A poster above describes Geert Wilders as 'gay'. I'm not so sure he is. These days gay men don't usually get married to women; and Wilders has a Hungarian wife tucked away somewhere safe...poor people, because of the security arrangements they get to see each other about once a week in a closely-guarded location. Frankly, I think his wife is a serious contender for the title of Smartest Woman in Europe...for picking out and snaffling up, well ahead of time, a man who would be intelligent enough to recognise the threat from the Jihad-makers and the Sharia-pushers, and brave enough to try to lead a Resistance against that threat. Whether he's gay, bi or straight, he's a Man and his wife must have seen that, way back when.

Seconding PersonoftheBook - if these Muslims are carrying out their razzias, their cowardly swarming attacks, repeatedly in certain locations - e.g. Kennedy Park - and against certain types of targets, say, a schoolgirl, a drunk guy, a lone elderly woman walking a dog - then it seems to me that a few 'stakeouts'/ booby traps could be arranged. The gang attacks and then discovers, for example, that the lone little old lady isn't as old as she was made up to look, nor the schoolgirl as defenceless, and that she's a wing chun kung fu champ (they find this out when they're balled up on the ground clutching their groins after being swift-and-deadly kicked), and her dog is a bull terrier that's prepared to BITE and HOLD ON and that she has a whole lotta friends just as unfriendly as her, with dogs too, suddenly popping out of their hiding places, and that they - the nasty, slimy, cowardly little Muslim bullies - are surrounded, with nowhere to run. Or they discover that that bloke who looked drunk...isn't, and that he too has a LOT of friends, big burly friends with guns, or great BIG sticks. And then they get humiliatingly caned, with everything recorded on video from start to finish. HOnestly, too, tarring and feathering and riding out of town on a rail was *made* as a taking-down-a-peg treatment for supremacist Muslim thugs. Maybe, if the Muslim jihad gangsters had a few nasty surprises of this kind, they'd think twice about attacking random kafir... Of course, if such action was taken, you'd have to have a few lawyers on side beforehand, ready to deal with the howls of 'racism!' that would be raised; which is why the initial *Muslim* gang attacks on what the Muslims supposed to be lone, defenceless, easy target Infidels, would have to be filmed.

OK. So *only* fifteen people - fifteen heroes - turned up for the SIOE rally against the Harrow mosque. It's a start. Fifteen. Better than one, or two, or three, or ten. A whole lot better than none. The SIOE should simply set another date, for another rally (I suggest during the runup to Passover and Easter), and get cracking on some networking. Each of those fifteen people who did come, should try to find a few other people to join him or her, next time. And see what happens. If at first you don't succeed, then try, try, try again.

The thing that really gets me about this is the way Reuters casually ignores the psychological and economic damage wreaked by these strutting, sneering, predatory b*st*rds. Many of those who are held to ransom - most of the sailors on board the seized ships, for example, or the British couple who were snatched with their ocean-going yacht only 60 miles or so from the capital city of the Seychelles islands, or the kidnapped journalists Canadian Amanda Lindhout and Aussie Nigel Brennan - are NOT rich people; and so cannot afford to pay the exorbitant ransoms demanded. Seamen from the Ukraine, Russia, Philippines, Tuvalu and Kiribati, are poor as dirt; their families and friends can't meet the price. Countries like the Philippines, Tuvalu, Kiribati and Ukraine, are too damn poor to be able to ransom their citizens. So their captured people rot in hell with the jihadis quite prepared, in the end, to either enslave them or casually kill them, once it becomes clear that the money really ain't forthcoming. Lindhout and Brennan, and the British couple, come from middle-class backgrounds, not filthy rich at all; the kidnapped British couple had retired and sunk EVERYTHING into their boat which had become their sole asset; to ransom them, their children and friends would have to strip themselves of whatever assets *they* have. I know that Brennan's family members, to raise the $1.5 million demanded (and he was being kept in solitary confinement, and viciously beaten), sold houses and cars; the sale of a house and land with all or most of the resulting cash vanishing into the bottomless maw of Somalia, means that the seller is henceforward 'handicapped', permanently losing their main asset built up by years of work. And thus, bit by bit, kidnapping by kidnapping, ship by hijacked ship, the resources of the lands of the non-Muslims, are liquidated and siphoned off into dar al Islam, to feed the vampire extortioners; to be spent on ...more jihad, to conduct more ghazwa raids, more kidnappings, more hijackings. Furthermore, through the seizure of ships and cargoes there is the cost to the insurance companies and the disruption of trade and commerce. It's the imposition of jizya or tribute by any other means. Muslims used this sort of 'raiding', year after year, decade after decade, to 'soften up' targets like Spain and Byzantium, destroying assets and also stealing resources, to weaken them so they could be invaded outright. Sure, Lindhout and Brennan should have had more sense than to go into Somalia; but the British couple in their yacht had no reason to suppose pirates would be so close to the coast of the Seychelles; and a Tuvalu or Kiribati or Filipino ordinary seaman has no choice what ships he works. In the old days, newspaper articles about pirates, hijackers and kidnappers-for-ransom - whether said pirates were Muslim or non-Muslim - would have been filled with righteous fury and calls for enforcement of the law. But Reuters seems almost admiring of all this 'enterprise'. The proper treatment of these evil people should be the obliteration of their coastal lairs, their harbours, anchored boats and palaces, by withering bombardment from Infidel naval ships just offshore; at sea decoy ships (like the Q-ships of WWII) might be used to draw the pirate boats out of hiding, upon which, they should be sent to Davey Jones's locker.

NoGuile - true. There is an excellent organisation called 'Anglican Friends of Israel'. Look them up. Don't forget that one of the best Gentile friends that Israel ever had was the devout and erudite Anglican clergyman, James Parkes. His books 'The Story of Jerusalem' and 'Whose Land?' are well worth reading. The other great English lover of Israel was the extraordinary Orde Wingate who, had he not been killed in Burma during World War II, would surely have ended up with a job in the IDF, either in active service or as an instructor of soldiers. James the Fin: there are antisemites but I think there are also many earnest and well-meaning Christians who (knowing nothing about the enormous Arab/ Muslim capacity for voluble, tearful, convincing and elaborate lies) have been completely sucked in by Arab/Muslim taqiyya, much of it channelled through 'Palestinian' Islamochristians such as Naim Ateek and Hanan Ashrawi. At the very end of John Roy Carlson's 'Cairo to Damascus' (1951) you can see him putting his finger on that whole agitprop campaign aimed at Christians, right at its beginnings before it had much in the way of oil money behind it. I could have gone down that path but for the grace of God. I grew up in a totally pro-Israel household but by the time I did my second degree at university I was beginning to be swayed by all the Poor Palestinian sob stories that were deluging the church. Then, fortunately, I discovered Jacques Ellul and then, having read most of his other books and learned a good deal of respect for his judgement, worked my way through his brilliant book on Israel, 'Un Chretien Pour Israel' (1983), which contains a lucid and devastating deconstruction of the whole anti-Israel propaganda. Luckily by that stage I had learnt enough French to be able to read it in French...since it alone of all his books written around that time, has NOT been translated into English (funny, that). That cleared my head and rendered me thenceforward wholly immune to all versions of the 'Arab Narrative'. And then one day, googling for Jacques Ellul because I wanted to find out if Un Chretien Pour Israel was still in print (there is *exactly one* copy in Australia, in *one* library), I came across Bat Yeor's dhimmitude site, because of Ellul's forewords that he wrote for her. And Bat Yeor linked to Mr Spencer's jihadwatch...

Bikini with rifle? Why not? I bet her husband would be first in line to get one of the posters and pin it up: every man with brains wants a Woman of Valour as a wife, after all if she knows how to stop the grizzlies and the mountain lions it means the kids get a better chance at surviving. (Isn't he Native American/ First Nations, by the way? And doesn't that make nonsense of any attempt to represent her as a Racist?) Get her head straight about Islam, put her in charge of the US combined forces and the jihadis would run screaming for cover. The jihadis' worst nightmare is this: that the Soccer Moms of the USA wake up, realize what the sharia-pushers intend for said Soccer Moms and their precious daughters...and Do Something. Tolkien's Ents annihilating Saruman's Orthanc will be nothing on it if Palin wakes up to the Muslim agenda and leads the Soccer Moms into battle. The whole non-Muslim world could do with a Deborah to lead it. But our potential Deborah still needs a bit more educating. Is there any way to get Palin into the same room as Nonie Darwish, Bat Yeor, Brigitte Gabriel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan? Or to find a way of persuading her to read 1. Darwish's "Cruel and Usual Punishment", the lay infidel's guide to Sharia in all its hideousness 2. Spencer's 'Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades', 3. Jacques Ellul's brief foreword to Bat Yeor's 'The Decline of Eastern Christianity About Islam', which foreword comprises just five pages beautifully summing up *everything* that the practical non-Muslim politician needs to know about Jihad; and 4. Raymond Ibrahim, 'Islam's Doctrines of Deception', a little article that he wrote for 'Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst' in September 2008? Maybe throw in 'Submission', 'Fitna', and 'Islam: What the West Needs to Know'.

Heagney went to Dr Alan Godlas at the University of Georgia. Godlas is most definitely not to be trusted. First up: he is listed among the 138 Islamic 'scholars' who signed off on the sweetly-sinister daw'a exercise, 'A Common Word', which the Muslims sent to the leaders of all major Christian groupings, in October 2007. Among those 138 are some truly nasty Islamic antisemites and peddlers of eye-stretching nonsense and lies (and that's only the main ones I've had a chance to research - I suspect most of the 138 are actually not very nice people, if one ferreted about a bit). Not good company to be keeping. Secondly: at Jihadwatch on 6 January 2006, in the comments thread to an article entitled 'dimwitted moral equivalence', Godlas' name was casually raised by a poster who had come across an article about jihad, that Godlas had written. Well: what then transpired on the comments floor makes for fascinating reading, as Mr Spencer's friend Hugh Fitzgerald did a bit of on-the-spot online investigation, assessing, in particular, the reading list of Godlas's course as presented at Georgia U. Mr Fitzgerald only very, very rarely indulges in vulgar language, but his instant response to Godlas's article as flagged, was..."cr*p". Then he got out the scalpel... I will reproduce part of what Mr Fitzgerald said, about Godlas's course, just to give you an idea of why Meredith Heagney's treatment of him [Godlas] as an 'authority is such an unmitigated disaster. "If one were to dream up a propaganda course for Islam, it would come out looking exactly like this one by Alan Godlas. Exactly. This should be used for a made-for-television movie. Enemy Within, that sort of thing. "I will, in the near future, provide a little analysis of the reading list and syllabus for this Guide to Nothing and Nowhere, so carefully and sinisterly crafted (why perhaps Godlas took his cue from the helpful list of Books Not to Read that Khaled Abou el Fadl offers at his self-glorifying website -- in which he attempts to make sure that students never ever find out the truth about Islam, but stick with the apologists). "I've never seen anything like it. "A carefully worked-out, systematic attempt, nothing innocent about it, to prevent this man's students from finding out anything real, anything of value, about what Jihad means -- 'what it means in the Qur'an, in the Hadith, in the Sira, 'what it meant to the major figures in the history of Islam, including Al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Taymiyya 'and all other Qur'anic commentators, and rulers, and jurisconsults, 'and what every single major Western figure in the history of the study of Islam, 'until the last few decades when it became impossible to tell the truth, 'and hirelings of the Muslims ruled the roost, and Muslims themselves came to dominate the academic departments and MESA Nostra."... And so on. Check it out in the archives at jihadwatch.org. Godlas in 2006 was deliberately and comprehensively and very cleverly misinforming his students about jihad. One must assume therefore that he is most definitely going to misinform the likes of stupid Ms Heagney, about what sharia law prescribes for those who - like Rifqa - publicly, noisily apostasise.

I am just so glad that some of them are out of that hell-hole, that Predator Pit. I started praying for them years ago and I'll keep on praying till I know that they're *all* safely out. I pray for the remnant Jews trapped inside Islamic Iran, too. May the Holy One dispose of the Islamic 'pharaoh', that 'amalek', who rules in Persia, and open a doorway of escape not just for Persian Jews but for the Christians and Zoroastrians and Bahaii. Oh, btw I'm a Christian. And in case anyone thinks I'm only praying for Yemeni Jews and Persian Jews to be able to escape, because of some beliefs about end times or whatever...WRONG. I pray for them because being a dhimmi is to be in the bottom of a Predator Pit and no human being should be subjected to such vile treatment. For *exactly* the same reasons I pray for the Christians trapped inside Islamic lands - especially, at the moment, the Christians of Iraq and Egypt and Pakistan, northern Nigeria and southern Sudan; but also those of Persia, Lebanon, and Syria. That's not the complete list... *And* I pray for the Hindus and Buddhists in Bangladesh, the Hindus and Sikhs of Pakistan, the Hindus and Buddhists and Confucians and Christians of Malaysia and Indonesia...I pray for them all to be able to escape (from places where they are small minorities, as in Pakistan) or (where they are regional majorities, as in S Sudan, S Nigeria, West Papua) to be able to free themselves from Muslim dominion as independent states, or, if they inhabit a region such as Kashmir or S Philippines or S Thailand, which is part of a kafir-majority state, then I pray for a resolute offensive against jihad subversion to be carried out by that state, resulting in the annihilation of the leading jihad inciters and the *eviction* of the entire lawless and violent Mohammedan population to whatever part of dar al Islam happens to be over the border.

Okay. You've got four people there who look like they're on the ball: Reps. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.). It's a start. (How many members does Congress have?).

To those people who spoke of the need to get people out into the streets protesting on Rifqa's behalf, even in Ohio, but also spoke with alarm of the cold and the approaching winter: I'm afraid that to save Rifqa it may be necessary to ignore the weather. Just rug up like Eskimos or Russian bears, huddle like Emperor penguins, and bring hurricane lanterns and portable heaters if you have to. If it blows up a blizzard and even so, 1000 or 5000 or 10 000 freedom-loving Americans turn up with portable heaters and torches and banners and are prepared to make igloos on the sidewalk, if necessary, and sit in them for Rifqa's sake, *surely* the media would have to wake up and realize this thing is serious...that NOBODY would come out in the snow and the cold and the wind, unless they were convinced that a human being's life was at stake. (Look, I know it's easy for me to say this, since I'm an Australian; but I do know what your winters can be like, I've read Laura Ingalls Wilders' "The Long Winter"; still - this case is so desperately important for everything America stands for, everything you guys believe in - freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, vs. the totalitarian hell that is sharia law).

Quote: "They want us to give up our cars for buses. They want us to wash our dishes by hand and dry our clothes in the wind." And that = being an inhabitant of the Third World? Really? I lived in inner city Sydney for 17 years: we had four children and never owned a car, and used buses and trains all the time, taxis if it was late at night; we didn't feel deprived in the least. The public transport where we were, was quite efficient, frequent, and pleasant to use; the streets were too narrow and congested for car-driving - and fuggedabout parking. Well, now we live in a suburb that's a bit more spread out, where we *have* to use a car...though my husband still cycles to work because he likes the exercise (he takes the bus if it rains) and my son takes the bus to university. And in both my inner city house and my current house I never felt the need for a dishwasher, having washed dishes by hand all my life and thought nothing in particular about it. Big deal. As for drying clothes...well, I'm in Australia and in most parts of Australia, for nearly all of the year, you can hang out three loads of washing in the morning and they'll be bone-dry by midday. That worked for me even in the inner city house with its tiny backyard. Hanging out washing on the Hills Hoist doesn't make me feel like a Third World peasant (any more than does the fact that I have a banana plant in the back yard). I *like* being outside for what, five or ten minutes, checking on the garden and the pets and the weather. I feel absolutely no *need* for a drier, for 11 months of the year. Why would I use one when I don't need it and don't actually suffer any perceptible hardship from not using it? Why deliberately burn up more energy than you actually have to...unless, perhaps, to show off? I can fully understand why in the USA or Canada in winter you'd need a clothes-drier; and why people living in confined inner-city apartments with no open air access, would have to have one. But why would any person with access to a sunny balcony or a sunny breezy backyard would feel themselves put upon at the mere suggestion that they might hang their clothes out to dry in summer (and I know at least some of you guys get a pretty good summer, especially in parts west and south) rather than stuffing them into an electric drier- beats me.

Concerned Women For America (or a similar organisation) should set up a conference or hold a star-studded dinner. Invite Ms Mogahed {whose surname, btw, simply means 'MuJaHid', i.e, Jihadist, if I am not mistaken} to address the gathering. But DO NOT TELL HER that there will be *others* addressing the gathering, as a special surprise... Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Taslima Nasreen (and there are doubtless quite a few more whom Nonie or Ayaan or Wafa might know of, no-nonsense female apostates from Islam and whistle-blowers about the hideousness of sharia-as-it-is-lived, who might be called upon to be honored guests). See how long it takes for that sweetly-smiling mask to rip off, and the hysterical rage to come spitting and snarling forth, if she is put on the spot by Mesdames Darwish and Sultan.

I am not surprised that the men are downhearted. Anyone with commonsense can see that it is impossible to create a halfway decent civil society out of a population suffused with the suspicion and aggression that Islam inevitably fosters. The futile task should never even have been attempted. Now: just imagine what morale would be like if, instead of attempting the Sisyphean task that they have been set in 'Afghanistan', the men were in, say, Kashmir, or the southern Philippines, with a clearly defined and positive objective: to defend and protect, by plain old deadly force, all non-Muslims in said locales, from all forms of Muslim aggression from within and without (and, ideally, to gradually and relentlessly evict from those nonMuslim-ruled regions all of their Mohammedan fifth-column). An American or British or Aussie soldier helping guard the borders of India against Muslim infiltration from Pakistan or Bangladesh, would have no reason to fear treachery from the Gurkha or Sikh soldier at his elbow; an American or Aussie soldier going in with Filipino Catholic soldiers to rescue people kidnapped by Muslim jihad gangsters, or to liberate a Filipino Catholic town or farming village that had been attacked and occupied by Muslim jihadis, would have no reason to fear a knife or a shot in the back from his Filipino partner. They would be able to feel they were *achieving* something worthwhile, defending something worth defending - the very lives of basically-civilised non-Muslim societies, whether Hindu-majority India or deeply-Catholic Philippines; societies steeped in music, art, dance, and joie de vivre, societies where women don't cover themselves up in black bags, and thinking is not verboten, and people DON'T blow up primary schools. Sooner or later, dar al harb is going to have to realize that its borderlands - in Europe (Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece), Africa (especially Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, which could definitely do with a helping hand; indeed all the semichristianised countries of southern Africa need help to resist Islamisation), in south and southeast Asia (India, Philippines and Thailand are locked in battle with jihadis within their borders as well as [India] on their boundaries), and in the Middle East (Israel) need to be freed of their Mohammedan fifth-columnists, and defended vigorously against all attempted encroachments by the Empire of Islam.

Jokerman - you're on the right track. Everyone who hasn't already - read Auerbach, 'Mimesis'. He argues that the kind of literature that we call 'the novel' is rooted, ultimately, in the unique sensibility, a unique view of the human person, of deity and world and time, that derives from the TaNaKh and that was 'translated' into the Greco-Roman world by means of the Christian Gospels. The opening three chapters or so of Cahill's "The Gifts of the Jews" makes a very similar point. Instead of following a fated, predetermined path, instead of endlessly repeating an immutable cycle, each unique and irreplaceable person, each never-to-be-repeated individual bearing the Imago Dei, chooses toward life or toward death. The future is open; new things can come into being (and wrong choices are not always fatal; there remains the possibility, often, of repentance, of forgiveness, and even, astonishingly, the promise of resurrection). Remember: 'novel' also means 'new, without precedent'. The G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob declares, in one Biblical passage, "Behold! I create all things new". Here is Cahill writing about the Ten Words: "The journey of Avraham and the liberation wrought by Moshe transformed human understanding of past and future: the past is all the steps of my forebears and myself that have brought me to this place and moment; the future is what is yet to be. But the past is irretrievable and the future is a blank. The one is fixed, the other unknown. For the past I can have only regret, for the future only anxiety. To live in real time, to live in history, can be a horrible experience - and no wonder that the ancients contrived to escape such torments by inventing cyclical time and the recurrent Wheel leading only to the peace of death. "But this gift of the Commandments allows us to live in the present, in the here and now. What I have done in the past is past mending; what I will do in the future is a worry not worth the candle, for there is no way I can know what will happen next. But in this moment - and only in this moment - I am in control. "This is the moment of choice, the moment when I decide whether I will plunge in the knife or not, take the treasure or not, begin to spin the liar's web or not. "This is the moment when the past can be transformed and the future lit with radiance. "And such a realization need bring neither regret nor anxiety, but, if I keep the Commandments, true peace. But not the peace of Death, not the peace of coming to terms with the Wheel. For in choosing what is right I am never more alive". Now let us contemplate Ayaan Hirsi Ali, standing in a German railway station, deciding what she will do; whether she will submit to the arranged marriage to a fellow Muslim, that her father has decreed; or whether she will flee, reach for freedom...choose Life. "But that first afternoon in Bonn, a new idea crept up on me. I didn't even have to go to Canada; I could disappear here. I could escape it all, hide, and somehow make my own way, *like someone in a book* {my emphasis - dda}'. [Infidel, p. 187. 'Like someone in a book'. *Like a character in a novel* - like the people in the Western children's books, Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew, Hans Andersen and Grimm's Fairy Tales with their questing heroes and heroines, the thrillers and adventure novels and romance novels,that she had devoured as a schoolgirl in Kenya. And perhaps we should see behind all those fictional characters their historic origin and model in a living man called Avraham, walking out of Ur, out of the World of the Wheel, at the behest of the mysterious Voice that told him 'Lech lecha! Come Out!' 'Come with me to a land that I will show you'.

Michael Finton alias Talib Islam. 'Talib', let us not forget, is Arabic for 'student'. Well, well, well, isn't that interesting? - this recruit to the Mohammedan Mob chose to call himself: "Student [of] Islam".

Back in January this year when all the Mohammedans in Europe were rising up in a screaming rage because of the Jews' daring to take the battle to Hamas in Gaza, there were massed threat displays like this, by Mohammedan males, in Italy, right on the front doorsteps of the great Cathedrals in Milan and Bologna, and also outside the Colosseum. The Bishops of Milan and Bologna were very angry over what they correctly perceived as a direct threat. Without checking my files, I can't recall whether it was in Milan or in Bologna that an Islamosavvy Italian politician made a pointed statement, by arranging for a full Catholic mass to be held as quickly as possible, out-of-doors in the very location that the Mohammedans had - by ostentatiously 'praying' there - claimed for Islam. Such a deliberate ceremony of Christian prayer right there where the Mohammedans had been prostrating and reciting curses, is tantamount to an exorcism and a restatement of ownership. Like cleaning and airing your house after a burglar or vandal has rampaged through it. So: time to visibly, deliberately and loudly 'clean house' by reaffirming non-Muslim physical and spiritual ownership of and authority over the affected space, and by extension, of everything it represents. I would advise large groups of Washingtonian Jews and Christians, and indeed, non-Muslim citizens of every tradition who are concerned about this, to get themselves ASAP to this area where these Muslims were carrying out their mass threat display. Those of a religious bent should walk around the perimeter reciting prayers. Jews - Pam, you and other Jews, of various stripes, should surely have prayers that would be appropriate - praying for the peace of the city in which you reside, as Jeremiah advised. As for the Christians: Catholics, I would suggest the Ave and the Magnificat, and even a sprinkle or two of holy water; and all Christians could use the Our Father and the Gloria, plus whatever prayers for the Government and Nation are prescribed in your particular church's orders of service. Throw in some prayers for the Armed Forces and Police while you're at it. A bit of impromptu a capella from a Black Gospel choir or two. Native Americans, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs - do whatever it is your tradition prescribes, to ward off and nullify evil influences. Public readings of the Declaration of Independence and of relevant Clauses of the Constitution could also be carried out at the four corners of the affected area, by everybody, including atheists and agnostics. Do it and see what happens.

When this came up at Jihadwatch, I drew attention to the fact that what the Christian hotelier in this story is reported as having said about Islamic female dress, is virtually identical with - and if anything, rather less blunt than - what the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, told both houses of the French parliament in Versailles in June. Here is Mrs Vogelenzanger: "traditional Muslim dress for women was a form of bondage". Here is M. le President, Nicolas Sarkozy, as reported by an Australian national news outlet: "The burqa is not a sign of religion. It is a sign of enslavement. It is a sign of subservience". Looks like the police in Liverpool had better send a posse across the Channel to arrest Monsieur le President, too. He made his statement in a far more public place, to far more people, than Mrs Vogelenzanger did; and he said it, indeed, to support a proposal that the burqa and niqab should be *banned* in France. In any case: I think the lawyer representing the Vogelenzangers might profitably draw attention to the words of Mr Sarkozy - "the burqa is...a sign of enslavement". They might also, of course, draw attention to the testimony of a fiery Iranian-French activist, Chadhdorrt Djavenn, who is one of those calling for the outlawing of hijab on the grounds that it is both a political weapon and a form of sexual abuse. http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA53309 She's a lot fiercer than Mrs Vogelenzanger and she says a whole lot more.

Actually, re. the 'Jews being Jews'...let's remember what Moses did in Midian, after he had fled from Egypt (for killing an Egyptian who had been beating up a Hebrew slave). Exodus 2: 15-19, "...But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up, and helped them, and watered their flocks. And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, 'How is it that ye are come so soon to day?' And they said, 'an Egyptian [Moses] delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock'." I think Moses would thoroughly approve of what those Israeli commandos achieved in Tulkarem. The House of Israel: rescuing ladies in distress and routing bullies and thugs, since millennia BC.

Over at Jerusalem Post when I read their version of this story, this morning, there was one comment, among the talkbacks, that said it all: "Muslims being Muslims. Jews being Jews".

Pam - just a thought. I know Phyllis Chesler has interested herself in this critically important landmark case. I also know that while recently in Italy, Ms Chesler visited Magdi Cristiano Allam, an apostate from Islam who must be protected by seven armed guards...*in Italy*. I know that Signore Allam has written about the plight of apostates from Islam, in Italy, who (not being, as he is, a high-profile author and journalist with a leading newspaper which can afford his security detail) must live in hiding, in fear of the Muslim hitmen coming to kill them for having apostasised. Seems to me that if it has not already been done, the Rifqa Bary story and the various facts you (Pam) and others have unearthed, should be shared with Signore Allam, pronto. I suspect that the Corriere della Sera, or one of the Catholic/ Vatican papers, might be prepared to publish some rather more sympathetic and intelligent reports than have appeared in the American press. Imagine if Signore Allam were to write a long, blisteringly truthful discussion of the case! After all, it was Italy that gave asylum to another high-profile apostate, that Afghan guy, Abdul Rahman, who had converted to Christianity and barely escaped being executed for it. Perhaps Italy can come through for Rifqa too, with an offer of asylum.

Pam - is ACT for America onto this? I'm in Australia so I can't do anything except praying - most fervently - for cold drenching rain all day long on September 25th in Washington. I'll be praying on 25 September - praying that God (the real one, not the war-demon of the Arabs) will bless and save America and wake up Congress and Senate to the fact that they're sitting in the cross-hairs of Jihad. 4 am till 7 pm, eh? And they want 50 000 people (that is - 50 000 Mohammedan males engaging in a massed public threat display - remember the mob who 'prayed' en masse in the piazza in front of the Duomo in Milan in January this year? First they howled their hate against the Jews, then they 'prayed' right in front of the duomo - which they had received no official permission to do ) Seems to me that surely Islamosavvy Americans should be able to rustle up *more* than 50 000 people - to turn up on 25 September at 3 am and stay till 8 pm. Hit the phones and the emails, people: you have a week to scramble the counter-demonstration, which should be mounted by Jews, Christians (especially Copts, black Sudanese Christians, Assyrians, Armenians, and the multiplying churches of the Persian diaspora), Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and secular folks all together. Ideally there should be a solid wall of non-Muslim citizens, protectively encircling Capitol Hill, side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder. But no matter how many people you get, *somebody* should turn up; there should be defiant, sharia-resisting non-Muslims visibly present as unfoolable observers (and videoing and taking lots and lots of photographs and recording any and all speeches made), right through, from before the Muslims turn up, till after they leave. Christians - and Jews too - might like to look up the practice known as 'prayer walking'. Get there early - or even do it on the afternoon/ evening of the previous day - in small groups, and walk around Capitol Hill. (Hey, take some dogs along). That turf ain't Muslim turf and it ain't going to be, either. I don't know Washington geography. But there should be watchful teams of Infidels staked out right next to every significant landmark and memorial - e.g. the Lincoln Memorial, all through the day on the 25th.

I followed the link and read the article. I saw Ms Heagney's email address at the bottom, so I emailed her and put a flea in her ear - citing the Bukhari Hadith on killing apostates, and an article from The Times (UK) from 2005 in which the reporter interviewed actual apostates from Islam in the UK who are forced to live in hiding - *in the UK* - because of the constant threat from their former co-religionists. I also dared her to talk to Magdi Cristiano Allam, journalist, with the Italian 'Corriere della Sera', who is a high-profile apostate from Islam, and could tell her a thing or two about what happens to 'apostates' and 'blasphemers'.

Now if only that many people could be called out to rally, not only in the USA but in other countries, in support of 1. Rifqa Bary and the right of people to leave Islam without being killed for so doing; 2. Geert Wilders and the right to criticise and question Islam without being killed for 'blasphemy' 3. all non-Muslims - e.g. the Copts of Egypt, the Hindus and Christians of Pakistan and Bangladesh - who are being persecuted and killed by Muslims; and 4. Israel, Thailand, India, the Philippines - kafir-majority countries currently bearing the brunt of violent jihad on their own soil.

The Rifqa Bary case - a formerly Muslim girl in a western country, fighting for her right to exercise freedom of conscience and for her right to life; fighting for the right to leave Islam, and stay alive after having done so. The Geert Wilder case - a non-Muslim, in a western country, fighting for freedom of speech, for his right to criticise and question Islam without being silenced or killed. These are landmark cases that cannot and must not be lost.

Pamela - this piece on 'honor' murders (actually, de facto ritual human sacrifice of females and [sometimes] young males), reminded me of a haunting story I encountered *here*: http://solomonhezekiah.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/the-price-of-honour/#comment-617 I quote the commenter: "This ['honor' murders] is one of the things that makes me scream that Islam has no business being named in the same sentence as Christianity and I do scream it, well mention it, as often as possible when the whole “three great religions” bumph comes up. "Many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away (ie, my youth) I worked for a year for Magen David Adom and in a pub one night I met this big, horrible, skinhead Russian import who was doing his time in the IDF. "He was about 18 and was back from a tour of duty in the West Bank [i.e. Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria - dda] where he and his buddy had found a 13 year old girl battered senseless, barely alive and wrapped in a plastic sack. "He was, honestly, not the nice face of the IDF or anything else but he was sober and crying. I never forgot." END QUOTE. (Now *there’s* a confronting subject for a modern ‘Pieta’: the young Jewish soldier, big tough-looking guy...with tears running down his face, carrying the half-dead wretched little victim of an attempted honor murder/human sacrifice, over the rocky Judean hills to where the Jewish medics will try to save her life).