harmonicminer

I have mentioned Dr. Jasser in other posts, leader of a movement of Muslims in favor of American democracy, and I’ve linked to his website in the blog roll on the lower right of this page.  If Islam is to free itself of an dangerous radicals who want to set the tone (sometimes all too successfully) for all of Islam, the reform must come from within, in the person of spokesmen like Dr. Jasser, who prizes liberty above Sharia.

Why the media keeps going to CAIR as a representative of “moderate Islam” instead of AIFD is beyond me…  or maybe it isn’t.  After all, most of the media are hostile to Israel, and so is CAIR.  Listen to Dr. Jasser, and hope there are many more who will follow him.

Not having anything brilliant to say today (why should today be different than any other day?), I defer to George Will, in his piece titled Israel’s Netanyahu Poised to Take Out Iran’s Nuclear Sites

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then, or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.

To understand the man who will make it, begin with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948. It is, he says, a campaign to “put the Jew back to the status of a being that couldn’t defend himself — a perfect victim.”

Today’s Middle East, he says, reflects two developments. One is the rise of Iran and militant Islam since the 1979 revolution, which led to al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The other development is the multiplying threat of missile warfare.

Now Israel faces a third threat, the campaign to delegitimize it in order to extinguish its capacity for self-defense.

After two uniquely perilous millennia for Jews, the creation of Israel meant, Netanyahu says, “the capacity for self-defense restored to the Jewish people.” But note, he says, the reflexive worldwide chorus of condemnation when Israel responded with force to rocket barrages from Gaza and from southern Lebanon. There is, he believes, a crystallizing consensus that “Israel is not allowed to exercise self-defense.”

From 1948 through 1973, he says, enemies tried to “eliminate Israel by conventional warfare.” Having failed, they tried to demoralize and paralyze Israel with suicide bombers and other terrorism. “We put up a fence,” Netanyahu says. “Now they have rockets that go over the fence.” Israel’s military, which has stressed offense as a solution to the nation’s lack of strategic depth, now stresses missile defense.

That, however, cannot cope with Hamas’ tens of thousands of rockets in Gaza and Hezbollah’s 60,000 in southern Lebanon. There, U.N. resolution 1701, promulgated after the 2006 war, has been predictably farcical. This was supposed to inhibit the arming of Hezbollah and prevent its operations south of the Litani River.

Since 2006, Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal has tripled and its operations mock resolution 1701. Hezbollah, learning from Hamas, now places rockets near schools and hospitals, certain that Israel’s next response to indiscriminate aggression will turn the world media into a force multiplier for the aggressors.

Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged “disproportionate.” Israel knows this as it watches Iran.

Last year was Barack Obama’s wasted year of “engaging” Iran. This led to sanctions that are unlikely to ever become sufficiently potent. With Russia, China, and Turkey being uncooperative, Iran is hardly “isolated.” The Iranian democracy movement probably cannot quickly achieve regime change. It took Solidarity 10 years to do so against a Polish regime less brutally repressive than Iran’s.

Hillary Clinton’s words about extending a “defense umbrella over the region” imply, to Israelis, fatalism about a nuclear Iran. As for deterrence working against a nuclear-armed regime steeped in an ideology of martyrdom, remember: In 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini said: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

You say, that was long ago? Israel says, this is now:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, says Israel is the “enemy of God.” Tehran, proclaiming that the Holocaust never happened and vowing to complete it, sent an ambassador to Poland who in 2006 wanted to measure the ovens at Auschwitz to prove them inadequate for genocide. Iran’s former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered a “moderate” by people for whom believing is seeing, calls Israel a “one-bomb country.”

If Iran were to “wipe the Zionist entity off the map,” as it vows to do, it would, Netanyahu believes, achieve a regional “dominance not seen since Alexander.” Netanyahu does not say Israel will, if necessary, act alone to prevent this. Or does he?

He says CIA Director Leon Panetta is “about right” in saying Iran can be a nuclear power in two years. He says 1948 meant this: “For the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign Jewish people could defend itself against attack.” And he says: “The tragic history of the powerlessness of our people explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.” If Israel strikes Iran, the world will not be able to say it was not warned.

German website Der Spiegel says examination of photographs of eight scorched Kurdish rebels shows Turkey used chemical weapons

Is Turkey using chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels? German weekly Der Spiegel reported on its website Thursday that it had obtained photographs showing the bodies of fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that had been killed by chemical weapons. The report, which is based on a report published over the weekend, claims German experts have examined and confirmed the photographs’ authenticity.

According to the report, the horrifying images show burned, maimed and scorched body parts. Kurdish human rights activists believe the people in the photos are eight members of the PKK underground, who were killed in clashes with the Turkish military in September 2009.

The photographs were transferred to a human rights delegation including German activists, journalists, and far-Left Turkish politicians.

A “far left Turkish politician” just has to be an interesting beast.  From what I can gather, they are modeled after “social democrats” everywhere, which means that socialism is more important to them than freedom.  This group seems to descend from pro-Soviet roots.

The report said the photographs were transferred to a forensics lab and were examined by experts from Hamburg University Hospital. Expert Hans Baumann confirmed the initial suspicion that it is highly probable the eight Kurds died “due to the use of chemical substances.”

This is not the first time Turkey is suspected of using chemical weapons, in violation of the international treaty to which it is a signatory. Such suspicions have led German politicians to call for an independent international probe into the matter.

It would be spectacular if those same German politicians were more serious in stopping Iran from going nuclear.  How many German banks and German industrialists are doing business with Iran (maybe through appropriate cutouts to maintain semi-plausible deniability)?  But only semi-plausible.

Gisela Penteker, a Turkey expert with the international medical organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, noted that Turkey has been suspected of using chemical weapons for years. “Local people have said that again and again,” she explained. Finding proof is difficult, however, she said, because bodies were often released so late that it was hardly possible to carry out a thorough autopsy.

Meanwhile, Berlin daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung, also reported that it has obtained additional, shocking pictures, supposedly autopsy photographs of six other killed Kurds.

The paper also reported that the Turkish Foreign Ministry rejected the claims, saying, “Turkey is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and its armed forces do not possess any biological or chemical weapons.”

Well, that’s comforting.  Turkey, of course, is the newest addition to the international blame-Israel-first coalition, made up of the Arab league, most European nations, Russia and China….  and, of course, the American Left, including American academia and American media.

Good luck finding any significant American media outlet covering this, or an American academic calling for an international investigation….  of the sort they called for when Israel defended its Gaza blockade from Turkish ships.  Now, THAT really deserved an “impartial” international investigation by that neutral arbiter of peace and truth, the United Nations.

But a few Turkish Kurds killed with banned chemical weapons?  That doesn’t even make the radar screen, let alone the news.

It would seem that the Turkish government’s zone of protection from such investigation has widened, in exact proportion to its recent hostility to Israel.  After all: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. 

And to most of these people, Israel is surely the enemy.

The worm turns in Saudi Arabia, as a Saudi woman beats up virtue cop

It was a scene Saudi women’s rights activists have dreamt of for years.

When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition.

But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping.

A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix.

For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop.

According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.

I think I like this lady.  But I fear that in Saudi Arabia she will be treated very harshly.

In the meantime, Saudi men push for more wives

A group of young Saudi men have launched a campaign to convince Saudi men of the unappreciated virtues of polygamy.

It is a response to young Saudi women uninterested in joining a polygamous marriage, older Saudi women divorcees and Saudi men unable or unwilling to support more than one woman. The campaign seeks to counter what Saudi traditionalists see as an increasingly negative stigma attached to polygamy.

Campaigning under the slogan “Prophet of Four”, a reference to the Islamic edict allowing men to marry up to four wives, the group calls for every Saudi man to take four wives so as to rid the country of so-called ‘spinsters’, a term referring to unmarried Saudi women over the age of 30. Launched at the start of Saudi Arabia’s ‘marriage season’, the campaign’s Facebook page has already garnered a few hundred supporters.

Spinsters of the world, unite! Throw off your shackles! Marry a sexist pig who will only “beat you lightly“!

The UN continues its utter vapidity and cupidity (not to mention stupidity) with this bit of insane theater.  It’s like putting Adolph Hitler on the board of the local anti-semitism society.  I’m sure the women of Iran are comforted now that Iran is going to have a voice at the UN for women’s rights around the world.

In the meantime, Iran continues its nuclear program apace, a fact which even the densest of the international left is finally beginning to realize, and fear.  And Iran is still the single largest player in fomenting international terrorism, unless, of couse, you count the Saudi’s, who fund the madrassas that create converts to radical Islamism, and also appear to fund terrorists directly via cutouts and misdirection.  This isn’t exactly Saudi national policy, since terrorism threatens the Saudi leadership as well as the USA and Israel.  But it’s a measure of how out-of-control the Saudi government is of how its family princes spend their money outside the nation.

Oh, yeah, we really want these guys working for women’s rights.

Here is the opening part of an article titled “Tower of Terrorism at Ground Zero” at the Muslims Against Sharia Blog

America is defined by the last phrase of its national anthem: The land of the free and the home of the brave. Freedom, in all its forms, is its greatest legacy, which the nation has bravely fought many wars on many fronts to preserve against the unceasing assaults of totalitarianism of all stripes. Time and again, the heroes of the nation bravely sacrificed their lives to protect freedom and liberty.

Currently, America is faced with the insidious, multifaceted, and most deadly threat of Islamism. Since Islam has been around for centuries, there is a tendency to ignore or even deny the threat it poses to humanity. Various concessions are made, some of them as good faith offerings and some in the hope of placating the Islamists. Yet, concessions to threats are appeasements. And appeasements have never solved any problems. They only whet the appetite of the aggressor, give it more power, and make it even more dangerous.

Very unfortunately, in today’s world, Islamists [including political Islam] are set as Islam’s locomotive that takes the Islamic train on its demolition course. Instead of promoting peace, many of the so-called leaders of the ‘Muslim Ummah’ are engaged in fuelling Jihad and killing innocent people in the name of religion. And sadly, such elements are gradually growing influence everywhere in the world as well brainwashing some of the naïve global leaders like Barack Hussain Obama, who continues to appease Islamists without sensing the degree of threat it poses to his very own country.

Islam and democracy are incompatible. As democracies practice their magnificent accommodating belief, they knowingly or unknowingly lay the track for the advancing train wrecking that is Islam. Radical Islamism threatens to set a new record for brutality, contrary to the contention that there is no reason to worry about it. Jihadist Wahabism’s tentacles are reaching out from its cradle in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf Arab Emirates. The Petrodollar flush Sunni-Shia zealots are liberally financing mosques, Madrassas [Islamic indoctrination schools], Islamic centers at universities, front organizations and lobbyists to promote the Wahhabi or Shiite virulent Islamism in every part of America. That makes America the Vulnerable.

Activities of Tablighi Jamaat is gradually increasing in United States, and according to recent statistics disclosed during last year’s largest Tablighi congregations in Bangladesh, more than four hundred Tablighi groups are actively working in various so-called community mosques or in disguise mostly targeting young Americans with the goal of converting them initially to Islam and later giving them Jihadist provocations.

So begins a rather lengthy and detailed article on the various ways that radical Islamists are pursuing their agendas in the USA.

Ask yourself this simple question: is the mosque at Ground Zero being paid for with money from America’s Muslims?

Not likely.

Do you think “moderate Muslims” are paying for it?  (Here is one who probably is not.)  Is it being paid for with money from the same people and nations who fund worldwide radical Islamism?

What do you think?  And do you think they would spend their money if they didn’t expect it to produce a result in the USA?  What do you think is the result they intend?

Just in case you never heard what was actually on the “humanitarian aid ship” Mavi Marmara, the one you’ve seen in videos of “peace activists” clubbing Israeli inspectors with metal rods, It’s Official: There was No Humanitarian Aid on Mavi Marmara

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has informed Israel’s representatives the world over that there were never any humanitarian supplies or equipment aboard the Mavi Marmara, where Israeli commandos were ambushed by armed mercenaries posing as peace activists. The commandos opened fire and killed nine of the attackers after three soldiers had been brutalized and temporarily captured.

Of the seven flotilla ships that were intercepted by Israel on May 31 and afterward, only four were freight ships, the MFA reported to its embassies and consulates: The Challenger 1 (a small yacht), the Sfendonh (a small passenger boat) and the Mavi Marmara (a passenger ship) did not carry any humanitarian aid, and had only the passengers’ personal belongings.

The four freight ships are the Gaza, the Sofia, the Defeny and the Rachel Corrie. As of June 7, Israel had only offloaded equipment from the Defeny. The equipment offloaded was loaded onto 26 trucks, and an additional eight trucks are waiting at the Kerem Shalom crossing to enter Gaza.

The equipment includes:

1. 300 wheelchairs
2. 300 new mobility scooters
3. 100 special mobility scooters for the disabled
4. Hundreds of crutches
5. 250 hospital beds
6. 50 sofas
7. Four tons of medicine
8. 20 tons of clothing, carpets, school bags, cloth and shoes
9. Various hospital equipment – closets and cabinets, operating theater equipment, etc.
10. Playground equipment
11. Mattresses

The equipment remaining at Ashdod Port on the three cargo ships which have not been offloaded include some 2000 tons of construction equipment – building materials and tools, and construction waste (rubble, toilets, sinks and cement) for re-use.

The MFA noted that:

The equipment does not constitute humanitarian aid in the accepted sense (basic foodstuffs, new and functional equipment, fresh medicines).

The humanitarian aid on the four cargo ships was scattered in the ships’ holds and thrown onto piles and not packed properly for transport. The equipment was not packaged and not properly placed on wooden bases. Because of the improper packing, some of the equipment was crushed by the weight in transit.

The medicines and sensitive equipment (operating theater equipment, new clothing, etc.) are being kept in cool storage at the Defense Ministry base. Some of the medicines had already expired, and some will expire soon. The operating theater equipment, which should be kept sterile, was carelessly wrapped. A large part of the equipment, particularly shoes and clothing, was used and worn.

In other words, this whole thing exists as a proxy for Iran, working through intermediary Turkey (with which it is friendlier and friendlier), to break the blockade into Gaza, which is part of the reason Israel hasn’t been on the wrong end of missile attacks for awhile.

No one is starving in Gaza, other than maybe the political prisoners that Hamas has locked in basements.

You really need to check out this Powerline post, and watch the videos they linked here (don’t be impatient, the ad is short) and here.

Entertaining.  And educational.

Fareed Sakaria thinks he knows why Turkey is siding against Israel in the Gaza blockade. You guessed it: it’s Bush’s fault.

On the other hand, people who actually understand a bit more about the facts on the ground in Turkey see that the shift in Turkish foreign policy is a matter of demographics, as pointed out by Mark Steyn in Israel, Turkey, and the End of Stability

Foreign policy “realists,” back in the saddle since the Texan cowboy left town, are extremely fond of the concept of “stability”: America needs a stable Middle East, so we should learn to live with Mubarak and the mullahs and the House of Saud, etc. You can see the appeal of “stability” to your big-time geopolitical analyst: You don’t have to update your Rolodex too often, never mind rethink your assumptions. “Stability” is a fancy term to upgrade inertia and complacency into strategy. No wonder the fetishization of stability is one of the most stable features of foreign-policy analysis.

Unfortunately, back in what passes for the real world, there is no stability. History is always on the march, and, if it’s not moving in your direction, it’s generally moving in the other fellow’s. Take this “humanitarian” “aid” flotilla. Much of what went on — the dissembling of the Palestinian propagandists, the hysteria of the U.N. and the Euro-ninnies — was just business as usual. But what was most striking was the behavior of the Turks. In the wake of the Israeli raid, Ankara promised to provide Turkish naval protection for the next “aid” convoy to Gaza. This would be, in effect, an act of war — more to the point, an act of war by a NATO member against the State of Israel.

Ten years ago, Turkey’s behavior would have been unthinkable. Ankara was Israel’s best friend in a region where every other neighbor wishes, to one degree or another, the Jewish state’s destruction. Even when Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP was elected to power eight years ago, the experts assured us there was no need to worry. I remember sitting in a plush bar late one night with a former Turkish foreign minister, who told me, in between passing round the cigars and chugging back the Scotch, that, yes, the new crowd weren’t quite so convivial in the wee small hours but, other than that, they knew where their interests lay. Like many Turkish movers and shakers of his generation, my drinking companion loved the Israelis. “They’re tough hombres,” he said admiringly. “You have to be in this part of the world.” If you had suggested to him that in six years’ time the Turkish prime minister would be telling the Israeli president to his face that “I know well how you kill children on beaches,” he would have dismissed it as a fantasy concoction for some alternative universe.

Yet it happened. Erdogan said those words to Shimon Peres at Davos last year and then flounced off stage. Day by day what was formerly the Zionist entity’s staunchest pal talks more and more like just another cookie-cutter death-to-the-Great-Satan stan-of-the-month.

As the think-tankers like to say: “Who lost Turkey?” In a nutshell: Kemal Ataturk. Since he founded post-Ottoman Turkey in his own image nearly nine decades ago, the population has increased from 14 million to over 70 million. But that five-fold increase is not evenly distributed. The short version of Turkish demographics in the 20th century is that Rumelian Turkey — i.e., western, European, secular, Kemalist Turkey — has been outbred by Anatolian Turkey — i.e., eastern, rural, traditionalist, Islamic Turkey. Ataturk and most of his supporters were from Rumelia, and they imposed the modern Turkish republic on a reluctant Anatolia, where Ataturk’s distinction between the state and Islam was never accepted. Now they don’t have to accept it. The swelling population has spilled out of its rural hinterland and into the once solidly Kemalist cities.

As is often the case, Mark Steyn makes an elegant argument from demographics that the days of a western looking Turkey are probably over. We should have known when Turkey would not allow us to stage troops into Iraq in 2003. But it is now clear that Turkey is rapidly become just another Islamist state, and the demographic forces at work seem likely to continue its motion in that direction.

Don’t get me wrong:  I don’t think Fareed Zakaria is ignorant of the demographic changes in Turkey.  He surely knows.   Your speculations are as good as mine about why he doesn’t find that knowledge worthy of mention in his conjectures about what has led to changes in the Turkish political situation.

Click the link above and read Steyn’s article.

Egypt restricts marriage to Israelis

Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld a ruling on Saturday, that orders the country’s Interior Ministry to strip citizenship from Egyptians married to Israeli women.

The court said that the Interior Ministry should present each marriage case to the Cabinet on an individual basis. The Cabinet will then rule on whether to strip the Egyptian of his citizenship, taking into consideration whether a man married an Israeli Arab or a Jew when making its decision to revoke citizenship.

Saturday’s decision, which cannot be appealed, comes more than year after a lower court ruled that the Interior Ministry, which deals with citizenship documents, must implement the 1976 article of the citizenship law. That bill revokes citizenship of Egyptians who married Israelis who have served in the army or embrace Zionism as an ideology. The Interior Ministry appealed that ruling.

The lawyer who brought the original suit to court, Nabih el-Wahsh, celebrated Saturday’s ruling, saying it “is aimed at protecting Egyptian youth and Egypt’s national security.”

The government has not released figures of Egyptians married to Israeli women, but some estimates put the number around 30,000.

Israeli officials said they had no comment on Saturday’s ruling.

Somehow, I doubt that the UN Human Rights commission, the National Organization for Women, and liberal feminists everywhere will be any more forthcoming. 

Now, imagine if Israeli women who married Egyptians automatically lost their Israeli citizenship. 

Feminists everywhere would be deeply indignant.

As always, essentially ANY insult aimed at Israel is merely business as usual, even though the reverse would suddently become an intolerable outrage.

This article at Powerlineblog is difficult to summarize. It is a post about an article by Noah Pollak which is reviewing another article by Peter Beinart. I think it’s well worth your time, however, because of the way it explains the disconnect between American liberal Jews, liberals in Israel, American liberalism in general, and the facts on the ground in Israel, which are becoming clearer and clearer to even liberal non-Arab Israelis.  This is a quote from the article by Noah Pollack, discussing Beinart’s article and perspective, all of which is being discussed at Powerline at the link above.

Operation Defensive Shield in 2003, the Hezbollah war, and the Hamas war should have been moments in which liberal Zionists stepped forward to say: Israel took the risks for peace that we demanded. Israel committed itself to a diplomatic process, offered a Palestinian state, and withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza. The terrorists who attack Israel will find no defenders among us. Instead, talk of war crimes filled the airwaves, investigations were demanded, arrest warrants for Israeli officials issued, and now Peter Beinart says that he must question Zionism because civilians were killed in Gaza. Carried away by his own moral indignation, he never asks two fundamental questions: who started the war, and why was it fought from civilian areas?. . . .

Because the history of the peace process repudiates so many of liberalism’s most cherished premises, liberalism is increasingly repudiating Israel, and doing so in a perfectly logical fashion: with people like Beinart now saying that Israel is not in fact an admirable country and that it deserves to be thrown out of the company of liberal nations. In this way, the failure of the liberal vision is transformed from being a verdict on liberalism to being a verdict on Israel. . . .

The distilled pleading of Beinart is merely a series of demands that Israelis refuse to learn from experience: how dare they allow any hostility to Arabs creep into their politics; how dare they vote for Avigdor Lieberman, a populist who plays to the less-than-perfectly liberal Russian immigrants; how dare they lose faith in the peace process and the liberal hopefulness that animated it. Most important: how dare they upset the comfortable ideological existence of American Jews, whose acceptability to their liberal peers depends in no small degree on their willingness to join in pillorying Israel over the failure of the peace process — a failure, alas, that is not Israel’s but liberalism’s.

This is just a sample. Click the link at the top and read the whole thing. Highly recommended.

I guess I must have missed reading the part of Eric Holder’s resume that discusses his credentials to make judgments about whether or not “radical Islam” is a true part of the Islamic tradition, and supported by the Koran and Hadith.  One wonders if he knows the names Daniel Pipes, or Robert Spencer, or for that matter Bernard Lewis.  I don’t think he has shown any such reticence in attributing (incredibly rare) violence against abortionists to “Christian fundamentalist right-wingers,” nor has Janet Napolitano, who is worried that pro-lifers are nascent terrorists.  I can only wonder why the phrase “radical right” escapes Holder’s lips so much more easily than “radical Islam.”

You see, there isn’t really such a thing as “radical Islam,” because as Attorney General Holder fumblingly explains, if it’s “radical” it isn’t really Islam.  That’s comforting.  Are you less dead because the terrorist who killed you is really a radical non-Muslim who just thinks he is practicing true Islam?

When you’re too tired to write something today, Mark Steyn is a reliable backup, a seemingly never empty well of trenchant observation. This is from National Review Online:

Nicking Our Public Discourse

What with the Fort Hood mass murderer, the Christmas Pantybomber, and now the Times Square bomber, you may have noticed a little uptick in attempted terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland in the last few months.Rep. Lamar Smith did, and, at the House Judiciary Committee, he was interested to see if the attorney general of the United States thought there might be any factor in common between these perplexingly diverse incidents.

“In the case of all three attempts in the last year, the terrorist attempts, one of which was successful, those individuals have had ties to radical Islam,” said Representative Smith. “Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?”

“Because of . . . ?”

“Radical Islam,” repeated Smith.

“There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions,” replied Eric Holder noncommittally. “I think you have to look at each individual case.”

The congressman tried again. “Yes, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?”

“There are a variety of reasons why people . . . ”

“But was radical Islam one of them?”

“There are a variety of reasons why people do things,” the attorney general said again. “Some of them are potentially religious . . . ” Stuff happens. Hard to say why.

“Okay,” said Smith. “But all I’m asking is if you think, among those variety of reasons, radical Islam might have been one of the reasons that the individuals took the steps that they did.”

“You see, you say ‘radical Islam,’” objected Holder. “I mean, I think those people who espouse a — a version of Islam that is not . . . ”

“Are you uncomfortable attributing any actions to radical Islam?” asked Smith. “It sounds like it.”

And so on, and so forth. At Ford Hood, Major Hasan jumped on a table and gunned down his comrades while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” — which is Arabic for “Nothing to see here” and an early indicator of pre-post-traumatic stress disorder. The Times Square bomber, we are assured by the Washington Post, CNN, and Newsweek, was upset by foreclosure proceedings on his house. Mortgage-related issues. Nothing to do with months of training at a Taliban camp in Waziristan.

Listening to Attorney General Holder, one is tempted to modify Trotsky: You may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you. Islam smells weakness at the heart of the West. The post–World War II order is dying: The European Union’s decision to toss a trillion dollars to prop up a Greek economic model that guarantees terminal insolvency is merely the latest manifestation of the chronic combination of fiscal profligacy and demographic decline in the West at twilight. Islam is already the biggest supplier of new Europeans and new Canadians, and the fastest-growing demographic in the Western world. Therefore, it thinks it not unreasonable to shape the character of those societies — not by blowing up buildings and airplanes, but by determining the nature of their relationship to Islam.

For example, the very same day that Eric Holder was doing his “Islam? What Islam?” routine at the Capitol, the Organization of the Islamic Conference was tightening its hold on the U.N. Human Rights Council — actually, make that the U.N. “Human Rights” Council. The OIC is the biggest voting bloc at the U.N., and it succeeded in getting its slate of candidates elected to the so-called “human rights” body — among them the Maldives, Qatar, Malaysia, Mauritania, and Libya. The last, elected to the HRC by 80 percent of the U.N. membership, is, of course, a famous paragon of human rights, but the other, “moderate” Muslim nations share the view that Islam, in both its theological and political components, should be beyond discussion. And they will support the U.N.’s rapid progress toward, in effect, the imposition of a global apostasy law that removes Islam from public discourse.

Attorney General Holder seems to be operating an advance pilot program of his own, but he’s not alone. Also last week, the head of Canada’s intelligence service testified to the House of Commons about hundreds of “second- or third-generation Canadians” who are “relatively well integrated” “economically and socially” but who have become so “very, very disenchanted” with “the way we want to structure our society” that they have developed “strong links to homelands” that are “in distress.” Homelands such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

Hmm. If you’re wondering what those countries might have in common, keep wondering. No words beginning with “I-” and ending with “-slam” passed the director’s lips. If the head of the Crown’s intelligence service has narrowed his concerns about “disenchanted” “second- or third-generation Canadians” to any demographic group in particular, evidently it’s classified information and can’t be disclosed in public.

The U.N. elections are a big victory for the Organization of the Islamic Conference. By the way, to my liberal friends who say, “Hey, what’s the big deal about the Organization of the Islamic Conference? Lighten up, man”: Try rolling around your tongue the words “Organization of the Christian Conference.” Would you be quite so cool with that? Fifty-seven prime ministers and presidents who get together and vote as a bloc in international affairs? Or would that be a theocratic affront to secular sensibilities? The casual acceptance of the phrase “the Muslim world” (“Mr. Obama’s now-famous speech to the Muslim world” — the New York Times) implicitly defers to the political ambitions of Islam. And, if there is a “Muslim world,” what are its boundaries? Forty years ago, the OIC began with mainly Middle Eastern members plus Indonesia and a couple more. By the Nineties, former Soviet Central Asia had signed on, plus Albania, Mozambique, Guyana, and various others. In 2005, Russia was admitted to “observer” membership.

But along with the big headline victories go smaller ones. These days, Islam doesn’t even have to show up. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has quietly pulled representations of Mohammed from its Islamic collection. With the Danish cartoons, violent mobs actually had to kill large numbers of people before Kurt Westegaard was sent into involuntary “retirement.” Even with South Park, the thugs still had to threaten murder. But the Metropolitan Museum caved preemptively — no murders, no threats, but best to crawl into a fetal position anyway.

Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians noted that certain, ahem, “immigrant communities” were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo “female genital mutilation.” So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a “ritual nick” to young girls.

A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at “FGM.” After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

Der Spiegel, an impeccably liberal magazine, summed up the remorseless Islamization of Europe in a recent headline: “How Much Allah Can the Old Continent Bear?” Well, what’s wrong with a little Allah-lite? The AAP thinks you can hop on the sharia express and only ride a couple of stops. In such ostensibly minor concessions, the “ritual nick” we’re performing is on ourselves. Further cuts will follow.

If morals are all merely cultural, and any other culture is as good as yours, upon what ground do you stand to condemn “FGM”?  The multi-culturalists have no answer, because they have disarmed themselves of any of the benefit of either natural law or revealed truth in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

You can’t beat something with nothing.  The remorseless secularization of Europe has seriously weakened its defenses from Islam’s true believers who continue to pursue the “slow jihad.” (See the video below.)  How far behind is the USA?  Not as far as one might wish, if either the inability to utter the phrase “radical Islam” on the part of Attorney General Holder, or the AAP’s acceptance of “ritual nicks,” is any guide.

Muslim women find an ally for more rights: the Koran

Indonesia’s Siti Musdah Mulia is a name to remember. That’s because she is showing Muslim women how to break out of bondage by using the words of the Koran.
Dr. Mulia was raised in a traditional Indonesian Muslim home and an Islamic boarding school. She was barred from contact with men. She was not allowed to laugh out loud. If she socialized with a non-Muslim, she was made to shower afterward.

Growing up, she traveled to other Muslim countries and found ways to understand Islam other than the rigid orthodoxy of her upbringing. Having earned a PhD in Islamic political thought, she has become a significant force in Indonesia and elsewhere for Muslim women’s rights. In 2007 she received the International Women of Courage award from then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Mulia is one of several courageous Muslim feminists who are challenging conservative male interpretations of Islam. As Isobel Coleman, a leading American authority on Islamic feminism and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me: “Half of those men have never read the Koran in their own language.”

Mulia is one of several Muslim women in Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries profiled in a new book by Dr. Coleman, “Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East.”

Instead of blatantly waving the banner of democracy, certain to raise charges of being tools of Western cultural imperialism, these women are quietly working within the culture, rather than against it, citing progressive interpretations of Islam itself as justification for women’s empowerment, particularly in education and the workplace.

Coleman applauds the work of a global women’s movement, musawah (“equality” in Arabic), in researching how the laws of Islam elevated women’s rights in Arabia upon the faith’s 7th-century arrival there. Islamic laws prohibited the killing of girl babies, upheld the right of women to own property, the right to choose their own husbands and impose conditions on the marriage, and to divorce their husbands. They entitled women to an education, to dignity and respect, and the right to think for themselves.

As the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia has experienced its surge of Islamic fundamentalism, as has the neighboring Muslim country of Malaysia. But both are non-Arab countries. Both are democracies that have avoided the religious extremism of the Arab world. In many respects, Indonesia today is a showplace of how nations prosper when they advance the cause of women in education and the workplace.

Could its example cause a transformation in the Arab world, where in some countries half the female population is illiterate and denied the benefits of education? Coleman says that when she floats this thesis in the Arab Muslim countries, the answer is: “But they [Indonesians] are not really Arabs.” True enough, but they are Muslims, and a common faith must surely have some influence.

In the world of politics, Indonesia has exerted substantial influence in Southeast Asia. However, successive leaders since President Sukarno have been careful to assert its non-aligned status vis-à-vis the major powers. US diplomacy has skillfully taken account of this, offering help and aid when welcome (as was the case when a giant tsunami crashed across Indonesia’s shores in 2004) but avoiding too public an embrace.

The present government of President Yudhoyono has, however, given some cautious indications that Muslim Indonesia might be able to help ease tensions between the Muslim Arab world and Israel.

In religious development, women in Indonesia are finding common cause with Muslim women elsewhere as they recapture the original meaning of the Koranic texts. Perhaps, as Coleman suggests, this quiet revolution “has the potential to be as transformative in this century as the Christian Reformation was in the 16th century.”

There are a few, oh pitifully few Muslims and Muslim organizations who are trying to reform Islam from the inside.  One is linked here.  We need to support these people in every way that we can.  I think there are probably many who would like to work towards such reform, but are simply afraid.

It is an open question whether or not Islam has the resources to BE reformed.  What powered the Protestant Reformation (and eventually the Counter-Reformation) was a return to foundational teachings, and a stripping away of some of the accretions of tradition in favor of the roots of Christianity.

It is not clear to me that a return to the roots of Islam is really a great idea.  A reformation of Islam probably needs to reflect a different approach, some kind of willingness to interpret Islamic texts not in an originalist way, but in a “post-modern” way.

So, the paradox:  I am in favor of “originalist” interpretations of the Bible, but I hope that Muslims will discover “post-modern” interpretations of the Koran that will allow them to resist the call to violence issued by Muslim fundamentalists.

And, being a Christian, I cannot fail but to hope, profoundly, that many Muslims will find Christ, as they begin to question the roots of Islam.

Poll: 91% against Obama imposing deal

A huge majority of Israelis would oppose an attempt by US President Barack Obama to impose a final-status agreement with the Palestinians, a poll sponsored by the Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA) organization found this week.

Leading American newspapers reported last week that Obama was considering trying to impose a settlement if efforts to begin indirect proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians proved unsuccessful. The option was discussed in a meeting with current and former advisers to the White House.

Asked whether they would support Obama imposing a plan dividing Jerusalem and removing the Jordan Valley from Israeli control, 91 percent of Israelis who expressed an opinion said no and 9% said yes, according to the poll of 503 Israelis, which was taken by Ma’agar Mohot on Sunday and Monday and had a 4.5% margin of error.

Eighty-one percent said it was improper for Obama to try to force such a plan on the two sides, while 19% of those who expressed an opinion said it was proper.

The poll asked whether it would create enduring peace or enduring conflict should Jerusalem be divided, with Jewish neighborhoods remaining part of Israel and Arab neighborhoods becoming part of a Palestinian state. Eighty-four percent said conflict and 16% said peace.

The numbers were similar for the Jordan Valley, where 90% opposed relinquishing Israeli control and 10% were in favor.

Meanwhile, a poll of Palestinians conducted on April 8-10 by the Center of Opinion Polls and Survey Studies at An-Najah University in Nablus asked Palestinians whether they would accept the creation of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders with a land exchange as a final solution for the Palestinian problem, and whether they would support or reject making Jerusalem a capital for two states.

The numbers on the two-state solution were 66.7% against, 28.3% in favor, and 5% who did not know or did not express an opinion. On the Jerusalem issue, 77.4 said they opposed such a plan, 20.8% were in favor, and 1.8% had no opinion or chose not to express it.

Read that last bit again.  The Palestinians will not accept a “peace plan” on even the least possible advantageous terms for Israel.

There cannot be peace without a peace partner.  Hamas and Fatah have done a sufficiently good job in indoctrinating the last three generations of Palestinians to hate Israel that now there is no chance for Palestinian public support of a plan that Israel could not agree to anyway.

The only “fast solution” to the problem is going to be a complete victory by one side or the other.

There is a slow solution, one that will take about 40 years, a timeline so long that no Western government can possibly keep its eye on the prize that long, although Muslim governments seem to have no problem conceiving and employing decades long strategies (which is exactly why we are where we are today).   That slow solution is fairly simple.

The world’s governments COULD simply cut off all aid to Palestine, if Palestine continues to teach hate in its schools and media, and continues to elect Hamas.  The world does not “owe” Palestine anything, anything at all.  If Palestine chooses to be run by a terrorist organization, so be it.  Then we could wait about 40 years for the current haters to die, and for the next generations to begin to wonder what the fuss was about.  And those people might then be peace partners.

Of course, the world’s governments would have to stand together in this, and, of course, Iran, Syria and China, at least, would be likely to do an end-run around any ban imposed by the rest.

And that illustrates the essential issue.  Far from the “conflict in the middle east” problem STEMMING from the Israel/Palestine issue, the exact reverse is true.  The Israel/Palestine issue EXISTS, still, because several nations see it as in their best interests to keep it from ever being solved.   This has been true since the creation of the modern Israel.

But you can’t make peace with people who, more than anything, want you dead.

When even experienced negotiators begin to see this, it’s time to take notice.

This is one time when I wish that being a bit over the top in predicting the possible future of airline security hadn’t turned out to be more than likely.  I was at least half joking…  but I guess the terrorist have no sense of humor.

Jihadists plan attack with bombs inside their bodies, to foil new airport scanners

Britain is facing a new Al Qaeda terror threat from suicide ‘body bombers’ with explosives surgically inserted inside them.

Until now, terrorists have attacked airlines, Underground trains and buses by secreting bombs in bags, shoes or underwear to avoid detection.

But an operation by MI5 has uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda is planning a new stage in its terror campaign by inserting ‘surgical bombs’ inside people for the first time.

Security services believe the move has been prompted by the recent introduction at airports of body scanners, which are designed to catch terrorists before they board flights.

It is understood MI5 became aware of the threat after observing increasingly vocal internet ‘chatter’ on Arab websites this year.

The warning comes in the wake of the failed attempt by London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day.

One security source said: ‘If the terrorists are talking about this, we need to be ready and do all we can to counter the threat.’

A leading source added that male bombers would have the explosive secreted near their appendix or in their buttocks, while females would have the material placed inside their breasts in the same way as figure-enhancing implants.

Experts said the explosive PETN (Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate) would be placed in a plastic sachet inside the bomber’s body before the wound was stitched up like a normal operation incision and allowed to heal.

A shaped charge of 8oz of PETN can penetrate five inches of armour and would easily blow a large hole in an airliner….