20 July 2007 @ 8:58AM >> The Metropolitan Transportation Authority here in New York City runs commercials saying, “If you see something, say something,” asking the citizenry to report suspicious behavior that might indicate terrorist activity. But apparently, the Democrats in Congress would rather have you keep your mouth shut. Because of their actions, saying something could end up dragging you into court.

First, a little background:

As the plane boarded, she said, no one refused to fly. The public prayers and an Arabic phone call triggered no alarms.

But then a note from a passenger about suspicious movements of the imams got the crew’s attention.

To Pauline, everything seemed normal. Then the captain - in classic laconic pilot-style - announced there had been a “mix-up in our paperwork” and that the flight would be delayed.

In reality, the crew was waiting for the FBI and local police to arrive.

Contrary to press accounts that a single note from a passenger triggered the imams’ removal, Captain John Howard Wood was weighing multiple factors.

* An Arabic speaker was seated near two of the imams in the plane’s tail. That passenger pulled a flight attendant aside and, in a whisper, translated what the men were saying: invoking “bin Laden” and condemning America for “killing Saddam,” according to police reports.

* An imam seated in first class asked for a seat-belt extender - the extra strap that obese people use because the standard belt is too short. According to both an on-duty and a deadheading flight attendant, he looked too thin to need one.

A seat-belt extender can easily be used as a weapon - just wrap one end around your fist, and swing the heavy metal buckle.

* All six imams had boarded together, with the first-class passengers - even though only one of them had a first-class ticket. Three had one-way tickets. Between the six men, only one had checked a bag.

And, Pauline said, they spread out - just like the 9/11 hijackers. Two sat in first class, two in the middle and two back in the economy section, police reports show. Some, according to Rader, took seats not assigned to them.

* Finally, a gate attendant told the captain she was suspicious of the imams, according to police reports.

So the captain made his decision to delay the flight based on many complaints, not one. He also consulted a federal air marshal, a U.S. Airways ground-security coordinator and the airline’s security office in Phoenix. All thought the imams were acting suspiciously, Rader told me.

One more odd thing went unnoticed at the time: The men prayed both at the gate and on the plane. Yet observant Muslims pray only once at sundown, not twice.

“It was almost as if they were intentionally trying to get kicked off the flight,” Pauline said.

And now, the people who reported the suspicious behavior are being sued by the “flying imams” who were removed from the plane.

A bill that would have protected citizens from such suits just got killed by the Democrats in Congress.

Apparently, political correctness is more important than national security.

So remember, if you see something, shut up. Or else, you might just end up in court.

3 July 2007 @ 11:34AM >> A former British Jihadist:

[W]hat drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn’t enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

[...]

For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: “Are you British or Muslim?”

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don’t want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

[...]

Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.

I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.

Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.

25 June 2007 @ 1:28PM >> Multiculturalism is an ideology that prefers to think of people as members of groups rather than individuals. It also rejects integration, which leads to separate communities living by their own rules within the same society. The logical result of this is that Islamic law is applied in Western nations, something that’s been happening with frightening regularity in the West lately. And according to this study, there is increasing support among young Muslims for Sharia law being implemented in Britain:

Young British Muslims are more likely than their elders to support Shari’a law and admire al-Qaida, but three-fifths of 16-to 24-year-olds say they have as much in common with non-Muslims as with Muslims, according to an opinion poll published on Monday.

The survey, entitled “Living Together Apart: British Muslims and the Paradox of Multiculturalism” and carried out by UK think tank Policy Exchange, found evidence that young Muslims held more fundamentalist beliefs on key social and political issues than those over age 55.

Forty percent of Muslims between aged 16 to 24 said they would prefer to live under Shari’a law in the UK, compared to only 17% of those over 55. Thirty-six percent of the younger group said a Muslim who converted to another religion should be “punished by death,” while only 19 percent of the older group agreed.

[...]

“There is clearly a conflict within British Islam between a moderate majority that accepts the norms of Western democracy and a growing minority that does not,” she added.

Shahid Malik, a Labor member of Parliament who is a Muslim, said, “This report makes very disturbing reading and it vindicates the concern many of us have that we’re not doing enough to confront this issue.

“For years, I have argued that the [far right] British National Party is a white phenomenon which it is up to the white community to address.

Well, extremism exists in the name of Islam, and that’s something the Muslim community has to take leadership on. It’s my view that the mainstream umbrella Muslim organizations have not risen to the challenge and don’t accept the depth of the problem that’s facing them.”

19 June 2007 @ 8:55AM >> The Washington Times reports that Pakistan is condemning Britain’s decision to grant knighthood to author Salman Rushdie. You may recall that Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses led to an Iranian fatwa being issued against him that ordered his death.

This leads to the Quote of the Day, courtesy of Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, Pakistan’s Religious Affairs Minister:

The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body, he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the ’sir’ title.

In other words, do what we say—and don’t accuse us of being terrorists!—or we’ll blow you up.

As the Washington Times report indicates, this sentiment has some support:

In the eastern city of Multan, hard-line Muslim students burned effigies of Queen Elizabeth II and Mr. Rushdie. About 100 students carrying banners condemning the author also chanted, “Kill him. Kill him.”

Remember this next time someone tries to tell you that it is our foreign policy that creates terrorism. In reality, the Jihadists want the rest of the world to bow down before their demands.

This war will end in one of two ways: the Jihadists will be defeated, or the world will be ruled by Sharia law. Odds are, we’ll be gone long before this battle for civilization is over.

Update: More thoughts here, from Flemming Rose, the editor of the Danish newspaper whose publishing of cartoons containing images of Mohammed sparked worldwide violence.

29 May 2007 @ 8:05AM >> Some forms of government-mandated segregation just don’t seem to stir that much passion among the world’s do-gooders:

Saudi officials have arrested a man in Mecca for being a Christian, saying that the city, which Muslims consider to be holy, is off-limits to non-Muslims.

Nirosh Kamanda, a Sri Lankan Christian, was detained by the Saudi Expatriates Monitoring Committee last week after he started to sell goods outside Mecca’s Great Mosque.

After running his fingerprints through a new security system, Saudi police discovered that he was a Christian who had arrived in the country six months earlier to take a job as a truck driver in the city of Dammam. Kamanda had subsequently left his place of work and moved to Mecca.

“The Grand Mosque and the holy city are forbidden to non-Muslims,” Col. Suhail Matrafi, head of the department of Expatriates Affairs in Mecca, told the Saudi daily Arab News. “The new fingerprints system is very helpful and will help us a lot to discover the identity of a lot of criminals,” he said.

16 May 2007 @ 9:08AM >> I guess al Qaeda was hoping that the Socialist would win:

An Al-Qaeda front group in Europe threatened on Tuesday to launch bloody attacks in France in response to the election of “crusader and Zionist” Nicolas Sarkozy as president.

“As you have chosen the crusader and Zionist Sarkozy as a leader ... we in the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades warn you that the coming days will see a bloody jihadist campaign ... in the capital of Sarkozy,” the group’s “Europe division” said in an Internet statement addressed to the French people.

[...]

The group previously claimed responsibility for the July 2005 terror attacks in London, as well those in Madrid in March 2004 and in Istanbul in November 2003.

The only way for Western nations to be safe from this type of terrorism is to let al Qaeda choose our future heads of state.

12 May 2007 @ 1:48PM >> It turns out that my friend Karol Sheinin grew up with two of the six men accused of plotting a terrorist attack on Fort Dix:

When Elvis and Dritan Duka, two of the three brothers arrested on terrorism charges in Fort Dix, were kids, they were neighborhood bullies. When they got a little older, they became drug dealers.

How do I know? They grew up in my neighborhood, my brother and his friends used to brawl with them on a fairly regular basis. My brother’s best friend’s mom was friends with their mom. Then they moved to New Jersey and became Jihadis. Of all possible paths for the Duka kids, that one didn’t seem the most likely.

23 April 2007 @ 8:44AM >> In this Front Page Magazine interview, I discuss the inspiration behind my first video, Protesting the Protesters; politics, human rights, the global Jihad & the Middle East; McCain/Feingold and Michael Moore (there is a connection!); the one-party state of Hollywood and academia; and, finally, my upcoming film Indoctrinate U.

3 April 2007 >> A Reuters article entitled “Bush success vs. al Qaeda breeds long-term worries” starts out by saying:

Even as al Qaeda tries to rebuild operations in Pakistan, experts including current and former intelligence officials believe the group would have a hard time staging another September 11 because of U.S. success at killing or capturing senior members whose skills and experience have not been replaced.

And to illustrate this seemingly positive news, columnist David Morgan quotes a few experts, such as a guy who claims that al Qaeda is delighted to be on the receiving end of this “success”:

“If you’re looking at it from the cave, or wherever al Qaeda is hiding at the moment, you have to be pretty happy with the way the world is moving,” [former CIA agent Michael Scheuer] said.

Yes, the world rarely looks more sunny than from deep within a cave.

Morgan notes that although “Islamist groups have killed about 1,600 people in 53 attacks overseas since 2001,” the current trend is encouraging: “The number and lethality of the attacks have fallen off since 2004.”

So naturally, Morgan concludes the article on a positive note:

But IntelCenter chief executive Ben Venzke said the chance of an al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil has grown based on the militant network’s increasing references to the American homeland in public messages.

“Our leading thinking is that we are closer now to an attempt at a major attack in the United States than at any point since 9/11,” Venzke said.

As James Taranto points out:

There is no denying Venzke is right. If an al Qaeda attack is in the future, then it is closer now than at any point since 9/11. Venzke has stumbled onto something profound: the linear and sequential nature of time.

There are other disturbing implications as well. If you survived 9/11—and this is true no matter who you are—you are more than five years closer to death now than you were then.

2 April 2007 @ 9:19AM >> Germany’s Der Spiegel asks “Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?“

And in another piece, the widely-read pan-European magazine looks at anti-Americanism in German society, noting that Germans now “believe that the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran.” Perhaps part of the reason Germans don’t perceive Iran as a threat is that the country, like the rest of Europe, has carefully avoided inflaming Iran for decades:

The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country’s foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a “critical dialogue” between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they’ve been naughty, they’ll stop condemning their women to death for “unchaste behavior” and they’ll stop building the atom bomb.

That plan failed at some point — an outcome, incidentally, that Washington had long anticipated. Iran continues to work away unhindered on its nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacts to UN demands with an ostentatious show of ignorance. The UN gets upset and drafts a resolution.

[...]

For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic. In terms of history and foreign policy, the Americans have either been too isolationist or too imperialistic. They simply go ahead and invade foreign countries (something we Germans, of course, would never do) and then abandon them, the way they did in Vietnam and will soon do in Iraq.

[...]

Iran is a different story. The last time someone made a joke on German TV about an Iranian leader, the outcome was not pleasant. Exactly 20 years ago, Dutch entertainer Rudi Carell produced a short TV sketch portraying Ayatollah Khomeini dressed in women’s underwear. Carell received death threats. The piece, which lasted all of a few seconds, led to flights being cancelled and German diplomats being expelled from Tehran. Carell apologized. Jokes about fat Americans are just safer.

Fast forward to the Cartoon Intifada, the rioting, the burning embassies, and the death toll that arose out of cartoons in a newspaper, and you can see why the trembling Europeans are reluctant to say anything critical about Iran or radical Islam. But they might not see Iran as a threat, much in the same way that a compliant gradeschooler doesn’t see the local bully as a threat as long as he hands over his lunch money whenever he’s asked.

Say what you want about the Americans, though, because your head won’t get chopped off as a result. So it’s easy, although shortsighted, for you Europeans to direct your anger at the United States. There are no consequences for it. We’ll still come to your defense when your cities start falling to your own home-grown Jihadists in a generation or two, just as we provided for the common defense of Europe for the half-century bounded by World War II and the fall of the Soviet Empire, allowing you to spend next to nothing on your own defense and build up your lavishly unproductive welfare states.

But by engaging in this ostrich act whenever confronted with reality, Europe is not only postponing the inevitable, but making it inevitably worse. Because today’s schoolyard bully doesn’t have a nuclear weapon...yet. But it may soon, no matter how many worthless pieces of paper the U.N. issues. So when the bully graduates to mass murder of unspeakable proportions, there will be those of us who said we told you so. And we’ll remember all those nasty words you said about us. And then we’ll help, because this is our fight too.

We just wish you’d wake up and see it for yourselves.

23 March 2007 @ 10:36AM >> Europe is increasingly surrenduring its own culture and bowing to the mandates of Sharia law.

First, from Germany:

A 26-year-old mother of two wanted to free herself from what had become a miserable and abusive marriage. The police had even been called to their apartment to separate the two — both of Moroccan origin — after her husband got violent in May 2006. The husband was forced to move out, but the terror continued: Even after they separated, the spurned husband threatened to kill his wife.

A quick divorce seemed to be the only solution — the 26-year-old was unwilling to wait the year between separation and divorce mandated by German law. She hoped that as soon as they were no longer married, her husband would leave her alone. Her lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk agreed and she filed for immediate divorce with a Frankfurt court last October. They both felt that the domestic violence and death threats easily fulfilled the “hardship” criteria necessary for such an accelerated split.

In January, though, a letter arrived from the judge adjudicating the case. The judge rejected the application for a speedy divorce by referring to a passage in the Koran that some have controversially interpreted to mean that a husband can beat his wife. It’s a supposed right which is the subject of intense debate among Muslim scholars and clerics alike. “The exercise of the right to castigate does not fulfill the hardship criteria as defined by Paragraph 1565 (of German federal law),” the daily Frankfurter Rundschau quoted the judge’s letter as saying. It must be taken into account, the judge argued, that both man and wife have Moroccan backgrounds.

“The right to castigate means for me: the husband can beat his wife,” Becker-Rojczyk said, interpreting the judge’s verdict.

And from France, newspaper editor Philippe Val describes the trouble he’s in as a result of publishing those Mohammad cartoons:

A French court is tomorrow expected to decide whether I and the newspaper I edit, Charlie Hebdo, committed a crime by publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. If the court finds me guilty of “publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion,” in effect racism, as the organizations of French Muslims that are plaintiffs in this case claim, I could be imprisoned for six months and fined thousands of euros. A great deal is at stake, for free speech in France and Europe, in the outcome of this trial.

[...]

Before publication, I was pressured not to go ahead and summoned to the Hotel Matignon to see the prime minister’s chief of staff; I refused to go. The next day, summary proceedings were initiated by the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France to stop this issue of Charlie Hebdo from hitting newsstands. The government encouraged them, but their suit was dismissed.

After the cartoons appeared, the Muslim groups attacked me by filing suit against me on racism charges. President Jacques Chirac, who campaigned for this just-completed trial, offered them the services of his own personal lawyer, Francis Szpiner. Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Grand Mosque, who always took orders from the Elysee, was apparently not convinced this case was necessary; he told me as much several times. But Mr. Boubakeur was under pressure from the fundamentalists at the UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France), who had come to dominate the French Council of Muslim Worship, which he heads, and Mr. Chirac. Why? Only he knows. We can only guess. Probably to nurture his friendships in the Middle East and win arms contracts for France, while at home playing to Muslim public opinion that’s supposedly in thrall to fundamentalism.

[...]

Since it is hardly thinkable that the French parliament could be persuaded to re-establish the crime of blasphemy, the plaintiffs chose the legal path to try to obtain a ruling condemning all criticism of religion. But in order to survive, democracy needs to confront dogmas. We saw this happening when rights for women and homosexuals were established; we see it again today in defending genetic research on stem cells, for instance.

This trial is important for all the forms of expression that should flourish in democracy: painting, cinema, literature, journalism, scientific research, and even the free speech exercised in everyday life. The limits to this freedom are already fixed by laws that protect life, and that penalize racism, insults and defamation. In publishing the Danish cartoons, no one broke any of them.

3 March 2007 @ 9:15AM >> Professor Mike Adams of the University of North Carolina is a rare breed in academia. The professor and prolific columnist actually believes it is an outrage for taxpayer-funded universities to be employing instructors who are actively encouraging war against the United States. The latest column from Adams introduces us to the writings of one Julio Pino, a professor at Kent State University.

Professor Pino has a blog called Global War (now offline in the wake of this scandal), in which he declares 2007 to be “the year of Islamic victory” and does so “in the name of OBL.” (That would be Osama bin Laden, for the acronymally-challenged.)

Professor Adams describes Professor Pino’s website:

[J]ust in case you were curious about the purpose of this site, it is provided in the upper right corner: “We are a jihadist news service, and provide battle dispatches, training manuals, and jihad videos to our brothers worldwide. All we want is to get Allah’s pleasure. We will write ‘Jihad’ across our foreheads, and the stars. The angels will carry our message throughout the world.”

There is also an “Oath of Freedom” in the upper right corner: “We were born free. We will live freely and when death comes to us, we will die freely. Jihad is changing all that can be changed; freeing ourselves through our own efforts; and the conviction that truth will prevail, inshallah.”

Under the entry “Sister Detonates Herself to Eliminate Shia Traitors” there is a description of a female suicide bomber who recently killed 41 people. Just in case you wondered how the host of the site feels about the suicide bomber, the next line tells you: “Now she lies on the Golden Couch of Paradise.”

[...]

Although obsessed with the notion that America is being over-run by “Christian fascism,” he has affectionately referred to his students his “little Jihadists” and his “beloved Taliban.” In other words, he makes no bones about the fact that he works to indoctrinate, not educate, the children of the taxpayers of the State of Ohio.

No word yet on whether Professor Pino would at least spare the taxpayers of Ohio from his “global war.” After all, those taxpayers are lending Pino legitimacy by paying him to be called “Professor” and allowing him to present himself as a learned scholar. The least he could do is ask for those generous Ohioans to be killed last in the glorious Jihad.

---

Update: Professor Pino’s website has been taken offline, and he now states that “he wouldn’t acknowledge any connection” with the site. (Tellingly, he does not deny any connection with the site, either.) “The Web site is not the issue — freedom of speech is the issue,” he said.

24 February 2007 @ 5:50PM >> Contrary to the widely-held Western belief that terrorism arises when impressionable, impoverished teens look towards a future without hope, Islamic terrorists tend to come from the better-educated, wealthier segments of society. Investor’s Business Daily reports on a Gallup poll of some 10,000 members of the Muslim world, saying that “[t]he most radical among Muslims — those who support jihad — earn more and stay in school longer.”

IBD cites anecdotal evidence that bears this out:

• Bin Laden, the son of a Saudi billionaire, studied engineering.
• His deputy Ayman al-Zawahri is an eye surgeon.
• Mohamed Atta, the son of a lawyer, earned a master’s degree in urban planning.
• 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed graduated from an American college with an engineering degree.
• Flight 93 pilot Ziad Jarrah’s father is a Beirut bureaucrat who drove a Mercedes and put his son through prep school.

Some of the London bombers had college degrees. One was a schoolteacher. Another’s father owned a store.

Many of the Saudi hijackers were the best and brightest in their towns. Hani Hanjour, who crashed the plane into the Pentagon, studied English at the University of Arizona. Family members were wealthy merchants from Taif, a resort city in Saudi Arabia.

Marxism made popular the idea that all political turmoil was the result of clashes between socioeconomic classes. Although Marxism ultimately failed, that core tenet became the default thinking of many Westerners.

We perceive the motivations of the Jihadists through a distinctly Western lens. We’re projecting our beliefs onto them, and assuming that their behavior must be motivated by what our teachers taught us was the source of all conflict. Marxism may not have destroyed the West economically, but it could destroy the West psychologically, by preventing us from seeing the threat as it is.

Just because we learned in school that all conflict results from friction between the classes doesn’t make it so. This conflict stems from a profound cultural difference, one that can’t be papered over by feel-good policies like increased foreign aid.

Take Egypt, for example. Since 1975, Egypt has gotten well over $50 billion in U.S. foreign aid. Has this money made Egypt any less beholden to the Jihadists?

Not if the treatment of Abdel Kareem Soliman is any indication. This past week, the Egyptian blogger was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and the president of Egypt. An abridgment of freedom that—in the U.S.—would send lawyers scurrying to television cameras was instead met with a shrug:

As the court hearing ended, the media moved to the street in front of the courthouse and started interviewing people about what they thought of the trial. With the exception of human rights activists and bloggers, the Egyptian public seemed satisfied with the verdict, if not disappointed it wasn’t longer.

Many people expressed the view that Abdel Kareem should be killed for what he wrote, and each of them shared their preferred way to kill him: stabbing, hanging, and of course, the classic beheading. One actually asked a lawyer if it was legal to now kill him, since this verdict clearly brands him as an apostate, and the Sharia punishment for an apostasy is death. People were talking about killing him in the most casual manner, as if he was no longer a human being to them.

As I said, today’s conflict with the Jihadists arises from a profound cultural difference, not from America’s past foreign policy or failure to hand out even more money around the globe. But for some reason, many of us prefer to point the finger back at ourselves and ignore the real source of the problem. Simply put, finding fault with other cultures just isn’t politically correct.

But in war, refusing to understand the enemy is suicidal.

22 February 2007 @ 8:49AM >> A female government minister in Pakistan was shot in the head and killed for not wearing a veil:

Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province and an ally of President Pervez Musharraf, was killed as she was about to deliver a speech to dozens of party activists, by a “fanatic”, who believed that she was dressed inappropriately and that women should not be involved in politics, officials said.

Mrs Usman, 35, was wearing the shalwar kameez worn by many professional women in Pakistan, but did not cover her head.

[...]

The gunman, Mohammad Sarwar, was overpowered by the minister’s driver and arrested by police. A stone mason in his mid 40s, he is not thought to belong to any radical group but is known for his fanaticism. He was previously held in 2002 in connection with the killing and mutilation of four prostitutes, but was never convicted due to lack of evidence.

Mr Sarwar appeared relaxed and calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God’s order to kill women who sinned. “I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment,” he said, adding that Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership. “I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again,” he said.

[...]

Ms Usman, a married mother of two sons, joined the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League after being elected in 2002. A strong supporter of the President’s policy of “enlightened moderation” - designed to tackle extremism - she was appointed to her current post in December last year according to her government biography.

In April 2005, she encouraged the holding of a mini-marathon involving female competitors in Gujranwala - an event which led to riots after police intervened to stop armed Islamic activists from disrupting the race. She also ran a small fashion business from her base in the town.

[...]

General Musharraf, whose support for the US-led war on terror has caused consternation among Pakistan’s hardline elements, has promised to address women’s rights as part of his more moderate agenda.

But analysts said that the murder of the female minister highlighted the failure of his government in curbing Islamic extremism. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a recent report said that violence against women had increased alarmingly, with some of the incidents incited by Mullahs opposed to women’s emancipation.

15 February 2007 @ 8:12AM >> The New York Sun reports:

The letter “X” soon may be banned in Saudi Arabia because it resembles the mother of all banned religious symbols in the oil kingdom: the cross.

The new development came with the issuing of another mind-bending fatwa, or religious edict, by the infamous Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the group of senior Islamic clergy that reigns supreme on all legal, civil, and governance matters in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The commission’s damning of the letter “X” came in response to a Ministry of Trade query about whether it should grant trademark protection to a Saudi businessman for a new service carrying the English name “Explorer.”

[...]

Among the commission’s deeds is the famed 1974 fatwa — issued by its blind leader at the time, Sheik Abdul Aziz Ben Baz — which declared that the Earth was flat and immobile. In a book issued by the Islamic University of Medina, the sheik argued: “If the earth is rotating, as they claim, the countries, the mountains, the trees, the rivers, and the oceans will have no bottom.” Another bright light of the commission, Sheik Abdel-Aziz al-Sheikh, recently stopped a government reform proposal aimed at creating work for women by allowing them to replace male sales clerks in women’s clothing stores. Sheik al-Sheikh damned the idea, saying it was a step “towards immorality and hellfire.” The underlying logic is breathtaking: Women are more protected by buying their knickers from men! Over the years, the commission has rendered Saudi Arabia a true kingdom of darkness. Movie theaters are banned, as are sculptures, paintings, and music, and the mixing of sexes in public.

The commission really has it in for women. They must don the all-enveloping veil, or niqab, in public; they cannot drive themselves nor ride anywhere without a male guardian, and they cannot travel alone domestically or abroad.

The commission also excels at banning the construction of houses of worship — other than mosques — even though the majority of the 8 million expatriates working in the kingdom come from Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths. Indeed, celebrating a private Sunday Mass inside a home could lead to jail, public lashings, and expulsion.

One of the most criminal travesties committed by the commission’s foot soldiers, the Mutawaeen, or religious police, was dramatically reported by the muzzled Saudi press itself on Friday, March 15, 2002, when the Mutawaeen forcibly prevented girls fleeing a burning school from leaving the building because they were “improperly dressed.”

The day after, the Saudi Gazette newspaper quoted witnesses as saying the police stopped men who tried to help the girls, warning the men: “It is sinful to approach them.”

Of the 800 teenage pupils in Mecca, 15 burned to death and more than 50 were injured. Yet, the commission and its royal enablers thrive.

30 January 2007 @ 8:53AM >> From the Evening Telegraph in Peterborough, England:

A growing minority of young Muslims are inspired by political Islam and feel they have less in common with non-Muslims than their parents do, a survey revealed.

The poll found support for Sharia law, Islamic schools and wearing the veil in public is significantly stronger among young Muslims than their parents.

While the majority of Muslims feel they have as much, if not more, in common with non-Muslims in Britain than with Muslims abroad, the figure dropped from 71% of over-55s to 62% among 16-24 year olds, the survey for independent think-tank Policy Exchange found.

The percentage who said they would prefer to send their children to Islamic state schools increased from 19% for over 55 year olds to 37% of 16-24 year olds.

The number who said they would prefer to live under Sharia law than British law increased from 17% of over-55s to 37% of 16-24 year olds.

Munira Mirza, the lead author of the report, said the results suggested Government policy was to blame for sharpening divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims.

She said: “The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multicultural policies implemented since the 1980s which have emphasised difference at the expense of shared national identity and divided people along ethnic, religious and cultural lines.”

23 January 2007 >> It looks like our old friend is at it again:

Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria’s foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report.

“Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives,” the Iranian president was quoted as saying.

[...]

The Iranian president also directly tied events in Lebanon to a wider plan aimed at Israel’s destruction. He called on “regional countries” to “support the Islamic resistance of the Lebanese people and strive to enhance solidarity and unity among the different Palestinian groups in a bid to pave the ground for the undermining of the Zionist regime whose demise is, of course, imminent.”

Ahmadinejad has threatened the State of Israel with annihilation several times in recent months, and has recently added the US and Britain to the list of countries he says will be destroyed.

Why can’t we just talk to Ahmadinejad? I’m sure if we sent pleasant-looking ambassadors to sit down with him, smile politely, and ask him in kind, measured tones to give up his nuclear plans and his apparent desire to see our country destroyed, maybe the nice man would find it in his heart to spare our deaths. Maybe at the very least he could be convinced to delay our deaths by a few weeks.

All we are saying, Mahmoud, is give peace a chance.

He has to listen to reason.

Doesn’t he?

17 January 2007 @ 8:32AM >> Bloomberg reports that “honor crimes” have historically been ignored by British law enforcement officials:

Samaira Nazir rejected Pakistani suitors chosen by her family and planned to elope with her Afghan boyfriend. The penalty for her defiance: death from 18 stab wounds inflicted by her brother and cousin at the family home in Southall, England.

More than a dozen women are killed for violating community standards each year in the U.K., according to police. While Nazir’s killers were jailed for life, U.K. police ignore hundreds of “honor crimes” to avoid inflaming relations with Muslim enclaves as they work to head off homegrown terror plots, say lawmakers and women’s rights advocates.

“There is a kid-gloves approach on the basis that you don’t want to offend these communities,” says Usha Sood, a lawyer and lecturer at Nottingham Trent University who specializes in forced marriage cases. “If you take into account the whole range of honor offenses, the number runs into the thousands.”

[...]

Honor violence includes abduction, forced abortion and rape, police say. Most incidents involve South Asian families, Sood says, adding that counselors also help victims with Kurdish, Afghan, Nigerian and Turkish backgrounds.

[...]

Sometimes violence stems from the desire to keep women isolated from the modern world.

“Girls are being beaten up for things like having a mobile phone,” says Sanghera, 41, who runs the Karma Nirvana shelter for women in Derby, England. The group deals with seven forced marriages a week, and about four cases each month of people under the threat of murder, she says.

Typical of those seeking help is an 18-year-old who asked to be identified only as Serena. She says she sought help through Karma Nirvana after her father beat her repeatedly for six years. After a suicide attempt at 15, she was sent to Pakistan and kept there for a year before she returned to a hostile home.

“The whole house was against me — dad, mum, sisters, all of them,” she says. “Then I took a big step and went for a fresh start.” After four months on the run, Serena is taking classes and maintaining phone contact with her mother from the city where she’s in hiding. “If my uncles find out where I am, they will kill me for sure,” she says.

[...]

“Communities would prefer to turn a blind eye, and anyone who raises the issue is either a racist or an Islamophobe,” [Member of Parliament Ann] Cryer says at a tea lounge at the House of Parliament.

16 January 2007 >> Britain’s Observer reports that “[a]n undercover investigation has revealed disturbing evidence of Islamic extremism at a number of Britain’s leading mosques and Muslim institutions, including an organisation praised by the Prime Minister.”:

Secret video footage reveals Muslim preachers exhorting followers to prepare for jihad, to hit girls for not wearing the hijab, and to create a ’state within a state’. Many of the preachers are linked to the Wahhabi strain of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, which funds a number of Britain’s leading Islamic institutions.

A forthcoming Channel 4 Dispatches programme paints an alarming picture of how preachers in some of Britain’s most moderate mosques are urging followers to reject British laws in favour of those of Islam. Leaders of the mosques have expressed concern at the preachers’ activities, saying they were unaware such views were being disseminated.

At the Sparkbrook mosque, run by UK Islamic Mission (UKIM), an organisation that maintains 45 mosques in Britain and which Tony Blair has said ‘is extremely valued by the government for its multi-faith and multicultural activities’, a preacher is captured on film praising the Taliban. In response to the news that a British Muslim solider was killed fighting the Taliban, the speaker declares: ‘The hero of Islam is the one who separated his head from his shoulders.’

Another speaker says Muslims cannot accept the rule of non-Muslims. ‘You cannot accept the rule of the kaffir [non-Muslim],’ a preacher, Dr Ijaz Mian, tells a meeting held within the mosque. ‘We have to rule ourselves and we have to rule the others.’

Britain’s Jihadists aren’t stupid. They know that the soft underbelly of the West is our blind support of multiculturalism. Assimilation is rejected in favor of each community maintaining its own separate oasis. And thanks to political correctness, anyone who questions the wisdom of this is immediately branded an insensitive bigot. So most Westerners, whose social behaviors have been molded by an educational system in which being labeled a racist is perhaps the worst human offense, keep quiet because the threat of Jihadists among them is not yet apparent. The question is, will the West wake up before it’s too late? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, the video taken from within the so-called moderate mosques is chilling. If this doesn’t serve as a wake-up call, I don’t know what will.

---

Update: The entire Dispatches: Undercover Mosque program is now available on Google Video.

16 January 2007 @ 11:19AM >> As president in the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter was a leader of legendary impotence. For the last 444 days of his presidency, Islamic revolutionaries in Iran held Americans hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. According to the hostages, one of those terrorists was a man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Today, Ahmadinejad is the president of Iran. And Jimmy Carter is an apologist for terrorists. In his new book, which compares the state of Israel to the segregationist apartheid regime that once ruled South Africa, Carter writes:

It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.

In other words, keep those attacks coming until Israel does what is demanded by “the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups.”

I can only imagine that by venturing into the territory of pure wingnuttery, Carter’s book is part of some elaborate scheme to make the foreign policy of his administration seem sensible by comparison.

11 January 2007 >> There’s something about our psyche which seems to make self-criticism the new national pastime. Naturally, our political leaders know this. They know that when hundreds of newspapers and television stations align in a daily tearing-down of the war effort, the American people will eventually lose their nerve and want to give up. Others know this, too, which is why al Qaeda distributed copies of Black Hawk Down as a means to understand how the media can be used to amplify a relatively minor military failure and drive the United States from the field of battle. If terrorists provide enough negative footage to our media, they know we’ll turn and run. But if we fight too vigorously, that will be held up by our own media as evidence of our inherent evilness. More >>

10 January 2007 >> At Pace University—a school that until September 11th, 2001 stood in the shadows of the World Trade Center—showing a film critical of radical Islam is apparently considered a hate crime:

Pace University administrators threatened to sic the cops on a Jewish-student club if it went ahead with plans to screen a critically acclaimed film about radical Islam, the head of the group charged yesterday.

Michael Abdurakhmanov, president of Pace Hillel, said two deans warned that showing the documentary film would implicate club members as suspects in two hate crimes involving the desecration of the Koran at the university’s lower-Manhattan campus last fall.

In addition, Abdurakhmanov said an assistant dean physically restrained him as he attempted to defend the film and his group in a meeting with administrators.

“The message was pretty clear, if you show this film, you’re going to incriminate yourself,” Abdurakhmanov said.

[...]

“Her words were if you show this film, the police will be looking into your records further,” Abdurakhmanov said.

28 December 2006 @ 1:46PM >> From Canada’s National Post:

Dr. Tawfik Hamid doesn’t tell people where he lives. Not the street, not the city, not even the country. It’s safer that way. It’s only the letters of testimony from some of the highest intelligence officers in the Western world that enable him to move freely. This medical doctor, author and activist once was a member of Egypt’s Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for “the Islamic Group”), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden’s videos, telling the world that Islamic violence will stop only once we all become Muslims.

[...]

He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. “The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education,” he says. “I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine.

“I’ve heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class Muslims — and never poor Christians — who become suicide bombers in Palestine.”

[...]

He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves to another area, one that he says is far too seldom discussed: “North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.

“Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don’t for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism.”

A pause. “I know. I was one who accepted it.”

[...]

“The sexual aspect is, of course, just one part of this. But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?”

He’s exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. “Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They’re slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can’t you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want.”

5 November 2006 >> Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe reports on a few fronts in the global Jihad:

Australia: Australia’s foremost Muslim cleric triggers an uproar when he likens women who don’t wear an Islamic headscarf to “uncovered meat” and blames them for attracting sexual predators.

Afghanistan: The kidnappers of Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello threaten to murder him unless Abdul Rahman, an Afghan Christian convert, is returned to Afghanistan and handed over to an Islamic court.

Iran: The president of Iran calls Israel “a group of terrorists” and threatens to harm any country that supports the Jewish state. “This is an ultimatum,” warns Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the elmination of Israel and the United States.

Thailand: Islamist terrorists bomb a column of Buddhist monks as they collect offerings of food in Narathiwat, a city in southern Thailand. One person is killed; 12 are injured.

France: “We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists,” says police union leader Michel Thoomis. “This is not a question of urban violence any more. It is an intifadah, with stones and firebombs.”

Britain: In a “true Islamic state,” sexually active homosexuals would be executed, says Arshad Misbahi, an imam in Manchester’s Central Mosque.

Meanwhile, Muslim Kurds in Iraq prefer to live in peace:

There are no insurgents in Kurdistan. Nor are there any kidnappings. [...] Iraqi Kurdistan is optimistic, full of hope, infused top to bottom with a go-go, build-build attitude.

Who would have thought that a glimmer of hope for peaceful coexistence with our Muslim brothers could be found in—of all places—Iraq?

26 October 2006 @ 8:59AM >> Political rumblings in Amsterdam:

Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk is in favour of imposing a ban on the wearing of a burka in public spaces.

The Liberal VVD told MPs on Thursday night the face-covering clothing is a symbol of division (between the West and Islam) and was not in harmony with the integration of Muslims and the emancipation of women.

[...]

One of the options being studied is whether a general ban on the burka is possible under current regulations. It will then also be assessed whether a ban wearing a burka can be justified based on issues of safety and public order.

The final option is whether a ban can be imposed via existing regulations such as a general local ordinance or compulsory identification laws.

Government ministers had been called back to the Parliament to explain why they had not yet imposed a ban on the burka, as demanded by MPs in December at the initiative of Geert Wilders. It had previously been revealed that the cabinet was divided over the issue.

By itself, the wearing of a burqa in public is not “symbol of division” in a Western society, it’s merely a symbol of that society’s ability to incorporate people from different backgrounds. There’s nothing wrong with a burqa per se, as long as it is worn voluntarily.

A grave threat to Western culture is the murderous intolerance shown by some radical Muslims to our core values, like that of free thought and free speech. But we have other important values, such as the freedom to worship (or not) as we please—as long as one’s actions don’t infringe upon someone else’s rights.

The way to address the fact that there are some Jihadists in the Muslim world who need to be defeated is not to strip all Muslims of their right to wear religious attire. Doing so does nothing to further the integration of Muslims, it only serves as a signal that they are not welcome.

Western cultures will go down a dangerous path if we start outlawing legitimate, non-violent and uncoerced expressions of faith.

20 October 2006 @ 8:45AM >> First, they came for the satellite dishes. Now they come for the broadband Internet connections:

Iran’s Islamic government has opened a new front in its drive to stifle domestic political dissent and combat the influence of western culture - by banning high-speed internet links.
In a blow to the country’s estimated 5 million internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages. The move by Iran’s telecommunications regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, films and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation. It will also impede efforts by political opposition groups to organise by uploading information on to the net.

You’ve got to wonder about a government that believes the only way to survive is to cut off its citizens from the outside world.

15 October 2006 @ 3:59PM >> The New York Times reports that in Europe, “those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.”

9 October 2006 @ 8:41AM >> I have always thought that Peter Beinart of The New Republic is one of the more sensible, intellectually honest voices on the left. His latest piece is an example why:

Last week, I went searching the liberal Web for discussions of Idomeneo. The Deutsche Oper, a Berlin opera house, had recently canceled the Mozart classic because it feared Muslims would react violently to a scene featuring Mohammed’s severed head. Germans declared that free speech was under siege. The New York Times covered every wrinkle. Right-wing websites buzzed. And, on the big liberal blogs, virtual silence.

If pressed, most liberal bloggers would probably have condemned the opera house’s decision. But they didn’t feel pressed. Blogging thrives on outrage (see, for instance, my colleague Martin Peretz’s outraged blogging on the affair at tnr.com/blog/spine), and the Idomeneo closure just didn’t get liberal blood flowing. And why is that? Perhaps because it didn’t have anything to do with George W. Bush.

[...]

In much of Europe, Muslim violence has become a serious threat to free speech. In publishing its cartoons of Mohammed last fall, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten performed a test: Is it possible to safely caricature the Prophet? The answer—received loud and clear by the Deutsche Oper—was no. Lower profile incidents confirm the point. Within days of the opera’s cancellation, a French philosophy teacher was placed under police protection for writing an article critical of Islam.

[...]

Liberals are less prone to a “clash of civilizations” mentality that undermines the very notion of free speech as a universal value. And that is why they must make the cause of European free speech their own. The best analogy is the “political correctness” fights that roiled college campuses in the late ’80s and early ’90s. When professors and students were punished for statements that violated racial and gender orthodoxy, it was conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza who most aggressively came to their defense. But many conservatives were tainted by their defense of the McCarthyite assault on campus free speech in the 1950s. In 1991, THE NEW REPUBLIC published a review of D’Souza’s book by the renowned Southern historian Eugene Genovese. “As one who saw his professors fired during the McCarthy era, and who had to fight, as a pro-Communist Marxist, for his own right to teach,” wrote Genovese, “I fear that our conservative colleagues are today facing a new McCarthyism.” Yet the conservatives, he argued, couldn’t defeat it alone. The cause of free speech “will go down, unless it is supported by a substantial portion of the left and center. ... It is time to close ranks.”

We have reached that point again. During the PC wars, many liberals were genuinely conflicted about whether free speech outweighed racial and gender sensitivity on campus. Today, some liberals still excuse censorship in sensitivity’s name. The bigger danger, however, is not sensitivity; it is indifference. Having adapted themselves so fully to a hyper-partisan environment, many liberals seem unable to conceive of a struggle in which the Republican right is not an enemy but an ally. But there are such struggles, and, without today’s activist liberals, they will be harder to win. Free speech is under threat, and Idomeneo should be the last straw. It is time, once again, to close ranks.

3 October 2006 @ 12:47PM >> Britain’s Daily Mail reports:

A hardline Muslim teacher who caused a furore by denouncing pupils for celebrating Christmas has been made a Government schools inspector.

Israr Khan’s Ofsted appointment was described by a former colleague as ‘absolutely astonishing’.

Mr Khan, now headmaster of an Islamic school, launched into his tirade during a concert rehearsal at Washwood Heath Secondary School in Birmingham in 1996 after the choir including around 40 Muslim youngsters, had sung a number of popular Christmas songs, including carols.

He leapt from his seat, yelling: “Who is your God? Why are you saying Jesus and Jesus Christ? God is not your God - it is Allah.”

As children in the audience began booing and clapping, a number of choir members - both white and Asian - walked out, some in tears.

[....]

It has been claimed that Washwood Heath school was then a ‘hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism’. Rashid Rauf - the airline terror bomb suspect whose extradition is currently being sought from Pakistan - was a pupil there at that time.

[...]

One Muslim father, who asked to be known only as Mohammed, said: “As a governor, Mr Khan will be able to exert a great deal of influence over the school and its policies.

“By his previous actions, he seems to represent what I would call a hardcore attitude to Islam.”

29 September 2006 @ 9:26AM >> Is Europe finally beginning to stand up against Jihadist intimidation? The controversy over a cancelled Mozart opera in Germany may be a turning point.

German chancellor some effect:

A controversial Mozart opera adapted to include a scene showing Mohammed’s severed head on stage appears set for a new run in Berlin after the German government said the show must go on as a “signal of closer dialogue” with the country’s 3.4m Muslims.

[...]

Badr Mohammed, head of Berlin’s European Integration Centre and one of the Muslim delegates to the conference, said the forum was a “historic breakthrough - an opportunity that Muslims must now grasp”.

[...]

Yet greater co-operation was already proving difficult on Wednesday night, as some of the representatives of Germany’s main Muslim organisations complained that the interior ministry had also invited independent Muslim experts to the forum, including women writers and lawyers who are highly critical of conservative Muslim traditions.

So it sounds like, although the current run of the show has been cancelled, it may be put on at some yet-to-be-determined time in the future.

We shall see. I’ve got a feeling this story isn’t over yet.