Archived news and commentary: July 25 - 31, 2005

2005/07/25 - 2005/07/31
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2005/07/11 - 2005/07/17
2005/07/04 - 2005/07/10
2005/06/27 - 2005/07/03
2005/06/20 - 2005/06/26
2005/06/13 - 2005/06/19

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Sunday, July 31, 2005

News and commentary:

"British MP George Galloway in Syria: Foreigners Are Raping Two Beautiful Arab Daughters - Jerusalem and Baghdad" (MEMRI TV, 2005/07/31)
"The following are excerpts from interviews and a speech by British MP George Galloway, which aired on various Arab channels on July 28 and 31, 2005.
Galloway (on Syrian TV, July 31, 2005): Mr. Blair is using this crime and all these dead people as a justification for this absurd idea of a war on terrorism. "Terror" is a word... Terror is a tactic, it's not a strategy. The idea that Muslims have some kind of sickness in their bodies, which must be cured, which is the idea behind Bush, behind Mr. Blair, and behind Mr. Berlusconi's government in Italy - It must be resisted. It's not the Muslims who are sick. It's Bush and Blair and Berlusconi who are sick. It's not the Muslims who need to be cured. It's the imperialist countries that need to be cured. ...
The real question is, after the evidence of Sykes-Picot 1, are you ready to accept Sykes-Picot 2? What does Sykes-Picot mean to the Arab world? Nothing except division, disunity, weakness, and failure. Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters. Why? Because they are too weak and too corrupt to do anything about it. So this is what Sykes-Picot will do to the Arabs. Are you ready to have another hundred years like the hundred years you just had?" (Hat tip: Harry's Place.)

"London Police Nab 7 More in Blasts Probe" (Catherine McAloon, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/31)
The Friendly Suicide Bomber II: "Police arrested seven people in southern England on Sunday in connection with the failed July 21 London transit bombings and reportedly were investigating the attackers' ties to Saudi Arabia and Italy.
Police made the arrests during raids on two properties in Brighton, on the coast, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police said, providing no other details. ...
Police discovered that Hussain called Saudi Arabia hours before his arrest, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported, and the Sunday Times said another bombing suspect went on a monthlong visit to Saudi Arabia in 2003, telling friends he was to undergo training there.
Hussain reportedly told investigators the bombers were motivated by anger over the Iraq war. He also told them the July 21 bombs weren't intended to be deadly, his court-appointed lawyer, Antonietta Sonnessa, said Sunday.
"He didn't want to kill anyone but only carry out an attention-drawing act," Sonnessa was quoted as telling the Italian news agency ANSA." (See also: "Man Admits Role in Failed London Attack" (Frances D'Emilio, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/30))

"Confronted with our own decadence" (Minette Marrin, The Sunday Times, 2005/07/31)
"One of the things that strikes me more, not less, forcibly as time has passed is the contempt that Muslim extremists feel for us. They despise us for our decadence, and I feel more and more forced to accept the painful truth that they have a point.":
"All the same, it can hardly be denied that with all our celebrated freedom, and all our wealth, we have somehow created a society that is characterised by growing disorder, uncertainty and loss. For a long time now Britain — or rather many of its institutions and traditions — has been suffering from a loss of nerve and a loss of will which amounts to a national moral funk. ...
There’s a thread running though all this and what has been happening to the army. Whatever the rights and wrongs of human rights legislation it is quite clearly horribly wrong to demoralise officers and other ranks with threats of legal action (other than their own courts martial) at a time when they are facing extreme danger in extreme heat in the service of their country. It is not just wrong. It is decadent.
For if we lack the will to defend ourselves, or rather to defend those who are there to defend us, we are simply rolling over and showing to the world’s scavengers and beasts of prey the soft underbelly of decadence. ...
I don’t suggest that this loss of conviction affects everyone. Yet it has to be said that almost nobody has really done much to resist what has been done to our institutions and our manners. There has been a long march through the institutions of a nameless and shapeless ideology, misleadingly called political correctness. It is far more important and powerful than that name suggests and it is largely responsible for the long decay of the institutions and has contributed a lot, indirectly, to the decadence I'm talking about."

"Nazi reminders in Gaza?" (Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, 2005/07/31)
"A reader e-mails a link to a news item from Gaza, where some Jewish residents have ''tattooed" their national ID numbers on their arms, Auschwitz-style -- a bitter gesture of protest against their forthcoming expulsion. My correspondent's comment is blunt. ''Misusing Holocaust language and imagery," she writes. ''Utterly disgusting -- makes me have less sympathy for them." ...
Let's be clear: You don't have to support disengagement to agree that the Nazi-talk is grotesque. The Israeli army is not the Gestapo. The peaceful Jewish residents who will be forced from the homes and land they love are not being sent to gas chambers. Sharon's plan may be delusional -- instead of enabling Israelis to ''disengage" from Palestinian violence, it will bring them more of it, and in deadlier forms -- but it isn't the Final Solution.
And yet . . .
And yet there is no getting around the fact that Israel is about to become the first modern, Western nation in more than 60 years to forcibly uproot a whole population -- men, women, children, babies -- solely because they are Jews. There is no getting around the fact that the forthcoming expulsions are rooted in the belief that any future Palestinian state must be Judenrein -- emptied of its Jews. ...
The abandonment of Gaza and northern Samaria plays directly into the hands of the haters. The sight of Jewish troops expelling Jewish families from their homes and schools will do nothing to promote Arab-Israeli peace. It will reinforce instead the notion that any Jewish presence is intolerable on land the Arabs claim for themselves. And if that is an argument against Jewish life in Gaza, it is also an argument against Jewish life in Israel."

"Switched Off in Basra" (Steven Vincent, The New York Times, 2005/07/31)
A report from Basra: "As has been widely reported of late, Basran politics (and everyday life) is increasingly coming under the control of Shiite religious groups, from the relatively mainstream Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Recruited from the same population of undereducated, underemployed men who swell these organizations' ranks, many of Basra's rank-and-file police officers maintain dual loyalties to mosque and state. ...
"No one trusts the police," one Iraqi journalist told me. "If our new ayatollahs snap their fingers, thousands of police will jump." Mufeed al-Mushashaee, the leader of a liberal political organization called the Shabanea Rebellion, told me that he felt that "the entire force should be dissolved and replaced with people educated in human rights and democracy."
Unfortunately, this is precisely what the British aren't doing. Fearing to appear like colonial occupiers, they avoid any hint of ideological indoctrination: in my time with them, not once did I see an instructor explain such basics of democracy as the politically neutral role of the police in a civil society. Nor did I see anyone question the alarming number of religious posters on the walls of Basran police stations. ...
An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations - mostly of former Baath Party members - that take place in Basra each month. He told me that there is even a sort of "death car": a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment." (See also: "Baffled in Basra" (Steven Vincent, National Review, 2005/06/21))

"Another Face of Terror" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2005/07/31)
"Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, is supposed to be our valued ally in the war on terrorism. But terror takes many forms, not all of them hijacked airplanes or bombed subways.
For the vast majority of humans, terror comes in more mundane ways - like the violent hands that woke Dr. Shazia Khalid as she lay sleeping in her bed, and the abuse she's suffered at the hands of Mr. Musharraf's government ever since.":
"Then on Jan. 2, Dr. Shazia woke up in the middle of the night, and at first she thought she was having a nightmare. "But this person was really pulling hard on my hair, and then he started pressing on my throat so I couldn't breathe. ... He tied the telephone cord around my throat. I resisted and struggled, and he beat me on the head with the telephone receiver. When I tried to scream, he said, 'Shut up - there's a man standing outside named Amjad, and he's got kerosene. If you scream, I'll take it and burn you alive.' ... Then he took my prayer scarf and he blindfolded me with it, and he took the telephone cord and tied my wrists, and he laid me down on the bed. I tried hard to fight but he raped me."
The man spent the night in her room, beating her, casually watching television, raping her again and boasting about his powerful connections. A 35-page confidential report by a tribunal describes Dr. Shazia tumbling into the nurse's quarters that morning: "semiconscious ... with a swelling on her forehead and bleeding from nose and ear." Officials of Pakistan Petroleum rushed over and took decisive action.
"They told me to be quiet and not to tell anybody because it would ruin my reputation," Dr. Shazia remembers. One official warned that if she reported the crime, she could be arrested. ...
Dr. Shazia wasn't sure she dared to report the crime, but she begged for permission to contact her family. So, she says, officials drugged her into a stupor and then confined her in a psychiatric hospital in Karachi.
"They wanted to declare me crazy," Dr. Shazia said bitterly. "That's why they shifted me to a hospital for crazy people." ...
"When I treat rape victims, I tell the girls not to go to the police," Dr. Shershah Syed, a prominent gynecologist in Karachi, told me. 'Because if she goes to the police, the police will rape her.'"

"Muslims sound alarm over schools" (Russell Skelton, The Age, 2005/07/31)
A report on Muslim schools in Australia: "The teacher could not believe what he overheard. The "visiting" imam was launching into a tirade against the Jews and Americans that bordered on the ludicrous.
But then came the clincher, he recalled. "The imam told the students that the Jews were putting poison in the bananas and they should not eat them." ...
The teacher was alarmed by what she discovered in the school library. An image of Christ in a book on comparative religion had been defaced.
When she asked students to explain, they told her that another teacher, a devout Muslim, had asked them to demonstrate that Islam was the one true faith by striking the picture with sharpened pencils.
"They told me they had been made to line up and one by one stab the picture," the teacher told The Sunday Age. "As far as I know, the book is still in the library." ...
She says she has no regrets about leaving. "The atmosphere at the school was unhealthy," she said. 'When you asked children to write about their favourite hero, they nearly always wrote about Osama bin Laden.'"

"Terror suspect gives first account of London attack" (Tony Thompson et al., The Observer, 2005/07/31)
"One of the men accused of taking part in the failed terror attacks in London on 21 July has claimed the bomb plot was directly inspired by Britain's involvement in the Iraq war.
In a remarkable insight into the motives behind the alleged would-be bombers, Hussain Osman, arrested in Rome on Friday, has revealed how the suspects watched hours of TV footage showing grief-stricken Iraqi widows and children alongside images of civilians killed in the conflict. He is alleged to have told prosecutors that after watching the footage: 'There was a feeling of hatred and a conviction that it was necessary to give a signal - to do something.'
But some of the Italian media reports told a conflicting story. Some reports quoted Osman as saying: 'I hardly know anything. They only gave me a rucksack to carry on the tube in London. We wanted to stage an attack, but only as a show. Who gave me the explosive? I don't know. I didn't know him. I don't remember. We didn't want to kill, we just wanted to scare people.'
Milan's Corriere della Sera newspaper said Osman first told authorities he did not know what was in the backpack he took on the London underground, then changed his version, saying he was told the attackers were only supposed to carry out 'demonstrative' attacks. But the Rome daily Il Messaggero said the suspect told investigators: 'We were supposed to blow ourselves up.'
Osman allegedly said: 'More than praying we discussed work, politics, the war in Iraq ... we always had new films of the war in Iraq ... more than anything else those in which you could see Iraqi women and children who had been killed by US and UK soldiers.'"

Saturday, July 30, 2005

News and commentary:

"This photo released by Italian State Police..."
(AFP, 2005/07/30)
"This photo released by Italian State Police show Osman Hussain arrested in Rome July 29, 2005. The London bombing suspect in custody in Rome is to fight extradition to Britain, his lawyer indicated after a preliminary extradition hearing at the Italian capital's Regina Coeli prison."

"Man Admits Role in Failed London Attack" (Frances D'Emilio, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/30)
The Friendly Suicide Bomber I: "ROME - A suspect in the failed London transit bombings admitted Saturday to a role in the attack but said it was only intended to be an attention-grabbing strike, not a deadly one, a legal expert familiar with the investigation said.
Osman Hussain told interrogators he wasn't carrying enough explosives even to "harm people nearby," the expert told The Associated Press. The expert spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the ongoing investigation, which under Italian law must remain secret. ...
Grilled by a pair of Italy's top anti-terrorism prosecutors, Hussain said that months ago in London, his chief — who he identified as "Muktar" — taught him how to assemble explosives using fertilizers and stuff explosives and timers into backpacks, the Rome daily La Repubblica said.
Hussain was referring to Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, one of the other bombing suspects captured Friday in a London raid, the newspaper said. Ibrahim is suspected of planting explosives on a London bus on July 21.
"Muktar urged us to be careful" La Repubblica quoted Hussain as telling his interrogators. 'We didn't want to kill, just sow terror.'"

"Terror's Global Ambition" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2005/07/30)
"The terrorist attacks in London this month have triggered an avalanche of speculation about the possible causes of the atrocities and the motives of the perpetrators.
By a week ago the prevalent view according to the British media was that the attacks were carried out by young men "angry about British involvement in Iraq."
This created the illusion of a rational cause-and-effect. The London daily The Independent put it starkly: Osama bin Laden had warned that if "we bomb his cities in Iraq" he would bomb "our cities" in the West. ...
Another explanation, by an American pundit, was that young Muslims were angry with the loss of their identity and were trying to revive their traditions. This, however, assumes that car bombs and random killing of people in public transport constitute part of the Islamic identity and tradition. ...
The groups behind the latest attacks in London and Sharm el-Sheikh are motivated neither by anger over the liberation of Iraq nor any sufferings caused by poverty and/or identity crisis.
They have a clear, coldly calculated strategy aimed at changing the regional balance of power in their own favor, by driving the Western "infidels" out, so that they could seize control of several Muslim countries — some with immense oil resources. And that would be the first step toward putting Islam back on the path of world conquest for the first time since the Ottomans abandoned their siege of Vienna in the 16th century.
Any show of weakness by the West in meeting that challenge would only help clinch the current debate within the Islamist circles in favor of those who advocate the most radical terrorist options."

"Suspect 'confesses to London attacks'" (AFP/The Australian, 2005/07/30)
"The man believed to be the fourth would-be bomber in the failed July 21 attacks said he and his accomplices wanted their attack to spread fear in London, in an apparent confession reported by Italian newspapers today.
"We wanted to make an attack, but only as a demonstration," several newspapers quoted 27-year-old Osman Hussain as saying, without citing a source. Italy's best-selling newspaper, the Corriere della Sera, expressed fears that the presence of one of the presumed London bombers could be linked to an planned attack here.
"Was he here just as part of his escape or to prepare a new attack?" it asked.
Rome daily Il Messaggero headlined: "The suicide bomber was among us," and reported that police believe Hussain could have been in Rome to prepare a terrorist attack."

"GOT THE BASTARDS"
(The Sun, 2005/07/30)

"Captured - all five 21/7 bomb suspects" (Daniel McGrory et al., The Times, 2005/07/30)
"Every suspected member of the July 21 suicide bombing team was under arrest last night after an extraordinary day of police operations stretching from a West London housing estate to the backstreets of Rome. ...
After days of raids and arrests across the capital and in Birmingham, the breakthrough for police came yesterday morning when officers are believed to have traced a telephone call to a hideout at Block K Dalgarno Gardens.
Terrified neighbours could clearly hear officers shouting for the occupants to strip to their underwear and surrender.
Tear-gas canisters had been fired into the property, which is understood to have been barricaded.
Inside was Muktar SaidIbrahim, 27, who is suspected of trying to detonate a nail bomb on a bus, and Ramzi Mohammad, the failed Oval bomber.
Police commanders realised that they could not risk a long stand-off. Terrorists in Madrid blew themselves up when police stormed the building.
Officers called both men by their first names but repeatedly warned them: “You must do as we say.” After a two-hour stand-off both gave up without a fight.
A witness said that they heard one of the men say: 'I’ve got rights.'"

Note: Sorry for the downtime, which was due to technical problems I can't even pretend to understand. More in this post by Joe Katzman at Winds of Change.

Friday, July 29, 2005

News and commentary:

"Last Suspects in Failed Bombings Nabbed" (Paisley Dodds, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/29)
"Police swooped down on a posh London neighborhood and traced cellphone calls across Europe to a Rome hide-out Friday, netting the remaining suspects in the failed transit bombings without firing a shot. The arrests capped an eight-day manhunt that was one of the most extensive in British history.
At least three of the four suspects were of East African origin.
Black-clad police armed with stun grenades and gas masks pointed assault rifles at the doors of suspects on the outskirts of Notting Hill. Two young children stumbled into the standoff a floor below a suspects' apartment, and an armed officer tried to shoo them away from his dog. ...
One man arrested in the apartment complex near Dalgarno Gardens street identified himself as Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, Clarke said. Police believe he planted explosives on the No. 26 bus in Hackney, east London. Ibrahim, also known as Muktar Mohammed Said, immigrated from Eritrea in 1990 and became a British citizen in 2004.
The second man arrested at the complex identified himself as Ramzi Mohammed, Clarke said, and police accuse him of carrying explosives into the Oval Tube station. He was shown on closed-circuit footage wearing a "New York" sweatshirt. ...
A fourth man — identified as Somali-born Briton Osman Hussain — was arrested in Rome, Italian authorities said. Hussain is accused of planning to plant a bomb at Shepherd's Bush Underground station in west London. He was seen on closed-circuit television carrying a backpack."

"That Huw Edwards is a nice man" (brownie, Harry's Place, 2005/07/29)
"Very affable and humourous in the warm-up, and about a stone lighter than he looks on the telly.
I spent the first 10 minutes of last night’s Question Time Special believing I had been transported back to the post-9/11 edition of the same program, a program so utterly beyond the pale that it made me feel ashamed to be British.
The way we started, one could have been forgiven for thinking that everybody, but everybody was responsible for the 7/7 atrocity, apart from the fanatics who actually carried bombs onto trains. “We need to understand why these young men felt so detached, blah, blah…” Self-hating Brits, I’d call them. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m just your ordinary Joe: wife and kids, mortgaged up to the hilt, unfulfilling job, not enough money, etc., etc.. It’s a hard enough slog as it is without some one-step-removed apologist insisting that I take partial responsibility for the irrational actions of people I’ve never met, never hurt, but who would, given half the chance, slaughter me and everyone else I love. Its not my fault, see, and I resent being asked to contemplate the possibility it might be. In fact, it makes me quite angry.
Which is my problem in these sorts of public meetings. I tend to spend more time with my head in my hands than I do with my hand in the air. So when I hear people whose most important decisions each day are what to play on the iPod lecturing the country’s most senior policeman about the rules of engagement for suicide bombers, telling him how his men are “executioners” (these being the officers who ran towards, not away from, a man they suspected of being half a second from committing mass-murder), I want to be sick, have a shower, scream……do anything in fact, but speak." (See also: "One-Sided" (Clive Davis, clivedavis.blogs.com, 2005/07/28) and "Is this what people think?" (Stephen Pollard, stephenpollard.net, 2005/07/28): "It was worse than appeasement. The audience actually booed outright condemnation of the murderers.")

"Clerical Error: The Dangers of Tolerance" (Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, The New Republic, 2005/07/29)
"It has become trite to say that, on September 11, 2001, Americans realized anew that it was important to pay attention to what was happening on distant shores, that developments taking place half a world away could suddenly and devastatingly threaten the lives of people here at home. This realization was important, but it cemented a view of Islamist terrorism as an external threat. ...
One lasting legacy of the July 7 terrorist attacks in London may be the exploding of this myth. Britons now realize that Islamist terrorism can be homegrown. What's more, the attacks have focused attention on the extent to which Great Britain has become an exporter of Islamic terrorism in recent years, by providing refuge to Islamist radicals from throughout the Middle East. ...
Three clerics residing in Britain have been particularly critical to the support of terrorism worldwide: Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, Abu Hamza Al Masri, and Abu Qatada. In fact, German law enforcement documents we recently obtained indicate that Abu Qatada has provided much of the spiritual inspiration for Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the most effective Iraqi insurgent leader. ...
We know from Understanding Terror Networks, an authoritative 2004 study of 172 jihadist terrorists from around the world by former CIA officer Marc Sageman, that half of the terrorists in his sample attended the same ten religious institutions. Indeed, six of those institutions are in Europe. The importance of that finding was further underlined as it emerged at press time that several members of both the July 7 and the July 21 bombing missions worshiped at, or passed through, Hamza's Finsbury Park Mosque, including Mohammed Siddique Khan, the suspected leader of the July 7 operation. The clear inference from all this is that, at an early stage, prosecuting -- or shaming into silence -- preachers like Bakri, Abu Hamza, and Abu Qatada is critical to stem the spread of the militant Islamist ideology that glorifies terrorism."

"Britain encourages asylum-seekers to despise the society that helped them" (Mick Hume, The Times, 2005/07/29)
"When news broke that two of the London bombing suspects came to Britain as the children of refugees from war-torn East Africa, the ballistic headlines ranged from “Bombers on benefits” to “Bombers are all spongeing asylum-seekers”. But nobody addressed the question — why would asylum-seekers try to destroy the country that gave them a home? After all refugees from war and famine, spongeing or otherwise, normally seek a haven where they can put down roots rather than plant bombs.
Perhaps it might have something to do with the way that, from the moment they arrive here, asylum-seekers are told that Britain is a racist hellhole that deserves what it gets. And they first receive that message not from some fringe Islamic preacher, but from the heart of our self-flagellatory culture. Those bombing suspects came to a society that seems intent on denying that there is anything good about living here. Britain gave them schooling. But what exactly would they would have been taught?"

"Iraq Can Survive This" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2005/07/29)
"Two weeks ago, I received a bleak message from an Iraqi Sunni friend named Talal Gaaod. It worried me because Gaaod has been working hard for the past two years to rally Sunnis to support a new Iraqi government. But as the country has drifted deeper into anarchy this summer, Gaaod's confidence has been shaken.
The rough language of his e-mail conveys the situation better than a hundred polished Pentagon reports: "The political process, and the American project, it has failed," Gaaod wrote. "Believe me, there is no need to waste anymore one penny of the American taxpayers' money and no more one drop of blood of the American boys." He added: "Continuing on the basis to build a democratic process in securing the country, it's only a dream." ...
Wise observers see new cause for anxiety. John Burns of the New York Times suggested last Sunday that an Iraqi civil war may already have begun, in the Sunni suicide attacks against Shiite targets and in the anti-Sunni death squads that are said to have been organized by Shiite militias. Michael Young, the opinion editor of the Beirut Daily Star, wrote a column yesterday, "Preparing for a shipwreck in the Middle East," in which he cautioned: "The American adventure in Iraq -- creative, bold and potentially revolutionary -- threatens to sink under the weight of a Sunni insurgency that has fed off the Bush administration's frequent incompetence in prosecuting postwar stabilization and rehabilitation."
A useful rule about Iraq is that things are never as good as they seem in the up times, nor as bad as they seem in the down times. That said, things do look pretty darn bad right now, and U.S. officials need to ponder whether their strategy for stabilizing the country is really working." (See also: "Preparing for a shipwreck in the Middle East" (Michael Young, The Daily Star, 2005/07/28) and "If It's Civil War, Do We Know It?" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2005/07/24))

"Friends Describe Bomber's Political, Religious Evolution" (Sudarsan Raghavan, The Washington Post, 2005/07/29)
"LEEDS, England -- The day before Shehzad Tanweer strapped on a backpack filled with explosives and made his way into London, he took part in a cherished British pastime: a pickup soccer match in a park here. ...
"He was laughing and joking like normal," said Saeed Ahmed, 29, downcast eyes reflecting the shock that still lingers. ...
Many of Tanweer's friends said in interviews that he became more religious after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
"Shehzad definitely opened his eyes because of September 11th," said Ashid, a friend who did not give his last name out of fear the police might question him. "That's when many young people got back into Islam around here." ...
On a recent Wednesday, some of Tanweer's Muslim friends were playing soccer in Cross Flats Park. Others who said they had known him watched from a bench, some of them smoking marijuana.
In conversations with a reporter, they spoke about conspiracy theories they had downloaded from radical Web sites. There was no plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Nor did any bring the twin towers down. It was an American plot, they said.
"Why should we care about the London bombings when thousands of innocent Muslims are being killed in Iraq?" one friend demanded. Like the others, he refused to give a name. He said he understood Tanweer's anger. He paused, then added that he might have done the same."

"Afghan Women Put Lives on Line To Run for Office" (N.C. Aizenman, The Washington Post, 2005/07/29)
"CHARKH, Afghanistan -- The note slipped under Mahmoud Shah's front gate was written in a tidy, graceful hand. But the message brimmed with venom: "If you don't stop campaigning for Noorzia Charkhi, your life will be in danger. Also tell Noorzia Charkhi that she should give up her candidacy. Aren't you ashamed to put up posters of your family's women in the bazaar?"
Charkhi, 36, is a journalist based in the capital, Kabul, who is campaigning for a seat in Afghanistan's new parliament. But in this mud-walled village in Logar, the home province she hopes to represent, Charkhi's candidacy is such a challenge to tradition that she and her relatives, including her cousin Shah, have faced repeated threats.
"I'm not going to quit, because I want to show people that a woman should be able to do these things. But definitely I fear for my life. . . . The people who did this already have blood on their hands," Charkhi said during a visit to Shah's home, 50 miles south of Kabul. "I'm even more afraid that they will smear my reputation," she added. "That would be worse than death." ...
Yet female candidates in provinces across the country have complained of receiving phone calls and letters threatening them with death if they don't withdraw.
In southern Helmand province, U.N. officials are investigating reports of letters circulating that offer a $4,000 reward for killing female candidates."

"21/7 bombers made just one mistake, police chief warns" (Stewart Tendler et al., The Times, 2005/07/29)
"London was “very, very lucky” last week to escape a second wave of suicide attacks at least as devastating as the bombs on July 7, the capital’s top police commander said yesterday.
Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that a single mistake by the bombers had avoided carnage on three Underground trains and a No 26 bus. In the starkest language he has used since 52 people and four bombers died in the 7/7 attacks, Sir Ian spelt out the nature of the terrorist threat facing London.
“This is a campaign we are facing — not a one-off event,” he said. “The second attack on July 21 should not be taken as some indication of weakening of the capability or the resolve of those responsible.
'This is not the B team. These are not amateurs. They made a mistake. They made one mistake. We are very, very lucky. The carnage that would have occurred had those bombs gone off would have at least been the equivalent to those on July 7.'"

Added in archive:
"Home grown" (60 Minutes, 2005/07/24)

Thursday, July 28, 2005

News and commentary:

"The myth of moderate Islam" (Patrick Sookhdeo, The Spectator, from the 2005/07/30 issue)
"So the mantra ‘Islam is peace’ is almost 1,400 years out of date. It was only for about 13 years that Islam was peace and nothing but peace. From 622 onwards it became increasingly aggressive, albeit with periods of peaceful co-existence, particularly in the colonial period, when the theology of war was not dominant. For today’s radical Muslims — just as for the mediaeval jurists who developed classical Islam — it would be truer to say ‘Islam is war’.":
"The funeral of British suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer was held in absentia in his family’s ancestral village, near Lahore, Pakistan. Thousands of people attended, as they did again the following day when a qul ceremony was held for Tanweer. During qul, the Koran is recited to speed the deceased’s journey to paradise, though in Tanweer’s case this was hardly necessary. Being a shahid (martyr), he is deemed to have gone straight to paradise. The 22-year-old from Leeds, whose bomb at Aldgate station killed seven people, was hailed by the crowd as ‘a hero of Islam’. ...
Could it be that the young men who committed suicide were neither on the fringes of Muslim society in Britain, nor following an eccentric and extremist interpretation of their faith, but rather that they came from the very core of the Muslim community and were motivated by a mainstream interpretation of Islam?
The Muslim community now inhabits principally the urban centres of England as well as some parts of Scotland and Wales. It forms a spine running down the centre of England from Bradford to London, with ribs extending east and west. It is said that within 10 to 15 years most British cities in these areas will have Muslim-majority populations, and will be under local Islamic political control, with the Muslim community living under Sharia. ...
It is worth noting that many conflicts around the world are not internal to the Muslim community but external, as Muslims seek to gain territorial control, for example, in south Thailand, the southern Philippines, Kashmir, Chechnya and Palestine. Is it possible that a conflict of this nature could occur in Britain?" (See also: "Doublespeak Unveiled: Muslim “moderates” are true to spirit of Islam" (Bruce Thorton, Private Papers, 2005/07/26))

"The American Islamic Leaders' "Fatwa" is Bogus" (Steven Emerson, The Counterterrorism Blog, 2005/07/28)
"This morning a group of American Islamic leaders held a press conference to announce a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against “terrorism and extremism.” An organization called the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) issued the fatwa, and the Council on American - Islamic Relations (CAIR) organized the press conference, stating that several major U.S. Muslim groups endorsed the fatwa.
In fact, the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism. It does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad let alone admit that it has been used to justify Islamic terrorist acts. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate. In fact, officials of both organizations have been directly linked to and associated with Islamic terrorist groups and Islamic extremist organizations. One of them is an unindicted co-conspirator in a current terrorist case; another previous member was a financier to Al-Qaeda." (Hat tip: Jihad Watch. See also: "U.S. Muslim Fatwa Against Terrorism" (CAIR, 2005/07/28): "Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives. There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism. Targeting civilians’ life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is haram – or forbidden - and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not 'martyrs.'")

"Moroccans Beat Up van Gogh's Son, 14" (Nobody's Business, 2005/07/28)
"Since the murder of Theo van Gogh, last November, his now 14-year-old son Lieuwe has twice been physically attacked by young Moroccans, or (more likely) Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent. ... Van Gogh's parents said this in an interview on national television.
They insisted their grandson had done nothing to provoke the assaults. In one incident, recalled Anneke van Gogh, Theo's mother, "[Lieuwe] was walking the dog in the Watergraafsmeer area of Amsterdam, and they came up to him and said, 'Is your name van Gogh?' Lieuwe said no, of course, but they beat him anyway."
She also recounted how, some time after Theo van Gogh's assassination, a group of Moroccans appeared in the street where he had lived, inquiring about Lieuwe's whereabouts. It was the neighbors' impression that the visitors weren't there to offer condolences, and the police were called — but according to the filmmaker's mother, no one bothered to show up. That would have been in keeping with local officers' alleged non-action after the two beatings Lieuwe received. The cops were called then, too, Anneke van Gogh told the TV interviewer, but they declined to make an appearance.
Recently, Lieuwe was transferred to another class, in another building of his school, after he'd been repeatedly bullied by Muslim pupils. His grandmother said that Lieuwe had had to endure taunts like "Good thing they killed your dad."
The news of the attacks on the 14-year-old came just a day after Theo's killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, was sentenced to life without parole. Through the verdict, Lieuwe held his head high. His response afterwards was that he would send Bouyeri a postcard with the words 'Theo Forever.'" (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.)

"Keeping an Open Mind" (David T, Harry's Place, 2005/07/28)
"DNA can match you, but that does not mean you are going to commit a crime.": "Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham's Central Mosque delivers his perspective on the nature of the terrorist attacks on the United Kingdom:
From the BBC:

Speaking to BBC Radio WM on Thursday Dr Naseem questioned the existence of al-Qaeda.
"I don't think al-Qaeda exists because we Muslims all over the world have not known this organisation," he said.
"The only information about this organisation is coming from the CIA. Now, the CIA is not known for telling the truth."

From the Telegraph:

'Tony Blair has told lies on going to Iraq and in a court of law if a witness has proved to be a liar he ceases to be a reliable witness. So we cannot give our blind trust to the Government.
"To have that trust it is important that the process of law should be independent, open and transparent. I am also sad that unfortunately the impression has been given that Muslims are to be targeted in this war against terror. There seems to be a directive to target Muslims. Why do we not have an open mind about this?
"Muslim bashing seems to be more earnest than the need for national unity and harmony. Terrorists can be anybody - we will have to see [whether the bombers are Muslims]. The process is not open; the process is not transparent; the process is not independent. I do not have faith in the system as it stands."
"Tony Blair … is not going to be perceived as a reliable witness. His comments could motivate someone to take the law into his own hands.
"Some people have been caught but I have not seen any evidence. The process of law is not open."
Asked about the suspects' DNA being found at the scene of the first attacks, he said: "DNA can match you, but that does not mean you are going to commit a crime. Thousands of youths are passing by and caught on CCTV, so how do you know it is them?'"

(See also: "Call for mosque chairman to quit" (BBC News, 2005/07/28) and "Leading cleric rails at injustice of 'Muslim bashing'" (Nick Britten, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/07/28))

"London attacks: turning point for US Islamic community" (Shadi Hamid, The Christian Science Monitor, 2005/07/28)
"First, the July 7 bombings reaffirmed what already should have been obvious - Islam has been hijacked by a band of murderers. It's imperative that Muslims, instead of waiting for others to remedy the situation, offer a stronger, more systematic response to terrorism. ...
Finally, Muslims must rediscover their religion's deep respect for the sanctity of human life - whether the lives in question are British, Iraqi, or Israeli. The Muslim community's inability or unwillingness to speak out against suicide bombing in Israel is reflective of the moral depths to which we've so tragically sunk. Some things in life are morally ambiguous. The killing of Israelis in cafes and pizzerias, however, is not one of them. When we argue that the immorality or illegality of suicide bombing is contingent upon political considerations, we're on a dangerously slippery slope. ...
In the wake of the London bombings, there is a growing realization in the Muslim community that the intolerance by some of its own can no longer be tolerated.
In these most dangerous of times, the margin for error is small. And considering how small it is, American Muslims now have a unique opportunity to play a greater, more central role in the continuing struggle against those who brandish the name of Islam so selfishly in the service of terror."

"The Secret Life of Mohammed Bouyeri" (P.J. Costello, FrontPageMagazine, 2005/07/28)
"In a shocking set of revelations, the Netherlands’ daily, De Telegraaf, has reported that Mohammed Bouyeri and his associates in the Hofstadgroep used radical Islamism to hide the fact that their group was actually a “sexual cult.” In a report titled “Preaching and Porno,” the paper went on to recount the story of the Islamist “lover boys” who clothed their lurid sexual preferences in the garb of religious extremism.
The group was inclined to a vast array of depraved activities, not the least disturbing of which was the sexual abuse of young women. The group also reportedly had a penchant for marrying young women, most of whom were native Dutch and had converted to Islam. Bouyeri and his co-religionists would use them as “porn princesses,” before abandoning them after two weeks.
Characteristic of the group’s degenerate ways was Nouredine el F., aka Abu Qaqa, now identified as a member of the Hofstadgroep. Having previously dated a 16-year-old girl, he had found a new lover by the time of his arrest: a 21-one-year-old woman who worked for the elite Dutch Marine Corps. Nouredine was known to parade around the woman’s work place with a loaded machine gun in his backpack. Also prior to this arrest, he dated a woman who police say had a “dodenlijst” (a death list) found in her apartment that included the names of two prominent Dutch politicians.
And then there was Mohammed Bouyeri. Of Bouyeri, the Telegraaf writes that he “has a sickening sexual interest. Together with his ‘brothers’, he enjoyed CD-ROMs where one can see how to amputate male genitals. On his laptop he also had illegal images of a man having sex with a dead woman.” According to the paper, “Mohammed B. was aroused by gruesome amputations and sex with a dead woman.”
The revelations offer a striking contrast to the man who claimed to have renounced the culture of Dutch society for the purity of the Islamic faith. Even as he indulged his most gruesome fantasies in secret, Bouyeri put on a show of strict religious asceticism, abstaining from alcohol and refusing to take part in activities involving both men and women. For all their zeal, these Islamic extremists didn’t exactly practice what they preached."

"Preparing for a shipwreck in the Middle East" (Michael Young, The Daily Star, 2005/07/28)
"...the Middle East has moved closer to the abyss than at any time since the end of the second Gulf war in 1991":
"The American adventure in Iraq - creative, bold and potentially revolutionary - threatens to sink under the weight of a Sunni insurgency that has fed off the Bush administration's frequent incompetence in prosecuting postwar stabilization and rehabilitation. In the Palestinian areas, the Palestinian Authority is more than ever looking like a futile, corrupt artifact in front of Islamist parties that promise only violence and the suffocation of tolerant politics. In Syria, the kleptocratic regime of Bashar Assad is disintegrating, but its death may linger in the absence of alternatives. And in Iran, the situation has been complicated by the election as president of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, delaying the expansion of liberty in the society, even as the regime must shift its attention to Ahmadinejad's poor electorate - conservative by nature but potentially violent if its expectations are not met.
Gliding above this is the apocalyptic specter of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, whose latest exploits in London and Sharm al-Sheikh brought standard condemnations from representative institutions in the Arab and Muslim worlds, usually blended in with standard condemnations of Western behavior toward Arabs and Muslims. The effect was a cowardly canceling out of meaning; nonetheless, pro forma expressions of remorse often came across, intentionally or not, as precisely the opposite.
In truth, when it comes to fighting terrorism and expanding democracy in the Middle East, a global dialogue of the deaf prevails. ...
Many of us will continue to dream of a liberal Arab world, because that's the only exit from a nightmare that has lasted for far too long. Iraq was to be the first step. But the plot is apparently much more complicated than anyone imagined, and the characters involved too mediocre. The region is heading toward a shipwreck: too few lookouts, too many icebergs." (Hat tip: David Ignatius. See also: "If It's Civil War, Do We Know It?" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2005/07/24))

"The West's not anti-Islam — it just gives rights to women" (Mary Ann Sieghart, The Times, 2005/07/28)
Sieghart on the YouGov poll on British Muslims published in the Daily Telegraph, where 32% believed that "Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end.":
"What is revealing is that the feelings of alienation suffered by Muslims in the YouGov poll are far greater among men than women. Muslim girls, on the whole, are liberated by living in Britain. Their education is deemed as important by the State as their brothers’. Those whose parents don’t encourage them to stay on at school and go to university will be encouraged by their teachers instead. For many of them, Western society offers the chance of escape from oppression by fathers, brothers and husbands.
The proportion of Muslim men who say that they feel no loyalty to Britain (18 per cent) is more than three times higher than the proportion of women who say the same. In other words, nearly all Muslim women feel attached to this country and grateful for what it has given them, while a solid core of Muslim men do not. Muslim men are also far more likely than women to say that Western society is decadent and immoral.
This suggests that the problem with Britain — and the West as a whole — is not that it is un-Islamic. If that were the case, then Muslim women would surely feel as alienated as Muslim men. More plausible is that Muslim men resent the way in which their traditional feelings of superiority over women are challenged in the West. Here, they simply can’t get away with subjugating their womenfolk in the way that they can in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Somalia." (See also: "One in four Muslims sympathises with motives of terrorists" (Anthony King, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/07/23))

"When the Profile Fits the Crime" (Paul Sperry, The New York Times, 2005/07/28)
"In response to the serial subway bombings in London, Mayor Michael Bloomberg prudently ordered the police to start searching the bags of New York's subway riders. But there will be absolutely no profiling, Mr. Bloomberg vowed: the police will select one out of every five passengers to search, and they will do so at random, without regard for race or religion.
In that case, the security move is doomed to fail.
Young Muslim men bombed the London tube, and young Muslim men attacked New York with planes in 2001. From everything we know about the terrorists who may be taking aim at our transportation system, they are most likely to be young Muslim men. Unfortunately, however, this demographic group won't be profiled. Instead, the authorities will be stopping Girl Scouts and grannies in a procedure that has more to do with demonstrating tolerance than with protecting citizens from terrorism.
Critics protest that profiling is prejudicial. In fact, it's based on statistics. ...
Once an Islamist suicide bomber is sitting next to you on the train, your chances of escape are slim. The only solution is for the police to stop him well before he boards your car. But with the system as it stands, that terrorist could easily slip in through the numerical window of random security screening. By not allowing police to profile the most suspicious train passengers - young Muslim men who fit the indicators above - Mr. Bloomberg and other leaders not only tie one hand behind law enforcement's back, but they also unwittingly provide terrorists political cover to carry out their murderous plans. Call it politically correct suicide." (See also: "Burnt offerings on the altar of multiculturalism" (Diana West, Town Hall, 2005/07/18))

"In Britain, Migrants Took a New Path: To Terrorism" (Sarah Lyall, The New York Times, 2005/07/28)
"They came to Britain as children in the early 1990's, refugees from war and famine in East Africa looking for a haven in the West. But at some point, according to the authorities, something poisoned Muktar Said Ibrahim and Yasin Hassan Omar against the country that had taken them in. ...
Both men came to Britain as so many immigrants do, fleeing something else. The circumstances of their arrival, as well as the disclosures that both received social security benefits and state housing, incensed critics of a government asylum policy that, many say, has allowed anti-Western extremists to proliferate in Britain.
"Welcomed here as the dependents of asylum seekers, educated in our schools, taking full advantage of all the benefits this country so generously offers - now they want to destroy us," The Daily Mail, which has long fulminated against what it calls a too-generous asylum system, said in an editorial on Wednesday.
"Could there be a more chilling snapshot of the madness of a system implemented by successive governments that has left this country at the hands of murderous fanatics?" the editorial said."

Added in archive:
"The Enemy We Treat Like A Friend (Part II)" (Oriana Fallaci, Corriere Della Sera/Mystery Achievement, 2005/07/24)
"The Enemy We Treat Like A Friend (Part I)" (Oriana Fallaci, Corriere Della Sera/Mystery Achievement, 2005/07/23)

Also, l ooking for commentary on the British terror attacks by Theodore Dalrymple I found these reviews of his new collection of essays, "Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses". The cover is just brilliant, by the way:
"The challenge to be civilized" (Andrew Martin, The Courier-Journal, 2005/07/17)
"By-products of Modernity" (Paul Hollander, New York Sun, 2005/06/13)
"The Doctor Is In" (David Pryce-Jones, National Review/Manhattan Institute, 2005/06/06)

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

News and commentary:

"An X-Ray view of one of the unexploded devices..."
(ABC News, 2005/07/27)
"An X-Ray view of one of the unexploded devices found in the trunk of the bomber's car shows that it was designed to inflict massive damage."

"Sources: July 7 London Bomb Plot May Have Been Much Larger" (ABC News, 2005/07/27)
"The plot for the July 7 transit bombings in London, which killed 56 people, may have been much larger than previously known, ABC News has learned.
Sources familiar with the investigation tell ABC News an additional 12 bombs and four improvised detonators were found in the trunk of a car believed to be rented by suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer. Police believe the bombers drove the car to Luton, where they boarded trains to London. ...
ABC News also obtained photographs, which offer a first glimpse of the bombs used in the attacks.
The bombs were made of homemade high explosives. The materials used are widely available products, such as peroxide. Some were packaged like pancakes, and others contained nails for use as shrapnel. An X-ray image of one of the bombs found in the attacker's car trunk shows the deadly concoction.
"When you put the X-ray machine on it [the bomb], you see what is bulging on the sides of the bottle are nails — many, many nails," said Ayers, while examining the photo. "And the nails are put there so that when the bomb goes off, the nails will tear tissue and kill people in the area. Bombs don't kill by concussion. Small bombs, they kill by the blast effects of fragments of glass or metal, and this is designed to kill people."
British authorities are deeply concerned they are in a race against time against people who want to plan another attack."

"Birmingham and its links to militant Islam" (Sam Knight, The Times, 2005/07/27)
"But over the last six years, radical Islamists from Birmingham's 150,000-strong Muslim community have been linked to a series of attacks in the Middle East.
In 1999, five men from Birmingham were arrested in Yemen in connection with the kidnapping of 16 tourists in the country. Four of the tourists were killed in a botched rescue attempt by the Yemeni army and Shahid Butt and Sarmad Ahmed, both from Birmingham, were sentenced to serve five years in prison in Aden.
Four years later, officers from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism branch were given a list of men and organisations in Birmingham and the West Midlands by Israeli security forces after Omar Khan Sharif, a 27-year-old from Derby, killed himself in Israel after failing to detonate his bomb in a Tel Aviv bar.
Mr Sharif's accomplice, Asif Mohammed Hanif, from Hounslow, in West London, became Britain's first confirmed suicide bomber when he killed himself and three people the same night in Tel Aviv in April 2003. Both men were thought to have been funded by organisations in the West Midlands. ...
In 2003, a Hizb Ur-Tahrir conference entitled "British or Muslim?" attracted 10,000 people to Birmingham, prompting the Home Office to commission a study on the group and warn of the spread of fundamentalist doctrine in the region."

"Failed London bomber arrested in Birmingham" (Mark Sellman, The Times, 2005/07/27)
"Anti-terrorist officers believe that a man arrested in Birmingham today is one of the would-be suicide bombers who tried to attack the London transport network last week.
A witness said that the arrested man looked like Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, who has been named by Scotland Yard as the man who tried to explode a bomb on the Victoria Line Tube line last week.
The man was felled with a Taser stun gun after a scuffle with police officers who raided a house in Heybarnes Road in the Hay Mills area of Birmingham at 4.30am.
Police found a suspect package and more than 100 nearby homes were then evacuated on Army advice as the bomb squad moved in. The BBC reported that the man had been wearing a rucksack as he was arrested, although Scotland Yard could not confirm that report."

"Egyptians Question Culture-Extremism Link" (Nadia Abou El-Magd, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/27)
Egypt II: "Stunned by terror attacks in a Red Sea resort, Egyptians are in a remarkably frank debate about whether mosques and schools - and the government itself - should be blamed for promoting Islamic extremism.
Even pro-government media say authorities have created a climate where young people are turning into radicals and suicide bombers.
In a country more used to hearing general condemnations of terrorism, critics on Wednesday were angry - and specific - hammering at instances where they say the government let state media and mosque preachers, including many appointed by the government, to promote intolerance.
At one mosque in Cairo, some worshippers objected to prayers for the dead and missing after Saturday's bombings in Sharm el-Sheik because some victims were likely non-Muslims, said the editor of the government weekly Al-Musawwar. ...
What was unusual about the self-criticism after Sharm was that it came from government media - and even from within the Islamic clerical hierarchy picked by the government.
"There is no use denying. ... We incited the crime of Sharm el-Sheik," ran a bold red headline of a lead editorial Wednesday by Al-Musawwar's editor in chief, Abdel-Qader Shohaib.
The bombers "didn't just conjure up in our midst suddenly, they are a product of a society that produces extremist fossilized minds that are easy to be controlled," Shohaib wrote.
"They became extremists through continuous incitement for extremism which we have allowed to exist in our societies. Regrettably, the incitement is coming from mosque pulpits, newspapers, and TV screens, and radio microphones," which are all state-run, Shohaib said.
In Al-Ahram, columnist Ahmed Abdel Moeti Hegazi wrote: 'This is not just deviation, it is a culture.'"

"Egyptian Parliament Member Praises Killing Americans" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 944, 2005/07/27)
Egypt I. "On July 17, 2005, on Egypt's Dream TV, Egyptian MP Hamadein Sabahi and Abd Al-Rahim Ali, a journalist and expert on Islamist movements discussed issues such as Iraq, killing American soilders, and Osama bin Laden. ...
Hamadein Sabahi: "The responsibility for the slaughter of [the Egyptian ambassador in Iraq] lies, first and foremost, with George Bush, his administration, and his military forces, occupying Iraq."
Host: "And who else is responsible?"
Sabahi: "The Egyptian government. It's directly responsible.
[…]
"Since the beginning of the crisis in Iraq, the Egyptian government's position was submissive, meek and contemptible. This position did not reflect the will of the Egyptian people, or the interests of the Arab nation. Rather, it has reflected submission to the American interests."
Host: "And who was the third killer?"
Sabahi: "The third killer is the collaborating puppet government, which has no legitimacy in Iraq.
[…]
Sabahi: "When the conflict is directed against the Americans, it is good. Any weapon that kills an American is good. Any gun aiming at the Marines is good. Any kidnapping or slaughtering of an American in Iraq is good."
Abd Al-Rahim Ali: "In Iraq, there are a million Western and international intelligence agencies, which help Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi to disintegrate this country, and to keep the Americans there for another million years."
Sabahi: "Are you saying America is behind Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi?"
Ali: 'Of course. There is no doubt.'"

"Beards and scarves aren't Muslim. They're simply adverts for al-Qaeda" (Amir Taheri, The Times, 2005/07/27)
"The 7/7 attacks in London inspired some sympathetic comment throughout the Muslim countries. But even then many commentators could not resist taking a swipe at Britain for having “hosted Islamist terrorists” for years. A number of self-styled clerics, including 58 Pakistanis, have issued fatwas (opinions) that, on the surface, look like a rejection of terrorism. A closer look, however, shows that they still have a long way to go before they could be taken seriously.
Some self-styled clerics, including many in the British Muslim community, have used semantic trickery to hedge their bets. They condemn the attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh but when it comes to the attacks in London, all they are prepared to say is that they “do not condone” them. More disturbingly, their statements include the usual litany of Muslim woes about Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the assertion that “our youths” are right to be angry. The more they speak the more unspeakable they become. ...
The excessive politicisation of Islam has created a situation in which the best-known Muslim today is Osama bin Laden.
Islam must decide whether it wants to be a faith or a political movement. It cannot be both without being hijacked by Salafis or Khomeinists who have transformed it into a breeding ground for terror."

"Tread more carefully" (Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 2005/07/27)
"On Channel 4 News last week, the mayor [Ken Livingstone] was asked about his public embrace of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has repeatedly praised suicide bombers - not, admittedly, those on London trains and buses but those in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Livingstone responded by making Qaradawi's case for him, explaining that while Israel had fighter jets and tanks, the Palestinians "only have their bodies" and no other way to "fight back".
Livingstone's own position is to condemn all suicide bombings. And he was at pains to stress that Qaradawi is against them too - when they are used in Britain or America or indeed anywhere outside the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That was meant to be comforting, but for some reason I don't feel comforted. For one thing, it is illogical. The arguments that Qaradawi applies to Israel-Palestine could just as easily be used by al-Qaida agents and their sympathisers.
Let's say Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer were angered by the occupation of Iraq or even 80 years of western imperialism, as Livingstone himself has suggested. What weapons would they have against the mighty arsenals of Britain and the US? Those men from Leeds had no jet planes or tanks. They too "only have their bodies". Under Qaradawi's logic, so generously explained by the mayor, they too must have a legitimate right "to fight back" by attacking the civilians of the imperialist power: in other words, you and me." (See also: "What The World Owes Palestinians and The Left" (Dennis Prager, Creators/RealClearPolitics, 2005/07/26))

"Life for van Gogh killer fails to ease Dutch fears" (David Rennie, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/07/27)
"Khalil el-Yobari, 30, a shopkeeper, echoed the sergeant's defence of the Netherlands as a place to build a peaceful life. But he felt there had been a big change for Muslims. "People don't talk to us in the street any more," he said.
His friends yearned to attack Israel or America, he said matter-of-factly, but he condemned terrorism in Europe. He combined praise for the Netherlands with nostalgia for the good life he felt ended with September 11.
"Before that attack, Amsterdam was OK," he said. "Now it is very difficult to find a job as a Moroccan, even with school diplomas."
He condemned Bouyeri's crime, saying that Mr van Gogh had had every right to say what he liked without being attacked. "It's a free country," he said.
But he reported bitter debate among his friends about the case and gave warning that the case had added to Muslim anger about racism at home, as well as the situation in Iraq and the Middle East.
"Dutch people hate Muslims," he said. "One survey said 56 per cent say that. We all feel we are in prison now. I have friends who tell me they want to fight."
He rejected London-style attacks in Holland because innocent people had been killed. But, without any evident pleasure at the thought, he predicted that home-grown terrorism would hit the Netherlands.
"It is going to happen - and it will be from people like me," he said."

"Terror suspect is a convicted mugger" (Duncan Gardham and Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/07/27)
"One of the four suspects in the attempted suicide bombings in London last week spent several years in prison as a mugger, the Telegraph can reveal.
Despite his record, Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, also known as Muktar Mohammed Said, was granted a British passport less than a year ago. ...
Members of the gang, who are understood to have included a man arrested in connection with the bomb inquiries, were jailed for terms ranging from two to four years at Luton Crown Court in 1996 after admitting five robberies in the Welwyn Garden City and Stevenage areas.
Ibrahim received five years because he had been carrying a knife. He served his time in several young offenders institutions.
After his release, he was said to have attended Finsbury Park and Brixton mosques in London, both of which have been associated with radicals.
He applied for naturalisation in November 2003 and was issued with a full passport last September. All new citizens are required to show that they have no criminal past and questions will be asked about how his record did not come to light.
He would have taken a pledge: "I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values. I will observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British citizen."
Yet within 10 months of being naturalised, Ibrahim was involved in a bomb plot aimed at the heart of the nation."

"The benefit bombers who repaid help with hatred" (Steve Bird et al., The Times, 2005/07/27)
"Residents of Curtis House in New Southgate regarded Muktar Said-Ibrahim and Yasin Hassan Omar as feckless young men living aimlessly on state benefits.
Ibrahim had served time in Huntercombe Young Offenders’ Institution, Oxfordshire, according to Whitehall sources, and Omar, was known as a shoplifter.
As children, both fled civil war and bloody conflict in Eritrea and Somalia for the safe refuge of Britain. Yet they came to hate their adopted homeland so much that they volunteered for suicide bombing missions.
In preparing for “martyrdom” Ibrahim, 27, and Omar, 24, had turned the tower block that they shared with hundreds of people into a terrorist safe house and a bomb factory. Forensic science teams have found traces of explosives in flat No 58 and the rubbish chute as well as a substantial cache of bombmaking chemicals in a lock-up garage. ...
One former friend, a member of the same criminal gang, said that Ibrahim turned to radical Islam after meeting fellow Muslim inmates in jail. “I bumped into him [after he had left prison]. He had grown a beard and moustache and was wearing Muslim headgear. I asked: ‘What happened?’ He smiled and answered, ‘I’m taking life a bit more seriously’.”
The former friend, also jailed for the same offence, said when he had first met Ibrahim, he was a swaggering, teenager who drank alcohol and smoked marijuana."

"Eight attackers linked by their ties to radical London mosque" (Sean O’Neill and Daniel McGrory, The Times, 2005/07/27)
"The ethnic mix of the eight London bombers, ranging from young Somalis to Yorkshire-born sons of Pakistani parents and an Anglo-Jamaican convert, has surprised investigators. ...
Detectives have been piecing together these eight lives to determine how their paths crossed. The suspicion is that these fanatics from north and south met at Finsbury Park mosque.
Mohammad Siddique Khan, 30, the oldest of the Leeds bombers and the suspected leader of that group, is known to have visited this North London mosque over recent years. Police are investigating claims that a second Leeds bomber also spent time there.
The East African-born cell lived not far away in North London, so this was a regular place of worship.
Other would-be suicide bombers linked to the mosque include Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a passenger jet in midair, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 19th hijacker from the 9/11 attacks.
It was also a focal point for European and American converts to Islam, including a number linked to terror cells. ...
For many refugees, Finsbury Park mosque was a place where they could buy forged or stolen passports and identity documents that would enable them to find work. It was also a place where they could buy clothes, which had often been stolen by gangs of shoplifters."

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

News and commentary:

"The pamphlet with text highlighted..."
(The Times, 2005/07/26)
"The pamphlet with text highlighted by suspected bus bomber Muktar Said-Ibrahim."

"Neighbours describe bomb suspect as devout loner" (Paul Platt, The Times, 2005/07/26)
"Neighbours of the suspected bus bomber Muktar Said-Ibrahim have described him as a devout loner who handed out religious pamphlets.
Sarah Scott, a neighbour in Stanmore, northwest London, said that Said-Ibrahim gave her a book called Understanding Islam in which he had highlighted specific passages.
One highlighted passage read: "Anyone who says ‘there is no God (worthy of worship) except Allah’ and dies holding to that (belief) will enter paradise." ...
For the past two years, Said-Ibrahim was thought to have lived with Yasin Hassan Omar, the man suspected of trying to blow up a Victoria Line train near Warren Street, in a flat in Bounds Green, North London, raided by police yesterday. Police sources said a large amount of materials suitable for making bombs was found in the flat.
Yasin Hassan Omar is said to be a Somali national who entered the UK in 1992 aged 11 as the child of an asylum seeker, and was granted leave to remain indefinitely in May 2000.
As such he would have been legally entitled to claim housing benefit to rent a flat in Bounds Green, north London, where police today said they found suspicious material that could have been used to make explosives.
Enfield Council has confirmed that Omar is a registered tenant at Curtis House, a tower block in Ladderswood Way, and received £75 a week in housing benefit. He has been living at the address for over six years, since February 1999.
Omar's housing benefit was stopped in May, but up to £24,000 may have been given to the 24-year old over the last five years. It is understood he also received income support."

"PM's Press Conference - 26 July 2005" (10 Downing Street, 2005/07/26)
A transcript of Prime Minister Tony Blair's press conference:
"Question: Prime Minister can we try and clear up once and for all this Question about any potential linkage between Iraq and any acts of terror in Britain. ...
Prime Minister: ... Whatever excuse or justification these people use I do not believe we should give one inch to them, not in this country and the way we live our lives here, not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in our support for two States, Israel and Palestine, not in our support for the alliances we choose, including with America, not one inch should we give to these people. And I want to say this to you, and I may offend people when I say this, but I am going to say it nonetheless. 11 September for me was a wake-up call. Do you know what I think the problem is? That a lot of the world woke up for a short time and then turned over and went back to sleep again. And we are not going to deal with this problem, with the roots as deep as they are, until we confront these people at every single level. And not just their methods, but their ideas.
Let us just take this issue of Iraq and expose it for a moment. Frankly the obscenity of these people saying it is concern for Iraq that drives them to terrorism. If it is concern for Iraq, why are they driving a car bomb into the middle of a group of children and killing them. Why are they every day in Iraq trying to kill people whose only desire is for their country to become a democracy. Why are they trying to kill people in Afghanistan. Why are they trying, every time Israel and Palestine look as if they could come together in some sort of settlement, they go and wreck it. Why are they killing people in Turkey. What is their excuse there, or in Egypt, or in Saudi Arabia. They will always have a reason and I am not saying that any of these things don't affect their warped reasoning and warped logic as to what they do, or that they don't use these things to try and recruit people. But I do say we shouldn't compromise with it. I am not saying anyone says any of these things justify it, but we shouldn't even allow them the vestige of an excuse for what they do."

"The Muslim mind is on fire" (Youssef M. Ibrahim, Middle East Times, 2005/07/26)
"The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers, not by US or British soldiers. In fact, fewer than ever US or British soldiers are dying since the invasion more than two years ago. Instead, we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life. If this is jihad someone got his religious education completely upside down. ...
Let us not forget that the killing began a long time before the invasion of Iraq.
Indeed, jihadis have been killing for a decade in the name of Islam. They killed innocent tourists and natives in Morocco and Egypt, in Africa, in Indonesia and in Yemen, all done in the name of Islam by Muslims who say that they are better than all other Muslims. They killed in India, in Thailand and are now talking of killing in Germany and Denmark and so on. There were attacks with bombs that killed scores inside Shia and Sunni mosques, inside churches and inside synagogues in Turkey and Tunisia, with Muslim preachers saying that it is okay to kill Jews and Christians - the so called infidels. ...
I fear those naïve Muslims who think that they are beating the West have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.
In this new cold and hot war, car bombs and suicide bombers here and there will be no match for the arsenal that those Westerners are putting together - an arsenal of laws, intelligence pooling, surveillance by satellites, armies of special forces and indeed, allies inside the Arab world who are tired of having their lives disrupted by demented so-called jihadis or those bearded preachers who, under the guise of preaching, do little to teach and much to ignite the fire, those who know little about Islam and nothing about humanity." (Hat tip: RealClearPolitics.)

"Doublespeak Unveiled: Muslim “moderates” are true to spirit of Islam" (Bruce Thorton, Private Papers, 2005/07/26)
"The jihadist enemy, on the other hand, is operating on principles and values squarely in the tradition of Islam, and thus unlike fascism and communism is expressing a spiritual need and an orthodox religious mandate: to fulfill by force the will of Allah that all the world be subject to Islam and an Islamic state, the caliphate, ruled by sharia, Islamic religious law. ...
How else do we make sense of the continued widespread support for homicide bombings and Al Qaeda visible in poll after poll of Muslims worldwide? ...
Consider how many British Muslims, supposedly opposed to homicide bombings, praised Hamas founder Sheikh Yassim, who engineered the murder of over 500 Israelis in furtherance of his organization's long-term goal to destroy Israel. After the Israeli Defense Forces killed him, a memorial service was held in London, an event attended by “moderates” like Muslim Council Secretary General Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who called Yassim a “renowned Islamic scholar,” an estimation shared by Inayat Bunglawala. Think about the implications: respected, Westernized “moderate” Muslims praise a terrorist murderer as an “Islamic scholar,” and we are supposed to believe that “fanatics” have “hijacked” and “distorted” Islam?
Or consider Dr. Yusuf Karadawi, a British Muslim theologian the mayor of London has praised as a “moderate.” Of course, on cue he will recite the usual “condemnations” of terrorism, but always with his fingers crossed. Once more, Israel is the key to discerning the true beliefs of the “moderate.” Dr. Karadawi has stated that there are no civilians in Israel, that using children as homicide bombers is acceptable, and that the terrorists in Iraq murdering Americans, Brits, and Iraqis are “valiant.” The Muslim Council of Britain has described this apologist for murder as a 'distinguished Muslim scholar, a voice of reason and understanding.'" (Hat tip: Melanie Phillips.)

"Criticism of suicide bombers censored at the UN" (IHEU/Dhimmi Watch, 2005/07/26)
A press release from the International Humanist and Ethical Union:
"IHEU today attempted to call on the United Nations to condemn
killing in the name of religion, but were prevented from doing so by the heavy-handed intervention of Islamic representatives. The IHEU call, at today's meeting of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, follows moves by Islamic clerics to legitimise the current wave of terror attacks. ...
The Islamic members of the Sub-Commission objected to the speech as an attack on Islam. The text however is a report on recent critical comment on Islamist extremism by a number of notable Muslim writers and is a call to the UN Human Rights Commission by the NGOs "to condemn calls to kill, to terrorise or to use violence in the name of God or any religion".
The text referred to recent decisions by high-ranking Muslim clerics
confirming that those who carry out suicide bombings cannot be treated as apostates and remain Muslims(1), a fatwa by a Saudi cleric that innocent Britons were a legitimate target for terrorist action(2), and remarks by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, dean of the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Qatar University who has visited Britain, that terror attacks are permissible."

"Van Gogh killer jailed for life" (Philippe Naughton, The Times, 2005/07/26)
"A Dutch court sentenced the confessed killer of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to life imprisonment today, the harshest sentence possible for a murder that the judge described as a terrorist attack.
Mohammed Bouyeri, 27, had mounted no defence at his two-day trial earlier this month for the killing last November.
Bouyeri had accused Van Gogh of insulting Islam and told the court he would do it again if given the chance.
"The terrorist attack on Theo van Gogh has unleashed feelings of great fear and insecurity in society", Udo Willem Bentinck, the presiding judge, told Bouyeri. "There is only one fitting punishment in this case and that is a life sentence. You are thus convicted to a life sentence."
Van Gogh, well known for his scathing criticism of Islam and the multicultutural society, was shot and stabbed in broad daylight as he cycled the streets of Amsterdam on November 2, 2004, pleading with his killer to discuss his grievance as he died. Bouyeri cut the filmmaker's throat and impaled a letter in his chest threatening Dutch politicians.
Bouyeri, wearing a black and white checkered headscarf, showed no emotion as he shook his lawyer’s hand following the verdict. He had earlier told the court he had intended to die in the action and become a martyr for his faith."

"After London, Britain's doubts" (John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Los Angeles Times, 2005/07/26)
"On the surface, British politicians are doing pretty much what American leaders did after 9/11 — rallying the people without stoking fear and extending the government's power to deal with terrorists without sacrificing the essence of a free society. Yet there are also striking differences that could have big implications for Britain's continued participation in the war on terrorism.":
"The second difference is that the British are much more willing to fault the West for the atrocities. In the U.S., very few people followed Susan Sontag and Ward Churchill in blaming American imperialism for the assaults on the twin towers and the Pentagon. After the attempted second attack on London, journalists peppered Tony Blair with questions about "the root causes of terrorism," which in context were clearly root causes in the Sontag sense.
Last week, London's mayor, "Red" Ken Livingstone, said, "I don't just denounce the suicide bombers. I denounce those governments that use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy" — which presumably means Israel and the U.S. "The bombings would never have happened if the West had simply left the Arab nations alone in the wake of the First World War, rather than trying to control the flow of oil." You only have to imagine Rudolph Giuliani uttering these words to see the gap between British and American politics."

"What The World Owes Palestinians and The Left" (Dennis Prager, Creators/RealClearPolitics, 2005/07/26)
"In the last few weeks, innocent men, women and children have been blown up, paralyzed, brain damaged and otherwise had their lives ruined by Muslim suicide bombers in Britain, Egypt and Iraq.
Who can we thank for this man-made plague? Palestinians and the Left.
We need to thank Palestinians for their major contribution to humanity -- religiously sanctioned mass murder of innocents through suicide. Prior to the Palestinians, this did not exist. ...
What therefore happened was that the religious justification for murdering innocent people took hold in the Muslim world. It apparently never occurred to Muslim leaders that once you justify evil, that evil will eventually be unleashed against you, too.
If blowing up Jewish children is OK, so is blowing up Egyptian, Moroccan, Iraqi, British, Spanish and Russian children.
And that is where the Left comes in. They have provided the secular and universal justification for Palestinian Islamic terror against Jews. ...
The socialist mayor of London himself blames the terror in his city on British support for America and Israel, not on Islamic terror-theology.
Like London's mayor, the Left around the world blames Israel for the Palestinian suicide bombers, and blames America for those in Iraq. Without the Left around the world, the Palestinian God-based mass murder through suicide would have been an isolated phenomenon, universally condemned as the evil it is."

"Anticipatory self-defense" (Louis Rene Beres, The Washington Times, 2005/07/26)
"Consider Iran. President Bush has assuredly authorized the Pentagon to prepare plans for the pre-emptive destruction of that country's developing nuclear installations. Leaving aside the difficult tactical side of such an operation -- and whether or not it would actually be helpful to American national security -- a prior question arises: Would this particular pre-emption be permissible under international law? ...
To be sure, in the best of circumstances, an expression of anticipatory self-defense against Iran would be broadly multilateral and fully endorsed by the United Nations. Sadly, we don't yet live in the best of all possible worlds, and the only viable alternative to an American defensive strike against Iran may be an unimaginable nuclear nightmare.
International law is not a suicide pact. There can never be any stable balance of terror in the Middle East. Functioning under certain Islamic leadership elites, Iran could conceivably consider using its nuclear weapons against "infidels" despite the reasoned expectation of massive nuclear retaliations. In such cases, deterrence would be immobilized and Iran could even become a suicide-bomber writ large -- a state willing to "die" to achieve certain presumed religious obligations.
Let President Bush take heed."

"What the Terrorists Want" (Daniel Pipes, FrontPageMagazine, 2005/07/26)
"In nearly all cases, the jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and the Shari’a (Islamic law). Or, again to cite the Daily Telegraph, their “real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide ‘caliphate’ founded on Shari’a law.”
Terrorists openly declare this goal. The Islamists who assassinated Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 decorated their holding cages with banners proclaiming “The caliphate or death.” A biography of Abdullah Azzam, one of the most influential Islamist thinkers of recent times and an influence on Osama bin Laden, declares that his life “revolved around a single goal, namely the establishment of Allah's Rule on earth” and restoring the caliphate.
Bin Laden himself spoke of ensuring that “the pious Caliphate will start from Afghanistan.” ...
Although terrorists state their jihadi motives loudly and clearly, Westerners and Muslims alike too often avert their eyes. Islamic organizations, Canadian author Irshad Manji observes, pretend that “Islam is an innocent bystander in today’s terrorism.”
What the terrorists want is abundantly clear. It requires monumental denial not to acknowledge it, but we Westerners have risen to the challenge."

"Two-thirds of Muslims consider leaving UK" (Vikram Dodd, The Guardian, 2005/07/26)
A small rump? There is actually no question in the poll itself about "support for the attacks on July 7". The closest one is if "more attacks would be justified" and 5% is tens of thousands rather than "potentiallly running into thousands".
The most amazing result, in my opinion, is that 6% answer "Not at all" on the question whether the "bom