Iraq - Sunnis End Boycott

The Washington Post reports on the Sunnis joining the political system in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, May 21 -- More than 1,000 Sunni Arab clerics, political leaders and tribal heads ended their two-year boycott of politics in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq on Saturday, uniting in a Sunni bloc that they said would help draft the country's new constitution and compete in elections.

Formation of the group comes during escalating violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that has raised the threat of sectarian war. The bloc represents moderate and hard-line members of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party and other main groups of the disgruntled Sunni minority toppled from dominance when U.S.-led troops routed Hussein in April 2003.

Sunnis have remained on the sidelines of the Iraqi government since then. Most Sunnis boycotted national elections in January that put the long-suppressed Shiite majority in charge. Meanwhile, a Sunni-led insurgency appears to have become increasingly unpopular among ordinary Iraqis as the death toll from bombings and other attacks climbs.

"The country needs Sunnis to join politics," Adnand Dulaimi, a government-appointed overseer of Sunni religious sites and a leader of the drive to draw Sunnis into the rebuilding of Iraq, declared at the conference Saturday where the bloc was assembled. "The Sunnis are now ready to participate."

"The last elections brought a major turnaround in the political representation of Sunnis,'' Dulaimi said. "We think it's time to take steps to save Iraq's identity, and its unity and independence. . . . Iraq is for all, and Iraq is not sectarian.''

Which means Zarqawi has lost.
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Islam - The Hypocrisy of Muslims

Mona Charen reports on how Muslims are easily enraged and how hypocritical they are.

Absent from this blame exchange is any recognition that many Muslims can be incited to violence by anything or nothing. It's as if they live poised for outrage. In 2002, the Miss World Pageant had to high-tail it out of Nigeria after rioting took more than 200 lives. Angry Muslims rampaged through the streets after a young fashion writer penned an article wondering how Muhammad would have reacted to the pageant, and suggesting that the Prophet (who had 14 wives) might have chosen a wife from among the assembled beauties. The offices of the newspaper were firebombed. A few weeks later, after many deaths, the Islamists remained unsatisfied. The deputy governor of a northern Nigerian province issued a "fatwa" declaring it the duty of religious Muslims to track down the 21-year-old author of the story and kill her.

The Koran incident was merely an excuse to attack America. Muslims are determined to bring Islam to the world - by force if necessary. That's why there is no thank you when America helps Muslims.

Easily aroused to fury, Muslim fanatics are correspondingly difficult to court. Nowhere has there been acknowledgment on the part of Muslim leaders that the United States has again and again put its servicemen in harm's way in order to rescue or aid Muslims. We did so in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo. We poured out our hearts and opened our wallets when Indonesia was struck by a tsunami. It isn't just that they've failed to say thank you. No, the U.S. is unrelentingly accused of making war on Islam. President Bush visits mosques, holds Ramadan services at the White House and declares (too optimistically?) that Islam is a religion of peace. And yet the U.S. is distrusted and reviled in many parts of the Muslim world.

Because we are infidels and have not converted to Islam - thankfully!

Unfortunately, she ends the piece with defeatism.

In the course of our wide-ranging war on terror, Americans have certainly committed some acts that are needlessly inflammatory to Muslim sensibilities. Abu Ghraib is exhibit A. But Abu Ghraib is also the exception, not the norm. Detainees at Guantanamo receive religiously appropriate food, prayer mats and time for daily worship. The U.S. even provides Muslim chaplains. The underlying truth is this: We are at pains not to fight a religious war. The trouble is, our enemies are fighting a religious war, and there is nothing we can do about it. Al Qaeda's strongest suit is the sympathy it can tap among some of the world's 1 billion Muslims for a jihad against the unbelievers. Our strongest suits are freedom and the reality that we are the winning side.

There's plenty we can do about it!

For starters call the war what it is - a religious war. We may not want to fight one but if that is what the other side is doing, that's the war you're fighting.

Then stop being afraid to offend them. Stoning women, honor killings, attacks on Christians and Jews, and lack of women's rights are all wrong. Say so!

Killing or issuing death threats to those that criticize Islam is wrong and so are laws banning such criticism. Stand up to them.

We didn't start this war and if we are going to win it, we have to name the enemy and stand up to it - Islam. Muslims must come to understand that they can live in Western societies and practice their religion but they must co-exist with other religions and live under the law of the land - not the law of the Koran.

UPDATE

An Egyptian has similar thoughts.

The whole idea revolves around the radioactive level of anti-Americanism here. I once said on this blog that here a corpse with an Israeli or an American bullet in it is worth much more than 100 bodies that were torn apart by a suicide bomber in Iraq. This is so evident in the reaction towards the massacres of both the southern Lebanese city of Qana in 1996 and of the Iraqi Shia dominated city of Hilla this year. In Qana, over 100 Lebanese civilians were killed when an Israeli artillery shell hit a UN shelter (Israel said it was a military mistake). The entire region erupted in flames when this tragedy happened. On the other hand, more civilians were slaughtered in Hilla, yet unlike Qana, very few Arabs or Muslims are actually aware of where Hilla exists. Qana happened 9 years ago, Hilla happened 3 months ago. You see the trend? The Qana civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers so we shout and foam at the mouth, the Hilla civilians were killed by a Jordanian terrorists so we go along doing our normal business.

Are we heartless? No. Are we senseless? No. Then why this awful indifference to the lives of the same Iraqis whom we pretended we cared about when we demonstrated against the war in Iraq? The answer lies in the level of media induced Anti-Americanism that anesthetizes our feelings and prevents us from seeing the actual picture of Iraq.

The anti-Americanism* that is running like a drug in our blood stream cripples our ability to rationalize and view Iraq from an Iraqi and not of an American prism. ...

That includes the American media as well, which provides something else you can do. Write to the media and let them know you are fed up with all the anti-American propaganda.
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Iraq - Good News Part 28

Chrenkoff's Good News Iraq - Part 28 is up. Scroll down to this: Good news from Iraq, part 28

The direct link doesn't seem to be working.

There is some new information that backs up my claim that there is no civil war in Iraq. In increasing numbers the Sunnis are joining the democratic process as well as the army and police forces. And in Fallujah the first democratically elected council held its first meeting.

This is one of Chrenkoff's longest Good News posts, which shows that things are much better in Iraq than how the media portray them.

Be sure to check it out.
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Islam - Western Media Has Wrong Image

Ali Aswad Al-Aseri, Saudi Ambassador to Pakistan says ‘Western media projecting wrong image of Islam"

I agree and a commenter at Rantburg sums it up well.

"In a way, I quite agree with him, the "western media" is projecting the wrong image of Islam, they're far too sympathetic, apologetic, swooning, and ass-kissing in their coverage."

Among other things, the ambassador had this to say:

“There is no provision for terrorism in Islam. Terrorists have no religion. Islam is a religion of peace, brotherhood and tolerance,” he asserted.

Well Mr. Ambassador it seems some Muslims in Britain practice a different form of Islam.

Muslim protesters today called for the bombing of New York in a demonstration outside the US embassy in London.

In Saudi Arabia the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.

The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible.

And what about all these Muslim crimes against Christians? Crimes like using the Bible as toilet paper, burning ancient Torah scrolls and churches.

Doesn't sound like peace and tolerance to me but is sure sounds like the Islam I know.

UPDATE

Maybe the ambassador would care to explain why women in Saudi Arabia can't drive and this:

“There are many problems that come up whenever we want to discuss anything to do with women in our country. We do not even know how to discuss things on their behalf since they are not allowed to express themselves in our society.”

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America - Damaged by the fallout from their bogus story about US troops desecrating something sacred to Muslims, Newsweek hits back by desecrating something sacred to Americans. Newsweek's Japanese edtion has a picture on its cover of the American flag in a trash can. Now we know where their loyalties lie. LGF provides a translation of the cover.

The red text at the left just above the “Newsweek” logo says:

“America forsaken.”

The big white and yellow text says:

“The Day America Died — The ideal of ‘freedom’ falls to the ground due to Bush continuing in office.”

 
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America - Newsweeks Assault on America

In their haste to paint US troops as the bad guys, Newsweek ran a bogus story of our troops desecrating the Koran. Riots ensued and 17 people were killed. Newsweek retracted the story but the damage to America was done and those 17 lives are still lost. Either way Newsweek achieved their goal - damage to America.

But the fallout also damaged Newsweek and they wanted revenge. Since the US edition of Newsweek is still in the spotlight, how could Newsweek hit back? By having the Japanese edition put a picture on the front cover with the American flag in a trash can. I'll post the picture after this post.

Newsweek was up in arms over bogus claims US troops deserted something sacred to Muslims but cares nothing for something sacred to Americans. That makes it pretty clear where Newsweeks loyalties lie.

I don't know the best place to complain but I'm going to try here:

Letters to the Editor for the U.S. print edition:

Letters@newsweek.com

Write them and let them know how hypocritical and anti-American they are.

UPDATE

A commenter noted that the Japanese cover was from a few months back which would make the cause and effect argument void. WND reports the cover is from 2 Feb 2005.

Still, the Koran story and this cover picture together show where Newsweeks loyalties lie.
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Britain - Communists March in Londonistan

Melanie Phillips comments on communist George Galloway and the Stop the War coalition's march this weekend calling for the end of Israel.

So now the pretence is stripped away. In London on Saturday, an unappetising collection of leftists and Islamists -- including 'Gorgeous' George Galloway, the Mosley of Mesopotamia whose career has been given such a welcome fillip by the US Senate -- called for the destruction of Israel. As the Jerusalem Post reports, there was no more pretence that the issue is the 'occupation' of the territories, or the security barrier, or the 'oppression' of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. They want Israel utterly destroyed.

She ends with this:

What an advertisement for this once great country. Londonistan, capital of hatred, ignorance and prejudice in the free world.

Sad, but true. And much of it promoted by the Biased Broadcasting Corporation.

UPDATE

And these are the people they support.

The army spokeswoman said it was the 14th time in the past two months that a Palestinian teenager had attempted to detonate a bomb or smuggle arms and explosives through a military checkpoint despite a de facto truce declared in February.

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Iraq - American Failures

as one Iraqi sees it.

What I think is definitely an American failure is the inefficiency of their media, comparing with the anti-American media, like Algazira, and Alarabia, BBC (especially the Arabic department), Radio Monte Carlo, etc. This was a very serious point which gave a wide free space for all those who hate the Americans to ruin the deeds, changing continuously the scales of things, especially in such a critical period. This point cost us and the Americans much.

This is how an Iraqi views the BBC and the American media - anti-American. I couldn't agree more.

HT Biased BBC
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Britain - Galloway's "Fatherland" Search

Christopher Hitchens charts Galloway's quest for a new fatherland after the fall of the Soviet Union.

This was exactly his demeanor when I ran into him last Tuesday on the sidewalk of Constitution Avenue, outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where he was due to testify before the subcommittee that has been uncovering the looting of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program. His short, cocky frame was enveloped in a thicket of recording equipment, and he was holding forth almost uninterrupted until I asked him about his endorsement of Saddam Hussein's payment for suicide-murderers in Israel and the occupied territories. He had evidently been admirably consistent in his attention to my humble work, because he changed tone and said that this was just what he'd expect from a "drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay." It takes a little more than this to wound your correspondent--I could still hold a martini without spilling it when I was "the greatest polemicist of our age" in 2001--but please note that the real thrust is contained in the word "Trotskyist." Galloway says that the worst day of his entire life was the day the Soviet Union fell. His existence since that dreadful event has involved the pathetic search for an alternative fatherland. He has recently written that, "just as Stalin industrialised the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraq's own Great Leap Forward." I love the word "scale" in that sentence. I also admire the use of the word "plotted."

He may have found it now in the heavily Muslim populated Bethnal Green and Bow constituency.

Hitchens goes on to note that the left supported Saddam simply because it was anti-American. As I noted earlier, some on the left have awoken from their trance and realized how untenable the left's position is.

There are only two ways this suffering could have been relieved. Either the sanctions could have been lifted, as Galloway and others demanded, or the regime could have been removed. The first policy, if followed without conditions, would have untied the hands of Saddam. The second policy would have had the dual effect of ending sanctions and terminating a hideous and lawless one-man rule. But when the second policy was proposed, the streets filled with people who absolutely opposed it. Saying farewell to the regime was, evidently, too high a price to pay for relief from sanctions.

Let me phrase this another way: Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam! This is repellent enough in itself. If the Saddam regime was cheating its terrified people of food and medicine in order to finance its own propaganda, that would perhaps be in character. But if it were to be discovered that any third parties had profited from the persistence of "sanctions plus regime," prolonging the agony and misery thanks to personal connections, then one would have to become quite judgmental.

Yes, and I sense judgement day is coming for Galloway. Justice is a curious thing, it wants to be seen to be done. Galloway has caused the death and suffering of many and the scales have been in his favor for far too long. Now, weight is being added to the other side and slowly the scales begin to tip the other way. Hopefully, one day soon, the steel bars of Her Majesty's prison will be Galloway's final fatherland.
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Middle East - Bush Country

As FOUAD AJAMI puts it "The Middle East embraces democracy--and the American president."

To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country. I was to encounter people from practically all Arab lands, to listen in on a great debate about the possibility of freedom and liberty. I met Lebanese giddy with the Cedar Revolution that liberated their country from the Syrian prison that had seemed an unalterable curse. They were under no illusions about the change that had come their way. They knew that this new history was the gift of an American president who had put the Syrian rulers on notice. The speed with which Syria quit Lebanon was astonishing, a race to the border to forestall an American strike that the regime could not discount. I met Syrians in the know who admitted that the fear of American power, and the example of American forces flushing Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, now drive Syrian policy. They hang on George Bush's words in Damascus, I was told: the rulers wondering if Iraq was a crystal ball in which they could glimpse their future.

One or two raids accross the border ought to stop Syria supporting the terrorists infiltrating into Iraq.

And Ajami notes that in Iraq they are doing "democracy's work".

One memory I shall treasure: a visit to the National Assembly. From afar, there are reports of the "acrimony" of Iraq, of the long interlude between Iraq's elections, on Jan. 30, and the formation of a cabinet. But that day, in the assembly, these concerns seemed like a quibble with history. There was the spectacle of democracy: men and women doing democracy's work, women cloaked in Islamic attire right alongside more emancipated women, the technocrats and the tribal sheikhs, and the infectious awareness among these people of the precious tradition bequeathed them after a terrible history.

This "spectacle of democracy" is displayed in a free Iraqi press and spells the doom of the terrorists and all the dictators in the region.

A lively press has sprouted in Iraq: There is an astonishing number of newspapers and weeklies, more than 250 in all. There are dozens of private TV channels and radio stations. Journalists and editors speak of a press free of censorship. Admittedly, the work is hard and dangerous, the logistics a veritable nightmare. But no single truth claimed this country, no "big man" sucked the air out of its public life. The insurgents will do what they are good at. But no one really believes that those dispensers of death can turn back the clock. Among the Sunni Arabs, there is growing recognition that the past cannot be retrieved, that it had been a big error to choose truculence and political maximalism. By a twist of fate, the one Arab country that had seemed ever marked for brutality and sorrow now stands poised on the frontier of a new political world. No Iraqis I met look to neighboring Arab lands for political inspiration: They are scorched by the terror and the insurgency, but a better political culture is tantalizingly close.

Be sure to read the rest.
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Islam - The Real Problem

Mark Steyn nails the real problem with Islam.

It's not the mobs, so much as the determination of the elites to keep their peoples in a state of ignorance. The most educationally repressive form of Islam, for example, is funded and promoted by Saudi princes who, though not as handsome as Imran, also spend a lot of time in the West -- gambling, drinking, womanizing and indulging other tastes that even the wildest night on the tiles in Riyadh just can't sate. Whereas most advanced societies believe that an educated population is vital to the national interest, many Muslim elites seem to have concluded than an uneducated population is actually far more useful. And, when you look at Saudi funding of radical madrassahs in hitherto moderate Muslim regions from the Balkans to Indonesia, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that they're having great success de-educating hitherto relatively savvy parts of the world.

This disaster took a combination of factors. We can't do much about Muslim fanatics; we probably can't do much about our self-worshipping vanity media whose reflexive counter-tribalism has robbed it of all sense of perspective or proportion. But we ought to apply pressure on the link between the two worlds: the self-serving elites who enjoy the privileges of the West even as they exploit their co-religionists' ignorance of it. That's just not cricket, is it?

Read the rest.
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America - Leaving the Left

It's taken a long time but finally some on the left are looking in the mirror and finding they don't like what they see. And I'll give The San Francisco Chronicle credit for running the article.

Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

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.

A must read.
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America - Muslims Faking Hate Crimes

Recently I posted about Azza Basarudin's claim that she got a used copy of the Koran through Amazon that had the words "death to all Muslims" written in it. I did a little research on her and speculated this might be a fake hate crime.

Dainile Pipes did more research and confirmed by suspicions.

(1) MPAC did not mention that the customer in question, Azza Basarudin, 30, is an Islamist affiliated at one time with the Islamic Institute of Human Rights, headed by Wissam Nasr. (Nasr now heads the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) office in New York.) For an example of her thinking, note above, how she presents 9/11 not as an occasion when Muslims violated Americans but when Americans violated Muslims. In other words, this is no average customer.

(2) MPAC also neglected to mention that Basarudin bought a used Koran, not a new one. Used books buyers do not normally expect vendors to clean their purchases of markings by former owners.

(3) Is it pure coincidence that this Koran episode is so perfectly timed to follow the Newsweek and Guantánamo controversy? One can't but wonder if Basarudin, like at least seven other U.S. Muslims, is faking her own persecution. Or if, like its colleague CAIR, MPAC stokes anti-Muslim hate even where it does not exist.

And he finishes with this:

(7) This episode is yet another instance of Islamist organizations relentlessly seeking special privileges for Islam. At a time when American Catholics must endure "art" that consists of the crucifix in urine and a Virgin Mary made in part of elephant dung, why should American Muslims be indulged in their exquisite sensibilities? As Stephen Schwartz keeps repeating, if Islam is to flourish in America, it must adapt to America.

(8) Amazon should answer MPAC firmly in the negative, reinstituting Bellwether's right to sell Korans at Amazon, making no public condemnations, and not giving money to MPAC. If you agree with this conclusion, let Patty Smith at Amazon (psmith@amazon.com) know your thoughts.

Please email her and let her know that it's time to stand up to Muslims and stop giving them special treatment.
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Britain - Muslims want to rule the world. Read the signs. Ooops! Too late, something has already superceded it - freedom! 

Britain - "Moderate" Muslims Go Mad

This is London reports on the protest in London by Muslims organized by the so called "moderate" voice of Muslims in the UK.

Muslim protesters today called for the bombing of New York in a demonstration outside the US embassy in London.

There were threats of "another 9/11" from militants angry at reports of the desecration of the Koran by US troops in Iraq.

Some among the crowd burned an effigy of Tony Blair on a crucifix and then set fire to a Union flag and a Stars and Stripes.

Notice burning of a crucifix and a Union flag as well as a Stars and Stripes? The Union flag burning is significant because it shows this is not about the Koran incident at all. As a picture, which I'll post next, shows, this is about Islam taking over the world.
So who organized it?

The protest was organised by groups including the Muslim Council for Britain and the Muslim Parliamentary Association of the UK.

The MCB knows passions are running high and hijacked these feelings to further its agenda to turn Britain into and Islamic state. Don't believe me? Just listen.

One of the protesters called for the release of radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza. He shouted: "Your so-called democracy will fall under the sword of Allah. The day of judgment is coming."

And it will if the people of Britain don't wake up the snake in their midst's.
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Islam - How To Gain Respect

ALI AL-AHMED thinks he has the answer but it will never work. Why? Because the Koran teaches everything he says it shouldn't.

As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia--where I come from--are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.[...]

The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible. The State Department's annual human rights reports detail the arrest and deportation of many Christian worshipers every year.[...]

The Saudi Embassy and other Saudi organizations in Washington have distributed hundreds of thousands of Qurans and many more Muslim books, some that have libeled Christians, Jews and others as pigs and monkeys. In Saudi school curricula, Jews and Christians are considered deviants and eternal enemies. By contrast, Muslim communities in the West are the first to admit that Western countries--especially the U.S.--provide Muslims the strongest freedoms and protections that allow Islam to thrive in the West. Meanwhile Christianity and Judaism, both indigenous to the Middle East, are maligned through systematic hostility by Middle Eastern governments and their religious apparatuses.

The lesson here is simple: If Muslims wish other religions to respect their beliefs and their Holy book, they should lead by example.

And therein lies the problem, they can't for the Koran itself teaches the same things. The situation will not change until the Koran is changed.
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Islam - Spreading Polio

And this from Al Jazeera!!

An outbreak of polio in Yemen has risen to 63 cases, making it one of the worst epidemics in the world, the UN health agency said.

The number of cases in Yemen will probably soon exceed 100, as many more suspected cases are being investigated, said Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the World Health Organisation's polio eradication campaign.

"They are having a pretty big epidemic there," Rosenbauer said. "But we should be able to stop the virus relatively quickly."

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, which like Yemen was thought to be polio-free, two more cases have been confirmed, the WHO said. Indonesia, which reported its first case on 3 May, now has six.

Why did this happen?

Some Muslim clerics in northern Nigeria led the immunisation boycott, claiming the polio vaccine was part of a US-led plot to render Nigeria's Muslims infertile or infect them with Aids. Vaccination programmes restarted in Nigeria in July 2004 after local officials ended the 11-month boycott.

How bad has it gotten?

The virus has since spread to Benin, Chad, Cameroon, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Togo.

Last year, 1267 people were infected in the world - 792 of those in Nigeria. The total new cases in 2005 stands at 198, according to WHO, with Nigeria and Yemen listed as the worst-affected countries.

What to do about it?

Officials in Yemen said parents of infected children are planning lawsuits against the Health Ministry for failing to halt the spread of the disease.

Wrong answer. Sue the Muslims who started it all.
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France - Creating an Islamic State

Get'em while their young seems to be the message from this report.

Here's the summary:

Summing up, Obin explains his disturbing findings as the result primarily of indoctrination orchestrated over years by international Muslim organizations. From an early age, students are taught what to think, what to believe, and to regard their school teachers as liars. The goal of the radical groups seeking to segregate Muslim communities and denouncing integration as oppression, Obin writes, is to take the Muslim residents of France out of the French nation and make them think of themselves as part of the international Muslim community.

In a particularly interesting observation, Obin notes that it is the schools that have reached accommodations with the extremists that are most plagued by violence against girls, Jews, and teachers. Schools that refuse to tolerate the intolerable have coped much better with the problems described in the report. As a result, Obin calls for a policy of no compromise with Islamist demands.

Absolutely!

This is a lesson the British Prime Minister's wife should learn.

This is London reports "It [Hizb-Ut-Tahrir] also advised Shabina Begum, the Luton girl who recently won a High Court ruling that she was entitled to wear a head-to-toe jilbab to school."

And who represented Begum at her trial? Mrs. Tony Blair!

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Islam - Muslim Crimes Against Christians

The Anchoress has a good round up.

Ancient Buddhist statues destroyed by Muslims -- no worldwide riots or murders by Buddhists recorded in response.

One of the holiest Churches in Christendom occupied by Muslims; altar shat and pee'd upon; religious artifacts stolen; Bible torn up and pages used as toilet paper -- no worldwide riots or murders by Christians recorded in response.

Sacred ancient Jewish tomb destroyed by Muslims; ancient Torah scrolls burned; mosque is built on the ruins -- no worldwide riots or murders by Jews recorded in response.

Ancient historical and religious artifacts found at Judaism's holiest site systematically dug up and destroyed by Muslims -- no worldwide riots or murders by Jews in response.

More than 900 churches in Indonesia fire-bombed by Muslims since 1998 -- no worldwide riots or murders by Christians in response.

Hundreds of ancient Orthodox Christian churches and cemetaries defiled and destroyed by Balkan Muslims -- no worldwide riots or murders by Christians in response.

Keep it handy for the next time a Muslim complains about the Koran incident and then tell them to piss off.
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Islam - Why Islam is disrespected

Jeff Jacoby has the answer.

And he is spot on.

He sums up with this:

But what disgraces Islam above all is the vast majority of the planet's Muslims saying nothing and doing nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away at their religion. It is Free Muslims Against Terrorism, a pro-democracy organization, calling on Muslims and Middle Easterners to ''converge on our nation's capital for a rally against terrorism" -- and having only 50 people show up.

Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can't get the time of day.

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