The Smiling Mask Of Islam Starting To Slip.

Note: Here is further proof that the claims of tolerance and peace made by muslims is essentially false. They can talk the good talk; but they can't walk the good walk.

Read on and learn about the real Islam...

Malaysia's secular vision vs. 'writing on the wall'
More on the Lina Joy case, and other examples of the "creeping Islamicization" of Malaysia. Sharia Alert, and an Islamic Tolerance Alert, from the International Herald Tribune: "Letter from Malaysia: Nation's secular vision vs. 'writing on the wall'"

KUALA LUMPUR - The idea of a secular state is dead in Malaysia," says Farish Noor, a Malaysian scholar who specializes in politics and Islam. "An Islamic society is already on the cards. The question is what kind of Islamic society this will be."
It is hard to square this view with a drive through modern Kuala Lumpur, its downtown bars and nightclubs not exactly the symbols of a budding theocracy. Yet as Malaysia marks 49 years of independence from Britain on Thursday, lurking behind a cosmopolitan facade is a tense and divisive battle over the country's future.
Those who want to maintain the country's secular roots are fighting what they call creeping Islamicization. Muslim women who at the time of independence often wore silky, tight-fitting outfits today do not leave the house without a head scarf, which is now also required for female police officers of all religions during official functions.
Muslim prayers are piped into the loudspeakers of government offices in the new administrative capital, Putrajaya. And Islamic police officers routinely arrest unmarried couples for "close proximity."
"I see the writing on the wall," said Ivy Josiah, the director of the Women's Aid Organization, a group that lobbies the government on women's issues. "It's only a matter of time before Malaysia becomes another Taliban state."
Malaysia, a multiracial country where just over half the population of 26 million is Muslim, is testing the limits of compatibility between traditional Muslim beliefs and Western- style democracy.
In Europe, the threat of terrorism posed by disaffected Muslims has spurred religious leaders and politicians to wonder whether there is a better way to assimilate Muslim and Western traditions. The experience of Malaysia appears to show that there is no easy solution, even after five decades of trying.
In recent years, a number of high- profile court cases have highlighted the clash between Muslim and secular laws, but none so much as the lawsuit brought by Lina Joy, a computer saleswoman, who is challenging the Malaysian government over its refusal to officially acknowledge her conversion from Islam to Christianity. After two lower courts ruled for the government, Joy awaits a judgment from the country's highest court.
The case has aggravated already mistrustful relations between Muslim, Christian and Hindu communities. It has led to death threats against one prominent lawyer, large protest gatherings and a ban by the government on any further public debate. At the heart of the case is the fundamental question of which is supreme in Malaysia: Muslim law or the country's secular Constitution.
Malaysia has a hybrid legal system that incorporates both Islamic and civil laws for personal and family matters: Muslims are governed by religious laws against drinking, eating during the daylight hours of Ramadan and having close proximity between unmarried women and men. Marriages, divorces, funerals, and inheritance are governed by Islamic laws.
For non-Muslims - Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs - civil laws apply. But the hybrid system is now in crisis and the multiracial fabric could fray.
[...]
"You are seeing worldwide a common thing happening," said Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a Muslim lawyer. "Muslims are defining themselves by their religion instead of their country." Malik recently asked for police protection after receiving death threats for his role in the Lina Joy case: he submitted a brief in defense of Joy's right to convert.
"Lina Joy is important because it's finally brought to light the tensions that exist between those who favor an Islamic state and those who believe in the universal values entrenched in the Constitution," Malik said in an interview.
Lawyers who back the government's position in the case say Muslims in Malaysia are subject to Islamic law. "We are not saying you do not have any choice of religion. But if you want to convert out you must do so in the Islamic court," said Zulkifli Noordin, a lawyer who submitted a brief in support of the government's position.
In reality, converting out of Islam is frowned upon if not actively discouraged in Malaysia. Only one state, Negri Sembilan, allows apostasy and usually after ordering the person through a lengthy rehabilitation program - an attempt to keep them from converting.
Zulkifli says 18 people have successfully left the faith, although many others are thought to have done so unofficially. In the country's most conservative state, Kelantan, local laws call for the death penalty for apostates. The law has not yet been applied.
The context of the tensions in the Lina Joy case is a Muslim community that says it feels under siege and threatened by a thriving evangelical Christian movement. Newspapers cite wild estimates of mass conversions if Lina Joy wins her case and call for a strengthening of religious law.





Comment: Why is this issue not being widely covered in the Australian press? Maybe the thought of mass conversions away from Islam would be embarrassing for the dopey PC infected journalists in Australia who still buy the BS of 'Islam is a religion of peace'.

Real Fair Dinkum Islam...

Note: Here it is folks, the REAL Sunni Islam in action. Forget about the BS that you get told about this 'religion of peace'. Here is the real Sunni Islam...violent,vindictive and murderous.

Read all about it and ask yourself some hard questions...




29 August, 2006
MALAYSIA
Death threats against Lina Joy, fighting for her life and religious freedom

Convert to Christianity and her fiancé forced into hiding by death threats. The attorney who is appealing to the courts to have her conversion acknowledged is victim of intimidation.


Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews) – Lina Joy’s fight for religious freedom is turning into a fight for the right to live. The Muslim convert to Christianity and her would-be Christian husband have gone into hiding after extremists issued death threats against her for apostasy, this according to her attorney, Benjamin Dawson, who spoke in a recent interview to the New York Times. Victim of intimidation himself, Mr Dawson said that the best solution for the two was emigration.

Ms Joy, whose pre-conversion name was Azlina binti Jailani, met her fiancé, a Christian of ethnic Indian background, in 1990. Now she would like to get married and want her conversion to be officially recognised. Failing this, she would have to marry a Muslim and accept Islamic rules on marriage and inheritance.

For many years she has tried unsuccessfully to get Malaysia’s National Registration Department and then the courts to remove Muslim status from her identity papers. She was thus left with an appeal to the Federal Court, which is currently vetting her application. However, in Malaysia there are two, often conflicting, legal systems, one based on Islamic law; the other, on the constitution.

The Joy case has created great tensions in Malaysia. The issue at stake is whether the constitution or Sharia should be supreme.

Dawson himself wonders whether “we go down the Islamic road, or do we maintain the secular character of the federal Constitution that has been eroding in the last 10 years”.

Given the situation the lives of those who are spearheading the difficult fight for religious freedom in Malaysia are at risk, the lives of people like human rights lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, who has been an observer at the appeal trial for the Malaysian Bar Council, and whose face now appears in a ‘Wanted Dead’ poster.

The message that came with the photo was no less clear: “This is the face of the traitorous lawyer to Islam who supports the Lina Joy apostasy case. Distribute to our friends so they can recognize this traitor. If you find him dead by the side of the road, do not help.”

Mr Malik is now seeking police protection.





Comment: This situation...normal for Islam...is a perfect opportunity for Australia. As part of our support for human rights, the Australian government should extend refugee rights to those persons who leave Islam and convert to a non Islamic religion, or give up religion altogether. such persons actually and genuinely endanger their lives by such actions...as does any slave making a dash for freedom.

No other act by Australia would give as much help to those many muslims around the world who are seeing Islam as useless to them in their lives in 2006...or 1427 as it is in the Islamic calendar.

Australian officials should take every opportunity to remind the Australian people that Sunni Islam is not religion but politics...violent, vindictive and murderous (if need be for traitors who leave).

Go Girl, Go!

Note: Let us all cheer on this girl. Down with the sex mad puritanism of poisonous imams.

Read on...


Australia: Muslim girl in beauty pageant "a slur on Islam"
Sharia Alert from Down Under. Sheik Mohammed Omran is perfectly free to moralize, but bitter experience has shown that slurs on Islam often turn into threats of violence against those who are perceived as doing the slurring. "Beauty queen uproar," from The Herald Sun.

THE Islamic community is bitterly divided over a Melbourne Muslim girl's entry into the Miss Teen Australia beauty pageant. Aspiring model Ayten Ahmet, 16, says she wants only to be a positive role model for teenagers.
She believes religion is irrelevant to the competition.

The Craigieburn teenager hopes to be announced as a Victorian finalist in the contest, marketed as the southern hemisphere's biggest teen beauty pageant, at a preliminary event at Federation Square today.

But the pageant, which includes a swimwear section, has been condemned as sinful by some senior Muslims.

Melbourne cleric Sheik Mohammed Omran criticised the event, with his spokesman branding participation by Muslim girls as "a slur on Islam".

"They are ignorant of what their religion teaches and should learn their religion," the sheik's spokesman said.

"The teachings of the prophet and the Holy Koran do not encourage a girl to go out and uncover her modesty in public."

Victorian Islamic leader Yasser Soliman said participating in the contest was not in accordance with the teachings of Islam.

"What Islam teaches is that God-given beauty is only to be shared with the husband. It is not something used as a commercial gimmick, for financial gain, fame or entertainment,' he said....





Comment: Ignore these low rent sex hysterics, Ayten. You get out there and compete...these imams are nothing but trouble for and all other muslims in Australia.

The Islamist Problem...In A Nutshell.

Note: This posting shows readers the complete problem with Islamism. Islamism can only defeated by firmness and relentless attacks on it by the friends of freedom, from all cultural and religious backgrounds.

Read and learn...


Confronting Islamist Totalitarianism
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/998

On October 22, 2005, the France 2 television talk show Tout le Monde en Parle aired an interview with writer Salman Rushdie and French actor and Islamist Sami Nacéri. Left on the cutting room floor was an ugly incident during taping when Nacéri accused Rushdie of debasing Islam. If an imam asked him to kill Rushdie, Nacéri went on, he would himself shoot the bullet into Rushdie's head. He then pantomimed firing a gun at Rushdie.

Philippe Val, editor of the French left-wing weekly Charlie Hebdo, described the omitted segment in the November 2 issue of the magazine. French reaction was minimal. While some journalists debated whether celebrities made appropriate commentators, there was little discussion of France 2's decision to delete the offending segment.

On February 28, 2006, in response to Nacéri's threat, France 2's censorship, and the decision of several newspapers not to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, twelve prominent Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals issued a manifesto first published on the French website Proche-Orient.info. The translation, replicated below, was later published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten. The willingness of prominent thinkers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to stand together suggests that intellectuals recognize the totalitarian nature of Islamism and are determined not to cede terms of the societal debates to Islamists.

—The Editors

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity, and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilizations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism, and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology, which kills equality, freedom, and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject "cultural relativism," which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom, and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia," an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatization of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

Signed:

Salman Rushdie, author, The Satanic Verses
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born Dutch MP
Taslima Nasreen, exiled Bangladeshi writer
Bernard-Henri Levy, French philosopher
Chahla Chafiq, exiled Iranian writer
Caroline Fourest, French writer
Irshad Manji, author, The Trouble with Islam
Mehdi Mozaffari, professor of political science, University of Aarhus
Maryam Namazie, producer, TV International English
Antoine Sfeir, editor, Cahiers de l'Orient
Ibn Warraq, author, Why I Am Not a Muslim
Philippe Val, editor, Charlie Hebdo.





Comment: The struggle against Islamism is clearly vital for the health and welfare, both of the West and the many muslims who want to enjoy freedom in their lives. In Australia we need to be determined to deal implacably with the enemies of personal freedom. We need to reject with contempt the efforts of poisonous imams to present islamism as somehow 'freedom'. It is not.

This posting shows the reason for expelling imams from Australia. Readers will notice that the idiotic french muslim actor said he would murder Salman Rushdie 'if an imam asked him'. He didn't volunteer to do it of his own volition. It would be an imam who would direct him. Do we need to wait endlessly for this sort of action to occur in Australia, at the behest of some imam from Arabia?

By expelling the imams from Australia we would free the local muslims from the fascism that is clamped on Sunni muslims by the Wahhabi imams sent here from Arabia. Without these poisonous imams the local muslims would be free to develop an Australian version of Islam. Such a development would be in Australia's national interest.

Is anyone awake in Canberra?

Some Strong Home Truths...As Told By A Muslim Writer.

Note: This posting is from the well known and highly regarded muslim writer, Ms. Irshad Manji. Her contributions are always worth reading.




The Willful Myopia of Muslim Elites

Irshad Manji


Last week, the luminaries of the British Muslim mainstream - lobbyists, lords and members of Parliament - published an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair, telling him that the "debacle" of both Iraq and Lebanon provides "ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.


" In increasingly antiwar America, a similar argument is gaining traction: The United States brutalizes Muslims, which in turn foments Islamist terror.
But violent jihadists have rarely needed foreign policy grievances to justify their hot heads. There was no equivalent to the Iraq debacle in 1993, when Islamists first tried to blow up the World Trade Center, or in 2000, when they attacked the American destroyer Cole. Indeed, that assault took place after United States-led military intervention saved thousands of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.
If Islamists cared about changing Iraq policy, they would not have bothered to abduct two journalists from France - probably the most antiwar, anti-Bush nation in the West. Even overt solidarity with Iraqi suffering did not prevent Margaret Hassan, who ran a world-renowned relief agency in Baghdad, from being executed by insurgents.
Meanwhile, at least as many Muslims are dying at the hands of other Muslims as under the boots of any foreign imperial power. In Sudan, black Muslims are starved, raped, enslaved and slaughtered by Arab militias, with the consent of an Islamic government. Where is the "official" Muslim fury against that genocide? Do Muslim lives count only when snuffed out by non-Muslims? If not, then here is an idea for Muslim representatives in the West: Go ahead and lecture the politicians that their foreign policies give succor to radicals. At the same time, however, challenge the educated and angry young Muslims to hold their own accountable, too.
This means reminding them that in Pakistan, Sunnis hunt down Shiites every day; that in northern Israel, rockets launched by Hezbollah have ripped through the homes of Arab Muslims as well as Jews; that in Egypt, the riot police of President Hosni Mubarak routinely club, rape, torture and murder Muslim activists promoting democracy; and, above all, that civil wars have become hallmarks of the Islamic world.
Muslim figureheads will not dare be so honest. They would sooner replicate the very sins for which they castigate the Bush and Blair governments - namely, switching rationales and pretending integrity.
In the wake of the London bombings on July 7, 2005, Iqbal Sacranie, then the head of the influential Muslim Council of Britain, insisted that economic discrimination lay at the root of Islamist radicalism in his country. When it came to light that some of the suspects enjoyed middle-class upbringings, university educations, jobs and cars, Sacranie found a new culprit: foreign policy. In so doing, he boarded the groupthink express steered by Muslim elites.
The good news is that ordinary people of faith are capable of self-criticism. Two months ago, 65 percent of British Muslims polled believed that their communities should increase efforts to integrate. The same poll also produced troubling results: 13 percent lionized the July 7 terrorists, and 16 percent sympathized. Still, these figures total 29 percent - less than half the number who sought to belong more fully to British society.
Whether in Britain or America, those who claim to speak for Muslims have a responsibility to the majority, which wants to reconcile Islam with pluralism. Whatever their imperial urges, it is not for Tony Blair or George W. Bush to restore Islam's better angels. That duty - and glory - goes to Muslims.
______________________________________________________________
Irshad Manji, a fellow at Yale University, is the author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith."IHT




Comment: This writer should be brought to Australia to speak to Muslim and non Muslim audiences. The only possible way forward for Muslims in Australia is a reformed Islam which is suitable for Australian circumstances. Only Mulsims can reform Islam.

Islam And Its Useful Idiots.

Note: This posting is from an Iranian site. The author has personal life experience of living with muslims in charge of the country. His views are very uncomplimentary to Islam and muslim behaviour. He has grounds for his views.

Read on and be informed...


Islam's Useful Idiots
Monday, 07 August 2006
Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among the non-Muslims: A new generation of “Useful Idiots,” the sort of people Lenin identified living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also lives in liberal democracies, but serves the cause of Islamofascism—another virulent form of totalitarian ideology.

Useful Idiots are naïve, foolish, ignorant of facts, unrealistically idealistic, dreamers, willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from the ranks of the chronically unhappy, the anarchists, the aspiring revolutionaries, the neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of the population. Arguably, the most dangerous variant of the Useful Idiot is the “Politically Correct.” He is the master practitioner of euphemism, hedging, doubletalk, and outright deception.

The Useful Idiot derives satisfaction from being anti-establishment. He finds perverse gratification in aiding the forces that aim to dismantle an existing order, whatever it may be: an order he neither approves of nor he feels he belongs to.

The Useful Idiot is conflicted and dishonest. He fails to look inside himself and discover the causes of his own problems and unhappiness while he readily enlists himself in causes that validate his distorted perception.

Understandably, it is easier to blame others and the outside world than to examine oneself with an eye to self-discovery and self-improvement. Furthermore, criticizing and complaining—liberal practices of the Useful Idiot—require little talent and energy. The Useful Idiot is a great armchair philosopher and “Monday Morning Quarterback.”

The Useful Idiot is not the same as a person who honestly has a different point of view. A society without honest and open differences of views is a dead society. Critical, different and fresh ideas are the life blood of a living society—the very anathema of autocracies where the official position is sacrosanct.

Even a “normal” person spends a great deal more energy aiming to fix things out there than working to overcome his own flaws and shortcomings, or contribute positively to the larger society. People don’t like to take stock of what they are doing or not doing that is responsible for the conditions they disapprove.

But the Useful Idiot takes things much farther. The Useful Idiot, among other things, is a master practitioner of scapegoating. He assigns blame to others while absolving himself of responsibility, has a long handy list of candidates for blaming anything and everything, and by living a distorted life, he contributes to the ills of society.

The Useful Idiot may even engage in willful misinformation and deception when it suits him. Terms such as “Political Islam,” or “Radical Islam,” for instance, are contributions of the Useful Idiot. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam, simply because they are redundant. Islam, by its very nature and according to its charter—the Quran—is a radical political movement. It is the Useful Idiot who sanitizes Islam and misguides the populace by saying that the “real Islam” constitutes the main body of the religion; and, that this main body is non-political and moderate.

Regrettably, a large segment of the population goes along with these nonsensical euphemisms depicting Islam because it prefers to believe them. It is less threatening to believe that only a hijacked small segment of Islam is radical or politically driven and that the main body of Islam is indeed moderate and non-political.

But Islam is political to the core. In Islam the mosque and state are one and the same—the mosque is the state. This arrangement goes back to the days of Muhammad himself. Islam is also radical in the extreme. Even the “moderate” Islam is radical in its beliefs as well as its deeds. Muslims believe that all non-Muslims, bar none, are hellfire bound and well-deserve being maltreated compared to believers.

No radical barbaric act of depravity is unthinkable for Muslims in dealing with others. They have destroyed precious statues of Buddha, leveled sacred monuments of other religions, and bulldozed the cemeteries of non-Muslims—a few examples of their utter extreme contempt toward others.

Muslims are radical even in their intrafaith dealings. Various sects and sub-sects pronounce other sects and sub-sects as heretics worthy of death; women are treated as chattel, deprived of many rights; hands are chopped for stealing even a loaf of bread; sexual violation is punished by stoning, and much much more. These are standard day-to-day ways of the mainstream “moderate” Muslims living under the stone-age laws of Sharia.

The “moderate” mainstream of Islam has been outright genocidal from inception. Their own historians record that Ali, the first imam of the Shiite and the son-in-law of Muhammad, with the help of another man, beheaded 700 Jewish men in the presence of the Prophet himself. The Prophet of Allah and his disciples took the murdered men’s women and children in slavery. Muslims have been, and continue to be, the most vicious and shameless practitioners of slavery. The slave trade, even today, is a thriving business in some Islamic lands where wealthy, perverted sheikhs purchase children of the poor from traffickers for their sadistic gratification.

Muslims are taught deception and lying in the Quran itself—something that Muhammad practiced during his life whenever he found it expedient. Successive Islamic rulers and leaders have done the same. Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, for instance, rallied the people under the banner of democracy. All along his support for democracy was not a commitment of an honest man, but a ruse. As soon as he gathered the reins of power, Khomeini went after the Useful Idiots of his time with vengeance. These best children of Iran, having been thoroughly deceived and used by the crafty phony populist-religionist, had to flee the country to avoid the fate of tens of thousands who were imprisoned or executed by the double-crossing imam.

Almost three decades after the tragic Islamic Revolution of 1979, the suffocating rule of Islam casts its death-bearing pal over Iranians. A proud people with enviable heritage is being systematically purged of its sense of identity and forced to think and behave like the barbaric and intolerant Muslims. Iranians who had always treated women with equality, for instance, have seen them reduced by the stone-age clergy to sub-human status of Islamic teaching. Any attempt by the women of Iran to counter the misogynist rule of Muhammad’s mullahs is mercilessly suppressed. Women are beaten, imprisoned, raped and killed just as men are slaughtered without due process or mercy.

The lesson is clear. Beware of the Useful Idiots who live in liberal democracies. Knowingly or unknowingly, they serve as the greatest volunteer and effective soldiers of Islam. They pave the way for the advancement of Islam and they will assuredly be among the very first victims of Islam as soon as it assumes power.



Comment: The Australian authorities who have charge of protecting Australia from the problems associated with current Islamic politics and actions must do the sensible thing. This is to arrange for a weekly publication which is carried as an insert in all Arabic publications in Australia. Such an insert would be a vehicle for ideas written by muslims who are the enemies of the jehadist Islamic world view.

Currently the muslim communities in Australia are subjected to censorship of any real criticism of the jehadist world view. This censorship is controlled by the poisonous imams. Muslims in Australia need the support of Australian authorities to get free from this censorship. It is in our national interest to help muslims in Australia free themselves from an Islam which is unsuitable for Australian norms.

Is anyone awake in Canberra?

Panic Grips Pakistani Muslim Leaders.

Note: One would think...if one was normal...that it would be easy to reform rape laws in a country. Reform them in such a way as to actually help and empower women who are subjected to this most terrible attack on their person.

One would be wrong if Islam enters into the equation.

Reforming Islam means, among other things, putting an end to punishment free rape. Knowing this, many muslims cling to the backward parts of the Koran which allow this sort of primitive bedouin behaviour.

Read on and see Islam in action in Pakistan in 2006...




Musharraf faces bitter clash over rape law reforms

And democratic reforms are an "attack on Islam."

President Pervez Musharraf has opened a new and especially bitter confrontation with radical Islam by trying to rewrite Pakistan's controversial rape laws.
These place an almost impossible burden of proof on women by compelling them to produce four "pious" male witnesses to prove rape or risk being convicted of adultery and face 100 lashes or death by stoning.

This law, known as the Hudood Ordinance, has been regarded as untouchable since its passage 27 years ago.


It is regarded as untouchable because it is rooted in the Qur'an. After Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha, is accused of adultery (it's a long story; get it in my forthcoming book The Truth About Muhammad), he exonerates her with a revelation from Allah requiring four witnesses to establish a sexual offense: "Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah" (Qur’an 24:11). The adoption of this law was part of the long, slow abandonment of secular law by Pakistan.

It also sets no minimum age for sex with girls, saying only that they should have reached puberty.
This too is based on Muhammad's example. According to a hadith attributed to Aisha herself as the source, "the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years" (Bukhari, 7.62.64).

A powerful militant Muslim lobby regards this code as sacred and based on Koranic texts and sharia law. No previous Pakistani leader, not even the country's first female leader, Benazir Bhutto, dared reform it.
But Gen Musharraf's allies in parliament sparked the fury of the militant opposition by introducing a Women Protection Bill. This would remove the requirement for four male witnesses to prove rape and set 16 as the age of consent for sex with girls.

When this measure came before parliament, Islamic radicals responded by tearing up copies of the bill and storming out. "This bill is against the Holy Koran," said Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the leader of the militant opposition. "We reject it and will try to block it in any possible manner." Other MPs chanted "death to Musharraf" and "Allah is great."


There's a preview of what the British parliament will be like in a few years.

Liaqat Baluch, the deputy leader of an alliance of six Islamic parties, pledged to mount a public campaign to show that "under the garb of this bill and women's rights, the government is deviating from the Koran". The prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, countered that the militants had committed "an act of desecration" by tearing up the bill.
Gen Musharraf, who claims to favour "enlightened moderation", has waited until his seventh year in power before venturing into this uniquely sensitive political territory. But western diplomats, who have repeatedly demanded the repeal or reform of the Hudood Ordinance, believe he will succeed. The general's allies have a comfortable majority in parliament. The bill will go before a parliamentary committee, where Islamic radicals could introduce wrecking amendments. Last month Gen Musharraf, a key US ally in the war on terrorism, changed Pakistani law to allow women detained on charges of adultery and other minor crimes to be released on bail. Hundreds of women were later freed.

Until now the general, who has survived three assassination attempts by radical Islamic groups, has preferred to avoid confrontation over an issue that has not, despite an unprecedented publicity drive by the government, caught the popular imagination.

"How can a dictator propped up by the West introduce democratic reforms?" asked Hazat Aman, an official of a social welfare group run by the hardline Islamic Jamaat-i-Islami party. "It is an attack on Islam," he said.


And that's why he may prevail in the short run, in a parliamentary vote or some such, but he is unlikely to do so in the long run unless there is a larger-scale challenge to Islamic orthodoxy than has hitherto existed.




Comment: Islam as it actually functions, in many countries,is hopelessly primitive. It is unable to function in the modern world. The role of governments like Australia's is to apply constant pressure on these backward manifestations of Islam. This pressure is necessary as the defeat of the primitive is never easy, because the leaders of the 'primitives' will always lose out in any defeat of primitivity. Everyone always resists the lose of power.

As a prelude to this, it is probably smart to stop all muslims in Pakistan from coming to Australia. The only exception are self declared secularists, Christians, Hindus and Achmadiyya 'muslims'. This would also apply to the Pakistan Cricket Team.

In the days of the good fight against apartheid, there was much turmoil over South African teams coming to Australia and other modern countries. The same effective principle now needs to be applied to primitive Islam.

The solution is simple: reform Islam and start living in the real, the modern world.

Panic Grips Malaysian Muslim Leaders.

Note: This posting from the New York Times makes very interesting reading. Apparently local muslim worthies in Malaysia are worried that if this lady is able to beat the imams and exercise a real right to freedom of religion, "this would open the floodgates to many other requests of Muslims wanting to change their faith".

Why would so many muslims want to flee from Islam?

Read on and see if you can answer this question...





No joy for Malaysian Muslim convert to Catholicism


A Malaysian woman known only as "Lina Joy" is in hiding after threats from Islamic extremists who accuse her of apostasy after she renounced her Muslim faith and sought to marry her Christian fiance.

The New York Times reports that Lina Joy whose name is now a household word in majority Muslim Malaysia started proceedings five years ago in the civil courts to seek the right to marry her Christian fiancé and have children.

Because she had renounced her Muslim faith, Joy, 42, argued, Malaysia's Islamic Shariah courts, which control matters like marriage, property and divorce, did not have jurisdiction over her.

In a series of decisions, the civil courts ruled against her. Then, last month, her lawyer, Benjamin Dawson, appeared before Malaysia's highest court, the Court of Appeals, to argue that Joy's conversion be considered a right protected under the constitution, not a religious matter for the Shariah courts.

"She's trying to live her life with someone she loves," Dawson said in an interview.

For Malaysia, which considers itself a moderate and modern Muslim country with a tolerance for its multiple religions and ethnic groups of Malays, Indians and Chinese, the case has kicked up a firestorm that goes to the very heart of who is a Malay, and what is Malaysia.

Joy's case has heightened a searing battle that has included street protests and death threats between groups advocating a secular interpretation of the constitution, and Islamic groups that contend the Shariah courts should have supremacy in many matters.

About 60 percent of Malaysia's 26 million people are Muslims, 20 percent are Buddhists, nearly 10 percent are Christians and 6 percent are Hindus.

"Malaysia is at a crossroads," Dawson told the New York Times. "Do we go down the Islamic road, or do we maintain the secular character of the federal constitution that has been eroding in the last 10 years?"

In rulings in Joy's case, civil courts said Malays could not renounce Islam because the constitution defined Malays to be Muslims.

They also ruled that a request to change her identity card from Muslim to Christian had to be decided by the Shariah courts. There she would be considered an apostate, and if she did not repent she surely would be sentenced to several years in an Islamic center for rehabilitation.

Conversions of Muslims to Christianity are not common in Malaysia, though most converts do not seek official approval for marriage and therefore do not run into the obstacles that Joy confronted.

One 38-year-old convert, who provided only his Christian names, Paul Michael, described how he led a double life.

"Church members know us as who we are, and the outside world knows us as we were," he told the Times. He was fearful, he said, that if his conversion became public the religious authorities would come after him, and he could be sentenced to a religious rehabilitation camp.

Meanwhile, Asia News reports that pressure by Islamic extremists is intensifying daily: they are intent on preventing a positive outcome of the case that may pave the way for a "flight from Islam" by other believers.

Recently, for example, the parish where Lina Joy was baptised, Our Lady of Fatima, Brickfields in Central Kuala Lumpur, were informed about a police report against their parish.

According to the Harakah fortnightly paper dated August 16-31, a man called Taib Hisham reported the church, claiming that Joy's baptism went against Article 11 of the Constitution that says: "The law may control or restrict the propagation of any religious doctrine or belief among persons professing the religion of Islam." Taib was supported in his initiative by the youth wing of the Islamic Party of Malaysia (known as PAS) and Islamic NGOs. Article 11 also guarantees religious freedom.

. So while they wait for the sentence, they are taking their "precautions".

Local sources said no effort is being spared to convince the Muslim community to take up a stand "in defence of Islam" and several blogs and websites are calling for a verdict that "spells a victory for Islam" in Malaysia.




Comment: We all know that contemporary Islam and its muslim leaders do not believe in actual freedom of religion. Quotes from the Koran notwithstanding, the reality of life in 2006 is that Islamic leaders will take any action, including murder in some countries (but not yet in Malaysia), to prevent apostasy from a dying Islam.

This situation will continue and get worse, until the problems faced by Islam are actually addressed, instead of denied. The whole world can see the problems faced by contemporary Islam; only the muslim leaders and most of their deluded adherents refuse to see what everyone else can clearly see.

When will this stupidity stop?

Poverty Is The Main Source Of Trouble For All The Muslims.

Note: This article tells the bare truth: poverty is the main source of the troubles of all the Muslims. Politics prevents any progress because of the corruption of the the muslim leaders. These political and 'religious' leaders work always to keep the muslims poor and ignorant. The end result is the theft of the resources in the muslim countries by their leaders, aided and abetted by Westerners.

Read and be informed...

A Political Spanner in the Arab Economic Wheel
Mohamed Al-Assoum Al-Hayat - 22/08/06//

In the mid-1960s, the Arab countries initially agreed to establish an Arab common market. For more than 40 years, these countries have not been able to move one step toward the realization of this considerable economic project. At the beginning of this century, Arab countries came to another agreement providing for the commencement of the first phase of a project to establish a free trade area among the Arab countries. This entailed the abolition of customs duties on locally manufactured goods transported between Arab countries.

Despite the passage of four years since the deadline set for starting the establishment of the 'greater Arab free trade area', things are still at a standstill, although this form of co-operation was the first to prevail in international trade relations over the past few years. Indeed, such agreements were signed among groups and several countries that are only linked to each other by common interests and positive economic and trade prospects which such agreements give rise to.

Strangely enough, the Arab countries are trying to sign similar agreements with other WTO members, whether within the Euro-Mediterranean or Asian scope of co-operation.

The obstacles are many and understandable, but they have not been overcome. However, the most significant obstacle is the absence of professionalism and the dominance of the Arab political decision over any other decisions or interests. Many joint economic projects reached a final and decisive point, and then came to a halt without seeing the light of day.

The Arab political spanner is always looking to stop the economic wheel. It is indifferent to the volume of common interests and historic investment opportunities that may be missed, and to the subsequent loss of resources and hundreds of thousands of job opportunities for Arab citizens.

This has resulted and will continue to result in the failure of Arab economies, particularly their infrastructures. There are no modern railway lines, roads paved according to international standards, electricity network linkage, networks of transporting natural gas and petroleum products, etc; bearing in mind that these requirements are essential for modern economies and their future growth.

This absence also results in the failure to keep pace with new developments in international economic relations and the integration of countries into economic blocs and unions where political differences are reduced to a minimum or even set aside in order to avoid their subsequent harm to mutual economic interests that should be given priority. This, however, runs counter to what is happening in the Arab World, where the priority has always been given to what is political.

Indeed, economics and politics cannot be separated. However, this integration should be viewed from a positive perspective: giving political support to deepen common economic interests. This differs from the negative aspect which is using politics and political influences to curb economic growth and co-operation, as is the case in the Arab countries.

The great imbalance in Arab relations needs to be professionally addressed to curb the role of the spanner and remove obstacles that may slow the rotation of the economic cycle, especially as common interests, opportunities and available potentials - including capital, natural resources and human skills in the Arab countries - are great. They can lead to increased growth rates and provide job opportunities. Unemployment in the Arab countries is among the highest rates in the world and it is on the rise, according to UN data. This should be accompanied by the improvement of living standards to support political and social stability in these countries.

These factors, and others, are enough to make one rethink the negative role of the political spanner in slowing down the movement of the economic wheel, a condition caused by the absence of professionalism and co-ordination to gain the greatest possible benefits. Today, the world is experiencing large shifts where economic interests gain increasing importance. The Arab World has many capabilities, but they have yet to be exploited.

An economics writer.




Comment: Australia has a duty to help promote economic development and justice in the muslim world for the ordinary muslim people. This is the only real source of peace in that region.

This Is What An Australian Muslim Sounds Like.

Note: This posting from an Australian Muslim who is an elected public official in Sydney is well worth reading.

The answer to his question is simple: if the Federal government's stupid Islamic Institute goes ahead (IT SHOULD NOT)it will be a Sunni school run by Saudi Arabian Wahhabi fascists. This school will be the centre for the destruction of muslim integration into Australian life.

Read on and be worried...



Moderate Muslims locked out

Sydney Morning Herald

Saeed Khan

August 21, 2006

Federal Government has flagged an action plan worth $35 million with the noble aim of promoting national security and community cohesion. Yet the sole action detailed so far is for $8 million to be spent setting up an institute of Islamic studies.

But at the core of the Federal Government's solution lies the additional problem that when an initiative has a religious identity and mission, it is bound to benefit those who organise religious life. In turn, the alienation of the moderates and progressives of the Islamic community is set to continue.

The idea of introducing "moderate" Islam via an Australian institution is naive, if not risible. There are many models and interpretations within Islam, which is why there is bound to be conflict between religious forces over whose model should succeed.

What brand of Islam will this institute teach: Sunni, Wahhabi, Shiite, Ahmadi, Alawi or one of the dozens of other schools of thought?

The initiative may be well-meant, but it is hard not to be sceptical when it is flagged to help Australian Muslims in the name of national security.

Initiatives such as the planned institute are likely to play into the hands of the religious conservative fringe, rather than promoting self-help within the broader Islamic community, by giving them unwarranted credibility.

Further, it would be difficult for a government-initiated religious institution to teach Muslims about moderate Islam while the Government itself continues to support US-sponsored aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Islamic world.

Is this institute going to be an autonomous and inward-looking theological college like most Christian colleges? Or would it take the form of a faculty of Islamic studies at a university run by an academic board and subject to standard academic rigour?

Any number of local universities already teach Islamic studies and some are even equipped to produce imams. So, why not support these existing programs rather than spending millions of dollars setting up a new institute.

Religious education often starts at home and children are usually educated in their parents' religion. Hence, the proposed institute is not likely to change anything in the medium term.

With the establishment of the Muslim Community Reference Group to deal with the issues facing Australian Muslims, from the outset the Federal Government has taken a narrow view of the community. By engaging almost solely with the religious leaders of the community, the predominantly moderate and already well-integrated Islamic community is now suffering from a religiously conservative stereotype.

What is the difference between a moderate and a religiously conservative Muslim? For moderate Muslims, like most members of our society, religion forms only a small part of their identity.

The Federal Government seems to be caught in a trap of focusing on religious leaders rather than the moderates within the Muslim community, looking for a quick panacea that doesn't exist.

Today's Western society was built on secular democracy yet there is conflict between what we consider new and moderate ideas and religious values and practices.

Introducing a religious leadership model in Australia, as is proposed for the Muslim community, would conflict with our secular values.

Instead of handouts that are likely to end up with favoured religious institutions, the Government should focus on a national campaign against racism and Islamophobia. Youths from Islamic and Middle Eastern backgrounds are finding it difficult to get jobs, for example. Initiatives to tackle such specific problems could do more to address the consequent social problem of a disaffected minority falling under the influence of extremists.

If the aim is to assist community integration, there is no substitute for political representation.

If the aim is to foster moderate Islamic voices, the Government needs to strengthen the engagement of the moderate majority and look at providing mainstream role models.

Give credit where it's due: initiatives aimed at mentoring, employment assistance and boosting participation in local sports are a step in the right direction if kept away from the Prime Minster's reference group.

With the group's tenure coming to an end next month, the Government has an opportunity to do the right thing. It must put in place an advisory body that is more inclusive, moderate and independent. There are many successful individuals and community organisations out there that already are a part of the Australian mainstream and would serve as excellent role models.

Saeed Khan is a Marrickville councillor and a vice-chairman of the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW.





Comment: Councillor Khan is very right to point out that this Islamic Institute will be a source of turmoil in the Australian Muslim communities. It is intended by the Wahhabis to be exactly that.

There must be no foreign, non Australian money allowed into this Institute. Not one cent.

Because of the bitter ideological disputes that swirl through contemporary Islam it is obvious that the Founding Director of the Institute will have to be a non Muslim. He or she must, of course, be an internationally recognised and published scholar of Islam. The Institute must be legally attached to an Australian university so that the highest standards of academic appointments can be maintained. The staff should be, by statute, half non Muslim. This institute is to be a scholarly venture not a centre for preaching Islam; especially not a centre for Wahhabi Islamic fascism.

Alert readers must take action on this matter and help make it a subject for public discussion.

This Is What A European Muslim Sounds Like.

Note: This muslim author, Khalad Allam, is the deputy editor of a major Italian newspaper. He wrote this article to address the question of Europe and its Christian Roots. I am running this to give readers an example of what a successfully integrated muslim sounds like in Europe.

Clearly the way forward for muslims in the West is along a positive path similar to that followed by Mr. Allam. Australian muslims would not make a mistake by thinking long and hard about the example offered here of Khalad Allam.

Read on and have confidence in the future...



Europe and Its Christian Roots.
by Khaled Fouad Allam


While concerns about the decline of Europe are making themselves felt more keenly - drastic demographic contraction and the consequent dramatic aging of the population, economic stagnation, political paralysis, divisions among the European peoples, and intellectual skepticism - perhaps we have not considered what the new Europeans think of Europe; those who, like me, have perhaps lived here for over twenty years, and have embarked here in order to rebuild their lives and hope for a better life.

A Muslim brought up within Islam, I left the land that produced Saint Augustine, Albert Camus, and one of the greatest Islamic mystics, Sidi Abu Meddin. I learned to live within a witnessing Islam, capable of meeting confrontation and encountering others, and for this reason the question of the roots of Europe brings into question my being both European and Muslim. There are many complex and difficult questions at stake, but one of them is essential: the question of the foundations of European identity.

At this moment in history there are Europeans, but no Europe, and the call of John Paul II to consider the question of the Christian roots of the continent assumes a central importance and requires much more than a simple historical and cultural interpretation.

Certainly, many have argued against this approach: some fear that this call could be transformed into a means of infringing upon the principles of secularism; others, appealing to the juridical-constitutional sphere, assert that the task of a constitution is that of organizing relations among the different powers.

These arguments have always seemed feeble to me. What is being discussed is not a constitution, but a European convention, which means a pact that demands that we reconsider the reasons for our staying together and for our shared values, and in the end, that we question ourselves as to how the political arena taking shape can also be an arena of hope. The question the Holy Father asks makes us recognize the fact that political thought cannot be reduced to quantifiable expertise, and that it is always necessary to question politics in order to prevent it from becoming an instrument of manipulation or a cynical expression of power. In the case of the question of Christian roots, the political situation is inviting us to make interpretations, to seek out reasons in order to understand, construct, formulate hypotheses. I have often wondered why the topic of Christian roots still undergoes such sustained polemics, while the word "market," which resounds like a leitmotif throughout the text of the convention, has not provoked any reflection on the relationship between the market and the construction of Europe.

Certainly, at first glance it is possible to make an exclusivist interpretation of the phrase "Christian roots," but this is an incorrect reading, because it does not consider the context in which the question is posed: this question is an extension of the pope´s twenty-five years of activity all over the planet.

In reality, John Paul II´s insistence on the question of the Christian roots of Europe must not be separated from his many initiatives for dialogue: from the prayer meeting in Assisi in 1986 to his meeting with Rabbi Toaff in the synagogue of Rome; from his voyage to Israel to his meeting in the mosque of Damascus with the mufti of that mosque, and, even earlier, his meeting in Casablanca with young Moroccans in 1985. All these things have created a new outlook, a new interpretation of Christianity that the history of past centuries had impeded. And the building of Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century is taking place in parallel with the shaping of this new Christianity that has broken free from its own history and has interiorized secularization. In effect, what can the Holy Father do other than renew constantly St. Francis´ travels to the sultans of the world, toward other cultures and religions?

The polemics over Christian roots lay bare our contradictions: the refusal to acknowledge these roots is the symptom of a fear, an inner block in regard to everything that European youth, now in their forties, learned on their school benches (crusades, religious wars, St. Bartholomew´s Night, etc.); but history demands a critical and honest distancing.

On cannot escape the fact that our modern political structures are rooted in Christianity: our law and institutions are the fruit of a complex elaboration that this civilization produced, apart from the fratricidal struggles that have marked it in past centuries.

But something even more profound has marked in an indelible way this continent, whose cultural boundaries are varied but in which we recognize a single essence, something that is difficult to elaborate rationally in a univocal way, but is present in the deepest heart of the European character. It is the passion for freedom - or rather democratic passions - and the sense of participating in a common history that have made Christianity the focal point around which Europe has defined itself. It is thus that we are moved by a Christ of Cimabue or find ourselves enchanted by Renaissance Madonnas, that we are carried away by listening to a motet by Bach or Mozart´s Requiem. None of this would have been possible without that debt. Europe is in debt to Christianity because, like it or not, that is what has given it its form, meaning, and values. Denying all of this means, for Europe, denying itself.

The question of Christian roots of Europe, at a moment in which everyone is talking about cultural diversity and multiethnicity, brings up other problems: how can one welcome the other while denying oneself? How can we seal a pact among the communities of the world if Europe refuses to recognize itself? Roots go down into the ground, where they meet, and will meet, other roots. The roots of Christianity are planted in Jewish and Greek soil, and now Christianity is facing Islam, while in the future it will encounter Asia and Africa.

This encounter is possible only if one is aware of one´s own roots. Considering the roots of Europe means considering possible, and sometimes unprecedented, extensions of the continent. Today America, China, and Africa are testing us, each with its own roots made of suffering and hope, while in Europe unease has already taken form, and is spreading. Europe, face to face with itself, is rich in wisdom but must still accept itself. To me, it represents the olive tree in the Koran, in verse 35 of the Sura of Light, which "is neither of the East nor of the West."







Comment: Consider how much better off muslims in Australia would be if they had access to the writings of this man every week. Proper integration into Australia does not require abandonment of one's cultural background, but it does require the absorption of the current Australian ethos and 'way of doing things'.

Most Muslims in Australia, I firmly believe, want to live properly in this country as ordinary Australians. They are stopped (many of them) by poisonous imams whose agenda does not include the welfare of Australia or its people.

Non muslim Australians have a duty to help muslims in Australia to get free from these low life imams. When they can do this they can develop an Australian Islam which addresses their real situation in Australia.

Muslims in Australia can all live here as properly integrated as is Mr. Khalad Allam in Italy. All it requires is the effort by muslims here to do so.

Sharia Law...The Muslim Trapdoor To Poverty.

Note: This posting is an article by Andrew Bostom, an author of great credibility on Islam. He points out the danger of sharia law. Readers who think may be puzzled as to why the muslims living in muslim countries are so poverty stricken when their countries have very many excellent economic resources. The answer is sharia law.

Read and learn...


Making the World Safe for Shari’a?
August 18th, 2006



Grand Ayatollah Sistani is said to be the most important friend the Coalition has in Iraq. But he is a troubling friend. Almost universally regarded as the most important figure in Iraq’s domestic politics, his 2003 fatwa urging Iraqis to not resist the invading Coalition forces helped make the initial conquest go smoothly. His confrontation with younger rival Muqtada al-Sadr helps keep the sometimes violent radical in line.

But Ayatollah Sistani is an irridentist Shi’ite cleric who believes in najis—one of the more despicable belief systems in all of Islam which imposes ugly restrictions on “infidels” due to their supposed physical and spiritual “impurity” [I have written about najis here, here, and here]. Or you can go to his own website, and then as my colleague Hugh Fitzgerald notes,

“If you click on “Muslim Laws” on the left, and then, once a list comes up, click on “najis things,” you will get a list—#84—and if you then go a little further, and click on the menu where, among those unclean things, the “kafir” (which is to say, the Unbeliever, that is to say—You and I) you will get a further discussion of how, in the wonderful, “moderate” Islam of the al-Sistani variety, the Unbeliever, the Infidel, the Kafir (guilty of “kufr” or “ingratitude” for failing to receive the Revelation of the Last of the Prophets in the right, accepting, submissive way) is viewed.”

And this is what Sistani writes about gays:

His Eminence, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the supreme religious authority for Shi’ite Msulims in Iraq and worldwide, decrees that gays and lesbians should be killed in the worst manner possible, according to this news article from a London-based gay rights group. A rapid search through Sistani’s official website turns up a page, translated as:

“Q: What is the judgement on sodomy and lesbianism? A: “Forbidden. Those involved in the act should be punished. In fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible.” Thus opines the Shi’ite cleric who was nominated by Iraqis for the 2005 Nobel Peace prize.

Sistani also “wishes” for Sharia to be imposed in Iraq. He’s a patient fellow, knowing demography is on his side…

Recently I received the following question on Sistani from a highly capable military analyst:

Would it still be true to say, as some sources do, that Sistani supports a quietist form of Shi’a Islam, one that does not seek political power as such? I’m thinking for example of early Puritan sects in American history, which believed things we don’t consider acceptable today, but which, in competition with other beliefs, ended up with a shared culture that ultimately turned out to be very workable for the US.

The analogy with Puritans in America is wrong. Shi’ite sects in major population centers—Iran, Iraq, and Yemen—have never behaved in a manner analogous to the Puritan settlers of the United States (despite 13 centuries of unimpeded opportunities to demonstrate any similar leanings given the complete dominance of Islam in those regions), i.e., been willing to create societies even remotely resembling the pluralistic, traditionally liberal democratic society that the US has become.

Instead, they have all opted for Shari’a societies—stifling theocracies, the very antithesis of American liberal democracy, where hurriyya “freedom as perfect slavery to Allah” prevails, not freedom as described by John Stuart Mill.

And there is a widely prevalent canard about what Iran was in the ~425 years between 1502-1925 (barring a ~ 70-year period of Afghan invasion, internecine warfare, and Sunni rule in the 18th century from approximately1722-1794, until the restoration of Shiite rule under the Qajars in 1795): Persia/Iran was a strict Shi’ite theocracy, whose leading ulema were not the least bit “quietist”, and in fact were very much like Ayatollah Khomeini. (I have written about this rather morose history, especially for the non-Muslims under Shi’ite rule, at considerable length here.)

The great scholar E.G. Brown (who was quite favorably inclined towards Persia I should add) summed up (A Literary History of Persia, vol. IV, Cambridge, 1930, p. 371) the role of the Shi’ite ulema in the period before 1925, as follows:

The Mujtahids and Mulla are a great force in Persia and concern themselves with every department of human activity from the minutest detail of personal purification to the largest issues of politics.

I support removing odious and acutely threatening Muslim thugocrats (whatever their personal religiosity) in the post 9/11/01 era—which is why I supported the lightning and relatively low (albeit still awful) cost (in lives) campaign required to remove Saddam Hussein (having accepted the flawed intelligence on Iraq).

But to invest unlimited blood and treasure which effectively gives electoral sanction to more Shari’a—as the Algerian jihadists of the 1990s put it so forthrightly “Islamic state by the will of the people”—is a tragic and dangerous delusion. And we have failed miserably in this regard in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Specifically, we should have refused as Paul Bremer did refuse initially (despite his other arguable administrative failings), to give our imprimatur to constitutions that are subservient to the Shari’a, rendering them incompatible with universal human rights. This bedrock principle—still unheeded by our policymaking elites—was articulated eloquently by the Muslim Senegalese jurist Adama Dieng, while serving as secretary-general to the International Commission of Jurists in 1992. Referring to the Cairo Declaration, the Shari’a-based “Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (UDHRI)”, Dieng declared that under the rubric of the Shari’a, the UDHRI,

...gravely threatens the inter-cultural consensus on which the international human rights instruments are based; introduces, in the name of the defense of human rights, an intolerable discrimination against both non-Muslims and women; reveals a deliberately restrictive character in regard to certain fundamental rights and freedoms..; [and] confirms the legitimacy of practices, such as corporal punishment, that attack the integrity and dignity of the human being.

The Rahman “apostasy” case in Afghanistan should have been a stark wake up call. But even in Iraq there was an early, concrete sign (February 2004) of things going awry: the refusal of the interim Iraqi government to allow its ancient, historically oppressed (often brutally so) Jews to return in the wake of the 2003 liberation. Singling them out was agreed upon absent any objection, except for the dissent of one lone Assyrian Christian representative in the interim government, who knew well what such bigotry foreshadowed: the oppression and resultant exodus of the Assyrian community, which is now transpiring. And last spring came this harrowing story about Shari’a and Sistani-supporting women in the Iraqi Parliament: (Iraq’s women of power who tolerate wife-beating and promote polygamy):

As a devout Shia Muslim and one of eighty-nine women sitting in the new parliament, she knows what her first priority there is: to implement Islamic law. When Dr Ubaedey took her seat at last week’s assembly opening, she found herself among an increasingly powerful group of religious women politicians who are seeking to repeal old laws giving women some of the same rights as men and replace them with Sharia, Islam’s divine law.

We have a moral obligation to oppose Shari’a, which is antithetical to the core beliefs for which hundreds of thousands of brave Americans have died, including, ostensibly, 3000 in Iraq itself. There has never been a Shari’a state in history that has not discriminated (often violently) against the non-Muslims (and Muslim women) under its suzerainty. Moreover such states have invariably taught (starting with Muslim children) the aggressive jihad ideology which leads to predatory jihad “razzias” on neighboring “infidels”—even when certain of those “infidels” happened to consider themselves Muslims, let alone if those infidels were clearly non-Muslims.

That is the ultimate danger and geopolitical absurdity of a policy that ignores or whitewashes basic Islamic doctrine and history, while however inadvertently, making or re-making these societies “safe for Sharia*)”—as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and now, likely, an Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon.

* My journalistic colleague Diana West coined this very apt phrase, “Making the world safe for Shari’a.”

Andrew Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad.





Comment: The poverty of the muslims in muslim lands (which is the main engine driving muslims away from the muslim lands to the prosperous Western Christian countries)is directly caused by the ludicrous regulations of Sharia Law.

Changing this failed ideology will be impossible because it is deemed by all muslims to be divinely inspired, like the Koran, and thus perfect. Clearly it isn't perfect in any discernable sense to anyone with a Western education.

Australia should guard against this lurking problem by having legislation outlawing any form of Sharia law being applied in Australia by any organisation, public or private. This would be a real blow to the reactionary 'lecturers' allowed into Australia by the Australian government.

Every door to a reactionary and fascist Islamic ghetto should be closed in Australia except the door which brings muslims into the free life of the Australian mainstream. There they can live an Australian Islam, developed by muslims living in Australia. Such an Islam can only be consistent with Australian social and economic norms.

The policy is easy to understand: no victories for foreign unfree Islam; full freedom for Australian muslims.

Is anyone awake in Canberra?

A Muslim Points To An Islamic Threat To The Whole World

Note: this is one of the most important postings to ever appear on this site. I most highly recommend a slow and careful reading of this article by Stephen Schwartz.



A threat to the world
Stephen Schwartz

With the foiling of the alleged conspiracy by radical Islamists to devastate transatlantic air travel — at the height of the US–UK tourist season — Britain has emerged, a little more than a year after the London Tube bombings, as the apparent main target for jihadist terror in Europe.

This has little to do with British policies, poverty, discrimination or Islamophobia. Simply put, a million or more Sunnis of Pakistani background, who comprise the main element among British Asian Muslims, also include the largest contingent of radical Muslims in Europe. Their jihadist sympathies embody an imported ideology, organised through mosques and other religious institutions, rather than a ‘homegrown’ phenomenon, as the cliché would have it. They are symbolised by individuals like Rashid Rauf, the British-born Birmingham Muslim who was arrested on the Pakistan–Afghanistan border two weeks ago and who is now the chief suspect in the terror enterprise, and his brother Tayib, who is in custody in the UK.

Dr Irfan Ahmed Al-Alawi, head of the UK Islamic Heritage Foundation and an outstanding British Muslim adversary of the extremists, put it well at a Washington conference on Euro-Islam in June. He declared, ‘Students who graduate from the Muslim schools in England and those who become extremists have the same brainwashing done to them as the Taleban. There is extremist Islam within the United Kingdom — yes, there is — and we should clean out our own house.’

I learnt about the problem of British Islam — which is unique when compared with Muslim community life in France, Germany and the rest of Western Europe — while pursuing my commitment to moderate Islam worldwide. I became Muslim in 1997 in Bosnia–Hercegovina, following a decade of reporting and writing about the end of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans I learnt about the Saudi cult of Wahabism, which aims to control all Sunni Muslims around the globe and inspires al-Qa’eda. Before and after 11 September 2001 I worked to expose Wahabism. I then co-founded a public charity, the Center for Islamic Pluralism, as a network of moderate Muslims in the US and Canada, Western Europe, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Israel, the Balkans, Turkey, Pakistan and India, and Central and Southeast Asia. But as I travelled back and forth, to Britain among other places, and spoke to British Muslim representatives in international forums, it became clear that the UK faces the most serious jihad danger of any country in Western Europe.

Imported Muslim clerics are the basis of the threat. Islam in the UK is overwhelmingly influenced by imams and other religious officials born in Pakistan and trained in that country or in Saudi Arabia. Pakistani Sunni mosques in Britain are major centres for jihadist preaching, finance, incitement and recruitment. The Islamic picture in the UK is much darker than that in Germany, where most Muslims are Turkish and, when they turn to radicalism, follow either a Marxist or a nationalist inspiration — or even that in France, where social dislocation and violent outbursts by the discontented young have produced, perhaps surprisingly, efforts by leading clerics to calm the community.


By contrast, the leaders of British Islam — exemplified by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) — have assumed a posture of truculence, obstruction and indignation when any suggestion is made that jihadist sympathies infect their ranks. British politicians and media exacerbate this problem when, apparently baffled, they rend their garments in dismay over Muslims and converts raised to be British but turning out anti-British. The problem is not British society. British Muslim youths who enlist for jihad act not out of negative experiences of British culture or politics, but as tools in a deliberate process of indoctrination, carefully pursued by imams and agitators mainly imported from Pakistan with Saudi backing.

Unfortunately, the Blair government, notwithstanding its support for the US administration of George W. Bush, seems to be completely paralysed when dealing with this matter. I witnessed the pathetic paradigm of official Britain’s relations with radical Islam at two recent colloquia held to address ‘discrimination against European Muslims’ (terrorism is a subject off the agenda at such affairs). One was called in Warsaw by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) last year, and the other was sponsored by the UK Foreign Office and the Saudi-financed Organisation for the Islamic Conference (OIC) at Wilton Park in May.

At the former conclave, dominated by British Muslim representatives, the Brighton-based Pakistani-ethnic imam Dr Abduljalil Sajid, of the obscure Muslim Council for Religious and Racial Harmony, blasted Tony Blair for an alleged assault on civil rights after the London bombings of July 2005. Imam Sajid entertained delegates with anecdotes of how he harassed Blair, acting out his insistence that Islam and terrorism are completely unconnected. To many Muslims present, the bombings and the radicalism that inspired them were nothing compared with the need of said Muslims (and demagogues) to appear to defy British and other Western authorities.

Perhaps more dismayingly, a London Metropolitan Police representative spoke exclusively in the idiom of political correctness. He reassured his audience that British law enforcement would go out of its way to avoid ‘stereotyping’ and Islamophobia, which he defined as presuming that suspects in terror conspiracies might be found among Muslims. Not one British Muslim speaker indicated that 7/7 might have created fear of Islam; rather, they argued that an exaggerated British concern about radical Muslims leads to fear, prejudice and oppression that drive Muslim youth to disaffection and violence. Thus does the aggressor assume the costume of the victim.


The Wilton Park meeting in May similarly included British Muslim speakers who, following the uproar over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, tried to blame tensions exclusively on non-Muslims. These included Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former head of the Muslim Council of Britain, who in 1989 suggested that death would be ‘perhaps, a bit too easy’ for the dissident author Salman Rushdie. Also at the conference was the Malaysian leader Dato Abd Aziz Muhammad, who spoke in support of the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas. The concluding entertainment was a rapid-fire discourse by Tariq Ramadan, the Euro-Islamist philosopher employed at Oxford, who is repudiated by many British Muslims for his links with the fundamentalist Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood and his defence of terrorism.

Professor Ramadan spoke in favour of calm in the dialogue about Islam, both from Muslims and non-Muslims, but he also made it clear that he remains eager to condemn the Western democracies. He also figured in the least impressive attempt by the British authorities to address the challenge of Islam after 7/7: the creation by the Blair circle of the grotesquely named ‘Radical Middle Way’. This is a circuit of Muslim Britain by Ramadan and other public figures, some of them mere poseurs, who offer young believers, in place of extreme radicalism, some kind of moderate radicalism, as indicated by the programme’s title.

Apart from Ramadan, the risible roadshow has included a Kuwaiti jihadist, Tariq al-Suweidan, and a Californian charlatan, Joe Hanson, alias Hamza Yusuf. Hanson varies his message according to his audience: when he speaks before crowds where jihadists dominate, he proudly repudiates any questioning of radical Islam and shouts his hope that others will also ‘fail the test’ of moderate belief. But in meetings with non-Muslims he claims to be the number one enemy of Wahabism in the West, describes himself as an adviser to George W. Bush (on the basis of a single comment at a gathering) and postures as a spiritual Sufi.

Still, if al-Qa’eda may generally be traced to Saudi Arabia and the doctrines of Wahabism, the cancer that threatens British Islam has an essential Pakistani connection. Pakistan’s military ruler, Pervaiz Musharraf, continues to promise the US and the UK that he is a firm ally against extremism, and his emissaries plead that Pakistan is an equal, if not a more vulnerable and suffering, victim of terror. But Musharraf appears impotent to do anything about it apart from the occasional arrest.

Pakistan has a level of uncontrolled Islamist bloodshed exceeded only by Iraq. Along with adherents of Wahabism, the country is swarming with fanatics of the fundamentalist Deobandi sect, which originated in India and part of which metastasised into the Taleban. The Masjid-e-Umer mosque in Walthamstow, a converted synagogue attended by at least eight of the alleged terror plot suspects, is a Deobandi institution. These homicidally inclined ideologues summon the madrassa boys to riot for the benefit of global television news. They do so at the command of political parties standing for exclusive sharia law, fundamentalist theology and aid to the Taleban and al-Qa’eda. Among these movements, some merely drench the mosques and streets of Pakistan with blood, like the infamous murder machine known as Sipah-e-Sahaba or Knights of the Prophet’s Companions. Others, bearing such names as Jamaat-i-Islami (Community of Islam) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Righteous), maintain extensive international paramilitary networks.


This constellation of crime is backed by senior officers in the Pakistani army, the country’s ISI intelligence establishment and other armed bodies of the state. And the entire system is imported to every country where Pakistani Sunnis reside. Whether in Britain, the US, Canada or elsewhere, these zealots silence moderates through slander and intimidation, stir militancy and intrigue against their most hated enemies: Shia Muslims first, then Jews and, of course, Christians.

It may be impossible for General Musharraf to rid his country of jihadist violence. But Britain need not and must not permit Pakistani religious gangsters to continue their control of British Islam. Britain should require that Muslim clerics be at least trained and certified in Europe, if not in Britain, according to a classical, anti-radical Muslim curriculum that reinforces loyalty to the legitimate authorities. Britain should not, out of fear of the accusation of racism, refrain from investigating jihadism in mosques on British soil. The authorities should take the time to identify and support authentic Muslim moderates, and not be satisfied with schemes turned out on the hoof at ministerial meetings, which involve recruiting ringers for the radicals to play at reform. The alternative to such a programme of action is to encourage the jihadist assault on Britain, and further use of Britain as a base against America and the world.

Stephen Schwartz, author of The Two Faces of Islam, may be contacted at www.islamicpluralism.org.



Comment: Careful readers will have noticed that Mr. Schwartz sees the same problems in Islam as this site sees...poisonous imams, Wahhabi fascism gliding on Saudi money, organised ignorance, hostility to education,violence promoted as the solution to every problem.

Again let me complain: why is there no program to bring people like Stephen Schwartz to Australia to open the eyes of the frightened and lazy dopes running Australia to this growing problem.

Is anyone awake in Canberra?

Doctor Ahmed Diagnoses Islam Today.

Note: This posting is from the Sydney Morning Herald. The writer is a pysychiatry registrar. He is, thus, perfectly situated to talk about denial of the obvious in that collapsed shambles known as Islam.

Read on and learn...


Islam needs to face up to its failures
Tanveer Ahmed
August 18, 2006

Advertisement
AdvertisementTHE latest arrests in Britain and Pakistan relating to another possible terrorist attack by Western-raised Muslims are a pivotal point in the shaping of popular opinion and in setting a course of action for Muslims living in the West.

After the London bombings in July last year there were ceremonial hugs between sheiks and the Mayor, Ken Livingstone; not this time. Nor were there immediate police announcements in Muslim districts to avoid criminalising entire communities. In fact, quite the opposite.

The former Metropolitan Police chief, John Stevens, wrote in the News of the World: "When will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is their problem?"

The tone of opinion and editorial pieces has also become less sympathetic. Even progressive newspapers such as The Guardian have accused Muslims of burying their heads in the sand. To a large extent, it is justified.

Despite repeated terrorist attacks and the normality of radical views in the community, Muslims have done little to speak up about the extremists in their ranks or to condemn the abuses of radical Islamic groups and governments. Rather, their political voices have been limited to cries of discrimination and criticism of the foreign policy of the West.

This reached a climax in Britain this week after a council of Islamic representative groups handed a document to the Government outlining how British foreign policy needed to be altered, based not on any principle, but because it was increasing the appeal of extremism in their communities. Similarly, here the Federation of Islamic Councils has been lobbying the Federal Government to remove Hezbollah from a list of banned terrorist groups.

The claims that terrorism is linked solely to Western foreign policy look increasingly weak, especially since the latest investigations in Britain suggest there were plans for attacks on London from the mid-1990s.

When Muslim voices are heard, victimhood themes and, even worse, ludicrous levels of denial dominate. In London this week, interviews with Muslims revealed that large sections of the community still believe there was no proof that Muslims were behind the London bombings and that there was a Jewish conspiracy behind the World Trade Centre attacks.

Surveys in London's Daily Telegraph in February found 6 per cent of Muslims believed the London bombings were justified. This equates to about 100,000 people in Britain who could see nothing wrong with the July 7 attacks in their country. Almost 35 per cent were sympathetic. While no similar surveys have been carried out in Australia, I suspect the figures would be little different.

The groups that tend to harbour undesirable views see Islam as morally superior and believe it needs to be instituted at all costs. They take solace in their belief that despite the overwhelming economic, administrative and technological superiority of the West, at least they can hold on to their superior morals.

They create cultural fortresses to ward off the forces of their adopted home while still hoping to benefit from its economic advantages. It is the children who, raised in such cultural fortresses, feel few ties to their country of birth and are vulnerable to radical ideologies offering a higher, supra-national identity.

The time has come for Western Muslims to take a more aggressive stance, to take control of the institutions and commentary that demean them and accept that Islam is full of failures that require action.

Furthermore, there should be a growing sense that while Islam has been instrumental in offering meaning and purpose to billions, it has been more useful as a system of spirituality than as a system of jurisprudence.

This should be the new battleground between radicals, moderates and cultural Muslims, and recent events demand these issues be confronted directly and debated openly.

Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatry registrar who is writing a book that takes a comic look at Muslim life in Sydney, to be published early next year by ABC Books.




Comment: The good doctor points out clearly the major immediate problem facing muslims in the West: denial of the obvious. The denial that there is any problem with Islam as it is practised; a denial that the epidemic of super violence is approved by vast numbers of muslims in the West; the denial that their claims to 'moral superiority' are spurious and indeed comic when one looks at the reality of Islamic lives and practices both in the West and in the failed muslim states.

If the useless Australian government actually had a proper policy toward integrating the local muslims in Australia Dr. Ahmed would have a platform for speaking regularly to his fellow muslims in Australia. As it stands he can only get the occasional Op Ed piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Australian government must finance a weekly magazine which appears inserted into every arabic and muslim newspaper in the country. The publication war against islamic fascism must be carried on relentlessly, promoting the views of people like Dr. Ahmed.

Muslims Clinging To Brain Dead Policies.

Note: This report makes sad reading. The attraction of brain dead policies like suicide bombings to Palestinian muslims is a mystery to intelligent people. It was this policy that led directly to the enormous and very regrettable concrete wall that now seperates Israel and Palestine.

The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing but expect a different outcome.

Read on with a heavy heart...


Thwarted Palestinian terrorist organizations attempts to perpetrate suicide bombing attacks and abduct Israelis during the war in Lebanon; some of these attempts were directed by Hezbollah with the purpose of opening yet another front in Israel 1



Overview
1. In the course of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon , the Israeli security forces thwarted suicide bombing attacks and attempts to abduct soldiers and civilians to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners. Some of these terrorist attacks were thwarted shortly before their planned execution.

2. The thwarted terrorist attacks were planned by the terrorist organizations' cells in Gaza and the West Bank, the most prominent being the Fatah's Tanzim cell in Nablus . Some of them (including the Fatah cell in Nablus ) are directed by Hezbollah, which instructed terrorist infrastructures in the West Bank to intensify their activity during the war in Lebanon and perpetrate suicide bombing attacks and abductions so as to open another front against Israel .

3. During the war, the Israeli security forces thwarted nine abduction and suicide bombing attacks on the verge of implementation (see details below). Also thwarted or disrupted were over twenty attack plans in various stages of development. Detained within the context of the counter-terrorism activities were 396 terrorist operatives, including 12 potential suicide bombers detained before embarking on their missions. The detainees belong to Fatah's Tanzim (177), to Hamas (76), to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (62), and to other terrorist organizations.

Details on nine abduction and suicide bombing attacks
thwarted shortly prior to implementation
Thwarted suicide bombing attack at an IDF roadblock in the vicinity of Nablus (August 9)

4. On August 9, the Israeli security forces detained a female suicide bomber and her collaborator at the Beit Iba roadblock in the vicinity of Nablus . The two were dispatched by a Fatah Tanzim cell.

Thwarted suicide bombing in Elon Moreh (August 5)

5. Following a specific security alert, the Israeli security forces conducted intensive activities in the course of which they detained a suicide bomber with a powerful explosive belt. The suicide bomber was on his way to perpetrate the suicide bombing attack after he had been videotaped with a rifle and an explosive belt, reading his will and claiming responsibility for the terrorist attack. In his interrogation, the suicide bomber admitted that the intended site of the terrorist attack was the Samaria settlement of Elon Moreh.

Thwarted suicide bombing attack in Rehovot

6. The security forces thwarted a suicide bombing attempt in the city of Rehovot , planned by the Hezbollah-directed Fatah Tanzim infrastructure from the Balata refugee camp in Nablus . Intensive activities carried out following a specific security alert led to the arrest of a suicide bomber and a collaborator who was supposed to guide him to the site of the terrorist attack. In their possession was a bag with an explosive belt.

7. In his interrogation by the Israel Security Agency, the Palestinian who was to guide the suicide bomber related that he had been illegally working in Rehovot without a residence permit. He had been approached by Ibrahim Nimr Abu Munif (nicknamed Ibrahim Nayba), the head of the Fatah Tanzim infrastructure in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus , and asked to lead a suicide bomber to a terrorist attack in Israel . He was planning to bring him to Rehovot, leave him on the main street, and proceed to his workplace.

Thwarted suicide bombing attack in Israel (July 26)

8. Hamade Shtaiwi, from Kafr Qaddum village in the Qalqilya region, was planning to lead a suicide bomber to Israel in the immediate time frame, on behalf of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad cell in Jenin. He was shot dead by an IDF force when he attempted to evade arrest.

Thwarted abduction in Tel-Aviv (July 21)

9. Following a specific security alert, a 21-year-old female terrorist from Nablus was detained on the Tel-Aviv promenade. In her interrogation, she admitted that she had been dispatched by Ibrahim Nayba, the leader of the Hezbollah-directed Fatah Tanzim infrastructure in the Balata refugee camp ( Nablus ). She was assisted by an Israeli Arab who drove her to Tel-Aviv and was supposed to drive her back to Nablus

10. The terrorist intended to meet with a Jewish acquaintance, sedate him using sleeping pills, abduct him, and bring him back to Nablus where she was to deliver him to Fatah Tanzim operatives.

Thwarted abduction attempt by a terrorist who attempted to infiltrate
into Israel through Sinai (July 20)

11. Ramez Nabahin, a resident of the Gaza Strip village of Deir al-Balah, was detained near the Israeli-Egyptian border while attempting to infiltrate into Israel from Sinai. In his interrogation, he admitted that he was sent to Israel by a Popular Resistance Committees operative in the Gaza Strip in order to abduct an Israeli and smuggle him to the Gaza Strip to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners. He was directed to abduct a soldier or, failing that, murder him and transfer his documents to the Gaza Strip for purposes of negotiation.
12. Ramez Nabahin made several unsuccessful attempts to cross into Egyptian territory through the Rafah crossing. His dispatchers attempted to secure a fake medical pass for him but met with no success. Ultimately, he was able to cross the border to Egypt on the day the crossing was opened for humanitarian needs (in order to provide those Palestinians “stuck” on the Egyptian side with a possibility to return).

13. Having crossed into Egypt , Nabahin planned to enter Israel and abduct one of the two Israeli cab drivers with whom he was in touch. He planned to order a cab ride, abduct the driver, bring him to the south, and transfer him to Egypt and subsequently to the Gaza Strip.

Thwarted suicide bombing against an IDF force near the settlement of Oranit (July 19)

14. A specific security alert led to the arrest in Hod Hasharon of Rami Abu Hajle, from the village of Azun near Qalqilya. He was supposed to lead a suicide bomber on behalf of the Hezbollah-directed Fatah Tanzim cell in the Balata refugee camp (Nablus), led by Ibrahim Nayba.

15. In his interrogation by the Israel Security Agency, Abu Hajle admitted that he had collected extensive information on an IDF force in the vicinity of the settlement of Oranit on his way to his workplace on Hod Hasharon, where he was illegally residing. After his return from work, Abu Hajle was to meet with the suicide bomber in the village of Azun and lead him back to the Oranit region to perpetrate a suicide bombing attack against IDF soldiers.

Thwarted abduction attempt on the Ramallah-Nablus road (July 18)

16. On July 19, the Israeli security forces arrested Shaher Hajj, the head of a Fatah Tanzim cell in Ramallah. In his interrogation, he admitted to planning to abduct Israelis on the road between Ramallah and Nablus . The abduction was supposed to take place several days after his arrest, after the acquisition of a suitable vehicle by the terrorist cell. The security forces arrested some of the cell members and some of its collaborators.

Thwarted suicide bombing attack in the city of Bnei Brak (July 17)

17. Ashraf Hanani, a resident of the village of Beit Furik in the Nablus region, was arrested on Jaffa St. in Jerusalem with a bag containing some 13-15 lbs. of explosives. In his interrogation, he admitted that he had been sent to perpetrate the terrorist attack by Popular Resistance Committees operatives in Beit Furik, Ramallah, and the Gaza Strip. He was instructed to enter Jerusalem and proceed to the city of Bnei Brak , where he was to get off on Geha Bridge (one of the busiest traffic areas in the center of Israel ) and detonate himself near a large group of people.





Comment: It is no wonder that Australia has a bi-partisan policy of full support for Israel when all the Palestinians can do is endlessly repeat the stupidities of suicide bombing. Who could possibly support this deranged behaviour?

Is anyone awake in Ramallah?

Muslim Fascists Attacked by Muslim TV Chief.

Note: The writing is starting to appear on the wall for the 'head in the sand' approach so popular with so many muslim journalists, when the subject is muslim crimes inspired by Islam.

Read on...






August 15, 2006 No.1248

Director General of Al-Arabiya TV in Defense of President Bush's Description of London Bombers: 'They Are Fascists'

In an August 14, 2006 article titled "They Are Fascists" in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, the paper's former editor-in-chief and current director general of Al-Arabiya TV, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, defended President George W. Bush's description of the individuals who were arrested last week before they could carry out their plan to blow up passenger airplanes.

The following are excerpts from the article, in the original English:

"The Protesting Groups... Would Have Done Better to... Denounce the Deeds of Those Affiliated to Islam Who Harmed All Muslims and Islam"

"Many of us are only concerned with reputation and image, our image in the media, and the reputation of the Muslims in the world, but they do not care about reforming the original source, their children.

"When U.S. President George W. Bush described those who plotted to kill thousands of passengers in ten airliners as Muslim fascists, protests from a number of Islamic societies in the West and the East were voiced against this description.

"What is wrong with using a bad adjective to describe a terrorist as long as he is willing to personally call himself an Islamist; declares his stance, schemes, and aims; while his supporters publicly call for killing of those whom they consider infidels, or disagree with them religiously or politically?

"The strange thing is that the protesting groups, which held a press conference, would have done better to have held it to denounce the deeds of those affiliated to Islam, who harmed all Muslims and Islam."


"Bush Did Not Say That the Muslims Were Fascists; He Said That Muslim Fascists Were the Problem"

"Bush did not say that the Muslims were fascists; he said that the Muslim fascists were the problem, i.e. he distinguished between an extremist group and the general innocent peaceful Muslims. Yes, fascism is a word that has bad connotations, and is used here to approximate the meaning to the listeners. The Westerners know that fascism is an extremist nationalist movement, which emerged from the European society, and was responsible for destructive wars caused by its premises, which are based on discrimination, racism and hatred. This approximation is correct when you apply it to the literature of the Islamic extremists. The same as the Europeans fought fascism and the fascists by word and by gunpowder, the world will fight the extremist Islamists. This is what the good Muslims, who are at the forefront of those hunting down Al-Qaeda, do; the same as the Muslim who exposed the latest conspiracy to hijack the airliners, when he hastened to inform the security authorities when he suspected what was happening in the neighborhood.

"This is why I do not understand what those people - who want to protect reputation and image from the Westerners - want to call the Muslim extremists who resort to violence. Do they want to call them Khawarij (the earliest Islamic sect, which traces its beginning to a religious-political controversy over the Caliphate)? The problem is that no one (in the West) understands its historical meaning. Do they call them by their names only, such as Osama, Ayman, Muhammad, and Zamani? Do they call them according to the sarcastic Egyptian way: 'people who should remain nameless?'"


"What is More Important than Preoccupation With Preserving the Image is to Rectify the Situation, and to Confront the Extremists Among Us"

"Describing them as fascists in the west is better than all the bad adjectives that rightly or wrongly have been attributed to them. This is because as far as the Westerners are concerned, fascism means a specifically defined group that still lives within their societies, is from their ethnic groups and religion, and hence distinguishes between them and the others.

"What is more important than preoccupation with preserving the image is to rectify the situation, and to confront the extremists among us. The majority of the Westerners did not know anything about Islam and Muslims until bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri, Muhammad Atta, and the culprits of the London explosions called themselves Islamists, and started to use the Koran and the Islamic historical nomenclatures. You cannot call the Red Brigades Movement anything other than what they call themselves, and there is no escape from calling them Italian communists; the same applies to the National Front in Britain, which is described as a Nazi and fascist movement."


"To Describe a Muslim as a Terrorist is Natural if He is a Terrorist"

"In the end, describing rotten apples as rotten does not make the people hate eating good apples. The same applies to the Muslims; there are one billion Muslims in the world, and the world has no option other than dealing with them, and hunting down the evil minority among them. We have wasted a long time since the seventies in being preoccupied with protesting against nomenclatures and images. This is despite the fact that these people hijack civilian airliners, kill people in restaurants, and justify their actions by using pan-Arab or Islamic descriptions. To describe a Muslim as terrorist is natural if he is a terrorist, the same as you do with a Colombian drug smuggler, an Italian mafioso, a Russian butcher, a British Nazi, or a U.S. right-wing extremist."





Comment: Excellent muslim thinkers like Mr.al Rashed have no real voice in Australia's arab language press. The Australian government should have a weekly magazine insert which appears in every arabic language newspaper. Such a magazine should carry the writings of people like this gentleman, and the many muslims like him who are on the side of the West in this war against the Islamic fascist aggressor.

Is anyone awake in Canberra?