Tear Off the Zunnar

Shahid = Getting Ass in Paradise

2007-12-20T17:52:00.001-08:00

Every palistinian child, say someone aged twelve, says: Oh Lord, I would like to become a Shahid.

2007-12-20T17:46:00.001-08:00

(To become a Shahid is to die while killing a Jew)

Jihad Mickey

2007-12-19T20:04:00.001-08:00

Jihad Karaoke

2007-12-18T19:42:00.001-08:00

Mark Your Calendars

2007-12-18T19:12:00.000-08:00

Two world renowned Islamic scholars will be speaking in Madison over the coming months.

Dr. Jeffrey Lang will be lecturing at 2650 Humanities on the UW Campus on February 15th, and will be leading a student workshop the following day. Lang is a mathematics professor and American convert to Islam most known for his three books on the American Muslim experience.

Reza Aslan will be speaking on March 25th as part of the UW's distinguished lecture series. Aslan, an American of Persian decent, hails from the University of California-Santa Barbara where he writes novels, screen plays, and countless articles aimed at liberalizing Islam and convincing westerners that true Islam is a peaceful, democratic, and kind faith that has been hijacked by backward tribalism. Aslan is most well known for his bestselling book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.

As the dates of these events approach, I will share more details as well as my thoughts about the two authors.

A Beacon of Hope

2007-12-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

By the time I decided to write about Aqsa Parvez it had all been said. Still I felt that I could not let this month slip by without mentioning the poor girl's murder. It was a very sad event and I feel for her Mother and friends.

At least someone is able to find hope in the attention that this tragedy has recieved.

From the Pakistan Daily Times:

Aqsa’s murder a beacon of hope, a wake-up call

WASHINGTON: “I hope she becomes a beacon of hope for all the girls who are in a similar situation living like a hostage in their homes,” a Pakistani-Canadian has said, commenting on 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez’s murder by her father because she would not wear the hijab.

Syed Shah, an IT specialist, told the Toronto Sun that Aqsa’s “tragic demise should be an eye opener for those ‘traditional’ fathers who are living in Canada yet are still trapped in the 15th century mind frame. They cannot and should not expect their daughters to live in bustling Mississauga and bear a mindset of a girl living in any rural part in Pakistan. The two just don’t go together.” The irony, he pointed out, is that immigrants come here seeking the freedom of Canada, but some forget that the hard-fought right now extends to their families. “The alternative is Saudi Arabia. Why don’t they pick that?” he added.

Aqsa Parvez was secretly buried on Saturday, “her tragic murder still reverberating through a city that remains shocked and horrified,” according to the Canadian daily. “We see her beautiful face everywhere, on the TV news and the newspapers, her haunting dark brown eyes bright with such promise and excitement at what life had to offer. Life that was suddenly cut short at 16, allegedly by an Old World father who could not tolerate her need to distance herself from his suffocating control, and the dictates of his religion,” the paper wrote.

The newspaper quoted another young woman it called Fatima who said, “Today it’s the face of this young girl, Aqsa Parvez, but as far as I’m concerned, this problem existed when I was 10, more than 20 years ago.” She came to Canada as a child from Pakistan and unlike other girls she knew who would take off their head coverings once they were out of their parents’ sight, she wasn’t obligated to wear a hijab. Her parents only insisted she dress in loose, modest clothing.

Another Canadian Muslim, retired professor Dr Mahfooz Kanwar said Aqsa’s death had all the marks of an honour killing by a man who felt his religion and family were being disrespected. khalid hasan

City of Minneapolis Caves to Sharia

2007-12-17T16:01:00.000-08:00

This happened way back on September 24 but I missed it until today.

Mayor R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis included the following in his budget address:

Beyond connecting people to jobs and preparing future workers, we need to continue creating more jobs by also supporting our entrepreneurs and small business owners, who are responsible for half of all new jobs created. We’ll support these small businesses with more than $4.7 million dollars of business financing tools that provide:

* market-rate loans for job creation,
* low-interest loans to purchase equipment or make building improvements,
* loans to purchase and rehabilitate small commercial and industrial properties, and
* alternative financing loans with no interest to business owners whose religious beliefs restrict them from receiving traditional interest-based financing.

In case you missed the key line: alternative financing loans with no interest to business owners whose religious beliefs restrict them from receiving traditional interest-based financing.

As the quoted text illustrates, the mayor of a major American city intends on utilizing public dollars to enable Islam. Even worse, Rybak's proposal offers Muslims special protection under the law in a way that discriminates against members of other faiths, agnostics, and atheists.

I wish I could say I was surprised to discover that Minneapolis was caving to Sharia but I'm not. Minneapolis has been trending this way for some time. If the good Scandinavian folks up there don't start stepping up soon they might find themselves in a Dearbornistan type of community before too long.

...and just in case you had any reservations about the character of Mr. Rybak, this photo ought to clear them up. Pictured are Rybak, Keith Ellison, and...well you know the other guy...

HT - Gates of Vienna

In related news, Dhimmi Watch is reporting that Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota is enabling radical Islam in another way.

Nearly 20 Democrat Congressmen Oppose Christmas but Support Ramadan

2007-12-15T10:02:00.000-08:00

Amanda Carpenter at Townhall notes that several Democrats who voted in favor of a resolution honoring Ramadan in October have now voted against a similar resolution honoring Christmas. To me this shows a very clear disdain for America's people and culture as well as dreadful intellectual inconsistency.

The list is as follows:

Nine Democrats voted against the Christmas resolution. They are: Rep. Gary Ackerman (N.Y.), Rep. Yvette Clarke (N.Y.), Rep. Diane DeGette (Colo.), Rep. Alcee Hastings (Fla.), Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.), Rep. Jim McDermott (Wash.), Rep. Robert Scott (Va.), Rep. Pete Stark (Calif.) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Calif.).

Another nine Democrats chose to vote "present." They are: Rep. John Conyers (Mich.), Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.), Rep. Rush Holt (N.J.), Rep. Donald Payne (N.J.), Rep. Allyson Schwartz (Pa.), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), Rep. Peter Welch (Vt.) and Rep. John Yarmuth (Ky.).

Each of them supported the Ramadan resolution except for Rep. Lee, who did not vote.

HT: Atlas

A Conversation with Simon Deng

2007-12-10T17:50:00.001-08:00

Simon Deng, a black Christian African was kidnapped by a Muslim Arab at the age of nine and given as a gift to one of the man’s relatives. Deng is now a free man who just recently marched from New York to Washington to meet with President Bush and to raise awareness for the plight of Sudan’s enslaved peoples.

Yes, slavery is common in the Sudan today. Just this past May Deng personally liberated 200 Christians from slavery in the Sudan.

Listen to his interview with Pamela from Atlas Shrugs here. Note: the first three quarters of the program consist of Pamela’s rants. Interesting as they are, the really good stuff starts about 45 minutes in when Pamela gets Deng on the phone. The twenty minute long conversation is well worth listening to.

I found his comments about the use of the word Jihad in the Sudan to be particularly fascinating. According to Deng, the Arab dictator of the Sudan Omar Hasan Hamad al-Bashir utilized the word just a few weeks ago to call upon the Muhjahadeen to wage war.

Deng is sure to explain that it is not he who uses this word nor is it Pamela, a right wing blogger. Jihad (not the internal struggle kind of Jihad that the left talks about but the relentless war on infidels and polytheists kind that is found in the Quran) is utilized by the President of the Sudan to rally his troops for genocide, mass rape, and war.

I’ve never been one to view Bashir or his regime as Jihadists for the sake of Jihad that is to say for the sake of Islam. I might view Ahmadinejad this way but I don’t see Sudan operating under the same motivations.

Rather, I believe that the Sudanese Regime has always had to rely on chaos and war to maintain its grip on the country and its oil reserves. Jihad against Christian and animist blacks has just been the most effective tool in the regime’s arsenal with which they can motivate the minority Arab tribes towards that purpose.

Regardless of the specific nature of the genocide and enslavement of Africans in the Sudan two facts remain clear. One, Islam was the stated justification for the genocide of more than 3.5 million Africans. Two, Islam remains the justification for the enslavement of many thousands of Christians and animist Africans in the Sudan. That is a reality that few in this country wish to accept but until we come to grips with it there is little we can do to ease the plight of the African tribes in Darfur or the Christian tribes in the south.

"What you are saying is: You have the right to become an apostate, but I will kill you."

2007-12-04T18:11:00.000-08:00

I wonder what Jamal Badawi would say about this: Muslim Scholars Debate Changing Religion.

Why do 76% of Kuwaitis believe that changing your religion warrants a death sentence?

Ahmed Rehab and John Edwards

2007-12-04T17:54:00.000-08:00

I've commented on other blogs (here and here) about the Milwaukee Muslim Community's choice for a counter to Walid Shoebat in Chicago CAIR Director Ahmed Rehab. Ahmed comes across as a modern, (Egyptian born) American Muslim, however, some of his stated beliefs, particularly about the Muslim Brotherhood and its founder Sayyid Qutb are extremely disturbing.

LGF has posted this evening that Rehab has been damn near drafted by the Edwards campaign (or should I say that the Edwards campaign has damn near been hijacked by Saudi Arabia?). For sometime I have been frightened by Edwards as compared to Hillary or Obama, and for reasons that I ought to expound upon at some point. If the deal hadn't already been sealed against the man in my mind this would do it.

Gays need a lesson in Empiricism

2007-11-30T16:59:00.000-08:00

The Dutch are commissioning a study to determine why Moroccan men are beating the piss out of gay men all over Amsterdam. I am familiar with this problem from reading Bruce Bawer's work. In his must read treatise on the Islamisation of Europe, the homo-sexual Bawer relays story after story of Muslim homophobia and anti-gay rage in Europe. Particularly telling is a description of how gay men and women in Amsterdam, formerly the world's most gay tolerant city, must now refrain from holding hands for fear of being attacked by Muslims.

Twenty five years ago when homosexuality was still quite taboo in much of the western world Amsterdam was a haven for gay men. It was one of the few cities in the world where they could hold hands. Thanks to Islam, the freedom and safety that homosexuals in Amsterdam felt is rapidly disappearing.

Gays in America are quick to bash the slightest amount of homophobia coming from Christians. When will they wake up to the greater religious threat to their way of life?

Robert Spencer comments more on this issue at Dhimmi Watch.

Walid Shoebat Silenced by UW Milwaukee

2007-11-30T16:35:00.000-08:00

Once again the left shows its disdain for freedom of speech and true academic freedom.

Shoebat is controversial. That is true but he is also an internationally recognized speaker and author on the most important topic of our lifetimes. To deny him the right to speak because of threats from radical left-wing student groups is to side with the very groups that caused the problem in the first place.
If the University were really concerned about the cost of security they could jsut arrest unlawful protesters and fine them.

For information about Shoebat you can visit his website here.

Update: The Beloit Daily News sides with freedom: Checkbook censorship is no less ugly than any other kind.

Update 2: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that UW-M has reversed its decision. More information can be found at WTMJ.

How does Bush expect peace if they won't even shake hands?

2007-11-30T16:18:00.000-08:00

I chuckled at stories earlier this week about the Arabs at Annapolis refusing to shake hands with the dirty Jews. This story, however, is more disturbing than funny.

Not only are the Muslims at the conference refusing to shake the hands of Jews, they are demanding a separate entrance to the conference. What's next seperate drinking fountains, swimming pools, the front of the bus? I know that this is shocking to Saudis but in America Jews are considered equal and I'm not talking about equal to apes and pigs. The Bush administration has created a little slice of apartheid right here on American soil. Republicans should be ashamed of their leaders. I know I am.

Savage Sues CAIR

2007-11-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

I'm glad to see somebody give CAIR a taste of their own medicine.

http://www.savage-productions.com/Savage_CAIR_suit.html

Liberals Need a Lesson in Empiricism

2007-11-28T17:40:00.000-08:00

I fondly recall once getting into a shouting match with a political theory professor at the UW after he commented that the extermination of my Kulak ancestors had nothing to do with Marxism. As our debate expanded, I learned some interesting facts from my fine Marxist professor, namely that the 50 some odd million Chinese and Chinese minority peoples killed by Mao had nothing to do with Marxism, that the Soviet Gulag had nothing to do with Marxism, and that nearly every other negative event associated with Marxism, 1975 Cambodia, Castro's political prisons, and the Berlin Wall for example, all had absolutely nothing to do with Marxism.

Marxism, being the penultimate achievement in human political and social thought was flawless, he contended. Therefore, none of these negative events could have anything to do with it.

Most of my classmates stared at their lecturer inattentively thinking instead about the best way to ask out the girl next to them or about the hang over they were still trying to get over three days after losing 14 rounds of beer pong. Several classmates nodded. A few of us grunted in disgust and did our best to argue with our blind teacher. I wondered then how such an educated man could be so blind to the empirical evidence before him. I wonder today how so many well-intentioned and educated liberals are so blind to the realities of radical Islam and particularly Sharia law.

Some time ago I watched this British documentary on You Tube.

The documentary does its best to portray Sharia in a positive light. In fact an independent observer with no prior knowledge of Sharia law would walk away from the documentary thinking that Sharia was mostly a way for African women to get compensation from deadbeat dads.

Documentaries like this are one liberal response to conservative criticisms of Sharia law. The other common response usually comes without a British accent and therefore doesn’t sound quite as enlightened. It is still surprisingly affective and it usually goes something like this:

Conservative: Can you believe that a woman was sentenced to death by a Sharia court in Saudi Arabia for being gang raped by four of her cousins?

Liberal: Zionism!

Conservative: What do you mean?

Liberal: Christianity and Judaism are just as violent as Islam.

Conservative: What does that have to do with the case of this poor woman?

Liberal: Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, Mumia Abu Peltier…

Anyways, back to my original quandary? How is it that liberals are able to ignore what they see right in front of their own eyes? How can they deflect the reality of Sharia law as it is practiced in the real world by real people. How can they ignore oppressed women in 2007 by changing the subject to the brutality of Medieval Christians?

Two recent cases illustrate this point:

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/11/28/mohammed-teddy-bear-teacher-charged/

The Case of Mohammed the Teddy Bear.

Michelle Malkin has done an outstanding job covering this issue. Rusty from Jawa Report was good enough to create the following graphic.

The gist of the story is this. Ms. Gillian Gibbons, a 54 year old British educator working in a Khartoum elementary school had her class vote to name a classmate's Teddy bear. A popular 7 year old student named Mohammed recommended naming the bear after himself. The class took a vote.

Twenty out of 23 students voted to name the bear Mohammed after their 7 year old classmate. The response of Khartoum was to arrest Ms. Gibbons and charge her with insulting the prophet of Islam, a serious crime under Sharia law (as it is applied to nearly everyone in nearly all Muslim nations and a few neighborhoods in France). Ms. Gibbons now faces 6 months in jail, 40 lashes, and a fine.

The case of the Girl of Qatif.

The Girl of Qatif is a Muslim 19-year-old Saudi girl who committed a very serious crime under Sharia law – she allowed herself to be kidnapped and gang raped by seven men. In some Muslim countries that lack the purity and enlightenment of Saudi Arabia, this poor girl might have been subject to a tribal Jirga rather than a Sharia court and her sentence could have been much more severe such as death by stoning, an honor killing at the hands of a relative, or a combination of the two.

In the birthplace of Sharia, however, this criminal is subject to far less punishment – just 90 lashes…and an additional 110 lashes for having had the audacity to appeal her sentence. That is Sharia Law in action. That is how Sharia law is enforced throughout the Muslim world.

Liberals need a lesson in empiricism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism

BTW…This is what a few dozen lashes under Sharia law looks like 20 days later. HT-Atlas

The Hippie-Muslim Cabal that wants to take away your Ice Cream

2007-11-20T16:33:00.000-08:00

The cornerstone of the University of Wisconsin that is Babcock Ice Cream is under threat from a conspiracy more insidious than the Illuminati/Mafia/Québécois anschluss that sparked Celine Deon's career.

Members of the Muslim Student Association are joining forces with smelly neo-vegans to bring a little slice of hippie Sharia to the UW. Their success could spell the end of Babcock Ice Cream as we know it.

Why?

Because Babcock Ice Cream is made with Pork Gelatin...

Shocked are you? I know I was.

I always thought that gelatin was made from horse hoofs. Low and behold the fine folks at the UW discovered that the Hoof and Hide Jello of the equestrian beast just couldn't cut it when it came to producing the world's finest ice cream. To make ice cream that good took a real animal...Babe (or Wilbur if you're more into classic children's literature than you are into bad film of the 90's).

Just ask Scott Rankin, a UW-Madison associate professor in food science. Scott said it best about using pork gelatin in Babcock's goodness in a Sarah Nance's Pulitzer deserving Daily Cardinal piece Babcock ice cream's pint-sized problem:

Flavor-wise, gelatin is so flavor-neutral that it lets the flavor the milk and whatever flavor you add to the system really come through. It doesn’t bind many flavors [and] also attributes to the textural aspect of it.

See! Gelatin doesn't bind, and...whatever. Take that you vegan wannabes.

Rankin went on to explain the vital role that gelatin plays, "in stabilizing the ice cream and keeping it solid".

Rankin is right. We can't let Babcock Ice Cream become destabilized. Write or call your legislator. Tell them to stand up for Babcock.

176

2007-11-19T17:28:00.000-08:00

Suspicious behavior on a Milwaukee flight from DC warrants TSA Suspicious Incident #177. Many bloggers are wondering about the first 176. Was this a dry run?

Fatima Butto on Benazir

2007-11-17T19:43:00.000-08:00

Benazir's niece sure has an interesting take on her aunt. This article has been appearing all over the internet over the past few days.

Aunt Benazir's false promises

Bhutto's return bodes poorly for Pakistan -- and for democracy there.

By Fatima Bhutto
November 14, 2007

KARACHI -- We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private news channels -- has been drafted.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause. Now that the situation has changed, she's saying that she wants Musharraf to step down and that she'd like to make a deal with his opponents -- but still, she says, she's the savior of democracy.

The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)

Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.

It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.

It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late.

Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.

And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.

My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority.

I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto.

By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.

Late Edition: Bolton Attacks ElBaradei

2007-11-12T15:44:00.001-08:00

Bolton also commented on Pakistan:

Promoting his book on CNN Friday morning, Bolton told John Roberts that the issue in Pakistan "is not a choice between democracy ... and martial law. ... This is a choice right now between secure command and control over Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenel on the one hand and chaos on the other. If we have chaos, we could have a radical Islamicist regime in charge of those weapons."

This guy tells it like it is. We need a little more of that on issues like these.

Hat Tip: Atlas

Bhutto was really hot back in the day but she still needs to respect history

2007-11-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

In 1979 liberal reformers and Marxists joined together with Islamic radicals to overthrow a dictator in Iran. Instead of a Democratic worker's paradise they got another dictator and greater oppression than they could have imagined under the Shah. Within a few years most of these reformers were either dead or exiled.

Today Benazir Bhutto threatened to undermine the dictatorial regime of Pakistan's ruler, Pervez Musharraf. Bhutto should be cautious as should her American supporters in Congress and the Administration. While I see no possibility of cooperation between Bhutto and Pakistan's would be theocrats (they've already tried to kill her once this month), I can envision a future where the Musharraf regime falls to pressure from the left only to be replaced by a Taliban like regime from the right.

Bloggers Take Down Radical Cleveland Imam

2007-10-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

See this great blog: Central Ohioans Against Terrorism

Here is a sample of the fine Imam's sermons:

Dear brothers and sisters, the talk about the Day of Judgment is long and full of things that will confuse the human mind and put fear in the hearts of the faithful. Every day that comes is much more Worse than the day before it as we get closer to the hour. Among the signs of the approach of Day of Judgment is what the messenger of Allah PBUH said: “The hour of judgment shall not happen until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Muslims shall kill the Jews to the point that the Jew shall hide behind a big rock or a tree and the rock or tree shall call on the Muslim saying: hey, O Muslim there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him, except the Gharqad tree which will not say, for it is the tree of Jews.” Agreed upon. This is seemed to be very soon and close now. We ask Allah SWT not to test us so hardly if we live till this horrible moment insha’allah.

In case you don't remember, this Imam was hired to replace a guy who was deported for funding terrorists.

Dr. Jamal Badawi Lecture Tommorrow at 7:00, Grainger 1100

2007-10-31T14:13:00.000-07:00

Jamal Badawi is coming to town tomorrow as an invited guest of the Muslim Student Association. Badawi is an Egyptian born, Canadian professor who has risen to become a prolific North American writer, lecturer, and activist on Islamic issues. He's also an active leader in groups such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and is the founder/chairman of the Islamic Information Foundation.

Badawi preaches a peaceful, non-violent form of Islam that we all wish was the mainstream. Unfortunately, Badawi seems more successful in convincing non-Muslims that Islam is the religion of peace than he does convincing Muslims. I would contend that more than two decades of Badawi's lectures have distracted Westerners as to the true nature of the radical Islamic threat more than it has improved their understanding of Islam.

I think that most non-Muslims familiar with Badawi would count him among the moderates or even liberal Muslims on the North American lecture circuit. He has never been one to openly call for Sharia or destruction of Israel, at least not that I know of. His thoughts on Apostasy are quite progressive, see here. Still, he has said and published some things that I do find controversial and perhaps it is useful to examine them while keeping in mind that these are the statements of a Moderate Muslim.

For example, Badawi's publications on gender (in)equity in Islam are ubiquitous in academic discussions of women in Islam. In his 1995 book, Gender Equity in Islam, Badawi tries to explain away the controversial passage of the Quran (4:34) where Allah calls on Muslim men to beat their wives:

In the event of a family dispute, the Qur'an exhorts the husband to treat his wife kindly and not overlook her POSITIVE ASPECTS (see Qur'an 4:19). If the problem relates to the wife's behavior, her husband may exhort her and appeal for reason. In most cases, this measure is likely to be sufficient. In cases where the problem continues, the husband may express his displeasure in another peaceful manner, by sleeping in a separate bed from hers.

There are cases, however, in which a wife persists in deliberate mistreatment and
expresses contempt of her husband and disregard for her marital obligations. Instead of divorce, the husband may resort to another measure that may save the marriage, at least in some cases. Such a measure is more accurately described as a gentle tap on the body, but NEVER ON THE FACE, making it more of a symbolic measure then a punitive one. Following is the related Qur'anic text:

Men are the protectors and maintainers of women. because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next) do not share their beds, (and last) beat (tap) them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance): for Allah is Most High, Great (above you all). (4:34)

This may appear to be a reasonable approach to the awkward an often embarrassing passage in the Quran. After all, Badawi is interpretation sounds generous – don't beat your wives, just tap them lightly "symbolically." Notice, however, that the words "tap" and "lightly" are his additions to the Quranic text, not Allah's. His arguments may sugarcoat this passage for western ears but they do little to assist the Yemeni woman who's husband reads a Quran lacking in Badawi's parenthetical insertions.

Moreover, if one really thinks about what Badawi is saying – that is not just alright, but actually required behavior for men to "tap" there wives to punish them, to physically touch their wives when they are angry… shouldn't that set off some bells for feminists. I for one grew up in a school system and culture that emphatically emphasizes the fact that it is NEVER, EVER acceptable for a man to place a hand on a woman. It's even codified in our legal system. I would argue that Badawi's "tap" is 4th degree physical assault but I digress.

The point I am trying so miserably to make is that here we have a Moderate Muslim, a favorite among American academics, who is justifying and defending the duty of Muslim men, as set forth in the Quran, to lay hands on their wives for disobedience. Why is this not an issue for feminists?

I have one more thing to say about Badawi's "tap" before I move on. Leftist Western Islamic Scholars like Badawi or Karen Armstrong often translate the Arabic word Idrib in this section of the Quran to mean something like "tap." Idrib is used repeatedly in the Quran. In nearly every use of the word it clearly comes across as meaning to beat, scourge, or strike (hard), as in, “strike (Idrib) off their heads, strike (Idrib) off the very tips of their fingers!” – Quran (8:12)

I would like Badawi to explain how one would go about “tapping” off the head of some poor 8th century Jewish tribesman. How exactly would a good Muslim warrior “tap” off the tips of some Quraysh goat herder's fingers?

The solution to gender inequity in Islam is not to deny its existence by sugarcoating text in the Quran. It is not to transform "strike" into "tap," although I wish it was that easy. A more plausible solution is to take a step back as Muslims like Irshad Manji have and say hey, that was then this is now. In the 21st Century, particularly if you're living in a western society, it is just not acceptable behavior to tap on your wives – no matter what the Quran requires.

At any rate, Badawi should inspire an interesting and informative discussion of various Islamic issues. I will be attending the lecture, tomorrow night at 7:00 pm in Grainger 1100 and encourage you to as well.

On David Horowitz and Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week

2007-10-25T18:18:00.000-07:00

Not being a student or faculty member at the UW these days I was forced to sneak into the David Horowitz lecture Monday night. After a few moments of cloak and dagger I found a seat dead center amongst the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) activists.

Most of the folks seated around me were wearing green to show their solidarity against Islamo-Fascism Awareness week. After I started getting high from permanent marker fumes I realized that most also had posters with friendly hippie slogans on them. I spent a few minutes listening to the CAN kids discuss their plans to disrupt the lecture but that conversation came to a halt when the communications director for the UW College Democrats, Gerald Cox, joined them.

For whatever reason unkown to me Cox seemed to have the respect of a number of the CAN kids, people who generally have very little respect for anything. At many points during the lecture Mr. Cox and other CD officers would play a large roll at maintaining decorum amongst the CAN kids. I see a bright political future for that young man.

After saying the pledge, to which only a handful of CAN kids vocally objected, Sara Mikolajczak of the College Republicans welcomed the audience. At this point, my count put the 9 out of 10 members of the audience squarely in the court of Mr. Horowitz's detractors. Eric West of the Dane County GOP followed up with a brief introduction and then David Horowitz arrived on the scene while a couple of CRs donned posters of an Afghan woman being shot on a soccer field by the Taliban.

The CAN kids began coughing and clearing their throats but the CMs miraculously kept them from elevating the level of disruption further. Already I was disappointed.

Several years ago I attended two lectures in the same theater dealing with slavery reparations. Mr. Horowitz was the speaker at the second lecture. I fondly recall several liberal students at that lecture attempting to shout down Mr. Horowitz. They failed but then turned their back on him while slipping on Noam Chomsky masks. The entire episode was quite theatrical and very entertaining. At the same lecture, Mr. Horowitz was organized and poignant. Unfortunately, the Islamo-Fascist lecture would be neither entertaining, save the brief Kevin Barrett episode that I will get to later, nor was it organized or well done.

Uncle Jimbo over at Black Five said that Horowitz sucked Hoover. He wasn't far off the mark.

Horowitz began by quoting a couple of shockingly true statistics about women and gays in the Muslim world, namely:

• 138 million Muslim women have been the victims of clitorectamies
• 4,000 Muslim homosexuals have been brutally murdered by the Iranian regime
• 52,000 Muslim women have been victims of honor killings

The effect of these statistics was, as intended, to calm and silence Mr. Horowitz's retractors. His plan worked well but no sooner had he actually gotten the dirty hippies to start listening then he started to go off on tangents.

Then Barrett showed up. Upon the first mention of 9/11, Barrett was on the scene ranting and raving. The CDs and CRs, in near unison began to ask him to sit down and wait for the question and answer period.

A CAN kid seated immediately behind me asked, "Who is that guy?"

Another responded, "Only the most controversial professor ever to teach on this campus."

The first responded, "Lets applaud him," to which several dozen CAN kids began clapping and cheering the man who defines the term "Ass-hat," Kevin Barrett.

Much to my amazement, not a moment passed before both the communications director and the chair of the CDs were both berating the CAN kids with lines like, "You do not applaud THAT man!" The CDs really treated the CAN kids like children and the CAN kids responded in kind, quickly quieting down.

About this time a few guys in the front rows of stage left started the Asshole chant. It quickly spread until about a fifth of the audience was participating in the UW tradition. Even a few Libs were joining in. It was a riot of a good time.

Then Kevin Barrett left and after one of his cronies attempted to follow his example, Horowitz got back to the business of defining Islamo-Fascism. He did a fine job explaining that Islamo-Fascism is the merger of a church with a totalitarian state, i.e., Iran. He had the audience's attention once again but being David Horowitz he set about offending them with ultra-right wing drivel about the connection between 1930s Nazism and historical and modern Islamo-Fascists.

I am fully aware of the historical connections between Hitler and the Muslim Brotherhood and 1930s Palestinian leaders. I know that the founders of the Syrian and Iraqi Baathist parties were admirers of Hitler and that they based their regimes in many respects on Nazi Germany. I accept that. Still, something in my core does not appreciate when people use comparison or links to Nazis to get their point across and Mr. Horowitz's leaps between a few historical facts and some pretty serious conclusions the modern Islamic world set of my bullshit-o-meter. If it affected me in such a way, imagine how liberal responded?

To make matters worse, Mr. Horowitz began getting his historical facts all wrong. The Otoman Empire was not founded in 1552 Dave. For crying out loud, they conquered Constantinople a century earlier and the Battle of Kosovo, an event paramount to any discussion on the Balkans, an area that Mr. Horowitz writes about frequently happened in the 14 th century. Misstating facts like this, a consequence of Mr. Horowitz's ill prepared and disorganized style, destroyed his credibility with an already skeptical audience. To make matters worse, during the question and answer portion of the evening, Mr. Horowitz attacked a student who attempted to correct his Ottoman mistake, more-or-less calling him a moron.

Note to speakers: When you have no credibility with an audience, don't bother trying to explain the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not only will you fail but you will reinforce your opponents beliefs. Discussion on the history of that conflict is as touchy a topic as they come. Nearly all people are under informed about it yet just as many feel completely secure and confident about the few facts they do know, no matter how questionable those facts are.

Horowitz rambled on for another 30 minutes or so. Occasionally he received applause and occasionally a dirty hippie in the audience would shout out an obscenity or call him a fascist but for the most part things were calm. His lecture was followed by a question and answer that went like this:

Questioner # 1: Mr. Horowitz, I am a Muslim professor and I regretfully must agree with many of the things you say about the Muslim world, however, I feel that your tone and choice of language insults many moderate Muslims and give cannon fodder to the radicals. How do you respond?

David Horowitz: You sir are a moron. Shut up and sit down. (10 minutes of ranting and raving with arms flailing) Again, you're an idiot.

Questioner # 2: …A dirty white male hippie stands up and spouts off a lot of bullshit before asking, how do you as a white man know anything about Afghan women?

David Horowitz: You are a Nazi and supported Hitler during WWII. (10 minutes of ranting and raving) Again, you are a Nazi, please keep your questions shorter next time.

This went on and on until I started to fall asleep and had to get up and walk around for a while. Over the course of the next half hour or so, Horowitz made the following points:
• I am a genius.
• You are all idiots.
• Fuck you, I'm going home.

Now I realize that I make some radical statements on this blog and in my life and I know that my arguments aren't always that well put together but sheesh! David Horowitz writes 200,000 words plus a year, his own claim, and most of them are on this and similar subjects. The man should be able to put together a cohesive argument on this stuff. He utterly failed.

Still, at the end of the evening I walked away feeling good for three reasons:
1. Most people think that Kevin Barrett is an Ass Hole.
2. There are some young Democrats out there who still respect free speech and public discourse. Kudos to the UW College Dems and for that matter, the MSA, for behaving like dignified adults. I've even got to give props to CAN for not being too disruptive.
3. I was on my way to a cold pint of Lake Louie at the Harmony bar.

Final Thought: Horowitz appears to perform best under fire. He seemed disappointed that he wasn't shouted down. I can't say why for certain. Perhaps he was disappointed that he wouldn't get a chance to rip the UW on O'Reilly like he did last time he came and was shouted down or maybe he just likes a good old fashioned fight. Looking through the lens of history I tend to think that he is a man who has changed far less from his days as a white black panther radical in the 60s than most think. Horowitz is still a radical and he still loves the attention that a good controversy brings. Watching his body language during the question and answer session, I couldn't help but draw comparisons to the way Barrett had acted...

Other comments on this event can be found at Althouse and on the College Democrats' blog .

The Badger Herald Muckrakers have some humorous video up including a clip of Barrett.

Yousef al-Khattab

2007-09-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

And to think, Blogger is kind enough to host this religion of peace practitioner's blog.

Photo Tip: Jawa

"In principle, the Zionists lack any religion."

2007-09-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

Little Green Footballs has a translation of an interview from Memri TV with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here.

A video of the interview can be seen here.

Little Green Footballs seems to find it most interesting when Ahmadinejad discusses messages he receives from Germans announcing their disdain for Jews. Ahmadinejad goes on to predict that Europeans will "eradicate" the Jews if times are "calm."

I agree that those are hot tidbits, however, I find a separate section much more interesting.

In it, Ahmadinejad states, "In principle, the Zionists lack any religion. They are lying when they say that they are Jews. They have no religion." This is key.

Islam provides certain protections to the people of the book, Jews and Christians. Yes they are to be held apart, made submissive, forced to pay the Jyzia and to be restricted from many of the freedoms and privileges that Muslims enjoy, etc... but generally speaking, they are not to be murdered wholesale...

...unless... they are not really Christians or Jews. If they are not, it they are pagan or apostate for instance... well then in that case... that is a whole different story.

Such people have no protection in Islam and may be murdered or enslaved by Muslims simply for breathing. Generally speaking, they are offered a chance to convert first, usually in the form of a threatening letter as that is what the Prophet Muhammad did. Ahmadinejad is very familiar with this sort of letter but I digress.

The significance of stating that "Zionists" are not Jews, that they have no religion, cannot be understated in an Islamic context. By denying Zionists, presumably all Israelis and their allies in America, status as a people of the book Ahmadinejad is denying them protection under Islam and granting all Muslims free reign to slaughter them.

Transcript of the interview courtesy of Memri TV:

August 28, 2007 Clip No. 1558

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Zionists Cause Turmoil in the World to Prevent Europeans from Eradicating Them

Following are excerpts from a press conference by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which aired on the Iranian News Channel on August 28, 2007:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: We declare that since our [nuclear] project is for peaceful purposes, we are prepared to provide – under IAEA supervision – technical and engineering services to the other IAEA members. We can guide them, so that other too can use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

[...]

Journalist: What would you say to people who are concerned that a possible attack [against Iran] would be very bad? Thank you.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: In my opinion, the premise of this analysis is wrong. In Iran, there are hardly any such people. Even if there are any such people, they are so few that they drown in the sea of Iranian people. If you want to see how happy the Iranians are, take a look at Iran's streets, places of entertainment, and centers of tourism. The Iranian people is not worried about such things at all. The reason is clear: The Iranian people relies upon its faith, its unity, its national capabilities, and its culture, and therefore, it is invincible.

[...]

I state categorically that there is no chance that America will make such a decision, and that even if it does, it will be incapable of carrying it out. The reasons are so clear that they don't need to be mentioned.

[...]

Journalist: You said that Iran does not anticipate a military attack, but Mr. Sarkozy, the president of France, indicated yesterday that if Iran continues its nuclear project, there is a possibility of a military attack. What do you think about this?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: According to our assessment, because he is new, he is trying to position himself in the world, but he hasn't yet tested the waters. In other words, he may not be aware of the significance of what he said. Besides, in our opinion, he said this for domestic consumption. Politically, this is too trivial for us to even think about.

[....]

A government functions like a football team. It is team work. The president is the coach of the team. No player who enters the field can say he must remain there the entire 90 minutes. The coach examines the game, and changes the formation. This is because the team has to win. Pay attention. The group has to achieve several targets. The coach sees this, and at that moment, he can change the formation and even the tactics, but the goal and the path remain the same. He may change the tactics and the formation, and may take out some of the players from the field, and bring on new ones instead.

[...]

In principle, the Zionists lack any religion. They are lying when they say that they are Jews. They have no religion. They are against religion, because religion means friendship, brotherhood, peace, and justice. Religion means to respect the divine prophets. Note this. Religion means to respect others. It means friendship between peoples. Note that wherever the Zionists are, there is war, and wherever there is war, they are the ones behind it. As a matter of fact, if you examine American society, you will see that they oppress the Americans. They oppress the Europeans, even though they are a minority. They infiltrated in an organized manner... No more than 10,000 of them are part of the organization, and the rest just follow them. But they have become a powerful underground political party, which has the money and the media at its disposal. They do not want friendship and peace between peoples. They do not want there to be friendship between the Swedish government and other countries. This way they get rid of their complexes about the Prophet of Islam and all other prophets. As you know, an affront to the Prophet of Islam means an affront to all the divine prophets, because the Prophet of Islam is the Seal of the Prophets.

[...]

Therefore, because the Zionists have no religion, I strongly suspect that they are behind [the Swedish cartoon], and that they want to embarrass the Europeans, and make the European governments face a challenge. They want to instigate a war, because war is the essence of their existence. If the world is calm, the people of Europe the Germans... If the world is calm, they will eradicate the Zionists. I'm convinced of this. Do you know how many messages I get from Germans every day? They have an aversion to the Zionists. The Zionists humiliated the German people very much. But the Zionists are in control. The moment the world is calm and people can express their views, you will see that they will drive them out of Europe. The people of Europe themselves will drive them out. The [Zionists] do not want such a thing to happen, and that's why they instigate new turmoil every day.

[...]

When Mr. Putin met me in Bishkek, he told me that they would complete the reactor in Bushehr as planned. In opinion, Mr. Putin and the Russian government are standing by these statements, and they will complete the reactor. We are not worried about this.

See Gates of Vienna for Coverage of 9-11 in Brussels

2007-09-14T16:37:00.001-07:00

Gates of Vienna has excellent coverage of the death of freedom of speech in Europe. GoV's coverage is depthful and considerate. My very brief take is not.

EU and Belgium's attitude on 9-11:

1. Organized protest against radical Islam is forbidden. All protesters will be arrested (One woman was even arrested on her way to the protest for... get this...carrying an Israeli flag. No Joke!).

2. Disorganized 9-11 Troofers are allowed to protest in favor of a theory that George Bush and the Jews took down the towers.

Jihad means interal struggle...

2007-09-14T16:03:00.000-07:00

...even when you're caught running around a suburban Detroit park with an AK-47 in camo and own a website praising the murderers of Jewish and Christian children.

Here is Dr. Ali Zorkot's web page: http://www.zorkot.org/Houssein2.html

Here is a Zorkot web page devoted to Hizbollah: http://www.zorkot.org/JabalAmel.html

Here's the latest news on this would-be terrorist: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296865,00.html

Kent State Jihad Still Going Strong

2007-09-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

Kent State Professor Julio Pino is back at and this time it is worse. He is praising the 9-11 suicide bombers.

“The Muslim world is poetic, and the greatest of all epics is martyrdom.“Laa ‘ilaaha ‘illallahu (There is none worthy of worship but Allah) must be on his dying lips that he may enter Paradise. Not by chance did Mohammed Atta’s ‘Instructions for the Final Night’ counsel him [sic] make these his last words before crashing into the World Trade Center. Amen.” - Julio Pino

See Jawa for more info.

Cute Palestinian Toys

2007-09-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

Thoughts

2007-09-11T18:05:00.001-07:00

This is what the "moderate" Muslims at the Islamic Thinkers Society have to say today. HT: Atlas

Six pipelines were destroyed in Mexico simultaneously while a truck bomb killed at least 37.

The Muslim Student Association, the group that founded a couple of organizations that went on to become un-indicted co-conspirators in terrorist funding, has been posting videos on YouTube. In these videos, one of its leaders harasses women and Jews with glee. See here.

Urban Infidel showed us what the Muslim Day Parade in New York was all about.

Meanwhile, countless protesters in Brussels were arrested for showing their solidarity with America on this day, while 9-11 troofers were alloud to march in peace. See Gates of Vienna for details.

On this day in 1683, Jan Sobieski III arrived in Vienna. The following morning at 4:00 AM Sobieski lead his Hussars into the Turkish horde crushing them, thus preventing Islam from exterminating the west.

One Month

2007-08-06T17:33:00.001-07:00

American Muslims in Oakland assassinate Chauncey Bailey a prominent local journalist who dares to report on their criminal behavior.

Yousef Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed, two Muslim Arab students are arrested with a trunk filled with explosives in South Carolina.

Nuradin Abdi, a Somali Immigrant admitted to working with Al Qaeda in an attempt to blow up a mall in Columbus Ohio.

One of the Virginia Paint Ball Jihadists recieved 10 years for lying under oath to promote terrorism.

Daniel Aljughaifi, aka Abu Mohammed or Daniel Joseph Maldonado as the press likes to call him, an American from Massachusetts, was convicted of training with Al Qaeda in order to genocide Muslims (the wrong type) in Somalia.

Jilani Humayun, a Pakistani national was arrested for trying to ship hi-tech weapons systems information to the Islamist regime in Malaysia.

Muhammad Salah, a prominent Chicago Muslim was sentenced to 21 months in prison for lying under oath to cover for Muslim American fund raising for Hamas in connection with the murder of an Israeli-American teenager.

This list took ten minutes to come up with. Given an hour, I bet I could triple it.

YouTube Promotes Jew Killing

2007-07-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

"I have no problem watching that head-chopping video (of Daniel Pearl) and eating popcorn and going to Dairy Queen when it's over In šaʾ Allāh."

See the Sick Muslim Bastard Video Here

Flag this video as Hate speech and get it off the internet. God knows if this were a video critical of Jihad it would have been removed by You Tube hours ago.

HT: Atlas

Side note...check out this guy's You Tube profile. He lists "eye poking" as a hobby.

Keith Ellison Demonstrates New Definition of Ass Hat

2007-07-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

This Man is a US Congressman.

"You'll always find this Muslim standing up for your right to be atheists all you want," so says Keith Ellison. What Congressman Ellison forgot to mention is that you'll always find almost every other Muslim standing up for their right to kill you for being an atheist.

I'm not sure which statement is more outrageous, this one or the one where he compares 9/11 to the burning of the Reichstag.

Muslim Public Affairs Council Communications Director Linked to Supporting Osama

2007-06-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

Steven Emerson has made some startling revelations about Edina Lekovic, a very public face of "Moderate Islam" in America. Check out this Daniel Pipes post for all the details and be sure to watch the video of Emerson taking on Lekovic found on Pipes' site.

Federal Prosecutors Name National Islamic Groups "Unindicted Co-conspirators"

2007-06-05T15:46:00.001-07:00

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Islamic Trust have been linked once again to funding terror.

HT - Atlas

Gwen Moore a traitor?

2007-05-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

That's what some bloggers are saying about Wisconsin's fine Congresswoman from Milwaukee. This is a photo of her meeting with a top Muslim Brotherhood official.

I would call her a Dhimmi but that's a term that applies to people conquered by Muslims who do not convert. I pretty sure the Gentle Lady would convert in a heartbeat if Islam became the dominant in our region. After all, her son already has the name.

HT - Atlas

Should I call someone or is that being racist?

2007-05-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

A lot of bloggers have already commented on this New York Post article but it is just so damned important that I feel compelled to spout off too, even if I am a day late.

A group of Jihadis walk into a Circuit City with a tape that clearly shows them to be militant Muslims planning a terrorist attack on Americans. Thankfully, the clerk called 911, the FBI got involved, and the Jihadis' plan was foiled without anyone being hurt. Unfortunately, the clerk came close to not making that call. Why? Because he thought it would be racist to report Islamic terrorism. Political correctness and multicultural brainwashing spoon fed by CAIR and their media allies are putting this country at risk plain and simple.

The reaction of the clerk should have been to immediately call the authorities. Thank God he eventually came to that conclusion. It should not have been, "Dude, I just saw some really weird shit. I don't know what to do. Should I call someone or is that being racist?" That is completely screwed up thinking but I can't blame the guy.

The media is quick to label actions like calling the police about a group of militant Muslims as Racist and Islamophobic. CAIR is even quicker to file lawsuit.

It is the responsibility of our government to stop this trend now. The first step is passing legislation to protect the John Does who reported on the Flying Imams and future brave citizens that stand up against Islamofacists. The second step should be cutting all relations with groups like CAIR. We must delegitimize these groups and their message.

Already law enforcement officers face "stop snitching" campaigns in black ghettos across America. In Milwaukee, even local elected official such as Mike McGee Jr. take part in and sometimes lead these campaigns. We can't let CAIR's campaign of suing anybody who reports on terrorist activities have the same effect on terrorism investigations that the stop snitching movement has had on the prosecution of violent and drug crimes.

Turkish court gives life sentence in honor killing case

2007-05-15T05:39:00.000-07:00

It's encouraging to see Turkey trying.

A court in Bursa handed down a life sentence for 60-year-old Arif Ç. who stabbed his 22-year-old daughter Sevil Ö. 27 times when she returned home after running away from her husband and two children.

On Wednesday Arif Ç. was sentenced by the Bursa 2nd Criminal Court to life imprisonment in solitary confinement with no possibility of parole for the crime of premeditated murder. Arif Ç claimed before the ruling that his daughter had committed suicide, saying she had suffered from psychological problems. Declaring that his daughter returned home 13 days after she had fled, Arif Ç. said: “Just when we went to make a missing person report at the gendarmerie my daughter stabbed herself. I am innocent.”

But the court assembly, considering the forensic report and the impossibility that a person could stab himself or herself in the back, did not rule in his favor.

"They say that I converted to Christianity or that I'm a homosexual"

2007-05-15T05:24:00.000-07:00

From an article in Slate about an Egyptian Blogger:

They say that I converted to Christianity or that I'm a homosexual, neither of which can be tolerated in the Egyptian culture (and neither of which are true).

Now I'm getting information that the government's next step will be to send me to jail on charges of espionage and homosexuality.

Charges of homosexuality...It's nice to know that Islamist Egypt still respects freedom of speech enough to make up false charges of 'real' crimes in order to arrest and gulag political dissidents.

ANALYSIS OF THE MADISON MUSLIM ANTI-TERROR PACT

2007-05-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

The Madison Muslim Dawa Council has an anti-terror pact up on their State Journal hosted web page. Sounds encouraging doesn’t it. Unfortunately, a brief analysis reveals that it is quite hollow.

MADISON MUSLIM ANTI-TERROR PACT
Ouati Khwamae Ali(Web-designer)
04/29/2006

In lieu of the recent announcement of an "imminent" act of terror, the Madison Muslim Dawa Circle are initiating a grass roots movement against terrorism in any form.

Place imminent in quotes to make it suspect. A jab at homeland security perhaps?

Many Muslims were counted among the victims of September 11, 2001 and it should not be forgotten, that a large number of Muslims have fallen in the unconstitutional "war on terror" that has followed.

Equate the war on terror with terrorism itself and delegitimize it as unconstitutional. Americans are the real aggressors aren’t they…

It should be equally noted that the Muslims and Islam have been made the victims of an over all misrepresentation.

I would agree, the mainstream media has misrepresented Islam as a peaceful religion.

In order to avert any further misunderstanding, we feel that it is important to make our condemnation of terrorism clear.

Good. To make it really clear you should have come out and said it in paragraph one but we know that attacking America is more important so we’ll be happy to accept it here.

We therefore state that terrorism is forbidden in Islam. As Allah says in the Quran that "If one person is killed unjustly then it is as if all of humanity had been killed," (Meaning of Quran 5:32.)The path of Islam naturally rejects the premise of terrorism by enjoining just behavior and forbidding injustice. Thusly; All acts of terror whether suicide bombing or any other indiscriminate act of terror are outside the limits of Islam.

Terrorism is forbidden in Islam? You condemn the acts, and I admit that is a good step, but are you ready to condemn the men? Will you condemn Palestinian suicide bombers or the six punks who tried to shoot up Fort Dix last week as non-Muslims or even bad Muslims? I doubt it.

And then there is this oft (mis)quoted Quranic verse, “Allah says in the Quran that, ‘If one person is killed unjustly then it is as if all of humanity had been killed.’”

No he doesn’t. Karen Armstrong says that. Allah says this:

Quran 005.032
YUSUFALI: On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.
PICKTHAL: For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth.
SHAKIR: For this reason did We prescribe to the children of Israel that whoever slays a soul, unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the land, it is as though he slew all men; and whoever keeps it alive, it is as though he kept alive all men; and certainly Our messengers came to them with clear arguments, but even after that many of them certainly act extravagantly in the land.

Allah was talking to the Jews, not Muslims. Furthermore, what is this business about “corruption of the Earth” and acting “extravagantly in the land?” Aren’t these verses used by Islamist Imams that believe the very presence of Jews in the Holy Land constitutes corruption of the Earth to promote Jihad against Jews?

And what do you make of the Verse of the Sword, Quran Verse 9:5? In his Sermon for the Feast of Sacrifice, Osama bin Laden said of the verse, “Praise be to Allah who revealed the verse of the Sword to his servant and messenger [the Prophet Muhammad], in order to establish truth and abolish falsehood.” The celebrated verse is used by terrorists as a Quranic justification of their actions all the time. Here it is. It’s quite straight forward. Do you condemn this verse? Do you condemn those who read it as support for killing non-Muslims?

Quran 009.005
YUSUFALI: But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
PICKTHAL: Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
SHAKIR: So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

Furthermore, as Weapons of Mass Destruction are an indiscriminate form of warfare, any entity that uses or condones them, must equally be held accountable. The use of such indiscriminate weaponry is surely equatable to an act of terrorism and stands as an injustice deserving of criminal prosecution no matter who uses such methods.

Another thinly veiled attack on the US government and military.

Finally we hold firm to a "no tolerance" policy regarding any signs of terrorism within our community. Terrorism itself is criminal and unacceptable.

Good. This is what Americans want and need to hear from you. Erase the rest of this “pact,” leave these two sentences and we’re set.

We stand against terrorism in hopes to protect our families, friends and neighbors, while at the same time hoping to promote a proper understanding of Islam and the Muslims in this difficult time.

Good.

Also it is our hope that this document will further the understanding that true Muslims seek to be a positive factor within the community by helping to improve the circumstances of everyone in the community regardless of race, gender or religion.

Multi-cultural gobbledygook.

This Anti-Terror Pact stands as a formal statement represented by Madison Muslim Dawa Circle and Muslim Student Association (MSA), as well as many of the individual Muslims in Madison who hold firmly that terrorism is forbidden. We will do everything in our means to stop any threat of terror "imminent" or not.

We shall see.

Amir Salih Erschen

The Quoted verses from the Quran are from the Uinversity of Southern California Compendium of Muslim Texts

So, how does this anti-terror pact hold up? Actually pretty well. I count 5 condemnations of terror and only three attacks on America, althoguh there are also two "Islam is the victim" cards pulled, one misquoting of the Quran, and one line of utter PC BS.

Apparantly Christianity is Haram but Islam is Kosher at US Airports

2007-05-10T16:28:00.000-07:00

How come this is ok, but this is not?

UW Madison MSA promotes Imam Wahaj Event

2007-05-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

A Muslim Imam is labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by the prosecuting U.S. Attorney, testifies as a character witness for convicted Muslim terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman, and threatens America with demise unless it becomes a Muslim nation. As a Muslim American parent, do you: A. speak out against this Iman to make it clear that he does not represent the view of American Muslims, or B. send your impressionable, college aged child to a one month seminar to learn from him?

Apparently, the answer is B.

The Muslim Student Association at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is currently advertising a month long American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM) program on their (state sponsored, government) webpage.

Prominently featured at the program will be none other then Brooklyn's finest Imam, and supporter of Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman, the 1993 WTC bomber, Siraj Wahaj.

…and what might impressionable UW students learn from Wahaj at this month long program? Well here is something he lectured to Muslims in 1991:

"…And he [Allah] declared 'Whoever is at war with my friends, I declare war on them.' Who is a friend of Allah? [He chants a passage in Arabic] Allah. Your true friend is Allah, the messenger, and those who believe. Americans and Canadians. Hear it well. Hear what I'm telling you well. The Americans are not your friends, hear what I'm telling you, hear it well. The Canadians are not your friends, hear what I'm telling you, hear it well. The Europeans are not your friends. Your friend is Allah, the Messenger and those who believe. These people will never be satisfied with you until you follow their religion. They will never be satisfied with you…" Source

…and in 2002 he told the Kashmir Telegraph, "if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional govt. with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, he said, we would elect our own emir and give allegiance to him. Take my word if 8 million Muslims unite in
America, the country will come to us."

...and then there is this gem from the Wall Street Journal, "In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam." In the same article, Imam Wahaj shares his opinion on all the adulterers out there, "If Allah says stone them to death, through the Prophet Muhammad, then you stone them to death, because it's the obedience of Allah and his messenger -- nothing personal."

...and finally for all those Madistani liberals who constantly profess their love for homosexuals but who can't seem to realize that Islam is extremely anti-gay, Imam Wahaj, in reference to the supposed opening of a gay mosque in Toronto stated, "I would burn down the masjid myself, if I could." Source

So lets get this straight, Wahaj:

1. Is said to have been a co-conspirator behind the 1993 WTC attack.
2. Was a close friend and supporter of a convicted terrorist.
3. Seeks the collapse of American Democracy and the rise of an Islamic Caliphate right here in the US.
4. Thinks we should stone adulterers.
5. Would personally burn down the mosques of gay Muslims.

Sending our Muslim kids to learn from this guy is a great idea. Thanks UW for supporting the cause of this Jihadi.

Julio Pino Web Archives

2007-03-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

MarkedManner has some great updates on Professor Pino's Jihad. He includes this link to archives of Pino's site.

This is an example of of the images glorified on Pino's site.

Pino's website is down

2007-03-03T11:50:00.000-08:00

Well, it took several days but it appears that Professor Pino has wised up. His website: global-war.bloghi.com now redirects to http://bloghi.com/. This morning I was still able to read his filth but I cannot find it now. I sure hope some blogger out there saved some screen shots or at least the text of his articles. I now wish I had.

Kaplan vs. Pino

2007-03-03T11:28:00.000-08:00

Ann Althouse has as usual done a fine job covering the Leonard Kaplan Hmong Comments Story. Take this post. In Kaplan's case, the main stream media was quick to find fault with him for discussing stereotypes about Hmong immigrants in one of his classes even though the accusation against Kaplan had come from a student who hadn't even been in his class that day.

Compare the media's coverage of Kaplan to its coverage of Julio Pino. According to Mike Adams, Pino runs a website devoted to Sunni jihad. On his website, Pino promotes Al Qaeda, praises the murder of Shiite children, displays a photo of one of the 9-11 hijackers as if he were some kind of hero, and so much more. Thus far, the media has been shy about this story. Fox News has managed to touch on the story a bit during breaks between Anna Nicole stories but other wise a few articles like this from the Cleveland Plain Dealer are all we see.

So what have I learned from this comparison?

As far as our taxpayer supported Universities are concerned:

* Open discussion of stereotypes in our society = Verboten

* Encouraging Muslims to kill Americans = Protected Academic Freedom

Police stop Druze Honor Killing

2007-03-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

This is interesting. A Druze girl wants to participate in a beauty pageant. Her relatives feel that they must kill her to stop her because doing so would bring dishonor on the family.

My question is, had this honor killing taken place, would it have counted as an honor killing by Muslims or would it count as one of those honor killings that we hear about from the left, the ones carried out frequently by other religions? The Druze consider themselves Muslim, however, most other Muslims do not agree, particularly when they take into account Druze support for the pig and monkey state of Israel.

Minnesotastan Update

2007-03-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

Somali cab drivers are refusing to obey secular law.

Muslim workers are suing for the right to break 5 times a day on the company's dime.

Kent State's Jihad

2007-03-02T06:59:00.000-08:00

If you haven't read up on Julio Pino yet, please do so: here.

...and of course, you'll want to look at Julio's blog.

Two things that I find interesting about his post that I haven't seen mentioned yet:

1. The fact that he shows such glee at the death of Shia women and children (I know that Wahabis consider the Shia to be polytheists and worthy of death but they're usually more tactful, at least in the west, about expressing that).

2. He's still posting! When I first read through his blog on Tuesday, I would have bet money that he would take his blog down within a couple of hours. He hasn't, in fact he seems to be using this as an opportunity to bring more attention to his goals of killing Americans, Shia, Jews, puppy dogs, muppets, ice cream men etc... (Ok, I made up those last three but still, this guy seems to really like seeing innocent people killed).

Looks like we've got another Ward Barrett on our hands who will milk this publicity for all it's worth, probably get suspended form teaching, with full pay, sue the University and make a bundle.

Good News From Minnesota

2007-02-25T09:27:00.000-08:00

Via Malkin, Jawa, and Pipes...

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Commission refuses to put on the Zunnar for Somali cab drivers. For several months the drivers, via the Muslim Brotherhood, have been demanding the right to refuse to transport anyone to Minneapolis Airport who might be carrying booze or a seeing-eye dog. According to Jawa, the commission will not be allowing the Muslims to enforce Sharia Law in their cabs for the time being.

For the full story see Pipe's ongoing posting here.

St. Louis Jihad Update

2007-02-24T21:11:00.000-08:00

Mousa M. Abuelawi, the Muslim who was preparing for war in St. Charles, Missouri, was indicted today. I'm still waiting for the FBI to tell us if this war he was planning was jihad or just some gang war. If it wasn't a jihad, I'd sure like to know just how Mousa planned to put all those land mines and hand grenades to use. I'm also waiting to see if this story ever gets the national media attention it deserves.

Honor Killings in the New Year

2007-02-24T20:41:00.000-08:00

Below are listed just a handful of stories about honor killings that have taken place so far this year. Some of them offer glimmers of hope for Muslim women, but sadly most do not.

Pakistani Minister Zilla Huma Usman was shot through the head for being a female leader in a Muslim nation, because she campaigned for the emancipation of women, and because she did not cover herself to the extent that Muslim law requires.

http://www.americandaily.com/article/17788

Hamda Abu-Ghanem’s bullet filled body was discovered in her parents home in Israel. She was likely killed by her brother and cousin for bringing dishonor on the Muslim family by seeking help from battered women’s shelter. She was the eighth woman to dishonor the Abu-Ghanem family and meet such a fate in the past six and a half years.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/829395.html

A 19 year-old Jordanian boy was given a reduced sentence of just three months for slaughtering his 22 year-old sister after his family requested the charges be dropped. The woman was brutally murdered after her brother learned she may have taken a lover out of wedlock. The boy’s original sentence for the honor killing had been only 6 months.

http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070201-063624-9274r

Dhimmi Ray Hanania of the Chicago Sun News Herald taught us that honor killings are as much a Christian and Jewish phenomenon as they are a Muslim Phenomenon.

http://www.swnewsherald.com/online_content/2007/02/022007rh_honorkill.php

Sixteen year-old Zahra Ezzo was killed by her brother in Damascus because she had allowed herself to be raped.

http://www.aina.org/news/2007021494913.htm

A 17 year-old Turkish girl talked her brother out of fulfilling the hit her family’s elders had put on her.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=66084

Nazanin Fatehi was released from an Iranian Prison where she had spent two years for the unforgivable crime of fighting off rapists. Had she not fought them off she would have been killed for allowing them to rape her.

http://www.leadercall.com/cnhi/leadercall/opinion/local_story_037101057.html?keyword=secondarystory

Two brothers bricked their sister and her lover to death in Multan, Pakistan.

https://www.azcentral.com/my/zage.php?referer=http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0201HonorKilling01-ON.html

The Turkish Daily News reported that 1,806 women where killed as a matter of honor over the past 5 years in Turkey.

http://www.leadercall.com/cnhi/leadercall/opinion/local_story_037101057.html?keyword=secondarystory

A Jordanian father shot his 17 year-old daughter because she may have had sex.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,246712,00.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0701260123jan26,1,1200281.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

The fifth anniversary of Fadime Sahindal’s death passed in Sweden. Fadime, a Kurdish immigrant, had been an outspoken advocate of Muslim women’s rights until her father shot her.

http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/International/nyhetssidor/artikel.asp?ProgramID=2054&Nyheter=&artikel=1158022

An 18 year-old girl was shot in Ramala.

http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Briefs/10371.htm

Turkey did the right thing and sentenced an entire family to life in prison for massacring their 15 year-old daughter who dis-honored them by getting herself raped and even worse, getting pregnant.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=64297

Bloomberg reported that hundreds of honor crimes go unpunished in the UK each year because Police there treat Muslims with “kid gloves.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ato5csz7na1k&refer=home

Safiye Haji Osman escaped certain death from family members for being selfish enough to get raped. She fled Somalia for a women’s shelter in Turkey.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=63895

Meanwhile, 1,500 Somali Muslims in Minneapolis pledged their support for the regime that wanted Osman dead.
http://bsimmons.wordpress.com/2006/12/31/1500-in-minneapolis-protest-ouster-of-sharia-government-in-somalia/

Turkey’s Interior Minister stressed the need for more women’s shelters to reduce the number of honor killings in the country.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=63640

The Canadian Supreme Court tore of the Zunnar and ruled that honor killings are no excuse for murder in the maple leaf country.

http://www.arabamericannews.com/newsarticle.php?articleid=7217

Coming to a College Campus Near You: Jihad?

2007-02-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

The University of Wisconsin makes headlines every time 911 Conspiracy Nut Kevin Barrett opens his mouth but there is a lot more going on there that flies under the radar.

Take tonight for example. The University of Wisconsin Middle East Studies Program is hosting Ali Abunimah at the State Historical Society. Abunimah is an anti-Israeli activist, Vice president of the Arab American Action Network, and the founder of the radical "Electronic Intifada." Abunimah is not some scary terrorist but he certainly exposes a radical view that is already all to prevalent on the UW campus.

Much more disturbing however is this advertisement on the UW's Muslim Student Association's web site. The advertisement reads:

The 1st Annual Tazkiyah Retreat: Living Life As A Traveler
When: February 23rd - 25th
Where: Camp Minikani, Amy Belle Lake Hubertus, WI
Cost: $55 (Includes food and lodging)
What: Confirmed Speakers Include:
Shaikh Muhammad Faqih (Al Maghrib Institute and IIOC - Orange County, California)
Amir Abdel Malik (Masjid Al-Islam - Oakland, California)
Br. Arif Hussain (Young Muslims - Chicago, Illinois)
AND MORE!

Do you feel as if you need to get away from the distractions of your daily life?...
To purify yourself?...
Renew your Iman?...
Get closer to Allah (SWT)?...

BUT... you also want to have a little fun?...
Build new relationships?...
Increase your knowledge?...
And... remind yourself of your sole purpose in this life?

This Tazkiyah retreat aims to help young Muslims achieve these goals.

If you answered yes to the at least three of the questions above then complete
the application today for the weekend you'll never forget! www.ismonline.org

This Tazkiyah Retreat includes:
- Talks (Featuring: Sh. Amir AbdulMalik Sh. Muhammad Faqih and Arif Hussain)
- Interactive workshops
- Discussions
- Qiyams
- Group learning projects
- Sports and other activities throughout the weekend

Youth applying must be ages 15 and up...
Space is limited: Must submit application by Feb 15th.

For more information visit:
www.ismonline.org

Any Questions?
E-mail: Br. Aatif Aatif@ismonline.org
Sr. Yasmin Yasmin@ismonline.org

Why am I so disturbed by an ad for Muslim Youth Retreat? Take a look at the speakers that will be attending: Shaikh Muhammad Faqih, Amir Abdel Malik, and Arif Hussain.

Shaikh Muhammed Faqih is an instructor at the Al Maghrib Institute. According to his bio, Faqih "completed a B.A. in Islamic Studies from the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences (IIAS) in America in Fairfax, VA, and graduated in Quran Memorization and Recitation from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia." Notice that Faqih doesn't list the name of the school he attended in Jeddah. Maybe that's because the school was King Abdulaziz University, the same school where Osama studied the Quran to justify his Jihad against the atheist Soviets and then the West.

Some, if not all of his teachers in Jeddah would have been Muslim Brotherhood members and all were the strictest of Wahabis - you know, those scary Muslims that our government and the media keep telling us only make up a small minority in the Muslim World...Well guess what, those scary Wahabis are here, in Wisconsin and they are the role models that our Muslim Children turn to for guidance.

While we're on the subject of schools, perhaps I should mention that the IIAS in Virginia wasn't exactly the type of college that encourages the free exchange of ideas. The Saudi government used the institution to distribute anti-American hate literature in the US. Women at the IIAS had to enter through separate back doors, were forced to attend classes through closed circuit television, and were only granted 4 hours a week of library time. I can understand that last bit. It just wouldn't do to have a bunch of Muslim harlots tempting and distracting the future Imams of America while they try to study their holy book and Hadith.

As for Faqih's current employer, the Al Maghrib institute...well its basic missions are to spread rabid Wahabism, hate against Jews, Holocaust denial, and anti-Americanism. Check out this article from FrontPage Magazine for details.

Amir Abdel Malik is a frequent guest lecturer at MSA events on college campuses across the country. Malik made headlines a couple of years ago with this hate filled speech on the University of California - Irvine but his hate for America and Jews runs much deeper.

Discoverthenetwork.org credits Malik with the following statements:

Palestinian mothers are supporting their children who are suicide bombers, saying, 'Go honey, go!' That ain't suicide; that's martyrdom.

The Israelis were 'in-control' of 9-11, (which) was staged to give an excuse to wage war against Muslims around the world.

Sooner or later, today's Muslim students will be the parents of Muslim children. And they should be militants.

The enemies of Islam know that when we come back to power we're gonna check 'em.

In the Speech I linked to above, Malik says the following:

And we have to sacrifice too, while we live here ... in Am-ri-ka. The belly of the beast. The number one imperialist in the world...

But ... let’s call it a state, OK? And then you gonna go get some Uncle Tom Palestinian leaders to fall for this okey-doke. Two-state solution is off the table. No. One state. And check this out! One state ... majority rules. One state ... majority rules.

Us. The Muslims.

Is this the kind of guy we want teaching our Muslim children about their faith?

Arif Hussain is a Chicago based Wahabist. If he is a radical Jihadist, he has flown under the radar thus far so I can't comment much on him. He did sign the now infamous fatwa denouncing Islamic terrorism after the London Bombings, however, that's not necessarily an indication of much. Many of the American Imams who signed that fatwa have since been connected to terrorist organizations or caught on tape advocating terror against Americans and Jews.

I did some digging on some Muslim chat sites and found a few other names of speakers who will be attending this weekend's retreat.

One of them is Yasmin Mogahed, a local Muslim female graduate student. I first noticed Mogahed's name during the Danish cartoon scandal. She was vocal about her opposition to the First Amendment, strongly opposing the publication of the cartoons.

Mogahed's other work seems focus on defending Muslim misogyny. Muslim Feminist Ginan Rauf calls Mogahed's writing, "a thinly disguised assault on women’s equality and a blatant misrepresentation of Western Feminism." Well gee, I sure am glad that Mogahed will be at the retreat to teach cheese head Muslim girls to submit themselves to their men. With all the feminist mumbo-jumbo in Madison I think it's just great to finally inject a little balance.
One final speaker will be Aatif Abdul-Qadeer. Abdul-Qadeer was president of the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine back in 2004 when it was in the news for anti-American, pro-terror rallies.

So basically, we have here a legion of radical wahabists coming to Wisconsin to teach Muslim children about their faith. These Muslims are not members of the so-called "Moderate Muslim Majority" we hear about so often from President Bush and the media. These Muslims are members of a sect who have hi-jacked the faith and who seek to restore it to a hardline 7th century version - a version in which Women must fully submit to their husbands, a version where Jews and Christians must convert, live as Dhimmis, or die, a version where Apostates, Polytheists, and Gays must be slaughtered.

If there is a form of Islam that is compatible with Western values, this is not it. Sadly, as you can see from those who are leading this retreat, the hardline Wahabis are running the show these days. They are the Imams in the mosques, the professors in our schools, and the roll models for Muslim Children at retreats like this one. Did I mention that the retreat is sponsored by the largest Muslim Center in Wisconsin and that it is being advertised on a state website, payed for with state dollars?

St. Louis Jihad

2007-02-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

Does a Muslim man purchasing claymore mines, automatic weapons, and grenades to wage war in a Midwestern city qualify as a news story?

Apparently not since this story has been floating around the net since yesterday morning and still hasn’t been picked up by the AP or any major news sources that I’ve seen.

I have to hand it to law enforcement though. This is the second serious Jihadist in as many months to be apprehended in America’s heartland.

The Afghan Campaign

2006-12-14T07:36:00.001-08:00

Steven Pressfield pulls no punches with his realistically fictional account of Alexander the Great’s infamous Afghan campaign. Campaign utilizes an interesting literary style by incorporating modern military terms like enemy noncombatant into the ancient style of warfare of Alexander’s Macedonians. That combined with his expert descriptions of Afghan culture and terrain periodically trick the reader into thinking that he is reading about NATO troops storming a hovel in Kandahar. The whole thing is very effective.

At other times Campaign reads like cheap military pulp. As I said, Pressfield pulls no punches. This is a carnal telling of a brutal story but it not without message.

Pressfield toys with the modern notions of morality that have been common in military fiction since WWI and prerequisite since Vietnam. What effect is slaughtering civilians having on the souls of Alexander’s troops? Can they ever return home and be reintegrated into society?

These questions add to the story but more often then not Pressfield discards them to make a more focused point about fighting Guerillas, specifically Afghan Guerillas. The conclusions that I take from the book are that Afghan culture has changed little in 3,500 years and that the rules for fighting against Afghan Guerillas are the same now as they were then – You must fight on their terms, their way. It is brutal. It is contrary to our morality and code of honor but on their turf it is their code that matters. Do not underestimate the depth of that code. Ultimately, when the hearts and minds of the population cannot be won by carrots and they instead choose to support an active insurgency, a military commander must be willing to terrify them into submission through brute force on a massive scale.

Will NATO need to conform to Afghan codes of warfare and levels of brutality to win there? Is it even possible for anyone to win in Afghanistan long term? Am I reading too much into a fictional piece of Literature?

Travel to Asia

2006-12-14T07:17:00.000-08:00

I'll be sojourning to Asia shortly but promise to get this blog fully up and running the way I would like it to be when I return in the New Year.

"Moderate" Cleric speaks out againt Talib Shareef

2006-12-11T18:36:00.000-08:00

I am comforted by Rockford Iman Shpendim Nadzaku’s proclamation that Talib Shareef was acting alone when he allegedly plotted to slaughter families and children in Rockford and that he has nothing to do with the Rockford Muslim community despite his 7 years living as a Muslim in the area and the fact that he is a son of a local Nation of Islam member.

I am less comforted by Iman Nadzaku’s past statements. Nadzaku, the “moderate” spiritual leader of Rockford’s growing Muslim community has been an adamant opponent to free speech in the past. Commentator Scott Richert sums it up in an essay entitled What Lies Beneath. According to Richert, Nadzaku the moderate was quoted in the Rockford Register Star in 2004 stating, “the publications, (Dannish Cartoons of Muhammad), far from being an example of Constitutionally protected free speech, actually violate fundamental principles of American law.” He argued that the cartoons constituted “fighting talk,” and should be prohibited.

I skeptically accept Nadzaku’s claims that he is indeed a moderate, however, it is important to recognize that even so called moderate Islam is incompatible with American beliefs in liberty and freedom of speech and expression.

Midwest Jihad?

2006-12-10T20:43:00.000-08:00

The FBI affidavit filed against Rockford Jihadist Talib Abu Salam Ibn Shareef is a great read. I find Shareef’s words like the following to be disturbing yet almost entertaining in a “could be found in a John Singleton joint” kind of way. This is perhaps the most interesting line in the affidavit:

I’m ready man, these Kafirs don’t give a damn about us, niggers don’t care what happens to the Umma, about sisters getting raped, about brothers losing their (UI). They don’t care, man. All they care about is (UI)…I probably would have eventually ended up just stabbing the shit outta some Jews or something. Just stabbing them niggers with a steak knife.

Jihad is nothing new in the Midwest. It’s been alive and well at least since Zulfiqar Ali Shah arrived to serve as the spiritual leader for the Islamic Society of Milwaukee (he’d lost his previous job as a fundraiser for an Islamist charity when the Treasury Department shut it down for funneling money to terrorists). Hopefully words like Shareef’s will wake up a few folks to the growing presence of Jihadists in the upper Midwest.

Facinating study from Turkey on the lack of rights of its rural women

2006-12-10T20:09:00.000-08:00

Some hi-lights from the study conducted by the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Center for Women's Issues as reported in the Turkish Daily News:

80% of rural Turkish women are illiterate

16% had been traded like cattle for another woman

43% had born children before the age of 18

30% married before the age of 15

71% married by the age of 19

44% had given birth to 6 or more children

84.2% hadn’t graduated from primary school

99.6% hadn’t graduated from secondary school

45% live with their mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law or married children (perhaps because their husbands said, “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you” and threw them out into the street without any support?)

6.4% said there had been an honor killing in their area

Tell me again, why is this culture equal to American culture?

Read it All

Palestinian Woman Killed by Family Member for Honor

2006-12-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

From the Jerusalem Post...

A woman in her thirties was gunned down near the entrance to her house in the Sharon town of Kafr Kasem late Monday evening in what police were describing as yet another "family honor killing."

Click here for the full text

Inside the Kingdom

2006-12-06T23:30:00.001-08:00

"I have lived in the Bin Ladin clan. I have analyzed the workings of Saudi society and I fear for the future of the free world. My fear and outrage is based on my conviction that a large majority of Saudis support the extremist ideas of Osama Bin Ladin and that the Bin Ladins and the Saudi Royal Family continue to operate hand in hand even if their relations are sometimes too intricate for their convergent convictions to be apparent."

--- Carmen Bin Ladin
Inside the Kingom

I recently finished Carmen Bin Ladin's autobiography, Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia. It's is a deeply tragic tale of a Swiss-Persian woman's long romance with Islam Bin Ladin, one of the more powerful of Osama's 21 brothers. I would immediately like to go out, buy twenty copies, and begin distributing them to all the cultural relativist feminists I meet.

Inside the Kingdom's selling point is that it provides a profoundly personal insight into the family, though clan is a better word, of the world's foremost terrorist. Indeed it even provides a few interesting anecdotes about Osama himself.

For instance, at a clan getaway to the Red Sea one sweltering summer day in the late 70's, Carmen sits with Osama's wife and baby son. As Osama's infant suffers severely from dehydration, Carmen asks Osama's wife why she is trying to feed water to her child from a metal spoon. Why not just give the child a bottle? The mother replies that Osama will not have his son raised with western practices. Even as the mother weeps and Carmen has her husband plead with Osama to let his child sip from a bottle, Osama does not budge. He would rather see his child, even his male child die than take a drink from a western made rubber tit.

The real power behind Inside the Kingdom, however, comes from Carmen's ability to express the love shared by her and her husband Islam and the tragedy of losing that love to medieval Bedouin culture and Wahabi doctrine. Inside the Kingdom is as Carmen describes it, a "Saudi Fairytale." It opens with romantic stories of Islam's princely courtship of Carmen, their first years together attending UCLA, and the free, Western lifestyle they cultivate their relationship under.

The story takes a dramatic turn when Carmen, a native of Switzerland, first sets foot onto Saudi sand for her wedding to Islam. From that point on she becomes nothing more than chattel in the eyes of the Bin Ladin men and women. In Saudi Arabia it turns out, even the extreme levels of wealth and power held by her husband and the Bin Ladin clan cannot save her from the prison of her gender.

As Inside the Kingdom develops the reader slowly watches Carmen's tragedy unfolding. This happens gradually for while Carmen is viewed as her husband's property outside the home, forced to wear the abaya, forbidden to speak to or be seen by men, unable to drive, shop, read, hold an opinion, etc…, she is able to set up her own little version of the west within her home compound. Carmen builds a library of forbidden books, invites foreign dignitaries and businessmen over for Tennis and black market beer, and focuses proudly on little triumphs like getting her Ethiopian driver to acknowledge her voice.

As her outward freedoms are completely stripped, she takes greater and greater refuge in these tiny victories within her own home. Getting her Ethiopian and Sudanese servants to respond to her voice when she asks them to mop up her terrace or to drive her to a relative's house seems to be the focus of several years of Carmen's efforts. In Saudi Arabia even the wife of a Bin Ladin, a clan second only to the al Saud princes, is inferior to her male servants. Moreover, Saudi women are forbidden from having their voices heard by any men that are not their husband or a blood relative. Carmen's struggle with her slave like male servants to control the most mundane responsibilities of her home is heartrending but it is enough for her to subsist intellectually and emotionally without slipping into the deep depression that must be a Saudi woman's only true companion.

Coupled with this is Carmen's hope that Saudi society will liberalize with time and begin to offer more modern freedoms to its women. Unfortunately, that dream ends for Carmen with the Iranian Revolution of 1979 when the Saudi Royals, concerned about the potential of a conservative Muslim revolt in their own lands, turn back the clock on liberalizing the nation to approximately 780 AD. At the same time that Carmen finds her hopes for a more open Saudi Arabia shattered, her husband Islam begins to grow ever more traditional and paranoid.

With time, Islam will become more like his many brothers demanding ever greater restrictions on Carmen and deciding that like other Saudi men, he too should hold more than one woman as his property. Their long affair that started as such a true romance ends in 1988 when Carmen and Islam separate. He later signs a death warrant for Carmen by accusing her of adultery. Carmen now faces extradition to Saudi Arabia if she steps foot inside a Muslim country. Once there, she will not be allowed to defend herself and would likely face execution.

The status of women in Saudi Arabia is an embarrassment to humanity yet so often I hear blanket statements from acquaintances and colleagues like, "you can't compare cultures," "cultural comparisons are subjective and therefore valueless," or "as an American man you shouldn't form opinions about other cultures." Most, if not all of these cultural relativists also consider themselves to be feminists. I just don't get it. I simply cannot accept the concept that Saudi culture is equal to my own in the face of the damning evidence so bravely provided by Carmen Bin Ladin. To these cultural relativists I now have my own blanket statement to share, "You are not a feminist, nor do you support women's equality in any real sense if you think that Saudi Culture is equal to American Culture…period."

Introduction

2006-12-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

I begin this blog in large part because most of my friends and family have grown quite exhausted with daily discussion of my foremost intellectual preoccupation - Islam. Who can blame them? It is not a happy subject. A forthright discussion of modern Islam is necessarily grim, oft disturbing, and if it is to be honest, manifestly un-PC.

In my community of Madison, Wisconsin, political correctness is the orthodoxy de jour. If one is heard uttering words like Muslim, Koran, or Jihad aloud in the wrong coffee house or watering hole, they will often be met with a glare of shock or a stern frown. In fact any public discourse focusing critically on Islam, or any religion save Christianity for that matter, is strictly taboo.

Although political correctness is thankfully not a virtue to be found amongst most of my friends, many of them would rather not look boorish to the 22 year-old co-ed in the Che Guevara t-shirt and Dolce sunglasses who might be eaves dropping from a near by bar stool. Furthermore, I am beginning to believe that most of my circle of friends and colleagues find depthful discussion of Islam unanimated or even boring. As hard as it is for me to imagine, I must come to accept the empirical evidence around me. Eyes glaze long before lips touch their fourth Johnny Walker when I begin using words like Hadith or Dhimmitude in lively political discussions.

So for the sake of my friends I turn to the internet to bounce my ideas about Islam off of… well, myself, and to occasionally, or perhaps frequently, vent.