EclectEcon

The staged appearance of the killing of al-Dura, staged to make it appear the boy was killed by Israeli troops, set off a wave of fury:

On September 30 2000, two days after Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel’s opposition Likud Party, went for a walk on Temple Mount, Palestinians mounted a demonstration at Gaza’s Netzarim Junction. A 55-second piece of video footage of that demonstration, transmitted that day by the French TV station France 2, was to cause unprecedented violence in the Middle East and throughout the world.

The footage, with a voice-over by France 2’s Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, showed what was said to be the killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura by Israeli marksmen. Viewers saw the child crouching in terror behind his father, Jamal, as they sheltered next to a barrel under what Enderlin said was Israeli gunfire, and then slumping to the ground as Enderlin pronounced that he was dead.

That image of the boy screaming in terror before being killed was uniquely incendiary. It portrayed the Israelis as diabolically gunning down a child in cold blood, even as he cowered for his life. It ignited the Arab and Muslim world with apparent proof that the Israelis were deliberately killing their children, inciting a murderous frenzy.

Al-Dura became a poster boy for the Palestinian and Islamist war against Israel and the West. The day after the France 2 broadcast, the second intifada erupted in its full fury; according to the 2001 Mitchell report, the two events were directly connected. Twelve days later, a mob of Palestinians shouting, ‘Revenge for the blood of Mohammed al-Dura’ lynched two Israeli army reservists and dragged their mutilated bodies through the streets of Ramallah.

When al-Qaeda decapitated the journalist Daniel Pearl, the video of this atrocity was punctuated with references to al-Dura. After September 11 2001, Osama bin Laden said: ‘Bush must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura.’ Several Arab countries issued postage stamps with his picture. On Palestinian Authority TV and in its school books, al-Dura’s example is used to encourage other children to emulate his spirit of ’sacrifice’.

But we now know that this whole fiesta of violence and incitement was based on a lie. For whatever people think they saw in those 55 seconds, it was not the death of that boy. He was not killed by Israeli bullets; he was not killed at all. At the end of France 2’s famous footage, he was still alive and unharmed. The whole thing was staged, a fantastic piece of play-acting, an elaborate fabrication designed to blacken Israel’s name, and incite the Arab and Muslim mobs to mass murder.

Melanie Phillips has a very detailed account of the entire affair. I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

In addition, Alan Adamson links to some insightful comments about the media trial that ensued, in which France 2 and Charles Enderlin sued Phillipe Karsenty for libel when he exposed the sloppiness, bias, and outright untruths in the original story as reported on France2 by Enderlin.

To understand the al-Dura affair, it helps to keep one thing in mind: In France, you can't own up to a mistake.

Not even if it contributes to intifadas, death, anti-Semitism, and more hatred.

For links (omitted here), see this.

Political Correctness Gone Mad?

From Yahoo News, via BenS,

London, May 26 (ANI): Naming his sniffer dog "Allah" has resulted in in prison officer Chris Langridge, 28, being shifted out of Britain's top Belmarsh high-security jail.

Though Langridge insisted that his labrador was called Ali, and not Allah, a Muslim inmate filed an official complaint against the the dog handler, and he was promptly shifted.

One Belmarsh officer said: "This is political correctness gone mad."

Belmarsh houses some of Britain's most notorious extremist Muslims, including hook-handed Abu Hamza. It also has the highest proportion of Muslim prisoners of any jail in Britain.

"Muslims don't like dogs and it would have been an insult to their religion if the dog had been called Allah, which is sacred to them. It is disgraceful the way the management kow-towed to them despite Chris's denial," The Sun quoted a source, as saying.

I confess. I have not seen Fitna, the movie. Having read some reviews, I don't really care whether I see it. I doubt if it is a very good movie or a very bad movie. But I'd rather read blogs or watch CSI on television.

If you really want to see it, there are lots of sites hosting it even though threats from Muslim extremists caused LiveLeak to remove it from their site.

Nevertheless....

As when the Danish cartoons caused so much violence among Islamic extremists, I am once again appalled and deeply concerned about the clash between their perceptions of their religion and the heretofore sacrosanct western ideals of freedom of speech. I am equally appalled that Canada's embarrassment to the world, Louise Arbour, has once again spoken out against freedom of the press and in favour of appeasing terrorists. Here is a letter my friend Eva sent Ms. Arbour:

I have just read that you have condemned the movie, "Fitna".

Have you seen it? I doubt it. I have seen it because I took advantage of the opportunity to watch it during the short number of hours it was shown on a web-site. I knew that the time would be short and, of course, threats have been made to the lives of the people who posted the film on the internet and they have been obliged to withdraw the film.

If you had seen it, you would know that the film consists of exact extracts from the Koran. Yes, the verses are very bloody and full of hate, but Wilders didn't invent the verses. What he did was to show that there are powerful, murderous sectors of the Islamic world who take the inflammatory, incitement contained in the verses very literally indeed. The verses were accompanied by newsreel shots of the incitement being carried out in the real world, by Islamic militants, not by Mr Wilders. The newsreel shots were originally broadcast on AL Jazeera, the BBC and other media outlets. You didn't complain then, did you?

Aren't you addressing your moralistic fervour in the wrong direction? Aren't you blaming the messenger and not the originators of the worldwide hate, blood, gore and mayhem? Admit, you are terrified of the true violators of human rights and turn your anger to those who point it out. If you were truly concerned with human rights you would speak out against the atrocities committed in the name of Islamic extremism.

From the Trono Star (h/t to BenS):

Person 3: "What happens, what happens at the Parliament?"
Person 1: "We go and kill everybody."
Person 3: "And then what?"
Informant: "And then read about it ..."
Person 1: "We get victory."
Informant: "And take, uh, Paul, um, what's his name ____. Paul loser."
Person 1: "Paul Martin."
Person 3: "Yeah."
Person 1: "Nah, I wish he had won guy."
Informant: "What you . . . what you talkin' about?"
Person 1: "Now it's the other guy, Harper."

Geert Wilders' film Fitna, a critical examination of Islamism and the Quran, is now available on the internet (e.g. see here). For reviews, see this by Eugene Volokh or this from Reuters.

Update: For more, see this, especially see the statment from LiveLeak, which is hosting the video, and see Update III:

I just watched Geert Wilders’ film, Fitna, The Movie. My initial reaction is a yawn. No surprise, of course. ...

Anyone who has seen terrorist propaganda films is familiar with most of the scenes and most of the disgusting conflations of the Quran with acts of violence, murder, kidnapping and anti-semitism. Such behavior has been condemned resoundingly among Muslims. Those that use the Quran for illegitimate and criminal ends should be punished by the fullest extent of the law.

What I’m really wondering: is Wilders’ protesting against Islam or the monopoly extremists already have over grainy, low-budget, youtube videos? The only difference I see is that Wilders plays the best of Western classical music — an insult to the legacy of Tchaikovsky — than death chants.

From Reuters:

AMSTERDAM, March 23 (Reuters) - A U.S.-based web service, which Islam critic and Dutch right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders planned to use to show his film critical of the Koran, said on Saturday that it had inactivated the site due to complaints.

"This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy," the company said on the site www.fitnathemovie.com.

Wilders, who has given few details about his 15-minute film, has said he plans to release 'Fitna' on the Internet before the end of the month after Dutch broadcasters declined to show it. Fitna is a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife". ...

The film is not so much about Muslims as about the Koran, Wilders wrote in a commentary in Dutch daily De Volkskrant on Saturday. He said Fitna was a last warning for the West.

Wilders had previously warned of a "tsunami of Islamisation" in a country home to almost one million Muslims.

I expect there are other, bigger, faster sites willing to host his film, but if not, let me know and I'll figure out a way to do it on one of the sites I use.

The speech by Geert Wilders to Holland's Parliament. A very strong statement condemning the Islamification of Europe.

Reductio Ad Absurdum or is it just too close to the truth to be funny [h/t to BenS]? As usual, click on the image to see it larger and clearer.

It sure looks as if the answers are a resounding "YES" and "LOTS"[h/t to BenS].

A Dutch politician cautioned that the government of the Netherlands was dominated by a "fear of Islam," after it delayed the release of a short film he had made attacking the Koran. In the film, Geert Wilders, the leader of the conservative Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) compares the sacred Muslim text to Hitler's Mein Kampf.

In an open letter to the Dutch De Volkskrant newspaper Wednesday, Wilders claims that the panic shown by politicians and by police served only to prove his point.

Police and politicians were afraid that the film would spark riots and even went so far as to tell Wilders that he would have to leave the country,

"If I had announced that I was going to make a film about the fascist character of the Bible would there have been a crisis meeting of Holland's security forces?" he asked. "Would I have received as many death threats as I have done since announcing I was making a film about the Koran? Of course not."

"The fact that a 10-minute film not yet shown could, according to some, lead to economic boycotts, riots and other horrible things says everything about the nature of Islam. Nothing about me. The cabinet acknowledges with its panicky reaction that Islam is not comparable to Christianity, but is a unique ideology. And this ideology thus demands a separate, unique approach. The Koran film has thus already demonstrated its usefulness."

The Iranian parliament has warned of "extensive repercussions from Muslims throughout the globe" if the film is released.

The film will be broadcast in a number of weeks, the PVV leader said.

Melanie Phillips has a recent item by this same title. Here are some excerpts, dealing with the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem:

... the only reason the Palestinians are suffering from the security barrier is that it was erected solely to stop them from murdering any more Israelis. If they abandoned their terrorism, the barrier would immediately come down.

Such moral blindness apart, it is truly remarkable that these mindless bigots never pause to ask themselves the obvious question. If it really is Israel that is driving out Bethlehem’s Christians, then why isn’t it equally driving out Bethlehem’s Muslims? Same Israeli ‘occupying’ forces; same separation barrier; same hardship, brutality, economic sanctions etc. Are we to assume, perhaps, that Israel has a particular problem with Christians, rather than the Muslims or Arabs in general, that the rest of the world has somehow missed?

(In which case, might they not also scratch their heads at the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians have thrived and multiplied, rising in number from 34,000 in 1948 to nearly 130,000 in 2005?) Might there not be the teensiest, weensiest morsel of a clue in the fact that, whereas a few years ago Bethlehem was mainly Christian, now it is 80 per cent Muslim? Might the fact that such a dramatic change occurred simultaneously with Bethlehem coming under Muslim control after Oslo (thus making all those responsible for that satirically named 'peace process' accessories to the persecution of Bethlehem's Christians) just possibly have something to do with it?

In my student days of the tumultuous 60s and early 70s, I was pretty left of centre, as were most of my friends. One of the reasons I drifted toward the right was that I saw too many instances of people on the left trying to take away freedoms rather than create or enhance freedom.

I didn't realize that so many leftists are also racists. It seemed back then that leftists were the most active in the fight against racism. But not so any more in Europe, according to Flemming Rose. From an article in Reason, reflecting on the Danish cartoon controversy [h/t to BenS]:

I think many people betrayed their own ideals. The history of the left, for instance, is a history of confronting authority — be it religious or political authority — and always challenging religious symbols and figures. In this case, they failed miserably. I think the left is in a deep crisis in Europe because of their lack of willingness to confront the racist ideology of Islamism. They somehow view the Koran as a new version of Das Kapital and are willing to ignore everything else, as long of they continue to see the Muslims of Europe as a new proletariat.

KT recently sent me this, from the Financial Times in which Philip Stephens points out that while the BBC purports to be objective it really isn't because in its moral equivocating equivalencies, it ignores and omits so much that is so wrong with the totalitarian regimes. Here is an excerpt:

The BBC’s omissions, the careful juxtaposition of alleged cause and effect, and the choice of language invite the conclusion that there is moral equivalence between a US presence in the Middle East and the random slaughter of innocents.

No mention is made of the totalitarian nature of al-Qaeda, of its stated plan to tear down every regime in the Arab world and replace them with a single theocratic state. There is not a hint of the jihadis’ proud anti-Semitism and their pledge to destroy Israel. Nor of their abomination of democracy. Instead, the suicide bombers – the BBC never calls them terrorists – are cast implicitly as freedom fighters. What Mr Bin Laden wants, we are invited to conclude, is a better deal for Muslims. If we stopped interfering, all would be well.

Let's face it: Islamic fundamentalist terrorists exist. To ignore that fact or to deny their existence is suicidal. Stephens makes the case really well. I recommend that you rtwt.

Because of the attack on The World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, we in North America tend to think we are on the front line in the war on terror. But Timothy Ash says we're mistaken [h/t to Judith]. Actually we think we're on the front line but we aren't, while the Europeans seem to think they're not on the front line but really are.

To return from the United States to Europe is to travel from a country that thinks it is on the front line of the struggle against jihadist terrorism but is not, to a continent that is on the front line but still has not fully awoken to the fact.

Only a fool would rule out the possibility of another terrorist assault on what is now styled the American homeland, but the fact is that in the six years since 9/11, there have been several major attacks (Madrid, London) and foiled plots in Europe. In the United States, there have been no major attacks and, as far as we know, just a few averted conspiracies. All the evidence suggests that American Muslims are better integrated than those in Western Europe. Last week's arrest of a group apparently planning a 9/11 anniversary attack in Germany suggests that the threat to the heimat is greater than that to the U.S. homeland.

An invisible front line runs through the quiet streets of many a European city or town where there is a significant Muslim population. Whether you live in London or Oxford, Berlin or Neu-Ulm, Madrid or Rotterdam, you are on that front line -- much more than you ever were during the Cold War. This struggle is partly about intelligence and police work to prevent those who have already become fanatical, violent jihadists from blowing us up at St. Pancras or the Gare du Nord. ...

Iraq is a sideshow in this larger struggle. President Bush may claim that Iraq is the front line in the war on terror, but even some of his senior commanders don't believe that. To be sure, the Iraq war has become an added grievance for disaffected Muslims everywhere, although note that Germany's nonparticipation in the Iraq war did not keep it safe. Nor should we avert our eyes from the further uncomfortable truth that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will be celebrated by violent jihadists as a victory.

But the larger truth is that a British soldier returning from Basra to Bradford (a city with a large Muslim population) will be coming from one front line to another. This invisible front line is not a military but a cultural/political one. ...

If we are calm, clear-sighted and resolute, we will eventually win this struggle and remain free. A continent that has rid itself of the horrors of imperialism, fascism and communism will see off this lesser menace too. But it will take many years, and we had better shape up to it.

John Chilton, aka The Emirates Economist, explains that in the United Arab Emirates,

During the fasting month [Ramadan] the demand for food actually rises. Fasting takes place during the daylight hours. Iftar, the daily breaking of the fast at sundown, is a festive event. In homes families gather for large meals that have been under preparation all day. Restaurants offer buffets to serve the crowds at Iftar. I'm speculating, but my guess is that demand rises through a combination of celebration and the inevitable waste of dealing with feeding a crowd all at once.

Check out his full posting for discussions of the UAE's attempt to regulate prices in the face of shifting supply and demand curves.

Salim Mansur is a colleague at The University of Western Ontario. He is also a regular attendee of a group, including BenS and others every Saturday morning on the north end of London, Ontario, in which intense discussions rule the day. He is becoming increasingly well-known throughout the world as a lucid speaker and writer who happens to be a moderate Muslim. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Coalition for Democracy, which has circulated his latest column from the Trono Sun. Here are some choice excerpts:

As Islamist terrorism, however despicable, became mundane occurrence in the daily news cycle, the deafening silence of Muslims -- except for lonely voices of feeble opposition -- has given credence to growing numbers of non-Muslims that Islam is as much a religion of peace as the Klanmen's politics is an expression of multiculturalism [emphasis added].

But there is another side to this abject reality. The Muslim majority's silence is greatly compounded by the appeasement mentality in the West of the mainstream liberal-left media, politicians trolling for ethnic votes and bureaucrats running public institutions....

It is as if more diversity training for public officials, more accommodation of demands made by fundamentalist Muslims, greater willingness to self-flagellate for sins long past of western colonialism, more policing of what might be politically incorrect speech and writing about Islamists or Saudi Arabia's official cult (Wahhabism) of bigotry masquerading as a world religion, will somehow mysteriously translate into taming suicide-bombers and their masters to reciprocate kindly to the liberal-left sensibilities of people in the West.

How morally enfeebled... is the West?

It sure looks as if they are. From the Telegraph [h/t to BenS],

Over the weekend, the BBC was forced to remove a highly offensive message about Jesus from its website... [W]hy had this message been allowed to remain there for a week, despite complaints?

Anti-Muslim comments vanish instantly. Meanwhile, it emerged yesterday that the BBC has refused to allow Casualty [an ER-type programme] to carry a storyline featuring a terrorist attack by a Muslim suicide bomber. The editorial guidelines department decreed that, instead, the terrorists should be animal rights extremists.

The BBC's coverage of Islamic affairs has been unsatisfactory for many years.

In its international and domestic news reporting, the corporation has consistently come across as naïve and partial, rather than sensitive and unbiased. Its reporting of Israel and Palestine, in particular, tends to underplay the hate-filled Islamist ideology that inspires Hamas and other factions, while never giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. (Disgracefully, the BBC is still refusing to publish the Balen Report, which it commissioned to investigate allegations of anti-Israel bias.)

In its coverage of British Muslims, the BBC has been inspired by two laudable aims: to treat their beliefs respectfully; and to avoid stereotyping ordinary Muslims as terrorist supporters. In the process, however, it has done two rather different things.

First, it has presented Islam on its own terms, as if only Muslims had the authority to describe their religion.

Mohammed remains an intensely controversial figure. Yet the BBC shies away from proper historical investigation of "the Prophet", as it insists on calling him.

Second, the BBC has only scratched the surface of one of the biggest news stories of the decade: the penetration of Muslim youth by Islamic supremacist groups.

Indeed, the corporation has even helped this to happen.

Again and again, it has wheeled on Islamic "moderates" who belong to hard-line sects that real moderate Muslims are desperate to stop their children joining.

It has been left to Channel 4 to conduct undercover investigations in radical mosques and to commission a 2007 GFK/NOP opinion poll revealing that almost a quarter of British Muslims believe that the Government helped stage the London bombings of July 7, 2005.

We live in a world in which, although the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, the vast majority of terrorists are Muslim. [emphasis added]...

To ban a storyline featuring Islamic terrorists not only misrepresents reality; it is also an insult to licence-payers whose family, friends or colleagues were blown to pieces on July 7 - and not by animal rights activists.

As Richard Littlejohn writes in The Daily Mail,

"Good morning, this is the news from the BBC. A group of animal rights activists has hijacked four airliners and flown them into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington."

I'm sorry, I'll read that again. "Four members of the anti-vivisection movement have blown themselves up on the London Transport network, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds more."

I don't think so. "Two doctors have attempted a suicide car bomb attack on Glasgow airport. The League Against Cruel Sports has claimed responsibility."

As the late Bill Deedes might have said: shurely shome mishtake.

But it all makes about as much sense as the BBC's decision to can an episode of Casualty which starts with a young Muslim blowing himself up in a crowded bus station - and rewrite it so that the bombing is carried out by animal rights extremists.

The Casualty plotline was rejected by the Beeb's "editorial and ethical standards" commissars, who were worried that it was stereotyping young Muslims as terrorists.

The BBC likes to boast about the gritty reality of its dramas. But if that were the case, they'd have stuck with the original script.

In real life, it's Muslims committing all the terrorist atrocities in Britain these days.

That's not to say that all Muslims are terrorists, far from it, but to pretend that the bunny liberation brigade are bombing bus stations is preposterous. ...

I would love to see a major political party advocate the abolition of the BBC. Or at the very least a major cutback in their funding.

From Melanie Phillips:

People in Britain are shocked — shocked! — that medical doctors are suspected of involvement in the al Qaeda terrorist attacks on Britain over the past few days. The shock reflects the deep unreality of public discourse up till now. People have persisted in believing that Islamic terrorism could be explained by poverty, deprivation, alienation and so forth, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Now they are horrified that doctors, whose calling is to save life, can be bent on mass murder.

The capacity of the human mind to delude itself never ceases to amaze. How can such educated individuals be killers? people exclaim. Have such people really leaned nothing from history? Have they forgotten the Nazis, forgotten Dr Mengele, forgotten that the genocide of the Jews was carried out by people who delighted in Goethe and Mozart? Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden’s number two, is a paediatrician. Yet he is responsible for the deliberate mass murder of thousands of people.

... If we don’t understand, even now, that what we are facing is a religious war, a jihad against the unbeliever and backsliding Muslims across the world we cannot possibly hope to defend ourselves against it.

... The terrorism we face is a jihad carried out in the name of Islam, mandated by the principal religious authorities in the world of Islam and drawing on theological concepts in Islam. That doesn’t mean all Muslims go along with it; many do not, and many are indeed its victims. But to deny that it is a war which draws its authority from Islamic precepts is to deny the truth. [emphasis added]

Addendum #1: For more, see this [h/t to Jack].

Addendum #2: I like Rondi's observation about these physicians:

I believe their oath went something like this: First, do no harm...unless it's in the name of Jihad.
Sheesh.

[h/t to JC] from the Gulf News:

'Cover up or we will cut your throats'

Gaza City: An Islamic group threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they don't wear strict Islamic dress, frightening reporters and signaling a further shift toward extremism in the Gaza Strip.

The threat to "cut throats from vein to vein" was delivered by the Swords of Truth, a fanatical group that has previously claimed responsibility for bombing Internet cafes and music shops. The new threat was the first time the organization targeted a specific group of people.

On Sunday, around 50 anchors and employees from government-run Palestine TV, mostly women wearing Muslim headscarves, marched from the station's offices in Gaza City toward the office of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to protest the threat.

Most of the 15 women broadcasters on government-run Palestine TV wear headscarves. But they also wear make-up and Western clothing — not considered strictly observant by extremists.

The Swords of Truth issued the statement Friday in an e-mail to news organizations.

"We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation," the statement said. The group also accused the women broadcasters of being "without any ... shame or morals."

I don't know what started my thinking about this question, but it was probably this article in TownHall by Mary Grabar, which decries the lack of freedom for women under Islamic fundamentalism (and, I would add, much other religious fundamentalism)[h/t to Judith]. I was picturing Muslim women not leaving the house much; and, when they did, being covered from head to toe and hence unable to use their bodies to produce vitamin D from exposure to the sun.

Shortly after reading that article, I read this posting from Craig Newmark, which points to potential evidence that vitamin D plays a major role in reducing the risk of cancer, and I wondered whether Muslim women (or anyone else for that matter) who wear clothing that covers all but a slit for their eyes any time they are outside have a higher risk of, or show more signs of, the symptoms associated with vitamin D deficiency. Or do they adjust for the lack of sunlight by altering their diets to get more vitamin D?

From the WSJ Opinion Journal [h/t AlanP]:

JAKARTA, Indonesia--Suppose for a moment that the single most influential religious leader in the Muslim world openly says "I am for Israel." Suppose he believes not only in democracy but in the liberalism of America's founding fathers. Suppose that, unlike so many self-described moderate Muslims who say one thing in English and another in their native language, his message never alters. Suppose this, and you might feel as if you've descended into Neocon Neverland.

In fact, you have arrived in Jakarta and are sitting in the small office of an almost totally blind man of 66 named Abdurrahman Wahid. A former president of Indonesia, he is the spiritual leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), an Islamic organization of some 40 million members. Indonesians know him universally as Gus Dur, a title of affection and respect for this descendant of Javanese kings. In the U.S. and Europe he is barely spoken of at all--which is both odd and unfortunate, seeing as he is easily the most important ally the West has in the ideological struggle against Islamic radicalism.

I certainly hope his views and the positions of his supporters are not just wishful thinking.

Melanie Phillips is reporting this story from the wire services:

Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons - such as the Holocaust and the Crusades - because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has found. The way the slave trade is taught can lead white children - as well as black pupils - to feel alienated, according to the study by the Historical Association. And a lack of factual knowledge among teachers, particularly in primary schools, is leading to ’shallow'’ lessons on emotive and difficult subjects.

Some teachers have even dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons over fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic reactions in class. And one school avoided teaching the Crusades because its ‘balanced'’ handling of the topic would directly contradict what was taught in local mosques.

The report, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, said: ‘Teachers and schools avoid emotive and controversial history for a variety of reasons, some of which are well-intentioned. ‘Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship.'’

Phylis Chester wrote this for the TimesOnLine. It is (or should be) devastating if you think freedom is important:

Once I was held captive in Kabul. I was the bride of a charming, seductive and Westernised Afghan Muslim whom I met at an American college. The purdah I experienced was relatively posh but the sequestered all-female life was not my cup of chai — nor was the male hostility to veiled, partly veiled and unveiled women in public.

When we landed in Kabul, an airport official smoothly confiscated my US passport. “Don’t worry, it’s just a formality,” my husband assured me. I never saw that passport again. I later learnt that this was routinely done to foreign wives — perhaps to make it impossible for them to leave. Overnight, my husband became a stranger. The man with whom I had discussed Camus, Dostoevsky, Tennessee Williams and the Italian cinema became a stranger. He treated me the same way his father and elder brother treated their wives: distantly, with a hint of disdain and embarrassment.

In our two years together, my future husband had never once mentioned that his father had three wives and 21 children. Nor did he tell me that I would be expected to live as if I had been reared as an Afghan woman. I was supposed to lead a largely indoor life among women, to go out only with a male escort and to spend my days waiting for my husband to return or visiting female relatives, or having new (and very fashionable) clothes made.

In America, my husband was proud that I was a natural-born rebel and free thinker. In Afghanistan, my criticism of the treatment of women and of the poor rendered him suspect, vulnerable. He mocked my horrified reactions. But I knew what my eyes and ears told me. I saw how poor women in chadaris were forced to sit at the back of the bus and had to keep yielding their place on line in the bazaar to any man.

I saw how polygamous, arranged marriages and child brides led to chronic female suffering and to rivalry between co-wives and half-brothers; how the subordination and sequestration of women led to a profound estrangement between the sexes — one that led to wife-beating, marital rape and to a rampant but hotly denied male “prison”-like homosexuality and pederasty; how frustrated, neglected and uneducated women tormented their daughter-in-laws and female servants; how women were not allowed to pray in mosques or visit male doctors (their husbands described the symptoms in their absence). [emphasis added]

There is much more in the original article.

Also, see this, which I posted over a year and a half ago. Just because apologists for Islamic fundamentalists ignore this problem, that does not mean the problem will go away quickly or easily.

And speaking of feminism and Islam, do not forget the amazing story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, summarized here by Mona Charen, and here in one of my earlier postings, which includes several links to her autobiography, The Caged Virgin, and other items about her.

[The recent] bombings in Thailand remind us that this is not a struggle between Islamism and the West. It's a struggle between Islamism and everybody. Thailand, India, Russia, China--all these countries face terrorism from radical Muslims. This is evidence that it is not U.S. foreign policy or Western imperialism that is at the root of Islamism. Certainly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Guantanamo Bay help deliver recruits to the Islamist cause. But Islamism as an ideology goes far beyond grievances with George W. Bush. [emphasis added]

That's from Jordan Smith, writing at The Western Standard. The apologist-appeasers and critics of the West need to keep this point in mind.

Nick Cohen has had an epiphany and is distressed that so many left-wing people cannot see the dangers of fundamentalist Islam, especially as it is manifested by extremists and terrorists. From a review by Peter Obern and cited in The Guardian:

The collapse of socialism in the Eighties and the rise of what he calls Islamic fascism have changed everything. Cohen asserts that the left's hatred of America means it is no longer able to tell the difference between right and wrong. It suffers from the syndrome identified by Bertrand Russell 80 years ago, a belief in the superior virtue of the oppressed. This dogma has led left-wing writers and activists to make fellow cause with bigots, murderers, terrorists, gay-bashers, women-haters and the most dangerous kind of anti-semite.

Cohen skilfully shows how the left perversely sets its moral compass by the United States. When America refused to invade Iraq in 1991, it faced charges of collusion with a totalitarian regime. When it did go in some 12 years later, it was accused of taking part in an imperial adventure. For the left, whatever America does is by definition evil. Cohen is at his best as a painstakingly forensic reporter and he marshals his evidence with flair and rigour. Chomsky's erratic public career, including a brief spell as apologist for Pol Pot, gets the treatment it probably deserves. The section on how the Socialist Workers Party (a marginal organisation taken with perplexing seriousness by Cohen) evolved from a half-baked Marxist sub-group into a repository for Muslim grievance is very nicely done.

He is at his very best when he exposes the dishonesty of the liberal press. Here he is on the Independent's report of the murder of the American green party activist Marla Ruzicka by an Islamic suicide bomber in Baghdad in April 2005: 'The piece was headlined, "The senseless death of the woman who fought George Bush", which read as if her murder wasn't a premeditated act by a religious fanatic from the ultra-right but George Bush's fault. Her legacy "should put many politicians in America, and in our own country, to shame," the Independent continued, while carefully - and shamefully - avoiding criticism of her killer.'

But not everyone likes the book or even sees much value in it. As you might expect, The Guardian quotes others who detested it, which pushes it to number one on my list of what to order next.

Rule of thumb: if leftist reviewers of The Guardian don't like a book, it is probably very good.

. .

Several years ago, a colleague told me that in many developing countries, when a person gets a job, suddenly dozens of relatives show up and expect to be supported by that person. But because this reaction is expected by possible job-seekers, it amounts to a fully anticipated tax that, not surprisingly, deters people from seeking reasonably paying jobs in the legitimate market, forcing more work into the underground economy.

Here is another effect [via Judith]. A Saudi female physician is being forced to divorce her husband, in part so her family can arrange her marriage to a partner of their choosing, and in part because they are dependent on her financial support.

The case of Rania Albou-Enin, a 27-year-old Saudi physician has caused particular concern. In her last month of pregnancy, she is anxiously awaiting an appeals court decision in a case of forced divorce brought by he father.

Her husband, Saud Al-Khaledi, is being held in a police jail in Alkhobar, according to her lawyer Ibrahim Al-Behairi. Rania, who had been paying all her family's bills, has claimed she was beaten by one of her brothers and that the family brought the case to ensure they would not lose their main breadwinner.

Update: thanks to John Chilton for reminding me about this piece by Tyler Cowen, which sets out the family tax on employment. Be sure to read both the piece and all the informative examples provided in the comments!

I used this title before, and here is further evidence, provided by Stephen Pollard:

A BBC mole has sent me this briefing for BBC staff from the BBC's Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, on what lies ahead this year.

It’s all too predictable. The "fragmentation" of Palestinian society has, in Mr Bowen’s view, nothing to do with the Palestinians and everything to do with Israel (“the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government”). Indeed, Israel is to blame for almost everything. The Palestinians are not responsible for anything; Israel is the culpable party.

He has contempt for every Israeli politician he mentions; Ehud Barak, for instance, is described as having killed "various Palestinians", written as if he did so for the sake of it.

If this is what passes for high-level analysis at the BBC, is it any wonder its reporting is so poisonous?

Pollard posted the entire memo at his site. It is absolutely appalling. And be sure to read the comments there as well.

Would this be the result? (from Denis MacEoin, via Judith):

Here is a letter I have just sent to The Independent about Mary in Bethlehem.
Denis MacEoin

Dear Sir,
Johann Hari asks: 'What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today?' The truth is that she would not last twenty-four hours. Hamas activists would kill her and Joseph for the crime of being Jews. If she concealed her religious identity, morality brigades would gun them down as adulterers, or her own family would polish her off in an 'honour' killing for having become pregnant outside wedlock. If she escaped that, Muslim radicals, faithful to Qur'anic doctrine would put her to death as a heretic for claiming to be the Mother of God, and would execute the infant Jesus for his pretension to be the Son of God. The three Magi would be beheaded as star worshippers, the shepherds hanged as apostates from Judaism (a crime under shari'a law), and the angel Gabriel sent back to heaven for re-training in Islamic theology. The reality of life in the West Bank and Gaza has as much to do with unreformed Islamic conservatism as it has with Israel's repeatedly thwarted attempts to achieve peace and goodwill in equal measure for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Denis MacEoin
Newcastle upon Tyne

It appears that the RCMP incorrectly informed the US that Maher Arar was a suspected terrorist with the result that he was seized while in the US and deported to Syria, where he was tortured. As a consequence there was an inquiry into the RCMP's actions. From the Canadian Coalition for Democracies,

Certain RCMP officers made a serious mistake. The government has recognized the fallibility of its security forces by undertaking an independent investigation into how such a mistake was made. We cannot expect a democracy to be perfect, but we can expect it to recognize its mistakes, to compensate the injured parties, and to take concrete steps to prevent a recurrence.

But who will hold inquiries into the torture being committed in Syria? Where are the UN resolutions condemning Syria for its violation of human rights?

The most important lesson to be learned from Mr. Arar’s case is not the shortcomings of our own security services, but the barbarism of our radical Islamist enemies who brutalized an innocent Canadian. The real lesson is the treatment of Bill Sampson, a Canadian tortured and sentenced to death by beheading in Saudi Arabia. The real lesson is the torture and murder of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi under Iran's chief prosecutor, Said Mortazavi, who was subsequently welcomed at the inaugural session of the UN Human Rights Council.

Also see this.

Before you get all apologetic and guilt-ridden about past Western imperialism and all the harms it caused, keep in mind that Mongolian, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Islamic imperialism have all been pretty virulent in their day. In particular, you might want to take a brief look at this article by Greg Richards [h/t to Judith]. Here are some choice excerpts about past Islamic imperialism:

At the death of Muhammad in 632, the realm of Islam consisted of northwest Arabia. To the north and west is Christian Byzantium, to the east is Persia. Neither of these were Arab; neither of them were Muslim. But within 100 years, the territory from Persia to Spain was controlled by Muslim Arabs. How did this happen? Egypt, for instance, was not in 632 an Arab country. It was of a different ethnic stock and had been in existence for 3600 years.

What happened was conquest, one of the most impressive in history. Here is a very brief timeline:

1. 630 – Muhammad conquers Mecca from his base in Medina.

2. 632 – Muhammad dies in Medina. Islam controls the Hijaz.

3. 636 – conquest of Syria. Victory in battle over the Byzantines gives Syria and the surrounding lands, all Christian – including Palestine and Iraq – to the Caliph.

4. 636 – 642 Persia conquered by the Muslims.

5. 642 – conquest of Egypt. The Arab/Muslim conquest moves west along North Africa into hitherto non-Arab/non-Muslim lands.

First Muslim invasion of Europe: from the West

6. 711 – Tariq (after whom Gibraltar is named: the Rock of Tariq – Gib al-Tariq) invades Spain. The Muslim conquest moves into Europe.

7. 718 – conquest of Spain complete.

8. 732 – Muslim invasion of France is stopped at the Battle of Poitiers (also called the Battle of Tours). This is regarded as one of the turning points in world history. The Franks, under their leader Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne), defeat the Muslims and turn them back out of France....

Second Muslim invasion of Europe: from the East

9. 1453 – Muslim Turks conquer Christian Constantinople and make it the seat of the Caliphate

10. 1456 – Muslims conquer Athens

11. 1478 – Serbia, Bosnia, Crimea come under Ottoman control

12. 1480 – Otranto in Italy taken by the Ottomans

13. 1529 – Vienna besieged by the Ottomans

14. 1683 – Battle of Vienna. The Turks are defeated by the Polish king Jan Sobieski leading a combined Polish-Lithuanian army. This is the high-water-mark of Turkish/Muslim conquest of Europe from the East.

There's much more in the article.

For those of you who missed this in the comment to my earlier posting on corruption, I am reproducing it here [with thanks to Acad Ronin]:

The following paper: Sanholtz, Wayne, and Rein Taageprera. 2005. Corruption, Culture and Communism. International Review of Sociology (Jan), has two major findings. First, the effect of culture on "elite integrity" is such that the rank, from highest to lowest, is European Protestant, European Catholic, East Asian, Orthodox, and Muslim. Second, if a country is Communist, or has a Communist past, the effect is to cause a downward shift in elite integrity for all five cultural backgrounds. The absolute downward shift is strongest for European Protestant countries because they start out at high levels, and least for Muslim countries, because they start at relatively low levels.

S&T go on to link Elite Integrity to values on two dimensions, Survival/Self-Expression and Traditional/Secular-Rational. Though they don't explore the issue further, one can assume that poor countries are likely to cluster towards the survival and traditional ends of the two value continua.

From the UN Watch,

As everyone expected, the one-sided resolution—sponsored by the Arab and Islamic members and automatically supported by China, Cuba and the like—was adopted by a strong majority, with 32 in favor, 8 opposing and 6 abstentions. Israel was condemned for the "willful killing" of civilians, and yet another UN "high level fact-finding mission" will be disptached to the region.

What matters most, however, is that the leading democracies refused to support today's charade. With the help of our campaign's swift action, not a single European Union country voted to support the anti-Israel text. This determines how intelligent public opinion the world over will interpret today's events.

In addition to Canada, there was the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and the United Kingdom who all voted "No" to the one-sided condemnation. (The U.S. and Australia firmly spoke against it as well, but neither is currently a voting member of the 47-nation Council.) Although France merely abstained, this was nevertheless an improvement from their "Yes" vote last week at the Security Council.

Obsession is a very powerful documentary about the strength and growth of radical Islam throughout the world. Here are some brief descriptions of it, courtesy of Melanie Phillips:

[Obsession] should be made compulsory viewing for every politician and pundit who clings to the misguided belief that all we face is terrorism rooted in various grievances around the world. It is the single most powerful and terrifying public exposition of the fact that a global Islamic jihad is now being waged from Bali to Istanbul, from Chechnya to Madrid, from Morocco to Manhattan, from Thailand to Bloomsbury – and that the world that is under attack is deeply in denial about what it is facing.

Some of the footage in this film leaves you speechless. The Shatat series on al Manar TV, for example, transmitted into millions of Muslim homes around the world, which purports to show a Jew kidnapping a Christian child and slitting his throat in order to use the blood to make Passover matzahs. This of course was the medieval blood libel against the Jews which caused unspeakable savagery to be meted out against them on the basis of a monstrous lie; and here is this same abominable lie, animated for TV and thus doubtless convincing millions of Muslims of the diabolical nature of the Jews. Just as horrifying are the children seen being indoctrinated to hate Jews and Americans, to kill them and to die. A three year old girl, asked why she doesn’t like the Jews, answers ‘because they are apes and pigs’ (a common depiction) as was said by ‘our God in the Koran’. The images of these young children, with their sweet and innocent faces, being programmed to hate and to kill are unspeakable.

This is a film about fanaticism. It does not make easy viewing. It destroys the fiction that Islamic terror is the product of ‘grievances’ about specific conflicts. It demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is instead the product of fanatical, hysterical, paranoid, medieval hatred, bigotry and power-mania. What it shows above all is that we are up against an ideology which turns millions towards madness and savagery – but we are totally failing to combat that ideology. Indeed, we don’t even recognise it for what it is. This film goes a long way towards opening our eyes. [emphasis added]

If you want to see the documentary, you can go to this website [YouTube]to download the segments (but I'm not sure how long they will be available here) [h/t to Judith]:

1. Obsession: Radical Islam Part 1- There's a Problem
   We can pretend it doesnt exist, but that wont help. We can pretend it's not our problem, but That wont help either. It's 1938 and Hitler wants the Sudetenland. Do we give it to him...Again?
2. Obsession: Radical Islam Part 2 - The Culture of Jihad
   Part 2 of the landmark Documentary film...How Radical Islamist Clerics are imbuing Arab Culture with Jihad
3. Obsession: Radical Islam Part 3 - The Media of Terrorism
   Part 3 of the Documentary. Peeling another layer off the onion. Arab Muslims, Ex-Muslims and Historians delve into the Radical Islamic influence on the Media.
4. Obsession: Radical Islam Part 4- Jihad in the West
   Part 4 Of the landmark documentary film.
5. Obsession: Radical Islam Part 5 - The culture of Denial
   The Culture of denial, What we see and hear is what it is...Not something else. It is what it is.
6. Obsession: Radical Islam Part 6 - To Their Own Children!
   Part 6: The worst of the Terrorist Propaganda, and Hatred Is Drected at the Minds of Their Own Children. "Cameras are there for the whole world to see it, but the world Refuses to see it." - Walid Shoebat
7. Obsession: Radical Islam Part 7 - Hitler and the Mufti
   Part [7]: Haj Amin al-Hussieni The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Yaser Arafat's Uncle, Broadcast weekly from Berlin on Arab Radio, to the Middle East. He was put in charge of recruiting 3 Divisions of Muslim SS. They were His Divisions, and the Arab Muslims were Allied with the Nazi Axis in WWII.
8. Obsession: Radical Islam Part 8 - We've Been Here Before...
   The Final part of the documentary movie "Obsession" What the West needs to know about Radical Islam. What have we learned? If history has taught us anything, it is this: Those who do not learn from it, are destined to repeat it. We ignored the signs in the 1930s. Hitler broke treaties, and Pacts, and we did nothing to stop him. Last week N Korea, an Allie of Iran, detonated and Atomic Bomb. Iran is trying to build one of their own. Just like Hitler said he was going to wipe out the Jews in 1938, today, Ahmadinejad says he's going to wipe out Israel. Ahmadinejad says he want to hasten the return of the Imam Mahdi, and the end of days, by instigating a calamity...We ignore him at our Peril. "We have not succeeded in making our children love life. We have taught them how to die for the sake of Allah, but we haven't taught them how to Live for the sake of Allah" - Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari-(Former Dean of Islamic Law, Qatar University)

For more information about the film, see this.

One of the comments I often read or hear when people are discussing the Islamic terrorism is that after all, didn't the West start it all with the Crusades? Here is a strong argument that no, the West didn't start it all with the Crusades (excerpts here, read the whole thing; h/t to Judith):

Doesn’t the present violence ... have its roots in the Crusades’ brutal and unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In other words, aren’t the Crusades really to blame?...

Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression — an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed’s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.

That is what gave birth to the Crusades.

To be honest, I really doubt that Christianity was wonderfully tolerant in the first 1000 years or so after it became a dominant, gubmnt-sponsored religion. So in the end, I don't much care who started what. I do care, though, that the Crusades not be used as an excuse for terrorism today.

From last Sunday's Washington Post [h/t to Scoop]:

When dealing with a "disobedient wife," a Muslim man has a number of options. First, he should remind her of "the importance of following the instructions of the husband in Islam." If that doesn't work, he can "leave the wife's bed." Finally, he may "beat" her, though it must be without "hurting, breaking a bone, leaving blue or black marks on the body and avoiding hitting the face, at any cost."

Such appalling recommendations, drawn from the book "Woman in the Shade of Islam" by Saudi scholar Abdul Rahman al-Sheha, are inspired by as authoritative a source as any Muslim could hope to find: a literal reading of the 34th verse of the fourth chapter of the Koran, An-Nisa , or Women. "[A]nd (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them," reads one widely accepted translation.

The notion of using physical punishment as a "disciplinary action," as Sheha suggests, especially for "controlling or mastering women" or others who "enjoy being beaten," is common throughout the Muslim world. Indeed, I first encountered Sheha's work at my Morgantown mosque, where a Muslim student group handed it out to male worshipers after Friday prayers one day a few years ago.

Verse 4:34 retains a strong following, even among many who say that women must be treated as equals under Islam. Indeed, Muslim scholars and leaders have long been doing what I call "the 4:34 dance" — they reject outright violence against women but accept a level of aggression that fits contemporary definitions of domestic violence.

Western leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, have recently focused on Muslim women's veils as an obstacle to integration in the West. But to me, it is 4:34 that poses the much deeper challenge of integration. How the Muslim world interprets this passage will reveal whether Islam can be compatible with life in the 21st century. As Hadayai Majeed, an African American Muslim who had opened a shelter in Atlanta to serve Muslim women, put it, "If it's okay for me to be a savage in my home, it's okay for me to be a savage in the world."

Not long after I picked up the free Saudi book, Mahmoud Shalash, an imam from Lexington, Ky., stood at the pulpit of my mosque and offered marital advice to the 100 or so men sitting before him. He repeated the three-step plan, with "beat them" as his final suggestion. Upstairs, in the women's balcony, sat a Muslim friend who had recently left her husband, who she said had abused her; her spouse sat among the men in the main hall.

At the sermon's end, I approached Shalash. "This is America," I protested. "How can you tell men to beat their wives?"

"They should beat them lightly," he explained. "It's in the Koran."

He was doing the dance.

... Meanwhile, shelters created for Muslim women in Chicago and New York have begun to preach zero tolerance regarding the "disciplining" of women — a position that should be universal by now. And some Muslim men appear to grasp the gravity of this issue. In Northern Virginia, for instance, an imam organized a group called Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence — though it still endorses the "tapping" of a wife as a "friendly" reminder, an organizer said.

Yet even these small advances, if we can call them such, face an uphill battle against the Saudi oil money propagating literalist interpretations of the Koran here in the United States and worldwide.

Mark Steyn has a new book out, America Alone. Fortunately, it appears that with the conservatives leading the Canadian gubmnt, America is no longer alone. And despite the efforts of the Guardian and the BBC, the Brits still provide some support for the US. The book is a scathing indictment of the West's inability to deal with Islamic terrorism.

This site provides an excerpt from his book. [h/t to Scoop] Here are some choice sections:

[N]ow, instead of the quaintly parochial terrorist movements of yore, we have the first globalized insurgency.

As a bleary Dean Martin liked to say, in mock bewilderment, at the start of his stage act: "How did all these people get in my room?" How did all these jihadists get rooms in Miami and Portland and Montreal? How did we come to breed suicide bombers not just in Gaza but in Yorkshire?

In the globalized pre-9/11 world, we in the West thought in terms of nations - the Americans, the French, the Chinese - and, insofar as we considered transnational groups, were obsessed mostly with race. Religion wasn't really on the radar.

So an insurgency that lurks within a religion automatically has a global network. And you don't need "deep cover": You can hang your shingle on Main Street and we won't even notice it. And when we do - as we did on 9/11 - we still won't do anything about it, because, well, it's a religion, and modern man is disinclined to go after any faith except perhaps his own.

... There are no "card-carrying members" of this enemy: That's what makes them an ever-bigger threat: You don't need to plant sleepers. If you've got a big pool of manpower and a big idea that's just out there all the time - 24/7, flickering away invitingly like a neon sign in the Western darkness - that's enough to cause a big heap of trouble.

.... Who's Abdurahman Alamoudi? He's the guy who until 1998 certified Muslim chaplains for the United States military, under the aegis of his Saudi-funded American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council. In 1993, at an American military base, at a ceremony to install the first imam in the nation's armed forces, it was Mr. Alamoudi who presented him with his new insignia of a silver crescent star.

He's also the fellow who helped devise the three-week Islamic awareness course in California public schools, in the course of which students adopt Muslim names, wear Islamic garb, give up candy and TV for Ramadan, memorize suras from the Koran, learn that "jihad" means "internal personal struggle," profess the Muslim faith, and recite prayers that begin "In the name of Allah," etc.

OH, and, aside from his ster ling efforts on behalf of multicultural education, Alamoudi was also an adviser on Islamic matters to Hillary Clinton.

And it turns out he's a bagman for terrorists.

Infiltration-wise, I would say that's pretty good. The desk jockeys at the CIA insist, oh no, it would be impossible for them to get any of their boys inside al Qaeda. But the other side has no difficulty setting their chaps up in the heart of the U.S. military, and the U.S. education system, and the U.S. political establishment, and the offices of U.S. senators and former First Ladies.

. .

Tashbih Sayyed is the Editor in Chief of Pakistan Today and The Muslim World Today. His answer to the question, "Why is the world afraid of Muslims?" appears here. This is a brief excerpt:

The Judeo-Christian World is on the defensive and has chosen to lay down its arms at the feet of the religious fascists instead of standing up for its ideals of openness, tolerance, liberty and freedom.

As an American Muslim who grew up loving his religion, I do not feel any happiness, nor do I see anything positive in realizing that the world now fears Muslims.

In fact, I am very saddened and deeply troubled by these developments. I am very angry at the radicals within my faith who have used my religion as a platform to espouse hate, perpetrate acts of violence and create fear within the Judeo-Christian world. ...

I am deeply concerned that fear of Muslims will result in a serious revulsion of Islam in western society. Contrary to the claims by the political Islamist establishment that Islam is a peaceful faith, their deeds convey just the opposite - there is nothing peaceful about what is happening in the Muslim communities today or what Islamists are doing in the world. The faith that the radical Islamists promotes is one of "perpetual outrage." In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "I have judged other's religions by their lives, for it is from our lives and not our words that our religions must be read."

Salim Mansur was a recipient of the Stephen Wise award, presented in Los Angeles last month. Here is a slightly edited version of his acceptance speech:

In three weeks the world will mark, most likely by ignoring the occasion, the 25th anniversary of the murder of Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt. The forces of bigotry and hate that overwhelmed President Sadat on that morning of October 6, 1981 – men with poison in their hearts who sprayed machine-gun bullets into him and men who spoke from pulpits in mosques in praise of the killers – are bent on making an inferno of our world.

President Sadat was murdered for scaling the walls of enmity separating Arabs and Israelis, Jews and Muslims, and embracing his one-time foe with warmth and without recrimination. He was a martyr in the cause of making peace, of seeking reconciliation between two people who both revere Abraham as their patriarchal ancestor. My own efforts since before 9/11 have been to keep reminding ourselves – Jews, Christians, Muslims – our quarrels and enmity are of our making as we pervert what comes from the God of Abraham Whom we worship in a manner of our own choosing. I do not know any more than anyone else in this room or anywhere else on our planet if there truly will come a time when peace will reign on earth, when lambs will share fearlessly the company of lions, when swords will be turned into ploughshares, when men and women and children will wait breathlessly for the promised Messiah of Abraham’s God to arrive and rule before the end of time. My faith tells me such an eventuality will come to pass, Insha Allah (God-willing). But I do know – my head and my heart tell me – none of this will occur unless Muslims become reconciled with Jews, repent for wrongs done in thoughts and deeds, and seek reconciliation as President Sadat did even as he walked to his death.

I end with the memorable words of President Sadat from his epochal speech to the Israeli Knesset in the afternoon of November 20, 1977, for these words express all that I cherish as I strive to walk in the path that our prophets illuminated for us with their lives. President Sadat concluded his address saying, “I repeat with Zacharia: Love, right and justice.” Then he said, “From the holy Koran I quote the following verses: ‘We believe in God and in what has been revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the 13 Jewish tribes. And in the books given to Moses and Jesus and the prophets from their Lord, Who made no distinction between them.’ So we agree, Salam Aleikum – peace be upon you.”

We are fortunate to have Salim Mansur as a colleague at The University of Western Ontario.

From this source [h/t to Judith]:

Who killed 80,000 Muslims recently, imprisoned thousands more and brutally occupied and de-facto annexed their country? Israel? no. USA? Try again. Remarkably, no UN debate ensued. If Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International made a fuss about it, nobody noticed.

Please check the original source to see what country has been responsible for all this anti-Islam behaviour. I just love the conclusion there:

Something to think about, for those who insist on the fiction of international law.

Today's Clement editorial cartoon [h/t to Jack; apologies for no link] in the National Post shows angry young men (presumably radical Muslims) carrying signs that say, "Death to Mozart", reacting to the situation described here.

That's pretty funny. But here are some pertinent facts that make it even funnier:

The production — which was also mounted by Deutsche Oper in 2003 — is intended to shock. Mozart never included the severed-heads scene. Indeed, Idomeneo's original libretto never even mentions Islam or Mohammed. But when Idomeneo, the king of Crete, breaks a vow to Poseidon and the sea god sends a monster to the island as punishment, the director of the Berlin production chose to have the title character slay the monster, then stagger on stage carrying the four heads and proclaim, "The gods are dead!"

Such post-modern revisionism of classic texts has become trite. We might well object to this one on artistic grounds. Still the decision whether to mount it or not should be left to tastes of the Deutsche Oper and its audience, rather than the possible rage of a mob. [emphasis added]

The editorial continues in a scathing tone:
he German press agency DPA said Berlin police so far had recorded no direct threat to the opera company, although one patron had passed on an anonymous concern about security. And when the company's directors asked police for a security report, police advised that the possibility of "disturbances" could "not be excluded." All of which makes the company's decision worse: It is crumpling in the face of a potential threat, not even an imminent danger.

When artists, writers, politicians and even ordinary citizens start to self-limit their basic rights to avoid provoking the irrational anger of Muslim street protestors, then rights to such things as free assembly, thought and speech become meaningless. What would Solzhenitsyn, Sharansky and Havel — men who spoke their minds in the face of totalitarian repression — think of such pusillanimity in the face of a tyrannical ideology?

Fortunately even most German politicians are disgusted with the cancellation.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, who as interior minister is Germany's top security official, told a news conference, "This is crazy ... I will not accept that there will be violence because people don't like some pictures [or images on stage]." He said non-Muslims have gone too far in accommodating Muslim sensibilities.

Peter Ramsauer, chairman of the Bavarian Christian Social Union caucus in the German parliament, went further still. He called the cancellation decision "pure cowardice."

Update: Also see Rondi's comments here and here.

Here is an important piece of information and analysis from Salim Mansur, an award-winning moderate Muslim. In this piece, he says,

[I]nstead of dignifying outrage by striving to find any merit in what has led to the burning of Pope effigies in the Arab-Muslim world, I am reminded of another conversation worth recalling that took place in Baghdad in 1258.

It occurred following the fall of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire and the seat of the Islamic caliphate, to Mongol armies led by Hulaqu Khan. The conqueror demanded eminent Muslim scholars of the time present themselves to him in Baghdad, and then he posed to them the question: "Which is preferable (according to your Islamic laws) the disbelieving ruler who is just or the Muslim ruler who is unjust?"

The assembled scholars sat in stunned silence, aghast at the question posed. Then one among them — history records a man by the name of Riazuddin Ali ibn Tawas — arose and signed a reply which read: "The disbelieving ruler who is just."

There is much here to pause and reflect upon in the exchange between a conqueror and a scholar that occurred in Baghdad over eight centuries ago.

One thing is certain from observing the contemporary Arab-Muslim world, it suffers from an excess of Muslim rulers who are unjust and religious leaders who never understood that faith without reason is as arid and life-denying as deserts of inner Arabia.

From the NYTimes [reg req'd]:

In a class on Islamic history at the Hartford Seminary some years back, the students were discussing a saying ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad that translates roughly as, “Whenever God wants the destruction of a people, he makes a woman their leader.”

The professor, Ingrid Mattson, suggested that the phrase should be analyzed in its historical context when Islamic societies consisted largely of tribal raiding parties. A male Saudi student contended that all such sayings were sacred and not to be challenged, the argument growing so heated that he stormed out of the classroom. Professor Mattson stood her ground, as was her style.

... Like other mainstream Muslims, she struggles with how best to convince people that the faith does not condone terrorist violence. She detects what she calls “Muslim fatigue” among North Americans weary both of the extremists who use the religion to justify their attacks and of the moderates who seem powerless to influence them.

“The sense I have from Americans is that they don’t want to hear Muslims talking about Islam anymore,” she said. “They just want us to do something to stop causing all these problems in their lives.”

I expect she is right.

The Pope quoted something about Muhammad and Islam that was said by some emperor 700 years ago (give or take). And then when people called him on it, he said, essentially,

If what I said upset you, I'm sorry, but I won't apologize for having said it. After all, those weren't my words. I was just quoting some other guy. My views are different.

My take is that he is, indeed sorry that Muslims and others reacted so strongly, but he sees that as their fault, not his. He is right about that. I also think the Pope's views are not very different AT ALL from what he quoted.

Why would the Pope quote that material? Because he disagreed with it (which he didn't, at least not in that speech)? Or, more likely, because he agreed with it (which he did in much of his earlier work before becoming Pope)? If the Pope had any courage, he would have said:

I have no regrets for having said what I did. However, I am, like a good Bayesian, perfectly willing to update my priors. I wish I were wrong. I hope I am wrong. But I'd like to see some proof that Islam isn't evil. Show me that proof, that evidence, and I will gladly apologize. But the violent reactions only serve to support my view.

Update [#1]: Check out the posting and comments at Roger Simon: "I find myself in the weird position of sympathizing with the Pope." - Salman Rushdie [thanks to MA for the pointer].

Update #2: Also be sure to read the NYTimes op-ed piece by John Allen [reg reqd]. Here are some excerpts:

Benedict has also challenged what he sees as Islam’s potential for extremism, grounded in a literal reading of the Koran. In a 1997 interview with me, he said of Islam, “One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of pluralistic society.”

... [W]hile Saudis contributed tens of millions of dollars to build Europe’s largest mosque in Rome, Christians cannot build churches in Saudi Arabia. Priests in Saudi Arabia cannot leave oil-industry compounds or embassy grounds without fear of reprisals from the mutawa, the religious police. The bishop of the region recently described the situation as “reminiscent of the catacombs.”

The pope is sympathetic to these concerns, as several developments at the Vatican have made clear.

At a meeting with Muslims in Cologne, Germany, last summer, Benedict urged joint efforts to “turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people and hinders progress toward world peace.”

Update #3: For a clergyman with courage, see this [h/t to Brian Ferguson]:

Cardinal George Pell says "the violent reactions in many parts of the Islamic world" to a speech by Pope Benedict justified one of the very fears expressed in that address. "They showed the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence," Cardinal Pell said in a statement yesterday.

Oriana Fallaci, the writer and renowned Italian journalist, died on Friday. She was 76. Fallaci, who had been diagnosed with cancer years ago and who was living in New York, had come back to her hometown in Florence days ago as her condition worsened. [h/t to Judith]

Here is what I posted about Oriana Fallaci back in June.

And here is a lengthy piece about her from the New Yorker.

Fallaci disputed the existence of moderate Islam:

Fallaci rejects the idea of a Moderate Islam. “Moderate Islam is another invention of ours. Another illusion fabricated by naiveté or Quislingness or misplaced realpolitk. Moderate Islam does not exist.” Islam is in the Koran—in nothing but the Koran. “And the Koran is the Mein Kampf of a religion which has always aimed to eliminate others.” [source: The Courage and Wisdom of Oriana Fallaci, Prof. Paul Eidelberg, Nativ: A Journal of Politics and the Arts, no link available]

But that flies in the face of the work by Professor Salim Mansur at The University of Western Ontario, a moderate Muslim who continues to berate fellow Muslims for not denouncing the murderous fundamentalists in their midst.

During the past few days, several people, including Jack, MA, and BenS have all sent me news items about the Pope's speech, in which he quoted a medieval emperor who had some negative things to say about Mohammed. Here is a summary from Language Log:

Pope Benedict XVI has incited a firestorm of criticism in the Muslim world by relying on an obscure medieval polemic to illustrate a point about religion and violence. In the speech, given at Regensburg University in Germany, the Pope turned to a dialogue between the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and "an educated Persian," dated to 1391. The Emperor is quoted as saying:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Though the Pope made it clear that he was only quoting this viewpoint, he didn't do much to disavow it in the immediate context of his speech. [emphasis added] (And his portrayal of the Prophet's teachings in the Qur'an is erroneous in other ways, as Juan Cole and others have pointed out.) As if that wasn't inflammatory enough, the New York Times managed to bollix the money quote in its original article on the speech.

The Language Log posting then continues, with a dissection of the NYTimes quote and its correction.

I posted yesterday about the six documentaries that Pierre Rehov has made and how he distributes them in VHS format along with a magazine in France. Here, courtesy of Ms. Eclectic (and, unfortunately with no link) are excerpts from an interview with Rehov about his latest documentary, Suicide Killers (the e-mail has the name, Dr. Robert Capretto at the end, as if he is the person who conducted the interview, but I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this material):

On July 15, I appeared on MSNBC's "Connected" program to discuss the 7/7 London attacks (you can see video of the segment on the linked page). One of my fellow guests was Pierre Rehov, a French filmmaker who has filmed six documentaries on the intifada by going undercover in the Palestinian areas. Pierre's upcoming film, "Suicide Killers," is based on interviews that he conducted with the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers in an attempt to find out why they do it. Pierre agreed to my request for a Q&A interview here about his work on the new film. Many thanks to Dean Draznin and Arlyn Riskind for helping to arrange this special interview.

What inspired you to produce 'Suicide Killers," your seventh film?
I started working with victims of suicide attacks to make a film on PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) when I became fascinated with the personalities of those who had committed those crimes, as they were described again and again by their victims. - especially the fact that suicide bombers are all smiling one second before they blow themselves up.

Why is this film especially important?
People don't understand the devastating culture behind this unbelievable phenomenon. My film is not politically correct because it addresses the real problem?showing the real face of Islam. It points the finger against a culture of hatred in which the uneducated are brainwashed to a level where their only solution in life becomes to kill themselves and kill others in the name of a God whose word, as transmitted by other men, has become their only certitude.

What insights did you gain from making this film? What do you know that other experts do not know?
I came to the conclusion that we are facing a neurosis at the level of an entire civilization. Most neuroses have in common a dramatic event, generally linked to an unacceptable sexual behavior. In this case, we are talking of kids living all their lives in pure frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness or even understanding from the opposite sex. The separation between men and women in Islam is absolute. So is contempt toward women, who are totally dominated by men. This leads to a situation of pure anxiety, in which normal behavior is not possible. It is no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil. Since Islam describes heaven as a place where everything on earth will finally be allowed, and promises 72 virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution.

What was it like to interview would-be suicide bombers, their families and survivors of suicide bombings?
It was a fascinating and a terrifying experience. You are dealing with seemingly normal people with very nice manners who have their own logic, which to a certain extent can make sense since they are so convinced that what they say is true. It is like dealing with pure craziness, like interviewing people in an asylum, since what they say, is for them, the absolute truth. I hear a mother saying "Thank God, my son is dead." Her son had became a shaheed, a martyr, which for her was a greater source of pride than if he had became an engineer, a doctor or a winner of the Nobel Prize. This system of values works completely backwards since their interpretation of Islam worships death much more than life. You are facing people whose only dream, only achievement is to fulfill what they believe to be their destiny, namely to be a shaheed or the family of a shaheed. They don't see the innocent being killed, they only see the impure that they have to destroy.

You say suicide bombers experience a moment of absolute power, beyond punishment. Is death the ultimate power?
Not death as an end, but death as a door opening to the after life. They are seeking the reward that God has promised them. They work for God, the ultimate authority, above all human laws. They therefore experience this single delusional second of absolute power, where nothing bad can ever happen to them, since they become God's sword.

Is there a suicide bomber personality profile? Describe the psychopathology.
Generally kids between 15 and 25 bearing a lot of complexes, generally inferiority complexes. They must have been fed with religion. They usually have a lack of developed personality. Usually they are impressionable idealists. In the western world they would easily have become drug addicts, but not criminals. Interestingly, they are not criminals since they don't see good and evil the same way that we do. If they had been raised in an Occidental culture, they would have hated violence. But they constantly battle against their own death anxiety. The only solution to this deep-seated pathology is to be willing to die and be rewarded in the after life in Paradise.

Are suicide bombers principally motivated by religious conviction?
Yes, it is their only conviction. They don't act to gain a territory or to find freedom or even dignity. They only follow Allah, the supreme judge, and what He tells them to do.

Do all Muslims interpret jihad and martyrdom in the same way?
All Muslim believers believe that, ultimately, Islam will prevail on earth. They believe this is the only true religion and there is no room, in their mind, for interpretation. The main difference between moderate Muslims and extremists is that moderate Muslims don't think they will see the absolute victory of Islam during their life time, therefore they respect other beliefs. The extremists believe that the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Islam and ruling the entire world as described in the Koran is for today. Each victory of Bin Laden convinces 20 million moderate Muslims to become extremists.

Describe the culture that manufactures suicide bombers.
Oppression, lack of freedom, brain washing, organized poverty, placing God in charge of daily life, total separation between men and women, forbidding sex, giving women no power whatsoever, and placing men in charge of family honor, which is mainly connected to their women's behavior.

What socio-economic forces support the perpetuation of suicide bombings?
Muslim charity is usually a cover for supporting terrorist organizations. But one has also to look at countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are also supporting the same organizations through different networks. The ironic thing in the case of Palestinian suicide bombers is that most of the money comes through financial support from the Occidental world, donated to a culture that utterly hates and rejects the West (mainly symbolized by Israel).

Is there a financial support network for the families of the suicide bombers? If so, who is paying them and how does that affect the decision?
There used to be a financial incentive in the days of Saddam Hussein ($25,000 per family) and Yasser Arafat (smaller amounts), but these days are gone. It is a mistake to believe that these families would sacrifice their children for money. Although, the children themselves who are very attached to their families, might find in this financial support another reason to become suicide bombers. It is like buying a life insurance policy and then committing suicide.

Why are so many suicide bombers young men?
As discussed above, libido is paramount. Also ego, because this is a sure way to become a hero. The shaheeds are the cowboys or the firemen of Islam. Shaheed is a positively reinforced value in this culture. And what kid has never dreamed of becoming a cowboy or a fireman?

What role does the U.N. play in the terrorist equation?
The UN is in the hands of Arab countries and third world or ex-communists countries. Their hands are tied. The UN has condemned Israel more than any other country in the world, including the regime of Castro, Idi Amin or Kaddahfi. By behaving this way, the UN leaves a door open by not openly condemning terrorist organizations. In addition, through UNRWA, the UN is directly tied to terror organizations such as Hamas, representing 65 percent of their apparatus in the so-called Palestinian refugee camps. As a support to Arab countries, the UN has maintained Palestinians in camps with the hope to "return" into Israel for more than 50 years, therefore making it impossible to settle those populations, which still live in deplorable conditions. Four-hundred million dollars are spent every year, mainly financed by U.S. taxes, to support 23,000 employees of UNRWA, many of whom belong to terrorist organizations (see Congressman Eric Cantor on this subject, and in my film "Hostages of Hatred").

You say that a suicide bomber is a 'stupid bomb and a smart bomb' simultaneously. Explain what you mean.
Unlike an electronic device, a suicide killer has until the last second the capacity to change his mind. In reality, he is nothing but a platform representing interests which are not his, but he doesn't know it.

How can we put an end to the madness of suicide bombings and terrorism in general?
Stop being politically correct and stop believe that this culture is a victim of ours. Radical Islamism today is nothing but a new form of Nazism. Nobody was trying to justify or excuse Hitler in the 1930s. We had to defeat him in order to make peace one day with the German people.

Are these men traveling outside their native areas in large numbers? Based on your research, would you predict that we are beginning to see a new wave of suicide bombings outside the Middle East?
Every successful terror attack is considered a victory by the radical Islamists. Everywhere Islam expands there is regional conflict. Right now, their are thousands of candidates for martyrdom lining up in training camps in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Inside Europe, hundreds of illegal mosques are preparing the next step of brain washing to lost young men who cannot find a satisfying identity in the Occidental world. Israel is much more prepared for this than the rest of the world will ever be. Yes, there will be more suicide killings in Europe and the U.S. Sadly, this is only the beginning.

Despite having a few minor quibbles (20 million? what's the source for that?), I was fascinated, intrigued, and impressed by the interview.

You might remember the names, Walt and Mearsheimer. They're the academics from Harvard and Chicago who wrote the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Harvard," otherwise known as the