaysia’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to argue that Ms. Joy’s conversion be considered a right protected under the Constitution, not a religious matter for the Shariah courts.

“She’s trying to live her life with someone she loves,” Mr. Dawson said in an interview.

Threats against Ms. Joy had become so insistent, and the passions over her conversion so inflamed, he had concluded there was no room for her and her fiancé in Malaysia. The most likely solution, he said, was for her to emigrate.

Read it all.

Michael Graham: The tragedy continues

In "The tragedy continues," Michael Graham (thanks to Mackie) reflects on the dhimmis who fired him a year ago, and the ongoing (and growing) problem that authorities still refuse to face:

One year ago this month, I was fired from my talk radio job by ABC/Disney for saying on the air — and in these pages — that "Islam is a terrorist organization."

My argument was very simple. Any organization that allows terrorists to operate freely in its name; whose ideology is, rightly or wrongly, used to justify and promote terrorism; and whose membership includes, according to every international poll, hundreds of millions of devotees who suppoIrt suicide bombing — that organization has a unique problem with terrorism.

That's what I said. ABC ordered me to apologize for it. They insisted I perform community service as a form of penance for it. I told them I would never apologize for telling the truth, and they fired me.

One year later, I'm back on the air and I haven't changed a bit.

The problem is, neither has Islam.

One year ago, I reported in horror that approximately one in four British Muslims told pollsters that, if they knew about a terrorist plot targeting their fellow British citizens, they would not report it to the police. "Troubling," I said at the time, but not as bad as actually supporting terrorist attacks.

Now, a new poll shows that about one in four British Muslims support suicide bombings, that the 7/7 attacks in London were justified. Nearly half of British Muslims today believe the 9/11 attacks on New York were a conspiracy involving the US government and Israel.

These are Muslims in Britain. Not Baghdad, not Bangladesh, but living in the heart of the modern, Western world.

Read it all.

Fitzgerald: Sweet reason beyond all reason

"Rev. Canon John L. Peterson, director of its Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation..." -- from this article

The very words "Global Justice" and "Reconciliation" reek of self-righteousness, and reek too of what we have come to realize such words, and the men who employ them approvingly, will always reek of: an attitude of sweet reason that goes beyond reason, a belief that "everyone has a point" and that if only we "listen to one another," "if only we engage in dialogue," "if only this" and "if only that" then all manner of things shall be well. In the mental universe of such people, it is inconceivable that hatred could be embraced, hatred could be taught, hatred could be sacred, and that there can be no compromise with those who uncompromisingly divide the world between Them and Us.

There was no negotiation, no treaty, no forum to which Hitler or more likely Goebbels could have been invited, which would have meant a thing. It would only have offered yet one more way for the terminally naive to believe that somehow it was all based on a misunderstanding, or still worse, of the wicked. (Wicked: do such words still come up, not in the Biblical quotes, but in the their own words, the words of these Canons to the left and so seldom to the right of us?) All of these people refuse to make distinctions based on such silly ideas as Good and Evil.

"Global Justice" means, of course, that wherever there is economic backwardness then there must be a reason. The reason must always be sought in the advanced, wealthy West. (Yet some of us in that world are not wealthy at all. We are far less wealthy than, say, Canon John L. Peterson, whose cathedral for the busy rich and influential fittingly boasts gargoyles with briefcases.) The reason is never found or even sought in, for example, the inshallah-fatalism of Islam that explains, like nothing else does, the failure of Muslims to create wealthy societies, despite the fact that so many of them (and why don't they share that loot with other Muslims?) have been the recipients of the greatest unearned transfer of wealth in human history, some ten trillion dollars since 1973. That won't be part of any hint of "Social Justice" from Canon John L. Peterson.

And "Reconciliation" -- here we go again: the "Fellowship of Reconciliation," and all the rest, and the seizure of official Quaker organizations by the professional anti-Israel brigade, with Joe Gerson's name leading all the rest. There is so much of this, so much that makes no sense in a world where some people rant like Azzam Tamimi or Ahmadinejad (whose regime has enjoyed killing all kinds of people, including nice Iranian intellectuals, such as that elderly couple who bravely continued their opposition, and for their pains were both decapitated, husband and wife, and their heads left on either side of what passed for a mantelpiece in their house).

What is it about the atmosphere at the National Cathedral? Instead of being a place of common sense and common decency, ever since Dean Francis B Sayre first started expressing his support for those conducting the Lesser Jihad against Israel more than 30 years ago (in one speech describing Jerusalem as "the capital of the religion of the Arabs" which must have startled the Guardians of the Two Holy Places, and at various times equating the Israeli victims of terrorism with Arab terrorists or those who supported them), it has been a place of -- well, a place like so many soft-headed places where the clergymen themselves have lost their faith, and replaced it, so often, by becoming Defenders of another Faith -- the faith of "everyone is the same" and "why can't we get along," the faith of the Church of Diversity and Tolerance, or even more to the point, Defenders of the Faith with that Faith being not Christianity but Islam. So it is not surprising to discover Canon John L. Peterson treating Khatami as a respectable interlocutor, as if some kind of useful "dialogue" could conceivably ensue, and not merely a boost to Iranian prestige, and repetition, in a softer vein, of the same sentiments that Ahmadinejad expresses every day. One cannot help wondering: if such people had been around in the 1930s, would they have invited, if not a big-shot Nazi, then at least Harvard-educated Putzi Hanfstaengl, the one sent over to convince the American ruling class that Hitler and the Nazis were their sort, or perhaps Fritz Kuhn of the Bund (no, he would have been too crude)?

Give us that old-time religion. Give us Holy Living and Holy Dying. Give us Magnalia Christi Americana. Give us Donne in St. Paul's. Give us anything, but not this etiolated Christianity that would spend some of whatever moral capital it may still possess or claim to possess on offering a forum for those who would not, for one minute, ever permit such tolerance for non-Muslims. Nor, furthermore, would he permit any works of art -- including those gargoyles with briefcases -- or of science, or the freedom to choose various means of artistic expression, or to engage in the free and skeptical inquiry that make science possible and which form much of our civilizational legacy. That legacy, one has reason to suspect, is one which Canon John L. Peterson has not carefully considered, is insufficiently grateful for. He will not allow himself to consider the proposition that just possibly Khatami, his putative guest, has no interest in that legacy either. He will not consider the spread throughout the Western world and elsewhere of the belief-system (not "religion") of which Khatami’s colleague and successor Ahmadinejad is the fanatical embodiment, Islam, and what that spread will mean for that art, that science, that essential mental freedom.

Long ago Peter De Vries wrote a funny book, "The Mackerel Plaza," about a thoroughly-modern minister, the kind who combines Updikeian adulterous liaisons with a non-belief in God. This book was written long before the Are-You-Running-With-Me-Jesus with-it boys, the harvey-coxes of the age, came on the scene, the ones who would prefer that they not be embarrassed by too much talk about God.

Well, here we are. Hold the God. Hold the Christianity. Hold the defense of Christians. Hold the defense of the Holy Land from Muslims who, were they to gain control, would certainly kill or expel every last Jewish resident, and probably the Christians as well. Skip it. Give us "Social Justice." Give us "Reconciliation." Give us the man known to have murdered other Iranians not quite as fanatical as he -- the smiling and sinister Khatami, once official head and splendid exemplar of that hideous regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iranian ex-president Khatami invited to speak at National Cathedral

Dhimmitude from loopy Leftist Christians who believe the exercise of the Christian Faith consists essentially of executing a program of cultural surrender and moral blindness. "Iran ex-president invited to Washington," from AP, with thanks to Mackie:

WASHINGTON - Despite a diplomatic standoff over nuclear weapons and other difficult issues, a former Iranian president is making plans to speak next month at the Washington National Cathedral.

The former president, Mohammad Khatami, would be the most senior Iranian official to visit Washington since Islamic fundamentalists seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979 and held Americans there hostage for 444 days....

A State Department official, who was not authorized to be identified by name, said applications for visas had been received from Khatami and several Iranians who would travel with him.

The applications are under review, the official said....

At the Cathedral, the Rev. Canon John L. Peterson, director of its Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation, said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had invited Khatami to participate in a conference Sept. 5-6 to promote dialogue.

He said the church's center "thought it would be appropriate to invite the president to speak on the role that the three Abrahamic faiths can play in shaping peace."

"We have a special commitment to embracing the children of Abraham," he said, referring to Muslims, Christians and Jews.

"The Church calls upon us to engage in reconciliation and understanding by having conversations with people with whom we might disagree," he said.

Evan Anderson, deputy director of the Center, said the former president was in Dubai preparing to apply for permission to visit the United States.

"Any headway that is to be made in U.S.-Iranian relations is very important," Anderson said. Religious groups should play a role in fostering dialogue with Iran, he said.

Khatami would speak at the Cathedral Sept. 7 on the role of Muslims, Christians and Jews in improving world understanding.

Fitzgerald: A farce, but not by Feydeau

Azzam Tamimi insists on telling the truth: of course there is no such thing as "European Islam." There is no different text of Qur'an and Hadith and Sira stamped "European edition." Islam does not offer different versions of its immutable texts, the texts that inhibit free and skeptical inquiry, or any possible interpretive escape, a thousand years after the Gates of Ijtihad swung shut with a thud.

How Tariq Ramadan, with his phony but plausible to some (some, such as Olivier Roy and Gilles "Always Wrong" Kepel, the boys who just want to have fun, and want to be fooled about Islam), must be tearing at his hair. For this business of creating a "European Islam" -- carefully undefined, as it must be -- is the shtick of Tariq Ramadan.

And now along comes Tamimi, and queers the pitch.

Oh well, Tariq Ramadan can still try to get into the United States, where he really wants to be in any case. After all, it's the hardest nut to crack in one sense, but then there are all those sweet scott applebys to supply grants, and to defend you against the know-nothings of the CIA and FBI (not to mention all those people -- chomskys and zinns and the usual suspects, rounding up themselves to sign the indignant and impassioned letter of support for Tariq Ramadan -- who will make him as welcome as they possibly can).

Yes, that's it. Forget about that "European Islam" stuff. It won't wash. Light out for the territories. Go west, young Ramadan. Go to America, where so many are waiting to give you grants. Start with the Kroc Center, but don't end there. Knock up the Carnegie Foundation, now handing out money left and right to anyone who can put the words "Islam" and "Reform" together in a sentence, thanks to Vartan Gregorian's nostalgia for his childhood in Tabriz and his own failure to understand Islam through the glow of his memories. The new man coming aboard is if anything even worse, heading some damn program on Islam and its self-amelioration, all music to the ears of Infidels who don't want to believe, can't bear to believe, the evidence not only of their senses but of their minds -- if only they allowed those minds of theirs to study Islam, its doctrine and its 1350 years of practice.

Yes, here it is: American Islam. The brand new kind of Islam, so different from Islam in the Middle East, and in Pakistan, and in Bangladesh, and in Malaysia, and in Indonesia. So different from the Islam in Algeria, and the Sudan, and northern Nigeria. So different too from the Islam in Europe, the Islam practiced by Muslims in Bradford and London, in Madrid and Amsterdam, in Hamburg and Cologne, in Marseille and Paris, and in so many places.

American Islam is so very different. Isn't that the theme of so many articles in The New Duranty Times and in The Boston Globe these days, with smiling faces of young people, so normal, so attractive, at Dearborn High, and with all those impressive statistics about their educational level, and their income level? Oh yes, only the undereducated, only the poorer Muslims, we are now told despite all the contrary evidence, are the danger -- and anyway that just doesn't happen in America. The American "melting pot" is so very different from the European countries that have apparently done everything they can, and for decades, to make the lives of Muslims hard, to reject them, to make them feel "humiliated" despite the fantastic benefits -- the free health care, the free education, the nearly-free housing, the constant solicitude for Muslim sensibilities at every level of government and in the press. Somehow it hasn't worked.

So we will be hearing a lot more about "American Islam" as the savior of Islam and of those Infidels from here on out. The farce of "European Islam" will come to an end, and as the curtain comes slowly down on Europe, it will rise on a new farce, just booked, here in the United States.

Of course there is no "American Islam" as there is no "European Islam." There is for America and Europe no special magic or immunity from Jihad and the tenets of Islam that prompt Jihad and that inculcate hostility toward Infidels. Because Islam itself is so clearly based on the division of the world between Believer and Infidel, that division will be found arising from the teachings of Islam in Dearborn, or in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, or in Falls Church, Virginia, or in Houston, or in Columbus, Ohio. No, it will be the same Islam, the Islam of Shi'a and Sunni, and within Sunni Islam of all four schools of jurisprudence -- the Islam in which Jihad is a duty, sometimes collective and sometimes individual, to remove all obstacles to the spread of Islam, to ensure that Islam does spread, using all of the instruments of Jihad (of which combat, or qital, is only one, and at present not the most effective), so that Islam dominates everywhere, and everywhere Muslims rule. It will take time. Muslims are patient.

Are Infidels capable of the same patience in throwing back the menace of Islam? This is a menace not only to the physical security, even the lives, of Infidels, but also to the civilizational legacy that they inherited and to which further contributions might be made, but could never have been made, and will never be made, within an Islam-dominated society.

"European Islam."

"American Islam."

A farce, but not by Feydeau.

Muslim viewers to be banned from gossip

Sharia Alert from modern, moderate Indonesia. From AP, with thanks to Jimmy:

Fitri Komalasari has heard of plans by Indonesia's increasingly vocal Islamic clerics to forbid the watching of celebrity gossip shows.

But she says she can't imagine life without daily updates on the marital breakdowns, affairs and quarrels of the rich and famous.

"Life without gossip shows would be like vegetables without salt," said Komalasari, 27, who works at a city bookstore that also sells spicy entertainment news magazines. "I love to watch them. I love gossiping."

Religious leaders say some programs - like one that disclosed an alleged affair by a son of a former president and another that claimed a famous Olympic-winning athlete had an illegitimate child before marrying - are sinful because they are slanderous or exploit people's shameful secrets.

The generally moderate group, Nahdlatul Ulama, is considering issuing a fatwa against such shows - another sign, critics say, of the inroads of Islamic conservatism in the world's most populous Muslim nation, which has a tradition of moderation, tolerance and secularism.

Dozens of local governments across the sprawling archipelago have introduced Islamic regulations - from making it obligatory for women to wear head scarves to banning gambling and alcohol - and national politicians are considering bills to impose jail time for nudity in art, lewd dancing, even kissing in public.

Ma'ruf Amin, the leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, said last week the proposed religious edict, or fatwa, warns that the tens of millions of Indonesians who watch gossip shows "could end up in hell".

Fatwa in Indonesia are not legal enforceable, and it is unclear how many of the country's 190 million Muslims would obey it.

Amin said his group also plans to press the government for laws to punish the estimated 40 broadcasters that presently feed on "quarrels between husbands and wives, adultery or people living together outside wedlock".

Reactions from the gossip television industry so far have been reserved - possibly over fears of being seen as un-Islamic. They have asked for clarification about exactly where the line is.

"This edict has no legal implications, and it only applies to their (NU's) members," said Ilham Bintang, who produces eight of the country's major gossip shows and is widely regarded as the godfather of Indonesia's decade-old infotainment industry.

"As a Muslim, I agree that the act of disclosing disgraceful things of one's household should be forbidden," he said, adding that only a small percentage of his episodes deal with the content in question....

"Gossip is natural," she said ordering an iced coffee at a city mall. "It's my right."

"If one vilifies Islam, one is by necessary consequence vilifying people who hold that religious belief"

Is telling the truth about Islamic teaching vilifying Islam? Many Muslims would say so. And in the State of Victoria. It is law. We covered the first trial in this case at some length. Here is an update on the appeal. "Religion in the dock in Muslim vilification appeal," from The Age, with thanks to Rosie:

IT IS impossible to vilify Islam without also vilifying Muslims, because the two are indistinguishable, the Victorian Court of Appeal was told yesterday.

"If one vilifies Islam, one is by necessary consequence vilifying people who hold that religious belief," Brind Woinarski, QC, told the court.

Mr Woinarski was appearing for the Islamic Council of Victoria in the appeal by Christian group Catch the Fire Ministries and pastors Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot against a finding under Victoria's religious hatred law that they vilified Muslims in 2002. The Racial and Religious Tolerance Act defines vilification as inciting hatred, serious contempt, revulsion or severe ridicule against a person or class of persons.

Cameron Macaulay, for the pastors, argued that the act explicitly confined the prohibition to vilifying persons, not the religion — otherwise it could operate as a law against blasphemy. Instead, it recognised one could hate the idea without hating the person.

Justice Geoffrey Nettle asked Mr Woinarski: "There must be intellectually a distinction between the ideas and those who hold them?" "We don't agree with that," Mr Woinarski said. "But in this case it's an irrelevant distinction, because Muslims and Islam were mishmashed up together."

Justice Nettle: "Are you saying it's impossible to incite hatred against a religion without also inciting hatred against people who hold it?" Mr Woinarski: "Yes."

Mr Macaulay said orders by Judge Michael Higgins against the pastors to take out a newspaper advertisement apologising and not to repeat certain teachings were too wide, and beyond his powers under the act.

He said it was surprising that the pastors could hold the beliefs but not express them. "They are restrained by law from suggesting or implying a number of things about what in their view the Koran teaches: that it preaches violence and killing, that women are of little value, that the God of Islam, Allah, is not merciful, that there is a practice of 'silent jihad' for spreading Islam, or that the Koran says Allah will remit the sins of martyrs.

"Contentious or otherwise, these are opinions about Islam's doctrines and teaching. Statements of this kind are likely to offend and insult Muslims but their feelings are not relevant under the act." Mr Macaulay said the act burdened free speech, contravened international treaties Australia had signed and breached the Australian constitution....

British Law Against Glorifying Terrorism Has Not Silenced Calls to Kill for Islam

No surprise here, since this law was designed by British dhimmis to silence critics of jihad, not jihadists. From, of all places, the New York Times, with thanks to all who sent this in:

LONDON, Aug. 20 — From his home on the northwest edge of this city, Muhamad al-Massari runs a Web site that celebrates the violent death of British and American soldiers. It is visited by tens of thousands of people every day, he said.

Mr. Massari maintains the Arabic-language site, tajdeed.org.uk, in the face of a strict new law aimed at curtailing violent speech and publishing. Just last week, the Council of Holy Warriors, a group affiliated with Al Qaeda, posted a declaration on the site praising a suicide bombing in Iraq that killed or wounded 55 people.

“If you kill our civilians, we kill your civilians,” Mr. Massari declared during an interview.

Mr. Massari’s Web site, and his public remarks, appear to violate of the Antiterrorism Act of 2006, which makes it a crime to glorify or encourage political violence. Inciting violence has long been illegal here but the new rules, drawn up after the London subway and bus bombings in July 2005, are intended to be much tougher.

The law’s underlying assumption is that speeches and publications by Britain’s more extreme Islamists may play a role in leading disgruntled young men toward violence. In addition to banning speech that encourages terrorism, the new law also criminalizes reckless speech that may have the same effect.

Yet despite the antiglorification law, and an array of other measures approved since last summer’s bombings, Islamist leaders like Mr. Massari persist, some of them declaring it the duty of British Muslims to kill in the name of Islam.

Some British leaders are beginning to publicly question why such clerics are allowed to continue. Last week, David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, chastised the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair for failing to enforce laws intended to make it more difficult for political extremists to operate.

In remarks to the press, Mr. Cameron, a possible successor to Mr. Blair, accused the government of failing to “follow through when the headlines have moved on.”

“I do not believe that our government is doing enough to fight Islamist extremists at home or to protect our security,’’ he said. “Why have so few, if any, preachers of hate been prosecuted or expelled, with those that have gone having done so voluntarily?”

In addition to curtailing political speech, the British government outlawed 15 militant groups, most of them Muslim. It took a sterner attitude toward Islamists who had preached violence in the past, barring one well-known Syrian-born cleric, Omar Bakri Mohammed, from returning to the country. Earlier this year, it secured the conviction of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the country’s most militant cleric, for soliciting murder and racial hatred.

Yet for all those actions, the new measures do not appear to have silenced those either praising or calling for violence in the name of Islam. Some Islamist preachers have carefully scaled back their language, even if, in context, the meaning seems clear.

On Sunday, speaking before 8,000 followers in Manchester, Azam Tamimi extolled the glories of suffering for the faith.

“The greatest act of martyrdom is standing up for that is true and just,” Mr. Tamimi said. “Martyrs are those who stand up in defiance of George Bush and Tony Blair.”

The remarks by Mr. Tamimi, one in a line of Islamist scholars and clerics to address the Manchester crowd, were the latest in a series of carefully worded public statements by British Islamist leaders that seemed aimed at testing the limits of the new law. In the Islamic world, “martyrdom” means sacrificing one’s life, often violently, for the faith.

Others, meanwhile, have carried on as before, speaking in support of political violence or publishing tracts that do the same.

One of them is Atilla Ahmet, leader of the Islamist group Supporters of Shariah. In meetings with supporters and in interviews, the British-born Mr. Ahmet speaks freely about what he considers the necessity for violent action, both here and abroad, to avenge what he considers unjustified attacks on Muslims abroad.

“You are attacking our people in Muslim countries, in Iraq, in Afghanistan,’’ Mr. Ahmet said, referring to the British and American governments. “So it’s legitimate to attack British soldiers and policemen, government officials, and even the White House.”

Mr. Ahmet, a 42-year Briton of Cypriot descent, went on to include bank employees as legitimate targets “because they charge interest,” which he says is in violation of Islamic law.

Mr. Ahmet said he is aware of the new law, but that he could not shirk his duty to defend Islam, which he believes is under assault by Britain and the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. He says he often addresses his followers, who he says number 3,000.

“If you are going to kill a Muslim, then I will do everything in my power to kill you,’’ he said.

Mr. Massari, the Web site operator, said he approved of violence against British and American soldiers in Iraq, as well as against most of the governments in the Middle East. He said, for instance, that it “is legitimate for Iraqis to kill Tony Blair, the same with Bush.’’

The posting on his Web site about the Iraqi bombing said of the attackers, “We ask God to accept our brothers as martyrs.’’

Mr. Massari makes several distinctions that he says insulate him from being deported or prosecuted by the British government. He says, for instance, that he does not post any material on the Web site himself; he lets his members do that, most of whom sign up anonymously. The other important distinction, he said, is that he does not call for violence in Britain....

Asked why no one had been arrested or prosecuted for encouraging terrorism, a spokesman for Scotland Yard, the national police force, declined to comment.

Sure. What can they say? "We're spineless, terrified, cringing dhimmis"?

The Bush administration, under laws toughened after the Sept. 11 attacks, has prosecuted a number of people for encouraging terrorism.

In one of the more high-profile cases, a Muslim scholar in northern Virginia, Ali al-Timimi, was sentenced to life in prison in 2005 for urging his young Muslim followers to wage war against the United States overseas.

At a dinner meeting on Sept. 16, 2001, Mr. Timimi told some of the men in the group that it was their Muslim duty to fight for Islam overseas and to defend the Taliban in Afghanistan against American forces, according to testimony at his trial. In an Internet message in 2003, he described the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia as a “good omen” for Muslims in an apocalyptic conflict with the West....

“Anyone who supports Tony Blair,’’ said Khalid Kelley, an Irish-born convert to Islam, “is not a civilian.’’

Remember that one the next time a "moderate Muslim" assures you that Islam forbids the killing of civilians.

Suicide of the West

A superb piece by Melanie Phillips in NR:

When America was attacked on 9/11 by Islamic jihadis, it was said that this was a doomsday wake-up call for the West. Within a short while, however, much of Britain decided that 9/11 was actually America’s fault and that Israel was at the core of the problem.

When Britain was attacked last year on 7/7 by Islamic jihadis, it was said that this was a doomsday wake-up call for the U.K. Within a short time, however, much of the country decided that it was Britain’s own fault on account of “Islamophobia” and the war in Iraq.

Now 25 British Muslims have been arrested for an alleged plot to blast up to ten trans-Atlantic airliners out of the sky. This vast alleged conspiracy, thought to encompass many dozens more plotters from Germany to Pakistan, bears all the monstrous hallmarks of a classic al Qaeda operation. In addition, security sources say that dozens more al Qaeda-linked terrorist cells are at large in the U.K.

From the evidence of one opinion poll this week, the British public has at least woken up to the fact that we are in the throes of a world war. Not so, however, the British establishment and chattering classes. Denial is no longer a river in Egypt but a British pathology.

Read it all.

Glick: The coming wars

Caroline Glick's grim prognosis in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to John Doe):

Since the cease-fire was implemented in Lebanon, we have heard scattered reports indicating that a prisoner swap with the Palestinians may be in the works. In exchange for hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian terrorists now held in Israeli prisons, IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage by Palestinian terrorists for nearly two months, may be released from captivity.

These reports lend weight to the view that things are back to normal. Terrorists kidnap Israelis and hold them hostage and Israel releases terrorists in order to free them. It is a comforting thought for people like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his colleagues and the members of Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz's General Staff who continue to believe that it will be possible for Israel to sign on a dotted line and achieve "a normal existence." Unfortunately, the chance that Shalit will be released is almost as small as the chance that Israel will be able to achieve a "normal existence." Palestinian sources explain that the decision of whether or not to release Shalit is firmly in the hands of the Iranians and Syrians, and they are not in any mood to horse trade with the Jews.

Read it all.

UK: Cleric who urged jihad to be freed from prison

Soon he will be free to resume his jihad. From The Observer, with thanks to JE:

An Islamic cleric who influenced at least one of the 7 July bombers and whose videos may have been seen by several of the terror suspects arrested earlier this month, is to be freed from prison in weeks.

Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal encouraged Muslims to attend training camps so they could wage jihad on the West. He was jailed in February 2003 for nine years, reduced to seven on appeal, after being convicted of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred. Hundreds of Muslims attended his lectures in mosques across Britain, including Birmingham, London and Dewsbury in West Yorkshire.

His trial heard recordings of el-Faisal, Jamaican by birth but living in Stratford, east London, praising Osama bin Laden. 'You have to learn how to shoot and fly planes and drive tanks,' el-Faisal told those who attended his lectures. 'Jews,' el-Faisal said, 'should be killed... as by Hitler.'

He encouraged the use of chemical weapons to 'exterminate non-believers', and exhorted Muslim women to buy toy guns for their children to train them for jihad. He also suggested that nuclear power stations could be fuelled with bodies of Hindus, slaughtered for their 'oppression' of Muslims in Kashmir.

Videos of his lectures have been found circulating in Muslim circles in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, where police are concentrating inquiries into this month's alleged bomb plot involving airliners.

El-Faisal is eligible for parole having served more than half his sentence. The Home Office confirmed he had been served with a notice of deportation to Jamaica, signalling that he will be released in weeks - bar a successful appeal against the decision.

The prospect of a man described in court as a 'fanatic and an extremist' being freed has troubled Muslim leaders who fear he will continue to disseminate his views in Britain. 'Once he's deported to Jamaica, what restrictions will there be to prevent him spreading his message of hate over the internet,' asked Andrew Dismore MP.

Is Andrew Dismore a "Muslim leader"?

Chaldean priest kidnapped in Baghdad

Islamic Tolerance Alert. "Two Chaldean Priests Kidnapped in Baghdad," (the second has since been released) from Compass Direct:

August 17 (Compass Direct News) - Iraqi church leaders issued appeals today for the release of a Chaldean Catholic priest kidnapped in southeast Baghdad yesterday morning.

In an e-mailed statement, Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk Louis Sako called for the release of Father Saad Sirop of St. Jacob parish in Baghdad’s Doura district.

The appeal quoted Sura 5 of the Quran, asking that Muslims protect priests and monks. Sako also noted that Sirop was a good man who had preached and practiced love and peace.

Priests and monks are mentioned specifically in Sura 5, verse 82:

Certainly you will find the most violent of people in enmity for those who believe (to be) the Jews and those who are polytheists, and you will certainly find the nearest in friendship to those who believe (to be) those who say: We are Christians; this is because there are priests and monks among them and because they do not behave proudly.

The article continues:

"I think that there are two reasons these kidnappings are taking place," Sako told Compass over the telephone. "The first reason is money. But the second reason is that they want to push Christians out of Iraq."

The archbishop said that Doura was a majority Sunni Muslim area with a significant minority of 3,000 Christians. He said that Sunnis moving into the area from other parts of Iraq wanted to take possession of the Christians’ homes.

"Sirop was on his way home from celebrating mass at St. Jacob church at about 6:30 a.m. when his car was stopped by three armed men with masks," Sako told Compass. "They forced him into their car but left his driver alone."

The clergyman’s kidnapping was also reported today on Iraqi news websites "Buratha News" and "Aswat Al-Iraq." According to the latter, the Iraqi Islamic Party has demanded that Sirop’s kidnappers free him.

Chaldean Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Baghdad Shlemon Warduni, traveling outside of the country, also issued an appeal for the priest’s release. He directly addressed Sirop’s captors, saying that kidnapping a clergyman who had faithfully served his country did not help their cause.

Bostom: Making the World Safe for Shari’a?

Andrew Bostom writes in The American Thinker:

The Rahman “apostasy” case in Afghanistan should have been a stark wake up call. But even in Iraq there was an early, concrete sign (February 2004) of things going awry: the refusal of the interim Iraqi government to allow its ancient, historically oppressed (often brutally so) Jews to return in the wake of the 2003 liberation. Singling them out was agreed upon absent any objection, except for the dissent of one lone Assyrian Christian representative in the interim government, who knew well what such bigotry foreshadowed: the oppression and resultant exodus of the Assyrian community, which is now transpiring. And last spring came this harrowing story about Shari’a and Sistani-supporting women in the Iraqi Parliament: (Iraq’s women of power who tolerate wife-beating and promote polygamy):

As a devout Shia Muslim and one of eighty-nine women sitting in the new parliament, she knows what her first priority there is: to implement Islamic law. When Dr Ubaedey took her seat at last week’s assembly opening, she found herself among an increasingly powerful group of religious women politicians who are seeking to repeal old laws giving women some of the same rights as men and replace them with Sharia, Islam’s divine law.

We have a moral obligation to oppose Shari’a, which is antithetical to the core beliefs for which hundreds of thousands of brave Americans have died, including, ostensibly, 3000 in Iraq itself. There has never been a Shari’a state in history that has not discriminated (often violently) against the non-Muslims (and Muslim women) under its suzerainty. Moreover such states have invariably taught (starting with Muslim children) the aggressive jihad ideology which leads to predatory jihad “razzias” on neighboring “infidels”—even when certain of those “infidels” happened to consider themselves Muslims, let alone if those infidels were clearly non-Muslims.

That is the ultimate danger and geopolitical absurdity of a policy that ignores or whitewashes basic Islamic doctrine and history, while however inadvertently, making or re-making these societies “safe for Sharia*)”—as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and now, likely, an Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon.

Read it all.

Fitzgerald: A tribute to HDS Greenway

A poster at Jihad Watch recently wrote: “Once upon a time I lived in the NE. The anti Israel bias of the Boston Globe turned me into a Boston Herald customer. The Globe had more than one op-ed columnist weighing in against Israel. HDS Greenway was the worst.”

Was, and is. Though he is officially retired, the vaporings of HDS Greenway, half or 2/3 of them devoted in some way to Israel (his main topic, practically his only topic these days) can still be found on Fridays at The Boston Globe, where he has spent many years. Greenway is a Peter-Jennings sort of fellow. He never liked the Jews in Israel, something about them, but always liked the American Colony Hotel, the Arabs, smooth and accommodating. He never, not once, appears to have studied the cadastral (land-ownership) or demographic history of the area under the Ottomans, nor for that matter does he appear to know anything about the history of the wider and always demonstrated a preference for the Arabs. He had lots of friends among them -- charming, liquid brown-eyed. He found them his sort.

He is not quite as bad as Robert Fisk, more sure of himself than the uncertain but vicious Chris Hedges, and more intelligent than the vacuous Tom Ashbrook -- who after having proved his intense dedication to journalism by leaving The Globe for a get-rich scheme of some Internet company that was going to sell household goods, rushed back and begged for a job, and was finally taken in by Jane Christo. While the smarmy Dick Gordon was fired, the just-as-smarmy and even dumber Ashbrook was kept on, and there he is today, with his "On Point" that, whenever it comes to the Middle East, apparently vets the callers so that those offering a word of support of Israel are always swamped by the others. I know several such callers whom Ashbrook has banned -- he has their phone numbers and names. The young people who answer the phone take these down, then go away, look up the list of those whom Ashbrook has banned because they are too damn convincing, and then they always come back -- several people have told me -- and always say "Gee, we have another question just like that ahead of you" or "Gee, afraid we won't have time to get to you." So much for the phoniness of that invitation to "join the conversation" that Ashbrook keeps repeating.

Well, back to Greenway. He would show up on Morrissey Boulevard, wowing the inkstained wretches with his rotation of cars each day, and his Yankee bowties (there's one bow-tie wearer in every Ropes & Gray or Hill & Barlow, and so too at The Boston Globe), and the Winships thought he was just fine.

He knew, and knows, nothing about the Middle East. He knows nothing, even though he spent years reporting from there, because he has never understood Islam, its centrality, its relevance to everything that happens. He deeply believes in the existence of the "Palestinian people." He deeply refuses to find out very much -- he never showed any interest -- about the history of the Mandate for Palestine, the history of land ownership in that area under the Ottomans and later, the demographic history of the area, or for that matter the demographics related to Jews and Christians in what became Mandatory Palestine, or all over what Greenway no doubt thinks of as "the Arab world." He has no linguistic gifts, no historical training. Some find him ornamental. From time to time he has been pressed into service to introduce a visiting speaker for some local foreign-affairs-council, for those who like to think they keep up with events, and for whom a good lecture by, say, Rami Khouri or Brent Scowcroft, or someone else of that ilk and bias, will tell them all they need to know in order to understand the Middle East.

Greenway fits right in with an Op/Ed page that favors outside commentators of the Wiliam Pfaff-Jonathan Power variety, all of whom overlap on one point: their complete lack of sympathy or understanding for Israel, their deep belief that there is no problem with Muslim peoples or polities that cannot be solved by giving them what they demand from Israel, now and in the future.

Has H.D. S. Greenway ever taken the trouble to study the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the biography of Muhammad? In the hundreds of thousands of words he has produced, in his mere reporting over many years, and in his attempt more recently to make his own kind of sense of men and events, he has never given the slightest hint of having done so.

His entire professional life has been, thus, worthless.

Arab Nationalism Run Rampant at Middlebury

Franck Salameh, who teaches Arabic studies at Boston College, writes about the marginalization of non-Muslim Arabic-speaking people, as well as of non-Arab Muslims, and the erasure of Israel, at Middlebury College's highly politicized Arabic Summer School. From RealClearPolitics:

At Middlebury College's Arabic Summer School, where I recently taught Arabic, students were exposed to more than intensive language instruction. Inside the classroom and across campus, administrators and language teachers adhered to a restrictive Arab-nationalist view of what is generically referred to as the "Arab world." In practice, this meant that the Middle East was presented as a mono-cultural, exclusively Arab region. The time-honored presence and deep-rooted histories of tens of millions of Kurds, Assyrians, Copts, Jews, Maronites, and Armenians--all of whom are indigenous Middle Easterners who object to an imputed "supra-Arab" identity--were dismissed in favor of a reductionist, ahistorical Arabist narrative. Those who didn't share this closed view of the Middle East were made to feel like dhimmi--the non-Muslim citizens of some Muslim-ruled lands whose rights are restricted because of their religious beliefs.

In maps, textbooks, lectures, and other teaching materials used in the instruction of Arabic, Israel didn't exist, and the overarching watan 'Arabi (Arab fatherland) was substituted for the otherwise diverse and multi-faceted "Middle East." Curious and misleading geographical appellations, such as the "Arabian Gulf" in lieu of the time-honored "Persian Gulf," abounded. Syria's borders with its neighbors were marked "provisional," and Lebanon was referred to as a qutr (or "province") of an imagined Arab supra-state.

Nor was the Arabic school's narrow definition of Middle Eastern culture restricted to the classroom. Alcohol was prohibited during school events and student parties, and although a school official claimed the ban reflected Middlebury's campus policy, beer and wine flowed freely during cookouts and gatherings organized by the German, French, and Spanish schools. Banning alcohol is a matter of Islamic practice and personal interpretation--not accepted behavior throughout the Middle East--and reflected the Arabic school's conflation of Arabic with Islamic.

Similarly, the Arabic school's dining services conformed to the halal dietary restrictions of Islam, an act implying that all Arabic speakers are Muslims, and that all Muslims are observant; yet less that 20 percent of the Arabic school community was Muslim. No such accommodations were made for Jewish students who kept kosher, even though they outnumbered the Muslims.

Read it all.

Pakistan: Muslim land-grabbers attack Christians

Islamic Tolerance Alert from our friend and ally: "Muslim Land-Grabbers Attack Christians: One believer missing, three severely injured; police file charges against victims," from Compass Direct:

August 18 (Compass Direct News) – In an attempted land-grab, Muslim attackers have terrorized a predominantly Christian village in Pakistan’s Punjab province over the past two weeks and demolished its church.

Three Christian men were hospitalized with serious hatchet wounds from an initial August 7 attack on Mominpura Thaiki village near Sharaqpur, 20 miles southwest of Lahore. The Muslim aggressors came from a neighboring village.

Another critically injured Christian, Bashir Masih, was abducted and remains missing since a second assault on the village on Saturday (August 12), when he tried to stop armed attackers from stealing his cattle.

Yaqoob Maher, a Muslim ex-convict and landowner from a neighboring village, has been accused under Pakistan’s anti-terrorist laws of masterminding and leading the two attacks.

After a six-year campaign to force the Christian villagers off their lands, Maher’s latest assaults left the village church in ruins. The marauders exploded several hand grenades inside the church, stole everything of value and desecrated Bibles and hymnbooks. They also destroyed two houses adjacent to the church, one by fire.

A number of Christian women were beaten and their clothes ripped and partially torn off, an especially painful public disgrace in Pakistani culture.

Read it all.

Fury after Jihad Jack walks free from jail

Jihad Jack Update from The Australian, with thanks to Nicolei:

THE families of terror victims have described the decision by an appeals court to release "Jihad" Jack Thomas - the first man jailed under the Howard Government's new terrorism laws - as a farce.

A Melbourne court's decision yesterday to quash the conviction of the Muslim convert - who met Osama bin Laden and other al-Qa'ida operatives just months before the September 11 attacks - was embarrassing for the Government and the Australian Federal Police and distressing for families of terror victims.

Although Mr Thomas could face fresh terror charges arising out of an ABC interview conducted in his Melbourne home during the trial and aired after the conviction, Peter Iliffe, the father of a Bali bombing victim, said the decision to free him showed how "disconnected the judiciary was from reality".

And David Byron, who lost his 15-year-old daughter Chloe in Bali, said there should be "zero tolerance" for those accused of terrorism. "I don't know what's happening in this country. I read that another terrorist was released in Indonesia last week because of a holiday."

But the lawyer for Faheem Lodhi, a Sydney man convicted of preparing a terrorist attack, praised the court's decision as "good old-fashioned" justice.

The Mufti of Egypt: The True Face of the Blood-Sucking Hebrew Entity has Been Exposed

The Mufti of Egypt -- yes, the same one who wants to destroy all of Egypt's pre-Islamic artwork -- repeats the ancient blood libel. From MEMRI, with thanks to all who sent this in:

In an article in the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram, Egyptian Mufti Sheikh Dr. 'Ali Gum'a expressed his support of the resistance in Lebanon and stated that the lies of the "Hebrew entity" expose "the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers... who prepare [Passover] matzos from human blood." [1]

The following are excerpts from the article:

"Greetings to the Lebanese people, to the Lebanese government, and to the Lebanese resistance - to the small and beautiful country that has proved to the world that the ideals of determination, bravery and self-dignity still exist in this era that has been taken over by the blood-sucking murderers.

"Anyone who follows the news will discover that the Hebrew entity has turned into a [source] of [empty] talk, while the Arab discourse, which was characterized in the sixties [as empty talk], has developed significantly. [The Arabs] have learned a lesson and have moved from talk to action, and from the fostering of illusions to honesty, transparency, realistic goal-setting and ability to change. The Israeli discourse, [on the other hand], has turned to false declarations based on illusions, with wishful thinking taking precedence over facts.

"These lies have exposed the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers who were described by Filmange in his book The Treasure Hidden in the Talmudic Laws [sic], which tells how [the Jews] planned [to prepare] a matzo [unleavened Passover bread] using human blood. [2] If we follow events, the most important thing [that we discover], in my opinion, is that the war going on [today] plants hatred in the next generations, as though one of its goals is to perpetuate the conflict for many years to come.

He's certainly right about the hatred, if not about its perpetrator.

In Christian-Muslim relations, peace not served by ignoring history

Honesty and realism, i.e., anti-dhimmitude, from Charles Chaput, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Denver (thanks to Uncle Jeff):

...Catholics who do know history may remember the following:

Islam has embraced armed military expansion for religious purposes since its earliest decades. In contrast, Christianity struggled in its divided attitudes toward military force and state power for its first 300 years. No “theology of Crusade” existed in Western Christian thought until the 11th century. In fact, the Christian Byzantine Empire had already been resisting Muslim expansion in the East for 400 years before Pope Urban II called the First Crusade — as a defensive response to generations of armed jihad.

Much of the modern Middle East was once heavily Christian. Muslim armies changed that by imposing Islamic rule. Surviving Christian communities have endured centuries of marginalization, discrimination, violence, slavery and outright persecution — not always and not everywhere; but as a constant, recurring and central theme of Muslim domination.

That same Christian suffering continues down to the present. In the early years of the 20th century, the Muslim Ottoman Empire murdered more than 1 million Armenian Christians for ethnic, economic, but also religious reasons. Many Turks and other Muslims continue to deny that massive crime even today. Coptic Christians in Egypt — who, even after 13 centuries of Muslim prejudice and harassment, cling to the faith — continue to experience systematic discrimination and violence at the hands of Islamic militants.

Harassment and violence against Christians continue in many places throughout the Islamic world, from Bangladesh, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and Iraq, to Nigeria, Indonesia and even Muslim-dominated areas of the heavily Catholic Philippines. In Saudi Arabia, all public expressions of Christian faith are forbidden. The on-going Christian flight from Lebanon has helped to transform it, in just half a century, from a majority Christian Arab nation to a majority Muslim population.

These are facts. The Muslim-Christian conflict is a very long one, rooted in deep religious differences, and Muslims have their own long list of real and perceived grievances. But especially in an era of religiously inspired terrorism and war in the Middle East, peace is not served by ignoring, subverting or rewriting history, but rather by facing it humbly as it really happened and healing its wounds.

Egypt: Christian knifed by Muslim who vows to kill him and all "infidels"

More persecution in Egypt. "Christian Cobbler Knifed for Offhand Comment: Muslim fanatic with criminal record admits intention to kill him and ‘all infidels,’" from Compass Direct:

August 15 (Compass Direct News) – A Muslim ex-convict stabbed and killed a Christian cobbler northeast of Cairo in June, confessing that he had planned to murder him because he was an ‘infidel’ who had made an offhand comment that offended him.

Hossam Hafez Ahmad Attaya knifed Fouad Fawzy Tawfik on June 27 as the shoemaker was bending down to take the Muslim man’s foot measurement near his shop in Zagazig, provincial capital of Sharkeya.

“I want to kill him because he is an infidel, let me kill them all!” Attaya was heard to shout as he sunk an eight-inch blade into the Christian’s left lung and stomach, according to Tawfik’s family.

“My brother was clearly victimized for being a Christian,” Noshe Fawzy Tawfik told Compass.

Restraining Attaya from stabbing Fouad Tawfik a second time, bystanders called an ambulance. The shoemaker died minutes later from loss of blood before he could reach the hospital.

Bush declares war against "individuals"

"Islamic fascists"? Never mind. Oh, and in other news: to avoid offending Germans, President Roosevelt has announced that he is dropping all reference to the "National Socialist German Workers Party," and will henceforth refer not to our war against the Nazis, but to our war against "individuals that would like to kill innocent Americans to achieve political objectives."

Archdhimmitude in Washington, as Bush bows to his Saudi masters: "Bush drops reference to 'Islamic fascists,'" from AP, with thanks to Andrew Bostom:

STATE DEPARTMENT President Bush has avoided repetition of a term that angered Muslims.

Responding last week to the foiling of an alleged plot to blow up flights between Britain and the United States, Bush said, "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists."

That triggered immediate objections from the Council of American-Islamic Relations, and another objection today from the government of Saudi Arabia.

In a statement after its weekly meeting, the Saudi Cabinet "warned against labeling Muslims with accusations of terrorism and fascism."

Bush didn't repeat the reference to "Islamic fascists" at the State Department today, referring instead to "individuals that would like to kill innocent Americans to achieve political objectives."

UK Home Sec'y Reid: Islam means peace

Of course, in fact it means "submission." How confident can Reid really be of defeating this "intolerant and violent totalitarianism" when he refuses even to look squarely at its deep roots in Islamic tradition and teaching -- despite the fact that the very depth of those roots will give him a good indication of what he really may reasonably expect from many Muslims in Britain?

"Europe faces 'very real threat,'" from the BBC, with thanks to M.:

UK Home Secretary John Reid has said Europe faces a "persistent and very real" threat from terrorism, after a meeting with EU counterparts in London.

But he said the presence of five other interior ministers and top EU officials symbolised Europe's determination to stand together and defend their values.

Finland, holder of the EU presidency, congratulated the UK on pre-empting an apparent plot to bomb US-bound planes.

Twenty-four people are now in custody in the UK over the alleged plot.

Mr Reid said the European Union needed to develop its counter-terror policies in response to the evolving threat.

He said the talks had discussed practical measures in four areas:

* Tackling liquid explosives
* Co-ordination of transport security
* Exchange of intelligence
* The nature of European Islam

The world was faced by a form of "intolerant and violent totalitarianism", he added, which was subverting a religion, Islam, whose very name stood for peace.

And even if it did stand for peace, what kind of peace, Reid? On what terms? What makes you think Islam means by peace the same thing you mean by it? Why has it never occurred to you even to consider seeking answers to such questions?

Multiculturalism is to blame for perverting young Muslims

What Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali thinks of as "Islamic radicalism" is older than he realizes; it didn't begin with Ibn Taymiyya, as the great jihad conquests that created the heart of what we think of as the Islamic world took place before the birth of that famous Islamic jurist; in fact, "Islamic radicalism" is as old as the Muslim Prophet Muhammad himself, as I demonstrate in my forthcoming book The Truth About Muhammad. But much of what the Bishop has to say here is absolutely true, and useful.

From the Telegraph, with thanks to B.:

Islamic radicalism did not begin with Muslim grievances over Western foreign policy in Iraq or Afghanistan. It has deep roots, going back to the 13th-century reformer Ibn Taimiyya, through Wahhabism to modern ideologues such as Sayyid Qutb in Egypt or Maududi in Pakistan.

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan gave it the cause it was looking for, and Afghanistan became the place where Muslim radicals were trained, financed and armed (often with Western assistance).

The movements that were born or renewed do not have any kind of centralised command structure, but co-operate through diffuse networks of affinity and patronage. One of their most important aims is to impose their form of Islam on countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, Malaysia and Indonesia. This may be why they were not regarded as an immediate threat to the West. Their other aims, however, include the liberation of oppressed Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya and elsewhere, and also the recovery of the Dar Al-Islam (or House of Islam), in its historic wholeness, including the Iberian peninsula, the Balkans and even India.

In this cause, the rest of the world, particularly the West, is Dar al-Harb (House of War). These other aims clearly bring such movements into conflict with the international community and with Western interests in particular.

So how does this dual psychology - of victimhood, but also the desire for domination - come to infect so many young Muslims in Britain? When I was here in the early 1970s, the practice of Islam was dominated by a kind of default Sufism or Islamic mysticism that was pietistic and apolitical. On my return in the late 1980s, the situation had changed radically. The change occurred because successive governments were unaware that the numerous mosques being established across the length and breadth of this country were being staffed, more and more, with clerics who belonged to various fundamentalist movements.

There were no criteria for entry, no way of evaluating qualifications and no programme for making them aware of the culture that they were entering. Until quite recently, ministers and advisers did not realise the scale of the problem, even though it was repeatedly brought to their attention. Secondly, in the name of multiculturalism, mosque schools were encouraged and Muslim pupils spent up to six extra hours a day learning the Koran and Islamic tradition, as well as their own regional languages. Finally, there are the grievances. Some of these are genuine enough, but the complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene where Muslims are victims (as in Bosnia or Kosovo), and always wrong when they may be the oppressors or terrorists (as with the Taliban or in Iraq), even when their victims are also mainly Muslims.

Given the world view that has given rise to such grievances, there can never be sufficient appeasement, and new demands will continue to be made. It is clear, therefore, that the multiculturalism beloved of our political and civic bureaucracies has not only failed to deliver peace, but is the partial cause of the present alienation of so many Muslim young people from the society in which they were born, where they have been educated and where they have lived most of their lives.

Read it all.

Italy: Murdered Pakistani woman's father sought

Eurabia Alert from AKI, with thanks to S.:

Rome, 14 August (AKI) - Italian police investigating the suspected 'honour killing' of a 20-year-old Pakistani woman are looking for her father and two other male relatives - a brother-in-law and an uncle - in connection with the murder. The body of the woman, Hina Saleem, was found buried in the garden of her parents' home in Sarezzo, near the northern Italian city of Brescia on Saturday. Her throat had been slit.

The woman's disappearance was reported by her Italian boyfriend, a 33-year carpenter, identified as Giuseppe in news reports.

The couple began their relationship a year ago against the wishes of Saleem's father Muhammad, against whom Hina had pressed violent abuse charges in the past, only to withdraw them later, and who according to reports had promised her in marriage to a cousin in Pakistan. In March Hina went to live with Giuseppe and began working at a local pizzeria.

While she preferred to wear Western-style clothes most of the time - she was wearing jeans when her body was found - she would cover her hair as a "sign of respect" when visiting the family home, neighbours said.

Investigators believe that Hina's mother Bushra - who the neighbours often tried to defend her daughter from her father's rage - may have left for Pakistan a few week ago taking her younger children with her.

In his wife's absence, police suspect the 56-year-old Muhammad, together with the other male relatives decided to murder Hina after she refused one last request for her to leave Italy and to accept the arranged marriage in Pakistan.

On Saturday police found Muhammad's car abandoned on the side of a road near Sarezzo, but have thus far failed to locate him or the other two men.

Muslim takeover at Catholics’ website

Countering stereotypes by hijacking someone else's website. From the Evening Mail, with thanks to Twostellas:

CATHOLICS logging onto a Barrow church website were diverted onto a site run by a Muslim organisation.

St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, on Michaelson Road, Barrow Island, keeps abreast of 21st century technology by having its own website.

But anyone trying to access www.stpatrickscumbria.co.uk website last week was diverted instead to a site called Islam Answers Back.

The site says Islam Answers Back is a division of Islaminfo.com.

In what appears to be a response to events both in the Middle East and here in the UK the website message says: “Muslims cannot stand idly by watching as Islam is under siege.

“Muslims have to provide answers to the objections and negative stereotypes of Islam.”...

Taxpayers fund Islamic center

More on this case from WorldNetDaily:

An announcement that the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Va., has refurbished a building to be used as a prayer room for Muslim soldiers and civilians on base is a "bad signal," one critic has concluded.

The Marines announced earlier this summer that one of the buildings on the base had been repainted so that Muslims would have a place to pray and hold religious services

The new "Islamic Prayer Center" is the first of its kind on a Marine base, and "serves to express the Marine Corps' recognition of diversity among service members and the commitment to provide continued support to all Marines regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or gender," the base announcement said.

However, Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer said he wonders why the Marines do not seem concerned such facilities might to used to generate anti-American sympathies.

"It's going to go up as part of a testament to American multiculturalism and so on without any indication of the possibility that this could be a source of what we're fighting against," he said. "It just sends a bad signal."

Fitzgerald: A tribute to Peter Bergen and Lawrence Wright

Peter Bergen, consistently miscomprehending Islam -- go back and check the record of rich embarrassment -- is hardly alone. All sorts of writers on Bin Laden or on Al Qaeda purvey inside dopesterism and piquant details about Bin Laden's wives (including the one who ordered lingerie and ran around in a track suit, no doubt trying to hold onto her man who jettisoned her for a 15-year-old Yemeni girl -- a full six years older than little Aisha, the favorite wife of the man Bin Laden aims to emulate). They appear to think that these details about Bin Laden as son, Bin Laden as brother, Bin Laden as would-be leader of mujahedin in Afghanistan, Bin Laden as either the great leader and inspirer, or alternatively, as the great organizer of Al Qaeda, are illuminating of the “root causes” of the Jihad. So this is all breathlessly packaged and then appears, in tantalizing bits, in GQ or The New Yorker or Vanity Fair. But the reader learns nothing, absolutely nothing, about Islam, about the texts that have consumed Bin Laden, that animate him and his fellows. It is all Reader's Digest-level stuff, though the income from being a "consultant" or an "expert" to this or that news channel certainly kicks one's economic status up several rungs.

On NPR I listened to a voice that sounded as if it belonged to someone particularly naive. He was talking all about Bin Laden. I heard him, as I pulled out of the grocery store's parking lot, discussing how before Al Qaeda the various terror groups were all "nationalistic" in their desires. Yes, how true. Not the desire to eliminate the Infidel state of Israel, but rather the desire by so many Arabs and Muslims to show their solicitousness for the "legitimate rights" of the "Palestinian people" (whose actual lives are a matter of complete indifference to other Arabs and Muslims, as one can see by how they are not permitted to integrate into or become citizens of any Arab country but Jordan). And how very "nationalistic" are the declared aims of Lashkar-e-Taiba, or a hundred other groups.

Yet this group is hellbent on killing Hindus not only in Kashmir but all over India -- for the goal is not that of helping the "legitimate rights of the Kashmiri people" but of establishing, rather, rule by Islam over first Kashmir, and then over other parts of India as well. Over all of India. Nothing "nationalistic" about it. This is of course true of other conflicts also that are generally regarded as nationalistic: for example, the war of Muslim northerners against the Christian, predominately Ibo, people of what was to be the independent state of Biafra. The Muslims were conducting, as Col. Ojukwu said, a "Jihad" against the non-Muslims. The Abu Sayyaf terror group in the Philippines has not stated any "nationalistic" aims; its aim is to end Christian rule over Muslims, and eventually, to extend the area over which the Muslims dominate. And the same is true with the Muslim attacks on Christians in Sulawesi, in the Moluccas, in East Timor, and on Hindu interests in Bali.

But Lawrence Wright was convinced that it was only when Bin Laden came along that a "nationalist" impulse, found here and there, was given a unifying framework, the framework of Islam. Had Wright been more than a mere reporter, a reporter of what so-and-so did or said, he might have spent a summer reading widely in the doctrine and the history of Islam. If he had done so, the things that he cannot quite grasp would have become clear. Instead, he passes on his confusion to his readers.

Then the speaker said something about how Bin Laden was "rejecting modernity." This "rejection of modernity" stuff is all over the place. It's nonsense. Muslims do not reject any of the gewgaws produced by the modern West. Airplanes, television, the Internet, satellite television, Western medicine, the whole shebang. If by "modernity" the author means, instead, the universal civilization of the West, that is now to be found everywhere. This is reflected not in those gewgaws but in the belief in the emphasis placed on the individual and on rights guaranteed to individuals. And if by "modernity" one means the very idea that a government's legitimacy is to be located in the expressed will of citizens, rather than in the revealed desires of Allah some 1350 years ago and his unalterable law of what is to be forbidden and what is to be commanded, then yes, you could call Bin Laden and all the other perfectly orthodox Muslims engaged in terrorism as "against modernity" -- but it would distract and confuse those who need to know that what Bin Laden is against, and what he is for, is not different from what a Muslim warrior was against and for in 1804 in West Africa, in 1600 in Hindustan, in 1453 in Constantinople. He is for exactly what any of a long line of those engaged in violent Jihad have wanted: the rule of Allah upon earth.

Finally the interviewer (Terry Gross? Someone else? I can't remember) gave the title of the speaker's book -- "The Looming Tower" -- and his name, Lawrence Wright. I had heard the name, and I wondered what made Lawrence Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker, think he could write a book about Bin Laden without immersing himself in the texts that Bin Laden refers to constantly, that Bin Laden has taken as the source for his entire being, and to which he makes constant appeal in everything he says or does.

In today's New Duranty Times, there is a story about Grisha Perelman and a possible proof of Poincare's Conjecture. What, I wondered to myself, would one think of the author of that piece had he confused the mathematician Poincare with that other Poincare, the political figure. Not much. But every day "terrorism experts" and "Bin Laden experts" and "Al Qaeda experts" flogging their wares, or delivering themselves of some well-recompensed banality on some nightly news program ("Well, Al Qaeda could be behind this. It bears all the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation. Then again, it could be some entirely different group. Hard to tell") make a similarly glaring error. No one cares.

But these Bergens and Wrights, in getting the most obvious and most important things wrong, are akin to that writer about Perelman and Hamilton and the Poincare Conjecture, had he, that reporter, described for his audience "the very versatile Frenchman Poincare, not only a mathematician of the first rank but also the President of France just before and during the First World War, who later served as the Prime Minister as well. Amazing what politicians used to be like." Or so I could so easily imagine -- for what's in a name, Henri or Raymond, they both end in Poincare, how much attention exaggerated to detail do you require, and what does it matter?

And what does it matter if Peter Bergen tells an interviewer that if he could ask Osama Bin Laden one, just one question, that question would be "Where in the Quran can you find justification for killing innocent civilians?" -- with all the colossal ignorance that that question betrays? And what does it matter if Lawrence Wright, staff writer for The New Yorker, where once upon a time William Maxwell and Katherine White and E. B. White, and James Thurber, and Brendan Gill, and Philip Hamburger, and many others -- grown-ups all, and supported by a cast of contributing grown-ups (Niccolo Tucci, I. B. Singer, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, John Cheever, John Updike, S. N. Behrman, Joseph Mitchell, J. D. Salinger, and many others, hundreds of others), proceeds to tell us, to tell the NPR audience and his readers, that Bin Laden was at war not with Infidels, but with "modernity," and that before Bin Laden all Muslim terrorists were merely "nationalists"? What does Wright think the nation-state means in Islam? What can he conceivably think it means?

Henri, Raymond, what's the difference. Bin Laden is bad, so what's the difference if we don't quite pinpoint what it is that makes him bad, and that makes him and so many uncountable others bad? What does it matter if we don’t care to discover what makes their ranks endlessly replenishable as long as people continue to believe, and to find their entire mental universe both created and limited by the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Sira? After all, now we know about his wife jogging in her track suit, and how he treated his kids, and how that stuff -- "modernity" -- managed to get his goat.

Oh God, I cried. Is there to truth no duty?

A George-Herbert moment.

Was I overreacting? Was I wrong? Should I simply acquiesce in having to be faced every day with evidence of shallowness, ignorance, and stupidity by those who presume to instruct us on matters that affect our physical and civilizational survival?

Or do I, just possibly, have a point?

What do you think?

Fitzgerald: An hour of complete mindlessness

At the gym I watched CNN, an hour of complete mindlessness with Christiane Amanpour, trying to find, trying to understand, trying to come to grips with, what it is, what could it be, what might it be, that makes some "young Muslims" -- a tiny tiny minority of them, contemplate suicide bombings of the kind involved in the plot just revealed in England.

There were "experts" on Islam and "experts" on terror. The first "expert" explained at as long as "young Muslims" (the British equivalent of the "yoots" in "My Cousin Vinny") were exposed to "pictures" of what was going on going on in "Palestine" -- yes, what is going on in "Palestine" or rather Israel (and by the way, why are there not Jewish plotters planning to get revenge on so many countries that have abandoned Israel, thrown it to the Arab and Muslim wolves?) -- and in "Iraq" and in "Chechnya" and in "Afghanistan" and, continued the "expert," as long as these yoots believed that Islam was being attacked, Islam was under siege, their rage would continue to grow.

There was more in this vein. There was a Muslim, a friend of two brothers who had been picked up for their part in the plane-bombing plot, who kept saying that "all communities -- Christians, Jews, Muslims, all of them" have their "extremists" and all of them occasionally get out of control, and in any case he went on and on about how there was nothing, absolutely nothing, except indignation at the terrible things being done to Muslims that could conceivably explain these Muslim plans and plots and mass murders, past, and passing, and to come.

And among those "experts" was Lawrence Wright, who proceeded to explain that the "Arabs and Muslims" in the United States were not a worry. They were so much better integrated, because -- well, because they were, because 70% of them earned over $50,000 and so many of them had college degrees and so on. It was as if none of the information that has been so widely disseminated about how "disproportionately" the well-educated or rather, well-degreed and well-off Muslims are represented in the ranks of Muslim terrorists had never reached him. Nor has it reached the other fellow who came after, who said that "Lawrence Wright is absolutely correct" in his explanation of why the "Muslim community" in the United States is so much less threatening.

Not a single person appeared to think that the true explanation was other: there are at most 3 million declared Muslims in the United States, with a population of 300 million. Of those, 2 million are Black Muslims, a group whose practices, and attitudes, lead them to be regarded as not real or full Muslims by the real, Pakistani or Arab variety. That leaves at most 1 million Muslims out of a population of 300 million. And far more of those 300 million are believing Christians. And there are also many more Jews than there are in Great Britain. Furthermore, American attitudes are not colored by any diseased guilt over some Empire, nor are Americans quite so inclined to be influenced by the pro-Arab lobbies and agents that long ago took over the Foreign Office, but have also, in the past few decades, successfully infiltrated into the upper reaches of the BBC and many of the main newspapers. America, thank god, remains different.

But the main thing, of course, is merely that Muslims are not as numerous as they are in Great Britain. Out of a population that is 1/5 the size of that in America, Great Britain has 1.5 times as many Muslims (that "Muslim friend of two brothers picked up" predictably exaggerated their numbers, claiming there are "2.2 million Muslims" in Great Britain). In other words, in proportion to the non-Muslim population, Muslims in Great Britain are seven times as numerous as Muslims are in the United States. And the same obtains in other European countries, where the Infidel governments and the most farseeing citizens are tearing their hair out at the thought that this problem was entirely the result of negligence, of ignorance of the belief-system of Islam.

Oh, she looked, Christiane Amanpour. Indeed she did. She tried to elicit answers from that Muslim frien of those Muslim brothers. She asked first one expert on "terrorism" , and then another, and another, and another, to find out what it is that "makes them do it." She sought the answer here, she sought the answer there, she sought her answer everywhere. But that Answer proved as elusive for Christiane Amanpour as did, for the French, that demmed elusive Pimpernel, played long ago, in a different England, by that elegant immigrant, who had no trouble "integrating" into England despite his Hungarian Jewish background, a certain Leslie (Steiner) Howard.

UK Muslims: Give us Sharia, special holidays, and more -- or else

Or else more of us will become jihadists.

In a sane world, it would be Muslim leaders who would be reassuring the British government that they would redouble efforts to root terrorists out of their midst. "Muslims call for special bank holidays," from the Daily Mail, with thanks to Designnut:

Muslim leaders summoned to talks with the Government on tackling extremism in their midst called for public holidays to mark their religious festivals....

Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly had prepared an uncompromising message on the need to tackle dangerous radicalism.

But, in what she admitted were 'sharp' exchanges, some senior Muslim figures turned the tables yesterday and made a series of demands which also included the introduction of Sharia law for family matters.

Dr Syed Aziz Pasha, secretary general of the Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK and Ireland, said: 'We told her if you give us religious rights, we will be in a better position to convince young people that they are being treated equally along with other citizens.'

Dr Pasha said Miss Kelly had agreed to look at the proposals, though her spokesman insisted later that she did not favour any legal change which would give 'special treatment' for the Muslim community.

Some of the 30 moderate Muslim leaders at the meeting told Miss Kelly that important days in their two main religious festivals - Ramadan and Eid-ul-Adha - should be made public holidays for followers of the faith.

Sharia law, which is practised in large parts of the Middle East, should also be introduced in Britain, they argued. While it specifies stonings and amputations as routine punishments for crimes, Dr Pasha said he wanted it only for family affairs.

Under the law, a husband pays his wife a dowry on marriage, and money and assets are shared out between family members in specified amounts after someone dies.

'We are willing to co-operate but there should be a partnership,' Dr Pasha said.

'They should understand our problems then we will understand their problems.'

A recent poll suggested that a third of British Muslims would rather live under Sharia law, while a similar number said they also hope Britain will one day become an Islamic state. But Dr Pasha claimed the legal changes he proposed would help convince young Muslims to integrate better into British society.

The Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK and Ireland claims to be a widely representative umbrella group. However, it does not include more influential and high-profile bodies such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the MCB, also attended the meeting but distanced his group from the calls for Sharia law.

He said: 'We believe one legal code should apply for all citizens of the UK. There is no place for multiple legal systems for people of different religious or ethnic backgrounds.

'If people object to a certain law they should campaign peacefully and democratically for a change - but only so that it applies to all people, not just Muslims.' The Government has accused Muslim leaders of a 'dreadful misjudgment' for claiming its foreign policy has fuelled the threat of extremism. An open letter, signed by three Muslim MPs, three peers and 38 community groups, said the 'debacle' of Iraq, combined with the recent failure to do more to bring about an immediate end to the Middle East conflict, had encouraged extremists who threaten Britain....

Haras Rafiq, of the Sufi Muslim Council, said: 'The first thing that we need to do as a community is admit there is a problem.

'It is like being an alcoholic - we need to stand up and say these things and have an open and honest debate.'

Kharshid Ahmed, chairman of the British Muslim Forum, said: 'We believe that the threat is still external - it is people coming from outside and leading the radicalisation.

'We need to deal with that before people inside our communities are leading the radicalisation.'

They already are, Kharshid. Or haven't you noticed that some of the 7/7 bombers and most of those recently arrested were British citizens?

Egypt: Copts lose homes, freedom over spurious murder charge

Islamic Tolerance Alert from Egypt: "Egypt: Copts Lose Homes, Freedom Over Murder Charge: Months after mosque calls for attack on Christians, victims of riot still awaiting justice," from Compass Direct:

August 14 (Compass Direct News) – Families of five jailed Christians have lost their homes northeast of Cairo after authorities persuaded them to turn over deeds to their property in exchange for what was supposed to be the release of relatives accused of murder.

Abdel Masih Awad Sayeed, 86, and four relatives in Sharkeya province have been in police custody since December 11. Officials detained the five after the death of a Muslim the previous day prompted rioting in the village of Kafr Salama Ibrahim.

Medical examiners concluded that injuries to Mohammed Ahmad Abu Talib in a fight with two of the Christian men could not have caused his death, but lawyers and a family member told Compass that the two Christians and three relatives are charged with “conspiracy to murder” Talib.

Talib’s death occurred last December 10, when he intervened on his son’s behalf in a fight with Christian brothers Yusef and Wa’el Abdel Maseh Awad, a relative said. The brothers’ cousin, Milad Samy Zaki, told Compass that after beating the Christians, Talib suffered a stroke and died minutes later.

A forensic medical report published in June, more than six months later, found that Talib had 75 percent blockage in his right coronary artery, and that two other arteries contained 60 and 90 percent blockage.

“Advanced atherosclerotic changes were found in all coronary arteries,” said the report, obtained by Compass.

Medical examiners concluded that “superficial injuries” to Talib’s nose, neck and left leg in the fight were “not sufficient to cause a death.” But when the Muslim population of Kafr Salama Ibrahim heard a call from mosque loudspeakers to attack Christian homes, many retaliated under the assumption that the Awad brothers had killed Talib.

“From 2:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., a crowd of Muslims attacked Christian homes while police did nothing,” Milad Zaki said. “They went to Sayeed’s house, where Yusef and Wa’el Awad’s families were also living, and threw all of the furniture out the window and burned it, beating everyone up.”

According to a police report, the crowd destroyed seven Christian homes and a chicken farm during the rioting.

Read it all.

Jihad and Dhimmitude: A Real-Life Test Case

Diana West, guest blogging for Michelle Malkin, comments on recent calls for Sharia in Britain:

In the wake of the Airplane Plot, the same story reported that Ruth Kelly, who is something official called the Secretary of State for Communities (sounds squishy), met yesterday with British Muslim leaders. They called on the government to sanction sharia for British Muslims in matters of family law and marriage as a means of preventing Muslims from becoming what are rather quaintly known as "extremists." Of course, if sharia isn't extreme, what is?

So here we are. Britain narrowly averts another 9/11 that was to have been caused by British Muslim terrorists, and British Muslim leaders take the opportuity to press forward a political agenda (ending GB-US cooperation abroad, and urging the adoption of sharia at home) that could only please the terrorists. What happens next will tell us how deeply into dhimmitude Great Britain really is.

UK: five-year-old girl's passport photo rejected for fear of offending Muslims

The sinful photo

Galloping Eurabia Update from the UK: "Passport photograph of girl's bare shoulders rejected 'as it may offend,'" from the Telegraph, with thanks to all who sent this in:

A five-year-old girl's passport application was rejected because her photograph showed her bare shoulders.

Hannah Edwards's mother, Jane, was told that the exposed skin might be considered offensive in a Muslim country.

The photograph was taken at a photo-booth at a local post office for a family trip to the south of France.

Because of the way the camera was set up, the picture came out showing Hannah's shoulders.

The family had it signed and presented it at a post office with the completed form but were told that it would not be accepted by the Passport Office.

A woman behind the counter informed them that she was aware of at least two other cases where applications had been rejected because a person's shoulders were not covered.

UK Muslim MPs renew "change your foreign policy or we'll blow you up" warning

The anti-dhimmi scorn and derision these MPs received for their initial "change your foreign policy or we'll blow you up" warning has not made them alter their position one bit. They don't seem in the least concerned about the fact that lots of individuals and groups dislike various government policies, but aren't blowing anyone up because of that.

"Don't treat us like patsies, say Muslim MPs," from The Guardian, with thanks to JE:

Muslim MPs will warn John Prescott today that they will not be treated as "patsies" to defend unpopular foreign policies in Iraq and Lebanon.

Their complaints, to be made in a meeting with the deputy prime minister, follow criticism at the weekend by government ministers - including the foreign minister Kim Howells and John Reid, the home secretary - of the letter signed by prominent Muslims warning that Britain's foreign policy stance had fuelled terrorist acts by alienated young Muslims.

Sadiq Khan, Labour MP for Tooting, signed the letter along with two of the other three Muslim MPs, Mohammed Sarwar and Shahid Malik. He said the MPs were particularly angry with comments from Mr Howells, suggesting that the signatories wanted foreign policy to be decided by fear of terrorism.

"Nobody is suggesting that foreign policy should be decided by six extremists in Dewsbury, but it is foolish to suggest or even expect us to go around defending government policy that is extremely unpopular in Muslim communities. We just would not have any credibility in trying to sort out the problems we are facing."

Iran vows to rein in media in new morality clampdown

Rescuing souls from the excesses of... news. Sharia Alert from AFP:

TEHRAN, Aug 11, 2006 (AFP) - Iran's conservative Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad-Hossein Saffar-Harandi vowed Friday to rein in the media as part of a new clampdown on "wicked manifestations in society".

The minister said there too many domestic news agencies in the Islamic republic and that their number needed to be reined in to create more quality and less quantity of news output.

He said 11 news agencies were already operating with his ministry's authorization and another eight were awaiting permits. A further 50 to 60 had also submitted applications to the ministry, he added.

"I have no choice but to restrict the extent of these things, when the investment has been more in quantity than quality," he said.

Saffar-Harandi said the move would be part of a wider campaign to revive the values of the Islamic revolution in cultural life.

"Unfortunately, we witness inappropriate and wicked manifestations in society today ... But now, you have my word that we will purify the cultural atmosphere," he said in a speech carried live by state radio.

"In the near future, we will not witness an unhealthy cultural product among books, movies, shows, music, etc."

Fitzgerald: Questions for a Christian American in Turkey

A poster at Jihad Watch recently informed us: "I've been living in Istanbul for five years...openly as a Christian and American. No problems yet..."

The poster is not taking in the real situation. If Turkey permits him to live "openly as a Christian and American," that does not mean much about Islam. For Turkey is the one Muslim country that experienced, ever since 1924, the effects of a systematic and even ruthless attempt by Kemal Ataturk to constrain the political and social power of Islam. If there is a large class of secular Turks, that is due to Kemalism. If there are women who dress like Western women, who work in all kinds of jobs, who have the freedoms of Western women, that has nothing to do with Islam.

It is, rather, the result of constraints put on Islam. It is despite Islam. About one-quarter of the Turkish population -- not all but almost all of it to be found in Istanbul (go out into the countryside, travel around Turkey) and in Ankara, and in a handful of places full of Western tourists and catering to their trade -- can be said to be "secularist." Yet this is after 80 years of every conceivable act undertaken to constrain Islam. And still, Islam is always and everywhere pushing back, always and everywhere a persistent threat to Kemalism. Read about the threats to Turkish secularists in the universities and the alarm expressed by some rectors at well-known centers of secularism. If all this is so, and it is, then the problem in Turkey remains, and will remain, Islam.

The same poster wrote somewhat solipsistically of his own freedom to be openly (good god, he is certainly grateful for small things) as a "Christian" and an "American." Well, ask your most advanced and tolerant Turkish friends if the Turkish government might at long last allow the Hagia Sophia to be re-used as a site for Christian religious ceremonies. That is the kind of question that any Westerner would naturally, in his innocence, ask. And we of course cannot conceive of why that should not be possible, given that back in the early 1930s Ataturk managed to stop having the Hagia Sophia used as a mosque, as it had been since the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It is a scene of Muslim triumphalism (crosses ripped off walls, vandalism everywhere) even today -- with the Green Banner of Islam waving its Qur'anic declaration so that no one gets the wrong idea. Go ahead, ask the question. They will look at you as if you are crazy.

And talk, not "openly" but secretly, with Christians who remain, the 1% of the population that is all that is left of the once-lively Christian population of Turkey, a city which in 1914 had a population in Constantinople that was 50% non-Muslim. Where did they all go? And why? What happened to all those Armenians, those Greeks, those Jews?

And when you talk about practicing your faith "openly" and in the same breath, of your being "openly" an American, are you talking about Taksim, and Istiqlal Caddesi, and a few other parts of Istanbul, or all of Istanbul, all of its quarters, including the heavily Islamic ones? And are you talking about the rest of Turkey? Have you not noticed more hijabs in evidence? Not noticed that box-office success that depicted American soldiers in Iraq as "Nazis" and a "Jewish-American" doctor as a Mengele-like harvester of organs for resale, from prisoners "murdered" at Abu Ghraib? Did you notice when a leading Turkish parliamentarian described American soldiers as "worse than Nazis"? What about that best-seller in Turkey, Mein Kampf? Do you read and speak Turkish? (The Tomer schools are ready to receive you). On what basis do you conclude that Turks themselves can openly practice Christianity?

I can't forget the look of worry in the eyes of two Turkish government workers, who spoke to me in lowered voices, as they confided that they were "Jehovah's Witnesses" and had come from a meeting. They looked around to make sure that no other Turks could be listening in. Their fear was no different from that I observed years before, when visiting the then-Soviet Union, among those trying to talk to a friendly foreigner.

Of course you can live "openly" -- in some places --as a "Christian and American." The reason you can live, without any problem as a "Christian" is because you are an "American." And the same of course is true for those who are "Jewish" and "American" and who in some quasi-official capacity can, for a specific purpose, be tolerated -- just for that purpose -- in Muslim countries: not because there is real toleration of Jews, but because they are "Americans" and that changes everything. Mike Wallace can interview Ahmadinejad without worry in Iran; Henry Kissinger can travel to Saudi Arabia; Paul Wolfowitz can be the American Ambassador to Indonesia or Dan Kurtzer to Egypt. But do you think that if they were not Americans, and powerful members of the media or of the American government, they would be tolerated for one minute? Of course you don't.

Do you think Christian missionaries have full freedom in Turkey, do you think, despite the laws, that citizens of Turkey would feel completely free to leave Islam and become Christians without fear of social ostracism, loss of jobs, and so on? Do you?

Look more closely beneath the surface of Turkish life, and spend time, say, in one of the vast markets, where you may still find an Armenian silversmith or two. Go to those cafes and bookstores along Istiqlal Caddesi, and find out more about the problems of being "openly" a Christian, if one doesn't have that blue passport of the United States of America in one's breast pocket, or safe-deposit box back at the hotel or apartment. And ask yourself again: how did Constantinople, which in 1914 had a population that was 50% non-Muslim, come now to be Istanbul, with a population less than 1% non-Muslim?

And the situation is still worse outside Istanbul, where there are practically no non-Muslims to be found. Why? What happened?

If you're a Muslim, it's your problem

Courageous anti-dhimmitude, cutting through all the routine Islamic deflections of responsibility, in "If You're a Muslim - It's Your Problem," from The Stevens Plan in News of the World:

WHEN will the Muslims of Britain stand up to be counted?

When will they declare, loud and clear, with no qualifications or quibbles about Britain's foreign policy, that Islamic terrorism is WRONG?

Most of all, when will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is THEIR problem? THEY own it. And it is THEIR duty to face it and eradicate it.

To stop the denial, endless fudging and constant wailing that somehow it is everyone else's problem and, if Islamic terrorism exists at all, they are somehow the main victims.

Because until that happens the problem will never be resolved. And there will be more 7/7s and, sometime in the future, another airplane plot will succeed with horrific loss of innocent life.

Equally important, those British politicians who have seemed obsessed with pandering to, and even encouraging, this state of denial, must throw off their politically-correct blinkers and recognise the same truth—that Muslim terrorism in Britain is the direct responsibility of British Muslims.

Read it all.

Sense and nonsense from Richard Perle

Richard Perle offers common sense about monitoring mosques, and silliness about working with moderate Muslims, in "We should not tolerate the preachers of jihad," in the Telegraph:

Omar Sheikh was a promising LSE student from a comfortably middle-class Anglo-Pakistani family. On a humanitarian mission to Bosnia in 1992, he was recruited into a life of terror. In July 2002, he was sentenced to death in Pakistan for his role in the beheading of an American journalist, Daniel Pearl.

In his book Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, Bernard-Henri Levy recounts young Omar's reaction to the suggestion that he go to Afghanistan for training. He imagines him thinking "…he has to finish his studies… and his father is still the one who decides everything." "We'll talk to your father," he is told by the Islamist he meets in Bosnia. "I'll organise a meeting for him with Maulana Ismail, imam of the Clifton mosque, a holy man, who is experienced at guiding young English Muslims to our places in Afghanistan and who will find the words to convince him, I'm sure. It's an honour for a family to have a son who abandons his useless studies to consecrate himself to the life of jihad."

Thus was a bright student from a good family lured into a holy war that aims to impose Islamist fundamentalism on the world.

It is a war fought with planes crashed into buildings or blown up in mid-air, roadside bombs, kidnappings, beheadings and other unspeakable instruments of terror. It is decentralised but global in scope, from madrassas in Pakistan, to mosques in London, to "charities" in America, to banks and boardrooms in the Middle East.

It is a war with a cultural and ideological component that is lavishly financed by easy oil money from states like Saudi Arabia that we have long (and foolishly) regarded as "moderates" and "friends". It is a war utilising sophisticated technology for destruction and communications, and equally sophisticated techniques for inculcating lethal extremism.

The warriors in this jihad are identified, indoctrinated and recruited by men who manipulate the power of faith to induce a fanaticism whose ultimate expression is the martyrdom of suicide missions. Among them are clerics who have rewarded their welcome into our liberal, open societies by preaching our destruction.

How many acts of holy war - how many recruitments? - were performed by the imam who carried out his assigned task of facilitating Omar Sheikh's training at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan? By what concept of liberal democracy must we allow these clerics who are out to destroy us the opportunity to reach impressionable young people with their message of holy war?

It has always been difficult to draw the fine line between protected speech, which is fundamental to our individual liberty, and incitement to prohibited criminal activity. In the United States, that line has long been defined by the concept of a "clear and present" danger. You don't claim the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre as a matter of free speech. In the UK, too, advocacy that falls short of incitement to immediate violence has been widely tolerated.

But combating Islamist extremism may require rethinking the idea of imminence in judging the dangers, and the appropriate response to them, of the insidious process leading ultimately to acts of mass murder. It is the act of recruitment into the swamp of a world divided into believers and infidels that may well be the more appropriate line dividing acceptable from unacceptable advocacy.

Yet in both the UK and the US we have been reluctant - dangerously so - to restrict, and in many cases even to monitor, what is said in the mosques and social centres of Islamist extremists.

In both our countries, there is great resistance to the effective surveillance of extremist Islamist groups. Opposed by most Muslim and civil liberty organisations, which fear that official scrutiny will lead to harassment and discrimination, police authorities have found it difficult to gather essential intelligence that could give timely warning of the formation of cells and networks destined to plan and execute acts of terror.

There was a (largely partisan) outcry in the US when it was learned that telephone conversations and bank transfer records were being scrutinised for terrorist connections, even though not a single aggrieved individual could be found. The occasional, inevitable mistakes by over-worked police and security organisations have further inhibited aggressive surveillance.

After 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali and the rest, all carried out in the name of jihad, and after the chilling discovery of the successfully foiled plot to destroy thousands of air travellers last week, it is obvious we need to know what is going on in those parts of the Muslim community where Islamist extremists have made inroads. At the same time, we need to encourage the vast majority of Muslims who do not share jihadist views to join in opposing them.

Of course, Western officials have been doing all they can to encourage them, but have failed to do so. Perle thinks this is because they have chosen to work with "extremists" rather than "moderates":

To gain the trust and confidence of the American and British Muslim communities, officials in both countries have "outreach" programmes to work with mainstream community leaders. Sadly, these programmes have often left the silent majority of moderate, tolerant Muslims on the sidelines while courting organisations and leaders who are doing more for the disease than the cure.

In an important study released by the British think tank Policy Exchange, "When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries", Martin Bright has described what he calls "the Government's bizarre dalliance with the Islamists".

Based on leaked official documents, Bright demonstrates convincingly the Foreign Office's eagerness to work with, and inevitably enhance the standing of, representatives of the Muslim Brother-hood, an organisation committed to holy war ("Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope"), as well as individuals who have openly supported suicide bombing.

Inexplicably, the British Government has accepted as its main partner on Muslim issues the Muslim Council of Britain despite "the clear Islamist sympathies of its leaders".

Something similar has happened in the US, where extremist leaders claiming to speak for America's tolerant Muslim community have been received at official events. On both sides of the Atlantic we need to abandon the illusion that extremist leaders are authentic and less voluble moderates are not. Talk to the latter - and keep a close watch on the former.

But of course, there is no such illusion. No Western officials have chosen to work with "extremists" rather than "moderates." Perle is correct that the British government has courted the Muslim Brotherhood, and there are other examples of this sort of thing, but that has not been at the expense of their consuming desire to find moderate Muslim leaders with whom they could work.

European and American government and law enforcement officials have generally been proceeding upon the assumption that, as Perle puts it, they "need to encourage the vast majority of Muslims who do not share jihadist views to join in opposing them." To this end they have been engaged for quite some time in a search for reliable spokesmen for that vast majority. But to their repeated surprise, they have found again and again that the "moderates" with whom they have engaged, such as the Muslim Council of Britain, are not as moderate as they thought they were.

I have heard Western officials affirm the existence of this vast majority and then in practically the same breath lament the difficulty of finding moderate leaders with whom they could work, without ever noticing their self-contradiction. Perle assumes here that they can't find such leaders because they haven't tried, which is just absurd. The other possibility -- that the vast majority of moderates they assume exists actually doesn't -- is much more likely to be true, but is apparently too frightening for Perle and other Western analysts to contemplate.

Saudis deny human trafficking allegations

Saudi slavery update from Gulf News, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Riyadh: The Saudi government has denied a recent report released by the US Department of State ranking the kingdom as one of the largest human traffickers in the world.

The report said Saudi Arabia is a hub for workers coming from south Asia, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Indonesia and said, many of these workers are subject to bad working conditions including their employers holding their passports as well as physical and sexual abuse.

The report also said some workers are never paid their proper salaries.

The US Government report said household servants and drivers are among the most abused group of workers in the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia also serves as a safe haven for children smuggled from Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Mali and Afghanistan who are forced to beg or work as street vendors, the report said.

It also alleged that the Saudi government does not protect victims properly and also accused the Saudi government of not being serious in enforcing law against human traffickers.

Iran threatens life of man for apostasy

Islamic Tolerance Alert from Iran Focus: "Iran threatens life of young man for apostasy - report"

London, Aug. 11 – An Iranian man from the northern city of Rasht is facing prison and may be executed for converting from Islam to Christianity, a Christian news agency reported.

Seven years after Issa Motamedi Mojdehi converted to Christianity, he was jailed by the Ministry of Intelligence Security (MOIS), Iran’s notorious secret police, for apostasy but was officially charged with illegal drug trafficking, Compass Direct News reported.

The 31-year-old was arrested on July 24. A week later, he was transferred to Lakan Prison.

The report said that officials had told Motamedi Mojdehi that he would remain in jail and possibly face execution unless he renounced his Christian faith.

An officer identified only as Mr. Baghani warned him that it might take “several executions” before Iranians understand the consequences of apostasy under Islamic law, Compass said.

Authorities reportedly found out that Motamedi Mojdehi and his wife Parvah had converted to Christianity in January, when they chose a name from the Bible, Micah, for their newborn son.

"Change your foreign policy or we'll blow you up"

Some refreshing anti-dhimmitude from the UK: "Minister criticises Muslim letter," from the BBC, with thanks to Twostellas:

Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has criticised Muslim leaders for condemning British foreign policy.

An open letter, signed by three Muslim MPs, three peers and 38 community groups, said the stance on the Middle East has put civilians at risk.

They went on to say that UK policy has given "ammunition to extremists".

But Mr Howells denied there was a "rational connection" and said "no government" formulates policy based on a perceived risk from terrorists....

Except Zapatero's Spain, and Chirac's France, and...

He said: "I have no doubt that there are many issues which incite people to loath government policies but not to strap explosives to themselves and go out and murder innocent people.

"There is no way of rationalising that.

"I think it is very, very dangerous when people who call themselves community leaders make some assumption that somehow that there's a rational connection between these two things."...

Liberal Democrats deputy leader Vince Cable agreed there were links with foreign policy but voiced concerns the letter's message might "give some comfort to the kind of people who say: 'Well, change your foreign policy or we'll blow you up'".

'Green Helmet' Helps Rescue the Wounded

AP circles the wagons in the Washington Post:

After hours of digging, Daher emerged with the youngest victim. In a parched voice, he shouted something in Arabic and held the child up for the photographer.

To many in the West, such photographs are surprising; but they are not unusual in the Middle East, where grief and drama are often intertwined, and that can include displaying of bodies.

Call me silly but I think the "something" he shouted is a key question. Did he shake his fists at heaven and condemn Hizballah for using human shields? Did he curse the Jews like Mel Gibson at a routine traffic stop? Did he shout, "Allahu Akbar, Mr. DeMille; the child is ready for its close-up"? That's what all the fuss is about.

There is no question that he set up camera shots and most of us are disgusted at AP for playing along.

UN calls for peace as fighting continues

If I had a dime for every "lasting peace" agreement in the Middle East, I would be able to retire in luxury. Al Jazeera.Net includes a bonus picture of all powerful Green Helmet Man in a charming ensemble that includes gloves but no orange vest, which is good, because orange is so last season.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said that the UN text should "open a path to lasting peace between Lebanon and Israel that will end the suffering and violence of this past month".

I suspect that lasting peace will come to Lebanon when Hizballah and their backers are crushed by overwhelming force so that they no longer have the ability to make war.

UK: "faith-hate" attack on mosque

There is no excuse for vigilantism or attacks like this one. If those opposed to the jihad resort to terrorism, there is increasingly little to distinguish them from the jihadists.

It is interesting to note that this is immediately classified as a "faith-hate attack," while the international jihad plot that hoped to murder thousands of people by downing ten transatlantic planes for the express purpose of terrorizing the alleged enemies of Islam is not so perceived. In the latter case, government and law enforcement officials vie with one another to be the first to exonerate Islam and the Muslim community from any responsibility for the plot or for "faith-hate" in general. But the same solicitude is not offered to non-Muslims. This attack will instead be used as yet another indication of endemic British "racism" and "xenophobia," not to mention "Islamophobia."

"Probe into arson attack on mosque," from the BBC, with thanks to Jimbo:

Police are investigating an arson attack on a mosque in Chester.

Detectives are treating the fire as a faith-hate attack but claim it is too early to say if it is in response to Thursday's anti-terror arrests.

Accelerant was put through the door of the mosque on Clifton Drive shortly before midnight on Thursday.

The blaze, which caused superficial damage, was quickly extinguished and although people were inside at the time, no-one was injured.

Authorities still holding Christians arrested in April rioting

Islamic Tolerance Alert: "Authorities Still Holding Christians Arrested In April Rioting: After nearly four months, government has yet to report on Alexandria church stabbings," from Compass Direct:

August 9 (Compass Direct News) – Egypt has detained seven Christian men without charge since a fatal knife attack on churches here last April triggered two days of violence in the Mediterranean coastal city. Alexandrian Christians plan to sue the country’s Interior Ministry for the men’s release, as well as for compensation for Christian-owned shops and Orthodox churches that were damaged during the unrest. Hesham Azmy Iskender was among 101 Christians and Muslims who were originally detained. Over the following month, police released most of the prisoners. But they have continued to renew the imprisonment of Iskender and six other Christians, even after the prosecutor general issued orders for the release of all the detainees in May.

Bostom: Bernard Lewis’ Conundrum: What To Leave In, What To Leave Out?

Andrew Bostom contributes these considerations about some recent statements by the renowned Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis:

As noted earlier at Jihad Watch, Bernard Lewis in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal rehashes some of the same points Robert Spencer made on July 27th regarding the significance of August 22, 2006, which, as Lewis notes (again), marks “…27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427… when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq”.

Unfortunately, the essay epitomizes two tendencies that have become distressingly common from Lewis: omission and equivocation. Despite his elegant statement of some of the problems stemming from Muslim eschatology, his analysis is marred by the complete absence of any discussion of the Jew-hatred which is central to that eschatology. Given the raw Jew-hatred permeating the contemporary Muslim world, Lewis squanders this teachable moment.

In stark contrast, George Vajda’s landmark research demonstrated how Muslim eschatology emphasizes the Jews' supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl -— the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ -— and as per another tradition, the Dajjâl is in fact Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions state that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered -— everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree. Thus, according to a canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985, featured prominently in the Hamas Charter), if a Jew seeks refuge under a tree or a stone, these objects will be able to speak to tell a Muslim: “There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!”

As Vajda observes,

Not only are the Jews vanquished in the eschatological war, but they will serve as ransom for the Muslims in the fires of hell. The sins of certain Muslims will weigh on them like mountains, but on the day of resurrection, these sins will be lifted and laid upon the Jews...

Lewis omits any discussion of these critically relevant anti-Jewish themes.

After an allusion to the modern cult of Islamic martyrdom, Lewis concludes:

How then can one confront such an enemy, with such a view of life and death? Some immediate precautions are obviously possible and necessary. In the long term, it would seem that the best, perhaps the only hope is to appeal to those Muslims, Iranians, Arabs and others who do not share these apocalyptic perceptions and aspirations, and feel as much threatened, indeed even more threatened, than we are. There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam. Now is the time for them to save their countries, their societies and their religion from the madness of MAD (mutually assured destruction).

"Some immediate precautions"?

Why not just state: Iran cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and this must be prevented by a pre-emptive strike at their nuclear facilities, if necessary?

"There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam."

Even if this were true, what difference does it make if they, like the good Germans of Nazi Germany, do nothing -— a point Dr. Laurent Murawiec made without equivocation, here?

The omissions regarding eschatology fail to explain the Muslim masses’ crazed obsession with Jews. His wishful thinking about “many such peaceful Muslims” who supposedly abhor the jihadists, yet do nothing to stop them, could undermine the only viable short term solution: taking out Iran's nuclear facilities ala the Israeli attack on Osirak.

War with Photos

Here's a little something for those of you who die Deutsches sprechen, a German language article about the amazing adventures of Green Helmet Man. Check out the photos from 1996. Same guy, different corpse--one hopes.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has video on the story.

Muslim leaders informed, but wary, of anti-terror raid

While the British government kowtows to them, Muslim leaders in the UK are still in complete self-righteous denial about how the ideology that leads to terror attacks incubates within their communities. From the TimesOnline, with thanks to Josephnadir:

Muslim community leaders were contacted by the police and Government officials early this morning as the first statements were released to the press.

Khurshid Ahmed, leader of the British Muslim Forum was rung by a chief superintendent from the Metropolitan Police and a senior official from the Department for Communities and Local Government just before 7am to be told the arrests had taken place.

The police also contacted Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari, General Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, at 6.54am. He was told that a number of arrests had taken place "for the public’s safety" but given few details.

Mr Ahmed said that he felt the operation had been handled well but he warned that if the police failed to find any evidence to incriminate the people concerned then relations between the government and the Muslim community would deteriorate further....

Mr Ahmed said he had spent the morning contacting local authorities, police authorities and Muslim community groups to ensure there was no "backlash" when further information was released about the identity of those arrested. He had already spoken to leaders in Bradford, London and the Midlands....

Note that all his remarks seem to be about backlash and false arrests. None address the problem of terrorism within the Islamic community. He should be promising to work with officials to root jihadist sentiments out of the Muslim community. Instead, he issues vague threats.

But he admitted that it was very difficult to know whether there had been an overreaction, until further details emerged: "I have no information about that whatsoever." He said that if the arrests turned out to have been based on faulty intelligence, as happened after the arrests and shooting at Forest Gate, the community would react badly.

"It would be very unfortunate. It would further cloud relations between the Government and the Muslim Community and would reinforce the perception people have got that the police are targeting the Muslim community. I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen and we do find there is substance in the allegations."

The Muslim Council of Britain said the police had gone out of their way to ensure that the arrests were low key and had not attracted undue attention....

How very kind of the British to be so sensitive.

Ali Miraj, member of the Conservative’s policy commission on international and national security said he would personally support the police action to ensure public safety. But he said that the mood amongst the Muslim community at present was very antagonistic. He also said current events in the Middle East would only encourage radicalism among disaffected young Muslims.

"I just hope they find some stuff on these guys. If they don't they will seriously dent confidence with the Muslim community in future. Otherwise people will think they are crying wolf and it's a Forest Gate Mark II. If they find nothing when they raid these people then there will be a real fear the police are deliberately targeting our people.

"The botched terror raid at Forest Gate, East London, in June was regarded as a very disproportionate response. Two hundred police uncovered nothing and the community was unfairly targeted," he said.

Of course, he doesn't know that they uncovered nothing.

Mr Miraj said there was huge anger amongst the grass roots and he was not surprised that some were prepared to take drastic action. Many would not help the police with information about suspicious behaviour, he said. "One Muslim said to me recently outside a mosque: 'What is grassing on our Muslim brothers going to achieve?'"

Hmmm. Good question. Could the answer be, maybe an end to jihad terror attacks?

Fahad Ansari of the Islamic Human Rights Commission said that many Muslims would be sceptical about the police statement. High profile arrests in the past,including Forest Gate had failed to produce any evidence of terrorist activity.

“I think you will get cynicism from the community,” he said.

“Over the last few years we have seen many high profile raids like this plastered over the press to terrify the public.

“We have seen it time and time again. It has been hit and miss on too many occasions. It is causing a lot of mass hysteria.”

He suggested that the raids could even have been timed to distract attention from the criticisms of the Government’s stance on the Lebanon crisis.

“There has been so much pressure on the Government, it could be a way of diverting attention away from its policy on the Middle East,” he said.

He accused Tony Blair of being in a “persistent state of denial” on the impact Britain’s foreign policy - from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Middle East - was having on Muslims in Britain.

“He has to realise that there was a relationship between 7/7 and British foreign policy,” he said.

Birmingham Labour MP Khalid Mahmood appealed to local communities to help provide as much extra information as possible to help the police thwart the terrorists.

He said he believed the arrests were based on “fairly good intelligence” and would not prove unfounded and increase tensions fuelled by recent events in Forest Gate.

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, warned against any attempt to blame the Muslim community at large.

“Only a united London can help defeat terrorism, which means that all London’s communities have their part to play,” he said.

“No community in London can or should be targeted or blamed because of the actions of people who are pure criminals.”

In fact, the Muslim community in London can be blamed for not having put in place long ago a comprehensive anti-jihad program. For not expelling jihadists from its ranks. For not making it clear that they support the British governmental structure and don't want ultimately to replace it with Sharia.

Iran: Another ex-Muslim persecuted

Perhaps the drug charge is to divert unwanted Western attention from the underlying problem of Mojdehi's apostasy, which is really what upsets them. Islamic Tolerance Alert: "Iran: Government ‘Officially’ Charges Ex-Muslim with Drug Trafficking: Officers tell convert to Christianity his real crime was abandoning Islam," from Compass Direct:

August 8 (Compass Direct News) – Seven years after Issa Motamedi Mojdehi converted from Islam to Christianity, Iranian secret police have jailed him for abandoning Islam but officially charged him with illegal drug trafficking.

Authorities formally charged the 31-year-old Christian with drug trafficking when he was arrested two weeks ago. But Savama (secret police) officials have told Motamedi Mojdehi that his real offense, said to be recorded in his confidential legal file, is abandoning Islam. Unless he renounces his Christian faith and returns to Islam, officials told him, he will remain in jail and possibly face execution.

Report: U.S.-French Alliance on U.N. Cease-Fire Resolution Crumbling

Because the French are reverting to their Eurabian ways and parroting the Arab League line. From Fox, with thanks to Infidel Pride:

UNITED NATIONS — The French-American alliance at the United Nations over a Mideast cease-fire agreement is crumbling, sources tell FOX News.

The French U.N. delegation has joined with Arab nations and is now calling for a complete and immediate Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon as a condition of any cease-fire, the sources said.

In addition, the French have reportedly agreed with Arab demands that the Lebanese force be accompanied only by UNIFIL, with no international force to be deployed.

Egyptian Monastery Besieged by Police

More trouble for the Copts in Egypt. "Breaking News: Egyptian Monastery Besieged by Police," from the Barnabas Fund, with thanks to Mike:

8/8/06 - Egypt. Barnabas Fund has been contacted urgently by a partner in the Coptic Orthodox Church this morning with the urgent news that St Anthony's Monastery on the Red Sea is under siege by the police at this very moment.

Some 200 - 300 police officers equipped with 14 bulldozers have closed and blockaded the roads outside the monastery, which is situated in a mountainous region of Egypt's Red Sea coast. Monks from the monastery are protesting outside the building trying desperately to protect their home. The police officers were acting on orders from the Red Sea Governorate based in Hurghada.

It would seem that prejudiced Muslim officials who are hostile to the Christian Church in Egypt are misusing and violating the law to attack this historic Coptic monastery which dates back to the fourth century.

The crisis has arisen because the local governorate claims the walls of the monastery have been constructed illegally and has issued the police with orders to destroy them. However, official permission to construct the walls was obtained in 1992 and they were built some 4 - 5 years ago. Permission was given because the monastery had experienced problems with Muslim extremist groups and it was recognised that a perimeter wall was needed for protection.

FURTHER INFORMATION WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE BY BARNABAS FUND, ON REQUEST AS WE RECEIVE IT.

Rape law reform hits Sharia roadblock in Pakistan

An opportunity squandered in Pakistan, as a cabinet committee chips away at reforms of the Hudood rape laws. Sharia Alert from the Daily Times: "Hudood Ord amendments: Cabinet body to delete adult age clause"

ISLAMABAD: The cabinet committee formed to review draft amendments to the Hudood Ordinances has decided to delete a proposed change that would make sex with a girl below the age of 16 the offence of rape.

Cabinet sources told Daily Times that several minister had objected to this clause when the draft amendments were presented to the cabinet for approval a week ago. The prime minister formed a six-member ministerial committee to resolve differences over the amendments.

The sources said Sher Afgan Niazi, the parliamentary affairs minister, Aftab Sherpao, the interior minister, and Dr GG Jamal, the culture minister, had argued at the cabinet meeting that this amendment would cause trouble in rural and tribal areas where girls are traditionally married off at a young age. The ministers argued that in Islam, a woman becomes an adult when she reaches puberty.

The sources said the six-member ministerial committee had now communicated to some cabinet members that it had decided to remove this condition. The other amendment that ministers objected to was one that would give equal weight to the testimonies of adult male and female witnesses in rape cases. They had also voiced concern at the timing of the bill, but the prime minister had rejected this concern, the sources said. The bill was to be tabled in the National Assembly on Monday, but was delayed on account of the ministers’ objections. It is now expected to be tabled on Wednesday, after a parliamentary party meeting of the ruling coalition on Tuesday endorses the bill.

Fitzgerald: A crock, almost everywhere you look

It was recently noted at Jihad Watch that generally those who teach Arabic or Islam become apologists and propagandists for Islam. There are several reasons for this. One is that many who go into this field may be self-selecting. Something about it "attracts" them and makes it "appealing" to them.

This is not because of the fascination of what's difficult, or from an interest in what needs to be studied by Westerners because it is only they who can dare to study, say, the origins of the Qur'an or the Hadith (think of Ignaz Goldziher) with the mental freedom and the scholarly resources that only the West, but not the Islamic world, provides. If you want to find out about the warsh and nafs versions of the Qur'an, you do so in the West. If you want to study and publish on the Qur'an the way Mingana did, or Arthur Jeffery in that lavish publication on foreign words in the Qur'an, paid for by the Gwakior of Baroda, you do so in the West. If you want to study, as Joseph Schacht did, Muhammadan Law, you may spend time in Egypt gathering material (when Schacht lectured in Cairo, he was capable of doing so in Arabic), but you will write in the West.

Those were different people, entirely of a different level of linguistic and other training, and of broad cultivation -- as is true in so many academic fields based on the study of history and literature. They above all were steeped in, and had been from an early age, a system of rigorous education that assured their knowledge of, and therefore the natural appreciation for, the artists, the scientists, the thinkers, of the Western world, of the Western tradition.

The Western world has not quite realized how difficult, if not impossible, it is for a Believer who is a teacher of any subject having anything to do with Islam, to be, at the same time, anything other than a stout if sly Defender of the Faith -- a Defender who has no conception of, or fealty to, the idea of disinterested academic study. This Believer will most likely attempt to prevent others from learning about, much less teaching about himself, the real progress being made in Western study of early Islam. Indeed, he will not permit any study of Islam that appears to open up Islam to Western criticism. Thus the entire subject of the dhimmi is either ignored, or reduced, in the Lewisian manner, to a few paragraphs, or a single completely misleading phrase, of the kind any of us can so easily compose.

Here's my version: "Non-Muslims living in the Islamic world were treated with far more tolerance than were non-Christians living in Christian-ruled countries; they could live quietly, practice their religion, and of course everyone knows that the Ottoman Sultans, just like the chivalrous Saladin, always had Jewish doctors." Sometimes, if the instructor thinks the undergraduates may have heard about it and wants to pre-empt any doubters in the house, he will refer to the "Jizya" as "a tax on non-Muslims which was simply a substitute for the 'zakat’ that Muslims had to pay." All completely false in the sly meaning so slyly conveyed -- but to deconstruct every phrase, to show what is misrepesented, and what is omitted entirely, takes time -- and most students will have no idea how deeply and gravely they have been misled.

MESA, or as it is more accurately known around here, MESA Nostra (the Middle East Studies Association) in 1970 had a membership consisting of perhaps 5% Muslims. Now the Muslims among its members constitute 60%. But that is not the only important thing. Non-Muslims must work with and attend departmental meetings with these Muslim colleagues. How awkward it would be to be in the same department with people who will bear an eternal grudge against you if you dare say one word about Islam that they find is not to their liking, if you dare to present Islam as anything other than something wonderful, and if you dare to suggest that the Muslim and Arab view of the universe is not always and everywhere to be endorsed. Non-Muslims must rely on Muslim colleagues, who have and will always have power over them -- whether for obtaining grants as a graduate student, or on a doctoral examination committee, or vetting your thesis, or recommending that one’s thesis be published by a certain press, or later giving one teaching assignments, and then voting on tenure. Many are not deemed suitably compliant, insufficiently "collegial," as that curious criterion is now officially deemed important in judging one's fitness for academic promotion and tenure -- an absurdity that would have appalled Joseph Schacht and Franz Rosenthal and so many others. This is, of course, part of the simpering sentimentality that would have kept out so many great teachers and scholars, and favors the careful-to-offend-no-one mediocrity. Thus are whole departments ruined, degree by degree, appointment by appointment.

If you are a non-Muslim professor, you are at the mercy of your Muslim colleagues. Forever you will need those book blurbs, those easier teaching assignments, those recommendations for grants, grants, grants, that trip to Bellagio and the Lago di Como. It never ends. And if that depends on your not offending so many powerful Defenders of the Faith -- well, you are not going to say a word about Luxenberg or Patricia Crone, or Ibn Warraq's anthologies of scholarly writing. You are not going to say a word about "Jihad" that makes any real sense. You will never refer to the Shari'a in a way that conveys just what it means for non-Muslims. You will not discuss the tenets of Islam and their incompatibility with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You will not discuss the real treatment of non-dhimmis. You will never mention the killings of 60-70 million Hindus under Muslim rule, never come to grips with what it is in the statements of Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri and so many others that come straight from the Qur'an, the Hadith, the details of Muhammad's life. You will never discuss inshallah-fatalism in courses on "economic development in the Arab/Muslim world," will never discuss the Islamic suppression of free and skeptical inquiry, or the narrow limits placed on acceptable vehicles for artistic expression. You will, essentially, lie and be a collaborator in lies. And your courses will be almost entirely worthless. The keenest students, capable of reading on their own, capable of comprehending along the way what is happening, are likely simply to leave the field, not to enter it. And the ones who enter it will be those well-satisfied with what, say, Hamid Dabashi or Omid Safi or any number of others tell them about Islam. They will enter clutching their copies of Sells's bowdlerized Approaching the Qur'an (the "lyrical" parts only, so as not to trouble anyone), or Carl Ernst's apologetics, or that favorite for Muslim instructors, that compilation of old romantic cliches and up-to-date misinformation, Maria Rosa Menocal's The Ornament of the World, all about that "convivencia" in Islamic-ruled Spain that so many still want to believe in -- because if it somehow was true somewhere, then won't, please won't it be again, in the islamized Europe toward which we are heading, and which we do not know how to stop?

MESA, MESA Nostra. And it is just as bad wherever, of course, Arab money has managed to create "Centers of Islamic Studies," or endow certain chairs for certain purposes. When the Saudis and other Arabs give money, they make sure that their rules are applied, and they install local enforcers in those centers, and departments, to make sure that they get their money's worth. Look at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, at Georgetown, run by lean, mean, jogging apologist John Esposito, making a living far beyond what he ever dreamed of before he found his true calling. Look at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, also at Georgetown, so convenient to both the corridors of uninformed and unwary power and to those members of the press and television who will call you up to take advantage of your proffered, amiable, furrowed-brow serious, "expertise."

I could go on. But you get the dismal picture. A crock, almost everywhere you look.

Fitzgerald: Vive la Différence!

"The wandering eyes of men will no longer be a concern for certain women in a popular Italian resort on the Adriatic Sea. The city council of Riccione has come up with a way to enable Muslim women to enjoy the sand and sea without being fully clothed: opening sections of the beach exclusively for their use. Muslim women will now be able to cast off their headscarves and robes because men will be banned from certain portions of the beach. These stretches of sand will also be fitted with tents and have only female lifeguards and waitresses in order to ensure that the Islamic law requiring women to be covered in the presence of men is not broken. Hotel owner Attillio Cenni wants to take things a step further and have female lifeguards—ala Pamela Anderson—keep a lookout for men while patrolling the sea in water scooters." -- from this article

Yes, in Italy, and in France, and in Spain, everywhere, Muslims have a divine right to beaches, to cities, to everything. They are Muslims, the most perfect of peoples, following the ways of Muhammad, the most Perfect Man. All in the end, little by little, step by step, succumb to the demands and needs of Muslims. That is what Infidels have to understand. For now, they appear still to have a life tenancy in Europe -- but eventually the lives of those Infidels now living their lives will be over, and that tenancy extinguished, not to be inherited by their Infidel children or their Infidel grandchildren.

It is right, it is proper, it is just, to make accommodations for Muslim men and Muslim women. It is right, it is proper, it is just, to shut off entire bits of the Italian coastline to all non-Muslims, despite the violence this does to long-established customs, practices, and laws. It is right, it is proper, it is just, to make sure that the shaytanic seductive wiles of women are kept far from the view of men, Muslim men, men easily maddened by those wiles, that flesh, that wicked seductiveness.

And it is not only women. It is also animals. For, according to John Hendren, an LA Times reporter in Iraq, on NPR yesterday morning, in what was one of the funniest and telling reports that can possibly be imagined -- JAY LENO take note -- shepherds in Iraq have been killed because they left their goats untethered. Why did that deserve death? Well, because those goats were proving so immensely attractive to Iraqi men, leading them astray just as you, or I, dear reader, might be led astray by Hedy Lamarr or Audrey Hepburn or Merle Oberon (yes, I said I was 98 years old, and I meant it), or possibly that ravishing Italian actress Laura Morante who appeared in John Malkovich's movie about the Sendero Luminoso and, unforgettably, in an interview on Italian television). And so the goats, or those who put the innocent Iraqi men made goat-mad by their untethered presence, putting those poor Muslim men at the end of their own tether, had to be killed.

You don't believe me? You have forgotten, then, the religious prescriptions of the Ayatollah Khomeini about what is forbidden, and what commanded, as to the disposition of the funeral baked meats, when the funeral is that of the animals of those baked meats themselves, and the animals in question, having endured the passionate embraces of Muslim men, are now posthumously serving a second duty: having sated the sexual need, they are now relieving that of hunger. But there are rules about this. There are always rules. And as Ayatollah Khomeini wrote in his collected works, one may not serve such meat of former lovers, goats or cows or sheep, to one's own family or one's own neighbors. But, in a spirit of waste-not-want-not, one can serve such meat to inhabitants of a village nearby.

Think about the Italian beach. Think about those Afghani men with their child-brides whose photographs were shown a few weeks ago in The Sunday Magazine of The New Duranty Times. Then think about John Hendren's report, on the goats and the murdered shepherds.

Then ask yourself: are we all alike? Do we all think alike? Is it just a matter of "poverty" or "lack of democracy"? Or is there something else here that a very great number of people in the Infidel world are missing, almost willfully missing, to their own future shame, chagrin, and horror?

Think of those shepherds being murdered for letting their goats, batting their goat eyes, roam free -- there to be seen, admired, and one knows what may then, and so frequently does, follow for present-day inhabitants of that Light Unto the Muslim Nations we are building in Iraq, at a cost in money of some $400 billion (in past, present, and committed future costs related to replacement of desert-degraded weapons and support for 20,000 American wounded).

Women. Goats. What's the difference? Shaytan, Shaytan, Shaytan.

Annan: Israel raid may be part of pattern

Obligingly ignoring the evidence that the Qana "massacre" was staged and that Hizballah deliberately launches attacks from civilian areas in order to provoke responses they can use as propaganda victories, the UN's Chief Dhimmi shills for the League of Arab States' jihadist agenda. Note the continuing attempts to exaggerate the casualty count. From AP, with thanks to JE:

UNITED NATIONS - Israel's air raid on in the Lebanese town of Qana, which killed 28 people, may be part of a larger pattern of violations of international law in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report Monday.

In that light, Annan said that the July 30 attack was sufficiently serious to merit a more comprehensive investigation.

The attack should be seen "in the broader context of what could be, based on preliminary information available to the
United Nations ... a pattern of violations of international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law committed during the course of the current hostilities," Annan wrote.

The Security Council had asked Annan last week to report back on the circumstances of the attack, when it approved a statement expressing its "extreme shock and distress" at the bombing. It deplored the loss of civilian life in the conflict.

In the six-page report, Annan acknowledged requests from Lebanon, the League of Arab States and the Non-Aligned Movement for a full investigation. Yet the report said the seven days Annan was given were not nearly enough for such a task, particularly because the war has made getting to Qana difficult and U.N. observers weren't there when the attack occurred.

Funny. The press had no trouble getting there.

Initial accounts had said that some 56 people were killed in the attack. But the toll was later lowered by half. Of the 28 bodies pulled from the rubble, some 14 were children, Annan said.

Annan's report said the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known by its acronym UNIFIL, could not confirm or deny Israel's contention that Hezbollah was launching attacks from Qana before the July 30 attack....

Two letters from Lebanon — one from its U.N. mission and the other from its Foreign Ministry — said the Qana attack was one of several violations of humanitarian law Israel has committed during the fighting against Hezbollah.

The letter from the U.N. mission said that the civilians who remained in Qana, which had been bombarded heavily in the previous two weeks, either found escape blocked by destroyed roads and buildings, or were too old, sick or poor to leave.

That letter claimed that 62 people were killed and that Israel had presented no evidence showing Hezbollah was operating among them. The warnings Israel delivered do not absolve it of its humanitarian obligations, the letter said.

"In Qana, Israeli forces deliberately attacked the civilian population sheltering in an unadulterated residential area," the letter said. "This, without any doubt, represents a war crime committed against (the) civilian population not taking direct part in the hostilities."

The other Lebanese letter conformed with Annan's conclusion that 28 people were killed.

Sudan: Christians lightening their skin to protect themselves from Muslim attacks

"Resisting Jihad Is Racism" Alert: in Sudan, the Muslims are generally light-skinned, and the Christians generally darker. So there is a huge run on skin-lightening products, as Sudanese Christians view them as a matter of life and death. "In Sudan, pale is beautiful but price is high," from Reuters, with thanks to Nick:

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - At the crowded Beauty Queen parlor in Sudan's capital Khartoum, beautician Selma Awa says she just cannot understand why so many of her clients want to get their skin lightened.

"One hundred percent of women who come here have it done," she said. "People think it's prettier to look white. In my opinion, dark is prettier. I don't know who they want to look like."

[...]

In Sudan, Africa's biggest country, over two decades of civil war between lighter-skinned northerners and darker southerners has given skin tone more sinister connotations, and the meaning of the various shades is nuanced.

Northerners, who are mainly Muslims and claim Arab lineage, have traditionally held power. A north-south coalition government now shares power after a peace deal last year.

During civil strife, skin tone often meant the difference between life and death. Southerners, traditionally Christian or animist, complain of prejudice against them in everyday life, and some northerners privately claim superiority over their darker and non-Arab countrymen.

British Jews warned of rise in hate crime

The British government should issue its own warning to the Muslim community there: attacks on Jews will not be tolerated. From the TimesOnline, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

THE Jewish community in Britain is facing a wave of anti-Semitism as a result of the conflict in Lebanon, security experts said yesterday.

The Community Security Trust (CST), which advises British Jews on safety issues, said that synagogues, schools and community centres should increase security as the risk of terrorist attacks and anti-Semitic incidents in Britain escalated in correlation with hostilities in the Middle East.

The warning came after a bomb scare at the Israeli Embassy forced police to cordon off a busy shopping area on Sunday afternoon. An area around Kensington Palace Gardens, West London, was closed and cars were searched before the all-clear was given.

The trust logged 60 antiSemitic incidents last month, compared with 31 for the same month last year. These included the daubing of racist slogans and references to Islam on windows at a Jewish doctor’s North London home, and the painting of the word “Hezbollah” on the pavement outside Garnethill Synagogue in Glasgow. Other incidents involved abusive phone messages and hate mail.

Pakistan: Christian Beaten For Drinking Water From Public Facility

What's an unclean kaffir doing drinking from the Muslims-Only water fountain? Muhammad Crow Alert: "Christian Stone Mason Beaten For Drinking Water From Public Facility," from the ASSIST News Service, with thanks to LAH:

LAHORE, PAKISTAN (ANS) -- A Christian stone mason received critical injuries, including dislocation of his shoulder after he was seen drinking water from a public facility, by a Muslim man on June 6 (Tuesday) just outside the eastern city of Lahore, the Pakistan Christian Post (PCP) has reported.

Nasir Ashraf, the Christian mason was working at the construction site of a school. The trouble for him began while he was returning to the site. Confronting him with anger the Muslim man asked him as to why he drank water from the public facility by using a glass that was placed at the water tank.

“Why did you drink water from this glass since you are a Christian?” the PCP quoted the Muslim man as asking Nasir.

“The man accused the mason of polluting the glass and proceeded to destroy it. The Muslim man then summoned a crowd by shouting, “This Christian polluted our glass,” and encouraged them to beat him up”, the PCP report said.

“The crowd began beating Nasir, eventually pushing him off a ledge. The fall dislocated his shoulder, broke his collarbone in two places and knocked him unconscious,” it said.

L.A. Mayor Apologizes to Muslim Leaders

Villaraigosa could have told them that it was his prerogative to take sides, and that any decent person of whatever persuasion would support Israel in this conflict. Instead he chose to play the dhimmi and kowtow. From AP, with thanks to Dave Washburn:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has apologized to Muslim leaders who accused him of taking Israel's side in the violence in Lebanon by going to a pro-Israel rally and ignoring their invitations to interfaith peace vigils.

Villaraigosa met with 10 Muslim leaders Sunday and explained that a mix-up by his staff had prevented him from seeing their invitations, said his spokeswoman, Janelle Erickson.

"The mayor did apologize that the staff didn't place the meeting on his schedule sooner," said Erickson, describing Sunday's hour-long discussion as "open and friendly."

Villaraigosa called the meeting after the Muslim leaders held a news conference Friday accusing him of not representing all groups touched by the conflict.

They noted that he attended a July 23 rally by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, at which he condemned Hezbollah guerrilla rocket attacks on Israel, but failed to respond to repeated calls and e-mail invitations to interfaith vigils for people killed on both sides in Lebanon....

The mayor pledged to visit mosques and attend events in the city's Islamic communities, and assigned one of his senior advisors as liaison to Muslim groups.

Anti-terror laws alienate Muslims, says top policeman

Don't try to keep them from waging jihad, or they may...wage jihad. Silly dhimmitude from The Guardian, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

One of Britain's top police officers will today warn that anti-terrorism laws are discriminating against Muslims and law enforcement agencies are running a "real risk" of criminalising ethnic minorities.

Tarique Ghaffur, assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan police, will also call for "an independent judicial review" of why some young British Muslims turn to extremism. He warns that more work is needed to stop the "flight, fright or separation" of British Muslim communities after the July 7 2005 bombings in London.

Mr Ghaffur, Britain's highest-ranking Muslim police officer, will today address a National Black Police Association conference in Manchester and tell how racism has blighted his own career.

Since the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, western countries have toughened counter-terrorism laws. Mr Ghaffur will say: "Not only has anti-terrorism and security legislation been tightened across many European countries with the effect of indirectly discriminating against Muslims, but other equally unwanted practices have also emerged, including 'passenger profiling' as well as increased stop and search and arrest under terrorism legislation."

In Britain, people of Asian appearance have borne the brunt of increased stopping and searching. Police have said the practice is "intelligence-led", but Mr Ghaffur appears to cast doubt on this repeated defence: "These practices tend to be based more on physical appearance than being intelligence-led."

Mr Ghaffur will say the July 7 attacks "revealed some of the limitations of the policing response" and other authorities such as Revenue and Customs are acting in a way that could be counterproductive: "There is a very real danger that the counter-terrorism label is also being used by other law enforcement agencies to the effect that there is a real risk of criminalising minority communities.

"The impact of this will be that just at the time we need the confidence and trust of these communities, they may retreat inside themselves. We therefore need proper accountability and transparency round all policy and direction that affects communities."

In Kosovo the Orthodox Church Is Under Siege

Sandro Magister reports in Chiesa (thanks to Sparta):

ROMA - During the last week of November, two more Orthodox Christian churches were attacked and damaged in Kosovo - in Gornja Brnjica, and in Susica. Neither was protected by KFOR, the military force under NATO command that maintains order in the region.

Since the war ended with the defeat of the Serbs in 1999, more than one hundred Orthodox holy places have been assaulted and destroyed in Kosovo, many of them going back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Earlier, while the Serbian army of Slobodan Milosevic had control of the region, it is calculated that 212 of the 560 Muslim mosques in the area were damaged or razed.

In Kosovo today, the Orthodox Serbs are a besieged and endangered minority. Of the roughly 250,000 who fled following NATO´s military intervention, only a few thousand have returned. Together with the 130,000 who remained, they are herded in restricted zones and kept under constant threat. Power rests in the hands of the Muslim Kosovar Albanians. The future status of the region is uncertain. Formally, Kosovo remains an autonomous province of the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro, but resolution 1244 of the United Nations defining its status also refers to the Rambouillet accords of 1999, which appeal to the principle of self-determination of peoples in outlining the definitive arrangement of the area. And the overwhelming Albanian majority has enlisted this point in its bid for independence.

The destruction of Christian churches is part of this plan - or, at least, that´s what the local Orthodox community fears. "Either destruction, or transformation into museums," specifies Fr. Sava Janjic, vice-prior of the monastery of Decani.

This monastery is one of the masterpieces of medieval art in Kosovo, an historic cradle of Serbian Orthodoxy. It is occupied by 35 monks, many of whom have entered during the last twelve years, in a complete rebirth of monastic life. During the war, they were lavish in their defense of the Kosovar Albanians, threatened with ethnic cleansing by Slobodan Milosevic´s army. But today, it is the monks who are under constant threat. The Italian soldiers of KFOR ensure the defense of the monastery. The monks may not venture beyond the security fence to visit their faithful unless they are accompanied by an armed escort. The condition of the other 25 monasteries and churches under KFOR protection is similar. Among the most precious holy places - and the ones most at risk - are the patriarchate of Pec, the monastery of Gracanica, and the cathedral of the Mother of God of Ljevisa, in Prizren.

Artemjie, the bishop of Raska and Prizren, the highest Orthodox authority in Kosovo, laments "the inexplicable silence of Christian and democratic Europe in the face of such grave crimes committed against a Christian and European people, which the Serbian people is." And he accuses the Vatican of having been "amply implicated in the events" that produced the current situation.

Italian Beaches Under Islamic Law

Aaron Hanscom tells the appalling story in FrontPage (news links in the original):

Europe’s transformation into Eurabia is still dismissed as absurd by many Europeans who choose to ignore the effects of unassimilated Muslim populations in their cities. But it’s the absurd—as seen in some recent accommodations to Muslims—that might finally force them to avert their eyes no more.

The wandering eyes of men will no longer be a concern for certain women in a popular Italian resort on the Adriatic Sea. The city council of Riccione has come up with a way to enable Muslim women to enjoy the sand and sea without being fully clothed: opening sections of the beach exclusively for their use. Muslim women will now be able to cast off their headscarves and robes because men will be banned from certain portions of the beach. These stretches of sand will also be fitted with tents and have only female lifeguards and waitresses in order to ensure that the Islamic law requiring women to be covered in the presence of men is not broken. Hotel owner Attillio Cenni wants to take things a step further and have female lifeguards—ala Pamela Anderson—keep a lookout for men while patrolling the sea in water scooters.

Everything didn’t go off without a hitch, however. Because the law states that the beach needs to be able to accommodate public passage—and not just Muslims—the partitions couldn’t extend all the way to the sea. But Muslim women need not worry. The city council of Riccione is already considering whether to authorize the construction of reserved seaside swimming pools.

Riccione councilwoman for urban planning, Loretta Villa, defended the city measure as a sound business decision: “We live on tourism and we can’t survive if we don’t satisfy the requests of our customers, especially the ones who have started coming here only recently.” Those requests would more accurately be described as demands from a group that is used to having them met. The truth is that Riccione “has become popular with Arabs, especially Saudis, who are increasingly demanding customized services, such as private jet charters.”

Villa found nothing newsworthy about the creation of sections of the beach for Muslim women only. Comparing the decision to other accommodations made for tourists she said, “When the Germans started coming here didn't we learn the language and start providing German newspapers?" The fact that Germans would never demand the exclusive right to enjoy the beach is apparently lost on the councilwoman.

Muslim inmates in London prisons have recently benefited from an even more bizarre surrender to the tenets of multiculturalism. After Muslims complained that they had to face Mecca while sitting on the toilet, they weren’t told to think about the effects breaking the law would have on their ability to fulfill certain aspects of Islamic law. Personal responsibility was instead taken by the British government, with the Home Office agreeing to rebuild the toilets by turning them 90 degrees. Muslims reacted not with gratitude but by expressing a sense of entitlement. One former prisoner said, “The least the Prison Service can do is make sure people can practice their religion correctly in prison.”

As a way to lessen the public’s shock over the plan, the Home Office refused to reveal what the cost of the “on-going refurbishment” would be to taxpayers. But a British jailer spoke for many when he said, “If they didn’t get locked up for committing crime they would not have this problem. Yet we have to sort out their loos. If we weren’t paying for it as taxpayers I’d laugh my socks off.” Muslim criminals are the ones who are laughing now, content with the knowledge that even after breaking the law they can gain concessions because of their religion. The dangers of such a precedent were not lost on Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, who warned: “Some common sense needs to be applied.”

Indeed, the construction of Islamically-correct toilets is now spreading throughout England. The Manchester Methodist Housing Association has developed a housing estate in North England with “bathrooms that face away from Mecca.” One resident explained why the houses were being built exclusively for Muslims: “We’re all Muslims here so yes, it is important [to live exclusively among Muslims]. For myself I’m not really too bothered but to a lot of the Muslim people, yes it is important to them and yes it is a very good idea.” Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal correctly noted that “anyone in contemporary Britain who would dare to state (even in a private conversation) that “to a lot of non-Muslims people, yes it is important not to live among Muslims and yes it is a very good idea” might find themselves convicted in court for racism.” But in today’s multicultural Europe, Muslims are the only group of people who are allowed to be prejudiced.

European Muslims have clearly learned that Westerners are so scared of violence in the name of Islam that even the most outrageous requests will be granted. Last year Burger King pulled its ice cream cones from its British restaurants after Rashad Akhtar claimed that he read the word “Allah” in the creamy swirl on the lid. The Muslim man didn’t only urge a boycott of Burger King, he stated that “this is my jihad.” Another British Muslim’s complaints caused Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council to ban all pictures of pigs and “pig-related items” because pigs are considered “unclean” in Islam.

The reason why Muslims have such an easy time getting their way in Europe was best expressed by Professor Unni Wikan of the University of Oslo in her defense of a series of rapes committed by Muslim men against Norwegian women. According to the professor, Norwegian women “must take their share of responsibility for these rapes” because rape is viewed as the woman’s fault in Muslim countries. In other words, European Muslims don’t have to stop raping women, but European women have to stop dressing provocatively.

Indeed, the real absurdity in Europe today is the defense of the indefensible.

Hizballah uses Christian villages as shields in missile attacks

Why not? Christian lives are cheap, and have always been regarded as such by Islamic law which stipulates blood money to be paid at a substantially reduced rate for the murder of a Christian as compared to the rate for the murder of a Muslim. "Hezbollah uses Christian villages as shields in missile attacks," from CNA, with thanks to DFS:

Washington DC, Aug. 03, 2006 (CNA) - Recent reports indicate that Hezbollah is using Christian villages to shield its attacks against Israel.

According to Christian Solidarity International, Hezbollah is hiding among civilian populations, mostly in southern Lebanese towns, such as Ain Ebel, Rmeish, Alma Alshaab.

Launching attacks behind human shields is in violation of the Geneva Convention's provision for the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, which prohibits the use of civilians as military shields.

This is not a new strategy for Hezbollah. Col. Charbel Barka, a former South Lebanese Army commander, says Hezbollah is repeating what it did in attacks against Israel in 1996.

A Christian from the village of Ain Ebel, who requested to remain nameless for fear of a reprisal from Hezbollah, reported that he found Hezbollah fighters setting up a launcher on his rooftop. Hezbollah fighters ignored his pleas to stop and fired the missiles. He immediately gathered his family and fled his home, which was bombed 15 minutes later by an Israeli air strike.

Hezbollah has also attempted to stop Christians from fleeing their villages. According to Christian Solidarity International, on July 28, Hezbollah fighters fired upon several Christians fleeing Rmeish with their families, wounding two.

Sami El-Khoury, president of the World Maronite Union, adds that media reports about Christian support for Hezbollah are inaccurate.

"Contrary to Western press reports, indicating high percentages of Christian support for Hezbollah, 90 percent of Christians, 80 percent of Sunni and 40 percent of Shiites in Lebanon oppose Hezbollah," El-Khoury told Christian Solidarity International.

Christian Solidarity International has called for the United Nations to establish a politically independent commission to investigate Hezbollah's contravention of international law. The group has also urged the UN Security Council to deploy immediately an international force in Lebanon to facilitate a ceasefire, to stop the flow of arms from Syria to Hezbollah, and to assist the Lebanese government in fulfilling its obligation to disarm Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has been the ruling power in the south since Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago. Christian villages suffer from extensive neglect of infrastructure under Hezbollah rule. Once the majority, the Christian population in Lebanon has declined to under 40 percent due to pressures by Islamic militias supported by Iran and Syria.

Olmert to Eurodhimmis: stop preaching to Israel

"Olmert tells Europe to stop preaching to Israel," from Ynet News, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties in an interview published on Sunday in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Olmert also said it would not be possible to completely destroy Hizbullah and insisted he did not underestimate them, saying they had fired just 3,000 of their arsenal of 15,000 rockets so far.

"Where do they get the right to preach to Israel?" Olmert said when asked about criticism from European capitals of Israeli military operations that have led to a heavy civilian toll.

"European countries attacked Kosovo and killed 10,000 civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket.

"I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: Don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians."

Iraq: Evidence shows increase in number of executions as homosexuals plead for asylum in Britain

Sharia Alert from Brave New Democratic Iraq: "Gays flee Iraq as Shia death squads find a new target: Evidence shows increase in number of executions as homosexuals plead for asylum in Britain," from The Observer, with thanks to JE:

Hardline Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq are targeting a new type of victim with the full protection of Iraqi law, The Observer can reveal. The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the 'immorals' - homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.

There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused. The threat has led to a rapid increase in the numbers of Iraqi homosexuals now seeking asylum in the UK because it has become impossible for them to live safely in their own country.

Fitzgerald: Why are we supporting them?

Egyptian judges urge "scrapping the peace deal"? It was scrapped, by Egypt, more than twenty years ago, just as soon as the third tranche of the Sinai was handed over by those ever-hopeful, ever-trusting, endlessly trusting Israelis, along with all those oil fields and airfields (including Etzion, the base from which those Israeli planes took off to bomb the Osirak reactor). Save for one brief meeting on the border, and Rabin's funeral, Mubarak has never once visited Israel as he was expected to do, as the Camp David Accords, in committing Egypt, for such great tangible assets, surely assumed he would do.

Egypt also has denied Israelis the right to participate in film festivals and book festivals, discouraged Egyptians from visiting Israel, and encouraged antisemitism at every level of the officially-monitored and censored (just try making fun of slick, oily Gamal Mubarak, and see what happens to your paper and to the writer) press, radio, and television.

The Americans in power during the years 1977-1980 presided over the period of the second great oil price rise, when Carter's fireside chat was no substitute for a nation-wide discussion of the nature of Saudi society, the likely use of OPEC revenues to fund Jihad ("what's Jihad"?), and therefore the need to tax gasoline so as to merely recapture part of the oligopolistic rents that otherwise would be taken by the OPEC nations. They oversaw the utterly resistible rise of Khomeini (supported by Arafat and the PLO, and assorted Mortimers and Sicks) and the far-from-inevitable fall of the Shah, whom the Americans did nothing to support and everything to abandon. Carter even sent a letter later to Khomeini, praising him as a "fellow man of faith." That was the quality of the leadership in that period 1977-1980. It was even worse than that during 1973 and the first oil price rise, when Kissinger was still preoccupied with Vietnam. He was never one to understand economics and certainly not one who had the faintest notion of what Islam was all about -- does he now? Perhaps a bit more? The American government was receiving its intelligence on Saudi Arabia (which was the most dangerous of OPEC members in the long run, even if it was the Shah who was originally behind the demands of oil-producing states for a price rise) from the likes of the ambassador James Akins in Riyadh (who was later fired by Kissinger, so outrageous was his behavior) and Raymond Close, the C.I.A. station chief who resigned in 1977 to go into "business" with the Saudis. He was for a long time after, and in a sense for a long time before, always "in business" with the Saudis.

In this kind of mess, it has always been comforting for American policymakers to construct a little drama: the drama consists of separating out the "good" Muslim countries, the ones that are our "firm allies" such as Pakistan (still called that in yesterday's New Duranty Times), our "staunch ally" Saudi Arabia, and our "two closest Arab allies, Egypt and Jordan," from the others. What is the point to using such misleading language? Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia may, at various times, in very limited ways, have interests that intersect with ours as we then perceive them. Mubarak, for example, would no doubt like the power of Iran curtailed, and so would we. Saudi Arabia wished to support the Afghanis fighting the Soviet army, and so did we. Jordan has tried in the past to limit Syrian ambitions, and so have we. And Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia all have governments that of course wish to suppress the activities of terrorist groups insofar as those terrorist groups attack the ruling elites in Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, respectively. But these governments have no qualms, none, about attacks on Infidels. Indeed, they are perfectly willing to do nothing to discourage and a good deal to encourage such terrorism as long as it is properly directed at Infidels -- Israel, America, Great Britain, France, India, Hindus or Christians or Jews, but not against Mubarak and his Friends-and-Family Plan, and not against King Abdullah and his mediagenic clan, including his uncle and his father's widow, not to mention his own family. Saudi Arabia is happy to support the worldwide Jihad except insofar as it threatens the livelihood, and the lives, of those tens of thousands of princes, princelings, and princelettes who have been robbing Arabia blind since Abdul Aziz consolidated his power early in the last century. Pakistan, of course, is happy to support terrorism directed at Kashmir and India, but Musharraf draws the line, very severely, at any attacks on --- Musharraf.

Egypt is not, was not even under Saint Sadat, and will never be, an ally of the Americans. This is abundantly established by the meretriciousness of the Egyptian government, its failure to meet a single one of its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords (though it was quite happy to howl in protest if it sensed any delay by Israel in the agreed-upon timetable for the handover, in three stages, of the entire Sinai). This should be understood in Washington, where the memory of Saint Sadat, like light from a distant star, keeps arriving long after that star -- such as it was -- has been extinguished. Sadat never was that Prince of Peace he was taken to be, and that Carter and Brzezinski kept telling us he was. Compare their browbeating, their viciousness, toward Begin, that simple sentimentalist who was convinced that "they really like me" as he gave away everything.

After the transfer of $60 billion by American taxpayers to Egypt, a world center of anti-American propaganda and antisemitism, what has been obtained in return? What do Egyptians think? We know what they think. They rival Jordan in their hatred for Americans and the United States. Why are we supporting them?

Why?

UK: Cricket match with Israeli team canceled over "public safety issues"

UPDATE: The match is still on. (Thanks to MM for the link.)

Note the Muslim Association of Britain's enthusiastic support for this successful enterprise of intimidation. "Conflict affects sport and arts," from the BBC, with thanks to Twostellas:

A match involving the Israeli cricket team in Glasgow has been abandoned amid fears of demonstrations over Israel's campaign in Lebanon.

Organisers, the European Cricket Council, said it was cancelled because of public safety issues.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival has also cancelled sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy following protests from pro-Palestinian groups.

Jewish leaders said they were concerned about anti-Semitic feeling.

Originally, police said the European Cricket Council could not find an available venue for the Israel match on Thursday.

The Israeli cricket team had been expected to play Jersey in Newlands, in Glasgow's south side, on Thursday.

That match was switched to Anniesland, postponed then cancelled. Both teams will now receive one point in the tournament.

The team is due to meet Norway on Saturday in Hillhead, Glasgow, in the European Cricket Council's second division championship match.

Osama Saeed, of the Muslim Association of Britain, said of the decision to drop the match: "This is fabulous news, though we would wish that the decision had been taken earlier by the organisers on the grounds of principle rather than practicality."

Singapore bans play for negative portrayal of Muslims

It "could create unhappiness and disaffection amongst Muslims" -- that is, somebody could get hurt. From Reuters, with thanks to Twostellas:

SINGAPORE - Singapore authorities banned a play just hours before it was due to be staged because it portrayed Muslims in a negative light, local media said on Saturday.

In its first banning of a play since its was formed in 2003, the government’s Media Development Authority said it was withdrawing the performance licence for “Smegma” as it was ”insensitive and inappropriate for staging”, the Today paper said on Saturday.

“Smegma undermines the values underpinning Singapore’s multi-racial, multi-religious society. The play portrays Muslims in a negative light,” the media authority was quoted as saying in Today.

The media authority, which initially agreed to the public performance of “Smegma”, back-peddled on Friday and said it was worried that the play “could create unhappiness and disaffection amongst Muslims”, the newspaper reported.

According to the Singapore law, all public performances must be approved and licenced by a government-appointed official.

Both the media authority and “Smegma” playwright P Elangovan could not be reached for comment on Saturday, but Elangovan was quoted as saying in Today that he was ”unsurprised” by the ban.

His play “Talaq”, about rape within an Indian Muslim marriage, was also banned in Singapore in 2000, according to the paper.

India: Book banned, publisher arrested for book containing picture of Muhammad

And they're demanding the death penalty, which is the traditional Sharia punishment for blasphemy. "Indian Muslims sue blasphemous book," from Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News, with thanks to Twostellas:

Police have seized and banned school textbooks carrying fake portraits of the noblest messenger of Allah, Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH) and arrested the publisher in Uttar Pradesh state after religious authorities demanded the death penalty for him and the book's writer, an official said on Friday.

According to the daily Times, copies of the fifth-grade Hindi book were seized from the Vivekananda school in Mahoba town, said Home Secretary RM Srivastava.

The administration has banned and seized the book carrying the picture of Holy Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).

The publisher of the book has been arrested, Srivastava said.

Education Minister Kiran Singh has ordered an inquiry into how the book was approved by a government panel that clears textbooks before circulation.

Pakistani Christians protest razing of church to make way for fertilizer factory expansion

From AP: "Christians protest demolition of church by factory management in Pakistan"

MULTAN, Pakistan - About 150 Christians on Friday protested the demolition of their church by the management of a fertilizer factory in eastern Pakistan, a priest and police said.

The church - located on land owned by the recently privatized Pak Arab Fertilizers Limited - was demolished late Thursday in the city of Multan to allow the company to expand its factory next door, said Umair Ahmed, a company spokesman.

"It was not done because of any religious motive,” he said, adding they had given advance notice to the Christians to vacate the church.

No dialogue, apparently. Just orders to get out.

Mukhtiar Faisal, who purchased the factory last year, was not immediately available for comment.

However, Yaqoob Masih, the priest of the church, condemned the factory management for bulldozing their place of worship, and urged President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to take action.

Masih said a mosque located near their church had not been harmed.

"We begged them not to do it but they demolished our church,” he told the protesters at the rally in Multan, city in eastern Punjab province.

He said the factory management was now offering them money as compensation, but they had turned down the offer.

"We don’t need money. We only need our church.”

Sharif Zafar, an area police chief, confirmed that incident, but said the factory management was still holding talks with the angry Christians to resolve the issue.

Christians make up about 3 percent of Pakistan’s predominantly Muslim population of more than 150 million and generally live peacefully with the Muslim majority.

Portrait of a 'heretical' lady

A profile of the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to DFS):

When the Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a fatwa on Salman Rushdie in 1989, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a pious 20-year-old Muslim who applauded the Iranian leader for putting a price on the apostate's head.

"All I knew is that he had insulted the prophet, and anyone who insulted the prophet deserves to die," recalls Hirsi Ali. In 2003 - after she renounced her faith and entered the Dutch parliament - Hirsi Ali became known as the "Dutch Salman Rushdie" for the torrent of death threats she incited for her crusade against Islam.

A few years ago, she met Rushdie in New York and apologized for once siding with the Islamists against him. He obviously accepted her olive branch, providing the cover endorsement for Hirsi Ali's new book of essays, The Caged Virgin.

Hirsi Ali doesn't sound like an embattled activist over the phone. Her quiet, flute-y voice matches the fine-featured face which peers with calm resolve out of photos. But her language is the opposite of delicate. Hirsi Ali has called the Prophet Muhammad a "tyrant," a "pervert" and a "pedophile" for counting a nine-year-old among his nine wives.

Running through The Caged Virgin is Hirsi Ali's conviction that Islam is inimical to individual rights because it calls for the individual's unquestioning submission to God. Hirsi Ali argues that Islam enforces an unyielding hierarchy - leading down from Allah, to the Prophet, to religious leaders and then fathers - which brooks no space for individual freedom. Hirsi Ali bats off the suggestion that this account could equally apply to other monotheistic religions, which demand obeisance to a single God.

"Judaism and Christianity have gone through a long history of enlightenment and reflection," she says. "But the Islam that we see today tends towards the seventh century. Islamic reformists throughout the centuries have been harassed and exiled and killed."

Yes. Read it all.

"These youths have shown no respect for the church as a place of worship. How would they feel if a gang of vandals attempted to break into their mosque?"

It is good to see that the local Muslim leader condemns these attacks and is even going to the police about them. It would be even better to see that he is working against the attitudes and assumptions that lead to such attacks in the first place. "Priest guards church against ‘racist’ attacks," from the Lancashire Telegraph, with thanks to Twostellas:

A PRIEST is set to install high fences around his church in Blackburn in a bid to combat racist attacks.

The move was revealed as a Muslim leader blasted the gang of youths which targeted St Joseph's RC Church, in Audley, Blackburn.

Coun Salim Mulla, secretary of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, said the gang were "disgraceful and disrespectful" and he was so angry that when he found out who was responsible he would personally report them to the police.

The latest incident happened on Sunday at 11pm and although the church's alarm system prevented the youths from gaining access to the church, significant damage was done to the church door.

Father Francis Parkinson, the Roman Catholic priest at St Joseph's, was also targeted in February when he was racially abused by a gang of youths who had been loitering in the church car park.

A 19-year-old later admitted racially aggravated threatening behaviour against the priest and was given a conditional discharge for 12 months and ordered to pay £50 costs.

Father Francis said the church and its car park have been plagued with gangs of juveniles making a nuisance of themselves.

He said he was looking to install high fences around the church and car park to keep youths out and protect the church from vandalism.

He added: "I would simply like to know why these young men feel they have got to do this as I personally don't understand it.

"This is just another example of wanton vandalism that is upsetting community cohesion.

"These youths have shown no respect for the church as a place of worship. How would they feel if a gang of vandals attempted to break into their mosque?

"I was racially abused by youths hanging around the church car park a few months back and now we have had an attempted break-in.

"The bolt on the door has been broken. Repairs cost money. I have spoken to Coun Mulla about this situation and he is most upset that this keeps happening and has said he will do what he can to find those responsible."

Coun Mulla said he couldn't believe the church had been targeted again and called for the Muslim community to condemn the youths' actions.

He said: "The Muslim community works very closely with the Christian community and it is important we understand and respect everybody else's beliefs.

"I expect all youths to be law abiding and not cause harm to people's places of worship. Sadly some youths behave disgracefully and these youths in particular have disgraced their community by what they have done to St Joseph's."

"I want to send a strong message to the community that this sort of racist and anti-social behaviour is not acceptable."

All right. But there is a larger problem of the hatred for and contempt of Christians inculcated by a Qur'an that calls unbelievers the "vilest of creatures" (98:6) and says they are under Allah's curse (9:30) and must be fought (9:29). Is Coun Mulla doing anything about that?

Moshe Yaalon: Those who condemn Israel signal that using human shields pays dividends

Moshe Yaalon is a retired lieutenant general and former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. In "Rules of War" in the Washington Post (thanks to Sr. Soph), of all places, he lays bare some of the inconsistency and dishonesty of what passes for thought among all too many dhimmi analysts in the West.

The conflict in the Middle East is about much more than Israel and Hezbollah, or even Hezbollah's Syrian and Iranian sponsors. What is at stake are the very rules of war that underpin the entire international order.

Sadly, judging from how most of the world has responded to Israel's military action against Hezbollah, these rules have been completely abandoned.

The rules of war boil down to one central principle: the need to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. Those who condemned Israel for what happened at Qana, rather than placing the blame for this unfortunate tragedy squarely on Hezbollah and its state sponsors, have rewarded those for whom this moral principle is meaningless and have condemned a state in which this principle has always guided military and political decision making.

Faced with enemies who openly call for its destruction and victimized by unremitting wars and terrorism since well before it was born, Israel has risked the lives of its citizens and its soldiers to abide by this principle in a way that is unprecedented in the history of nations.

Here is but one of countless examples: In 2003, at the height of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, our intelligence services discovered the location of a meeting of the senior leadership of Hamas, an organization pledged to the annihilation of the Jewish state and responsible for some of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out against Israel.

We knew that a one-ton bomb would destroy the three-story building and kill the Hamas leadership. But we also knew that such a bomb would endanger about 40 families who lived in the vicinity. We decided to use a smaller bomb that would destroy only the top floor of the building. As it turned out, the Hamas leaders were meeting on the ground floor. They lived to terrorize another day.

Read it all.

Anti-dhimmitude in the Daily Mail: "You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist...to wonder how many of the male 'civilians' killed by the Israelis are actually Hezbollah terrorists"

From "The civilian casualties are awful but Israel is fighting for its existence" in the Daily Mail, with thanks to PK:

But you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist, either, to wonder how many of the male 'civilians' killed by the Israelis are actually Hezbollah terrorists or whether everything we're being shown from Lebanon is for real.

Islamonazis are sophisticated propagandists and they know they'll find a gullible audience in the civilised world for their carefully-strewn teddy bears, strategically-placed 'Baby Milk Factory' signs (in English) and wailing widows from central casting.

Have you ever noticed how every time a coalition air strike goes astray in Iraq, it always manages to hit a 'wedding party'?

Why is there only ever one child's shoe in the rubble, never a pair? There always seems to be a broken medicine box, too, with a handy red cross - never a red crescent, mind you - on the lid, just in case we haven't got the message.

Credulous CNN correspondents and handwringing BBC reporters fall over themselves to sign up for the Hezbollah guided tour of the ruins.

UN Deputy Secretary General: Hizballah not terrorist group

They're not terrorists. They just delight in murdering civilians. "U.N.'s Malloch Brown Questions Hezbollah's 'Terror' Designation," from FoxNews, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

WASHINGTON — U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown may want to stick to reforming his own office and stop criticizing member states, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday.

Malloch Brown was quoted in a British newspaper Wednesday suggesting that he does not think that Hezbollah, the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group currently fighting Israeli Defense Forces, is a terrorist organization.

"It's not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism. Hezbollah employs terrorist tactics; it is an organization, however, whose roots historically are completely separate and different from Al Qaeda," he said, according to a transcript of an interview.

Afghan government expels Christians

Islamic Tolerance Alert from Brave New Democratic Afghanistan: "Afghan Govt Expel Christians," from SBS World News Australia, with thanks to JE:

The Afghan government has decided to expel more than a thousand South Korean evangelical Christians who had intended holding a peace festival in Kabul.

According to officials the South Koreans are mainly university students or professors who are being expelled for involvement in religious discussions with local Afghans and concerns for their safety.

I.e., if we don't expel you, the mob will get you.

Officials had warned around 1,500 South Koreans, most of them evangelical Christians, against preaching or political activities.

The South Koreans had said they wanted to come to the insurgency-wracked country to spread peace....

There were weeks of hot-tempered debate earlier in the year about whether an Afghan who converted to Christianity should be put to death in accordance with Islamic Sharia law.

The United Nations had also expressed its concern over the visit. "With the current situation in Afghanistan it is not particularly helpful to have people in Afghanistan who may incite public disorder," spokesman Aleem Siddique said.

Thanks for standing up for human rights and religious freedom, Siddique.

Give War A Chance

Nidra Poller writes from Paris for Jihad Watch on peace in our time:

Advocates of an immediate cease fire did not prevail at the recent Rome Conference convened to discuss the current crisis and if possible agree on a common position. As bluntly stated by two disappointed journalists: “World powers failed to reach agreement…on when to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militiamen in Lebanon [sic], bowing to American pressure to give Israel more time to bomb.” Sciolino and Cooper inadvertently admit that the cease fire camp is focused primarily, or realistically, on curbing Israel’s right to pursue its military operation in Lebanon, without really addressing the problem of Hizballah attacks against Israeli civilians. For good reason. Hizballah is not operating within the framework of so-called international law. What’s more, an honest description of the conflict precludes the ceasefire approach and demolishes its humanitarian underpinnings.

In the real world Hizballah launched a widespread, unprovoked, premeditated attack against Israel. Astute observers worldwide recognize this offensive as the opening battle of Iran’s war against the infidels, in the larger context of global jihad. Israel is striking back with considerable determination, making progress while discovering the full extent of the challenge in terms of Hizballah weapons caches, underground tunnels, trained combatants, sophisticated communications and tactics. Disproportionate for some, inadequate for others, the ongoing Israeli military campaign is undeniably vigorous and skillful.

By what logic would one interfere at this point, impose a ceasefire, and replace courageous IDF soldiers with any combination of multinational troops known or imaginable? The idea is so preposterous that it unravels as it is articulated. One day a NY Times editorial suggests that the French would be the backbone of the force because of their close ties with Lebanon, forgetting to add a word or two about France’s ill-concealed antipathy for Israel. But it doesn’t even matter. Because the French have made it clear that they are not marching in until and unless the political problems are solved and the battlefield is pacified and, even then, they will only take marching orders from the UN. Maybe you have to live in France to understand that this is their way of saying “non.” As for suggesting that the French first prove their mettle by disarming the punk jihadis in the banlieue or curbing the appetite for car burning, it’s too easy. Just as it is too easy to tally UN failures in the region, on that very border, and anywhere else in the world where scrupulous authority backed up by military force is required. The death of four UN soldiers on the eve of the Rome conference was immediately transformed into stones to throw at Israel. Kofi Annan, whose quite recent words of praise for Hassan Nasrallah coupled with their photo op are circulating in the blogosphere, cast the first stone. And the howling crowd joined in without stopping to think exactly how this incident supported their ceasefire cause. It doesn’t. It illustrates the impossibility not to mention the utter inadvisability of an expanded UN force on the border. Israeli soldiers are kidnapped and subject to conditions of detainment that chill the blood. Israeli soldiers are dying in combat in Lebanon, courageously fighting to protect Israeli civilians and Israel’s very existence. Israeli civilians are killed in their homes, on their streets, in their workplaces. Four UN soldiers--still passively observing as Hizballah fighters fiercely defend the military installations they constructed under the UN’s watchful eye—are killed and the UN immediately accuses Israel of deliberately targeting them.

Would it be any different in the case of an expanded, beefed up international intervention force? Or would that force serve as the avant-garde of the human shield now composed of the Lebanese population?

Measured against the existential danger facing Israel and, concomitantly, the rest of the free world, the vague notion of a multinational force is shockingly frivolous. Its advocates skirt every concrete problem, beginning with the disarmament of Hizballah, and introduce preposterous notions such as inviting Syria to participate because it has the only Arab army that could handle those tough Hizballah fighters. The force would be under French commandment, but the French won’t go anywhere near the region until it has been pacified. The force would operate under UN mandate, prevent cross-border attacks, pave the way for deployment of the Lebanese army on the troubled frontier as specified in UN Resolution 1559…but only if the warring parties agree in advance. As for the underlying issues, a close look reveals that the ceasefire is based essentially on satisfying Hizballah demands for massive liberation of Lebanese prisoners and evacuation of the Sheba’a Farms, thereby justifying the unprovoked July 12th attack.

In short, the ceasefire crowd is promising peace in our time.
French participation in any military operation is highly problematical. French participation in the ceasefire movement is total and, on the domestic scene, exhilarating. Public approval ratings for Chirac-Villepin are up by more than 10%. The media are at a fever pitch of anti-Zionist hysteria. Anticipating victory in Rome, they announced a stunning turnaround in US policy, claiming that Condoleeza Rice came away from her meeting with Fuad Sionora finally convinced of the need for an “urgent ceasefire.” That story vanished the next day, when the American Secretary of State reiterated her government’s opposition to hasty interruption of combat. Undaunted by the facts, the media hammer away, invent new stories, convinced that victory—in the form of cowardly surrender—is just around the corner.

It won’t work this time. The resolve of determined nations—Israel, the US, Great Britain, Canada, and certain Arab countries among others—is too strong, the evil designs of Iran via Hizballah are too clear, the stakes are too high to allow good old international opinion to come to the rescue of jihadis who attack boldly, promise hellfire and damnation, and then squeak for help as soon as they start losing.
The failure of the Rome Conference to impose that kind of international opinion is in fact a success for a new, post-UN era in international relations. No multinational force is going to combat Hizballah and deliver a sharp blow to apocalyptic Iranian projects, and no jumble of nations can formulate coherent policy on life and death matters. All the humanitarian hype will not hide the fact that this is war, in war you take sides, and you fight to win. It is true of the jihadis, it is true of those who fight them. You can’t be both at the same time.

Aussie govt Muslim advisers: Hizballah not terrorist group

Why, of course not. Those rockets lobbed at civilians in Israel, those are directed to the cause of peace and justice. "Govt, Muslim advisers clash on Hizbollah," from AAP, with thanks to David:

The government is on a collision course with its Muslim advisory group over its claim that Hizbollah should not be considered a terrorist organisation.

The Muslim Community Reference Group is considering writing to Prime Minister John Howard asking the government to reconsider its listing of the militant arm of Hizbollah as a terrorist organisation....

Mr Howard made it clear Wednesday the government had no intention of removing the militant arm of Hizbollah from its official list of terrorist organisations.

"No chance, full stop. No chance at all (of removing Hizbollah from the list)," Mr Howard told reporters.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the decision to ban Hizbollah, which was first listed in 2003, had not been made lightly.

"They're not decisions which are political," he said....

"I'm not aware of any information that would suggest we should reconsider proscription of the military wing of Hizbollah."

But Ameer Ali, chairman of the Muslim advisory group set up last year in the wake of the London terrorist bombings, says Hizbollah should not be lumped in with groups like al-Qaeda.

"They should not condemn Hizbollah as a terrorist group," he told AAP.

"I don't think they should judge that they are simply a terrorist organisation like al-Qaeda.

"It is part of Lebanese politics."...

Dr Ali believes the government's assessment of Hizbollah is clouded by the US and Israel.

"We are of the opinion that the Australian government does not have an independent foreign policy with regard to the Middle East," he told ABC Radio.

"We go along with whatever the Americans say and the Americans go along with whatever the Israeli lobby says."

As Khomeini said, "There is no fun in Islam"

"Muslim fun park day flop," from The Sun, with thanks to DRK:

A MUSLIMS-only day at Britain’s biggest theme park has been axed after a huge bookings flop.

Organisers Islamic Leisure had hoped to attract 28,000 people to the event at Alton Towers, Staffs, on September 17 — but less than 1,000 tickets were sold.

Woman jailed in housekeeper slavery case

Colorado Slavery Case Update. From AP, with thanks to Mackie:

CENTENNIAL, Colo. - A woman was sentenced to two months in jail Tuesday for effectively stealing the services of an Indonesian woman who prosecutors said was held as a virtual slave for four years.

Sarah Khonaizan, 35, a Saudi citizen who lives in suburban Denver, also was ordered on the theft charge to pay $90,000 in restitution and was ordered not to have any contact with the 24-year-old woman.

Last week, a federal judge sentenced Khonaizan to five years' probation and ordered her to pay $26,275 in restitution after pleading guilty to harboring an illegal immigrant.

Her attorney, Forrest Lewis, has said she wants to return to Saudi Arabia and will not fight deportation.

One elastic loaf with pepperoni -- what? No pepperoni?

"Elastic loaf." Mmmmmm. Pizza must be tasty in Iran.

If the unbelievers are unclean, then why use their dirty words? Like "pizza" and "chat." The Thug-In-Chief bans dhimmi lingo: "Iran bans 'pizza,' orders up 'elastic loaf,'" from AP, with thanks to Teri (note, however, that Arabic supremacism remains unchallenged):

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as ''pizzas'' which will now be known as ''elastic loaves,'' state media reported Saturday.

The presidential decree, issued earlier in the week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the IRNA official news agency reported.

The academy has introduced more than 2,000 words as alternatives for some of the foreign words that have become commonly used in Iran, mostly from Western languages. The government is less sensitive about Arabic words, because the Quran is written in Arabic.

Among other changes, a ''chat'' will become a ''short talk'' and a ''cabin'' will be renamed a ''small room,'' according to the official Web site of the academy.

Debate continues on reform of rape laws in Pakistan

The measure to revise the rape laws in Pakistan continues to inch forward, but will always face opposition from those who share the opinion of Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, quoted below, that "Neither Parliament or anyone else has the authority to remove or change laws of God" regarding accusations of rape and adultery (see Qur'an 24:13).

An update on this story from AP: "Pakistan mulls changing much-criticized Islamic rape laws"

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The government will propose legislation amending Pakistan’s rape laws to remove the near impossible burden of proof placed on victims and protect them from retaliatory adultery charges, a senior lawmaker said Tuesday.

The draft amendment will likely be submitted soon to the National Assembly, or lower house of Parliament, Mahnaz Rafi, chairwoman for Parliament’s special committee for women’s development, told The Associated Press.

This will be a historic change and it will end decades of miseries for women,” said Rafi, a lawmaker of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q party.

Since Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1979, a woman must produce four Muslim witnesses to prove she is the victim of a rape. A woman who claims she was raped but fails to prove her charges can then be arrested and convicted of adultery or for having sex outside marriage.

Under the proposed amendments, the person who accuses a woman of committing adultery (or has sex outside of marriage) will have to come up with four witnesses” in a common law court, Rafi said.

Pakistan has two parallel and sometimes overlapping legal systems: one based on British common law and another based on Islamic law.

Under Islamic, or Shariah, law, women can be sentenced to death by stoning if found guilty of having sex outside of marriage, although the usual sentence is life in prison.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a moderate, has sought to reform Islamic laws to improve women’s rights in the past but backed off because of strong opposition in deeply conservative Pakistan.

Earlier this month, however, Musharraf signed an amendment that allowed women awaiting charges to be released on bail - his first change to Pakistan’s Islamic laws.

A lawmaker from a coalition of radical Islamic groups said Tuesday that the coalition opposes repealing Islamic laws in their entirety, as many moderates are demanding, but it may support legislation aimed at improving how investigations are handled.

"Neither Parliament or anyone else has the authority to remove or change laws of God,” said Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a prominent figure in the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal or United Action Forum opposition coalition.

Ahmed, a member of the National Assembly, declined to comment in detail because he had not seen the draft amendments.

Parties supporting Musharraf have enough strength in Parliament to pass the bill.

Annan's secret call to Straw: get with it and play the dhimmi

And Straw complied. From The Guardian, with thanks to JE:

Kofi Annan told Jack Straw of his anger at Britain's stance on the conflict in a phone call last Wednesday to the former foreign secretary, it emerged last night. The UN secretary general rang Mr Straw hours after Britain and the US blocked a call for an immediate ceasefire at the Rome summit, and a day after Israel bombed a UN monitoring position, killing four observers.

Two days later Mr Straw broke rank publicly, attacking Israel's "disproportionate" actions.

Egypt Copts Proud of Hizballah

I have been told by many Middle Eastern Christians, including Copts, that they have long learned to say one thing about Islam and Muslims in public, and another in private. That is not to say that the Copts quoted in this article don't believe what they're saying: I've met many genuine dhimmis among Middle Eastern Christians as well. There are others, of course, who are genuine anti-dhimmis; but most have been co-opted by the Arab nationalism that spuriously offered them equality with Muslims on the basis of ethnic solidarity. The Arab nationalist enterprise has, of course, increasingly given way to the jihad, leaving the dhimmi Christians in a worse position than they would have been in if they had had the courage to stand up for their own identity in the first place.

As for these Copts, their solidarity with Hizballah will get them nowhere. It won't make Egyptian Muslims stop their campaign of discrimination and harassment. Nothing will stop that except their conversion to Islam.

"Egypt Copts Proud of Hizbullah," from IslamOnline, with thanks to PRCS:

CAIRO — Egypt's Copts have hailed the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbullah and its chief Hassan Nasrallah as a source of pride to Muslims and the Arab world, and launched a fund-raising campaign to help the Lebanese people in their current trial.

"All Arabs must be proud of Hizbullah's gallantry," Bishop Rafiq Gris, the spokesman for the Egyptian Catholic Church, told IslamOnline.net Monday, July 31.

"No matter what the results will be, Hizbullah has proved that the 'invincible' Israeli army is too weak and shown that a Frankenstein created by the Arab rulers was brought to his knees by a few number of fighters," added Yuhana Qaltah, a writer and columnist.

Hizbullah has inflicted heavy losses on the powerful Israeli army and proved in no way an easy meat.

Its fighters forced Israeli forces to withdraw from the two strategic towns of Bint Jbeil and Maroon Al-Ras they had seized earlier.

Hizbullah has downed at least two Apache helicopters and damaged a giant warship at the very beginning of the conflict.

Famed filmmaker Youssef Chahine said Nasrallah is a "source of pride to Islam."

"Hizbullah is a symbol of Arab dignity," he told Reuters on Sunday, July 30.

The Cannes-awarded director said he hoped to shake hands with Nasrallah in a visit to Beirut earlier this year.

"Nasrallah welcomed my visit…I'm really proud of him," Chahine added.