Archived news and commentary: November 27 - December 3, 2006

2006/11/27 - 2006/12/03
2006/11/20 - 2006/11/26
2006/11/13 - 2006/11/19
2006/11/06 - 2006/11/12
2006/10/30 - 2006/11/05
2006/10/23 - 2006/10/29

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, December 3, 2006

News and commentary:

"Was ex-spy trying to sell dirty bomb?" (James Murray, Daily Express, 2006/12/03)
"The radiation spy scandal took a sensational twist last night with the revelation that KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko had converted to Islam before he died.

Scotland Yard detectives are now trying to discover if he had any secret links with Islamic extremist terror groups.

Their biggest fear is that the former Soviet spy, who died of polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital, may have been helping Al Qaeda terrorists or other extremist groups get hold of radioactive material to be used in a devastating “dirty” atom bomb.

The news comes on top of a claim by Litvinenko’s friend Mario Scaramella that the former spy helped smuggle radioactive material from Russia to Switzerland in 2000.

Litvinenko’s sympathies with Chechen rebels, seeking to break away from Moscow and create an independent Muslim state, are well known.

And when Chechen rebels were blamed for a massive bomb attack in 1999 that destroyed a Moscow block of flats with the loss of 400 lives, Litvinenko enraged Russian President Vladimir Putin with his claim that the Russian leader himself ordered the attack in a bid to damage the Chechen cause." (UPDATE: See also "British police arrive in Moscow to hunt for spy death clues" (Philippe Naughton, The Times, 2006/12/04): "Litvinenko's father, Walter, said in an interview published today that his son - who was born an Orthodox Christian but had close links to Islamist rebels in Chechnya - had requested to be buried according to Muslim tradition after converting to Islam on his deathbed.")

"Leaving London" (The Brussels Journal, 2006/12/03)
"A quote from The Sunday Times [Johannesburg, South Africa], 26 November 2006

A report by Britain’s chief immigration think-tank, Migrationwatch, said more than 100,000 British-born Londoners have left the UK capital this year as immigrants stream into the city. Meanwhile, another report by private analysts predicts that the white exodus is set to accelerate further, and that London’s immigrant population will jump from 40% to 60% in just 12 years.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said the departing whites were being replaced by other ethnic minorities in their neighbourhoods, leading to a “very unfortunate” apartheid-style segregation of the capital.

The report said it was a potential disaster for integration and race relations in Britain. “The effect is a rapid increase in the ethnic minority composition of some boroughs, resulting from an outflow of the white population and an inflow of African and Asian international migrants.”

While white South Africans fled Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban for either suburban security complexes or foreign shores in the mid-1990s, experts said whites in London and cities like Birmingham and Bradford were fleeing to rural “market towns” – and, increasingly, abroad.

In his seemingly xenophobic book, Time to Emigrate? George Walden, who was education minister under Margaret Thatcher, had no doubt about the cause. Immigration had created “unacceptable” terrorist and crime risks, and had doomed British culture."

"Palestinian group threatens women who don't cover up" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/12/03)
"A hitherto unknown group calling itself the Just Swords of Islam issued a warning to Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip over the weekend that they must wear hijab head coverings or face being targeted by the group's members.

In pamphlets distributed in several places in the Gaza Strip, the group also claimed responsibility for attacks on 12 Internet cafes over the past few days.

The warning was directed primarily against female students at universities and colleges who do not cover their heads in line with Islamic tradition.

The group said its followers threw acid at the face of a young woman who was dressed "immodestly" in the center of Gaza City last week. They also destroyed a car belonging to a young man who was playing his radio tape too loudly.

Addressing female students, the group said: 'We will have no mercy on any woman who violates the traditions of Islam and who also hangs out in Internet cafes.'" (See also: "Gunmen attack Internet cafes in Gaza" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/11/29))

Saturday, December 2, 2006

News and commentary:

"Muslims demand rape law reverse" (Bruce Loudon, The Australian, 2006/12/02)
"ONLY 10 days after Pakistan's military-led Government reformed the country's medieval rape and adultery laws, Islamabad appeared poised for a major backflip on the issue yesterday in an effort to pacify Islamic fundamentalists who have signed a fatwa against the historic changes.

Hardline Pakistani religious leaders have labelled the reforms "un-Islamic, immoral and unconstitutional" and evidence of "Western values infiltrating society". ...

The reforms to the rape laws were acclaimed by women's rights groups in Pakistan and around the world as an overdue change to a system that has long been regarded as an affront to civil liberties.

But as much as it won global plaudits, and the firm backing of President Pervez Musharraf, the bill evoked fury among the Islamic fundamentalist parties that are supportive of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and are seen as a growing threat to the Pakistani Government in elections scheduled for next year. ...

Negotiations over the bill follow two days of fury in mosques across the country, with Muslim priests leading attacks on the changes, denouncing them for their "Western values" and attacking those who supported the reforms.

Under the changes, complaints of rape and adultery will be dealt with under the country's civil penal code rather than under an obscure Islamic sharia ruling imposed in 1979 that demands that four male witnesses testify before a rape charge can be proved.

Reports said yesterday that as part of the attempt to curb the gathering campaign against the rape law changes, police and paramilitary forces had ringed the headquarters of the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party in the Punjab capital of Lahore, where thousands of protesters led by the MMA were gathering to demonstrate against the changes to the legislation." (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.)

"Hezbollah-led protesters camp out in Beirut" (Tom Perry, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2006/12/02)
"BEIRUT (Reuters) - Supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah-led opposition camped out in central Beirut on Saturday on the second day of protests to demand the resignation of the U.S.-backed government.

Protesters pitched tents near central Beirut's Martyrs' Square and on streets leading to the government's headquarters, where hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters rallied on Friday to demand the government quit.

Hezbollah, a Shi'ite Muslim group backed by Syria and Shi'ite Iran, wants to topple what it calls a U.S. government in Lebanon. The anti-Syrian politicians who dominate cabinet say the opposition are attempting a coup.

"No matter how long they stay in the street ... this will not bring down the government of (Prime Minister) Fouad Siniora," Sunni Muslim leader Saad al-Hariri, who backs Siniora, told Al Hurra television late on Friday.

The demonstrators imposed a blockade on the government offices on Friday, but later eased it after contacts between opposition leaders and Arab diplomats, a senior opposition source said. "The government received our message," he said."

Added today:
"The Faking Imams" (Richard Miniter, Pajamas Media, 2006/12/01)
"Misusing History at Slate.com" (Fredric Smoler, American Heritage, 2006/11/30)

Friday, December 1, 2006

News and commentary:

"800,000 Hizbullah supporters protesting in Beirut" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2006/12/01)
"At least 800,000 flag-waving protesters from Hizbullah and its pro-Syrian allies descended on downtown Beirut on Friday in a peaceful but noisy protest to force the resignation of Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, who was holed up in his office ringed by hundreds of police and combat troops.

The protesters, which police estimated at 800,000, created a sea of Lebanese flags that blanketed downtown. Hizbullah officials put the number at least 1 million - one-fourth of Lebanon's population.

"This is by far the largest gathering in Lebanese history," Hizbullah official Sheik Hassan Izzedine told The Associated Press. ...

"Saniora Out!" "We want a free government!" protesters shouted through loudspeakers, and the crowd roared in approval amid the deafening sound of Hizbullah revolutionary and nationalist songs. "We want a clean government," read one placard, in what has become the opposition's motto. ...

Hizbullah 's deputy leader, Sheik Naim Kassim, made it clear the fight is against "American tutelage" and said the protest action will continue until the government falls."

"The Faking Imams" (Richard Miniter, Pajamas Media, 2006/12/01)
"The Now Notorious Flying Imams Claim Their Only Crime Was “Flying While Muslim,” But Our Exclusive Reporting Reveals They Are Trying to Sweep Their Real Motives Under Their Prayer Rugs":
"Pauline revealed to the Pajamas Media that the six imams were doing things far more suspicious than praying - an Arabic-speaking passenger heard them repeatedly invoke “bin Laden,” and “terrorism,” a gate attendant told the captain that she did not want to fly with them, and that bomb-sniffing dogs were brought aboard. Other Muslim passengers were left undisturbed and later joined in a round of applause for the U.S. Airways crew. “It wasn’t that they were Muslim. It was all of the suspicious things they did,” Pauline said. ...

One thing that no one seemed to consider at the time, perhaps due to lack of familiarity with Islamic practice, is that the men prayed both at the gate and on the plane. 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. ...

“I think it was either a foiled attempt to take over the plane or it was a publicity stunt to accuse us of being insensitive,” Pauline said. 'It had to be to intimidate U.S. Airways to ease up on security.'" (See also: "How the imams terrorized an airliner" (Audrey Hudson, The Washington Times, 2006/11/28))

"Jihad in Denmark – An overview and analysis of Jihadi activity in Denmark 1990-2006" (Michael Taarnby Jensen, Danish Institute for International Studies, November 2006)
"Perhaps the most significant impact of the Jihadists has not been on the frontlines, in international terrorism, in propaganda activities or spectacular recruitment drives, but on Danish society. In spite of their small numbers they have managed to wedge themselves between the Muslim communities and mainstream Danish society. Their success in polarising Denmark has been completely out of proportion to their real numbers. The only area where the Jihadists have had a visible impact is in the area of societal cohesiveness. The fruits of this achievement must be shared with the groups of non-violent Islamists, but this area remains unexplored and underestimated. ...

What is verifiable is the fact that previous fringe Islamist movements, like the Hizb ut-Tahrir, now have a much larger audience and have gradually left the shadows. The at times very harsh debate in relation to the drawings of the Prophet Mohammed revealed a proportion of Danish Muslims unwilling to engage in dialogue, people with nothing but contempt for Danish law. The most recent arrests of young, often very young, Danish second-generation Muslim immigrants also demonstrate that radicalisation patterns have changed.

At the height of the cartoon crisis, when Danish embassies were being torched in the Middle East, there was a very real concern about domestic bloodshed. One remark in particular summed up the current state of division between Danes and Muslims. It was uttered by a very amicable middle-aged housewife with no known prior propensity for extremist views:

'Now I understand why people kill their neighbours.'"

Added today:
"Saddam's forces filled mass graves with children" (Paul Schemm, AFP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/30)
"Disembowelled and murdered for teaching girls" (Kim Sengupta, Independent/The New Zealand Herald, 2006/11/30)
"The Veil Controversy" (Olivier Guitta, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/29)
"Italy’s rebel woman MP fears fatwa" (John Follain, The Sunday Times, 2006/10/29)

Thursday, November 30, 2006

News and commentary:

"Pope Benedict XVI..."
(Patrick Hertzog, AP, 2006/11/30)
"Pope Benedict XVI, center, stands with Muslim clerics, security officers and other prelates, during a visit to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006."

"Pope prays with cleric at Turkey mosque" (Brian Murphy, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/30)
"ISTANBUL, Turkey - Pope Benedict XVI joined an Islamic cleric in prayers under the towering dome of Istanbul's most famous mosque Thursday in a powerful gesture seeking to transform his image among Muslims from adversary to peacemaker.

The pope's minute of prayer was done in silence, but the message of reconciliation was designed to resonate loudly nearly three months after he provoked worldwide fury for remarks on violence and the Prophet Muhammad.

"This visit will help us find together the way of peace for the good of all humanity," the pope said inside the 17th-century Blue Mosque — in only the second papal visit in history to a Muslim place of worship. Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, made a brief stop in a mosque in
Syria in 2001.

Benedict's steps through a stone archway and into the mosque's carpeted expanse capped a day of deep symbolism and lofty goals. Hours earlier, he stood beside the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians and passionately encouraged steps to end the nearly 1,000-year divide between their churches."

"Saddam's forces filled mass graves with children" (Paul Schemm, AFP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/30)
"BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi troops have gunned down mothers cradling infants and slaughtered scores of Kurdish children before bulldozing them into mass graves, a forensic expert told Saddam Hussein's genocide trial.

In harrowing testimony, American expert Michael Trimble explained how three mass graves discovered since the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq were filled mainly with the bullet-riddled corpses of very young children.

Of 301 corpses in the graves, 183 were Kurdish children killed during Saddam's Anfal campaign in 1988, said Trimble, who is the head of the mass graves investigation unit at the Iraqi High Tribunal

"The captives were often bound and blindfolded. The captives were led into the grave and then executed with pistols or automatic assault rifle fire. The graves were then covered by those directing the execution," Trimble said.

"In all these graves, 90 percent of the children are less than 13 years of age," he said, adding that one was a child of six to 12 months, "shot in the back of his head as his mother held him in her arms."

Describing the evidence found at one of the graves in Al-Muthanna in southern Iraq Trimble said: "It was a highly organised programme of execution."

Trimble showed slides of a child of five to six years whose legs were cut in half by a bullet. She had been dressed in little green boots embossed with the image of a small cat."

"Disembowelled and murdered for teaching girls" (Kim Sengupta, Independent/The New Zealand Herald, 2006/11/30)
"GHAZNI - The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.

The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely.

But his life was over.

He was partly disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes. The remains were put on display as a warning to others against defying Taleban orders to stop educating girls.

Halim is one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taleban and United States and Afghan forces. ...

At the village of Qara Bagh, Halim's family is distraught and terrified. His cousin, Ahmed Gul, shook his head. 'They killed him like an animal. No, no. We do not kill animals like that. They took away a father and a husband, they had no pity. We are all very worried. Please go now, you see those men standing over there? They are watching. It is dangerous for you, and for us.'" (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.)

"Misusing History at Slate.com" (Fredric Smoler, American Heritage, 2006/11/30)
"With respect to historical analogies, strange doings over at Slate.com: On Tuesday, Diane McWhorter published a piece sneering at the tendency to avoid comparing the Bush administration to the Nazis. She wonders why “nobody seems eager to delve too deeply into what exactly it was about George W. Bush that the voters so roundly rejected . . . polite discussion of that question does not contain any derivative of the words fascism, propaganda, or dictatorship. God forbid Nazi or Hitler.” Early on, Ms. McWhorter points out that the Bush administration, like the Nazis, engages in propaganda. I do not think this successfully isolates the more distinctive qualities of National Socialism.

Ms. McWhorter handsomely acknowledges that the Bush people have avoided exterminating the Jews, but insists that this does not get them off the hook. She concludes by assuming the point at issue: The United States is like Nazi Germany because ordinary Americans went along with Bush for a number of years. Before that dazzling display of circular reasoning, she makes a number of other comparisons, and one core of her argument focuses on the brief threat to change the Senate’s rules on the filibuster, which, had it happened, “struck me as a functional analog of the Enabling Act of 1933, which consolidated the German government under Chancellor Hitler and effectively dissolved the Reichstag as a parliamentary body.” For this analogy to hold, you have to assume, at a minimum, that in the event the Republicans had changed the filibuster rules on confirming Federal judges, there would never again have been an election in the United States. And to assume this, you have to be an idiot." (See also: "The N-Word" (Diane McWhorter, Slate, 2006/11/30))

"Rumors and reporting in Iraq" (Michelle Malkin, michellemalkin.com, 2006/11/30)
"I've been following up with CENTCOM on the Associated Press/sketchy sources brouhaha. Just heard this morning from Michael B. Dean, Lieutenant, U.S. Navy MNC-I Joint Operations Center, Public Affairs Officer:

From CPATT PAO:

BG Abdul-Kareem, the Ministry of Interior Spokesman, went on the record today stating that Capt. Jamil Hussein is not a police officer. He explained the coordinations among MOI, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Defense in attempting to track down these bodies and their joint conclusion was that this was unsubstantiated rumor.

He went on to name several other false sources that have been used recently and appealed to the media to document their news before reporting. He went into some detail about the impact of the press carrying propaganda for the enemies of Iraq and thanked "the friends" who have brought this to their attention.

AP did attend the press conference."

(See also: "AP Editor: Military's Claims 'Ludicrous'" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2006/11/29), "Getting The News From The Enemy" (Curt, Flopping Aces, 2006/11/25) and "New savage twist to violence in Baghdad" (Steven R. Hurst, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/24))

"Winning Muslim hearts and minds" (Michael Burleigh, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/30)
"As in the Cold War we need to foster and respect cultural dissidence. This was brought home to me when I read Last Summer of Reason, whose author, Tahir Djaout, was murdered in 1993 by Algerian Islamists. Those who like pop music could try the Indonesian rock star Ahmad Dhani, whose hit Warriors of Love is a brave, moderate, Sufi challenge to the terrorists of that country. Everywhere in the Islamic world — 80 per cent of which is non-Arab — there are reasonable, cosmopolitan people who do not want, if they are Lebanese Shia, to be represented by Hizbollah or ruled by Syria, nor to have their tastes dictated by clerical zealots. Let's reach out to them, or at least create some forum where we can be reminded of their existence. So far the West's public diplomacy has been pathetic. ...

We also need to terminate the existence of "Londonistan". A dedicated border police might practise the sort of steely-eyed scrutiny that awaits anyone going to or leaving America. France and Germany have managed to deport 20 militant clerics each: what is the figure for Britain? These men chose to flout our liberality, so their fate elsewhere is not among our major concerns. It is a continent-wide disgrace that 200 European Muslims have been to Iraq to kill coalition soldiers. Did the trained survivors return here?

We are entitled to have accurate information about immigration, with open discussion of its cultural, as well as economic, merits and demerits. Clear lines need to be established about what the majority of people here are prepared to tolerate, for toleration is not some open-ended, one-way arrangement. It's all very well to say you are against the formation of inner-city ghettos potentially subtracted from common law, but how, precisely, do Conservatives imagine dispersing them or preventing their formation?"

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

News and commentary:

"The Veil Controversy" (Olivier Guitta, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/29)
"For Islamists, the imperative to veil women justifies almost any means. Sometimes they try to buy off resistance. Some French Muslim families, for instance, are paid 500 euros (around $600) per quarter by extremist Muslim organizations just to have their daughters wear the hijab. This has also happened in the United States. Indeed, the famous and brave Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan recently told the Jerusalem Post that after she moved to the United States in 1991, Saudis offered her $1,500 a month to cover her head and attend a mosque.

But what Islamists use most is intimidation. A survey conducted in France in May 2003 found that 77 percent of girls wearing the hijab said they did so because of physical threats from Islamist groups. A series in the newspaper Libération in 2003 documented how Muslim women and girls in France who refuse to wear the hijab are insulted, rejected, and often physically threatened by Muslim males. One of the teenage girls interviewed said, "Every day, bearded men come to me and advise me strongly on wearing the veil. It is a war. For now, there are no dead, but there are looks and words that do kill."

Muslim women who try to rebel are considered "whores" and treated as outcasts. Some of them want to move to areas "with no Muslims" to escape. However, that might not be a solution, as Islamists are at work all over France. The Communist newspaper L'Humanité in 2003 interviewed two Catholic-born French women who said they had converted to Islam and started wearing the niqab after systematic indoctrination by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In light of this, wearing the hijab may or may not be a manifestation of the free exercise of religion. For any individual, it may reflect the very opposite--religious coercion. "

"AP Editor: Military's Claims 'Ludicrous'" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2006/11/29)
"The Associated (with terrorists) Press is standing by its insurgent sources, and AP International Editor John Daniszewski calls the US military “ludicrous:” AP, U.S. military spar over atrocities report. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

“The attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question,” AP International Editor John Daniszewski said in a statement e-mailed to On Deadline this afternoon.

Daniszewski has been featured at CAMERA.org several times; here’s a report on an amazingly deceptive article he wrote for the LA Times, propagandizing for Syria: Daniszewski Works to Polish Syrian Image. He’ll shill for Syria, but denounce his own country’s military. ...

LGF reader Glen K. forwarded an email he received from CENTCOM today, indicating that the Iraqis are planning a rebuttal to the continuing AP claims about Jamil Hussein: ...

Sir:

I have just learned from Mr. Costlow, mentioned below, that Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the official Ministry of Interior spokesmen, will begin his regularly scheduled press conference at noon tomorrow with a statement that Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee."

(See also: "Getting The News From The Enemy" (Curt, Flopping Aces, 2006/11/25) and "New savage twist to violence in Baghdad" (Steven R. Hurst, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/24))

"A culture of violence" (Evelyn Gordon, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/11/29)
"Virtually not a day has passed recently without some famous person declaring that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the key to solving all the problems of the Muslim world - from Kofi Annan ("As long as the Palestinians live under occupation… so long will passions everywhere be inflamed") through Henry Kissinger ("a restarted Palestinian peace process should play a significant role" in resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis) to Tony Blair (an Israeli-Palestinian settlement is "the core" of any effort to resolve other Middle East problems and defeat "global extremism.")

It is astonishing that so many intelligent people could seriously espouse such an obvious falsehood. ...

But the theory of Israeli-Palestinian centrality is not only false, it is dangerous - because it prevents the world from addressing the real root cause of all these conflicts, including the Israeli-Palestinian one: a widespread culture in the Muslim world that views violence and threats of violence as legitimate means of resolving disputes. ...

If the West really wants to solve its Muslim problem, it must adopt the opposite approach - making it clear that violence, far from being rewarded, will be penalized. By instead seeking to appease the Muslim world in Israeli coin, it merely proves that violence pays.

And it will thereby reap more of the same."

"Iranian leader berates Bush on U.S. Mideast policy" (Irwin Arieff, The Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/29)
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lambasted President George W. Bush's Middle East strategy on Wednesday at a time the U.S. leader has come under pressure to open direct contacts with Tehran.

Ahmadinejad, in a five-page letter to the American people, called on Washington to pull out of Iraq and recognize a Palestinian state. ...

Referring to Israel, Ahmadinejad accused the U.S. administration of supporting "oppressors" in the Middle East and disregarding the opinion of the American people in "the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people."

"You know well that the U.S. administration has persistently provided blind and blanket support to the Zionist regime, has emboldened it to continue its crimes, and has prevented the U.N. Security Council from condemning it."

On Iraq, he said that with a constitution and government now in place, "would it not be more beneficial to bring the U.S. officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical U.S. military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people?"

"As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness," he said." (See also the full letter: "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Letter the American People" (Blogs of War, 2006/11/29))

"Gunmen attack Internet cafes in Gaza" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/11/29)
"Unidentified gunmen attacked several Internet cafes in the Gaza Strip with hand grenades and bombs before dawn on Wednesday. The simultaneous attacks caused heavy physical damage but no one was injured.

There were no claims of responsibility, but some cafe owners accused Muslim fundamentalists who have been campaigning against Internet cafes and surfers.

"Some fanatics are unhappy with the fact that many young people have access to the Internet," one owner told The Jerusalem Post. "They claim that the Internet is corrupting young people because it exposes them to Western values and culture and pornographic sites."

Another owner, Ala Shawwa, described the attacks as a "cowardly act." He estimated losses to his Internet cafe at $3,000, adding that the place had been entirely destroyed.

Nabil al-Atleh, owner of Coffee Net in the center of Gaza City, said the attacks occurred just after before dawn prayers in local mosques. He said all 30 computers were destroyed, estimating the damage at more than $5,000.

In Rafah, arsonists set fire to a shop selling cassettes and CDs. The owner, Farid Awad, said masked gunmen had warned him in the past not to sell modern music."

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)
"Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium. ...

Yes, the present generation of Europeans really is heretical, made up of traitors of a sort. They themselves, not just their consensual governments, or the now-demonized American Patriot Act and Guantanamo detention center, or some invader across the Mediterranean, have endangered their centuries-won freedoms of expression--and out of worries over oil, or appearing as illiberal apostates of the new secular religion of multiculturalism, or another London or Madrid bombing. We can understand why outnumbered Venetians surrendered Cyprus to the Ottomans, and were summarily executed, or perhaps why the 16th-century French did not show up at Lepanto, but why this vacillation of present-day Europeans to defend the promise of the West, who are protected by statute and have not experienced war or hunger?

Third, examine why all these incidents took place in Europe, where more and more the state guarantees the good life even into dotage, where the here and now has become a finite world for soulless bodies, where armies devolve into topics of caricature, and children distract from sterile adults' ever-increasing appetites. So, it was logical that Europe most readily of Westerners would abandon the artist and give up the renegade in fear of religious extremists who brilliantly threatened not destruction, but interruption of the good life, or the mere charge of illiberality. Never was the Enlightenment sold out so cheaply."

"What is a 'moderate' Muslim?" (Irshad Manji, The Times, 2006/11/29)
"We Muslims resent it when non-Muslims reduce the Quran to its most bloodthirsty passages. Why, I wondered, are we reducing the Pope’s speech to a mere few words?

The emails I received in response proved that Muslims know how to exercise freedom of expression as vigorously as the Pope does. Consider, for example, this message from Imran, a self-described “moderate Muslim” and American citizen who works for the US government:

“You said that how Muslims are reacting to the Pope is like reducing the Quran to its most bloodthirsty passages. There is no such thing, Missy… You are looking for cheap publicity for your book and bashing Islam is the easiest way to get it nowadays. It used to be sleeping with the publisher, but for that you require looks. One more thing, if you are a Jew, you should not be ashamed of it."

Sonya is another Muslim American who benefits from her country’s free speech guarantees. She told me that I should be ashamed of myself for stating my heretical views publicly. Sonya went on:

'Do you blame the people who give you death threats? Or try to psychically harm you? I happen to agree with them. If you know how to talk to people, it will get you somewhere. If you don't, you will have many enemies...'"

"Sharia law is spreading as authority wanes" (Joshua Rozenberg, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/29)
"Islamic sharia law is gaining an increasing foothold in parts of Britain, a report claims.

Sharia, derived from several sources including the Koran, is applied to varying degrees in predominantly Muslim countries but it has no binding status in Britain.

However, the BBC Radio 4 programme Law in Action produced evidence yesterday that it was being used by some Muslims as an alternative to English criminal law. Aydarus Yusuf, 29, a youth worker from Somalia, recalled a stabbing case that was decided by an unofficial Somali "court" sitting in Woolwich, south-east London. ...

Mr Yusuf told the programme he felt more bound by the traditional law of his birth than by the laws of his adopted country. "Us Somalis, wherever we are in the world, we have our own law," he said. "It's not sharia, it's not religious — it's just a cultural thing." ...

Faizul Aqtab Siddiqi, a barrister and principal of Hijaz College Islamic University, near Nuneaton, Warwicks, said this type of court had advantages for Muslims. "It operates on a low budget, it operates on very small timescales and the process and the laws of evidence are far more lenient and it's less awesome an environment than the English courts," he said.

Mr Siddiqi predicted that there would be a formal network of Muslim courts within a decade." (See also: "Law in Action: Legal Pluralism" (BBC News, 2006/11/28))

Added today:
"Muslims oppose vast mosque plan" (Sean O'Neill, The Times, 2006/11/27)
"Muslim jailed for killing British queen's swan to break Ramadan fast" (AFP/Middle East Times, 2006/11/23)

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

News and commentary:

"A veiled Somali woman holds a weapon during a protest rally..."
(Reuters, 2006/11/28)
"A veiled Somali woman holds a weapon during a protest rally against U.S. draft Security Council resolution plan in Mogadishu, November 28, 2006. The United States expects to unveil this week a draft Security Council resolution authorizing African peacekeepers to help prop up Somalia's shaky interim government, U.N. diplomats said on Monday."

"Pope urges leaders to renounce violence" (Victor L. Simpson, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/28)
"ANKARA, Turkey - Pope Benedict XVI urged leaders of all religions Tuesday to "utterly refuse" to support any form of violence in the name of faith, while Turkey's top Muslim cleric complained to the pontiff of growing "Islamophobia" in the world.

As he began his first visit to a Muslim country — a trip that drew extraordinary security but few onlookers — Benedict sought a careful balance as he extended friendship and brotherhood to Muslims, hoping to end the outcry from many Muslims over his remarks linking Islam to violence. ...

Seeking to ease anger over his perceived criticism of Islam, Benedict met with Ali Bardakoglu, who heads religious affairs in Turkey, warmly grasping hands. Benedict sat nearby as the Muslim cleric defended his religion.

"The so-called conviction that the sword is used to expand Islam in the world and growing Islamophobia hurts all Muslims," Bardakoglu said."

"En Garde! Belien vs. Peters" (Paul Belien, Politics Central, 2006/11/28)
Belien on "The 'Eurabia' Myth" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2006/11/26):
"I can assure you that “Eurabia” is real enough. We have received threats from extremist muslims, we have been harassed by the authorities. I was present when earlier this year a group of scholars met in The Hague to discuss Eurabia. I saw how they had to do so anonymously, under assumed names and under police protection.

Eurabia is not a myth. Eurabia is all too real.

We see how the inner cities and suburbs in various European countries are degenerating into “no go” areas, where people get killed, where the police no longer venture and where radical Muslims hold sway. The French authorities have published a list of 751 “sensitive urban areas,” which are no longer under the control of the authorities and which have become, as Daniel Pipes remarked, the “Dar al-Islam, the place where Muslims rule.” Almost 5 million people, or 8% of the French population, live in these “sensitive urban areas.” But, apparently, there is hope, because here is Ralph Peters in The New York Post, offering to have the U.S. intervene and evacuate the inhabitants to America!

Americans do not realize how dramatic the situation is in Europe today. The Europeans are running. Instead of fighting they are leaving. They are leaving the cities for the countryside. In my home town of Antwerp 5,000 immigrants move in every year while 4,000 Antwerpians move out. Many Dutch are leaving their highly urbanized country for places such as rural Norway. Some are leaving Europe altogether.

The Netherlands and Germany have more emigrants than immigrants today, and in other countries, such as Belgium, Britain and Sweden the number of emigrants is rising. These people are not driven by hatred, they are driven by despair and the hope for a better future which they realize their Eurabian home countries are no longer able to provide." (See also: "They Report, You Decide (with update from Mark Steyn)" (Mark Steyn, Power Line, 2006/11/26))

"High school students carry weapons, assault and force sex" (Metro, 2006/11/10)
Rinkeby is a suburb in Stockholm where 70 percent of the inhabitants are immigrants. Translated excerpts from an article in Swedish on the results of Stockholmsenkäten 2006, a survey of hazardous behavior among high school students. I'm late on this, because the results have not been reported in Swedish media, with the exception of a feature in TV 4 Stockholm's news yesterday and this article, which was the only one I found:

"17 percent of Rinkeby's boys in grade 9 says that they have forced someone to have sex during the last twelve months. ...

Rinkeby differs markedly from other districts on a large number of questions that relates to tendencies to commit serious crimes among the students.

Among the boys in Rinkeby in grade 9, who were 15 or 16 years old when the inquiry was made, 44 percent say that they have carried weapons during the last year. Two out of ten say that they have stolen a car and almost a third of the boys, 31 percent, say that they have hurt someone so badly that the person in question had to seek medical attendance."

Some additional results from the inquiry, taken from Stockholmsenkäten's site [link in Swedish]:

So many male students say that they have, during the last twelve months...

...forced someone to have sex:

Rinkeby: 17 %
Stockholm [avarage]: 3 %

...broken into a car or committed burglary of a shop, drugstore or other building:

Rinkeby: 24 %
Stockholm [avarage]: 9 %

...forced someone to give away valuable belongings:

Rinkeby: 27 %
Stockholm [avarage]: 6 %

...intentionally hurt someone so badly that the person in question had to seek medical attendance:

Rinkeby: 31 %
Stockholm [avarage]: 10 %

...stated that most of their friends have committed serious crimes:

Rinkeby: 29 %
Stockholm [avarage]: 12 %

"Pope Rage in Istanbul" (Robert Spencer, FrontPageMagazine, 2006/11/28)
"Unfortunately, the danger of and anger over the Pope’s visit to Turkey has overshadowed both the real focus of the visit, and what should be its major preoccupation. The main purpose of the Pope’s trip is to meet with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church. One may hope also that the Pope will take an opportunity to shed some light upon the woeful condition of religious minorities, principally Christians, in what is nominally a secular state that allows for religious freedom. Two converts from Islam to Christianity, Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal, are currently on trial on charges of “insulting ‘Turkishness’” and inciting hatred of Islam. What seems to be behind the charges is that Tastan and Topal were proselytizing – which, while not officially illegal, is frowned upon and has sometimes resulted in beatings of Christians trying to hand out religious literature. On November 4, a Protestant church in western Turkey was firebombed, after months of harassment that was ignored by Turkish authorities. The murderer of a Catholic priest, Fr. Andrea Santoro, last February in the Turkish city of Trabzon was recently sentenced to only eighteen years in prison. (The killer shouted “Allahu akbar!” as he fired shots at the priest.)

All this bespeaks a Turkish officialdom that is hostile – at best – to non-Muslim forms of religious expression, Turkey’s guarantees of religious freedom be damned. The institutionalized subjugation and second-class status of religious minorities under the Ottoman Empire was bad enough, but Turkish secularism has been, if anything, even worse." (See also: "A tense time for a papal visit" (Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, 2006/11/25))

"How the imams terrorized an airliner" (Audrey Hudson, The Washington Times, 2006/11/28)
"Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials.

Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted "Allah" when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix.

"I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud," the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department.

Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks -- two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin.

"That would alarm me," said a federal air marshal who asked to remain anonymous. 'They now control all of the entry and exit routes to the plane.'"

Added today:
"French police the target in urban guerrilla war" (Jon Boyle, Reuters, 2006/11/27)
"25 football fans arrested in Somalia watching Chelsea-Manchester United clash" (Muse Mohamed Osman, AIPS, 2006/11/27)
"They Report, You Decide (with update from Mark Steyn)" (Mark Steyn, Power Line, 2006/11/26)
"Back to the Future" (Fouad Ajami, USNews.com, 2006/11/26)

Monday, November 27, 2006

News and commentary:

"Sending a Grim Message" (Bruce Bawer, The New York Sun, 2006/11/27)
"The Nobel Peace Prize Concert will be held in Oslo on December 11 and broadcast around the world. The Norwegian Nobel Committee doesn't much care for Americans these days (except for 2002 laureate Jimmy Carter), but it knows who's an international draw and who isn't, and so the concert, as always, is top-loaded with American celebrities. The co-hosts are Sharon Stone and Angelica Huston, and the entertainers scheduled to appear include Lionel Ritchie and Wynonna. Also on the bill is a British singer who calls himself Yusuf.

Does that last name not sound familiar? Well, this is the same guy who used to be known as Yusuf Islam. Still confused? Well, before that he was Cat Stevens, and before that, just for the record, he was Steven Demetre Georgiou. For those who know a bit about Yusuf — who dropped his original name after converting to Islam in 1977 — the invitation from the Nobel Committee came as something of a surprise. Then again, for those who know a bit about the Nobel Committee's politics (this is the same crowd, after all, who publicly regretted giving their 1994 award to Shimon Peres, but not to that year's co-winner, Yasser Arafat), the decision to invite Yusuf to pay tribute in song to this year's prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, was not quite so astonishing. ...

This is, in short, a man who opposes freedom of speech and women's equality — a man who would have cheered the execution of Salman Rushdie. The decision to invite him to perform at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert — which is supposed to be a celebration of civilization's highest values — sends a grim message about the values the Norwegian Nobel Committee exalts above all others."

"French police the target in urban guerrilla war" (Jon Boyle, Reuters, 2006/11/27)
PARIS (Reuters) - Stoned, beaten and insulted, their vehicles torched by crowds of hostile youths, French police say they face an urban guerrilla war when they enter the run-down neighborhoods that ring the major cities.

"Our role is to guarantee the safety of people and property but the great difficulty today is that police are having problems ensuring their own safety," said Jerome Hanarte of the Alliance-Police Nationale union.

Bedside television interviews with officers hospitalized after beatings in "les banlieues," or suburbs, support statistics showing a 6.7 percent jump in violent crime in the 12 months to August.

Fourteen officers are hurt every day in the line of duty, unions estimate, and law and order is sure to feature prominently in next year's presidential election. ...

...Nicolas Comte, general secretary of the Syndicat General de la Police (SGP), said officers now face guerrilla warfare in the suburbs.

"The simple presence of men in uniforms in some areas is no longer a provocation but a declaration of war in the minds of some louts," he told a recent police union rally. ...

The plain clothes officer in Seine-Saint-Denis said seven colleagues were attacked recently after chasing a driver who skipped a checkpoint. Their vehicle was torched and they narrowly escaped serious injury.

"The high number of officers hurt means that police themselves don't feel safe," he said.

"That's pretty serious, because if police don't feel safe, you can imagine what the ordinary citizen feels," added the officer who asked not to be identified.

To protect themselves, police often move in large groups -- a tactic youngsters say is heavy-handed and overly aggressive.

Comte says the threat to police is so great in some neighborhoods they should exercise their "right to withdraw." That means refusing to respond to emergency calls if they judge they cannot guarantee their own safety."

"Turkish prime minister, pontiff to meet" (Benjamin Harvey, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/11/27)
"ISTANBUL, Turkey - Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to meet Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, a change of plans that appears to signal openness to a visit that has angered many Turks. ...

Benedict, on his first papal visit to a predominantly Muslim country, was to arrive at the Ankara airport Tuesday around noon, where he will meet briefly with Erdogan, who waited until the day before the pope's arrival to announce that he would make time to see the pope.

News reports say some 3,000 police officers have been assigned to guard the pope upon his arrival in the dusty, sprawling capital of Ankara. Snipers will watch from hillsides and tall buildings, and armored vehicles and riot police will be stationed near the areas he is scheduled to visit. ...

On Monday, a group of around 100 demonstrators displayed what they said were a million signatures for a petition demanding that the Haghia Sophia be declared a mosque and opened to worship for Muslims.

In a speech Sunday, Benedict said he was coming to Turkey as a friend of the Turks and asked his followers to pray for him. That same day, more than 25,000 Turks protested in Istanbul, asking the pope to stay home."

"25 football fans arrested in Somalia watching Chelsea-Manchester United clash" (Muse Mohamed Osman, AIPS, 2006/11/27)
Somalia II: "Islamic rulers in Somalia arrested a group of football fans, some as young as ten years old, for watching yesterday's English premiership league game between Chelsea and Manchester United in a cinema.

The sports fans were seized by the Islamists who also destroyed and confiscated equipment belonging to the cinema in the Buulo Burde district of Hiiran region in central Somalia.

Eye witness Adul Waahid Ahmed told the AIPS website that during the fiercely contested 1-1 game between Chelsea and Manchester United masked Islamists stormed into the cinema and opened fire above the heads of the viewers.

"Everyone ran toward the front of the cinema and only 25 of the more than 150 fans were arrested and had their heads shaved," the eye witness told Shafici Mohyaddin Abokar of the Somali Sports Press Association via phone this morning. ...

Sheik Hussein Barre Raage of the district Islamic Courts Union in Buulo Burde harshly criticized the viewing of sport by Somali citizens and said that anyone caught watching a match would be registered as a criminal.

"Now the bad lovers of sport are in jail and will remain there until they are taught the good culture and lessons of Islam," the Islamist administrator said.

The Sheik told a press conference that Somali youth are obliged to go to the holy war instead of watching what he called "the bad games which descended from the old Christian cultures." The Sheik decreed that instead of watching television, sports fans must register at specially established holy war registration centers."

"Islamists mass troops on Ethiopian border" (Business Day, 2006/11/27)
Somalia I: "MOGADISHU — Somalia’s powerful Union of Islamic Courts began massing thousands of troops on the border with Ethiopia over the weekend, days after Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said he was ready to confront the Islamic militants in Somalia.

“War is imminent. There is no other alternative,” Islamist military officer Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal said by satellite phone from the border. “Ethiopia declared war, so we will defend ourselves and protect our country and people.”

The Islamists have declared a jihad on Ethiopian troops in the country to back the weak transitional government based in the northern town of Baidoa.

Ethiopia last week said it was ready for a confrontation with the Muslim militants, who control most of the country.

Residents of the border area have begun fleeing." (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

"Letting suicide bombers speak for themselves" (Tom Tugend, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/11/27)
"Sixteen-year old Hassan is deeply frustrated because he was caught by Israeli police before he could blow himself up among a crowd of Israeli civilians.

"If I had been killed, my mother would call it a blessing," he says. "My family and 70 relatives would have gone to paradise, and that would be a great honor for me."

Hassan is one of more than a dozen Palestinian suicide bombers captured before they could carry out their missions and interviewed in the documentary Suicide Killers by French-Jewish filmmaker Pierre Rehov.

The movie's subtitle, "Paradise is Hell," is a deliberate allusion and counterpoint to last year's Oscarnominated Palestinian drama Paradise Now, which some critics charged "humanized" and even glorified its two suicide bombers. ...

The would-be terrorists rarely speak of nationalist grievances but constantly emphasize their religious mandate.

"Our goal is to kill all enemies of Islam," says one young woman.

"Those who die for Allah are not dead but live in paradise," a young man proclaims.

Such beliefs easily reinforce hatred of Jews. "Jews have never obeyed God and are not part of mankind," adds another prisoner." (See also: Pierre Rehov's Middle East Documentaries.)

"Bring back Saddam Hussein" (Jonathan Chait, Los Angeles Times, 2006/11/27)
And I thought Kevin Toolis's recent praisal of Saddam Hussein was a low-water mark:
"So allow me to propose the unthinkable: Maybe, just maybe, our best option is to restore Saddam Hussein to power.

Yes, I know. Hussein is a psychotic mass murderer. Under his rule, Iraqis were shot, tortured and lived in constant fear. Bringing the dictator back would sound cruel if it weren't for the fact that all those things are also happening now, probably on a wider scale.

At the outset of the war, I had no high hopes for Iraqi democracy, but I paid no attention to the possibility that the Iraqis would end up with a worse government than the one they had. It turns out, however, that there is something more awful than totalitarianism, and that is endless chaos and civil war. ...

Restoring the expectation of order in Iraq will take some kind of large-scale psychological shock. The Iraqi elections were expected to offer that shock, but they didn't. The return of Saddam Hussein — a man every Iraqi knows, and whom many of them fear — would do the trick." (See also: "Compare bloodshed. Saddam is then the moral victor, not Bush" (Kevin Toolis, The Times, 2006/11/11))

"Muslims oppose vast mosque plan" (Sean O'Neill, The Times, 2006/11/27)
Via Melanie Phillips: "Now that Muslims themselves have added their explicit voice to the local protests against the Tablighi Jamaat mosque, will the government finally listen? Or will it continue its policy of abandoning Muslims – along with everyone else – to the extremism that so threatens them, and which it has so consistently and shamefully appeased?":

"The architect’s vision is of a 21st-century Alhambra, a place for prayer, education, debate and the celebration of Islamic culture.

But the plan to build Europe’s biggest mosque beside the London 2012 Olympic Park is attracting opposition from the Muslim community.

The concern is not the building, but the activities of Tablighi Jamaat, the ultra-orthodox sect that is behind the huge mosque.

A petition against the scheme, organised by Muslims in the East London borough of Newham, attracted 2,500 signatures in only ten days and is continuing to draw support. It says that allowing Tablighi Jamaat to build the mosque would aggravate community tensions. ...

Dr Irfan al-Alawi, Europe director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, is “extremely concerned” about the spread of Tablighi Jamaat and recently addressed a seminar at the Policy Exchange think-tank about the mosque plans. “Tablighi are not moderate Muslims, they are a separatist movement,” he said.

'If this mosque were to go ahead it will be strictly run by the Tablighis; there will be no room for moderates.'"

Added today:
"Quartet of ladies shows where we're headed" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2006/11/26)

 

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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Copyrights of quoted materials belong to their respective owners.

"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

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Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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