Islam - resisting dhimmitude

Diana West writes about Hollywood's bowing to Muslim pressure when it comes to how Muslims are portrayed. She also notes the wider implications.

Still, maybe the creators of "24" deserve a medal, considering the total silence of their fellow movie- and television-makers when it comes to the war on jihadist terror. War, what war? Culture clash? What culture clash? Freedom — what kind of freedom? Hollywood and the media may be "brave" and "bold" in fearlessly depicting sexuality, violence and the perversions therein, but they're cultural cowards when it comes to depicting — even mentioning — matters of war, Islam and jihad. Call it dhimmitude, Hollywood-style.

While the term dhimmitude, coined by historian Bat Ye'or, refers to the inferior status of Jews and Christians living under Islamic rule, she also points to disturbing signs of dhimmitude throughout the free West. These range from the politically correct fear of giving offense, which curtails freedom of speech (think Fox punting Islam), to the fear of jihadist violence, which curtails freedom of movement, and even the free practice of religion (think armed guards at synagogues).

An unlikely moviemaker who refuses to accept dhimmi conditions is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ms. Ali is the amazingly courageous 35-year-old [tk] Somali-born ex-Muslim and Dutch parliamentarian whose first foray into moviemaking is a provocative 11-minute film called "Submission." Directed by Theo van Gogh — who was ritualistically murdered on an Amsterdam street last fall, his head nearly severed from his body, a jihadist rant pinned to his chest with a knife" — Submission" depicts the brutalized plight of all too many women at the hands of men under Islam, a political issue championed by Ms. Ali. For exercising her freedom of speech, Ms. Ali now lives under an Islamically imposed death sentence (fatwa). She also lives under lock and key, guarded 24 hours a day, and transported everywhere in an armored vehicle.

Such is the going price of freedom in Holland, just another ultra-liberal, Western country besieged by jihadists. "This fatwa isn't just directed against me," she explains, "but against Holland, against the entire Western world. We are all targets. In the eyes of radical Muslims, any country in which Muslims can be criticized openly is an enemy of Islam."

One thing these people can stop doing is blaiming all this on radical Muslims. Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hasani, a representative of Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, says.

"Freedom, democracy and stupidities of this type cannot be carried over to any part, and these concepts are out of sync with the principles of Islam..."

And Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, the so called moderate voice of Muslims in Britain, says there is no such thing as a Muslim terrorist.

The problem doesn't lie with just radical Muslims, it lies with all of Islam.
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Islam - Muslisms burning the Koran. Where are the Muslim protests over this? Muslims riot and rampage over a bogus allegation that the US desecrated the Koran but say nothing when Muslims burn the Koran? I suspect these protests have nothing to do with the Koran. 

Lebanon - Birth of a Nation

The Wall Street Journal reports on the new Lebanon.

What is remarkable is that what began as an alliance of convenience between Christians, Sunnis and Druze to expel Syria has not only survived Syria's departure, but has deepened into an alliance of shared convictions. Saad Hariri, the son of Rafik and likely the next prime minister, is running an interdenominational slate of candidates in the parliamentary elections tomorrow. Across nearly the entire political spectrum, candidates advocate the same things: Eradicate what remains of Syria's influence in the army, intelligence services and the government; establish an independent judiciary; use the discipline of Lebanon's $34 billion debt to trim the budget and privatize state-owned assets.

"We need to keep this momentum for reform going," says Yassin Jaber, a Shiite parliamentarian. "To the Arab world, the revolution in Ukraine meant nothing. But Lebanon really means something. If we're going to be the ones carrying the message of change, we have to make sure the change is good." Even more surprising is how wide the support is for ending the confessional system. "Muslims as well as Christians consider that they need to rebuild a country based on freedom and democracy beyond the logic of communities," says Amin Gemayal, a Maronite former president whose community has the most to lose from ending the system.

How long before the Syrians and Egyptians want their freedom?

As the Journal notes, there is no going back.

But perhaps the apparent nonchalance of most Lebanese is warranted. Wherever I go here, the impression is of a people intent on making up for lost time, and determined never again to be dragged down by extremism. It is these Lebanese, one senses, and not Hezbollah, who are making the country anew, and who are doing so, at long last, in the absence of fear.

Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, whose next?
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Islam - No to freedom and democracy

That's what Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hasani, a representative of Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, says.

"Freedom, democracy and stupidities of this type cannot be carried over to any part, and these concepts are out of sync with the principles of Islam," said Hasani, the imam who led Friday prayers in the main city of western Iranian Azerbaijian.

"Islam always spoke with the sword in the hand and I don't see why now we have changed attitudes and talk with the other civilisations."

And what type of sword does Hasani want?

"You need to vote for Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani," said Hasani. "This way we will finally be able to have for ourselves the atomic bomb to fairly stand up to Israeli weapons," said Hasani.

That clear enough for all the Muslim apologists out there?
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Iraq - Running out of suicide bombers?

Muslims terrorists in Iraq want us to believe that followers of Islam are so devout that they are willing to commit mass murder in order to drive the infidel Americans out of their holy land. The media portray the situation as a never ending supply of zealous Muslims prepared to be martyred in the name of Allah.

The reality is they are neither devout nor martyrs. Sometimes they are drivers hired to transport explosives and, unbeknownst to them, the explosives are remotely detonated when the truck passes the target. In short, they are hired and tricked into being a mass murderer.

Sometimes they are hired and lied to as to what the target is.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Wisam Younis' sole ambition in life, he said Friday, is to kill Americans. So he claimed surprise when he discovered his car bomb had killed eight Iraqis and wounded more than 80 outside a Baghdad restaurant. Younis and brothers Badr and Yassin Shakir are charged with murder and face the death penalty in the May 23 attack.

``We did not know that the attack would target innocent people and we were deceived. We were eluded by enthusiastic ideas and money,'' said Younis, barefooted and with bruised and swollen hands. An insurgent leader promised him $1,500 for the bombing, he said.

If he is such a devout Muslim and his sole ambition was to kill Americans, why did he need to be lured into the deed with the promise of money? Sounds capitalist to me.

In a sign of just how desperate the terrorists are, they are now using dogs for mass murder.

Come to think of it, that's what they've been using all along.
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America celebrates Memorial Day. Thanks to all our military men and women. 

Islam - Muslim hypocrisy

Indonesia bombing kills 19

Bomb kills 17 at Pakistan shrine

Muslims protest U.S. from Asia to Mideast over Alleged desecration of Quran
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America - Targeting Journalist: No Evidence

Linda Foley now admits she has no evidence that the US military targets journalists.

In a must read, Thomas Lipscomb hits every nail on the head with this article.

Foley had the advantage of seeing what happened to Jordan and, as the head of a powerful union of 35,000 journalists and media workers, she knew anything she said about targeting journalists would likely be scrutinized. So one would expect that she has a pretty solid case for her revival of the discredited Jordan charges? But one would be wrong. Her spokesperson, Candice Johnson, told me Foley can provide “no evidence” to support her charges either.

As Lipscomb points out:

Sherlock Holmes’s key clue to who stole the racehorse in “Silver Blaze” was a dog in the stall that didn’t bark. And something equally odd happened on the way to the Foley firestorm: To date, not a single pundit, editorial writer, or newspaper ran anything, with the exception of the Chicago Sun-Times story I wrote, a St. Paul Pioneer Press column by Mark Yost, and a Washington Times column item.

Clearly Foley was correct in assuming the Right was the only danger to her repetition of the statement that got Eason Jordan canned. The Mainstream Media couldn’t be bothered to cover “Easongate: The Sequel.” And positioning Foley as the gallant defender of the lives of journalists targeted by the U.S. military was inspired PR. After all, Sherlock Holmes’s dog didn’t bark because he was good friends with the thief.

He ends with this:

If the most basic tenets of Journalism 101 are now no longer important enough for the media itself to honor and defend against their own members who violate them, where is the professionalism and the authority that is our main claim to writing the indispensable “first draft of history” – much less its value for sale? And if we lose sight of that irretrievably, who needs us? There are bloggers out there today with more credibility than Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, Eason Jordan, and Linda Foley combined, and their audiences are growing.

If Foley is allowed to walk unchallenged from what Mencken might have called “a clear, simple, and” unproven statement, it will only accelerate the speed at which her members lose what is left of their credibility--and then their jobs. (Look at The New York Times newsroom downsizing this week.) If the press isn’t going to take its own standards seriously, it is hard to think of why anyone should take the press seriously enough to pay for it. In the meantime, Rupert Murdoch’s and Roger Ailes’s success offers a constant unpleasant reminder: the media market prefers dogs that bark.

Since she can't put up time to pack up.

Powerline has an email Lipscomb sent to his media colleagues.

This is a key moment in media history. So far NO ONE in MSM is covering this but my Chicago Sun-Times story and an item in the Washington Times. WHY? How do you account for it? Are you going to let this drop?

If we do… are you ready to support a Eason Jordan’s suit for reinstatement? HE did exactly the same thing as Linda Foley at the Newspaper Guild. Why the separate and unequal treatment?

Email me back off the record. I’d like your opinion as to what is going on here.

Good for Editor & Publisher for having the guts to run this...

I hope this helps tee up the issues… this is something we all better look into seriously before former American MSM employees are blogging for pennies.

And if we let this pass...we don’t deserve much more.

Brilliant!
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Iraq - Syrian intelligence officer captured

The Daily Star of Lebanon reports.

BEIRUT: A Syrian intelligence officer detained in Baghdad has admitted to launching the missile attack on the late premier Rafik Hariri's Future Television in June 2003, according to Al-Rai al-Aam Kuwaiti newspaper. In an article published on Wednesday, the newspaper said Hussein Ahmad Tah, 32, was arrested by Iraqi police when he was attempting to assassinate employees in an Iraqi public institution. Following his arrest, Tah decided to admit to his previous crimes, among which is the Future TV bombing.

Tah said he worked for Syrian intelligence services, adding that he worked for a long time in Lebanon where he perpetrated several attacks. He then moved to Iraq, where he committed several attacks against mosques and Iraqi civilians. Security sources in Iraq said that Tah recounted the details of the attack on Future TV. The television station, situated near Raouche in Beirut, was attacked on June 15, 2003, resulting in the destruction of one of the newsrooms. No casualties were reported. The attack was considered as a message to then-owner of the station, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Sources said the car used to perpetrate the crime was stolen in 1997 and hidden in a garage until the date of the attack. A previously unknown group called Jamaat Ansar Allah had held itself responsible for the attack in a statement issued the next day. However, Tah told Iraqi police that the group did not exist and that he had written and issued the statement.

And Captain's Quarters notes:

If this can be substantiated -- and that may be a tall order -- it would corroborate our intelligence that Syria has at least assisted in the insurgency that has gripped the Sunni Triangle in Iraq since the end of the war. Once substantiated, then we need to take some action against the Syrian dictator that will push him from power. In the meantime, I think we can afford to wait for further evidence to support or refute this claim.

Why? As Tigerhawk notes:

If Syria has, in fact, been able to arrest more than a thousand insurgents in just the last few weeks, why hasn't it been doing that for the last two years? Syria, in its braggodocio, has implicitly confessed that it has been able to stop insurgents from crossing the border all along, and effectively admitted the charges against it.

And there was plenty of evidence in Falluja that Syria was behind the terrorists there.

I'd say it's time to get tough with Syria, afterall they say they have stopped co-operating with us; if they ever were.
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Syria - Fessing Up

Tigerhawk thinks so.

The Associated Press, it seems, has written this story upside down. If Syria has, in fact, been able to arrest more than a thousand insurgents in just the last few weeks, why hasn't it been doing that for the last two years? Syria, in its braggodocio, has implicitly confessed that it has been able to stop insurgents from crossing the border all along, and effectively admitted the charges against it.

Yep.
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Canada - Quebec rejects sharia system

Good for them!

The Globe and Mail reports.

Quebec — Quebec has rejected the use of Islamic tribunals, which can be used to settle family disputes, in the province.

In a unanimous vote Thursday, the Quebec legislature passed a motion against allowing sharia to be used in the legal system.

Maybe Canada is not lost after all.
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Islam - All religions are not the same

Robert Spencer fisks Tom Regan's Christian Science Monitor Blog article on how "Islam [is] not only religion marred by violence".

A must read and he concludes with this:

All religions are not the same, and do not have the same capacity to inspire violence. As un-PC as that is, it is the truth. It must be faced. Regan reflects conventional PC wisdom, to be sure -- views that are held across the spectrum, from the New York Times to National Review -- and until this wisdom is seen for the hollow and deceptive thing it is, we are all that much more vulnerable.

We are indeed.
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America - Terrorism and the Human Rights Community

A must read article by one of Amnesty International's own. Nice to see people on the left starting to question where the left is headed.

While the sheer audacity of our Saudi "allies" to propagate these morally repugnant publications on American soil may have come as a shock to some, no less disconcerting was the failure of the US offices of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to join Freedom House Chairman of the Board R. James Woolsey in condemning the Saudi Arabian authorities for advocating and propagating an ideology of hatred that has "no place in a nation founded on religious freedom and toleration." Given that any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence is prohibited under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the unwillingness of HRW and AIUSA to respond to these human rights violations appears to be yet another consequence of the increasing politicization and ideological drift that is undermining the effectiveness, reliability and credibility of these organizations, as well as the defense and promotion of human rights here in the United States.

A must read.

Here is another on the left who awoke from his self imposed trance, looked in the mirror, and realized the left was marching in the wrong direction.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

We have a long way to go but there are some signs that people on the left are realizing that their position is untenable.

UPDATE

The Belmont Club remarks on AI's latest report.

I'd have to say that Amnesty International's Report claiming the US is the world's worst human rights violator condemns itself far more than it does the United States. Anyone who has lived in the Third World or any of the places which Amnesty International purports to care about knows -- and I mean knows for a fact -- what police abuse, torture, arbitrary detention, etc. really are and that it cannot be compared in any wise to the "Gulag" in Guantanamo Bay. Moreover, anyone who has lived in such places knows that the last place where victims can find practical help is from Amnesty International.

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Middle East - Rewarding Palestinian Hate

Bush's pledge of $325 million in aid to the Palestinians should have stings attached. For one, he should force Abas to stop hate speeches against America.

Recent sermons by Mr. Mudeiris include one from April 15, 2005, in which he said that Muslims prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan were forced to convert to Christianity. In his sermon on February 4, 2005, he called for Palestinians to conquer Israel. This year's New Year sermon was devoted to the destruction of America: "America has reached the top and we admit it, but it is headed for a bottomless pit, Allah willing. America, which is being led by its current president, to a bottomless pit. He leads it to death and destruction, Allah willing. America's grave was dug by Bush the day he invaded Afghanistan. Bush prepared this grave on the day he invaded Iraq."...

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Iraq - Harley Davidson to the rescue

It's nice to see a story of normal life in Iraq.

BAGHDAD -- When he belches around Baghdad's old quarter on his spotless Harley Davidson, Kadhem Sharif, a power-lifting champion sporting wraparound sunglasses, makes for an unlikely sight.

And the 53-year-old is fully aware that his passion for one of the most recognizable symbols of the American way of life is not to everybody's liking in post-war Iraq.

But his garage is a carbon copy of any Harley aficionado's den in the United States, complete with posters of naked "babes on bikes".

And his collection of 40-plus motorbikes provides a condensed history of 100 years of national turmoil.

"This Norton was built in 1914 and became part of the escort of King Faisal, Iraq's first monarch," says Sharif as he proudly gives a tour of his modest garage.

About half of his motorbikes are Harleys. "I was 12 when I sneaked out on my father's Harley for the first time. I bought my first one eight years later, a 1966 Fatboy," Sharif recalls.

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Britain - Court bans wearing "hoodie"

Relax Muslims.

The Guardian reports.

A teenager has been banned from wearing a hooded top or cap in public for five years after terrorising residents in a Manchester suburb.

I'm all for cracking down on these yobs but banning a hooded top or a cap?

I don't know about you, but women wearing a black hooded top that hides all but their eyes, scares the s**t out of me. Are they going to ban them next? Just asking.
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Pakistan - Muslim Shrine Blast America's Fault

The Scotsman reports that a man wearing a policman's uniform walked into the shrine and detonated a bomb that killed 20 so far and wounded 200.

What do the Muslims do? Blame America.

Hundreds of Shiite worshippers staged angry protests at the shrine and clashed with police after officers baton-charged the crowd to clear the way for ambulances.

Many of the Shiites also chanted, “Down with America!”

Could this be more hijacking a demonstration as noted in this New York Times article?

For me, after three years in southern Afghanistan, something felt not quite right about the more virulent demonstrations across the country. The instant tip-off was that they were initially led by university students. Afghans and Westerners living in Kandahar have often wondered at the number of Pakistani students in what passes for a university here. The place is pathetically dilapidated, the library a locked storeroom, the medical faculty bereft of the most elementary skeleton or model of the human body. Why would anyone come here to study from Pakistan? Our unshakable conclusion has been that the adroit Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, is planting operatives in the student body. These students can also provoke agitation at Pakistani officials' behest, while affording the government in Islamabad plausible deniability.

So what's Pakistans beef?

In other words, it's a mistake to focus on the Newsweek article as the cause of the recent demonstrations in Afghanistan. Instead, the reason was President Hamid Karzai's May 8 announcement that Afghanistan would enter a long-term strategic partnership with the United States.

Such an alliance discomfits Afghanistan's neighbors. Pakistan, for one, is used to treating Afghanistan as an all but subject territory. The events of Sept. 11 and the sudden arrival of the United States changed all that, to the muted chagrin of Islamabad. Although Pakistani officials have mastered their role as allies in the "war on terrorism" and play it convincingly, they would like nothing better than to see the United States pull out of Afghanistan. What better, then, than to project Afghanistan as a volatile place, hostile to Americans?

Tricky business, this war on terror.
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Iraq - Quality of Suicide Bombers Declining

I recently posted about how Suicide Bombers Hard To Come By and now here is evidence of just how desperate the terrorists are becoming.

Insurgents in Iraq attached explosives to a dog and tried to blow up a military convoy near the northern oil centre of Kirkuk.

The canine bomb went off but the only casualty was the unfortunate animal, said police.

Hey Joe, get me PETA on the phone, these terrorists are in for it now!
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Britain - Lecturers overturn Israel boycott

Good! Maybe people in this country are starting to stand up to these people.

The BBC in their usual bias, mis-represent what the boycott was about.

UK academics have voted to overturn a boycott of two Israeli universities accused of complying with anti-Palestinian polices.

That's not what the AUT accused them of. The original AUT webpage containing the accusation has been removed but here is the Google cache copy.

That on May 15, 2002 Dr. Ilan Pappe, senior lecturer in Political Science at Haifa University, was sent a letter notifying him that he faced trial and possible dismissal from his position. The charge was that he had violated 'the duties of an academic member of staff', that he had 'slandered departments and members in the humanities faculty, damaged their professional reputation and endangered the possible promotion of some of them.'

That these accusations related to Dr. Pappe's efforts to defend a 55 year old graduate student, Teddy Katz, whose Master's thesis was under attack by an Israeli veteran's organization because it documented a massacre of 200 unarmed civilians by the Haganah (the pre-state army of Israel) at a village called Tantura, near Haifa.

That the recriminations are still continuing and Dr. Pappe's job is still being threatened.

And as The Times (UK) notes:

The sponsors of the boycott maintain that Haifa University is threatening to sack a lecturer for supporting a student's thesis on an alleged Israeli massacre in 1948, and that Bar Ilan has links with a college based in a settlement in the West Bank. They say the academic boycott is a protest against discrimination, as valid as the widely supported ban by British universities on links with South African institutions during the apartheid years.

Such a claim is as laughable as it is inaccurate. Whereas many South African academics supported outside pressure on their government and almost all black students complained of discrimination, in Israel neither is true. In both universities, Jews and Arabs study together, and in Haifa especially there is a substantial number of Arab lecturers and students. Moreover, if Palestinian students themselves are not calling for a boycott, what is the point of such tokenism by the AUT?

The point is to be anti-Israeli.

UPDATE

Melanie Phillips notes more BBC bias and the Palestinians praise for the universities the AUT were against.
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