Savagery in St. Paul

Fri, Aug 24, 2007 at 10:17:10 am PST

Michelle Malkin has the details of a horrific assault in a Somali neighborhood of the Twin Cities, witnessed by neighbors who did nothing to help: The ghost of Kitty Genovese in St. Paul ... and breaking the silence in Afghanistan.

As many as 10 people witnessed a man raping and beating a woman early Tuesday in the hallway of a St. Paul apartment building, police said Wednesday. No one stopped it. At one point, the 26-year-old victim knocked on a door, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside told police he didn’t open the door or look out, though he said he called police. Police found no record of the call, according to an affidavit for a search warrant filed in Ramsey County District Court. St. Paul police arrested Rage Ibrahim, 25, on suspicion of criminal sexual conduct Tuesday. He hasn’t been charged.

“It was horrifying. I can’t describe how it sent chills up my back, watching this woman getting assaulted and people turning their backs and doing nothing,” said St. Paul police Cmdr. Shari Gray, who oversees the department’s sex crimes unit. She saw surveillance video that recorded the attack in the Highwood neighborhood. As the woman screamed, five to 10 people - men and women - peeked out their apartment doors to see what was happening or started walking down the hallway and retreated after witnessing the assault, Gray said.

From: LGF

****************************

Muslims resent FBI's release of ferry passenger photos

Muslim Outrage--Get Over Yourselves

August 24, 2007

Seattle Muslims in a Full Court Victimization Press: "We need to get some type of apology from them and figure out how to get back to where we were." The FBI agents shouldn't apologize for doing their jobs and trying to protect people. Gomez is right: "people in those communities have to get over this sensitivity toward feeling victimized." And instead of resenting anti-terror efforts, some cooperation with them would be most welcome.

An update on this story.

"FBI's release of ferry passenger photos resented," by Lornet Turnbull, Janet Tu and Mike Carter for the Seattle Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

For Arabs and Muslims across the Puget Sound area, a rise in the nation's threat level or a bombing halfway around the world often can mark a period of unease.

In the years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, leaders in that community say incidents of profiling and harassment have ebbed and flowed — increasing when Muslims are linked to news of the day.

Now the FBI's release of photographs of two men of unknown origin, who the agency says were observed acting suspiciously aboard as many as six different Washington ferry routes in recent weeks, is creating new worries in the community.

Muslim- and Arab-American leaders are upset that the FBI didn't consult them — as it has done in other instances — before releasing the photos on the Internet and to news organizations. They worry that the action may fracture the relationship the agency and the community have carefully built.

The FBI has stressed that the release of the photos is a rare move, taken only after it had exhausted other efforts to identify the men. The agency also has said the men's actions could be innocuous, but it needs to question them.

The photos were snapped by a ferry captain last month after crew members alerted him to suspicious activity. The men seemed inordinately interested in the operation of the vessel, took photographs of the interiors of the boats and went into areas tourists and commuters don't normally go, the FBI has said. The agency has received many tips but has not yet found the men.

Dozens of Muslims and Arabs have complained to community leaders about the photographs. The fallout has led to a meeting planned today between Muslim- and Arab-American community leaders and law-enforcement officials.

"We need to get some type of apology from them and figure out how to get back to where we were," said Rita Zawaideh, head of the Arab-American Community Coalition....

Zawaideh said she met with FBI officials about the August incident three days before the agency released the photos of the two men. But the FBI didn't bring up that subject.

"Why not ask us then and we would have had a way to ask people in the community," she said.

Gomez said the agency needs to address certain sensitive issues, but "people in those communities have to get over this sensitivity toward feeling victimized."

Many passengers have been stopped and questioned recently, as the ferry system has stepped up security once the FBI concluded the men might be watching the system. The stops are based on activities, not skin color, Gomez said.

Two days ago, a Seattle Times photographer, who is white, was stopped and questioned after taking photographs near the Mukilteo ferry terminal.

The FBI didn't take the photos of the two men to the Arab- and Muslim-American community because the agency doesn't know if the men are Middle Eastern, Gomez added.

"That seems potentially prejudicial to me, and in some ways worse than simply putting [the photos] out the way we did," Gomez said. "It is not us saying these guys look Middle Eastern."

Zawaideh countered: "They're not saying these men are Arabs, but insinuating they are."

How on earth are they doing that, Zawaideh? They released pictures and said these men were acting suspiciously as reported by many people on several ferries. If they had instead gone to Muslim leaders and asked them for help, as you yourself suggest above, then they would have been announcing in a public way that these guys were Muslims. And I expect if they had approached Muslim leaders with these photos, the leaders would have been outraged, outraged, that the FBI was assuming that the men were Muslims. It's a no-win situation.

This all comes at a time when some local Muslim and Arab-American leaders say they've seen a new spike in discrimination complaints....

Both Zawaideh and S. Arsalan Bukhari, president of the Seattle chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), say their organizations have been receiving more reports lately involving allegations of discrimination.

Bukhari said he's heard of delays at the border, as well as cases of people being asked questions at the airport and searched so thoroughly they missed their flights.

I'd live with it if it happened to me, Arsalan. Better than getting blown up. At least for some of us.

JihadWatch

What a bunch of whiny-ass babies.

HOMELAND INSECURITY
Iraqi terrorists caught
along Mexico border
American intelligence chief confirms
'people are alive' as a result of capture


Posted: August 23, 2007
4:04 p.m. Eastern




© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

President Bush with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell
President Bush's top intelligence aide has confirmed that Iraqi terrorists have been captured coming into the United States from Mexico.
The confirmation comes from National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, who talked about the situation in an interview with the El Paso Times recently.
"Coming up through the Mexican border is a path," McConnell said. "Now, are they doing it in great numbers? No, because we're finding them and we're identifying them and we've got watch lists and we're keeping them at bay."
But, he said, "There are numerous situations where people are alive today because we caught them (terrorists)."
(Story continues below)
Intelligence officials say the numbers and details of such situations are classified, but McConnell pointed as an example to Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, who entered the United States through Tijuana, Mexico, in 2001, and later pleaded guilty to helping raise money for Hezbollah, which has been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.
The goal, McConnell said, is for terrorists to gain admittance to the United States, and then produce "mass casualties."
"You've got committed leadership. You've got a place to train. They've got trainers, and they've got recruits," McConnell told the newspaper. "The key now is getting recruits in. So if your key is getting recruits in, how would you do that?"
McConnell's office did reveal some numbers, during fiscal 2006, there were 14 Iraqi nationals caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally, while so far in 2007, that number is 16.
"Now some we caught, some we didn't," McConnell told the newspaper. "The ones that get in – what are they going to do? They're going to write home. So it's not rocket science; word will move around."
Also revealed was that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted 60 Iraqis crossing the nation's southwestern border in 2006 who were seeking asylum in the U.S., while that number so far in 2007 is 178.
The Times report said a U.S. intelligence analyst said there's been evidence that human smugglers, or coyotes, are telling Iraqis to ask for amnesty if they are caught.
The typical scenario is this: Forged documents are used to get an Iraqi into a country in South or Central America. Since travel from country to country is allowed without vises in many locations there, they work their way north to the U.S. border.
McConnell told the newspaper the numbers are classified, but there have been a relatively small number of people with known links to terrorist groups who have been caught at that point.
Kourani, for example, apparently paid a Mexican Consulate official in Lebanon $3,000 for a Mexican visa and then was smuggled into the United States in the trunk of a car.
He was sentenced to more than four years in prison after admitting he helped raise funds for Hezbollah.
When the newspaper asked U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, about the situation, he said, "It's not something we would talk about."
"We have had intelligence about al-Qaida identifying Latin America as a potential or prospective area where they could come through, but frankly, I'm surprised that the director would make definitive statements like that because, even if it were true, you wouldn't want to publicize that," Reyes told the Times.
McConnell was senior vice president with Booz Allen Hamilton, focusing on intelligence and national security, before being appointed to his current post by Bush in February.
He previously was the director of the National Security Agency and served as a member of the Director of Central Intelligence senior leadership team before then.

From: World Net Daily

Thursday, August 23, 2007



*******************************

Watching Al Jazeera, Part I

So Karen and I sit down, flip channels, and what do you know, suddenly Al Jazeera pops up.
"Since when do we get Al Jazeera?" I ask.
"We don't," Karen assures me.
Oh man, gotta call the cable company and make sure we're not paying for this Jew-hatred.
There's all this slow mo footage overlaid with sinister musical stings of grim looking Jooz carrying M16's; this is intercut with Bedouin children herding sheep, looking all innocent and peaceful.
And the narrator/host/entertainer, a woman with shoulders like a fullback, and an absolutely tragic mullet style hair-do from the 80's, keeps talking about "G-d's Jewish warriors," and she repeats these three words—I'm counting, mind you—and by the time she hits number 107, I give up.
I now know what it's like to get brainwashed in some North Korean reeducation gulag.
Anyway, this Al Jazeera lady with the hoo-ha Oxford accent—big shock—states:
"The second intifada was an attempt by the Palestinians to shake off the Israeli occupation."
Really?
Well, what else can you expect from Al Jazeera.
Actually, the second intifada was Arafat's answer to the Camp David Accords. His way of saying no to all negotiations after Barak offered the terrorist leader 96% of everything, including dividing Jerusalem.
The whole two hours of this Al Jazeera program is such typical, and poisonous Arab propaganda that Karen and I are kind of fascinated. This huge lady with the really bad hair interviews guess who as experts on Israel?
Jimmy Carter. Karen Armstrong. John Mearsheimer. There's the obligatory angry loser from Peace Now — dude, clean your office, it looks like cat litter. And a couple of Israeli lefties who are so far gone they might as well be living in Damascus.
Gee-willikers, Al Jazeera lady forgot to interview Hizbullah/Iranian-proxy strongman Hassan Nasrallah; his views on Israel are pretty much the same as the usual suspects above. He's always ranting about the evils of the Israeli occupation. And he vehemently denies that he's a Jew-hater. Like Carter, Armstrong and Mearsheimer he insists that he's merely anti-Zionist.Yup, Nasrallah gets positively indignant when he's accused of being an anti-Semite. Sheesh, can't anyone criticize and bomb Israel without being accused of being a Jew-hater?
There's this long segment on the — horror musical sting here — Israel lobby. Obligatory shots of well-dressed, um Jews, tables of food, which I suppose is proof of evil, people chatting and looking, y'know, conspiratorial.
I'm waiting for Al Jazeera lady to start quoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, because that's really what this segment is all about, but I suppose she's too cool for that. This is after all Al Jazeera. They are , allegedly, civilized.
Then fullback lady pulls out the big guns: Actual Jewish terrorists. She comes up with Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir , and a group who rigged explosives to the car of an Arab Mayor they suspected of aiding terrorists and who planned on blowing up an Arab girl's school, Disgusting and wrong, but they were caught and arrested, by Jewish cops, thank G-d.
That's it for Jewish terror.
Personally, I think the Jewish people have shown remarkable restraint in the face of a genocidal enemy.
Al Jazeera lady gets all indignant about American Christians who support Israel. They're warriors because... I have no idea; they sing and dance and pray.
I always thought that warriors are people who, y'know, pick up weapons and fight.
Let's face it, Al Jazeera lady is playing the old Soviet game of manipulating and ultimately destroying language: slavery is freedom, the bottom is the top, evil is good.
Karen and I are smiling. Wow, these good Christians show more love of Israel than many Jews. G-d bless them. Al Jazeera just did a big favor, probably increased membership in that Florida Church by 20%.
Then there's segment called: "The Power Couple."
"Hey isn't that your cousin Shani?" I say to Karen.
"Yup, sure is."
Al Jazeera lady grimly reports on Assemblyman Dov Hikind and his wife Shani, who raise money for a united Jerusalem.
Al Jazeera lady darkly spits out: "All. Completely. Legal."
Horrifying.
Al Jazeera lady points out that some of these Jewish warriors are wearing, prepare yourselves: diamonds.
I'm in a state of shock, feel like melting into a puddle.
The chutzpah of Jewish women wearing diamonds.
Every Al Jazeera viewer knows that women should be wearing, y'know, burkahs!
Al Jazeera lady pines for the past when Jews were forbidden to live in Jerusalem; when the Western Wall was the city garbage dump; when synagogues were horse stables; when headstones from Jewish cemeteries were used by the Jordanians to pave streets; when Jordanian soldiers sat on the walls of the Old City, shot and murdered Jews.
Ah, the good ol' days.
Basically, the whole two hours is a hit piece on Jews who wish to live in Judea and Samaria. Al Jazeera lady blames, well, everything on the Jooz. She never points out that after the Jewish surrender of Gaza, Hamas proclaimed victory and promised that "all of Israel would be liberated."
I guess that's sort of an inconvenient truth.
Here's a larger truth: what happens when Arab/Muslims proclaim parts of London, Paris, Brooklyn, under Sharia and the presence of Jews an intolerable provocation?
There are already 22 Arab countries that are Judenrein.
Why does the world find this perfectly acceptable, perfectly natural?
Why does the world keep drawing new lines in the sand where the presence of Jews is unacceptable?
Just asking.
"Hey," says Karen, "this isn't Al Jazeera, this is CNN."
"Well, I know that, I've just been using this as a literary device to make a point."
Christiane Amanpour's work is guilty of moral equivalence. She's a disgraceful journalist. And I guarantee this: tonight 's segment will be an apology for Muslim jihadists.
Posted by Robert at August 22, 2007 10:41 AM

Global Snapshots from the Religion of Pieces

More religion from the RoP. Full stories at the Yorkshire Miner (hat tip 2000)

"Her crime by the way was to refuse the sexual advances of a local villager."

"This picture always saddens me, a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His crime, being an Hindu."

Brussels: "This gory scene is caused by the illegal killing of sheep for Ramadan."

Posted by Pamela Geller on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 11:04 AM in Global Jihad 2007

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2007/08/global-snapshot.html

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

***************

My opinion: Islamics are sub-human, for they have lost every shred of God given humanity and human kindness.

CAIR ... I await your lawsuit.

Christiane Amanwhore's Hit Piece on the Jews

CNN, the Crescent News Network's star dhimmi reporter, Christiane Islamiane Amanpour six-hour €œtelevision event God's Jewish Warriors€ (to be following on successive nights by God'€™s Muslim Warriors and €œGod's Christian Warriors) aired this evening and it is hard to imagine but this unabashed Jew hater, outdid herself.

Moral inversion packaged tres sophisticay. Jihadist translates into "God's Warrior." One sided would imply there might be another side and clearly in this useful idiot's world, there is only Islam.

It began with a lie, and went downhill from there. Who does Amanpour think she is? Who died and made her queen of antisemites?

Amanpour/Imamwhore speaks to the usual Jewicidal suspects ie Shimon Peres and world class Jew haters Jimmy Carter and Protocols of Zion devotee`John Mearsheimer." Prominent political scientist," my ass. Yes, that bad.

Pearls like "Jewish settlers turned to terror" (without mentioning the Israeli government arrested Jewish Underground plotters and imprisoned them for long periods of time) thereby equating self defense to terror.

And Israel's "plot to destroy Islam's holiest sites" There are no people on earth that have gone to such extraordinary measures to preserve religious and archaeological sites than the Jews. Islam, OTOH, is notorious for destroying any and all non Muslim archaeological and religious artifacts and has gone so far as to issue a fatwa against religious statues.

"The major obstacle to peace is the settlements." "The Jewish settlements have inflamed much of the Muslim world." Not Islamic jihad, not the legacy of Islamic antisemitism. Not Israel itself. The Arab narrative "OCCUPATION!"

Six thousand miles away in New York, "defiance of international law comes dressed in diamonds"

Its all about the tricky, crafty, sneaky Jews defying their government, defying the US, defying international law by supporting settlements. INTERNATIONAL LAW aka the UN. Amanpour evokes the Islamized UN repeatedly.

"Why not withhold Israel's foreign aid?" she asks Jimmy Carter (of all people.)

Amanwhore goes on to say the building AIPAC --the Zionist lobby, is located in is "more powerful" than the Foggy Bottom.

"Some might say that this building became the most powerful arm of American foreign policy, more powerful than foggy bottom, State department."

If this is journalism, I'm the Pope.

I can already see the spate of lawsuits going after Jewish charities for supporting settlements that contravene US policy and international law. Ed Lasky, an email exchange added;

......the basic lie that it is the settlements that inflame the Arab world (and not the existence of Israel) ; the canard about Jewish money and power in America, the ominous music on cue as the "documentary" then segues to the White House, the reliance on Jimmy Carter and Mearsheimer and then using criticism who merely label them as anti-Semitic and not the experts (like Rick Richman) who point out the lies in their work, no wherein the Koran is Jerusalem mentioned-the Shrine on the Temple Mount was placed their by a local Arab ruler envious of tourist dollars going to Mecca and Medina-he propagated the story that Jerusalem is the spot from which Mohammed rode the horse heavenwards.

Islamiane Amanpour pulls every Jew hating canard out of that shitty little bag of hers. The old dual loyalty is regurgitated. "I was never fully American, I was Jewish!"

One example of many of using a non-representative sample of people to represent a group. Same woman , when referring to Christian supporters-we have to take advantage of our friends. Wonderful quote--not. (Lasky)

The second hour gets worse. The Jews are to blame for everything. Israel displaced Palestinians from the Arab quarter in East Jerusalem and confined them to wretched refugee camps strewn with garbage and sewage, where they suffer still decades later despite billions in US and EU aid but no mention of that. She blames Israel yet again for Lebanese Christian massacre in Sabra and Shatila. No mention of how the Pali Arabs destroyed Lebanon and its Christian community.

Christian Zionists are depicted as foolish puppets manipulated by those crafty, sneaky Jews. "Their [the Christian Zionists] money builds parks, childcare centers and music therapy centers. Projects that make Jewish life her more comfortable and more permanent."

Amnawhore equates Jews soliciting support and donations for Israel with Muslims terror funding jihadists who murder Israelis while deliberately and willfully ignoring the crucial difference between savages and civilized men, between terrorists and sovereign nations.

Amnapour talks about Christian antisemitism and the Jew as Christ killers. The Jooooooooooos, every time she says it, it is dripping with contempt.

Amanwhore than spends twenty minutes on a some tiny fringe group that was going to target a Pali school years ago but was busted by Israeli police and went to jail without ever launching an attack. Even so Amanwhore devotes a whole segment to this. This group represents Israel much the way the Unibomber represents your typical American. Rockets rain on Jewish schools (kindergartens) in Sderot daily and not a peep from this ignoramus's mouth about that very real horror.

Al Jizz is going to run this "special" on an endless loop.

Tomorrow night: Muslim Warriors
Just as she used a tiny fringe of Jews to represent the Jewish people, I am sure she will invert this on Muslim warriors. She will show the millions of jihadists worldwide as a "tiny fringe" of the religion of peace and the thousands of Islamic attacks since 9/11 as mere blip on the screen.

UPDATE: Fitzgerald: The point of CNN's religious fundamentalism series

UPDATE: Loved this from Lawyn;

I admit that the errie music accompanying the presentation of that DIABOLICAL PLOT of American DIAMOND MERCHANTS using their own money to BUY, DO YOU HEAR ME, BUY REAL ESTATE FROM PALESTINIANS is an outrage none should bear. Sure that most of the ARABS selling are laughing up their sleeves, thinking...."Got over on you Jooooo, soon you will be in the sea and I will have my house/land back. In the meantime I'll go visit with the widow of our great leader in Pareee"

UPDATE: Richard Baehr rips it to shreds. Hysterical.

UPDATE: And Director Blue: Christine Amanpour's exposé on religious killers

CNN's Christine Amanpour is hosting a series of exposes on religious warriors . Each show in the series focuses on the aspects of a single religion:

* Yesterday: the Worldwide Jewish Cabal
* Tonight: Misunderstood Muslims
* Thursday: Christian Crusaders
* Friday: Killer Quakers
* Saturday: Antagonistic Amish
* Sunday: Bloodthirsty Buddhists
* Monday: Homicidal Hindus

Amanpour is certain to offer a detailed comparison of the number of terrorist attacks broken down by instigating religion. And the number of deaths associated with those attacks. As well as the number of slaves currently held by each religion.

Posted by Pamela Geller on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 01:05 AM in Antisemitism:Modern Argument to Age Old Hate, Leftwing Media Jihad

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

West underestimates the 'evil of Islam'

By Richard Kerbaj

August 21, 2007 02:00am

Article from:

Font size: + -

Send this article: Print Email

THE West was still underestimating the evil of Islam, an influential Muslim thinker has warned, insisting that Australia and the US have been duped into believing there is a difference between the religion's moderate and radical interpretations.

On a two-week "under the radar" visit to Australia, Syrian-born Wafa Sultan secretly met both sides of federal politics and Jewish community leaders, warning them that all Muslims needed to be closely monitored in the West.

In an interview with The Australian, Dr Sultan - who shot to recognition last year following an interview on al-Jazeera television in which she attacked Islam and the prophet Mohammed - said Muslims were "brainwashed" from an early age to believe Western values were evil and that the world would one day come under the control of Sharia law.

The US-based psychiatrist - who has two fatwas (religious rulings) issued against her to be killed - warned that Muslims would continue to exploit freedom of speech in the West to spread their "hate" and attack their adopted countries, until the Western mind grasped the magnitude of the Islamic threat.

"You're fighting someone who is willing to die," Dr Sultan told The Australian in an Arabic and English interview. "So you have to understand this mentality and find ways to face it. (As a Muslim) your mission on this earth is to fight for Islam and to kill or to be killed. You're here for only a short life and once you kill a kafir, or a non-believer, soon you're going to be united with your God."

Dr Sultan, who was brought to Australia by a group called Multi-Net comprised of Jews and Christians, met senior politicians, including Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Labor deputy leader Julia Gillard.

Private security was hired for Dr Sultan, who left Australia yesterday, and state police authorities were also made aware of her movements in the country.

The organisers of her visit asked the media to not publish anything about her stay until she had left the country because of security-related concerns. Dr Sultan said Islam was a "political ideology" that was wrongly perceived to have a moderate and hardline following.

"That's why the West has to monitor the majority of Muslims because you don't know when they're ready to be activated. Because they share the same basic belief, that's the problem," said the 50-year-old, who was last year featured in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Dr Sultan, who was raised on Alawite Islamic beliefs before she renounced her religion, began to question Islam after she witnessed her university teacher get gunned down by Muslim hardliners in Syria in 1979.

The mother of three, who migrated to the US in 1989, said the West needed to hold Muslims and their leaders more accountable for the atrocities performed in the name of Islam if they wanted to win the war on terror.

But while she considered the prophet Mohammed "evil" and said the Koran needed to be destroyed because it advocated violence against non-believers, Dr Sultan struggled to articulate her vision for Muslims, whom she said she was trying to liberate from the shackles of their beliefs.

"I believe the only way is to expose the Muslims to different cultures, different thoughts, different belief systems," said Dr Sultan, who is completing her first book, The Escaped Prisoner: When Allah is a Monster.

"Muslims have been hostages of their own belief systems for 1400 years. There is no way we can keep the Koran."

Blind man wins case after cabby refused dog

Anti-dhimmitude in British Columbia -- but only so far. By Brian Hutchinson for the National Post:

VANCOUVER - A blind man denied service from a Muslim taxi driver for "religious reasons" has been awarded $2,500, the result of a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal discrimination settlement reached on Friday and made public yesterday.

Bruce Gilmour estimates that Vancouver taxi drivers have passed him over "a hundred times, maybe 150 times" since he acquired his first guide dog in 1984. But an incident one evening last year with North Shore Taxi Ltd. was "the straw that broke the camel's back."

It was cold outside, and raining. Mr. Gilmour was attempting to return home after spending time with two friends at a West Vancouver coffee shop. The trio had just spent an active weekend at Whistler; Mr. Gilmour remains an avid skier despite being blinded in a 1977 car accident.

A taxi was called. On arrival, the driver would not allow Mr. Gilmour's golden retriever, Arden, into the car. An argument ensued and the cabbie then drove off, without his two passengers.

Mr. Gilmour complained to North Shore Taxi the next day.

He was told that the driver's Muslim faith prohibits him from associating with dogs, hence his refusal to provide service.

It was the first time Mr. Gilmour had ever heard such an excuse, and he said it made his blood boil....

Mr. Gilmour decided to fight back. He hired a lawyer, himself a Muslim, and filed a formal complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal, alleging discrimination.

Taxi driver Behzad Saidy and North Shore Taxi applied to have the complaint dismissed. Mr. Saidy filed a statement from a Muslim cleric, claiming that "Islam holds some restrictions toward certain animals, including dogs." The statement did not elaborate, and the tribunal denied the application to dismiss the discrimination complaint.

Mr. Gilmour consulted with his cleric. Imam Syed Jaffri leads the Az-zahraa Islamic Centre in Richmond, a Vancouver suburb. He "spent long hours on this," Mr. Gilmour said. "He provided an unbiased interpretation of the Koran that indicated there is nothing saying that one must refuse service to another person because of the fear of contamination by a dog."

On the other hand, Muslims who come into contact with dog saliva or dog hair are required to repeat their daily ablutions, washing their face, arms, hands, and feet, according to an expert in Islam whom the Vancouver Province interviewed last year.

The tribunal was to hear Mr. Gilmour's case on Monday; however, a settlement was reached last week with Mr. Saidy and his taxi company. "The parties have agreed to resolve Mr. Gilmour's complaint by balancing the rights of persons with seeing-eye dogs to obtain taxi service with the rights of Muslims to follow their religion," the settlement reads.

In the future, North Shore Taxi drivers with an "honest religious belief (Muslim) which precludes them from transporting certified guide dogs" must still respond to calls from blind people such as Mr. Gilmour. But they may ask their dispatch operators to send "the next available cab" to cover the service request.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017799.php

August 16, 2007

*********************

"Radical Islam’s war with the West is not finite and limited to political grievances — real or imagined — but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in faith”

Here is a review of an essential new book that lays bare the jihadists' motivations and goals in their own words: Raymond Ibrahim's The Al-Qaeda Reader. There is no way we can resist and contain the jihadists, and stave off the Islamization of the West, without understanding how they recruit, the power of their appeal in the Islamic world, and the ways they explain what they are doing and why. This books cuts through the PC nonsense that still dominates the public discourse in the West and illuminates all that like no other book ever has.

"In Their Own Words: Newly translated writings of the al Qaeda leadership," by Bruce Thornton at VDH's Private Papers:

Given that war, as both Sun Tzu and Mohammed preached, is deception, it behooves us to understand accurately the enemy’s motivations and not be fooled by his deceiving propaganda. Yet in the current war against Islamic jihad, the West has stubbornly refused to take seriously what the jihadists tell us, believing instead what Thucydides called the “pretexts” with which an enemy rationalizes his aggression. Osama bin Laden and his theorist Aymin al Zawahiri in particular have provided us with numerous texts outlining the Islamic foundations of their war against the West. A few of these pronouncements and manifestoes have long been available, but now thanks to Raymond Ibrahim’s The Al Qaeda Reader, writings previously unavailable in English can be studied and analyzed. Such study will provide powerful evidence that contrary to the deceptions of apologists and the naïve delusions of some Westerners, the bases of the jihadists’ actions lie squarely within Islamic tradition, not in the alleged Western crimes against Islam.

Fluent in Arabic and trained as a historian in the ancient Middle East, Ibrahim is currently a technician in the Library of Congress’ Near East Section, where he discovered al Qaeda documents that had not been translated into English. He has organized these writings into two sections: theology, writings intended for fellow Muslims that ground al Qaeda’s war against the West in the traditional Islamic doctrine of jihad; and propaganda, writings meant for Westerners that cast bin Laden’s war as a just response to the depredations of Western powers.

The documents in the first section make a sustained, coherent argument for offensive jihad based on the Koran, the Hadith (the traditions of the words and deeds of Mohammed), and the Ulema (past and present scholars of Islam). Indeed, as Ibrahim notes, “Zawahiri’s writings especially are grounded in Islam’s roots of jurisprudence; in fact, of the many thousands of words translated here from his three treatises, well more than half are direct quotations from the Koran the Sunna [words, habits, and practices] of Mohammed, and the consensus and conclusions of the Ulema.” This extensive grounding weakens the “highjacking” charge apologists use to explain Islamic jihad. On the contrary, al Qaeda’s arguments are unexceptionally traditional — which is why, of course, millions of Muslims accept them.

In these writings addressed to fellow Muslims, bin Laden and Zawahiri argue against the notion of “moderate” Islam; the compatibility of Sharia (laws governing Islamic society) with democracy; the idea of accommodation with the enemy; and the prohibition against killing women and children. In other words, they meticulously attack as distortions of Islam all the popular assertions about Islam’s nature promulgated by apologists, Westernized Muslims, and even many Christians. As bin Laden himself writes in “Moderate Islam Is a Prostration to the West” — a letter written to the Saudi theologians who in 2002 publicly advocated coexistence with the West — such moderation necessitates the adoption of Western values: “They [the Saudi theologians] first acknowledge their [Westerners’] values and ideologies in their entirety, while shying away from evoking the truth valued by the Religion [Islam] and its foundations.” Even the notion of “co-existence” is a Western idea contrary to Islam: “As if one of the foundations of our religion is how to coexist with infidels!” Quite the contrary: the traditions and foundations of Islam urge believers to “wage war against the infidels and the hypocrites, and be ruthless against them” (Koran 66:9), a verse Zawahiri quotes along with the commentary of al Qurtubi, 13th-century author of a 20-volume exegesis of the Koran: “There is but one theme — and that is zeal for the religion of Allah. He commands the waging of Jihad against the infidel by use of sword, sound sermons, and the summons to Allah.”

So too with other Western notions such as tolerance and “dialogue,” which bin Laden correctly asserts are “built on Western conceptions, which themselves rest upon the most loathsome, secular principles.” Indeed, bin Laden has a strong case, for he appeals for evidence to the life and practices of Mohammed and his companions — along with the Koran the Muslim’s guide to every aspect of life — and asks sarcastically, “What evidence is there for Muslims for this [dialogue and shared understanding]? What did the Prophet, the companions after him, and the righteous forebears do? Did they wage jihad against the infidels, attacking them all over the earth, in order to place them under the suzerainty of Islam in great humility and submission? Or did they send messages to discover ‘shared understandings’ between themselves and the infidels in order that they may reach an understanding whereby universal peace, security, and natural relations would spread — in such a satanic manner as this?”

History shows that bin Laden has the better understanding of Islam than do Western apologists; as Ibrahim summarizes the argument, “‘radical’ Islam is Islam — without exception.” In this same vein, Zawahiri argues in his “Loyalty and Enmity” that the only relationship one can have with the infidel is enmity. Zawahiri buttresses this argument with numerous quotations from Islamic theology, the most important coming from the Koran 60:4: “‘We disown you and the idols which you worship besides Allah. We renounce you: enmity and hate shall reign between us until you believe in Allah alone.’” On this authority comes the necessity to wage jihad against the infidel.

Perhaps the most important document in Ibrahim’s collection is Zawahiri’s “Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents.” For years, we have been told that terrorism is un-Islamic because Islam forbids suicide and the killing of non-combatants. Zawahiri, however, teases out from Islamic tradition a perfectly rational and coherent argument in support of terrorism and suicide bombings.

Zawahiri starts by repeating Islam’s acceptance of deception in war as justified, thus legitimizing suicide bombings, which are deceptive by nature. Next, he builds his argument on selected hadiths, which as Ibrahim notes requires some interpretive stretching. Zawahiri gets around this difficulty by resorting to analogy, “a legitimate tool of Islamic jurisprudence,” as Ibrahim reminds us. Zawahiri focuses on intention, why the Muslim kills himself, not who kills him: “Thus the deciding factor in all these situations is one and the same: the intention — is it to service Islam [martyrdom] or is it out of depression and [despair]?” As for killing women and children, Mohammed himself provides a precedent during the siege of Ta’if, where he used catapults. The Prophet’s response to the question of killing women and children, which of course catapult missiles would do perforce, was “They [women and children] are from among them [infidels].” Again, the ultimate intention is the key: referring to al Shafi’ and the Hanbalis, two schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Zawahiri argues that it is permissible “to bombard the idolators even if Muslims and those who are cautioned against killing are intermingled with them as long as there is a need or an obligation for Muslims to do so, or if not striking leads to a delay of the jihad.”

Zawahiri’s reasoning in defense of suicide bombing may be ultimately unconvincing to many Muslims, or unsustainable by more careful exegesis. But the mere fact that such a case can be made — something impossible to do in the Christian, or Hebraic, or Hindu, or Buddhist traditions — and that millions of faithful Muslims accept the case, speaks volumes about the “religion of peace.”

[...]

These leftist bromides appear over and over in subsequent speeches and manifestoes, and testify to bin Laden’s shrewd recognition of the West’s Achilles heel: the appeasing proclivities of its elite intellectuals who, riddled with self-loathing guilt, are incapable of defending their way of life and its highest goods.

[...]

The Al Qaeda Reader, simply by letting our enemies speak in their own voices, explodes the popular delusion that Western crimes and policies are responsible for the “distortion” of Islam that al Qaeda represents. As Ibrahim writes, “This volume of translations, taken as whole, prove once and for all that, despite the propaganda of Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, Radical Islam’s war with the West is not finite and limited to political grievances — real or imagined — but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in faith.” This means that the fight will be long and hard, that leaving Iraq or creating a Palestinian state will not buy peace, and that the side that accurately understands its enemy and has confidence in its own beliefs will ultimately triumph. Thanks to Raymond Ibrahim’s The Al Qaeda Reader, we have the means for achieving that understanding.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017872.php

August 22, 2007

**********

August 23, 2007

Suicides among women on the rise in Turkey, many believed to be coerced as a form of "honor killing"

"Invariably, survivors said it was their kader, or destiny, to meet such an end."

"When wrong boyfriends or clothes lead daughters to kill themselves," by Helena Smith for The Guardian:

Nuran Uca never made it to 61 Aydin Arslan Street. If she had gone to the colourful two-storey building, climbed its narrow stairwell, walked down a corridor and sat in the plump brown armchair that so many other women had used, she might be alive today. There, with counsellors from the Kam-er support group, she could have talked about the "crime" of falling in love with a man she could never marry.

Instead, on June 14 the Kurdish woman succumbed to the phenomenon that is claiming lives in this Kurdish area of south-east Anatolia: she hanged herself in the bathroom of her home.

"She was just 25 but it was especially tragic because both were teachers, educated people," said Remziye Tural at Kam-er, the women's organisation that has become a lifeline in Turkey's poor south-east for those who face death because of a perception of dishonour. "She was modern and wore tight clothes - which is why his family rejected her.

She was banned by her parents from seeing or speaking to him, and then they stopped her leaving the house. In the end the pressure was too much."

[...]

Invariably, survivors said it was their kader, or destiny, to meet such an end.

But women's groups and human rights advocates believe the suicides are tantamount to murder. Stories have emerged of girls as young as 12 being locked in rooms for days with rope, poison or a pistol.

"There's a lot of evidence to suggest that these are, in fact, 'honour killings' passed off as suicides - that these girls are being forced to take their own lives," said Aytekin Sir, a psychiatrist who has studied the practice. There is no evidence that Nuran Uca's family forced their daughter to kill herself.

Last year, Yakin Erturk, a special UN envoy, arrived at the same conclusion, saying "honour suicides" had clearly begun to replace "honour killings", with the deaths increasingly being disguised as accidents.

Death sentences

For a long time the potent forces of fear and shame in the communities stopped young women visiting the Kam-er centre on Aydin Arlsan Street. But recently at least four girls a day have gone there, often in fear of death sentences issued by their fathers and brothers for infractions perceived to have brought shame on their families.

Nearly one-fifth of those who walked through the doors of the organisation since it started up in 1997 complained of threats from their families. Some had received text messages on their mobile phones saying typically: "You have blackened our name. Kill yourself or we will kill you."

According to Vildan Aycicek, at the organisation's headquarters in the city of Diyarbakir, west of Batman: "Women apply to us when they think they cannot survive the violence any longer. Most are illiterate and don't know their legal rights. If they do, they have no idea how to use them."

There had, she said, been cases of Kurdish and Turkish women calling Kam-er's hotline from Britain and other countries saying they also feared for their lives. Worldwide, the numbers of "honour killings" are notoriously difficult to estimate. But in Turkey the vengeful practice is cited by academics as the cause of death for hundreds of women each year - far above the official annual figure of 70. Sometimes adultery, or a woman's desire for divorce, prompts an all-male "family council" to order a killing.

But the list of "offences" is long: rape, incest, pregnancy brought on by both, a girl ringing into a radio chat show, exchanging eye contact with a boy or wearing a skimpy shirt. Sometimes accusations are no more than rumours.

One villager near Diyarbakir explained the attitude of his home area. "Without rules you have chaos," said Seyikan Arslan. "If my sister or my mother made a mistake we [men] would have to make it right. They would have to pay to cleanse our honour."

[...]

The culture clash has played a large part in exacerbating tensions within families and particularly between patriarchal fathers and their female offspring. "Migration is behind the big rise in honour and suicide killings," said Dr Sir, whose research found that support for the deaths far outstripped other popular penalties such as a woman having her nose sliced off or head shaved.

[...]

Ironically, the suicides have also been blamed on Turkey's efforts to stop "honour crimes". With Ankara's reforming Islamic-rooted government determined to enter the EU, it has toughened laws against the killings. Lenient sentences for those who cite provocation as a mitigating factor are no longer possible. So, to save men from a life in prison, experts believe families are instead forcing women to kill themselves.

[...]

Absent from the campaign in Batman has been the mayor, Huseyin Kalkan, who was awarded damages by DC Comics after a lawsuit over the use of his town's name for the superhero Batman. That money, activists point out, could be used to save women like Nuran Uca.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017877.php

****************

Belgium: Muslims want ban on Easter eggs

Not that there is a dominant culture that has a right to express itself. Oh, no. "Muslims want ban on Easter eggs," from Expatica (thanks to Diana West):

ANTWERP – "If headscarves are banned for employees who work at the desk at city services in order to guarantee neutrality of services, then we demand that no Christmas trees be set up in city buildings and that no Easter eggs be given out." Antwerp trade union representative Badia Miri said this on Wednesday in the Gazet van Antwerpen.

Miri is one of the seven Muslim women who were forced to remove their headscarves if they wanted to continue working at the desk. Three of the seven staff members of the city of Antwerp who wore headscarves agreed to stop wearing one. Different positions - not involving contact with the public - were found for the others. No one was dismissed. There is still opposition to the dress code however, which came into effect in March. The seven Muslim women are now urging that "neutrality of service provision be actually enforced."

"The Antwerp city government says that neutrality is endangered if staff wear a cross or headscarf," says Miri. "But in our experience action has only been taken against the Muslim women. If the city government is really concerned about neutrality, then Christmas trees and Easter eggs should no longer be allowed at work. We are asking that a contact point be set up to report all violations of the dress code."

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017874.php

August 22, 2007

**************

Fitzgerald: The point of CNN's religious fundamentalism series

Christiane Amanpour has at least one parent who was part of what one would have hoped to describe as the intelligent secular ancien regime. They were the people pushed out by Khomeini and his epigones, and therefore, one would have thought, comprehending the nature of Islam. Well, it turns out that not everyone who has fled Iran quite has that necessary understanding. Some like to pretend that Khomeini is a sport, when the real sport was the Shah and his father, in their de-emphasis on Islam, their emphasis on the pre-Islamic past of Iran, and their willingness to limit the power of the mullahs -- and, above all, to give the non-Muslims of Iran, the Christians, Jews, and Baha'is, reasonable security and even something akin to legal equality.

But Amanpour does not realize that. Nor, in her aggressive climb through the media ranks, has she stopped to study Islam. She has not stopped to find out what happened to the Zoroastrians or what happens to them in Iran today. She has not stopped to find out why, even in the 20th century, a Jew could be killed for going out in the rain (where a drop might ricochet off him and hit an innocent Muslim with this raindrop of najis-ness, thus contaminating him).

She might, that is, have begun with the history of Islam in Iran and considered the treatment of non-Muslims, and how Shah Abbas II overnight ordered the conversion of all the Jews and Armenians in an Iranian city (possibly Tabriz), and why the real, as opposed to the Iranian exile's dreamy fictional history of Iran, is full of such episodes. She might have gotten hold of E. J. Browne's work on Persian literature, and studied Hafiz and Sa'adi. She might have read Omar Khayyam, and come to realize just how un-Islamic he was. She might have read the Shahnameh of Firdowsi, and seen how his literary talent was put to work preventing the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Arabs from successfully coming to damage and then overwhelm the Iranian culture. She might have done a special program on Islam as a vehicle of Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism, and used Iran as an example of one place where it did not succeed as it did elsewhere.

Oh, there are many things that raw-boned massive Christiane Amanpour might have done, if she had allowed herself the leisure to think, and be something more than one more media star, one more mere reporter incapable of making sense of what she reports on.

But she did none of it. She clawed and clawed to the top. She entered into a mariage blanc, a white marriage of grayish convenience, with James Rubin. She travels, she reports from here, she reports from there. She is like so many of them, with their fabulous salaries, their baseless self-assurance, their inability to convey anything difficult, anything that requires instructing us rather than feeding us visual and verbal pablum.

If you have seen the presentation of those "Christian fundamentalists" (read: Fanatics), then you will observe how carefully the cameramen have captured those flags, and taken shots of hands uplifted in prayer or hallelujahs to make sure the viewer gets the impression of a Nuremberg rally, with these "Christians" heil-hitlering all over the place. Very carefully done, very artfully and deliberately done. She, Christiane Amanpour, is of course determined to make this group of Christians look as bad as possible, and then to convince us that they represent a huge number of people, and to do the same, when their time comes, to those wild-eyed fanatical Jews, those "Biblical settlers" who think -- imagine that! -- that the Land of Israel, that gigantic land, practically the size of Connecticut or is it Massachusetts, was given in a Covenant to the Jews. What a terrible thing, what a thing so utterly comparable, is it not, to the view in Islam that the entire world belongs to Muslims, and that they must by right dominate everywhere?

Do you see a little something not quite symmetrical in her view, in her presentation, or that of her crew, so willing to play ball? Meanwhile, one wonders how she can stand herself. And why CNN so obviously insults us, in reducing the menace of Islam, the menace that only a fool could ignore, and the full scope of which, based on immutable texts, becomes clearer to the intelligent every day, to something like the non-existent menace from those wild-eyed Nurembergian Christians, with Amanpour as their recording Riefenstahl, or those crazy "West Bank" settlers, in their trailers, choosing to live among a million Arabs -- "Palestinians" -- who of course have every right to be there, because...well, isn't the Middle East the same thing as the Arab World, after all? Where do those pesky remnants of Jews, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Copts, Maronites, Mandeans, Yazidis, Armenians, and all the others come from? Why don't they go back where they came from? The "Arab World," the "Muslim Arab World" -- now that's more like it. That's just the ticket.

Because, you see, Every Group Has Its Crazies. And those crazies, you see, are exactly alike, in what they want, and how they act, and the size of the demands they make on the rest of us. But exactly.

That's the point of this series. You didn't think there was another point, did you?

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017854.php

August 21, 2007

******************

Nearly 4,000 Women Arrested In Iranian Dress Code Enforcement Sweep

Sharia Alert from Iran, via MEMRI's blog (thanks to Writer Mom):

The commander of the Intelligence Police for Public Security Affairs in Gilan province in northern Iran, Yadollah Hosseini, has announced the arrest by security forces of 3,925 women in the province, under the country's campaign to enforce the Islamic dress code.

He added that legal proceedings against 2,077 of them were underway, and that warnings had been issued to 25,214 women.

Source: Baztab, Iran, August 15, 2007

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/017816.php

August 17, 2007

********************

FBI seek men behaving suspiciously on Washington State Ferries

Submitted by admin on Tue, 2007-08-21 11:45. U.S. News

Douglas J. Hagmann, Director

21 August 2007: The FBI is asking the public for their help in identifying the two men depicted below, both "passengers" aboard Washington State ferries on several recent occasions, and both showing a high level of interest in security vulnerabilities of the boats.

Both men were seen on more then one ferry and more than one run over the past several weeks, taking photos of strategic areas and specific parts of the boat and engaging in other acts that aroused the suspicions of both passengers and crews.

Ferries have been identified as top potential maritime terrorist targets, and numerous incidents of surveillance by men - mostly of Middle Eastern appearance - have been reported over the last few years.

Anyone who knows the identity of the men shown in the images above are asked to call the FBI at (206) 622-0460.

We would also like to hear from you as well, and if necessary, are willing to assist you in providing information to the FBI should you desire an alternate method of contact. You may send us an e-mail at director(AT)HomelandSecurityUS.com, replacing (AT) with the traditional @ sign.

From: http://homelandsecurityus.com/WAFerry082107 8/21/07

Israel Dispatches Humanitarian Aid Abroad and at Home

by Ezra HaLevi

(IsraelNN.com) Israel dispatched aid to Peru Sunday and granted citizenship to 500 African refugees fleeing slaughter by Islamists in Darfur, Sudan.

Israel sent $20,000 to Lima, Peru in order to purchase and distribute blankets and tents for those affected by the earthquake that struck last Wednesday, killing over 500 people. A 6.0 aftershock hit the region again Sunday morning.

No members of the 3,000-member Jewish community in Peru were reported injured and though Peru is a popular destination for Israeli post-army trekkers, no Israeli were reported injured in the quake either. One Israeli man was found dead in his hotel, however, though rescuers said his death appeared unconnected either. The Israeli Embassy in Lima was damaged by the 8.0 quake.

500 Darfur Refugees Given Asylum
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Sunday that he has ordered 500 Darfur refugees be given Israeli citizenship and absorption assistance.

Olmert added, however, that other African refugees, who continue to attempt to enter Israel from Egypt, will be turned away. Fifty such Africans were transported back to Egypt Saturday night.

Israel estimates that 2,800 Africans, 1,160 of them Sudanese, have crossed the Egypt-Negev border region in recent years.

Oh those wicked Israel's! Not.