Eye On Islam

Touching A Jihadist Nerve

2012-01-25T23:22:00.000Z

The truth ICNA is trying to hide

The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) called on NYPD police commissioner Ray Kelly to resign today, after it was revealed that an "anti-Muslim" film had been shown to over a thousand police officers in the force as part of their training.

ICNA did not mention, of course, that the "Islamophobic" film in question, The Third Jihad, is narrated by a Muslim, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, or that it begins with a disclaimer that reads: "This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of radical Islam. Only a small percentage of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are radical." Nor did they mention the fact that the film's conclusions were based on solid documentary evidence accepted as compelling by the judge during the Holy Land Foundation terror funding trial which began in 2007, and led to the conviction of the defendants on all counts.

There is good reason for this. ICNA itself, in its 2010 Handbook, openly admits to being the American branch of a global Islamic movement that seeks to establish "the united Muslim Ummah [community] in a united Islamic state, governed by an elected khalifah [caliph] in accordance with the laws of shari’ah." It lays out a gradualist plan for achieving these objectives, citing the importance of the Qur'an and Sunnah as the theocratic pillars of legislation and guidance in all areas of life. It also praises and recommends the works of, among many others, Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Brotherhood's leading modern spokesman and spiritual guide.

So what is ICNA's motivation in attempting to punish and silence Mr. Kelly? The Third Jihad uses documentary evidence to demonstrate that the Muslim Brotherhood is engaged, in its own words, in "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." It shows how the organisation and its front groups have striven to implement this plan in America in recent years.

The Islamic Circle of North America supports the Brotherhood, and is itself striving for the same totalitarian goal. Therefore, where there are people who are trying to raise awareness of these issues, it seeks to shut them up and shut them down. It stands a much greater chance of succeeding in its mission to subsume America within a collectivist global caliphate if all those who seek to stop it are gagged, muted and defenseless in the path of its assault.

UPDATE: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is also calling for Kelly to resign. CAIR is named in the Muslim Brotherhood internal document linked above - along with ICNA - as one of "our [i.e., the MB's] organizations and the organizations of our friends".

Tawfik Hamid on Oklahoma's Rejection of "Unalienable Rights"

2012-01-22T00:26:00.000Z

Ealier this month, a federal appeals court unanimously upheld a ruling that blocked implementation of an Oklahoma state constitutional amendment that would have prohibited state courts from considering what is broadly described as Islamic “Sharia law” and “international law.”

The court concluded that by "singling out Islam for unfavorable treatment" in state courts, the law likely violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The court further explained:

“Appellants do not identify any actual problem the challenged amendment seeks to solve. Indeed, they admitted . . . that they did not know of even a single instance where an Oklahoma court had applied Sharia law or used the legal precepts of other nations or cultures, let alone that such applications or uses had resulted in concrete problems in Oklahoma.”

One of the problems with the many anti-sharia laws that are being put forward on the state level in the US is that many of their proponents seem unable to put forward a coherent case in support of them. For example, while it may be true that Oklahoma is not one of the documented states in which sharia has been applied in an American court (there are 23 states where this has in fact occurred, by the way), the proponents of the bill could have pointed to other examples from around the country, and warned about the seriousness of considering the possibility that such a thing could happen, and acting to prevent it. But they apparently did not do this.

They should have also made the point that the anti-sharia laws are aimed at Islam's political doctrines, and so do not infringe upon the First Amendment religious rights of American Muslims in any way. But they have not done this effectively, either, and so the clueless dhimmis have ended up triumphant this time.

It is extremely telling that one of the most passionate denunciations of the court's decision that I have seen comes not from anti-jihad warriors such as Robert Spencer or Pamela Geller, but from a Muslim: Tawfik Hamid.

Hamid is an Egyptian Muslim who was formerly a member of the terrorist group Jamaah Islamiyah, and studied for a time under the tutelage of the current al-Qaeda head honcho Ayman al-Zawahiri. After renouncing the group, Hamid has become perhaps the world's foremost proponent of a tiny Islamic reform movement that seeks to fundamentally rewrite the tenets of Islam - not by denying that any problematic texts or doctrines exist, but by confronting these problems head-on and seeking to construct new understandings of Islam that challenge the mainstream interpretations that have prevailed for fourteen centuries. Unsurprisingly, in the process of engaging in this courageous exercise, he is regularly subjected to death threats by others who label themselves "moderate Muslims".

In a recent article, Hamid brilliantly skewers the critics of the anti-sharia bill. Below are some lengthy extracts from his piece, which make plain the importance of these issues, and highlight how vital it is that true moderate Muslim reformers such as Hamid are supported and encouraged throughout the Islamic world:

The above comments about Sharia law do not properly depict how controversial the risks to society would be if considered. Fundamental principles of Sharia law that are not only approved but also unchallenged in Islamic Jurisprudence include the killing Muslims who convert from Islam to another faith, the stoning of adulterers, and the killing of gays.

Furthermore, it justifies polygamy, pedophilia, and beating women to discipline them. If the judges of the Oklahoma court knew that the basic principles of Sharia law promote such inhumane and derogatory acts and still lifted the ban on it, it would subsequently end in catastrophe.

Not only would it be disastrous to our society but it would also show a level of ignorance within the U.S. judicial system.

If one day Awad wanted to kill another Muslim who converted to Christianity (or any other faith), would the Oklahoma court uphold his ‘constitutional right’ to practice Sharia Law and kill that Muslim — as Sharia law dictates — or will they uphold the constitutional right of the other Muslim to practice his freedom of religion?

In other words, should the court in Oklahoma protect such constitutional rights that arouse criminal activity (an example being the killing of apostates) but not protect such constitutional rights that allow citizens to freely select their faith and convert out of Islam without being threatened? The court MUST explain this discrimination in respecting one constitutional right over another.

Courts must be able to find sources for Sharia Law that illustrate how it DOES NOT promote the above mentioned criminal activities. Such sources must be cited appropriately and it must be noted whether any major Islamic institution approves it. Removing the ban on Sharia Law — without showing even one single approved Sharia text that rejects the crimes mentioned above — can be seen as a form of endorsement for legalizing such criminal acts....

The judges who lifted the ban on Sharia law must explain to us how allowing a law that justifies the above mentioned crimes can fit with our “unalienable rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Accepting Sharia Law that shamelessly allows killing apostates, adulterers and gays AND that promotes beating women, pedophilia and slavery is ultimately destructive to our unalienable rights.

Appeasing The Muslim Brotherhood

2012-01-13T00:06:00.000Z

Muhammad Badi

Yesterday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met with leaders of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, who are poised to dominate the country's new parliament.

The meeting is part of an ongoing effort by the Obama Administration to reach out to the Brotherhood after decades of shunning the movement.

These efforts are an affront to human decency and a sign once again of how poorly the "Arab Spring" (which I prefer to call the "Infidel's Winter") has been understood among the Western elites.

Almost simultaneous to Burns' visit, the MB's Supreme Leader Muhammad Badi was quoted in the Egyptian media (translation here) as saying the following:

“The Brotherhood is getting closer to achieving its greatest goal as envisioned by its founder, Imam Hassan al-Banna. This will be accomplished by establishing a righteous and fair ruling system, with all its institutions and associations, including a government evolving into a rightly guided caliphate and mastership of the world.

"When the Brotherhood started its advocacy [da’wa], it tried to awaken the nation from its slumber and stagnation, to guide it back to its position and vocation. In his message at the sixth caucus, the Imam [Banna] defined two goals for the Brotherhood: a short term goal, the fruits of which are seen as soon as a person becomes a member of the Brotherhood; and a long term goal that requires utilizing events, waiting, making appropriate preparations and prior designs, and a comprehensive and total reform of all aspects of life.

“The Imam [Banna] delineated transitional goals and detailed methods to achieve this greatest objective, starting by reforming the individual, followed by building the family, the society, the government, and then a rightly guided caliphate and finally mastership of the world.”

Despite the historical reality that the caliphate has always been an aggressive, imperialist entity posing a permanent and serious threat to the non-Muslim world, some might argue that Badi's words should be taken more figuratively than literally. Perhaps a Muslim "mastership of the world" would be more a general alliance of nations sharing a common religious heritage, and wouldn't have an overly political or theocratic character, they might argue.

Not so. For as I reported here nearly a year ago, Badi is openly on record stating that the Qur'an should form the basis of the political structure of the new Egypt, while his organisation's political platform plainly advocates sharia law as the political solution to Egypt's problems.

In Badi's own words:

"The noble Koran is the constitution that sets out the laws of Islam. It is the fountainhead of all virtue and wisdom in the hearts of the believers, and it is the best [way] for the believers to become closer to Allah... The Holy Koran includes all the tenets of faith, laws of worship, principles of public good [and] legal concepts [pertaining to] this world, including duties and prohibitions, and they are for the benefit of all humanity, without distinctions of religion, [skin] color, gender, [social] status or language..."

Badi' added that the Koran must continue to be a way of life for every Muslim and his family, and that, at the state level, countries whose official religion is Islam must establish the Koran as "the basis for the constitution and the first source of legislation, the scales of justice in the courtrooms and one of the bases of the [school] curricula at all levels [of education]... All clauses of the [state] constitution which Islam and its precepts do not permit must be removed..."

In other words, barbaric, theocratic sharia law is the crux of Badi's vision of what "mastership of the world" really means.

But maybe it's a "moderate" form of sharia law, one that rejects draconian punishments and is really just like being a Rotarian? Again, very unlikely, given that the Egyptian people overwhelmingly define sharia as encompassing stonings, amputations, and denial of freedom of speech and freedom of religion - and a majority of them support the implementation of this system of governance.

Badi's description of a gradual process of Islamisation involving a "long term goal that requires utilizing events, waiting, making appropriate preparations and prior designs, and a comprehensive and total reform of all aspects of life," mirrors the views of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is often referred to as the "father figure" of the Brotherhood. In a recent fatwa at his OnIslam website, Qaradawi opined that "Gradualism in applying the Shari`ah is a wise requirement to follow." He has these specific recommendations:

Being a divine law, gradualism is to be followed on the political level nowadays. That is to say, gradualism is to be observed when it comes to applying the rulings of the Shari`ah in today's life when Muslims have been socially, legislatively, and culturally invaded.

If we want to establish a real Muslim society, we should not imagine that such an end can be achieved by a mere decision issued to that effect by a king or a president or a council of leaders or a parliament.

Gradualism is the means through which such an end can be fulfilled. Gradualism here refers to preparing people ideologically, psychologically, morally, and socially to accept and adopt the application of the Shari`ah in all aspects of life, and to finding lawful alternatives for the forbidden principles upon which many associations have been founded for so long.

In other words, a slow, gradual creep of sharia law into the non-Muslim psyche and society, under the noses of those who should ostensibly oppose it, so that it is achieved before most people have even realised it needed to be stopped. The MB's own words as recorded in captured internal documents reveal that this is its plan not just for Egypt, but for the West as well.

But anyway, ignore all of this. Barack Obama wants "outreach", and why would anyone disapprove of that?

WaPo, Ghannouchi, And The Jews

2012-01-09T21:03:00.000Z

The editors and journalists of the Washington Post apparently believe they can say things and that automatically makes them true.

Take this piece today, concerning the growing trend of antisemitism in post-"Arab Spring" Tunisia. It first describes the Ennahda party, which heads the country's new government, as a "moderate Islamic party", without any specific evidence to support this appellation.

The article then goes on to describe a recent incident in which videos circulated online showing crowd members - reported to be some 5000 in number - greeting Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas offical, at the airport in Tunis on Thursday, chanting “Kill the Jews” and “Crush the Jews.” It publishes unquestioningly the "condemnation" of Ennahda's leader Rashid al-Ghannouchi:

“Ennahda condemns these slogans which do not represent Islam’s spirit or teachings, and considers those who raised them as a marginal group,” Ghannouchi said in a statement.

Ghannouchi's words can be trusted about as much as those of a viper.

In an interview last year, Ghannouchi predicted triumphantly that the Arab Spring would lead to the "end of Israel" by 2027. He also alleges that "the Jews" are behind a global conspiracy to destroy Islam - classic Islamic antisemitic ideology, which goes back to the genesis of Islam.

And Mr. Ghannouchi has a long history of association with extremism and Palestinian terrorism. From 1988-92, the Islamic Committee for Palestine organised conferences and rallies in the United States that featured the leading lights of Islamic extremist movements throughout the world. One example of such a conference took place in Chicago from December 22-25, 1989 and featured Mr. Ghannouchi as a speaker. Its theme was “Palestine, Intifada, and Horizons of Islamic Renaissance” and other speakers included Abd Al-’Aziz Al’Awda, the “spiritual leader” of Islamic Jihad and Muhammad ‘Umar of Hizb Al-Tahrir, the Islamic Liberation Party.

In 2002, Mr. Ghannouchi co-signed a statement that said: “The bodies of the men and women of Palestine are shields against the Zionist agenda, which its greater target is to destroy the entire Islamic Ummah.” The statement was also signed by Muslim Brotherhood, Hizballah and Hamas leaders - all antisemites par excellence.

Forgive us, then, if we greet his latest proclamations with little more than a contemptuous chuckle.

The WaPo article goes on to gloss over the problem and history of antisemitism in Tunisia, which goes back a long time. In recent years, it most notably came to the fore in the Ghriba synagogue bombing of 2002, in which 21 people were killed and 30 injured. More recently, in February 2011, another synagogue was torched, with some observers noting the apparent lack of interest in the attack among the police and security services. And also last year, a Muslim mob held an anti-Jewish rally outside Tunisia's main synagogue, chanting the jihadist battle-cry, "Jews wait, the army of Muhammad is coming back," and "We'll redo the battle of Khaybar" - a reference to the slaughter of a peaceful Jewish farming community by Muhammad, as recorded by his earliest biographers, during which Jewish leaders were tortured for money and their wives raped. This same battle-cry has been heard during various anti-Israel marches around the Islamic world, including among those setting sail on the "Freedom Flotilla" that would later be attacked by Israel when it tried to breach the legally justified blockade of Gaza.

The Post leaves its readers with one last obfuscation in the final sentence:

Tunisia currently has a Jewish population of 1,500 Jews, but in the 1960s there were 100,000. Most left following the 1967 war between Israel and Arab countries, and Socialist economic policies adopted by the government in the late 1960s also drove many Jewish business owners out of the country.

Aside from the sombre demographic data, this passage is extremely misleading. The Jews just "left" following the Six Day War? Why did they leave? Precisely because of Islamic antisemitic persecution.

According to historian Norman Stillman, riots that took place on June 5th, 1967, resulted in most Jewish shops being looted, and the Great Synagogue was burned and desecrated. One eyewitness remarked: "It is the unanimous opinion of Jews one talks to that if there was any doubt previously, it is quite clear now there is no future for them in Tunisia." Just prior to these events, there were approximately 23,000 Jews in Tunisia. Within a year of this rioting, there were seven or eight thousand left. Many of them had fled to France to escape the Muslim depredations.

This WaPo article is just one of many that has appeared over the last year underlining the failure of the mainstream Western media to properly inform the public about the reality of what has been happening in the Middle East since the Arab Spring began.

Investigate The Islam Channel!

2012-01-05T23:27:00.000Z

The Leveson Inquiry is an ongoing series of government-sponsored hearings designed to investigate the standards of practice (and malpractice) within the British news media, focusing particularly on the allegations that newspapers connected with Rupert Murdoch's News International organisation obtained stories by illegally hacking into people's mobile phones, including those of celebrities and a teenage kidnap and murder victim.

Now, an "alternative Leveson Inquiry" is being set up by an Islamic TV channel in order to investigate the way in which British media report on Muslim and Islamic affairs. The Islam Channel is planning to appoint a judge with an independent panel of assessors - just like Leveson - to carry out the inquiry.

The "Alternative Leveson" will examine "the possible causal effect between media coverage and social attitudes towards Muslims. It will also assess any links between media coverage and subsequent government policy", with the implication being that the hearings will likely find the British media to be guilty of propagating Islamophobia.

Let's bring things back to reality for a minute. The Islam Channel has in the past broadcast programmes hosted by members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation that British politicians have repeatedly called to be banned, to attack "man-made law" and advocate the implementation of sharia.

The channel has been accused of giving a platform to Anwar al-Awlaki, the extremist cleric killed by an American drone strike in September, who had links to al-Qaeda and to the man charged with trying to blow up a transatlantic jet on Christmas Day 2009. The channel last year carried adverts for a box set of DVDs of Awlaki's sermons and for at least two events at which the cleric was due to be the star speaker via a video link.

Furthermore, the channel's chief executive officer, Mohamed Ali Harrath, has been on an Interpol wanted list since 1992, after his native Tunisia accused him of attempting to create "an Islamic state by means of armed revolutionary violence".

A 2010 report by the primarily Muslim "Quilliam Foundation" revealed that the channel is running programmes saying that women should not refuse their husbands' sexual advances, should not leave the house without their husbands' permission, and that if they wear makeup, they are prostitutes.

It has also endorsed polygamy, declared that the majority of people in Hell will be women, and been found by Ofcom to have breached the broadcasting code on impartiality during elections, and for broadcasting an unbalanced programme about the ownership of Jerusalem.

Something definitely needs investigating here, and it sure ain't "Islamophobia".

The Stages Of Islam

2012-01-02T22:57:00.000Z

It is remarkable, and surely not coincidental, that when you look at the behaviour of Muslim communities around the world today, and you compare areas which have different Muslim populations, you see startling similarities with the behaviour of Muhammad. There are four key stages in the process of “Islamising” a society, and these all follow Muhammad's example:

1. When Muhammad first started preaching Islam in Mecca, and when he later emigrated to Medina, when he still had very few followers, he preached relative tolerance and tried to call people to his religion peacefully. Today, in countries like the USA, where the Muslim population is very small, we see that they are relatively benign compared to the Muslim populations of some other countries, as they seek to ingratiate themselves with the local populace. Phony "moderate" Muslim advocacy groups spread the message that Islam is a Religion of Peace, and publicly scoff at the idea that any Muslims are engaged in efforts to transform the legal system of their host country by any means - even as said "moderate" groups push exactly this agenda.

2. When those to whom Muhammad was preaching – particularly the Jews – proved stubbornly resistant, he started to become more hostile towards them, and began to make demands that they accede to Islamic customs, claiming that all those who refused were evil and hated Islam and all Muslims. Today, Muslim communities in countries such as the UK and the rest of Europe are also making similar demands for their host countries to bend over backwards for the sake of Muslims (which the dhimmi leaders often acquiesce to), and they label anyone who does not want their society to become Islamic a “bigot”, an “Islamophobe” and a racist. They use these terms deliberately in order to frighten people away from resisting the spread of the Islamic political system, since they know that many people in the West would rather die horribly than do anything that would make them appear to be intolerant.

3. Once Muhammad had consolidated his power and knew that the other religions in Arabia were not going to submit to his rule willingly, he declared war on them. He waged jihad against his own former tribe, the Quraysh, for many years, eventually defeating them and converting them to Islam. The three main Jewish tribes in the region were all exterminated or enslaved. Every other pagan tribe in Arabia was converted to Islam by force. Today, countries with significantly higher Muslim populations, such as Nigeria, the Philippines and Kenya are witness to frequent violent rioting and mass chaos caused by Muslim mobs and militias. The fighting in these countries has turned physical and the Muslims there are much more open about their rejection of non-Muslim societies and their desire to impose sharia law on them by any means necessary.

4. After Muhammad conquered Mecca, he had successfully won control over all of Arabia, and began to impose a tyrannical rule over the people he governed. Several of those he considered his enemies were hunted down and murdered, and Islamic law was brutally imposed. Today, countries which are virtually 100% Muslim, such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, run what amount to almost fully-fledged sharia states, where persecution of non-Muslim minorities and women is commonplace, and barbaric punishments such as stoning and amputation are carried out.

That these four stages can be observed fairly consistently among Muslim populations all over the world is no coincidence. Anyone who studies Islam can understand the connection between the behaviour of Muhammad and the behaviour of the Muslim world today, and can make accurate predictions about what will be the next step in the process.

It is for this reason that the study of Islam and sharia in the West is so important. One cannot defeat a threat doctrine one does not understand. From accurate knowledge, efficient policy will naturally follow.

New Year, Same Old Islam

2012-01-01T16:28:00.002Z

Yes, I've been gone a long time. This can be attributed partly to the preparations for my wedding in early October (to one woman, not four), and my subsequent two-week honeymoon in Mexico. After that, I had little time for blogging, for various reasons, but my New Year's Resolution was to start it up again, so here I am.

I will be posting the usual mixture of news analysis and debunking of apologetics in the days and weeks to come, but in the mean time, below is a cartoon I saw recently that does what all good cartoons do: tell it like it is, in a humerous way.

The Biblical characters Adam and Eve appear - as Muslims - in the Qur'an. Here's how they might have looked:

The Secondcoming...

2011-12-18T22:56:00.001Z

Eye On Islam returns in the New Year.

In the mean time, Merry Christmas, you infidel scum.

State of Hostilities (Updated)

2011-09-21T22:57:00.008+01:00

As the Palestinian Authority continues its attempt to achieve statehood beginning with full acceptance of United Nations membership, here are three reasons why this action should be opposed by the international community.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Under international law, the first condition required for a political entity to be considered a state is as follows:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a ) a permanent population; b ) a defined territory; c ) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

The Palestininian Authority has no complete legal control over a permanent population, and therefore cannot be classified as a state.

2. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, in line with the general policy of the Fatah group he leads, has repeatedly refused to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, failed to condemn terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians (something which even Yasser Arafat did, although his condemnations were obviously insincere), and rejected groundbreaking peace offerings from successive Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Netanyahu (see details here, here and here).

3. By the admission of its own MPs, Fatah's drive to form a "two-state solution" based on the 1967 armistice lines is a purely practical political initiative, designed as a temporary step toward annexing the whole of Israel. This process does not differ significantly from the terrorist group Hamas' intention to conquer all of Israel - an existing United Nations member state - using a transitional "Palestinian state" as a first step in a long-term plan (see final paragraph here). This objective is clearly incompatible with the image of a "state" that wants and deserves official recognition at the UN.

UPDATE: What was I saying?

Palestinian Authority representatives in the United Nations are handing out maps of "Palestine" that show it in place of all of Israel, including Tel Aviv, reports David Bedein of the Israel Resource Review.

Bedein, who is currently in the United States, told Arutz Sheva: "They do not want a Palestinian state, but all of Palestine. The maps they hand out in their offices include all of 'Palestine.' They erase Israel completely in their maps."

When Life Imitates Art

2011-09-20T20:05:00.004+01:00

(Click to enlarge)

Feeding The Lions

2011-09-15T22:49:00.007+01:00

Never fear - he only wants good sharia, not bad sharia

In what he will undoubtedly consider to be his finest moment as Prime Minister, thousands of Libyans turned out to cheer David Cameron, along with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in Benghazi today.

"It is great to be in free Libya," Mr Cameron said. "Col Gaddafi said he would hunt you down like rats, but you showed the courage of lions."

Very poetic and stirring words...if only they were in support of a more worthy cause.

We already know that the National Transitional Council, upon whom NATO have put such hopes in forging a new "freedom-loving" Libya, consist partially of Islamic jihadists who fought AGAINST our troops in Iraq, and partially of others who may have had similar inclinations but whom we can't be bothered to investigate. It is even reported today by CNN that an anonymous senior defense official at the Pentagon, when asked if there were members of terrorist groups operating inside the NTC, replied, "Yeah, probably".

Cameron and Sarkozy's best friend during this whole adventure has been Mustafa Abdul Jalil, an NTC leader. On the one hand, Jalil has said that the new Libyan government "will not accept any extremist ideology", and that he is for "moderate Islam" - after which Cameron apparently stopped listening, since he has also stated explicitly:

"We are seeking to establish a state government by law and welfare - and Shari'ah - Islamic law - should be the main source of law".

Only three months ago, Cameron fought tooth and nail against some of his own MPs - including Nick Clegg - to get the official government definitions of "Islamic extremism" altered to include "the advocacy of sharia law". Is he against sharia law in the UK, but not against it in Libya? If so, why? If sharia is good enough for a "free Libya", in his words, why would it not be good enough for the UK, as well?

Needless to say, if you go to the link above and read the apologetic article which quotes Jalil's sharia statement, you will see that it is written by Dr. Abdul Wahid, Chairman of the UK Executive Committee of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Dr. Wahid fully supports the NTC's sharia vision for Libya. Hizb ut-Tahrir openly promote sharia in the UK, and David Cameron has on several occasions called for them to be banned. What would he make of the fact that an organisation he wants to outlaw support the stated governmental ambitions of his new ally, who himself advocates a form of governance Cameron deems to be incompatible with with the "freedom" he wants to promote in Libya?

Ten Years On, Are We Safer?

2011-09-12T20:44:00.004+01:00

Perhaps the single most asked analytical question as we reached the tenth anniversary of 9/11 was a variation of the following: "Ten years after those attacks, are we safer now than we were then?"

I believe that the answer to this question lies not so much in what is happening in the military realm of which side - us or the terrorists - has the most men left standing, but in the ideological world, where our understanding of the threat must necessarily come from.

The terrorists who committed those acts did so in the name of Islam. As several 9/11 conspirators stated in an "Islamic Response" to the American government who put them on trial, "killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion. These actions are our offerings to God. In addition, it is the imposed reality on Muslims in Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, in the land of the two holy sites [Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia], and in the rest of the world, where Muslims are suffering from your brutality, terrorism, killing of the innocent, and occupying their lands and their holy sites. Nevertheless, it would have been the greatest religious duty to fight you over your infidelity. However, today, we fight you over defending Muslims, their land, their holy sites, and their religion as a whole."

The conspirators quote from the Qur'an at least a dozen times in their response, including immediately following the statement that "In God's book, he ordered us to fight you everywhere we find you, even if you were inside the holiest of all holy cities, The Mosque in Mecca, and the holy city of Mecca, and even during sacred months."

Elsewhere, al-Qaeda and rafts of other terrorist groups have justified their actions, again and again, by referring to Islamic texts and teachings.

And yet, despite all this, a decade on, we still live in a world where even to speak about such things is not only considered politically incorrect, but actually the height of vulgarity. Again and again, our political leaders insist that even though the terrorists themselves say that Islam is their motivation, actually it is not, and we must ignore Islam in all this and focus on "extremism".

Only a few days ago, Liam Fox, the Defense Secretary of the current British government, insisted on BBC's Question Time that "we must not fall into the trap" of believing that terror attacks by Muslims "have anything to do with Islam", and the lemming-like audience applauded him. Even David Cameron, while critiquing the failed policy (or pet project) of multiculturalism, claimed that "The point is this: the ideology of extremism is the problem; Islam emphatically is not."

So even though Islam contains within it doctrines which are violent and supremacist, and even though terrorists repeatedly invoke those teachings to justify their actions, we must overlook this, because David Cameron says that there is this "ideology of extremism" that is out there somewhere, and can presumably be invoked as the terrorists' true inspiration, and we should focus on that instead, and that will help us beat them.

Rrrrriiiiigggghhhtt.....

It is a sad time for the rational thinking person when a Muslim in Fort Hood, Texas, gives an academic lecture to his victims explaining that he is soon going to attack them because of his religion, and yet this atrocity is not only allowed to still happen, but the man's reasons for committing it are later whitewashed in the US military's official reports on the incident.

Similar willful ignorance has also led to widespread political support for the so-called "Arab Spring", despite the recent antisemitic rioting in Egypt, and despite a whole host of other things that make the Middle Eastern Muslim commitment to "democracy" (when understood in its expansive Western formulation) seem questionable at best.

Self-imposed unawareness of the threat doctrine has also led to the increasing capitulation to sharia throughout the Western world. Sharia is a draconian system of totalitarian law that violates fundamental human rights and crushes individual freedom. And yet, in America, sharia has been considered or applied in state court judgements in at least 23 states, in violation of the US Constitution. In Germany, it is frequently used in court decisions. And here in the UK, sharia is an increasingly threatening - and worryingly sanctioned - shadow legal system that is issuing rulings that run counter to British law.

All of this was happening to a certain extent BEFORE 9/11. But since, it is almost as if the fall of those towers has acted as the catalyst for the Western world to hasten its own decline, out of fear and shame. Those infamous events have produced greater levels of organised resistance to the jihad threat than existed before them. But we cannot possibly consider ourselves "safer" when we will not even acknowledge the motivations, goals and origins of the ideological threat we face. We cannot be "safer" when we are so fixated on one organisation - al-Qaeda - that we ignore the well-developed mindset and worldview that generated it. Although the attacks gave us the kick up the backside our security agencies needed to guard us more effectively against all future attacks, that in itself will not be enough.

As sad as it is, a decade on from 9/11, we are only marginally safer now than we were then.

Debunking The Nigerian Tribune

2011-08-27T00:03:00.003+01:00

The paucity of reason and evidence Islamic apologists have in their favour is demonstrated again in this article today by Azeez Ishaq Oladimeji at the Nigerian Tribune.

Oladimeji opines that "The perception of an average non-muslim is that Islam is a violent religion, which mean that muslimas, therefore, are violent...However, all these perceptions are wrong. Islam is a religion of peace."

Aside from the fact that this is a straw man - believing that Islam is a violent religion does NOT mean that one also believes that all Muslims are violent; anyone who does believe such a thing is a fool - he then goes on to fill the rest of his article with falsehoods and ignorance.

Firstly, he quotes Qur'an 5:32 as follows: "Because of that, we ordained for the children of Israel that if anyone killed a person, not in relatiation of murder, or (and) be spread mischief in the hand [sic], it would be as if he killed all mankind. And if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind."

Notice that he does not quote the verse along with its surrounding context, which paints an entirely different picture:

For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth.

The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom.” (5:32-33)

Thus, in its full context, we can see that this passage is actually a threat to the Jews not to oppose the Muslims or they will face crucifixion, mutilation or banishment.

After this, he quotes the following: "And do not kill anyone whose killing Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause. And whoever is killed wrongfully (intentionally with hostility and oppression and not by mistake), we have given his heir the authority to demand the law of equality in punishment or to forgive, or to take blood-money. But let him not exceed the limits in the matter of taking life.” (17:33)

Oladimeji omits mention of the fact that according to revered Muslim Qur'an commentators such as Ibn Kathir, this verse only applies to "wrongfully" killing Muslims, not unbelievers.

He then cites an anonymous non-Muslim author who quoted two hadith in which Muhammad is recorded as having first of all tortured a Jewish leader in order to force him to reveal the location of hidden treasure, before having him killed, as well as praising the brutal murder of a non-Muslim shepherd by one of his followers. Oladimeji asserts that these stories are pure fabrications on the part of the infidel author, and that no source can be found for them.

Well, I'll tell you the source: Ibn Ishaq's The Life of Muhammad. As I'm sure Oladimeji knows, Ibn Ishaq was a pious Muslim, and Muhammad's earliest biographer. His work is the most important biographical material on Muhammad in existence, and is highly renowned among Muslims.

The Jewish leader who was tortured to death by Muhammad was Kinana b. al-Rabi, and the incident took place at the Khaybar oasis in approximately 629 AD. It is documented on page 515 of Alfred Guillaume's English translation of Ibn Ishaq's work. The second incident was not immediately familiar to me, but after a brief flick through The Life of Muhammad, I found it - it's on page 673.

I hope the author will take the time to condemn Ibn Ishaq for fabricating these stories in order "to tarnish the image of Islam and to condemn Muslims."

Oladimeji asserts that all the violent verses in the Qur'an "were revealed to Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) at the time when non-believing were attacking Makkah’s muslims and threatening those that were in Medina. Thus, Allah allowed them to defend themselves. In other words, those verses are for special historical situation, concerning the beginning of Islam."

In fact, most of the Qur'an's most violent passages were revealed after Muhammad had already extinguished the Quraysh as a threat. Much of sura 9, for example, was revealed around the time Muhammad was launching offensive military operations against the Byzantine Empire, who had never heard of him until he started threatening their rulers and demanding that they convert to Islam. At around the same time, he was also sending his fiercest warriors, such as Khalid bin Walid, to fight the few remaining non-Muslim tribes of Arabia and convert them to Islam by force. One tribe in Yemen was told, "Break them (i.e. the arrows) and testify that None has the right to be worshipped except Allah, or else I will chop off your neck." (Bukhari v.5, b.59, no.643) Muhammad sent Khalid to the Banu Harith tribe, and "ordered him to invite them to Islam for three days before he fought them. If they were to respond and submit, he was to teach them the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Prophet, and the requirements of Islam. If they should decline, then he was to fight them." (Tabari v.9, p82)

The main problem with the "You have to understand it in its historical context" argument is that it is entirely selective. The entire Qur'an was revealed in relation to specific events that occurred in Muhammad's life. How, then, does Oladimeji propose that we decide which verses are supposed to be applied only to a specific time period, and which are supposed to be taken as general, everlasting principles? Why must the violent verses be seen as historical relics, but the peaceful-sounding verses be seen as applying to everyone today, when both were revealed 1400 years ago in reaction to particular circumstances? And what's more, does Oladimeji believe, as do the vast majority of Muslims, that the Qur'an is eternal and uncreated? If so, what is the point of it containing reams of commandments which are now not to be applied and are no use to anybody?

Note: This article has been emailed directly to the Nigerian Tribune. If there is any response, it will be published here in full.

What Now For Libya?

2011-08-23T22:33:00.005+01:00

Celebrations in Tripoli...but who will take the cake?

As news filters through that the Libyan "rebels" have taken control of Colonel Gaddafi's compound, bringing that lunatic's reign of terror ever closer, our short-sighted media is exultant. Not very much thought is being given at all by either them or our policymakers as to what exactly is the nature of the "revolution" we've taken far too long and spent far too much money to help bring about.

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which has played a major role in the uprisings against Gaddafi, contains former members of al-Qaeda. As author John Bradley notes in a cogently argued new article today, a key commander of this group has praised al Qaeda as "good Muslims...fighting against the invader" in Iraq. A look back at a 2007 study shows that the Benghazi region of Libya, where the rebels are primarily based, was responsible for sending more Islamic jihadists to Iraq to fight Coalition troops than any other location on Earth.

And a draft Constitution penned by the Transitional National Council, which has been officially recognised by Western leaders as the government of Libya, contains the following worrying statement:

Islam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).

Of course, the authenticity of this document, which has found its way online, is not 100% verified, and there are reasons to take it with a pinch of salt. It could have potentially been written by anybody. But if it does turn out to be legitimate, this declaration would not be at all surprising. After all, Coalition-backed "revolutionary" governments in both Iraq and Afghanistan implemented identical provisions in their constitutions, rendering any overtures towards Western conceptions of "democracy", "human rights" and "freedom" utterly moot. Just ask Abdul Rahman. And given the jihadist connections which are deeply entrenched within the rebel movement, a push for a sharia-based government would not be difficult to envisage.

Once again we have seen our leaders all too eager to get involved in a war in the Middle East without knowing what we actually want to achieve long-term, and without knowing who our friends and enemies actually are. In the last decade, the sheer cost in terms of wealth and human lives has been astronomical, but the positive dividends most assuredly have not.

No one will be sad to see the back of Gaddafi when he's finally caught like a rat in a hole somewhere. But perhaps more importantly, I sincerely doubt that anyone will much like what comes after he's gone, either.

Exposing A Faux "Moderate"

2011-08-22T23:25:00.008+01:00

"The Flying Imam" just ran out of fuel

In this pointless Op-Ed over at Digital Journal today, we are treated to the wisdom of Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher, a German-born Muslim who now lives in Britain, and is convinced that becoming Islamic emirate is just what the UK needs. He and his "Holy Qur'an" (their words, not mine) are treated with the utmost reverence by the interviewers, who don't seem prepared to ask any probing questions whatsoever.

Take the first question. Dr. Bleher is asked:

We´ve recently seen reports of stickers going up in some areas of London which claim it is a Sharia controlled zone - that is Sharia with an H. A certain Anjem Choudary has claimed responsibility for them. I gather you regard this guy as a clown.

Bleher responds:

[I d]on’t understand the Sharia with an H comment, the correct transliteration of the Arabic word is Shariah. He is either misguided or mischievous. Or ignorant. You can’t have a Sharia-compliant zone as a separate enclave in a country as if the government of the country was suspended. Of course, a community may have its own “vigilantes” to ensure that their streets are free from drug dealers or prostitution, for example, but how are they going to get their local bank branch to abandon interest-based banking? None of us lives in a power vacuum, so any change has to be political, not symbolic. In my book Surrendering Islam I have shown how Islamic organisations and activism are often purposefully subverted and hijacked in order to bring about a confrontation. Genuine Islam is usually the loser. I imagine that Anjem Choudary took his inspiration for the Shariah-controlled zone from Jews who have their own districts in most major European towns classified as Eruvs, demarcated areas where a sufficient large number of Jews live to consider the place culturally Jewish, so the restrictions for the Sabbat can be relaxed. But Islam isn’t Judaism, and the same model doesn’t really work for us.

Notice that Bleher does not say that sharia should not be the law of the land, even in Britain. He simply says that Choudary and his cronies are going about it in the wrong way. He then deliberately tries to confuse his Western, secularised audience by making a facile comparison between Islamic enclaves and Jewish neighbourhoods, which both deflects away from and trivilises the anti-societal threat posed by Islamic supremacist self-segregation (Soeren Kern documents the latter extensively in a new article published today at Hudson NY).

The next question is:

When certain newspapers talk about Sharia they project this image of people having their hands chopped off for theft or stoned to death for adultery, curiously they don´t mention this sort of thing: or this

First of all, the two examples linked to above demonstrate absolutely nothing about sharia - they demonstrate nice people doing nice things. Neither of the "good" Muslims seen here ever invoked Islam or its teachings - let alone sharia - as their primary motivation for their actions, and even if they had, that would not mitigate the more unpleasant aspects of sharia, such as the aforementioned amputations and stonings.

Speaking of which, you will notice once again that in his answer, Bleher never denies that these brutal punishments are part of sharia; he just circumambulates around the issue with a lot of fluff:

The media love sound bites. They work on emotions rather than understanding. The Shariah means the “way” or “path” by which the Muslim community is governed, in other words, the legal code Muslims apply in their dealings with each other. It is made up of source law and case law and like any legal system it is detailed and complex and cannot be reduced to two items of punishment perceived to be cruel. You wouldn’t sum up the British legal system by saying: if you insult the monarch, they hang you, since high treason does carry the death penalty in the British legal code. A lot of media pundits would have been hanged otherwise.

When asked about sharia courts arbitrating in the UK, Bleher argues that "It is a myth that British and Islamic law are incompatible in every respect" - a nice little "sound bite" (to use his phrase) which of course does not rule out the possibility that British and Islamic law may be incompatible in some respects!

The good doctor defends his uncompromising attitude towards homosexuality, as would many Christians, but some research on his website turns up the fact that - unlike most Christians - the "progressive" Dr. Bleher advocates the execution of homosexuals if they engage in "a public display of lewdness witnessed by several people". He also supports the idea, pulled direct from the Qur'an (3:28), of disassociating from non-Muslims, although he equivocates that this would only be permitted if a Muslim was trying to befriend a non-Muslim "in preference to or against a Muslim" - a statement that belies his claim to be opposed to the "clash of civilizations" concept. Anyone who so fervently advocates the divine regulation of personal friendships based on religious alliances clearly does not hold to the equality of all people before God.

Oh, and to cap things off, Dr. Bleher likes polygamy as well, "so as to protect a wife from being abandoned in favour of another." However, "Whilst there is a conditional acceptance of polygamy in Islam, a woman may not have more than one husband, as this would make it extremely difficult for a child to know who his or her father is."

Just who appointed this slimy character as a spokesman for moderate British Muslims?

Mubarak: Zionist Puppet?

2011-08-16T22:43:00.002+01:00

Do you remember the "revolution" that swept through Egypt earlier this year? The one that proved that Islam and liberal democracy are fully compatible?

The one where the majority of the "pro-democracy" reformers marching in the streets wanted to implement brual sharia punishments in the country?

The one where the most organised resistance to the oppressive regime was an Islamic organisation that seeks to implement sharia law?

The one where an American journalist covering the events was sexually assaulted by crowds of men screaming, "Jew! Jew!"?

The one where a known extremist speaker took the microphone in the centre of Cairo and called for Muslims to re-conquer Jerusalem, and hundreds of thousands of Muslims cheered him?

Remember that revolution? Of course you do.

Well, its fruits are still being felt. A show broadcast only two days ago on Egypt's religious channel, Al-Hekma TV, displayed malignant antisemitism in the form of a demented puppet show, in which children acted as prosecutors against the ousted President Mubarak.

In the show, Mubarak is accused of being an "enemy of Allah". Why, specifically? Because he is "Israel's best friend". The show puts the following words into the puppet Mubarak's mouth:

"As long as the Israelis occupy Palestine, we must treat them well. These Jews have always been good people. In the Jewish quarter here, we have always known that they keep their word."

Note the references not just to Israelis, but to Jews in general.

Most maliciously, Mubarak is accused of importing poisonous pesticides from - where else? - Israel, resulting in his bringing "cancer upon the Egyptian people". A reminder that while Muslim anti-Jewish conspiracy theories can sometimes venture into the comical, they also serve as a deadly serious inciting factor in a potentially genocidal hatred of Jews.

This is, of course, nothing new. During the "revolution", we saw protestors waving placards with Mubarak's image "defiled" with a Star of David. We also heard protestors say that a principle reason for demonstrating against him was his alleged support for Israel. Clearly, then, it was somewhat premature, if not entirely misinformed, to joyously proclaim that the displacement of Hosni Mubarak would result in a Westernised democracy untainted by radical Islamic prejudices.

Why Islam Is Not Confined to Personal Worship

2011-08-15T22:50:00.003+01:00

One of the things that non-Muslim Westerners most consistently fail to understand about Islam is that it is not just a religion. It is also a political system - and a fascist one at that, which seeks to control every aspect of a person's life down to the smallest detail, including but not limited to dietary and toilet habits. It thus appears to such uninformed Westerners that Islam - which they see as merely a few rituals and quirky beliefs about the afterlife - could not possibly be a threat to the political order of non-Muslim societies. Frequently, those who do describe Islam as a totalitarian political system are decried as "Islamophobes" - but this ignores the fact that this understanding of Islam is a part of its mainstream culture.

This was brought home to me over the weekend while reading two English-language articles which both came out of the Muslim world. The first is from a letter by a female Muslim on this Malaysian news site. In it, the author irately notes the following:

A great misconception of Islam lies in the fact that it is nothing more than a theological reflection confined to the realm of personal worshiping. Far from truth, the very essence of Islam as taught by Prophet Muhammad SAW dictates that Islam encompasses all spheres of life, from etiquette to commerce to good governance of a country.

A little later on, the author refers to a recent controversy in the country, in which the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (JAIS) was heavily criticised for raiding a church and arresting Christians who were allegedly seeking to preach the Gospel to Muslims. She passionately writes:

The more recent issue concerning Jais and Hassan Ali further underlined the effort to reduce Islam to merely ritual worship devoid of its 'syumul'/holistic concept. The fashionably 'human rights' and 'moral policing' terms quickly make their way to the fore condemning the authority, when Islam has outlined its principle clearly that apostasy is one of the biggest sin and any conduct that leads to this effect should be arrested immediately.

This rule has been held dearly for more than 1,400 years ago despite the effort to force Islam to embrace the stance opted by other religions in apostasy matters...

For the author, "The distorted view that prevails is that in order for Muslims to fit in the multicultural society, he/she should remove their identity as much as possible, leaving behind the Islamic says [sic] in their day to day business, and only proceed with their five prayers in the mosques, wedding ceremonies and Raya celebration. For good Muslims, the tenets of their religion are embraced as a whole and not selectively chosen."

To sum up:

The multiracial components of Malaysian society have lived together in harmony for many years and they must accept the fact that for Muslims, Islam is not simply a theological scripture confined within the space of the mosque. It translates into their everyday life.

And to put it more succinctly, here is the first line from another recent article in the Pakistan Observer:

Islam offers a complete code of life in every aspect of human existence.

With this context in mind (and there are reams of further examples from Muslim writers, scholars and websites - not bigoted infidels - that I could adduce), it should become clearer why Islam does pose a not-intangible threat to Wetern societies: As it creeps further and further into our lives and neighbourhoods, it brings with it adherents who have a ready-made programme for societal governance = sharia law. This programme includes numerous rigourously codified strictures that are fundamentally in opposition to values and constructs upon which Western society was built. These laws violate human rights (e.g. denying freedom of speech when it comes to criticism of Islam, sanctioning death for those who leave the faith, confining women to household slaves and sex objects and condoning marital violence against them) and uproot cherised Western institutions (e.g. legal systems, education, etc).

Sharia is not a gimmicky "plug-in" for Islam that was invented by a few crazies. It is the very essence of Islam itself - without it, very little is left. One of its primary sources, the hadith, is full to bursting with Muhammad's wisdom and commandments on all manner of personal and societal issues, many of which govern the daily lives of almost every Muslim to this day. The five pillars of Islam are themselves a key component of sharia, and are legislated over meticulously, to the extent that many ordinary Muslims are confused and simply have no idea when they are supposed to pray, for how long, and what circumstances validate or invalidate their prayers, and must seek advice from a resident clerical "expert".

Once, while watching the Islam Channel on Sky, I saw an episode of its "Islam Q & A" programme, in which an imam takes viewers' calls and questions live on air. One particular woman had just come back from visiting family in Africa, and had brought back with her some souvenir figures of animals such as giraffes and zebras. She had called because she wanted to know if it was permissible for her as a Muslim to keep these figures in her home. The cleric answered that having models of animals in her home could be construed as idolatry and that she should get rid of them immediately.

What kind of "religion" makes it a sin to keep a toy giraffe in your living room? And more than that, what kind of "spiritual experience" makes a woman feel that it is necessary to contact a complete stranger and ask him if she is allowed to do so?

Need I remind you that this specific example does not come from some deeply tribal part of Africa or the Middle East - it comes from Muslim communities right here in the UK.

That is why non-Muslims in the West need to stop projecting their own understanding of what a religion is onto Islam, when its very nature is more complicated, and more political, than they give it credit for. When an ideology is political in nature, and when it demands forceful imposition of its rules on those currently outside of its influence by way of jihad, it must necessarily be seen as a problematic and potentially dangerous invading force, and dealt with accordingly.

To close this essay, I leave you with the words of Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi, one of the foremost Islamic thinkers of the twentieth century. His view of Islam as a complete way of life is not an "extremist" position, but one that has been read, digested and understood by millions of Muslims around the world. We ignore this fact at our own peril.

Maududi believed that “Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.” Specifically, “Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and programme”. Maududi taught that “Islam is not merely a religious creed or compound name for a few forms of worship, but a comprehensive system which envisages to annihilate all tyrannical and evil systems in the world and enforces its own programme of reform which it deems best for the well-being of mankind.” Muslims must wage jihad against unbelievers, the purpose of which “is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of State rule.”

In Whom Do We Trust?

2011-08-03T19:50:00.003+01:00

Naser Abdo - The moderate who wasn't

Last week, Naser Jason Abdo - a Muslim in the US military - appeared in court on charges of planning a terrorist attack against the Fort Hood army base in Texas.

Investigators say Abdo was found in a motel room three miles from Fort Hood's main gate with a handgun, an article titled "Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom" and the ingredients for an explosive device, including gunpowder, shrapnel and pressure cookers. An article with that title appears in an al-Qaeda magazine.

Abdo is the second Muslim to attempt an attack against the base - the first being Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed dozens of people in 2009. Fortunately, Abdo's own plans were thwarted before any lives could be taken, but according to reports, he exuntantly chanted Hasan's name as he was led out of the court on Friday.

The most troubling - and at the same time instructive - aspect of this new case is not that the same base should be targeted twice for jihad terror attacks by Muslims, or that Abdo was also recently charged with possessing child pornography (does he share a bit of his Prophet's soft spot for young children, perhaps?). No, the most worrying part of this story is the way that Abdo was able to deceive everyone he came into contact with by way of the most simplistic form of taqiyya, or religiously mandated deception.

Last year, Abdo appealed for consciencious objector status because he did not believe he was Islamically permitted to fight against other Muslims in Afghanistan (something Nidal Hasan also believed). At that time, he said the following in an interview with ABC News:

"I want to use my experience to show Muslims how we can lead our lives," he said. "And to try and put a good positive spin out there that Islam is a good, peaceful religion. We're not all terrorists, you know?"

And while we now know that Abdo supported the murderous actions of Hasan, at the time, he wrote an essay to Associated Press saying that the original Fort Hood shootings "run counter to what I believe in as a Muslim."

This would not be the first time that an American Muslim has claimed publicly to be a moderate, when in reality they are a jihadist. Late last year, a San Diego cleric with the wonderfully inventive name of Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, who was "known for advocating nonviolence and tolerance", was arrested for funding the Somalian jihadist organisation al-Shabab. And let's not forget CAIR.

In light of all this - the fact that Islam contains within it a doctrine that sanctions the deliberate deception of non-Muslims in order to progress the cause of Islam, and the fact that there are many available examples of Muslims telling unbelievers one thing and then doing another - I have to ask a question I have asked here a couple of times before: Why should we trust any Muslim who tells us that they are moderate?

I am not, of course, saying that all Muslims who profess to be moderate are lying. I am merely saying that we have no reliable way to tell the difference between a genuine moderate Muslim and a deceiver - until it is too late. This being the case, suspicion of Muslims is completely justified - and this is not a problem that I or any other "Islamophobes" have made for them. It is a problem that they - and in particular their jihadist co-religionists such as Naser Abdo - have made for themselves. Perhaps when they start to address that fact honestly, we'll all begin to trust them a little bit more.

Spinning Muhammad (Part 3)

2011-07-27T22:51:00.004+01:00

The third and final part of Rageh Omaar's documentary series "The Life Muhammad" (UK readers watch here) was the most outright deceptive (and selective) of the lot. In fact, it was so full of falsehoods that it's difficult to know where to start.

The first major thing that leapt out at me was when Omaar discusses Muhammad's marriage to nine-year-old Aisha, and makes out that her age can reasonably be disputed depending on who you ask, and that she could just as easily have been 16.

It's certainly true that some people will tell you that Aisha was a lot older than nine, but this claim flies completely in the face of the Islamic textual evidence. Five of the six Sahih Sittah (the most revered hadith collections) contain explicit testimonies that Aisha was nine at the time Muhammad consummated his marriage with her. Below is but one example from each collection, although there are many similar traditions to choose from:

Khadija died three years before the Prophet departed to Medina. He stayed there for two years or so and then he married 'Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consumed that marriage when she was nine years old. (Bukhari v.5, b.58, no.236)

'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old. (Muslim b.8, no.3311)

Aisha said: The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) married me when I was seven years old. The narrator Sulaiman said: Or six years. He had intercourse with me when I was nine years old. (Abu Dawud no.2116)

When Hadrat Aisha passed nine years of marriage life, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) fell in mortal sickness… ‘A’isha was eighteen years of age at the time when the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) passed away and she remained a widow for forty-eight years till she died at the age of sixty-seven. (Nasai)

1877. Abdullah (Allah be pleased with him) is reported to have said, "The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) married ‘A’isha while she was a seven years [sic] old girl and took him [sic] to his house as a bride when she was nine years old and he parted with her (after his demise) when she was eighteen years old." (Ibn Majah)

Other important Islamic historical sources, including the biographies of Ibn Hisham, Tabari and Ibn Kathir also state explicitly that Aisha was nine. There is no evidence anywhere that she was older, except for circumstantial evidence which largely involves focusing on apparent timeline discrepancies, while ignoring every single authoritative text that says in black and white that she was nine. Omaar has thus created a "dispute" where there is none.

He does this again when it comes to Muhammad's multiple marriages. He allows Karen Armstrong to claim - again with no evidence at all - that the Prophet of Islam's polygamous marriages were not borne of lust, but were purely marriages of political convenience. This once again ignores what the most respected Muslim sources on Muhammad's life actually say. Muhammad resolved to marry his adopted son's wife, for example (who was known for being very beautiful), after accidentally walking in on her in a state of undress, which in the words of the famous Muslim historian Tabari "excited the admiration of the Messenger of God". (The History of al-Tabari, v.8, p.2)

Another wife, Safiyya bint Huyayy, was taken by Muhammad as a war captive after his attack on the Jewish oasis of Khaybar, and chosen specifically for her beauty:

We arrived at Khaibar, and when Allah helped His Apostle to open the fort, the beauty of Safiya bint Huyai bin Akhtaq whose husband had been killed while she was a bride, was mentioned to Allah's Apostle. The Prophet selected her for himself, and set out with her, and when we reached a place called Sidd-as-Sahba,' Safiya became clean from her menses then Allah's Apostle married her. (Bukhari v.5, b.59, no.522)

What any of this had to do with political or tribal calculations is anyone's guess.

One of the most egregious falsehoods in the entire series comes when Omaar describes Muhammad's takeover of Mecca as a wonderfully peaceful event, during which he declared a general amnesty and forgave every single one of his enemies. As the useful website Religion of Peace put it so superbly: "If the fact that an entire city wasn’t put to the sword after being conquered by a man against whom it did not want to fight is proof of forgiveness, then we would have to say that the bar is being set quite low."

In any case, Muhammad actually ordered the assassination of a number of his enemies upon taking control of Mecca, although not all the murders were eventually carried out. The unfortunate souls who were indeed murdered included Abdullah Khatal, an apostate, and one of his slave girls, as well as the Jews Abu Afak and Asma bint Marwan, both of whom were killed (as was Abdullah's slave girl) for the crime of "insulting" Muhammad by writing satirical verses.

Omaar also omits all mention of the way that, following his conquest of Mecca, Muhammad subdued the rest of Arabia by imposing Islam upon all the remaining tribes by force. One tribe in Yemen was told, "Break them (i.e. the arrows) and testify that None has the right to be worshipped except Allah, or else I will chop off your neck." (Bukhari v.5, b.59, no.643) Muhammad sent his most fearsome warrior, Khalid bin Walid, to the Banu Harith tribe, and "ordered him to invite them to Islam for three days before he fought them. If they were to respond and submit, he was to teach them the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Prophet, and the requirements of Islam. If they should decline, then he was to fight them." (Tabari v.9, p82)

You get the picture. Overall, non-Muslims have very little to learn from this series of documentaries, except that Muhammad was always and everywhere a victim, and managed to convince the whole of Arabia to convert to Islam simply by being so wonderful. I don't know how many people will buy it, but for those who felt unsure what to believe during and after watching the three episodes, I hope my analyses of some of their contents have been useful and instructive.

Taking Back The Fight

2011-07-26T22:24:00.004+01:00

I condemn this monster

There are, unfortunately, those for whom the massacre of almost 100 innocent people in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik was not an occasion to mourn this tragic loss of life, but an opportunity for political point-scoring and smear-mongering.

Fortunately, there are also those among us who will not be cowed by this insane and willfully dishonest chest-thumping, and are sticking to their principles and contributing to the debate in positive ways.

At his highly readable blog, Daniel Greenfield debunks 6 popular myths about Breivik, including the canard that he is a "Christian fundamentalist" (his own words, as articulated in his 1,500-page manifesto, demonstrate that he is not a particularly religious person), and that he "hates Muslims" (he was in fact willing to make destructive alliances with them that would facilitate the re-establishment of a global Islamic caliphate), among others.

At Humans Events, Robert Spencer hits back at those who have attempted to blame him personally, along with other anti-jihad freedom fighters, for Breivik's massacre. Spencer observes:

The logic here is absurd, albeit oft-used on the Left. Just as the deranged Jared Loughner ’s shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was initially blamed on Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, so now the Left is using Breivik to try to discredit and silence the entire anti-jihad movement, as if this psychopath’s murders prove that his political proclivities are lethal in themselves. This would be like saying that no one can question Western policies vis-à-vis the Islamic world, for to do so would make one responsible for the 17,000 deadly jihad attacks that Muslims have committed worldwide since 9/11. It would be like saying that the Beatles were responsible for the Charles Manson murders because he thought he heard exhortations to kill in their songs, or that Jodie Foster was responsible for the shooting of Ronald Reagan because in John Hinckley’s befogged mind he thought it would impress her.

The intent of this campaign is clear. The scholars, politicians and activists who have spoken out about the threat to human rights and constitutional principles that jihad and Islamization pose have never advocated any kind of violence or illegal activity. By tarring them with the murders of Anders Breivik, the enemies of freedom hope to quash all resistance to the advance of Islamic supremacism in the West.

And on the BBC last night, EDL leader Stephen Lennon impressively demolished Jeremy Paxman's spiteful attempts to link Breivik to his organisation, reiterating the group's opposition to such barbaric behaviour.

From a personal angle, I feel it is important to add my own sadness that a man who expounded some views with which I wholeheartedly agree could commit such an appalling act of mass murder in service of them. There may be those in the anti-jihad movement who, understandably, feel that Anders Breivik's actions have set our cause back ten years, that his legacy will make it that much harder to spread the message of the counter-jihad resistance around the Western world. While I sympathise, I can vouch nevertheless that I will not give up the struggle. I will continue to fight the good fight. I will continue to defend my principles and my heritage against the encroachment of Islamic totalitarianism - not with bombs and bullets as Breivik did, but with the power of the word, and of knowledge. With the power of freedom and equality, dignity and courage.

We fight this war on an ideological front. We don't know for certain that we will win, but we believe. We fight because evil must be fought wherever it is found, because fighting is the only option for the civilised. Anders Behring Breivik has done some damage to our cause, but it is far from terminal.

The future is ours for the taking.

Sharia In The Land Of Oz

2011-07-21T22:43:00.002+01:00

The progressive and civilised nature of sharia law is on display again, this time emanating from, of all places, Australia, where a soon-to-be-published report, summarised by The Australian, will make clear that "Sharia law has become a shadow legal system...endorsing polygamous and underage marriages that are outlawed under the Marriage Act."

A system of "legal pluralism" based on sharia law "abounds" in Australia, according to new research by legal academics Ann Black and Kerrie Sadiq. The study finds that not all Muslims are registering their marriages and some are relying on religious ceremonies to validate unions that breach the Marriage Act.

This includes "polygynist marriages", in which a man takes multiple wives, and marriages where one party is under the lawful marriage age.

Even worse:

The latest research has found that while polygamy is unlawful, mainstream law accommodates men who arrive in Australia with multiple wives and gives some legal standing to multiple partnerships that originate in Australia.

"Valid Muslim polygynist marriages, lawfully entered into overseas, are recognised, with second and third wives and their children able to claim welfare and other benefits," they write.

Changes to the Family Law Act in 2008 meant that polygamous religious marriages entered into in Australia could also be recognised as de facto marriages. "It means a second wife can be validly married under Islamic law . . . and be a defacto wife under Australian law with the same legal entitlements as any other de facto relationship," they write.

The Australian concession to sharia law - a foreign system of totalitarian governance that seeks to destroy the values upon which the country was built - is disturbing, but not surprising. After all, all the precedents for it have already been set here in Britain, the land of many Aussies' ancestors.

Sharia operating as a shadow legal system? Check.

Muslims not registering their marriages, thus rendering them illegal under the laws of their host country? Check.

Polygamy? Check.

Child marriage? Check. ("The practice [of forced marriage] affects mainly young Asian [read "Muslim"] women, with more than a third of cases involving those aged under 18. One in six victims are under 16.")

Polygamous families being given benefits despite their illegality under national secular law? Check.

In related news Down Under, two Muslims have been arrested for whipping a recent convert to Islam 40 times with a piece of electrical cable as a sharia-sanctioned punishment for drinking alcohol.

The article at The Australian tries to put a brave face on things with the following nugget:

In their article, associate professor Sadiq and Ms Black note that research on Islamic marriage found in 2008 that 90 per cent of Muslims did not want to change Australian law.

While this figure sounds encouraging - it's better than over here, anyway - it's still worth pointing out that if "only" 10% of Australian Muslims want to replace Australian law with sharia, that still amounts, according to census figures, to around 37,000 Muslims who crave fascism and sedition (total population = 21,766,711; 1.7% of whom are Muslims = 370,034; 10% of whom want sharia law = 37,003).

All of which makes plain why anti-sharia measures of the sort which are being proposed in several US states today are needed just as urgently in Australia as anywhere else.

Islamic Human Rights Abuse In Iran

2011-07-20T22:50:00.003+01:00

Youcef Nadarkhani

The former pastor of a network of Christian churches in Iran could face execution by the state for apostasy.

Youcef Nadarkhani was arrested in his home city of Rasht on October 13, 2009 while attempting to register his church after protesting compulsory Islamic religious instruction in Iranian public schools. Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights group, reports that he was originally charged with protesting; however, the charges against the 32-year-old were later changed to apostasy and evangelizing Muslims.

According to the official indictment put forward to the Iranian Supreme Court, the only way Mr Nadarkhani can now avoid his sentence is if he can prove that he was never actually a Muslim - a Herculean task, since he was apparently born into a Muslim family, and Islamic tradition has always held - as delineated by Muhammad himself - that every human being is born a Muslim, and only turned "astray" to other religions by their parents later in life.

As a US Department of State spokeswoman pointed out:

"He is just one of thousands who face persecution for their religious beliefs in Iran, including the seven leaders of the Baha’i community whose imprisonment was increased to 20 years for practicing their faith and hundreds of Sufis who have been flogged in public because of their beliefs."

Indeed. Back in February, a joint statement by six international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, condemned the widespread use of political executions in Iran, which frequently involve more than a passing religious dimension. The press release notes that "At least eight of those executed in January were political prisoners, convicted of 'enmity against God' (moharebeh) for participating in demonstrations, or for their alleged links to opposition groups."

Also, "The recent executions also raise fears for the lives of two men, Saeed Malekpour and Vahid Asghari, believed to have been sentenced to death by Revolutionary Courts following separate unfair trials in which they were accused of 'spreading corruption on earth.'"

And: "On January 26 authorities announced that Sayed Ali Gharabat had been executed for 'spreading corruption' and 'apostasy' in Karoun Prison, Ahvaz, after he, according to authorities, falsely claimed to have communicated with the Twelfth Imam. Twelver Shi’a Muslims believe that the Twelfth Imam is currently in hiding and will return to earth to bring about justice."

This specific charge, of "spreading corruption in the land", which is taken directly from Qur'an 5:33 (which also prescribes the penalty of crucifixion, amputation or banishment), is nothing new. Eliz Sanasarian notes in her landmark book Religious Minorities in Iran that the exact same phrase was used to justify the execution of the Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian by the Khomeini regime in 1979, as well as during the persecution of the Bahai's throughout that era.

The press release concludes with the following recommendations:

To put an end to this killing spree, other nations should demand that Iran immediately end these executions and respect its obligations under international law, Shirin Ebadi and the six human rights organizations said.

Iran has made consistent efforts to obstruct scrutiny of the situation in the country by international human rights mechanisms over the past five years. In light of that record, Shirin Ebadi and the organizations called on other nations to take advantage of the forthcoming session of the Human Rights Council to appoint a special envoy of the UN Secretary-General with a mandate to investigate and report on human rights conditions in Iran.

I certainly hope they oblige, but if the past record is anything to go by, we cannot trust the UNHRC to do anything other than ignore the genuine human rights abuses committed by Islamic regimes. In any case, these blatant acts of barbarity should be condemned by every individual in the free world - openly, noisily and insistently.

Spinning Muhammad (Part 2)

2011-07-19T23:15:00.006+01:00

Last night saw the broadcast of the second part of Rageh Omaar's documentary series "The Life of Muhammad" (UK viewers can watch here). Due the fact that it dealt almost exclusively with Muhammad's relations with his non-Muslim neighbours, it was perhaps even more prone to apologetic presentation of Muhammad's deeds than was the first episode.

The thing that most stands out about this episode, as with the one before it, is the way that Muhammad is always presented as the victim. According to Omaar, none of the confrontations he got himself into with the Quraysh or the Jewish tribes of Medina were of his own making - they were always caused by his neighbours attacking him and rejecting his message for no apparent reason. Inconvenient facts such as the Prophet's political assassinations of Jewish leaders on the pretext that they insulted him never get a mention.

I also thought there was an extremely ironic and unintentionally revealing moment about half way into the programme when a segment with Robert Spencer, in which he mentions Muhammad's dictum "War is deceit" (Bukhari v.4, b.56, no.3030, and others), is immediately followed by Tariq Ramadan claiming that jihad is only defensive in nature, without mentioning the offensive variety of jihad mandated by Qur'an 9:29 and reiterated by Islamic scholars and jurists throughout the centuries - an omission that is obviously calculated, deliberate and, above all, deceitful. I doubt that Omaar realised the irony.

The show devotes a small amount of time near the end to the massacre of the Banu Qurayza, who are again presented as malicious fiends who sided with Muhammad's enemies. In fact, their only crime was to remain neutral in a war that had nothing to do with them. The Prophet's biographer Ibn Ishaq recounts how the leader of the Qurazya tried his best to refuse the Quraysh's offers, but after much "wheedling" eventually agreed to what was essentially a neutrality pact:

The enemy of God Huyayy b. Akhtab al-Nadri [of the Quraysh] went out to Ka'b b. Asad al-Qurazi [of the Qurayza] who had made a treaty with the apostle. When Ka'b heard of Huyayy's coming he shut the door of his fort in his face, and when he asked permission to enter he refused to see him, saying that he was a man of ill omen and that he himself was in a treaty with Muhammad and did not intend to go back on his word because he had always found him loyal and faithful. Then Huyayy accused him of shutting him out because he was unwilling to let him eat his corn. This so enraged him that he opened his door. He said, 'Good heavens, Ka'b, I have brought you immortal fame and a great army. I have come with Quraysh with their leaders and chiefs which I have halted where the torrent-beds of Ruma meet; and Ghatafan with their leaders and chiefs which I have halted in Dhanab Naqma towards Uhud. They have made a firm agreement and promised me that they will not depart until we have made an end of Muhammad and his men.' Ka'b said: 'By God, you have brought me immortal shame and an empty cloud which had shed its water while it thunders and lightens with nothing in it. Woe to you Huyayy leave me as I am, for I have always found him loyal and faithful.' Huyayy kept on wheedling Ka'b until at last he gave way in giving him a solemn promise that if Quraysh and Ghatafan returned without having killed Muhammad he would enter his fort with him and await his fate. (p.453)

Muhammad's punishment of the tribe, which involved beheading up to 900 men and taking their wives and children as prisoners, is notably described by Omaar as a "horrific act of brutality" - but he immediately qualifies this statement by adding that the incident must be viewed in light of its historical context.

Sorry, but that won't wash. First of all, such a horrible slaughter is completely unbefitting of a Prophet of God - and indeed, of the God Himself - at any time. Secondly, Muhammad is viewed by all Muslims as al-insan al-kamil: "the Perfect Man". The Qur'an describes him as an "excellent example" of conduct for Muslims to follow (33:21), and Muslims are encouraged to emulate everything he did. The implications in this case are obvious and disturbing. Thirdly, while the Banu Qurayza were not massacred "just because they were Jews", as such - as the programme takes particular care to point out - Muhammad's hostile relationship with the Jews of Medina did go on to become one of the primary foundations of Muslim hatred of Jews in the centuries following Muhammad's death. For example, the ninth-century Iraqi polymath al-Jahiz noted that one of the main reasons the Muslims of that time and place hated Jews more than they hated Christians was because:

The Jews were the neighbours of the Muslims in Medina and other places...When the [Muslim] Emigrants [from Mecca] became the neighbours of the Jews [in Medina]...the Jews began to envy the Muslims the blessings of their new faith, and the union which resulted after dissension. They proceeded to undermine the belief of our [i.e. the Muslim] masses, and to lead them astray. They aided our enemies and those envious of us. From mere misleading speech and stinging words they plunged into an open declaration of enmity, so that the Muslims mobilised their forces, exerting themselves morally and materially to banish the Jews and destroy them. Their strife became long-drawn and widespread, so that it worked itself up into a rage, and created yet greater animosity and more intensified rancor...

Al-Jahiz then identifies as the "most potent cause" of Islamic antisemitism, the following verse from the Qur'an: "Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans...” (5:82) This leads us on, finally, to the programme's general depiction of Islamic antisemitism, which is completely divested of its Qur'anic dimension, and attributed solely to the modern dispute over Jerusalem, which in time-honoured BBC fashion is referred to as "the third holiest city in Islam", without ever being referred to as THE holiest city in Judaism. The statement by a British Muslim propagandist that there was a "Jewish Golden Age" in Muslim Spain is also allowed to pass completely unchallenged, when in fact thousands of Jews were murdered in pogroms during this period in 1013 and 1066 AD.

Former EU Commissioner: "No Future For Jews In Holland"

2011-07-18T22:47:00.004+01:00

Former European Union Commissioner Frits Bolkenstein said that Jews have no future in the Netherlands and recommended that they emigrate to the US or Israel, Dutch magazine Elsevier reported on Tuesday.

According to a book on Dutch Judaism, released this week, Bolkestein, former leader of the VVD party, said that due to antisemitism amongst young Moroccans (i.e Muslims) Jews who look like Jews - those who wear kippahs or payot - should leave Holland for their own safety.

The former politician added that the many Arab (i.e. Muslim) television channels in the Netherlands contribute to the spread of antisemitism. He said he has no confidence in proposed measures to combat anti-Jewish sentiment.

Geert Wilders, who visited Israel this week, responded that "Jews shouldn't emigrate, anti-Semitic Moroccans should."

It's All In The Numbers

2011-07-15T20:15:00.005+01:00

It's very easy to give a misleading impression in the media. Most often, this is done not by altering or inventing the facts, but by simply omitting the ones that you don't want people to see.

Veteran smear-merchant Karl Vick does this in his blog post published at the TIME website yesterday. He titles the post "Poll Finds Palestinians Disenchanted with Hamas, Iran and the Peace Process". He goes on to describe a new face-to-face poll - conducted in Arabic - of 1,010 Palestinians just published by Bill Clinton's former pollster Stan Greenberg, providing, among others, the following findings of the study:

"Hamas, disapproved of by two of three, including in Gaza, where it has ruled since 2007"
"Iran, which 77 percent of Palestinians see negatively, an uptick in villainy likely attributable to its role in suppressing the Arab Spring uprising in neighboring Syria, if not the demands of its own people after stealing the last election."
"Most also oppose firing rockets into Israeli cities, and call the murder of a settler family in Itamar 'wrong.'"
"And by two to one, Palestinians favor ending Israel's 44-year military occupation through negotiations rather than by violent resistance."

Vick even describes as the "most striking finding" of the poll...the "Palestinians' focus on daily life".

Apparently not considered by Vick to be striking or even noteworthy findings are the following, pulled from a much more balanced summary of the survey at the Jerusalem Post, which he never even mentions:

Seventy-two percent backed denying the thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, 62% supported kidnapping IDF soldiers and holding them hostage, and 53% were in favor or teaching songs about hating Jews in Palestinian schools.

When given a quote from the Hamas Charter about the need for battalions from the Arab and Islamic world to defeat the Jews, 80% agreed. Seventy-three percent agreed with a quote from the charter (and a hadith, or tradition ascribed to the prophet Muhammad) about the need to kill Jews hiding behind stones and trees.

But if you only listen to Vick, the "most striking" thing about this study is the Palestinians' views on unemployment, followed closely by their "disapproval" of Hamas (but not, apparently, its hateful and pro-genocidal Charter) and that group's particular methods for obtaining the same desired outcome: the destruction of Israel. After all, the poll also revealed that while the majority of Palestinians disapprove of a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, a majority (66%) said that the "real goal should be to start with a two-state solution but then move to it all being one Palestinian state."

Meaning there would be no more Israel - merely an Arab State governed by Muslims with Jews as dhimmi subjects.

Spinning Muhammad (Part 1)

2011-07-13T23:02:00.004+01:00

This past Monday (11th July) saw the broadcast of the first episode in a three-part series for the BBC entitled "The Life of Muhammad". UK readers who missed it will be able to watch the first part in its entirety here.

As could be expected, the documentary, presented by Al Jazeera's Rageh Omaar, mostly shied away from any critical analysis of Muhammad's life and deeds, giving brief lip-service to some critical views, and giving far too much airtime to the woeful Karen Armstrong (although there were a couple of cameos from the exceptional Robert Spencer).

The programme contained many dubious claims and misrepresentations of the sources, and chief among these was the theme, peddled throughout the last 15 to 20 minutes, that Muhammad was "persecuted" by his Meccan tribe, the Quraysh, simply for preaching Islam peacefully.

But is this presentation really accurate?

Muhammad began publicly preaching Islam in Mecca in around 613 AD. For many years he faced frustration as his own tribe, the Quraysh, rejected and mocked him. He had a small band of followers who became Muslims, but most of the Meccans were quite happy to continue praying to their pagan goddesses. Although Muslims frequently assert that Muhammad and his men were persecuted by the Quraysh simply for being Muslims, the Prophet's earliest and most trusted biographer Ibn Ishaq writes that the Meccans only began to seriously oppose Muhammad after he started insulting their gods and attacking their heritage:

When the apostle openly displayed Islam as God ordered him, his people did not withdraw or turn against him, so far as I have heard, until he spoke disparagingly of their gods. When he did that, they took great offence and resolved unanimously to treat him as an enemy...he would not yield to them and withdrew from them and insulted their gods... (The Life of Muhammad, p.118)

One early Muslim narrator remarked:

“They [the Quraysh] said that they had never known anything like the trouble they had endured from this fellow; he had declared their mode of life foolish, insulted their forefathers, reviled their religion, divided the community, and cursed their gods. What they had borne was past all bearing, or words to that effect.” (pp.130-131)

The Quraysh tried on several occasions to negotiate an amicable resolution to the troubles:

“[Quraysh leader] Abu Sufyan and sundry other notables went to Abu Talib [Muhammad's uncle] and said: '...You know the trouble that exists between us and your nephew, so call him and let us make an agreement that he will leave us alone and we will leave him alone; let him have his religion and we will have ours.'” (pp.191-92)

Muhammad consistently declined a relationship of mutual respect, demanding that the Quraysh convert to Islam. (Ibid.)

Omaar claims in the show that the Muslims suffered appallingly at the hands of the Quraysh, suffering everything from torture with hot coals to death by stabbing. Where he gets this information from is something of a mystery, however. Indeed, the hadith record that the "worst thing" the Meccans ever did to Muhammad was as follows:

"While Allah's Apostle was praying in the courtyard of the ka'ba, 'Uqba bin Abi Mu'ait came and seized Allah's Apostle by the shoulder and twisted his garment round his neck and throttled him severely. Abu Bakr came and seized 'Uqba's shoulder and threw him away from Allah's Apostle and said, "Would you kill a man because he says: 'My Lord is Allah,' and has come to you with clear Signs from your Lord?" (Bukhari v.6, b.60, no.339)

An attempted throttling isn't exactly a friendly gesture, but it is far from the exaggerated tales that Rageh Omaar spins. Ibn Ishaq does record an incident in which a Muslim was mocked and dragged through the streets by his beard, but even so, the extent of the "persecution" the Muslims actually suffered is vastly overstated - especially in light of the fact that where tensions did arise between the Muslims and the Quraysh, they were primarily caused not by the mere existence of the Muslims, but by Muhammad's repeated insults towards his tribe's religion and traditions.

Disproving the claims of violent persecution and passive "martyrdom" on the Muslims' part is another story recorded by Ibn Ishaq. Some Muslims were praying when they were interrupted by a group of pagans, and the two groups began arguing. At this point, one of the Muslims struck a member of the Quraysh with a camel's jawbone, drawing blood. "This," says Ibn Ishaq, "was the first blood shed in Islam." (p.118) And it was shed by a Muslim.

According to the preview at the end of the episode, next week's installment of this series will deal with the massacre of the Banu Qurayza. I am fascinated to see how they approach this incident, since I can guarantee right now that under no circumstances will they simply present this as an evil, unjustifiable act that is unbefitting of a Prophet of God (people would die if they did that). However they choose to cover it, I'll examine their account, along with any other major discrepancies, at the same time here next week.

Heroes And Villains

2011-07-06T22:39:00.002+01:00

Ihsanoglu & Wilders: Champions of two very different causes

The newly renamed Organisation of Islamic Cooperation - formerly the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) - has once again shown which side of the freedom/totalitarianism divide it sits on. Last week, it issued the following statement about the recent acquittal of Geert Wilders at the end of his totalitarian hate speech trial in the Netherlands:

The OIC Secretary General [Ekmelledin Ihsanoglu] said that Mr. Wilders has taken upon himself a dangerous path of derailing inter civilizational harmony and peace by spreading and fanning hatred against Islam and Muslims in his own country as well as in other European countries.

Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said that the vilification of Islam and the sacred image of the Prophet Muhammad by Wilders has reached a stage when it can no longer be tolerated under any pretext including the right to freedom of expression. He urged the Government or Netherlands to take necessary appropriate action to contain the campaign of hatred and incitement by Wilders who is a coalition partner of the Dutch Government. He expressed serious concern that the silence of the Dutch Government in this respect may undermine the existing good bilateral relations between the 0IC Member States and the Netherlands [i.e. he made an implicit threat. ~ Ed].

Now, Wilders has in response issued the following brilliant set of questions in writing directly to the Dutch Prime Minister:

1.)
Have you seen the intimidating statement of the OIC Secretary General, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, about me and the OIC report “Fourth OIC observatory report on islamophobia” about statements made by various Dutch politicians?(*)

2.)
Do you agree that the OIC has vastly overstepped the boundaries with these intimidating statements and do you agree with me that a Dutch politician should have the right to criticise Islam and multiculturalism in a public debate, as was confirmed during my political trial by the court decision of June 23rd?

3.)
Are you prepared to explain to the OIC member countries that criticism of Islam and freedom of speech are essential in a democratic society under the rule of law? If not, why not?

4.)
Do you share the opinion that criticism, such as that of an organization like the OIC, is hypocrite and despicable given that the OIC in article 24 of its own Cairo Declaration on Human Rights explicitly states that all rights and freedoms are subject to Islamic Shari’ah law? If not, why not?

5.)
Are you prepared in the short term to distance yourself publicly in strong wordings of this report and of the intimidating statement of the OIC secretary general? If not, why not?

6.)
Will you make it clear once and for all to the OIC that the Netherlands will not accept to be lectured by an institution such as the OIC which makes human rights subject to the barbaric Shari’ah, and that we will not allow our fundamental freedoms and our freedom of speech to be restricted? If not, why not?

7.)
Are you prepared to answer these questions this week?

This man is a hero, plain and simple.

Cruising For A Bruising

2011-07-05T23:02:00.003+01:00

At Slate today, Christopher Hitchens poses some questions for the organisers of the imminent follow-up to last year's "Freedom Flotilla", whose explicit purpose was to aid Israel's enemies by illegally breaking its perfectly legal blockade.

Specifically, Hitchens focuses on the flotilla's ties to Hamas, a fact which he does not document in any detail but is nevertheless a reality. For example:

Amin Abou Ibrahim, also known as Amin Abou Rashed, is one of the main organizers of the ”Freedom Flotilla 2″ and a founder of the ECESG, a central organization participating in the flotilla. Recently, the Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf cited Abou Rashed as the “brain behind the flotilla”...

Abou Rashed was an active participant in last year’s flotilla as well. His name also came up during the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation by the US government in 2007. The Holy Land Foundation is designated by the US Treasury as a Specially Designated National and banned by the EU for its direct financial and material support to Hamas. During the Holy Land Foundation trial, a letter was shown written by Abou Rashed to Akram Mishaal, a director of the Holy Land Foundation and a cousin of Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal.

In the letter found at Holy Land Foundation headquarters and used as a court case exhibit by the US government, Abou Rashed lists the names, addresses, and bank numbers of “charitable organizations working for Palestine in Europe.” Abou Rashed was writing as a representative of the Al-Aqsa Foundation, an organization designated by the US Department of Treasury as a charity financing terror and “a critical part of Hamas’ terrorist support infrastructure.”

These “charitable organizations” cited in Abou Rashed’s document were also later declared by the US Department of Treasury to be supporters of terrorist organizations, specifically Hamas, and consequently their assets were frozen.

Many Hamas affiliated organizations, as recognized by the US Treasury, were organizations in which Amin Abou Rashed was a very active participant in to say the least. Now, as leader of the current flotilla to Gaza, this raises deeper questions regarding the intentions of the flotilla organizers and their further connections to Hamas.

Let us hope that when "The Audacity of Hope" eventually reaches Gaza, the IDF send it and all of its miserable participants straight down to the seabed and to hell.

Hope And Change In Tunisia

2011-07-03T23:08:00.002+01:00

When the so-called "Arab Spring" began in Tunisia, we were told that it would bring democracy, freedom, moderation and secularism to the country and the region.

Today, we learn this:

Today Tunisia's commission of political reform announced that it adopted (by majority) a ''republican pact'' that will be the basis of the future new Constitution, and in particular it states the rejection of any normalisation with Israel.

While announcing the pact the president of the commission, Yadh Ben Achour, did not offer any details, but the Arab speaking Tunisian press published its content, which defines Tunisia as a free and democratic country, whose official language is Arab and whose religion is Islam.

The pact, that will serve as the basis of the future Constitution, categorically rejects ''any form of normalisation with the Zionist State'', and supports the Palestinian cause.

Democracy! Freedom! Moderation! Secularism!

Not that this is anything particularly new in the world of the Tunisian Revolution's "moderate Islamist" leadership.

All Muscle, No Backbone

2011-06-30T23:00:00.004+01:00

Due to the all-encompassing nature of sharia law, there are very few areas of private or public life that Islam does not legislate over in some way. Similarly, there are increasingly fewer areas of life where Islam is not taking hold, and where it is not convincing weak-willed non-believers to bend over before it.

Consider the case of Kulsoon Abdullah, a Muslim woman from Atlanta, USA, who - along with the US Olympic Committee - petitioned the International Weightlifting Federation to change its rules to allow her to wear Islamic dress during participation in competitions. Previously, the rules had mandated that competitors must have bare arms and legs so that judges can tell when the elbows and knees have "locked" and a lift has been properly completed.

Having won her appeal, Abdullah has been successful in having the rules changed so that she can now wear "a hijab and a body-covering unitard".

This case raises some interesting issues.

Islamic law mandates that when out in public, women must cover everything except their face and hands, in accordance with the words of Muhammad:

“Asma, daughter of Abu Bakr, entered upon the Apostle of Allah wearing thin clothes. The Apostle of Allah turned his attention from her. He said: O Asma, when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this, and he pointed to her face and hands.” (Abu Dawud b.32, no.4092)

However, additionally, the body coverings that Muslim women wear must not be tight-fitting or reveal their figures. For example: "Women are forbidden to wear thin clothes which reveal their shapes when they go out." (Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani, A Treatise on Maliki Fiqh, p.386) A fatwa issued on the website of the popular South African Muslim preacher Ebrahim Desai emphasises this point repeatedly. Kulsoon Abdullah's form-fitting "unitard" clearly violates this explicit law.

Furthermore, Abdullah shouldn't even be at the event, since Islamic law forbids women from leaving the home without the permission of their husbands and for any reason other than attendance of serious events such as funerals (Qayrawani, p.387; Reliance of the Traveller, p.538), and they certainly couldn't be in the presence of men to whom they are not related.

In other words, Kulsoon Abdullah is barely following Islamic law at all. There is therefore a very good possibility that her demands to wear a loosely defined "Islamic dress" while weightlifting have next to nothing to do with piety, and everything to do with getting one over the Infidels. After all, if she can win a small battle like this now, what larger battle can she win next time? If she can convince the Infidels to change the rules of the game to accomodate her religio-political ideology, what other concessions might they make, if threatened strongly enough with the stigma of "Islamophobia" and religious discrimination if they fail to comply?

Well...perhaps they'll allow sharia law to supercede their own law in Britain, or America, or France, or anywhere else in the Western world?

But that couldn't be what's going on, could it? It's just a woman who wants to do some weightlifting. Go back to sleep.

Weirdest Anti-Terrorism Conference Ever

2011-06-28T22:52:00.005+01:00

Our allies and our enemies...but which is which?

This past weekend, the leaders of some of our most vital Muslim allies in the Middle East attended a conference entitled "World Without Terrorism".

Were these important moderate Muslims there to renounce violence in the name of Islam and come up with transparent, effective ways to combat those Muslims who besmirch the name of their peaceful religion by committing acts of terrorism with a Qur'an in their hand?

Of course not, silly. Their main aim, according to the participants, was to "clearly define terrorism and to identify its root causes," particularly "satanic world powers which use terrorism in their policies and in their planning to achieve their illegitimate goals," such as the "Zionist regime" and Zionism in general, which have "from their very beginning perpetuated global terrorism". The conference also aims to highlight the way that "the U.S., the U.K., and other Western governments had 'a black record of terrorist behaviors.'"

Well, what else would you expect when the conference is led by Iran's Ali Khameini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

This conference, whose sole purpose was to demonise the West and Israel, was attended by three of our main "allies" in the Muslim world: Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Pakistani President Asif 'Ali Zardari, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. None of these men appeared to have any problem or, crucially, any strategic disagreements with the pro-genocidal Ahmadinejad or, for that matter, with the actually-genocidal Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, who also attended this "anti-terrorism" conference despite being wanted for war crimes.

Indeed, these so-called "allies" actively endorsed the views of Khameini and Ahmadinejad that "the Zionist regime feel proud of their terrorist background", and that the 9/11 attacks were cooked up by the West and Israel to justify colonialist ambitions in the Middle East, with their own anti-Western statements. President Karzai requested aid from Iran. The Iraqi President emphasised that Iraqis were united in their opposition to the Coalition prescence in their country, and again asked for Iranian assistance in driving it out. And Zardari told the Iranian leadership that the U.S. was trying to sow division in Pakistan for its own ends, and promised that his country would work toward expanding its relations with Tehran.

To top off this wonderfully surreal and downright dangerous meeting of "allied" minds, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon actually praised the conference, saying that it would do wonders for the future prevention of terrorism.

In other news, David Cameron praised Levi Bellfield for his groundbreaking work on a new seminar series for convicts entitled "A World Without Child-Killing".

Sold

2011-06-24T20:05:00.004+01:00

Nancy and Christine: Where is the world's outrage?

Over at FrontPage, the invaluable Raymond Ibrahim provides details of the latest human rights outrage from "democratised" Egypt - an outrage that has been completely ignored by the entire English-speaking media, leaving Ibrahim to summarise the details published in the Arabic media about the incidents:

The two girls, Christine Azat (aged 16) and Nancy Magdi (aged 14) were on their way to church Sunday, June 12, when they were seized. Their abductors demanded $200,000 Egyptian pounds for their release. The people of the region quickly put their savings together and came up with the ransom money; but when they tried to give it to the kidnappers, they rejected it, saying they had already “sold” the girls off to another group which requires $12 million Egyptian pounds to return them.

Ibrahim concludes with the following comments:

Therefore, next time you hear about an Egyptian Muslim preacher boasting that Islam permits Muslims to abduct and ransom infidels as a great way to make a living and own female sex-slaves, or when you hear about a Kuwaiti political activist praying to Allah that Kuwait would formally institutionalize sex-slavery, do not brush these aside as mere words, for here are their fruits.

Another Genocide In Sudan?

2011-06-20T22:46:00.004+01:00

Omar al-Bashir: Mass-mudering jihadist war criminal

This disturbing piece in TIME magazine highlights the now very real possibility of another genocide in Sudan:

Sudan's history is strewn with cases of mass atrocities against non-Arabs in the south and north, with Darfur being only the latest; reports in recent weeks from Sudan's South Kordofan state suggest history could be repeating itself yet again. There, members of a minority, opposition-aligned African ethnic group are being slaughtered "like animals," in the words of one alarming church statement. The diverse tribes live in a rugged land of mud-hut villages called the Nuba Mountains. So far, besides an aerial-bombardment campaign against the Nuba areas, the targeted killings against them have been mostly confined to the major towns, as tens of thousands flee into the hills where, for now, they are mostly safe.

But internal U.N. documents obtained by TIME show that refuge might soon come under attack too. Hundreds of military vehicles have streamed into South Kordofan's capital of Kadugli, the center of the bloodbath, according to U.N. reports. Preparations for a major ground offensive were becoming increasingly clear, the U.N. Kadugli base warned in a June 15 confidential dispatch, which urgently called for political intervention to ward off the crisis.

As well as racial tension between the Arabs and the blacks, the slaughter in Sudan is also, as described by the perpetrators, a textbook Islamic jihad. Only three days ago, Christians and their churches in the South Kordofan area were brutally assaulted by Muslims allied to the Sudanese government, who screamed "Allahu Akbar!" as they attacked. As described by Nina Shea of the Centre For Religious Freedom, Sudan's war criminal President Omar al-Bashir has for many years waged an explicitly self-defined "jihad" against the predominantly black Christians (and fellow Muslims) of Sudan, while according to the man's own documented words, his long-term intention is to implement sharia law in his country. And we're not talking the fluffy, friendly "family law" version of sharia that many Western commentators assure us is the sole function of Islamic law, but full-fledged, Dark Ages barbarity, including but not limited to the brutal flogging of women:

Separately, Mr Bashir also commented on a recent high-profile case in which a video posted on the internet showed a woman being flogged by police in the north.

"If she is lashed according to Sharia law, there is no investigation. Why are some people ashamed? This is Sharia," the president said.

Also according to Shea:

For years Khartoum has treated the black, Sufi Muslims of Darfur as second-class citizens, systematically discriminating against them in providing development opportunities, government services, and positions of power. When they rebelled against this policy of extreme marginalization, they became — in the view of a regime that conflates religion with politics — "apostate." Under Islamist rules, apostates are to be put to death or taken as slaves. In 1992, six pro-government Sudanese imams issued a fatwa making this explicit: "An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them." Though the fatwa was intended at that time for the Muslims of the central Nuba province and the Christians and animists of the south, it equally applies today to the Muslims of Darfur.

Despite President Obama dedicating a "generous" two-minute radio address to these jihadist atrocities a few days ago, the international community has by and large tragically and shamefully failed to act decisively in bringing Omar al-Bashir and his Islamic supremacist cronies to justice. The results have been disastrous, and could end up even more so, as the TIME piece solemnly concludes:

In the early 1900s, Winston Churchill, then a young British soldier on a military campaign in Sudan, described how a fierce Sudanese battalion was sent down to fight the Nuba, a "mountain people who cared for nothing but their independence," just to give the elite soldiers something to do. In the 1990s, as many as half a million Nuba were killed when the Sudanese government declared jihad against them. When I was in the Nuba Mountains in April, I found a people terrified that war would return but resigned to their frightful and uncertain future. Given their history and the history of their government, they seem to have good reasons to be fearful.

Talking With The Taliban?

2011-06-18T17:29:00.004+01:00

It has been hinted at many times in the recent past, and although details are still extremely sketchy, it appears to be happening at last: the Coalition in Afghanistan is "in talks" with the Taliban.

Where does one start with this idiocy? In recent weeks, "militant factions" of the Taliban have attacked and killed innocent people in banks, shopping centres and hospitals. Additionally, as the BBC notes in its coverage of "the talks", even as these talks were supposedly going on, Taliban suicide bombers killed nine people at a police station. There is no record that any "moderate factions" of the Taliban have opposed any of this.

You don't negotiate with people like this - you murder them, and when that is not possible, you utilise your best resources to cut off their funding and methodology of attack.

Aside from the moral and tactical stupidity of these talks, there is also another aspect to consider. A few days ago, USA Today reported that "The number of attacks by Afghan security forces on U.S. and allied troops has increased dramatically this year", with 40% of all such attacks since 2005 occuring this year alone.

Then there is the fact that Islamic law (to which our enemies rigorously adhere) allows for peace talks and truces only as a temporary cessation of hostilities for tactical purposes. In the words of the important manual of Islamic law Reliance of the Traveller, which has been endorsed by some of Islam's highest authorities:

There must be some interest served in making a truce other than mere preservation of the status quo...Interests that justify making a truce are such things as Muslim weakness because of lack of members or materiel, or the hope of an enemy becoming Muslim...If the Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) made a truce with Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud. It is not permissible to stipulate longer than that, save by means of new truces, each of which does not exceed ten years.

In light of all this, what steps are being taken (or could conceivably be taken) by Coalition negotiators to ensure that Muslims who claim to be our friends are being sincere, and will not turn around at the first available opportunity and kill their new-found allies?

Why, absolutely none, because to even contemplate such a thing, even in spite of all the evidence, would be "Islamophobia", and no one wants that.

In a statement reacting to this latest news, the UK said it supported "Afghan-led efforts to reconcile and reintegrate members of the insurgency who are prepared to renounce violence, cut links with terrorist groups, and accept the constitution".

Where are these people? Have our intelligence services and army identified a single person fitting this description? And if so, what criteria did they use to determine it?

In any case, any "moderate Taliban" members who accept the constitution of Afghanistan would also accept stoning and religion- and gender-based discrimination, since all these things are part of sharia law which, thanks to our own enlightened efforts, is enshrined in the Afghan constitution as the ultimate arbiter of all laws in that country (see Chapter 1, Article 3).

All the talks in the world won't change these facts.

Bernard Lewis On Communism And Islam

2011-06-14T20:44:00.005+01:00

The following are extracts from an essay by the renowned historian of Islam, Bernard Lewis, published in the journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1954. Despite his now unfortunately highly apologetic stance towards Islam, this essay, entitled "Communism and Islam", demonstrates a couple of things:

1) That once, Professor Lewis viewed Islam itself (i.e. not "Islamic fundamentalism") honestly as inherently opposed to Western conceptions of freedom and democracy

2) That once, it was acceptable in academic circles to criticise Islam without being labelled a bigot and a racist.

Although Communism isn't now the threat it once was, Lewis' observations are just as relevant today as they were back then.

Finally, before reading Lewis' well-reasoned analysis, take a look at these words written by philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1920:

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 sad that in the modern day, those few souls who dare publicly to compare Islam to the totalist despotism of Communism are either hauled before a court on charges in "offending a group of people", or praised as heroes for simply saying what men used to be able to say understatedly and as a matter of course only a few decades ago.

From Bernard Lewis' 12-page article, with some key passages highlighted:

I turn now from the accidental to the essential factors, to those deriving from the very nature of Islamic society, tradition, and thought. The first of these is the authoritarianism, perhaps we may even say the totalitarianism, of the Islamic political tradition...The political experience and traditions of Islam, though very different from those of Eastern Europe, do nevertheless contain elements which might, in certain circumstances, prepare the way for Communism.

Many attempts have been made to show that Islam and democracy are identical - attempts usually based on a misunderstanding of Islam or democracy or both. This sort of argument expresses a need of the uprooted Muslim intellectual who is no longer satisfied with or capable of understanding traditional Islamic values, and who tries to justify, or rather, re-state, his inherited faith in terms of the fashionable ideology of the day. It is an example of the romantic and apologetic presentation of Islam that is a recognized phase in the reaction of Muslim thought to the impact of the West...In point of fact, except for the early caliphate, when the anarchic individualism of tribal Arabia was still effective, the political history of Islam is one of almost unrelieved autocracy. I say autocracy, not despotism, since the sovereign was bound by and subject to the Holy Law, and was accepted by the people as rightful ruler, maintaining and maintained by the authority of the Holy Law. But still, it was authoritarian, often arbitrary, sometimes tyrannical. There are no parliaments or representative assemblies of any kind, no councils or communes, no chambers of nobility or estates, no municipalities in the history of Islam; nothing but the sovereign power, to which the subject owed complete and unwavering obedience as a religious duty imposed by the Holy Law...

Quite obviously, the 'Ulama [scholars] of Islam are very different from the Communist Party. Nevertheless, on closer examination, we find certain uncomfortable resemblances. Both groups profess a totalitarian doctrine, with complete and final answers to all questions on heaven and earth...Both groups offer to their members and followers the agreeable sensation of belonging to a community of believers, who are always right, as against an outer world of unbelievers, who are always wrong. Both offer an exhilarating feeling of mission, of purpose, of being engaged in a collective adventure to accelerate the historically inevitable victory of the true faith over the infidel evil-doers. The traditional Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War, two necessarily opposed groups, of which the first has the collective obligation of perpetual struggle against the second, also has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs. There again, the content of belief is utterly different, but the aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same. The humorist who summed up the Communist creed as 'There is no God and Karl Marx is his Prophet' was laying his finger on a real affinity. The call to a Communist Jihad, a Holy War for the faith - a new faith, but against the self-same Western Christian enemy - might well strike a responsive note.

Why We Must Map Sharia And Islam In Britain

2011-06-07T22:49:00.004+01:00

The Middle East Forum has just made available for download a much-anticipated, landmark study published in the latest issue of Middle East Quarterly, entitled "Sharia And Violence In American Mosques".

Authored by legal expert David Yerushalmi and Mordechai Kedar of Israel's Bar Ilan University, the 14-page paper is the culmination of the Mapping Sharia Project, whose initial findings were first revealed in 2008.

The study's methodology was rigorous, objective and thoroughly scientific, and involved in-depth undercover investigation and mapping of 100 American mosques across 14 states, randomly sampled but representative of the overall Muslim community.

Among the study's findings include:

- "Of the 100 mosques surveyed, 51% had texts on site rated as severely advocating violence; 30% had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19% had no violent texts at all." This amounts to a total of 81% of American mosques which, to some degree, advocate political violence against non-Muslims in service of sharia governance.

- "In 84.5% of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts. The leadership at shariah-adherent mosques was more likely to recommend that a worshipper study violence-positive texts than leadership at non-shariah-adherent mosques." Additionally: "[O]f the 51 mosques that contained severe materials, 100 percent were led by imams who recommended that worshipers study texts that promote violence."

- Mosques that were identified using empirical, well-defined criteria as being strictly "shariah-adherent" were "more likely to feature violence-positive texts on site than were their non-shariah adherent counterparts.”

These important data have a number of key implications. First of all, they completely validate Rep. Peter King's much-maligned claim that around 80% of American mosques have been taken over by extremists, almost to the exact percentage, as well as the previous testimony of Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Muslim himself, who provided an identical estimate of the jihadist infiltration of American mosques in front of the US State Department in 1999.

Another important observation of the study is that rigourous adherence to sharia is shown to be strongly correlated to the likelihood of violent texts being sold, recommended and preached at any given mosque, along with the promotion of establishing a sharia-based caliphate in the United States. This underscores the importance of forbidding sharia any foothold in any part of the Western world, no matter how innocuous and harmless it appears to be, since bringing sharia into non-Muslim societies inevitably brings jihad also, and those who most vigourously advocate the implementation of some sharia laws into the Western legal system are the most likely to advocate total Islamic political takeover of Western countries by way of full-fledged sharia - in other words, sedition.

Here in the UK, the Home Office recently announced that it is planning to move on to a broader definition of "Islamic extremism" that, rather than simply focusing on violent terrorism, will include non-violent "advocacy of sharia law". Now, then, is the ideal time to undertake a large-scale investigation of British mosques similar to this latest one from America. We've already seen some evidence of radicalism in British mosques, and an investigation by The Times has also revealed almost half this country's mosques are under the control of the hardline Deobandis, who preach jihad and hatred of British values. But a rigourous study of the kind we have seen from this new report is needed in order to dispel any lingering doubts that when it comes to the Problem of Islam, the UK and the US are indeed close bedfellows.

Rape And Pillage In The Muslim World

2011-06-01T12:25:00.003+01:00

Al-Huweini: He needs sex slaves because no one would sleep with him voluntarily

At FrontPage, Raymond Ibrahim outlines the severity of the threat Christians face today from Muslim pillage and abduction.

He first provides some recent examples from the Muslim world (links in original):

- Pakistan: Muslim landowners used tractors to plough over a Christian cemetery in order to seize the land illegally. A young Christian mother was raped by six men. “In both cases, police covered up for the culprits.”

- Iraq: A Christian youth was kidnapped and decapitated: his family could not pay the €70,000 ransom demanded by his abductors. “The murder was meant to intimidate Christians so that in the future they will more readily pay ransom demands.”

- Egypt: Christian girls continue to be abducted and forced into conversion or concubinage (which amount to the same thing) and “kept as virtual slaves.”

He then demonstrates why this kind of violence and abuse of Christians is so common - because mainstream Islamic authorities endorse it. He translates some old and some recent statements of popular Muslim preacher Abu Ishaq Al-Huweini.

First the old:

If only we can conduct a jihadist invasion at least once a year or if possible twice or three times, then many people on earth would become Muslims. And if anyone prevents our dawa or stands in our way, then we must kill them or take as hostage and confiscate their wealth, women and children. Such battles will fill the pockets of the Mujahid who can return home with 3 or 4 slaves, 3 or 4 women and 3 or 4 children. This can be a profitable business if you multiply each head by 300 or 400 dirham. This can be like financial shelter whereby a jihadist, in time of financial need, can always sell one of these heads (meaning slavery)...

When asked to "clarify" his position on TV last week, he went on to say all of the following:

According to Huwaini, after Muslims invade and conquer a non-Muslim nation—in the course of waging an offensive jihad—the properties and persons of those infidels who refuse to convert or pay jizya and live as subjugated dhimmis, are to be seized as ghanima or “spoils of war.”

Huwaini cited the Koran as his authority—boasting that it has an entire chapter named “spoils”—and the sunna of Muhammad, specifically as recorded in the famous Sahih Muslim hadith wherein the prophet ordered the Muslim armies to offer non-Muslims three choices: conversion, subjugation, or death/enslavement.

Huwaini said that infidel captives, the “spoils of war,” are to be distributed among the Muslim combatants (i.e., jihadists) and taken to “the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold.” He referred to these latter by their dehumanizing name in the Koran, ma malakat aymanukum—“what your right hands possess”—in this context, sex-slaves: “You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate—though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff—and this is agreed upon by the ulema.”

“In other words,” Huwaini concluded, “when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”

Lest Muslims begin attacking all and sundry, however, Huwaini was careful to stress that Islam forbids Muslims from plundering and enslaving fellow Muslims—including “heretical” Shias. He used the Iran-Iraq war as an example, saying that a Sunni man is not permitted to enslave and abuse a Shia woman, “for she is still a Muslim and thus considered free.”

As a postscript, if you want to know where these Muslims' propensity for slavery and pillage comes from, read my review from 2009 of John Azumah's book The Legacy of Arab-Islam In Africa.

Finally, read this infamous hadith in which Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam and the uswa hasana, or "excellent example" (see Qur'an 33:21) for Muslims to follow, witnesses his men raping female war captives, and does not condemn the practice:

“We went out with Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) on the expedition to the Banu al-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, (but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl (Withdrawing the male sexual organ before emission of semen to avoid conception). But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born.” (Sahih Muslim b.8, no.3371)

Concealing The Truth About Islamic Antisemitism

2011-05-31T19:51:00.003+01:00

Professor Mark Elchardus: When Muslims want to shut you up, you know you're on the right track

A Belgian Muslim advocacy group named Vigilance Musulmane (Muslim Vigilance) has lodged a complaint with the Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Fight Against Racism (CGKR) after professor of sociology Mark Elchardus made statements in a newspaper about Islamic antisemitism.

In the article, published May 12th, Elchardus apparently said, according to this undoubtedly impartial Iranian news agency, that "antisemitism among Muslim students was theologically inspired and that there is a direct link between being Muslim and harboring antisemitic feelings". As a result, Vigilance Musulmane wants the CGKR to curtail free speech in future if it casts Islam in a bad light - par for the course from Western Islamic groups these days.

Of course, nothing in what Professor Elchardus said is inaccurate. Only a couple of weeks ago I outlined some (but by no means all) of the theological grounds for antisemitism within Islam, and their lethal applications, which leave no room for doubt that there certainly is a connection between Islam and antisemitism. And that's only backed up by the fact that, according to an EU report, fully half of all antisemitic hate crimes in Europe are committed by Muslims.....who only make up about 5% or less of the European population.

But Vigilance Musulmane, like all good soft jihadist groups, doesn't want you to know any of this. It wants the antisemitism to continue, but it has to remove the obstacle of European laws which are designed to punish antisemitism. So they try first of all to guilt us into remaining silent about the phenomenon of Muslim Jew-hatred by saying that if we point it out, we are necessarily implying that all Muslims are antisemites, and that we are therefore bigots and racists and Islamophobes. They know that this kind of talk will find a strong favourable reaction in some non-Muslim Leftist circles.

But when that fails, they just resort to trying to make those who tell the truth about Islam shut up.

Well, I'm not shutting up, no matter what they do, and I want everyone who cares about real freedom and real tolerance to stand up in support of Professor Mark Elchardus and his right to free speech and intellectual enquiry.

To do any less is to essentially sign a suicide note for the West.

Stoning...In The Ukraine

2011-05-31T00:38:00.002+01:00

They said that sharia law does not include a punishment of stoning to death. They also said that even if it does, this "law" will never come to Europe.

They were wrong on both counts.

A teenage Muslim girl was stoned to death under 'Sharia law' after taking part in a beauty contest in Ukraine.

Katya Koren, 19, was found dead in a village in the Crimea region near her home.

Friends said she liked wearing fashionable clothes and had come seventh in a beauty contest. Her battered body was buried in a forest and was found a week after she disappeared.

Police have opened a murder probe and are investigating claims that three Muslim youths killed her claiming her death was justified under Islam.

One of the three - named as 16-year-old Bihal Gaziev - is under arrest and told police she had 'violated the laws of Sharia'.

Gaziev said he had no regrets about her death because she had violated the laws of Islam.

What The "Liberated" Iraq Looks Like

2011-05-26T22:35:00.006+01:00

The banner reads, "No, no to Israel"

"At least tens of thousands" of Muslims marched through Baghdad waving Iraqi flags and shouting "No, no, America!" earlier today.

Organisers said at least 700,000 militiamen and supporters of the Shi'ite jihadist leader Muqtada al-Sadr had taken to the streets while the U.S. military estimated the crowd at about 70,000.

U.S. officials counted more than 300 busloads - each carrying up to 70 passengers - who traveled from Iraq's south for the rally, and were joined by some of the roughly 2 million who live in Baghdad's northeast Sadr City neighborhood where it was held.

An estimated 24,000 militiamen from southern provinces wore matching T-shirts bearing the Iraqi flag as spectators burned American and Israeli banners. Small groups of youths along the parade route also struck American flags with twirling kickboxing moves to the delight of onlookers.

The rally was a message to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about the staunch opposition by Iraq's most devout Shi'ites - and the ones who grudgingly helped him clinch a second term in office last year - to a continued U.S. military presence in 2012.

Already, American forces in Baghdad and southern Iraq have seen an increase in rocket and mortar attacks as well as roadside bombs in recent months. U.S. officials have blamed the uptick on Shiite militias backed by Iran who are trying to take credit for driving American forces from Iraq.

God bless Dubya and Obama. The spending of all that blood and treasure to bring "democracy" to Iraq really worked out so well, didn't it?

The Democratic Club

2011-05-24T23:21:00.004+01:00

Here's a clip from Iraqi TV of two commentators discussing the legacy of Saddam Hussein:

When George W. Bush talked about bringing democracy to Iraq, I don't think this is what he meant.

Allen West On Obama's Anti-Israel Speech

2011-05-20T20:16:00.002+01:00

Tea Party Rep. Allen West has issued a response to Barack Obama‘s announcement that he backs the Palestinians’ demand that Israel redraw its borders to where they were in 1967. Not only did he call the move the “most egregious foreign policy decision” the administration has made, but he also feared this “could be the beginning of the end as we know it for the Jewish state.”

“The pre-1967 borders endorsed by President Obama would deny millions of the world’s Jews access to their holiest site and force Israel to return the strategically important Golan Heights to Syria, a known state-sponsor of terrorism,” West said in an e-mail to "The Blaze".

“Resorting to the pre-1967 borders would mean a full withdrawal by the Israelis from the West Bank and the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Make no mistake, there has always been a Nation of Israel and Jerusalem has been and must always be recognized as its rightful capital.”

He concluded with some harsh criticisms: “President Obama has not stood for Israel or the Jewish people and has made it clear where the United States will stand when Palestine attempts to gain recognition of statehood by the United Nations. The President should focus on the real obstacle to security - the Palestinian leadership and its ultimate goal to eliminate Israel and the Jewish people.”

[Editor's note: It should be stated for the sake of accuracy that, as noted here, the pre-1967 "borders" referred to above are in fact not borders, but armistice lines - temporary boundaries to be replaced in the future by a negotiated, internationally recognised border. Nevertheless, Allen West's major points still stand.]

Bin Laden's Pakistani Support Network = Half The Country

2011-05-18T23:22:00.003+01:00

Here's an update from our Pakistani "allies" - and yet another indication of how insulting to our intelligence the use of that word is these days:

A majority of Pakistanis surveyed in a poll appeared to be aggrieved over the death of Osama bin Laden, with 51 per cent describing their emotions as "grief" though one-third said they were unconcerned by the incident.

The nationwide study was released by Gilani Foundation and carried out by Gallup Pakistan, the Pakistani affiliate of Gallup International. The poll covered 2,530 men and women in the rural and urban areas.

The poll was conducted among 2,530 men and women representatives of the adult population of Pakistan. They were distributed in the rural and urban areas of various provinces and districts and comprised a cross-section of various education, income, age and linguistic backgrounds...

Was Osama a martyr or an outlaw?

The views are divided over this one. While 44 per cent think he was a martyr, 28 per cent think he was killed because he was an outlaw.

What "Nakba Day" Is Really About

2011-05-16T20:05:00.005+01:00

In August of 1929, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, who was at that time the Mufti of Jerusalem, incited a series of anti-Jewish massacres that left hundreds of people dead. Al-Husseini provoked the local Muslims by claiming that a Jewish religious gathering near the Western Wall was actually part of a plot by the Jews to take over Muslim holy sites, and quoted from the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion to buttress his point. He also made the emphatically religious statement: "He who kills a Jew - his place in the life after death is assured!"

Historian Jennie Lebel describes what happened next as follows:

...Arab crowds streamed into Jerusalem from all towns, carrying truncheons, and a bloody anti-Jewish pogrom started...

After prayer in the mosque, there occurred attacks of Arabs on Jews who were praying in front of the Western Wall. The disturbances spread quickly throughout the whole town. 133 Jews were killed, and 239 severely wounded. The orthodox Jews suffered most casualties, in spite of the fact that they not only did not support Zionism, but even distinguished themselves as anti-Zionists...

A week later...the Mufti struck simultaneously in seven places. The 1929 riots culminated in the worst and most painful massacre in Hebron, where the attackers stormed houses, slaughtered 64 and wounded 85 Jews. If it had not been for some friendly Arab families, not a single Jewish soul in Hebron would have remained alive. In Safed 45 Jews were killed and their bodies were brutally mutilated. The Jewish quarter was set on fire. The police interfered only in Jaffa and thus prevented a renewed massacre in this town as well. Much of the Jewish Yishuv (Hebrew name for the Jewish community) had been totally destroyed. (pp.25-26)

In an interview on Palestinian television this past Friday, Sara Jaber, a 92 year old Palestinian woman who lived through these events, fondly recalled the Hebron massacre, and prayed for another one just like it:

Interviewer: So you remember May 15, 1948, the day of the Nakba [catastrophe, i.e. the day of Israel's creation].

Sara Jaber: Why wouldn't I remember? May Allah support us. I hope we forget those days. Allah willing, you will bury [Israel], and massacre the Jews with your own hands. Allah willing, you will massacre them like we massacred them in Hebron.

Interviewer: What does this day mean to you? You have lived 63 years since the Nakba. You have experienced the entire Nakba...

Sara Jaber: 92 years. That's 92. I lived through the British era, and I lived through the massacre of the Jews in Hebron. We, the people of Hebron, massacred the Jews. My father massacred them, and brought back some stuff...

It is in this historical context that we must consider the events currently taking place in Israel, where Muslims from surrounding nations have literally invaded Israel to "protest" against its mere existence. These Muslims' anger has nothing to do with Zionism or with any "occupation" or "oppression" committed by Israel, just as the 1929 Hebron massacre - in which anti-Zionist Jews were butchered by Muslims years before Israel "stole" a single piece of land from any "Palestinians" - had nothing to do with any provocation whatsoever.

These events have solely to do with a pathological hatred of Jews, which stems from the foundational sources of Islam, including the Qur'an. Below are some of the Qur'an's sentiments on Jews, along with one apocalyptic hadith and the views of al-Jahiz, a ninth-century Iraqi polymath who wrote a treatise explaining why the Muslims of that time - over a thousand years before the advent of Zionism - hated the Jews more than they hated the Christians:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“And when ye said: O Moses! We are weary of one kind of food; so call upon thy Lord for us that He bring forth for us of that which the earth groweth – of its herbs and its cucumbers and its corn and its lentils and its onions. He said: Would ye exchange that which is higher for that which is lower? Go down to settled country, thus ye shall get that which ye demand. And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was for their disobedience and transgression.” (Qur'an 2:61)

“And ye know of those of you who broke the Sabbath, how We said unto them: Be ye apes, despised and hated!” (2:65)

“That they said in boast, ‘We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah’;- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not.” (4:157)

“The Jews say: Allah's hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so. Nay, but both His hands are spread out wide in bounty. He bestoweth as He will. That which hath been revealed unto thee from thy Lord is certain to increase the contumacy and disbelief of many of them, and We have cast among them enmity and hatred till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, Allah extinguisheth it. Their effort is for corruption in the land, and Allah loveth not corrupters.” (5:64)

“Those of the Children of Israel who went astray were cursed by the tongue of David, and of Jesus, son of Mary. That was because they rebelled and used to transgress.” (5:78)

“Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans...” (5:82)

“The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.'” (Sahih Bukhari v.4, b.52, no.176-177 and others)

“I shall begin to enumerate the causes which made the Christians more liked by the masses...than the Jews, more endeared, less treacherous, less unbelieving, and less deserving of punishment...

“The first cause is as follows: The Jews were the neighbours of the Muslims in Medina and other places...When the [Muslim] Emigrants [from Mecca] became the neighbours of the Jews [in Medina]...the Jews began to envy the Muslims the blessings of their new faith, and the union which resulted after dissension. They proceeded to undermine the belief of our [i.e. the Muslim] masses, and to lead them astray. They aided our enemies and those envious of us. From mere misleading speech and stinging words they plunged into an open declaration of enmity, so that the Muslims mobilised their forces, exerting themselves morally and materially to banish the Jews and destroy them. Their strife became long-drawn and widespread, so that it worked itself up into a rage, and created yet greater animosity and more intensified rancor...

“Another circumstance, which is the most potent cause, is the...interpretation given by the masses to the Qur'anic verse 5:82 [see above]...” ~ Al-Jahiz (d.869), "Why The Muslims Prefer The Christians To the Jews"

Miami Imam & Sons Arrested For Funding Pakistani Taliban

2011-05-15T12:56:00.003+01:00

A Miami imam and two of his sons were arrested Saturday on federal charges they provided some $50,000 to the Pakistani Taliban.

Also named in the indictment are three others at large in Pakistan — Hafiz Khan's daughter, grandson and an unrelated man, all three of whom are charged with handling the distribution of funds.

The indictment lists about $50,000 in transactions. The funds were used to buy guns, support militants' families and promote the cause of the Pakistani Taliban, according to the indictment. It also alleges that Hafiz Khan owns a madrassa, or religious school, in his native Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan that shelters members of the Pakistani Taliban and trains children to become militants.

But wait a minute...why would an imam, who spends all his time studying the Qur'an and teaching Islam to his congregation, get the idea that he should fund Islamic terrorist groups? Wouldn't he be overwhelingly persuaded against this idea by the Qur'an's message of peace and universal brotherhood?

Well...since the Qur'an promotes the funding of those who fight "in the cause of Allah" (a phrase always understood in Islamic theology to refer to violence and killing) as a noble virtue, probably not:

Those who believe, and suffer exile and strive [i.e. jihad] with might and main, in Allah's cause, with their goods and their persons, have the highest rank in the sight of Allah: they are the people who will achieve (salvation). (9:20)

Go ye forth, (whether equipped) lightly or heavily, and strive and struggle [i.e. jihad], with your goods and your persons, in the cause of Allah. That is best for you, if ye (but) knew. (9:41)

Alms are for the poor and the needy, and those employed to administer the (funds); for those whose hearts have been (recently) reconciled (to Truth); for those in bondage and in debt; in the cause of Allah; and for the wayfarer: (thus is it) ordained by Allah, and Allah is full of knowledge and wisdom. (9:60)

Only those are Believers who have believed in Allah and His Messenger, and have never since doubted, but have striven [i.e. jihad] with their belongings and their persons in the Cause of Allah: Such are the sincere ones. (49:15)

That ye believe in Allah and His Messenger, and that ye strive [i.e. jihad] (your utmost) in the Cause of Allah, with your property and your persons: That will be best for you, if ye but knew! (61:11)

Muhammad himself was very clear about this also:

He who does not join the warlike expedition (jihad), or equip or look well after a warrior's family when he is away, will be smitten by Allah with a sudden calamity. (Abu Dawud b.14, no.2497)

The article also makes clear that Hafiz Khan is a "native" of Pakistan - therefore shouldn't he have outright rejected the Taliban, since we are told that Pakistan is an ally that is "vital" to our efforts in the War On Terror?

Scratch that idea, as well.

Nezar Hamze of the Council on American-Islamic Relations was said to be "very shocked" at the arrests (aren't they always?), as were Hafiz Khan's neighbours:

Across the street from the Miami mosque, neighbor Odelia Fernandez said she found the elderly bearded man to be respectful. Even though language barriers prevented them from communicating, they would wave hello to one another.

Khan's next-door neighbor, Jorge Gonzalez, said he frequently saw Khan walking to the mosque.

"It's hard to believe," Gonzalez said. "The Taliban sleeping alongside my room — wow."

Pop quiz: name a method by which we can determine with anything like relative certainty that the Muslim across the street from us, or at our workplace, or in our government, who smiles and acts very nice when we talk to them, isn't in fact a jihadist sympathiser who acts friendly when we're looking but hostilely when we're not?

Answers on a postcard, please.

(N.B. If you're having trouble, here's another story from November last year that may or may not help you:

"The arrest of the leader of a City Heights mosque, a man described as a revered figure who was known for advocating nonviolence and tolerance, has stunned the close-knit Somali community in City Heights, where many refugees of the war-torn country live, work and pray.

"Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud [yes, that really is his name ~ Ed], 38, appeared in federal court Wednesday to answer to charges that he was involved in a conspiracy to provide money and other aid to al-Shabaab in Somalia, which U.S. authorities have designated a foreign terrorist organization.")

Toilet Jihad

2011-05-10T22:51:00.003+01:00

Would YOU scream triumphant religious exultations as you searched for the bathroom?

A Yemeni man was wrestled to the floor on a plane bound for San Francisco yesterday after pounding on the cockpit door as it approached the landing phase and allegedly screaming "Allahu Akbar!"

According to Fox News, "Authorities do not yet have a motive".

According to the Daily Mail, the man could have possibly mistaken the cockpit for the bathroom.

No doubt Rageit "Allahu Akbar!" Almurisi's actions were not religiously motivated.

Sectarian Strife?

2011-05-08T23:02:00.004+01:00

This BBC article today demonstrates a repeated trend that we are seeing with increasing regularity in the mainstream media: Muslim persecution of Christians in Egypt is repeatedly described as "clashes between Muslims and Christians" or "sectarian strife". This implies that both sides are equally to blame for any unrest, and gives fuel to those who spout the old canard that all religions are equally destructive.

What the media rarely report - or at the very least bury many paragraphs down into an article - is that this "strife" goes entirely one way, i.e. Muslims in Egypt repeatedly attack and persecute Christians, but are not persecuted or attacked in return.

This latest bout of violence in Egypt was triggered by rumours that a Christian woman who had converted to Islam was being held captive by the Coptic Church - an allegation Muslims in Egypt have made before, but which has never been backed up by any supporting evidence whatsoever (indeed, even the woman in question has denied publicly that any such thing took place). Nevertheless, this mere rumour was enough to cause hundreds of Muslims (presumably those "pro-democracy" reformers we're always hearing about) to go out into the streets and burn down churches (funnily enough, no mosques have been attacked).

None of this should be surprising: the Copts have been a persecuted minority in Egypt for centuries, and I have documented many of the most recent cases of that persecution on these pages. To add to this, here are some of the latest examples, all coming from the past three weeks or so:

- The Prime Minister suspended a Christian governor in the Qena province because Muslims protested against his appointment
- An Egyptian convert from Islam to Christianity arrived seeking asylum in France after being hounded out of his home country two and a half years ago because of his apostasy
- The homes of Coptic Christians have been attacked and burned down by Muslims

Does this sound like "sectarian strife" to you? Or does it sound like one group of people systematically harassing, assaulting and bullying another?

Protecting Bin Laden From Hell?

2011-05-07T19:52:00.003+01:00

While US authorities have made it abundantly clear that they buried the jihadist mass murderer Osama bin Laden at sea "in accord with Islamic law", they have to date been noticably hesitant to provide more details about what exactly transpired on board the USS Carl Vinson.

But until the video of this unbelievable "funeral" is released, Anneke Green of the Washington Times has uncovered some truly disturbing information about the official US Navy policy regarding the burial of Muslims at sea. We do not yet know for certain whether this protocol was followed in the case of bin Laden, but it is logical to assume that it may well have been given the statements of the US Government, as given the fact that this is standard policy.

According to the "Navy Military Funerals" document (read it here - in particular pages 34-35), all those in attendance at a Muslim funeral on board a Navy vessel must face Mecca. They must recite from Sura al-Fatihah, the first chapter of the Qur'an, which is almost universally interpreted by Muslim scholars as cursing Jews and Christians (see but one example here), before reading a prayer including these words:

“O Allah, forgive him, have mercy on him, pardon him, grant him security, provide him a nice place and spacious lodgings, wash him (off from his sins) with water, snow and ice, purify him from his sins as a white garment is cleansed from dirt, replace his present abode with a better one, replace his present family with a better one, replace his present partner with a better one, make him enter paradise and save him from the trials of grave [sic] and the punishment of hell.”

They must then lower the body into the sea (as opposed to, say, dumping it like household rubbish) facing Mecca, while intoning:

"O Allah this is your servant who is now your guest, and you are the best of hosts. Forgive him and expand his entrance."

Green's commentary really sums up the moral perversity and farcical nature of this whole affair:

The families of those slaughtered by bin Laden—many of whom were Muslims—might not be happy to learn that the Obama administration may have considered it “appropriate” to ask Allah to “pardon” al Qaeda’s evil overlord. Or to petition him to not only let him into paradise but give him a nice, big house when he gets there, with a better family and wife (wives?). How will those families feel about the fact that this sociopath got a better burial than many of their dead loved ones, some of whose circumstances of death made them religiously ineligible for the prayers—or “religious remarks”—he received? The Pentagon’s official statement on his burial did not note whether bin Laden’s face was toward Ka’aba in Saudi Arabia, as the service instructs, but it did make clear that his body was “eased into the sea.”...

Sending in a SEAL team to blow off bin Laden’s head showed presidential leadership. The subsequent handling of the body and burial, however, raises serious questions about Mr. Obama’s dominant priority. The constraints involved certainly reveal why a sea burial seemed attractive. But if no other country would take his remains and they absolutely had to be disposed of within 24 hours, why didn’t we just tie his body to the back of the carrier (fantail), weigh anchor and see if there was anything left to dispose of by the time our service members were back in the arms of their loved ones? That sort of observance would have shown the respect he deserved.

Murdering Free Speech

2011-05-04T22:55:00.004+01:00

Lars Hedegaard: Demon Truth-Teller Of Denmark

This world is full of contrasts, and we see these all too often when it comes to the prevailing attitudes of Western authorities towards Islam, versus the realities of Islam itself.

Yesterday, Danish writer and cartoonist Lars Hedegaard was found guilty of hate speech and "racist statements" after he spoke during a 2009 interview about the intra-familial violence often experienced by women and girls in the Muslim world. Obviously, he was not insinuating that every Muslim woman in the world is being attacked, raped or killed by their own families. What he was talking about was the depravity of a general culture that treats women as possessions of men, disobedient and rebellious, who can be beaten by men when they step out of line and whose murder often carries no penalty under Islamic law.

Hedegaaard's discussion of this was deemed a crime by a Danish court.

Also yesterday, it was reported that a man went to suburban Detroit and fatally shot his 20-year-old stepdaughter in the head because she left Minnesota to live with her father and was not adhering to Muslim customs.

Jessica Mokdad now joins the sad ranks of Aqsa Parvez, Amina and Sarah Said, Noor Faleh Almaleki, Sandeela Kanwal, and several other Muslim girls who have in just the past few years been murdered in honour killings - not in some deprived part of the Middle East, but in the United States of America.

Lars Hedegaard will be fined approximately £600 for noticing this.

Shame on Denmark.

Victory?

2011-05-03T20:11:00.002+01:00

Merely one soldier

"Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden — may Allah protect them from all evil — are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time."

~ Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda Second-In-Command, 2005

Unholy Reverence

2011-05-02T19:43:00.003+01:00

Following bin Laden's death, this article at ABC News outlines the Islamic rituals American forces performed before disposing of the jihadist mass murder's body:

Bin Laden's corpse was taken to Afghanistan to have his DNA tested for positive identification. The body was then flown to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, officials told ABC News and he was buried at sea. The burial was done in accordance with Islamic law, officials said. A Muslim seaman conducted the process and said the prayers, with bin Laden's body wrapped in the "appropriate way."

Wait a minute...let me get my head around this. Did the United States military just kill the man responsible for the worst attack against its people in the nation's history, and then give him a sorrowful, dignified funeral in accordance with the laws of the ideology that drove him to commit that heinous act?

What is wrong with this picture?

And shouldn't the Muslim seaman who assisted with the burial have refused to perform an Islamic rite on such an obviously "un-Islamic" specimen?

According to ABC, this staggering display of dhimmitude was performed "so [as] not to inflame the Muslim world".

Isn't the "Muslim world" overwhelmingly peaceful, and doesn't it reject bin Laden as an anti-Islamic extremist? Am I missing something?

As it happens, the military got it wrong anyway - Sunni Islam's top authority, Cairo's Al Azhar University, condemned the sea burial as "sinful" and un-Islamic - indicating that they also seem to be affording an unusual amount of respect to bin Laden's carcass, considering that he was so un-Islamic and all.

Freudian Slip

2011-05-02T13:12:00.002+01:00

Bin Laden Dead - Now The Questions Begin

2011-05-02T10:54:00.004+01:00

Imagine the look on his face when he finds out he'll only get 72 raisins...

So Osama bin Laden has been killed by US forces in a raid in Abottabad, Pakistan. He was found living in a custom-built mansion in an area where former Pakistani Army officers like to retire.

Questions are instantly raised:

1) Given the above information, is anyone going to insist that at least some major Pakistani authorities did not know that bin Laden was there? And if we accept that they did, what do we do about Pakistan? Such news would on a grand scale, after all, vindicate David Cameron, who caused controversy last July when he stated that some of the Pakistani authorities were in cahoots with the Taliban.

2) Why, according to this AP report, did the US ensure that bin Laden's body was disposed of "according to Islamic practice"? Wouldn't this be a bit like "respecting" Adolf Hitler's final wishes after World War II? And why perform this act of reverence for bin Laden's religious beliefs anyway when President Obama stated explicitly following his death that Osama was not a Muslim at all?

3) How soon will it be before the Muslim world goes apeshit in the thousands or even millions over this murder of a great mujahid, and when that happens, what defense mechanisms will our leaders use this time to continue to justify their delusions that bin Laden was only supported by a tiny minority of extremists?

4) So Osama is dead. Now what are we going to do about the religious texts that inspired him?

Lara Logan Speaks

2011-04-29T14:34:00.002+01:00

"They raped me with their hands..."

More on this story.

From the New York Times:

Lara Logan thought she was going to die in Tahrir Square when she was sexually assaulted by a mob on the night that Hosni Mubarak’s government fell in Cairo.

Ms. Logan, a CBS News correspondent, was in the square preparing a report for “60 Minutes” on Feb. 11 when the celebratory mood suddenly turned threatening. She was ripped away from her producer and bodyguard by a group of men who tore at her clothes and groped and beat her body. “For an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands,” Ms. Logan said in an interview with The New York Times. She estimated that the attack involved 200 to 300 men....

Before the assault, Ms. Logan said, she did not know about the levels of harassment and abuse that women in Egypt and other countries regularly experienced. “I would have paid more attention to it if I had had any sense of it,” she said. “When women are harassed and subjected to this in society, they’re denied an equal place in that society. Public spaces don’t belong to them. Men control it. It reaffirms the oppressive role of men in the society.”...

Among the letters she received, she said, was one from a woman who lives in Canada who was raped in the back of a taxi in Cairo in early February, amid the protests there. “That poor woman had to go into the airport begging people to help her,” Ms. Logan recalled. When she returned home, “her family told her not to talk about it.”

Ms. Logan said that as she read the letter, she started to sob. “It was a reminder to me of how fortunate I was,” she said.

So that's what Egyptian "democracy" feels like.

"[Y]ou're basically my slave"

2011-04-27T22:51:00.003+01:00

Rich Dart, aka Salahuddin: Jizya, not hypocrisy

A few weeks ago, the papers carried a story about a white Muslim convert called Rich Dart, who preaches hatred of this country while simultaneously claiming thousands of pounds in benefits from the state. It was not uncommon to see Dart described as a "hypocrite" for this. Similar accusations have been levelled against other British jihadists and Muslim welfare sponges in recent years, including Anjem Choudary and Abu Qatadah.

But are these guys really being hypocritical?

The jizya is a tax levied against non-Muslims in the Qur'an: “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.” (9:29)

The important Muslim scholar Ibn Kathir says that non-Muslims should pay this tax "in defeat and subservience", being "disgraced, humiliated and belittled."

Muhammad Shafi, the former Mufti of Pakistan who died in 1976, wrote the following in his commentary on the above Qur'an verse:

“Literally, jizya means return or recompense. In the terminology of the sharia, it refers to the amount of money taken from disbelievers in lieu of killing.

“The reason is that kufr (unbelief) and shirk (polytheism) are rebellion against Allah...Killing is the real punishment for it. But, Allah has, in His perfect mercy, reduced their punishment by giving them an option. The option is that, should they agree to live as subjects of the Islamic state under the general Islamic legal framework, they may be allowed to remain there against the payment of a nominal amount of jizya.”

Another influential modern Islamic commentator, Maulana Maududi, writes:

“One of the advantages of jizya is that it reminds the dhimmis every year that because they do not embrace Islam...they have to pay a price – jizya – for clinging to their errors.”

An article published today in the Telegraph, about the jihadist terror threat to Friday's Royal Wedding, contains this telling exchange:

As the group [Muslims Against Crusades] accused the Royal Family of being responsible for war crimes, onlookers shouted: “You're all on benefits anyway” and “Long live the Queen”.

One of the Muslims retorted: "You paid for this camera, you pay for my benefits, you're basically my slave."

In light of all of the above, it is abundantly clear that those British Muslims who take welfare benefits from the same state they claim to despise are not being hypocritical. The Qur'an and Islamic law mandate extraction of the jizya from non-Muslims as a symbol of Islamic domination and as a punishment for disbelief in Allah. These Islamic supremacists, therefore, view themselves as inherently entitled to all the money they are given by the Infidel state.

If our clueless leaders knew any of the above, this would not be an issue.

America Has Fallen

2011-04-23T23:26:00.003+01:00

Black clouds

Sharia is here:

A Florida pastor at the center of a Koran-burning controversy was jailed briefly for refusing to pay what the authorities called a “peace bond” for a planned demonstration outside a mosque.
Related

The pastor, Terry Jones, whose remarks against Muslims have inflamed anti-Western sentiment in Afghanistan, said he refused to pay the $1 bond because doing so would violate his freedom of speech. He was released from jail hours later after paying the $1.

Mr. Jones had planned a demonstration Friday outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the nation. Prosecutors worried that the protest would lead to violence, and asked Judge Mark Somers of 19th District Court in Dearborn to intervene. Judge Somers conducted a one-day jury trial to determine whether Mr. Jones posed a threat to peace. The jury concluded that he did, and the judge then ordered Mr. Jones and an associate to post the bond to cover the cost of police protection.

Yes, you read that right: an American judge jailed a man for planning to stage a peaceful protest on public property - because a certain religious group to which the peaceful man did not belong would respond violently to this protest.

Give me liberty or give me death?

MCB: Women Who Don't Veil Are Disbelievers

2011-04-17T23:50:00.007+01:00

I'm sure they are just ecstatic inside

As Andrew Gilligan has noted today at the Telegraph, a document on the website of the Muslim Council of Britain (which you can read in full here - I have saved it for re-upload in case an embarassed MCB tries to bury it) declares that the obligation for Muslim women to wear the veil is "not open to debate".

The document says that not covering the face is a "shortcoming" and suggests that any Muslims who advocate being uncovered could be guilty of rejecting Islam:

"We advise all Muslims to exercise extreme caution on this issue, since denying any part of Islam may lead to disbelief.

"Not practising something enjoined by Allah and his Messenger… is a shortcoming. Denying it is much more serious."

The statement quotes from the Qur'an: "It is not for a believer, man or woman, that they should have any option in their decision when Allah and his Messenger have decreed a matter. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has indeed strayed in a plain error." (33:36)

Unmentioned by Gilligan in his article is the part where the MCB tell believers to "show solidarity" against anyone who criticises the veil, since this criticism "might prove to be a stepping-stone towards further restrictions. Today the veil, tomorrow it could be the beard, jilbab and thereafter the headscarf!"

Worst of all, the MCB (whose leaders, it must be pointed out, have also signed petitions in support of Islamic terrorist groups and made excuses for Saudi hate literature) deliberately diminish the suffering the burqa can cause, claiming that "the level of discomfort caused is insignificant, particularly when compared to the discomfort and problems that result from other common and less widely condemned practices such as sexual promiscuity, nudity and alcohol consumption by other segments of society."

Meanwhile, the Mail reports that Muslim women in Tower Hamlets who do not wear headscarves are being threatened with violence and even death by Islamic "extremists" intent on imposing sharia law on parts of Britain.

How much clearer can it be made that women do not "choose" to wear this hideous monstrosity? The vast majoriy of women who claim to have chosen to don this garb have actually done so because they are surrounded by a culture that perpetuates the fear that if they do not wear it, they will either be physically punished in this world or go to Hell in the next. That's not freedom.

Women who have donned the veil have described its debilitating effects:

When we walked out of the cool souq area into the blazing hot sun, I gasped for breath and sucked furiously through the sheer black fabric. The air tasted stale and dry as it filtered through the thin gauzy cloth. I had purchased the sheerest veil available, yet I felt I was seeing life through a thick screen. How could women see through veils made of a thicker fabric? The sky was no longer blue, the glow of the sun had dimmed; my heart plunged to my stomach when I realized that from that moment, outside my own home I would not experience life as it really is in all its color. The world suddenly seemed a dull place. And dangerous, too! I groped and stumbled along the pitted, cracked sidewalk, fearful of breaking an ankle or leg.

And numerous studies have highlighted the health problems encountered by Muslim women as a specific consequence of lack of exposure to sunlight.

We can therefore conclude two things:

1) The majority of women who wear the Islamic dress do not choose to do so. Their society chooses for them.

2) Any woman who does freely choose to wear this garb is either insane or a masochist.

Girls For Sheep

2011-04-15T20:12:00.003+01:00

Please watch this extract from a Swiss documentary about conditions for women in Afghanistan.

And as you watch, bear in mind the appropriate context for this barbarism:

“The Prophet said: If one of you marries a woman or buys a slave, he should say: 'O Allah, I ask Thee for the good in her, and in the disposition Thou hast given her; I take refuge in Thee from the evil in her, and in the disposition Thou hast given her.' When he buys a camel, he should take hold of the top of its hump and say the same kind of thing.” (Abu Dawud b.11, no.2155)

“[The Prophet] 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 others)

“Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.” (Qur'an 4:34)

Everyone Does It

2011-04-13T22:41:00.003+01:00

As the French ban on public face-coverings (i.e. both religious and non-religious) comes into effect, we can already hear the cries of "Islamophobia!" emanating from victimhood-posturing Muslims and their non-Muslim Leftist allies the world over.

Here are some other "Islamophobic" countries that have in recent history implemented bans on the wearing of the burqa/niqab and other misogynistic Islamic dress in some public places:

Turkey
Tunisia
Syria
Egypt (another example here)

It's anti-Islamic bigotry, I tell you!

Hypocrisy: What Muslims Do Best

2011-04-08T16:19:00.002+01:00

We saw it back in 2009, when Muslims whined and complained about the Swiss minaret ban while failing to condemn the lack of freedom for Christians to build churches in the Middle East. We saw it when Sunni Islam's top authority, Al Azhar University, severed all dialogue with the Vatican in protest at the Catholic Church's condemnation of Islamic persecution of Christians, saying that this was an unacceptable "interference" in Muslim internal affairs - even though Al Azhar itself had previously tried to interfere in non-Muslim affairs by calling for the minaret ban to be reversed.

It seems that self-righteous hypocrisy is what Muslims do best.

And as Muslims go on bloody rampages through Afghanistan, killing people in response to the burning of a Qur'an, it is worth recalling a September 2010 article by Daniel Pipes which clarifies the continuing hypocrisy of the Muslim world. The article examines a mainstream Islamic fatwa, or sharia legal ruling, from 2003 which states that Muslims have the right to use the Torah or the Bible as toilet paper. When a German woman noticed this fatwa and called in response for a "Koran toilet paper roll", a scholar from Al Azhar issued another fatwa calling for the "shedding of [her] blood".

And over at Front Page, Raymond Ibrahim has a timely list of recent murders and persecutions of Christians committed by Muslims (not even in response to the Qur'an-burning, just "business as usual" in the Muslim world) - none of which have met with any condemnation at all from Muslims (links in the original):

* Afghanistan: A Muslim convert to Christianity was seized and, according to sharia’s apostasy laws, awaits execution.

* Bangladesh: A Christian man was arrested for distributing Bibles near Muslims. Since Wednesday, thousands of Muslims have been rioting, injuring dozens—not because of Jones, but in protestation of women’s rights.

* Egypt: A Muslim mob burned down another Coptic church and dozens of Christian homes; when Christians protested, the military opened fire on them while crying “Allahu Akbar,” killing nine. Another mob cut a Christian man’s ear off “according to sharia.”

* Ethiopia: Muslims went on a rampage burning down nearly 70 churches, killing at least one Christian, and dislocating as many as 10,000. Christians living in Muslim majority regions are being warned to either convert to Islam, abandon their homes, or die.

* Malaysia: Authorities detained and desecrated thousands of Bibles.

* Pakistan: Two Christians were shot to death as they exited church; a Christian serving life in prison for “blasphemy” died in his cell under suspicions of murder.

* Saudi Arabia: An Eritrean Christian has been arrested for sharing his faith with Muslims and is facing the death penalty; other missionaries continue to languish in Saudi prisons.

* Somalia and Sudan: Christian girls—including a mother of four—were recently abducted, raped, and killed for embracing Christianity.

Ibrahim also points out the obvious media double standard coming from the non-Muslim Western media, which has by and large blamed Terry Jones personally for the murders committed in response to his book burning, while largely ignoring all the above Muslim crimes against humanity:

Such is the surreal and increasingly irrational world we live in, where irate Muslims and groveling Westerners obsess over the destruction of one book while ignoring the destruction of many human lives; where a guaranteed and hard-earned American right—freedom of expression—receives a lot of condemnatory huffing and puffing from those charged with protecting it, while murderous, barbarous—in a word, evil—behavior is devoutly ignored.

A Real Cause For Outrage

2011-04-03T22:24:00.005+01:00

If only they knew how much David Petraeus loved them, they'd put out that fire

As much as one comes to accept the staggering dhimmitude of Western leadership when it comes to dealing with Islam, these same dhimmi leaders still have a habit of displaying such spineless amorality that it leaves one with one's jaw on the floor and one's blood boiling.

Take, for example, the response of US military commander General David Petraeus to the wave of murders committed by ordinary Muslims (i.e. not just the Taliban or other "extremist" groups) in Afghanistan following the recent burning of the Qur'an by pastor Terry Jones:

In view of the events of recent days, we feel it is important on behalf of ISAF and NATO members in Afghanistan to reiterate our condemnation of any disrespect to the Holy Quran and the Muslim faith.

We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Quran.

We also offer condolences to the families of all those injured and killed in violence which occurred in the wake of the burning of the Holy Quran.

What an unbelievably appalling thing for a military leader in the free world to utter. The burning of the "Holy Qur'an" (holy to who?) is explicitly condemned, but those who slaughtered innocent people and burned churches to the ground because someone set fire to a mass-produced wad of paper are never condemned. Instead, "condolences" are offered to the victims' families, as if they died in some tragic natural disaster.

Petraeus finished with one final insult to the memory of those brave soldiers who have died fighting his Muslim public relations war:

We further hope the Afghan people understand that the actions of a small number of individuals, who have been extremely disrespectful to the Holy Quran, are not representative of any of the countries of the international community who are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people.

Sure, because as long as the Afghan people understand that, they won't be driven to murderous violence by someone thousands of miles away burning a book, right?

Right?

Petraeus is a disgrace and should be fired immediately for his outrageous and cowardly statements.

Another Rape Victim Suffers The Ultimate Injustice

2011-03-31T22:46:00.005+01:00

This man had to watch his little girl being whipped to death because of Islam

At the same time as Iman al-Obeidi finds herself charged for being raped, this peculiarly Islamic phenomenon is not limited solely to Libya.

This horrifying piece at CNN examines the case of 14 year-old Hena Akhter, who was lashed to death in Bangladesh on charges of adultery. In reality, she was raped. The article provides these details:

Hena was walking from her room to an outdoor toilet when Mahbub Khan gagged her with cloth, forced her behind nearby shrubbery and beat and raped her.

Hena struggled to escape, Alya told CNN. Mahbub Khan's wife heard Hena's muffled screams and when she found Hena with her husband, she dragged the teenage girl back to her hut, beat her and trampled her on the floor.

The next day, the village elders met to discuss the case at Mahbub Khan's house, Alya said. The imam pronounced his fatwa. Khan and Hena were found guilty of an illicit relationship. Her punishment under sharia or Islamic law was 101 lashes; his 201.

Mahbub Khan managed to escape after the first few lashes.

That the rapist/"co-adulterer" was also charged and punished does not diminish the inherent misogyny of this sentence, since such an unjust ruling could only occur as the result of a legal process that deems a woman's testimony to be worthless before a court. The Qur'an says: "And call to witness, from among your men, two witnesses. And if two men be not (at hand) then a man and two women, of such as ye approve as witnesses, so that if the one erreth (through forgetfulness) the other will remember.” (2:282)

When Muhammad was asked why a woman's testimony was worth half that of a man, he explained: “This is because of the deficiency of a woman's mind.” (Bukhari v.3, b.48, no.826)

Then, of course there is also the fact that, as I explained in another recent post, Islamic law requires four male witnesses to establish a charge of sexual misconduct - a virtually impossible standard to fulfil.

Further on, the CNN article notes:

Bangladesh is considered a democratic and moderate Muslim country, and national law forbids the practice of sharia. But activist and journalist Shoaib Choudhury, who documents such cases, said sharia is still very much in use in villages and towns aided by the lack of education and strong judicial systems.

The Supreme Court also outlawed fatwas a decade ago, but human rights monitors have documented more than 500 cases of women in those 10 years who were punished through a religious ruling. And few who have issued such rulings have been charged.

And finally:

The United Nations estimates that almost half of Bangladeshi women suffer from domestic violence and many also commonly endure rape, beatings, acid attacks and even death because of the country's entrenched patriarchal system.

This is another one of those facts that utterly invalidates the claims of Islamic apologists that Islam "empowers" women. Not only do the above statistics reinforce the obvious fact that wherever Islam predominates, women suffer; they also shed light on the futility of invoking "happy" Muslim women in the Islamic world as proof that Islam cherishes women's rights. In a society where the consequence of speaking out against abuse is more abuse, praise for the oppressive force is obviously illegitimate.

Unfortunately, it appears that it will take many, many more cases like that of Hena Ahkter before the Western Left - and even, increasingly, the Right - starts to get the picture.

Iman al-Obeidi: Victim Or Slanderer?

2011-03-30T23:19:00.003+01:00

Libyan officials take Iman al-Obeidi into custody

Further to my posting yesterday, and confirming its factual validity, the Libyan woman who was arrested after telling foreign journalists she had been gang-raped by Colonel Gaddafi's troops has herself now been charged with slander.

Perhaps Bill O'Reilly can travel to Libya immediately and explain to the authorities there that the idea that Muhammad could have taught that Muslim men can rape women and not be held accountable is "hard to believe".

Another notable aspect of this story is the fact that just because the men in question are now suing Iman al-Obeidi does not mean that they are innocent of the crime, since the Islamic definition of slander is different from the Western conception.

According to a canonical hadith (Muslim b.32, no.6265), Muhammad was once asked to define slander, or "backbiting". He answered: "Backbiting implies your talking about your brother in a manner which he does not like" - even if a given accusation is true. Hence the translator of the authoritative Islamic legal manual Reliance of the Traveller asserts the following in a footnote:

Slander (ghiba) means to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike, whether about his body, religion, everyday life, self, disposition, property, son, father, wife, servant, turban, garment, gait, movements, smiling, dissoluteness, frowning, cheerfulness, or anything else connected with him...

So in Islam, to slander someone does not necessarily mean you have said something about them that is false; only that you have said something that they would prefer you didn't mention in public.

Taking Bill O'Reilly To School (Yet Again)

2011-03-29T22:52:00.003+01:00

Despite being regularly pilloried by the Left for being a "right-wing nutjob", Fox News' Bill O'Reilly has pretty consistently shown himself to be willfully clueless about Islam.

This was demonstrated again yesterday during a segment on O'Reilly's show about the alleged rape of a Libyan woman by Muammar Gaddafi's forces. O'Reilly interviews Wafa Sultan, a former Muslim of Syrian origin, and author of A God Who Hates. Sultan appropriately pointed out that under Islamic law, rape is essentially legalised and encouraged due to the fact that four male witnesses are required to testify to a sexual assault on a woman. Failure to present these four witnesses will result in the victim being accused of adultury and quite possibly stoned to death.

O'Reilly responded incredulously, stating: "I find it hard to believe that the Prophet Muhammad would preach a religious doctrine where women can be abused at any time by any Muslim man and the man can be not held accountable in heaven or hell."

Well Bill...believe it.

Start with this hadith, taken from Sahih Bukhari, the collection of Muhammad's traditions considered most sacred and reliable by Muslims. Read it all to get the full story, but here it is in summary: Muhammad's favourite wife Aisha - who also happened to be pre-pubescent, by the way - was accused of adultery, and because Muhammad did not like this, he received a "revelation" from Allah which exonerated her, and scolded her accusers for not producing four witnesses. This admonition remains in the Qur'an to this day: “Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah.” (24:13)

This set the precedent in Islamic law that four male witnesses are required in order to justify an accusation of rape. The Hedaya, an important Islamic legal manual that is used today in Pakistan's sharia courts, says: “The evidence required in a case of whoredom [Arabic: Zina, meaning fornication or adultery] is that of four men, as has been ordained in the Qur'an, and the testimony of a woman in such case is not admitted”.

As many as 75% of women in prison in Pakistan are there because they were victims of rape. When the Musharraf government considered modernising these rape laws in 2006, a group of furious Islamic clerics protested. They demanded that the new law be withdrawn, since it would turn Pakistan into a “free-sex zone”. They insisted that the law was “against the teachings of Islam”, and that it had only been passed to appease the West.

Further evidence that Muhammad condoned and even encouraged rape can also be found in the following hadith, in which Muhammad permits his soldiers to rape female war captives, reassuring them that Allah will not allow the women to become pregnant and that therefore his men don't have to withdraw before ejaculation:

“We went out with Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) on the expedition to the Banu al-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, (but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl (Withdrawing the male sexual organ before emission of semen to avoid conception). But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born.” (Muslim b.8, no.3371)

Then there is also divine permission given by the "Prophet" Muhammad for marital rape: “If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning.” (Bukhari v.4, b.54, no.460).

And all that's just for starters, Bill. You won't like the main course.

A Chronicle Of Christian Persecution

2011-03-28T20:13:00.002+01:00

Earthquake? No...Islam

"A Christian [in Bangladesh] has been sentenced to one year in prison for “creating chaos” by selling and distributing Christian books and other literature near a major Muslim gathering north of this capital city." ~ March 23rd

"Thousands of Christians have been forced to flee their homes in Western Ethiopia after Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes. At least one Christian has been killed, many more have been injured and anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 have been displaced in the attacks that began March 2 after a Christian in the community of Asendabo was accused of desecrating the Koran." ~ March 24th

"A group of Muslims attacked Ayman Anwar Mitri, a 45 year old Christian Coptic man in the Upper Egyptian town of Qena, cutting off his ear. The Muslims claimed they were applying Sharia law because Mr. Mitri allegedly had an illicit affair with a Muslim woman. The Muslims called the police and told them 'We have applied the law of Allah, now come and apply your law,' according to Mr. Mitri in an interview for the Egyptian Human Rights Organization." ~ March 26th

"A report recently published by Aid to the Church in Need gives a round-up of how Christians are being persecuted in many countries. In particular it looked at the very difficult conditions in the Middle Eastern countries." ~ March 27th

Tell me again how Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance.

Maths Teachers And "Anti-Muslim Bigotry"

2011-03-25T23:54:00.003Z

Richard "Ignore All The Evidence" Durbin

Earlier this month, Rep. Peter King began his hearings on the radicalisation of American Muslims, an important investigative process that no more demonises the average Muslim than the trial of the Yorkshire Ripper demonised Michael Parkinson.

Now American Senate Democrats are countering with a hearing of their own, led by Richard J. Durbin, to examine Muslims' civil rights, saying there has been a "spike in anti-Muslim bigotry" in the last year that demands closer attention.

Evidence of this "anti-Muslim bigotry" is hardly anywhere to be found. After all, as even the Washington Times article linked above notes, "In 2009, the latest FBI statistics available, anti-Islamic hate crimes accounted for 9.3 percent of the 1,376 religiously motivated hate crimes recorded. That's far less than the 70.1 percent that were anti-Jewish." There have been no Congressional hearings that I am aware of on the subject of American antisemitism.

Meanwhile, the US government is suing a Chicago school on behalf of a Muslim maths teacher who claimed religious discrimination when the school refused to grant her permission to take three weeks off for her pilgrimage to Mecca. Despite the fact that the school's decision had nothing to do with her religion and everything to do with her unreasonable request, and despite the fact that nothing in Safoorah Khan's religion requires her to go on her hajj this year, Uncle Sam is apparently running interference on her behalf, which they would obviously not have done for a member of any other religious group.

With this sort of "anti-Muslim bigotry" rampant in America, it's no wonder that Muslims are being "driven" to extremism and radicalisation, right?

Worth Dying For?

2011-03-24T20:07:00.003Z

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan established by the United Nations Security Council on 20 December 2001 by Resolution 1386 as envisaged by the Bonn Agreement.

ISAF's "Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team" (CAAT) has issued this demented leaflet to our soldiers in Afghanistan, entitled "Cultural Sensitivity: Religious Importance of the Qur'an", which imposes Islamic law on our troops serving in the country. The full text reads as follows:

Best Practice: NATO ISAF personnel should always deal carefully with Islam and its founding text, the Holy Qur’an.

Discussion:

The vast majority of Afghans, 99%, is Muslim and thus practices Islam. The Qur’an (also spelled Koran) is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe the Qur’an is the book of divine guidance and direction that all of mankind should follow. They consider the text – in its original Arabic – to be the literal word of God (Allah), revealed to humanity through the Prophet Muhammad (also spelled Mohammad).

Because Muslims believe that the Qur’an records the literal word of God, they treat all copies of the book with extreme veneration. Every complete copy, or even a partial passage, is considered holy. It is considered culturally insensitive for any non-Muslim to touch a copy of the Qur’an. Even Muslims are supposed to perform ablution, a ritualistic hand washing before holding the Qur’an.

Additionally, verbal disrespect for Islam and/or the Qur’an is considered as inappropriate as physical desecration of the Qur’an. Insulting the Qur’an is an act of blasphemy. Muslims believe they have an inherent duty to stand up against injustices committed against Islam and the Qur’an. Therefore, they take any perceived disrespect to Islam and/or the Qur’an extremely seriously. Insurgents will use this to their advantage by planting desecrated Qur’ans and spreading disinformation about NATO ISAF forces.

Recommendations:

1. Do NOT handle Qur’ans or other Islamic religious items.
2. Never talk badly about the Qur’an or its contents.
3. If you must search a location or person’s belongings, ask them if they have a Qur’an or religious item present. If so, ask them to remove it or put it in a suitable place before conducting the search.
4. Your level of sensitivity must be even greater when conducting canine searches. Having an animal anywhere near a Qur’an or other religious artifact is considered highly disrespectful.
5. If you have any questions about the Qur’an or Islam, ask respectfully.
6. Be informed and prepared to answer questions about alleged desecration of the Qur’an.

In other words, comply with Islamic rules even though you are not Muslims and do not believe in Islam, because they will kill you if you don't - and if they do, it will be your fault.

It's all part of that wonderful idea originated by George W. Bush, and continued by the witless commanders of the British and American armed forces today, that it is seriously worth going to war and having our best soldiers murdered, having them come home with crippling life-destroying disabilities, having hundreds of British and American children grow up without fathers - all in order to make Muslims happy.

How's that working out, lads?

No "No Fly Zone"

2011-03-18T20:21:00.003Z

Continuing his outstanding analytical coverage of the situation in Libya, Andrew C. McCarthy dissents from the official editorial line of his editors at National Review in order to oppose the UN-backed "No Fly Zone" over Libya, which will commit Western countries to another aimless war in the Middle East, sacrificing the lives of our best soldiers, for no good reason, and in aid of shadowy "rebels" who include among their number many Islamic jihadists.

McCarthy concludes:

I appreciate that it is hard to say, “Butt out.” Qaddafi is a monster and his opposition is murky enough (for now) to be portrayed as “rebels” and “freedom fighters.” But I fear we’re being swept away by emotion and by what we should now know is the vain hope that making sacrifices for besieged Muslims is going to make the ummah like us better. It is essential to attack Islamic terrorists who plot against America, but our humanitarian military efforts in the Islamic world have been a disaster — at staggering costs in lives and hundreds of billions of dollars that we don’t have. We should be working on how to get the nation disentangled from Islamic countries, not leading the nation headlong into another conflict that we cannot win.

Read the whole thing. No Western leader has articulated any kind of meaningful or coherent plan of what they want to achieve in Libya, and for this reason they MUST NOT commit to it, lest it become another Afghanistan.

Common Causes: Palestinian Terrorists And The Western Left

2011-03-16T22:44:00.006Z

"Arab terrorists murdered five people in a family in the Jewish community of Itamar, in northeast Samaria, around 9 p.m. Friday night...

"The only survivors were a 12-year-old girl, who returned from a Bnei Akiva youth group event to discover her parents and three of her brothers and sisters,including a three-month old baby girl, dead in pools of blood, and two younger brothers, who were sleeping a separate room...

"[Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad] did not condemn the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which took responsibility for the attack. In a statement to the media, the terrorist cell of the Fatah faction headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas claimed that the attack was a 'heroic operation, part of the natural response to the massacres of the fascist occupation against our people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.'" ~ Israel National News, 12th March 2011

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"The despicable murders in Itamar occurred as a natural offshoot of the round of Israel-bashing called by the organizers of month-long “Israel Apartheid 'Week'.”Those doing the bashing are busy turning logic on its head. For them, up is down, day is night, and right is wrong. The collected hatemongers of the radical Left allied with the terminally hate-filled Muslim world, their ranks filled with empty-headed and gullible drones, are combining to shriek misplaced support for an Arab people calling themselves Palestinians, who, they allege, are suffering from apartheid. They make this false charge by slandering the Jewish state, equating it with what was once the South African Apartheid regime." ~ Israel National News, 15th March 2011

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And the final insult:

"'Palestinian' kills five Israelis in West Bank

"Israeli troops have launched a manhunt after five members of a Jewish settler family were killed in the West Bank." ~ BBC News, 12th March 2011

So it was actually their fault they got butchered, you see, because they were "settlers".

Exposing Keith Ellison's Taqiyya (Again)

2011-03-13T23:15:00.003Z

Keith Ellison: inveterate liar

Fresh from lying in front of the assembled at Peter King's hearings on Islamic terrorism, Muslim Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison was at it again the next day, when he appeared on TV in debate with atheist talk show host Bill Maher.

Maher accurately summarised the reasons why the King hearings are so important, skewering the much-peddled talking point that holding hearings about Islam alone, without focusing on other forms of "extremism", was unfair and would provoke further suspicion of Muslims:

I would say that the threat from radicalised Muslims is a unique and greater threat...It's been going on a thousand years, this problem between Islam and the West. We are dealing with a culture that is in its medieval era. It comes from a hate-filled holy book, the Qur'an, which is taken very literally by its people. They are trying to get nuclear weapons. I don't think Tim McVeigh would have ever tried to get a nuclear weapon because I think right-wing nuts, they think they love this country and they are not trying to destroy this country; they want to get it away from the people they see as hijacking it. That's different from Muslim extremists who want to destroy [America]. And also it's a culture of suicide bombing which is hard to deter [because we are facing] people who want to kill themselves.

Ellison responded with standard Islamic apologetic talking points, which I will discuss below:

1. Claiming that violent and hateful verses from the Qur'an are taken "out of context" to justify violence, which ignores centuries of traditional commentaries on the Qur'an by venerated Muslim scholars, who make clear that, all context considered, these verses mandate violence against and the subjugation of unbelievers. For example, there is verse 9:29, which reads: “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 Qur'an commentary of Ibn Kathir (d.1373), which can be found in any good Muslim bookshop today, provides both historical and textual context for this verse to assert:

“This honorable Ayah [verse] was revealed with the order to fight the People of the Book; after the pagans were defeated, the people entered Allah's religion in large numbers, and the Arabian Peninsula was secured under the Muslims' control. Allah commanded His Messenger to fight the People of the Scriptures, Jews and Christians, on the ninth year of Hijrah, and he prepared his army to fight the Romans and called the people to Jihad announcing his intent and destination...

“Allah said, 'until they pay the Jizya', if they do not choose to embrace Islam, 'with willing submission', in defeat and subservience, 'and feel themselves subdued', disgraced, humiliated and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah [protected religious minorities living under Muslim rule] or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced and humiliated.”

There are many, many other commentators who interpret this verse in the same way, and they are all considered mainstream in the Muslim world. Keith Ellison thinks he understands the Qur'an better than them. Bill Maher doesn't buy it, and neither should you.

2. Quoting the following Qur'anic passage:

“whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.” (5:32)

But not providing the "context" for this command by quoting it in full along with the immediately following passage:

For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth.

The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom.” (5:32-33)

Thus, in its full context, we can see that this passage is actually a threat to the Jews not to oppose the Muslims or they will face crucifixion, mutilation or banishment.

3. Quoting the passage which says "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) without mentioning that, in he words of the revered Muslim scholar Tabari (d.923): “Arab society was compelled to enter Islam because they were an unlettered community, having no book which they knew. Thus nothing other than Islam was accepted from them. The People of the Book are not to be compelled to enter Islam if they submit to paying the jizya [poll tax] or kharaj [land tax].”

In other words, the purpose of jihad outlined in Qur'anic verses such as 9:29, at least regarding Jews and Christians, is not to force them to accept Islam, but rather to force the Islamic legal system upon them, relegating them to second-class status and payment of the jizya if they refuse to convert. But if they do convert, they do so freely.

4. Maintaining that "If you listen to terrorist rhetoric, Bill, what they do is they cite politics...they cite political grievances. They don't really use too much religion."

I would advise anyone listening to this who finds this to be a compelling argument to immediately purchase a copy of The Al Qaeda Reader by Raymond Ibrahim, which uses never-before-translated writings from Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to demonstrate that al-Qaeda's political propaganda is intended purely for the consumption of the West, while its longer treatises distributed in Arabic in the Muslim world cite extensive quotations from the Qur'an and Islamic tradition to make a transcendental theological argument. For example, in a letter to a group of Saudi theologians that was never intended for Western consumption, bin Laden quotes numerous verses from the Qur'an and hadith to support the assertion that:

“Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission [i.e. conversion to Islam]; or payment of the jizya [non-Muslim poll tax], through physical though not spiritual submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword – for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live.”

Numerous other examples, including the case of the failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and of the 9/11 orchestrators themselves give the lie to the claim that Muslims don't use religious arguments to justify terrorism.

All of the above is easily verifiable. While Maher's criticism of Islam itself (i.e. not "radical Islam" or "Islamic extremism") is welcome, it is a shame that he was not informed enough to call out Keith Ellison on the deceptions that followed in the rest of the interview.

Mission No. 77

2011-03-13T00:17:00.002Z

Government documents seized by protestors in Egypt chillingly suggest that the Egyptian State Security was involved in the church bombing on New Year's Day in Alexandria. The bombing killed 21 people and wounded 80, the worst violence against Egypt's Coptic Christian minority in more than a decade.

The legitimacy of the document hasn't been determined, but its distribution touched off protests in Cairo by hundreds of Coptic Christians.

Copts, especially those in Alexandria, had suspected state involvement in the bombing, noting that a stepped-up security force that was supposed to have protected the church had vanished before the bomb exploded.

According to the document, one of eight said to discuss attacks on churches, State Security used a jailed jihadist to help organise the plot, including details on the church's entrances and exits. The document was dated December 2nd, 2010, and was addressed to the interior minister. It referred to the church bombing as "Mission No. 77."

If this information is confirmed to be true, it would be a damning indictment of Mubarak's deposed "secular" government, and would also not be remotely surprising. After all, this wouldn't be the first time in recent history that Egyptian security forces have been complicit in the persecution of the Copts.

It is telling that our witless media only noticed in the last few weeks that Egypt and other Arab countries have oppressive governments. Before the despots began slaughtering their own people who were protesting against their rule, all the mainstream media ever noticed in the Middle East was the imaginary "war crimes" of Israel. Their silence on the persecution of Christians in Egypt in favour of antisemitic slurs against the only pluralistic democracy in the region is truly shameful.

Defending Peter King's Hearings

2011-03-11T20:40:00.005Z

Rep. Peter King: A politician with balls

At last, after weeks of speculation and controversy, the hearings on radical Islam organised by Peter King of the United States House of Representatives are underway. Typically, the media are cooking up a storm on this subject, and King and his hearings have been criticised from almost every angle.

So far, despite the presence of every kind of Islamic supremacist thug, the hearings have gone well. We have seen King call out the Council on American Islamic Relations for its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and terrorism, which the media have portrayed as unfounded accusations despite the huge body of supporting evidence.

We have also seen the Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison - whose ritual pilgrimage to Mecca was paid for by the Muslim American Society, the Muslim Brotherhood's official US branch - deliver a speech that I hear brought him within a hair's breadth of beating Colin Firth to that coveted Best Actor Oscar. Despite Ellison's crocodile tears, however, what he actually said was absolute garbage, as Matthew Shaffer demonstrates here.

Ellison's phony diatribe was consistent with one of many talking points that are currently doing the rounds among Leftists and weasels everywhere: the claim that many Muslim terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11 have been prevented with the help of tip-offs from other Muslims. The source for this is apparently a recent study by the Triangle Centre on Terrorism and Homeland Security at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. This data is, however, highly contentious given that similar "findings" by Muslim organisations have been discredited as biased and unreliable.

But even if the Triangle Centre's data is accurate, what the "expert" witnesses and analysts continue to ignore is the fact that those Muslims - and there have unfortunately been many - who have committed or attempted to commit terrorist attacks on US soil have done so in the name of Islam, and in devotion to Islam, as they have said themselves repeatedly. Those Muslims who have prevented terrorist attacks have largely done so not because of Islam, but simply because they are good people who want to help others. Rep. King's hearings, for all their flaws, are intended to investigate what leads Muslims who take the Qur'an seriously to commit acts of violence in its name. Most "moderate" American Muslim advocates would apparently prefer that this investigation never took place, which makes one wonder what these groups have to say and do before people stop referring to them as moderates.

Another common talking point of King's critics are the claims that these hearings somehow represent the return of McCarthyism and witch-hunts. So the argument goes, there are many different kinds of "extremists", and to focus solely on Islam is counter-productive and risks turning people against Muslims as a whole.

The problem with this is that there is a severe and undeniable correlation that is not being addressed - despite Muslims making up 1% of the American population, they have somehow managed to account for over 80% of all convictions tied to international terrorist groups and homegrown terrorism since 9/11. That such a serious problem emanating from one specific demographic group deserves an in-depth investigation of its own is self-evident, and this investigation no more "singles out" or "demonises" all Muslims any more than hearings on the odious Westboro Baptist Church would demonise all American Christians.

Finally, King's oft-quoted statement that around 80% of American mosques are under the control of extremists has once again been presented as a hateful fabrication that he pulled out of nowhere, when it has in fact been derived from hard data pulled from several undercover investigations. In 1999, Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Muslim himself, testified in front of the US State Department:

The most dangerous thing that is going on now in these mosques, that has been sent upon these mosques around the United States – like churches they were established by different organizations and that is ok – but the problem with our communities is the extremist ideology. Because they are very active they took over the mosques; and we can say that they took over more than 80% of the mosques that have been established in the US. And there are more than 3000 mosques in the US.

In 2008, the initial findings from 100 mosques of the Mapping Sharia Project suggested that around 75% should be on watch-lists due to their radical teachings.

These disturbing figures do, of course, reflect the nature of the leadership of American mosques, and not necessarily the congregants, who often reject the teachings of their imams, but King never claimed that 80% of American Muslims were extremists, only the mosques, and in that he was entirely correct.

These hearings are an absolutely essential part of America's defense strategy. Improved knowledge leads to improved policy. But it is not surprising to see the usual suspects out to implement their own little "witch-hunts" against those who espouse Islamo-Realism in the West. Hopefully, as they grow increasingly desperate, the coming days, weeks and months will see fewer and fewer Americans buying their snake-oil and more of them waking up to the truth about Islam.

Marital Rape In Pakistan

2011-03-10T23:37:00.004Z

This horrific article from the Pakistani Tribune exposes the widespread problem of marital rape in the country, with General Hospital in Lahore dealing with five cases of married women sexually assaulted by their husbands every single week.

Be sure to read the whole article, but there are several things that immediately jump out. First:

Nilofer Raja* complained that her husband had several extra marital affairs and that she had contracted an STD after he forced himself on her. “He abuses me but I cannot refuse him. My family told me that it was my religious duty to do as he demanded and that if I refuse the angels will curse me all night,” she told doctors.

Sahih Bukhari, the most authoritative Islamic religious text after the Qur'an, quotes the "Prophet" Muhammad as saying: "If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning.” (Bukhari v.4, b.54, no.460).

Typically, whenever the backwardness of Muslim countries is brought to light, the learned analysts will tell us that this backwardness is merely a "cultural" problem, or is caused by a "lack of education", and anyone who says it has anything to do with Islam is an Islamophobe. But when someone directly quotes a religious tradition word for word in order to justify oppression, that is not "cultural" - it is a direct result of the teachings of that religion, and failing to acknowledge this is what allows it to keep happening time after time.

Shirkat Gah representative Fauzia Vikar said “the concept of marital rape does not exist in our society. She is thought to have signed a contract for sex...

Once again, these attitudes are vindicated by the teachings of Muhammad, who believed that the best and most important thing a woman brings to a marriage is her vagina: “The stipulations most entitled to be abided by are those with which you are given the right to enjoy the (women's) private parts (i.e. the stipulations of the marriage contract).” (Bukhari v.7, b.62, no.81)

Most reports from battered women reflect that they do not think their spouses are guilty of a crime.” “Most women I have spoken to on the issue simply think that marital rape is natural. We need to educate and economically empower women so that they realise it is not their duty to tolerate abuse,” she said. According to Vikar, most women consider it shameful and a sin to oppose non-consensual sex.

It is this sort of thing that gives the lie to those who claim that women in Muslim societies aren't really oppressed, for example, by wearing the burqa, and cite as evidence for this the testimony of Muslim women who say that they are treated fairly under Islam. When the consequence of speaking up against abuse is more abuse, possibly leading to violence and death - or at the very least severe social stigmatisation - that is NOT fairness or liberation. It is the oppressed seeking to justify their own oppression out of fear and demoralisation.

According to a gynecologist Dr Asmah Mehmood “Very few women in Pakistan actually have a healthy sexual relationship with their spouses. Abuse is common and so is violence.”

It is important to note that the Qur'an permits men to beat their wives if they are disobedient: “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.” (4:34)

Numerous mainstream Islamic authorities, including the authoritative manual of Islamic law Reliance of the Traveller, are very clear that refusal of sexual intercourse is among the acts of "rebellion" and disobedience which justify the beating of women. From Reliance:

When a husband notices signs of rebelliousness in his wife (whether in words, as when she answers him coldly when she used to do so politely, or he asks her to come to bed and she refuses, contrary to her usual habit; or whether in acts, as when he finds her averse to him when she was previously kind and cheerful), he warns her in words (without keeping from her or hitting her, for it may be that she has an excuse...If she commits rebelliousness, he keeps from sleeping (and having sex) with her without words, and may hit her...

Finally, as you contemplate the serious human rights abuses currently ravaging Pakistan, do not ignore the fact that British Muslim leaders support this barbarity as well.

Sleep tight.

Going Backwards

2011-03-10T20:27:00.006Z

"So long as there is this book [the Qur'an], there will be no peace in the world." ~ William Gladstone, Prime Minister four times between 1868 and 1894

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome." ~ Winton Churchill, Prime Minister twice between 1940 and 1955

"[T]he ideology of extremism is the problem; Islam emphatically is not." ~ David Cameron, current Prime Minister

Same Story, Different Country

2011-03-03T22:37:00.003Z

In this terrific piece over at National Review, Andrew C McCarthy exposes the shallowness of the mainstream media's continual hysterical delusions about the "pro-democracy" protests now raging in Libya. McCarthy notes:

Yes, yes, I know: We are not supposed to look at Libyans now as they appeared the last time we took notice: a cheering throng greeting Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie terrorist, whom the Obama administration was cajoled into ignoring when the Brits orchestrated his release from jail to appease our spot-shorn leopard. Nor are we supposed to register that Qaddafi’s main opponents in this 97 percent Muslim country are Islamists who have about as much use for us as they do for Colonel Crazy.

Aside from this, however, McCarthy does not mention the crazed antisemitism that has been on display during the unrest. Take for example, this representative example of many banners held up by protestors:

(Click to enlarge)

Note the Star of David on Gaddafi's forehead. And note that we saw the exact same thing on banners of Mubarak during the demonstrations of the "secular pro-democracy reformers" in Egypt. The pattern is clear: in the Muslim world, if you want to demonise someone and portray them as evil incarnate, depict them as a Jew. This is in line with the teachings of the Qur'an: “Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews..." (5:82) Reprehensible, of course. But apparently acceptable to some as long as the people support the institutionalisation of antisemitic values via democratic elections.

Anyway, McCarthy goes on to provide a little history lesson, explaining the Bush administration's hopeless attempts to turn Colonel Gaddafi into a "reformed" character and an ally, which were of course doomed to failure. It seems our leaders noticed too late what anyone with eyes should have been able to see long ago: that Gaddafi is and always will remain a despot who can never be trusted and should in fact have been destroyed long ago.

But whatever happens in the coming days, whether Gaddafi is deposed or not, let's have no more of this "democracy" claptrap. When the values of the people are informed by Islam, there can be no democracy in the fullest sense. End of story.

Goodbye Antisemite, Hello Jew-Hater

2011-02-27T23:17:00.005Z

Necmettin Erbakan, described as "the mentor of political Islam in secular Turkey and its first Islamist prime minister", has died aged 84.

Erbakan, who began the revival of orthodox Islam in a country that had until that time had ferociously kept a secular lid on political Islam, was a vicious antisemite and hater of infidels. In an interview on Turkish TV in 2007, he repeated a series of anti-Jewish slurs, deliberately conflating Zionism and Judaism, referring to Jews as "bacteria" and "disease", and blaming them for everything from the Crusades to the modern capitalist system.

The Milli Gazette, a daily newspaper produced by Erbakan, regularly publishes anti-Jewish and anti-Christian material for the consumption of the ordinary Turkish public. For example, an article in 2005 read:

"Some people in this country are mistaken in how they treat Christians and Jews. Such mistakes are harming not only the perpetrators, but also all the young Muslims of this land, and directly or indirectly, this country.

"Heading the list of these mistakes is the respect and reverence shown to Christians and Jews […] It is a mistake to include them in the protocol of meetings, to let them speak, to applaud them, to quote their words in the newspapers […]. It is not just wrong, it is a frighteningly grave mistake […]

"It is a mistake for so-called professors, writers, thinkers, and famous intellectuals to make 'sympathetic' statements about Christians and Jews. Particularly, to say that 'they too will go to heaven' is an even bigger mistake. […] Christians and Jews, who have rejected our Prophet and refuse to recite 'Mohammed is the Messenger of God' belong forever in Hell.

"In the eyes of God, there is only one religion, and that is Islam […] There is only one book, and that is the Koran. […]

"For so-called 'dignitaries' to present Christianity and Judaism as 'godly religions' is terribly wrong. […]

Not surprisingly, current Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan praised Erbakan today, saying: "We will always remember him with gratitude for what he taught us and for his persevering character." Erdogan is himself a virulent antisemite who denies the Armenian genocide.

Erdogan's mentor, Necmettin Erbakan, is perhaps the man most singularly responsible for causing Turkey to begin its slide from a secular, albeit heavy-handed, republic into a reverted Islamic supremacist state which is largely responsible for the ongoing attempts to colonise Europe with Muslim immigrants. He may now be gone, but his prodigy Erdogan is doing his best today to ensure that his legacy is not forgotten.

(N.B. As far as I understand, the image above was published a couple of years ago in a Turkish newspaper as part of a "Celebrity Lookalikes" feature. I claim no ownership of it.)

UK: Muslims Smash In Man's Skull For Teaching Religious Studies

2011-02-21T22:59:00.006Z

Gary Smith

While Britain's Muslim communities are busy demanding protection against a "backlash" from the "far-Right" (whatever happened to that, by the way?), it is once again proven that non-Muslims are the ones who have the most valid claim to protection from Muslims:

Four men launched a horrific attack on a teacher in which they slashed his face and left him with a fractured skull because they did not approve of him teaching religion to Muslim girls.

Akmol Hussein, 26, Sheikh Rashid, 27, Azad Hussain, 25, and Simon Alam, 19, attacked Gary Smith with a Stanley knife, an iron rod and a block of cement.

Mr Smith, who is head of religious education at Central Foundation Girls' School in Bow, east London, also suffered a fractured skull.

The four now face a jail sentence.

Detectives made secret recordings of the gang's plot to attack Mr Smith prior to the brutal assault.

The covert audio probe captured the gang condemning Mr Smith for 'teaching other religions to our sisters', the court heard.

And why, despite this intelligence, did the police do nothing protect Mr. Smith? Would they have been this lax if members of the EDL had been plotting to attack Muslims?

At least, for once, our law enforcers weren't completely afraid to admit the obvious:

Prosecutor Sarah Whitehouse told the court: 'The evidence from what was said on the probe points overwhelmingly to a religious motive for this attack.'

Funny how Muslims keep doing this, isn't it?

Al-Qaradawi Speaks In Egypt

2011-02-18T20:32:00.005Z

As many Western media outlets continue to equivocate about the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the support for the group among the Egyptian people, the truth can't stay hidden for long.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi is a controversial Muslim cleric who is often described as a "Muslim televangelist", a man whose sermons reach the homes of as many as 60 million Muslims around the world via his regular broadcasts on Al Jazeera. He is an immensely popular personality who has defended suicide bombings and wife-beating, and has incited genocidal violence against Israelis and Jews and predicted the conquest of Europe by Muslim immigrants. Oh, and he supports the death penalty for those who leave Islam.

He is also the "father figure" of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, as described in this recent article at Der Spiegel. Such is his influence that the group has even invited him to become its spiritual leader.

Today in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Qaradawi gave Friday prayers in front of as many as one million Egyptian Muslims. During his sermon, he praised the "revolution" and prayed for the Muslim re-conquest of Jerusalem. The "moderate" crowd raucously cheered his every word.

Feel safe yet?

Lara Logan And Egyptian Antisemitism

2011-02-17T20:00:00.007Z

The majority of Western media institutions have by now covered the horrifying rape of CBS reporter Lara Logan in Egypt. But curiously, many of those "respectable" media institutions who have covered the story have omitted all mention of the fact that the thugs who assaulted her yelled "Jew, Jew!" as they violated her.

We have already seen the anti-government demonstrators deface pictures of Hosni Mubarak by drawing a Star of David on his forehead (see below), and we have heard them say: "He [Mubarak] is supporting Israel. Israel is our enemy...If people are free in Egypt...they gonna destroy Israel."

According to a 2009 Pew survey, 95% of Egyptians view Jews "unfavourably".

People will insist that this hatred of Jews stems primarily from the Arab conflict with Israel, but they fail to explain why, according to the English Orientalist E.W. Lane, the Muslims of Egypt hated Jews with a passion long before Israel ever came into existence. From his book Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, published in 1835:

They [the Jews] are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general, and they are said to bear a more inveterate hatred than any other people to the Muslims and the Muslim religion. It is said, in the Qur'an [quoting 5:82] 'Thou shalt surely find the most violent of all men to those who have believed to be the Jews…'

Notice that Lane attributes the Muslim hatred of Jews in Egypt to antisemitic teachings in the Qur'an - an observation that in the modern day would have him accused of "Islamophobia".

This whole distressing story is actually quite reminiscent of a letter published in an Egyptian newspaper in 1948 - almost twenty years BEFORE Israel's "illegal occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza, and subsequent "inflammatory" conflicts with nearby jihadist groups - which read as follows:

It would seem that most people in Egypt are unaware of the fact that among Egyptian Muslims there are some who have white skin. Every time I board a tram I see people pointing at me saying, “Jew, Jew!” I have been beaten more than once because of this. For that reason I humbly beg that my picture (enclosed) be published with an explanation that I am not Jewish and that my name is Adham Mustafa Galeb.

Like Adham Mustafa Galeb, Lara Logan was not Jewish - but also like him, she learned first-hand the disturbing reality of antisemitism in Egypt.

The Other Side of the TV Coin

2011-02-14T23:56:00.003Z

Tonight has already seen the broadcasting of a disturbing documentary detailing, accurately, the problems with Islamic schools in Britain. Channel 4's Dispatches was a cutting, important and honest piece of factual reporting.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said about the BBC's offering an hour earlier, lovingly entitled "Geert Wilders: Europe's Most Dangerous Man?". If you live in the UK, and missed this "documentary", you can watch it on BBC iPlayer here.

This had to be one of the most hideously biased, poorly researched and recklessly irresponsible pieces of "factual" television I have ever seen - and considering this is the Beeb we're talking about, that's saying something. The smears, shoddy research, whitewashing, editorialising and willful distortions come thick and fast. In fact, the programme-makers were on such a roll in this one that it's not only Wilders that they defame.

Nevertheless, you should watch it - if you can stomach it - if you want further proof of what a rotten, useless, flabby organ our mainstream media has become.

Deflecting Attention

2011-02-14T19:55:00.002Z

The hate-preaching, child-abusing Islamic school at the centre of tonight's Dispatches documentary will close tomorrow amid "safety fears".

Teachers at the Darul Uloom Islamic High School, in Small Heath, Birmingham, have held meetings with police chiefs and fear that youngsters could be targeted by the "far-Right".

And so the Muslim community does what it always does: it presents itself as the real victim, and deflects attention away from its activities by whining about a "backlash" from the "far-Right" that never actually materialises. As a result, the next time this kind of thing happens in an Islamic school somewhere in Britain, no one notices.

And that's just what they want.

More British Muslim Child Abuse Uncovered

2011-02-13T23:00:00.002Z

In this case, the child abuse mentioned in the title does not just refer to the completely unprovoked and unjustified beatings inflicted upon children at this school, but also the wicked inculcation of hatred the kids are exposed to at such a young, impressionable age.

From "Mosques Teaching 'Extreme Views'" by the Press Association:

Young Muslims are being taught extremist views in British mosques, an undercover investigation has found.

Shocking footage of children apparently being hit by their teachers during lessons on the Koran will also be aired on Channel 4's Dispatches programme on Monday.

A hidden camera installed by a reporter at a school in Birmingham recorded a preacher telling pupils "the disbelievers are the worst creatures, they are the worst creatures".

Where did he get this idea from?

"Lo! those who disbelieve, among the People of the Scripture and the idolaters, will abide in fire of hell. They are the worst of created beings." (Qur'an 98:6)

The Qur'an also dehumanises unbelievers as "the worst of beasts" (8:55).

The 11-year-olds are then told not to trust more liberal Muslims.

Their teacher said: "The person who's got less than a fistful of beard, then you should stay away from him the same way you should stay away from a serpent or a snake."

Another group of pupils are told in an assembly at the school: "The disbelievers, they are the worst of all people. The Hindus do, they drink piss, I've told you this. Do they have any intellect? No."

We are often told by Muslim spokesmen and apologists that the root cause of "Islamic extremism" is either poverty, lack of education or anger over British and American foreign policy. But if that's the case, why would British Muslims hate Hindus, who have not invaded Iraq or Afghanistan, and who cannot possibly be blamed for poverty amongst Muslims?

Could it be to do with the fact that, according to the Qur'an, polytheism of the kind practised by Hindus is the "most heinous" sin anyone can possibly commit (4:48)?

Only Islamophobes would say so, of course.

In more footage filmed by the programme at a mosque in Yorkshire, teenagers and a preacher are seen to be hitting younger children. Pupils as young as six or seven were caught on camera being hit and kicked by the people supposed to be looking after them.

But remember: Islam is a religion of peace.

Dr Taj Hargey, founder of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, said: "This is totally against Islam. This is something that is deeply humiliating and shameful to Muslims to hear other Muslims describe people of other religions in such derogatory, disparaging terms."

Well, then I guess Dr Hargey must be really humiliated and ashamed of the Qur'an.

How often must this kind of thing keep happening before someone in the West starts to think that maybe this Islam thing isn't all about peace and love after all?

If They're The Moderates...

2011-02-09T23:16:00.004Z

Back in November, America's witless President "lauded Indonesia's unity between people of different faiths as as a model for Islam and the West". Indonesia is routinely portrayed by the Western media - no matter what happens there - as a "moderate" Muslim country and the most tolerant in the Islamic world.

Well, scratch that idea.

Several recent incidents have demonstrated that Indonesia is in fact a hotbed of virulent infidel-hatred and intolerance. Yesterday, thousands of angry Muslims (perhaps yet another wing of that "tiny minority of extremists" we're always hearing about) attacked three churches, a Christian orphanage and a health centre that is also Christian.

The revolt took place in Temanggung regency (Central Java), and started right in front of the town hall: first the crowd attacked the court where a trial against Richmond Bawengan Antonius, a Christian accused of proselytising and blasphemy, was being held.

Bawengan was arrested in October 2010 because during a visit to Temanggung he had distributed printed missionary material which, among other things, poked fun at some Islamic symbols. This "profanity" has cost him five years in prison at the hands of the "tolerant" Indonesian regime, but the crowd were demanding the death sentence. The violence was sparked by their dissatisfaction with the verdict.

Instead of leaving the court, the crowd started pushing, shouting provocative slogans and then destroyed the building. Hundreds of police rushed in to intervene but failed to appease the thousands of Muslims who began to march en masse to "target Christians" on the main street of the city.

Then there is the case of the Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim sect considered heretical by the vast majority of Muslims because, among other things, they consider their sect's founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, to be the final Prophet of Allah rather than Muhammad (they also, it must be noted, have a slightly more moderate, apologetic stance on jihad against unbelievers: another reason for which they have been persecuted by the orthodox).

In 2008, the Indonesian government outlawed Ahmadism, although they have denied that this is in any way intolerant. But the persecution of the Ahmadis is very real in Indonesia, and in other parts of the Islamic world, as was demonstrated recently when 1000 Muslims (obviously another tiny minority of extremists) stormed a house in West Java to stop the Ahmadis from holding worship. You can watch some footage of this below - however, be warned: it is brutally, sickeningly graphic. You will see people being killed as Muslims gleefully and mockingly run at them and bludgeon them in their heads and necks with sticks and rocks - all the while shouting "Allahu Akbar!". If you are easily upset, you may want to think twice about watching this video.

I honestly hope Barack Obama is watching it. But even then, I don't expect the slightest shred of doubt to creep into his ideologically-driven mind that there might be a problem with the religion of his childhood, or that Indonesia may not in fact be the multicultrual paradise he wants it to be. Only Islamophobes would think such things, after all.

Egypt: What The Opposition Want

2011-02-06T21:21:00.004Z

Muhammad Badi', general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest and best-organised movement in the current Egyptian opposition, and the one best equipped to succeed once Mubarak steps down, or is forced out. The Obama Administration has already greenlighted the Brotherhood for a takeover in Egypt - an exceptionally stupid thing to do in light of what the group stands for. Below are extracts, translated by MEMRI, from the positions of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, as expressed by its general guide, Muhammad Badi', since his nomination in January 2010, and as set out in its proposed political platform, which was drafted in the era of Badi's predecessor, Muhammad Mahdi 'Akef, and was leaked to the media in August 2007. And bear in mind as you read these the broad support for the Brotherhood's positions - in all their ugly glory - amongst the ordinary Egyptian populace.

Muhammad Badi:

"The Soviet Union fell dramatically, but the factors that will lead to the collapse of the U.S. are much more powerful than those that led to the collapse of the Soviet empire – for a nation that does not champion moral and human values cannot lead humanity, and its wealth will not avail it once Allah has had His say, as happened with [powerful] nations in the past. The U.S. is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise..."

"Muslim leaders, Islam, to which you belong, advocates jihad as the only means for setting the Ummah's situation aright, as Allah says: 'O you believers! When you are told to go forth in Allah's way, why should you incline heavily to earth? Are you contented with this world's life instead of the hereafter?' [Koran 9:38] Our revival, majesty, and glory depend on the return to righteousness, which will only be achieved through resistance and the support of [resistance] in every way – with money, arms, information, and self[-sacrifice]..."

"The noble Koran is the constitution that sets out the laws of Islam. It is the fountainhead of all virtue and wisdom in the hearts of the believers, and it is the best [way] for the believers to become closer to Allah... The Holy Koran includes all the tenets of faith, laws of worship, principles of public good [and] legal concepts [pertaining to] this world, including duties and prohibitions, and they are for the benefit of all humanity, without distinctions of religion, [skin] color, gender, [social] status or language..."

Badi' added that the Koran must continue to be a way of life for every Muslim and his family, and that, at the state level, countries whose official religion is Islam must establish the Koran as "the basis for the constitution and the first source of legislation, the scales of justice in the courtrooms and one of the bases of the [school] curricula at all levels [of education]... All clauses of the [state] constitution which Islam and its precepts do not permit must be removed..."

And from the Brotherhood's leaked political platform:

"The authority of the shari'a will be implemented in a manner that conforms to the [will of the] nation, by means of a parliamentary majority elected in free, clean, and transparent [elections]. The legislative branch must consult with the nation's Supreme Council of Clerics, which will likewise be freely and directly elected from among the clerics, and will be completely independent of the executive branch – procedurally, financially and administratively. It will be assisted by neutral and reliable committees and advisors with knowledge and experience, including in the secular sciences. [The duty of consulting with the Supreme Council of Clerics] will also apply to the president when he wishes to implement decisions based on law and in the absence of the legislative branch. In these circumstances, the Supreme Council of Clerics decision will be final and will best serve the interests of the public."

Note that in the above section, free democratic elections will be used to facilitate the implementation of a repressive sharia state. Hence the mainstream media's and David Cameron's championing of Egyptian "pro-democracy demonstrators" is exposed as hollow and short-sighted.

There is much more at the link provided. Be sure to read it all to understand why Obama's mindless endorsement of the Brotherhood - and all other media analyses declaring the organisation to be "harmless" - will ensure that Egypt will continue to be no friend of the United States, or of universal human rights and real democracy.

Islamophobe Becomes Shi'aphobe

2011-02-06T12:12:00.002Z

What a turn up for the books.

Recently a man, Roger Stockham, was arrested in Dearborn, Michigan, for attempting to blow up a mosque with fireworks. Islamic leaders quickly seized on the event to condemn the rampant "Islamophobia" prevalent among white non-Muslims in America.

But it turns out that Roger Stockham isn't a greasy Islamophobe after all. He is in fact a convert to Sunni Islam who was trying to blow up a Shi'ite mosque. According to reports, Stockham rejected his initial defense attorney because he claimed that he was a Shi'a Muslim. Stockham also speaks fluent Arabic and has quoted Qur'anic verses during interviews.

I doubt we'll be hearing back from CAIR on this any time soon.

Why David Cameron Is Right...And Wrong

2011-02-05T18:55:00.003Z

Go here to read the full text of David Cameron's speech at the Munich Security Conference.

In places, the Prime Minister says some genuinely good things. His impassioned, if narrow, criticism of "state multiculturalism" is welcome, as is his basic understanding that the Islamic threat comes not just from terrorism, but from Muslim political advocates who advance the same goals as the terrorists by non-violent means:

At the furthest end are those who back terrorism to promote their ultimate goal: an entire Islamist realm, governed by an interpretation of Sharia. Move along the spectrum, and you find people who may reject violence, but who accept various parts of the extremist worldview, including real hostility towards Western democracy and liberal values.

Cameron falls down when he makes the common claim that jihadists want to impose "an interpretation of sharia", as if there were a "moderate" school of sharia that rejects jihad against unbelievers, the execution of apostates, stoning, and sacralised discrimination against women and non-Muslims (for the record, there isn't), but on a basic level he got this part right.

Elsewhere, though, Dave gets it seriously wrong on many levels:

We have got to get to the root of the problem, and we need to be absolutely clear on where the origins of where these terrorist attacks lie. That is the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism. We should be equally clear what we mean by this term, and we must distinguish it from Islam. Islam is a religion observed peacefully and devoutly by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a political ideology supported by a minority.

So the Prime Minister wants us to distinguish between the Islamic ideology and the ideology of "Islamist extremism". But he defines the "true" Islamic ideology by referring to the existence of peaceful Muslims, NOT to the actual doctrinal basis of the Islamic ideology, namely the Qur'an and the Sunnah.

The Qur'an says all of the following and more:

“And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers...And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.” (2:191-93)

“Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). Unto all (in Faith) Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward.” (4:95)

“Tell those who disbelieve that if they cease (from persecution of believers) that which is past will be forgiven them; but if they return (thereto) then the example of the men of old hath already gone (before them, for a warning). And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah.” (8:38-39)

“Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” (9:5)

“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.” (9:29)

“Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth...” (9:111)

The hadith says all of the following and more:

Sahih Bukhari

“Allah's Apostle said: 'I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah.” (v.1, b.2, no.25)

“Allah's Apostle was asked, 'What is the best deed?' He replied, 'To believe in Allah and His Apostle (Muhammad).' The questioner then asked, 'What is the next (in goodness)?' He replied, 'To participate in Jihad (religious fighting) in Allah's Cause.'” (v.1, b.2, no.26)

Sahih Muslim

“When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them...If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them.” (b.19, no.4294)

“It has been narrated on the authority of Abu Sa'id Khudri that the Messenger of Allah said (to him): Abu Sa'id, whoever cheerfully accepts Allah as his Lord, Islam as his religion and Muhammad as his Apostle is necessarily entitled to enter Paradise. He (Abu Sa'id) wondered at it and said: Messenger of Allah, repeat it for me. He (the Messenger of Allah) did that and said: There is another act which elevates the position of a man in Paradise to a grade one hundred (higher), and the elevation between one grade and the other is equal to the height of the heaven from the earth. He (Abu Sa'id) said: What is that act? He replied: Jihad in the way of Allah! Jihad in the way of Allah!” (b.20, no.4645)

This is the "Islamic ideology". If it sounds to you exactly like an "extremist" ideology, then you will instantly understand where Cameron has gone wrong.

Cameron also errs when he makes a separation between Islamic religious and political ideology. In actual fact, Islam is both a religion and a political system. Witness the writings of Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi (d.1979), one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the twentieth century. Maududi believed that “Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.” Specifically, “Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and programme”. Maududi taught that “Islam is not merely a religious creed or compound name for a few forms of worship, but a comprehensive system which envisages to annihilate all tyrannical and evil systems in the world and enforces its own programme of reform which it deems best for the well-being of mankind.” Muslims must wage jihad against unbelievers, the purpose of which “is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of State rule.”

Was Maududi just an "Islamist extremist"? Cameron might say so, but this understanding of Islam as a "total way of life" that encompasses both the spiritual and the political enjoys widespread acceptance throughout the Islamic world, as I explained here. So my point is that when the Prime Minister tries to claim that "political Islam" exists on its own as a separate entity to "real Islam", he is making a crippling mistake that prevents us getting to the root of the problem. The existence of Muslims around the world who do not practise political Islam does not make the teachings of Muhammad and the Qur'an, as well as fourteen centuries of tradition and deeply entrenched societal attitudes, go away.

Cameron's ignorance shows up again a little further on in the speech:

This highlights, I think, a significant problem when discussing the terrorist threat that we face. There is so much muddled thinking about this whole issue. On the one hand, those on the hard right ignore this distinction between Islam and Islamist extremism, and just say that Islam and the West are irreconcilable – that there is a clash of civilizations. So, it follows: we should cut ourselves off from this religion, whether that is through forced repatriation, favoured by some fascists, or the banning of new mosques, as is suggested in some parts of Europe . These people fuel Islamophobia, and I completely reject their argument. If they want an example of how Western values and Islam can be entirely compatible, they should look at what’s happened in the past few weeks on the streets of Tunis and Cairo : hundreds of thousands of people demanding the universal right to free elections and democracy.

The point is this: the ideology of extremism is the problem; Islam emphatically is not.

What Dave fails to grasp is that democracy is only as good as the values of its participants. And in the case of Egypt in particular, it is very clear that there is widespread support for violent, draconian sharia punishments among the Muslim masses. Participation in free elections is relatively meaningless without the elected parties being willing and able to provide genuine freedom and equality to the citizens they govern. Again, if Cameron knew anything about Islam and sharia law, he would have to admit that Islam itself is the problem, because its values and its assumptions about the nature of freedom, governance, equality and human rights are markedly different from our own.

Take, for instance, some of the values he delineates further on, during his explanation of the minimum requirements for cooperation with British Muslim organisations:

So we should properly judge these organisations: do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separation?

Islam denies equality of rights to women and to non-Muslims. Furthermore, the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam sets itself up as an alternative to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and states explicitly in many places that all human rights are subject to the dictates of sharia law. In summary, the result is that Islamic concepts of human rights violate the actual human rights of freedom of expression and freedom of conscience across the board.

So yes, Mr Cameron, Islam empatically is the problem. It is a very serious problem that will persist all the while our political leaders continue to make half-formed assumptions about its character and origins.

What Sort Of Revolution In Egypt?

2011-02-02T22:46:00.002Z

As the chaos in Egypt rumbles on, there are those in the media who appear hopeful that the revolution we are now witnessing will lead to an ill-defined, flowering "democracy" in the region.

While the Mubarak regime is indeed oppressive, is the opposition really capable of producing the kind of truly free state that some people think it can? I see no reason to believe so. Some analysts have shrugged off the suggestion that this is an Islamic Revolution, citing many secular justifications made by protestors for their actions, and pointing out that hardline Islamic groups have not been front and centre during these demonstrations.

And yet, as far as I can see, the opposition really has no organised centre or figurehead. Mohamed ElBaradei, the media's darling of the moment, is a nobody who has barely set foot inside Egypt during the last 20 years. The only group that has any kind of significant following at all is the Muslim Brotherhood, described at Encyclopedia.com as "the most important representative of the Egyptian masses" today. The Brotherhood, as Kamal El-Helbawy, a member and former spokesman affirmed recently, would seek to implement sharia law in Egypt if it took power, as long as "the majority of the people and democratic practice allows it". Despite his further equivications, this would be a very, very bad thing, since no version of sharia exists which actually promotes the real freedom and equality necessary to govern a true democracy.

And would the majority of the Egyptian people allow sharia law to take hold? There is plenty of evidence to suggest so. Widespread popular support for the Brotherhood can be viewed in conjunction with the fact that a 2007 WorldPublicOpinion.org/University of Maryland survey found that of a representative sample of 1000 Egyptian Muslims, at least 50% and as many as 74% expressed a desire to implement "strict" Islamic law in every Muslim country. These findings are backed up by the results of a study by another respected polling organisation, the Pew Research Centre, who found that "At least three-quarters of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan say they would favor making each of the following the law in their countries: stoning people who commit adultery, whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery and the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion."

What we can draw from this is that even if the majority of Egypt's Muslims don't have any specific urge to get the Muslim Brotherhood into power, if such a thing was to happen (which seems inevitable eventually given the paucity of any other organised opposition to the current regime), they would have no problem at all living with it. Such an outcome would, of course, be detrimental to women and non-Muslims, and would render Egypt an enemy of Western democracies, since we cannot coexist in friendship alongside countries whose core values so drastically contravene universal standards of human rights (Egypt is bad enough already in this regard).

The long and short of it is this: It is true that the opposition protests in the country are not primarily religious in character right now. But then, neither was the Iranian Revolution to begin with. While what we are witnessing did not begin as an Islamic Revolution, I believe that it will end up as one. Time will tell.

Intifadas Home And Away

2011-01-30T23:08:00.003Z

As the latest bouts of "political unrest" break out in the Muslim world, which threaten to put the pro-sharia Muslim Brotherhood in charge of previously (relatively) secular, if oppressive states, it is important not to forget that the danger of such things happening in Europe is on the horizon, also.

This piece at the International Analyst Network highlights the growing threat of "radical Islam" (i.e. Islam) in Greece. The article notes, among other things, the significant role of Turkey in importing a massive Muslim underclass into Europe:

The role of the emerging Islamic power of Turkey into managing the en mass movement from Islamic countries into the EU has been highlighted numerously over the past few months and it is of interest to make a note of the fact that regular flights are being organized between Rabat in Morocco and Algiers in Algeria to Istanbul so as to bring a sizeable number of nationals from those countries to Turkey and transport them thereafter to Greece-Bulgaria, en route to the EU.

The Islamic governance in Turkey has lifted travel regulations and visas with those countries, whilst it has no visa with Iran, thus promoting in effect the movement of Afghans and Pakistanis, as well as, Iranians into Europe.

It is important to note that mental Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stated that the assimilation of Muslim immigrants into European society is a "crime against humanity". The explicit purpose, therefore, of encouraging mass Muslim immigration into Europe is colonisation, and the substitution of the West's Judeo-Christian, post-Enlightenment values with Islamic ones, facilitating the first step in the transformation of Europe into the base for the new caliphate, as envisioned by the currently Turkish-led Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

The piece also provides evidence of the myriad negative effects of this Muslim immigation policy in Greece:

Since late 2008, there have been three major cases that show the tendency of creating a rising network of a quasi-radical Islamic element in the Greek society. The first was in the December 2008 riots, were approximately 50% of the people arrested were Pakistanis and Afghanis arrested, some of them claiming to the authorities that were paid in order to participate in the violent demonstrations.

The second development was the May 2009 so-called "Koran demonstrations", when a multicultural group of various Islamic communities in Athens took to the street allegedly claiming that the Police desecrated the Koran during a routine search in the pockets of a Syria street vendor.

It was later revealed that this particular individual was lying to the authorities and the press and was involved in various illegal actions including robberies. What was also proven, was that a network of NGO's were able to coordinate and finance the mobilization of the illegal Muslim community in Athens and claims have been made that they are financed by the organized crime which employs the desperate masses of Muslims in the country in conjunction with the intelligence apparatus of Islamic countries in Greece.

A third phase was the mass prayer of some 10,000 Muslims in the centre of Athens in October 2010, without attaining the necessary state permission for that. Amongst the organizers they were individuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and an Imam was brought by Egypt to commemorate the ending of the Ramadan.

Islam is on the rise everywhere, and while we may shudder to imagine what a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt may look like, what is of perhaps even more concern is what Europe already looks like. Many derided Bat Ye'or when her provocative and important book Eurabia came out, but each year that goes by proves her to be absolutely correct in her analysis.