Happy Ashura!

Sunday was Ashoura Day for Shi'ite Muslims around the world, the day they commemorate the killing of Muhammad's grandson by mutilating their own children and filling their streets with rivers of blood:



Diversity requires that we show respect for this retarded barbarism.

Burkha Fashion Show

Bill Maher is a hard Leftist, but occasionally he does brilliant things like this:

Merry Christmas, Infidels

"Your King Osama looks like a dirty wizard or a homeless Santa." ~ Bruno

Over the Christmas period (and I hope yours was happy and prosperous, by the way*), I spared more than a passing thought for those Christians around the Islamic world who were left unable to celebrate their holy day, due to fear of punishment by the adherents of that most tolerant of religions: Islam.

In Pakistan, the Christian community of Gojra spent their Christmas in tents after Muslim mobs destroyed their homes, and continued to fear further attacks even afterwards.

In West Java, Indonesia, all churches were guarded by heavy police details over the Christmas period, while others weren't able to celebrate in a church at all because they have been refused permission to build them. Dozens of churches in the province have closed since 2004 after being stormed or attacked by Muslim mobs. In 2000, churches were bombed across the archipelago on Christmas Eve.

Meanwhile, in Basra, Iraq, the Christian community voluntarily chose not to celebrate Christmas overtly this year out of respect for Shi'ite Muslims, who celebrated the "martyrdom of Imam Al Hussain and his brother Al Abbas" at the same time. Just imagine the reverse situation, where Muslims voluntarily hold back from celebrating their religious holidays out of respect for Christians. And then come back to the real world.

In the West, most people take religious freedom for granted. Despite the fears of many on the Left about the Christian Right, Muslims in the West enjoy almost total religious freedom. By contrast, non-Muslims in Islamic countries do not have such freedom. The concept of freedom of religion, as defined in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, simply does not exist in Islam. Neither does the Golden Rule, which was articulated by Jesus, and is a major cornerstone of every other world faith...except Islam: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Here in Britain, and Europe, and America, we all understand this maxim, even if we do not always practise what we preach. But in the Islamic world, there is very little knowledge of even this basic concept, and that is why Christians are today suffering martyrdom even on their holiest of days.

*And yes, that includes you, "Andrew McCann"

The Legacy of Sharia

The societal damage caused by sharia law can be witnessed today in the story of the Muslim man who forced his 16 year old son to marry and then rape a twelve year old girl - who was also his cousin.

This kind of thing demonstrates the contempt that some Muslims in Britain (about forty per cent, perhaps?) have for British law. "The 54-year-old organised a sham Muslim ceremony between his son, then 16, and the girl at his home in Woolwich, south-east London, in March last year." He knew that the ceremony was illegal under British law. But he didn't care.

Lest anyone think his act was un-Islamic, he was simply following the example of the "Prophet" Muhammad, who "married Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consummated that marriage when she was nine years old.” (Bukhari v.5, b.58, no.234, and many others) Muhammad is, according to the Qur'an, "a beautiful pattern of conduct" (33:21) who Muslims should strive to emulate in all aspects of their lives. And this is the result.

It should be obvious that all the while Britain's at least 85 sharia courts are left open (many of which are already sanctioning illegal acts), there is a danger that incidents like this will be repeated in a more formal setting. The only solution is to shut them all down. But the government won't do that. It would be "Islamophobia".

Little girls be damned.

D.R.I.P. (Don't Rest In Peace) Ayatollah Montazeri

D.R.I.P

Predictably, the BBC today covers the death of Iranian "reformist" cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri with a treacly biography that seeks to paint him as a "moderate" alternative to current President Mahoud Ahmadinejad, who he did admittedly oppose for political reasons.

Unmentioned by the BBC, Montazeri was an upholder of the age-old Shi'ite doctrine of najis, which teaches that non-Muslims are not only spiritually impure, but also physically unclean. In her in-depth analysis of the status of non-Muslims under the rule of the Islamic Revolution, Eliz Sanasarian demonstrates how, as a direct result of najis policies which were championed by Montazeri, non-Muslims in Iran were subjected to institutionalised discrimination. For example, non-Muslims were denied production jobs because Muslims refused to touch goods that had been manufactured by infidels, for fear that Muslims would be "contaminated" by them.

Such is the man who is reduced by the BBC to a "reformist" and even a human rights advocate! In fact, the only reform Ayatollah Montazeri was interested in was a break away from the relatively moderate, secular Pahlavi rule and a return to the theocratic bigotry that had prevailed in the country since the early 1600s.

Antisemite Erdogan's Self-Deception

Prime Minister "Mas-Com-Ya" Erdogan

According to a statement issued by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this week, "Islamophobia is a crime against humanity just like anti-Semitism".

The ironies of Erdogan's statements are numerous. The equation of that chimeric phenomenon known as "Islamophobia" with antisemitism is self-evidently ridiculous, but more glaring is Erdogan's apparent self-deception, given the fact that his own country, and indeed his own good self, is full of bigoted antisemitism.

The Turkish media is rife with Jew-hatred conflating Judaism with Zionism and making ahistorical accusations against the Jews (see here, here and here), none of which has ever been condemned by Erdogan. What's more, Erdogan himself wrote, directed and starred in a theatrical play entitled "Mas-Com-Ya" ("Masons-Communists-Yahudi [Jews]"), which was staged all over Turkey in the 1970s. The play focused, according to historian Rifat N. Bali, on "the 'evil' nature of these three concepts, and the hatred towards them."

Also during his statements earlier in the week, Erdogan is reported to have said: "Islam means peace, and it cannot tolerate terrorism. We reject all attempts to link Islam with terrorism.” One must assume, then, that his first target for opprobrium must be the many thousands of Muslims around the world who are currently linking Islam with terrorism.

Why are you laughing?

Finally, the report notes:

The agency noted that Erdoğan also called on the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Arab League and all concerned parties to present a unified front to help end Islamophobia.

But not, you'll note, to end terrorism committed in the name of Islam.

Pakistan: Muslim Employers Poison Christians

A Christian sanitation worker was struggling for his life yesterday in a hospital in Pakistan's Punjab province, after two Christian co-workers had already died because Muslim employers apparently poisoned them.

The father of the three workers, Yousaf Masih, said the incident happened on Monday, in a banquet and wedding hall where his sons demanded wages owed to them.

Masih said the Muslim managers of the facility were angry that Christians dared to ask for payment. "My sons were apparently forced to consume some kind of poisoned drink, or a drug...They were left there to die," he said, adding that their bosses also made abusive remarks about Christianity.

But never fear, for Obama Nobel says that Islam is a tolerant religion.

Who Cares About The Copts?

As if further confirmation were needed of the gross hypocrisy inherent in the Islamic mindset following the Swiss minaret controversy, this article from Bloomberg outlines it yet further:

On a side street in the far northeast Cairo suburb of Ain Shams, the door of a five-story former underwear factory is padlocked.

This is, or was supposed to be, the St. Mary and Anba Abraam Coptic Christian Church. Police closed it Nov. 24, 2008, when Muslims rioted against its consecration. Since then local Copts have had to commute to distant churches or worship in hiding at each other’s homes.

While Muslim leaders criticized the Nov. 29 vote in Switzerland that banned construction of minarets, they don’t support Christians who want to build churches in some Islamic countries. Restrictions in Egypt have exacerbated sectarian violence and discrimination, say Copts, a 2,000-year-old denomination that comprises about 10 percent of the population.

The day after the Swiss vote, Ali Gomaa, one of Egypt’s top Muslim clerics, called the decision “an attempt to insult the feelings of the Muslim community in and outside of Switzerland.”

Copts quickly said that neither Gomaa nor any other Islamic leader mentioned the Christian situation in Egypt.

“Without the merest attempt to put our house in order, are we in any position to taunt others to put theirs?” Youssef Sidhom, editor-in-chief of the Cairo-based Egyptian Coptic weekly newspaper El-Watani, said in a telephone interview. “They should be ashamed.”...

“The decision of the Swiss people stood to be interpreted as xenophobic, prejudiced, discriminative and against the universal human-rights values,” said the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which represents 57 Muslim-majority nations.

Members include Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslims are arrested for worshipping privately; Maldives, the Indian Ocean atoll where citizenship is reserved for Muslims; Libya, which limits churches to one per denomination in cities; and Iran, where conversion from Islam is punished by death, according to a 2009 U.S. State Department report on religious freedom.

Read the whole thing.

Cairo Human Rights Group: "Arab Countries Fail On Human Rights"

A new report from the independent Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies reveals plainly what I have been saying here since I started this blog back in March - Muslim countries are leading the world stage today in terms of human rights abuses. The report also takes Barack Obama to task for his failure to take notice of this fact, which he could have addressed (but failed to) at his pathetic June 4th Cairo speech to the Muslim world. Obama - winner of the Nobel Prize for Nothing - is, of course, far more concerned with the fact that a few soldiers at Guantanamo played loud music to some terrorists.

Extracts from the article describing the Cairo human rights report are reproduced below. But don't worry: perhaps my occasional visitor who goes by the name of "Andrew McCann" will come along and tell us that this has nothing to do with Islam, and that only "losers" care about these human rights abuses.

The report by the independent Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies surveyed 12 countries and said that most of them repressed human rights activists, press freedoms, and discriminated against religious minorities.

The state of human rights in the 12 countries—Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen— "has worsened compared to 2008," the report said....

"Egypt continued to top the list of countries in which torture is routinely and systematically practiced," it said, adding that dozens had died in the country of torture or excessive force by police.

The report also found torture was "routine" in Bahrain, "rampant" in Tunisia, and practiced in Saudi Arabia against terrorism suspects.

Human rights advocates faced harassment in several Arab countries, with Syria, which has jailed dozens of democracy activists, holding the "worst record in this regard."

Religious and ethnic minorities also continued to suffer discrimination in several Arab countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the report said.

"Despite the Saudi regime's attempt to appear to champion religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue in international forums, in practice the national religious police continue to exhibit violent behavior," it said.

Egypt, where roughly 10 percent of the 80-million-strong population are Coptic Christians who frequently complain of discrimination, "is increasingly acquiring the features of a religious state," it added.

The report also said that US policies were "wholly inimical to reform and human rights in the region," and accused President Barak Obama's administration of abandoning support for reform initiatives in the Arab world....

The rights group's representative in Geneva, Jeremie Smith, warned at a press conference that Arab countries had exported attempts to undermine accountability to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

"Arab governments have largely taken strategies that they have perfected at a national level to avoid accountability, and they have exported them to the United Nations system," he said.

Regarding the Islamic subversion of the UNHRC, see here.

Book Review

"THE LEGACY OF ARAB-ISLAM IN AFRICA: A QUEST FOR INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE" BY JOHN ALEMBILLAH AZUMAH

On November 4th, I posted the first half of a two-part essay on slavery in Islam and the West. After losing the second half of the essay, I promised that it would be replaced, with a review for this book.

The book is a historical overview of the Muslim enslavement of Africans over the last fourteen hundred years. Due to its very specific subject matter, the book necessarily overlooks the over one million white European Christians who were taken captive by the Muslim pirates of the Barbary Coast between 1530 and 1780, as well as the tradition of self-criticism and abolition that separates the West not only from the Islamic world, but from every other civilisation that has ever existed.

Azumah's analysis is essentially designed to prove one basic point: that regardless of the evils committed by Westerners against the African population, Muslims have been no less guilty of the enslavement of Africans (as well as the inhabitants of every other area they have conquered throughout history). Azumah, who works at the Henry Martyn Institute International Centre for Research, Interfaith Relations and Reconciliation in India, argues that this is absolutely necessary in order to initiate meaningful dialogue between Muslims and people of other religions in Africa.

Although the book achieves the author's basic intention, I feel that it does not go far enough in emphasising that the Islamic slave trade was actually worse than the Western slave trade. For example, while Westerners are estimated to have enslaved roughly ten to eleven million Africans between the sixteenth century and the nineteenth, Muslims are estimated to have enslaved at least seventeen million Africans between the seventh century and the nineteenth. That the Islamic slave trade ultimately lasted longer and enslaved more people than its Western counterpart is a fact that is never subjected to any exposure in Western academic circles.

Azumah's book contains a detailed exposition on the way that the mere non-belief in Islam of the indigenous African people was used as a primary justification for their enslavement by the Muslims. For example, the medieval Muslim jurist Abd al-Aziz bin Ahmad al-Bukhari (d.1330) declared: "Servitude is a vestige of obstinacy in refusing to believe in the One God (kufr), and this in the eyes of the law is death itself." Ahmad Baba, a seventeenth-century Muslim leader from Timbuktu, wrote a popular enslavement manual called the Mi'raj, which became a standard reference used by Muslims in Sudan. This manual states plainly that "the reason for slavery [in Islam] is non-belief".

Azumah also dedicates a whole section to demonstrating overwhelmingly that Arab Muslims were prone to racist attitudes towards black Africans, which may surprise those Western liberals who see only white people as the epitome of bigoted racism. The Spanish Muslim thinker Sa'id al-Andalusi (d.1070) wrote that blacks were "more like animals than men". Ibn Sina (d.1037), a Muslim philosopher known in the West as Avicenna, also wrote of blacks as inherently inferior to lighter-skinned people, and believed that they were by their very nature slaves (incidentally, the Arabic word abd is used synonymously to mean both a slave and a black person). Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d.1274), believed that "the Negro does not differ from an animal in anything except the fact that his hands have been lifted from the earth". Finally, the great Muslim sociologist Ibn Khaldun (d.1406) wrote: "[T]he Negro nations are, as rule, submissive to slavery because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes quite similar to those of dumb animals".

The rest of the book is dedicated to describing the terrible conditions African slaves were subjected to by their Muslim masters, which easily match those imposed upon slaves in the West. One of the most heinous aspects of this is the practice of castration, which Azumah describes as follows:

The operation, done on boys aged between eight and ten...was carried out with an exceedingly high death rate...[O]n the whole about 30 per cent survived the operation in Bagirmi, while other estimates put the mortality rate at up to eighty per cent. This barbaric act was made particularly cruel for black victims in that, in contrast to their white counterparts whose operations did not deny them the ability to perform coitus, the castration of blacks involved what was commonly referred to as 'level with the abdomen', i.e. a complete amputation of the genetalia.

Azumah also demonstrates the total devstation wrought by the (alarmingly violent) Islamic slave trade in Africa, and provides enslavement figures:

In 1894, thanks to the French efforts to assess the situation of slavery in the region, it was revealed that about 30 to 50 per cent of the total population of the Western Sudan were slaves, with up to 80 per cent near some commercial centres...

In Kankan 57 per cent of the population were slaves while in Sikasso, the capital of Tieba, two-thirds of the population were found to be slaves in 1904. The same percentage was estimated for the slave population of Bobo-Dioulasso. In areas immediately around Kong and Bandama, however, the proportion of slaves approached 80 per cent. In Northern Nigeria the same pattern of slave concentration is revealed...

Within the Sokoto caliphate as a whole, during the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries, slaves are said to have 'certainly numbered in many millions and perhaps as many as 10 million.' On the island of Zanzibar in east Africa in 1907 there were 27,000 freed slaves, and 140,000 slaves out of an estimated population of 208,700.

Finally, Azumah points out that slavery was not formally abolished in Saudi Arabia until 1962, Oman in 1970, and Mauritania in 1981 - all under Western pressure. The Islamic world never spawned its own abolitionist movement, and slavery has always been accepted in Islamic societies, due to its basic acceptance in the Qur'an and in the example of Muhammad, who is known to have owned around sixty slaves in his lifetime. The beliefs enshrined in these sacred Muslim sources about the inherent inferiority of unbelievers militated against any Muslim movement to abolish slavery. Moreover, there is evidence that slavery is still practised in many Islamic countries, such as Sudan, today.

The author concludes this fascinating book with an appeal for genuine dialogue on this issue, which must necessarily involve Muslims taking a step back and engaging in some meaningful self-criticism akin to that practised in the West during the abolition era:

[T]here is no doubt that contemporary relations between communities in general are rooted in the historical past. The historical past, which was in itself formed by religious and ideological traditions has made some significant 'mis-steps'...It is these 'mis-steps' that both the Arab-Muslim and black African sides have to acknkowledge, and accept so that lessons can be learnt from them, to make dialogue worthwhile and sustainable. Unless we are prepared to react to history together, we are left with no alternative but to use history to react against each other...

This may be called critical faithfulness...Acknowledging the 'mis-steps' within one's inherited tradition is, first of all, a sign of strength rather than weakness. This strength of integrity is...crucial for dialogue. Second, critical faithfulness to one's tradition will, on the one hand, help bring restorative justice to victims, and prevent the injustices associated with these aspects from repeating themselves, on the other hand. Third, being critically faihtful to one's tradition will enable an intelligent appropriation and adaptation of these traditions in contemporary times.

Finally, critical faithfulness will help bring about change in old and preconceived unhelpful attitudes and perceptions so as to promote mutual respect and peaceful co-existence between and among communities. Inter-religious and inter-ideological dialogue is therefore inpossible without the parties involved being prepared to be critically faithful to the various inherited traditions.

Azumah's insights underscore the desperate need for Muslims to acknowledge the errors of their past, and indeed, their present, as well as to confront the ideological basis for slavery in Islam. All the while they refuse to do this - and all the while Leftists in the West continue to focus all their attention on our own past crimes (for which we have already paid our pennance by inventing abolitionism, the ultimate display of self-criticism) - people will continue to suffer as slaves under the yoke of Islam.

Hypocrisy?

As Muslims whine and seethe and complain over the the banning of minarets in Switzerland (not whole mosques, remember, just the entirely unnecessary minarets), the double standards are there for all to see. Islamic law forbids the public practise of non-Muslim religions. The fourteenth-century Islamic legal manual Reliance of the Traveller says the following about non-Muslim communities living under Islamic rule: "...non-Muslim subjects are obliged to comply with Islamic rules that pertain to the safety and indemnity of life, reputation, and property. In addition, they...are forbidden to...ring church bells or display crosses, recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals and feastdays; and are forbidden to build new churches."

Reliance of the Traveller is not just a medieval document. In 1991, it was endorsed by Cairo's Al-Azhar University as conforming "to the practise and faith of the orthodox Sunni community". Al-Azhar, the oldest and most prestiguous educational institution in the Islamic world, is the closest equivalent in Sunni Islam to the Vatican.

Based on this immutable law, Saudi Arabia completely forbids the building of churches and the public display of non-Muslim religions, and bars non-Muslims from even entering Mecca:


The Maldives is currently very close to implementing similar laws. Have any Muslim human rights activists campaigned against this open infringement of religious freedom around the Muslim world? What do you think?

Hypocrisy on their part? It may seem so, but as Hugh Fitzgerald points out today at Jihad Watch, these double standards simply reveal

the complete obliviousness, by almost all Muslims, to the very idea of the Golden Rule: Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You. The apostate Ali Sina has written at length - see here -- convincingly and eloquently about the Golden Rule, a simple code for conduct that is present, Ali Sina notes, in all the major world faiths with one exception - and that one exception is Islam...

Ali Gomaa is not being a hypocrite when he attacks the Swiss for voting against the minaret. He's not even up to the possibility of hypocrisy. It never occurs to him, for it simply has never entered his head that the same rules should apply to Islam as apply to other faiths...

I wouldn't call Ali Gomaa, or Muslims hypocrites. They are far far beyond hypocrisy in their deep beliefs. They simply can't fathom why, in what universe, anyone would expect them, the Muslims, ever to treat the bearers of Untruth, the Ungrateful Infidels, in a way that would not make clear the many legal disabilities under Shari'a that non-Muslims must, by right, endure. Shari'a is the Holy Law of Islam, to which the manmade laws of the Muslim state or states can only aspire to copy exactly in every particular, but must at least try asymptotically to emulate. Under it, non-Muslims deserve to be humiliated, deserve to be degraded, deserve to live in conditions of physical insecurity. How could it not be? For how else can the Truth of Islam, and the superiority of the Muslims, the "best of peoples," otherwise be declared in all its unswerving rightness?

On Minarets

A debate is currently raging in Switzerland on the subject of a potential ban on the building of minarets atop mosques in the country. Members of the Swiss People's Party have been calling for a ban on all minaret building. This BBC article from 2007 encapsulates their arguments succinctly:

They claim the minaret is not necessary for worship, but is rather a symbol of Islamic law, and as such incompatible with Switzerland's legal system...

"We don't have anything against Muslims," said Oskar Freysinger, member of parliament for the Swiss People's Party.

"But we don't want minarets. The minaret is a symbol of a political and aggressive Islam, it's a symbol of Islamic law. The minute you have minarets in Europe it means Islam will have taken over."

This argument is exactly in line with the entry on minarets in the venerable Brill Encyclopedia of Islam:

“It seems on the whole unrelated to its function of the adhān, calling the faithful to prayer, which can be made quite adequately from the roof of the mosque or even from the house-top....To this day, certain Islamic communities, especially the most orthodox ones like the Wahhābīs in Arabia, avoid building minarets on the grounds that they are ostentatious and unnecessary…It must be remembered, however, that throughout the mediaeval period, the role of the minaret oscillated between two polarities: as a sign of power and as an instrument for the adhān.”

Thus a ban on minarets is not an infringement on Muslims' religious freedom. Aside from the fact that the minaret is an unnecessary feature, it is fundamentally a symbol of aggressive political power. The message is simple: Islam is in charge in this area. Political statements of conquest of this kind are not acceptable in the West, and must not be permitted, especially in light of the supremacist aspect of Islam, and its imperative to dominate and not be dominated, or as the medieval Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun put it, to "gain power over other nations".

Why The UN Is Compromised

Below is embedded video from a recent forum held by the Israeli Council For Civic Action, to commemorate the anniversary of the United Nations vote to partition Palestine on November 29th, 1947.

At the forum, Danny Ayalon, Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel, spoke candidly about the massive Muslim voting bloc at the UN, which has systematically and continuously pressured this once noble but now dhimmified organisation to take anti-Israel stances at every opportunity. Ayalon pointed out that "Many of these [Muslim] nations are dictatorial and human-rights abusers who form an automatic majority against us which is formed by political expediency and group-think." He adds: "If the Arabs or Palestinians wanted to pass a resolution claiming that the earth is flat, this would be assured of a majority."

Ayalon's observations are absolutely correct. From the 1975 Arab-initiated resolution labelling Zionism as racism, to the morally inverted Human Rights Council, to the hideously biased Goldstone Report, the UN has been vehemently anti-Israel, and vehemently pro-Muslim/pro-Arab for the past forty years. Bat Ye'or documents how this happened in her book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. Kudos to Mr. Ayalon for speaking up against this oppressive, hostile atmosphere of hate.

Maldives To Ban Public Practice of Non-Muslim Religions

Mohamed Nasheed, the President of the Maldives, said yesterday that he would seek advice from Muslim scholars on Islam’s position on allowing non-Muslims to worship in an Islamic community.

In his radio weekly address, the president said the constitution was "very clear" that laws contrary to Islam could not be made or enacted.

"It has become very important for me to find out what Islamic sharia says about not allowing foreigners who want to worship other religions in the Maldives," he said. "When this bill comes from the People's Majlis for the president to ratify, the question before me will be what is the ruling in Islamic sharia on people of other religions living in an Islamic community to worship?"

The president said he needed an answer to the question before ratifying the bill. "When I know, it will be easier for me to make a decision on ratify the bill before it becomes law," he said.

And what is the Islamic position on this issue? The fourteenth-century Islamic legal manual Reliance of the Traveller says the following about non-Muslim communities living under Islamic rule: "...non-Muslim subjects are obliged to comply with Islamic rules that pertain to the safety and indemnity of life, reputation, and property. In addition, they...are forbidden to...ring church bells or display crosses, recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals and feastdays; and are forbidden to build new churches."

Reliance of the Traveller is not just a medieval document. In 1991, it was endorsed by Cairo's Al-Azhar University as conforming "to the practise and faith of the orthodox Sunni community". Al-Azhar, the oldest and most prestiguous educational institution in the Islamic world, is the closest equivalent in Sunni Islam to the Vatican.

Thus, it is mainstream, orthodox Islamic law (not "radical Islam", "Islamism", or "a strict interpretation of Islamic law") which mandates that non-Muslim minorities must be denied equality of rights with Muslims when it comes to religious observance, amongst other things. President Nasheed will probably be told this by his scholars. And so the the return of dhimmitude - the world's greatest, and yet most ignored, human rights outrage - will continue apace.

Robertson In The Doghouse

American governor-elect Bob McDonnell continues to face calls for him to publicly repudiate donor and ally Pat Robertson today, after Robertson said of Islam: "Islam is a violent - I was going to say religion, but it's not a religion. It's a political system. It's a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination. I think we should treat it as such and treat its adherents as such, as we would members of the Communist Party or members of some fascist group."

I am no fan of Robertson, but what he is quoted as saying here is largely accurate. I disagree that Islam is not a religion. It is a religion. But it is also "a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination." This is easily documentable.

The Islamic doctrine of jihad derives from a number of verses in the Qur'an, most notably 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the Jizya [non-Muslim poll tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” The famous Muslim thinker Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi (d.1979), who is widely considered to be one of the most influential Islamic figures of the twentieth century, interpreted this verse as follows:

“The purpose for which the Muslims are required to fight is not as one might think to compel the unbelievers into embracing Islam. Rather their purpose is to put an end to the sovereignty and supremacy of the unbelievers so that the latter are unable to rule over men. The authority to rule should only be vested in those who follow the true faith; unbelievers who do not follow this true faith should live in a state of subordination...Jizya symbolises the submission of the unbelievers to the suzerainty of Islam. To pay the jizya of their own hands 'humbled' refers to payment in a state of submission. 'Humbled' also reinforces the idea that the believers, rather than the unbelievers, should be the rulers in performance of their duty as God’s vicegerents...

“The simple fact is that according to Islam, non-Muslims have been granted the freedom to stay outside the Islamic fold and to cling to their false, man-made ways if they so wish. They have, however, absolutely no right to seize the reigns of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines. For if they are given such an opportunity, corruption and mischief will ensue. In such a situation the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.

“One of the advantages of jizya is that it reminds the dhimmis [non-Muslim subjects of an Islamic state] every year that because they do not embrace Islam...they have to pay a price – jizya – for clinging to their errors.”

Thus we can clearly see that this doctrine involves the ultimate conquest and subjugation of the world under Muslim rule, by means of violence. The medieval Muslim historian and sociologist Ibn Khaldun (d.1406) wrote: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universality of the [Muslim] mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force...The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense...Islam is under obligation to gain power from other nations.”

As Robertson said, Islam is also a total political system that mandates for believers not just their spiritual actions, but also their civil and political ones, right down to the smallest detail. It is, in other words, totalitarian in nature. In his 1920 Theory and Practise of Bolshevism, philosopher Bertrand Russell openly compared Islam to Soviet Communism:

Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam.

Marx has taught that Communism is fatally predestined to come about; this produces a state of mind not unlike the early successors of Muhammad.

Among religions, Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world.

It is also interesting to note that immediately upon Robertson making his comments, the first group to jump down his throat was the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad is on record as telling an audience of captive fellow Muslims: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." Fellow co-founder Nihad Awad has said: "I am in support of the Hamas movement." Hamas, of course, is the Palestinian terrorist group whose stated aim is to destroy Israel utterly and then wipe out all of the world's Jews. CAIR and its officials also have numerous other ties to Islamic terrorism, including direct connections to Hamas.

In short, Pat Robertson was right to say what he did, and while he should (if only on this occasion) be listened to, one group that certainly should not be listened to (under any circumstances or at any time and by anyone) is CAIR.

Islamic Slavery In Africa

On the 4th of November, I posted the first part of an essay entitled "Slavery In Islam And The West: The Double Standards of the Intellectual Elites". The first part dealt with slavery in the West, and how Western principles of equality and human rights eventually led to the emancipation of the practice. I had intended to publish the second part of the essay, which dealt with the unreformed, unconfronted problem of the historical and contemporary Islamic enslavement of non-Muslims, a couple of days later. However, unfortunately, the computer I was using died, and the Word document which contained the rest of the essay was lost.

Rather than trying to write it all up again, I thought instead that I would simply share a link to this Youtube video on Islamic slavery, narrated by John Azumah, the author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa. I have just ordered this book, and expect to receive it sometime in the next few weeks. Once I have read it, I will post a short review/summary, which will serve as a full replacement for my lost essay. I will also add the book to the Recommended Reading list on the right-hand side of the page.

In the meantime, I suggest you watch the video linked above. Education on this issue, as with a number of other Islam-related issues, is vital if we are to have genuine and meaningful "interfaith dialogue" between Muslims and other religious groups, as well as bringing a final end to dehumanising, backward practices such as slavery.

Case In (Power)Point

As I mentioned in my previous post, Major Nadil Malik Hasan once alarmed his colleagues by detouring away from a planned medical lecture by proselytising for Islam, during which he allegedly expressed some alarming views.

Today, the Washington Post has published what it claims to be the actual PowerPoint presentation used by Hasan during his presentation. Notice the open jihadist interpretation of Islam, including explanations of the doctrine of abrogation, whereby more violent verses of the Qur'an cancel out more peaceful ones, as well as declarations such as: “Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please Allah, even by force is condoned by Islam.”

That Nadil Hasan must really, REALLY be an Islamophobe.

Confronting Nadil Malik Hasan's Jihadism

"Allahu akbar!"

Recent days have seen many people, both journalists and lay people, display their intolerable ignorance, and self-inflicted denial, over the motivations of Nadil Malik Hasan, who last week gunned down dozens of people at Fort Hood, Texas. Every single person I have spoken to personally on the subject has expressed the belief that Hasan was "mentally unbalanced" and that his "anxiety" over an imminent deployment to Afghanistan caused him to "snap" and engage in an act of mass murder. His Muslim identity was, consequently, irrelevant in this case.

But let's look at the facts (keeping aside a statement in support of suicide bombing allegedly posted on the Internet by Hasan months before the attack). Nadil Malik Hasan handed out Qur'ans to neighbors just before going on his rampage and yelled “Allahu Akbar,” the jihadist’s cry, as he opened fire. When he was supposed to be giving a medical lecture, Hasan instead proselytised for Islam, during which time he said that according to the Qur'an, if you are an unbeliever, "you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat."

One former associate of Hasan's, Col. Terry Lee, recalls that Hasan “claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans”. Finally, it has recently emerged that Hasan went to the same mosque as three of the 9/11 hijackers, and according to a fellow Muslim officer at Fort Hood, his eyes "lit up" whenever he discussed his admiration for the radical teachings of the imam at that mosque.

In short, this was an Islamic jihad attack.

Of course, there will be those who will never accept Nadil Malik Hasan's Islamic motivation for this shooting, no matter what evidence is presented to them, because the consequences of doing so frighten them senseless. If they accept the overwhelming evidence that Hasan was a jihadist, they may start to have to question their normal assumptions that Islamic terrorism is caused by poverty, or social frustration, or any number of other equally Marxist excuses. To question those assumptions leads to having to reconsider the place of Islam in Western society, and the extent of the threat posed by Islamic fanaticism even in America.

But liberals will never take these steps. To do so would make them "bigots" and "Islamophobes", reactionary and intolerant. Can't have that.

UPDATE: "U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News."

Jihad At Fort Hood

Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist, trained to treat soldiers under stress, opened fire yesterday in a crowded medical building at Fort Hood, Texas. When the assault ended minutes later, the attack had become what is believed to be the largest mass shooting ever to occur on a U.S. military base. Twelve were killed, 31 wounded.

Predictably, the mainstream media have been dancing gingerly around the possible motive of this murderer, as well as what religion he might belong to. This Washington Post article, however, does point out that Hasan was a "very devout" Muslim.

This "very devout" Muslim telegraphed his intentions months beforehand when he wrote in an Internet posting:

There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that "IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE" and Allah (SWT) knows best.

Hasan must have been an Islamophobe.

N.B. Hasan's assessment of the Islamic permissibility of suicide bombing is almost identical to that of Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as that of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a mainstream Muslim cleric who reaches millions of Muslims worldwide via his regular al-Jazeera broadcasts, and has been consulted on several occasions by White House officials on issues of US foreign policy!

Slavery In Islam And The West: The Double Standards Of The Intellectual Elites (Part 1)

INTRODUCTION

In 2006, Tony Blair expressed his “deep sorrow” over Britain's role in the slave trade. In an article for the New Nation newspaper, the then-prime minister said it had been a “profoundly shameful” affair in Britain's history.

But Blair's words angered some African groups, such as the Pan African Reparation Coalition – because he had not been fawning enough in his apology. “An apology is just the start – words mean nothing,” said a spokeswoman.

There are a number of double standards and misplaced priorities in this scenario. Is it really right that Britain – and the West in general – should be singled out for the slave trade? And should it be necessary for Blair, or anyone else, to apologise for it at all?

The fact the mainstream media and groups such as the Pan African Reparation Coalition repeatedly ignore is that there was another slave trade which was just as shameful a blot on the history of the human race – the Islamic slave trade. Not only is this never mentioned by any reparations groups or Western courses on slavery, but the Islamic world has never been subjected to any worldwide condemnation or shame because of it.

This two-part essay is intended to redress the balance and provide the corrective to the current politically correct malaise, by examining and comparing the West and the Islamic world and their roles in the slave trade. In doing so, I hope to call attention to the neglected victims of a slave trade that no one condemns, as well as to emphasise that the West no longer has anything to be ashamed of, and has much to be proud of.

SLAVERY IN THE WEST

We certainly should not glorify slavery, and nor should we minimise or celebrate the role of Western countries such as Britain in participating in it. Slavery is an unethical, inhuman, degrading practice. But the West has already paid its penance for its past crimes – and it did so by being the first to push for abolition of slavery.

The roots of abolition go back to the ancient Greeks, who developed the conception of the equality and unity of man, a common brotherhood that bound all human beings regardless of race or creed. Plato put forward the argument that one of mankind's biggest mistakes was to “divide humanity into two”, treating the Greeks as a separate class while “[a]ll other nations, although their number is unknown and they do not intermingle or share any common language, are called by the single term 'barbarian', and because of this one term it is supposed that they constitute a single class.” Aristotle saw mankind as one race, distinguished from other creatures by the power of reason. Cicero, who introduced Greek philosophy to the Romans, wrote:

“That justice is based on nature will be evident, if you fully realise man's fellowship and unity with his fellow men. No two things are so closely alike as all of us are to each other...Hence, however man is to be defined, one definition is true of all men – proof enough that there is no difference between the species, for if there were, a single definition would not cover all its members...There is indeed no one of any race who, given a guide, cannot make his way to virtue.”

There was even direct criticism of slavery during the era of the ancient Greeks. Alcidamas, the fourth-century rhetorician and Sophist, condemned the practice: “The deity gave liberty to all men, and nature created no one a slave.” And although Aristotle is known to have said that some men are by nature slaves, he also recommended that “it is better to hold out freedom as a reward for all slaves”.

Such views continued to be held in the West long after the Greeks, including among Christians, who absorbed Greek and Stoic ethics into their theology. Although it condones and never condemns slavery, the Bible also affirms the oneness of man before God: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) This attitude caused Christians to question the morality of slavery even as far back as the so-called Dark Ages. St. Isidore of Seville declared that “God has made no difference between the soul of the slave and that of the freedman.” In 649, Clovis II, king of the Franks, married a slave, who later began a campaign to halt slavery. The Catholic Church now honours her as St. Bathilda. And in the sixteenth century, a Spanish missionary and bishop named Bartolomé de Las Casas was instrumental in enacting a law prohibiting enslavement of the Indians.

These aren't simply the actions and assumptions of a few; they are part of the grand universalist tradition of the West, and have formed our culture, part of who we are as Brits, or Americans, or Europeans. In time, they would form the basis for the abolition of the slave trade.

The pioneering abolitionists William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson were British. They were supported in their efforts by influential writers such as William Cowper and Laurence Sterne. In America, there was William Lloyd Garrison, and even Abraham Lincoln, both of whom based their opposition to slavery on Biblical principles. Slavery was pronounced to be against the law in Scotland in 1776. English philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham called the British colonies where slavery flourished “a disgrace and an outrage on humanity.”

The eighteenth century was the high tide of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but it also gave rise to the principles of freedom, equality and human rights, which were themselves derived from the ancient Greeks and found primarily in the West. Truly one of the greatest things about Western civilisation is its ability to engage in self-criticism: to subject even its most cherished beliefs and institutions to critical analysis and change. It was this willingness for self-criticism that led to the abolition of slavery, not just in the West, but throughout the world.

Stay tuned for Part 2, coming soon...

Dhimmitude In 2012

Something is wrong with this poster

Actually, it's dhimmitude right now, from film director Roland Emmerich, the man behind new disaster flick "2012". Here's the story:

He blew up the Empire State Building and the White House in Independence Day, sent a giant monster careering through the heart of Manhattan in Godzilla and destroyed the famous Hollywood sign in The Day After Tomorrow. But it seems there are places even Roland Emmerich will not go - the German film-maker has revealed he abandoned plans to obliterate Islam's holiest site on the big screen for fear of attracting a fatwa...

"I wanted to do that, I have to admit," Emmerich told scifiwire.com. "But my co-writer Harald [Kloser] said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right.

"We have to all, in the western world, think about this. You can actually let Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol ["Arab"? ~ Ed], you would have ... a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is.

"So it's just something which I kind of didn't [think] was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out."...

...in order to highlight his opposition to organised religion, the director decided to use CGI to destroy the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro instead. For good measure, he also blew up the Sistine chapel and St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican...

This fits in perfectly with the my blog post here yesterday, discussing sitcom "Curb Your Enthusiasm"'s eager willingness to have a man urinate on Christian symbols but not Muslim ones. The first question is: What do Emmerich and the film's producers glean from the fact that they won't face any death threats if they destroy Christian holy symbols, but they will if they destroy Muslim ones? And secondly, why didn't Emmerich simply leave the scene in the movie and declare that anyone who would riot and kill innocent people over a fictional event depicted in a movie is a barbaric medievalist and should not be dignified by such cowardly capitulation?

I suspect that the answer to the first question is that Emmerich knows very well what this fact means, but will never say so in public. And I suspect the answer to the second is that he does not understand the threat to free speech that Islamic political pressure on Western powers actually constitutes.

Would Larry David Urinate On The Qur'an?

I've never watched it religiously (har-de-har-har-har), but on the few occasions that I have watched the hit American sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm, I have found it to be fairly amusing. In some ways, it's like an Americanised, ad-libbed version of our own One Foot In The Grave.

Today at Front Page, Jamie Glazov examines a recent episode of the show in which lead character Larry David (played by, er, Larry David) accidentally urinates on a picture of Jesus, leading to much subsequent hilarity. Glazov asks the question: "Are producers of this show, or Larry David, or anyone else connected to it fearing for their lives right now? Are there Christian groups calling for the death of anyone in connection to this episode?"

Also:

Would the producers of this show have just as easily allowed a scene in which Larry David urinates on a Koran? He couldn’t urinate on a picture of Muhammad because we all know that making a representation of Muhammad gets you an immediate death sentence. So we have to settle for the Holy Book. But how much does anyone want to bet that this would never be allowed?

Question: Why in our culture is urinating on Jesus easily permitted but urinating on the Koran is simply unthinkable? What does this signify?

Glazov repeats the question yet again:

HBO has come to the defense of the episode, saying that it is all about parody. Everyone needs to lighten up. So, if Larry David urinated on the Koran, would HBO tell everyone they need to lighten up because it is parody? What does it say that we know for a fact that the latter would simply never happen?

What meaning and lesson do we draw from this?

It goes without saying that this question is, of course, rhetorical.

The Goldstone Report: Islamic Propaganda

You may remember the Goldstone report, which was released by the UN a couple of months ago. This report accused both Israel and Hamas of committing "war crimes" during the Gaza offensive at the beginning of the year. Despite the report's claim to objectivity and balance, it was in fact riddled with anti-Israel bias, and the majority of the report focused on supposed Israeli atrocities during the war. This bias included distortion of the facts and double standards in regard to acceptance or dismissal of evidence.

For example, the report claimed that there was no evidence that Hamas fighters hid in civilian areas and used human shields made up of civilians during the conflict. This completely disregards the testimony of witnesses; for example: "Witnesses, including Hanan Abu Khajib, 39, said that Hamas fired just outside the school compound, probably from the secluded courtyard of a house across the street, 25 yards from the school. Israeli return fire, some minutes later, also landed outside the school, along the southwest wall, killing two Hamas fighters. Nearly all the casualties were in the street outside the compound, with only three people wounded from shrapnel inside the walls." It also ignores video footage showing Palestinian fighters planting improvised explosive devices outside houses and then climbing into those houses and hiding among the civilian population:



Finally, the report actually acknowledges that Hamas MP Fathi Hammad admitted in February 2009 that his party used human shields during the conflict, citing the following statement: "...the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death seeking. For the Palestinian people, death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the mujahideen excel and the children excel. Accordingly, [Hamas] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against the Zionist bombing machine." But despite this, the report goes on to dismiss this as insufficient evidence that Hamas used human shields.

On several other occasions, statements by Hamas leaders and politicians are declared not to constitute evidence, and yet numerous quotes from Israeli politicians are provided, accompanied by the following statement: "It is in the context of comments such as these that the massive destruction of businesses, agricultural land, chicken farms and residential houses has to be understood." In other words, statements by Palestinian politicians which reflect badly upon them do not count as evidence, but statements from Israeli politicians must be taken as evidence of war crimes and nefarious motivations.

All the Goldstone Report has done is embolden and delight Islamic jihadists not just in Palestine, but everywhere, by lending credibility to the Hamas movement and denigrating Israel at every opportunity. That the report would end up being so biased is not that much of a surprise, given the UN's long record of anti-Israel policies, as well as the known anti-Israel bias of several people directly involved in commissioning the report.

But what makes it now even less surprising is the revelation that the Goldstone Report was actually initiated by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the 57-state Islamic umma which makes up the largest voting bloc in the UN and has for the past several years been attempting to push through worldwide legislation that would make it a criminal offense to criticise Islam.

Israel faces enemies on all fronts, and what makes the situation so alarming is that most of these fronts are not martial in nature, and so constitute an easily overlooked threat to its security which is undermining its defenses without the use of guns or bombs.

Rifqa Bary Back In Ohio

Rifqa betrayed?

Rifqa Bary is the young Muslim girl from Ohio who converted to Christianity and subsequently fled her home after her father allegedly threatened to kill her for apostasy. The legal team representing her made a comprehensive case that Bary would be under threat from the local Muslim community, which is highly radicalised, if she was sent back to Ohio.

But, in the face of all human decency and compassion, it has happened anyway. Bary will initially live in a foster home, but a potential move home is possible. If that happens, we will sooner or later find out how much danger the girl is in.

Also of note is the fact that "Magistrate Mary Goodrich did order Children Services to monitor Rifqa's phone and Internet use after Jim Zorn, a Children Services attorney, asked for the restrictions." This was a tacit acceptance of the entirely unproven allegations by Rifqa's father - which were even taken up by pundits on the "right wing" Fox News shortly after the story first broke - that Rifqa has been "brainwashed" by a shady cult into converting to Christianity, and even into deliberately fabricating the claim that her father threatened to kill her. This spurious charge completely ignores conclusive evidence that Rifqa Bary had clandestinely converted to Christianity long before she had even met the Christian pastors who supposedly "brainwashed" her. It also ignores the evidence of the Islamic radicalism - including open support for the death penalty for apostates - among Muslims in Rifqa's home town. This evidence was provided by Rifqa's legal team, and was corroborated on a national scale in separate research by counter-terrorism investigator Dave Gaubatz.

The authorities are playing a potentially lethal game with Rifqa Bary. I am not a believer in any religion, but I will be praying that this young girl, whose only crime was to have freedom of conscience, is kept safe from harm.

Strange Sex Tales From The Muslim World

I'd rather see this...

...than this.

One of the charges that Muslims - whether "moderate" or "Islamist" - and even non-Muslim liberals often like to throw at the West is that it is a place of sexual decadence and immorality. From pornography to the increasing sexualisation of the Western media, the claim is that all this sexual libertinism offends the sensibilities of sprititually-minded, morally pure Muslims, and this causes them to hate us so much that they strap bombs to themselves in order to kill us, or fly planes into buildings, killing themselves along with thousands ofinnocent people, out of pure rage.

This argument is completely silly, of course, but as Daniel Pipes demonstrates this month, Muslims are in no position to be lecturing us Westerners on the subject of sexual morality. Islamic ideals and cultural norms in the Muslim world often lead to bizzarre and often disturbing sexual escapades, which Pipes has diligently documented in the link above. A few highlights are pasted below. I know where I'd rather live.

Sanctioned rape of Iranian virgins before their execution: An unnamed member of Iran's paramilitary Basij, currently married with children, explained to a Jerusalem Post reporter that he joined the Basij at 16 years when his mother took him "to a Basiji station and begged them to take me under their wing because I had no one and nothing foreseeable in my future. My father was martyred during the war in Iraq and she did not want me to get hooked on drugs and become a street thug. I had no choice." Then came a description of his role raping young girls:

He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death." In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said. Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?"

"Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."

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Afghan president favors law that "legalises rape within marriage": As elections in Afghanistan loom in August, President Hamid Karzai appears to be looking for Islamist votes by supporting a law, article 132 of which states that women must obey their husband's sexual demands and that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least "once every four nights" when traveling, unless she is ill. The final document is not yet published but it also appears to forbid wives from leaving home without their husbands' permission, to grant custody of children to fathers and grandfathers only, and to approve child marriages. According to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), "Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband." (March 22, 2009) Aug. 16, 2009 update: The BBC reports that the bill, only slightly modified from its initial terms, has passed and become law. It also indicates that husbands may withhold food from wives who refuse their sexual favors.

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Wet-nursing breaks up marriages: Readers may remember getting a good laugh two years ago when Izzat Atiya of Egypt's Al-Azhar University came up with a hair-brained way for men and women to work together by having the women feed their male colleagues "directly from her breast" at least five times. This act, his fatwa announced, would accord with a hadith and create maternal-child relations between the two, thus precluding any sexual activity between them and permitting them to be alone together at work. "Breast feeding an adult puts an end to the problem of the private meeting, and does not ban marriage. A woman at work can take off the veil or reveal her hair in front of someone whom she breastfed."

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Pleasure-marriage contract with a 9-year-old girl: Rami 'Aleiq, the former head of the Hizbullah Students Union at the American University in Beirut, gave an interview about himself to Rotana Music TV on August 25, 2008, and which MEMRI has today made available...

The interviewer asks: "How did you ever dare to sign a pleasure-marriage contract with a nine-year-old girl?" and 'Aleiq replies: "In our culture, in order to be able to touch a girl or a woman, there must be a contract of pleasure-marriage."

The interviewer notes: "We are talking about a nine-year-old girl ...," prompting 'Aleiq to justify his actions:

Sure. In Islam, and this is what we were taught, a girl is mature from the age of nine. This is true with regard to Sunnis as well as Shiites. You are focusing on Shia Islam, because I am a Shiite, but according to religious jurisprudence, a girl is mature at the age of nine. This is where we got this idea. I was a child, and so was she, so I was not allowed to touch her, if I didn't form with her the kind of relation that permitted this.

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Creating female suicide bombers through systematic rape: From Iraq comes news of the televized prison confession of Samira Ahmed Jassim al-Azzawi, a shopkeeper born in 1958 and the mother of four, telling about her alleged role in recruiting more than 80 young Iraqi women as suicide bombers, 28 of whom actually went on to carry out attacks.

Her method of recruitment? Organizing their rape in order to exploit the deep shame associated with rape in Muslim society in order to push the victims to forfeit their lives as suicide bombers, thereby somewhat redeeming their lost honor.

The Daily Mail quotes Jassim: "I was able to persuade them to become martyrs. Many of the women were broken, depressed, especially those who were raped." The paper goes on to explain that "Jassim's role was to manipulate these rape victims - persuading them they would be better off dead. And once the women had volunteered to become suicide bombers, she delivered them back to insurgents ready for death."

Al-Jazeera quotes Jassim telling about one specific victim, Amal, a teacher who had problems with her husband and his family:

I met Amal and we stayed together for more than two weeks. I talked to her until I convinced her she was in a bad situation - as she had been treated badly by her husband and brothers. She was mentally exhausted. I then took her to see my contacts, then received her back from them at the same delivery place. This is where she then blew herself up".

The New York Times focuses on an August 2007 suicide bombing that killed 12:

Jassim recounted the fate of a woman she called only Um Huda, whom she had led to a neighborhood bank that served as her rendezvous point. "When I was talking to her, she was not answering or looking at me," Ms. Jassim said. "She was mumbling verses of the Koran." "I got her to the bank and left her there," she went on, unemotionally. "She detonated herself at a police station in Muqdadiya."

The Times of London provides more details about the modus operandi of Umm al-Mu'minin, "the Mother of the Believers,":

Jassim is heard in the video apparently confessing to training a female bomber who attacked a police station in Diyala. "I was introduced to her, I began talking to her," she said. She had to talk to one elderly woman several times before persuading her to blow herself up at a bus station, she added. … US officials have said that recruiters often pick on vulnerable women whose husbands have been killed in the violence that consumed Iraq since the invasion. Some even marry the woman and then convert her into a suicide bomber.

Jassim's arrest is no small matter, for female suicide bombers have been a major tactic for al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunnah, and other terrorist groups in Iraq to get through the security forces. Checkpoints are typically run by male guards and social imperatives prevent them from frisking women, permitting the latter to carry out operations, especially as their long black robes offer plenty of space to conceal explosives.

Jassim faces the death penalty if found guilty. (February 6, 2009)

But Remember: HE'S the One Causing "Community Tensions"

Back on October 13th, I responded to a Home Office spokesman who said that Geert Wilders' presence in the UK "could have inflamed tensions between our communities and have led to inter-faith violence" by saying: "In fact, all Wilders would have done is what he has done already: hold up a mirror to Islamic societies and demand that they be seen as they really are. Any violence that would have occurred would have been committed by Muslims opposed to his presence there, and thus his point would have been proved."

I also should have included in that incitement to violence. And guess what? I was right.

"In Islam the punishment for the one who insults the Prophet is capital punishment."

Did Geert Wilders the "Islamophobe" say that?

Nope, it was a Muslim, in the linked video above.

In his Risala, Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, writes: "Whoever abuses the Messenger of God - peace and blessing of God be upon him - is to be executed, and his repentance is not accepted."

Was al-Qayrawani an Islamophobe? Nope. He was a renowned jurist of the Maliki school, one of the four major schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence. He died in the tenth century, but his teachings, and those of others, are clearly not a dead letter today. Not even in Britain.

Yet Another Attempted Islamic Honour Killing In America

Faleh Almaleki ran over his own daughter because she was "too Westernised"

According to ABC News: "Police in Arizona are hunting for an Iraqi-American father who they say ran over his daughter with his car to punish her for becoming 'too Westernized' and rebuffing the conservative ways he valued."

Note to ABC - "conservatives" generally don't run people over with cars for "rebuffing" their values.

In any case, the article drags out the usual apologist to explain that Islam doesn't teach anything that could remotely justify this and that Muslims are under increasing risk of being victimised. In this case, the apologist happens to be a member a member of the Muslim American Society, which is an arm of the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

Ibrahim Ramey, human and civil rights director for the Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation, told ABCNews.com that whenever this type of crime involves a Muslim it can serve to elevate the fears of people who may already harbor misconceptions about Islam.

Mr. Ramey completely ignores the fact that it is Muslims themselves who are the ones with the misconceptions about Islam, since even in America, they keep on committing honour killings, despite the fact that there is supposedly no sanction in Islam for doing so. We've seen this in the cases of Aqsa Parvez, who was murdered for not wearing a hijab, Amina and Sarah Said, who were murdered for dating non-Muslims, Muzzamil Hassan, who set up a TV channel to challenge "misconceptions about Islam" but ended up beheading his wife after she filed for divorce, and others. Why do they all keep doing this? Don't they know that the Qur'an says that there is "no compulsion in religion"? Don't they know that Islam values women's rights?

Honour killing is broadly tolerated in Islamic societies, and I wrote about some of the reasons why here. All the while Muslim groups keep failing to confront these facts, and deal with them, the bodies of young girls will keep piling up.

Flying Imams Under The Microsope

CAIR tool Omar Shahin with a Qur'an. What could possibly go wrong?

If you are not familiar with the case of the "Flying Imams", this article provides the background:

Most Americans remember the Nov. 20, 2006, spectacle of the half-dozen Muslim clerics who were kicked off a US Airways Minneapolis-to-Phoenix flight after engaging in behavior that alarmed both passengers and crew before takeoff. Many on board feared the imams – who prayed loudly in Arabic, refused to sit in their assigned seats, fanned out in the cabin in pairs to occupy the front, middle and rear exit rows, ordered seat-belt extenders they didn't need, criticized the Iraq war and President Bush, talked about al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and other disconcerting behaviors – were testing security procedures in a dry run for a future hijacking.

The imams, who insisted they were acting innocently, were booted off the plane, detained for several hours and questioned by airport police, the FBI and Secret Service, and prevented from booking a later flight on US Airways.

As a result, in a high-profile lawsuit championed by CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations] and argued by a CAIR-affiliated attorney, the "flying imams" brought suit against not only US Airways and the airport authority, but even the fearful passengers, or "John Does," who had simply reported the suspicious activity.

Outraged at the obvious chilling effect the case had on citizens who had been encouraged post-9/11 to be vigilant about security, Congress passed a law to protect citizens from being sued for reporting suspicious behavior to law enforcement. The passengers were subsequently dropped from the case.

But after Judge Ann Montgomery of the U.S. District Court of Minnesota ruled the "John Doe" law didn't immunize law enforcement officers named in the "flying imam" lawsuit, the case went forward.

Today, both sides announced that an out-of-court settlement involving payment to the imams had been reached, though the amount was undisclosed per mutual agreement.

That such a lawsuit would have a deleterious effect on effective airport security is obvious, but the issues don't stop there. The linked article goes on to further investigate the chilling possibility that the entire event - beginning with the imams getting on the plane and deliberately acting suspiciously - was orchestrated by CAIR in order to drum up sympathy for Muslims and to intimidate non-Muslims into ignoring or downplaying suspicious behaviour by Muslims at airports. The express intent, in other words, was to help make it easier for jihadists to commit terrorist atrocities.

The article, inspired by a recently released book called Muslim Mafia by P.David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry, provides some alarming details:

"Rewind to 1999," says "Muslim Mafia." "That year, two Muslim college students were removed from an America West flight to Washington from Phoenix after twice attempting to open the cockpit. The FBI later suspected it was a 'dry run' for the 9/11 hijackings, according the 9/11 Commission Report."...

Representing the two Muslim students was none other than CAIR, which held a news conference condemning "this ugly case of racial profiling" and urging Muslims to boycott America West...

The plot gets thicker.

[Omar] Shahin [one of the Flying Imams] also knew both of the students who were kicked off the America West flight, as documented in "Muslim Mafia," which reports that Shahin ministered to them at his former mosque in Tucson, Arizona, where they had attended college on visas from Saudi Arabia. When they were arrested, Shahin rushed to their defense – along with CAIR.

Incredibly, reveals "Muslim Mafia," "Shahin has admitted to being a former supporter of Osama bin Laden while running the Saudi-backed Islamic Center of Tucson, which functioned as one of al-Qaida’s main hubs in North America."

FBI investigators believe bin Laden operated a cell at that same mosque. Hani Hanjour, the Saudi hijacker who piloted the plane that hit the Pentagon, worshipped there along with bin Laden’s one-time personal secretary, according to the 9/11 report. Bin Laden’s former chief of logistics was president of the mosque before Shahin took over...

Shahin, the spokesman for the six flying imams, is a native of Jordan, and currently leads the North American Imams Federation, or NAIF, a sister organization to CAIR, both controlled by the international Muslim Brotherhood, which federal authorities recognize as the parent organization of both al-Qaida and Hamas. In fact, Shanin was returning from a private NAIF conference in Minneapolis when he was removed from the flight. During the conference he had met with newly elected Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, who had just spoken the previous night at a CAIR event.

So a radical Muslim with connections to CAIR engages in a stunt with remarkable similarities to one that was perpetrated several years earlier by two people he happened to know personally, and then his CAIR associates are the ones who take up his defence, just as they had done in that previous case.

Those who would dismiss all this as mere conspiracy-mongering would do well to examine the radical background and history of CAIR. For more information on that, see here.

Also of concern is the connection of Shahin with Keith Ellison, America's only Muslim Congressman. But Ellison is also connected with CAIR, as well. See here.

These are worrying times indeed.