June 2005 Archives

A communiqué on "Rumsfeld's Comments" from the Mujahideen Army General Headquarters in Iraq. Note the religious language: "victory or martyrdom" -- yet the learned analysts will still refuse to take them at their word, to understand the intransigence of the jihad ideology that is behind those words, and will eventually call for negotiations with these people. They will decline to learn that negotiations are for the mujahedin only another way to attain their goal, not a setting in which they moderate or change that goal. They will dismiss the religious language here as meaningless boilerplate, not realizing how key it is to understanding this properly.

And then the learned analysts will wave their hands in their cocktail parties and say, "Spencer? Jihad Watch? Pah!" But come see me in ten years and we'll see who was right. From Uruknet.info, with thanks to Designnut:

June 28, 2005

This communiqué is post as is without changes.

The Mujahideen Army General Headquarters
Baghdad
The Republic Of Iraq

Urgent Release

Subject: Rumsfield's Comments

Oh great sons of Iraq!

We confirm to you, as well as the generally known media which as usual herd behind what comes out from these war criminals and these liars by profession. They lie so often that it has become the diseases, which with god's will, bring their end.

We have not entered in any negotiations with the occupiers or anyone who represent them or the puppet government.

The Mujahideen Army is in full adherence to the military doctrine of the of the Mujahideen Central Command MCC, and the Political views of Rafidan - The Political Committee of the MCC.

We are Mujahideen for the sake of our nation. And our aim is either victory or martyrdom in it's path.

And god is witness to our oath!

God is greater than all, God is greater than all, God is greater than all!

And Glory to God, his prophet, and the believers!

The Mujahideen Army
Baghdad on the 19th of Jamadi the first 1426
The 26th of june 2005

It is against Islamic law, of course, for a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim man. From the BBC, with thanks to Singh:

Two men have been jailed for life for killing a man wrongly targeted in a dispute between Sikhs and Muslims.

Shimraz Kahn, 35, got a minimum of 18 years for the murder of Major Singh Gill at his West Midlands shop. Waheed Akhtar, 22, was given 15 years.

The men believed Mr Gill's Sikh son was in a relationship with a young Muslim woman, Stafford Crown Court was told.

Two others were found not guilty. Two further suspects are believed to have fled to Pakistan....

Prosecutor Anthony Barker, QC said Mr Gill was the victim of a deliberate and planned killing.

"Some men had clubs, iron bars and hockey sticks and inside the shopkeeper was clubbed to death," he said.

"Yet the people who killed him had set out to kill someone else.

"They killed a perfectly innocent man who had done absolutely nothing."

He said the story behind the killing was complicated but involved the relationship of a Sikh man and a Muslim woman.

What's this? A European official showing some backbone (no doubt the Iranians will be praying, "May Allah rip out his spine") and asking for common courtesy? Sack him! "No beer? No lunch!," from Reuters, with thanks to Twostellas and Mr. Tickle:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A lunch meeting between a leading parliamentarian in Belgium and counterparts from Iran has been canceled because the beer-loving Belgian could not stomach a ban on alcohol.

"Even for the tolerant Herman De Croo, that was a bridge too far," De Croo, a Dutch-speaking Liberal, told De Standaard daily Thursday.

De Croo, president of parliament's lower house, had been due to entertain the speaker and members of the Iranian parliament Friday during their visit to Belgium -- famous for its diversity of beer brands.

But he said lunch had been canceled because the Iranians, who as Muslims do not drink alcohol, wanted their hosts to do the same.

"I did not receive such demands in writing. But ... I was indirectly asked not to serve alcohol," said De Croo.

Herman DeCroo, I will forthwith proceed to hoist my own adult beverage in your honor.

The visit ran into further trouble after Iran's parliament speaker Gholamali Haddadadel insisted he would not shake hands with the female president of Belgium's Senate.

Anne-Marie Lizin, a Socialist, then canceled their meeting. She said in a statement that Iranians should respect local customs in Belgium, just as Belgians should in Iran.

Indeed.

More on Iran's thuggish new President from Spiegel Online, with thanks to Simon:

The newly elected president of Iran has been accused of being involved in the 1980 American hostage crisis. Former hostage David Roeder, 66, told SPIEGEL ONLINE, that Ahmadinejad threatened to kidnap his son and cut off his fingers and toes. "You don't forget someone like that," the former Assistant Air Force Attache says. SPIEGEL ONLINE: You are claiming that the newly elected president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of those involved in taking and holding you hostage in Iran from November 1979 to January 1981. How can you be sure?

Roeder: He was present at at least a third of my personal interrogations, which took place nightly for a little over a month early on in the hostage-taking situation. He seemed to be calling the shots, but from the background. The interrogators would ask a question and it would then be translated from Farsi into English by a woman interpreter.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did they try to exert force on you to answer the questions or did you cooperate freely?

Roeder: I decided that initially I wasn't going to respond in any way, shape or form. They had me handcuffed to a chair and at least during the first few sessions, blindfolded as well. But once the blindfold came off, they had developed a plan that Ahmadinejad was instigating. Because I was not cooperating, they threatened that they were going to kidnap my handicapped son and send various pieces of him -- fingers and toes is what they mentioned -- to my wife if I didn't start cooperating. You don't forget somebody who is involved in something like that....

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You don't think you could have forgotten him after all these years?

Roeder: No, absolutely not. Not when he was involved in threatening my son.

Why? What does the UN deny them now? "Islamic states want permanent seat on UN Security Council," from AFP, with thanks to EPG:

SANAA (AFP) - Foreign ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) opened a meeting with a call for a Muslim permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu urged a greater role for Muslim countries in world affairs and demanded a "permanent representation for the Islamic world on the UN Security Council".

"The Islamic world, which represents one fifth of total mankind, cannot remain excluded from the activities of the Security Council which assumes a fundamental role in keeping security and peace in the world," he said Tuesday.

Ihsanoglu announced on Monday that ministers would discuss proposals for the representation of the 57-member Islamic body on the Security Council during their three-day conference in the Yemeni capital.

Another one from the Which Side Are You On Department, from Pakistan's Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

LAHORE: Al Qaeda suspect Hafiz Ehsan Saeed's father died during Ehsan's detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but Ehsan said that although he mourned the loss, he would go for Jihad again if given the chance.

Great! Free him!

"I was quite upset when I heard the news (of my father's death) but I will sacrifice anything for Islam," Saeed told Daily Times on Monday. Saeed is one of the 17 jihadis released by the Punjab government after keeping them imprisoned for nine months after their return from Guantanamo Bay.

Talking to Daily Times, most of the freed men reiterated Saeed's resolve to "go for Jihad again." They said they would sacrifice anything for Islam even though they were tortured at Guantanamo.

Yeah, like the old naked women on the chest torture. The horror! The horror!

Their relatives rejoiced that their kindred had been released, but added that the men remain committed to their faith. The men were between the ages of 25 to 30 years and seemed to be in good health. They were released after their relatives submitted affidavits and sureties that they would not be involved in anti-state activities.

United States authorities arrested the men from Afghanistan on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda and kept them in Guantanamo prison for three years. Nine months ago, they were found innocent of these charges and given to Pakistani authorities. Authorities here detained these men while intelligence agencies investigated them further. The men were found not involved in any crime in Pakistan.

All right. Then what jihad are going to "again"?

Asked why the men were kept in Pakistani prisons after being cleared by US authorities, Maulana Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi, the Punjab chief minister's adviser on religious affairs, said local authorities wanted to investigate whether the men had been brainwashed and were still involved in any terrorist activity...

Yep. Gotta watch out for that brainwashing. It's unfortunately common in Pakistan.

Some of the 1979 hostages say that Iran's new President Ahmadinejad was one of their captors. Others say he wasn't. Thanks to PAR, I have here put a recent photo of Ahmadinejad next to the infamous hostage photo in which some claim he appears.

I think it is the same man. What do you think?

A happy update on this story from IRN News, with thanks to a tea-loving snail:

An Egyptian Christian was released from mental hospital following international pressure over his five-month forcible commitment to the mental hospital, and being charged from apostasy from Islam, Compass Direct has informed.

Gasir Mohammed Mahmoud was released on 9th June 2005 from the El-Khanka Hospital for Mental and Neurological Health in Cairo, Egypt.

Mahmoud was adopted and raised by a Muslim couple who were shocked last December after finding out that he had converted to Christianity two year before. Afterwards, his father appealed to local Muslim sheikhs prompting them to issue a death sentence against his son for apostasy.

However, his mother appealed to local state security police to protect her son from being killed, which resulted in Mahmoud's subjection to seemingly endless rounds of interrogation and a series of arrests.

Initially following his arrest, Mahmoud expressed that he was questioned "in a decent way" in the presence of state security officer Mohammed Amar. However, when he was transferred to a different official, who was accompanied by two Muslim sheikhs, they tried to convinced him to re-convert to Islam again.

After eight days, eating only the food that other fellow-imprisoned people shared with him, he was sent to Suez Security Directorate. After four days he was released.

His first footsteps led to an evangelical church where he asked for another copy of the Bible, since his was destroyed: "But they were afraid," Mahmoud said, "and refused to give me a Bible."

When he returned home, a messenger was already waiting for him telling him to meet Mohammed Amar again. During the next set of interrogations, when asked why he went to church; Mahmoud said he could not stop himself from going there.

"So he started to torture me, to pull off the nails of my toes," Mahmoud said. "Now I'm still not able to wear shoes because of the pain."

This torture continued for a further 18 days, and included stripping him naked and dousing him with ice-cold water over and over...

This is probably one for the Bridge For Sale Department, but we'll see. "Muslim nations vow to help end Iraq insurgency," from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinpolitan Irredentist:

SANAA (Reuters) - Foreign ministers of Muslim countries on Thursday pledged cooperation with Iraqi authorities to help end a bloody insurgency waged there by Iraqis and foreign Arabs.

Ministers of member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting in Yemen agreed to help "rebuild Iraq and enabling the Iraqi government to maintain security and stability," Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi told reporters.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Wednesday he held informal talks in Sanaa with officials from neighboring states about foreigners coming to fight in Iraq.

Several countries who share a border with Iraq including Kuwait, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, are all OIC members.

From the New Zealand Herald, with thanks to Stuart:

The country's only co-educational Islamic school has been put under direct Government control amid concerns that its cultural environment is clashing with its education obligations.

Al-Madinah School in Mangere, Manukau City, has been under fire for several years for prioritising religion at the expense of the curriculum and segregating staff and students according to gender.

Successive Education Review Office reports have drawn attention to problems of "governance and segregation", and a limited statutory manager was installed in 2002.

But the Ministry of Education has now drafted in Dennis Finn - the man who took over at troubled Cambridge High School last year - to haul the 360-student school into line.

Melissa O'Carroll, the acting northern region manager for schools, said Mr Finn's appointment as commissioner was "to support the school and enable it to strengthen educational outcomes for all its students".

The school has made concessions to the review office. It reversed a 2003 decision to cease education for girls beyond Year 8 and last year extended the length of the school day to accommodate prayer and lessons.

But a new ERO report has sparked the overhaul, with Education Minister
Trevor Mallard dissolving the board of trustees after seeing the
report...

Mute laborer jihad in Thailand update from MediaCorp News, with thanks to Twostellas:

PATTANI, Thailand : Three Buddhists including a mute labourer were shot and killed and teachers' homes were attacked in southern Thailand, police said, as authorities vowed to boost security funding to counter rampaging violence.

Srang Saewong, 56, a mute highway worker in Yala province, was shot dead in Bannang Sata district as he drove to work.

"I don't see a motive such as personal conflict. He was mute and his wife was also mute, so it's just part of the campaign of unrest," police Lieutenant Colonel Sakarin Bumpensamai of Bannang Sata told AFP.

Chicken trader Tonkui Saephoo, 72, was shot dead at a food market in Yaring district of Pattani province by unidentified gunmen, police said, adding that investigators were still at the scene.

In the same province, 52-year-old Thanat Nilvisut, a janitor at Pattani Technical College, was shot dead as he traveled to work.

More than 720 people have died in near-daily attacks or clashes with
security forces since January 2004, when a bloody raid on a weapons depot triggered an uprising in the three majority-Muslim southern provinces bordering Malaysia.

In Narathiwat province, suspected Islamic insurgents spray gunfire at
teachers' homes, resulting in at least one teacher being shot in the
arm...

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in FrontPage:

“May Allah rip out his spine from his back and split his brains in two, and then put them both back, and then do it over and over again….Amen.”

“I believe he’s already on the hit list, nothing new.”

“we make dua [i.e., we pray] Allah allows your blood to spill over our hands.”

These are threats I have received recently. Last week, when I spoke at the New York Tolerance Center about “The True Nature of the Jihad Threat,” I discovered that news of these threats have somehow found their way to the New York Police Department, which -- unbeknownst to me until I arrived at the venue -- dispatched its “Hercules Team” to ward off any who might have wanted to make those threats reality. The Team, a group of courteous and accomplished plainclothesmen, turned away one young man with a backpack at the door, after he refused to let them search his bag.

Against that somewhat ominous backdrop, I spoke about the violent intolerance of the Islamic jihad: its imperative to impose Sharia, with its institutionalized discrimination against non-Muslims and women, and its mandate to commit violent acts that is rooted in the Qur’an and Sunnah, supported by mainstream understandings of those texts, and elaborated by Islamic law. I tried to impress upon the crowd the threat that the jihad poses to central notions of human rights enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Bravo for life’s little ironies: after this talk about the need to defend the West from this furious and fanatical form of intolerance, I was confronted by a young man and a young woman who were quite offended by my -- you guessed it -- intolerance. The Muslims who made it necessary for us to have our conversation under armed guard because of death threats did not offend them. My talk did. We had a brief discussion -- until the young man refused to shake my hand and I realized that no real exchange of ideas was going to be possible -- in which I found that their views reflected not just their personal opinions, but a large number of common prejudices and false assumptions about the nature of the present conflict, the meaning of tolerance itself, and more.

A dhimmi was inadvertently burning pages with Qur'an verses on them. From WND, with thanks to Anthony:

Sources in Pakistan report a radical Muslim mob has attacked Christian homes in three areas near Peshawar, Pakistan.

According to Voice of the Martyrs, which aids persecuted Christians around the world, the Tuesday attacks came after a Christian man was accused earlier that day of burning pages with Quranic verses written on them.

VOM sources say the man, Yousaf Masih, a man in his 60s, has worked for almost two decades as a sweeper for the Pakistani military. His most recent assignment was cleaning in the home of a military officer, a major. Tuesday, he was asked to clean the office at the major's home. During the cleaning, he came across a bag of papers, and the major told Masih to take the papers outside and burn them.

According to the report, Masih is illiterate and would not have known what was written on the papers. Other workers saw the papers and said Masih was burning pages from the Quran.

After hearing the workers' accusations, Masih rushed to his home in the Lama Veera area of Nowshera, east of Peshawar, VOM's sources said.

At 3 p.m. Tuesday, police came to the home and arrested Masih. Insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad or the Quran can be punishable by death under Pakistan's harsh anti-blasphemy laws. Following the arrest, a group of angry Muslims came to the home and began to beat Masih's three sons, the report indicated.

Muslims returned to the area at about 10 p.m. that night and burned an estimated total of 200 houses in Lama Veera, CMH and Saran. Many houses were looted by the attackers, who stole TVs, refrigerators and other items. The mob beat Masih's sons and his brother, Yaqoob.

VOM reported authorities have arrested 16 people involved in the attacks. A Hindu temple was also attacked, indicating the mob apparently first believed Masih was a Hindu.

"President invokes new Islamic wave," from the TimesOnline, with thanks to Anthony:

IRAN’S ultra-conservative President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, threw down a challenge to the West yesterday by declaring that his election victory marked the dawn of a new Islamic revolution that would spread around the world.

“Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world,” he said. “The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world.”...

More expert analysis follows:

As Mayor of Tehran, he was reprimanded by the Supreme Leader for a similar speech.

“He needs to be put in check by the Supreme Leader, who will make it quite clear that, if anyone’s going to talk about exporting Islam, it’s the Supreme Leader and not the President,” one veteran analyst said.

Yes, let's watch for that to happen. As if he weren't the Supreme Leader's man.

President Ahmadinejad’s win has given the ideological Right renewed confidence and, most importantly, absolute power. Analysts fear that the country is now a step closer towards a dictatorship.

What is it now?

News of Delaware County (thanks to Anthony) has published a long dhimmi puff piece, "A look inside Delaware County's largest mosque," about the local Al Madinah Mosque (which they call the "the Masjid Al Madinah Mosque," or the "Al Madinah Mosque Mosque"). In it, there is a most interesting statement:

On a Friday afternoon at the Masjid Al Madinah Mosque, dozens of Muslims from across the world stand shoulder to shoulder with Americans of the same faith.

They face East, toward their holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

While nearby the converted house shoppers busily cruise the stores at 69th Street outside, a bearded man sings prayers in Arabic as worshippers watch on video monitors on three different levels.

Women and girls occupy the top floor; men and boys the first and basement. The guest speaker has already finished the "Khutba," a sermon mixed in Arabic, English and sometimes other languages. Now, it's time for praise....

"We started in a basement, but we never used to have Friday worship," said Mohommad Mujeed. "From the basement, we started to look for a place. We heard this place was being sold at auction. We spent over $100,000 on this building [fixing it up]."...

Mujeed said many Americans are unfamiliar with Islam and are exposed to it mainly through reporting on the violence of religious extremists. He insists, however, that their actions don't represent the main stream teachings of the faith.

"Islam is a peaceful religion," says Mujeed, "Muslims should love other people like they love themselves.

"Terrorists have a different agenda. A normal Muslim under normal circumstances would never dream of doing these things."

"Under normal circumstances"? So are there circumstances in which a "normal Muslim" would dream of doing these things? If so, what are they? Is Mujeed referring to the common teaching that when unbelievers are waging war against Islam, all Muslims have the obligation to fight back? But that is what the jihadists of today say is happening right now. Does Mujeed believe that to be the case, or does he think we are still in "normal circumstances"? If so, why? If not, why not?

Jihad ideology update from the SITE Institute, with thanks to Anthony:

The Shari’a Committee of al-Qaeda in Iraq recently published a 49-page booklet titled: “Why We Fight - and Against Whom?” which was electronically distributed across several al-Qaeda affiliated forums. Allegedly written by Abu Hamza al-Baghdadi, a member of the Shari’a Committee, the booklet is primarily divided into two “examinations,” each containing several “quests” outlining the group’s position concerning their jihad and branding Shi’ite Muslims as an enemy “worse than Jews and Christians, because they chose for themselves a path other than that of Islam, and have opened the widest doors of infidelity.”

The booklet discusses in great detail the motivation for the mujahideen, explaining that they are fighting what they see as “contemporary persecution” by those who do not follow Islam, or are followers of an Islamic faith they do not hold true. Their stated goal in this battle is to propagate their brand of Islam, and at the same time, expunge the “corruptive elements” within society, including “idols, prostitution and fornication,” and smash the “false proselytizers… and the governments protecting them.” Further, Muslim governments who support Western prospects are accorded greater enmity, and jihad against these “Imams of infidelity” takes “priority over fighting Jews and crusaders.”

Concluding the publication, the Shari’a Committee of al-Qaeda in Iraq assails democratic government, believing it a deification which impugns Allah’s rule and “since democracy is a system that claims to be the highest authority, it must be considered a religion.” Whoever adopts this “religion,” including members of parliament or the people who voted for their election, is branded an infidel and “must be treated accordingly.”

Subscribe to SITE's superb Intel Service and you can get much more.

A follow-up to this story from AP, :

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) -- A quarter-century after they were taken captive in Iran, five former American hostages say they got an unexpected reminder of their 444-day ordeal in the bearded face of Iran's new president-elect. Watching coverage of Iran's presidential election on television dredged up 25-year-old memories that prompted four of the former hostages to exchange e-mails. And those four realized they shared the same conclusion - the firm belief that President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been one of their Iranian captors.

"This is the guy. There's no question about it," said former hostage Chuck Scott, a retired Army colonel who lives in Jonesboro, Ga. "You could make him a blond and shave his whiskers, put him in a zoot suit and I'd still spot him."

Scott and former hostages David Roeder, William J. Daugherty and Don A. Sharer told The Associated Press on Wednesday they have no doubt Ahmadinejad, 49, was one of the hostage-takers. A fifth ex-hostage, Kevin Hermening, said he reached the same conclusion after looking at photos.

However:

Not everyone agrees. Former hostage and retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer, of Peoria, Ariz., said he doesn't recognize Ahmadinejad, by face or name, as one of his captors.

Several former students among the hostage-takers also said Ahmadinejad did not participate. And a close aide to Ahmadinejad denied the president-elect took part in the seizure of the embassy or in holding Americans hostage.

Sharia alert from India, via AFP, with thanks to Scaramouche:

LUCKNOW, India (AFP) - A powerful Muslim body in India has ordered a woman allegedly raped by a relative to separate from her husband, but said she was free to remarry if she wished.

The victim, 28-year-old Imrana Ilahi, was allegedly raped by her father-in-law Ali Mohammed in Muzafarnagar district of northern Uttar Pradesh about two weeks ago.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board, set up in 1972 to protect the rights of Muslim women in the country, said the marriage would have to come to an end.

"As per the Koran, Imrana's conjugal relationship with her husband stood dissolved since she has been raped by the latter's blood relative," the board's woman member Begum Naseem Iqtedar Ali told reporters here.

"Had she been raped by anyone other than a blood relation, she could have stayed with her husband ... but here a sacred relationship had been violated, the consequences of which have to be borne by Imrana and her husband Noor Ilahi," she said.

But Imrana could remarry if she wanted to, she added.

The Muslim body's rulings are binding on all Muslims in the country.

But it was a ruling by a group of local Muslim clerics that the mother of five children marry her rapist and treat her husband as her son that caused an public outcry.

The Muslim clerics said the rape had annulled the woman's marriage to her husband and had ordered that she marry her father-in-law.

Imrana's father-in-law, who is presently in jail, has alleged his daughter-in-law had consented to having sex with him....

When asked whether the ruling was too harsh on Imrana, Begum Naseem Ali said as believers of Islam, they had to "follow what has been prescribed by the religion and even the victim and her husband have professed to abide by Shariat."

Eurabia update from Expatica, :

MADRID — Spanish police arrested two more people - a Moroccan and an Algerian - on charges of recruiting Islamic militants to fight against United States-led forces in Iraq.

The arrests followed the detention of 11 people earlier this month accused of ties to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is a key figure in the insurgency in Iraq.

Ridoune Elourma, a 29-year-old Moroccan, was picked up Tuesday in Puigcerda, a city in the north-eastern region of Catalonia.

Police said they arrested him when he crossed into Spain to buy supplies for a construction project he was working on in the nearby French town of La Tour de Querol.

It emerged that Elourma was refurbishing a chalet belonging to Josep Pujol, son of former Catalan regional president Jordi Pujol.

In fact, he was at the wheel of an SUV owned by the politician's wife, Marta Ferrusola, at the time of his arrest.

Josep Pujol issued a statement saying Elourma was simply an employee of the construction company he hired to do some work at his property, and that he had loaned the Moroccan his mother's vehicle so he could pick up materials.

The other suspect apprehended this week was 31-year-old Algerian national Mohamed Saad, traced on Monday in Valencia.

Authorities had been looking for the two men since the raids mounted on 14 June as part of 'Operation Tigris' in which 11 men said to be linked to Zarqawi and his Ansar el Islam group were arrested.

The Spanish cell is said to have made up a support network for Zarqawi's 'jihad' or holy war agsinst US-led forces in Iraq, connections in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Britain.

Giving with one hand, taking back with the other. From the BBC, with thanks to Anthony:

The ways in which Muslims can integrate better into society will be examined at a students' conference on Thursday.
The 500 delegates at the event organised by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis) will also discuss discrimination at universities.

Fosis spokesman Azam Bakeer Markar said Muslims faced more suspicion on campus since the attacks of 11 September.

Giving:

But he said the UK's 9,000 Muslim students would be encouraged to do more to show they "had nothing to hide".

"Muslim students are very active on campus and now there's always people questioning their various gatherings," Mr Markar said.

"In the climate of fear after 9/11 we consider it's best to engage more rather than withdraw into our shell."...

Taking back:

They will also hear from the wife of Babar Ahmad, who is facing extradition to the US on terror charges.

Fosis president Wakkar Khan said her presence reflected the students' concern at anti-terror measures taken by the government since September 11.

"Mrs Ahmad is going to be touching on the issues surrounding what happened with her husband and the implications for the Muslim community at large.

"It was quite a shock for the Muslim community when this happened because they saw Babar as just another Muslim, it could be any of us," Mr Khan said.

The US Department of State has claimed that websites run by Mr Ahmad, who is from Tooting, south London, urged Muslims to use "every means at their disposal" to train for jihad, or holy war.

This "could be any of us"? Really?

No doubt they were just trying to visit their relatives in San Diego. From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

MEXICO CITY — Mexican agents in Tecate captured two Iraqis who had hoped to sneak into U.S. territory without proper documents.

Federal authorities say Samir and Munir Yousif Shana told investigators they were contacted by a person in their hometown of Baghdad, who said he could smuggle them into San Diego.

The two have relatives in San Diego.

From IslamOnline, with thanks to Anthony:

CAIRO - A British council has presented resource packs covering the basic teachings of Islam to primary schools across the London borough of Harrow in an effort to provide a better understanding of the Muslim faith, according to a local daily.

"The new resources will help school staff further develop their approach to high quality teaching of Islam -- a religion that is far too often misunderstood," the Harrow Times Monday, June 27, quoted as saying Councilor Navin Shah, leader of Harrow borough Council, which has become the first to fully fund the teaching of Islam in primary schools.

The resource packs include books, artifacts, CDs, videos and teaching aids covering the basic Muslim beliefs and practices through interactive class projects.

Resources for secondary schools are also being developed and will be
available to schools across the borough, according to the paper.

The packs for primary schools were produced by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), in partnership with the Department of Education and Skills.

"We believe education is the key to creating a vibrant and understanding society," MCB Secretary General, Iqbal Sacranie, told Harrow Times.

That's Sir Iqbal to you, buddy.

"These resources, developed by our team of educationalists,...

Iqbal, I believe the word you are searching for is "sensationalists."

...aim to support the teaching of Islam in schools by making available creative, engaging and child-friendly resources on Islam and Muslims."

"We want to ensure that every school child in Britain has access to high quality Islamic resources through their schools," he added...

Yes, that's a high priority indeed. Would anyone be willing to donate copies of Islam Unveiled or Onward Muslim Soldiers to the Brits to further that end?

Remember: the MCB boycotted Holocaust remembrance ceremonies commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz. And now they are teaching British children about Islam.

The cover of Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer's forthcoming book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery Publishing) has been altered a bit from the first provisional cover that appeared at Amazon last month.

The main change is that this new cover contains an enthusiastic endorsement at the top. How do you like it? Just in case you can't read it, it says:

"May Allah rip out his spine from his back and split his brains in two, and then put them both back, and then do it over and over again. Amen." -- "Praise" for the author on RevivingIslam.com

Amazon now has it listed as coming out on August 1. Last I heard from Regnery, it will be out August 8. But that may have changed.

From the back cover:

Everything (well, almost everything) you know about Islam and the Crusades is wrong -- because most textbooks and popular history books are written by left-wing academics and Islamic apologists who justify their contemporary political agendas with contrived historical "facts." But fear not: Robert Spencer (author of the bestseller Islam Unveiled) refutes the popular myths in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Spencer reveals facts that you won't be taught in school and will never hear on the evening news, supplies a revealing list of "Books You Must Not Read" (as far as the PC left is concerned), and takes you on a fast-paced politically incorrect tour of Islamic teaching and Crusades history that will give you all the information you need to understand the true nature of the global conflict America faces today.

In the coming weeks I will share with you some endorsements the book has received.

In my comments on Daniel Pipes' article on Allah and God yesterday, I wrote this:

It is not actually Islamic doctrine that, as Pipes says, "Moses and Jesus introduced mistakes to the Word of God." Their followers did that. The Qur'an, addressing Muhammad and the Muslims, says of the Jews: "Have ye any hope that they will be true to you when a party of them used to listen to the word of Allah, then used to change it, after they had understood it, knowingly?" (2:75). This verse, combined with the fact that the Old and New Testaments do not bear witness to Muhammad as he expected, have led mainstream Muslim theologians to extend the charge of willfully perverting the Scriptures to Christians as well, although the charge is not made against Christians in the Qur'an.

In response, a frequent reader of Jihad Watch wrote this to me:

I've never really heard a Muslim ever say that the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament were transmitted perfectly at first, and only later corrupted. They don't give the Bible even that much credit, it seems.

While this is true of many -- particularly modern -- Muslim commentators, it is not true across the board. Why does this matter? Because if, as Pipes says, "Moses and Jesus introduced mistakes to the Word of God," their followers cannot be held responsible. But if it was the followers who supposedly corrupted what had been pure Scriptures, then they bear the guilt for their act. And indeed, one of the meanings in Arabic of the word dhimmi is guilty people. One of the sources of their guilt is this alleged corruption of the Scriptures -- which indicates how deeply the concepts of the dhimma are embedded within Islam. (And for the thousandth time, if that is not faced it cannot be dealt with. If Muslim reformers are sincere, let them acknowledge this and work to eradicate it.)

Anyway, here is some evidence for my position. Not only have Muslims said to me personally that the Torah (Taurat) and Gospel (Injil) were transmitted perfectly at first, and only later corrupted, it is in the Qur'an:

"And We caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow in their footsteps, confirming that which was (revealed) before him in the Torah, and We bestowed on him the Gospel wherein is guidance and a light, confirming that which was (revealed) before it in the Torah - a guidance and an admonition unto those who ward off (evil)." (5:46)

This verse assumes an uncorrupted Injil (containing "guidance and light") given to Jesus, confirming an uncorrupted Taurat given to Moses.

Cf. the classic Qur'an commentator Ibn Kathir on Qur'an 5:13:

"They change the words from their (right) places...) Since their comprehension became corrupt, they behaved treacherously with Allah's Ayat, altering His Book from its apparent meanings which He sent down, and distorting its indications. They attributed to Allah what He did not say, and we seek refuge with Allah from such behavior."

Thus Allah sent it down perfectly to Moses, and the Jews supposedly later altered it "from its apparent meanings which He sent down."

Likewise also another classic commentary, or tafsir, that of Al-Tabari, on Qur'an 2:75:

"...God states that it was a group of those who heard God's speech who did the altering [thereby] stressing the gravity of the lie they brought, after He had confirmed the proof and demonstration for them; and He notified His believing servants of the vanity of their hopes about the faith of their surviving descendants in the truth, light, and guidance which Muhammad brought them. Thus He said to them: 'How can you expect these Jews to affirm your truthfulness, when you inform them by what you tell them of something invisible which they have not witnessed or seen? Some of them heard from God His command and prohibition, then changed it and altered it and denied it. Those of their surviving descendants who are among you are more likely to deny the truth you have brought them, not having heard it from God but only from you; and it is more probable that they will alter the qualities and description of your prophet, Muhammad, in their scriptures, and change them wittingly, and then deny him and give him the lie. [They are more likely to do this than their predecessors who heard the speech of God directly from God; they altered it after they had understood it and known it, intentionally altering it]..."

"They heard from God His command and prohibition" -- which means they received it uncorrupted -- "and then they changed it and altered it and denied it." "They" of course obviously refers here to the Jews, not to Moses.

Here also is Ibn Kathir on Qur'an 5:46:

"...We made the Injil guidance and an admonition that prohibits committing sins and errors, for those who have Taqwa of Allah and fear His warning and torment. Allah said next, (Let the people of the Injil judge by what Allah has revealed therein.) meaning, so that He judges the people of the Injil by it in their time. Or, the Ayah means, so that they believe in all that is in it and adhere to all its commands, including the good news about the coming of Muhammad and the command to believe in and follow him when he is sent."

If people were ever to judge by the Injil, it must in this view have existed uncorrupted at some point.

In fact, some ancient Muslim commentators insist that the Gospel was never corrupted. This doesn't mitigate Christian guilt -- these commentators see the Christian refusal to accept Muhammad as conferring guilt upon them in any case. Often they see the Christian New Testament as it stands as bearing witness to Muhammad, and charge the Christians with perversity for not acknowledging that. Here is Ibn Khazem, writing in 1064 AD:

Since the Quran must be true it must be the conflicting Gospel texts that are false. But Muhammad tells us to respect the Gospel. Therefore, the present text must have been falsified by the Christians after the time of Muhammad....The Christians lost the revealed Gospel except for a few traces which God has left intact as argument against them.

Other authorities who accepted the Injil as authentic: Al-Tabari, Amr al-Ghakhiz, Al-Bukhari, Al-Mas'udi, Abu Ali Husain Bin Sina, Al-Ghazzali, Ibn Khaldun, and more recently, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, about whom I wrote in Onward Muslim Soldiers. He wrote: "In the opinion of us Mohammedans it is not proved that corruption (tahrif-i-lafzi)...was practiced." Likewise Fakhruddin Razi: "The Jews and early Christians were suspected of altering the text of the Taurat and Injil; but in the opinion of eminent doctors and theologians it was not practicable thus to corrupt the text, because those Scriptures were generally known and widely circulated, having been handed down from generation to generation."

The upshot of all this is that it reinforces the idea, as Pipes puts it, that "Islam views Judaism and Christianity as flawed versions of itself, correct on essentials but wrong in important details." No non-Muslim should enter into "inter-faith dialogue" without a clear awareness of that fact.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald, inspired by this Red-and-Blue politically correct celebration of the Battle of Trafalgar, peers into his crystal ball and sees, a mere 16 years hence, what the celebrations of the Battle of Lepanto will be like in the looming Eurabia:

The year: 2021. The occasion: the 450th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, where the Turkish fleet under Ali, the captain pasha, was defeated by the naval forces of Venice and of Spain (commanded by Don John of Austria, natural brother to the great Philip II, King of Spain). This victory helped repulse the constant efforts by the Muslim Turks to penetrate even further and seize even more Infidel lands in Eastern and Central and Southern Europe.

At the site of the engagement, the ships are all identical. Indeed, they all belong to the Eurabian fleet of a newly-expanded Eurabia, in which Turkey is the most populous member.

Of course, no one in his right mind would have wanted to label the ships with such words as "Turkish" or "European" (much less "Venetian"). "We are all Turks now," joked the French Foreign Minister, Ekmelledin Uzal, to his British counterpart, Manwar al-Oteiba. But of course, it would not do to label the sides "Turkey" and "Turkey."

Cornel West, Jr., son of the celebrated winner of two Nobel Prizes (one in literature and another for peace), was chosen to organize this event that holds so much significance for the world's peoples.

He was a natural choice. For, as president of the Eternal Peace and Dialogue-to-Death Foundation, which boasts 800,000 employees in 65 countries and is funded with the turned-over endowments of several self-extinguishing foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, the Soros Foundation, the Buffett Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Walton Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Olayan, Khashoggi, and Khaddafy Foundations, as well as the assets of three dozen slightly smaller foundations that had similarly disbanded, from all parts of the globe.

It was he, the brilliant son of an even more brilliant father, who finally hit upon the right way to label those ships that were to re-enact the Battle of Lepanto in a spirit not of celebrating a victory (what does "victory" mean, and what is "defeat," when we are all the children of the same god, and all of us indistinguishable one from the other, after all?).

At first, Cornel West, Jr., possibly remembering how the Battle of Trafalgar was re-enacted years ago, when his father was still a hard-working University Professor at Princeton and celebrated winner of the 2005 Lannan Prize for Services to Culture and Humanity, or Humanity and Culture, or something -- thought the two sides might indeed be labeled the "Blue Team" and the "Red Team," as had been done for the Trafalgar anniversary. But then it was pointed out that the painting would be costly, and besides, what with the ozone layer constantly thinning out into nothingness, more and more people seemed to be suffering from daltonism, which meant that millions of spectators watching the re-creation on television would have difficulty distinguishing one team from the other.

Then West had a brilliant idea. It was, like all brilliant ideas, so obvious -- and yet, no one had thought of it. It would make clear, utterly and transparently clear, what wars and bloodshed were really all about. They were about nothing at all. They had nothing to do with any discrete quarrels, any venomous ideologies, any attempts by one side or another to conquer one side, or another.

No, wars -- Man's Inhumanity to Man -- was all about The Other. Man, especially Western man, European man, or European man's mutated descendants in North America, who were consumed with the need to create, and then to mount a campaign against, The Other. It could be anything. It didn't matter. In the time of Lepanto, it was the terrible Turks, the malignant and the turbaned Turks, the Turks of "Mama li turchi" used to scare little Italian children.

And so it came to pass, that in 2021, in the re-created Battle of Lepanto, where Cervantes lost a hand (and later would lose his freedom to a renegade, a Christian-turned-Muslim slave-master named Venedikili Hasan Pasha, a future Beylerbey of Algiers), each side bore the exact same label -- a label that showed the futility of all warfare, of all distinctions, of all the silliness that Western man, especially, has inflicted on the otherwise naturally peaceful people in this naturally harmonious world (don't you find it getting just a little hot, and stuffy, and harder to breathe, in this wonderful still fossil-fuel-driven world of ours?).

And this is what the great son of the even greater father decided to do:

He labeled the ships of the Venetians, and the other European contributors to the fleet, "The Other." And then he labeled all the ships that represented the naval fleet of the Ottoman Turks with signs that read "The Other."

And that was that. The Battle of Lepanto. "The Other" vs. "The Other." For there is no "Other" now, in 2021. And in truth, there never really was "the Other" -- for "the Other" was simply a construct of the Western world, one which the peaceful non-Westerners made the terrible mistake of borrowing from them.

As Mustafa Schwartz-Weiss Kara-Akyol al-Padovi, the Italian Minister of Culture, noted, "yes, we are all Turks and Muslims now. We are all "The Other" now. Alhamdulillah, we are all friends, there will be no more war. There didn't have to be war in 1571. We could all have saved a lot of time, a lot of pain, if only the Venetians and the Spanish had understood then what everyone in Europe now understands."

Fruit drinks were sold. There was loukoum. There was iced Moroccan mint tea There were hubble-bubble pipes.

A splendid time was had by all.

Jihadist in the seat of power. "AP Photo shows Iran’s new President as 1979 US hostage-taker," from Iran Focus, with thanks to Solomon:

London, Jun. 29 - Iran Focus has learnt that the photograph of Iran’s newly-elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, holding the arm of a blindfolded American hostage on the premises of the United States embassy in Tehran was taken by an Associated Press photographer in November 1979.

Prior to the first round of the presidential elections on June 17, Iran Focus was the first news service to reveal Ahmadinejad’s role in the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

The identity of Ahmadinejad in the photograph was revealed to Iran Focus by a source in Tehran, whose identity could not be revealed for fear of persecution.

This story has nothing to do with the global jihad, but it shows why it is virtually certain that Britain will eventually capitulate to the jihadists and become an Islamic state: any nation that becomes ashamed of its own history and culture will ultimately die. What reason would it have to keep on living? And that death should be ruled a suicide. From Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain celebrated an epic naval victory Tuesday but a descendant of its hero Admiral Horatio Nelson said the Battle of Trafalgar bicentenary was trying too hard not to offend historical enemies France and Spain.

A highlight of the world's biggest naval review was featuring two fleets enacting a 19th century sea battle.

But they have been called simply the red and the blue fleet rather than by country names, which has sparked a shot across the bows from Nelson's great great great granddaughter.

"I am anti-political correctness. Very much against it. It makes fools of us," said 75-year-old Anna Tribe.

"I think the idea of the blue team fighting the red team is pretty stupid. I am sure the French and Spanish are adult enough to appreciate we did win that battle," she added.

The historian playing Nelson in the mock battle is equally annoyed.

"If you obliterate history for the sake of political correctness, you can't learn from the past. Nelson thought politicians were cowards. I tend to agree," Alex Naylor said.

You can say that again, Alex.

I have been doing a great deal of speaking around the country, and that means I have been doing a lot of flying. Three times recently I have been unable to check in electronically, and have waited an inordinately long time at the check-in counter while the airline employee checking me in talked in low tones on the phone. Why? The first time this happened, the airline official, staring intently at her computer screen, blurted out, "Oh! You're on the No-Fly List!" Then, after a great deal of typing, phone talk and staring at the screen, without further explanation or any answer to my incredulous inquiries, I was cleared to fly. Another time the airline employee got on the phone and talked in a very soft voice for a very long time. Straining forward, I made out "No Fly List" mentioned at least twice among the mumbling.

I don't know anything more about this, but I suspect there is someone named Robert Spencer on the No-Fly List. And this fact seems to have caused me minor delay and inconvenience on several occasions. However, even if it caused me major delay and inconvenience, I would never dream of suing Homeland Security or anyone else. I would rather they be overcautious than unduly careless. I will put up with the inconvenience rather than compromise the DHS's constitutional anti-terror activities and thereby increase the risk of more attacks. But here is yet another attempt to shift focus from jihad terrorism to the resistance to it, and to hamstring that resistance. Courtroom jihad update from AP, with thanks to Anthony:

CHICAGO -- A U.S.-born Muslim who says he was unjustly detained and questioned at customs checkpoints sued the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday over the "degrading process."

In the complaint filed in Chicago federal court, Akifur Rahman said customs agents held him for several hours on four occasions since March 2004 while he was re-entering the country from abroad, even though he had proper identification.

Rahman said he's "afraid of what may happen every time I return from a trip outside the United States."

"This lawsuit seems to be the only way to ... insure that this degrading process is not repeated," Rahman read from a statement.

According to his lawsuit, Rahman, of suburban Wheaton, received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security in April saying his problems stemmed from an "unfortunate misidentification" in which his name could be a near match of someone on a government watch list.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and "the adoption of adequate policies to ensure the reasonably expeditious re-entry" of U.S. citizens whose names are similar or identical to those on watch lists....

The damages Rahman is seeking are not the problem. The "'adoption of adequate policies to ensure the reasonably expeditious re-entry' of U.S. citizens whose names are similar or identical to those on watch lists" is. This is something that could compromise DHS efforts to track real terrorists.

You'll never guess who is behind this:

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys representing Rahman are seeking class-action status for the lawsuit.

2014! Maybe this is why the dhimmi Swede is impatient. But this story says that the accession talks will indeed begin October 3, as von Sydow wants. "EU sets Turkish entry timetable," from Reuters, with thanks to Anthony:

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) -- The EU's executive Commission reaffirmed on Wednesday that it aims to bring Turkey into the 25-nation bloc, but not before 2014, in a negotiating mandate which it adopted ahead of starting accession talks with Ankara.

"The negotiations will be based on Turkey's own merits and the pace will depend on Turkey's progress in meeting the requirements for membership," the negotiating mandate said. "The shared objective of the negotiations is accession."

The document states that negotiations for Turkish European Union membership can only be concluded from 2014, after the bloc's next long-term budget which runs from 2007 to 2013.

Accession talks are scheduled to start on October 3, as agreed last December by EU leaders.

But before that, EU foreign ministers must approve the "negotiating framework" unanimously, which may give rise to more wrangling in a political climate increasingly skeptical of Turkish accession following the French and Dutch "No" votes to the EU constitution.

A Commission spokeswoman said the text, seen by Reuters ahead of the EU executive's weekly meeting, had been adopted with only minor changes in the wording.

No doubt Russian authorities were reading Jihad Watch and realized the error of their ways. And if you believe that, I've got a wonderful suspension bridge in which you may be interested in investing. An update on this misguided effort by the Russians. They've decided to forget the whole thing. From the Globe and Mail, with thanks to Scaramouche:

MOSCOW -- Russian prosecutors dropped an inquiry yesterday into whether a Russian translation of an ancient Jewish text incites national and religious hatred.

The prosecutors had been examining the Shulhan Arukh, a 16th-century Jewish religious book, searching for evidence that Jewish groups are illegally spreading hatred by distributing the text's Russian translation.

The decision to end the investigation came during a visit by a Russian trade delegation to Israel, which had been outraged by the inquiry into a code of Jewish laws that has served the religion for hundreds of years...

The inquiry began when 19 deputies in the Russian Duma signed a letter in January calling for a ban on Jewish organizations. The letter complained that Jewish groups were distributing an abridged version of the Shulhan Arukh, and alleged that the text prejudices readers against non-Jews...

The book serves as a guide to Jewish life, although many of the teachings are considered outdated by modern Jews. It describes proper clothing, ways of bathing, eating habits, marriage ceremonies, funeral rites and holiday celebrations.

Russian lawmakers who criticized the book apparently never read it, said Mr. Kogan, because he saw them on television making wild claims about its contents, such as the idea that it encourages Jews to kill non-Jews.

The regional Basmanny prosecutor found no evidence to support those
allegations. In a written decision dated May 30, the prosecutor said the book may offend non-Jews, but it doesn't constitute an incitement to hatred.

The prosecutor's statement also ruled that the lawmakers and others who signed the letter of complaint cannot be held criminally responsible for using phrases such as "Jewish fascism," and "Jewish aggressiveness as a form of Satanism."

"I'm happy that this case has been dropped," said Berel Lazar, Russia's chief rabbi, adding that he'd been personally informed of the decision by the Moscow prosecutor's office.

Swedish Parliament Speaker Bjorn von Sydow is in a big hurry to get Turkey into the EU. Why the unseemly rush to dhimmitude? From Turkishpress.com, with thanks to Anthony:

ANKARA - Swedish Parliament Speaker Bjorn von Sydow said on Monday that Sweden wanted Turkey-EU accession talks to start on Oct. 3rd, 2005 in line with the decision taken at EU Summit of Dec. 17th, 2004.

Speaking in a joint news conference after the meetings between Turkish and Swedish parliamentary delegations, Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc thanked Sweden's support to Turkey's EU bid and wished Sweden to continue extending its support during the accession talks that would start on Oct. 3rd.

Tarik Shah and Rafiq Abdus Sabir update from AP, :

New York - Two U.S. citizens accused of being al-Qaida loyalists pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges on Tuesday.

An indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan late Monday charged Tarik Shah, 42, and Dr. Rafiq Abdus Sabir, 50, each with a count of conspiring to provide material support to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network....

Prosecutors allege Sabir, an Ivy League-educated doctor, agreed to treat holy warriors in Saudi Arabia. Shah, a jazz musician and a self-described martial arts expert, allegedly agreed to train them in hand-to-hand combat.

Court papers filed last month described Shah's zeal to train "brothers" for urban warfare.

Both men allegedly pledged their allegiance to al-Qaida during a May 20 meeting in the Bronx that was secretly recorded....

Shah is "charged with wanting to give al-Qaida members karate lessons," his attorney, Anthony Rico, told reporters. "The concept in and of itself is ridiculous given the seriousness of terrorism."

Yeah, it isn't as if a jihad terrorist might need to fight anyone. He would be too busy waging the jihad within his soul to conform his life to the will of Allah.

On May 25 I posted a link to Alyssa A. Lappen's superb article, "Turkey's Forgotten Islamist Pogrom," which notes:

Published this month by Greekworks.com, the work subtitled The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul shows that riots which destroyed 4,500 Greek homes, 3,500 businesses, 90 religious institutions and 36 schools in 45 distinct communities, resulted not only from “fervid chauvinism, or even [from] the economic resentment of many impoverished rioters, but [from] the profound religious fanaticism in many segments of Turkish society.”

Now, from ekathimerini.com (thanks to Sparta) comes an important sidelight to this story:

Within a few hours, 45 Greek communities were looted and destroyed on that September night in 1955, when a protest in Istanbul veered out of control.

Greeks and Armenians were savagely beaten and there were gang rapes.

Turkish writer Aziz Nessin says that any male passer-by the Turks considered a Greek was forced to show if he had been circumcised.

In some cases, Nessin says, Turks carried out “circumcisions” on the spot with knives.

Vryonis shakes his head sadly when these incidents are mentioned to him. He says most of the victims of this atrocity were Greek priests.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer, :

John C. Eckenrode, special agent in charge of the FBI's Philadelphia office, said the bureau had not received any "specific or credible threats" related to Live 8 or other events.

Even so, he said, the FBI's local antiterrorism command post would be on 24-hour duty in the coming days, and hundreds of Philadelphia-based agents from a variety of agencies - experts in hazardous materials, weapons of mass destruction, explosives - would be ready to "deploy at a moment's notice."

Among other things, Eckenrode said, agents would monitor the arrival of the USS Cole, a destroyer attacked by terrorists in Yemen in October 2000, which is scheduled to dock at Penn's Landing tomorrow.

Syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock (thanks to Mackie) notes the hypocrisy of the ongoing Qur'an-abuse controversies:

Associated Press reports, among others, document how militant Islamists treat Shiite shrines with all the deference the SS showed synagogues in the 1940s.

• June 1, 2005: A suicide bomber blasted the funeral of Mullah Abdul Fayaz, a moderate cleric, at his eponymous mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He killed Kabul's police chief and 20 others, while wounding 50.

• Jan. 20, 2005: A suicide bomber exploded inside the Ghocha Park Mosque in Sheberghan, injuring 21.

• June 30, 2003: An earlier bombing at Fayaz's mosque injured 16.

To date, colleagues of the Gitmo Boys have killed 21 and wounded 89 in Afghan mosque bombings.

Iraq's picture is even bloodier. Examples:

• May 23, 2005: A car bomb at a Baghdad mosque killed two and wounded 22, including 11 children.

• March 10, 2005: A suicide bomber detonated himself during a funeral at a Mosul mosque, murdering 47 people and injuring at least 101.

• Feb. 18, 2005: On Ashoura, Shiites' holiest day, homicide bombers attacked two Baghdad mosques, killing 25 and injuring 30.

• Feb. 18, 2005: A car bomb killed eight and hurt 10 at an Iskandariyah mosque.

• Aug. 26, 2004: Mortar shells pummeled a Najaf mosque, killing 27 and injuring 63.

• March 2, 2004: Homicide bombers, mortars and hidden explosives at mosques in Baghdad and Karbala killed 181 and wounded 573 Ashoura worshippers.

• Aug. 29, 2003: A car bomb outside a Najaf mosque killed 85 and injured 140.

Add the 386 killed and 970 injured in Iraq to the Afghan figures above: The terrorist pals of Guantanamo's al-Qaida and Taliban residents have butchered 407 Muslims and injured 1,059 more in these mosque attacks.

After crying for these murdered and maimed Muslims, weep for the Qurans destroyed. At worst, a May 27 Pentagon probe revealed, U.S. personnel at Guantanamo mistreated Qurans on 13 occasions, only five deliberately, notwithstanding requirements that soldiers "handle the Quran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art."

In one "atrocity," a Quran was stacked atop another Quran on a TV set. Interrogators twice "either touched or stood over" the Quran during questioning. Most regrettably, a soldier relieved himself outdoors last March 25. The breeze shifted towards a cellblock, and an adjacent air duct splattered his urine onto a detainee's nearby Quran and uniform. The soldier was reprimanded and reassigned to gate-guard duty.

Compare this to the Islamofascist explosions that reduce Allah's words to ashes.

More peace and tolerance from inside those password-protected Muslim forums, from the SITE Institute, :
June 28, 2005

A message posted to a password-protected al-Qaeda affiliated forum, which contains a section concerning women and the Muslim family, titled: “To You, My Muslim Sister: The Women’s Role in Jihad Against the Enemy,” seeks to motivate Muslim women to enter jihad in physical and supporting capacities as part of a larger discussion of a sickness overwhelming the “Islamic Nation” that is hindering their fight against the enemy.

The author believes that a “disease” is ravaging the ranks of the Muslims, causing “misery and humiliation” upon them by their enemies. The disease is considered a “weakness,” which is defined as “love of life and hatred of death,” and is only improved through jihad and “fighting for the sake of Allah.” Here, the message indicates, is where the Muslim women may play an important role and raise men who are not owned by “cows, trees, crosses, and altar worshippers….”

No, no, it is not I who am a terrorist -- it's a quote from Time's proto-suicide bomber, Marwan Abu Ubeida. Here is this week's column in FrontPage:

“Yes, I am a terrorist. Write that down: I admit I am a terrorist. [The Qur’an] says it is the duty of Muslims to bring terror to the enemy, so being a terrorist makes me a good Muslim.”

These are the words of Marwan Abu Ubeida, the subject of a Time magazine piece entitled “Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber.” It is gratifying to see Time being willing to take this trip into Marwan’s mind, since most mainstream media outlets have been singularly uninterested in the thought processes of jihad terrorists. But even Time doesn’t explore the implications of Marwan’s words. And this is no trivial omission: jihadists from Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Marwan Abu Ubeida have consistently made clear that today’s jihadists are working from mainstream traditions and numerous Qur’anic exhortations, and that by means of these traditions and teachings they are able to gain recruits among Muslims worldwide — as well as to hold the sympathy of others whom they do not recruit. This explains why there has been no widespread, sustained, and sincere Muslim outcry against the jihad terrorist enterprise in general.

Marwan makes it clear: “The jihadis are more religious people. You ask them anything — anything — and they can instantly quote a relevant section from the Qur’an.” He is chillingly forthright: “The only person who matters is Allah — and the only question he will ask me is ‘How many infidels did you kill?’” He invokes Qur’an 8:60: “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy.” The jihad ideology Marwan reflects is rooted in the Qur’an and Islamic tradition. The longer we postpone confronting that fact, the worse the problem will grow.

Yet both liberal and conservative media analysts do not want to face this. They think that by speaking about the Islamic roots of jihad violence they will undercut moderate Muslims. But in fact, no reform in Islam can ever take place without an acknowledgment of what needs to be reformed. The near-universal refusal to provide that acknowledgment is just one reason why that reform is virtually certain not to be forthcoming. The contemporary problem of global Islamic terrorism will never be solved unless people are willing to speak forthrightly about the nature of the challenge we face and work to find positive solutions. Ignoring or distorting the true nature and source of the problem will only postpone the crisis, and make its ultimate resolution more difficult.

The media is failing the American public on this issue. But the truth will out, if in other venues. It’s time for the direct approach. One organization is taking the truth about jihad terrorism directly to the people: The People’s Truth Forum. On September 21 I will be participating in a symposium on terror, sponsored by the Forum, entitled, “The Radical Islamist Threat to World Peace and National Security.” This symposium will challenge media bias head-on by exploring forthrightly such unexamined dogmas as the idea that regionalized economic conditions and American injustices are the real cause of terrorism, not any imperative derived from Islamic theology. We will explore the mindset of people like Marwan Abu Ubeida who think that terror is commanded by God, providing a profile of the slaughterers of innocents that is urgently needed — and has not been provided by the media in almost four years since 9/11.

Other speakers include the renowned terrorism expert Harvey Kushner, author of Holy War on the Home Front; Brigitte Gabriel, a former anchor for world news in the Middle East and a prominent Arab-American journalist; and Judith Jacobson, vice-president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) and the coordinator of the Columbia University SPME chapter. This promises to be one of the few places in modern-day America where you will be able to hear the truth about what we're up against. Get more information about how you can attend at www.peoplestruthforum.com.

The People’s Truth Forum was organized to heighten public awareness about the issues that matter most. The Forum hopes to host similar events around the country in the future and thereby to circumvent the information stranglehold of the mainstream media — a stranglehold which, with its cavalier refusal to face the facts, leaves us all that much more vulnerable.

A bit more about that "totalitarian ideology" the President referred to tonight, from an interview with the imam of the Islamic Center in New York, Dr. Ahmad Dwidar. From MEMRI-TV, with thanks to Carolyn:

Dwidar: In 1995 I heard some sermons, saying that Muslims should march on the White House from some of the mosques.

Host: What do you mean by "march on the White House"?

Dwidar: One cleric said in his sermon: "We are going to the White House, so that Islam will be victorious, Allah willing, and the White House will become into the Muslim house."

Host: How? I don't understand.

Dwidar: This is simply a slogan. I'm only saying this to...

Host: Are they going to occupy the White House or what?

Dwidar: No, they say that through the domination of Islam and its ideas, the White House will change.

Host: This will happen one day, but not this way. Islam will be victorious, no doubt, but not this way.

Dwidar: It will not happen unless the Muslims abandon their slogans and become a role model. If a Muslim doctor who invents a cure in the hospital or performs an important operation successfully – all the media will broadcast it live and announce it worldwide. The Muslim who makes do with breaking the wooden podium, with screaming, and with patronizing, condescending rhetoric that "Islam is coming, and it will change the face of the earth," while at the same time he cannot even change the face of the Islamic capitals, which overflow with garbage – this path will lead to no good.

Note that Dwidar doesn't object to the end, only to the means. Presumably if a Muslim stopped being condescending and cleaned up the capitals of Islamic states, he could legitimately set his sights on the Islamization of the United States.

The President is speaking about Iraq, and Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald has some initial impressions:

I have been watching someone on television positively hallucinating about "winning" some "war on terror" by sticking it out in a country called "Iraq" where there are citizens who think of themselves as "Iraqis" and who are eager to put into place what sounds amazingly like the American Bill of Rights, after decades of enduring terrible misrule at the hands of some strange regime apparently totally unconnected to the behavior of the gentle Iraqis themselves -- possibly these mis-rulers arrived from outer space.

I didn't catch mention, in this "important address to the nation," of the words "Islam" or "jihad" or anything except some reference to the "murderous ideology" of "the terrorists."

So I suppose Europe has nothing to worry about, just as long as it goes quietly, step by step, and islamizes the way a frog is cooked -- by slowly turning up the heat, by indiscernable degrees.

I feel secure now in the knowledge that my leaders have understood the threat, and are not relying merely on brute force, and have decided to take their stand in Iraq, and after the military phase, to pour American aid in so as to create that Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations which is already having such major effects, we were told, because "elections have been held in Lebanon [where the Christians may lose their confessional arrangement, and the new head of Lebanon is an outspoken admirer of Saudi Arabia], in the "Palestinian territories" [yes, and what a success that has turned out to be, with the performance of Hamas, not to mention the corruption and meretriciousness of Mr. Abbas, the phony leader of a made-up people, who waits while Sharon helpfully writes out his own Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, and presents it with a little wink -- please do not break until at least 6 months go by], and in "Saudi Arabia" [this must be a reference to the municipal election where the most fundamentalist of the usual fanatics swept the board -- well done, democratic experiment in Saudi Arabia!].

Unmentioned went, for some reason, the election in Iran, where a former Teheran mayor, a tireless pothole-fixer, was elected, and will show the world that in his version of Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations pothole-fixing and fanatical Islam can exist in the same mind of the same maximum leader of the same totalitarian regime. This is something the smug speaker gave no signs of comprehending.

Last week I spoke at the New York Tolerance Center about "The True Nature of the Jihad Threat." News of death threats I have received somehow found their way to the New York Police Department, which -- unbeknownst to me until I arrived at the venue -- dispatched its "Hercules Team" to ward off any who might have wanted to make those threats reality. The Team, a group of courteous and accomplished plainclothesmen, turned away one young man with a backpack at the door, after he refused to let them search his bag.

Against that somewhat ominous backdrop, I spoke about the violent intolerance of the Islamic jihad: its imperative to impose Sharia, with its institutionalized discrimination against non-Muslims and women, and its mandate to commit violent acts that is rooted in the Qur'an and Sunnah, supported by mainstream understandings of those texts, and elaborated by Islamic law. I tried to impress upon the crowd the threat that the jihad poses to central notions of human rights enshrined in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights and derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Bravo for life's little ironies: after this talk about the need to defend the West from this furious and fanatical form of intolerance, I was confronted by a young man and a young woman who were quite offended by my -- you guessed it -- intolerance. The Muslims who made it necessary for us to have our conversation under armed guard because of death threats did not offend them. My talk did. We had a brief discussion -- until the young man refused to shake my hand and I realized that no real exchange of ideas was going to be possible -- in which I found that their views reflected a large number of common prejudices and false assumptions about the nature of the present conflict, the meaning of tolerance itself, and more. That's why I thought it might be worthwhile to recount some details of our encounter.

The young man, for example, insisted to me that my focus was wrong. He told me that even though he was a Jew, he believed that Israel was a worse violator of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights than the jihadists, and reiterated several times that America is the world's greatest terrorist, not any jihadist. These are, of course, fashionable notions on the Left and some sectors of the Right, but that doesn't make them true.

Israel a worse threat than the global jihad? What violence is Israel fomenting in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Bosnia, and elsewhere around the globe? Where are Israelis spreading an ideology that demands that its adherents subvert the states in which they live and replace their societies with a radically different social model that denies equality of rights to women and certain religious groups? Where are Israelis teaching their children that the noblest thing they can do with their lives would be to strap bombs on themselves and blow themselves up in a large crowd of unsuspecting civilians?

I am sympathetic to the Palestinian Arab refugees, some of whom I know personally. But let us not forget that the refugee problem was not created by Israel, but by the Arab states surrounding Israel that started war against her, making the displacement of peoples necessary where it need not have been. Those states also refused to take in those refugees.

In FrontPage today, Daniel Pipes takes up a question that has often been considered by commenters here: is the Allah of Islam the same as the God of the Bible? This is not just a matter for theological wrangling; the policy implications of the question begin to come clear along the middle and particularly at the end of Pipes' article. Says Pipes:

This might seem like a minor semantic quibble, but the meaning of Allah has profound importance. Consider two alternate ways of translating the opening line of Islam’s basic declaration of faith (Arabic: la ilaha illa-la). One reads “I testify that there is no God but Allah,” and the other “I testify that there is no deity but God.”

The first states that Islam has a distinct Lord, one known as Allah, and implies that Jews and Christians worship a false god. The second states that Allah is the Arabic word for the common monotheistic God and implies a commonality with Jews and Christians.

The first translation is 40 times more common at google.com than the second. Despite this, the latter is the accurate one. Bush was right. Several reasons point to this conclusion.

Scriptural: The Koran itself in several places insists that its God is the same as the God of Judaism and Christianity. The most direct statement is one in which Muslims are admonished to tell Jews and Christians “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we do submit” (E.H. Palmer translation of Sura 29:46). Of course, the verse can also be rendered “our Allah and your Allah is One” (as it is in the notorious Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation).

Historical: Chronologically, Islam followed after Judaism and Christianity, but the Koran claims Islam actually preceded the other monotheisms. In Islamic doctrine (Sura 3:67), Abraham was the first Muslim. Moses and Jesus introduced mistakes to the Word of God; Muhammad brought it down perfectly. Islam views Judaism and Christianity as flawed versions of itself, correct on essentials but wrong in important details. This outlook implies that all three faiths share the God of Abraham.

Yes they do -- in a sense. Obviously Muhammad portrayed himself as a prophet sent by the God of Moses and Jesus. It is not actually Islamic doctrine that, as Pipes says, "Moses and Jesus introduced mistakes to the Word of God." Their followers did that. The Qur'an, addressing Muhammad and the Muslims, says of the Jews: "Have ye any hope that they will be true to you when a party of them used to listen to the word of Allah, then used to change it, after they had understood it, knowingly?" (2:75). This verse, combined with the fact that the Old and New Testaments do not bear witness to Muhammad as he expected, have led mainstream Muslim theologians to extend the charge of willfully perverting the Scriptures to Christians as well, although the charge is not made against Christians in the Qur'an.

In light of that, it is no small thing that, as Pipes notes, "Islam views Judaism and Christianity as flawed versions of itself, correct on essentials but wrong in important details." I think unfortunately that this makes it unlikely that some path to mutual coexistence can be based on the fact that "all three faiths share the God of Abraham." They do, but Islam views the other two not as equal or even potential partners, but as renegade perversions of the true faith of the God of Abraham. No Muslim, therefore, would say he worships the Triune God of Christianity, which the Qur'an rather inaccurately denigrates as worship of God, Jesus, and Mary (5:116). Hardly a promising ground for mutual understanding.

Accordingly, I wrote some time ago that "Muslims themselves vehemently deny that the Allah of the Qur'an is the God of the Bible." By this I did not mean to deny the identity between the deity of Jews and Christians with that of Muslims that is claimed in Qur'an 29:46; rather, I was referring to the rejection by Muslims of the Trinity, which is accepted by almost all Christians, as well as to their classification of Judaism along with Christianity as a renegade perversion of Islam, which is based on the idea that the Bible as we have it has been corrupted. The Qur'an even says that "they indeed have disbelieved who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary" (5:17). The Arabic word used here is "kafara," which is related to "kafir," or unbeliever. Thus traditional Christians are unbelievers (and under Allah's curse, cf. Qur'an 9:30).

Linguistic: Just as Dieu and Gott are the French and German words for God, so is Allah the Arabic equivalent. In part, this identity of meaning can be seen from cognates: In Hebrew, the word for God is Eloh-im, a cognate of Allah. In Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, God is Allaha. In the Maltese language, which is unique because it is Arabic-based but spoken by a predominantly Catholic people, God is Alla.

Further, most Jews and Christians who speak Arabic routinely use the word Allah to refer to God. (Copts, the Christians of Egypt, do not.)

Quite so. Many Arabic interjections that are used by Christians as well as Muslims feature the word "Allah": "Inshallah" (God willing), "Smallah" (in the name of God), "Wallah" (by God), "Allah ma3ak" (God be with you", "Yalla" etc...) Copts, in line with Dr. Pipes' observation, never use these expressions. They replace the word "Allah" with "Rabb" (Lord), hence saying "Insha'arrab", "bismirrab", "Rabbina Ma3aak" etc. -- as if to divorce themselves from the God of Islam. However, Maronites, Melkites, and other Arabic-speaking Christians use the same expressions that Muslims use, although not in reference to the God of Islam.

The Old and New Testaments in Arabic use this word. In the Arabic-language Bible, for instance, Jesus is referred to as the son of Allah. Even translations carried out by Christian missionaries, such as the famous one done in 1865 by Cornelius Van Dyke, refer to Allah, as do missionary discussions.

Pipes draws these conclusions from this evidence:

The God=Allah equation means that, however hostile political relations may be, a common “children of Abraham” bond does exist and its exploration can one day provide a basis for interfaith comity. Jewish-Christian dialogue has made great strides and Jewish-Christian-Muslim trialogue could as well.

But before that can happen, however, Muslims must first recognize the validity of alternate approaches to the one God. That means leaving behind the supremacism, extremism, and violence of the current Islamist phase.

This is a point worth exploring further. In light of the Qur'anic verses I have referred to here and others, I wonder if it would really be possible for Qur'an-believing Muslims to "recognize the validity of alternate approaches to the one God" -- specifically approaches that are condemned as perversions of the true faith in the same Qur'an that seems to assert (in 29:46) this "common 'children of Abraham' bond." On what basis will Muslims be able to act upon 29:46 but not 9:30 and 5:17? In Qur'an 98:6 the "unbelievers" -- using the same word that is used of Christians in 5:17 (kafara, kafaru) are termed the "vilest of creatures." We're all one big happy group of children of Abraham? Not quite.

Also, I think it is worth noting that "supremacism, extremism, and violence" are not solely features of "the current Islamist phase" of Islam, but are constants of Islamic history -- as Dr. Pipes himself suggests when he notes that the Qur'an itself "views Judaism and Christianity as flawed versions of itself." What is that but supremacism? And that supremacism, combined with the jihad ideology that is rooted in the Qur'an and Sunnah (as I detail in Onward Muslim Soldiers) and has been a constant of Islamic history (as Dr. Pipes has ably noted), becomes a recipe for extremism and violence. Will this change as Muslims come to recognize that we are all children of Abraham with a common God? I hope so. But I don't think a reading of the Qur'an justifies this hope.

DC Watson points out some intriguing new developments in CAIR's suit against the intrepid Andrew Whitehead and Anti-CAIR:

March 31, 2004, Virginia Beach, Virginia: the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) files a civil lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead, the founder of Anti-CAIR (ACAIR), a gutsy organization whose purpose has been to inform the people of the United States of the activities of this particular Islamic organization.

There isn’t much to say about CAIR that hasn’t already been said by authors and scholars who are much more knowledgeable about this group than myself. Their organization is what it is, and we will continue to expose them.

After researching Mr. Whitehead, it is odd that CAIR would sue an average American citizen for an amount in excess of one million dollars, since it is most likely that they know that he doesn't have the means to pay such an amount. Is it really about the money? Or is CAIR simply demonstrating that filing lawsuits against those who speak out against them is a simply a weapon in their arsenal, as they wage war on free speech?

Nonetheless, some interesting information has come to pass. When this lawsuit was first filed, Mr. Whitehead and ACAIR were served with several complaints from the plaintiff in this case. Actually, there were six.

Listed below is page two from the actual complaint, which outlines what CAIR has viewed as libelous statements made by Whitehead on the Anti-CAIR website, and page two of the “Amended Motion” recently filed by CAIR’s legal representative. Whatever could the reason be for this amendment?

Compare the two. In the amended complaint, A & B are truncated, and E, F, G, and H are gone altogether (C & D seem to have bit the dust before even the first complaint was issued). Now why is that?

But have they fired the ideology that led to his subversive actions and arrest? From the News-Sentinel, with thanks to PRCS:

Leaders of the Lodi Mosque have voted to fire Shabbir Ahmed, the imam who has been arrested on immigration charges and accused of supporting the Taliban.

"He will not return to our mosque," said Muhammed Shoaib, mosque president, who added that the decision by board members to terminate Ahmed was unanimous. They voted on Ahmed's dismissal Sunday night.

Arrested earlier this month on immigration violations, Ahmed acknowledged in court Friday that he made speeches in Pakistan supporting the Taliban in its fight against the United States. He said he regrets those comments now, having come to see Americans' "true value and respect for human life."

Sharia alert from the UK -- not as the law of the land, but as a matter of individual observance. From EDP24, with thanks to Anthony:

A Muslim woman alleged to have been recruited to help abduct five children from Norfolk and take them to Libya told a court yesterday that she had only gone on the trip with her husband because she had to "obey him".

Wearing a veil completely covering her face, Wedad Ahmed, 38, said through the help of an interpreter that her husband Mustafa Abushima, 45, had not discussed with her the trip to Morocco, in which it is alleged they posed as parents of the five abducted children.

She told the jury at Norwich Crown Court: "When my husband gives an order I have to obey him. I cannot do anything but."

They're looking for incitement to religious hatred, eh? Have they looked at a book that calls Jews (and Christians) apes and pigs (2:62-65; 5:59-60; 7:166) and says they are under Allah's curse (9:30) and are the "vilest of creatures" (98:6)? And that believers must wage war against them (9:5, 9:29)? Just wondering.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, is Kitsur Shulhan Arukh the foundation of a global network of people who are committing violence in its name? Do people behead innocent civilians while chanting the praises of God and holding up copies of Kitsur Shulhan Arukh?

From AP, with thanks to Anthony:

MOSCOW -- Prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether a Russian translation of an ancient Jewish religious text incites national and religious hatred, a move condemned by many Jewish organizations as anti-Semitic.

Moscow district prosecutors summoned Rabbi Zinovy Kogan for questioning last week as part of a probe into whether the Russian translation of Kitsur Shulhan Arukh, a code of ancient Jewish religious laws, provokes religious hatred, Kogan told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday.

The investigation was meant to review a ruling last month by Moscow prosecutors that the text did not inspire hatred and a criminal case was not warranted, said Kogan, chairman of the Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations who published the translated text.

The Israeli government and Jewish organizations, including the Conference of European Rabbis, condemned the probe.

"To take a traditional Jewish text and try to ban it reminds us of the official state-sponsored anti-Semitism that we saw in czarist Russia," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

The original probe was initiated after two nationalist activists including a prominent far-right ideologue complained the text is aimed at "insulting human dignity based on national and religious affiliation," according to an earlier prosecutors' statement posted on the Web site of an anti-xenophobia group, Sova. The text was also accused of labeling Christians "worshippers of idols" in a reference to Christians' main religious symbol, the cross.

That's it? Sounds like standard religious polemic. Does it tell Jews to wage war against Christians? I think they're looking at the wrong book.

Syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock compares the rights of homosexuals in the West and in the Islamic world.

This weekend’s Gay Pride festivities in New York City climaxed with Sunday’s 36th annual parade down Fifth Avenue. As usual, the raucous affair thrilled some and rattled others, but everyone walked away intact.

One would have to fantasize about such an occasion, however, in most Muslim nations where homosexuality remains as concealed as a bride beneath a burqa. When it peeks through, it isn’t pretty. While many liberals (and President G.W. Bush) call Islam a religion of peace, "celebrating diversity" is hardly on its agenda. Consider these recent examples of the Islamic world's institutional homophobia:

In Saudi Arabia, 105 men were sentenced in April for acts of "deviant sexual behavior" following their March arrests. Al-Wifaq, a government-affiliated newspaper, claimed they illegally danced together and were "behaving like women" at a gay wedding.

"Calling the event a 'gay wedding' has become a lightning rod to justify discrimination against gay people," Widney Brown of Human Rights Watch told Patrick Letellier of gay.com.

Seventy men received one-year prison sentences while 31 got six months to one year, plus 200 lashes each. Four others face two years behind bars plus 2,000 lashes. If these four receive their lashes at once, Brown fears their wounds will prove fatal.

"Anyone caught committing sodomy -- kill both the sodomizer and the sodomized," Islamic cleric Tareq Sweidan demanded on Qatar TV last April 22. As the Middle East Media Research Institute (memri.org) reports, Sweidan continued: "The clerics determined how the homosexual should be killed. They said he should be stoned to death. Some clerics said he should be thrown off a mountain."

Ogudu Emmanuel and Odjegba Tevin admitted that they were male lovers after their neighbors reported them to Nigerian cops. They were arrested January 15 and charged with "crimes against nature." The pair apparently escaped from jail while awaiting trial and potential 14-year prison sentences. Gay rights activists worried that cops or other inmates may have killed them in custody.

Last November, an Islamic court in Keffi, issued an arrest warrant for Michael Ifediora Nwokoma after neighbors accused him of having sex with a man named Mallam Abdullahi Ibrahim. Nwokoma quickly fled. Ibrahim was charged with the "unholy" act of "homosexualism." The court postponed Ibrahim's trial indefinitely and incarcerated him until Nwokoma surfaces.

In northern Nigeria, where Sharia law governs 12 Muslim states, homosexuality requires capital punishment by stoning.

Iraq's terrorist Ansar al-Sunnah Army, the Islamic Army in Iraq, and the Mujahedeen Army issued a statement last December 30 urging Iraqis not to vote in last January's elections, lest democracy spawn un-Islamic laws such as "homosexual marriage," in their words. To be sure, many Americans also oppose gay marriage, but they at least have the good manners not to detonate advocates of same-sex unions. Ansar-al-Sunnah is incapable of such restraint. It scored major headlines when it claimed responsibility for a December 21 bombing at a U.S. military mess tent at a base in Mosul. It killed 22 people, 18 U.S. GIs among them.

Egyptian cops have met gay men online and through personal ads, then arrested them, according to a March 1, 2004 Human Rights Watch report. Since 2001, HRW says at least 179 men have been charged with "debauchery," prompting five-year prison sentences for at least 23. As the Associated Press' Nadia Abou El-Magd wrote, HRW "interviewed 63 men who had been arrested for homosexual conduct. It said they spoke of being whipped, bound and suspended in painful positions, splashed with cold water, burned with cigarettes, shocked with electricity to the limbs, genital or tongue. They also said guards encouraged other prisoners to rape them" -- thus using coercive gay sex to penalize consensual gay sex.

While he notes that secular nations such as Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Syria are more relaxed about homosexuality, Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch.org and editor of The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, warns against equating the homophobia of strict Muslim states with, say, American social conservatives' opposition to gay-rights laws.

"Jerry Falwell and others like him do not call for the deaths of homosexuals, while these people do," Spencer tells me. "This demonstrates the bankruptcy and, ultimately, the danger of such moral equivalence arguments, which are nonetheless ubiquitous today in discussions of Islamic terrorism."

Unlike Sunday's marchers, many in the Muslim world literally risk their lives and limbs by merely peering out of the Islamic closet.

This is sure to irk the Turk. From AZG Armenian Daily, with thanks to Anthony:

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, president Robert Melson, vice-president Israel Charny, collectively edited and sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the 6th session of the IAGS in Boca Raton, Florida, on June 6. Below we present the letter.

Dear Prime Minister Erdogan:

We are writing you this open letter in response to your call for an "impartial study by historians" concerning the fate of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention. We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is hundreds of independent scholars, who have no affiliations with governments, and whose work spans many countries and nationalities and the course of decades. The scholarly evidence reveals the following:

On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War I, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens – an unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. Another million fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years.

The Armenian Genocide was the most well-known human rights issue of its time and was reported regularly in newspapers across the United States and Europe. The Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented by thousands of official records of the United States and nations around the world including Turkey’s wartime allies Germany, Austria and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of survivors, and by decades of historical scholarship.

The Armenian Genocide is corroborated by the international scholarly, legal, and human rights community:

1) Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide in 1944, cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the Nazi extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he meant by genocide.

2) The killings of the Armenians is genocide as defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

3) In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization of the world’s foremost experts on genocide, unanimously passed a formal resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide.

4) 126 leading scholars of the Holocaust including Elie Wiesel and Yehuda Bauer placed a statement in the New York Times in June 2000 declaring the "incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide" and urging western democracies to acknowledge it.

5) The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem), the Institute for the Study of Genocide (NYC) have affirmed the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide.

6) Leading texts in the international law of genocide such as William A. Schabas’s Genocide in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2000) cite the Armenian Genocide as a precursor to the Holocaust and as a precedent for the law on crimes against humanity.

We note that there may be differing interpretations of genocide - how and why the Armenian Genocide happened, but to deny its factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history.

We would also note that scholars who advise your government and who are affiliated in other ways with your state-controlled institutions are not impartial. Such so-called "scholars" work to serve the agenda of historical and moral obfuscation when they advise you and the Turkish Parliament on how to deny the Armenian Genocide.

We believe that it is clearly in the interest of the Turkish people and their future as a proud and equal participant in international, democratic discourse to acknowledge the responsibility of a previous government for the genocide of the Armenian people, just as the German government and people have done in the case of the Holocaust.

Al-Arian update from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The government tapped former university professor Sami Al-Arian's phones, planted microphones at his think-tank and intercepted his faxes and computer conversations because they suspected him of terrorism ties, a retired FBI agent testified.

A lot of work to build a case for one man.

Either they are just feigning this whole initiative, or they're trying to convince the jihadists to stop attacking for the time being because they are gaining what they want through diplomacy. Is the PA going to convince them to accept a two-state solution or some other form of lasting peaceful coexistence with Israel? Don't hold your breath. That would go against the oft-stated goals of both organizations, and the jihad ideology in general. "PA trying to get Jihad to hold fire," from AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

JERUSALEM: The Palestinian Authority is holding “serious dialogue” with the Islamic Jihad movement in a bid to persuade it to halt attacks against Israel, a senior official said yesterday.

“We have been engaged in a serious dialogue with Jihad to put an end to the attacks which go against our national interests,” presidential national security adviser Jibril Rajoub told reporters in Jerusalem.

“The Palestinian Authority is still committed to the truce and we will not accept any violation of the agreement,” he added.

A truce. A hudna. In Islamic law, a temporary period designed to allow the mujahedin to gather strength. Not a peace. Not coexistence.

Jihad Jack Thomas update from AAP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Terror suspect Jack Thomas pleaded not guilty in a Melbourne court today to receiving money from al-Qaeda....

Justice Bernard Teague ordered Thomas, who also faces charges of providing support to al-Qaida and falsifying a passport, to reappear in court on January 30.

He has not entered pleas on the remaining charges.

Can Turkey's entry into the EU be stopped? Does Europe wish to survive? From DPA, with thanks to Anthony:

BERLIN (DPA) -- Germany's conservative opposition has again thrown into question the mandate for the European Union membership talks with Turkey.

Talks between the European Union (E.U.) and Turkey are due to begin on October 3.

This will be after Germany's early national election in September, which opinion polls predict will result in a win for the Christian Democrat-led (CDU) opposition.

But in a weekend interview with Deutsche Presse Agentur, a leading CDU official, Matthias Wissmann sought to play down Turkey's hopes for eventually signing up to E.U. membership.

According to Wissmann, who also chairs the German Parliament's committee on European Affairs, the talks need to avoid allowing Turkey "any illusion that it can expect full membership."

Sharia alert from Amnesty International via Iranian.ws, with thanks to Anthony:

Amnesty International is calling for a sentence of eye gouging against a man in Iran not to be carried out. The 28-year-old man, known only as Vahid, has been sentenced to have his eyes surgically gouged out for a crime committed when he was 16 years old.

The Iranian Supreme Court rejected an appeal earlier this month and ordered that the punishment should be carried out.

It may now be inflicted at any time and Amnesty International has issued an 'Urgent Action' appeal against the sentence and is urging the authorities to abolish punishments such as eye-gouging which constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, amounting to torture.

Amnesty International UK Media Director Mike Blakemore said:

"This is a truly shocking case amounting to a sentence of judicial torture.

"We appeal to the Iranian authorities to guarantee that this punishment is not carried out and would further appeal to all medical practitioners in Iran to have nothing to do with this gruesome punishment."

According to Iranian press reports, Vahid was convicted of deliberately pouring acid from a battery on the face of another youth, Gholam-Hossein, blinding him. This took place in 1993, when Vahid had been working as a labourer in the capital, Tehran.

Vahid reportedly maintained throughout his trial that the attack was not intentional and that he had only meant to threaten the youth with the battery during an argument, but the battery's lid had opened accidentally, causing the injury.

The trial court reportedly ordered that Vahid's eyes be sprayed with acid as retribution (qesas) for his actions. Vahid's lawyer appealed, arguing that the rest of his face would also be damaged from the acid.

The appeal was reportedly rejected by a second court which ruled instead that Vahid's eyes would be surgically gouged out in order not to damage his face.

This punishment is in accord with the Qur'an: "We ordained therein for them: 'Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal'" (5:45). However, even this verse continues: "But if any one remits the retaliation by way of charity, it is an act of atonement for himself."

From the Straining Out A Gnat And Swallowing A Camel Department: "Hundreds Attend Dedication Of Iranian-Christian Church," from NBC11.com, with thanks to Susan:

Hundreds of people gathered for a special dedication of the Iranian Christian Church in the South Bay.

It is the largest one in the Bay Area.

Nearly 600 Iranian Muslims who converted to Christianity attend the church.

It allows women to serve as pastors, something not allowed in Iran.

You know what else isn't allowed in Iran? Conversion to Christianity. It was good of NBC11 to notice their little blow for women, but it would have been nice if they had told the good folks in the South Bay about the Sword of Damocles these converts escaped. If these 600 Iranian ex-Muslims were still back home, they'd be facing death sentences for their act of conscience. Nor is that "extreme Sharia," as a silly new book styles such things: it is based on a notorious statement by the Muslim Prophet Muhammad: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Sahih Bukhari, 9:84:57).

In the United States these converts can live freely as Christians. Yet dhimmi spokesmen will still praise the diversity of the Islamic world over that of the West.

This will be an interesting test of Pakistan's attachment to the Sharia -- not the tribe-ordered gang rape, which is some barbaric local custom, but the enforcement of Sharia evidence laws (requiring four Muslim men who saw the act to establish that it actually happened) by the court that overturned the original convictions. Mukhtaran Mai update from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani woman gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council said on Monday she hoped the country's Supreme Court would reimpose death sentences on the men who attacked her.

The Supreme Court began hearing an appeal by the woman, Mukhtaran Mai, against the acquittal of five of six men convicted in the assault.

"I expect the same decision as was given by the special court," Mai told reporters in the Supreme Court before the session began, referring to the conviction of the men.

Six men were originally convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, but five were later acquitted after appealing to a high court in Punjab province, which cited a lack of evidence. A sixth had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

Mai, 33, was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council after her brother -- who was 12 at the time -- was judged to have offended the honor of a powerful clan by befriending a woman from the tribe....

Anybody still fooled by this guy? From the Islamic Republic News Agency, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Iran's President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad renewed his allegiance with the late founder of the Islamic Revolution Imam Khomeini at his mausoleum in southern Tehran Sunday morning.

Accompanied by some members of his publicity office, Ahmadinejad laid a wreath of flower on Imam's tomb just one day after scoring a landslide win in the 9th presidential election.

The grandson of Imam, Hassan Khomeini, felicitated Ahmadinejad on his victory in the presidential race....

As the Man With No Eyes would say, You know, some men you just can't reach. In "Lodi, California Series Part II - Bad Faith Exchange With Islam," at PipelineNews (thanks to Mackie), William A. Mayer and Beila Rabinowitz detail how two of the non-Muslim religious leaders who signed a Declaration of Peace a few years back along with the ice cream jihad imam still haven't awakened to the fact that they were just pawns in his game.

June 27, 2005 – San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews - On March 24, 2002 six religious leaders signed a Declaration of Peace in Lodi, California.

That declaration read in part:

“We are six people gathered for a common purpose. Among us are a Jewish Rabbi, a Christian Minister, a Muslim Imam, and a believer from each faith. We acknowledge that fanatics and extremists have, throughout history, committed acts of terror and inhumanity against us all. Together, we repudiate these acts, and declare then to be contrary to our Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths.”

Although the full import of the Lodi, California terror related prosecutions is yet to be determined, at least two of the signatories on that document - who seem to have been exploited by members of the tainted Lodi Mosque and Farooqia Islamic Center - are in full and total denial.

To the contrary, they are seeking more of the same, as their correspondence with PipeLineNews indicates:

Rabbi Jason Gwasdoff, of Temple Israel, Stockton.

“I do not feel that I was taken advantage of in any way. I think the sentiments expressed in the declaration of peace were sincerely held by everyone who signed it. I do not assume the Imams are guilty of anything, and have yet to hear anything that would convince me otherwise. They are being held on immigration charges, and truthfully, if it weren't for the investigation of the Hayats I doubt they would be in jail today.

I think it is very important that we continue the interfaith dialogue with the Muslim community. We have much to learn about each other, and I have found that by talking and establishing relationships we dispel a lot of ignorance, and build important bridges.”

Pastor Norm Mowrey, formerly of First United Methodist Church, Lodi.

“I feel very positive about the Muslim Community in Lodi. It was wonderful journey with Jewish, Muslim and Christian friends that bought about the Declaration of Peace. That journey continues. We reject violence and terrorism now even more than before. If ever we needed to support each other it is now. I pray for my Muslim brothers and sisters in Lodi. I absolutely do not feel like I was taken advantage of in any way. Interfaith dialogue must continue. I am working here on the Monterey Peninsula to bring together Muslims, Christians (both Protestants and Catholics) and Jews. The journey will continue. We need to walk with each other during this most difficult time. This experience only points up the need for continuing understanding, trust, and friendship.”

We already saw Daniel Scot in Australia forbidden to read from the Qur'an in court because it constituted incitement. It's almost lights out in the UK. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to J:

(CNSNews.com) - A British lawmaker says reading excerpts from the Koran that advocate harsh treatment for Christians, Jews and unbelievers would violate a religious hatred bill currently before parliament.

"If this bill makes any sense at all, it must mean banning the reading, in public or private, of a great many passages of the Koran itself," Conservative MP Boris Johnson said.

And that, he added, was "absurd and paradoxical, given that the measure is intended to be a protection against Islamophobia."

The Racial and Religious Hatred Bill edged closer to becoming law Tuesday, after a House of Commons debate and second reading vote....

During the debate, Johnson read out various excerpts from the Koran regarding the treatment of non-Muslims, including sura 22:19, which read in translation: "As for the unbelievers, for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skins shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods."

Johnson said while the Koran was not "unique in its hostility to other creeds," he challenged a government minister to explain "why and how you think the repetition of those words in a public or a private place does not amount to an incitement to religious hatred of exactly the kind this bill is supposed to ban."

The proposed legislation, which has been introduced in a bid to protect Muslims, would apply to "words, behavior, written material, recordings or programs that are threatening, abusive or insulting [and] likely to stir up racial or religious hatred."

Convictions under the law could lead to a seven-year jail sentence.

The indefatigable Elio Bonazzi and Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi expose Iran's sham elections for what they were in FrontPage:

Hardline fundamentalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has swept to power in Iran, defeating his supposed “moderate” opponent Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the second round of Iran's presidential election on Friday.

The Iranian regime admitted that 7 million less voters turned up to vote in the second round. This is no surprise, since the ruling Mullahs have absolutely no support from the Iranian population. The regime stays afloat by its barbaric means, of course, and it continues to concoct numbers to feed the public. And while Iranians have been wise to this fact from the very beginning, the Western media continues to accept the lies spun by the Mullahs in Iran.

The details of the second round of “elections” are a depressing picture of where the ruling despots in Iran now stand with their own people. Photos taken by Iranians across Iran and posted on various Iranian websites and blogs, show that polling stations were mostly empty and that 30% of the people who showed up to vote due to having been blackmailed by the regime's forces deposited blank ballots into the boxes in protest. The intimidation was widespread: Iran’s Gestapo threatened civil servants’ jobs, old people's pensions and students’ grades and future university enrolment. The poor and rural people were intimidated by gun-toting guards who rounded them up to the polling stations. Even dead people’s I.D. cards got stamped so they could vote.

Read it all.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald continues his series of interlocking reflections on what to do in Iraq with these considerations of what it would take actually to win there.

What would "winning the war" mean? Would it mean ensuring a unified state, so that the Kurds would have to give up the possibility of a free Kurdistan? But a free Kurdistan would give other non-Arab Muslim minorities -- such as the Berbers in North Africa -- ideas, just the kind of ideas we want them to get. A free Kurdistan would hearten them, and hearten other non-Arabs, and cause Infidels to cease to use that inaccurate and dangerous term "the Arab world" which seems to hand over vast swaths of the earth's land mass to one particular ethnic group, as if Kurds, Berbers, Jews, Maronites (who are Arabic-using but not Arabs), Copts, Druse, Armenians, and a hundred smaller groups, including what remain of ancient peoples or sects (Mandeans, Zoroastrians, and so on) or more recent arrivals (Circassians who form the palace guard for the kings of Jordan, who cannot trust their own Arabs, just as the palace guard of the Assad family consist of Alawites, and even a Christian (Armenian) contingent, but never ever of real Muslims (who would destroy the Alawite regime, not because it is corrupt, but because it consists of Alawites).

And what else would constitute "winning in Iraq"? Presumably, having an Iraqi regime where Sunni and Shi'a sit down like the lion with the lamb, and all manner of things are well. Why is that a desideratum for American, or any Infidel government's, policy? Was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing, from our point of view, or a bad thing? It was a good thing. It should have gone on, or at least simmered quietly, forever. And if the Shi'a in Pakistan, intermittently murdered by the circumambient Sunnis, and the Shi'a oppressed by Sunnis in the eastern (Hasa) province of Saudi Arabia, come to feel that they, too, might be inspired by Shi'a power in Iraq, and furthermore, Shi'a in Kuwait and Bahrain have their hearts swell with pride as the o'erweening Sunni get what, after 80 years of lording it over the Iraqi Shi'a, they so richly deserve (and are left with no oil at all, but will have to rely on caravans bringing in oil from outside, on camels supplied by the tribe of the Jabal Shammar), is that a good thing -- from OUR point of view, which is the only point of view that matters, or is it a bad thing?

And what about the "fixing potholes" theory that some in the Administration cling to? You know, if only Iraq can establish a nice stable regime, after a few thousand other Americans die fighting "for Iraq" (not exactly the Battle Green in Lexington, or the rude bridge that arched the flood in Concord, is Ramadi, or Tikrit, or Fallujah), and the military sustains further degradation of the tanks, and the Humvees, and the helicopters, and the planes, and the size and quality of the Reserves, and the National Guard, and the regular army itself as people leave, or are disheartened, and the better potential recruits cannot be recruited, as they might have even two or three years ago.

Ever since I began doing this work publicly my point has been simple and consistent: that the jihad terrorists are working from mainstream traditions and numerous Qur'anic exhortations, and that by means of these traditions and teachings they are able to gain recruits among Muslims worldwide, and hold the sympathy of others whom they do not recruit. This explains why there has been no widespread, sustained, or sincere Muslim outcry against the jihad terrorist enterprise in general.

The mainstream media, both liberal and conservative, does not want to face these facts. They think that by speaking about the Islamic roots of jihad violence they will undercut moderate Muslims. But in fact, no reform in Islam can ever take place without an acknowledgment of what needs to be reformed. The near-universal refusal to provide that acknowledgment is just one reason why that reform is virtually certain not to be forthcoming.

Anyway, here is yet more evidence that it is the Qur'an that is inspiring jihad terrorism. "Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber," from Time, with thanks to Effractor:

One day soon, this somber young man plans to offer up a final prayer and then blow himself up along with as many U.S. or Iraqi soldiers as he can reach. Marwan Abu Ubeida says he has been training for months to carry out a suicide mission. He doesn't know when or where he will be ordered to climb into a bomb-laden vehicle or strap on an explosives-filled vest but says he is eager for the moment to come. While he waits, he spends much of his time rehearsing that last prayer. "First I will ask Allah to bless my mission with a high rate of casualties among the Americans," he says, speaking softly in a matter-of-fact monotone, as if dictating a shopping list. "Then I will ask him to purify my soul so I am fit to see him, and I will ask to see my mujahedin brothers who are already with him." He pauses to run the list through his mind again, then resumes: "The most important thing is that he should let me kill many Americans."

At 20, Marwan is already a battle-hardened insurgent, a jihadi foot soldier in Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's terrorist group, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Like the bulk of insurgents, he is a Sunni Muslim from the former ruling minority community. In his hometown, Fallujah, he is known for his ferociousness in battle and deep religiosity. Marwan asked his commander to consider him for a suicide mission last fall but had to wait until the beginning of April for his name to be put on the list of volunteers. "When he finally agreed," Marwan recalls, "it was the happiest day of my life." There are, he says, scores of names on that list, and it can be months before a volunteer is assigned an operation. But at the current high rate of attacks, Marwan hopes he will be called up soon. "I can't wait," he says, rubbing his thumbs with his fingers in nervous energy. "I am ready to die now."...

Marwan's journey toward suicide murderer began just a few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Before the war, he had been one of Fallujah's privileged young men: his father's successful business earned enough--even during the difficult years when the West imposed economic sanctions on Iraq--to provide a good life for Marwan and his six brothers and four sisters. In high school, he was an average student but excelled in Koranic studies at the local mosque....

Like other Iraqis who have joined extremist religious groups during the insurgency, Marwan severed connections with his family when he joined up. He says he will call them once before his suicide mission to say goodbye. Even though one of his brothers fights for another insurgent group and other siblings help the rebels with money and shelter, he says they all believe he has gone too far. "My family are not happy with my choice," he says. "But they know they can't change my path."

For the deeply pious Marwan, his colleagues in Attawhid are now closer to his heart than his family or former friends. "The jihadis are more religious people," he says. "You ask them anything--anything--and they can instantly quote a relevant section from the Koran." Like them, Marwan works Koranic allusions into his speech. He has also embraced the jihadist worldview of one global Islamic state where there is, in Marwan's words, "no alcohol, no music and no Western influences." He concedes that he has not thought deeply about what life might be like in such a state; after all, he doesn't expect to live long enough to experience it. Besides, he says, he fights first for Islam, second to become a "martyr" and win acceptance into heaven, and only third for control of his country. "The first step is to remove the Americans from Iraq," he says. "After we have achieved that, we can work out the other details."

FROM WARRIOR TO "MARTYR" Marwan says waiting is the hardest aspect of a jihadi's transformation into a suicide bomber. Volunteers have to undergo a program to discipline the mind and cleanse the soul. The training, supervised by field commanders and Sunni clerics sympathetic to the insurgency, is mainly psychological and spiritual. Besides the Koran, he says, "I read about the history of jihad, about great martyrs who have gone before me. These things strengthen my will." One popular source of inspiration for suicide bombers is The Lover of Angels, by Abdullah Azzam, one of Osama bin Laden's spiritual mentors, which tells stories of jihadis who died fighting Soviet occupying troops in Afghanistan. And Marwan is listening to taped speeches that address subjects like the rewards that await warriors in heaven. In recent months, jihadist groups have also begun showing recruits lurid videos of successful suicide hits. A U.S. official in Baghdad who studies suicide terrorism says some volunteers even visit the sites of previous bombings for inspiration.

Marwan says would-be "martyrs" may use their waiting time to take care of business--paying off debts, resolving family matters, saying farewells. Some destroy any photographs of themselves; extremist Islamists regard pictures as a sign of vanity and therefore taboo. Others compile lists of the 70 people Islamic tradition says a "martyr" can guarantee a place in paradise. "I haven't got my 70 names yet--I don't think I know that many people," Marwan says, allowing himself a rare smile. Some dig graves for themselves and leave instructions on the way they should be buried--generally with simple headstones. Marwan says he won't need a grave: "If I am lucky, my body will be vaporized. There won't be anything left of me to bury."...

Marwan says the occasional bomber may ask to be chained to the wheel to make sure he doesn't flinch at the last moment. "If you have any little doubt in your mind about your own ability to carry out the mission, you do that to make sure you don't lose your courage," he says. He scoffs at reports that some suicide bombers are intoxicated. "Those who go on these missions know that they are about to see their Creator," he says. "Do you think we would meet Allah in a state of drunkenness or drugged? It is unthinkable."

Toward the end of the cleansing period, a bomber may ask a fellow jihadi, one better versed in religious doctrine, to help with the final spiritual preparation. Marwan says he was asked to mentor a friend intent on martyrdom earlier this year. He expects his final weeks to be a period of euphoria rather than penance. "My friend was happier than I had ever seen him," Marwan says. "He felt he was close to the end of his journey to heaven." (The friend, he says, blew himself up two months ago at a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers near Ramadi, capital of the turbulent Anbar province, and six were killed. "We made a pact that we would meet in heaven," Marwan says.)

"I AM A TERRORIST" Marwan seems certain he is on a "pure" path. Unlike many other insurgents, who reject the terrorist label and call themselves freedom fighters or holy warriors, Marwan embraces it. "Yes, I am a terrorist," he says. "Write that down: I admit I am a terrorist. [The Koran] says it is the duty of Muslims to bring terror to the enemy, so being a terrorist makes me a good Muslim." He quotes lines from the surah known as Al-Anfal, or the Spoils of War: "Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy."...

That would be Sura 8:60.

"It doesn't matter whether people know what I did," he says. "The only person who matters is Allah--and the only question he will ask me is 'How many infidels did you kill?'"

There are so many distortions and inaccuracies in this short article that it would take a book to disentangle them all. From IslamOnline, with thanks to Anthony:

GENEVA, June 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The West has misjudged Islam and done it injustice, largely because of shallow knowledge of the Muslim faith driven from the distorted writings of early orientalists, a prominent Swiss expert has said.

I see. So the Christian lands of the Middle East and North Africa were subjugated and Islamized in the seventh century and thereafter not by Islamic jihad armies, but by the distorted writings of early orientalists. Got it.

“Rising Islamophobia is the result of the West’s shallow dealing with and misunderstanding of Islam,” Arnold Hottinger, who spent 50 years in the Middle East reporting for the leading Neue Zurcher Zeitung newspaper, told a day-long seminar organized by the Paulus Akademie.

Not that it, if it exists at all, has anything to do with 9/11, or the Iraq beheadings, or the Madrid bombings, or countless other actions by Muslims. No. Hottinger is obviously of the Saidist mindset that Westerners can only be perpetrators, and Muslim non-Westerners can only be victims.

Hottinger, a fluent speaker of Arabic,...

Oh, well, you see, then he must know what he is talking about. This kind of thing slips by the reader so quickly that usually he doesn't even notice what is being done to him. See, he knows more than the Orientalists. I, on the other hand, am in daily contact with many fluent speakers of Arabic who could explain in dozens of ways how this man is wrong. So we're back to zero on this one.

...faulted the West of portraying Muslims as the terrifying neighbor for long centuries.

"Early orientlists and churchmen only portrayed Islam as a religion of violence and wars" he told his attentive audience.

“This image found its way into textbooks, turning the Muslim world to a terrifying neighbor, which is a major injustice to Islam.”

Look. Muslims advanced into Spain and Europe in the 8th century. Nine centuries later, mujahedin were besieging Vienna. There was no significant hiatus in between except during the time of the Crusades. The Muslims, in short, were the terrifying neighbor for Christian Europe for hundreds of years. If there had been no Muslim invasions of the West, Hottinger might have a point. As it is, he stands simply as a shallow propagandist.

Hottinger has authored a number of books about the Muslim world in addition to writing many articles and giving lectures.

Negative Image

The Swiss expert said Islam is a melting pot for people of different ethnic and cultural background, a fact, he said, that is hard for the West to conceive.

Note that he doesn't say it's a melting pot for people of different religious backgrounds. No, the dhimmis are to keep discreetly out of sight during this presentation. But Hottinger's contention is absurd in any case: it's designed to portray the Muslim world as superior to the West in terms of ethnic and cultural diversity -- witness the immigrants from all over the world streaming into Riyadh and Tehran!

“No textbook in the West explains how Islam rapidly grew in Asia, which is home to the majority of Muslims worldwide,” Hottinger said.

Oh, it hasn't been entirely ignored. You can find some information on the bloody jihads in India in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers.

“When the Muslim immigrants came to Europe, a negative image of Islam was already deeply-rooted.”

Meanwhile, while drawing a veil over the blood-soaked history of jihad and dhimmitude, he predictably enough skewers Western colonialism:

The Swiss expert also shed light on Europe's bad history of imperialism and colonialism in Arab and Muslim countries.

He cited Europe’s role in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, causing many ethnic and border conflicts still raving in several Arab and Muslim countries.

Why, that's precisely the complaint of the global jihadists.

When the First World War (1914-18) broke out, the Ottoman Empire broke neutrality and fought on the side of the Central Powers.

The Ottomans were eventually defeated by the Allies in the Balkans, Thrace, Syria, Palestine and Iraq and its territories were colonized by the victors.

EU & Turkey

On Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, Hottinger said refusal to allow the admission of Muslim but secular Turkey would be a “big mistake”.

He cautioned that such a position would have major consequences as it would prove the view of "Muslim extremists" that the West is not willing to make any rapprochement with Islam and Muslims.

Actually it is only the West that has shown any interest in such a rapprochement. What has been done, Hottinger, on the Muslim side?

“It will also prove that Europe is a Christians-only continent and will cast doubts on efforts to bridge the gaps between the two sides.”...

Why is no one complaining that Saudi Arabia is a Muslims-only country? Or that Christians suffer discrimination of one kind or another in every other Muslim country on the planet today?

Hottinger opined that any attempt to strip Turkey of its Islamic identity is doomed, saying even Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular republic in Turkey failed to do this.

“In the first democratic elections according to western standards, the Turkish people elected Islamists,” he said.

Further highlighting his point, Hottinger cited failed attempts by the communist rule to strip Muslims in Central Asian republics of their Islamic identity.

“During my visits to Central Asian republics after gaining independence following the collapse of the Communist rule, every body I met was keen on reaffirming his Islamic identity,” he recalled.

Quite so. And to see that fact in an unalloyed positive light is to gloss over huge amounts of evidence of jihadist activity related to that reaffirmation.

More peace and tolerance. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Doc Washburn:

It was about midday when a young Palestinian woman from the refugee camp of Jabalya in Gaza approached an Israeli checkpoint clutching a special permit to visit a doctor on the other side of the border.

The girl had big, brown eyes and her black hair was tied in a ponytail, but it was the strangeness of her gait that attracted the attention of the security officials at the Erez crossing, the main transit point between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

When a soldier asked her to remove her long, dark cloak, she turned to face him. All her movements were taped by the military surveillance camera at the checkpoint: calmly, deliberately, she took off her clothing, item by item, until she looked like any normal young woman in T-shirt and jeans. It was then that she tried to set off the belt containing 20lb of explosives hidden beneath her trousers. To her horror, she did not succeed. Desperate, she clawed at her face, screaming. She was still alive, she realised. She had failed her martyrdom mission.

That afternoon, on June 21, the 21-year-old, Wafa Samir al-Biss, was brought before the press by Israeli intelligence. Her neck and hands were covered with scars caused by a kitchen gas explosion six months earlier. The ugly scars - which had been treated in a hospital in Israel - had probably helped turn her into the perfect would-be huriia (virgin), the ideal martyr, since they would make it difficult for her to find a suitable husband.

The decision to publicise her case was intended to show that a terrorist threat remains despite a lull in the intifada since the Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire agreement at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in February.

According to the Israeli doctor who attended Wafa at the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, she received blood transfusions during her treatment. "I told her, with a laugh, that now she has Jewish blood in her veins," he said, adding sadly that she had "seemed so nice - we got a lovely thank you letter from her family.''

Wafa had been sent on her mission by the Abu Rish Brigade, the small militant faction with links to Fatah. She did not, she said later, regret it, though she stressed that her decision had had nothing to do with her scarring. "My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she said. "Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …''

Asked whether she had considered the consequences of her planned attack, that it might have now precluded access to Israel for Palestinian patients who meant no harm and needed special medical treatment that could be achieved only here, she answered: "So what?" With a flat look in her eyes, she said: "They pay you the cost of the treatment, don't they?"

And what about babies? Would you have killed babies and children? she was asked. "Yes, even babies and children. You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?"

Yes, and I remember that the story was trumped-up.

Then she started to cry. ''I don't want my mother to see me like this. After all, I haven't killed anyone … will they have pity on me?'' It is unlikely. Wafa has become one of a very special group of females: the women who have tried - and failed - to die while killing for the Palestinian cause. I recently visited the Israeli jail that holds these "suicide women" near the finest Israeli villas, in the heart of the most fertile area of the country, the Plain of Sharon.

They are here, and still alive, because they changed their minds at the last moment, because they were arrested, or because, like Wafa, they did not succeed. They are kept in a kind of labyrinth, behind seven, or perhaps eight, iron doors and gates, at the end of long corridors to which few people are allowed access, and which are reached after climbing and descending one flight of stairs after another....

One of the inmates, Ayat Allah Kamil, 20, from Kabatya, told me why she had wanted to become a martyr: "Because of my religion. I'm very religious. For the holy war [jihad] there's no difference between men and women shaid [martyrs]."

According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr "will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair".

Her fellow prisoner, Kahira Saadi, from Jenin, is one of the jail celebrities. A mother of four, aged 27, she was held responsible for an attack in which three people died and 80 were injured. Zipi Shemesh, five months' pregnant, and her husband, Gad, were among the dead. They had gone to an ultrasound appointment and had left their two daughters, Shoval, seven, and Shahar, three, with a babysitter. They never came back.

Kahira was given three life sentences and another 80 years. She looked pale, sad, anguished. I asked her if the dead tormented her during the night. "No," she said. "Anyway, the actual attacker would have blown himself up even without me. I didn't kill anyone myself, physically."

Who do your children live with? "With my mother-in-law, my husband is in jail, too."

Aren't you sorry you ruined their lives as well as your own? "I did it to defend them. I'm not sorry, we're at war. But perhaps I wouldn't do it again. It was an impulse," Kahira answered balefully.

I think the real reason for what you did was different from the official one. "You're right," she said, "but I'm not going to tell you what the reason was."

You're paying heavily for it. Who comes to see you here? "Nobody came for the first two years, but now my children are beginning to come."

Have you had the courage to tell them you're never going to get out of here? "No, and I trust that God will solve my problem somehow. I tell you again that I didn't physically kill anyone that day."

What did you do? "I helped the attacker to get into Jerusalem. I gave him some flowers to hold in his hands."

When? "I don't remember the exact date, only that it was Mother's Day. That's why I prepared him some flowers."

Then it was February, I told her.

"How can you remember it so well?" she asked.

Because my son was killed on Mother's Day, I said, and I watched as she grew pale and seemed to stagger.

No, it wasn't you, I explained. He was killed in 1998, while your attack was in 2002. But we certainly have an anniversary in common.

At this, Kahira gave me a look that I'll never be able to describe. She didn't utter another word.

More revelations from Douglas Wood, from UPI, :

An Australian freed after 47 days as a hostage in Iraq has spoken on Australian television about the shooting of two fellow detainees in the same room.

Douglas Wood, 63, also told Channel Ten of his efforts to retain his sanity during his captivity by replaying his life, the BBC reported Sunday.

Wood, who was bound and gagged by his captors, heard two Iraqi captives being shot on successive nights in the same room where he was being held and thought: "When is my turn?"

A review of Bat Ye'or's landmark book Eurabia from the New York Post, with thanks to all who sent this in:

FOR over three decades, the historian Bat Ye'or has been a voice in the wilderness. Her warning that "jihad" had in the 1970s reemerged as a powerful force in much of Europe, fell on deaf ears. Most Europeans denied what was confronting them. They were equally blind, according to Ye'or, to the fact that many European politicians were effectively in collusion with the jihadists, motivated by economic aims, a philosophy of appeasement or by the shared values of anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

The 9/11 attacks, along with the revelation that several of the perpetrators had been educated at European mosques and universities, led to a greater awareness of the Muslim fundamentalist threat in Europe. And the Madrid train bombings, which killed 190 people last year, only reinforced that understanding. Yet willful ignorance remains.

Indeed, militant Islamists have been much better at understanding and exploiting Western cultural ideals and weaknesses than European and American intellectuals have been in understanding theirs.

Many Western liberals — viewing the world through their own narrow prism — still insist that Islamic terrorism is the product of ignorance and poverty, despite overwhelming evidence that most suicide bombers have been highly educated and relatively wealthy. Like Nazis, Communists and others before them who would destroy Western civilization, the jihadists in Europe, Iraq and al Qaeda know exactly what they are doing.

In "Eurabia," Ye'or points out that, for over a millennium, the effect of Islamic "jihad" through its political, military, economic and cultural components has been to subjugate and in some case extinguish once-thriving Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist civilizations in Asia, Africa and Europe.

She argues that "jihad" has now reappeared in Europe, not by accident but as the result of a grand design by French and other European diplomats to forge a new political entity, "Eurabia." It would fuse together the European and Arab worlds, dispose of Israel — the irritant in their way — and then challenge America for world hegemony.

The term "Eurabia," notes Ye'or, was first used in the mid-1970s, as the title of a journal edited by the president of the Association for Franco-Arab Solidarity.

Relying on detailed documents, minutes and directives generated by government bodies, including a little known organization set up by France in the 1970s called the Euro-Arab Dialogue, Ye'or charts the cooperation that has brought European democracies, Arab dictatorships and Islamic terror groups closer together. (Only last week, a Dutch diplomat was caught on film embracing a member of the Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad in Gaza.)

But as Ye'or notes, what started as a scheme for a greater "Eurabia" controlled by the French (who would in turn welcome the flow of Arab oil and Muslim immigration into Europe) has turned into an attempt by fundamentalist Muslims to take over Europe.

Within a single generation, a significant portion of the population of major cities in a dozen European countries have become Muslim.

Yet the crisis for Europe isn't about numbers, but militancy. Of course, most European Muslims wish to integrate, while peacefully practicing their religion. But opinion polls indicate that an increasing minority do not.

DC Watson recounts the activities of the courageous Kevin Montavon:

We’ve witnessed what the Council on American Islamic Relations is willing to post on their website. We spar with them on a continual basis, and will do so until they cease to be. While we spend our time dealing with these spin artists, it’s very important to remember that they also utilize local news publications to push their Islamic propaganda. Thus they should also be countered at this level. A colleague of mine who lives in the Ohio area recently called CAIR out for their distortions about Islam and the Qur’an.

For any of the Islamic apologists that visit this site and attempt to defend Islam by categorizing anyone who confronts it as ignorant, my colleague and friend, Kevin Montavon, possesses a Communications degree, attended twelve years of Catholic school, and has read both the Holy Bible and the Qur’an from cover to cover.

This exchange occurred in Ohio’s largest newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch. It began with a column written by Mahmoud El-Yousseph, entitled “Sacred Quran valuable to all of mankind.” The Dispatch published this on Thursday, May 26, 2005.

El-Yousseph appears to be affiliated in some capacity with the Council on American Islamic Relations, or is at least sympathetic with the organization. I draw this conclusion from the fact that in his letter, he invites anyone interested in receiving a free Qur’an to contact CAIR.

“Sacred Quran is valuable to all of mankind”
Mahmoud El-Yousseph: Posted 5/26/2005

“If a Muslim-American and retired Air Force veteran may speak out on the issue of the desecration of the Holy Quran, as reported on May 9 by Newsweek, here goes:”

“I have not yet recovered from the sadistic images from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. God only knows whether Newsweek’s story, that a copy of the Holy Quran was flushed down the toilet at the U.S. detention center at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, was true.”

“At this juncture, I feel that it is more productive and beneficial to learn about Islam and the Quran from a Muslim than from a biased and unreliable news organization that has only profit in mind. For that reason, I share basic information about the Holy Qur’an with non-Muslim readers.”

‘The Qur’an is the complete book of guidance for mankind. It is the sacred book of the Muslims and the main source of law in Islam. It is considered God’s words, which the angel Gabriel brought to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. This took place in the year 610, when the Prophet was 40 years old, and the revelations lasted for 23 years. It starts for the first 10 years in Mecca and continues for another 13 years in Medina. Both cities are in present-day Saudi Arabia.”

“The Quran is written in Arabic, to be read from right to left. It orders Muslims to do good and to avoid evil. The Quran consists of 114 chapters, called suras, and 6236 verses, called ayahs, according to the book Islam: Beliefs and Teachings, by Ghulam Sarwar.”

“In the Quran, one can find stories of many other prophets who came before Islam, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus, peace be upon them.“

“A Muslim also believes in all the revealed books that are mentioned in the Quran: the Torah of Moses, the Psalms of David and the Gospel of Jesus. The Quran also mentions the Scrolls of Abraham.”

“The Quran mentions many events that occurred prior to Islam, events that took place during the prophet Mohammed’s life and events that will take place in the future.”

“It might even surprise readers to know that the Virgin Mary, peace be upon her, is the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran, and that her name is mentioned 34 times. Jesus’ name is mentioned 33 times. The Prophet Muhammad’s name is mentioned only five times. The Quran recognizes and respects other faiths and prophets. Such a faith deserves respect, not public insults.”

“Anyone who is interested in a free copy of the Holy Quran translated into English can visit the Web site of the Council on American Islamic Relations at www.cair-ohio.com.”

And here is Kevin Montavon's reply:

“Quran has little value to people who are not Muslims”
Montavon’s rebuttal: Posted 6/18/2005

“Is Mahmoud El-Yousseph the self-appointed spokesman for all Muslims in central Ohio? It seems that every time a sensitive issue arises that in any way involves Islam, he is the first to fire off a letter to The Dispatch.”

“In his letter to the editor of May 26, El-Yousseph engaged in some distortions that render his basic premise (that The Koran is valuable to all humankind) meaningless.”

“The Koran is not valuable to all humankind. It is not valuable at all to non-Muslims. To non-Muslims (who make up the majority of the world's population), The Koran is nothing more than a book. And it is not a very good one, at that”.

“El-Yousseph went on to state that Islam respects the revelations of other faiths such as the Torah and the Gospels. What he failed to mention is that the Koran also teaches that these books are deficient, and that the Koran is the only true word of God. It also teaches that Christians and Jews have received revelation from God, but they have distorted that revelation.”

“Perhaps El Yousseph would like to explain the verses in the Koran that condone wife-beatings, honor-killings, deception in the name of protecting Islam, and other behavior that is abhorrent to modern society“:

4.34 (on wives), "admonish them, leave them in their beds apart, and beat them")

5.51 ("don’t take Jews and Christians as friends, they are friends of one another")

8.12 ("I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger tips of them").

9.5 (Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush")

9.29 ("Fight those who do not believe in God, ... until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection".)

“Perhaps he would like to explain why societies that are based on Islamic law provide little or no equal rights to women, little or no religious freedom to practice a non-Islamic faith, and little or no progress in the way of assimilating into modern society.”

“When Americans see people who claim to be civilized engaging in riotous and murderous behavior simply because they think that pages from a "holy" book were flushed down a toilet, we can analyze these events and come to conclusions on our own. We do not need the Mahmoud El-Yousseph filter to explain everything to us. Thanks but no thanks.”

Kevin Montavon

Hot on the heels of our peek inside the fever swamps of the ITS (and they are even more fevered today, but as they are writing material hoping that I will post it here I am not going to oblige), here are some sentiments of peace and tolerance expressed by posters to the Islamic Action Group, a Yahoo Group (thanks to Designnut). They are responding to this news item: Liberating Palestine: Hamas says diplomacy failure, promises to 'liberate' Palestine from Mediterranean to Jordan River.

-- In Islamic_Action_Group@yahoogroups.com, Aeisha Muhammad wrote:

As-Salaamu' Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatu

ALLAHU AKBAR !!

ALLAH BLESS HAMAS AND PEOPLE OF PALESTINE !

The best thing that could happen would be for the PA to be dismantled and for Hamas to take over the affairs of Palestine.

May ALLAH bring down the murderers of Abu Ammar and destroy the PA SO that Hamas may better safeguard Palestine and lead it to full liberation from the jewish Zionist vermin in 'israel'.

Conspiracy paranoia alert: "the murderers of Abu Ammar"? That's Arafat. Who are his murderers? The guys he contracted AIDS from?

LONG LIVE PALESTINE FREE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA !!

Fi AmmanALLAH
from the servant of ALLAH
Shayhka Maulani Aeisha Muhammad

The response to this:

--- jabrginap wrote:

After all the targeted assasinations, with one of the worst being being the sniper in the plane asking Sharon by plane if it was okay to 'take the shot' and then when told yes, he put a missile in Sheikh Yassin's wheelchair outside the mosque. It is like Azzam said, "there is no discussion, there is no dialogue, there is jihad and there is your rifle". The shaheed motto remains "until victory or martyrdom, it is a jihad" because jihad was written on the hearts of the faithful by Allah himself.

Azzam, of course, was one of the founders of Al-Qaeda. Yassin was the wheelchair-bound mass murderer who led Hamas until the incident referred to here.

The original poster replied:

To: Islamic_Action_Group@yahoogroups.com From: "Aeisha Muhammad"

Subject: Re: [Islamic_Action_Group] Re: Hamas: sees diplomacy failure, promises to 'liberate' Palestine from Mediterranean to Jordan River

My sentiments exactly

ALLAHU AKBAR !!

Jihad..Jihad..Jihad !! Finish with the jewish vermin
once and forever !!

Another one down. "Top Zarqawi aide ‘killed’ in US attack," from DPA, with thanks to Eschwapp:

AMMAN — A senior member of Iraq’s Al Qaeda branch was killed recently in a US crackdown on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Qaim near the Syrian border, a Jordanian newspaper reported yesterday.

Khalid Suleiman Darwish, better known as Abu Alghadiya, was among those killed in the operation, the daily Alghad quoted “well- informed sources” as saying.

Abu Alghadiya, a Syrian dentist married to a Jordanian woman, was described by Arab media as the ‘number two’ in Iraq’s Al Qaeda network and tipped to succeed its leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi....

According to the Jordanian paper, Abu Alghadiya and Al Zarqawi were among the founders of the ‘Syria Warriors’ group in Afghanistan in late 1999.

They later moved to Iraq, where they founded the “Monotheism and Jihad” faction before declaring allegiance to Osama bin Laden and joining Al Qaeda terrorist network, the report said.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald on how to find a solution to our current problems:

"When I ask her what "solution" there might be to prevent the European collapse of which she speaks, Ms. Fallaci flares up like a lit match. "How do you dare to ask me for a solution?" --- from a recent interview

The word "solution" is the wrong word. Had the reporter asked, or had Fallaci replied, that "what could be done to limit the damage, to contain or reverse the power of Muslims and the Jihad worldwide" then a coherent answer might have been offered, by Fallaci or by someone else.

The "containment of Communism" worked. Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, and before that in Eastern and Central Europe, and is now coming undone in China. Why? It collapsed because a sufficient number of people realized it was a farce and a failure, a failure in the very area -- the delivery of material wellbeing to the masses -- where it had most insistently promised it would be a success.

Who created the conditions for that failure to be perceived? The United States, and with the United States, other Western powers that countered Soviet propaganda and produced propaganda of their own, that did everything they could to check Soviet power once they came to their senses in the late 1940s (a little late for those countries already suffering Stalin's presence, or that of his local agents).
The Marshall Plan. NATO. Radio Free Liberty. Radio Free Europe. The Berlin Airlift. The suppression of Communist rebels in Greece. The Korean War. The money that went to non-Communist political parties all over Europe. The money that went to support newspapers and publishing houses all over Europe. The assistance or encouragement of various revolts inside the Soviet Union -- the "Forest Brotherhood" for example (the "Leshiye"). The bases everywhere. The anti-Communist propaganda. Decades of it, and trillions spent. And you know what? It worked. A group of people within the Soviet system came to some conclusions of their own about the moral and economic failures of Communism.

This can be done, more slowly, more deliberately, with Islam, and the Jihad that is central to Islam. The Infidel lands and peoples must first learn about Islam -- not from Muslims, or for that matter from non-Muslim propagandists, some of them hirelings, others ideologically wedded to Islam perhaps because it is now the most obvious vehicle of expressing one's hatred of, and alienation from, the Western world and, especially, the United States. They must thoroughly understand the texts. And then they must learn about Muslim conquest of non-Muslim peoples, and how those peoples were, in time and space, treated. And they must learn the kinds of things that Muslim apologists -- including those who are the most effective of all, the smooth-tongued "moderates" who, while seeming to denounce this or that terrorist act, will immediately be defensive about Islam itself, try to convince unwary Infidels that "Islam" has "nothing to do" with this, whether it is bombs going off, or the murder of apostates and others, or the mistreatment of women. Recently, on The Connection, all three of the "guests" -- one Hussein Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador, and the still-clueless-about-Islam Nicholas Kristof, and someone formerly in the State Department -- were quite insistent that the Pakistani lady, Ms. Bibi, who was gang-raped, suffered from people whose acts of course "had nothing to do with Islam." That's right, nothing: not the texts, not the attitudes those texts engender -- Muslims pervaded with Islam but whose actions "had nothing to do with Islam".

With no small help from obliging US officials who have expedited Saudi visas. From Arab News, with thanks to Eschwapp:

RIYADH, 26 June 2005 — Some 2,500 scholarships are available for Saudis wishing to study in the US in different fields, an official at the Ministry of Higher Education has announced.

Speaking to Arab News, Saad A. Al-Hagan, manager of public relations at the ministry, said scholarships were available for bachelor’s, master’s or PhDs in medicine, including nursing, pharmacy, engineering, computer science, basic sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry), law, accounting and e-commerce.

He said the decision to offer the scholarships was a result of Crown Prince Abdullah’s recent visit to the US. Those eligible are Saudis who have been admitted to a recognized American university and have a valid visa. They can either download the application from the ministry’s website or collect it from the ministry.

“The ministry will pay an amount equal to $1,200 per month if the recipient is a bachelor, and more for married students. Other expenses will also be covered such as a round-trip ticket and a monthly incentive depending on the student’s grade point average (GPA),” Al-Hagan said.

He thanked the US for expediting the issue of visas and said the measure would go a long way to allowing more students to study in the US.

According to earlier reports, the ministry has also made arrangements with a number of universities in Canada and Europe for sending Saudi students there for higher education.

First we had Kamal Nawash's Million Muslim Rally Against Terrorism, Hold the Million. Now we have a call from a non-Muslim radio talk-show host in Lodi, California, home of the ice cream jihad, for a Million Muslim March Against Terrorism. And the excuses are flying thick and fast from local Muslim leaders. From the Sacramento Bee, with thanks to all who sent this in:

One of Sacramento's most outspoken radio talk-show hosts, who has antagonized some Muslims with his on-air and online comments about Islam, is collaborating with Lodi Mayor John Beckman on what the two men are billing as the "Million Muslim March" to denounce terrorism.

KFBK personality Mark Williams has been hosting on-air discussions about terrorism and the Muslim faith since news broke early this month about an ongoing federal terrorism investigation that has upended the Central Valley town. So far, five Lodi men have been arrested in the case - none on terrorism charges.

Beckman called into Williams' evening show last week, answering what Williams calls a three-year standing invitation for Muslims to publicly rally against terrorism.

"I heard him talking about it on the radio," said Beckman, of Williams' on-air proposal. After contacting a representative from the Lodi mosque, Beckman said he called Williams and committed to organizing the march in his town.

Some Muslims wish Beckman hadn't made the call.

"He's got Islamaphobic tendencies," prominent Lodi Muslim leader Taj Khan said of Williams. "How can (former white supremacist leader) David Duke walk with Jesse Jackson?"...

Yeah, he wants Muslims to denounce terrorism. What a racist! What an Islamophobe!

Beckman had originally envisioned the march in late July with local Muslims walking city streets, possibly between the mosque and City Hall. He wanted it patterned after the Million Man March by African Americans in Washington, D.C., in 1995. On Tuesday, the project was continuing to blossom. The Break Through Project, a local coalition of Muslim, Jewish and Christian congregations and the principal organizers, has asked for more time. No date has been set.

Williams, who is unapologetically venomous at times in expressing his views - he suggested after the death of Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat that his headstone should be a urinal - says his heat is directed toward radical Muslim leaders who foster terrorism.

Extremist factions, he contends, are smothering the voice of what he calls "Joe Six-pack Muslims," those who are too intimidated to voice objections to more radical views.

A march or rally would give them an opportunity, Williams said.

"I think American Muslims are just as upset when they see extremists speaking for them," he said.

One of his frequent on-air targets is skeptical about Williams' motives.

Basim ElKarra, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Sacramento Valley, said his organization has an online petition signed by 688,560 people who have denounced terrorism.

"We've been denouncing terrorism forever. He's still not satisfied," said ElKarra.

ElKarra says Williams has labeled him an extremist on-air. "He doesn't even know me."

"He's calling our organization a radical, fascist organization," ElKarra said. "How can you respond to that?"

Maybe by explaining why several CAIR officials have been arrested recently on terrorism-related charges. Maybe by explaining the highly damning statements made over the years by various CAIR leaders. But I am not holding my breath.

Yamin Zakaria at Al-Jazeerah (not the Qatari TV station) takes issue with the recent knighthood of the Muslim Council of Britain's Iqbal Sacranie -- and with the very idea that a Muslim can have allegiance to a non-Muslim state. Sacranie and MCB spokesman Inayat Bunglawala should refute this article using Islamic texts -- if they can -- if they don't want young Muslims in Britain to be swayed by it. But 10 to 1 they just ignore it.

The problem is not so much that he is saying that Allah's law supersedes human law, but that the content of that law is so much in opposition with Western norms and values. How long will Britain and other Western countries survive without facing up to that opposition?

"Knights and Lords of the 'Muslim Council of Britain' in Service of Whom?" from Al-Jazeerah (thanks to Nicolei):

“Although those with narrow minded view point may seek to rebel in France, and I think a very tiny number of school girls have still defied the ban but the vast majority have obeyed it...” (Inayat Bunglawala – Secretary, Media Committee of MCB)

These are the words of a leading member of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), who are supposed to be the voice of the Muslim community in the UK. In reality, the MCB was setup by the British government and (one might question whether) the government contributes substantial funding towards it.

Only someone who is Islamically-illiterate or a belligerent enemy would scorn Muslims for striving to uphold Islamic commandments (Sharia laws) as “narrow-minded” or “rebellious”. Had the likes of Kilroy-Silk, Richard LittleJohn, Melanie Phillips or Polly Toynbee uttered those words, it would have been understandable; and expected because they have said much worse about Islam and Muslims. But, how can such hateful anti-Islamic rhetoric emanate from the spokesman of the MCB, Inayat Bunglawala.

Even someone with an elementary education in Islam would know that countless verses of the Holy Quran and numerous Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet (SAW)), confirm that rewards of heaven (paradise) in the Hereafter for those who abide by the Sharia laws; especially when one is striving to fulfil them under hardship. We are talking about something as fundamental and well-established as Khimar (Hijab, Islamic scarf) that is worn by the Muslim women all over the world from the inception of Islam. If the MCB claims to be a voice for Muslims at the very least one would expect its prominent members to defend the basic core values of Islam, in the face of an attack by the non-Muslims and even remaining relatively silent or neutral is unacceptable.

However, to the contrary, the courageous sisters in France were mocked by the MCB ‘man’ (Inayat Bunglawala) instead of coming to their defence! A clear sign of treachery and cowardice! The MCB to date has not reprimanded ‘him’ nor have they officially voiced their opposition to the despicable words uttered by Inayat Bunglawala in the same public forum in which he spoke, for all to observe. Therefore, ‘he’ (Inayat Bunglawala) must be either a belligerent enemy of Islam like those newspaper ‘columnists’ and/or Islamically-illiterate.

More from the Whose Side Are You On Department, from the TimesOnline, with thanks to Nicolei:

ABOUT 70 young Muslim men have left Britain to join the insurgents who are fighting coalition troops in Iraq, senior security sources have revealed.

At least three have been killed in combat, including one whose role in an Iraq suicide bombing in February was disclosed by police only last week.

The growing problem of militants from Britain travelling to Iraq has been highlighted by Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, in recent briefings to Tony Blair.

The MI5 boss warned the prime minister that would-be suicide bombers and other fighters who want to kill British and American troops were using “a number of routes” to get to Iraq from Britain. Most have travelled to Damascus in Syria before being smuggled over the border to meet rebel leaders.

Senior police sources say that they are trying to unravel a British-based network recruiting “martyrs” for the Islamic “holy war” in Iraq. The operation emerged following the arrest last week of a 40-year-old man who is alleged to have shared a house in Manchester with Idris Bazis, a 41-year-old French Algerian who blew himself up during a terrorist attack in Iraq four months ago....

The rebel commander, who used the name Abu Ahmad, said that another Briton, called Ammar and also 22, had been killed during clashes between Al-Qaeda and American troops around the time of the Falluja offensive in April last year. Ammar had travelled to Iraq with his brother Yassr, 18, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in March 2003. “They could not wait to go out and fight and kept on asking when they would go into battle,” the commander said.

He said that Al-Qaeda had “branches, supporters and financiers” in Britain as well as in France, Spain and Germany.

"Islamic Jihad Challenges Israel Amid Growing Anarchy," from Israel National News, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Islamic Jihad terror leaders declared they will end the "calm" and strike Tel Aviv if Israel tries to capture or kill them. Meanwhile, Arabs continued shooting each other in Jenin.

Israel earlier this week arrested 50 Islamic Jihad terrorists, including several who were not "ticking bombs," following a continued escalation in terrorism which killed an IDF soldier and a civilian. Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, quoted in an Arab newspaper in Lebanon, warned Israel that if goes after terrorist leaders, the diplomatic process will end immediately.

Abu Udai, a leading terrorist of the Jenin branch of Fatah party's military arm, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, threatened that "suicide bombers will shake the heart of Israel and Tel Aviv" if Israel does not stop arresting terrorists.

Noor Huda Ismail investigates the jihadists in Indonesia, including Abu Bakar Baasyir (Bashir), whom we have discussed many times here. Why do officials allow him to teach a course on Islam in the prison? Is that not simply creating a new contingent of jihadists? It indicates, of course, that their ideology doesn't differ from his. From the Washington Post (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

It is visiting hour at Jakarta's Cipinang Prison and its most famous inmate, the Muslim preacher Abubakar Baasyir, sits on a wooden bench surrounded by a dozen acolytes, assistants and lawyers. Several prisoners attend to him, including a confessed terrorist who has become the cleric's servant and coordinates a team of six to wash his clothes and cook his meals without pay. Prison officials allow Baasyir to teach a class on Islam to fellow inmates four times a week; about 100 prisoners attend each session....

Baasyir is holding court in prison instead of his home or office because Indonesian prosecutors have accused him of being the emir of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. In a 65-page indictment, they alleged that he was involved in "planning and/or encouraging other people to commit terrorism" including the 2003 bombing of the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, where 12 people were killed, and the 2002 bombing of a resort in Bali, where 202 people were killed. A court cleared Baasyir in the Marriott attack and found him guilty of approving of (but not of ordering) the Bali bombings....

But for me, Baasyir's case poses a different question. That's because he was a co-founder of the Islamic boarding school, Al Mukmin Ngruki, where I spent six years studying in sweltering classrooms. While I chose a career in journalism, many of my fellow students made a different choice. Dozens of Ngruki's alumni have been accused of taking part in a wave of terrorist attacks against Westerners in Indonesia. Security analysts and police investigators believe that the link is no coincidence. Sydney Jones of the International Crisis Group has called my alma mater an "Ivy League" for Jemaah Islamiyah recruits.

All of which makes me wonder: Why did so many of my fellow students end up choosing terrorism while I ended up writing about them?

To begin to answer that question, I decided to meet Abubakar Baasyir in jail. I contacted Hasyim, his soft-spoken liaison man, whose cell phone is constantly on. "Please come in," he said when I arrived. Using the word for teacher, he added, "Ustadz is ready."

After 10 minutes, the white bearded cleric entered. In his mid-sixties, he appeared in a white shirt and worn eyeglasses; a white box cap was perched on his head. Abdul Jabar, a JI member who admitted to blowing up an explosives-laden van at the house of the Philippine ambassador in 2000, accompanied him.

Baasyir, who proclaims himself an admirer of Osama bin Laden but still denies that he is a terrorist leader, said that he is just a victim of "the infidel Bush's America." Then he quoted a verse from the Koran: "The infidels will never stop fighting us until we follow their way." I know that verse by heart. We learned it in school....

Read it all.

This image comes to you from the passworded, Muslim-only forums of the Islamic Thinkers Society, the outfit that trampled on the flag on video and then wished painful torment from Allah on me when I posted the video -- which is tantamount to asking that someone fulfill Allah's will in this regard.

You can see that they have called this image "Darth Fagget." Don't these huckleberries know that I am neither "Darth Fagget" nor "Darth Spencer," but Freakin' Batman?

The ITS is feeling the heat. Here is a note from another place, from the Administrator over there:

One of the brothers from I.T.S. was interviewed by the F.B.I. the day after the article on NY Times was published. The conversation was recorded on audio and will be available shortly once we find out the legality of it. The main concern of the F.B.I. was about the video "Muslim Massacres" that aired on public television. The F.B.I. were concerned as to what the motive was behind putting this video up was. They were implying that we were using this video to incite people and "recruit" for jihad. What these F.B.I. agents did not realize was that in the beginning of the video, there is a disclaimer clearly stating that this video is not published to incite anyone but rather to bring awareness as to what's happening around the world. They mention that NOW the I.T.S. have sparked interest in the F.B.I. and CAIR also stated that I.T.S. are under tight watch by the F.B.I. So the battle has taken a new front. There are various things that are happening within the community which are playing along the agenda of the F.B.I. There are three elements to this whole agenda. They are the Media, F.B.I. and the Muslim Community. Things are getting realy ugly here. However, this was bound to happen . We shall see where the eeman [faith] stands in the Muslim community...

And here are some gems from the accompanying thread, "Spencer's True form." The Darth Spencer photo was posted by one "Rayat Al Islam" (Standard of Islam), who has a headband in his avatar that says KILL JEWS. Some comments that followed (I have changed their order so as to end with the finale I thought most fitting):

"Here is the one who is Attacking our brothers in ITS, may allah (swt) protect them"

Read more about the filthy DOG:
http://wwww.jihadwatch.org/spencer/

May Allah mahis his efforts vain.
May Allah's curse be upon him. Ameen.

Don't be a girly man, grow a beard

May Allah (swt) give him the punishment he deserves.

Who said don't be a girly man, grow a beard? Ok, finally something to laugh at today.

SubhanAllah [Glory to Allah] he really looks Like a ignorant stupid geeky Kafir

But of course! That's because I am "a ignorant stupid geeky Kafir." A ignorant stupid geeky Kafir with easy access to your secret forums.

Was anyone really fooled by this sham election? From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The leader of a hard-line Islamic group, however, praised the outcome.

"I'm glad and happy to know Iran's result," said Irfan Awwas, a leader of Majelis Mujahiddin Indonesia.

The group's founder, Abu Bakar Bashir, is jailed for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

He said Iranians apparently believe Rafsanjani is "more fit to manage international relations, especially with Western countries, but not to lead the country."

Clerics led by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have true power in Iran and are able to overrule elected officials. But reformers, who lost parliament in elections last year, had been hoping to retain some hand in government.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also criticized the election.

"For the Iranian people to have a fully free choice about their country's future, they should be able to vote for candidates who hold the full range of political views, not just candidates selected for them," Straw said.

But it's all America's fault, of course:

Pakistani Muslim scholar Komaruddin Hidayat attributed the hard-liner's victory to anger over U.S. foreign policy.

"America has put Islam in a corner," Hidayat said. "America attacked Iraq based on false reasoning just as it did in Afghanistan. This has given conservatives the chance to gain power in some Islamic countries."

How then did they gain power in Iran, decades before America entered Iraq or Afghanistan?

I was just sent a link to a silly discussion board on which this was written about me:

And Professors like THIS ONE, get alot of Money from the Goverment to write all of this Nonsense in his books.

Hang it all, I don't seem to have received my check from the "Goverment" lately. My Zionist check hasn't arrived either. In reality, Jihad Watch doesn't have anything approaching the budget we would need in order to do everything we would like to do to inform the public about the global jihad threat.

You mean, some people do this not for the money, but because they just think it's right? They'll defend human rights and equality of dignity for free? And I'm one of them? Dagnabbit, I missed the gravy train!

"Parents of son charged in beating may lose girl," from the Detroit News, with thanks to DC Watson:

MADISON HEIGHTS -- The Oakland County Prosecutor's Office on Thursday will attempt to permanently end the parental rights of a Madison Heights couple who police say neglected to seek medical help for their daughter after her older brother allegedly beat her over her relationship with a non-Muslim boy.

The 15-year-old girl, who is a Madison Heights Lamphere High junior, suffered a broken back in the beating, according to court documents. The trial to determine whether parental custody rights should be terminated is set for Thursday before Oakland Circuit Judge Joan Young.

The girl's brother, Ahmad Abdelmomen, 21, is charged with aggravated assault in the April 29 incident at their home in Madison Heights. Abdelmomen is free on bond pending a July 13 preliminary hearing before Madison Heights 43rd District Judge Robert J. Turner.

"She complained of the injury to her parents, but they didn't take her to a doctor because they condoned the punishment her brother gave her," said Robert Zivian, an assistant Oakland County prosecuting attorney assigned to the neglect case.

The following day, when the girl was still complaining of injuries, her parents called for an ambulance, according to Madison Heights Police Detective Sgt. Ron Hillman.

"She was in a lot of pain, and when she eventually went back to school, it was in a wheelchair," Hillman said. "It was too painful for her to stand for any period of time."

The girl initially told hospital workers she fell, Hillman said. After being questioned by police, she admitted that her brother had beaten her because he was upset over her relationship with a boy who was not of their religious faith, Hillman said.

"She wrote me a two-page statement about how both her brother and her parents disapproved of the situation," he said. "She wrote that's what prompted the beating in the first place."

Diana West gives us some more clear thinking, comparing Douglas Wood with Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot in the Washington Times:

The cases of the kidnapped engineer and the "guilty" pastors are not really parallel. The Victoria state court is not a murderous gang of jihadis. But there's something similarly outrageous about the coercion brought to be bear on these men -- coercion at gunpoint in Iraq, or on pain of prison time in Australia -- to revoke the precious and essential Western liberty to speak freely.

Such liberty is what compelled both pastors to flee their native Pakistan, where "blasphemy" against Islam can be a capital offense. And there's another connection: The Islamic doctrine of jihad that inspires the terrorists in Iraq is precisely what lies at the core of the Australian pastors' lectures and teachings, which are based directly on verses of the Koran and other Islamic texts.

What is car-wreck fascinating here is Judge Michael Higgins' conclusion that simply pointing out what the Koran says now constitutes outlawed speech in Victoria. During court proceedings, when Mr. Scot began to read verses from the Koran that denigrate women, a lawyer for the Islamic Council of Victoria, the plaintiff, cut him off, explaining that reading such verses aloud is itself an act of vilification. "How," wondered Mr. Scot, can it be vilifying to Muslims in the room when I am just reading from the Koran?"

How, indeed. As Robert Spencer has pointed out, at another point in the trial, the Australian judge was affronted that Mr. Scot had said that "the Koran promotes violence, killing and looting." Mr. Spencer writes: "In light of Koranic passages such as 9:5, 2:191, 9:29, 47:4, 5:33 and many others, this cannot seriously be a matter of dispute. Muslims have pointed to verses in the Bible that they would have us believe are equivalent in violence and offensiveness, or have claimed that the great majority of Muslims don't take such verses literally; but it takes a peculiarly strong resistance to reality not only to deny that such verses are there, but to charge one who pointed them out with religious vilification."

Mr. Nalliah, who plans to visit Great Britain to campaign against a similar vilification law now under consideration in Parliament, calls Victoria's shockingly totalitarian statute "sharia law by stealth." And so it is. In outlawing criticism of Islam -- which, so far, is the effect of the law -- Victoria has not only codified a peculiarly strong resistance to reality, but it has also adopted the practice of sharia-ruled states. This makes for a startling spectacle of free people placing a muzzle on speech, a limit on faith and a damper on inquiry.

Douglas Wood lost his freedom at gunpoint; Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot lost theirs by court-ordered political correctness. We know who rescued Mr. Wood; who will save the pastors?

Ice cream jihad update from News10, with thanks to Twostellas:

The spiritual leader of the Lodi mosque who was arrested in a sweep earlier this month admitted to the FBI that when he was in Pakistan he gave speeches to Muslims urging them to fight Americans in Afghanistan in the months following the September 11 attacks.

However, in his immigration hearing on Friday, Shabbir Ahmed told a judge that "it was a requirement of all imams. If you don't people turn against you. They sort of force you to say something."

Ahmed, 39, a citizen of Pakistan, is fighting to stay in the U.S. after he being arrested two weeks ago in a sweep that also netted two men accused of having ties to the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

Ahmed was a student and then a teacher at the Jamia Farooqia, an Islamic university in Pakistan, during the 1990s. He came to the United States in January 2002 after he was recruited to be the imam at the Lodi mosque.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald continues his reflections on what to do in Iraq with this exploration of the prospects for Iraqi nationalism, on which so many place such high hopes:

There are hardly any people in Iraq who think of themselves first as Iraqis, though every single one of those who does has apparently spoken at length to high American officials.

Iraq was spatchcocked together out of three quite different Ottoman vilayets: Mosul (predominately Kurd before the Arabs had a chance to arabize it), Baghdad (where a Sunni elite, and a Jewish merchant and professional class, existed when the British entered in 1920 -- and guess which group subsequently disappeared?), and Basra, which the India Office insisted be included, because it was seen as a potential breadbasket to supply the forces of the Raj.

In the 80 years since that happened, since Gertrude Bell noted the Shi'a unwillingness to be ruled by Sunnis, noted the mutual dislike of Kurd and Arab, what has happened? Have wonderful things happened that have made Kurds happy with Iraq, and created in them a sense of "nationalism"? Not at all. 182,000 Kurds were massacred by the Arabs under Saddam Hussein, and not a single Arab, including the opponents of Saddam Hussein within, and all the Arabs without, objected -- not a single syllable of protest came. After the fact, a handful of Westernized, sophisticated, and altogether unrepresentative people from Iraq -- a handful so tiny I can only offer one name, that of Kanan Makiya -- seemed to deplore the Arab massacre (for Saddam Hussein's orders were gleefully carried out, and enthusiastically supported, by all kinds of Arabs).

Are the Kurds likely, after this experience, to feel a new "nationalism"? All the evidence goes the other way. The same day as the ballyhooed election, when Shi'a trooped off to do what Al-Sistani told them to do, and the Sunnis stayed away, and the Kurds voted, those same Kurds also held a referendum on independence. It was not reported in the United States -- a reference here and there, mention by Peter Galbraith, and that's about it. And in that referendum 98% of the Kurds voted for independence. What does that tell us about the possibilities for the growth of "Iraqi nationalism"?

And the Shi'a? They now may prate about Iraq, and why not? They will rule that new Iraq. They can afford, now, to talk about Iraq, and "Iraqis." Iraq is theirs, if it holds together. They are in the catbird seat, and are ready to dole out to the Sunnis just a little of what was, over the last 80 years (and the percentage of Shi'a in the population has grown -- just as Muslims have far larger families than Infidels, in Iraq as in Lebanon, the Shi'a are simply outbreeding the Sunnis), doled out to them when the Sunnis were in control.

Yes, of course he is a Methodist....From The Telegraph, with thanks to Daryl:

A Briton who described himself as a wandering pilot has been detained by Mexican authorities and could be linked to the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, officials have said.

Amer Haykel, 45, identified as a British citizen of Lebanese descent, was arrested on Monday at the volunteer fire station of Todos Santos, on the Pacific coast about 35 miles north-west of Cabo San Lucas.

Mexico's federal attorney general's office said US authorities linked Haykel "to extremist groups believed to be involved with September 11 attacks in New York". It did not say if he faced any charges or if he was believed to be involved in any terrorist actions. Haykel told acquaintances that he was a pilot wandering the world. He seemed like "a straightforward person", said Gabriel Garcia, of the Cabo San Lucas fire station.

And no doubt some of the folks back home will be taking notes. "Al-Jazeera to look at open U.S. border," from WND, with thanks to Twostellas:

The Arab TV news network criticized by the new Iraqi government and others for its anti-American bias and willingness to carry the messages of terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, is headed for the U.S.-Mexico border to document how easy it is to enter America illegally.

Al-Jazeera has contacted Minuteman Civil Defense Corps leader Chris Simcox to try to arrange interviews. Simcox, who rejected the request for cooperation with the TV network, says al-Jazeera, seen by millions throughout the Arab world and elsewhere, is producing an hour-long documentary news special on lack of security at the U.S. southern border.

Al-Jazeera reporter Naisser Hssaini mentioned the increase in apprehensions of illegal aliens known as OTMs – other than Mexicans. These foreigners increasingly include Arabs, Muslims and others from the Middle East. The reporter also mentioned his familiarity with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement police of catching and releasing OTMS – particularly those not specifically known to be on any terrorist watch list.

"The group has been denied requests for interviews by Minuteman Civil Defense Corps organizers but they still insist on filming the groups’ activities along with the rest of the media during a July 4th weekend mission near Arivaca, Arizona," said Simcox.

Simcox has contacted the offices of Arizona's two Republican U.S. senators – John McCain and Jon Kyl – to invite them to do interviews with al Jazeera, "so perhaps they can explain to the viewers of this news outlet just how secure America's borders really are."

"The offices of the Arizona members of the United States House of Representatives will also be contacted to alert them to the presence and the intent by the al-Jazeera news crew to film the lack of security along the U.S. border with Mexico," said Simcox. "The office of the Department of Homeland Security will also be notified. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps also wonders just what DHS would tell al-Jazeera about the condition of our border security."

From the Whose Side Are You On Department, via AP, :

ROME (AP) -- An Italian judge on Friday ordered the arrests of 13 CIA officers for secretly transporting a Muslim preacher from Italy to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts - a rare public objection to the practice by a close American ally.

The Egyptian was spirited away in 2003, purportedly as part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, subjecting them to possible torture.

The arrest warrants were announced Friday by the Milan prosecutor's office, which has called the disappearance a kidnapping and a blow to a terrorism investigation in Italy. The office said the imam was believed to belong to an Islamic terrorist group.

The 13 are accused of seizing Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, on a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003, and sending him to Egypt, where he reportedly was tortured, Milan prosecutor Manlio Claudio Minale said in a statement.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome and the CIA in Washington declined to comment....

Germano Dottori, a political analyst at the Center for Strategic Studies in Rome, said it is not unusual for intelligence agencies to have squabbles with allied countries but that he could not recall prosecutors directly involved in investigating or apprehending agents involved.

"At some point the Americans will begin to think they can't trust the Italians," Dottori said.

Yep.

An intriguing story from NBC News, :

Somewhere north of Tehran, living perhaps in villas near the town of Chalous on the Caspian Sea coast, are between 20 and 25 of al-Qaida’s former leaders, along with two of Osama bin Laden’s sons.

Men such as Saif al-Adel, the former military commander of al-Qaida, and Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the bespectacled bin Laden spokesman, are not in hiding but rather in the care — or custody — of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

“They are under virtual house arrest,” not able to do much of anything, said one senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

How they got there and what will happen to them is one of the more intriguing stories of the war on terror, one that is filled with secret movements, stolen communications and a failed attempt at a prisoner exchange involving Iranian dissidents.

“We believe that they're holding members of al-Qaida's management council,” Fran Townsend, President Bush’s counterterrorism czar, said of Iran.

In an interview with Tom Brokaw two weeks ago, she added: “And we have encouraged and suggested that they ought to try them, they ought to admit freely that they're there — which they have not done — that they're holding them. Or they ought to return them to their countries of origin, which they've also been unwilling to do.”

Read it all.

Iraqi jihad update. "Gunmen ambush Iraq police patrol," from the BBC, :

Gunmen have ambushed a police patrol near the Iraqi city of Ramadi, killing eight officers, police said.

About 20 insurgents attacked the police officers as they patrolled a main road on the outskirts of the city, said a local police chief.

Ah, Muslims, those sensitive flowers. From the News Journal, with thanks to Nicolei:

A mother of three schoolgirls has filed a federal lawsuit against the Cape Henlopen School District, claiming school officials were disrespectful of their Islamic faith and didn't stop harassment by other students.

The lawsuit, made public Friday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, accuses a teacher at Shields Elementary School in Lewes of equating Muslims to terrorists while instructing a fourth-grade class last school year.

"During the course of that lesson, students were told 'Muslims believe the Koran teaches war and hatred'; 'Muslims believe that people who do not practice Islam are evil,' " the lawsuit said.

Yep, pretty inflammatory stuff. Of course Muslims don't believe that sort of thing, do they? Hmmm...Well, there was that fellow who wrote to me that "I want you to know that I hate you for the sake of Allaah and I make du'a for your destruction." And there was that Al-Muhajiroun seminar, "The Obligation of Inciting Religious Hatred."

But does the Qur'an teach war and hatred? Well, there is Qur'an 9:5: "Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush." There are also over 100 other verses counseling jihad in various ways. And hatred? Well, Allah hates the unbelievers: "He it is That has made you inheritors in the earth: if, then, any do reject (Allah), their rejection (works) against themselves: their rejection but adds to the odium for the Unbelievers in the sight of their Lord: their rejection but adds to (their own) undoing" (Qur'an 35:39). And they are vile, those unbelievers, even if they are among the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians): "Those who reject (Truth), among the People of the Book and among the Polytheists, will be in Hell-Fire, to dwell therein (for aye). They are the worst of creatures" (Qur'an 98:6). Do Muslims believe that those who don't practice Islam are evil? They do if they believe what the Qur'an says: how could "the worst of creatures" not be evil?

So once again it seems as if telling the truth about what at least Qur'an-believing Muslims believe is to be forbidden by Muslims in American schools.

The suit also alleges that the girl was denied equal time, and that her classmates teased her (which is a shame if it happened, but hardly uncommon in primary school, or grounds for a lawsuit) -- and it calls for the adoption of various dhimmi regulations:

School officials are accused of refusing to allow the girl in that class to explain Islam to her schoolmates, even though the teacher had discussed Christian symbols during Christmas.

"[When] it was suggested by the parent, that her daughter ... would make a balanced presentation explaining the Muslim religion to the classroom, to boost her self-esteem, it was expressed that such an action would be inappropriate, in that it would 'open a can of worms,' " the lawsuit alleges....

The lawsuit charges the district and its employees with failing to provide the students with equal protection for expression of their religious beliefs and due process to deal with the harassment that followed from fellow students.

One girl allegedly faced taunts such as "no loser Muslims allowed." Another of the girls was told she was ugly and had an ugly name.

The defendants also are accused of giving preference to Christian beliefs over Islamic beliefs in violation of the Constitution and retaliating against the family for exercising its right to practice its religion.

The case claims the fourth-grade girl was transferred to another teacher's class following her mother's complaints about the alleged anti-Islamic practices.

The mother and daughters are asking the court for monetary damages to cover their pain and suffering and to punish the district. They also want the court to order the district to:

•Develop policies to prevent intolerance and guide administrators on dealing with student complaints about harassment related to religious beliefs and social background.

•Implement mandatory training for faculty and staff on religious and cultural diversity.

•Keep statistics on racial discrimination and harassment complaints by students and the action taken to resolve them.

The lawsuit alleges the teachers' action, along with her supervisors' failure to stop it, made the fourth-grade girl so depressed that a therapist recommended she stay home from school and get tutoring.

But the lawsuit alleges even that option didn't work well because the instructor, approved by the district, continued to discuss ethnic hatreds and religious wars, despite the therapist cautioning against it. Another tutor was eventually sent to the family's house, but not for as much time as the family expected.

Sentenced in absentia? And where is Chbaba B. now? From Expatica, :

BRUSSELS — Antwerp Court sentenced in absentia on Friday a 22-year-old Moroccan man to six months jail and a EUR 550 fine for accosting and threatening a Jewish man last year.

It is the first time that such a case of anti-Semitism has led to a trial and a conviction, newspaper 'De Standaard' reported.

The suspect, identified only as Chbaba B., confronted a Jewish man in Statiestraat on 7 June 2004 and said: "I am Palestinian and I want to kill all the Jews". He then brandished a knife in front of the victim.

The Jewish man cycled to a nearby synagogue and alerted police, who later arrested the Moroccan. The suspect was found to be carrying a hacksaw.

Antwerp Court ruled that B. was driven by deep contempt and by feelings of hostility to Jewish people. "The facts bear witness to unacceptable intolerance and are a form of psychological violence," the ruling said.

From the New Duranty Times, with thanks to Seymour Paine:

LONDON, June 24 - The Anglican Church's international advisory body voted Friday to urge the church to consider withdrawing its investments in companies that support the occupation of Palestinian territories.

The move, presented as a message of solidarity with Palestinian Christians, immediately came under attack by Jewish groups, with some calling it ill timed and predicting a likely chill in Anglican-Jewish relations....

Before the vote, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, who helped lead the effort, talked about the occupation's effect on Palestinian Christians. He urged council members to support the resolution, saying it would send a strong message of disapproval to Israel.

Canon James Rosenthal, the council's communications director, said the remarks, and those by others, resonated with group members.

"When we hear the Christian population has dwindled to 1.5 percent, we are dramatically concerned," Canon Rosenthal said. "We have heard stories of humiliating experiences by Christians, and it is clear that the council sees the support of the Christian community as one of their foremost concerns."

Canon Rosenthal is talking about humiliation by Israelis. He doesn't seem to have noticed information like this, from "Christians in Holy Land in Crisis, Says Report," from Zenit:

For its part, in the city of Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, the growth of militancy among Muslims has caused a mass exodus from a town which up to 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel had been entirely Christian, observes ACN.

"All the Muslims like to come to this town. Little by little the Christians leave because they cannot live with the Muslims. There are some fanatics who do not like the fact that we exist," explains a longtime parish priest of Ramallah, Father Nazaih.

The priest also mentioned the bitterness that still exists several years after Muslim fanatics stole Christian land next to the church to build a mosque.

"They came with tractors and burst into the place," he said. "They broke the walls of the houses. We did not realize what was happening. They took everything. Even the governor could do nothing."

Of the thousands of families present in Ramallah in 1948, only a few hundred remain. Up to 40,000 Christians have gone to the United States, he added.

The New Duranty Times article goes on:

"Israelis are already traumatized and feel that the world is against them," said Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, earlier this month. The resolution, he added, would be "another knife in the back."

"US echoes Australian warning against travel to Malaysia," from AFP, :

The United States backed a warning from Australia advising against travelling to Malaysia's Borneo coast, saying it was also concerned that terrorists planned to kidnap foreigners there.

The Malaysian Government criticised Wednesday's Australian travel warning on the east coast of Sabah state, saying that tourist destinations there are safe and that Canberra had failed to consult Malaysia over the announcement.

But the US embassy here noted that several kidnappings and piracy incidents had already occurred in the area this year, perpetrated by criminals and the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf group.

"There are indications of continued planning of kidnappings, including of foreigners, in eastern Sabah's coastal areas and offshore islands," it said in a statement which reiterated an ongoing US State Department warning.

Why do they make their initial contact in a mosque? Don't the mosque leaders, aware of the Qur'an's peaceful teachings, turn them away? Why aren't American policymakers taking note of the implications of this fact? From the TimesOnline, :

IN A garden café on the airport road into Damascus clusters of young men gather to drink coffee, smoke shisha and hear some awe-inspiring accounts of death and glory that will lead many on a journey to certain death in the battle raging across the border in Iraq....

“It’s an individual decision. Once you’ve decided, you go to a mosque to make the initial contact. Then you are sent to a private home and from there for a week’s intensive training inside Syria,” she said. According to former fighters who spoke to The Times in Damascus, volunteers are given a crash course in using Kalashnikov rifles, firing rocket-propelled grenades and the use of remote detonators. The training takes place at secret camps in the Syrian desert, near the Iraqi border. Some attacks are even planned in advance in Damascus and Aleppo. Once the team is ready, a guide leads them across the rugged border into Iraq where they are taken to a safe house....

Over the past few weeks US Marines have carried out a series of offensives in the western Iraqi province of Anbar to try to smash the Euphrates supply line, yet most of the towns along the river valley remain in rebel hands. The main border town of al-Qaim is even nicknamed the “jihad superbowl” by US forces.

Going through this morning's email, I just came upon this:

curse be on christians and jew .oh muslims they r not ur friends but 2 each other.anyone who befiends them is one of their rank

Nothing like a good curse to go with my morning coffee! And "befiends" is good, even if inadvertent. The writer, of course, is referring to Qur'an 5:51: "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk."

When was the last time you heard Jews or Christians pronouncing curses on Muslims or anyone else? Just wondering.

"Terrorists in Iraq seen from Africa," from UPI, :

Military officials say close to a quarter of foreign fighters captured in Iraq come from northern Africa, validating fears that ungoverned swaths of the continent are serving as both a pipeline and safe haven for Islamist radicals.

According to a June 17 statement from a U.S. military official, a significant number of the Iraqi recruits are said to have joined Abu Musab Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq network. Zarqawi is the Jordanian militant believed responsible for many attacks that have left hundreds of Iraqis dead in past months.

"The potential does exist for [African] individuals or groups to go to Iraq and either conduct operations or receive some of the training," said Maj. Gen. Thomas Csrnko, head of U.S. special operations command in Europe (EUCOM), whose security oversight includes North and West Africa.

While a stream of African jihadists continue to provide manpower and financial support, Gen. Csrnko said many veterans could return to northern Africa to use insurgent tactics developed in Iraq, from bomb-making to strategic planning, against their governments....

Al Qaeda in Iraq issued a statement on its Web site congratulating the mujahedeen "who are fighting the converters in Mauritania."

...because of the peculiar evidence requirements of Islamic law: the victim's testimony is disallowed, and she must produce four male Muslim witnesses who saw the act. I discuss this evil law and its effects in Islam Unveiled.

"Rapist cop booked under controversial religious law," from the Indo-Asian News Service via Newz.in, with thanks to Doc Washburn:

A Pakistani policeman charged with raping a teenaged girl in a police station has been charged under a controversial religious law that carries the death penalty - but which could also enable him to walk free.

Sub-inspector Qaiser Shah was booked under Sections 10 and 11 of the Hud Zina Ordinance, which puts the onus on the victim to prove she was raped.

Under this law, the victim has to produce four male Muslims who were witness to the rape. If she fails to prove the allegation, she can be ostracised and even charged with adultery.

Late military dictator Zia-ul Haq had enacted the law in 1979. Successive governments - even the one headed by Benazir Bhutto - have paid lip service to repealing the ordinance but have not done so.

Shah is alleged to have raped 15-year old Saira at the Shahzad town police station here on the night of May 17-18.

From AsiaTimes (thanks to Lek) comes this profile of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir group, one of the leading global exponents of the ideological jihad:

KARACHI - From the shores of the Caspian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, there are violent reactionaries in the Muslim world who will kill and get killed, but beyond these fanatics there exists a real hardcore silently swaying the hearts and minds of many in the Muslim world.

Their religion is not obvious from their demeanor or the cut of their clothes, yet it is embedded in the very core of their hearts, and is the driving force behind all their actions.

They are an overwhelming emerging force, and even though they have been widely banned, they don't believe in retaliation. They have made a hub in Pakistan, where they outnumber many large religious parties, yet they remain difficult to pinpoint as they are political, but have been forced underground. They are the largest single movement in the Islamic world, the Liberation Party - Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT).

In in the mid-1990s, a large conference was held in London, where the topic was the revival of a caliphate in the Muslim world for the "implementation of pure Islamic doctrine", as is the goal of the HT. The conference was attended by delegates from around the world, and a key question was to determine an ideal place for the Islamic revolution. Many agreed on Pakistan, a land of valiant Muslim tribes that have traditionally responded enthusiastically to Islamic issues. And strategically, the country is well situated to embrace the Asian sub-continent and Central Asia - where initially the caliphate will be created.

Subsequently, hundreds of HT members, British but of Pakistani origin, many of them students at the London School of Economics and other centers of excellence, packed their bags and departed for Pakistan. By 2000, the HT had established itself in all urban centers of the country, but within three years it was banned. All police stations were given strict instructions to round up any person who claimed an association with the HT.

Hundreds of HT members were rounded up, and may reports of torture emerged. Of those produced in court, the only charges that were made to stick were those related to being a member of the HT.

This correspondent has spoken to senior Pakistani officials on the reason for the HT being banned, but none of them appears to have a clue - especially as the HT does not espouse violence or militancy.

HT members have even been encouraged by the authorities to change the name of the organization, as most other banned outfits do so that they can carry on with their activities, but the HT has refused to do so.

Pakistan, especially as a leading ally in the US "war on terror", has been urged by international intelligence agencies to continue cracking down on the HT. President General Pervez Musharraf has visited the United Kingdom and publicly advised parents to beware of the HT and keep their children away from its influence.

There follows an interview with HT's Naveed Butt. Read it all.

An update on this Sharia Alert from AP, with thanks to Nicolei:

BIREUN, Indonesia -- Fifteen convicted gamblers were flogged Friday for illegal gaming in Indonesia -- the first time caning was used as punishment in the world's most populous Muslim country.

After traditional Friday prayers, the 15 convicts were brought to a stage erected outside a mosque, where about 600 people gathered to watch in Bireun, a town in the semiautonomous Aceh region.

Religious officials wearing masks to conceal their identities struck the men on their backs with rattan canes. The blows did not break the skin and the men did not appear in extreme pain. At least one smiled and laughed during the caning.

"I am ready to be punished, but what about everyone else, including big time corruptors and thieves?" said Zakaria, 60, the oldest man beaten. "They should also be whipped."

Andrew Bolt comments on Australia's Victoria State ridiculous hate speech laws in the Herald Sun (thanks to OBL r Us):

PREMIER Steve Bracks promised four years ago to give us "racial and religious tolerance" if we gave up our free speech.

What fools people were to believe him....

Every case, each more trivial than the last, involves worry and legal costs. Each one makes yet more people too scared to talk freely.

Then there was that other promise – that the laws would "promote . . . tolerance". Instead, they've set us at each other's throat.

Take this case against Nalliah and Scott, pastors with the Catch the Fires pentecostal church.

Without Bracks' laws, these men would have quietly given their church seminar on jihad three years ago to 250 fellow worshippers and none of us would have even known. But the laws changed everything.

They inspired the Equal Opportunity Commission to urge Muslims to complain, and one EOC employee, May Helou, even asked three converts from the Islamic Council of Victoria -- of which she was an official -- to drop in on the pastors' seminar.

So began a three-year prosecution against the pastors that has cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Last December, Judge Higgins finally ruled that Scot in particular had offended by quoting the Koran in a way that got "a response from the audience at various times in the form of laughter". Is laughter now a crime?

Stranger still, he gave 13 examples of how Scot had "made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct", at least eight of which involved him quoting the Koran, and, I believe, accurately. Yes, the Koran indeed authorises men to beat their wives. Yes, it indeed calls for thieving hands to be chopped off.

What did Scot say that was false? The judge listed just two trivial examples, but also said Scot hadn't made clear enough he was giving a literalist reading of the Koran that wasn't mainstream.

Did he? Isn't it? On such points, so deserving of debate, Scot was convicted of stating the wrong opinion.

But if the judgment was strange, so was the penalty.

Scot and Nalliah must now run four big advertisements, costing $70,000, in the Herald Sun and The Age, declaring they've been found guilty of bad-mouthing Muslims.

Oddly, these apologies must reach not just the 250 people who were at their seminar, but 2.5 million newspaper readers who weren't. Odder still, the judge ordered the pastors to never even imply what they'd said about the Koran. They are banned from speaking their mind not only in Victoria, but anywhere in Australia, where others are still free to say what they may not.

Not surprisingly, the pastors say they'd rather go to jail than comply. Let's see if Bracks dares let this happen.

"Three Women Arrested, Charged," from Compass Direct, with thanks to Nicolei:

June 23 (Compass) -- A Muslim council has accused three Indonesian women of attempting to convert Muslim children. Dr. Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti and Ratna Bangun were arrested on May 13 and taken to the Indramayu State Prison, where they await trial.

Dr. Zakaria is the pastor of Gereja Kristen Kemah Daud (GKKD), or Christian Church of David’s Camp, located in the small town of Harguelis, Indramayu district, West Java....

After the National Education System Bill became law in June 2003, all public schools were required to provide religious education for children of religious minorities attending their schools (see Compass Direct, “A New Twist on Indonesia’s Controversial Education Bill,” September 12, 2003.)

The school in Babakan Jati had no means of providing Christian education, and therefore asked the GKKD church to provide teachers and an appropriate program. The Christian students would then be evaluated at the end of each semester and given the required marks in their school reports.

The women of the GKKD church set up a “Happy Sunday” program, with Christian songs, games and Bible study for the children. The program was run by Bangun and Pangesti, under the direction of their pastor, Zakaria.

Program Attracts Muslim Attention

After running for approximately 18 months, the number of children attending the program had grown to 40 -- but only 10 were from Christian homes.

The Muslim children attended the popular program with the full consent of their parents. Some of them began to sing Christian songs at school and at home, and this attracted the attention of Islamic elders who, in December 2004, forced the church to close.

The women then continued to run the Happy Sunday program from Pangesti’s home.

On March 26, they organized an Easter bus tour to the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an amusement park in Jakarta. Each of the participating children was given a t-shirt displaying the name of the church and the Star of David logo, so that the teachers could keep track of them during the outing.

The children had also received gifts on other occasions. For example, at Christmas time each child was given a carry bag.

During the tour, one of the children asked for and received a Bible from one of the teachers.

Muslim Complaint Leads to Arrests

As a result, Islamic leaders approached church staff and demanded that Muslim children no longer be allowed to attend the program. A complaint was also made to the Indramayu District Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) council. As a result, the local MUI chairman, K. H. Muzakir Mahmud, made an official complaint to the Indramayu police.

On May 1, a local Islamic leader interviewed four of the Muslim children who had attended the Happy Sunday program and recorded their answers on video.

The children were asked whether the women had ever offered them money, to which they responded, “No.” However all the children said they had received gifts, and one told the interviewer that he had asked for and been given a Bible.

On the evening of May 13, the three women were arrested and taken to the police station for questioning. They were accused of breaching the Child Protection Law, Chapter 86, No. 23/2002. If convicted, they could be sentenced for up to five years and fined 1,000,000,000 rupees ($103,600).

A prime entry from our Too Stupid For Words Department, from the Nashville Tennessean, with thanks to zzzadig. The police didn't respond fast enough? What could they have done if they had gotten there sooner? Put the defaced Qur'an on life support? Pounded its chest and brought it back to life? Come on. Police should leave the scenes of burglaries and fights in order to rush to the scene of a torn-up book?

A Muslim holy book was found yesterday covered with flies, with a torn-out page mashed into what appeared to be feces and burned around the edges.

The Koran was discovered on a doorstep about noon by an Islamic man who lives nearby in the LeNore Garden Apartments complex. He was walking to his home in the community, largely populated by Islamic immigrants from Somalia. A neighbor told police the book had been on the steps since at least 5 p.m. Tuesday...

How did the neighbor know that? And why is this story being written as if what was discovered was a murder victim?

"It's in the heart of every Muslim. We respect and we love (the Koran) more than our families," said Ab-dishakur Ibrahim, imam of the Al-Farooq mosque. "I don't know why anyone would do this. I can't comprehend it."

About a dozen Muslim men waited outside 647 Crutcher St. throughout the afternoon, taking breaks from their watch only to pray and to notify other friends.

Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime and are consulting the FBI. A suspect could be charged with misdemeanor desecration of a venerated object or civil rights intimidation, which can be a felony or misdemeanor charge, said Metro police Capt. Mike Hagar. The district attorney would make a decision whether to pursue criminal charges....

Funny thing: we never heard about that "misdemeanor desecration of a venerated object" when somebody was selling a consecrated host on Ebay. Ebay initially stuck to its guns, insisting that it was a legal sale. Funny how nobody pointed out this little misdemeanor offense.

Here's the delay story: "Islamic leaders disturbed by delayed police response," also from the Tennessean:

Islamic leaders said they notified police six times yesterday before officers arrived at the site of a Koran desecration. Police said the delay was due to an unforeseen number of higher-priority calls, including a burglary and a fight involving an officer.

"We can't pick when the calls come in. We have to take the high priorities as they come," Metro police Capt. Mike Hagar said.

Three men, including two Islamic religious leaders, phoned for police help throughout the afternoon after a first call at about 2:45 p.m. Three hours after that call, and after a Tennessean reporter told the Police Department spokesman of the delay, police arrived.

Spokesman Don Aaron said the communications system had no record of the 2:45 p.m. call and that the first call that the 911 center received came in at 3:46 p.m. No police units were available at that time, he added, so officers were dispatched at 4:53 p.m. But as police headed to the scene, they were pulled off to deal with a break-in that was in progress.

The call about the damaged Koran was entered into the system as a "Code 1," or routine call, and other calls superseded it. Islamic leaders said police apologized to them for the delay, though it was little comfort.

Police "did not respond in an appropriate manner to this incident," Abdulhakim Ali Mohamed, imam of the Islamic Center of Nashville, said to a crowd of Muslims. "Regardless of their excuse, you need to let them know that you, as a citizen, will not accept that."

The Muslims in Bangladesh who did this consider the Ahmadiyas heretics, and thus justifiably to be killed. Not a few would-be Muslim reformers in Bangladesh and elsewhere suspect this would be their fate also, and thus keep silent. From DPA via M&C, with thanks to Twostellas:

Dhaka - Suspected Islamic militants on Friday burned down a mosque and carried out bomb attacks on two other places of worship of the minority Ahmadiya sect in eastern Bangladesh, officials said.

Witnesses said the Ahmadiya mosque was razed to the ground after it was set ablaze by activists of a local anti-Ahmadiya group which wants the sect to be officially declared non-Moslem.

At least three people were injured in the fire which had quickly engulfed the mosque in the bordering town of Brahmanbaria, about 110 kilometres east of the capital Dhaka....

A rescue worker said there were a few people inside the mosque when the arson attack took place.

Residents said fire-bomb attacks were carried out on two other Ahmadiya mosques in the town but no casualties from these incidents were reported....

Extremist Sunni groups want the government to declare the Ahmadiyas non-Moslems because of religious differences on the status of Islam's prophet Mohammed.

Most Ahmadiya religious publications are banned in Bangladesh, an Ahmadiya leader said.

An older but important piece from The Guardian of Istanbul via the Taipei Times, with thanks to Twostellas:

Birgul Isik had not expected to find her oldest son waiting for her at the bus station when she and four of her children returned from Istanbul to the central Anatolian province of Elazigon on Tuesday.

She certainly wasn't expecting the 14-year-old to pull out a gun as she moved to embrace him."You've disgraced the family," he said, and shot her five times in the head and chest.

She is still in a coma.

For the police who charged the boy with attempted murder, and arrested his father and uncle on suspicion of incitement, it is just another example of the "honor" crimes that result in the deaths of scores if not hundreds of Turkish women each year. Most die for breaking the rules of propriety: they talk to men in the street, they wear the wrong clothes, they insist on education rather than an early arranged marriage.

Isik's crime was to appear on television. It was the fifth time she had fled her violent, bigamous husband. Ignored by the authorities, abandoned by her own parents, who reportedly told her "a woman's place is with her husband," she finally agreed last Friday to appear on a show many have described as Turkey's equivalent of Oprah Winfrey.

You only have to glance at Yasemin Bozkurt's daily program Woman's Voice to see why. There's the live studio audience, the frequent angry exchanges. The themes are familiar too: match-making, runaway children, violent husbands.

A radical break from Turkish TV's traditional mix of local sitcoms and Hollywood fare, the show, like its half-a-dozen competitors, has proved a hit. Despite the early afternoon slot, it regularly rates among the country's top 10. It has also courted controversy from the start.

The presenters see themselves as defenders of women's rights, confronting issues that had previously been hidden away in the silence of family homes. For their critics, they are purveyors of "victimization TV," using people's suffering to improve ratings and advertising revenue.

Of course, lurid TV shows don't cause honor killings. There must be another ingredient.

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer will be on the John Batchelor Show tonight at 11:20 PM EDT.

For convenience's sake, here is the infamous flag-trampling video that led to the death threats, which we are set to discuss.

Yes, I know it's the same joke over and over. Just in case you hadn't noticed, I am trying to make a point. Anyway, it wasn't a Baptist hideout, of course, it was an Islamic jihadist hideout. But it could just as well have been Baptists, right? Right? They're secretly sharpening their knives even now. Or is it polishing their stones? What's that? This was a jihad manual written by Muslims? Well, they're enraged over the American occupation, doncha know. If we hadn't perpetrated the outrages at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, why, they would all be florists by now.

"Iraq: Kidnap and Decapitation Manual Found in Hideout," from AKI, with thanks to Louise:

Baghdad, 23 June (AKI) - US Marines have found manuals on taking hostages and decapitation during a raid on a guerrilla hideout in the Iraqi village of Karabla, near the town of Qaim, close to the Syrian border. The Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that in the hideaway the troops also found several hostages who were being held there by Islamic militants. The hiding place was being used as a centre for the interrogation and torture of hostages, and contained electrodes and other instruments of torture.

The manuals found were used as Jihad (Holy War) handbooks. The first was titled: "How to choose the best hostage", the second covered decapitation and was called: "Rules for cutting off the heads of infidels", and the third manual, "principles of the philosophy of the Jihad", was more theoretical.

See: a posture of strength works. These guys don't want to be the next Yassin. Their work is disrupted, for which all decent people can rejoice. "Jihad chiefs avoid rally after Israel death threat," from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Islamic Jihad activists marched on Friday, vowing not to be cowed by Israeli death threats, but group leaders wary of assassination by airborne missiles avoided the rally.

Israel said on Wednesday it had resumed a "targeted killing" policy against leaders of Islamic Jihad, underlining how far a ceasefire with the Palestinians has frayed since a February summit that revived hopes of Middle East peace.

Islamic Jihad chose Beit Lahiya for its usual Friday rally. Around 1,000 faithful turned up to condemn Israel's decision and pledge retaliation. "Blood for blood and a shelling for a shelling!" they chanted.

But faction chiefs and masked gunmen who normally join such rallies were absent this time. Even the group's main spokesman Khaled al-Batsh remained in a car some distance from the rally.

A Jihad leaflet distributed to marchers said: "We urge our mujahideen to take maximum precautions to foil any chance for the occupation and its planes to eliminate us."

Batsh told Reuters: "The enemy is flying dozens of drones in our skies. Certainly we must be more careful. God has ordered us to take care against the plans of the Zionist enemy."

What's that? Hamas isn't a right-wing Christian group? It's a Muslim group? Oh, well, then, they are reacting to illegal occupation and oppression. Give them a state! What's that? They celebrate the murder of innocents on buses and in restaurants? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe? "Hamas leader urges more violence," from UPI, :

A Hamas leader has urged supporters to redouble efforts to "liberate" Palestine because diplomacy has failed, an Israeli newspaper's Web site, Ynet, says.

"All of Palestine, from the river to the sea, will be liberated by the mujahedin (martyrs) and their rifles, not by pointless diplomatic meetings," the leader, Nizar Rian, said Thursday in Gaza.

Ynet, the online site of Tel Aviv daily Yediot Aharonot, said Hamas has warned that the temporary calm is falling apart, and the Islamic Jihad and Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have echoed the statement. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have been involved in recent attacks on Israel, and the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades reportedly dispatched the female suicide bomber who was caught, ostensibly on her way to an Israeli hospital for treatment.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald begins a series of reflections on what to do in Iraq now. There will be some unavoidable overlap in the material in each section, as each will provide a look at the problem from different but interlocking perspectives. Here is part 1:

It has apparently become Holy Writ that the well-being of Iraq (defined by whom?), or the well-being of "Iraqis" (defined as whom?), or the well-being of Muslims everywhere who must be saved from the consequences of their own Lords of Misrule, their own inshallah-fatalism and love of luxury and idleness that explains their economic disarray (so much more fun to pass the time sitting with hubble-bubble pipes, watching Al-Jazeera, and becoming indignant at those terrible Infidels with their billions in foreign aid that is obviously part of their diabolical colonialism or neo-colonialism or post-colonial colonialism (choose 1) – it has apparently become universally accepted dogma that all this is in the interest of Infidels.

This is one of those unexamined propositions that does not stand up.
The best way to deal with the world of Islam, the Muslims who are in dar al-Islam and those who have managed to settle in the Lands of the Infidels, is not to make them comfortable, not to transfer even further wealth -- beyond the hundreds of billions transferred every year because of a grim accident of geology, money which in turn is used to fund various instruments of the Jihad, including mosques, madrasas, propaganda of every kind, bribes and the allure of business contracts, and so on.

If one believes that Islam represents a permanent menace to the wellbeing of Infidels and to their civilizations, such as they are, with all their faults and stupidities big and little, then one must not be fooled into thinking that either "poverty" (what nonsense: the most sinister and threatening Muslim countries are those like Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. and Iran; the least threatening, the impoverished Mali and Mauritania) or "absence of democracy" is what will do the trick. Many of those so-called "reformers," just like the North African lady who recently published a "daring" account of a muslima's sexual life (i.e., more or less an autobiography), may recognize that their own ruling classes are corrupt and depraved. But then on quite a few matters they immediately demonstrate that defensiveness about Islam that is such a feature of even the most "moderate" and seemingly "reasonable" of Muslims, whose mask comes off the minute Islam is seen to be criticized by Infidels in the mildest of ways. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, for example, in undermining the regime of Mubarak and Son, no longer collaborates with the American Copts -- no, he appears to be collaborating more with the Muslim Brotherhood. And of course Ibrahim's views on Israel, his complete inability to see the claim of Jews to their own homeland, with defensible borders, and their legal, historic, and moral claim to all of the West Bank and to Gaza, is something beyond his capacity. He simply cannot get his mind around it-- that is, he remains, for all of his "reform," neither a vocal supporter of complete equality for the Copts (and perhaps a little apology for their treatment, in their own land, by Arabs who conquered, and subjugated them -- no, that is simply an impossibility in Muslim terms), nor someone who is prepared to end the relentless Arab Jihad against the Infidel sovereign state of Israel.

No, it wasn't really right-wing Christians. It was that other religious group -- you know, the one that presents a much smaller threat. Iraqi jihad update, "Car bombings kill at least 17 in Baghdad: Onslaught follows deadly blasts that already rocked Iraqi capital," from CNN, :

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four car bombs exploded Thursday in a north-central neighborhood of Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and wounding as many as 60 others, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said.

A suicide attack near an old mall in the Karada area killed seven civilians and wounded 10 others, the defense ministry said, while the Iraqi police put the death toll at 12 civilians and three police officers, with 50 wounded.

Three police officers and seven civilians died in a second suicide blast targeting an Iraqi police patrol near a gas station, the ministry said. Ten civilians were wounded.

Car bombs also went off near two Shiite Muslim mosques -- Albu Jumaa and Abdul Rasool Ali. The bomb near Albu Jumaa mosque was parked on the street and likely was remotely detonated.

A team of explosives experts defused a fifth bomb near the Mubarak mosque.

The violence followed five car bombings Wednesday night in the capital, including three nearly simultaneous blasts that killed 18 people in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad, police said.

"He responded to God’s call and was seeking his paradise and wanted glory for his religion." From Arab News, with thanks to Eschwapp:

RIYADH/JEDDAH, 24 June 2005 — A statement posted on the Internet by the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, said yesterday that Abdullah Al-Rashoud, one of the most wanted men on a Saudi list of 26 terrorists, had been killed in US airstrikes on the Iraqi town of Qaim near the Syrian border....

Abdullah Muhammad Rashid Al-Rashoud, 37, had been No. 24 on the list of the 26 most wanted terror leaders put out by the Kingdom two years ago and was one of only three militants on the list still at large.

The web posting, the authenticity of which could not be confirmed, said he slipped into Iraq in April. “He entered Iraq a month and a half ago as an immigrant crossing the border to Al-Fayafi and Al-Qaffar to Al-Qaim to participate in the battles there. He responded to God’s call and was seeking his paradise and wanted glory for his religion,” the statement said. It did not mention the date he was killed but said that it was due to the aerial bombings of the city.

“When the Crusaders could not enter the area, the only thing they could do was bombard the Mujahedeen with warplanes,” it said. “Our sheikh (Al-Rashoud) got what he wished” — martyrdom....

Al-Rashoud was one of the religious leaders of the terrorists in the Kingdom. He issued statements through the Internet calling for young men to join him and his fellow terrorists in fighting jihad.

I have been a bit of traveling. In the last two weeks I have given talks in San Antonio, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Washington, DC; and New York City. I spoke, as it happens, to two Christian and two Jewish groups. And the one question I received from each of these groups most often was: Well, what you're saying is true, but all religions have their extremists, don't they? Every religion has inspired violence, hasn't it?

Of course there have been violent people acting in the name of every religion. But the idea that all religions are equal in their capacity to inspire violence is not only false but misleading: it encourages the arrant nonsense that crops up fairly often in the comments section here, and which I encountered with particular virulence from two self-assured young activists in New York (more on that later, as it was a meeting that showed with particular clarity the danger of some common errors of the zeitgeist): the idea that Jerry Falwell is as much or more of a threat to Western notions of freedom and human rights as is bin Laden or Zarqawi.

For a long time I have thought of this as merely paranoid silliness, so patently absurd that it need not be addressed in depth. But more and more I see this is a principal obstacle to our resistance to the genuine jihad threat: it diverts attention, it diverts energy, and it clouds the issue at hand. For ultimately the point of dredging up the Crusades and Falwell is to suggest that Osama and the jihad are phenomena that are just going to crop up in religions (you know how those people are, not clever and sophisticated like us), and there is nothing we can do about that, so let's work through education and economic aid to eradicate the "resentment" that "fundamentalism" feeds off. That's fine, except that the Islamic jihad is not going to be diverted by education or economic aid: it is an ideological construct based on core Islamic principles -- principles which are unique to Islam. If attention is not directed to those principles and the role they play in motivating and abetting violence against innocents, that violence will continue, no matter how much money and schooling is thrown at the problem. We saw how the jihadists exploited tsunami relief to harangue people in Aceh into stricter Islamic observance. We see how the schools in Pakistan are veritable mujahid factories. Nattering about Jerry Falwell and Christian Reconstructionism only diverts us from these and other salient facts.

So here fate and the morning news have sent us a test case: the Dutch bishops are protesting what is clearly a blasphemous TV show from a Christian standpoint. The analogy between the Qur'an desecrations and this show is exact. So sit back and wait for the Christian riots and murders of innocents. And when they do not happen, as they certainly will not, have the courage to examine whether or not this may be because there is something about Islam that is different from Christianity and every other religion -- and Muslims and non-Muslims alike must acknowledge that forthrightly and deal with it honestly, or its ill effects will continue to play out.

"Dutch bishops protest TV program showing Jesus on a leash," from The Universe, with thanks to Mrs. Obelix:

The Dutch bishops have asked a TV station to stop broadcasting a series that shows Jesus on a leash being walked like a dog.

In the program, "God Does Not Exist," six scientists explain why they feel it does not make sense to believe in God.

But the bishops said their criticism was not aimed at the scientists' views; rather it was the absurdist clips woven throughout the show in which Jesus acts like a dog and a naked African woman is seen hanging from a cross.

The bishops, in a joint statement with the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, said the program "insults and provokes many people, especially religious people, and is a negative contribution to the important debate in Dutch society among believers and nonbelievers."
The show's producers said they are offering nonbelievers a forum to explain their views....

A spokesman for the Dutch bishops' conference said it was "hard to believe" that the TV station did not intend to offend anyone.
"They say they want to clarify the position of nonbelievers, but they do so at the cost of the things that are holy and precious for believers," Jan-Willem Wits told Catholic News Service.

"We endorse the freedom of speech, but this freedom has its boundaries and must be in service of the dialogue and better understanding of people," he said.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has called the program "disgusting."

Muntz and van de Wint have a reputation for being provocative. In 2000, they were fired by another broadcasting company after Muntz walked around a Jewish Orthodox neighborhood in Vienna, Austria, dressed up as Adolf Hitler.

Oh, these are lovely fellows.

Dadullah and Brader -- no Omar (yet). From UPI, :

U.S. and Afghan forces have surrounded at least two senior Taliban commanders after three days of intense fighting in southern Afghanistan.

More than 100 Taliban fighters have been killed in one of the biggest offensives in two years, the BBC reported Thursday.

Those surrounded are believed to include Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Brader -- both of whom are said to be close to Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Hundreds of Afghan troops backed by U.S.-led coalition forces took part in the clashes in Zabul province that began Tuesday when rebels opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades....

A Taliban spokesman denied that any of their men had been killed.

Yes, and the American troops are nowhere near Baghdad!

The participants in the 5th National Forum for Dialogue in Riyadh evidently think it will be better PR for them and the Kingdom of they stop railing against "infidels" and start railing against "the other." But wait! Isn't it the West (as the learned Saidists will tell us), in its quest to demonize the "other," that has created all the tension between Muslims and the Western world? If the Saudis start talking about the filthy "other" who wars against Islam and must be conquered and subjugated, won't that make them guilty of the same thing? And, um, show (once again) the bankruptcy of the whole Saidist thesis? Hmmm.

"Better Understanding With Non-Muslims Stressed," from Arab News, with thanks to Eschwapp:

RIYADH, 24 June 2005 — Participants who gathered in a preliminary session of the 5th National Forum for Dialogue which is to be held in Abha, have asked that the word “infidel” be substituted by “other” in all religious and media speeches in the Kingdom when referring to non-Muslims.

They also called for better upbringing according to universal Islamic teachings of children, where youngsters would learn how to properly deal with “others” and called for religious institutions in the Kingdom to acknowledge their mistakes and correct them in this matter, whether they were in the judicial system or during sermons in mosques. Furthermore, they said that the hatred taught about non-Muslims in the educational system and in the media should stop and called for a definition of “religious standards” on how to deal with non-Muslims.

Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, deputy head of the National Forum for Dialogue who attended Wednesday’s preliminary session in Abha, said that efforts must be exerted for permitting what he called “an open channel” where citizens would express their concerns and discuss matters of interest at all levels.

Dr. Naseef also stressed in his opening speech the importance of how we deal with others and others’ feelings about us. He also said it was important to know our shortcomings in our dealing with others, adding that it was equally important to improve the way we deal with others, no matter where they were or where they come from.

Abha’s preliminary session to the 5th National Forum for Dialogue under the title “We and the others” which will be held in several months time in the same city, was attended by some 50 male and female participants from different educational backgrounds, among which were religious scholars, thinkers, young men and women, and local residents.

Discussions held by the participants also shed light on the need to define who the “other” was before engaging in a dialogue with the other party.

One participant said that “before engaging in any conversation with another party, it is important to know what the other party knows about us and how he thinks about us,” adding that it was important to “reconstruct society and provide the chance for its citizens to educate themselves in a way that would be beneficial to everyone on how to deal with others.”...

Yet another participant, Dr. Ali Al-Moussa, said that many Saudis have used religious speech to promote their own ideas of rhetoric and hatred toward others, especially since many of them have not been educated well enough in religion and tend to abuse the term “sheikh” to spread wrong messages in the community.

Well, certainly the wrong messages are getting out. But this doesn't seem to have been any accident, and has happened at the highest levels. We have documented many instances here of hatred and vitriol against the "other" being featured on official Saudi TV. Will that change? I doubt it.

Dagnabbit, those fiendish Christian Reconstructionists are at it again, peddling their hate literature (no doubt featuring sentiments such as "Stone the Muslims!") right out in the open in Melbourne, Australia. What's that? Islamic jihadists? Hate material sold in a mosque? Oh! Well, that's because they are poor and disenfranchised, you see. It's their culture. How dare you impose your values on them!

From the Herald Sun, with thanks to Brian Holloway:

LITERATURE filled with hatred of Christians, Jews and non-Muslims is being sold at a mosque near a Melbourne home raided by ASIO. Books sold at the store attached to the Brunswick mosque tell Muslims they should "hate and take as enemies" non-Muslims, reject Jews and Christians, and learn to hate in order to properly love Allah.

The texts say Muslims should learn military tactics and suggest that if a person speaks ill of Islam it is acceptable to kill them.

They urge Muslims to strike back against "the barbaric onslaught from their enemies -- the Jews, Christians, atheists, secularists and others".

Pages are devoted to legitimising episodes of violence against Jews who insult Islam.

Note well how they use traditions of Muhammad to justify all this:

"A Jewish woman used to abuse the Prophet and disparage him. A man strangled her till she died. The Apostle of Allah declared that no recompense was payable for her blood," one book recounts.

A similar example is given of a man killing the mother of his two children because she "disparaged the Prophet"; he also was declared clear of any crime.

The article doesn't tell you, but the following are passages from the Qur'an. The first is 3:119; the second is 5:51:

"When they (non-Muslims) meet you, they say, 'We believe', but when they are alone, out of frustration and rage, they bite off the tips of their fingers because of you," one says.

"O you who believe! Do not take the Jews (Yahood) and Christians (Nasara) for friends (Awliyaa). They are Awliyaa to each other. And the one among you that turns to them is one of them."

Readers are instructed by the books not to feel compassion for non-Muslims, not to trust them, and not to speak well of them.

One book says faithful Muslims should learn military tactics.

Yes, just like the military maneuvers they're running through today down at the local Methodist church.

Also, as one might expect, one publication quotes the legendary forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

"Terror suspects held in Amsterdam and London" -- no doubt those dastardly Christian Reconstructionists up to their dirty work again. What's that? Islamic jihadists? Oh, well, then they're just reacting to American injustice. Set them free! From the Dutch Expatica, with thanks to Dutch Cares:

AMSTERDAM — A 22-year-old man has been arrested in Amsterdam as part of the investigation into a suspected Muslim terror group in the Netherlands.

The suspect was armed with a loaded machine pistol, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner told Parliament on Thursday.

Donner said the man of Moroccan ancestry has been of interest to the police since November 2004, the month filmmaker Theo van Gogh was assassinated in Amsterdam.

He is suspected of being a member of the Hofstadgroep, described by the police as a terrorist organisation.

The suspect was sitting in a car with two women aged 21 and 26. Both of them were also detained and are suspected of involvement in a terrorist organisation, the minister said.

Apart from the machine pistol — a mini machine gun — police also found two filled ammunition clips, a silencer and a box with 14 rounds of ammunition...

The arrests in Amsterdam, Donner said, were connected to the detention of a 32-year-old Dutchman by police in London on Wednesday.

This older man was arrested at the request of the Dutch authorities. He is wanted for questioning in relation to the investigation into the Hofstadgroep.

Several young Muslim men are in custody in the Netherlands on charges of belonging to the suspected terror group and planning attacks in the Netherlands...

While the Dutch authorities have declined to talk about the suspicions against him, Scotland Yard in London has revealed the man is suspected of recruiting people for terrorist activities. He is also suspected of involvement with firearms and falsification of documents.

Clash of civilizations alert. The sponsor doesn't mind, and the shirts with the logo are still available. But this is an indication of the kind of demands that are beginning to be made, and will continue to be made, and will ratchet steadily up. "Rangers drop Carling shirt logo for its Muslim supporters," from the Evening Times, with thanks to Stephen:

RANGERS have dropped the Carling logo from their replica shirts - for Muslim fans.

The club said it would sell unbranded tops to supporters who don't want to advertise beer on their chests.

The move comes after complaints from Muslims whose religion prohibits anything that promotes drinking.

Delighted fan Mansoor Ali, 24, said: "I really like the new Rangers top and want to buy one this summer, but as a Muslim I have a duty to follow Islamic teachings.

"So I am really looking forward to wearing a Rangers shirt with pride - and not associating myself with alcohol."

Mansoor has supported Rangers since he was five.

As a boy his dad refused to buy him a Rangers top because of the club's shirt sponsorship deal with McEwan's lager.

Now the MCB wants other teams to follow suit:

The Muslim Association of Britain today called on Celtic to follow Rangers' example - but said it was still worried about the sponsorship deal, struck by the Old Firm in 2003.

A spokesman said: "There is a wider issue about whether it is responsible for the teams to be promoting alcohol in this way, though Rangers' move is a welcome one.

"Full credit to the fans for taking up the issue with the clubs, and we hope that Celtic will also look after their Muslim following."

Celtic-mad Suleyman Dar wants the new Hoops top - but, like Mr Ali, doesn't feel comfortable advertising beer. He said: "I am still wearing an old NTL-sponsored top.

"It's a real shame because I would like to wear the latest strip."

A spokeswoman for Rangers said: "We will have a limited number of Rangers jerseys without the Carling logo available to purchase before the beginning of the season."

Coors Brewing, the company that owns the Carling brand, said: "This won't be a problem."

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in FrontPage today on our two-faced friends, the Saudis:

When American soldiers raided jihadist hideouts in northeastern Iraq this week, they found a number of foreign passports, including two from Saudi Arabia. Several weeks ago the Syrians arrested 300 Saudis before they could cross into Iraq and join the jihad against America. These are just two more bits of evidence that loyalties continue to be divided in Saudi Arabia — underscoring the urgency of the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005, which was introduced in the Senate recently by Senator Arlen Specter. The Saudis have been playing a double game since 9/11, maintaining their alliance with the U.S. while aiding the jihad worldwide; now Specter and the bill’s other sponsors are trying to put a stop to the duplicity.

This Act is intended to “halt Saudi support for institutions that fund, train, incite, encourage, or in any other way aid and abet terrorism, and to secure full Saudi cooperation in the investigation of terrorist incidents, and for other purposes.” It calls on the Saudis to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1373 of 2001, which directs all nations to “refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts,” as well as to take “the necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist acts” and “deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts.” It cites a 2002 report by the Council on Foreign Relations that notes that “for years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al-Qaeda, and for years, Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem.” A June 2004 CFR report lamented that “since September 11, 2001, we know of not a single Saudi donor of funds to terrorist groups who has been publicly punished.”

The bill — S. 1171 — notes not only that the Saudis are financing terrorist groups, but that they are also aggressively spreading the jihad ideology that fuels terrorism. And they’re doing so right in the United States. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), through its subsidiary the North American Islamic Trust, owns over 300 mosques in the United States. The Accountability Act cites the January 28, 2005 report from Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, which revealed that what is being taught in those mosques: “material promoting hatred, intolerance, and violence within United States mosques and Islamic centers.” What’s more, “these publications are often official publications of a Saudi ministry or distributed by the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C.” One tract featured in the report tells Muslims: “Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.” A high school textbook makes it absolutely clear where such teaching leads: “To be true Muslims, we must prepare and be ready for jihad in Allah’s way. It is the duty of the citizen and the government. The military education is glued to faith and its meaning, and the duty to follow it.”

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald evokes the great Cole Porter in reflecting on the dhimmi stance recently taken by the Venice Biennale:

Statues, like paintings of any living creature, are forbidden in Islam. If the Bamiyan Buddhas managed for centuries to survive in Islam, it was only because the technical wherewithal was lacking. Once the Taliban acquired enough Western-produced explosives, they could finish the job.

A little booklet, possibly the most pathetic guide to an art museum ever published, is the "Guide to the Kabul Museum." I have a copy, published in 1964, long before the Taliban arrived on the scene to see Islamic justice done. There are a few dozen pages, a handful of photographs. It is clear that the ancient Greco-Buddhist civilization of Afghanistan, and of all other non-Islamic civilizations, were reduced mostly to rubble -- the flying rubble that we see whenever we see pictures of Afghanistan.

For in Islam, the pre-Islamic or non-Islamic artifacts are of no interest, no valuable. They can be destroyed, they should be destroyed. The tens of thousands of Hindu temples destroyed by the Muslim invaders, a partial list of which was compiled by Sita Ram Goel, are perhaps the best-known example. But what of everything that might have gone into that Kabul Museum but never made it?

The greatest destruction of art works in human history is that wrought by Muslim conquerors on the non-Muslim lands and peoples they invaded, conquered, and subjugated.

What will happen in Europe if it is islamized? If there are already people removing statues, however banal those statues may be, from art expositions now, what will happen in 10 years? In 20 years? Already statues have been vandalized or destroyed by Muslims -- in the Piazza del Popolo, and in a church in northern France (a statue of Mary and Jesus). Muslims have been recorded discussing their plans to destroy a celebrated fresco in Bologna that depicted Muhammad in Hell. What else is happening, and is being suppressed from us by worried European governments, whose elites, having been responsible for permitting millions of what are clearly enemy aliens, a classic fifth column, behind our own lines, cannot bring themselves to recognize the problem, and instead are intent on hiding the full truth from their own populations -- populations that are getting fed up?

In France, one out of every three babies born is now a Muslim. In 20 years, one out of every three 20-year-olds will, therefore, be a Muslim. What is to be done? Anything? Nothing?

In 1946, the most advanced and tolerant government in Central or Eastern Europe, a model of right-thinking, the government of Czechoslovakia, issued the Benes Decree. By that decree, because of their actions in the recent war (taking the enemy's side) 3 million ethnic Germans (many, but not all, had been supporters of Hitler and Deutschtum) were expelled from lands that had been populated by ethnic Germans for 600 years. No one in the Western world dropped a tear or uttered a protest. Everyone understood. Everyone still understands today, save for a handful of German revanshisty (as they used to be called in Krokodil cartoons).

News from www.iran.org:

Jun 22: The pro-Rafsanjani forces are organizing in the United States, attempting to sway public opinion and the media into believing the legitimacy of the presidential election farce. It’s not surprising that they are counting on the support of the Left in America.

Please see the press release below for more details.

FDI believes this current “election” in Iran is more aptly termed a “selection,” since all eight candidates allowed to run (seven finally appeared on the ballot last Friday) were vetted and approved by the Islamic fundamentalist Council of Guardians. None of the selected candidates supports dismantling absolute clerical rule (Velayat-e faghih) or the establishment of a secular government.

Iranian-American organizations may want to spread the word among their own base and contacts of this latest attempt to spread pro-regime propaganda in the United States.

+++

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/newsprint.cgi?file=/news2005/0620-23.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JUNE 20, 2005, 11:18 AM
CONTACT: Institute for Public Accuracy
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Iran at a Big Crossroads

WASHINGTON - June 20 -

The runoff election in Iran's presidential race, coming up this Friday, has profound implications for the future.

€ SIMIN ROYANIAN, ciwhr@yahoo.com
Royanian is co-founder of Women for Peace and Justice in Iran. She said today: "President Bush had proclaimed the elections in Iran undemocratic and a hoax from the beginning. ... Mr. Bush, by claiming that the Islamic Republic has no legitimacy, undermined the attempts of the reformist candidates at opening the possibility of normalization of relations. The people of Iran demonstrated that they are involved in deciding their destiny and they are a force to be reckoned with. The fact that the votes were spread among the candidates, necessitating a runoff, is another sign that the voters were not forced into voting for one pre-selected candidate. The result of the runoff election next Friday is very important since the frontrunner Rafsanjani promotes more liberalization and attempts to normalize U.S./Iran relations, while the second candidate represents the hardliners with no interest in open dialogue."

€ KAVEH EHSANI, kavehehsani@yahoo.com, http://www.merip.org
Ehsani is a research scholar at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is on the editorial boards of Middle East Report and Goft-o-gu (Dialogue) journal in Iran, and he is the author of a number of articles about Iran. Ehsani said today: "Despite some irregularities the election results in Iran probably show an accurate map of the political opinion in the country. These results show that conservative forces have managed to put together an effective nationwide political machine that consistently delivers voters. However, by the same token, the conservative vote has a maximum ceiling. As reformers, moderate conservatives, and formerly apathetic voters flock to support Rafsanjani against a 'fundamentalist' alternative, chances are that Rafsanjani will win with a strong hand, by posing as the savior of the nation against the dual threats of domestic extremism, and an effective international statesman able to neutralize the external military threats of the United States."

€ NORMAN SOLOMON, norman@accuracy.org, http://www.normansolomon.com
Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, was in Tehran for 10 days until yesterday. He spoke with hundreds of Iranians spanning the political and economic spectrum, including voters, reform activists, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the front-running presidential candidate. Solomon said today: "The Bush administration has been eager to dismiss the Iranian presidential election as meaningless, even though the election has included significant elements of democracy. The White House seems to be primarily interested in setting an agenda for military confrontation." Solomon is the author of the new book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."

We've heard this before. Our forces seem to be closing in on Mullah Omar or even Bin Laden himself, only to have them elude capture. From Reuters:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghan and U.S. forces surrounded an area in Afghanistan on Thursday where senior commanders of elusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar were thought to be hiding, Afghan security officials said.

The operation, backed by U.S. helicopter gunships, followed a big U.S.-backed offensive that killed more than 100 militants in the same region of the border between Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul provinces in the past three days, the officials said.

Those holed up in the Dai Chopan area included Mullah Dadullah, a member of the Taliban's 10-man leadership council headed by Omar, and Mullah Brother, another commander thought close to the Taliban leader, the Defence Ministry said.

Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ishaq Paiman identified the others as Mullah Abdul Hakim, Mullah Abdul Hanan and Mullah Abdul Basir. Mullah is a title for a Muslim cleric used by many top Taliban members.

Maybe that's because they ARE clerics AND terrorists at the same time. Is anybody in government connecting the dots? Porter? Rummy? Anyone?

From the Miami Herald:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - One of Saudi Arabia's most-wanted suspected terrorists was killed by a U.S. airstrike in northwestern Iraq, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq said, and two car bombs outside Shiite mosques in central Baghdad killed 15 and wounded 28 Thursday, police said.

The latest violence followed a series of car bombs late Wednesday, including four that exploded within minutes of one another. At least 23 people were killed in western Baghdad's Shula neighborhood and a nearby suburb.

The Web statement said Abdullah Mohammed Rashid al-Roshoud was killed in fighting near Qaim, on the border with Syria. It was signed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most notorious terrorist leader in Iraq.

The statement did not say when al-Roshoud was killed, but U.S. forces have launched a series of offensives near Qaim in past weeks against militants coming across the border.

Al-Roshoud slipped into Iraq in April, according to the posting, the authenticity of which could not be confirmed.

The Saudi militant and a group of mujahedeen "killed some of the Crusaders until the enemies of God had to withdraw."

"When the Crusaders could not enter the area, the only thing they could do was bombard the mujahedeen with warplanes," it said. "Our sheik (al-Roshoud) got what he wished" - martyrdom.

Al-Roshoud had been No. 24 on a list of the 26 most-wanted terrorist leaders put out by Saudi Arabia two years ago and was one of only three militants on the list still at large. He was one of the main theologians for al-Qaida's network in Saudi Arabia, calling for a holy war against the Saudi royal family and Western interests in the Persian Gulf...

Small business as cover for Hizbullah in Ecuador. From AP via the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Two Stellas.

Police broke up an international cocaine ring led by a Lebanese restaurant owner suspected of raising money for Hezbollah.

Ecuadorean authorities declined to elaborate Tuesday on the group's alleged links to terrorist activities "until further investigation."

But an internal police report obtained by The Associated Press said preliminary evidence "confirms the relationship between this organization and the terrorist movement Hezbollah." The document said the gang sent "up to 70 percent of its profits to the Islamic group."

Authorities detected the operation in September. The group smuggled cocaine principally to Europe and Asia in shipments valued at US$1 million each, the report said.

Anti-narcotics police on Tuesday presented a lineup of the alleged Lebanese ringleader, Rady Zaiter, and five other male suspects from Lebanon, Nigeria, Algiers and Turkey, in addition to an Ecuadorean woman.

The Ecuadorean investigation led to related arrests of 19 people in Brazil and the United States, the report said.

According to the report, Zaiter "had organized a large narcoterrorist infrastructure," using his Arab food restaurant in northern Quito as a front...

From Reuters, with thanks to Jefffrey Imm.

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia declared victory on Tuesday in its internal campaign against Southeast Asia's most feared Islamic militant group, but said there was room for improved U.S. cooperation in the global war on terror.

"We have dismantled the JI basic structure," Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak told Reuters, referring to Jemaah Islamiah, a group blamed for a series of attacks in neighbouring Indonesia, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

"But we cannot be too complacent," he added.

"There could be certain cells (that re-establish themselves) later on if we don't monitor the situation carefully."

Malaysia is viewed as having effectively used skills it acquired in ending a bitter communist insurgency in the 1960s against Islamic militancy, but some of its most wanted militants fled to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Malaysians Azahari Husin, a bomb-making expert, and Noordin M. Top, another JI member, are thought by Indonesian police to be planning another attack there. Police suspect Azahari made the bombs used in Bali and in the suicide bombing of a Jakarta hotel.

"We would like them arrested as soon as possible," Najib said in an interview in his parliamentary office.

"When we started to pursue them, or when they realised they were being pursued, they ran away to Indonesia. We have given the Indonesians as much information as we know about them but the actual interdiction of these people must be done by Indonesia."

Australia and the United States recently issued warnings to their citizens in Indonesia, saying intelligence suggested that terrorists were in the advanced stages of planning attacks...

From AP:

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico - A Lebanese-born man detained this week on Mexico's Baja California peninsula is believed linked to extremist organizations with ties to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Mexican prosecutors said.

Amer Haykel told acquaintances he was a pilot who was wandering the world on a tight budget. He seemed like "a straightforward person," said Gabriel Garcia of the Cabo San Lucas fire station, where Haykel had sought shelter for several days.

Mexico's federal attorney general's office said late Tuesday that U.S. authorities linked the Lebanese-born British citizen "to extremist groups believed to be involved with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York."

It did not say if he faced any charges or if he was believed to be personally involved in any terrorist actions...

Haykel was arrested on Monday at the volunteer fire station of Todos Santos, a small town on the Pacific coast about 35 miles northwest of Cabo San Lucas that is known as a haven for U.S. expatriates...

Officials have long expressed concerns that terrorists might use Mexico or Central America to stage an attack on the United States...

Last week, Pakistani Arif Ali Durrani, 55, was arrested in the beach resort of Rosarito, across the border from San Diego.

A former U.S. resident, Durrani was handed over to U.S. officials, who charged him with illegally exporting parts used to cool fighter jet engines. Durrani has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Durrani served five years in prison for selling missile parts to Iran in the 1980s...

From CBS News .

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi security forces on Tuesday killed two suspected terrorists accused of fatally shooting a senior security official outside his home, the government said.

The suspects were killed in a shootout in the Red Sea city of Jiddah, the official Saudi Press Agency quoted the Interior Ministry as saying. Three policemen were wounded in the exchange.

On Saturday, gunmen killed Lt. Col. Mubarak al-Sawwat as he was leaving his home in the holy city of Mecca. The Interior Ministry blamed the killing on the ``deviant bunch'' a Saudi euphemism for the al-Qaida terror group...

From the Irish Independent, .

A WOMAN on a suicide bombing mission was caught at an Israeli checkpoint with 20lbs of high explosives hidden in her underwear...

Security officials working at the Erez crossing, the main transit point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, said they became suspicious of al-Biss because her gait was strange.

Fearing she might be a suicide bomber, they isolated her and ordered her to strip. The images taken from a security camera showed her removing her black head scarf and gown. As she continued, the explosives were shown sewn into her underwear. It is possible she tried to detonate the device as she stripped only for the bomb to malfunction. Army sappers took away the device and blew it up safely.

Residents of Gaza are only allowed through the Erez checkpoint subject to strict rules. Al-Biss was being allowed through to receive treatment at an Israeli hospital after she was disfigured at her refugee camp home when a gas canister exploded on a fire while she was cooking.

Colonel Avi Levy, a senior Israeli army commander, said extremists were "cynically exploiting" Israel's humanitarian gesture.

During her television interview, which lasted more than an hour, al-Biss appeared confident and defiant but became shaky.

"My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she began. But she became tearful and began to contradict herself. At one point she denied she wanted to carry out an attack. When she denied any involvement in a suicide bombing, her minders intervened.

It seems she meant to target the Israeli Beersheba hospital where she was to receive treatment for her burns.

An NBC News analysis finds 55 percent hail from Saudi Arabia. From NBC News, with thanks to Two Stellas. Lisa Myers reports.

An NBC News analysis of hundreds of foreign fighters who died in Iraq over the last two years reveals that a majority came from the same country as most of the 9/11 hijackers — Saudi Arabia.

Among the suicide bombers was Ahmed al-Ghamdi, a one-time medical student and son of a Saudi diplomat. In December 2004, he climbed into a truck in Mosul and blew himself up.

On an Internet video, another Saudi says goodbye to his mother, then drives an ambulance full of explosives into a building.

They are among more than 400 militants from 21 countries whose deaths were celebrated on Islamic Web sites over the last two years.

"By far the nationality that comes up over and over again is Saudi Arabia," says Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News terrorism expert.

The NBC News analysis of Web site postings found that 55 percent of foreign insurgents came from Saudi Arabia, 13 percent from Syria, 9 percent from North Africa and 3 percent from Europe.

Of these one has been traced to Britain.

The U.S. military also says Saudi Arabia and Syria are the leading sources of insurgents. An Army official provided a list of the top 10 countries to NBC News but would not release the numbers of foreign fighters from each. The top 10, alphabetically, are: Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.

"You have some from poor families, some jobless," says Kohlmann. "You also have individuals that come from wealthy families, that come from a life of privilege and substance and material goods and material wealth."...

Last night I spoke at the New York Tolerance Center in Manhattan -- ironically enough, under protection from the NYPD after a death threat. Some New Yorkers, apparently, were not interested in tolerating my calling attention to the activities and goals of the global jihad network.

Irony was heaped on irony when I was confronted after the talk by a couple of self-righteous young people who informed me that America is the real global terrorist threat, and that I should be just as concerned about Jerry Falwell as about somebody like Ayatollah Sistani, whose equation of unbelievers as unclean in the same sense as dogs, pigs, and excrement I had made reference to during the question and answer period. I will be writing more about my exchange with this pair, since it was indicative of some prevailing attitudes that are important to address. But I mention them in this connection because when I saw this New York Observer article, "Local Insurgents: ‘Islamic Thinkers’ Menace Gay N.Y.," (thanks to JP for the link), I thought of them again: they're anxious to make an equation between Christian and Muslim extremists, while glossing over the fact that Falwell and others whom they like to mention do not call for the deaths of homosexuals, while these people do. This demonstrates the bankruptcy and, ultimately, the danger of such moral equivalence arguments, which are nonetheless ubiquitous today in discussions of Islamic terrorism. But their ultimate effect is to divert attention away from those who are actually committing violence and threatening to do so, and shifting it to others who do not commit or preach violence, as well as to people like me who are merely calling attention to the violence, hatred, and intolerance that is daily manifested by adherents of the jihad ideology.

On the evening of July 11, 2004, Kristine Withers walked down 37th Avenue, a main drag in Jackson Heights, Queens, and passed what had become a familiar sight: a group of tables set up on the sidewalk by the Islamic Thinkers Society, a local group of militant Islamists. On the tables, copies of the Koran and books espousing the group’s strict religious beliefs shared space with tracts on Zionism, pamphlets on the dangers of homosexuality, and signs bearing messages like "Your Terrorists Are Our Heroes."

Ms. Withers, who identifies herself as a lesbian and a political conservative, was offended by the group’s message. The Islamic Thinkers Society had become a regular feature at local gay-pride parades, where they’ve called for the castration and death of gay men, according to several witnesses who spoke to The Observer. But Ms. Withers said it was as much the anti-American messages as the anti-gay ones that riled her up.

"To me, it’s synonymous with the Nazis recruiting on 42nd Street during World War II," she said of her antagonists.

So, in another installment of the then-yearlong series of hostile exchanges between her and the group, she decided to do something. At one point in the exchange, she told the dozen or so bearded young men who make up the group that the prophet Muhammad was a pedophile. They called her a "Christian bitch," by her account. Then she knocked over a sign and stepped on it. Two young bearded men, members of the group, pulled the sign out from under her, sending her flying to the ground.

Soon, police arrived and took a statement from Mohamed Bahi, a student at Queens College who told The Observer that he is not a member of the group. Ms. Withers was charged with incitement to riot and four other counts. Queens District Attorney Richard Brown assigned the case to the unit of his office that handles bias crimes, though Ms. Withers argued that the Queens District Attorney was going after the wrong person for bias.

The Islamic Thinkers Society wouldn’t answer questions about the confrontation, but members of the group relived their confrontations with Ms. Withers on their password-protected Web site, hundreds of pages of which were provided to The Observer by the SITE Institute in Washington, which monitors online extremist groups. In their discussions, group members referred to Ms. Withers as "it" and a "dirty she-male."

"When ‘it’ came back with fists up and ready for action, it got what it asked for," wrote the site’s administrator, who goes by the name "Islamic Revival" and was apparently among the people on the scene. He described "a couple of slaps and snuffs in the face and a few other hits by a brother NOT from us but a brother who sells Islamic Books near us."

"They said what they said," explained Patrick Clark, a spokesman for Mr. Brown, of the Islamic Thinkers’ anti-gay statements. "But there’s also evidence to indicate that there was a crime that occurred, and that the defendant stomped on merchandise and religious artifacts and interrupted the prayer service and shouted epithets."

The case has since been resolved: Ms. Withers pled guilty this year and enrolled in anger-management classes, she told The Observer, to avoid the expense of a lawyer.

The dispute between an irascible lesbian conservative from Queens and a militant new group well on the fringes of the city’s Muslim community might appear to be a marginal conflict. But to New York’s gays and to some of its Muslim leaders, the scene in Jackson Heights bears a worrying similarity to communal conflicts that are challenging the idea of tolerance across Europe, with particular flashpoints in Holland and Scandinavia. There, young immigrants and the children of immigrants have been drawn to a more radical Islamic ideology than that of their parents. On the extreme fringes, these young men have committed acts of violence against Jews and gays, and in a case that shocked Europe, one young Dutchman of Moroccan origin murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in an Amsterdam street.

"It’s almost a cliché to define it like this, but in the end it’s a question of whether you can tolerate intolerance," said Leon de Winter, a Dutch novelist who has written on the Van Gogh murder. "We are defending the openness, the diversity of this society against tendencies from other cultures, in which this kind of openness which we celebrate is being regarded as a threat."

In this conflict, gays have become canaries in the ideological coal mine. Western liberals have tended to cut Muslim groups slack on their ideological pronouncements, in part out of sympathy with some of their causes—the insurgencies in Chechnya and the Middle East, for example—and in part out of a sense that anti-Muslim sentiment in the West is a more pressing problem than anything Muslims themselves might do.

But the rise of gay bashing on European streets has pushed the question of tolerance a step further and led some to question their reflexive defense of a put-upon minority. It has also opened up a heated debate within the gay community, and among liberals in general, over whether the proliferation of intolerant strains of Islam requires liberals in the West to take a harder line on issues like immigration and assimilation.

For some conservative intellectuals, rising anti-gay violence on the streets of Amsterdam, for example, comes as a kind of vindication.

"For liberals, the violent anti-gay hostility of their fundamentalist Muslim allies may be the first thing that really makes them realize they’re not on the same page," said the conservative gay writer Bruce Bawer, who lives in Oslo, and who is writing a book entitled While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within.

Others argue that the rise of conservative Islam in Europe is, in part, a reaction to Europe’s inability to integrate its immigrant populations. By this argument, America is different, given its openness to newcomers and its different set of Muslim immigrants.

"American Muslims are far better educated and far richer than average," said Muqtedar Khan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, who dismissed the Islamic Thinkers and their ilk as "small pockets of angry youth."

But here in New York, perhaps the most European of American cities in its traditional tolerance, some disturbing signs have emerged on the line between gay and Muslim communities. The Islamic Thinkers’ Web site is full of suggestions of anti-gay violence: "Man I can’t stop thinking: shoot the qawm of Lut," wrote one of the site’s moderators on May 20, using a Koranic reference to the story of Lot and Sodom....

The Islamic Thinkers, meanwhile, are not too new to American politics to play another familiar card: victimhood.

The group declined to respond to requests from a reporter to discuss their beliefs and their conflict with Ms. Withers. Instead, the group posted to its Web site (www.islamicthinkers.com) an e-mail from The Observer and warned that "an article would be published to deliberately misrepresent Islamic Thinkers Society and its views."

Later, the group posted a similar response to a forthcoming New York Times article: "Again and again, the Muslims of Islamic Thinkers Society have denied any interviews to the media," the Web site read. "Due to the unavailability of any direct source of information, even the reputable media outlets have turned into tabloids. The goal of the media is to suppress Muslims who stand up for injustice is vindicated even more now."

Even members of the Muslim community who have had limited interactions with the Islamic Thinkers are unsure of their origins or their size. The regular group, which spends weekend afternoons on that Jackson Heights street corner, is composed of about a dozen young Muslims, most of them men, some in traditional dress. Some of the group’s members are apparently American-born, and some are converts to Islam.

The Islamic Thinkers gained national notoriety earlier this year when they posted a video on the Internet—titled "Operation Desecrate American Flag"—that depicted them stomping an American flag into the curb and shouting that the "flag represents the Crusader war on Islam headed by the United State government."

The group has also become a fixture at Queens gay events, holding signs with messages like "Allah Will Destroy Nations That Allow Homosexuality" and "Today: Homosexuality; Tomorrow: Pedophilia; What’s Next? Bestiality?" at the borough’s Pride Parade, which runs through Jackson Heights. Last year, screaming matches erupted between the two sides; this year, police kept them apart.

"Somebody in the crowd started shouting ‘Go back to Osama bin Laden!’ or whatever, and these guys started shouting back," recalled Ayaz Ahmed, a gay Pakistani Muslim who attended this year’s parade. "I was like, ‘Oh, my God—what’s happening here?’"

But even some American Muslim groups who maintain that Islam forbids homosexuality have little time for the Islamic Thinkers. The executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Wissam Nasr, said the group’s style and the destruction of an American flag have caused "dismay" in the city’s Muslim community. The draft of a letter to the Islamic Thinkers, he added, is circulating among religious and communal leaders, and it tells the group: "You really have to know the disapproval that you’re meeting in the Muslim community."…

Other community groups were less willing to distance themselves from the Islamic Thinkers.

Adem Carroll of the Queens-based Islamic Circle of North America, for instance, said that the group was "not my cup of tea," but described it as "a sign of the alienation and anger that’s in the community, adding: "I think the approach of the Bush administration does not help.

"If you’re quoting me, I would hope that whatever I say doesn’t sound like I’m condemning them," Mr. Carroll concluded.

Logged and noted, Mr. Carroll.

From the BBC, with thanks to M.A.

The government has survived a backbench revolt over its plans for a new law to ban the incitement to religious hatred.

An amendment from a coalition of Tory and Lib Dem MPs to block the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill failed by 303 votes to 246, giving a majority of 57.

Critics, including comic actor Rowan Atkinson, say the measure will limit freedom of expression and stop them from telling religious jokes.

But Home Secretary Charles Clarke says the bill protects "people not faiths".

The bill received a second reading by 303 votes to 247 - a government majority of 56 - and will now go on to its committee stage...

From the Wall Street Journal, "Prophet of Decline: An interview with Oriana Fallaci"

NEW YORK--Oriana Fallaci faces jail. In her mid-70s, stricken with a cancer that, for the moment, permits only the consumption of liquids--so yes, we drank champagne in the course of a three-hour interview--one of the most renowned journalists of the modern era has been indicted by a judge in her native Italy under provisions of the Italian Penal Code which proscribe the "vilipendio," or "vilification," of "any religion admitted by the state."

In her case, the religion deemed vilified is Islam, and the vilification was perpetrated, apparently, in a book she wrote last year--and which has sold many more than a million copies all over Europe--called "The Force of Reason." Its astringent thesis is that the Old Continent is on the verge of becoming a dominion of Islam, and that the people of the West have surrendered themselves fecklessly to the "sons of Allah." So in a nutshell, Oriana Fallaci faces up to two years' imprisonment for her beliefs--which is one reason why she has chosen to stay put in New York. Let us give thanks for the First Amendment...

"When I was given the news," Ms. Fallaci says of her recent indictment, "I laughed. Bitterly, of course, but I laughed. No amusement, no surprise, because the trial is nothing else but a demonstration that everything I've written is true." An activist judge in Bergamo, in northern Italy, took it upon himself to admit a complaint against Ms. Fallaci that even the local prosecutors would not touch. The complainant, one Adel Smith--who, despite his name, is Muslim, and an incendiary public provocateur to boot--has a history of anti-Fallaci crankiness, and is widely believed to be behind the publication of a pamphlet, "Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci," which exhorts Muslims to "eliminate" her. (Ironically, Mr. Smith, too, faces the peculiar charge of vilipendio against religion--Roman Catholicism in his case--after he described the Catholic Church as "a criminal organization" on television. Two years ago, he made news in Italy by filing suit for the removal of crucifixes from the walls of all public-school classrooms, and also, allegedly, for flinging a crucifix out of the window of a hospital room where his mother was being treated. "My mother will not die in a room where there is a crucifix," he said, according to hospital officials.)
Ms. Fallaci speaks in a passionate growl: "Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty." Such words--"invaders," "invasion," "colony," "Eurabia"--are deeply, immensely, Politically Incorrect; and one is tempted to believe that it is her tone, her vocabulary, and not necessarily her substance or basic message, that has attracted the ire of the judge in Bergamo (and has made her so radioactive in the eyes of Europe's cultural elites).

"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder," the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote, and these words could certainly be Ms. Fallaci's. She is in a black gloom about Europe and its future: "The increased presence of Muslims in Italy, and in Europe, is directly proportional to our loss of freedom." There is about her a touch of Oswald Spengler, the German philosopher and prophet of decline, as well as a flavor of Samuel Huntington and his clash of civilizations. But above all there is pessimism, pure and unashamed. When I ask her what "solution" there might be to prevent the European collapse of which she speaks, Ms. Fallaci flares up like a lit match. "How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did?" She then says "Phwah, phwah," and gestures at slashing her wrists. "He committed suicide!" Seneca was accused of being involved in a plot to murder the emperor Nero. Without a trial, he was ordered by Nero to kill himself. One senses that Ms. Fallaci sees in Islam the shadow of Nero. "What could Seneca do?" she asks, with a discernible shudder. "He knew it would end that way--with the fall of the Roman Empire. But he could do nothing."...

"I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." I had asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion."...

Read it all.

From UPI, .

Jordan's Islamic legislators have asked King Abdullah to allow Hamas leaders who were evicted six years ago to return to Jordan, a legislator said Wednesday.

Azzam Honeidi, head of the Islamic bloc in Parliament, told UPI that the 17 legislators made the request at a meeting with the Jordanian monarch Tuesday night.

He said the Islamic legislators raised the issue on the grounds that Hamas is a strong political movement in the Palestinian territories, with influence in the Arab and Islamic world.

Honeidi said the bloc pointed out to the king that "even the United States and Europe started establishing contacts with Hamas in view of its wide popular base among the Palestinians."

The legislators also argued that the evicted Hamas leaders held Jordanian nationality and according to the constitution no Jordanian should be expelled from the country...

Jordan expelled Hamas leaders, including Politburo chief Khaled Meshaal, in 1999. It later agreed to allow the return of those who held Jordanian nationality on condition they quit their positions in the movement and stopped any political or media activity.

From AP, with thanks to EPG.

CAIRO, Egypt - Iraq's most feared terror group said Tuesday that it has formed a unit of potential suicide attackers who are exclusively Iraqis, an apparent bid to deflect criticism that most suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners.

Al-Qaida in Iraq announced the unit in an Internet posting signed by Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, the group's purported spokesman. The statement could not be authenticated, but it appeared on an Islamic Web site known for carrying messages from militant groups.

"In response to God's decree, and the heavy insistence of the (Iraqi) brothers and their longing for paradise, the Ansar platoon from the land of Iraq has been formed," the posting said.

"Dozens hurried to register their names to meet their God," the posting said. It told of one Iraqi youth who had rebuked his leader for failing to give him a suicide assignment, telling him he would complain to God on the Day of Judgment because "you prevented me from meeting my God."

The U.S. military has said foreign fighters are a small percentage — perhaps one in 10 — of the insurgents fighting the U.S. presence in Iraq. They do a disproportionate amount of killing, however, in part because they are more likely to carry out suicide bombings.

U.S. and other analysts say the foreign fighters are primarily Islamic militants waging what they regard as jihad or holy war, while the much larger homegrown, mostly Sunni Arab, insurgency has tended to be motivated more by political grievance and factional rivalry...

From Reuters:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghan and U.S. troops backed by warplanes blasted Taliban hideouts for a second day on Wednesday, killing scores of militants in some of the bloodiest fighting in years, officials said.

Kandahar's deputy police chief, General Salim Khan, leading about 400 police troops, said by satellite telephone from the scene that at least 64 Taliban fighters had been killed since Tuesday and 30 captured.

Two Afghan soldiers died and six U.S. soldiers were wounded in the operation where Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces meet, aimed at checking a surge in violence ahead of Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

"This is the heaviest bombing and fighting I have seen since the fall of the Taliban," Khan said, referring to the overthrow of the Taliban government in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces.

Hundreds of people have died in a surge in militant violence in recent months, raising concerns about the elections, the next big step in Afghanistan's difficult path to stability...

From the New Duranty Times, with thanks to all who sent this in.

The young Muslim men, with beards and bullhorns, work the streets of Jackson Heights on the weekends. They surface at parades and protests around the city, loudly declaring America the enemy and advocating for an Islamic state. Several weeks ago, they publicly tore up an American flag as payback for the reported desecration of the Koran at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Their own videos of violence against Muslims, one with the title "Muslim Massacres," have recently appeared on Queens Public Television.

In the annals of New York City's political outspokenness and fringe-group culture, the Islamic Thinkers Society may seem unremarkable at first glance. But after 9/11, in the city most damaged and unsettled by the terrorist attacks, the emergence of this young, however limited, Muslim-American voice is strikingly bold. In its fliers and on its Web site, the group describes itself as an "intellectual and political nonviolent organization," but it bears a strong resemblance to Islamist movements in England that try to unite Muslims by inciting anger...

The group's spokesman, Ariful Islam, said he was a 21-year-old student at La Guardia Community College who came to Queens from Bangladesh when he was 8. He said the group's purpose was promoting unity among Muslims and that the F.B.I. had been monitoring it for two years. The F.B.I. would not comment.

"What they're worried about is, are we recruiting for jihad," Mr. Islam said. "Through our past couple of years we have never recruited anyone to go to a foreign land. We have always made that clear through our activities. We have always stressed nonviolent means. However, that does not mean that we don't address American foreign policy, and we strongly disagree with their policies."

After years of quietly ignoring the group, the city's Muslim leaders began to speak out against it this week after reports of the flag desecration. Imams, activists and other leaders worry that the group is misrepresenting Islam, sending a negative message to Muslim youths and damaging a hard-earned, fragile trust between the Muslim community and those in law enforcement...

Walid Phares writes in FrontPage about why the elections in Lebanon might not be all they're cracked up to be, with thanks to EPG.

The last round of legislative elections ended June 19 in North Lebanon, completing a month-long process that gave the country a new assembly of 128 members. No violence marred the four rounds of voting; however, charges of corruption were raised, and many in the West, including those within the circles that supported the "Cedar Revolution," are struggling to understand the results. Any honest observer must admit Lebanon’s politics are complex. Unfortunately, the simple analysis of the elections that the media offers is not completely accurate...

The international media has reported the same basic analysis about the elections: according to election returns and party affiliations, the "Lebanese national opposition," led by Saadeddine Hariri carried 72 seats, a clear majority, to form the next Lebanese government. Hariri’s allies include the Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt (14 seats), the Lebanese Forces Party of jailed leader Samir Geagea (6 seats), and the Qornet Shehwan grouping (3 seats). According to this analysis, the "opposition" to the present Syrian-dominated government won the election, which therefore shifted the Lebanese to a moderate, pro-Western sphere.

This analysis is based on political reports out of Lebanon since the assassination in February of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, reports which included the million-plus people who flocked to downtown Beirut on March 14 to demand their independence from Syria. In the minds of viewers and governments around the world, those who led the protests that day are the heirs to a free, democratic Lebanon. Hence, Hariri, the son of the assassinated leader, and Jumblatt were named the leaders of the anti-Syrian movement. All other groups participating in the march were defined as followers. When Hariri’s election lists scored a majority in parliament, the perception was that the anti-Syrians had won...

Another, more complete analysis of the Lebanese elections, however, paints a different picture. The Lebanese political system is a labyrinth, notorious for its complexities, and one that is often oversimplified by observers or redrawn to match accepted worldviews. It is still, in fact, unclear whether the emerging parliamentary alliance will deliver democracy and keep Syria at bay...

Read it all.

From CNN, "'High risk' of WMD attack in decade," .

WASHINGTON -- The chance of an attack with a weapon of mass destruction somewhere in the world in the next 10 years runs as high as 70 percent, arms experts have predicted in a U.S. survey.

Most of the more than 80 experts surveyed in the report released on Tuesday believed one or two new countries will acquire nuclear weapons in the next five years, with two to five countries joining the nuclear club during the next decade.

The survey, commissioned by U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, also showed that four out of five people said their country was not spending enough on non-proliferation efforts.

The most likely scenario for a nuclear attack would be for terrorists to use a weapon they made themselves with material acquired on the black market, the survey said.

"The results underscore the need to improve security around tactical nuclear weapons and nuclear material in Russia and expand our ability to detect transfer of weapons or materials from rogue states to terrorist organizations," said a summary of a report outlining the survey results...

And from the New Duranty Times, "U.S. Borders Vulnerable, Witnesses Say," with thanks to EPG.

WASHINGTON - The federal government's efforts to prevent terrorists from smuggling a nuclear weapon into the United States are so poorly managed and reliant on ineffective equipment that the nation remains extremely vulnerable to a catastrophic attack, scientists and a government auditor warned a House committee on Tuesday.

The assessment, coming nearly four years after the September 2001 attacks and after the investment of about $800 million by the United States government, prompted expressions of frustration and disappointment from lawmakers...

Four federal departments - Homeland Security, Defense, Energy and State - are involved in a global campaign to try to prevent the illicit acquisition, movement and use of radioactive materials, which includes efforts to prevent theft of nuclear materials from former Soviet stockpiles and inspecting cargo containers on arrival from around the world.

Dirty bombs, crude devices that widely spread low levels of radiation, are relatively easy to detect. But highly enriched uranium, a crucial ingredient in a nuclear bomb, could easily be shielded with less than a quarter-inch of lead, making it "very likely to escape detection by passive radiation monitors" now installed at ports and border stations, Benn Tannenbaum, a physicist and senior program associate at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, testified at Tuesday's hearing.

The monitors are unable to distinguish between naturally occurring radiation from everyday items like ceramic tile and dangerous material like enriched uranium...

While alleged PIJ representative Sami Al-Arian is tried in Florida, Israel deals with them on the ground in Gaza. From Reuters:

JERUSALEM - Israel said on Wednesday it had resumed an assassination policy against some Palestinian militants and could mount air strikes with the risk of civilian casualties to ensure its Gaza pullout does not come under fire.

The Israeli threats, prompted by a flareup of Islamic Jihad militant attacks on Jewish settlers in Gaza, underscored the deterioration of a four-month-old ceasefire and followed an acrimonious Israeli-Palestinian summit.

Israel shelved "targeted killings" of militants in February as part of a truce deal. But resurgent violence has raised the specter of disruption to Israel's planned August withdrawal from Gaza and dimmed hopes for "road map" peace talks afterwards.

Word that the assassination policy had been dusted off came with Israeli confirmation of a failed missile strike on Tuesday while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were holding tense talks in Jerusalem.

"There was an attempt in Gaza to intercept an (Islamic Jihad) activist yesterday. It was unsuccessful," Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra said. "An opportunity presented itself. Any means to neutralize the organization are relevant and possible."

Islamic Jihad has resumed mortar bomb and rocket salvoes against Jewish settlements in Gaza in what it calls retaliation for continued Israeli raids to capture wanted militants.

"The attempt yesterday to kill an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza signaled the resumption of the targeted killing policy," an Israeli security source told Reuters...

Joe Kaufman asks some tough questions of Ahmed Bedier, the Communications Director for Florida CAIR, concerning Sami Al-Arian and reports to us in FrontPage, with thanks to EPG.

Ahmed Bedier, the Communications Director for the Florida Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Florida) and the Director of CAIR’s Tampa office, was being featured in a panel discussion on U.S. security and civil liberties in Miami, so we hopped in the car and headed south. The speakers’ panel, which took place June 18, 2005, was being sponsored by the League of Women Voters. Besides Bedier, the event included a Florida State Representative, someone from Homeland Security, an ACLU rep and a Haitian advocate.

Each participant took his/her turn at the podium to speak. You could tell, by the reactions from the crowd to the various speakers, where the audience’s sympathies lied. While Bedier, the ACLU rep and the Hatian advocate received much applause, the State Representative got a couple polite laughs and the Homeland Security agent found mostly cordial silence. This was basically a CAIR-skewed audience.

Bedier’s speech was a rail against the Patriot Act. He stated, “The editors of Esquire Magazine recently wrote, ‘If there’s one thing that always comes out of a terrible tragedy, it’s really dumb legislation.’” He said that “Muslims in America have been made the scapegoats in the witch-hunt that ensued [after 9/11].” He blamed September 11th on the U.S. government. He stated, “The bottom line is the Patriot Act is not working. And to simply give the power to renew it – it’s not the tools. The tools are you have to have better intelligence. The people that failed on 9/11 was the government.”

After the speeches, it was announced that the panel was going to take questions. I didn’t waste a moment; I quickly made my way to the mike up front.

KAUFMAN: “This question is for Ahmed Bedier from CAIR. When the media looks for a quote concerning Sami Al-Arian, they go to you. My question is, how did you become the spokesperson for the leader of the North American faction of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the co-founders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad? And if [Al-Arian] is found guilty in the trial he is in right now in Tampa – where you’re from – will you, if he is found guilty, will you then still like this man and support him?

Bedier then proceeds to bob, weave and duck the question. Read it all.

Update on the infamous Australian Religious Vilification case. Danny Nalliah stands firm as reported in the Herald Sun, with thanks to all who sent this in.

A CHRISTIAN pastor who has been ordered to apologise for vilifying Muslims says he will go to jail rather than say sorry for his comments.

Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) deputy president Michael Higgins ordered two pastors of an evangelical order, Catch the Fire Ministry, to apologise for comments they made in a speech, on a website and in a newsletter.

In a landmark ruling, the tribunal found Muslims were vilified by claims that Muslims were training to take over Australia, encouraging domestic violence and that Islam was an inherently violent religion.

The case was the first to be heard by VCAT since the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act took effect in Victoria at the start of 2002.

Outside the tribunal, Danny Nalliah – one of the pastors taken to VCAT by the Islamic Council – described himself as a martyr and said he would go to jail before apologising.

"Right from the inception, we have said that this law is a foul law, this law is not a law which brings unity," Pastor Nalliah said.

"It causes disunity and as far as we are concerned right from the beginning we have stated we will not apologise.

"We will go to prison for standing for the truth and not sacrifice our freedom and freedom to speak."

He said the Evangelical group had nothing against Muslims and its comments were taken out of context.

Judge Higgins said an apology was "appropriate" as the intention of the Victorian legislation was to protect freedom of speech, while placing limits on such freedom by prohibiting the vilification of persons or classes of persons...

I see, they are "protecting" freedom of speech by limiting freedom of speech...Thank heaven for the first amendment to the US Constitution!

From AP via ABC News:

JERUSALEM — The first Palestinian-Israeli summit in four months failed to propel peace prospects forward or solidify a shaky truce, leaving main issues unresolved and both sides disappointed.

The meeting Tuesday started with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon scolding Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for an upsurge in Palestinian violence. The chilly atmosphere never warmed.

The summit was supposed to kick off an effort to work together to ensure Israel's withdrawal from Gaza this summer proceeds smoothly and peacefully. But the frosty meeting itself raised doubts as to whether the leaders can work together on the pullout, much less on further peace moves.

The sticking points illuminated in the Debka file are:

1. United Egyptian-Palestinian Front

The Israeli prime minister was presented with a solid Palestinian-Egyptian front. The Palestinians refused to cooperate in the Israeli pull-out as long as Israel did not surrender to Egypt’s demands for its deployment on the Philadelphi border strip...

2. Egypt wants a naval base in N. Sinai’s El Arish

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the Egyptians have upped their price for collaborating in Israel’s disengagement from Gaza: now they want a naval base for missile boats in el Arish on the Mediterranean shore of northern Sinai. This would contravene the 1979 Egyptian Israeli peace treaty, as would their earlier demands for armored personnel carriers (instead of tanks), military helicopters and anti-tank missile emplacements to be posted along their border with southern Israel.

3. Palestinians want rehabilitation while keeping refugee status

The Palestinians have also laid down conditions for accepting the rehousing program offered Gaza refugees by Middle East Quartet coordinator James Wolfensohn at a cost of $3 bn in international funds. They insist on keeping their refugee status and assistance from UNRWA even after they are resettled. The point of this is that it would perpetuate the Palestinian refugee problem as a permanent political lever.

4. The Palestinians want more land – now

The Abbas team told Sharon that the removal of four Jewish communities from the northern West Bank this August is not enough; Israel military bases must also be withdrawn. In the current stage of violent mayhem in the northern West Bank, Israel cannot afford to relinquish its military presence opposite its main population and industrial heartland. The Palestinians however insist on full sovereignty over the northern West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip. By this device, they would acquire extra territory twice the area of Gaza without give-and-take peace talks.

5. Fresh European-Palestinian campaign against defense barrier

Abbas has ordered Palestinian FM Nasser al-Kidwe to sit down with an EU official and draw up international campaign number 2 against Israel’s security barrier. It would begin after Israel completes its pull-backs and feature a new complaint to the International Court at the Hague.

Michelle Malkin writes in Townhall:

Newsweek. Amnesty International. Jimmy Carter. Dick Durbin. The Guantanamo Bay-bashing continues.

In a rant published Tuesday, the Minnesota Star Tribune actually castigated Durbin for "caving in" on his slanderous remarks comparing U.S. treatment of detainees at Gitmo to torture and genocide by Nazis, Soviets and Pol Pot. The paper wrote that Durbin shouldn't have apologized and decried the entire operation as a "hellhole."...

And now, the facts:

Every single detainee currently being held at Guantanamo Bay has received a hearing before a military tribunal. Every one. As a result of those hearings, more than three dozen Gitmo detainees have been released. The hearings, called "Combatant Status Review Tribunals," are held before a board of officers, and permit the detainees to contest the facts on which their classification as "enemy combatants" is based.

Gitmo-bashers attack the Bush administration's failure to abide by the Geneva Conventions. But as legal analysts Lee Casey and Darin Bartram told me, "the status hearings are, in fact, fully comparable to the 'Article V' hearings required by the Geneva Conventions, in situations where those treaties apply, and are also fully consistent with the Supreme Court's 2004 decision in the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case."

Treating foreign terrorists like American shoplifters -- with full access to civilian lawyers, classified intelligence, and all the attendant rights of a normal jury trial -- is a surefire recipe for another 9/11. That is why the Bush administration fought so hard to erect an alternative tribunal system -- long established in wartime -- in the first place...

From Xinhuanet:

RAMALLAH -- The Israeli army and security forces continued on Wednesday their crack down on members and militants of the Islamic Jihad movement in the West Bank.

An Islamic Jihad militant in the city of Tulkarem in the West Bank said that the clashes took place between Israeli soldiers and militants of his group as an Israeli army force raided the village of Qufer Raie at pre-dawn Wednesday.

He said that an Israeli force arrested a number of Islamic Jihad militants Tuesday evening as they were besieged by the force in an abandoned house in the city.

"The group managed to survive from the siege and pulled back from the area where the Israeli force followed them and clashed with them," the Jihad militant clarified...

An interesting analytical piece from the Christian Science Monitor:

The US military strategy in Iraq has been consistent for months now: Use aggressive military operations to disrupt the flow of foreign fighters entering the country and the insurgent support lines that run along the Euphrates River west to the Syrian border. Simultaneously, the US is training Iraqi troops to fill the security vacuum that persists in the center and north of the country. By any metric of tactical military success, it's working, say analysts. US forces have strung together victory after victory. Marine and Army operations from Najaf in the south to Fallujah in the heart of the Sunni triangle and on to Mosul in the north have ended with thousands of insurgents killed and captured and tons of enemy munitions destroyed with minimal US casualties.

This is what Vice President Dick Cheney probably had in mind when he told "Larry King Live" last week that the insurgency is in its "last throes."

But if another measure of success is used - a reduction in the number and lethality of insurgent attacks - the US and the new Iraqi government are failing. In the past two days, for example, US Marines and Army soldiers carried out Operations Spear and Dagger (designed to disrupt insurgent capabilities between Baghdad and Syria). At the same time, separate suicide attacks killed 20 policemen in the Kurdish city of Arbil and 23 people in a Baghdad restaurant popular with policemen, while insurgents overran a police station in southern Baghdad, killing eight officers.

The gap between tactical victories on the one hand, and few tangible improvements in the overall Iraqi security situation on the other, is creating a widening disagreement over whether the US is winning or losing the war in Iraq.

Read it all.

From the Pakistan Tribune, "4 Day Operation Ended in Western Iraq"

U.S. and Iraqi forces have ended a four-day operation, Spear, aimed at clearing insurgent bases and training camps in western Iraq.

Military officials say forces killed some 50 fighters and discovered more than a dozen car bombs in and around the town of Karabilah during the campaign.

U.S. officials also say a roadside bomb killed an American soldier in a separate incident in western Iraq.

Meantime, a top U.S. military commander, General John Vines, says some U.S. forces may begin leaving the country after elections scheduled for later this year.

From Reuters:

KABUL - Pakistan has assured Afghanistan of its support and cooperation in the war on terror after angry words between the neighbours over accusations Pakistan is not doing enough to stop Taliban violence.

The assurance comes as fears mount that Taliban fighters launching attacks from Pakistan will disrupt a September parliamentary election in Afghanistan.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday following a 15-minute conversation between the Pakistani leader and President George W. Bush.

"President Musharraf assured President Karzai of Pakistan's continued support and cooperation in the fight against terrorism," the Afghan government said in a release on Wednesday.

"Pakistan condemned the menace in all its forms and manifestations," the Pakistani government said.

The presidents, both important U.S. allies in its war on terror, agreed to strengthen security cooperation, their governments said.

Afghan accusations that Taliban and other militants can launch attacks from the safety of Pakistan have been an irritant in relations since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

Insurgents have launched a wave of attacks in Afghanistan in recent months and hundreds of people, including militants, government and U.S. troops and civilians, have been killed in clashes, ambushes and blasts.

Steven Vincent writes an interesting article on the situation in Basra in National Review Online:

...Basra's police force isn't the only example of the social and psychological dysfunctionalities that plague this city of 1.5 million residents. Even as brave and dedicated people here begin to reconstruct their lives in the face of daunting problems — terrorism, a lack of investment funds, corruption, and a political process dominated by incompetent religious parties — others seem just as determined to, well, totally screw things up.

Take "Emergency 115." Recently, the city, with British assistance, instituted a "911"-style system for residents to dial in case of need. Humanely enough, the Brits designed 115 with a provision that allows Basrans to contact help even if they lack SIM cards in their mobile phones. (Land-lines are few and unreliable, so people live by their cells, which require the constant purchase of expensive "scratch" cards to replenish their minutes.) "We created 115 so the call is free," a British officer who supervises the program told me.

Gang atfa gley, Robert Burns might say. For a certain segment of Basra's population discovered the hilarity of making bogus emergency calls. To add to the fun, they remove their SIM cards and remain on the line for hours, tying up the system and preventing people with real crises from getting assistance. According to the British officer, "Only about 5 percent of people contacting 115 call actually need help."...

Then there's garbage: Basra is choking in it, from shredded plastic bags ensnared on coils of barbed wire to archipelagos of rotting offal floating in the city's canals. A few months back, the Brits — yes, them again — initiated a program that would pay trash collectors to cart waste material to a landfill in the desert. The plan seemed to work: Contractors brought truckloads of trash to the site, earning dinars in return. But the city seemed no cleaner. As the Brits soon discovered, contractors were loading up their vehicles with garbage from already-existing piles, located on the edge of town or smoldering in the city center. By the time the British rejiggered the program to compel contractors to direct their attention to city streets, the funding for the project disappeared, a victim of canceled plans, bureaucratic reorientation, or — more likely, locals say — theft...

"Liberation brought us freedom of the press," an Iraqi journalist once told me. "And as long as you don't probe into matters like civic corruption, organized crime, or the religious parties, you're free not to be killed."

And that's the way it is. For every step responsible Basrans move forward — a gradually improving security situation, glimmers of economic development, some political leaders who are beginning to understand they must provide benefits for their constituents — irresponsible, ignorant, and frequently violent elements drag the city backwards. A race, or competition, exists between the forces of enlightened synergy and progress and traumatized entropy and decay. Basra teeters between the two, its future up in the air. And with Basra, so goes the rest of Iraq.

Tzvi Kahn writes in The American Thinker:

According to the logic of a recent report issued by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), denying accused criminals a job constitutes an unethical breach of “academic freedom.” So, if Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had doctorates and respectable publication records, could they receive teaching positions at an American university? More to the point, what about Mohammed Yousry, an adjunct lecturer in Middle East studies at York College of the City University of New York (CUNY), a person accused of providing material support to a terrorist organization?

After all, in America’s criminal justice system, alleged offenders are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law – and bin Laden and Hussein have yet to receive fair and open trials. Until then, if their academic records were otherwise sterling, a university may not penalize professors on grounds ostensibly unrelated to their scholarship or teaching. Such grounds, according to the reasoning of the AAUP report, include alleged support of a terrorist organization aiming to slaughter the very students the professor teaches.
The AAUP issued its report following Yousry’s federal indictment in April 2002. He served as the translator for attorney Lynne Stewart and her former client Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in October 1995 of masterminding the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and of plotting to bomb other New York City landmarks, including the United Nations, New York’s FBI building, and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.

Presently serving a sentence of life imprisonment, Abdel Rahman was the leader of the Islamic Group (IG), or al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, a terrorist organization based in Egypt seeking to destroy Israel and America and to overthrow the Egyptian government and replace it with a more Islamic state. According to federal prosecutors, Abdel Rahman once released a statement from prison, in reference to America, calling upon “Muslims everywhere” to “dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes, kill them on land, at sea, and in the air.” On November 17, 1997, six terrorists affiliated with the IG murdered fifty-eight tourists in Luxor, Egypt, hoping to pressure the American government to release Abdel Rahman.

In 2002 Yousry and Stewart were charged with knowingly transmitting violent statements of Abdel Rahman to his followers worldwide. In so doing, they violated Special Administrative Measures (SAM) instituted by the Bureau of Prisons that limited Abdel Rahman’s access to the media in order to prevent him from addressing his terrorist followers. But in September 1999, with the help of Yousry and Stewart, Abdel Rahman issued a statement from prison ordering the IG to end its previously declared cease-fire against the Egyptian government after Egyptian officials conducted a raid in Cairo that resulted in the deaths of four IG members.

Yousry and Stewart were convicted in February 2005 on all counts, including conspiracy, defrauding the government, and providing material support to a terrorist organization. They are presently free on bail pending their sentencing in July.

What, then, raised the ire of the AAUP? When news of the indictment became known, CUNY administrators responded by suspending Yousry with pay for the duration of the spring 2002 term. CUNY then effectively fired him by declining to reappoint him to teach as an adjunct in subsequent semesters.

According to the AAUP report, entitled “Academic Freedom and Tenure: City University of New York,” in terminating Yousry, CUNY administrators violated a host of procedures regarding due process, faculty peer review, and open communication that govern the appointment of adjunct instructors in academia, an allegation the university denied. Such charges are common in academic life and are not especially notable. What makes the AAUP report remarkable, however, is the extent to which it also defines “academic freedom” to include the right of professors to retain their positions even as they are being investigated for supporting terrorism. “Adequate cause for a dismissal,” says the report, “will be related, directly and substantially, to the fitness of faculty members in their professional capacities as teachers or researchers” – not, evidently, as human beings who do not support bloodthirsty killers. The AAUP then went on to reject “the theory of teacher-as-role-model” as having “scant purpose” in university life...

Read it all.

From Radio Free Europe:

Baghdad -- The new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said today he is horrified at the level of violence wracking the country, and that Islamic extremists and former members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Ba'ath Party are trying to start a civil war in Iraq.

Khalilzad said after meeting in Baghdad with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that Iraq must prevail.

"Foreign terrorists and hard-line Ba'athists want Iraq to descend into civil war. Foreign terrorists are using the Iraqi people as cannon fodder. They care nothing about Iraq or the Iraqis. Their goal is the domination of the Islamic world and the promotion of global conflict," Khalilzad was quoted by RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq as saying. "Hard-line Ba'athists who commit crimes against the Iraqi people are working to foster an all-out civil war in the hope of either restoring dictatorship and their control of Iraq, or taking the country down with them. They will fail."

He continued: "I am horrified by the daily suffering of the Iraqi people. The terrorists attack ordinary people, teachers, doctors, newly trained police and others who are assisting the people of Iraq."

He added further: "I will support the efforts of the Iraqis to develop a unifying vision, a national compact. This vision should be enshrined in an enlightened and sound constitution that embraces democracy, pluralism and individual rights. The process must be inclusive. For Iraq to achieve its full potential, no community or sector should be marginalized."...

From the UK TimesOnline:

The housemate of a man who allegedly travelled to Iraq to carry out a suicide bomb attack has been arrested in Manchester, police said.

The 40-year-old man was arrested under the Terrorism Act after a dawn raid in the Moss Side area of the city. It is believed that another man who lived at the same address blew himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq in February.

The men, who are believed to be North African, have been described as "associates" rather than relatives. The intelligence which led to this morning's arrest is thought to have come from security forces in Iraq....

Last week's raids were the fourth such sweep since December looking for evidence of a co-ordinated operation to recruit young men to travel to Iraq and fight in the insurgency.

According to Michael Evans, Defence Editor of The Times, although there is no evidence to link this morning's arrest to those that have taken place recently across Europe, it is certainly a sign that authorities fear that illicit recruitment is active in the UK.

Another silly story of Qur'an abuse. Prison Service says female security prisoner goes on rampage during body search, tosses Quran pages toward toilet. From YNet News:

ASHKELON - A female Palestinian security prisoner in Ashkelon’s Shikma Prison tore up pages from a copy of the Quran and threw them toward the toilet during a routine search Sunday, the Israel Prison Service said.

The 22-year-old detainee from a village near Hebron is an Islamic Jihad member who was arrested three months ago in suspicion of hostile terror activity.

She resisted a routine search by a female guard, and then took out torn Quran pages from her skirt and hurled them toward the toilet.

The guard handed the torn Quran pages to the prison’s director, and Prison Service officials said she showed heightened sensitivity to the holy Islamic book.

“Security prisoners are permitted to keep Qurans, and the Prison Service provides them with the books, but tearing pages out of the book and throwing them in the bathroom is blasphemy and hinders the prisoners’ right to conduct religious rites,” a Prison Service official said.

Sorry, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how tearing up a book could be construed as blasphemous in this day and age. I thought the world had given up these exaggerated notions of the sacred a long, long time ago. Just like a lot of other things Muslims are forcing back into our collective consciousness, these ideas have never left Islam. We must grapple with them, not simply accept them, as the prison official cited above has done.

From AP via The Guardian:

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A bomb Tuesday killed a politician who was a harsh critic of Syria's power in Lebanon, police said, the second slaying of an anti-Syrian figure this month.

The explosion that killed former Communist Party chief George Hawi as he rode in his car came two days after elections that gave the anti-Syrian opposition a majority in Lebanon's parliament, breaking the hold of Damascus' allies.

Opposition figures quickly accused Syrian agents and their allies in the Lebanese security services in Hawi's assassination, as they did in the June 2 slaying of opposition journalist Samir Kassir and the Feb. 14 killing of former prime minister Rafik Hariri...

``Yes, it's the Lebanese security system - the remnants - the tutelage,'' Farouk Dahrouj, another former Communist Party leader, said on New TV. ``Tutelage'' is a reference to Syria's influence in Lebanon.

Walid Jumblatt, a leader of the opposition coalition that won the elections, which ended with a fourth and final round on Sunday, implicitly accused Lebanon's pro-Syrian president and the security agencies he heads. Jumblatt said the agencies must be ``completely purged'' before security is restored.

The bomb that killed Hawi was detonated by remote control, similar to the one that killed Kassir in his car nearly three weeks ago, Justice Minister Khaled Kabbani said, touring the blast site...

Hawi, a Greek Orthodox Christian, frequently spoke out against Syrian intelligence and interference in Lebanese affairs.

He was a prominent leader during the 1975-90 civil war, and his followers fought alongside Muslim and Palestinian militias against right-wing Christians and also battled Israeli forces. But in recent years, Hawi espoused Christian-Muslim dialogue...

Syria filled Lebanon's security and intelligence agencies with its allies to help implement its control for nearly three decades. Although Syria withdrew its military in April and some Lebanese security chiefs have been replaced, many pro-Syrians remain in place. The opposition also says Syrian intelligence agents continue to operate directly in Lebanon.

An interesting update on the claims the Australian Mufti is making concerning Wood's captors and his release. From the New Zealand Herald:

CANBERRA - Douglas Wood, the 63-year-old Australian engineer rescued last week from kidnappers in Iraq, flew into Melbourne yesterday to a joyful reunion with his family but with questions still surrounding his release...

The spiritual leader of Australia's Muslims, Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali also flew to Iraq to help find and free Wood, at one stage igniting controversy by claiming to have evidence that the still-hidden engineer was alive and well.

Alhilali returned to Sydney yesterday, claiming that Wood's captors had originally sought a A$25 million ransom, but that they had subsequently agreed to release him at 6pm last Wednesday, the day troops found him bound and concealed beneath a blanket in a Baghdad house.

He told the ABC Lateline programme that the group holding him when Iraqi troops burst in had been using the house as a transit station for his release, and had been unarmed because they wanted to deliver Wood safe and well.

"They didn't know who these forces were because they had agreed to deliver him to me, so they had good reason to be frightened for Douglas' life from any forces who attacked this house, of course," he said.

It still remains uncertain how Wood was discovered, with conflicting reports that the raid was either the result of a tip-off or a chance discovery during sweeps by the Iraqi Army and US troops.

Yesterday Prime Minister John Howard said Australian officials in Iraq had confirmed that the discovery was the result of a "sweep and cordon" operation, during which troops had been told that specific houses should be searched...

"But Department of Energy report says nothing was compromised." And we aren't told where these illegal immigrants were from, or why they might have been wanting to use false documents to get into the site. No doubt these were not jihadists but just undocumented Irishmen on a prank, so this is a story about lax security: what is to prevent jihadists from doing this? Sure, now security is tighter. It was supposed to be tight to begin with. From CNN, :

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sixteen illegal immigrants gained access last year to one of the most sensitive weapons sites in the country, according to a report issued Monday by the Department of Energy's inspector general.

The inspector general's investigation found the illegal immigrants were construction workers on jobs at the Y-12 National Security Complex near Knoxville, Tennessee.

The workers used "false documents" and "gained access to the ... site on multiple occasions," the report said.

The report details how the workers, apparently using fake green cards, were able to obtain access badges.

"This situation represented a potentially serious access control and security problem," the report said.

According to the report, the inquiry brought field agents to the plant who found "official use only" documents "lying unprotected in a construction trailer, which was accessed by the foreign construction workers."

The National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees nuclear weapons facilities for the Energy Department, said in the report no evidence was found that the workers had access to any of those documents.

The inspector general, Gregory Friedman, also found that although security was compromised, access controls at the plant have since been tightened.

And he found no evidence that classified or sensitive information was compromised.

Madrid bombing jihad update from UPI, :

MADRID -- Spanish authorities arrested five more suspects connected with last year's Madrid train bombing that killed 191 people, documents disclosed Monday show.

One of the suspects was charged with belonging to a terror organization while the others were accused of merely collaborating with terrorists, El Mundo reported in its online edition.

The five were also among the 16 Islamic terror suspects arrested last week. The other 11 arrested are suspected to have ties to alleged Iraqi terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Turkey says "Welcome back" to Metin Kaplan. From AP, :

A court found an Islamic terrorist guilty of planning to crash an airplane into the mausoleum of Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and sentenced him to life in prison.

The Istanbul court convicted Metin Kaplan of charges of attempting "to overturn the constitutional order", a charge that amounts to treason, and sentenced him to life with no possibility for parole.

Kaplan, who has said that he opposes the Turkish secular state but denies planning any terrorist acts, will appeal the ruling, his lawyer Husnu Tuna said Monday.

Kaplan lived in Cologne, Germany, until he was extradited to Turkey in October 2004. His group, the Caliphate State, calls for the overthrow of Turkey's secular government and its replacement with an Islamic state. The group has been outlawed in Germany and Turkey.

Judeo-Christian-Islamic values update from the Greensboro News & Record, with thanks to Anthony and Thunder Pig:

GREENSBORO -- All Syidah Mateen wanted was to give Muslim witnesses the chance to be sworn in on the Quran before testifying in Guilford County courtrooms.

But an attempt by the Greensboro Islamic center to donate copies of the Muslim holy text last week sparked a legal debate that has left state court officials scrambling to decide whether to allow the practice.

Officials with the Administrative Office of the Courts in Raleigh are trying to come up with a statewide policy on the issue before news of the controversy sparks a large outcry, spokesman Dick Ellis said....

An AOC lawyer's preliminary opinion last week said that state law allows people to be sworn in using a Quran rather than a Bible, Ellis said. But that conflicts with the view of top Guilford County judges, who told officials with the Islamic center Friday that they won't allow the practice in their courtrooms.

"An oath on the Quran is not a lawful oath under our law," Guilford Senior Resident Superior Court Judge W. Douglas Albright said earlier in the week. He sets policy for the county's nine Superior Court courtrooms.

Friday's news disappointed Mateen, who said she planned to pursue the issue further.

"This is a diverse world, and everybody does not worship or believe the same," she said. "We'll just have to get in touch with the right people and determine our next move."...

The issue surfaced for Mateen two years ago, when she came in front of Guilford District Judge Tom Jarrell. When she was asked to swear on the Bible before testifying in a domestic violence protective order hearing, the 40-year-old Greensboro woman asked Jarrell if there was a Quran.

"I was actually shocked that they didn't have any," she said.

She was allowed to testify after giving an affirmation to tell the truth, but the issue never left her mind.

Mateen recalls Jarrell telling her that day that all the courtrooms needed copies of the Quran.

Jarrell disagrees. He said he only told her he would look into the legality of such oaths if she wanted to bring a Quran in the future.

Mateen eventually went forward with her idea -- believing Jarrell approved. She got the backing of the Al-Ummil Ummat Islamic Center, which her late father established, to donate about 10 copies of the Quran to the county's courthouses.

The center's imam, Charles Abdullah, working through a judicial assistant, was prepared to hand over the Qurans last week.

"We do feel like it has some historical significance," Abdullah said. "We didn't want to make a big fanfare out of it."

But Jarrell said he was unaware of the donation until a reporter contacted him last week. He deferred any decision to the judges that set courtroom policy, and a meeting was postponed.

On Friday, Guilford Chief District Judge Joseph E. Turner said he told Abdullah that he could not accept the Qurans for the courtrooms.

But Turner asked whether Abdullah would donate a copy of the Quran to the law libraries in the county's two courthouses, and Abdullah agreed, he said.

Turner oversees policy for the county's 12 District Court courtrooms.

Both Turner and Albright said the language in the law -- which refers at one point to laying one's hand on the "Holy Scriptures" -- precludes someone from being sworn using the Quran.

Albright said he has nothing against other holy books, but he believes the statute is clear.

"Everybody understands what the holy Scriptures are," he said. "If they don't, we're in a mess."

AOC officials disagreed with that interpretation last week.

The law requires a person to fear both spiritual and temporal punishment if his testimony is false, and swearing on the Quran would satisfy that, Ellis said.

But AOC officials would rather Muslims give an affirmation instead of bringing another holy text into the mix, Ellis said.

State officials worry that would open the door to more problems. For example, Ellis asked, what if a person says they worship brick walls and should be allowed to swear on a brick?

"We don't want to complicate this simple procedure here," Ellis said.

Jarrell, the judge in Mateen's original case, said he's always been concerned about the utility of having atheists or non-Christians swearing an oath on the Bible.

"They might as well be swearing on a Sears catalog," he said.

If allowing people to swear on the Quran helps him get to the truth, Jarrell said, he has no problem with it. But he said he'll follow courthouse policy....

OK.

"Any one who, after accepting faith in Allah, utters Unbelief - except under compulsion, his heart remaining firm in Faith - but such as open their breast to Unbelief, on them is Wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful Penalty." (16:106)

"If allowing people to swear on the Quran helps him get to the truth," Jarrell said. But what if they are uttering unbelief under what they consider to be compulsion, in line with the verse above? This is just one element of a much larger problem: in relations with unbelievers, the Qur'an simply doesn't teach the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is, as we see from the above verse, permissible to lie to unbelievers. Other values come in for a similar treatment: for believers, they are upheld, but for believers alone.

It is considered impolite to point this out these days. This kind of politeness could be our undoing. Once again I ask anyone reading: please prove me wrong. Please show me where the Qur'an commands Muslims to be honest specifically to unbelievers, or even states the command not to lie in terms that unequivocally apply universally. I am familiar with the verses generally used to do this, and I warn you: I am also familiar with what the mainstream Muslim commentators on the Qur'an say about them. So fire away.

Maybe he was just on the way to fertilize his garden. Yeah, that's it. Thai jihad update, from Bangkok's The Nation, with thanks to Twostellas:

Police arrested a local Muslim official in Narathiwat on Sunday night following a high-speed chase after the man ran a checkpoint. In the pickup, the officers discovered a large amount of fertiliser that could be used to make bombs.

Meanwhile, three men were fatally shot in a grocery store in Yala’s Yaha district by armed intruders. One man died at the scene and the two others at hospital. In a separate incident, two men on a motorcycle shot and injured a Muslim man in a drive-by shooting in Yala’s Raman district.

The driver of the pickup in Narathiwat, Somchai Arwae, maintained his innocence. He was held for further questioning.

Police said the Muslim man was found to be carrying 11 bags of fertiliser concentrate weighing a total of 220 kilograms. Suspicions arose over the intended use of the chemicals after the man ran a police checkpoint in Muang district. During a subsequent search of Somchai’s house, police located another 33 bags of similar highly concentrated fertiliser. Each bag weighed 20kg, investigators said.

"Terms of Internment: How to win friends and influence enemy combatants," from Alan Bromley in Opinion Journal, with thanks to EPG:

Well, I think we should not close Gitmo but write a new set of rules of procedure for the treatment of terrorists, those who often either hide behind civilians when being shot at or kill innocent civilians to show how tough they are. The new rules, with the working title of, "Terms of Internment", should be:

• We really, really respect all your beliefs and all your writings, even if you use them as your basis for killing us.

• We want you to retain your beliefs, and therefore we will continue to supply you with every written word that reinforces your instinct to kill.

• We will honor those words, at all times, as much as you do, lest we offend you.

• We will only serve you the best humus available, from Zabar's (serving airline food is a severe violation of these protocols), or have kosher catering from the nearest kabbalah center.

• We will cover our women, from head to toe, in your presence, lest you be unduly offended--or aroused.

• We will give each prisoner one innocent civilian to hide behind during interrogations.

• We will prepare each prisoner a list of 72 virgins (or give them 72 raisins, I forget which they want).

• We will never lie to you or try to deceive you in our quest for your information.

• We will neither wake you early, nor keep you up late, and will always wait until your prayer sessions are complete before questioning you.

• We will house you in no less than five-star accommodations, and if all the hotels are booked, will place you in the five homes owned by Sen. John Kerry and his wife.

Funny, sure, but how different is it from what the hysterical people who equate Gitmo with Nazi death camps really want?

Remember: one of the "hate speech" charges against Oriana Fallaci is that she said: "Islam is a pond....The pond does not love life: It loves death." So where did this would-be suicide bomber get the idea that it was appropriate to express belief in "death and Allah"? Did she learn Islam from Fallaci? Or...is Fallaci right? "Female bomber says attack was aimed at youth," from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

A female suicide bomber who planned to blow up at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba on Monday, the same hospital where she received treatment for burns in the past, was caught at the Erez terminal crossing wearing explosives stitched to her underwear.

Security forces were alerted when the biometric screener located at the terminal crossing, revealed that Wafa Samir Ibrahim Bas,21, of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, was wearing explosives.

Security forces immediately shut down the crossing and Bas was ordered to strip inside a concrete enclosure. During the process she attempted several times to detonate the explosives but failed. Arguing during the procedure with the soldiers who issued orders over a loudspeaker, she eventually shed the explosives which were later blown up by a robot. Officials estimate that the bomb contained ten kilograms of explosives.

Hours later in a Channel One interview at the Shikma Prison in Ashkelon, Bas, an Al Quds Open University student, at first declared that she intended to kill as many Israelis as possible. "I love Allah, I love the land of Palestine and I am a member of the Al Aksa Brigades," she said.

She said she wanted to kill up to 40 or 50 people - as many young people as possible. When asked why specifically young people, she said it was in retaliation for the death of Muhammad Dura. Dura was an 11-year-old Palestinian boy killed at the start of the Initifada, four and a half years ago in the Karni/Netzarim road.

Of course, the whole Muhammad al-Dura brouhaha seems as if it was based on fiction.

She also said her motives for carrying out the attack were because the Koran had been torn up in the Megiddo prison.

Later however, she admitted that she had been taken advantage of by the Al Aksa Brigades and was a victim. Asked if she intended to blow up at Soroka, she said "no, we have hospitals, I was to blow up in a crowded area."

As the reality sank in she said "yesterday I was free, I was a bird flying in the sky." She claimed that her dispatchers told her their own children were unable to carry out the attack because they were too young. When asked why her dispatchers themselves didn't carry out the attack, she replied that she didn't know.

Breaking down and crying, she asked for her mother's forgiveness. "I am sorry mother, forgive me, I should have listened to you," she said.She also said she hoped Israeli judges would have pity and not sentence her too harshly.

When asked if she would launch attacks if allowed to return, she said she may consider it and that she believes "in death and Allah."

Qur'an abuse jihad alert: these lawyers are actually asking that their case be dismissed because of...Qur'an abuse. It was...tossed on a bed. This is outstandingly frivolous, and frivolous attempts to head off justice are nothing new for lawyers, but if this succeeds, we might as well turn out the lights in America. "Lawyers for 2 in 'dirty bomb' terror case allege misconduct at jail," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

MIAMI -- Attorneys for two terrorism suspects tied to an alleged al-Qaida dirty bomb suspect are asking for the dismissal of a federal indictment against them based on a jailer's mishandling of a Quran and intimidating jail cell searches that removed handwritten papers in Arabic.

The defense claims the seizures from the cells of Adhan Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi in May and June amount to government misconduct and an unconstitutional intrusion on trial preparation.

Jailers also disrespectfully tossed Hassoun's Quran on his bunk and left 8,000 pages of trial papers in disarray, his attorney Kenneth Swartz said in motions filed Friday.

Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, and Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and U.S. citizen, face possible life prison sentences on charges of plotting to fund and support Islamic jihad through murder and kidnappings abroad, including Bosnia, Chechnya and Somalia.

``By depriving the defendants of the confidentiality of their own case-related notes, the government has destroyed any possible confidence that their case can be prepared with privacy,'' the men's attorneys wrote.

The defense also is asking for an order to either release the men from solitary confinement or on house arrest. Alicia Valle, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said Monday that prosecutors would respond in writing, but both motions said the federal trial attorney opposed them.

Messages left at the downtown jail where the men are detained by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons were not immediately returned. The defense said the warden responded to a March request by Hassoun for a change in jail conditions by saying he was a ``security threat.''

The Federal Detention Center has held other inmates deemed administrative risks, notably drug kingpins, in solitary for years despite defense protests.

On the Quran, a jail officer took a piece of paper with Arabic writing, but Hassoun explained that he had copied an excerpt from the holy book and showed him the matching text. The officer returned the paper and tossed the Quran on the bed.

``Even the U.S. military has said that's not the kind of treatment you give a holy book, so I guess FDC hasn't come to that conclusion,'' Swartz said Monday.

Pakistani duplicity update from Reuters, with thanks to Fanabba:

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan security forces have arrested three Pakistanis for allegedly planning to assassinate the U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan government official said on Monday.

The Pakistanis, who were suspected of being linked to a Pakistani Islamic militant group, were arrested in the eastern province of Laghman on Saturday, the day before Khalilzad made a visit there, said the official, who did not want to be identified.

"They admitted they were there to try to get Khalilzad," he said....

The Afghan official said the three men were caught in the Laghman's Charkhakan district with two AK-47 rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher....

The official said it was unclear to which militant group the men belonged. "But we are pretty sure they are linked to a Pakistani militant group, the Taliban or al Qaeda," he said.

Khalilzad, has been outspoken in his criticism of Pakistan in recent days, despite its status as a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

In an interview with Afghan television on Friday, he said there was a good chance Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was hiding in Pakistan and accused Islamabad of failing to act against fugitive Taliban leaders, charges Pakistan called "irresponsible."

Because it might offend Muslims, of course. From Index, with thanks to Susan:

A sculpture by German artist Gregor Schneider was banned from the 51st Venice Biennale because the event's organisers said it might be offensive to Muslims.

The sculpture was a 15-metre-high cube covered in black fabric modelled after the Ka'ba in Mecca and was set to be displayed in St. Mark's Square. A spokesman for the Venetian arts authority said there was a danger that Muslims would feel provoked by the work, heightening the risk of the city being vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Schneider insisted that the artwork was not meant as a provocation. He said he wanted to symbolise a connection between European and Arab cultures.

The organisers tried to place the sculpture at another site, but finally decided not to display it at all. Instead, Schneider showed a video explaining his failed attempt.

More on Pakistani duplicity from the LA Times, with thanks to Andrew Bostom:

WASHINGTON — U.S. counter-terrorism authorities say that the detention of a Lodi, Calif.-based group of Pakistani men this month underscores a serious problem: the Islamabad government's failure to dismantle hundreds of jihadist training camps.

Long before the FBI arrested Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer Hayat, and accused the son of attending one of the camps, law enforcement and intelligence officials were watching the Pakistan-based training sites with increasing anxiety.

Technically, they say, the Pakistani government was probably right when it declared this month that the younger Hayat could not have received training at a "jihadist" camp near Rawalpindi since that is the home to Pakistan's military and its feared intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.

But that's because the Pakistani officials were referring to the "old" kind of Al Qaeda camp shown endlessly on TV, in which masked jihadists run around in broad daylight, detonating explosives, firing automatic weapons and practicing kidnappings, these officials say.

Since the post-Sept. 11 military strikes on Al Qaeda strongholds in Pakistan's tribal territories, the jihadist training effort has scattered and gone underground, where it is much harder to detect and destroy, U.S. and Pakistani officials said in interviews.

Instead of large and visible camps, would-be terrorists are being recruited, radicalized and trained in a vast system of smaller, under-the-radar jihadist sites.

And the effort is no longer overseen by senior Al Qaeda operatives as it was in Afghanistan, but by at least three of Pakistan's largest militant groups, which are fueled by a shared radical fundamentalist Islamic ideology. The militant groups have long maintained close ties to Osama bin Laden and his global terrorist network, according to those officials and several unpublicized U.S. government reports.

The groups themselves — Harkat-ul-Mujahedin, or HuM; Jaish-e-Mohammed; and Lashkar-e-Taiba — have officially been banned in Pakistan since 2002 and have been formally designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. That has prompted occasional crackdowns by Islamabad, but the groups merely change their names and occasionally their leadership and resume operations, authorities say.

Tiny minority of extremists update:

The groups wield tremendous political influence, are well-funded and are said to have tens of thousands of fanatical followers, including a small but unknown number of Americans who have entered the system after first enrolling at Pakistan-based Islamic schools, or madrasas. U.S. officials also accuse them of complicity in many of the terrorist attacks against American and allied interests in Pakistan and other assaults in the disputed Kashmir region.

Many U.S. officials say it's not surprising that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf hasn't cracked down harder on the militant groups and what they describe as their increasingly extensive training activities.

For years, the ISI itself has worked closely with the groups in training Pakistan's own network of militants to fight ongoing conflicts in Kashmir and elsewhere, and to protect the country's interests in neighboring Afghanistan. The militant groups also derive tremendous influence from their affiliations with increasingly powerful fundamentalist political parties in Pakistan...

"We once knew who the enemy was and what groups were the enemy. And it's become much more difficult to discern that now," said Bruce Hoffman, a chairman of the Rand Corp. and a counter-terrorism consultant to the U.S. government.

With all respect, Mr. Hoffman, I am not convinced that you ever knew who the enemy was. You just thought you did. Studying the pedigrees of various jihadist groups and sniffing each carefully for ties to al-Qaida is a fruitless diversion. It's really not that complicated. The foe is an ideology that is held by untold numbers of individuals, many of whom coalesce from time to time into various groups, which can disappear as easily as they arose. The ideology is the thing, but I know it is beneath the notice of most of those at State and in the Administration.

A most welcome update on the Siham Qandah saga. But note that she still has to select a Muslim guardian for her children, since her husband putatively converted to Islam before his death, without telling her a word about it. "Jordan: Widow wins final Court Battle," from CompassDirect:

June 16 -- A Jordanian court of appeal rejected a last-ditch appeal this week from the Muslim guardian fighting for custody of Christian widow Siham Qandah's two minor children. The June 13 decision reconfirmed an earlier verdict from Amman's Al-Abdali Sharia Court two months ago which revoked the legal guardianship of Abdullah al-Muhtadi, the maternal uncle of Qandah's daughter Rawan and son Fadi. According to Qandah's lawyer, this final verdict from the appellate court cannot be appealed. It effectively cancels all other pending cases regarding permanent custody of the children. Al-Muhtadi has been ordered by the court to repay misspent funds he had withdrawn from his wards' inheritance accounts without judicial approval. Qandah may now select a new guardian for court approval to oversee her children's legal affairs until they reach maturity at age 18.

More empty threats? Probably. The problem is that years can go by that are utterly filled with empty threats, and then the jihadists can strike again. Remember the interval between the 1993 WTC attack and the one in 2001. From the Stamford Advocate, with thanks to A Friend:

The FBI has alerted police about vague, unverified reports of a possible plan to attack power plants and electric grids around New York City this month, according to a confidential FBI memo.

The memo, written by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and read by The Advocate, warns of a written threat from a single source that New York-area power plants will be attacked this month.

The memo stresses that federal authorities have not corroborated the threat. The memo includes a composite sketch of a Middle Eastern man who may be trying to enter the United States this month to participate in the attack....

The police officers said the department receives regular warnings from federal authorities. But this memo is unusual because it names a person and includes a sketch, they said.

Bull said sketches are becoming more common in FBI memos to police.

The memo does not say how a power plant would be attacked. The written threat mentions the possibility of "great news in June," according to the memo.

Police and power company officials have paid more attention to electric power plants since August 2003, when a malfunction at Midwestern power grids caused a blackout across eight states, including Connecticut, and much of Canada.

Al-Qaeda, if my memory serves me well, claimed credit for that, too.

Maybe, maybe not. Not the work of "yobs," say the British police. And I know of one group within Britain that has declared war against it, and that is the jihadists. "Railway signals damage was sabotage," from EDP24, with thanks to A Friend:

Police investigating the cutting of railway signals between London and Norwich said tonight that it was a carefully planned pre-meditated act and not the work of young vandals.

Thousands of passengers were affected by the damage today and late Thursday night.

More than 20 trains were cancelled while services between Liverpool Street and Norwich ran hourly with delays of up to 45 minutes on the mainline and 30 minutes on local services.

Engineers, working throughout the early hours to pinpoint the cause of the signal failure, discovered it was a precise act of sabotage and not the work of yobs.

The saboteur cut train signalling and fibre optic cables at two points near Newton Flotman, south of Norwich, and went to great efforts to throw investigators off the scent.

"FBI Takes U Of A Student Into Custody On Terrorism Suspicion," from the HometownChannel.com, with thanks to A Friend:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- A University of Arkansas graduate student was taken into custody by the FBI on Friday after agents received reports that he could be involved in a terrorist organization.

Agents arrested Arwah Jaber after receiving an anonymous tip that he was flying back to his homeland of Palestine to join an organization that supports terrorist activities.

According to an FBI affidavit, Jaber sent one of his professors an e-mail saying he was taking a job with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization. The group is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

In December I posted about an anti-Semitic propaganda film, "Zahra's Blue Eyes," which depicts the vile slander of Jewish doctors stealing the eyes of a Palestinian child. It was being shown in Iran at that time. But now it is being shown in Holland. Here is a somewhat rough English translation of this Dutch article, courtesy Morghodius:

In certain Turkish mosques in Rotterdam, The Hague and Amsterdam an anti-Semitic film is sold. The TV program Nova showed it on Dutch TV. The movie is also shown too children. The movie was made in Iran and translated into Turkish.

The movie is called ‘Zahra's Blue Eyes’; it is about a Palestine girl that is kidnapped and mutilated by a Israëli soldier.

Her eyes are transplanted into a blind Jewish boy so he can see
again.

Beside being unconcealed propaganda against the state of Israel, which is not prohibited by the law, the movie contains anti-Jewish passages which, according to experts, fall within the range of the law.

The movie raise questions about the mosques where it is shown.

An interview with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Feisal. "Saudi Arabia is changing at an incredibly quick pace," he says. Looks as if he's right, eh? Wow! Women drivers! Of course, it isn't legal yet. From Spiegel Online, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Saudi Arabia has continually delayed implementing urgently needed reforms. Why is it going so slowly and why are reformers having such a hard time of it?

Saud al-Feisal: Saudi Arabia is changing at an incredibly quick pace, but we can't allow ourselves any experiments. The primary goal of the government is to strengthen the inner cohesion of our country. Even the western democracies didn't develop within just a few years. It took centuries, for example, until Great Britain gave women the vote.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The nation's founder, Abd al-Asis Ibn Saud, and your father, King Feisal, introduced girl's schools, telephones and television against the opposition of the conservatives. But today, the government can't even seem to push the concept of driver's licenses for women through.

Saud al-Feisal: In the 1950s or 60s, it was also much easier to introduce the telephone or telegraph than it is to allow women to drive today. It is a cultural and a societal question that is faced with deep-seated opposition.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you, personally, support the idea?

Saud al-Feisal: I am for it. Not just for philosophical and political reasons, but also for practical ones. It is not a religious question. Nowhere in the Koran is it written that women are not allowed to drive cars. In any case, there are many other -- and more important -- rights that have to be granted to women; like the right to vote, for example or the right to follow the career path they wish. There is also nothing in the Koran that would speak against these reforms either.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In mid-May, religious judges sentenced three Saudi intellectuals to six, seven and nine years in prison because they demanded that Saudi Arabia be transformed into a constitutional monarchy. Human rights groups are outraged.

Saud al-Feisal: I cannot speak about the judges in detail, but I was in fact disturbed by the fact that human rights observers were expelled from the court room during this trial. The federal prosecutor who was representing the government in the case pled for them to be admitted as observers.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does that not clearly show that the religious authorities in Saudi Arabia have the last word today?

Saud al-Feisal: The power of religion is not a negative power to us; rather, it is, as Crown Prince Abdullah repeatedly points out, a power that we must use in order to keep together our society. Where we do have a problem is with takfir -- in other words, the tendency to denigrate people who think differently as heretics, as apostates ...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: ... and by declaring holy war against them. Between 2,000 and 3,000 Saudi residents are currently in Iraq fighting for the jihad. Does that alarm you?

Saud al-Feisal: We are very alarmed by that and we are doing our best to cut off recruitment in our country and to dry up their funding sources. Our border with Iraq is secure and the Iraqi government has now agreed to provide us with lists of Saudi citizens currently in Iraq. That is very good because as soon as we know we are dealing with one of our own citizens, we can help.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why is it that so many young Saudis turn their backs on their homeland to fight in foreign wars as Mujahedeen?

Saud al-Feisal: It is related to the images they see every day that come out of Iraq and Palestine. They consider what they see there to be an unjust war against Muslims. And in this part of the world, the principle of justice is of fundamental meaning. If a Saudi Arabian feels that he is being treated fairly, according to the same standards that are also valid for everyone else, he will always accept it. However, if he feels an injustice is being inflicted upon him, he will battle against it until his death. These days, you can't just proceed against terrorism using the military. The problems in Iraq and Palestine have been thrusted upon us. They must be solved politically.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Twenty three years ago, King Fahd proposed a peace plan for the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nothing ever became of it.

Saud al-Feisal: There will be no peace as long as long as the conflicting parties don't make compromises and move towards each other. From where we are at today, we consider it to be Israel's move.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Israel is now going to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

Saud al-Feisal: That could be a good first step, if it is followed by others. But it will not be enough if other problems are not solved -- especially the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

In other words, if Israel capitulates further, we will make more progress.

This is a remarkable statement from Goss; if OBL isn't hauled in reasonably soon, it can only make him look bad -- unless his real intent is to call attention to Pakistan's double game, which can only be to the good. "CIA 'knows Bin Laden whereabouts,'" from the BBC, with thanks to Granny Weatherwax:

The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency has said he has an "excellent idea" where Osama Bin Laden is hiding.

But CIA director Porter Goss did not say when the world's most wanted man would be caught, nor his location.

He told Time magazine there were "weak links" in the US-led war on terror. His remarks follow recent US criticism of Pakistan's role in hunting suspects.

Bin Laden, wanted for the 9/11 attacks, is believed to be hiding in Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

From the Who's Side Are You On Department, via London's Al-Sharq al-Awsat, :

LONDON, June 18, 2005 (Al-Sharq al-Awsat) -- Fundamentalists in London say that the unprecedented attack on the Sudanese government by Ayman al-Zawahri, the number one ally of the leader of Al-Qaida Organization Osama bin Ladin, in his new tape that was broadcast by the Qatari satellite channel Al-Jazeera yesterday (June 17) was due to Khartoum's handing over to Washington of files on Al-Qaida's leaderships.

Hani al-Subaie the director of Al-Maqrizi Research Centre in London told Al-Sharq al-Awsat "Khartoum has turned over files with photographs for most of the leaderships of Al-Qaida and the Egyptian Jihad" who used to live in the Sudanese capital until they broke off and left Sudan in 1995....

Ayman al-Zawahri, the number two man in Al-Qaida Organization criticized "the American visualization of reforms" and attacked, according to the tape, the Sudanese, Saudi and Egyptian governments according to what the channel cited.

I suspect that this is true in large part because of politically correct niceties that make it impossible for the Fibbies to speak openly and honestly about the true causes and goals of Islamic terrorism. By starting with the unsupportable but also never-to-be-questioned dogma that contemporary terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, they doom themselves to getting lost in a forest of false assumptions and misplaced priorities.

"In Letter to Senators, Lawyer Criticizes Top F.B.I. Officials," from the New Duranty Times, with thanks to Seymour Paine:

WASHINGTON, June 19 - A lawyer who interviewed a number of top current and former counterterrorism officials at the F.B.I. in connection with a lawsuit against the bureau has written to three senators saying that the officials lacked a detailed understanding of terrorism and were promoted to top jobs despite having little experience in the field.

In a 15-page letter, the lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, wrote that the F.B.I.'s top counterterrorism officials said in sworn depositions that they did not know the relationship between Al Qaeda and Jamal Islamia, a South Asia offshoot of the terror network. Nor were they aware of the linkage between Osama bin Laden and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a spiritual adviser to Mr. bin Laden with whom he had been closely associated since the 1980's.

These guys should be reading Jihad Watch. I would wager that the average regular reader of this site knows more about what the jihad terrorists are doing around the world and why than the Fibbies, at least as they're portrayed here. The last time I talked to one -- about the death threats I recently received -- he was courteous and interested, but utterly uninformed about jihad terrorism.

Mr. Kohn said that F.B.I. Director Robert S. Mueller III, in his deposition, seemed unsure of Mr. bin Laden's relationship to Sheik Rahman, who is better known as the blind sheik and was convicted in 1996 on terrorism charges. Asked if he was aware of their relationship, Mr. Mueller is quoted in Mr. Kohn's letter as saying he was not.

Mr. Kohn's June 17 letter was written to two Republicans, Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, and one Democrat, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, each of whom has long had an interest in F.B.I. matters. Mr. Kohn said in the letter that he was disclosing the information from the depositions at Mr. Grassley's request.

"Since 9/11 and up to today, the F.B.I. has been led by managers without counterterrorism experience or background especially in Middle Eastern terrorism, and their testimony under oath is that they are learning about counterterrorism on the job," Mr. Kohn wrote.

Mr. Kohn's complaints, although clearly advocacy statements by a lawyer pressing his client's legal claims, are likely to be taken more seriously because they are similar to the findings of recent reports by recent independent review panels, which have criticized the bureau's progress in correcting the flaws exposed by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

From MEMRI:

On Friday June 17, 2005, Al-Jazeera TV released a tape of an address by Al-Qa'ida deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri. The following are excerpts from the speech by Al-Zawahiri aired by Al-Jazeera:

Al-Zawahiri: "True reform is based on three principles:

"The first principle is the rule of Shari'a[Islamic law], because Shari'a, which was given by God, protects the believers' interests, freedom, honor, and pride, and protects what is sacred to them. The Islamic nation will not accept any other law, after it has suffered from the anti-Islamic trends forcefully imposed on it.

"The second principle of reform is the freedom of the lands of Islam. No reform is conceivable while our countries are occupied by the Crusader forces, which are spread throughout our countries. No reform is conceivable while the Crusader forces are stationed in our countries [where they] enjoy support, supplies, and storage facilities, and go forth from our countries to attack our brothers and sisters in other Islamic countries. No reform is conceivable while our governments are controlled by the American embassies, which stick their noses into all our affairs.

"The third principle of reform is the Muslim nation's freedom to run its own affairs. This [principle of] reform will only be realized in two ways. First, freedom of the independent religious judicial system, the implementation of its rulings, and the guaranteeing of its honor, authority, and strength. Second, the freedom and the right of the Islamic nation to implement the principle of 'promoting virtue and preventing vice.'

"I would also like to stress that the expulsion of the invading Crusader and Jews from the lands of Islam will not be accomplished merely through demonstrations and hoarse throats in the streets. Reform and expelling the invaders from the lands of Islam will only be accomplished by fighting for the sake of Allah.

"Allah said: 'Fight them until all strife ceases and religion is professed for the pleasure of Allah alone.' He also said: 'Fight them, and Allah will punish them at your hands and will humiliate them, and will help you to overcome them, and will relieve the minds of the believers.'

"I salute my brothers, the lions of Islam, who are on the holy front of Islam around Jerusalem. I call upon them in the name of Allah not to abandon their Jihad, not to throw down their weapons, not to believe the counsel of the collaborators, not to forget the lessons of history, not to trust the secularists who have sold Palestine cheaply, and not to be drawn into the secular game of elections in accordance with a secular constitution."...

EMP Threat. Something more to worry about from the G2 Bulletin (subscription only).

Joining Sen. John Kyl, who warned of how an electromagnetic pulse attack threatens U.S. survival, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, chairman of the House Projection Forces Subcommittee, says an EMP attack – even by an underfunded, unsophisticated terrorist group – has the potential to cripple U.S. society.

"Today we are very much concerned ... about asymmetric weapons," said Bartlett. "We are a big, powerful country. Nobody can contend with us shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face. So all of our potential adversaries are looking for what we refer to as asymmetric weapons. That is a weapon that overcomes our superior capabilities. There is no asymmetric weapon that has anywhere near the potential of EMP."
EMP attacks are generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated at altitudes above a few dozen kilometers above the Earth's surface. The explosion, of even a small nuclear warhead, would produce a set of electromagnetic pulses that interact with the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth's magnetic field.

"These electromagnetic pulses propagate from the burst point of the nuclear weapon to the line of sight on the Earth's horizon, potentially covering a vast geographic region in doing so simultaneously, moreover, at the speed of light," said Dr. Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the commission appo9inted by Congress to study the threat. "For example, a nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the central United States would cover, with its primary electromagnetic pulse, the entire continent of the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico."

The commission, in its work over a period of several years, found that EMP is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold American society seriously at risk and that might also result in the defeat of U.S. military forces.

"The electromagnetic field pulses produced by weapons designed and deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of damaging electrical power systems, electronics and information systems upon which any reasonably advanced society, most specifically including our own, depend vitally," Wood said. "Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the American nation."

The commission concluded in its report to Congress earlier this year: "EMP is one of a small number of threats that may hold at risk the continued existence of today's U.S. civil society.''

"The number of U.S. adversaries capable of EMP attack is greater than during the Cold War," said Bartlett. "We may look back with some fondness on the Cold War. We then had only one potential adversary. We knew him quite well."

Bartlett pointed out that Iran has tested launching of a Scud missile from a surface vessel, "a launch mode that could support a national or transnational EMP attack against the United States."

"Iran has conducted tests with its Shahab-3 missile that have been described as failures by the Western media because the missiles did not complete their ballistic trajectories, but were deliberately exploded at high altitude," he said. "This, of course, would be exactly what you would want to do if you were going to use an EMP weapon. Iran described these tests as successful. We said they were a failure because they blew up in flight. They described them as successful. Of course, they would be, if Iran's intent was practicing for an EMP attack."...

Daniel Pipes on his weblog discusses of the unexplained aspects of the Lodi California jihad case.

The arrest this week of five men of Pakistani origins in Lodi, California, on what are likely to be terrorism-related charges (terrorism was initially a formal part of the picture but was then retracted) has prompted extensive media coverage. The coverage has uncovered some mysteries, which I note here in the hopes of finding answers to.

Hamid Hayat, 22, arrested on his return from what he admits was a jihadist camp in Pakistan, is an American citizen born in Stockton, California who attended school (though only up to the sixth grade) in the United States. That being the case, why does the Los Angeles Times write that, "Apparently unable to follow the proceedings in English, Hayat listened with the help of an Urdu translator"? Perhaps it's because Lodi contains an Urdu-speaking ghetto; an earlier article quotes one Pakistani immigrant, Raja Khan, estimating that around 80 percent of Lodi's Pakistanis are not fluent speakers of English. (In the absence of the two imams yesterday, the mosque service was held in Urdu.)

June 14, 2005 update: Johnny Griffin III, the lawyer for Hamid's father, says the Hayats didn't make some statements attributed to them in the complaint. "For one thing, there was no interpreter present, and Hamid speaks and understands very little English."
When he was arrested, Hamid Hayat, the junior-high dropout, was packing cherries. His father, Umer, sells ice cream from a truck. But his maternal grandfather, Qari Saeed ur Rehman, founded the Jamia Islamia Madrassa in 1962 (and still runs it), is a leader in the Jamiat Ulema Islam Party, and served as minister of religious affairs in the late 1980s. The family is Pakistani religious royalty – so, what are the father and son doing in California as unskilled laborers?

Hamid Hayat's attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, explaining why his family traveled so often to Pakistan, said that it went "on one occasion to seek medical treatment for the mother." It traveled to Pakistan for medical reasons? Urdu-speaking doctors are not hard to find in northern California and they dispose of far superior facilities, so what's up?

On April 19, 2003, on the way to Pakistan, the same day Hamid and Umer Hayat were stopped at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Christiana Halsey revealed that they were found with $28,093 in cash. What is an ice-cream vendor doing with such an amount of money and why is he breaking U.S. customs regulations by taking out so much cash without declaring it?

And, speaking of money and travel, here is something curious about the Farooqia Islamic Center: the 2003 tax return of this apparently Islamist institution (it hosted the likes of Siraj Wahaj and links to the Islamic Society of North America and the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs) shows operating expenses of $57,544 in 2003, of which over one third, or $20,625, was spent on travel. Wonder why.

From Reuters:

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber who walked into a Baghdad restaurant popular with police outside the Green Zone government compound killed 23 people on Sunday, the bloodiest attack in the capital for six weeks.

The al Qaeda group in Iraq led by Jordanian Abu Musab al- Zarqawi claimed the bombing as U.S. and Iraqi troops scoured towns close to the Syrian border that they believe serve as staging posts for foreign fighters coming into the country.

The bomb went off around lunchtime just a few hundred meters (yards) from where Iraq's parliament was meeting inside the fortified Green Zone, once Saddam Hussein's presidential palace compound. Zarqawi and his Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have declared war on the new Shi'ite-led, U.S.-backed government.

Not for more than a month, since U.S. and Iraqi forces launched Operation Lightning, a crackdown on insurgent bomb factories and other rebel activity in the city, has an attack caused so much bloodshed in central Baghdad.

The one-room, street-front restaurant was devastated, with scarcely a stick of blood-spattered furniture intact. Human remains lay on the sidewalk. Police said seven of the 23 dead were police. A further 36 people were wounded...

Yemen continues to be a jihad playground. From DPA, .

SANA - A Yemeni appeal court on Saturday confirmed a lower court verdict acquitting 11 Islamic militants of plotting terror attacks and upheld convictions against five of them for forging travel documents.

Presiding judge of the Sana Court of Appeals Saeed al-Qataa ordered the immediate release of the 11 defendants, saying the five men convicted of falsifying documents had served enough jail periods in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The defendants, standing behind bars, and their relatives in the courtroom shouted “Allahu-Akbar” (God is Great) as the judge pronounced the verdict. Six of the defendants had been handed over to Yemen by Saudi Arabia.

The men, aged between 24 and 35, had originally been charged with forming an armed group to carry out attacks in Yemen and abroad. Other charges included forging documents, possession of weapons and explosives.

A state security court cleared the 11 suspects of terror charges on March 21. Defence lawyers have argued that the case was based on weak charges...

From the UK's Evening Times, with thanks to Miss Jessel.

MUSLIM charities have tried to stop an Italian restaurant serving drink on a terrace, claiming it is offensive to Glasgow's Asian community. Gambrino Pizzeria in Kelvinbridge wants to use the pavement outside its premises as an eating and drinking area and has applied to Glasgow City Council for permission. However, the proposals for eight tables and 16 seats has infuriated the local Asian community who say drinking alcohol outdoors is "offensive".

Two Muslim charities, UK Islamic Mission, based at the Islamic Mosque in Carrington Street, and Noah's Ark/ Radio Ramadhan in Arlington Street, formally objected to the Great Western Road restaurant's seating plans.

Javeed Gill, secretary of the UK Islamic Mission, said: "This area is the second largest area for Muslims in the city and we look after 1500 young people and provide activities for them.

"We've no objection if it is being done inside but selling alcohol on the footpath is a temptation to our young people."

Mr Gill said concerns about the increasing number of outside drinking premises had been raised in the mosque.

Today, despite the protest, council officials are recommending the application be passed...

I got an email this morning making reference to my explanation of Dhimmi Watch (see above left):

Do you think the Quranic command that they should "feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29)(your translation)is a permanent, eternal and absolute command required to be applied and implemented under all circumstances, time and space, or was it specific to those who were and had been at war with the nascent Islamic community and tried their best to finish it? Thanks. [Name deleted]

This is one of many emails that I receive regularly, challenging my knowledge of this field. If 9:29 and the dhimma was only meant for the time of the "nascent Islamic community," you see, then it has nothing to do with the oppression of non-Muslims in Islamic countries today. So on this occasion I'd like to issue an open invitation: please prove me wrong. Remember, however: it is not enough for you to quote Qur'an 2:256 or 109:1-5 and assert on that basis that the oppression of the dhimmis never took place. There is abundant evidence that it did, as I document in all my books, and has been definitively established by Bat Ye'or in her books. It is likewise not enough for you to assert that the dhimmis were treated as well or better than the Muslims. That is false, and there is a mountain of historical evidence that establishes its falsity. Nor is it enough for you simply to maintain without evidence that the dhimma is a relic of history, never to be revived, since (search the archives here and you'll see) there are numerous jihadists who have made it quite clear that they hope to reestablish it if and when they gain power.

If, however, you have evidence of Islamic schools of jurisprudence actually abrogating the dhimmi laws, please let me know here. I don't think any such evidence exists, but since so many people are anxious to tell me I am ignorant of Islam, I am inviting them to teach me. Here is how I responded to the letter above:

Judging from the fact that the laws of the dhimma still appear in modern-day manuals of fiqh, I would say that most jurists understand them to be permanent, eternal, and absolute commands. However, those same manuals make it clear that they are not to be implemented under all circumstances, but only when various requirements are met. Cf. the Shafi'i manual 'Umdat as-Salik, section o11.

In fact that translation of 9:29 is Abdullah Yusuf Ali's. It appears to me to be an accurate rendering of the Arabic. Do you disagree?

However, I would like nothing better than to find jurists who have explicitly ruled out the application of the dhimmi laws in the modern period, or at any time in the future. If you have such citations, please send them. Thanks.

I look forward to receiving them.

A very enlightening discussion from Publius Pundit who reports an interview he conducted with one Mojtaba Agha, who was monitoring a polling station for Iranians in Tucson. Agha has taught at California State University in Hayward and the University of Phoenix, and is now a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona.

According to Mojtaba, there are approximately 2500-3000 Iranian expatriates in Tucson, 1500 of which are of voting age. At the time I arrived at 4pm, with an hour gone by and three left to vote, only 15 people had voted. Mojtaba was hoping for at least 60, but when I left around 5:30, only 25 had done so. The favorite among the Iranian-Americans was Moin by a landslide, but needless to say, it was a slow day...

Mojtaba also made several jokes about the informality of the procedure, saying that just like in the U.S., the voters coming in are all stupid and have no idea what they are doing.

Politics: This is the most interesting part, where Mojtaba offered some bizarre explanations for the state of Iran and that of the United States.

He said that he expected turnout in Iran to be extremely high, “even more than predicted,” and that certain groups were trying to “sabotage the Republic through boycotting” The reason he gave for this was that President Bush’s words the day before the election had inflamed people who would otherwise not vote to do so. He said that he was not going to vote because of the barring of female candidate, but he said that President Bush’s words and foreign policy “undermine Iran” so much that he felt compelled. His step second cousin, as well, voted only in the last hour because of this. Of course, it cannot be confirmed and is inconsistent with incoming reports out of Iran.

I asked him who he voted for, and he said Moin. The reason he gave was that he did not want to undermine the reform movement, though he admitted, “What Iran probably needs is a wiley candidate like Rafsanjani. And believe me, Rafsanjani is wiley!”

I pressed him on the issue of the barring of female candidates, along with the other some 1000 people who registered. He said that it can be justified, as the “decision reflects the reality of society.” As for the many hundreds of male candidates that registered, he denounced some as jokers and the others as mentally ill.

Change comes slowly to Pakistan's rural areas. From the Daily Times, with thanks to LH.

ISLAMABAD: The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has drafted a law abolishing the un-Islamic and inhuman custom of so-called marriage of a girl to the Holy Quran and recommended life imprisonment for persons involved in this practice. This practice, commonly known as ‘Haq Bakhshwan,’ is rampant in rural areas of Pakistan where feudal lords and other rich people deny the right of marriage to a woman just to preserve their property. (...)

According to the amendment whoever wilfully defiles, desecrates or damages a copy of the Holy Quran or allows the Holy Quran to be used for purpose of its marriage to a female or induces any person to swear on the Holy Quran never to marry anyone in her lifetime, shall be punishable with imprisonment for life.

From the Washington Times:

JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday rejected calls for U.S. engagement with the militant Palestinian group Hamas and urged Palestinians not to vote for the group's candidates in upcoming parliamentary elections.

"I frankly don't think that it is the dream of mothers and fathers around the world that their children will be suicide bombers," she said. "I don't think it is the dream of people around the world that their children will have no future but one of violence."

Miss Rice, may we refer you to Palestinian Media Watch, where you will find both the ideological justification and the celebration by many Palestinian parents over those very acts. The vows of Palestinian mothers to sacrifice their children for Islam are regular fare in the Palestinian media.

The parliamentary elections, which had been scheduled for July, were postponed indefinitely earlier this month.

Miss Rice, on her second visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories since assuming office in January, said after a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Washington will only deal with nationally elected officials.

"There is an elected president and a government with which we are dealing," she said at a press conference with Mr. Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "We are the government of the United States. This is the government of the Palestinian people."

The secretary's comments came after Hamas members disclosed Thursday that they had had regular contacts with European Union diplomats. Although EU officials in Brussels denied the contacts, they noted that dealing with Hamas may be hard to avoid since the group has won control of dozens of West Bank and Gaza towns in recent municipal elections.

Both the Unites States and the EU insist they still view Hamas as a terrorist organization...

But for how long?

Here's an interesting development in Iran's election, from the New Duranty Times, but regardless of the protests, it looks like there will be a run-off between two hardliners, the Mayor of Tehran and Rafsanjani.

TEHRAN - The race for the presidency in Iran was thrown into turmoil on Saturday when the third-place finisher accused conservative hard-liners of rigging the election and cutting him out of the runoff vote next week, which will be between a former president and the conservative mayor of Tehran.

The accusation of voting irregularities came from Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric and former speaker of Parliament known as a conciliator, who said he would continue to press his case publicly unless the country's supreme religious leader ordered an independent investigation.

It was a bold move in a country that does not generally tolerate such forms of public dissent, and it threw an element of confusion and uncertainty into the race just as the authorities were finalizing the election results, planning for the runoff and pointing to the outcome as a validation of this country's religion-based system of government.

The Interior Ministry issued final figures Saturday night, saying the former two-term president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, would face off against the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a runoff it said would probably be held next Friday. It was unclear what, if any, effect the accusations of fraud would have on the planned vote.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's strong showing came as a shock to the political establishment here. He had hovered at the back of the field of candidates in pre-election opinion surveys and his political base was said to be limited to the capital city. An element of the bizarre in the events on Saturday came as Mr. Ahmadinejad announced that he would be in the runoff hours before the ministry issued its own results.

The government did not immediately respond to the charges of vote tampering, but the cloud had been hanging over the race since the early morning hours when the Interior Ministry found its results being publicly contradicted on state television by the Guardian Council, the panel controlled by hard-line clerics that has the ultimate say over all government actions and often clashes with the reform-controlled elected government. The council has, for example, the power to unilaterally reject the outcome of the election.

Initially, the Interior Ministry had Mr. Rafsanjani first, Mr. Karroubi, the former speaker of the Parliament, in second, and Mr. Ahmadinejad third. Half an hour later the Guardian Council, which is not supposed to be involved in counting ballots, said Mr. Ahmadinejad was in first place.

Apparently hoping to head off an embarrassing public split, the departing president, Mohammad Khatami, visited the site where the ballots were being counted in the morning and offered words of assurance.

"All our efforts have been to hold a healthy election and to protect peoples votes," Mr. Khatami said in comments broadcast on national news. "I have come here to thank officials at the Interior Ministry and to make sure votes are being counted very carefully. If anyone has made any other comments, it is not right."...

From the New Duranty Times:

KARABILA, Iraq - Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.

The American military has found torture houses after invading towns heavily populated by insurgents - like Falluja, where the anti-insurgent assault last fall uncovered almost 20 such sites. But rarely have they come across victims who have lived to tell the tale.

The men said they told the marines, from Company K, Third Marines, Second Division, that they had been tortured with shocks and flogged with a strip of rubber for more than two weeks, unseen behind the windows of black glass. One of them, Ahmed Isa Fathil, 19, a former member of the new Iraqi Army, said he had been held and tortured there for 22 days. All the while, he said, his face was almost entirely taped over and his hands were cuffed.

In an interview with an embedded reporter just hours after he was freed, he said he had never seen the faces of his captors, who occasionally whispered at him, "We will kill you." He said they did not question him, and he did not know what they wanted. Nor did he ever expect to be released.

"They kill somebody every day," said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. "They've killed a lot of people."

From the house on Saturday, there could be heard sounds of fighting from the large-scale offensive to eliminate strongholds of insurgents, many of whom stream across Iraq's porous border with Syria.

As the marines walked through the house - a squat one-story building of sand-colored brick - the broken black window glass crunched under their boots. Light poured in, revealing walls and ceiling shredded by shrapnel from the blast they had set off to break in through a wall. Latex gloves were strewn on the floor. A kerosene lantern lay on its side, shattered.

The manual recovered - a fat, well-thumbed Arabic paperback - listed itself as the 2005 First Edition of "The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy," by Abdel Rahman al-Ali. Its chapters included "How to Select the Best Hostage," and "The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels' Heads."

Also recovered were several fake passports, a black hood, the painkiller Percoset, handcuffs and an explosives how-to-guide. Three cars loaded with explosives were parked in a garage outside the house. The marines blew them up...

"War is deceit," said Muhammad. "Algerian who fabricated details of al-Qaida plot sent to prison," from AP, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

INDIANAPOLIS – An Algerian man who lied about an al-Qaida plot to bomb five U.S. cities in an attempt to avoid deportation was sentenced Friday to a year in prison.

Ahmed Allali, 37, had pleaded guilty to three counts of making false statements for telling federal investigators he knew members of the al-Qaida terrorist network and had lived overseas with them in the late 1990s.

In addition to sentencing Allali to a year in prison, federal Judge Larry J. McKinney also imposed 3 years of supervised release following his release from prison.

Allali lied to members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force when he told them he traveled into the United States in 1998 with al-Qaida members, prosecutors said.

The Algerian national, who was living in Indianapolis, also claimed that an al-Qaida cell was planning to detonate bombs in five major U.S. cities in early 2005.

Late last year, Allali acknowledged he knew no one associated with al-Qaida and had fabricated the story in an attempt to avoid deportation, authorities said....

Authorities have said the investigation tied up hundreds of agents nationwide, diverting resources from other terrorist leads.

“False reports drain already overburdened public safety agencies as well as create undue alarm at a time in this country where there is legitimate concern,” Brooks said.

A cleric, eh? No, it isn't those pesky Methodists again, it's none other than Omar Bakri, who has been notably quiet of late. "UK Cleric's hate massage finds place in website," from the Hindustan Times, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad called the Tottenham mullah, despite watch on him by anti-terror units, has reportedly again called on Muslims to kill the non-believers. He is said to have appeared on an Islamic website urging supporters to rise up and support a holy war.

Bakri was shown in front of a cheering crowd, demanding supporters seek out non- Muslims-Kafirs-and kill them. He also, according to a media report, appeared to suggest the US embassy should be stormed. He was quoted saying, "We're going to incite people to do jihad, incite people to hate the new pharaoh (President Bush). Why not do more? Maybe take over the Embassy."...

Bakri, a former asylum seeker who lives with his family of eight, is already under investigation by Scotland Yard for similar speeches.

Yes, and Osama has a plush office in Foggy Bottom. From MEMRI:

In a June 15, 2005 editorial titled "All the Evidence Proves that Al-Zarqawi is an American Agent," a leading Egyptian government daily Al-Akhbar's states that Al-Zarqawi is working for the U.S. and is massacring Iraqis in an effort to extend the occupation in Iraq. The following are excerpts from the article:

"All the evidence proves that Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi is working for America, because his victims are Iraqis and not [members of] the coalition forces under the command of the American occupation forces in Iraq. Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi's official title is 'leader of Al-Qa'ida's faction in Iraq.' Osama bin Laden is the commander of the Al-Qa'ida organization, and this proves that [Al-Zarqawi's commander,] bin Laden, has [also] been an American agent ever since he operated against the USSR forces in Afghanistan in favor of the Americans!

"Let's read the statement issued two days ago on behalf of Al-Zarqawi in Iraq after he killed and wounded dozens of people from among the Interior Ministry and Iraqi army forces, by means of booby-trapped cars in a number of cities in Iraq!

"Raising a few questions is unavoidable in order to clarify the situation and [to understand] who this Al-Zarqawi with Jordanian nationality is.

"One of the questions is: which of the two should Al-Zarqawi oppose - the American occupation army and the foreign coalition forces, or the Iraqi military and police forces?! The statement issued by Al-Zarqawi and his organization says that they struck and killed dozens of [members of] the Interior Ministry and Iraqi army forces, whereas there was no mention of Al-Zarqawi targeting the American occupation forces and the coalition forces of the various nationalities. [In fact,] the statement did not even mention the occupation army in Iraq!"

"Another question [to be raised] is whether the world is so naive as to believe the American statements, which claim that Washington has allocated $25 million for Al-Zarqawi's arrest or for information leading to his arrest. [After all,] why arrest Al-Zarqawi and allocate all these millions while he is working for America?

"In addition, why is Al-Zarqawi massacring innocent Iraqi citizens and
[members of] the Iraqi National Guard, the Iraqi army and the Iraqi Interior Ministry? Al-Zarqawi undeniably aims to harm the Iraqi people and members of the Iraqi forces, who undergo training to protect [their] homeland in the future. This massacre of the Iraqi forces and the Iraqi people is meant to strengthen the American occupation of the region [that is known to be] the main route to Central Asia, formerly under USSR control, [and that is] rich in oil wells, and surrounds Iran and the Caspian Sea..."

You just can't parody this sort of thing.

Refreshingly straight talk from a Saudi terrorism expert. From NewsMax, :

Al-Qaida is far from being neutralized and is planning its next "catastrophic" attack, according to a top expert on the terrorist organization.

Dr. Saad al-Faqih, who heads the Saudi opposition group Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, was asked in an interview in London if there is any credence to reports of al-Qaida's "demise." His response was chilling:

"Nobody knows how al-Qaida really works. Consider, for instance, that the time lapse between the Africa embassy bombings and 9/11 was more than three years. Therefore the fact that no major attack has taken place since 9/11 is not altogether very surprising.

"Al-Qaida is an extremely resilient organization and it will most likely surprise everybody by how, when and where it executes its next catastrophic attack."

Asked when a weapons of mass destruction attack is likely to take place, Dr. al-Faqih said: "It could happen at any time."...

"But of course al-Qaida is an ideology and its potency cannot be reduced to the number of men in its ranks," he cautioned.

"Moreover, the invasion and occupation of Iraq gave al-Qaida a huge boost and the Saudi government has indirectly admitted that at least 2,500 Saudis are fighting in Iraq."...

"A classified interior ministry report claims that at least 200 have
returned and are currently plotting attacks inside the Kingdom.

"An attack on the royals will likely be carried out by returnees from Iraq."...

"Al-Qaida has lost ground militarily, politically and ideologically.

Ideologically? Really?

Attacking civilians proved to be a major blunder and it remains to be seen whether they can fully recover from it.

He is most likely referring only to Muslim civilians within Saudi Arabia.

"Also, by attacking the security forces they lost a lot of sympathy inside these organizations."

The feeling in Saudi society today is no longer particularly sympathetic toward al-Qaida, according to al-Faqih.

Tiny minority of extremists update:

"The situation was very different two or three years ago, when ordinary people were willing to give the jihadis shelter and other forms of support."

Al-Faqih also predicted that 'al-Qaida in Iraq' leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would likely be killed soon - and said that ordinary Saudis view their government's support for the occupation of Iraq as "treason."

Tales of ancient Kafiristan. "Lost tribe struggles for survival," from the Guardian, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

More than 2,000 years ago Alexander the Great tore across the mountains of northern Pakistan, plundering, conquering and, according to legend, sowing the seeds of a tribe that endures to this day. And today, the Greeks are back.

In a valley high in the Hindu Kush a three-storey building towers incongruously over a scattering of low-roofed huts. The ?300,000 (£200,000) centre - part school, part health centre, part museum and conference hall - is being built by the Greek government in an effort to save the Kalasha, Pakistan's tribe of "infidels".

Reputed to have descended from the armies of Alexander, the Kalasha have lived for thousands of years in a nest of idyllic valleys near the Afghan border. But their identity is being threatened by Muslim missionaries, tourism and neglect by central government.

The Kalasha are the last remnants of the population of Kafiristan, the
ancient "land of infidels" that straddled the borders of present-day
Pakistan and Afghanistan. About 4,000 of them survive in three majestic valleys that awe visitors as a sort of paradise lost.

Turquoise streams rush through leafy glades of giant walnut trees and
swaying crops. Clusters of simple houses cling to steep forested slopes. Compared with many compatriots beyond their valleys, the Kalasha are charmingly liberal: drinking wine, holding dancing festivals and worshipping a variety of gods. Women wear intricately beaded headdresses, not burkas, and may choose their husband.

"For me, the Kalasha are heroes, because they have reached the 21st century still living like their fathers," said Athanasius Lerounis, a 50-year-old schoolteacher from Athens supervising construction of the centre, which is due to open next month. "We want to help them preserve that."

The centre, which aims to provide everything from schooling to surgery, has reignited debate about how best to save the Kalasha way of life. Some community leaders feel the Greek initiative is good-hearted, but wrong-headed. "I don't blame them for wanting to help, but that help could damage us," said Saifullah Jan in Rumbur valley. "There is too much interference. Our people are getting spoilt. They should just let us be."...

At last, details of the latest chart-topper, featuring more railing against "Crusaders" and Jews, from Zawahri. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

CAIRO, JUNE 17 (AP) Al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, released a new video, aired on Al-Jazeera television today, denouncing the U.S. Concept of reform and saying armed jihad is the only way to bring change in the Arab world.

The message _ al-Zawahri's first video since February _ appeared to be an attempt by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida to coopt the rising wave of reform movements in the Middle East....

``The removal of the Crusader and Jewish invaders from the Islamic countries won't occur only by peaceful demonstrations,'' he said in a brief clip aired on the pan-Arab network. ``Reform and expelling the invaders from the countries of Islam won't happen except through fighting for God's sake.'' Instead, he outlined what he called a true program for reform _ based on the rule of Islamic law and the end of U.S. And Western domination.

``We cannot imagine any reform while our countries are occupied by the Crusader forces,'' he said. ``We cannot imagine any reform while our governments are being ruled from the American embassies in our countries.'' He said the Islamic world must be allowed to run its own affairs with ``the freedom of a legitimate and independent judiciary'' and the power to ``propagate virtue and prevent vice'' _ an injunction to implement Islamic law.

Four misunderstanders of Islam apprehended in London. From the TimesOnline, :

Police arrested four men for suspected terrorism offences in a series of co-ordinated armed raids in north London early today.

Detectives, acting on intelligence, raided two houses in Barnet and another in Finchley in the early hours and arrested two men.

Anti-terrorist officers ambushed a vehicle in Barnet High Road and arrested the driver and a passenger. The road was closed off this morning while officers checked the car, and searches were continuing at the three addresses.

The men were held in the early hours of this morning under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act. They are being questioned at a central London police station over suspected links to Islamic terrorism.

It's understandable that the government would not want to present its side of the case. But it just allows the New Duranty Times to print victimization speculation like this story. Perhaps some attention should be paid to the possibilities of disclosing enough to answer legitimate questions without compromising ongoing investigations. (Thanks to SusanP for the link.)

DHAKA, Bangladesh - Slumped at the edge of the bed she would have to share with four relatives that night, the 16-year-old girl from Queens looked stunned.

The sisters, their mother and a brother are back in Bangladesh.
On the hot, dusty road from the airport, she had watched rickshaws surge past women sweeping the streets, bone-thin in their bright saris. Now, in a language she barely understood, unfamiliar aunts and uncles lamented her fate: to be forced to leave the United States, her home since kindergarten, because the F.B.I. had mysteriously identified her as a potential suicide bomber.

"I feel like I'm on a different planet," the girl, Tashnuba Hayder, said. "It just hit me. How everything happened - it's like, 'Oh, my God.' "

The story of how it happened - how Tashnuba, the pious, headstrong daughter of Muslim immigrants living in a neighborhood of tidy lawns and American flags, was labeled an imminent threat to national security - is still shrouded in government secrecy. After nearly seven weeks in detention, she was released in May on the condition that she leave the country immediately. Only immigration charges were brought against her and another 16-year-old New York girl, who was detained and released. Federal officials will not discuss the matter.

But as the first terror investigation in the United States known to involve minors, the case reveals how deeply concerned the government is that a teenager might become a terrorist, and the lengths to which federal agents will go if they get even a whiff of that possibility. And it has drawn widespread attention, stoking the debate over the right balance between government vigilance and the protection of individual freedoms.

It is not known what prompted the authorities to investigate Tashnuba, who says the accusations are false. But in a series of interviews - her first - she said the government had apparently discovered her visits to an Internet chat room where she took notes on sermons by a charismatic Islamic cleric in London, a sheik who has long been accused of encouraging suicide bombings.

An F.B.I. agent, posing as a youth counselor, first confronted Tashnuba in her bedroom, going through her school papers and questioning everything from her views on jihad to her posterless walls, she said. Sent to a center for delinquents in Pennsylvania, Tashnuba said she was interrogated without a lawyer or parent present, about her beliefs and those of her friends, mainly American girls she had met at city mosques.

As suicide bombings mount overseas, with teenage girls among the perpetrators, there is no doubt that the government's intelligence efforts are spurred by legitimate fears. The agent leading this investigation was a Muslim woman born in Britain who has voiced strong concern about radical clerics' influence on young immigrants there. And in Tashnuba, who wore a veil and talks of an ideal Islamic state, she met unsettling opinions and teenage defiance.

But Tashnuba says that she opposes suicide bombing, that her interest in the cleric was casual, and that the government treated her like a criminal simply for exercising the freedoms of speech and religion that America had taught her.

As she tells it, F.B.I. agents tried to twist mundane details of her life to fit the profile of a terrorist recruit, and when they could not make a case, covered their tracks by getting her out of the country. In fact, the court order of "voluntary departure" that let her leave requires a finding that the person is not deportable for endangering national security.

Tashnuba said she believed she was singled out precisely because she is a noncitizen - allowing investigators to invoke immigration law, bypassing the familiar limits of criminal and juvenile proceedings.

"That gave them the green light to get me out of my family," Tashnuba said during her long journey with her mother and siblings to this teeming city where she was born.

This account is, in large part, her version of events. Some of it is supported by documents and other interviews, but it cannot all be corroborated because a court has sealed the case record at the F.B.I.'s request and barred participants from disclosing government information. The government has declined repeated requests to present its side.

An illuminating piece from the Asia Times, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

KARACHI - Two and a half years ago, Pakistan's most-wanted person, Asif Ramzi, was found dead, along with five others, following an explosion in a bombing-making factory in Korangi, a satellite district of the southern port city of Karachi.

Ramzi was wanted in connection with the killing of Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl and the June 2002 bombing of the US consulate in
Karachi.

This incident alerted the security agencies of both the US and Pakistan to the emergence of Korangi, as well as neighboring Landhi, as a new breeding ground for the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, and consequently a new target in the "war on terror". The Landhi-Korangi area already had notoriety as a "no-go area".

The Lashkar-i-Jhangvi is the militant offshoot of the banned Sunni sectarian group Sepah-i-Sahabah, which although not directly affiliated with al-Qaeda, its members have a kinship, as many of them trained together in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban in that country...

Read it all.

Rashid Ahmed update from Reuters, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's main spy agency gave military training to Kashmiri rebels battling security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir, a separatist leader has revealed for the first time.

While India has long accused Pakistan of training and arming the rebels, a charge Islamabad denies, this is the first confirmation by a separatist leader in the troubled Himalayan region. It comes at a time of unprecedented peace steps by the two nuclear-armed powers.

The Kashmir dispute has been at the heart of decades of hostility between India and Pakistan, and tens of thousands of people have been killed in the rebellion against Indian rule in its part of the Muslim-majority region.

The revelation of help for the rebels from Pakistan's Inter-Service
Intelligence (ISI) agency comes in a new book by Amanullah Khan, chief of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).

"We had a gentleman's agreement, an oral sort of agreement. I was given the idea that the ISI was all for the independence of Kashmir," Khan told Reuters on Friday, referring to the beginning of ISI help for his group.

He said he was given the impression that Pakistan's then military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, also supported the notion of independence for Kashmir...

An intriguing article on the ice cream jihad fallout among Muslims in Lodi. Note the position of CAIR, and the altogether positive prospect of Muslims planning to protest against it. "Muslim community: division and reflection," from the Record, with thanks to Thomas:

LODI -- The local Muslim community has tried hard this week to mask its divisions.

Those internal struggles may soon reappear in a public way. On Friday, Lodi Muslim Mosque board member Nick Qayyum said he and many others plan to protest at the Sacramento office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations for its part in standing by two local spiritual leaders arrested on immigration violations -- Mohammad Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed.

The two imams, as well as Khan's teenage son, were detained as federal officials investigated two other men suspected of having ties to terrorists. Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer Hayat, were arrested Sunday on charges of lying to investigators.

Qayyum said the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, shouldn't be defending the two imams, who he thinks have tried to take control of the local Islamic community. The imams have been controversial in part because they came to Lodi from Pakistan.

Khan also spearheads efforts to build the Farooqia Islamic Center, where some Muslims hope to create a religious school. Lodi Muslim Mosque board members have sued over those plans, accusing Farooqia supporters with deception and fraud.

More than 3,000 Muslims from Pakistan live in the Lodi area. The community has been divided in part over the Farooqia center, but also over whether the community should be led by outsiders or those who grew up in area.

Qayyum said that Khan and Ahmed "divided our families -- brothers against brothers, sisters against sisters. If (CAIR) is going to go out to support these people, we're going to protest. We're going to try to get 400 to 500 people to go to the office in Sacramento. That's not a joke, either.

"As far as I'm concerned, (Khan and Ahmed) hijacked our religion and tried to hijack us."...

It's interesting that with all this religion-hijacking talk we have heard since 9/11, this is the first instance I can remember of rank-and-file Muslims in America actually doing something about it. Please refresh my memory if I am overlooking something.

Rachel Ehrenfeld writes on the charitable jihad in Frontpage, with thanks to EPG:

On May 11, 2005, Muhamed Mubayyid was arrested and charged in Boston's District Court for filing false tax returns on behalf of Care International, for which he acted as treasurer. Mubayyid was also the Customer Services manager of the company known as Ptech, a privately owned technology company based in Quincy, Massachusetts. Ptech, which recently changed its name to GoAgile, developed a software, also called Ptech, that was used primarily to develop enterprise blueprints that held every important functional, operational, and technical detail of a given enterprise.

Mubayyid is only the latest of Ptech's top investors and managers to run afoul with the law. Mubayyid personifies the interlinks of the complex infrastructure, which were established by al-Qaeda and other Islamist organizations in the US.

But Mubayyid was not arrested for his connection with al-Qaeda. Rather, was charged for making false statements and conspiring to defraud the US by misrepresenting Care's activities, which involved "the solicitation and expenditure of funds to support and promote the mujahideen and jihad, including the distribution of pro-jihad publications."...

Read it all.

Why haven't they given up? Does the State Department know? Do they have any idea of the elements of the jihad ideology that motivates them? Do they know why the Karzai government has hewed so closely to the Islamic law that it was supposed to represent freedom from? From AP, :

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is regrouping and preparing to bring Iraq-style bloodshed to Afghanistan, the defense minister said Friday, warning his country may face intense violence ahead of key legislative elections this fall.

Recent intelligence indicates the terror organization slipped about half a dozen Arab agents into Afghanistan over the past three weeks, including two who detonated themselves in suicide bombings against a packed mosque and a convoy of U.S. troops, Defense Minister Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press.

"It looks like there has been a regrouping of al-Qaida and they may have changed their tactics not only to concentrate on Iraq but also on Afghanistan," Wardak said in an interview over tea at his wood-paneled office next to the heavily guarded presidential compound.

"We do believe that we will have three months of very tough times," Wardak said. "The enemies of this nation will do everything they can to disrupt the (Sept. 18 parliamentary) elections."...

"As we get closer to the elections, they are likely to intensify their efforts to ... derail the elections," said Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been tapped by President Bush to be the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq.

Referring to the infiltration of Arab fighters for al-Qaida, Wardak said: "We have gotten reports here and there that they have entered - at least half a dozen of them. The last report is that they came in just close to the time of the mosque attack."...

Authorities recovered the head of the mosque attacker and said he appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. Wardak said initial indications are that the second suicide attacker also was Arab.

A new tape surfaces from our old friend the doctor. From Xinhuanet:

CAIRO - Al-Jazeera TV channel said Friday that it will air a new videotape from al-Qaida's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri Friday evening.

In the tape which the channel aired an excerpt, the terror network's deputy leader appeared in a traditional gown wearing a white turban, and a rifle was propped up by his side.

He slammed the United States for its reforms in the Mideast region, and also criticized pro-Western states of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The channel stopped short of specifying how it obtained the tape, which was not dated.

Excerpts of the video will be aired at 9:30 p.m. local time (1830 GMT), the Qatar-based satellite channel said.

Zawahiri, al-Qaida's leader Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, appeared in a footage aired by the channel last November, calling for continuing fight against the United States "till the last hour."...

Stay tuned...

An effort to clean up the Iraqi Syrian border region. From AP via Fox News:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military launched a major combat operation Friday, sending 1,000 Marines and Iraqi soldiers to hunt for insurgents and foreign fighters in a volatile western province straddling Syria.

Operation Spear started in the pre-dawn hours in Anbar province to hunt for insurgents and foreign fighters, the military said. The area, which straddles the Syrian border, is where U.S. forces said it killed about 40 militants in airstrikes in Karabilah on June 11.

The operation came one day after Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston called the Syrian border the "worst problem" in terms of stemming the influx of foreign fighters to Iraq. Syria is under intense pressure from Washington and Baghdad to tighten control of its porous 380-mile border with Iraq.

The Marines have lost 11 men and two sailors over the past week in separate incidents around Anbar.

Elsewhere, a car bomber rammed into an Iraqi army convoy in northern Iraq early Friday, injuring at least seven people — three soldiers, three civilians and one policeman, police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said. The blast came on the heels of a car bomb on Baghdad's airport road Thursday that killed at least eight police officers and wounded 25 more...

Christopher Hitchens has an interesting piece in this month's Vanity Fair also carried in Front Page:

Driving down through the desert, from Tehran to the holy city of Qom, I am following the path of so many who have made the pilgrimage before me. They either were seeking an audience with, or a glimpse of, Ayatollah Khomeini or, if they were journalistic pilgrims, were trying to test the temperature of Iran's clerical capital. As I arrive, darkness is gently settling over the domes and spires of the mosque and the Shia theological seminary, the latter of which is demarcated by a kind of empty moat which doubles as a market. But I am not headed for these centers of spiritual and temporal power. My objective is an ill-paved backstreet where, after one confirming cell-phone call, a black-turbaned cleric is waiting outside his modest quarters. This is Hossein Khomeini. The black turban proclaims him a sayyid, or descendant of the prophet Muhammad. But it's his more immediate ancestry that interests me. This man's grandfather once shook the whole world. He tore down the throne of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and humiliated the United States. His supporters seized the American Embassy and kept 52 members of its staff prisoner for 444 days. The seismic repercussions of this event led to the fall of Carter, the rise of Reagan, the invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussein, and quite possibly the occupation of Afghanistan by the Red Army. It moved us from the age of the Red Menace to the epoch of Holy War. It was, at one and the same time, a genuine revolution and an authentic counterrevolution. I have become almost averse to shaking hands in Iran by now, because it isn't permitted for a man to shake a woman's hand in public in this nerve-racked country, and if you unlearn the conditioned reflex in one way, you unlearn it in another. But as I feel young Khomeini's polite grip, I fancifully experience a slight crackle from history.

Iranian hospitality is one of the most warming and embarrassing things it is possible to encounter. Before any conversation can begin on these grand questions, there must be fragrant tea, a plate of sohan, the addictive pistachio-and-saffron brittle that is the Qom specialty, and a pressing invitation to stay for dinner, and indeed for the night. The pressure is re-doubled on this occasion because the last time we met and talked I was the host.

Young Khomeini has been spending a good deal of his time in Iraq, where he has many friends among the Shia. He is a strong supporter of the United States intervention in that country, and takes a political line not dissimilar to that of Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani. In practice, this means the traditional Shia belief that clerics should not occupy posts of political power. In Iranian terms, what it means is that Khomeini (his father and elder brother died some years ago, so he is the most immediate descendant) favors the removal of the regime established by his grandfather. "I stand," he tells me calmly, "for the complete separation of religion and the state." In terms that would make the heart of a neocon soar like a hawk, he goes on to praise President Bush's State of the Union speech, to warn that the mullahs cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, and to use the term "Free World" without irony: "Only the Free World, led by America, can bring democracy to Iran."

Read it all.

California, Pennsylvania and Arkansas in the news this morning. Lodi case update from AP via Fox News:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A father and son were indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges they lied to authorities investigating links to Pakistani terrorist training camps connected to Al Qaeda.

Hamid Hayat, 22, was accused of lying to the FBI earlier this month when he said he did not attend a terrorism camp in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004, prosecutors said.

His father, Umer Hayat, 47, was charged with lying to investigators when he denied that his son had attended such camps. The FBI said the elder Hayat later admitted to flying his son to Pakistan and paying for the camp, which was run by the friend of a relative.

The indictment said the younger Hayat falsely told authorities he was not involved with a terrorist organization, he never attended a terrorist camp and he had never received any weapons training at such a camp.

In an affidavit, the FBI said Hamid Hayat attended a terror camp for about six months before returning to the U.S. intending to wage attacks. They said they found no immediate threat or terrorist activity.

Defense lawyer Wazhma Mojaddidi said Thursday that Hamid Hayat "has most definitely never attended a terrorist training camp."...

Members of the 2,000-member Pakistani community there have said they have been harassed by authorities, and on Thursday two groups said they would file complaints.

In other developments, a 68-year-old Pennsylvania man who told undercover federal agents he had "no loyalty for America" was indicted Thursday on a single count of attempting to support Al Qaeda by allegedly trying to build a bomb and sell it to the terrorist group or its affiliates.

If convicted, Ronald Allen Grecula, of Bangor, Pa., could face up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

In Arkansas, a graduate student who allegedly told a professor that he was leaving to fight in a Palestinian holy war was in federal custody Thursday. Federal agents arrested Arwah J. Jaber on a criminal complaint accusing him of knowingly attempting to provide support to a foreign terrorist organization.

According to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin (subscription only), terrorist organizations like Hamas provide start up money for small cash and carry businesses in Mexico and then use those businesses for money laundering. Small businesses in small towns seem to be a recurring theme, like the ice cream vendor in Lodi. We are also seeing large mosques being built in small towns in America like this one in Gallup NM. (Hat tip to Billy Don Burns)

From Reuters:

LAGOS - The United States closed its Nigerian embassy in Abuja and consulate in Lagos on Friday due to a "security incident" which is being investigated by Nigerian police, an embassy spokesman said.

A diplomatic source said intelligence indicated that foreign militants posed a specific threat to the U.S. presence in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest oil exporter which was named by Osama bin Laden as a candidate for "liberation."

"The embassy is reacting to a security incident and we thought it prudent to close," said an embassy spokesman, adding that he had no information on the nature of the incident.

Nigerian police were acting on information provided by the United States and the results of their investigation would be made public, the spokesman said.

The diplomatic source said the embassy had received information from foreign Islamic militant channels on a specific threat to the Lagos consulate.

"This is not a Nigerian source and there is not necessarily Nigerian participation, but we can't be sure of that," the source said.

Britain also closed its Nigerian High Commission office in Lagos due to a "security reason," a spokesman said.

Nigeria's population of 140 million people are divided roughly evenly between Muslims and Christians and the country has a long history of religious bloodshed...

Sure, they blew up a few people, but they put this guy through school. What capital fellows! More on the Al-Arian case from the Tampa Tribune, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

TAMPA - As an international student, job options were severely limited for Sammeeh Hammoudeh. Immigration law severely restricts off-campus work. Before enrolling, he had to show University of South Florida officials that he had enough money to cover his studies and living expenses.

But jurors in the terror support trial of Hammoudeh, former USF professor Sami Al-Arian and two other defendants heard testimony Tuesday that Hammoudeh taught at a private school and worked at a think tank.

Such work, even done voluntarily, wouldn't be allowed, testified David Austell, USF's director for international student services.

``In no case can the student work off campus without authorization'' from immigration officials, Austell said.

Prosecutors say he was on another payroll, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's, and that Al- Arian brought him here to help launder its money.

His defense attorney denies that and says Hammoudeh organized charity for needy children in Palestine....

Other records indicate the Islamic Community of Tampa, the formal name of Al-Arian's mosque, contributed nearly $36,000 in 1996 to cover Hammoudeh's education expenses while he pursued a master's degree in religious studies.

Meanwhile, retired FBI agent Edith ``Eddie'' Tuttle testified about a 1995 search of Al-Arian's home. Through Tuttle, prosecutors introduced dozens of new exhibits including videotapes, Al-Arian's personal telephone book, financial records and a 1993 Islamic Jihad calendar.

Defense attorney William Moffitt asked whether political material was seized during the search.

``I remember seizing items that said `Islamic Jihad' if you deem that political,'' she said.

Moffitt seems to be banking on the prosecution not knowing, or being afraid to say, that the jihad is an inherently political concept. From the beginning Muhammad waged jihads to extend the political parameters of Islam, and that idea is very much alive today.

Dhimmitude at DHS, where political correctness seems to have trumped the evidence -- evidence that keeps on being confirmed, as with the Lodi arrests recently. "Service Before Security," from Paul Sperry in FrontPage, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The good news is U.S. airport traffic is returning to pre-9/11 levels. The bad news is, so are security priorities at international terminals, where some of the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. illegally.

New internal memos I've obtained show the Homeland Security Department seems more worried about getting foreign travelers to their destinations on time than screening them for terror ties.

In fact, I've learned the department has formed a so-called Airport Wait Time working group, which met for the first time in December to come up with a national strategy to clock federal inspectors processing foreign travelers entering the U.S. at major international airports. Those who take too long are written up.

Airport immigration inspectors are our first line of defense against terrorists entering the country. They check fingerprints and photographs against terror watchlists and question suspicious foreign passengers.

Yet they are under new pressure to clear planes in response to complaints from airlines about security related delays.

"Flight times are now much more important than catching terrorists, drugs or illegals," a Customs and Border Protection supervisor at a major international airport told me. "We are always pressured to clear passengers in under 60 minutes, no matter what -- even though Congress lifted that mandate after 9/11."...

To reduce flight delays at these airports, DHS exempts a number of passengers from US-VISIT security screening if necessary, including teens, elderly, families, foreign pilots and religious workers such as imams, according to memo dated Jan. 2, 2004, and marked "LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE."

Foreign air crews are exempt even though a number of Saudi and other foreign Muslim airline pilots have been linked to terrorism.

So are Muslim clerics staying in the U.S. on R-1 and R-2 visas. Such foreign religious workers have been ranked the "lowest threat" among the 10 visa classifications (I've redacted the specific rankings, from highest threat to lowest, for obvious reasons). Yet hundreds of Muslim clerics have been linked to terrorism, many of whom still preach in the U.S.

Just last week, federal authorities arrested two Pakistani imams in connection with a terror case involving a possible al-Qaeda cell in the sleepy farming community of Lodi, Calif. The men allegedly violated the terms of their religious worker visas.

The leniency DHS gives such visiting clerics alarms GOP U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, since many are "calling for the violent overthrow of the nation" from mosque pulpits.

"They enter into this country, they are assigned to mosques. And most of the mosques in the United States are being built with Saudi money, most of them are Wahhabi. And these people, many of them, preach essentially sedition," Tancredo asserted in a recent hearing on border security held by the House International Relations Committee. "What these imams have said even outside the mosque would under any other situation, if anybody else would say these things, be considered to be seditious, and even charges would be brought on that basis."

He says putting them at the top of the list for exemption from fingerprinting and terror monitoring is the height of naiveté, and he's right. Many Muslim clerics use their religiosity simply as cover to carry out terror-related activities, such as recently convicted imam Ali al-Timimi, who encouraged young Virginia Muslims to kill Americans abroad.

Today's Al-Arian update features Sami finally getting the chance to savor the fruit of his labors up close. (Not, of course, that he had anything to do with this sort of thing. He was just raising money for schools and orphanages, you know, and that "Death to America! Death to Israel!" business was just fiery rhetoric. He's a fiery soul, all right.) From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

TAMPA, Fla. -- Kesari Ruza said that at first she didn't know exactly what happened to the bus that day in 1995, but it was immediately clear that something terrible had happened to her friend, Alisa Flatow, a fellow American student who was studying in Israel.

Ruza, testifying Thursday in the federal terrorism conspiracy trial of fired university professor Sami Al-Arian, described how she, along with Flatow, of New Jersey, and another American student, boarded a bus heading for a beach resort on the Gaza Strip on April 9, 1995. Sitting next to Flatow right behind the driver, she dozed off along the way and was jolted awake by chaos.

At the Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom, a suicide bomber drove a van loaded with explosives into the bus. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the group Al-Arian is accused of supporting, later claimed responsibility.

"I remember hearing some kind of sound that woke me up," testified Ruza, now a New York City attorney. "As soon as I woke up, Alisa's head kind of fell toward me. ... Her eyes were rolled back in her head and her hands were sort of curled in."

The 20-year-old Flatow suffered a severe head injury and died the next day at a Jerusalem hospital. Seven other people also perished and 40 were injured.

The trial of Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida computer engineering professor, and three other defendants on charges that they raised money in America and supported the mission of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad took an emotional turn at the end of its second week with the testimony of Ruza and a tearful Stephen Flatow, who told of rushing to Israel to find his brain-dead daughter being kept alive by a respirator.

Jurors, some of whom have nodded off during mostly mundane testimony so far in the trial, intently listened to the witnesses and watched a 10-minute amateur video shot at the scene of the bus bombing. The images show gun-toting Israeli soldiers watching over a chaotic scene of wounded people on the ground outside the bus with blown-out windows. Flatow, wearing a long denim skirt and white T-shirt, is visible on the ground getting medical care.

"There was blood everywhere," Ruza testified in a clear, steady voice. "There was blood on us, blood on our bags."

Prosecutors are attempting to link Al-Arian and the other defendants to such attacks by the PIJ, a State Department-listed terrorist organization blamed for more than 100 deaths in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The men deny any connection to the PIJ and say they are being persecuted for their unpopular pro-Palestinian beliefs.

Outside the courthouse Thursday, Al-Arian attorney William Moffitt repeated his contention that his client had nothing to do with the bombing, directly or indirectly.

"I've always said it's not Mr. Al-Arian's fault, and nothing that happened in the courtroom today changes that," Moffitt said.

Sure. He just raised money for them. He thought they were going to use it to open a candy store.

Prosecutors allege the men used an Islamic academic think tank, a Palestinian charity and an Islamic school founded by Al-Arian as fundraising fronts for the PIJ.

The government's case is anchored to a decade of wiretapped telephone calls and faxes beginning in late 1993 or early 1994, as well as letters, financial records, pamphlets, photos, video tapes and other evidence seized in searches.

An update on the Pakistani jihadist who is now a member of the government, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. "Rashid had Jihad links: Ex-ISI man," from the Times of India, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

ISLAMABAD: Former ISI (Inter-State Intelligence) functionary Khawaja Khalid has corroborated Yasin Malik and Mirza Aslam Baig’s assertions that Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed ran militant training camps near Islamabad from 1989 to 1991.

"Sheikh Rashid is a mujahid and played a great role in jihad. I would like to meet him and ask him why he is denying his involvement in training mujahideen. I had personally visited Rashid’s camp," he said.

The Daily Times also quoted Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the acting president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), as confirming that Rashid ran a militant camp in Fateh Jang, near Rawalpindi. He said that in 1991 the then premier Nawaz Sharif had ordered the camp’s closure.

He added: "Why do you want me to dig out skeletons from the closet? If I do that, no one in the ruling PML will come out smelling like a rose."

I've been following the twists and turns of this story for a day or two now and this is the latest and sanest version so far. From the BBC "Father-in-law arrested for rape" with thanks to all who sent in the various headlines.

Police in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have arrested a man accused of raping his daughter-in-law.

The arrest follows reports that a Muslim council of community elders had ordered the victim to marry her father-in-law.

That's her father-in-law, the rapist, folks. Just in case you missed it.

But the order was criticised by a top Muslim body which said it was not valid under Sharia (Islamic) law.

It said the council was not authorised to give such a verdict and added that the alleged rapist should be punished.

Senior superintendent of police in the town of Chatarwal, where the incident took place, told The Indian Express newspaper that the alleged rapist was being questioned.

The 28-year-old victim is said to have been raped when she was alone at home.

Under the Sharia law... if her father-in-law has raped her, he should be sentenced to death

When the incident came to the notice of the council, it ordered that she marry her father-in-law and change her relationship with her husband to that between a mother and son.

It also ordered her to leave her home and stay away for seven month and 10 days to become "pure"...

Then, if that weren't enough, minutes before he was sentenced to life in prison, the father-in-law rapist proposed to his daughter-in-law to save her from the "stigma of rape," and maybe also to reduce his sentence. She rejected him.

And come to think of it, we haven't heard a peep out of Zarqawi for while. (Of course, we heard nothing from OBL for a long time too, and then he popped up again.) From AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) - A top aide to Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, the US military revealed.

Mohammed Khalaf Shakar, also known as Abu Talha, is "Zarqawi's most trusted operations agent in all of Iraq," a military statement said Thursday.

"This is a major defeat for the Al-Qaeda's terrorist organisation in Iraq. Zarqawi's leader in Mosul is out of business," said US Air Force Brigadier General Donald Alston.

According to the military statement, he surrendered to US and Iraqi forces on Tuesday without a fight in "a quiet neighbourhood in Mosul" after they were led to his whereabouts by "multiple intelligence sources."

"According to former Talha associates, Talha never stayed more than one night at any one residence," the statement added.

Alston, the new top military spokesman, told reporters in Baghdad: "Numerous reports indicated he wore a suicide vest 24 hours a day and stated he would never surrender. Instead Talha gave up without a fight."

Iraqi authorities said recently they had captured one of Abu Talha's most trusted aides and his financial manager, Motleq Mahmud Motleq Abdullah, also known as Abu Raed, in Mosul on May 28.

They had also announced the arrest of another Zarqawi aide in Mosul known as Mullah Mehdi.

Abu Talha is accused of masterminding some of the deadliest attacks against US and Iraqi forces in Mosul. Iraq's third-largest city, it has been a major front for the insurgency since November.

"Talha fell like so many others fall, and that is through a combination of factors that ultimately catch up to him," Alston said.

"In his case like so many others along the way, civilians helped us get closer to him."

A positive sign.

From Reuters, "Bangladesh: Government Fails to Act Against Religious Violence Attacks on Minority Ahmadis Continue Amidst Censorship and Pogroms" with thanks to Skeet Street. The Ahmadis are a sect of Muslims who are considered to be apostates by Sunnis.

(KN)--an umbrella group of Sunni Muslim extremists--against the Ahmadiyya community. The KN and other extremist groups have attacked Ahmadiyya mosques, beaten and killed some Ahmadis, and prevented access to schools and sources of livelihood for others. They have demanded an official declaration that Ahmadis are not Muslims and a ban on all Ahmadi writings and missionary activities.

Founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Ahmadiyya community is a religious group that identifies itself as Muslim. It differs with other Muslims over the exact definition of Prophet Mohammad being the "final" monotheist prophet.

Under the Bangladesh National Party-led government, discrimination and violence against the Ahmadis has intensified. The report documents the government's failure to prosecute those responsible for anti-Ahmadi violence. It condemns the January ban on all Ammadiyya publications imposed by the government.

The Jamaat-e-Islami and the Islamic Okye Jyote, junior coalition partners in the government, do not recognize the Ahmadis as Muslims and have been involved in fomenting religious violence against them and other religious minorities.

"It's a dangerous moment in Bangladesh when the government becomes complicit in religious violence," said Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division. "The authorities have emboldened extremists by failing to prosecute those engaged in anti-Ahmadi violence and by banning Ahmadiyya publications." ...

From Breaking News with thanks to Two Stellas.

U2 frontman Bono was horrified during a visit to Ethiopia, when he saw local women pelting a breast-feeding aid worker with stones.

The American woman was oblivious of the offence she was causing, and had to escape the angry onslaught from female Muslims who had no qualms about injuring her or her baby.

Bono recalls: "I remember one vision of the people who are with World Vision, which is an American aid agency.

"One of the women was breast-feeding a child on the horse. She was so comfortable. She didn't mean to be insensitive.

"But the Muslim women did not like this and came out and started throwing stones at her because she was showing her breasts."

From AP, with thanks to Big Sleep.

VIENNA, Austria - Board members of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency approved a deal Thursday that exempts Saudi Arabia from nuclear inspections, despite serious misgivings about the arrangement in an era of heightened proliferation fears.

Although the Saudis resisted Western pressure to compromise and allow some form of monitoring, the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency had no choice but to allow it to sign on to the agreement.

Called the small quantities protocol, the deal allows countries whose nuclear equipment or activities are thought to be below a minimum threshold to submit a declaration instead of undergoing inspection.

There is little concern the Saudis are trying to make nuclear arms, but diplomats accredited to the meeting said Riyadh's resistance to inspections - and any new deals limiting the IAEA's powers to investigate - were disconcerting at a time of increased fears countries or terrorists might be interested in acquiring such weapons.

With the deal approved, delegates focused on a report on Iran, to be presented later Thursday to the closed board meeting and given ahead of delivery to The Associated Press.

It says Iran has acknowledged working with small amounts of plutonium, a possible nuclear arms component, for years longer than it had originally admitted and receiving sensitive technology that can be used as part of a weapons program earlier than it initially said it did....

The Saudis insist they have no plans to develop nuclear arms - and no facilities or nuclear stocks that warrant inspection.

As such, they qualify for the protocol, which has been implemented by 75 nations, most of them small and in politically stable parts of the world and which puts the onus on the nations to truthfully report that they have nothing to inspect.

But the timing of the deal for the Saudis comes amid persistent tensions in the Middle East and concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions. It also coincides with an agency push to tighten or rescind the protocol, as suggested in a confidential IAEA document prepared for the board and also made available to AP on Tuesday.

While the Saudi government insists it has no interest in nuclear arms, in the past two decades it has been linked to prewar Iraq's nuclear program and to the Pakistani nuclear black marketeer A.Q. Khan. It also has expressed interest in Pakistani missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and Saudi officials reportedly discussed pursuing the nuclear option as a deterrent in the volatile Middle East....

Yahiya Emerick writes an interesting article in IslamAmerica concerning the attitudes and beliefs of average American Muslims about raising their children in America and the attitudes of the children themselves. Thanks to Designut.

"Most parents send their kids here for reasons other than Islam," lamented the principal of a large Muslim school.

"A lot of our students have older brothers and sisters who have gone out of control. They smoke, use drugs, sleep around and disobey their parents."

I knew from my own experience that what he was saying was true. In my first year of teaching I had met the families of many of my students in the Muslim school.

What I saw shocked me.

The older siblings were completely and thoroughly non-Muslim in their behavior and demeanor. One girl had an older brother with an arm full of tattoos! The girl, who had seven older siblings that went through an urban public school told me that her parents were sending her to the Muslim school because they wanted "at least one good one."

On another occasion, I happened to be standing in the school office talking to the secretary when a middle-aged, Indo-Pak couple came in with their teenage daughter.

She was wearing tight jeans, no Hijab and a lot of make-up.

Her face said it all: she's been around. Her parents, as it turned out, wanted to enroll her in the Muslim school because they didn't want her to become "Christian." Oh... the parents also mentioned that she had a boyfriend and that they didn't want her to "get into trouble."

She was enrolled in the ninth grade and therefore would be in my Islamic Studies class. As it happened, she didn't know how to pray, she never made Wudu in her life and she knew nothing of Islamic teachings. She was, for all practical purposes, a non-Muslim with a Muslim sounding name.

Do you see a pattern emerging here? After having been involved with Muslim education for the last seven years as a teacher in Sunday schools, summer schools and full-time Muslim schools, I have had the chance to observe the immigrant Muslim community very closely. I wish I could say the indigenous Muslim community, but the immigrants have not seen fit to spread Islam to native-born Americans, but that's another story...

We recommend you read it all. Emerick continues to be shocked by America, shocked!

We may have a bit of a race in Iran's election. The latest from World News Online:

TEHRAN: Mariam is undecided who she will choose in Iran's presidential race but the 27-year-old from the Iranian capital's poor southern suburbs is sure of one thing: she will not vote for former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

"The root of all this unemployment and the current economic problems is Rafsanjani," the civil servant said, wandering down a south Tehran street festooned with posters for the seven candidates standing in today's polls.

The campaign began almost as a one-horse race, but after more than two weeks of campaigning that ended yesterday, Rafsanjani's lead has sharply eroded and his chances of securing the 50 percent vote needed for a first-round win seem slim.

The race is the tightest in Iran's history with reformist Mostafa Moin and conservative Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who both ran vigorous campaigns, in second and third place according to opinion polls, although polls have been unreliable in the past.

Moin is described by MEMRI being initially disqualified:

As in the past, the Guardian Council gave no explanation for its disqualification of most of the reformist candidates. The most prominent of these candidates was Mustafa Mo'in, the former Higher Education minister in the Khatami government, who had been ousted by the conservative Seventh Majlis. Mo'in's disqualification was protested by reformist and conservative political circles alike. Prominent reformist groups announced that they would boycott the elections, and violent riots by Tehran University students broke out.

In light of these developments, Iranian Leader 'Ali Khamenei immediately ordered the Guardian Council to reconsider the disqualification of Mo'in and of another reformist candidate, Vice President Mohsen Mehralizadeh. The Guardian Council then announced that these two reformists were on the approved list, in accordance with Khamenei's order. Mo'in announced that he would reconsider his candidacy in light of the Guardian Council's actions, but ultimately declared his candidacy, and harshly criticized the Guardian Council, calling its conduct "anti-constitutional."

Maybe this Mo'in is a true reformer, but then, Rafsanjani described himself that way once too...Back to the original article:

In south Tehran, several of those questioned backed Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative hopefuls credited with sprucing up the down-at-heel area.

"I support Ahmedinejad because of what he has done to the city. If you look at the city, you can see the changes," said 37-year-old trader Ali Salehi.

Ahmedinejad is described by MEMRI as expressing "more extreme conservative views than the other [conservative candidates]. Also according to MEMRI "A poll by the official Iranian News Agency (IRNA) among 45,834 voters throughout Iran asked "Whom will you vote for?"; 27.1% of respondents said Rafsanjani, 18.9% said Mo'in, and 16.5% said Qalibaf...Qalibaf was until recently Iran's police chief" and is also identified as a conservative.

A very interesting development coming from Holland. Rita Verdonk is cracking down. From the Dutch Expatica, with thanks to Dutch Cares.

AMSTERDAM — Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has ordered three imams accused of being a threat to public order and national security to get out of the Netherlands.

The trio have been accused of preaching a militant anti-western message at Al Fourkaan mosque in Eindhoven and allowing young people to be recruited for Jihad.

They will be expelled if they do not leave the country voluntarily, Verdonk has vowed.

She has given them a month in which they can challenge her order but they cannot stay in the Netherlands pending the outcome of any appeal.

Lawyer Marq Wijngaarden is representing the three imams says he will go to court to block the minister's order. He did not want to comment further as he has not yet read the full text of Verdonk's decision.

The Dutch intelligence service AIVD indicated that the imams "contribute to the radicalisation of Muslims in the Netherlands", the Justice Ministry said earlier this year.

The ministry claimed the imams tried to recruit, or tolerated the recruiting, of Muslims for Jihad, or holy war. They are also accused of using their sermons to urge Muslims to "isolate" themselves from the rest of Dutch society...

Convicted, yes, but sentenced to "slap on the wrist" prison terms. From Reuters:

PARIS - A top French court jailed three men for terrorist conspiracy on Thursday after finding them guilty of helping "shoebomber" Richard Reid, who narrowly failed to destroy a U.S. airliner over the Atlantic.

The court found they had helped Reid during his stay in Paris ahead of his abortive attempt to destroy a Paris-Miami American Airlines flight mid-Atlantic in December 2001 with a bomb hidden inside one of his shoes.

Jacqueline Rebeyrotte, presiding judge at the main Paris criminal court, sentenced Ghulam Rama to five years in prison and expulsion from France once his sentence was served.

Rama, 67, a Pakistani with joint British nationality, has already spent three years in jail awaiting trial. It was not immediately clear if he would appeal.

His co-accused, Frenchmen Hakim Mokhfi and Hassan El Cheguer, both aged 31, were each jailed for four years, one year suspended. The court ordered them released as they have been in preventive detention since June 2002.

All three men had pleaded not guilty.

During the trial, the court heard that according to French intelligence, Rama had used trips to Britain, New York, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia between 2001 and 2002 as cover while he organized terrorist attacks.

A French probe on Reid's activities in France revealed he had used a Paris cyber cafe to contact Pakistan, a trail that led them to Rama, president of the Straight Path Muslim charity.

Rama told police he saw Mokhfi and Cheguer with Reid. His lawyer said before the trial began that Rama was sick and confused when police first asked him if he recognized a photograph of Reid...

You knew it was coming. Islamonline reports this morning:

CAIRO – The Australian government and people have paid tribute to the role played by the Grand Mufti of Australia to secure the release of the Australian hostage in Iraq from his captors.

"He has made an enormous effort,” said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Sheikh Taj Aldin Al-Hilali has spent much of the past month in Iraq trying to negotiate the release of the Australian contractor, Douglas Wood, who was released during an Iraqi military operation Wednesday, June 15.

“Real credit should be given to him (Hilali) for the effort that he made and the risks that he took including to his own security and in assisting the team's efforts to try to get Douglas Wood released," Downer told ABC Wednesday, June 15.

The 63-year-old contractor was kidnapped in late April by a self-styled Iraqi group calling itself the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq, which initially demanded that Australia pull its 800 troops out of Iraq.

The top Aussie official also hailed the role of the Muslim minority in Australia in securing the release of the Australian national.

"That's one of the assets we have as a multicultural country, that people all came together as 'Team Australia', and they brought their different strengths and so we appreciate it very much the contribution Sheikh Al-Hilali and more generally the Australian Islamic Community made," he said.

Promise Fulfilled

Commenting on the news of releasing Wood, the Grand Mufti of Australia said he had met his promise on sparing no efforts to securre the release of the Australian hostage.

“I left Australia for Iraq on May 15, following the kidnap of the Australian national. I committed myself not to leave Baghdad without securing the release of the Australian hostage,” he told IslamOnline.net Wednesday during his stop-over in Cairo.

“After tireless efforts and contacts with different parties as well as breath-taking adventures, the efforts were crowned in success.”

Sheikh Hilali maintained that he engaged in contacts with two Iraqi groups involved in the kidnap process.

“One of the two groups helped me to define the hostage’s location, which was attacked by an Iraqi military team backed by US forces.”

“The hostage was released six hours before he was due to be beheaded and a number of kidnappers were arrested.”...

Call me sceptical, but instead of falling on his knees thanking the Mufti, what Mr. Wood actually said was, "God Bless America" and raised a beer with his Aussie mates. I haven't seen it reported anywhere that the Mufti gave the tip leading to the raid.

Update: The Herald Sun reports, "Tip came from the streets" with thanks to Vinegar Joe.

IRAQI soldiers rescued Douglas Wood after they were tipped off by a "walk-in" -- a civilian who simply walked off the street into a military checkpoint.

The civilian told them of hostages being held in a house in the western suburb of Ghazaliya, one of Baghdad's most dangerous.
But until they found him under a blanket and strapped to a bed, the Iraqis had no idea it was Douglas Wood in the house.

The informant's identity will remain secret, as will any reward he might have been paid.

But don't be concerned: it has nothing to do with terrorism. From AP, with thanks to EPG:

Mexico plans to deport a Pakistani to the United States to face questions regarding arms trafficking, Mexican authorities said Wednesday.

The Pakistani, who has not been identified by name, was detained Sunday along with three Afghans and a Syrian in the Tijuana area, across the border from San Diego, two Mexican government officials said on customary condition of anonymity.

All five were in the process of being deported to the United States on Wednesday for being in Mexico illegally, the officials said. It appeared the detainees arrived from the United States....

Mexican authorities said they had no evidence the Pakistani or other migrants had any connection to terrorist organizations.

Syed Salahuddin is here playing the role that Hamas has up to now been playing in Israel: both have been acting as hardline jihadists who will accept no negotiation. But if it looks as if India will start to give in to the jihadist demands at the negotiating table, as the EU is now cozying up to Hamas, then expect Salahuddin to change his tune.

"Kashmir Hurriyat leaders ask Pakistan's Muttahida Jihad Council to soften stand," from Pakistan's Jang via M & C News, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Lahore: It has been learnt that the visiting delegation of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference [APHC] held a meeting with Muttahida Jihad Council chief Salahuddin during which they asked him to soften his stand on the Kashmir issue.

According to sources, the APHC leaders conveyed a message of the government to Salahuddin to soften his stand on the Kashmir issue so that a solution to the conflict could be found. In response, Salahuddin said that the council would not soften its stand on the Kashmir issue nor would it become part of any conspiracy. It would continue jihad and ask the APHC leaders not to become part of any conspiracy to divide Kashmir. In the past, India has proved that it wants to complicate the problem and it has not yet shown any flexibility in its position.

I think it's inevitable: Hamas is coming in from the cold. These ruthless terrorists, who have gloried in their murders of civilians and called for the genocidal destruction of Israel, are (like Arafat before them) going to be accorded the respect of statesmen and invited to sit at negotiating tables. And also like Arafat, their overall goals and tactics they use to attain them will otherwise remain unchanged.

I wrote in Onward Muslim Soldiers that their commitment to the jihad ideology made them implacable foes of any negotiated settlement: they wanted Israel destroyed, and nothing less. Now they still want Israel destroyed and the Jews subjugated as dhimmis in an Islamic state, but they are seeing the value of negotiating toward that end. Jews (as well as Christians) in Israel should take note: the end of the EU's playing ball with Hamas can only be the institutionalized second-class status of the dhimma.

From Haaretz, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

WASHINGTON - The European Union has informed the U.S. administration of a substantial shift in its contacts with Hamas. The EU decision, which surprised the Americans, allows low-level European diplomats - below the rank of ambassador - to conduct talks with Hamas representatives who are running in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by both the U.S. government and the EU.

The EU decision reflects a political-strategic turnaround with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and constitutes the first stage toward recognition of a terrorist group that explicitly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and views acts of terror against civilians as legitimate.

"Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks..." (Qur'an 47:4). "Thai Buddhist beheaded in south," from the BBC, with thanks to Susan:

The situation is tense in Thailand's southern provinces A Buddhist man has been found beheaded in the majority Muslim province of Pattani in southern Thailand.

A note found next to the man's head claimed the murder was carried out in response to last week's arrest of a prominent Muslim student leader.

It was the fifth decapitation in a conflict that has claimed more than 700 lives in the past 18 months.

The note next to the severed head of retired teacher Kamol Chuneth carried a message obviously intended for police.

The note said that the authorities had arrested the wrong man.

I, Freakin Batman, thought you'd like to know.

Show your support for the Caped Crusader.

N.S. Rajaram writes from India. He is a historian whose primary focus is ancient history and pre-history. He occasionally writes on jihad and terrorism, and has lectured widely on Islamic terror in India, Europe, the U.S. and Australia. This is an illuminating piece on jihad and dhimmitude in India:

Jihad is the central doctrine of Islam and dhimmitude its historical consequence. Both should be defeated for India and the world to be really free.

The meaning of Jihad

Jihad is the central doctrine of the Islamic state, ordained by its scripture. Thanks partly to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the world now knows something of Jihad and its ties to Islamic terror. Nonetheless, Jihad continues to be presented as a noble internal struggle over one’s baser instincts— something like meditation and Yoga. Even when the violent aspect of Jihad is pointed out, its apologists claim that violence and terrorism cannot be justified as Jihad, as if “real Jihad” is something we should all welcome. As a result, a good deal of confusion prevails in the public mind with regard to the true nature of Jihad and its relationship to Islamic terror. The worst offenders in this game of sophistry are not the Muslims themselves but non-Muslim intellectuals and academics in India, Europe and especially America. It seems never to occur to these worthies that a medieval theocratic concept like Jihad has no legitimacy in a modern secular state— no matter what its real or imagined merits.

Another point worth noting is that terrorists worldwide acting in the name of Jihad cannot be defeated by redefining Jihad to suit our comfort level. The various Jihadis are drawn to the interpretation of Jihad given by the likes of Osama bin Laden and not the apologists that fill Indian and Western universities and newspaper columns. More significantly this “kinder, gentler” version of Jihad has no basis in either doctrine or history. It is necessary therefore to look at the primary sources to understand the place of Jihad in Islamic law and behavior. (Islamic law is part of its scripture.) What follows is a brief summary. More details on the place of Jihad in Islamic scripture and history can be found in Sita Ram Goel’s The Calcutta Quran Petition cited at the end of the article.

Dictionary of Islam defines Jihad as: “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad [the Prophet]. It is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Quran and in the Traditions [i.e., the Hadits or the ‘Acts of Muhammad’] as a divine institution, and enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam and of repelling evil from Muslims.” The last point about “repelling evil” calls for an explanation: its primary goal is to prevent Muslims from deviating from the true teachings of Islam of unrelenting hostility towards Kafirs and lapsing into heresy. Movements intended to root out such ‘evil’—often called ‘purification movements’—are a feature of Islamic history. The Wahabi movement that led to the Saudi brand of Islam and the Tablighi movement in India are two recent examples of such purification.

Dictionary of Islam also observes: “Sufi writers say that there are two Jihads: al-Jihadu ‘l Akbar, or the ‘greater warfare,’ which is against one’s own lusts; and al-Jihadu ‘l Asghar, or the ‘lesser Jihad’ against infidels.” It is important to note this is a later Sufi innovation that has no scriptural sanction; in fact it is a heresy that is rejected by the orthodox. Historically, the Sufis have actively supported and participated in the violent version of the Jihad, the only one that has any scriptural sanction. The nonviolent version is the one that is invoked by apologists, though it has played hardly any role in history since no one follows it.

Dictionary of Islam is also perceptive in noting: “The duty of religious war (which all commentators agree is a duty extending to all time) is laid down in the Quran in the following verses, and it is remarkable that all the verses occur in the al-Madinah Surahs, being those given after Muhammad had established himself as a paramount ruler, and was in a position to dictate terms to his enemies.”

So any hint of compromise that one finds in the earlier al-Meccah Surahs can be explained by the fact that they were given at times when Prophet Muhammad felt besieged and was forced to compromise with his adversaries in order to gain time. These were erased by the later Surahs revealed when the Prophet had become the paramount ruler.

The following Surah (IX. 5,6) sheds light on the Prophet’s idea of Jihad or the war against the infidels: “And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with God [Allah] wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them with every kind of ambush; but if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way, for God [Allah] is Gracious, Merciful.” So the Mercy of God offers unbelievers the ‘choice’ of conversion or death! This is just one example of many Surahs in the same spirit. There is no room for compromise in Jihad.

From the BayouBuzz, with thanks to Athinker.

The security chief for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has been hired to provide sensitivity training for the NOPD. Captain Dennis Muhammad has conducted sensitivity training in other cities such as Buffalo and will be paid $15,000 for his services, which NOPD Chief Eddie Compass says are needed in New Orleans. Compass says there are people in New Orleans who have complained about police treatment and are “anti police.” Compass believes that the “members of the Nation of Islam have some type of relationship with these people.”

However, what about those in the community and on the NOPD who are not members of the Nation of Islam? David Benelli of the Police Association of New Orleans says his phone has “been ringing off the hook” with members upset about the hiring of someone with ties to the Nation of Islam. The NOPD is 45% white, while the city is about 30% non-black, so there is a large number of people who might feel insulted by this decision. However, not only should whites be outraged about the selection of this Nation of Islam leader to conduct sensitivity training, but also all African-Americans in the community who are of the Catholic or Jewish faiths.

At the press conference announcing the training, a rabbi and priest expressed concern about Muhammad’s selection. Such concern is more than justified considering the history of Muhammad’s boss, Louis Farrakhan. Here are just a few of the Nation of Islam’s beliefs, as well as some of Farrakhan’s disturbing statements:

Whites are “blue eyed devils.”
Jews are “bloodsuckers”
“Hitler was a very great man.”
Jews controlled the slave trade and currently control the government
Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad believed that whites were created by an evil Black scientist and that there will be “The Great Decisive Battle in the Sky” when a space ship will kill all white people by bombing the earth
Muhammad believed that white people should relocate to Europe and that racial integration was wrong

In addition, Farrakhan has met with dictators in Sudan, Libya and Iraq, before the war, and praised their governments while denouncing the United States. Leaders in the Nation of Islam have also made very inflammatory anti-Catholic statements. In a November 1993 speech at Kean College in New Jersey, Farrakhan’s chief spokesman Khallid Muhammad said, “T]he old no-good Pope-you know that cracker, somebody need to raise that dress up and see what´s really under there. Jesus was right; you´re nothing but liars. The book of Revelations is right; you´re from the Synagogue of Satan.”

Due to public outcry, the New Orleans Police Chief reversed himself and will conduct sensitivity training under other leadership. From WND, with thanks to wwrwtw.

...While Chief Eddie Compass initially announced the plan as he sat next to controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whose fiery sermons and pronouncements have been criticized as racist and anti-Semitic, the city's top cop is now distancing himself from the controversial leader.

Compass argued the Nation of Islam's security chief, Capt. Dennis Muhammad, had successfully implemented the program in other cities, including Buffalo, reported WWL-TV in New Orleans.

Now Compass says the training will go on but with different leadership.

Compass said he decided to implement a program after hearing complaints about police officers during his recent tour of the city's high-crime neighborhoods.

"The people in the community who are anti-police, who really need to hear our message, who [we] really need to build the bridges with -- members of the Nation of Islam have some type of relationship with these people," Compass said earlier...

More on the infamous Khadr family of Canada from CFRA, "RCMP Uncovers al-Qaida Cache: Report," .

The RCMP believe they have uncovered information on the whereabouts of al-Qaida members and planned attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan.

The cache of documents was discovered after searching the possessions of a member of the Khadr family.

A report says the information is contained in a laptop, dozens of D-V-D's and in the pages of diaries, all seized when Zaynab Khadr arrived at Pearson International Airport in Toronto in February.

Khadr is the eldest daughter of a family that has admitted to close ties with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

More details from Canada's National Post, with thanks to Jen. Of course, we all know that families of terrorists do not exist in real life.

...A search of [Zaynab Khadr's] computer also unearthed files of Arabic songs that include Osama bin Laden's voice and video clips of terrorists in action or making speeches, all of which are "cause for concern and require further investigation," according to the officer, Sergeant Konrad Shourie.

But the Mounties cannot yet return Ms. Khadr's laptop computer, the audiotapes or even her Arabic diary before the legal deadline, which passed last month, because they need more time to copy the information and analyze it.

A forensic analysis of the computer's data, for instance, will take "several more months," the affidavit says, and a psychological analysis of Ms. Khadr based on her diary could take even longer.

Ms. Khadr and her brother Abdullah are under RCMP investigation for participating in the activities of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization of which their deceased father, Ahmed, was reputedly a high-ranking financier. They have not been charged.

Their younger brother, Omar, is detained at Guantanamo Bay after allegedly killing a U.S. medic in a firefight in Afghanistan. Abdurahman Khadr, another brother who claims to have attended al-Qaeda training camps, has publicly renounced the jihadist sympathies of his family...

Robert Spencer wrote a great piece on Oriana Fallaci yesterday. Now it seems the tables have turned and her accuser was found guilty of the same crime he accuses her of committing. ADEL SMITH, 6 MONTHS SENTENCE FOR DEFAMING RELIGION, from AGI, with thanks to RZ.

Padua, Italy, Jun 14 - Adel Smith, President of the Union of Italian Muslims, was sentenced by the Padua court to 6 months in prison, converted to a fine (over 6,000 euro), for the crime of defaming religion. On January 4, 2003, Adel Smith, during a TV program broadcast live on the Paduan channel 'Serenissima Tv' made accusations against the Catholic church defining it as "criminal association" and against Pope John Paul II, defined as "a foreign man who heads the church" and "able double-crosser. [...] I declared undeniable modern historic facts: for this reason I do not regret my declarations. It seems to me that the sentence is political. I am very curious to know what those think who yesterday invoked the freedom of judgment and criticism today: is it so for me too?" Smith said he will appeal against the sentence and if necessary will resort to European courts "until he is acquitted." "I am confident and sure that at the end I will have justice."

Kashmir update from the Times of India, .

When terrorism was at its peak in the Valley, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed set up terrorist camps in Pakistan where around 3,500 jihadis were trained in guerrilla warfare.

This astonishing revelation has come from Kashmiri separatist leader and JKLF chairman Yasin Malik. According to Daily Times , Malik has said that Rashid actively supported the armed struggle in Kashmir by setting up training camps. Rashid trained around 3,500 jihadis in guerrilla warfare around that time, Malik has said.

Malik was talking to the audience in an exhibition of 1.5 million signatures by Kashmiris demanding their involvement in the dialogue process in Islamabad. The exhibition showed thousands of pictures of Kashmiri people participating in Malik's signature campaign.

"Sheikh Rashid has played a great role for Kashmir's liberation. He used to support the frontline Jihadis, but very few people know about his contributions," Daily Times quoted Malik as saying...

Although Malik praised Rashid for his contribution to the armed struggle, the minister refused to comment when journalists approached him.

From the Khaleej Times, .

JAKARTA - Authorities have accused assailants involved in a recent armed attack on a police post in Indonesia’s eastern province of Maluku of having links with Al Qaeda, an official said on Tuesday.

Maluku Police Chief Brigadier General Aditya Warman said the evidence came from the capture and interrogation of several suspects involved in the recent attack on a Mobile Brigade (Brimob) post that left five policemen dead.

“We are continuing to investigate them as they are indeed linked to Al Qaeda,” Aditya Warman was quoted as saying by the state-run news agency Antara after a meeting with local religious figures and political party leaders.

Those questioned by police were allegedly part of a network responsible for a series of violent incidents in the provincial capital of Ambon, 2,340 kilometres northeast of Jakarta, that included the assassination of a reverend and a number of bombings, the police chief said.

“I have long stated that the incidents were the work of well trained people, and I was right,” Aditya said. “They are civilians with extraordinary capabilities.”

Aditya requested during the meeting that religious figures help police deal with the incidents, and said the masterminds behind the violence came from outside Maluku province.

“But they also use local people in carrying out their missions. They have relations with a number of terrorists currently wanted by the security authorities, like Dr Azahari,” Aditya said, referring to the most-wanted Malaysian fugitive accused of links to the worst terrorist attacks on foreigners in recent years...

From the BBC, with thanks to Marc.

The Football Association (FA) has changed its rules after a team was expelled by its league when Muslim players refused to play during Ramadan.

Manchester's Abraham Moss Warriors were fined by the FA and thrown out of the Lancashire League after the boys' team refused to play morning games.

The club was worried players fasting for Ramadan would become dehydrated as they could not drink before sunset.

The FA has now said no team must play if it affects religious observance.

Previously the rules only applied to Christians being asked to play on Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day.

"This is a massive victory not just for us but for everyone of all faiths around the country who wants to play football," said Warriors' manager June Kelly.

"It is just a shame that it took something like this to get the rules changed.

"Fifty years ago the rule might have made sense when there were hardly any Muslims playing but now we are such a multi-cultural society it was completely out of date...

Update on the Lodi case from AP via Fox News:

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — A white-bearded cleric, tutor to hundreds of Islamic students at a Pakistani seminary near the capital, on Tuesday branded FBI allegations that his 22-year-old grandson received jihadist training while attending the school a "pack of lies."

Qari Saeed-ur Rehman, leader of the Jamia Islamia madrassah in Rawalpindi, said his grandson Hamid Hayat and son-in-law Umer Hayat, 47, were wrongfully arrested in California last week, and he dismissed suggestions they were linked to an al-Qaida cell.

"Hamid Hayat never received religious education at my madrassah. There is no terrorist camp here. We reject such FBI allegations," Rehman, a supporter of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime, told The Associated Press in an interview at the school, which lies inside a grand mosque in a teeming commercial district of the city -- also home to the headquarters of Pakistan's army.

"All allegations leveled against them by the FBI are a pack of lies," he said.

An FBI spokeswoman in Sacramento, Calif., said the agency stood by the allegations it made in court documents.

"Time will tell what we come up with," spokeswoman Marcie Soligo said. "That's his opinion and that's fine. We stick by what was in the affidavit."...

Oh, Mr. Bergen, call your office. You may want to interview Mr. Rehman. His views and yours mesh perfectly.

From AP via Fox News, .

MADRID, Spain — Police arrested 16 Islamic terror suspects in raids in several cities, including 11 men accused of having ties to Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's group Al Qaeda in Iraq and recruiting people for attacks there, officials said Wednesday.

The 11 were part of a support group for a Syrian-based recruitment network for attacks on U.S. and allied forces, and some of them had said they themselves wanted to become "martyrs for Islam" and were awaiting orders to do so, the Interior Ministry said. It did not specify how Spanish authorities learned of these alleged intentions.

Most of the 11 are Moroccan and practically all of them sold drugs and committed robberies to finance the network, the ministry said. They were arrested as part of an investigation that began in 2004.

The other five detainees were described as suspects in last year's train bombing in Madrid.

Some 500 Spanish police took part in raids in Barcelona, Valencia, the southern Andalusia region, and Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the northern coast of Morocco...

It said the apparent leader of the Spanish group's recruitment activities was a 28-year-old Moroccan named Samir Tahtah, arrested near Barcelona. He coordinated communications with overseas leaders of the network and the sending of recruits to Iraq for terrorist attacks, the statement said...

Homeland Official to Tell Senate Panel Of Change in Administration Policy. From the Washington Post, .

For the first time, the Bush administration is endorsing mandatory requirements for heightened security at chemical plants, many of which homeland defense experts consider highly vulnerable to catastrophic terrorist attack.

The change in policy is one of the first enunciated by new Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who is conducting a top-to-bottom review of the two-year-old department's priorities and organizational chart.

Until this week, administration officials had embraced the chemical industry's proposals for voluntary security precautions, though they had warned that the day might arrive when industry foot-dragging would compel a crackdown.

The new Bush administration stance is outlined in testimony to be delivered today by Robert Stephan, recently named the Homeland Security Department's undersecretary for intelligence and infrastructure, at a Senate hearing. A transcript was made available by Senate staff members.

"I can report on his behalf that Secretary Chertoff has concluded that . . . the existing patchwork of authorities does not permit us to regulate the industry effectively," Stephan is to tell the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "While most companies have been eager to cooperate with the department, it has become clear the entirely voluntary efforts of these companies alone will not sufficiently address security for the entire sector."

U.S. officials say that an attack on some chemical plants in and near large cities, including a number in northern New Jersey, could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths if a resulting chemical cloud were spread by wind. Attacks on any of scores of other sites could result in thousands or tens of thousands of casualties, they said...

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer discusses some prevailing winds in today's FrontPage:

Holland and France have rejected the EU Constitution, and word is getting out that the main reason they did was out of concern for the growing Muslim presence in those countries, which threatens to remake those societies into Islamic states before this century is out — and which the proposed Constitution did nothing to address. But the European votes have given PC establishment analysts just another pretext to claim that today’s global jihad is really all our fault. James Carroll opined recently in the Boston Globe that “among the factors leading to the French and Dutch rejections of the European constitution last week, none looms more ominously than the nightmare of antagonism between ‘the West’ and Islam. Many Europeans fear a rising tide of green, both within the continent and from outside it. Where once communists threatened, now Muslims do. A new wall is being built.”

Carroll is not original in this. This was a much-retailed thesis as long ago as 1999, when Abdus Sattar Ghazali, a Pakistani journalist who has served as Assistant Editor for the Pakistani daily Dawn and editor-in-chief of Kuwait TV’s English News, wrote that “the demise of the Cold War involving the USA and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s left military strategists in the West searching for a new enemy.” Ghazali saw it as part of a conscious and long-range strategy: “To borrow [from] Richard Conder, author of the Munchurian [sic] Candidate: ‘Now that the communists have been put to sleep, we are going to have to invent another terrible threat.’ Former US Secretary of Defence, McNamara, in his 1989 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, stated that defense spending could safely be cut in half over five years. For the Pentagon it was a simple choice: either find new enemies or cut defense spending. Topping the list of potential bogeymen were the Yellow Peril, the alleged threat to US economic security emanating from the East Asia, and the so-called Green Peril (green representing Islam). The Pentagon selected ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ and ‘rogue states’ as the new bogeymen.”

When Ghazali wrote that in 1999, a year had passed since the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. It had been five years since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Other notorious incidents of Islamic terror were even farther back in the past: the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the hijacking of TWA flight 847 and the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, and so on. Ghazali conceded that radical Islam “has not been invented by Western politicians” — in the face of all the facts, how could he not? But he adds that even though politicians didn’t invent it, radical Islam “is being used by them.” Used for what? Ghazali concludes that “instead of reducing the military apparatus in the West to a symbolic vestige or getting rid of it altogether and thinking about ‘security’ completely afresh, new threats are being invented to serve the old purpose. This is our main problem, not an Islamic fundamentalist threat which, in any case, could only be dealt with by political and economic means.”

Carroll sees this trumped-up war heating up today: “Given escalations of the war in Iraq together with widely reported instances of Koran-denigration by US interrogators, such trends in Europe make the global war on terror seem expressly a war against Islam. The ‘clash of civilizations’ seems closer at hand than ever.”

Notice how 9/11 doesn't enter into this calculus. For Carroll it is as if the war in Iraq and ‘instances of Koran-denigration’ were just acts of unprovoked aggression by the West. Then he schoolmarmishly tells us that in order “to make sense of this dangerous condition, it can help to recall some of the forgotten or misremembered history that prepared for it, from the remote origins of the conflict to its manifestations in the not so distant past.” When did this dangerous and unprovoked demonization of Muslims begin? Why, with the Crusades, of course.

Today's Al-Arian update: "Prosecutors work to tie together Al-Arian and co-defendants," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Federal prosecutors continued today the methodical task of tying together the characters in what they say was a conspiracy operating from Tampa to support and raise money for Palestinian terrorists.

Nafeesah Abdurrashid, a former employee of the Islamic school founded by fired University of South Florida professor Sami-Al-Arian, testified that Al-Arian co-defendant Sameeh Hammoudeh once taught at the school, as did close associates Ramadan Abdullah Shallah and Mazan Al-Najjar.

Shallah, former director of the Palestinian think tank founded by Al-Arian at USF, left Tampa in 1995 and emerged later as the commander of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Damascus, Syria. Al-Najjar, who is Al-Arian's brother-in-law, was jailed for 3{ years based on secret evidence and deported in 2002.

Al-Arian and Hammoudeh are among the four defendants standing trial in federal court accused of providing material support to terrorists. Shallah and Al-Najjar are among five others named in the 53-count indictment who have not been arrested.

Prosecutors say the think tank, World & Islam Studies Enterprise, known as WISE, the school and a Palestinian charity founded by Al-Arian were fundraising fronts in the United States for the PIJ, a State Department-listed terrorist organization blamed for more than 100 deaths in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The defendants deny any connection to the PIJ and say they are being persecuted for their unpopular pro-Palestinian beliefs.

If that were true, most of today's pundits and Hollywood stars would be standing trial today.

From the Dutch Expatica, with thanks to Dutch Cares.

AMSTERDAM — Moroccan and Turkish groups in the Netherlands have set up a new action committee named "Genoeg is genoeg" (enough is enough) to organise a campaign against the Dutch government's tough immigration and integration policies.

The organisers are calling for a national demonstration on 17 September in Amsterdam. Two spokesmen for the new organisation outlined the plans for the demonstration during a press conference in the Moroccan capital of Rabat on Monday.

Dutch Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk arrived in Rabat for an official visit on Monday. She toured the Dutch embassy where modifications have been made to house the new integration tests that are to be introduced for would-be immigrants to the Netherlands.

While there was news on Monday that other European countries are interested in the immigration policies being pioneered by Verdonk, the spokesmen for the new action committee described her policies as discriminatory and racist...

One of those policies is to change the practice of retaining duel citizenship for THIRD generation Moroccan immigrants. Morocco is not cooperating. See Expatica here.

From Reuters, "Iraq's al Qaeda warns against talks with govt-Web"

DUBAI - Iraq's al Qaeda vowed to kill anyone negotiating with the U.S.-backed Iraqi government in a Web statement on Tuesday, a sign the group was worried about possible divisions among its Sunni Muslim allies.

The group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was responding to what it said were reports that tribal leaders in Iraq's third-largest city Mosul, the scene of frequent outbreaks of guerrilla violence, were seeking talks.

"Liars claim that the sheikhs of tribes in Mosul plan to hand over mujahideen (holy fighters) and assist the crusaders and apostates, and we do not know which tribes or sheikhs they speak of," the Sunni Muslim group said.

"We will impose God's punishment on anyone who stands by the crusaders or becomes their ally or supports them. The righteous swords are unsheathed and hunger for blood," it said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site.

The Iraqi government said on Sunday some rebels had approached it looking for peace terms but gave no details of who had made contact.

Zarqawi issued a similar warning in an audio tape attributed to him in April, referring to reports that U.S. and Iraqi officials had offered to negotiate with some militants...

The Shi'ite-led Iraqi government has often said it is willing to talk to rebels who stop fighting.

"We reiterate that there will be no dialogue with the Jews and Christians other than the sound of bullets, blood and fire," Al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq said in a separate Web statement.

From Reuters:

ISLAMABAD - Osama bin Laden is in good health, a Taliban commander said, dismissing speculation the fugitive al Qaeda leader was sick.

The commander, Mullah Akhtar Usmani, also said Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was well and in direct command of Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

"All praise to Allah, he is all right," Usmani told Pakistan's GEO, a private television station, when asked about bin Laden in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

Asked about reports bin Laden was sick, he said: "No, no, he is all right. There is no problem."

The private television station did not say where or when the interview was conducted. Usmani, who is on a 10-member Taliban leadership council and has been identified by the government as a top rebel commander, has in the past met reporters.

In the interview, his face was partly concealed by a black turban. An assault rifle was propped up at his side.

There has been speculation about the health of bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, who has been reported to be suffering from a kidney ailment.

Usmani declined to comment when asked about bin Laden's whereabouts. He said Taliban leader Omar was also well.

"He is still our commander and we are still getting instructions from him," he said of Omar. "Rumours of his illness have been spread by our enemies."

Asked if he could be sure the instructions were from Omar, Usmani said: "I can listen to his voice ... I am sure he is alive." He did not elaborate...

The Iraqi military gets the credit. From Reuters, "Australian PM says hostage Wood freed in Iraq," with thanks to 3rdtimelucky.

CANBERRA - Australian hostage Douglas Wood was freed from his Iraqi captors on Wednesday after being held for six weeks, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said.

"Mr Wood was recovered a short while ago in Baghdad in a military operation which I'm told was conducted by Iraqi forces, in cooperation in a general way with force elements from the United States," Howard told the Australian parliament.

Howard said Wood was now safe and well under the protection of Australian troops in Baghdad.

Wood, a 63-year-old engineer married to an American woman, has been held hostage since early May, when a two-minute video of him was delivered to news agencies.

Iraqi militants had warned Australia to begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq or they would kill Wood...

Do you wonder why we call it the New Duranty Times? Peter Bergen and Swati Pandy write about "The Madrassa Myth" without once dealing with what is taught at those Madrassas.

IT is one of the widespread assumptions of the war on terrorism that the Muslim religious schools known as madrassas, catering to families that are often poor, are graduating students who become terrorists. Last year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell denounced madrassas in Pakistan and several other countries as breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists." A year earlier, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had queried in a leaked memorandum, "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

While madrassas may breed fundamentalists who have learned to recite the Koran in Arabic by rote, such schools do not teach the technical or linguistic skills necessary to be an effective terrorist. Indeed, there is little or no evidence that madrassas produce terrorists capable of attacking the West. And as a matter of national security, the United States doesn't need to worry about Muslim fundamentalists with whom we may disagree, but about terrorists who want to attack us.

We examined the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners. We found that a majority of them are college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering. In the four attacks for which the most complete information about the perpetrators' educational levels is available - the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, and the Bali bombings in 2002 - 53 percent of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. As a point of reference, only 52 percent of Americans have been to college. The terrorists in our study thus appear, on average, to be as well educated as many Americans.

While this is true, it doesn't necessarily follow that the madrassas are nothing to worry about.

The 1993 World Trade Center attack involved 12 men, all of whom had a college education. The 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities, a prestigious and elite endeavor for anyone from the Middle East. Indeed, the lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university in, of all things, urban preservation, while the operational planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina. We also found that two-thirds of the 25 hijackers and planners involved in 9/11 had attended college.

Of the 75 terrorists we investigated, only nine had attended madrassas, and all of those played a role in one attack - the Bali bombing. Even in this instance, however, five college-educated "masterminds" - including two university lecturers - helped to shape the Bali plot.

Like the view that poverty drives terrorism - a notion that countless studies have debunked - the idea that madrassas are incubating the next generation of terrorists offers the soothing illusion that desperate, ignorant automatons are attacking us rather than college graduates, as is often the case. In fact, two of the terrorists in our study had doctorates from Western universities, and two others were working toward their Ph.D.

A World Bank-financed study that was published in April raises further doubts about the influence of madrassas in Pakistan, the country where the schools were thought to be the most influential and the most virulently anti-American. Contrary to the numbers cited in the report of the 9/11 commission, and to a blizzard of newspaper reports that 10 percent of Pakistani students study in madrassas, the study's authors found that fewer than 1 percent do so. If correct, this estimate would suggest that there are far more American children being home-schooled than Pakistani boys attending madrassas.

Sooo, home schooling is just as bad as the madrassas? Now you know why we call it the New Duranty Times. In this case, think Jimmy.

From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

HINESBURG, Vt. -- The Crusaders of Champlain Valley Union High are now history.

The School Board in the Vermont community is selecting a new nickname and mascot for the school.

The Islamic world has criticized the Crusades.

Yes, and I have criticized Islamic jihads, but I don't see that compelling any jihad terrorists to pack it in. This is just part of the larger campaign to make the West ashamed of its own culture and history -- the easier to subvert it. The West has nothing to apologize for in the Crusades, as I explain in my forthcoming book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

And closer to home, some people object to a knight bearing a crucifix as the symbol for a public school.

The image makeover will be implemented in time for the next school year.

Redhawks, Bobcats and Red Wolves are all in the running for Union High's new nickname.

I, Freakin Batman, have a suggestion: Cringin' Dhimmis. The Champlain Valley Union High Cringin' Dhimmis. How about it, School Board members? The mascot could be a little guy with a wide yellow belt and no shoes, head down, obsequious grin on his face. What do you think?

From AP via Fox News with thanks to Catherine.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Somali immigrant accused of conspiring to help terrorists blow up a shopping mall is asking that his statements to investigators — including what he knew about a member of Al Qaeda — be barred from his trial.

Attorney Mahir T. Sherif said Nuradin Abdi was arrested without grounds and pressured to answer investigators' questions. On June 1, he asked a federal judge to bar the statements, which are sealed.

Agents told Abdi last November they were arresting him for violating immigration laws, but did not specify which laws and did not show him a warrant until three days later, Sherif said. Agents used his statements to build a case against him, Sherif said.

"It was a warrantless arrest to start with, and after keeping him for three days and questioning him for three days, they used his own statements to go get a warrant," Sherif said Monday.

Uh oh, if this were a "Law and Order" episode, Jack McCoy's case would be in trouble...

In a statement filed with the request to bar his statements, Abdi said he believed if he cooperated with agents and gave them information about Iyman Faris, he would be allowed to go home. Faris has pleaded guilty to helping terrorists.

Fred Alverson, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office here, said prosecutors will file a response by July 1.

Abdi, 33, has pleaded innocent to charges of conspiring to aid terrorists and lying to gain political asylum in the United States as a refugee. Prosecutors accuse him of obtaining travel documents in 1999 by telling officials he planned to visit Germany and Saudi Arabia when he actually went to a military-style training camp for terrorists in Ethiopia.

If convicted, he could get up to 80 years. His trial is scheduled for Sept. 19...

Daniel Pipes writes in Front Page:

Homaidan Ali Al-Turki, 36, and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, 35, appear to be a model immigrant couple. Having arrived in the United States in 2000, they live with their four children in an upscale Denver suburb. Al-Turki is a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Colorado, specializing in Arabic intonation and focus prosody. He donates money to the Linguistic Society of America and is CEO of Al-Basheer Publications and Translations, a bookstore specializing in titles about Islam.

Last week, however, the FBI accused the couple of enslaving an Indonesian woman in her early 20s. For four years, reads the indictment, they created “a climate of fear and intimidation through rape and other means.” The slave woman cooked, cleaned, took care of children, and more for little or no pay, fearing that if she did not obey, “she would suffer serious harm.”

The two Saudis face charges of forced labor, aggravated sexual abuse, document servitude, and harboring an alien. If found guilty, they could spend their remaining lives in prison. The government also wants to seize the couple’s Al-Basheer bank account to pay their former slave $92,700 in back wages.

It’s a shocking instance, especially for a graduate student and religious bookstore owner – but not a particularly rare one. Here are other examples of enslavement, all involving Saudi royals or diplomats living in the United States.

In 1982, a Miami judge issued a warrant to search Prince Turki Bin Abdul Aziz’s 24th-floor penthouse to determine if he was holding Nadia Lutefi Mustafa, an Egyptian woman, against her will. Turki and his French bodyguards prevented a search from taking place, then won retroactive diplomatic immunity to forestall any legal unpleasantness.
In 1988, the Saudi defense attaché in Washington, Col. Abdulrahman S. Al-Banyan, employed a Thai domestic, Mariam Roungprach, until she escaped his house by crawling out a window. She later told how she had been imprisoned there, did not get enough food, and was not paid. Interestingly, her work contract specified that she could not leave the house or make telephone calls without her employer’s permission.
In 1991, Prince Saad Bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud and his wife, Princess Noora, lived on two floors of the Ritz-Carlton Houston. Two of their servants, Josephine Alicog of the Philippines and Sriyani Marian Fernando of Sri Lanka, filed a suit against the prince, alleging they were for five months held against their will, “by means of unlawful threats, intimidation and physical force,” they were only partially paid, denied medical treatment, and suffered mental and physical abuse.
In March 2005, a wife of Saudi Prince Mohamed Bin Turki Alsaud, Hana Al Jader, 39, was arrested at her home outside of Boston on charges of forced labor, domestic servitude, falsifying records, visa fraud, and harboring aliens. Al Jader stands accused of compelling two Indonesian women to work for her by making them believe “that if they did not perform such labor, they would suffer serious harm.” If convicted, Al Jader faces up to 140 years in jail and $2.5 million in fines.
There are many other similar instances, for example, the Orlando escapades of Saudi princesses Maha al-Sudairi and Buniah al-Saud. Joel Mowbray tells of twelve female domestics “trapped and abused” in the households of Saudi dignitaries or diplomats.

Why is this problem so acute when it comes to affluent Saudis? Four reasons come to mind. Although slavery was abolished in the kingdom in 1962, the practice still flourishes there. Ranking Saudi religious authorities endorse slavery; for example, Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan insisted recently that “Slavery is a part of Islam” and whoever wants it abolished he called “an infidel.”...

Read it all. Lots of useful links in the original.

From the Washington Post, "Suicide Bombing in Iraq Kills At Least 20"

BAGHDAD - A man wearing an explosive belt blew himself up Tuesday outside a bank in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said, killing at least 20 bystanders and wounding 83, many of them women and children, in the deadliest single suicide bombing in Iraq in more than a month.

In Kenaan, a town between Kirkuk and Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed five Iraqi soldiers at a road checkpoint and a mortar attack left the town's police station in flames, the Associated Press reported.

And in restive Anbar province, west of Baghdad, police found 24 bodies dumped in two separate areas in Habbaniya.

Kirkuk's police chief, Maj. Gen. Torhan Yousif, said the bomber was carrying more than 100 pounds of explosives when he joined a line of people waiting in line at the government-run Rafidain Bank to pick up their paychecks. The explosion killed and wounded civilians, police, and employees of local political parties, as well as severely damaging the bank and surrounding shops.

"The street was full of blood of the wounded and killed, and all the shops closed because people were afraid of more attacks," Nawzad Omar, 50, said afterward at a local hospital...

A recent succession of grisly discoveries by Iraqi authorities continued on Monday when police discovered 17 bodies 80 miles west of Baghdad and another seven near Hit, about 95 miles northwest of the capital. None were immediately identified.

Four of the 17 dead found by Iraqi soldiers had been beheaded, according to Abdul Munim Ahmed, a physician at a hospital in nearby Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.

In Hit, the head of the local hospital, Ahmed Jarrallah, said two of the seven bodies discovered there were women, and both had been beheaded. A statement posted at a mosque in Hit asserted that the seven had been killed by members of Ansar al-Sunna, one of the most violent insurgent groups in Iraq. The statement called the victims "traitors" who had "been helping the occupier fight the holy warriors" by working as private contractors who supplied cement...

Update from AP:

...Security forces captured a reported key member of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist group who is accused of building and selling cars used by bombers, the Iraqi government said Tuesday.

He was identified as Jassim Hazan Hamadi al-Bazi, also known as Abu Ahmed, and was arrested June 7, the government said. It added that he was part of an Al Qaeda cell run by a man identified as Hussayn Ibrahim...

Yes, this is an actual video game. "Disengagement, the video game" from Ynetnews, with thanks to JS.

Left-wing activists behind 'Day against Occupation for Democracy' introduce politically themed game to internet: Move the settlers.

The organizers of the "Day against Occupation and for Democracy," which will occur on June 17, have found a creative new way to get across their political message – by way of a free, Flash game on the internet that allows users to play IDF soldiers removing settlers from the territories.

"This is your opportunity to remove the settlements and get Israel out of the territories," the game's home page says.

To remove a caravan, the player need only click on it once, but when the caravan turns into house, two clicks are necessary to remove it. The game gets trickier when it comes to removing a settlement guarded by soldiers.

"To get rid of a settlement, you have to drag back the poor soldiers who have to guard it back across the Green Line – to Israel," the game explains.

The game's left-wing developers do have their limits, though: Those who toss Israeli soldiers into the sea do not get any points.

Once the soldiers are removed, the settlement can be taken down, but it is an almost Sysiphean task as the settlers keep on coming back to rebuild.

If the player loses the game, the screen displays a particularly bitter message: "One more settlement and the country is lost."...

More advice from the always helpful Islam Q & A site, with thanks to JK. And since when did they add another a to Allah? Soon, we need to address "the great Muslim spelling question," as well. Pick a spelling, any spelling, but stick to it will ya?

Question : I have questions about Islam; can you explain them to me? Is it permissible for a Muslim to be a sincere friend to a person who is not Muslim?

Answer : Praise be to Allaah.

It is not permissible for a Muslim to make friends with a mushrik or to take him as a close friend, because Islam calls on us to forsake the kaafirs and to disavow them, because they worship someone other than Allaah. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“O you who believe! Take not as friends the people who incurred the Wrath of Allaah (i.e. the Jews). Surely, they have despaired of (receiving any good in) the Hereafter, just as the disbelievers have despaired of those (buried) in graves (that they will not be resurrected on the Day of Resurrection)”

[al-Mumtahanah 60:13]

This was also the teaching of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).

1 – It was narrated from Abu Sa’eed al-Khudri (may Allaah be pleased with him) that he heard the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) say, “Do not keep company with anyone but a believer and do not let anyone eat your food but one who is pious.” (Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, 2395; Abu Dawood, 4832. Abu ‘Eesa al-Tirmidhi said: this hadeeth is hasan. It was also classed as hasan by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Tirmidhi, 2519).

Abu ‘Eesa al-Khattaabi said: Rather he warned against keeping company with anyone who is not pious and against mixing with them or eating with them, because eating with a person instills friendship and love in the heart.

He said: do not make friends with anyone who is not pious; do not take him as a companion with whom you eat and chat.

(Ma’aalim al-Sunan, Haamish Mukhtasar Sunan Abi Dawood, 7/185, 186).

2 – It was narrated from Samurah that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Do not live among the mushrikeen and do not mix with them, for whoever lives among them or mixes with them is not one of us.” (Narrated by al-Bayhaqi, 9/142; al-Haakim, 2/154. He said, it is saheeh according to the conditions of al-Bukhaari. The hadeeth was also classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in al-Silsilat al-Saheehah, 2/229 with its corroborating reports).

But it is permissible to deal with them in a kind manner in the hope that they might become Muslim.

It was narrated that Anas (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: There was a Jewish boy who used to serve the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), and he fell sick. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) came to visit him. He sat by his head and said, “Become Muslim.” (The boy) looked at his father who was with him, and he (the father) said, “Obey Abu’l-Qaasim (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).” So he became Muslim, and the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) went out, saying, “Praise be to Allaah Who has saved him from the Fire” (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 1290).

And Allaah knows best.

Well, that settles that. You can only be nice if there's a possibility you might convert the kafir, other than that, forget it.

Of course, if anything bad happens to Muslims, it's always the fault of not enough Islam. "Muslim Leaders in Indonesia Push for Implementation of Islamic Law," From Compass, with thanks to Witness.

Following the deadly May 28 bombing in Tentena, Indonesia, both Muslim and Christian leaders have expressed concern about corruption and violence in the country. Some Muslim leaders believe the best solution is the nationwide implementation of sharia (Islamic law). Congresses held in Jakarta in 2004 and Sulawesi in March 2005 recommended that sharia principles be introduced through a revision of Indonesia's criminal law. Meanwhile, provincial councils are including more sharia principles in local bylaws. In some provinces, governors have restricted freedom of worship for Christians.

Too bad this fellow isn't offering a reward, but no matter how many Qur'an quotes advocating violence against non-Muslims or "apostates" we send him, something tells me Mr. Kadhim won't believe his lyin' eyes. From SF Gate, "Finding my Religion," with thanks to Nicolei.

Abbas Kadhim grew up in Najaf, the Shiite holy city in Iraq where violent clashes broke out a year ago between U.S. military forces and followers of radical Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He fled to this country in 1992 after participating in the popular uprising against Saddam Hussein. Now a U.S. citizen, he writes a blog on religion and politics in the Middle East titled "Calling It Like It Is." I spoke with Kadhim, who teaches Islamic ethics and Koranic studies at Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union, about the role of Islam in shaping the country's direction.

Q: You teach students in the United States about Islamic ethics and the Quran. How well do you think Americans understand Islam today?

I would say that the average American is more informed about Islam now than prior to 9/11. Before 9/11, most Americans were either completely ignorant or misinformed. But there's been a lot of learning since then.

Still, what would you say are the biggest misconceptions?

Many Americans still think of Islam and terrorism as one and the same thing. This is a big problem. I mean, there are 1.7 billion Muslims in the world. If all of them are terrorists, the world is doomed, right? There are a certain number of Muslims who are taking their violent agenda and giving it a mask that is Islamic, but this is not what Islam is. I defy anyone to bring me one verse in the Quran that advocates violence. The Quran talks about fighting and other things, but always in self-defense, and even the verses that mention fighting say that peace is the way to go...

What do you think is going to happen in Iraq? Do you think the country will eventually stabilize itself?

Yes. Iraqis have done very well in handling themselves with adversity. They have gotten their country back much faster than was planned. The original plans were to have a military ruler of Iraq for five years. Iraqis got a government within a year and a half. People are already being sent to jail for corruption and theft. Terrorists are being captured. So Iraqis, if they are left to their own devices, they will do very well. And if there is any trouble, I think it will be because of the interference of people who are trying to pass a different agenda.

What role do you think Islam should play in building the new Iraq?

More than 95 percent of Iraqis are Muslim. These aren't just Muslims; they are practicing Muslims. In a population with that kind of majority, the religion has to be factored in future plans. It's important to remember that whatever small success has occurred in Iraq so far has been the result of people using Islam as a positive force. The elections were not an American idea; they were the idea of [leading cleric] Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who insisted on them. He also has been using his leverage to denounce violence. After the collapse of the regime, there was a wave of looting, and it was the mosques that called for people to return what was looted, and the majority of the things were brought back to the mosque. The mosque has been the only institution in Iraq really functioning in a positive way.

What about the fear that Iraq will become a theocracy, like Iran? Are you concerned about that?

This is not going to happen. Iran is a monolithic society with more than 80 percent who are Shiite Muslims. In Iraq, you have 65 percent of Iraqis who are Shiite. Even if you ignore the secular elements who don't want a theocracy, you've got head Shiite scholars saying they don't want it, either. The thing is, right now, if you push Islam outside, the entire enterprise will fail, guaranteed. Then you will give the terrorists a good reason to use [violence in] the name of Islam. Every time you exclude a group, you are giving them no choice but to engage in violence...

Yeah, yeah. Nothing is wrong with Islam and so anything that ever goes wrong, like terrorist violence for example, is never the fault of Islamic teaching. NEVER.

From the BBC, with thanks to Scaramouche.

The Pakistan government has confirmed that a victim of a notorious gang rape is on a special list of people who are not allowed to travel abroad.

Mukhtar Mai, raped allegedly on the orders of a tribal council in 2002, has demanded the restrictions be lifted.

"We want her case to be processed and resolved first," junior interior minister Shehzad Wasim said.

On Friday a court ordered that 12 men imprisoned in connection with the case must be released by Monday.

Ms Mai's name suddenly appeared on the "exit control list" earlier this month.

Immigration officers in Karachi say they have received instructions to stop her if she tries to travel abroad.

Ms Mai has been invited by human rights group Amnesty International to visit the United States.

Pakistan's opposition says that she is being prevented from travelling abroad because the government believes any such visit would hurt the country's image...

We've heard this kind of talk before, but will changing school textbooks actually help discourage jihad or change the traditional interpretations of Islamic law? From the International Herald Tribune, with thanks to Skeet Street.

AMMAN, Jordan By Middle Eastern standards, Jordanian schoolbooks are relatively free of bombast. But some textbooks used here to teach Islamic culture contain nefarious conspiracies that just will not go away.

There is the Western plot to divide the Muslim world. There is the conniving Jew seeking to destroy Islam. And there is the call for a return to the faith in response.

But if a committee reviewing the country's Islamic curriculum has its way, such talk, at least in the current form, is likely to become history. Facing growing extremism and rising security threats, educators are seeking to revamp their religious studies curriculum to cultivate a more thoughtful and open mind in a country that is among the more moderate of Arab states.

The effort to foster more moderate expressions of Islam is decidedly ambitious for an Arab government, but also very delicate.

Ostensibly, it seeks to inoculate Jordanian youth against extremism, although some critics complain that it is really an effort to ward off foreign pressure, especially from the United States, on which Jordan has grown increasingly dependent...

From AFP, with thanks to Skeet Street.

A former Iraqi police commando blew himself up in a failed attempt to assassinate the leader of the anti-insurgent Wolf Brigade, killing three policemen, the Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, said.

The bomber walked into the unit's headquarters in Baghdad on Saturday and detonated a belt hidden under his police uniform.

A patriotic song broadcast regularly on Iraqi television says members of the brigade "disarm bombs with their teeth".

Mr Jabr said the bomber was trying to kill the brigade's leader, Major-General Mohammed Qureishi. General Qureishi, popularly known as Abu Walid, is well-known in Iraq as the host of a TV show on which accused insurgents confess their crimes.

He and the bulk of the Wolf Brigade are Shiite Muslims, and leaders of the country's Sunni Muslim minority have accused the brigade of conducting kidnappings and summary executions during a continuing security crackdown known as Operation Lightning.

Mr Jabr echoed recent statements by Iraqi officials, calling Operation Lightning a huge success that had greatly reduced car bombings and other such attacks in and around Baghdad since it began a fortnight ago. During a surge of insurgent attacks last month a dozen or more bombs were exploding in Baghdad every day, Mr Jabr said, pointing to a diagram that tracked the trend. "Now we have one car bomb or two per day."

Mr Jabr said 36 terrorism suspects had been killed in gunfights during the operation and 1318 arrested.

Could be Cyber-Terror. "Joy Junction Web Site Hacked And Obliterated, Shelter Director Suspects Terrorist Activity" From ANS with thanks to Nicolei.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Long time Albuquerque resident Jeremy Reynalds is best known for his work with Joy Junction, the shelter for homeless families he founded in 1986 and continues to direct.

However, there’s another side of Reynalds that is not quite as well known – as a terrorist hunter.

For almost the last three years Reynalds has investigating and writing about a number of Islamic terrorist web sites, many of which are hosted by American Internet Service Providers...

Earlier this year Reynalds was also the subject of a death threat by radical jihadis.

Now Joy Junction’s web site has been hacked by individuals so proficient that the entire account has been wiped off the computer server on which it was housed.

“The simple fact is that these guys are not happy when I write articles exposing their hateful agenda,” he said. “Who else could it have been?”

“Our web host will launch an investigation on their own,” Reynalds added. “But ...these were not script kiddies (amateur hackers), they were pros. And they likely did not leave behind much for us to work with.”

Reynalds said while he cannot definitively say it was a terror attack against Joy Junction’s web site, he has a message for those individuals whom he dubbed “radical jihadi thugs” who engage in cyber crimes.

“You have picked the wrong person to try and intimidate,” Reynalds said. “Death threats and web site hacking just further serve to strengthen my resolve to fight terrorism.”

Details of a plan targeting New York's financial institutions from the New York Daily News, with thanks to T.

A terrorism plot that sparked last summer's Orange Alert envisioned turning the Citigroup Center into "cutthroat shrapnel," according to a report yesterday.

In reconnaissance plans, accused terrorist Dhiren Barot, currently jailed in Britain, called the building a glass house whose panels could be turned into "a potential flying piece of cutthroat shrapnel," according to a CBS News report.

Barot carefully cased the landmark tower on Lexington Ave. and E. 53rd St. down to the smallest detail - even describing how the toilets could be used as a place to assemble a bomb.

"The documents were very detailed," NYPD Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne told the Daily News. "They included, for example, how many seats there were around the conference table in the board room of the New York Stock Exchange [which he also scouted]. The level of detail showed they had engaged in serious reconnaissance."

Barot, 33, whose alleged Al Qaeda alias was Abu Eisa Al Hindi, checked out financial centers in Newark and Washington in addition to Citigroup and the Stock Exchange. A 50-page printout from his computer obtained by CBS revealed he was very thorough...

Our military is making an effort to stem the tide of jihadists flowing out of Africa into Iraq and elsewhere. From CNS News, with thanks to Nicolei.