They had stopped to rest. “3 French travelers slain in Saudi desert.” from AP: RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Three French travelers were killed by gunmen Monday in the Saudi Arabian desert when they stopped their car to rest on the side of a road leading to the holy city of Medina in an area restricted […]
Archives for February 2007
Ahmadinejad: Tomato price hikes an enemy plot
Partly the usual paranoia, and partly deflection of responsibility for failed economic policies. “Tomato price hikes an enemy plot: Iran president,” from Reuters: TEHERAN – Iran’s president said on Sunday the country”s enemies had hatched a range of plots to push the Islamic Republic to give up its disputed nuclear programme, including driving up the […]
Ahmadinejad says “˜no brakes” on Iran nuclear drive
“Going off the rails on a Crazy Train” in Tehran. From AFP: TEHERAN – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday defied Western threats to impose more sanctions over Iran’s contested nuclear programme, comparing its atomic drive to a “˜train with no brakes”. Ahmadinejad’s declaration came a day before the UN Security Council’s five permanent members plus […]
Rice: Pakistan must control border area
Indeed it must. But will it? In any case, it is good to see the White House at least doing something to call Pakistan to account. By Terence Hunt for AP: WASHINGTON – The White House is pressuring Pakistan to crack down on al-Qaida and Taliban operatives in the lawless border area with Afghanistan that […]
February 26, 1993
On this day fourteen years ago, Islamic jihadists set off a bomb in the World Trade Center, killing six people, wounding 1,000, and causing $500 million in damage. Over eight years later, Islamic jihadists brought down those same Towers. One might have been forgiven for thinking, in the interim between February 26, 1993 and September […]
More “misconceptions” about Islam
In “Removing the “˜cloak” of religious extremism” for the Common Ground News Service (via Middle East Online), Laura McAleer, a student at Georgetown University, and Hala Ali, a student at South Valley University of Cairo, who together participated in a “Western-Arab intercultural dialogue program,” spin some fanciful but familiar tales: Washington, D.C./Cairo Egypt – In […]
Islam’s Hagiographer
David Thompson profiles Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong: In my review of Robert Spencer’s The Truth About Muhammad, I wrote: “In his book, Islam and the West, the historian Bernard Lewis argued: ‘We live in a time when”¦ governments and religious movements are busy rewriting history as they would wish it to have been, as they […]
The myth of Muslim support for terror
Terror Free Tomorrow, an organization that recommends jizya as an antidote to terror, says that Islamic terrorism isn’t that big a deal anyway. In “The myth of Muslim support for terror: The common enemy is violence and terrorism, not Muslims any more than Christians or Jews” in the Christian Science Monitor (thanks to Ahsen), Kenneth […]
Muslim insurgency stokes fear in southern Thailand
From the International Herald Tribune: PATTANI, Thailand: Some are already calling it war, a brutal Muslim separatist insurgency in southern Thailand that has taken as many as 2,000 lives in three years, with almost daily bombings, drive-by shootings, arson and beheadings. It is a conflict the government admits it is losing. A harsh crackdown and […]
Lawsuit over Roxbury mosque dismissed
An update on this story. “Lawsuit over mosque site is dismissed,” by Stephen Kurkjian for the Boston Globe: A Suffolk Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit that contended the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s sale of a parcel of land in Roxbury for a price significantly below its appraised value to the Islamic Society of Boston violated […]
A message and a reply
In this post I quoted several Qur’an verses that are being used by Muslims today to justify mistreatment of women and warfare against non-Muslims. A comment appeared in the comments field there that I thought worth a separate posting, along with my reply. Here is the comment, a message to me: Robert, As a Muslim […]
Fitzgerald: Anything to do with terrorism?
There has been much discussion lately of whether or not this or that case has anything to do with “terrorism.” The Salt Lake mall shooter and the Nashville would-be murderer by taxicab spring immediately to mind. The word “terrorism” may not quite fit if the FBI takes it to mean some kind of organized conspiracy, […]
Fitzgerald: The vast folie à deux
TERROR suspects could be given taxpayer-funded counselling for being angry or having low self-esteem. Under the proposal, the [Australian] Federal Government would provide psychological counselling and anger management support to terror suspects and those subject to control orders. — from this article Not real comprehension. Not any sense that there may be something wrong with […]
A Danish party demands censorship for Quran
The Copenhagen Qur’an Petition. One would hope, probably against hope, that this proposal would lead to a fruitful public discussion of the passages of the Qur’an and Hadith that jihadists use today to justify Islamic supremacism, and an honest initiative by Muslims in Denmark to teach their people never to understand such passages literally. But […]
Report: Jihadist threat to Britain worst since 9/11
“It is thought the plotters could number more than 2,000,” up from the 1600 estimated last November. “Secret report: Terror threat worst since 9/11,” by Sean Rayment for the Telegraph: The terrorist threat facing Britain from home-grown al-Qaeda agents is higher than at any time since the September 11 attacks in 2001, secret intelligence documents […]
CAIR outraged at NC high school class
This Raleigh News & Observer story about Kamil Solomon’s presentation on Islam at Enloe High School in North Carolina, “Students told to shun Muslims” by Yonat Shimron and Kinea White Epps, quotes CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper and a student, but not Kamil Solomon himself. As such the claims about what was said have to be taken […]
Fitzgerald: We are not Jimmy Carter — are we?
A poster at Jihad Watch recently expressed conventional wisdom when he wrote: “The Iraqi military is not ready yet. Chaos would be the result. Iran would take the opportunity to control the southern half of Iraq, along with substantial additional oil resources. If the U.S. will not aggressively deal with Iraq, there is no chance […]
Canada court rejects terror law
How very interesting that a law that has been in place since 1978 would only now be found to be at variance with Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. From the BBC, with thanks to all who sent this in: Canada’s Supreme Court has struck down a controversial system that allowed the government to detain […]
ACLU: US Can’t Bar Terrorism Supporters
From AP: A civil rights group asked a judge Friday to find it unconstitutional for the federal government to exclude a prominent Muslim scholar or anyone else from the United States on the grounds that they may have endorsed or espoused terrorism. Another blow for civil liberties in America: “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of […]
Dutch politician doubts Muslim ministers’ loyalty
From Reuters: AMSTERDAM: The leader of a Dutch anti-immigration party will call for a vote of no-confidence in two Muslim government ministers next week, citing their dual nationality as the issue, a newspaper reported today. Geert Wilders said in an interview with the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad the appointment of Moroccan-born Ahmed Aboutaleb and Turkish-born […]