Archived news and commentary: March 27 - April 2, 2006

2006/03/27 - 2006/04/02
2006/03/20 - 2006/03/26
2006/03/13 - 2006/03/19
2006/03/06 - 2006/03/12
2006/02/27 - 2006/03/05
2006/02/20 - 2006/02/26

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, April 2, 2006

News and commentary:

"If Not Peace, Then Justice" (Elizabeth Rubin, The New York Times Magazine, 2006/04/02)
"The Hague has become a symbol of both the promise of international law and its stunning shortcomings. We have reached a point in world affairs at which we learn about genocide even as it unfolds, and yet it is practically a given that the international community will not use military intervention to stop it. Militias called janjaweed, recruited from Arab tribes in Darfur and Chad and supported by the Sudanese government, continue to attack, rape and kill villagers from African tribes — more than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur, and two million have fled their homes. For more than two years, politicians and activists have been shouting to the world that a genocide is unfolding in Darfur, calling it a slow-motion Rwanda in the hope that the shock of remembering the nearly one million people slaughtered in that African country in 1994 would prompt action. Coalitions of students, religious leaders and human rights groups have lobbied in Washington, have set up SaveDarfur.org and have made green rubber bracelets, now worn all over the United States, that quote George Bush recalling Rwanda and promising, "Not on my watch." Yet the killing rolls on, and no one intervenes to bring it to an end, as if the genocide in Darfur were already history."

"Bali battles the Muslims who want an Indonesian cover-up" (Michael Sheridan, The Sunday Times, 2006/04/02)
"But many Indonesians fear their president is losing his grip on a political debate increasingly dominated by fundamentalists, who have made a parliamentary bill on indecency the centrepiece of their campaign to purify the nation.
“This is an attempt by some people to import Arab culture to Indonesia,” said Yenny Wahid, a Muslim campaigner for women’s rights.
The draft bill would extend a ban on indecency to prohibit kissing in public, which would be punishable by five years in prison. Public nudity or the “indecent” exposure of the stomach, thigh or hip — some religious jurists argue that shoulders could also be deemed inflammatory — could be punished by a 10-year sentence and a £30,000 fine. ...
In East Java, a former boxer turned preacher, Yusman Roy, 51, is in prison for “spreading hatred”. His offence: reading prayers in the local language, Bahasa Indonesia, instead of classical Arabic.
A religious high school teacher, Sumardi Tappaya, 60, is facing imprisonment after a complainant heard him “whistling” while performing prayers. Ardhi Husain, 50, who ran a prayer centre that employed faith to help the sick, has been sent to prison for five years for writing a book deemed “deviant” by the ever more vigilant Indonesian Council of Ulemas.
Its “deviance” lay in affirming, among other questionable doctrines, that non-Muslims could also enter paradise. The printer and publisher also received jail terms. But nobody was arrested after an irate crowd burnt down the prayer centre.
Such petty malice and mob violence are prompting fears of a harshly repressive moral climate for artists and intellectuals. Agus Suwage, an artist, is virtually in hiding after a furious crowd, offended by his painting of a nearly nude couple in an imaginary garden of Eden, forced the closure of the Jakarta Biennale arts festival. He, too, could face a jail term."

Saturday, April 1, 2006

News and commentary:

"Freed Iraq hostage Carroll says she was 'forced' to make video" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2006/04/01)
"Released Iraq hostage Jill Carroll said her captors had "forced" her to make false statements in a propaganda video to gain her freedom, and condemned them as criminals.
months in captivity in Baghdad her captors had threatened her "many times," contradicting the version of events she gave in an separate interview recorded immediately after her release.
"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed," the 28-year-old journalist said in a statement from Ramstein air base in Germany.
"Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not," said the statement, read by the editor of the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor newspaper on CNN.
"The people who kidnapped me and murdered Alan Enwiya are criminals, at best. They robbed Alan of his life and devastated his family. They put me, my family and my friends-- and all those around the world, who have prayed so fervently for my release-- through a horrific experience. I was, and remain, deeply angry with the people who did this," the statement said.
"I also gave a TV interview to the Iraqi Islamic Party shortly after my release. The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word," she said.
'At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times.'" (See also: "Insurgents Justify Release of Jill Carroll in Web Tape" (ABC News, 2006/03/30))

"Apostates from Islam" (Paul Marshall, The Weekly Standard, 2006/04/10)
"The case of Rahman -- an Afghan Christian tried for the capital crime of apostasy -- is not the only one, even in Afghanistan, and is unusual only in that, for once, the world paid attention and demanded his release. But there are untold numbers in similar situations that the world is ignoring. ...
In the last two years in Afghanistan, Islamist militants have murdered at least five Christians who had converted from Islam.
Vigilantes have killed, beaten, and threatened converts in Pakistan, the Palestinian areas, Turkey, Nigeria, Indonesia, Somalia, and Kenya. In November, Iranian convert Ghorban Dordi Tourani was stabbed to death by a group of fanatical Muslims. In December, Nigerian pastor Zacheous Habu Bu Ngwenche was attacked for allegedly hiding a convert. In January, in Turkey, Kamil Kiroglu was beaten unconscious and threatened with death if he refused to deny his Christian faith and return to Islam. ...
Abdul Rahman's plight is merely the tip of the iceberg. Like the violence over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, or the Ayatollah Khomeini's demand that Salman Rushdie be killed for blasphemy, it reveals a systematic, worldwide attempt by Islamists to imprison, kill, or otherwise silence anyone who challenges their ideology.
We need to go beyond the individual case of Abdul Rahman and push for genuine religious freedom throughout the Muslim world. Especially we need to push for the elimination of laws against apostasy, blasphemy, heresy, and "insulting Islam." They seek to place dominant, reactionary interpretations of Islam beyond all criticism. Thus -- since politics and religion are intertwined -- they seek to make political freedom impossible."

Added today:
"Police help control Berlin school" (BBC News, 2006/03/31)

Friday, March 31, 2006

News and commentary:

"Police brought in as teachers lose control at Berlin school" (Expatica, 2006/03/31)
Eurabia III. More on the situation at the Ruetli school in Berlin: "Violence at a Berlin school dominated by Arab and Turkish youths and the nearby slaying of police officer, shot in the head while trying to arrest muggers, has fuelled alarm that troubled parts of the German capital are lurching out of control.
Police have now been brought in to help control the situation at the Ruetli school in the immigrant-dominated Neukoelln district, with six officers checking students for weapons.
Teachers at the school published a letter this week widely interpreted as saying conditions at their school had become so bad that it should be closed down. ...
When reporters went to school on Thursday they were pelted with paving stones by masked youths from the schoolyard as the district's mayor stood helplessly at the entrance of the building.
"While sheer chaos dominated behind him, the mayor talked about the failures of the 1968 generation," jeered the Berliner Kurier newspaper.
Teachers complain that over 83 per cent of the 224 children attending the school are foreigners. The biggest group, 35 per cent, are Arab children mainly from Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. ...
Students at the Ruetli Hauptschule were not shy about expressing their views to reporters.
"The German (students) brown nose us, pay for things for us and stuff like that, so that we don't smash in their faces," said a foreign student from the school as quoted by the Berliner Kurier."

"Police help control Berlin school" (BBC News, 2006/03/31)
Eurabia II: "Police have been deployed at a Berlin school after teachers complained that they could not cope with their students' aggression and disrespect.
Six officers were posted at the Ruetli secondary school in Berlin's Neukoelln district to check students for weapons.
In a letter asking for help, the head teacher said it had become almost impossible to hold orderly lessons.
Students were said to be ignoring or even attacking the teachers and fighting among themselves.
A teacher who recently left the school told the Tagesspiegel newspaper that ethnic Arab pupils were in the majority and were bullying ethnic Turks, Germans and other nationalities.
A student at the school told German N24 television that pupils were coming to school armed.
"Things have been getting worse and worse because people seem to be crazy here. They are bringing knives and weapons to school," the teenager said."

"Muslim gang forces Paris cafe to censor cartoon show" (Middle East Times, 2006/03/31)
Eurabia I: "PARIS -- A gang of young Muslims wielding iron rods has forced a Paris cafe to censor an exhibition of cartoons ridiculing religion, the owners of the establishment said on Friday.

Some 50 drawings by well-known French cartoonists were installed in the Mer a Boire cafe in the working-class Belleville neighborhood of northeast Paris, as part of an avowedly atheist show entitled, "Neither god nor god".

The collection targeted all religions - including Islam - but there were no representations of the Prophet Mohammed such as sparked the recent crisis between the West and the Islamic world, according to Marianne who is one of the cafe's three owners.

"We used to give glasses of water to a group of local boys aged between 10 and 12 who played football across the street. On Tuesday a few came in, flung the water on the ground and accused us of being racists," said Marianne, who did not wish to give her family name. "Later more of them came back with sticks and iron rods and tried to smash the pictures. They managed it with a few of them. With the customers we chased them away, but they kept coming back," she said.

Later the cafe-owners were approached by a group of older youths. "They said they did not approve of what the youngsters had done. But what we were doing was unacceptable, too. They warned us that if we didn't take down the cartoons they would call in the Muslim Brothers who would burn the cafe down," said Marianne. "They kept saying: 'This is our home. You cannot act like this here'," she said.

Refusing to dismantle the exhibition, the owners have placed white sheets of paper inscribed with the word 'censored' over the cartoons that were targeted by the gang.

"To take down the cartoons would have been a surrender. But on the other hand we cannot expose ourselves to this kind of violence. This way you can still see the pictures if you lift the paper," said Marianne.

One of the cartoons that aroused the wrath of the youths was a bar scene, in which the barman offers a drink to an obviously inebriated man who says "God is great". The caption is: "The sixth pillar of Islam. The bar pillar." In France a "bar pillar" is a barfly or drunk." (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.)

"Report: Carroll Threatened Before Release" (Mariam Fam, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/03/31)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Jill Carroll's kidnappers reportedly warned her before her release that she might be killed if she cooperated with the Americans or went to the Green Zone, saying it was infiltrated by insurgents. ...
Also on the Internet video, Carroll is shown answering questions, presumably from her captors, and saying that Iraqi insurgents were "only trying to defend their country ... to stop an illegal and dangerous and deadly occupation."
"So I think people need to understand in America how difficult life is here for the normal, average Iraqis ... how terrifying it is for most people to live here every day because of the occupation," she said on the video.
Bergenheim said Friday that Carroll's parents, who spoke to her about the video, told him it was "conducted under duress."
"What emerged was that they actually started filming this tape the night before and then there was a power outage. Jill had been told the questions, asked to translate them from Arabic into English," he told ABC's "Good Morning America."
"When you're making a video and having to recite certain things with three men with machine guns standing over you, you're probably going to say exactly what you're told to say," Bergenheim added." (See also: "Insurgents Justify Release of Jill Carroll in Web Tape" (ABC News, 2006/03/30))

"Hamas defends suicide bombing" (Nidal al-Mughrabi, AFP/Yahoo! News, 2006/03/31)
Kedumim III: "The Islamist group Hamas defended on Friday a suicide bombing that killed four Israelis as "resistance" against Israeli "crimes," putting it at odds with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who condemned the attack. ...
Israeli officials said the bomber, whose group is part of Abbas's
Fatah faction, was disguised as a religious Jewish hitchhiker and blew himself up when Israelis in a car picked him up near a settlement late on Thursday.
A spokesman for Abbas told official Palestinian media that the president condemned the bombing and that he asked all factions to abide by a truce declared last year.
Hamas described the attack as a "natural response to Israeli crimes." Information Minister Youssef Rizqa said: 'Resistance is a legitimate right for people under occupation.'"

"Mofaz: Hamas is responsible for Kedumim attack" (Yaakov Katz, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/03/31)
Kedumim II: "At a Friday security assessment following Thursday's suicide bombing in which four Israelis were killed near the West Bank community of Kedumim, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that Hamas was responsible for the attack.
"A government that engraves on its flag the idea of continuing terror and does not order the security forces it is responsible for to fight terror is accountable for this attack and every other attack that will come out of the Palestinian territories," Mofaz said.
"Israel will not allow such attacks and will respond strongly."
Mofaz ordered the IDF and the Shin Bet to intensify their operations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in an effort to crack down on terror infrastructure there."

"Suicide bomber kills four Israelis days after polls" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2006/03/31)
Kedumim I: "Four Israelis were killed in a West Bank suicide bombing just hours after final election results gave acting premier Ehud Olmert a boost in his ambitious plans to fix Israel's final borders in the territory.
Three Jewish settlers and a 20-year-old woman performing civilian national service were killed when the bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the Kedumim settlement west of the city of Nablus, police said.
The bomber, who was disguised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, had hitched a ride with an elderly couple who were among the dead.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of moderate Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas's mainstream Fatah movement, said it carried out the attack.
It named the bomber as Ahmed Masharka, 24, from the flashpoint southern West Bank city of Hebron."

Thursday, March 30, 2006

News and commentary:

"Insurgents Justify Release of Jill Carroll in Web Tape" (ABC News, 2006/03/30)
"ABC News has found a video on an insurgent Web site showing U.S. reporter Jill Carroll before she was released by her captors in Iraq. The circumstances surrounding the video are unclear and it is equally unclear whether Carroll was under duress during the taping. ... In the video uncovered by ABC News, Carroll is shown being interviewed by an unknown person and refers to her imminent release.
Below is a partial translation of the video:
Voice in tape: How did the Mujahedeen treat you?
Jill Carroll: They treated me very well. They treated me very well, like a guest. I was given very good food, kept very safe, treated very, very well. ...
Voice: What do you feel now that the Mujahedeen are giving you your freedom while there are still women in Abu Ghraib living in very bad (unclear)?
Carroll: Well, I feel guilty honestly. I've been here, treated very well, like a guest. I've been given good food, never, never hurt while those women are in Abu Ghraib. Terrible things are happening to them with the American soldiers are torturing them and other things I don't want, I can't even say, so I feel guilty and I also feels it shows the difference between the Mujahedeen and Americans, the Mujahedeen are merciful and kind that's why I'm free and alive."

"Kidnapped U.S. Reporter Jill Carroll Freed" (Mariam Fam, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/03/30)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - American reporter Jill Carroll was set free Thursday, police said, nearly three months after she was kidnapped in a bloody ambush that killed her translator. Her editor said she was "fine."
Carroll, 28, was handed over to the Iraqi Islamic Party office in Amiriya, western Baghdad, by an unknown group, Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said. She was later turned over to the Americans and was believed to be in the heavily fortified Green Zone, he said.
"She is healthy and we handed her over to the Americans," Nasir al-Ani, a party member, told The Associated Press. The party is the main Sunni political organization. ...
Carroll was kidnapped on Jan. 7, in Baghdad's western Adil neighborhood while going to interview Sunni Arab politician Adnan al-Dulaimi. Her translator was killed in the attack about 300 yards from al-Dulaimi's office.
During her months in captivity, she had appeared twice in videos broadcast on Arab television, pleading for her life."

"Euro-Med Assembly condemns Danish cartoons" (Aleander Balzan, EU Observer, 2006/03/30)
The Danish cartoon affair II. Fjordman: "Those who still think Eurabia is 'just a conspiracy theory' should read the news more closely. Notice how they only refer to the Arab world as 'the Mediterranean.'":
"EUOBSERVER/ BRUSSELS- MEPs and national MPs from the EU and Mediterranean countries have approved a resolution which "condemned the offence" caused by the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed as well "as the violence which their publication provoked."
The two-day plenary session of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, held in Brussels, also urged governments to "ensure respect for religious beliefs and to encourage the values of tolerance, freedom and multiculturalism."
Speaking during the parliamentary assembly, Egyptian parliament speaker Ahmed Sorour insisted that the cartoons published in Denmark and other recent events showed the existence of a cultural deficit.
Jordanian MP Hashem al-Qaisi also condemned the cartoons while remarking that it is not sufficient to deplore the cartoons as these things might occur again in another country.
But Danish parliamentarian MP Troels Poulsen, reacting to extensive criticism on Danish society over the issue, insisted that Danish society is based on both freedom of expression and religious tolerance.
He added that the government can not influence the media."

"Danish Muslims Sue Newspaper Over Drawings" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/03/30)
The Danish cartoon affair I: "COPENHAGEN, Denmark - A group of 27 Danish Muslim organizations have filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper that first published the carricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, their lawyer said Thursday.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday, two weeks after Denmark's top prosecutor declined to press criminal charges, saying the drawings that sparked a firestorm in the Muslim world did not violate laws against racism or blasphemy.
Michael Christiani Havemann, a lawyer representing the Muslim groups, said lawsuit sought $16,100 in damages from Jyllands-Posten Editor in Chief Carsten Juste and Culture Editor Flemming Rose, who supervised the cartoon project.
"We're seeking judgment for both the text and the drawings which were gratuitously defamatory and injurious," Havemann said."

"Albanian Muslims object to city's statue of Mother Teresa" (Benet Koleka, The Scotsman, 2006/03/30)
"MUSLIMS in Albania's northern city of Shkoder are opposing plans to erect a statue to Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian Catholic nun in line for elevation to sainthood by the Vatican.
The dispute is unusual for Albania, where religion was banned for 27 years under the dictator Enver Hoxha, and "mixed" marriages are the norm.
Seventy per cent of the population are liberal Muslims, the rest are Christian Orthodox and Catholic. But Muslim groups in Shkoder rejected the local council plan for a statue, saying it "would offend the feelings of Muslims".
"We do not want this statue to be erected in a public place, because we see her as a religious figure," said Bashkim Bajraktari, Shkoder's mufti, a Muslim religious leader.
Several residents said they felt there was an underground effort to treat Shkoder as a Catholic town, ignoring its majority Muslim community.
Shkoder's Muslims recently protested against crosses being erected on prominent hilltops around the city."

Added today:
"Western Standard sued for publishing cartoons" (Ezra Levant, Western Standard, 2006/03/29)
"The 'Salman Rushdie of Iraqi-Kurdistan' forced to flee to Sweden" (Charles Chapman, The Is-Ought Problem, 2006/03/29)

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

News and commentary:

"'Don't translate that word for word'" (Gene, Harry's Place, 2006/03/29)
The Danish cartoon affair II: "Watch this extraordinary video from Al-Jazeera TV of a meeting in Damascus between representatives of the Arab Student Union and the Danish Youth Council.
I can only hope the Danes were not as benignly tolerant as they appear of the antisemitic ravings of ASU chairman Ahmad Al-Shater:

Can this Danish newspaper or any other newspaper in the world draw a cartoon similar to the one about the Prophet Muhammad... Can it draw a similar cartoon about a Zionist rabbi, or discuss the imaginary Holocaust and refute it, or even draw Sharon, the arch-murderer, who has killed thousands of Arabs, in a cartoon similar to the one that appeared in the Danish paper? With all due respect, I am saying that it cannot do so. There are many examples all over the world. ...

The world-renowned English intellectual [David Irving], who was recently tried in another country, and was sentenced to three years in jail, although the whole world recognizes him as a great and reliable intellectual, who does not say things that are baseless. He relies on documents. I cannot recall his name, but he is a great English intellectual, a university professor, who refuted the Holocaust. So, he was sentenced in Geneva [sic], in a country that is not his own, in violation of all international laws.

And there's this from Muhammad of the Sudanese Student Union:

I'd like to tell you that harming the Prophet is not a new thing. 1,400 years ago, the Jews tried to kill him in Al-Madina. In our religion, harming the Prophet is where we draw the line. We are prepared to die to prevent this.
[...]
As you know, Bush killed 110,000 people in Iraq, while Saddam did not kill even one third of this figure. Saddam did not kill even 30,000 people throughout his rule. I would like to welcome you on this visit, because the image of Denmark and the Danish people has become very negative in the Arab and Islamic world. In conclusion, I would like to say that tomorrow America will pass a resolution in the UN Security Council, calling for international military intervention in Sudan. Among these forces, obviously, there will be Danish forces. I would like to inform you that because the Sudanese people are so angry over this affront, they will kill the Danish soldiers before they kill the others.

At this point Ahmad Al-Shater interrupts and tells the interpreter:

Don't translate that word for word. Just say that the Sudanese will put up resistance against them."

(See also: "In Student Dialogue in Damascus, Danish Delegation Reproached for Using the Term "Middle East" and Listen to Threats on the Lives of Danish Soldiers in Sudan" (MEMRI TV, 2006/03/24))

"Western Standard sued for publishing cartoons" (Ezra Levant, Western Standard, 2006/03/29)
The Danish cartoon affair I. Don't miss the scan of the imam's "hand-written scrawl" [PDF]. Via LGF: "Imam Soharwardy first tried to have the police arrest the Western Standard’s editor. When that didn’t work, he went to the idiots at the Alberta Human Rights Commission — clearly understanding who would take his side.":
"Earlier this month, the Western Standard was sued in human rights court for publishing the Danish cartoons. It's been ten years since I've graduated from law school, and I've never seen a more frivolous, vexatious, infantile suit than this.
But that's the point -- this complaint is not about beating us in the law. Freedom of speech is still in our constitution; we'll win in the end. It's a nuisance suit, designed to grind us down, cost us money, and serve as a warning to other, more timid media.
The hand-written scrawl and the spelling errors were what first disgusted me with the suit; but the arguments were what really got me. The complainant, Imam Syed Soharwardy, a former professor at an anti-Semitic university in Saudi Arabia, doesn't just argue that we shouldn't have published the cartoons. He argues that we shouldn't be able to defend our right to publish the cartoons. The bulk of his complaint was that we dared to try to justify it.
He argues that advocating a free press should be a thought crime." (See also: "Media runs scared" (Ezra Levant, The Calgary Sun, 2006/02/13))

"Norway's asylum policy claimed another victim today" (Bruce Bawer, brucebawer.com, 2006/03/29)
"Norway's asylum policy claimed another victim today. This time it was somebody I knew. Stein Sjaastad (58) was a good friend of, and the primary-care physician for, several of my best friends in Oslo. I met him several times. He was always gentle and soft-spoken, and always had a warm, slightly wry smile and a genial twinkle in his eye. He was by all accounts a wonderful, caring doctor, and when one of my best friends in Oslo was going through the worst crisis of his life, Stein was extraordinarily understanding, considerate, and helpful, going out of his way to help him through it. He was what every doctor should be.
Today an Algerian national who has been living in Norway for about a year, and whose asylum application was apparently denied (but who, as is the usual practice, simply remained here anyway), walked into Stein's office and stabbed him several times in the chest and neck with a knife that he had brought along. Apparently he had been a patient of Stein's. This afternoon, when his name surfaced in connection with the murder, several Oslo doctors told police that they had experienced this man's aggressiveness firsthand. But of course nothing had been done. Nothing is ever done. After all, lots of asylum seekers are aggressive.
One was reminded at once of August 3, 2004, when another aggressive asylum seeker -- this one from Somalia -- murdered 23-year-old Terje Mjåland on a downtown Oslo tram, the same tram my partner takes to work every day. That murderer, as it happens, was released by the authorities only two weeks ago, on March 15, on his own recognizance. He can't be held responsible for the crime, they say, because he was insane at the time. Now, apparently, he's OK." (Note: Don't miss Bawer's fisking of the Washington Post review of his "When Europe Slept". It's difficult to excerpt, but very revealing: "It's depressing that at this late date, establishment types like Simon still reflexively mock, belittle, and demonize the messenger in the same disgraceful way the Dutch establishment did Fortuyn. Why, still, this need to say, in effect, "move along folks, there's nothing new here"? Why this continued compulsion to drag in feel-good nonsense, such as Klausen's inane "study," which seeks to assure us, against all legitimate evidence, that all this unpleasantness will melt away of its own accord?")

"The 'Salman Rushdie of Iraqi-Kurdistan' forced to flee to Sweden" (Charles Chapman, The Is-Ought Problem, 2006/03/29)
Mariwan Halabjayee, the "Salman Rushdie of Iraqi-Kurdistan" has been forced to flee to Sweden:
"Halabjayee is in possession of a warrant for his arrest issued by the Suleimaniya police department. Halabjayee reportedly intends to use the warrant in an attempt to secure political asylum in Sweden.
The Kurdistani - Photo of book cover - Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam, by Mariwan HalabjayeeHalabjaee is the author of the book Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam. The book is about how Islam is allegedly used to oppress women. "I wanted to prove how oppressed women are in Islam and that they have no rights," said Halabjayee.
The Islamic League of Kurdistan has issued a "conditional" fatwa to kill Halabjayee if he does not repent and apologize for writing his book. The "conditional" nature of the fatal fatwa is uncertain. Halabjayee reported that "a couple of weeks ago in Halabja, the mullahs and scholars said if I go to them and apologize they will give me 80 lashes and then refer me to the fatwa committee to decide if I am to be beheaded. They might forgive me, they might not." As a result, Halabjaye went into hiding with his pregnant wife and three children.
Halabjayee was forced to flee Iraqi-Kurdistan after the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) refused to offer him any protection or to arrest those who threatened his life. "The Kurdish authorities have not provided any protection from threats and fatwas," said Halabjayee, 'any moment I am expecting a bullet or a hand grenade to be thrown into where I live.'" (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

"Afghan Christian Given Asylum in Italy" (Maria Sanminiatelli, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/03/29)
"ROME - The Afghan man who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity received asylum in Italy Wednesday, despite requests by lawmakers in Afghanistan that he be barred from fleeing the conservative Muslim country.
Abdul Rahman arrived in Rome days after he was freed from a high-security prison on the outskirts of Kabul after a court dropped charges of apostasy against him for lack of evidence and suspected mental illness. ...
Afghanistan's new parliament debated Rahman's case Wednesday and demanded he be barred from leaving the country. But no formal vote was taken on the issue.
Some 500 Afghans, including Muslim leaders and students, also gathered at a mosque in the southern town of Qalat, in Zabul province, to demand the convert be forced to return to Islam or be killed.
"This is a terrible thing and a major shame for Afghanistan," Zabul's top cleric Abdulrahman Jan said."

"'The Last Helicopter'" (Amir Taheri, OpinionJournal, 2006/03/29)
"Mr. Ahmadinejad's defiant rhetoric is based on a strategy known in Middle Eastern capitals as "waiting Bush out." "We are sure the U.S. will return to saner policies," says Manuchehr Motakki, Iran's new Foreign Minister.
Mr. Ahmadinejad believes that the world is heading for a clash of civilizations with the Middle East as the main battlefield. In that clash Iran will lead the Muslim world against the "Crusader-Zionist camp" led by America. Mr. Bush might have led the U.S. into "a brief moment of triumph." But the U.S. is a "sunset" (ofuli) power while Iran is a sunrise (tolu'ee) one and, once Mr. Bush is gone, a future president would admit defeat and order a retreat as all of Mr. Bush's predecessors have done since Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Ahmadinejad also notes that Iran has just "reached the Mediterranean" thanks to its strong presence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. He used that message to convince Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to adopt a defiant position vis-à-vis the U.N. investigation of the murder of Rafiq Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon. His argument was that once Mr. Bush is gone, the U.N., too, will revert to its traditional lethargy. "They can pass resolutions until they are blue in the face," Mr. Ahmadinejad told a gathering of Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Arab leaders in Tehran last month."

Added today:
"Welcome to Paristan, Eurabia (with pictures)" (France-Echos, 2006/03/27)

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

News and commentary:

"French Journalist: Danish Imams are Extremists" (Thomas Lauritzen, Politiken/Agora, 2006/03/28)
The Danish cartoon affair. "The man behind the controversial French documentary thinks that Abu Laban and Ahmed Akkari are extremists disguised as moderates.":

"He is rather reluctant to say the words because he has the greatest respect for the Danes - but Mohammed Sifaoui feels that it is necessary to tell us that we are “naive”.

“All you good and well-meaning people at Politiken, in the rest of Denmark and Europe, you hurt your and moderate Moslems’ cause when you let extremists call the tune,” he says.

“They’re not bombers - they’re worse”

And for Sifaoui there’s no doubt the Danish Imams such as Ahmed Akkari and Abu Laban are just that, extremists but disguised as moderates.

“Actually, I was sort of seduced by Abu Laban the first day. He seemed both friendly and tolerant. But it was lucky that I stayed with them for some days, because then all of the extremist ideology was revealed,” Sifaoui says about his travels in Denmark this February which, i.a., revealed Ahmed Akkari’s famous ‘bomb threat’ against the Social Liberal politician Naser Khader.

“I have never suggested that Abu Laban or Ahmed Akkari are terrorists themselves - in the sense that they’re bombers. They’re something much worse: They’re the the ideologues which give the young mad-man the necessary excuse - the ideological grounds - for carrying out an act of terror in Denmark.” ...

He hasn’t been lacking in death threats. He lives under police guard and our meeting at a Parisian café is set up at the last minute. ...

Why is it that they threatened you anyway in the end - as the documentary shows?

'A delegation of Imams arrived from Sweden and I think one of them recognised me. Then the threats came, warning me to not show anything creative. And that’s the point: How can those people say that they are democrats and moderates? They threaten a journalist just because they find out that he’s against terror and extremism.'"

(See also: "Danish Imam Abu Laban knew about planned Martyr operation" (Agora, 2006/03/24) and "Imams Busted by Hidden Camera" (Jyllands-Posten/Agora, 2006/03/23))

"Are they all mad?" (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, 2006/03/29)
"What on earth has happened to the Left when it has made a conspiracy monger like [Robert] Fisk one of the hottest speakers on our literary and activist circuit, and a best-selling author and much-petted guest on the ABC? ...
Just this month he was a guest of Adelaide's Writers Festival and gave a long lecture at Sydney University that was broadcast in full on the ABC on Sunday. ...
Apparently every bad thing in the Middle East is our fault. Said Fisk: "I see this immense world of injustice . . . and I must say given our constant interference in the Middle East, I'm amazed that Muslims have been so restrained."
In fact, so "restrained" are they that Fisk isn't sure how much they can be blamed even for September 11.
He often spoke in the US, he said, and "more and more people in the audience believe the American administration had some kind of involvement".
"I have to say before you clap (indeed, some in his audience were applauding) I don't have any proof of that.
"I mean, the worst I can envisage is that they know something was coming and they preferred it to happen so that their strategy could be put into place."
(Hmm. What sinister strategy would that be, Bob?)
But Fisk could not leave it even at that: "Serious people across the States are asking -- people in Iowa, for God's sake -- are asking me in letters, 'What really happened? How did those buildings fall so neatly down?'
"And I can't answer them except to say I am in Beirut and not New York and I can't investigate this. But there are a lot of things we don't know, a lot of things we're not going to be told."
Like this, perhaps: that although we've read that United Airlines flight 93 crashed when its passengers tackled their hijackers, Fisk thinks "perhaps the plane was hit by a missile". An American missile.
"We still don't know," he claimed." (Hat tip: Tim Blair.)

"Christian Convert Released From Prison" (Amir Shah, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/03/28)
"KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity has been released from prison after the case was dropped, the justice minister said Tuesday.
The announcement came after the United Nations said Abdul Rahman has appealed for asylum outside Afghanistan and that the world body was working to find a country willing to take him.
Justice Minister Mohammed Sarwar Danish told The Associated Press that the 41-year-old was released from the high-security Policharki prison on the outskirts of Kabul late Monday.
"We released him last night because the prosecutors told us to," he said. "His family was there when he was freed, but I don't know where he was taken." ...
Hours earlier, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan Mazar-i-Sharif to protest the court's decision Sunday to dismiss the case.
"Abdul Rahman must be killed. Islam demands it," said senior Cleric Faiez Mohammed, from the nearby northern city of Kunduz. "The Christian foreigners occupying Afghanistan are attacking our religion."
Several Muslim clerics have threatened to incite Afghans to kill Rahman if he is freed, saying that he is clearly guilty of apostasy and deserves to die."

"Fukuyama's Fantasy" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2006/03/28)
"It was, as the hero tells it, his Road to Damascus moment. There he is, in a hall of 1,500 people he has long considered to be his allies, hearing the speaker treat the Iraq war, nearing the end of its first year, as "a virtually unqualified success." He gasps as the audience enthusiastically applauds. Aghast to discover himself in a sea of comrades so deluded by ideology as to have lost touch with reality, he decides he can no longer be one of them.
And thus did Francis Fukuyama become the world's most celebrated ex-neoconservative, a well-timed metamorphosis that has brought him a piece of the fame that he once enjoyed 15 years ago as the man who declared, a mite prematurely, that history had ended. ...
I happen to know something about this story, as I was the speaker whose 2004 Irving Kristol lecture to the American Enterprise Institute Fukuyama has now brought to prominence. I can therefore testify that Fukuyama's claim that I attributed "virtually unqualified success" to the war is a fabrication.
A convenient fabrication -- it gives him a foil and the story drama -- but a foolish one because it can be checked. ...
Fukuyama now says that he had secretly opposed the Iraq war before it was launched. An unusual and convenient reticence, notes Irwin Stelzer, editor of "The Neocon Reader," for such an inveterate pamphleteer, letter writer and essayist. After public opinion had turned against the war, Fukuyama then courageously came out against it. He has every right to change his mind at his convenience. He has no right to change what I said."

"A Terrorist's Grand Delusion" (Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, 2006/03/28)
"Zacarias Moussaoui proved to be about as effective a defense witness as he was a hijacker.
The 9/11 conspirator had planned to fly a hijacked airliner into the White House, but he got arrested before the attack and had to sit it out. Yesterday, fighting the death penalty in an Alexandria courtroom, he took the stand -- over his lawyers' strenuous objections -- and pretty much destroyed the defense his team had built.
He readily agreed that he was part of the 9/11 plot. "I was supposed to pilot a plane to hit the White House," he said, and he knew of the World Trade Center attacks but lied to prevent authorities from stopping them.
"You rejoiced in the fact that Americans were killed?" the prosecutor asked.
"That is correct," Moussaoui said, matter-of-factly.
You called the collapse of the twin towers "gorgeous"?
"Indeed."
You asserted that "3,000 miscreant disbelievers" burned in a "hellfire"?
'That is correct.'"

Added in archive:
"The War Against Swedes" (Fjordman, Gates of Vienna, 2006/03/26)
"Mohammed Taheri-Azar's letter to police" (The Herald Sun, 2006/03/24)

Monday, March 27, 2006

News and commentary:

"Admire how courageous our CFF..."
(France-Echos, 2006/03/27)
"Admire how courageous our CFF (Muslims = ‘Chances for France’ according to leftism) are attacking a young women in group. Look at their faces, they are having fun hitting those damned infidels. In the following seconds she gets seriously punched in the face…"

"Welcome to Paristan, Eurabia (with pictures)" (France-Echos, 2006/03/27)
France-Echos has lots of pictures from the latest riots in Paris. More here and here:
"Then, comes aggressions toward women. What happened with all the feminist associations, Isabelle ALONZO and Jeanne MOREAU, and all the ones that are ready to let out their nails (claws?) as soon as a male gets a promotion before them, and shout to denounce sexism when names are not feminized? No one accepted to be civilian part (?? small translation doubt: partie civile??) toward aggressions of which women were victims by the attack led by ‘racailles’ (rabble) commandos.
No one dare to accuse this criminal sexism in the media.
Therefore, let’s not count on them to seek women’s aggressors. This picture published by The Sun shows the degree of civilization and integration reached by the CFF (Muslims and immigrants = ‘Chances for France’ according STASI and all the socialists). Let’s remind that France was the country of elegance, courtesy and gallantry. It took only 20 years to destroy this, at the point that foreign press recommend to avoid France.
Our media says foreign press is exaggerating, like they said concerning the riots-intifada of November 2005 … But those images are only the known part. Seeing what those barbarians and savages allows themselves to do under the eye of TV cameras in the heart of Paris, it is not very hard to imagine what they can do in the ‘cités’ were the government has completely lost its authority, and were sharia (Islamic law) is being applied. A hint: drug dealing, kidnapping and torture (Issan HALANI), ‘tournantes’ (French casual word meaning collective rapes, when a group of more than 30 CFF capture and kidnap a French girl, often extremely young) …" (Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.)

"Moussaoui: I was supposed to fly 5th jet" (Deborah Charles, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2006/03/27)
"Zacarias Moussaoui said on Monday he was supposed to fly a fifth airplane into the White House as part of the September 11 plot and knew two other planes were to fly into New York's World Trade Center.
Taking the stand at his sentencing trial, Moussaoui -- the only person charged in the United States in connection with the September 11 attacks -- said "shoebomber" Richard Reid was to join him as part of the crew in the suicide mission. ...
Moussaoui's claim contradicted what he said last year in pleading guilty: that he was not supposed to be part of the September 11 hijackings but was meant to be in a second wave of al Qaeda attacks and fly an airplane into the White House.
Moussaoui said he did not know the precise date of the planned attacks when he was arrested in Minnesota on August 16, 2001, and had only scant details of the overall plan.
"I had knowledge that the two towers would be hit but I didn't have the detail," said Moussaoui, dressed in a green prisoner jumpsuit and white cap.
Asked by Gerald Zerkin, one of his attorneys, if he was meant to be part of the September 11 attacks, Moussaoui said: 'Yes, I was supposed to pilot a plane to hit the White House.'"

"Afghan politician contrasts with student" (James Kirchick, Yale Daily News, 2006/03/27)
Yale II: "Rahmatullah Hashemi and Malalai Joya seemingly have much in common. Both are 27, come from the same region of Afghanistan and are interested in international relations. But the similarities between Hashemi, silver-tongued former spokesman for the Taliban, and Joya, one of the new Afghani Parliament's youngest members, end there. Not long ago, while Hashemi toured the United States defending the public murder of unchaste women, Joya risked her life to teach girls -- which at the time was a capital crime.
Visiting last week, Joya gave Yale a piece of her mind. Hashemi's presence here is, to her, "disgusting" and an "unforgivable insult." ...
Outrage over religious fascism ought to be the province of American liberals. But in Hashemi's case it has been almost entirely trumpeted by Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and right-wing bloggers. A friend of mine recently remarked that part of his and his peers' nonchalance (and in some cases, support for) Hashemi has to do with the fact that the right has seized upon the issue. Our politics have become so polarized that many are willing to take positions based on the inverse of their opponents'. This abandonment of classical liberal values at the expense of political gamesmanship has consequences that reach far beyond Yale; it hurts our national discourse."

"Mr. Levin, Meet Ms. Rohbar" (John Fund, OpinionJournal, 2006/03/27)
Yale I: "NEW HAVEN, Conn.--The BBC calls Malalai Joya the most famous woman in Afghanistan. On Thursday the 27-year-old women's rights activist, a member of the Afghan Parliament, mounted a stage at Yale and turned her fire on the university's decision to admit a former Taliban official as a special student.
"All should raise their voice against such criminals," she told a crowd of 200. "It is an unforgivable insult to the Afghan people that he is here. He should face a court of law rather than be at one of your finest universities." ...
Makai Rohbar, an Afghan student whose family legally immigrated to New Haven in 2002, served as Ms. Joya's translator for the evening. After Ms. Joya's speech, I asked Ms. Rohbar what she was studying. She told me she was taking classes in chemistry and biophysics in the hope of someday becoming a physician. I then inquired how long she had been at Yale. She blushed. "I don't go here," she said. "I attend classes at Gateway Community College," also in New Haven. She had never imagined that she could be accepted into Yale or ever find a way to pay for it. ...
I asked what she thought about Mr. Hashemi attending Yale with the help of a Wyoming foundation and a discount from Yale of 35% to 40% on tuition. "It's like a nightmare that you can't believe when you wake up," she told me. 'This is a good country, but I think some people in New Haven are so complacent they don't know what officials like Hashemi did to my people.'" (See also: "Sayed and de Man at Yale" (John Fund, OpinionJournal, 2006/03/20) and "Jihadi Turns Bulldog" (John Fund, OpinionJournal, 2006/02/27))

"In Iran, Even Some On Right Warning Against Extremes" (Karl Vick, Washington Post, 2006/03/27)
"TEHRAN -- Nine months after the election of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, Iranian politics has shifted so sharply to the right that some traditional conservatives are warning of the dangers of radicalism.
With reformists sidelined and Ahmadinejad setting a strident new tone on the global stage, figures from the extreme right of Iran's political spectrum are defining the terms of political debate in the country. In remarks that set off a domestic firestorm, a senior cleric close to the new president suggested in January that Iranian voters were largely irrelevant because the government requires only the approval of God.
The remarks by Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah, and similar comments by an aide, were roundly criticized, even on the editorial page of Kayhan, a traditional showcase for hard-line thinking. ...
"Ayatollah Khomeini warned the people lots of times not to allow these people, the Shia Talibans, to come to power in Iran and have space," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, noting that Khamenei has judged it prudent to accommodate even extremists within the system and accord them respect. "Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei feel these people can do a lot of damage. They can damage Iran. They can damage Islam. They are like the Taliban. They are like al-Qaeda. They say they know what Allah expects from us -- that we should do what he wants from us without paying attention to the consequences.
'And it's a very dangerous belief.'"

Added in archive:
"Today Tehran, Tomorrow the World" (Charles Krauthammer, TIME, 2006/03/26)
"Facing down a culture where they talk like crazies" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2006/03/26)

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

 

Copyright © Watch 2001-2006.
Copyrights of quoted materials belong to their respective owners.

"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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