harmonicminer

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….

If you read here much, you know that I am skeptical about the existence of “moderate Islam,” although I think there are such things as “moderate Muslims.” By that, of course, I mean that there is precious little ideological or historical support for “moderate Islam” as a coherent perspective, because such a perspective would require ignoring so much that is central to the Koran and Hadith, as interpreted by Muslims themselves.   But there are certainly Muslims who desire to be moderate, and are struggling to find a way to be so.

Here is a very interesting opinion piece by Paul Wolfowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and assistant secretary of state for East Asia, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.  He is a well known conservative, and a person who was central in the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq.  He is much reviled by the Left, but opinions like the one below show him to be far more nuanced than he is often portrayed.

Wahid and the Voice of Moderate Islam

By PAUL WOLFOWITZ

Abdurrahman Wahid, who died last week at the age of 69, was the first democratically elected president of Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country and third largest democracy. It has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world. Although he was forced from office after less than two years, he nevertheless helped to set the course of what has been a remarkably successful transition to democracy.

Even more important than his role as a politician, Wahid was the spiritual leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization in Indonesia, and probably in the world, with 40 million members. He was a product of Indonesia’s traditionally tolerant and humane practice of Islam, and he took that tradition to a higher level and shaped it in ways that will last long after his death.

Wahid recognized that the world’s Muslim community is engaged in what he called in a 2005 op-ed for this newspaper “nothing less than a global struggle for the soul of Islam” and he understood the danger for Indonesia, for Islam and for all of us from this “crisis of misunderstanding that threatens to engulf our entire world.”

Wahid was one of the most impressive leaders I have known. Although his formal higher education was limited to Islamic studies in Cairo and Arabic literature in Baghdad, his breadth of knowledge was astounding. With a voracious appetite for knowledge and a remarkably retentive memory, he seemed to know all of the important Islamic religious and philosophical texts. He also loved reading a wide range of Western literature (including most of William Faulkner’s novels) as well as Arabic poetry. He enjoyed French movies, and cinema in general, and could identify the conductor of a Beethoven symphony simply by listening to a recording. He was an avid soccer fan and once compared the different styles of two German soccer teams to illustrate two alternative strategies for economic development. He loved jokes, particularly political ones. During Suharto’s autocratic rule he published a collection of Soviet political humor in Indonesian, with the obvious purpose of teaching his own people how to laugh at their rulers.

Despite all that learning, Wahid had a common touch that enabled him to express his thoughts in down-to-earth language. He thus gained broad legitimacy for a moderate and tolerant vision. He could speak to young Indonesians, grappling with the relationship between religion and science by explaining to them the thoughts of a medieval Arab philosopher like Ibn Rushd (known to Christian philosophers as Averroes). And he was all the more effective because he himself had grappled with controversial ideas.

Wahid had been somewhat attracted in his youth by the writings of Said Qutb and Hasan al Banna, the founders of the Muslim brotherhood, but his deep humanism led him to reject them. When I visited him recently he told me of a long-ago visit to a mosque in Morocco where an Arabic translation of Aristotle’s “Nichomachean Ethics” was on display. Seeing that book had brought tears to his eyes and Wahid explained: “If I hadn’t read the ‘Nichomachean Ethics’ as a young man, I might have joined the Muslim brotherhood.”

No doubt, what had so impressed Wahid was that Aristotle could arrive at deep truths about matters of right and wrong without the aid of religion, based simply on the belief that “the human function is activity of the soul in accord with reason” (Nichomachean Ethics, Book I). But his tears must have reflected the thought of how close he had come to accepting a cramped and intolerant view of life and humanity.

Throughout his public career, three ideas were central to Wahid’s thinking. First was that true belief required religious freedom. “The essence of Islam,” he once wrote, is “encapsulated” in the words of the Quran, “For you, your religion; for me, my religion.” Indonesia, he believed, needs “to develop a full religious tolerance based on freedom of faith.” Second was his belief that the fundamental requirement for democracy—or any form of just government—is equal treatment for all citizens before the law. Third, that respect for minorities is essential for social stability and national unity, particularly for Indonesia with its extraordinary diversity.

Throughout his career Wahid spoke up forcefully for people with unpopular ideas—even ones he disagreed with—and for the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. He was admired by the Christian and Chinese minorities for his willingness to do so. One of his first acts as president was to participate in prayers at a Hindu temple in Bali where he had earlier spent several months studying Hindu philosophy. Later he removed a number of restrictions on ethnic Chinese and made Chinese New Year an optional national holiday.

Even after leaving office, Wahid’s role as a defender of religious freedom was extremely important. Indonesian voters have rejected extremist politics at the polls—and the leadership of the current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono deserves much credit for that. Nevertheless, extremist views and even violent extremism too often go unchallenged. A recent report from The Wahid Insitute (which he founded in 2004) notes that a minority with extremist views, now in control of the Indonesian Ulama Council, has issued religious rulings against “deviant” groups. An even smaller minority that espouses violence, particularly the Islamic Defender Front, has attacked Christian churches and the mosques of the small Muslim Ahmadiyah sect.

Wahid was one of the few prominent Indonesians to defend the rights of the Ahmadiyah or to speak out forcefully against the Islamic Defender Front. Doing so takes courage. But he was always courageous, whether in defying President Suharto at the height of his power or in his personal struggle against encroaching blindness and failing health.

Although optimistic that “true Islam” will prevail, as he wrote in his 2005 op-ed, Wahid did not underestimate the dangers facing the world from an “extreme . . . ideology in the minds of fanatics” who “pervert Islam into a dogma of intolerance, hatred and bloodshed” and who justify their brutality by declaring “Islam is above everything else.” This fundamentalist ideology, he said, “has become a well-financed, multifaceted global movement that operates like a juggernaut in much of the developing world.” What begins as a misunderstanding “of Islam by Muslims themselves” becomes a “crisis of misunderstanding” that afflicts “Muslims and non-Muslims alike, with tragic consequences.”

No one who knew Abdurrahman Wahid can believe that those fanatics who preach hatred and violence speak for the world’s Muslims. Even though the extremist ideology represents a distinct minority of Muslims, it is well-financed and well-organized. To confront it, Muslim leaders like himself need, as he wrote in 2005, “the understanding and support of like-minded individuals, organizations and governments throughout the world . . . to offer a compelling alternate vision of Islam, one that banishes the fanatical ideology of hatred to the darkness from which it emerged.”

That support includes material support, but it also includes the moral support that comes from international recognition and attention for Muslim leaders who speak out with the courage that Wahid did.

When Wahid was only 12 he was riding in a car with his father, Wahid Hasyim, himself a prominent Muslim leader at the time of Indonesian independence, when the car slid off a mountain road and his father suffered fatal injuries. What Wahid most remembered from that tragic event was the sight of thousands of people lining the roads as his father’s casket traveled the 80 kilometers from Surabaya to his burial at Jombang. Overwhelmed by the affection people had for his father, he wondered “What could one man do that the people would love him so?”

As the funeral procession for Wahid himself traveled the same route on the last day of 2009, thousands of mourners, deeply moved, again lined the road. What had he done that Indonesians so loved him? Perhaps the question is answered by the words that he asked to have on his tomb: “Here lies a humanist.” That he was and a great one as well. No one can replace him, but hopefully he has inspired others to follow in his path.

Mr. Wolfowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and assistant secretary of state for East Asia, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

h/t: Michael Yon

The Christmas Day Bomber invited a prominent ‘jihad’ cleric to address British students

The Christmas Day airline bomber invited a radical cleric who has advocated dying while ‘fighting jihad’ to address British students.

While president of the Islamic Society at University College London, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab helped arrange for Abdur Raheem Green to speak.

The cleric, who converted to Islam from Roman Catholicism, has written that conflict between Islam and the West is ‘ordered in the Koran’, and that Muslims and Westerners ‘ cannot live peaceably together’.

He has also claimed: ‘Dying while fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise and Allah’s good pleasure’.

In 2005, shortly before Abdulmutallab arranged for him to address UCL, Green was barred from entering Australia after opposition leader Kim Beazley accused him of ’spreading hate’.

The revelation adds weight to the belief that Abdulmutallab was radicalised during his time studying in London, where he read mechanical engineering and business at UCL between 2005 and 2008.

It is simply not supportable that jihad is a response to poverty and oppression, or the rest of the world’s poor would be doing what upper-middle class and wealthy young radicalized Muslims are doing… killing the innocent for Allah, or some other god.

But it doesn’t happen, does it?

The problem is 7th-century Islam in the 21st century.  Of course, 7th-century Islam was a problem all along.

In a refreshing break from its usual mantra of “terrorism is just a natural response to poverty and oppression,” the AP reports that the airline bomb suspect came from an elite family and the best schools.

As a member of an uppercrust Nigerian family, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab received the best schooling, from the elite British International School in West Africa to the vaunted University College London.

But the education he wanted was of a different sort: Nigerian officials say his interest in extremist Islam prompted his father to warn U.S. authorities. As Abdulmutallab was being escorted in handcuffs off the Detroit-bound airliner he attempted to blow up on Christmas Day, he told U.S. officials that he had sought an extremist education at an Islamist hotbed in Yemen.

A portrait emerged Sunday of a serious young man who led a privileged life as the son of a prominent banker, but became estranged from his family as an adult. Devoutly religious, he was nicknamed “The Pope” for his saintly aura and gave few clues in his youth that he would turn radical, friends and family said.

“In all the time I taught him we never had cross words,” said Michael Rimmer, a Briton who taught history at the British International School in Lome, Togo. “Somewhere along the line he must have met some sort of fanatics, and they must have turned his mind.”

At what point will the west, particularly the leftist elites, stop trying to tie terrorism to poverty or “oppression”?  This nonsense arises in part, of course, to find a way to blame the Israelis for defending themselves, and refusing to continue to allow their opponents advantages in land and ability to pre-position forces that nearly led to Israel’s destruction in earlier wars.  The real enemy is a mosque-induced death cult, whatever the economic status of its members.

This 23 yr old wannabe mass murderer had privileges I can only dream about. Something poisoned his mind. That something was radical Islam.

Abdulmutallab is not the only one with such ambitions.  His colleagues in hopeful horror are, like him, “students” from families that are wealthy enough to send them abroad for world-class educations.  The thing they have in common is that they take 7th-century Islam extremely seriously.  They actually believe the words of the “Prophet,” and have chosen to live — and die — in response to that belief.

In the meantime, ever more restrictive airport boarding regulations seem a certainty, and ever more intrusive searches, until we figure out that we have no choice but to identify who is more likely to have evil intent, and give them more scrutiny, because we surely don’t have the resources or the time to give the necessary scrutiny to everyone, including your grandmother in a wheelchair from Peoria, or Trenton, who may choose not to visit you next Christmas due to a distaste for body cavity searches and x-ray glasses (like the ones they used to sell in D.C. Comics, except these will work) in the hands of prurient security types.

The feckless belief that we can solve our security problems by restricting carry-ons and on-board behavior even more than we already have, and by searching everyone even more thoroughly, is yet more “Powerpuff Policy.”

Sooner or later, someone is going to figure out how to make high-explosive dentures and hip/knee replacements.  While Christian “fundamentalists” will be getting only fluoride treatments, young adult male Islamic fanatics will be lining up to have all their teeth pulled and get dental implants made of enamel coated plastique.   I predict an influx of wealthy foreign nationals, of Islamic extraction, into European schools of orthopedic surgery, particularly focusing on lower extremity joint replacements.  Our too-faithful recent oral surgery patients, who will not have flossed much, will enter airplanes with a slight limp.  It’s tough to recover from double knee/double hip transplants, especially when it hurts to eat.

The other passengers will feel sorry for them, briefly.

Eventually, the only people on airplanes will be strip-searched people with no scars, who just endured body cavity searches and had their stomachs pumped.  But they will be very, very safe, wearing their airline-issued flying uniforms.  When they land at their destinations, they will report to the changing room/luggage area, where they’ll get their clothing back, which was sent in a transport plane.   Cost of a ticket from L.A. to Phoenix?  About $1,000.

Coming up next:  explosive hair.

I cannot remember one single incident in which an international terror attack was prefaced with a cry of, “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

“Who is like you, oh Lord….” has not been uttered by even one suicide bomber just before they flipped their fatal switch.

No airline hijacker has screamed, “Om Mani Padme Hum”, “Hare Krishna”, or even a simple “Aum.”

And in spite of the often discriminatory tone towards Christianity in this country, I know of no crowds of fanatics who have danced in the streets around a burning effigy, shouting “Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”.

The simple fact is this.  Virtually all international terror is done in the name of Islam.  Note I did not say Islam is a religion of terror.  I said terror is done in the name of Islam.  Anyone wishing to step forward with a plausible denial of this simple fact please feel free to do so.

So here is the problem in America today.  The current occupant of the White House is an Islamic apologist and his administration reflects his attitude.

In his first year in office, President Obama has gone out of his way to reach out to Islamic regimes, some of which can best be described as avowed enemies, either of us or our allies, while at the same time he tours the world, apologizing for the United States.  Obama has tried to play down the importance of remembering 9/11 by transforming it into a “day of service”.  He has established the chilling precedent of bestowing constitutional rights on terrorists captured on the battlefield and intentionally avoided condemnation of terror admittedly and openly done in the name of Islam.

Why does Obama do this?  I don’t know.  Is it something left over from his childhood experiences?  Perhaps.  Is it because he continues to believe his own press about being “the Chosen One” -  that somehow the strength of his charisma can overcome the hatred and death wish our sworn enemies have for us?  Maybe.  But at the end of the day the reasons don’t really matter.  What does matter is that I believe our country is less safe now because of this administration.

This latest airline incident is truly frightening in what it reveals:  Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, is a man on the terror watch list, whose own father, a highly placed Nigerian Diplomat, reported him as a terrorist. He boarded a plane with no passport, no luggage, and a one-way ticket paid in cash.  This man almost succeeded in detonating a bomb on the plane as it approached Detroit’s Metro Airport.  And the response of our Homeland Security Secretary? “Once the incident occurred, the system worked,”  This may go down as one of the most asinine public statements ever made.  But it is frighteningly a reflection of this administration’s impotent position on terror, er, I mean “man-caused disaster.”

God help us.  Because I am starting to believe we are going to experience another disaster like 9/11 and if I am alive afterward I fully expect to hear this president urge us not to “rush to judgment,” when, in fact that is exactly what we should do.  Homeland Security should immediately begin to profile passengers according to threat level, starting with young Islamic men.  If I was a peaceful Muslim male between the age of 18 and 30, and I was given extra scrutiny at an airport I think I would certainly understand.  Wouldn’t you?  But instead we ramp up our security for everyone in the name of political correctness and to placate.  We don’t need to pat down wheelchair-bound octogenarians and mothers with a stroller carrying twins.  We don’t need to force everyone to sit in their seats for the last hour of a flight, with nothing in their hands.  We need to look for those who are most likely to commit these acts and like it or not they are within a pretty narrowly-defined group.  We need to stop fearing what someone might say.  And we need to stop pretending the regimes that spawn and sponsor these monsters will ever become our friends.

Jerusalem Post, via Yoni

Israel is likely to face advanced Iranian weaponry, long-range rockets, large missile silos and dozens of kilometers of underground tunnels connecting open fields with urban centers in the event of a future conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to the latest Israeli assessments.

Since Operation Cast Lead ended almost a year ago, Hamas has increased its weapons smuggling and today operates hundreds of tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor. It has smuggled in dozens of long-range Iranian-made rockets that can reach Tel Aviv as well as advanced anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank missiles.

Hamas is believed to have a significant number of shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles and 9M113 Konkurs, which have a range of four kilometers and are capable of penetrating heavy armor.

In addition, Hamas is believed to have today a few thousand rockets, including several hundred with a range of 40 kilometers and several dozen with a range of between 60 and 80 km. Intelligence assessments are that Hamas smuggled the missiles into the Gaza Strip through tunnels, possibly in several components.

Iran already supplies Hamas with 122mm Katyusha rockets that are smuggled into Gaza in several pieces and then assembled by Hamas engineers.

One of the main lessons Hamas learned from Cast Lead was the need to reinforce its defenses and as a result has invested efforts in digging additional tunnels, which connect open fields with homes belonging to key operatives as well as command centers.

The idea is to enable freedom of movement for the operatives between different battlefields, which it found difficult during Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza earlier this year.

Hamas has also increased its use of civilian infrastructure, particularly mosques, which the terror group already used quite extensively for storage and launching rockets during the operation. Hamas is believed to have taken control of almost 80 percent of the mosques in Gaza, using them to store weapons and set up command-and-control centers.

Hamas, is “padding” itself as well by setting up its command centers in large apartment buildings. This way, it believes, the IDF will not attack them by air, and will need to send ground forces deep into the population centers, where it will lose its technological advantage.

In addition, Hamas is hoping to increase the effectiveness of its rocket capability during a future conflict and has created large missile silos.

Hamas has also recently increased its efforts to dig what the IDF calls “offensive tunnels” close to the border with Israel, which the terror group could use to infiltrate into Israel and kidnap soldiers.

These tunnels are believed to be of strategic value for Hamas, which would only use them for large-scale attacks and high-value targets.

Russian train bombing

A dreadful thing happened last week. One of the fastest express trains of the whole Russia, Nevsky Express, which was going from Moscow to Saint-Petersburg and having more than 600 passengers on its board was blew up. At 9:34 pm, when train was going somewhere near Aleshinka – Uglovka towns, 7 kilos of TNT which were buried under the tracks detonated and as a result of which the train was derailed.

Many photos and story at the link. This was covered pretty sparsely in the USA… but it is a very big deal.

I wonder when Putin and company will catch on that Iran exports terrorism to Russia as much as anywhere else, directly or indirectly.

Abbas accuses Obama of doing ‘nothing’ for peace in the Middle East

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday accused US President Barack Obama of doing “nothing” to achieve peace in the Middle East. Speaking to Argentinian newspaper Clarin, Abbas said he hoped that Obama would “take a more important role in the future.”

He went on to say that the Palestinian people were awaiting US pressure on Israel, “so that it respects international law and takes up the Road Map,” stressing that the peace process could not be restarted without a halt to settlement construction.

When asked what he was willing to concede for peace, Abbas told Clarin that the Palestinian people had “already made concessions.”

He opined that the current government, with Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister and Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister, “is not seeking peace,” though he said that 73 percent of Israelis were in favor of peace.

What Abbas wants, of course, is for Obama to be tougher on his (putatively) only friend in the Middle East, Israel, than he is on actual opponents, like Iran, Syria or Hisbullah.

If we needed any reminder of the fact, this illustrates the basic dynamic of all Middle East peace negotiations.  Israel, which has always been the attacked party, must give up land and options that were legitimately earned in acts of national self-defense from Arab aggression, self-defense against incredible odds.  In the meantime, Palestine doesn’t have to give up anything, including the intent to see the end of Israel as a Jewish nation.

Prediction:  Obama will be no more successful than any of his predecessors at convincing Palestinians that their best interests lie in normalizing relations with Israel, with reporting and fighting against the terrorists in their number, and with going about the business of building a functioning economy, without the ridiculous and unachievable destruction of Israel.  Palestinians have exactly the same opportunity now that Israel had 60 years ago, to build something out of nothing in the desert.  Further, they have a potential partner, Israel, which would help, if Palestinians could control their hatred of the Jews.  I’m not holding my breath.

In the meantime, Obama brings a student council president level of understanding to a negotiation where world class diplomats have tried and failed.  I won’t blame him for failing.  I will blame him if he manages to cripple Israel while he is busy failing to engineer an unlikely peace.

If you want to recruit men to risk their lives repeatedly for relatively minor gain, Hezbollah thinks it knows the secret:

Mohammad, a 40-year old Lebanese Shiite who lives in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs, was holding forth on the virtues of resistance, loyalty, and sex. “You could create the most loyal army by providing political power, social services and fulfilling the desires of your men — namely, sexual ones,” he declared.

“And Hezbollah has been very successful in this regard,” Mohammad continued.

It is hard to disagree.

Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, expanded the Shiite community’s political power within the country, and has provided social services, such as health care and education, to its constituency since the 1980s. Today, it is also working to fulfill the sexual needs of its supporters, though a practice known as mutaa marriage.

Mutaa is a form of “temporary marriage” only acceptable within Shiite communities, one that allows couples to have religiously sanctioned sex for a limited period of time, without any commitments, and without the obligatory involvement of religious figures.

In conservative Muslim societies known for their strict sense of propriety, mutaa offers an escape clause. The contract is very simple. The woman says: “I marry myself to you for [a specific period of time] and for [a specified dowry]” and the man says: “I accept.” The period can range between one hour and a year, and is subject to renewal.

A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, but a Muslim man can temporarily marry a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish woman, as long as she is a divorcée or a widow. However, those interviewed for this article confirmed that Hezbollah-the “Party of God”-has allowed the practice to spread to virgins or girls who have never married before, as long as the permission of her guardian (father or paternal grandfather) is obtained.

Presumably, if you allow your virgin daughter to engage in a Shiite-sanctioned “temporary marriage,” you aren’t then required to kill her to preserve your family’s honor, which has been a big problem in Lebanon, it seems.

November 6, 2009. President Obama comments on the tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas in which an army major gunned down dozens of fellow soldiers:

We don’t know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.”

July 22, 2009. President Obama comments on the arrest of Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates, arrested in his own home after being mistaken for a burgler:

I don’t know not having been there and not knowing all the facts what role race played in that (incident), but…the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home… There is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, that’s just a fact.

Mr. President, your hypocrisy in the Fort Hood case is glaring.  The way in which you chose to respond to the news of the tragedy was a public disgrace.  And in spite of the efforts of you, your administration and the sycophant press, there will be no denying that yet another mass killing of the helpless has been perpetrated, apparently in the name of Islam.  Our country has a significant history in that respect as well, wouldn’t you agree?

it would appear that there is a pretty clear connection between the Fort Hood murderer and a radical imam who was also influential on some of the 9/11 killers:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam
said to be a “spiritual adviser” to three of the hijackers who attacked
America on Sept 11, 2001.

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US
soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in
Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September
11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an
American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting
in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting
attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.

Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for
al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort
Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday’s horrific shooting spree.

As investigators look at Hasan’s motives and mindset, his attendance
at the mosque could be an important piece of the jigsaw. Al-Awlaki
moved to Dar al-Hijrah as imam in January, 2001, from the west coast,
and three months later the September 11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hamzi and
Hani Hanjour began attending his services. A third hijacker attended
his services in California.

Hasan was praying at Dar al-Hijrah at about the same time, and the
FBI will now want to investigate whether he met the two terrorists.

Charles Allen, a former under-secretary for intelligence at the
Department of Homeland Security, has described al-Awlaki, who now lives
in Yemen, as an “al-Qaeda supporter, and former spiritual leader to
three of the September 11 hijackers… who targets US Muslims with
radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home
in Yemen”….

I wonder how much coverage this connection will get in US media.

H/T:  Robert Spencer

Just to clarify, I don’t think Spencer is saying that US judges give light sentences (or none) to “honor killers,” but it is a fact in many Islamic nations.

Someone asked me the other day how my post-election predictions were turning out, regarding press coverage of Obama and other matters.

It’s a bit early to know.  But one thing is becoming apparent:  the electorate is significantly less happy with the reality of Obama than the hope and change they thought they voted for.  So far, the press has not begun to savage Obama in the ways I thought might happen.  But Obama is finally beginning to be criticized for his sheer incompetence, the biggest evidence of which is his mismanagement of the process and the message surrounding his attempted takeover of US healthcare, though his astronomical deficit plans are a close second.  And, of course, the matters are related.  Those enormous deficits are the projections of Obama’s plans if the government takeover of healthcare is NOT passed.   If it is, everything is worse.  Far worse.

To be fair, it was bound to be a hard sell.  Americans are a cantankerous lot when they see (though they are a bit slow) that their freedom is about to be stolen.  But Obama’s twin errors were: 1) leaving it up to Pelosi and Reid to craft a bill and 2) telling obvious lies that could be checked (”You can keep your current health insurance if you like it, even if this plan becomes law.”)  Pelosi and Reid are so far inside the beltway that they simply had no concept of how bad it was going to look to Americans that congress-critters hadn’t read the bill, didn’t understand it, couldn’t defend it based on facts about its contents, but wouldn’t themselves be willing to live under “the public option” as a matter of course.   Obama was foolish to trust them in this.  Of course, Obama’s lack of experience in national politics, and in managing a political situation not in control of a Chicago-like machine, is what really betrayed him.

He compounded it by doubling down on obvious lies.  Nothing in the bill would stop any employer from throwing employees into the “public option,” and plenty in the bill would provide them with motivation to do so.  Americans began to see that the promises were mutually incompatible, which included coverage for the “uninsured,” lower prices, freedom to choose your providers, no tax increase, and no rationing.  It was as if someone tried to convince them that you really CAN have it “good, fast and cheap.”  Americans know better, when they start paying attention.

Many Americans felt robbed by the arbitrariness of “cash for clunkers,” knowing that it was a straight government giveaway for which THEY could not qualify, but would surely pay.  Twinned with this is the planned trillion-dollar-deficits-per-year for the next decade, even if the Obama, Pelosi and Reid are NOT able to extend government’s already partially accomplished takeover of healthcare.  And that’s probably optimistic, based on current projections.  Americans got numb to billions….  but trillions is something else entirely.  And they simply don’t want to pay it.  To be blunt, they’re terrified of it.

Regarding another prediction I made, I continue to believe that if the terrorists want Obama to be president for two terms, they’d be wise to just hold off attacking the US until his second term.  Such an attack, in the face of Obama’s prosecution of those who would protect us, namely the CIA, would surely result in yet more support peeling off from him.  He might try to regain that support by taking some dramatic action… but it would probably be of no more worth than Clinton bombing aspirin factories in the Sudan.

Support is also peeling off on Obama’s left.  In particular, the anti-war types who were seduced by Obama’s Iraq pullout plans have to be disappointed that he is adding troops to Afghanistan, and seems relatively serious about following the advice of his generals….  nearly the only thing Obama has done right so far.  Peaceniks are getting off the bus in droves, apparently having signed up for the wrong tour package.

In the meantime, I think one aspect of my predictions is right.  The press is STILL not seriously criticizing Obama’s policies, but it is starting to criticize Obama the man and president for his failures to carry them out.  As disdain for the puerility of their annointed choice begins to grow, some of that may yet lead to the investigative journalism that should have been done before the elections.

There is such a thing as a need to survive.  As the public distrust for Obama grows, if the press continues to support him and/or his policies unrealistically, its credibility gap will only grow.  At some point, the people who own the newspapers and networks that are hemorrhaging readers and viewers will start to count the cost.

When and if major media outlets start reporting on how other outlets sat on stories that would have damaged Obama during the election season, you’ll know the world has shifted.  There are probably a lot more of these than we know.  The dynamic will be simple: reporters share info over drinks.  One lets slip that his editor sat on something damaging to Obama.  The other reporter, desperate to salvage a sinking career and job prospects (and there are a LOT of people in that situation), talks his similarly desperate editor into publishing or broadcasting.  And the feeding frenzy begins.  There’s a LOT of that stuff out there.

I wonder how many more job losses NBC and MSNBC will have to have, how many more major newspapers will have to cut jobs or worse, before simple survival instinct sets in.  It’s a toss up… are they just loopy, or are they lemmings?

But no one believes them anymore.

It has become common for Muslim apologists, responding to the criticism that Muslims don’t condemn terrorism, to quote this imam or that, saying something that seems like a criticism.  Most of us in the west have little ability to determine the worth of these “criticisms.”  Is this something being said one way to the west, when the media are listening, and another way to the Muslim audience?  Is it a carefully worded “sympathy for the families of the dead” or is it a full-throated condemnation of the terrorist act as unIslamic and immoral, without equivocation or ambivalence?  After all, we give sympathy to the families of justly executed murderers.  Such sympathy hardly constitutes condemnation of the judge, the jury, the law or the executioners.

Another response is to say that the west is just as morally ambivalent about its own failings.  This article compares Muslim reluctance to condemn clear moral failure on the part of other Muslims to the tendency by modern Americans (including in the North) to whitewash the Confederate role in the Civil War, to call great generals of the South “heroes,” etc., when in fact they were fighting for a “state’s right” to protect the chattel ownership of human beings.  Of course, that war ended 145 years ago… there was less tendency in the North to be ambivalent about it at the time.  And this highlights another tendency of Muslim apologists, to point at western history, because there isn’t much they can point to now that compares to bombing African embassies, 9/11, the London Tube bombings, the Spanish train bombings,  the incredible carnage wrought in Iraq by Al Qaeda, the BATH killers, the Shia killers, the Indonesian Islamist killers, the Pakistani killers in Mumbai, etc., etc., etc., ad endless nauseam.

Occasionally something like this appears: Indian Muslims under pressure in Mumbai aftermath

“We strongly believe terrorists have no religion and they do not deserve a burial,” said Maulana Zaheer Abbas Rizvi of the All India Shia Personal Law Board, a body for framing Muslim laws.

This is good, but it’s in the same league as the pastor of a large church in Oklahoma condemning Timothy McVeigh, with perhaps tepid support from his denomination, but not much from a national umbrella church organization like the National Council of Churches or the National Association of Evangelicals, let alone wider Christendom.   The Shia are a distinct minority in India at about 10% of the approximately 100 million Muslims.

It’s tempting to put all Muslim denunciations of terrorism in the same category, but it’s a mistake.  It is not unusual for (especially) moderate Muslims to denounce the murder of other Muslims by Islamists.   How many of those same people say anything about rocketing Israeli civilians?

Even CAIR “denounces” terrorism, all the while it supports it via the Holy Land Foundation’s funneling of cash to Hamas.  Denunciations of terrorism, lacking specifics of who did what to whom, are cheap.  Ask CAIR to condemn a specific jihadi’s murder of innocents and all you usually get is, “We condemn all terrorism.”  And that’s code for, “We’re not going to name names.  And Israel is a terrorist nation.”   A ringing moral condemnation does not begin with, “Yes, but…”

So regarding Muslim denunciations of bad behavior by Muslims, some discernment is required.  Yes, you can find the occasional scholar or Imam who denounces it (though it often lacks those specifics).  But is it a scholar who is important in the Muslim world, or merely one who is popular with western elites as a “moderate spokesperson”?  It is well documented that many Muslim spokespeople say one thing in English to western media, and something else entirely to their own people, in their own language.  When a “Christian” murders an abortionist (which happens about once every ten years in the USA), virtually EVERY Christian leader speaks out against it instantly, in practical terms, including very conservative anti-abortion activists, both Protestant and Catholic.  You don’t need to look for “moderate Christians,” or “Christian scholars,” or something.  The Jerry Falwells, James Dobsons, Bishop Chaputs, the Popes, Pat Robertsons, Christian leaders of every stripe, Christian academics, the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, virtually every pro-life group and conservative talk-show host will condemn in unison the murder of the abortionist “in the name of Christ.”  And this is the response to only ONE person’s murder “in the name of Christ,” about every ten years.

Is it possible to contend that there is anything even remotely close to this in the Muslim world?  Instead, we see people dancing in the street at the murder of thousands.  We see a “compassionately released” terrorist, reponsible for the deaths of hundreds, greeted as a conquering hero by national leaders and clerics (most recently in Lybia, but it’s a common pattern, isn’t it?).   Imagine if Timothy McVeigh had driven his diesel-laced fertilizer truck up to the Al-Hussein Mosque in Cairo, instead of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and said God told him to do it.  When the Egyptians released him on “compassionate parole” in 30 years (you’re laughing hysterically, right?), do you think his return would be celebrated by the President of the USA, national religious leaders, an adoring press, and public acclaim?

One “out” that is sometimes taken is to say that there is “no recognized single leader” in Islam.  But there isn’t in Christianity, either.  If you consulted with the Pope, the Archibishop of Canterbury, the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, maybe some worldwide Protestant denominations and a few national Orthodox churches, and they all agreed, you could reasonably say “Christianity has spoken.”  And they all condemn the murder of abortionists, even though most are pro-life (with the notable exception of the National Council of Churches organizations, of course, which mostly represent dying denominations).

As I understand it, there are four “schools” of Islamic jurisprudence in Sunni Islam, and two in Shia Islam.  Those schools have well-known leaders, perhaps two or three important ones in each case.  It would be most persuasive if THOSE leaders spoke in unison that the murder of non-Muslims by jihadis is immoral and unIslamic.  But people in the west don’t listen clearly.  Some of these guys have “expressed sympathy” for the families of the killed on 9/11.   That is not the same thing as a ringing condemnation of the acts of the terrorists, and the public assurance to their own people, in their own people’s native languages, that the acts were sin, were unIslamic, would have been condemned by Muhammed, and did not earn the perpetrators a place in paradise.  Has THAT happened?  Or should we accept the PR statements of “moderates” who know that they’re talking to the western media in English or French?  Does Islam even teach that it is a sin to lie to non-Muslims for the sake of protecting the reputation of Islam?   Google “Al-taqiyya.”  (Qur’an 3:28: “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers. If any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah; except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them”.  This verse has been used, it seems, to justify lying to infidels in the defense of Islam.)

Let’s be really clear.  Imagine that 20 “Christians” hijacked four airliners filled with people from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Iran, and flew them into, say,

1) the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca at full occupancy,

2) the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina during the hadj, and maybe

3) the Haghia Sophia in Istanbul during Friday prayers, along with aiming one at

4) the palace of the Saudi family in Riyadh.

The entire Christian world would rise up in breathless horror.  Can you imagine the SCOPE of the reaction, the revulsion, the utter shame, and the rejection by the Christian world that this had anything to do with Christ or Christianity?  Can you imagine the thousands of recriminations that Christians would direct at each other, the self-examination, the zillions of study sessions to reinforce traditional Christian teaching on murder that would result in churches, christian schools and colleges, etc.?

Would we be willing to settle for a nice statement from the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dayton and an obscure professor of “Christian studies” somewhere that “we’re sorry for the victims’ families”?  Would we immediately put out PR statements hoping that this wouldn’t lead to “Christophobia” and “hate crimes” against innocent Christians?  Would we have to look for cherry picked Christian spokesmen to say “moderate” sounding things to the media?  And let’s be clear:  would Christians in ANY Muslim plurality nation be anywhere near as safe as Muslims have been in the USA after 9/11?

And would even the most conservative Bible Belt town in the South have a spontaneous dance of joy in the public square over the murder of those godless infidels, by right-thinking American boys with scout knives who hijacked airliners full of unbelievers?

I am waiting for an Islamic cleric in a prominent position in one of those six schools of Islamic jurisprudence to say that the killers of 9/11 are most likely in Hell, and belong there under Islamic teaching, as do those who are now emulating them.

And the notion that all six schools’ major representatives will make such a statement?  I suspect the Lord will return first.

The sentences for so called “honor killings” in Islamic nations are so light, when they are imposed at all, as to be an insult to the value of human life. In this case, a Gazan father killed his 27 yr old daughter by beating her to death with a chain over 40 minutes,  for using a cell phone to talk to a man.

In such killings, a woman’s life is taken by male relatives who suspect her of inappropriate conduct. Such killings are still widespread in the Middle East, where a woman’s perceived misconduct can hurt the standing of a family and where tradition says the “stain” can only be removed by shedding her blood.

Traditionally, assailants have received light sentences, but the killing of Najjar shocked even activists used to detailing such crimes.

Mezan and the PCHR said that Najjar’s father used an iron chain to beat her, while also kicking and punching her for about 40 minutes until she died of a fatal blow to the head, said Mezan and the PCHR.

“It’s shocking,” said Samir Zakout of Mezan. “But it’s not surprising because killers know they won’t be punished harshly.”

In the West Bank and Gaza, “honor killing” assailants serve between six months and three years in prison, said Mona Shawa of PCHR.

In Jordan, officials said Wednesday they have set up special tribunals to deal with honor killings, hoping to speed up trials.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch reported Wednesday that the Syrian government abolished a law that waived punishment for some honor killings and now allows judges to sentence perpetrators to at least two years jail.

This is simply beyond sad and horrifying. And it is a measure of how very far the world view of Islam is from that of the West.

However, do not expect “justice week” at your local university to have “honor killing” as a topic.  They’ll be too busy bashing Israel for defending itself.  Or maybe being concerned about global warming or something really important like that.