By now it should come as no surprise that Islamic extremists aren’t content to peacefully live out their lives on holy Islamic soil, but rather insist that the entire world succomb to the joys of sharia law. Nonetheless, the things some of them say and do never fails to amaze. Nor can one fail to be amazed at the openness with which they are received into Western society in the name of extreme multiculturalism and free, open debate.
It would seem that no Western European country is free from the possibility of becoming predominantly Muslim by mid-century, if not by conquest, then by simple demographics. European populations seem strangely averse to reproducing themselves while the attitude on that subject of the Muslim immigrants in their midst is basically no holds barred.
But that doesn’t mean that a little violence isn’t fully justified along the way of that seeming demographic inevitability and even the Emerald Island of Ireland is vulnerable, at least according to one Islamic extremist who recently spoke in Dublin. The following excerpts come from an article in an Irish paper:
The flag of Islam should be flown over Leinster House, an Islamic extremist said tonight.
Speaking in Dublin before addressing a Trinity College debate, Anjem Choudray also reiterated controversial views that Muslim violence is justified in certain circumstances.
The British-born lawyer, 39, angered the Irish Government last year when he said that Ireland risked becoming a target for a 9/11 style attack because it allowed US war planes to refuel at Shannon Airport.
Mr Choudray said: “As a Muslim, I believe Islam is superior to every other way of life and that it can resolve all the social and economic problems that Ireland suffers from.
“And as a symbol of that, the flag of Islam should be flown over the Dáil.
“This is symbolic of the fact that all societies will be run better according to God’s law.”
Mr Choudray, who has visited Ireland several times, was invited by the Philosophical Society at Trinity College to debate Islamic violence with other speakers.
Referring to the US military stopovers at Shannon Airport, he said tonight: “If US warplanes are using Irish soil, then Ireland is seen as aiding and abetting the war on so-called terror.
“Ireland says it has a position of neutrality but I don’t think it is seen that way in the Muslim world at all.”
Mr Choudray also warned that the Pope must be careful with his public statements so that he doesn’t offend Islam.
And taking top honors for Mr. Choudray’s most harebrained remark: “As a Muslim, I believe Islam is superior to every other way of life and that it can resolve all the social and economic problems that Ireland suffers from.”
Sure, just look what it’s done for that vast swath of the planet that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia. A wretched, ignorant, violent, poverty-ridden fever swamp from end to end. That’s Islam for you: quashing human potential for 14 centuries! Allahu Akbar!
And it can do the same for the Emerald Isle.
It would all be doubled-over, falling-down hilarious if it weren’t for two worrisome factors (in addition to the demographic one already mentioned): 1.) Europe’s inexplicable unwillingness to defend its own culture and heritage; and 2.) Islam’s aggressive tendencies combined with extreme irrationality and lack of moral boundaries (i.e., suicide bombings).
Suffice it to say, unless the West wakes up, its civilization, which has brought the world almost every blessing of modernity it enjoys, can be replaced in short order by something far less palatable.
Greg Strange provides conservative commentary with plenty of acerbic wit on the people, politics, events and absurdities of our time. See more at his website: http://www.greg-strange.com/
Muslim Extremist Wants Flag of Islam Over Ireland
Islam - religion of peace...
Al-Qaida in Iraq" and its allies issued a statement addressing the Pope as "a cross-worshipper" and warning, "You and the West are doomed, as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere.
"You infidels and despots, we will continue our jihad (holy war) and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism, when God's rule is established governing all people and nations," said the statement by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups in Iraq.
Another Iraqi extremist group, Ansar al-Sunna, challenged "sleeping Muslims" to prove their manhood by doing something other than "issuing statements or holding demonstrations."
"If the stupid pig is prancing with his blasphemies in his house," the group said in a web statement, referring to the Pope, "then let him wait for the day coming soon when the armies of the religion of right knock on the walls of Rome."
In Iran, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used the comments to call for protests against the United States. He argued that while the Pope may have been deceived into making his remarks, the words give the West an "excuse for suppressing Muslims" by depicting them as terrorists.
'Nice' people finish last
'Nice' people finish last
By Hartley Steward
So, have you dropped the idea of sewing a cute little Canadian flag onto your backpack to endear yourself to strangers when you holiday this year? There goes another precious Canadian conceit.
It seems that even the unbearable niceness of being Canadian won't keep you safe in this dreadful new world of ours. The smug Canuck smile has surely been wiped off your face by the gory details of the alleged Muslim terrorists' plans uncovered in Toronto.
Two weeks out, it is apparent from police and security services reports that this may be just the beginning. There are still wannabe terrorists out there, determined to explode a few bombs, kill a few Canadians, maybe behead a politician or two.
It's difficult to find anyone involved in security who won't guarantee a deadly attack of some sort or other. Any day now.
All that hatred, all those evil vibes, unleashed here in little old Canada, where we wouldn't say Shiite if they were coming through the windows with knives clenched in their teeth.
Canada is the inoffensive international nice guy, kicking in with foreign aid by the millions and an enlightened immigration policy.
We've been had, folks.
All that time we've been employing euphemisms and politically-correct speak so as not to antagonize the Muslim world, the radical Islamist leaders have been recruiting every malcontent and schizoid they can find to kill us and our children. Like a pack of crazed salesmen for jihad, they have been searching for weak minds and strong backs to do their dirty work.
It is clear that to extremist Muslims, we are no more or less than Americans with more snow and a trusting nature. We are white, rich, soft and decadent. We are infidels.
But don't be fooled. Their rage is not really born of religious principles or even extreme Islamic visions. It's not the result of American intervention in some Muslim nations.
That these extremists have apparently set up operations on such a broad scale here in Canada shows them for what they really are -- thugs, enraged by our standard of living, jealous of our freedom and our good life. Thugs, drawn to the zealotry like flies to excrement, fascinated by gruesome tales of mass killings and twisted promises of virgins at the end of it all.
They may have been fed propaganda by the truck load, they may have been taught that America is the great Satan, responsible for their every ill, they may have been filled to overflowing with the notion that Islam is the one true religion. But they are, nonetheless, still just thugs.
We flatter them
To impugn to them motives any more noble is to flatter them. To muse about the root causes of their discontent is to waste time while they gather even more recruits and strength. To think a little understanding and a few more foreign aid dollars will help is downright foolish. Thugs will be thugs.
The time has come for the international Muslim community to take some responsibility. It's time to squeal their heads off to security forces everywhere when they know something. Time to drop the dime on friends, neighbours, associates -- to show some courage and old-fashioned fortitude. Time to stop whining about a possible backlash against ordinary, law-abiding Muslims and begin to participate in the solution.
We don't need another lecture on our insensitivity to the Muslim world. We need help.
Muslims have got to root out the thugs hiding in their midst, as several of their leaders in Canada have stated. Unless this happens, we will really see a backlash -- or worse.
Canadians may be nice, but we're not stupid.
hsteward@canoemail.com
Islam, the prohibition against singing
Prohibition of Songs
First Khutbah
Dear brothers, the battle between Satan, supported by his human and jinn soldiers, and the believers is endless; it never ceases. We experience this battle each day, hour and even each minute. On the very day that Allaah cursed him and dismissed him down to earth, Satan swore that he would wage a bitter war in which he would mobilize all those he could manage to corrupt. He adopted many methods and different means in order to trap the children of Aadam. Among such traps through which he snares people with little religious knowledge and understanding is listening to songs accompanied by prohibited musical instruments. Songs make the heart deviate from the Holy Qur'aan and turn towards ugly deeds and vices. They are the "holy books" of Satan and the thick veil that stands as a stumbling block between a person and his Lord. It is the gate to adultery and sodomy. It is the means adopted by dissipated lovers in order to attain their ends. It is the method through which vicious jinns harm mankind.
Almost all people, save those whom Allaah chose, are taken to singing to the extent that you may find a father teaching his child how to sing and encourage him to do this ugly deed. It has more than ten different names in religion. It is called idle tales, nonsense, falsehood, whistling and clapping, the gate to adultery, the holy book of Satan, the source of hypocrisy in hearts, the foolish voice, the dissolute voice, the voice of Satan, the piper of Satan, and Sumood (singing in the dialect of the old people of Yemen).
Its names indicate its characteristics. What evil and wicked names! As for its first name, it has been mentioned in Allaah's saying which means: "But there are, among men, those who purchase idle tales, without knowledge (or meaning), to mislead (men) from the Path of Allaah and throw ridicule (on the Path): for such there will be a humiliating Penalty. When Our Signs are rehearsed to such a one, he turns away in arrogance, as if he heard them not, as if there were deafness in both his ears: announce to him a grievous Penalty." ( Luqmaan: 6-7).
Ibn Mas`ood said: "I swear by Allaah that these "idle tales" are nothing but songs." He repeated it thrice. Ibn `Umar and Ibn `Abbaas, may Allaah be pleased with them, said the very same thing. These Companions were living when the Qur'aan was revealed and hence they are among the most versed in interpreting the words of Allaah. They interpreted these "idle tales" as songs. You will never find any person taken to singing and listening to musical instruments without at least a degree of deviation from true guidance. He does not have the desire to listen to the Qur'aan and even prefers songs to it, to the extent that if he had to choose between the two, he would listen to songs. Even if he listens to the Qur'aan, he finds it hard to understand and assimilate it, and this may lead him to ask the one reciting to stop his recitation session because he feels that it is too long. As for songs, he asks the singer for more and feels that the song was very short.
A man came to Ibn `Abbaas, may Allaah be pleased with him, and asked him: “What is the legal judgment pertaining to singing? Is it permissable or prohibited?” Ibn `Abbaas replied: “On the Day of Judgment, will singing be classified with truth or falsehood?” The man said: “With falsehood”. Ibn `Abbaas commented: “You have reached the judgment yourself”.
Songs are the gateway to adultery as they contain inviting the beloved to an appointment, sitting with him (her) alone, practicing love, friendship, and lamentation over missing him (her). Besides this, songs call for dissolution of the veiling of women. Al-Fudhayl Ibn `Iyaadh said: “Songs are the gate to adultery”. Yazeed bin Al-Waleed also said: “O Bani Umayyah, beware of songs. They decrease decency, increase lust, and do away with one's integrity. It has the very same effect of wine and even replaces it. If you have no alternative but to listen to songs, do not let your women do the same, because songs are the gateway to adultery”.
Women are more affected by songs, musical tunes and the meanings of their words than any one else. Listening to songs may lead a girl to fall in love with the singer, to the degree that his songs and pictures are never far away from her mind. Is there an evil temptation greater than this? Many are the decent girls who have become prostitutes because of such songs.
Songs cultivate hypocrisy in one's heart just like grains grow and thrive in the presence of water, as Ibn Mas`ood said. Songs and Qur'aan can never co-exist in a believer's heart because of their contradictory nature. The Qur'aan enjoins us not to follow our lusts, or the footsteps of Satan and to stick, instead, to virtuousness. As for songs, they invite us to the opposite.
Is it not true that songs encourage one to satisfy his lusts? Don't they motivate one to practice each and every bad deed? Don't they tempt a person to have an affair with a woman or even a child? Songs and wine are companions, and they tempt one to commit sins and evil deeds. Satan made a bargain between these two evils so that, together, they will support each other in calling to corruption. Songs lead to prohibited adoration and committing ugly deeds. O Allaah, keep us away from Your Wrath and things which lead to Your Punishment. Hereby I end my sermon and ask Allaah for forgiveness.
Second Khutbah
All praise be to Allaah, the Lord of the Worlds Who guides whomever He wills to His straightforward path. May Allaah have peace, mercy and blessings on His slave and Messenger, Muhammad, his family and Companions.
Our Prophet sallallaahu 'alaihi wa sallam warned against listening to songs and musical instruments, as he said: "There will be people of my Community who will hold fornication, silk, wine, and musical instruments to be lawful'' (Bukhaari)
If such things mentioned in the hadith had been lawful, the Prophet sallallaahu 'alaihi wa sallam would have never condemned those who consider them legal, and he would not have mentioned them along with the already prohibited wine and silk.
Sahl bin S`ad As-Sa`di reported that the Prophet sallallaahu 'alaihi wasallam said: "This Community will experience the swallowing up of some people by the earth, the metamorphosis of some into animals, and being rained upon with stones.'' Someone asked, ``When will this be, O Messenger of Allah?''. He said, ``When female singers and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be lawful.''(Ahmad & Tirmithi)
The four Imaams ruled singing to be prohibited. Imaam Maalik used to prohibit it and say: It is done by wicked people. He also said: If one bought a slave girl and found that she is a singer, he has the full right to return her because of this defect.
Abu Haneefah hated singing and considered it a sin. His followers believed that listening to all musical instruments, such as the pipe (wind instrument) is prohibited. They also said that it is a sin that makes the person to be considered dissolute and his testimony is not accepted.
As for Shaafi`i, his followers believe that listening to songs is prohibited. They also said that hiring a singer, practicing songs as a profession, giving money to a singer as a remuneration are all prohibited just like giving money in return of the already prohibited animal's blood and corpse. They also believe that using a pipe is prohibited. If the pipe, which is the simplest of all musical instruments is prohibited, what about the flute and other instruments?
As for Ahmed's School of Jurisprudence, his son `Abdullaah said: I asked my father about singing, and he replied: It cultivates hypocrisy in hearts and therefore I do not like it. Then he mentioned the saying of Imaam Maalik: It is done by dissolute (loose or evil) people.
As for listening to songs sung by a female or a beardless lad, it is considered as one of the gravest sins that corrupts one's religion.
Dear brother, if you commit this sin or your family does it at home, hasten to repent to Allaah for He is the Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful as He said which means: "Tell My servants that I am indeed the Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful." (Al-Hijr: 49).
Hasten to sincere repentance and know that whenever a person gives up an evil act for the sake of Allaah, Allaah will compensate him with far better than what he abandoned. I would like to express my gratitude to those who abstain from committing sins and abandon evil acts and deeds practiced by the people of our time. They are the ones who have attained true happiness.
Islam IS our enemy...
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has described seeing the horror of the 9/11 attacks on the city's twin towers.
He told the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui he had been unwilling to believe people were jumping from the buildings until he saw it with his own eyes.
The jury has to decide whether the self-confessed al-Qaeda member Moussaoui should be executed. Mr Giuliani testified for the prosecution.
The court will also hear from relatives of some of those killed in the attacks.
Mr Giuliani told the jury the image of two people jumping together from the World Trade Center, holding hands, remained with him every day.
Describing the moment he saw people falling, he said: "I froze. I realised that in a couple of seconds, it switched my thinking and emotions. I said 'We're in uncharted territory'."
During Mr Giuliani's testimony, the jury was played video clips of the planes crashing into the twin towers, and people jumping from the buildings.
It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life
The former mayor, who was sitting next to scale models of the World Trade Center in court, said: "By the time the second plane hit, we knew for sure it was a terrorist attack."
He added that after the towers collapsed, it looked like a "nuclear cloud" was going through Manhattan, Reuters news agency reported.
The scene at the World Trade Center site was "horrid".
"It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life," Mr Giuliani told the jury.
"You could see parts of human bodies, hands and legs, a lot of injured... this was a war, this was a battle, we were attacked," the AFP news agency quoted him as saying.
News agencies reported that during a morning break in proceedings when the judge and jury were out of the court, Moussaoui sang "Burn in the USA" - apparently adapting the lyrics of the Bruce Springsteen song "Born in the USA".
If there was any doubt that this cocksucker and his religion of death were antithetical to civilization - this was it.
A muslim speaks the truth
This happens so rarely, that I was shocked when I read this. An American muslim aknowledging that islam needs reformation. How many muslim bloggers can admit, as he does, the crimes of islam? Not many I suspect...
'Cancer in its midst'
TODAY'S COLUMNIST
By M. Zuhdi Jasser
March 30, 2006
During the dark days of our Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote, "That these are the times, that try men's souls." As an American Muslim, I feel the sentiment of these words like a red-hot brand on my brain.
I have watched horrified as assassins have read out the words from my Holy Koran before slitting the throats of some poor innocent souls. To my non-comprehending eyes, I have seen mothers proudly support their sons' accomplishment of blowing up innocent people as they eat or travel. It shatters some part of me, to see my faith as an instrument for butchery.
It makes me hope and pray for some counter-movement within my faith which will push back all this darkness. And I know that it must start with what is most basic -- the common truth that binds all religions: "Do unto others, as you would have them do onto you." The Golden Rule.
But that is not what I am seeing taught in a great deal of the Muslim world today, and, unfortunately, in America it's just not much better.
Night after night, I see Muslim national organizations like the Council for American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, cry out over and over about anecdotal victimization while saying and doing absolutely nothing about the most vile hate-speak and actions toward Jews and Christians in the Muslim world. It is the most self-serving of outrage.
The question I ask myself in the darkness of my own night is, "How did my beautiful faith become so linked with such ugliness." To me, the answer is both deep and simple. A spiritual path must be only about the spiritual while a worldly path must be about this world. When the two get mixed together, it brings out the very worst in both.
Much of what passes today for religious thought and action is actually political. When I hear a sermon in a mosque about the horrors of Israeli occupation, I know that the political arena has taken over the spiritual one. When I see the actions of suicide bombers praised or excused by religious leaders, I know that this politicization is complete. But the current Muslim leadership in groups like CAIR and others want only to talk of victimization. So, it is now high time for a new movement by Muslims in America and the West.
We in the Muslim community need to develop a new paradigm for our organizations and think tanks which holds Muslims publicly accountable for the separation of the political from the spiritual. Gone should be the day where individuals and their organizations can hide behind the cloak of victimization as a smoke screen for what they really believe.
I do believe that religions have cycles that they go through. Christianity was once a highly intolerant faith. Jews were labeled as "Christ killers" and the colored peoples of the Third World were people whose native faith was like ragged clothes to be torn off their bodies.
Thank God those days are over. Now my faith community must do the same. It should be the true test of a Muslim, not so much how he treats a fellow Muslim but how he treats someone of another faith.
Time is not on our side and the volatile radical minority of Muslims could strike again at any time. But, while true change among Muslims may take generations, our history teaches us that once we start the ideological battle, nothing can counter the power of freedom, pluralism and the desire for human rights.
There are some small signs that my community is finally beginning to wake up to the cancer in its midst. We are learning something that was the central lesson of World War II -- that once aroused, evil never stays self-contained.
For many in my faith, it was all right to blow up innocent Israelis as they sat in their cafes and pizza parlors. Through some tortured act of logic, these suicide bombings were seen as some sort of legitimate religion-sanctioned acts. (All the while, notice how few Muslim organizations like CAIR will denounce Hamas by name). But, as evil always does, it migrates, and soon radical Muslims were blowing up little children in Russia, commuters in Spain and worshippers in one of Iraq's holiest mosques.
Maybe our first true wake-up call was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's homicide attack on the wedding party in Jordan. Because now, the evil unleashed on the occupying Jews had landed on the doorstep of Muslims as they partook in a joyous wedding day.
That is the lesson that we in the Muslim community are now learning. Do evil to anyone and eventually it will boomerang on you. Perhaps, that's a good place to start. Let the barometer of our faith be how we treat our Jewish friends, because in the end, that is how we will eventually treat ourselves.
M. Zuhdi Jasser is chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. A former Navy lieutenant commander, he currently is an internist in private practice in Phoenix.
Even moderate muslims love death...
I was debating on another blog with well-known jihadi apologist Abu Sinan about why some lone Afghani convert to Christianity needs to die. He amusingly claimed that:
"First of all, death for apostasy is not mandated by The Qur'an, that is obvious by all. Those who claim it is Sunnfh(the sayings and actions of the Prophet) stand on shaky ground." In fact, it does NOT seem obvious to an entire country Abu - and why? For the Shariah principles in question are shared by all four of the Sunni schools of jurisprudence (Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi'i), plus the Shia school.
And then he admitted (but not directly of course because he is a muslims after all:
"As to homosexuality and adultery, Islam takes the same stand as tradition Christianity and Judaism. So yes, like practicing Jews and Christians who follow a traditional following of their religions, I support the ban and punishment for these crimes."
Yes, our moderate muslim wants death for gays, lesbians and adulterers. Know of any Christian countries where they stone women to death for adultery? How about ONE western nation that executes gay people? No, me either. In fact, the amputations, executions and torturing of adulterers and homosexuals is the almost exclusive monopoly of Muslims. Religion of peace dontchaknow..
Religion Of Peace?
Some good questions about the "Religion of Peace" from Investors Business Daily.
Religion Of Peace?
Posted 3/27/2006
War On Terror: In the wake of the cartoon jihad and mosque-on-mosque violence in Iraq, most Americans now think Islam has more violent believers than any other faith. Yet many still view it as a "peaceful religion."
Psychologists might call this cognitive dissonance — a state of mind where rational people essentially lie to themselves. But in this case, it's understandable. In our politically correct culture, criticizing any religion, even one that plots our destruction, is still taboo. And no one wants to suggest the terrorists are driven by their holy text.
Which explains a Washington Post-ABC News poll showing that Americans are becoming more aware of the broader threat (58% associate terrorists with Islam), but are still convinced terrorists are radicalizing Islam and not the other way around (54% don't think Islam itself encourages violence).
The new poll, however, still doesn't sit well with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group dedicated to improving public perceptions of Islam. It has denounced increasingly negative views as "Islamophobic" and vowed to redouble its "education" efforts.
Good. What better time for CAIR and other Muslim leaders to step up, cut through the politically correct fog and provide factual answers to the questions that give so many non-Muslims pause?
Generally speaking, those questions focus on whether the Quran does indeed promote violence against non-Muslims, and how many of the terrorists' ideas — about the violent jihad, the self-immolation, the kidnappings, even the beheadings — come right out of the text? But even more specifically:
Is Islam the only religion with a doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers?
Is it true that 26 chapters of the Quran deal with jihad, a fight able-bodied believers are obligated to join (Surah 2:216), and that the text orders Muslims to "instill terror into the hearts of the unbeliever" and to "smite above their necks" (8:12)?
Is the "test" of loyalty to Allah not good acts or faith in general, but martyrdom that results from fighting unbelievers (47:4) — the only assurance of salvation in Islam (4:74; 9:111)?
Are the sins of any Muslim who becomes a martyr forgiven by the very act of being slain while slaying the unbelievers (4:96)?
And is it really true that martyrs are rewarded with virgins, among other carnal delights, in Paradise (38:51, 55:56; 55:76; 56:22)?
Are those unable to do jihad — such as women or the elderly — required to give "asylum and aid" to those who do fight unbelievers in the cause of Allah (8:74)?
Does Islam advocate expansion by force? And is the final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, to conquer the world in the name of Islam (9:29)?
Is Islam the only religion that does not teach the Golden Rule (48:29)? Does the Quran instead teach violence and hatred against non-Muslims, specifically Jews and Christians (5:50)?
There are other questions, but these should do for a start. If the answers are "yes," then at least Americans will know there's no such thing as moderate Islam, even as they trust that there are moderate Muslims who do not act out on its violent commands.
Facing down a culture where they talk like crazies
Facing down a culture where they talk like crazies ... Mark Steyn
Chicago Sun-Times ^ | 26 March 2006 | Mark Steyn
Fate conspires to remind us what this war is really about: civilizational confidence. And so history repeats itself: first the farce of the Danish cartoons, and now the tragedy -- a man on trial for his life in post-Taliban Afghanistan because he has committed the crime of converting to Christianity.
The cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were deeply offensive to Muslims, and so thousands protested around the world in the usual restrained manner: rioting, torching, killing, etc.
The impending execution of Abdul Rahman for embracing Christianity is, of course, offensive to Westerners, and so around the world we reacted equally violently by issuing blood-curdling threats like that made by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack: "Freedom of worship is an important element of any democracy," he said. "And these are issues as Afghan democracy matures that they are going to have to deal with increasingly."
The immediate problem for Rahman is whether he'll get the chance to "mature" along with Afghan democracy. The president, the Canadian prime minister and the Australian prime minister have all made statements of concern about his fate, and it seems clear that Afghanistan's dapper leader Hamid Karzai would like to resolve this issue before his fledgling democracy gets a reputation as just another barbarous Islamist sewer state. There's talk of various artful compromises, such as Rahman being declared unfit to stand trial by reason of insanity on the grounds that (I'm no Islamic jurist so I'm paraphrasing here) anyone who converts from Islam to Christianity must ipso facto be out of his tree.
On the other hand, this "moderate" compromise solution is being rejected by leading theologians. Let this guy Rahman cop an insanity plea and there goes the neighborhood. "We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," says Abdul Raoulf of the nation's principal Muslim body, the Afghan Ulama Council. "Cut off his head! We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left." Needless to say, Imam Raoulf is one of Afghanistan's leading "moderate" clerics.
For what it's worth, I'm with the Afghan Ulama Council in objecting to the insanity defense. It's not enough for Rahman to get off on a technicality. Afghanistan is supposed to be "the good war," the one even the French supported, albeit notionally and mostly retrospectively. Karzai is kept alive by a bodyguard of foreigners. The fragile Afghan state is protected by American, British, Canadian, Australian, Italian, German and other troops, hundreds of whom have died. You cannot ask Americans or Britons to expend blood and treasure to build a society in which a man can be executed for his choice of religion. You cannot tell a serving member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Kandahar that he, as a Christian, must sacrifice his life to create a Muslim state in which his faith is a capital offense.
As always, we come back to the words of Osama bin Laden: ''When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.'' That's really the only issue: the Islamists know our side has tanks and planes, but they have will and faith, and they reckon in a long struggle that's the better bet. Most prominent Western leaders sound way too eager to climb into the weak-horse suit and audition to play the rear end. Consider, for example, the words of the Prince of Wales, speaking a few days ago at al-Azhar University in Cairo. This is "the world's oldest university," though what they learn there makes the average Ivy League nuthouse look like a beacon of sanity. Anyway, this is what His Royal Highness had to say to 800 Islamic "scholars":
"The recent ghastly strife and anger over the Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes of our failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others. In my view, the true mark of a civilized society is the respect it pays to minorities and to strangers."
That's correct. But the reality is our society pays enormous respect to minorities -- President Bush holds a monthlong Ramadan-a-ding-dong at the White House every year; the immediate reaction to the slaughter of 9/11 by the president, the prince, the prime ministers of Britain, Canada and everywhere else was to visit a mosque to demonstrate their great respect for Islam. One party to this dispute is respectful to a fault: after all, to describe the violence perpetrated by Muslims over the Danish cartoons as the "recent ghastly strife" barely passes muster as effete Brit toff understatement.
Unfortunately, what's "precious and sacred" to Islam is its institutional contempt for others. In his book Islam And The West, Bernard Lewis writes, "The primary duty of the Muslim as set forth not once but many times in the Koran is 'to command good and forbid evil.' It is not enough to do good and refrain from evil as a personal choice. It is incumbent upon Muslims also to command and forbid."
Or as the shrewd Canadian columnist David Warren put it: "We take it for granted that it is wrong to kill someone for his religious beliefs. Whereas Islam holds it is wrong not to kill him." In that sense, those blood-curdling imams are right, and Karzai's attempts to finesse the issue are, sharia-wise, wrong.
I can understand why the president and the secretary of state would rather deal with this through back-channels, private assurances from their Afghan counterparts, etc. But the public rhetoric is critical, too. At some point we have to face down a culture in which not only the mob in the street but the highest judges and academics talk like crazies.
Rahman embodies the question at the heart of this struggle: If Islam is a religion one can only convert to not from, then in the long run it is a threat to every free person on the planet. What can we do? Should governments with troops in Afghanistan pass joint emergency legislation conferring their citizenship on this poor man and declaring him, as much as Karzai, under their protection?
In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" -- the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:
''You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows.You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
India today is better off without suttee. If we shrink from the logic of that, then in Afghanistan and many places far closer to home the implications are, as the Prince of Wales would say, "ghastly."
Islam - the barbarity continues...
As if any more proof was needed that islam is incompatible with civilization. Makes you wonder if the place is salvageable...
Top Muslim clerics: Convert must die
Religious leaders urge courts to ignore West, hang Christian
Friday, March 24, 2006; Posted: 12:24 a.m. EST (05:24 GMT)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Senior Muslim clerics are demanding that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity be executed, warning that if the government caves in to Western pressure and frees him, they will incite people to "pull him into pieces."
In an unusual move, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned President Hamid Karzai on Thursday seeking a "favorable resolution" of the case of Abdul Rahman. The 41-year-old former medical aid worker faces the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws for becoming a Christian.
His trial has fired passions in this conservative Muslim nation and highlighted a conflict of values between Afghanistan and its Western backers.
"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hard-line regime was ousted in 2001.
"He is not crazy. He went in front of the media and confessed to being a Christian," said Hamidullah, chief cleric at Haji Yacob Mosque. "The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed."
Raoulf, who is a member of the country's main Islamic organization, the Afghan Ulama Council, concurred. "The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled."
"Cut off his head!" he exclaimed, sitting in a courtyard outside Herati Mosque. "We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left."
He said the only way for Rahman to survive would be for him to go into exile.
But Said Mirhossain Nasri, the top cleric at Hossainia Mosque, one of the largest Shiite places of worship in Kabul, said Rahman must not be allowed to leave the country.
"If he is allowed to live in the West, then others will claim to be Christian so they can, too," he said. "We must set an example. ... He must be hanged."
The clerics said they were angry with the United States and other countries for pushing for Rahman's freedom.
"We are a small country and we welcome the help the outside world is giving us. But please don't interfere in this issue," Nasri said. "We are Muslims and these are our beliefs. This is much more important to us than all the aid the world has given us."
Afghanistan's constitution is based on Sharia law, which is interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death.
9/11 Conspiracy kooks ...
There are an amusing bunch of conspiracy-minded folks over at Kook Central who believe that 9/11 was caused by:
George Bush;
The military;
The Illuminatti;
The Zionists;
Masons;
The Lochness Monster; or
Bigfoot...
I guess we should blame David Icke and the rest of the late night talk shows that appeal to the gullible mind...
Iran aims to 'set Israel alight'
People have often asked me why I believe a clash between the civilized world and the islamic world is inevitable. Here's reason 4,678...
By Yossi Verter, Haaretz Correspondent
Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar said Tuesday that Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told him five years ago that "setting Israel on fire" was the first order of business on the Iranian agenda.
Aznar, in Israel as the guest of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, related the story to Major General (Res.) Professor Yitzhak Ben-Israel, who later confirmed to Haaretz that the remarks had been made.
Aznar's aides refused to give Haaretz the exact quote, but mentioned an article Aznar has written in the past on his meeting with Khamenei.
"He received me politely," Aznar wrote, "and at the beginning of the meeting he explained to me why Iran must declare war on Israel and the United States until they are completely destroyed. I made only one request of him: that he tell me the time of the planned attack."
The Nobel prize
ARAB / ISLAMIC NOBEL WINNERS
Literature
Najib Mahfooz 1988*.
Peace
1978 Anwar El-Sadat
1994 Yasser Arafat... A Joke!!! **
2003 - Shirin Ebadi
2005 - Mohamed ElBaradei
Chemistry
1999 - Ahmed Zewail
Physics
Abdus Salam
* Najib was stabbed in the back by Egyptian Moslem fundamentalists in 1997 because he supported the Peace Process between the Arabs ("Palestinians") and Israelis. Najib was partially paralyzed as a result.
**The Norwegians played an ugly joke on the world by pretending Arafat was a Man of Peace.
Note: Elias James Corey (Chemistry 1990), Peter Brian Medawar (Medicine 1960) and Ferid Mourad (Medicine 1998) are Nobel Prize winners but are Arab-Christians, not Muslims.
Kaare Kristiansen was a member of the Nobel Committee. He resigned in 1994 to protest the awarding of a Nobel "Peace Prize" to Yasser Arafat, whom he correctly labeled a "terrorist."
JEWISH NOBEL WINNERS
Literature
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer
2002 - Imre Kertesz
2005 - Harold PinterWorld Peace
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
1995 - Joseph RotblatChemistry
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1972 - William Howard Stein
1972 - C.B. Anfinsen
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Ronald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Herbert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1989 - Sidney Altman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1998 - Walter Kohn
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
2004 - Irwin Rose
2004 - Avram Hershko
2004 - Aaron Ciechanover
Economics
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1973 - Wassily Leontief
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 Rober Fogel
1994 - John Harsanyi
1994 - Reinhard Selten
1997 - Robert Merton
1997 - Myron Scholes
2001 - George Akerlof
2001 - Joseph Stiglitz
2002 - Daniel Kahneman
2005 - Robert J. AumannMedicine
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - David Baltimore
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
1977 - Andrew V. Schally
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1994 - Martin Rodbell
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1997 - Stanley B. Prusiner
1998 - Robert F. Furchgott
2000 - Eric R. Kandel
2002 - Sydney Brenner
2002 - Robert H. Horvitz
Physics
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1945 - Wolfgang Pauli
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1958 - Il'ja Mikhailovich
1958 - Igor Yevgenyevich
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1963 - Eugene P. Wigner
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1967 - Hans Albrecht Bethe
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - Leon N. Cooper
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Georges Charpak
1995 - Martin Perl
1995 - Frederick Reines
1996 - David M. Lee
1996 - Douglas D. Osheroff
1997 - Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
2000 - Zhores I. Alferov
2003 - Vitaly Ginsburg
2003 - Alexei Abrikosov
2004 - David Gross
2004 - H. David Politzer
2005 - Roy Glauber
There are a mere 12 Million Jews in the entire world, yet they have received 169 Nobel Prizes.The Muslims number 1.4 Billion (with a very big "B")... or 117 times the number of Jews! Based upon this 117:1 Muslim-to-Jewish ratio, one might expect the Muslims to have 22,260 Nobel Laureates.They have SEVEN! and one of them [Arafat] is a murderer (Allahu Akbar, indeed!).
Unless the Swedes and Norwegians start awarding Nobel Prizes for plane hijackings, pizza shop bombings, civilian bus attacks, Jihad suicides/homicides, drive-by shootings, throat-slittings, embassy attacks and other such acts of barbarism, the embarrassingly low level of contributions to the welfare of Civilization and Mankind by the [Arab] Muslim world will continue. The Jewish People, meanwhile, will continue being the Lights Unto All Nations.
Islamic death-lovers arrested...
The appalling nature of islam is on display here:
Muslim scumbags
Five arrested over London cartoons protest
By Times Online
Five men were arrested today over their alleged role in protests outside the Danish Embassy in London last month against cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.
Four of the five were held on suspicion of incitement to murder and all five are suspected of "using threatening words or written material to stir up racial hatred".
During the demonstrations in Central London on February 3 and 4, protesters held placards threatening a repeat of the September 11 or July 7 terror attacks. Among the slogans were "Massacre those who insult Islam" and "Europe you will pay, your 9/11 will come".
The demonstration attracted widespread political condemnation and among those calling for prosecutions was the Muslim Council of Britain.
The Metropolitan Police said today: "A number of specialist evidence gathering officers were deployed who collected video, audio and stills of those within the crowd. A dedicated investigation team, Operation Laverda, was set up that day.
David Warren - on the mark again...
The non-dialogue
A Zogby poll, out this week in the U.S., shows an unprecedented number of Americans now harbour unflattering views of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam. It is still low, compared to similar polls in Europe, but it approaches or just exceeds 50 per cent in each category. The pollster, James Zogby, who is also president of the Arab-American Institute in Washington, attributes the negative numbers -- much worse than what they were just after the terror attacks of Sept. 2001 -- to “demonization of the Arab world” by American politicians, authors, and media. I am unable to find a similar poll for Canada, but on past experience, Canadians tend to poll somewhere in the middle between Europeans and Americans.
I will not speak for the politicians, who tend more to respond to public perceptions than to shape them, but will admit that by having reported many thousand savage and barbaric acts done around the world, explicitly in the name of Allah, the media may have contributed to unfortunate perceptions of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam.
Yet, as I know from inside, the media both here and in Europe go to extraordinary lengths to suppress just the sort of material that could incite ill-feeling that way. This began the morning of 9/11/01, with the non-coverage of street celebrations in Arab ethnic neighbourhoods of Brooklyn and Detroit. As recently as last month, mainstream media were editing out London cartoon protesters carrying signs reading, “Behead Those Who Insult Islam”, “Europe You Will Pay”, etc.
On the other hand, there is patient, exhaustive coverage of anything that might incite anti-Western hysteria in the Islamic world. For even while the largest media outlets were refusing to show those bland Danish cartoons -- and doing so out of a pretended “respect for Islam” -- they were dredging up additional sordid photos from the Abu Ghraib outrage in 2004, and running those prominently.
I have often noted, that editorial decisions in the Western media could not be more useful to fanatical Islam if we were taking instructions directly from some Afghan cave. Ask yourself, when reading or watching, if the consistent message is not: “Fear Islam, but do not dare to criticize it.”
There is no conspiracy, however. The violent audacity of a generation of Muslim neo-jihadis happens to correspond precisely with the self-loathing of a generation of Western post-hippies. Perhaps never before, in the history of interaction between the “Dar al-Islam” (Muslim-ruled world), and the “Dar al-Harb” (the external world with which it is perpetually “at war”), have aspiring Muslim conquerors met such willing candidates for “dhimmitude”.
The definition of a “dhimmi” is one who pays the “jizyah” tax to his Muslim rulers; who, in return for this protection money, enjoys an ambiguous special status. This is, as Islamist propaganda is eager to propagate, exactly what is going on when, for instance, governments of the West send foreign aid to Muslim regimes, in the (vain) belief that this will exempt them from the next round of terror hits, or rioting. More generally, the equation of Western aid and domestic welfare payments with the “jizyah” is common in Arab media. It expresses contempt for the West, and our “so-called freedoms”.
So much of the failing “dialogue” between East and West comes down to misunderstanding each other’s terms. Take “jihad”, for example -- the duty to “struggle against everything that is against Allah”, which has been cited in each Islamic war of conquest, over the last 14 centuries. Contrary to popular belief, traditional Islam does not teach that Muslims have a duty to convert, enslave, or massacre their non-Muslim neighbours. On the contrary, the various Islamic schools agree they have a brotherly duty to “remove impediments” to conversion to Islam, including any worldly power not expressly subject to the will of Allah. The sorting out, afterwards, of who should be massacred and who not, of individual rights to booty, slaves, the enjoyment of captured women, and so forth, are spelt out by the learned jurisprudes in traditional Shariah; but these are secondary considerations.
Perhaps if Americans realized that such jihadis as Osama bin Laden are trying to do them a favour, by removing such impediments to their conversion as the existence of the government of the United States, they would not harbour such unflattering views. And perhaps, if they heard great cries of revulsion from across the Arab and Muslim world, against the innumerable acts of violence done in Allah’s name, they would realize that Islam is a “religion of peace”.
Islamofascist gets spanked!
MEMRI (http://memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1050) features Arab American psychologist Wafa Sultan completely stomping a bearded Islamofascist.
Courtesy of MEMRI TV.
David Warren makes sense...
Clash of whats?
Sometimes I am brought up short by the clarity and courage with which someone else -- with more to lose than I have -- states a truth. I am a Catholic Christian, who often dismisses “secular humanists”. But I’m in awe of people like Canada’s Irshad Manji, the “Muslim refusenik”, who had the courage in her book The Trouble with Islam to directly confront the horrors done in Allah’s name -- in, as she put it, “Pick a country, any Muslim country.”
Another is Wafa Sultan, an Arab woman practising psychology, now living in the States. A self-professed “disbeliever in the supernatural”, she has posted essays on the Internet in Arabic, including research into the fate of women under various Islamic regimes. She has willingly and ably confronted Muslim fanatics on Arab TV, most recently on Feb. 21st, when she debated Dr Ibrahim Al-Khouli on Al-Jazeera. A transcript and video clips with English subtitles were made available this week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (“Memri”) -- an indispensable institution, based in Israel, that distributes hard information and accurate translations of documents from the Arab world. (It is useless to condemn it as “Zionist” -- everything Memri publishes is sourced and checkable.)
With great bravery, Dr Sultan confronts the “tu quoque” (“you too”) arguments of the apologists for Islamic terror -- refusing to let them change the subject from what they have done, said, and approved, to misty rhetoric against Zionists, Yankees, Imperialists, Crusaders. Boldly on Al-Jazeera, last week, she said what our Western politicians, media flaks, and academic celebrities won’t say, from cowardice in its many forms. Excerpt:
“The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. ... It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on the other. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.”
The sparkling TV host interrupts to ask if Dr Sultan insinuates the clash is, “between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims”. Dr Sultan replies, “Yes, that is what I mean.”
The host reminds her that this phrase, “clash of civilizations”, came from Samuel Huntington, not Osama bin Laden. Dr Sultan reminds him that Islamic books and curricula, going back to the Koran, are full of calls for “fighting the infidels”.
When her opponent, Dr Khouli, claims he never offends people, Dr Sultan reminds that among other things he calls Westerners “al-Dhimma” (i.e. the Muslims’ natural slaves), that he routinely compares them to apes and pigs, that he calls Christians “those who incur Allah's wrath”, and so forth.
He asks if she is a heretic. Dr Sultan says, he can call her what he likes. He continues, “If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran!” She replies, “These are personal matters that do not concern you. ... Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me.”
And after the usual banter about Zionism, she notes that since the Holocaust, the Jews have made the world respect them by their work and knowledge, not their crying and yelling. “We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church.” Likewise, though professing Muslims turned ancient Buddha statues into rubble, “We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a mosque, kill a Muslim, or torch an embassy.”
Since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, many thousand other barbaric acts have been reported, around the world, each one performed explicitly in the name of Allah. This is fact, not prejudice, and our refusal to make Islam an issue plays directly into the fanatics’ hands.
It is not our business to “define Islam”, as so many Muslims aver. It is the Muslims’ duty to define it, in such a way that we will not mistake it for a sword held to our own throats. For when it is presented as a sword, it becomes our business.
Mohammad was a monster
The thought of an old man becoming aroused by a child is one of the most disturbing images in western culture. Yet in islam, their "Holy Prophet" married Aisha when she was 6-years-old and consummated his marriage with her when she was 9. He was then, 54 years old.
When it is pointed out that Muhammad had sex with a 9 year old child, Muslims brush it off and claim all sorts of excuses to justify this shameful act. This is the nature of blind faith and cognitive dissonance. Maybe by visualizing it, some of them will come to their senses and realize how evil this fiend they call a "prophet" truly was.
Marks Steyn's latest salvo against the enemy...
Needing to wake up, West just closes its eyes
February 26, 2006
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."
Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.
Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.
This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.
This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ''Jews equal money.'' In London, the Observer couldn't even bring itself to pursue that particular angle. Its report of the murder managed to avoid any mention of the unfortunate Halimi's, um, Jewishness. Another British paper, the Independent, did dwell on the particular, er, identity groups involved in the incident but only in the context of a protest march by Parisian Jews marred by ''radical young Jewish men'' who'd attacked an ''Arab-run grocery.''
At one level, those spokesmonsieurs are right: It could happen to anyone. Even in the most civilized societies, there are depraved monsters who do terrible things. When they do, they rip apart entire families, like the Halimis and Selams. But what inflicts the real lasting damage on society as a whole is the silence and evasions of the state and the media and the broader culture.
A lot of folks are, to put it at its mildest, indifferent to Jews. In 2003, a survey by the European Commission found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the "greatest menace to world peace." Only 59 percent? What the hell's wrong with the rest of 'em? Well, don't worry: In Germany, it was 65 percent; Austria, 69 percent; the Netherlands, 74 percent. Since then, Iran has sportingly offered to solve the problem of the Israeli threat to world peace by wiping the Zionist Entity off the face of the map. But what a tragedy that those peace-loving Iranians have been provoked into launching nuclear armageddon by those pushy Jews. As Paul Oestreicher, Anglican chaplain of the University of Sussex, wrote in the Guardian the other day, "I cannot listen calmly when an Iranian president talks of wiping out Israel. Jewish fears go deep. They are not irrational. But I cannot listen calmly either when a great many citizens of Israel think and speak of Palestinians in the way a great many Germans thought and spoke about Jews when I was one of them and had to flee."
It's not surprising when you're as heavily invested as the European establishment is in an absurd equivalence between a nuclear madman who thinks he's the warm-up act for the Twelfth Imam and the fellows building the Israeli security fence that you lose all sense of proportion when it comes to your own backyard, too. "Radical young Jewish men" are no threat to "Arab-run groceries." But radical young Muslim men are changing the realities of daily life for Jews and gays and women in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo and beyond. If you don't care for the Yids, big deal; look out for yourself. The Jews are playing their traditional role of the canaries in history's coal mine.
Something very remarkable is happening around the globe and, if you want the short version, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well:
''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.''
Stated that baldly it sounds ridiculous. But, simply as a matter of fact, every year more and more of the world lives under Islamic law: Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984. Four decades ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it's in the grip of sharia, and the other half's feeling the squeeze, as the death toll from the cartoon jihad indicates. But just as telling is how swiftly the developed world has internalized an essentially Islamic perspective. In their pitiful coverage of the low-level intifada that's been going on in France for five years, the European press has been barely any less loopy than the Middle Eastern media.
What, in the end, are all these supposedly unconnected matters from Danish cartoons to the murder of a Dutch filmmaker to gender-segregated swimming sessions in French municipal pools about? Answer: sovereignty. Islam claims universal jurisdiction and always has. The only difference is that they're now acting upon it. The signature act of the new age was the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran: Even hostile states generally respect the convention that diplomatic missions are the sovereign territory of their respective countries. Tehran then advanced to claiming jurisdiction over the citizens of sovereign states and killing them -- as it did to Salman Rushdie's translators and publishers. Now in the cartoon jihad and other episodes, the restraints of Islamic law are being extended piecemeal to the advanced world, by intimidation and violence but also by the usual cooing promotion of a spurious multicultural "respect" by Bill Clinton, the United Church of Canada, European foreign ministers, etc.
The I'd-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing-in-perfect-harmonee crowd have always spoken favorably of one-worldism. From the op-ed pages of Jutland newspapers to les banlieues of Paris, the Pan-Islamists are getting on with it.
© Mark Steyn 2006
When in doubt, muslims blame can't blame themselves...
When Sunni Muslims attack the shrine of Shiite Muslims in Arab Iraq, how do Pakistanis protest?
They blame the Jooooos, of course...
Religion of peace? Hardly...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1470584,00.html
Muslim apostates cast out and at risk from faith and family
By Anthony Browne
While Christians who turn to Islam are feted, the 200,000 Muslims who turn away are faced with abuse, violence and even murder
THE first brick was thrown through the sitting room window at one in the morning, waking Nissar Hussein, his wife and five children with a terrifying start. The second brick went through his car window.
It was a shock, but hardly a surprise. The week before, another brick had been thrown through the window as the family were preparing for bed in their Bradford home. The victim of a three-year campaign of religious hatred, Mr Hussein’s car has also been rammed and torched, and the steps to his home have been strewn with rubbish.
He and his family have been regularly jostled, abused, attacked, shouted at to move out of the area, and given death threats in the street. His wife has been held hostage inside their home for two hours by a mob. His car, walls and windows have been daubed in graffiti: “Christian bastard”.
The problem isn’t so much what Mr Hussein, whose parents came from Pakistan, believes, but what he doesn’t believe. Born into Islam, he converted eight years ago to Christianity, and his wife, also from Pakistan, followed suit.
While those who convert to Islam, such as Cat Stevens, Jemima Khan, and the sons of the Frank Dobson, the former Health Secretary, and Lord Birt, the former BBC Director-General, can publicly celebrate their new religion, those whose faith goes in the other direction face persecution. Mr Hussein, a 39-year-old hospital nurse in Bradford, is one of a growing number of former Muslims in Britain who face not just being shunned by family and community, but attacked, kidnapped, and in some cases killed. There is even a secret underground network to support and protect those who leave Islam. One estimate suggests that as many as 15 per cent of Muslims in Western societies have lost their faith, which would mean that in Britain there are about 200,000 apostates.
For police, religious authorities and politicians, it is an issue so sensitive that they are accused by victims of refusing to respond to appeals for help. It is a problem that, with the crisis of identity in Islam since September 11, seems to be getting worse as Muslims feel more threatened.
Muslims who lose their faith face execution or imprisonment, in line with traditional Muslim teaching, in many Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and Yemen. In the Netherlands, the former Muslim MP Ayan Hirsi Ali had to go into hiding after renouncing her faith on television.
The Prince of Wales recently held a meeting with religious leaders to consider ways to stop former Muslims being persecuted in other countries, but Britain itself is also affected.
Mr Hussein told The Times: “It’s been absolutely appalling. This is England — where I was born and raised. You would never imagine Christians would suffer in such a way.”
The police have not charged anyone, but told him to leave the area. “We feel completely isolated, utterly helpless. I have been utterly failed by the authorities. If it was white racists attacking an Asian guy, there would be an absolute outcry,” he said. “They are trying to ethnically cleanse me out of my home. I feel I have to make a stand as an Asian Christian.”
Yasmin, who was raised in the North of England, has been forced out of her town once, and is now trying to resist being chased out again. Brought up in a Muslim family, she converted after having a vision of Jesus when she gave birth to her youngest son, and was baptised in her thirties.. “My family completely disowned me. They thought I had committed the biggest sin — I was born a Muslim, and so I must die a Muslim. When my husband found out, he totally disowned my sons. One friend tried to strangle me when I told him I was converting,” she said.
“We had bricks though our windows, I was spat at in the street because they thought I was dishonouring Islam. We had to call the police so many times. I had to go to court to get an injunction against my husband because he was inciting others to attack me.”
She fled to another part of Britain, but the attacks soon started again as locals found out about her. “I wasn’t going to leave again,” she said, adding that it was the double standards of her attackers that made her most angry. “They are such hypocrites — they want us to be tolerant of everything they want, but they are intolerant of everything about us.”
With other converts, Yasmin has helped to set up a series of support groups across England, who have adopted a method of operating normally associated with dissidents in dictatorships, not democracies. They not only have to meet in secret, but cannot advertise their services, and have to vet those that approach them for infiltrators.
“There are so many who convert from Islam to Christianity. We have 70 people on our list who we support, and the list is growing. We don’t want others to suffer like we have,” she said.
How Muslims are caricaturing ourselves
By Irshad Manji
At the World Economic Forum in January, I observed something revealing. In a session about the U.S. religious right, a cartoonist satirized one of America’s most influential Christian ministers, Pat Robertson. In the audience, chuckling with the rest of us, was a prominent British Muslim. But his smile disappeared the moment we were shown a cartoon that ridiculed Muslim clerics.
Since then, a fierce fight has erupted between the European Union and the Muslim world over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Months ago, the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published cartoons that showed Islam’s messenger wearing, among other things, a turban-turned-time bomb. Although the paper has apologized, the controversy has metastasized: A Norwegian magazine and French paper recently re-printed the drawings, as have other broadcasters and publications while covering this story.
In response, Muslim rioters torched Scandinavian missions in Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Bomb threats have hit the offices of more than one European newspaper. Various Arab countries have recalled their ambassadors from Copenhagen. Chechnya has banned Danish humanitarian workers from its borders. Boycotts of Danish products have swept across supermarkets in the Arab world, and Muslims as far away as India and Indonesia are pouring into the streets to burn Danish flags – which feature the cross, among the holiest of Christian symbols. Early in the furor, thousands of Palestinians shouted “Death to Denmark!” Copenhagen evacuated Danish citizens from the Gaza Strip and sternly warned nationals in the West Bank to get out as well. Muslims themselves are getting pummeled in the riots: four died in Afghanistan alone on February 7. More will perish now that some Scandinavian NGOs are suspending tsunami relief efforts thanks to security problems.
To judge the root problem here, let us first determine how the cartoons became an international incident. Last September, these comics ran beside a story about the hurdles encountered by a Danish author in finding someone – anyone – to illustrate his children’s book about the Prophet. Every artist he approached declined the job out of fear of having to contend with Islamist extremists.
As if on cue, two of the people who produced these drawings received death threats in October 2005. We Muslims love to lecture about the need to assess touchy matters -- such as offensive Koranic verses -- “in context.” The context in which the Muhammad cartoons first appeared suggests that frustration, not malice, was the motive
Regardless, the cartoons met with howls of protest from Danish Muslims. Ten ambassadors of Muslim countries issued a letter demanding that Denmark’s prime minister punish Jyllands-Posten. Apparently, it didn’t occur to them that in a free society, media are generally independent of government. The paper continued to operate. Thus, the controversy continued to simmer.
Then a group of Danish imams took the cartoons to the Middle East. Complaining of press bias, they distributed the drawings – and fabricated a few of their own to ensure that unrest would be sown. One of the extra sketches, for example, portrays the Prophet with a pig’s snout.
All hell soon broke loose. From missionary manipulation, the imams achieved in the Arab world what they couldn’t accomplish from exercising their democratic freedoms in Denmark.
But it’s not just the Danish imams who choreographed this passion play. Arab elites also got in on the game. Why wouldn’t they? Such controversies provide convenient opportunities to channel anger away from daily crimes. No wonder President Lahoud of Lebanon insisted that his country “cannot accept any insult to any religion.” That’s rich. Since the late 1970s, the Lebanese government has licensed Hezbollah-run satellite television station al-Manar, among the most viciously anti-Semitic broadcasters on earth.
Similarly, the Justice Minister of the United Arab Emirates has said that the Danish cartoons represent “cultural terrorism, not freedom of expression.” This from a country that promotes its capital as the “Las Vegas of the Gulf,” yet blocks my website – muslim-refusenik.com -- for being “inconsistent with the moral values” of the UAE. Presumably, my site should be an online casino.
Muslims have little integrity demanding respect for our faith if don’t show it for others. When have we demonstrated against Saudi Arabia’s policy to prevent Christians and Jews from stepping on the soil of Mecca? They may come for rare business trips, but nothing more. As long as Rome welcomes non-Christians and Jerusalem embraces non-Jews, we Muslims have more to protest than these cartoons.
None of this is to dismiss the need to take my religion seriously. Hell, Muslims even take seriously the need to be serious: Islam has a teaching against “excessive laughter.” I’m not joking. But does this mean that we should cry “blasphemy” over less-than-flattering depictions of the Prophet Muhammad? God, no.
For one thing, the Koran itself points out that there will always be non-believers, and that it's for Allah, not Muslims, to deal with them. More than that, the Koran says there is "no compulsion in religion." Which suggests that nobody should be forced to treat Islamic norms as sacred.
Fine, many Muslims will retort, but we’re talking about the Prophet Muhammad – Allah’s final and therefore perfect messenger. However, Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet was a human being who made mistakes. It’s precisely because he wasn’t perfect that we know about the so-called Satanic Verses; a collection of passages that the Prophet reportedly included in the Koran. Only later did he realize that those verses glorified heathen idols rather than God. According to Islamic legend, he retracted the idolatrous passages, blaming them on a trick played by Satan.
When Muslims put the Prophet on a pedestal, we’re engaging in idolatry of our own. The point of monotheism is to worship one God, not one of God's emissaries. Which is why humility requires people of faith to mock themselves -- and each other -- every once in a while.
Here’s my attempt: A priest, a rabbi, and a mullah meet at a conference about religion, and afterwards are sitting around discussing their different faiths. The conversation turns to the topic of taboos.
The priest says to the rabbi and the mullah, "You guys can't tell me that you've never eaten pork."
"Never!" intones the rabbi.
"Absolutely not!" insists the mullah.
But the priest is skeptical. "Come on, not even once? Maybe in a fit of rebellion when you were younger?"
"Okay," confesses the rabbi. "When I was young, I once nibbled on bacon."
"I admit it," the mullah laughs (not excessively). "In a fit of youthful arrogance, I sampled a pork chop."
Then the conversation turns to the priest's religious observances. "You can't tell me you've never had sex," says the mullah.
"Of course not!" the priest protests. "I took a vow of chastity."
The mullah and the rabbi roll their eyes. "Maybe after a few drinks?" the rabbi teases.
"Perhaps, in a moment of temptation, your faith waned?" the mullah wonders.
"Okay," the priest confesses. "Once, when I was drunk in seminary school, I had sexual relations with a woman."
"Beats pork, huh?" say the rabbi and the mullah.
Clearly, I’m as impure a feminist as I am a Muslim. The difference is, offended feminists won’t threaten to kill me. The same can’t be said for many of my fellow Muslims.
What part of "no compulsion" don't they understand?
Reprinted with permission of The Wall Street Journal © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
40% of muslims in Britain want hand-chopping and women stoning
And people wonder why I keep referring to islam as the greatest threat to civilization that has ever existed...
Four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced into parts of the country, a survey reveals today.
The ICM opinion poll also indicates that a fifth have sympathy with the "feelings and motives" of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July 7, killing 52 people, although 99 per cent thought the bombers were wrong to carry out the atrocity.
50pc said interracial relations were worsening
Overall, the findings depict a Muslim community becoming more radical and feeling more alienated from mainstream society, even though 91 per cent still say they feel loyal to Britain.
The most startling finding is the high level of support for applying sharia law in "predom-inantly Muslim" areas of Britain.
Islamic law is used in large parts of the Middle East, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, and is enforced by religious police. Special courts can hand down harsh punishments which can include stoning and amputation.
Forty per cent of the British Muslims surveyed said they backed introducing sharia in parts of Britain, while 41 per cent opposed it. Twenty per cent felt sympathy with the July 7 bombers' motives, and 75 per cent did not. One per cent felt the attacks were "right".
Half of the 500 people surveyed said relations between white Britons and Muslims were getting worse. Only just over half thought the conviction of the cleric Abu Hamza for incitement to murder and race hatred was fair.
Cleric Offers Money To Kill Cartoonist
A so-called religious figure is offerring money to assasinate a cartoonist. This is Islam.
(CBS/AP) A Pakistani cleric offered a 1.5 million rupee reward and a car for anyone who kills the Danish cartoonist who drew Prophet Muhammad, while another Islamist leader was put under house detention, amid fears of more deadly demonstrations Friday, officials said.
Protests sparked by the Muhammad caricature continue in numerous cities around the globe. In Pakistan, thousands of security forces have been deployed to prevent unrest.
Police have arrested 125 protesters for violating a ban on rallies in eastern Pakistan and arrested 30 others after firing tear gas to disperse a protest in the southern city of Karachi.
Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, prayer leader at the historic Mohabat Khan mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar, announced at the mosque and the Jamia Ashrafia religious school that he leads would give a 1.5 million rupee reward and a car for killing the cartoonist of the Prophet pictures that appeared first in a Danish newspaper in September.
Do you remember when the Buddhist's rioted over this outrage?
Me either...
"Moderate" muslims don't believe that muslims were responsible for 9/11
It's always astonishing to find out the depths of depravity that so called "moderate" muslims find themselves. I was having a conversation with one of these folks about the Danish cartoons on a muslim blog (http://www.jamalsadik.com/home/2006/02/04/muhammad-cartoons/)when the blog owner pronouned this:
Flanstein, the notion that Muslims were to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks is to me simply that: a notion. All evidence linking “al-Qaeda” to the attacks is shaky at best. A Qura’an left at a strip club? A suicide note? Yeah that’s totally logical…you’re about to take your own life in the name of God, and the last thing you do is go to a strip club, with a Qura’an no less. Not to say that Osama isn’t a known terrorist; he has taken full responsibility for Sudan embassy bombings among other attacks. Incidentally though, Osama has exclusively denied his involvement inthe 9/11 attacks on more than one occasion:
“Osama bin Laden responded by reading a statement on September 16, 2001, ‘I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation,’ which was broadcast by Qatar’s Al Jazeera satellite channel. This denial was broadcast on U.S. news networks and worldwide. The second public response was read on September 28 by Daily Ummat, a Pakistani newspaper. In it, bin Laden stated ‘I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle.’ ” - Wikipedia, September 11 attacks article
I’m sure you didn’t hear about that, did you Flanny? And if you did, it could be totally disregarded, because “video tapes” suggested otherwise. Because we all video tape random conversations and then leave them in abandoned village houses, right? But at least we have the alternative of believing the stories fed to us by the Bush Administration…the same administration that lied to the American public and Congress to initiate a pointless war in Iraq; the same administration that openly spies on its own citizens. What troubled times we live in.
I remind myself that this dullard is actually a "moderate" muslim. One can only imagine how twisted the jihadis are...
Still Waiting For Moderate Muslims....
February 8, 2006
Still Waiting For Moderate Muslims....
By Tom Bevan
Six days after September 11, President Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., to deliver a message to a shocked, grieving nation: “These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith.” “Islam,” the President continued, “is peace.”
Five years later, after bombings in Bali, Turkey, Madrid, London, Israel, Iraq, and Amman (to name a few), the savage killing of Theo van Gogh, the murdering of children in Beslan, the burning of thousands of cars in Paris, and now a global conflagration over a few lame cartoons published in a Danish newspaper months ago, it is more than understandable the world is starting to question whether President Bush’s proclamation was more wishful thinking than fact.
The current crisis over the Mohammed cartoons helps illuminate another threat that is every bit as dangerous as terrorism: the cultural assertiveness of Islamic fundamentalism. The people we see rioting in London and around the world are not all willing to strap bombs to themselves in the name of Allah. But they’re clearly demonstrating a sympathy for the fundamentalist cause – whether manipulated or not- and a willingness to use threats of violence as a form of cultural intimidation. That is an ominous sign.
We keep hearing about how the vast majority of the 1.4 billion Muslims in the world practice the religion of Islam peacefully. That is certainly true, though not terribly important. What is important is where the trend is heading between the majority and the minority. This is a process without stasis; every day each group within Islam is either gaining or losing ground. One group is exerting more influence and control and the other is exerting less. Few would dispute that over the last five years, with few exceptions, the fundamentalist minority within Islam has been the group making strides.
The problem, of course, is that while the West is the target of Islamic fundamentalism and terror, the West is not in control of the outcome of the battle. Ultimately, that responsibility rests in the hands of moderate Muslims. No amount of appeasement, or bombs, or isolation, or troop withdrawals by the West is going to change the core dynamic of the struggle between those who want a modern, tolerant version of Islam and those who want to impose a 9th century version of sharia.
Every religion has its fundamentalists – Christianity no less than Islam. The difference between the two (as well as other major religions) is that over time and through much struggle Christians developed an external, peaceful tolerance toward those who would offend or insult their faith and, just as importantly, an internal discipline and intolerance toward members who would commit heinous acts of violence against innocent people in the name of their Lord. Islam, for the most part, still has that equation backwards.
And so we wait and continue to wonder: where are the moderate Muslims today? Where have they been for the last five years? We saw protests against terrorism in the streets of Amman last year – but only after the horrendous suicide bombing of a wedding shocked the consciousness of Jordanians. Aside from that, we’ve seen nothing demonstrating the magnitude and seriousness one would expect from hundreds of millions of people outraged over the fact their religion’s good name has been hijacked and distorted by a small group of fundamentalists.
There are only two conclusions to be drawn: moderate, peace-loving Muslims are either unable to win the battle against fundamentalism, or they are unwilling to win it. We are fast approaching the day when the continued lack of demonstrable effort on the part of moderate Muslims serves to disabuse the West of the notion that Islam “is peace.” That would be a terrible thing, and it would make the struggle of moderate Muslims that much more difficult in the end. The time for action is now.
"Our religion does not allow..."
Why would we care what their religion does or does not allow? Their complaint is that infidels are not following the rules of islam and need to be punished. No shit-sherlock. Pretty soon they'll be complaining that we don't hate Jews or beat women...
Justice!
Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was sentenced to seven years in prison on Tuesday after being found guilty of fomenting racial hatred and inciting followers in Britain to kill non-Muslims.
The former imam at London's Finsbury Park mosque was also found guilty of possessing a terrorist document (the Encyclopedia of the Afghani Jihad) and threatening or abusive recordings.
A jury found him guilty of seven of nine charges of soliciting murder, and two charges of stirring racial hatred. He had faced 15 charges in all.
He was then sentenced to seven years for the most serious charge he faced, of soliciting murder, and will serve concurrent sentences on the other charges. The jury had the option of sentencing Al-Masri to life.
Egyptian-born al-Masri, who has only one eye and a hook replacing one of his hands, is perhaps Britain's best-known Islamist speaker.
His mosque has been linked to a number of terrorist suspects, including Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged criminally by the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, and Richard Reid, who was arrested after trying to detonate a bomb hidden in his shoe while on a trans-Atlantic flight.
Al-Masri's trial began Jan. 11. Authorities in Washington have been closely watching the proceedings because they have charged him with trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon, conspiring to take hostages in Yemen and facilitating terror training in Afghanistan.
British law dictates that the domestic charges had to take precedence, but now that he has been convicted, it's possible al-Masri could be sent to the United States for a trial.
Al-Masri's lawyers have fought against extradition, arguing he wouldn't receive a fair hearing in the U.S. where officials have publicly called him a terrorist supporter.
They are also concerned a U.S. court could mete out the death penalty, which is banned in Britain.
The cult of the "bandit-murderer"
This was posted as a response elsewhere on my blog and thought it deserved wider attention.
Er, why is anyone surprised? Didn't you read the Koran?
There's a verse in the Koran that states the following:
'The Prophet is closer
To the Believers than
Their own selves.
And his wives are
Their mothers.'
(Sura 33, Verse 6.)
From a young age, many (perhaps most) Muslims are indoctrinated in a personality cult surrounding the bandit-murderer. It's not surprising therefore, given such a miseducation, that they react so fiercely to any criticism of him.
Indeed, it is quite an irony that whilst Islam condemns idolatry, it makes an idol of Mohammed, of the Koran, of the Kaaba, of Mecca, etc.. etc...
By the way, not everyone on the left is pro-Islam; check out the following for example:
http://www.counterpunch.org/ramakrishnan02042006.html
We need to eliminate the disease, (Islam) not the patients. Every Muslim (even Mohammed) is the descendant of a non-Muslim who was converted (by force or fraud or in the case of Mohammed, self-delusion) into the cult.
We need to help them get out of their madness - and being non-Muslims, we are ideally poised to do so. After all, it is the healthy who cure the sick.
Finally, we should not forget that the first victims of Islam are the Muslims themselves. Instead of blaming the victim, let's aim at eradicating the vice.
Fearless Mind | 02.06.06 - 8:22 am | #