Archived news and commentary: September 4 - 10, 2006

2006/09/04 - 2006/09/10
2006/08/28 - 2006/09/03
2006/08/21 - 2006/08/27
2006/08/14 - 2006/08/20
2006/08/07 - 2006/08/13
2006/07/31 - 2006/08/06

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, September 10, 2006

News and commentary:

"Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami..."
(Bizuayehu Tesfaye, AP, 2006/09/10)
"Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, left, arrives at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2006, in Cambridge, Mass. Khatami discussed 'Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence.'"

"Khatami calls Hizbollah symbol of resistance" (Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2006/09/10)
"CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami said on Sunday Hizbollah was a symbol of Arab resistance and that groups or nations fighting oppression could not be equated with terrorists.
Khatami said there was a difference between those who "strive for the territorial integrity of a country and those who kill only to kill." His comments, through an interpreter, came in reply to a student question after he delivered a speech at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
He called Hizbollah, which fought a 34-day war with Israel in Lebanon this summer and is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, "a symbol of Arabic resistance." Washington has accused Iran of arming Hizbollah guerrillas. ...
The speech in Cambridge on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, marked the end of a controversial five-city visit that included stops in Washington and New York."

"Clausewitz in Wonderland" (Tony Corn, Policy Review, September 2006)
"That infatuation with Clausewitz can lead to hair-raising absurdities about the GWOT is never better illustrated than by the recent remark of Anglo-American Clausewitzian veteran Colin Gray on the global jihad: ... “The war-hardened multinational cadre of veterans of the Afghan struggle is diminishing rapidly. It has suffered the natural attrition of age and infirmity, as well as the combat attrition inflicted by an aroused bevy of state enemies…. Those warriors for Islam cannot be replaced by new cohorts with comparable training and group bonding…. Al-Qaeda has now aroused a formidable array of enemies, within and beyond the Islamic realm.”
Besides the fallacy of equating jihadists with Al Qaeda alone, this static conception of the global jihad in terms of finite “stock” ignores the dynamic created by media, i.e., the cyber-mobilization as the new Levee en Masse. On what planet does the good professor live? From the Balkans to Londonistan, Europe has been, for at least a decade now, the closest thing to a “frontline” in the global jihad. In Colin Gray’s Britain today, 6 percent of the Muslim population (i.e., 100,000 individuals) think that the 7/7 London bombings were “fully justified;” 32 percent of British Muslims (half a million people) believe that “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end;” and 40 percent want to see sharia law adopted in the UK. ...
Rather than bury their heads in the Clausewitzian sand, strategists would be better inspired to meditate the truly “remarkable trinity” engineered by Arab governments for more than thirty years: natalist policies, anti-Western mass indoctrination, and mass emigration to the West. Isn’t time at least to add a chapter to On War on 'demographic warfare?'"

"The age of horrorism" (Martin Amis, The Observer, 2006/09/10)
It's a bit rich of Martin Amis to use other writers as examples of "rationalist naivete" regarding suicide-mass murder. Yes, José Saramago certainly fits the bill, but perhaps the essay would have been more "penetrating" if Amis scrutinized his own writings on the subject instead, for example "Fear and loathing" (Martin Amis, The Guardian, 2001/09/18), as it is a perfect example of this phenomenon from its opening paragraph:

"Terrorism is political communication by other means. The message of September 11 ran as follows: America, it is time you learned how implacably you are hated."

To be fair, Amis seems to acknowledge as much when he writes that he "felt disgrace ... because I had done it too, and in print, early on," but still, given his apparently still unresolved personal "philosophical crises," (unless I've missed some prior mea culpa) wouldn't this have been a perfect opportunity for self-reflection?:

"After the failure of Oslo, and the attendant consolidation of Hamas, the second intifada ('earthquake') got under way in 2001, not with stonings and stabbings, like the first, but with a steady campaign of suicide-mass murder. 'All over the world,' writes Berman, 'the popularity of the Palestinian cause did not collapse. It increased.' The parallel process was the intensive demonisation of Israel (academic ostracism, and so on); every act of suicide-mass murder 'testified' to the extremity of the oppression, so that 'Palestinian terror, in this view, was the measure of Israeli guilt'. ...
But the protests 'rose and fell in tandem with the suicide bomb attacks, and not in tandem with the suffering of the Palestinian people'.

This was because suicide-mass murder presented the West with a philosophical crisis. The quickest way out of it was to pretend that the tactic was reasonable, indeed logical and even admirable: an extreme case of 'rationalist naivete', in Berman's phrase. Rationalist naivete was easier than the assimilation of the alternative: that is to say, the existence of a pathological cult."

Saturday, September 9, 2006

News and commentary:

"Inside Pakistan's jihad factories" (Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, 2006/09/09)
"Over the years we have posted many articles about Pakistan's Islamic schools, showing how they are an ever-fertile breeding ground for jihadists. Here is yet another. Its heading reads: "Pakistan's Islamic schools have been accused of fomenting extremism. But, while their curriculum is avowedly narrow – Koran-memorisation all day, every day – their mullahs are at pains to distance themselves from violence." I wonder if it occurred to the Telegraph editors that spending all day, every day memorizing a book that exhorts believers to "kill the unbelievers wherever you find them" (9:5), "strike the necks" of unbelievers" (47:4), make war against Jews and Christians (9:29), beat disobedient wives (4:34) and the like might do a good bit to foment "extremism" in itself. ...
"By the book," from the Telegraph, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The fact that two of the July 7 London bombers visited madrassas in Pakistan before the attack – and the current investigation into Pakistani links to the alleged plot to bomb transatlantic flights from Heathrow – has once again raised questions over the significance of Pakistan's madrassas in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

However, contrary to the impression sometimes given by the popular press in the West, madrassas are educational institutions, not military training camps. The only gun on view at the Jamia Anwaria is an ancient shotgun belonging to a security guard dozing on a chair outside....

What a silly, naive paragraph. There are no guns, thus there is no military training. It appears that the Telegraph also never considered the possibility that the madrassas play a role in indoctrination and recruitment, in the service of the same jihad that those undergoing military training are hoping to advance. ...

The madrassa's leader, Maulana Ajmal Qadri, who is widely revered by his followers as a Muslim pir (saint), makes no apology for his beliefs. 'In our madrassas, we teach the Koranic jihad,' he says. 'This refuses to admit the supremacy of anyone, or any power, but Allah. We believe that the Muslim way is the supreme way, that the Islamic principle is best and that what the rest of the world does is not up to the mark.'

And so begins a two-hour disquisition on the failings and corruptions of the West that are a familiar part of thousands of sermons delivered every Friday – the Muslim holy day – to the faithful masses across Pakistan.

Read it all."

"Can the West defeat the Islamist threat? Here are ten reasons why not" (David Selbourne, The Times, 2006/09/09)
"LET US SUPPOSE, for the sake of argument, that the war declared by al-Qaeda and other Islamists is under way. Let us further suppose that thousands of “terrorist” attacks carried out in Islam’s name during the past decades form part of this war; and that conflicts that have spread to 50 countries and more, taking the lives of millions — including in inter-Muslim blood-shedding — are the outcome of what Osama bin Laden has called “conducting jihad for the sake of Allah”.
If such war is under way, there are ten good reasons why, as things stand, Islam will not be defeated in it. ...

2) The second reason why, as things stand, Islam will not be defeated is that the strengths of the world community of Muslims are being underestimated, and the nature of Islam misunderstood. It is neither a “religion of peace” nor a “religion hijacked” or “perverted” by “the few”. Instead, its moral intransigence and revived ardours, its jihadist ethic and the refusal of most diaspora Muslims to “share a common set of values” with non-Muslims are all one, and justified by the Koran itself. ...

5) The fifth disablement is to be found in the confusion of “progressives” about the Islamic advance. With their political and moral bearings lost since the defeat of the “socialist project”, many on the Left have only the fag-end of anti-colonial positions on which to take their stand. To attribute the West’s problems to our colonial past contains some truth. But it is again to misunderstand the inner strength of Islam’s revival, which is owed not to victimhood but to advancing confidence in its own belief system.

Moreover, to Islam’s further advantage, it has led most of today’s “progressives” to say little, or even to keep silent, about what would once have been regarded as the reactionary aspects of Islam: its oppressive hostility to dissent, its maltreatment of women, its supremacist hatred of selected out-groups such as Jews and gays, and its readiness to incite and to use extremes of violence against them. Mein Kampf circulates in Arab countries under the title Jihadi."

"Mother on terror charges for failing to report husband's alleged jihad plans" (The Scotsman, 2006/09/09)
"A YOUNG mother appeared in court yesterday charged with terrorism-related offences.
Bouchra El-Hor, 23, is charged with concealing information and failing to disclose information in relation to her cleric husband Yassin Nassari's alleged preparations for jihad. ...
Prosecutor Karen Jones claimed that El-Hor, who has Syrian and Dutch nationality, wrote a letter praising her husband's alleged plans for jihad and offered herself and her son for future martyrdom. Wearing a burka which covered her eyes and hands, El-Hor spoke only to confirm her name and date of birth at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday.
Glyn Lloyd, representing El-Hor, said: "It is indicated that she will plead not guilty."
Mr Lloyd said that the letter was a fantasy and El-Hor, of Ealing, west London, had no plans to carry out any jihad."

Friday, September 8, 2006

News and commentary:

"Muslim groups infiltrated by 7/7 bombers had huge govt grants" (The Daily Mail, 2006/09/08)
"Government grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds were handed out to Muslim organisations infiltrated by the July 7 suicide bombers.
Huge chunks of taxpayers' money were given to four Leeds-based institutions that were the haunts of ring-leader Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer.
Grants ranging from a few hundred pounds to £200,000 were made in Beeston, the bombers' home territory where three of the four 7/7 bombers lived.
The money came from funds intended to regenerate the area but suspicions persist that some of the cash may have been diverted to recruit and train the home-grown terrorists who killed 52 people in last year's attacks.
The Iqra Islamic bookshop - where hate-filled DVDs glorifying suicide bombers were produced - was one recipient.
Leeds Community School, which shared the same building with the radical bookstore, obtained a grant of over £106,000 for 'staffing and construction costs.'
The 'al-Qaeda gym' in the basement of a nearby mosque used by Edgware Road bomber Khan,30, was also equipped with money provided by Leeds City Council.
The Hamara youth centre, raided by police after the four men blew themselves and where Khan's inner circle met, received two £200,000 grants for building costs and an £189,000 EU building grant."

"Symposium: The Death of Multiculturalism?" (Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine, 2006/09/08)
A symposium with Bat Ye’or, Claire Berlinski, Leon de Winter, Bruce Bawer, Fjordman, Hege Storhaug and Lars Hedegaard:

"Hedegaard: ... As for the solution, I'm afraid that I cannot think of any. We can forget about integrating Muslims. Europe has successfully integrated any number of immigrants, including some that have come from far corners of the world. But we cannot integrate members of a competing political system who refuse to intermarry with us unless it is on their terms. If I could point to a single example of successful integration of Muslim minorities into non-Muslim populations anywhere during 1400 years of history, I would be more optimistic.
We will not get a solution, but we will get an outcome. And I fear that it will not be a pretty one. It helps little for European voters to choose new parliamentary majorities, as the Danes did in 2001, because the number of Muslims has already reached a critical mass and because any democratic government would recoil from employing the kind of harsh measures needed to protect free institutions and the secular state. What we see is general capitulation to the forces of the prophet -- one long Munich. And despite much talk of American resolve and resourcefulness, precisely the same is happening in the US."

"Bat Ye’or: ... Have we gone beyond the point of no-return with Islamic universities and madrassas sprouting over a Europe instrumentalized and paralyzed by terrorism from within and without, and professing jihadist fervor against America and Israel? Is not Tony Blair a tragic figure, in its Churchillian solitary fight? Can we survive if we stop to buy our security by paying billions in development projects in Arab countries and to the Palestinians? The results of this solicitude? The election of a Palestinian Hamas Taliban type regime with chaos, abductions, forced conversions, and the rise of Hizbullah and Islamism everywhere.
Our future? Maybe it will be like Lebanon, a fake state, a fake democracy which we pretend exists while in fact it is a jihadist battleground, administered by terrorized dhimmi notables in the service of their Muslim masters."

"Danish Investigators Fear Evidence Is Insufficient to Hold 5 Suspects in Possible Bombing Plot" (Dan Bilefsky, IHT/NYT, 2006/09/08)
"It also emerged Thursday that, just 90 minutes before the police crashed through his door in a sweep aimed at foiling what was alleged to be a terrorist plot, one of the suspects wrote an e-mail message to the editor of the Danish newspaper Politiken in which he railed against anti-Muslim hysteria, the paper reported Thursday.
In the message, the suspect, a recent convert to Islam, cited the authors of a new book, “Islamists and the Naïve,” which compares Islam to Nazism and communism.
It was written by Karen Jespersen, a former interior minister from the Social Democrat Party, and her husband, Ralf Pittelkow, a columnist for Jyllands-Posten. It was that newspaper that provoked Muslim fury last year when it was the first to publish cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad.
“Yes, there is fanaticism in Denmark and you have to ask yourself why the Danes are so hostile to foreigners,” the letter says. “The answer is very simple for us Muslims living here,” it continued, before mentioning Ms. Jespersen and Mr. Pittelkow, who was an adviser to Poul Nyrup Rasmussen when he was prime minister.
“He supports ridiculing people,” the e-mail message said of Mr. Pittelkow.
The book has created a sensation in Denmark, in part because its authors are former leftist intellectuals who once advocated tolerance but now argue that anyone underestimating the threat posed by Islam to Denmark and the West is naïve."

Added today:
"The Danish Mohammed Cartoons and the Failed German Train Bombings" (Lorenzo Vidino, Counterterrorism Blog, 2006/09/04)
"Prophet drawings motivated by suspects behind failed German train bombings, investigator says" (IHT/AP, 2006/09/02)

Thursday, September 7, 2006

News and commentary:

"Wail al-Shehri
One of the Martyrs of the Manhattan Raid"
(Al-Jazeera/CNN, 2006/09/07)
Screencap via Hot Air, who has much more.

"Al-Jazeera airs pre-9/11 bin Laden tape" (Bassem Mroue, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/09/07)
"Al-Jazeera broadcast Thursday a previously unshown video of the preparations for the Sept. 11 attacks, in which al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is seen meeting with some of the planners in an Afghan mountain camp.
The station said that bin Laden also is shown greeting some of the hijackers, although their faces were not clear and it was not immediately known which are purportedly shown.
The video included the last wills and testaments of hijackers Wail al-Shehri and Hamza al-Ghamdi. ...
Al-Shehri and al-Ghamdi are each shown speaking to the camera, their images superimposed over pictures of the crumbling World Trade Center towers and the burning Pentagon, as well as a model of a passenger jet.
They both say Muslims must stand up and fight the West.
"If jihad now is not an obligation (on Muslims), when will it be?" said al-Shehri, pointing to attacks on Muslims in Bosnia, Afghanistan and
Chechnya.
"If we are content with being humiliated and inclined to comfort, the tooth of the enemy will stretch from Jerusalem to Mecca, and then everyone will regret on a day when regret is of no use," al-Ghamdi said."

"After Theo Van Gogh" (Brendan Bernhard, LA Weekly/FrontPageMagazine, 2006/09/07)
A review of Ian Buruma's "Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance":
"He dutifully notes that Amsterdam is likely to be a majority-Muslim city in nine years’ time, but unlike the voters Fortuyn appealed to, he is not “confused,” let alone worried, by this. He writes, rather, like a man who is above such “petit-bourgeois” concerns, as they were recently termed in The New Yorker. And while his criticisms of Fortuyn, Van Gogh and Hirsi Ali are occasionally interspersed with praise, the latter is usually fleeting.
On the other hand, he is happy to inform readers that “perhaps the most impressive young woman I ran across during my time in Holland . . . wore a black chador that left only her round, friendly face, with a touch of lipstick and mascara, open to the eyes of the world.” According to Buruma, this woman, Nora, is in favor of the separation of church and state, against the imposition of sharia law in Holland — this is supposed to be a great achievement, apparently — and “would never even think” of living in a country like Saudi Arabia, even though — as any sane reader will immediately recognize — she chooses to dress as if she were already there. ...
On November 2, 2004, “the violent fantasies of a Dutch Muslim ended in the murder of a fellow citizen,” he states in the closing paragraph. But was Bouyeri “Dutch” in any meaningful sense? Did he regard Van Gogh as a “fellow citizen” or simply an infidel? At any rate, Buruma’s closing sentence leans less to Van Gogh than to his murderer: “What happened in this small corner of northwestern Europe could happen anywhere, as long as young men and women feel that death is their only way home.”
How about just buying them a plane ticket?"

"Bush Says Detainees Will Be Tried" (R. Jeffrey Smith and Michael Fletcher, The Washington Post, 2006/09/07)
"President Bush yesterday announced the transfer of the last 14 suspected terrorists held by the CIA at secret foreign prisons to the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said he wants to try them before U.S. military panels under proposed new rules he simultaneously sent to Congress.
Bush's statement during an impassioned East Room speech represented the first time he has confirmed the existence of the CIA program under which Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and others have been secretly held and subjected to irregular interrogation methods.
The president's dramatic speech committed Washington to putting senior al-Qaeda members -- including some believed to be the architects of the attacks -- on trial in proceedings that may be at least partly open."

Added today:
"Germany: Muslim Death Threats Force Woman Lawyer To Quit" (Giraldus Cambrensis, Western Resistance, 2006/09/06)
"Threats halt woman lawyer who fought forced marriages" (Kate Connolly, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/09/06)

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

News and commentary:

"Germany: Muslim Death Threats Force Woman Lawyer To Quit" (Giraldus Cambrensis, Western Resistance, 2006/09/06)
Seyran Ates II: "From a practice in Berlin, she had become well-known and her skills were eagerly sought by Muslim women. In 2005, she was named "German woman of the year". ...
20 years ago, Seyran was shot at by a man in the Berlin suburb of Kreuzberg. Last year she was representing a Muslim woman in a divorce case. Outside the court, the Muslim husband first physically attacked the woman, and then tried to assault her. This was the beginning of the end of her career. ...
It is saddening to hear that a brave woman such as this, prepared to stand up to the sexism, oppression and violence at the heart of Islam, has been so let down by the German system. Her message of the evils of multiculturalism, coming from a woman who knows about multiculturalism from the inside out, is a stark reminder to all the bland leftists who think they are "doing good" by encouraging "Muslim culture". To do so is, as Seyran states, to suppress women who would otherwise be full and equal members of our societies."

"Threats halt woman lawyer who fought forced marriages" (Kate Connolly, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/09/06)
Seyran Ates I: "A prominent Berlin lawyer has gone underground after receiving death threats for defending Muslim women who have been forced into marriage.
Seyran Ates, 43, a women's rights advocate, was named Germany's woman of the year in 2005 and has repeatedly spoken out against forced marriage, headscarves and honour killings. She said she had closed her practice as she could not operate safely.
Miss Ates said police had refused to protect her despite threats against her life, including a shooting incident in which a colleague was killed and she was seriously injured.
Her withdrawal from public life as one of the country's most outspoken critics of the subjugation of Muslim women has been called "alarming" by politicians and has sparked debate across the political spectrum.
Miss Ates, a Turkish Kurd who moved to Germany when she was six, has been the repeated target of insults and attacks by the families of many Turkish and Kurdish women in Germany, whom she has represented over more than two decades.
Last week she was threatened again by the husband of one of her clients, who attacked his wife and Miss Ates outside the courtroom where a case against the man was being held." (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.)

"Kidnapped Sudanese journalist beheaded: witness" (Opheera McDoom, Reuters/ABC News, 2006/09/06)
"KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A Sudanese newspaper editor who was kidnapped by unknown armed men was found beheaded on Wednesday, a day after he was reported snatched from outside his home in the capital Khartoum, an Interior Ministry source said.
A photograph showed Mohamed Taha's body bound at the feet and hands with his severed head next to his body, a Reuters witness said. ...
Taha was arrested last year and his al-Wifaq paper closed for three months after it published a series of articles questioning the roots of the Prophet Mohammed, which were condemned by Sudan's powerful Islamists.
Local papers quoted Taha's family as saying a group of men bundled him into a car outside his home in north Khartoum and sped off toward central Khartoum on Tuesday."

"ISNA Seminar: How to Beat a Woman" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2006/09/06)
"At the Islamic Society of North America’s national convention, attendees learned that beating a woman is for her own protection. (Hat tip: ciaospirit.)

Sunday, 11:00-12:30 pm
Room 22
Session 9G: “...And Beat them Lightly”: An Analysis and In-Depth Discussion of Verse 4:34

This session will discuss the following: understanding the context of revelation (asbaab al nuzuul) for this verse. Emphasis will be focused on understanding the correct meaning of the verse, with specific attention given to the words qiwamah, nushuz, and daraba as well as to understand how this verse is to be applied as a protection for women, not as an abuse.

Speakers: Muzzamil Siddiqi, Rabia Karim Khan
Moderators: Mohamed Magid Ali

Muzzamil Siddiqi may be familiar to LGF readers. He was an imam at the Orange County Islamic Center when Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn converted to Islam there."

"The Realities of Evil" (Theodore Dalrymple, New English Review, September 2006)
A review of the anthology "From the Gulag to the Killing Fields", edited by Paul Hollander:
"Where the means justify the end, as they do for most ideologies, mass murder becomes more likely, perhaps even inevitable in ideologised states. The capacity for cruelty, and the enjoyment of cruelty, that lies latent in almost every human heart, then allies itself to a supposedly higher, even transcendent purpose. Original sin meets social conditioning. A vicious circle is set up: and eventually, viciousness itself is taken to be a sign both of loyalty and of higher purpose.
It is curious how even now, after all the calamities of the twentieth century, the lengths to which people are prepared to go to pursue an end is taken by others as a sign of the worthiness if not of the end itself, at least of the motives of the extremists. The fact that people are prepared to blow themselves up in an attempt to murder as many complete strangers as possible is taken as proof of the strength of their humanitarian feelings and outrage at a state of injustice.
The greatness of a crime is thus a guarantee of the greatness of its motive: for who would order the deportation of whole nations, for example, cause famines, work millions to death, shoot untold numbers, unless he had some worthy higher purpose? And the more ruthlessly he did all these things, the higher his purpose must be to justify them. To participate in the worst of crimes is then to be the best of men."

"Even Jordanians seethe with hatred for the West" (Tim Butcher, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/09/06)
"But Jaouri did something very abnormal that day. Having acquired a machine pistol, he made his way to the ancient Roman amphitheatre in the heart of downtown Amman. It is a major tourist landmark and Jaouri would have known that Western tourists were likely to be there. He then walked up to a 12-strong group of foreigners, took out the machine pistol and calmly tried to kill as many of them as possible, another bloody act of jihadism where a person's connection with the West is enough, in the eyes of fanatics, to justify death.
One British tourist died and five other Westerners were wounded, as was a member of the Jordanian tourist police, who bravely hurled himself in the line of fire. ...
But perhaps the most disturbing aspect was the way the incident reveals how a seething hatred of the West festers even in Jordan, a country that is as pro-Western as any in the Middle East. ...
But the sad reality that the Jordanian authorities must face is that Jaouri is indicative of a genuine political sentiment within Jordan. He did something despicable and extreme, but the truth is that many do feel a deep antipathy towards the West. After all, only a few miles up the road from al Kadisyeh is Zarqa, hometown of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the jihadist notorious for beheading Western hostages in Iraq." (See also: "Briton killed in Jordan as ‘terrorist’ gunman opens fire on tourist party" (Rana Sabbagh-Gargour and Daniel McGrory, The Times, 2006/09/05))

"UK MPs find leap in anti-Semitism" (George Conger, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/09/06)
"Anti-Zionism has fueled an explosive rise in anti-Semitism in the UK, an All-Party Parliamentary Enquiry into Anti-Semitism is expected to report to Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday. ...
Anti-Semitism was "no longer a 1940s far-right phenomenon," Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust (CST) told The Jerusalem Post; "it's far wider than that. Jews are its first target, and it will not end there."
Anti-Semitic incidents have risen threefold following the start of the conflict in Lebanon, said Gardner, a spokesman for the CST, an organization whose roots stretch back to the 1930s battles with Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in London's East End. July was the third-worst month on record. He added that he hoped this inquiry "brings a better realization that all of society is challenged" by the scourge of anti-Semitism. ...
A statistical link between anti-Semitic views and anti-Israel views was found in a study of 5,000 Europeans in 10 countries conducted by Profs. Edward Kaplan of Yale University's School of Management and Charles Small of Yale's Institute for Social and Policy Studies. The study supports the conclusions of the MacShane inquiry." (See also the study [PDF]: "Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe" (Edward H. Kaplan and Charles A. Small, Journal of Conflict Resolution, August 2006). Also: "Critics of Israel 'fuelling hatred of British Jews'" (Ned Temko, The Observer, 2006/09/03))

Added today:
"Critics of Israel 'fuelling hatred of British Jews'" (Ned Temko, The Observer, 2006/09/03)

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

News and commentary:

"The new look for Britain’s hospitals"
(The Daily Express, 2006/09/05)

"British hospital introduces burka-style gown for Muslim patients" (AFP/Breitbart.com, 2006/09/05)
"A hospital in northwest England has introduced a new surgical gown modelled on the burka, allowing female Muslim patients to cover themselves completely in line with their religious beliefs.
The blue "Inter-Faith Gown" is the first of its type in Britain and has been trialled at the Royal Preston Hospital. It will be available to those who want it from November 1.
Hospital bosses said the gown -- which covers the entire body from head to toe -- provides extra comfort and cover for patients undergoing medical procedures and whose culture or religion requires more modest attire.
They described the response from patients as "overwhelming" and said it had attracted interest from a number of other hospitals around the country.
The Daily Express featured the new gown on its front-page Tuesday. But the right-of-centre newspaper was critical, arguing that the gown's introduction was an example of "political correctness" and skewed priorities.
It added in an editorial that it was tantamount to special treatment for one group of people."

"Report: Pakistan truce gives Taliban a free hand in N. Waziristan, even bin Laden immune there if he is 'peaceful'" (Jihad Watch, 2006/09/05)
Peace Deal I: "An outrageous report, less than a week before the fifth anniversary of 9/11. From ABC News: "Bin Laden Gets a Pass from Pakistan"

Osama bin Laden, America's most wanted man, will not face capture in Pakistan if he agrees to lead a "peaceful life," Pakistani officials tell ABC News.
The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a "peace deal" with the Taliban.
If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden "would not be taken into custody," Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, "as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen."
Bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere in the tribal areas of Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border, but U.S. officials say his precise location is unknown.
In addition to the pullout of Pakistani troops, the "peace agreement" between Pakistan and the Taliban also provides for the Pakistani army to return captured Taliban weapons and prisoners.
"What this means is that the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership have effectively carved out a sanctuary inside Pakistan," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism director."

"Pakistan, militants sign peace deal" (Bashirullah Khan, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/09/05)
Peace Deal I: "Pakistan's government and pro-Taliban militants signed an agreement Tuesday to ensure "permanent peace" in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan, seeking to end five years of violent unrest in the area.
The deal demands that militants halt attacks on Pakistani forces in the semiautonomous North Waziristan region and stop them from crossing into eastern Afghanistan to attack U.S. and Afghan forces hunting al-Qaida and Taliban remnants.
Pakistani troops will also stop their hugely unpopular military campaign in this restive region, which has left more than 350 soldiers dead, along with hundreds more militants and scores of civilians. ...
But the agreement, which one official said offers "implicit amnesty" to foreign and local militants, highlights the Pakistani military's inability to crush a violent pro-Taliban insurgency on its own soil."

"7 charged in terrorism plot in Denmark" (Jasmina Nielsen, AP/Yahoo! Newss, 2006/09/05)
Via Charles Johnson, who notes that Abu Bashar is "one of the Danish imams who toured the Islamic world whipping up a killing frenzy over the Danish Mohammed cartoons.":
"ODENSE, Denmark - Police raided homes in a largely immigrant suburb before dawn Tuesday, detaining nine men for allegedly preparing explosives for a terror attack in Denmark, which drew Muslim rage earlier this year over media caricatures of Islam's founder.
Seven men were later arraigned on preliminary charges of plotting a terror attack, but the other two were released. An Islamic imam, Abu Bashar, said the suspects were Muslims. ...
Identities of the arrested men were not released, but authorities said all were Danish citizens aged 18-33 and all but one had immigrant backgrounds. They were arrested in Vollsmose, an Odense suburb where many residents are immigrants. ...
German media has said one of those suspects, Youssef Mohamad el Hajdib, was heading to Denmark, and German and Danish media said German police found a telephone number in his pocket for Abu Bashar, the imam in Odense who identified the suspects arrested Tuesday as Muslims."

"The Islamic Way of War" (Andrew J. Bacevich, The American Conservative, 2006/09/11)
"Muslims have stopped fighting on Western terms—and have started winning.":
"So it turns out that Arabs—or more broadly Muslims—can fight after all. We may surmise that they now realize that fighting effectively requires that they do so on their own terms rather than mimicking the West. They don’t need and don’t want tanks and fighter-bombers. What many Westerners dismiss as “terrorism,” whether directed against Israelis, Americans, or others in the West, ought to be seen as a panoply of techniques employed to undercut the apparent advantages of high-tech conventional forces. The methods em-ployed do include terrorism—violence targeting civilians for purposes of intimidation—but they also incorporate propaganda, subversion, popular agitation, economic warfare, and hit-and-run attacks on regular forces, either to induce an overreaction or to wear them down. The common theme of those techniques, none of which are new, is this: avoid the enemy’s strengths; exploit enemy vulnerabilities. ...
What the Islamic Way of War does mean to both Israel and to the United States is this: the Arabs now possess—and know that they possess—the capacity to deny us victory, especially in any altercation that occurs on their own turf and among their own people."

"Briton killed in Jordan as ‘terrorist’ gunman opens fire on tourist party" (Rana Sabbagh-Gargour and Daniel McGrory, The Times, 2006/09/05)
"A BRITISH holidaymaker was shot dead and five other Westerners injured when a lone gunman opened fire on a tour party visiting a Roman amphitheatre in the Jordanian capital Amman yesterday. ...
Survivors described how the gunman shot his victims in the back at close range as they climbed the steep steps of the Roman amphiteatre, one of the most popular tourist sites in the capital.
Witnesses said that when he was about 20ft from the party he pulled a pistol from his pocket and shouted “God is greatest” in Arabic, then began shooting.
As bystanders tried to run for cover, the gunman took careful aim and is said to have fired up to 15 times before his ammunition ran out.
He was then seen trying to load another ammunition clip into the gun but the weapon appeared to jam, and locals and tourist police jumped on him as he turned to flee."

"Sudan unleashes forces to crush rebels" (David Blair, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/09/05)
"Heavy fighting resumed yesterday in one of Africa's bloodiest wars as thousands of Sudanese troops backed by Russian-made bombers launched a major offensive against rebels in Darfur.
A UN official in Sudan said fighting was taking place across a "swathe" of the region, concentrating on "areas that have traditionally been held" by rebels from the bitterly divided Sudan Liberation Army (SLA).
After air-lifting reinforcements to Darfur, President Omar al-Bashir appeared to be attempting to settle the three-year-old conflict.
The Sudanese leader has already rejected United Nations resolution 1706, passed last Thursday, calling for a fully-fledged peace-keeping mission in Darfur.
The president has also ordered the African Union, an alliance of all 53 countries on the continent, to withdraw its 5,000 troops and 2,000 civilians from the area when its mandate expires at the end of this month."

Added in archive:
"Belgian Authorities Destroy Holocaust Records" (Paul Belien, The Brussels Journal, 2006/08/31)

Monday, September 4, 2006

News and commentary:

"The Danish Mohammed Cartoons and the Failed German Train Bombings" (Lorenzo Vidino, Counterterrorism Blog, 2006/09/04)
An interesting update on the failed German train bombing:
"Just two days ago Jihad Hamad told interrogators in Lebanon that the main motivation for the attacks were the cartoons published by Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands Posten last September, something the two interpreted "as an attack of the Western world on Islam." The man also mentioned the war in Lebanon and Zarqawi’s death as reasons, but indicated the cartoons as the main one (one is left to wonder why the two targeted Germany and not Denmark, despite the fact that the Danish border is only a few dozens miles away from where the bombers lived).
But the links between the failed attacks and the Danish cartoons seem to go beyond that. Today Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet reported the news that one of the bombers, El Hajdib, was linked to the Danish imam Abu Bashar. According to the German BKA, when El Hajdib was arrested he was found in possession of a train ticket to the Danish city of Odense, where Bashar lives, and the cleric’s phone number. The BKA suspects that El Hajdib was supposed to hide in Odense with Abu Bashar's help before reaching relatives in Sweden. Contacted by journalists, Abu Bashar denied any knowledge of the case.
But who is this Abu Bashar? Unknown to most outside Denmark, he is well known to Danes for having led the first delegation of Danish imams that toured the Middle East (specifically, Abu Bashar went to Egypt, while others went to the Levant) with the infamous dossier containing the original 12 cartoons and other that had been fabricated by the imams." (See also: "Prophet drawings motivated by suspects behind failed German train bombings, investigator says" (IHT/AP, 2006/09/02))

"What a shambles over Iran" (Tim Hames, The Sunday Times, 2006/09/04)
"The collapse of resolve towards Tehran’s nuclear plans will deeply undermine international order"
"For after a brief period of relative solidarity, international policy towards Iran has returned to a shambles. Erkki Tuomioja, Foreign Minister of Finland, reacted to Iran’s latest nuclear defiance on behalf of the EU by insisting that it was way “too early” to consider anything other than diplomatic activity. The Russians are more interested in selling Iran nuclear technology and arms than in preventing it acquiring such resources.
The Chinese, whose enormous oil needs are serviced by Iran, are mumbling in the corner. Britain and France, which once took a comparatively tough line, have begun retreating. When President Bush speaks of the need for something to be done, he is portrayed as the reincarnation of Dr Strangelove. Our collective stance today is all holes and no carpet. ...
Iran is a special case because, first, it is already an established menace. It has spent the past two decades consistently seeking to sabotage any prospect of a permanent peace settlement between Israel and its neighbours and it remains dedicated to that mission. It continues to sponsor extremist fanatics in the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon. It is behind much of the trouble that has tortured Iraq and it does not intend to stop pulling these strings once US and British troops have left. If it becomes a nuclear nation, it is likely to be emboldened in these deeds."

"The lie that just won't seem to die: Jews behind 9/11" (Richard Greenberg, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/09/04)
"'The idea that Jews were somehow involved in 9/11 has now become a permanent feature in the conspiracy pantheon, like the JFK assassination and the Oklahoma City bombing,' says Mark Pitcavage, director of fact-finding for the Anti-Defamation League. ...
The purveyors are an eclectic aggregation that spans the geopolitical spectrum. They include neo-Nazis and other white supremacists in the United States and elsewhere; anti-government zealots; young anti-war activists; Holocaust deniers; Lyndon Larouche supporters; New-Age ideologues; propagandists and journalists within the Arab and Muslim world; and assorted devotees of the early-20th-century forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which purports to document a Jewish plan to dominate the world. ...
But the fact that conspiracy theories have been disproven is largely irrelevant to the theories' adherents, according to Barkun. The reason, he says, is that die-hard conspiracy-mongers are united by their embrace of what he calls "rejected knowledge."
"These people are profoundly distrustful of authority. It seems absurd to the rest of us, but in the mirror world that conspiracy theorists live, anything that is rejected by mainstream institutions must therefore be true," Barkun says."

 

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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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)

› AOTW Archive



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)

Weekly archive

2006/12/04 - 2006/12/10
2006/11/27 - 2006/12/03
2006/11/20 - 2006/11/26
2006/11/13 - 2006/11/19
2006/11/06 - 2006/11/12
2006/10/30 - 2006/11/05

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› Ajami, Fouad - Johnson, Paul
› Kagan, Robert - Ye'or, Bat



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