Nadal Hasan: Terrorist who was Recruiting al Qaeda

Nadal Hasan wasn’t being recruited by al Qaeda. He was actively seeking membership in that organization himself.  This guy is the worst sort of traitor.  He should be hanged publicly.  There is no doubt that he is guilty.  He should be executed.

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said that he requested the CIA and other intelligence agencies brief the committee on what was known, if anything, about Hasan by the U.S. intelligence community, only to be refused.

In response, Hoekstra issued a document preservation request to four intelligence agencies. The letter, dated November 7th, was sent to directors Dennis Blair (DNI), Robert Mueller (FBI), Lt. Gen Keith Alexander (NSA) and Leon Panetta (CIA).

Hoekstra said he is “absolutely furious” that the house intel committee has been refused an intelligence briefing by the DNI or CIA on Hasan’s attempt to reach out to al Qaeda, as first reported by ABC News.

“This is a law enforcement investigation, in which other agencies—not the CIA—have the lead,” CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in a response to ABC News. ” Any suggestion that the CIA refused to brief Congress is incorrect.”

 

Investigators want to know if Hasan maintained contact with a radical mosque leader from Virginia, Anwar al Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen and runs a web site that promotes jihad around the world against the U.S.

In a blog posting early Monday titled “Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing,” Awlaki calls Hasan a “hero” and a “man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

According to his site, Awlaki served as an imam in Denver, San Diego and Falls Church, Virginia.

The Associated Press reported Sunday that Major Hasan attended the Falls Church mosque when Awlaki was there.

The Telegraph of London reported that Awlaki had made contact with two of the 9/11 hijackers when he was in San Diego.

He denied any knowledge of the hijacking plot and was never charged with any crime. After an intensive investigation by the FBI , Awlaki moved to Yemen.

People who knew or worked with Hasan say he seemed to have gradually become more radical in his disapproval of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) called for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs as to whether Hasan was an Islamic extremist.

“If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have a zero tolerance,” Lieberman told Fox News Sunday.

This is the weakness of our society.  Scum like this guy will use our tolerant culture to commit murder and mayhem.

Investigators are looking into links between suspected Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan and a Virginia mosque that was visited by a radical prayer leader and two of the 9/11 hijackers.

Wahhabism Must Die!

We must realise that Islam is not our enemy.  Muslims are not evil people.  It is this virulent and violent form of Islam started by al Wahhab in the Nejd and spread like a plague across the globe by the Saudis in their oil funded madrassahs that are the enemy.  The House of Saud must fall.  Until it does, we will have these criminals amongst us and their numbers will continue to grow.

Osama bin Laden is but the latest thug to attempt to infect Islam with this disease through terror and violence.  Study the history of Islam.  Specifically, study the history of the Arabian Peninsula.  Study the history of the British Raj of the late 1800s.  Even the Ottomans fought the Wahhabis in the Nejd near the end of their Empire.  There is precedent in history for the events of today.  The Ottomans warred on the Nejd from Egypt in the 1700s and 1800s.  Their fight was against these same followers of the doctrines of the apostate al Wahhab and the ancestors of the current Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Wahhabism must die.  The sooner the better for all of the world– Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

A picture of the culprits.  The criminals of the House of Saud and proliferates of the disease contracted from their forefathers.

Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab ibn Sulaiman ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rashid Al-Tamimi^[1] (1703–1792) (Arabic: محمد بن عبد الوهاب التميمي‎) was an Islamic scholar born in Najd, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Despite never specifically calling for a separate school of Islamic thought, it is from ibn Abd-al Wahhab that the term Wahhabism derives.

He believed that those who practice innovation in Islam such as “taking the graves as a place of worship” which is practiced in Sufism and Shia Islam, are Kufr.^{[2][3][4][citation needed]}

For this reason, Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab destroyed many graves and was also considering destroying the grave of the Prophet Muhammad, out of fear that it might be worshiped.^[2][5]

This was due to the sayings of the prophet. Who said before his death, while on his death bed.

“May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their Prophets”.^[6]

Alliance with the House of Saud

Upon his expulsion from ‘Uyayna, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was invited to settle in neighboring Dir’iyya by its ruler Muhammad ibn Saud in 1740 (1157 AH). Two of Ibn Saud’s brothers had been students of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab in Uyayna, and are said to have played a role in convincing Ibn Saud to take him in. Ibn Saud’s wife is also reported to have been a convert to Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s cause. Upon arriving in Diriyya, a pact was made between Ibn Saud and Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, by which Ibn Saud pledged to implement Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings and enforce them on neighboring towns. Beginning in the last years of the 18th century Ibn Saud and his heirs would spend the next 140 years mounting various military campaigns to seize control of Arabia and its outlying regions, finally taking control of the whole of modern day Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1922. This provided the movement with a state. Vast wealth from oil discovered in the following decades, coupled with Saudi control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, have since provided a base and funding for Salafi missionary activity.

Legacy

Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab considered his movement an effort to purify Islam by returning Muslims to what he believed were the original principles of Islam, as typified by the Salaf and rejecting what he regarded as corruptions introduced by Bid’ah and Shirk.

Although all Muslims pray to one God, ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was keen on emphasizing that no intercession with God was possible without His permission, which He only grants to whom He wills and only to benefit those whom He wills, certainly not the ones who invoke anything or anyone except Him, as these would never be forgiven,^[31]. Specific practices, such as celebrating the birth of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were also deemed as innovations. He is hence considered by his followers to be a great revivalist of Islam, and by his opponents as an innovator and heretic. In either case, ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s impact on Islam has been considerable and significant.

Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab also revived interest in the works of the Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiya.

The followers of this revival (see Salafism) are often called Wahhabis, though most reject the usage of this term on the grounds that ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings were the teachings of The Holy Prophet Muhammad(Peace Be Up on Him), not his own. Thus, most generally refer to themselves as Salafis, while during his lifetime they often referred to themselves muwahhidin (“monotheists”).

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s descendents are known today as “Al al-Shaykh” (“House of the Shaykh”). The family of Al al-Shaykh has included several religious scholars, including the former grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad ibn Ibrahm Al al-Shaykh, who issued the fatwa calling for the abdication of King Saud in 1964. Both the current Saudi minister of justice and the current grand mufti of Saudi Arabia are also descendents of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab.

Commentary

Perceptions of ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab are varied. To many Muslims of the Salafi persuasion, ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab is a significant luminary in the proud tradition of Islamic scholarship. A great number of lay Sunni Muslims regard him as a pious scholar whose interpretations of the Qur’an and Hadith were nevertheless out of step with the mainstream of Islamic thought, and thus discredited.^[32] Some scholars regard him as a pious scholar who called people back to worship of Allah according to the Qur’an and Sunnah. Others, often Sufis, regard him as a one who stopped at nothing to gain power and manipulate others. Natana DeLong-Bas, meanwhile, has recently published a self-described “controversial” book that complicates the idea that ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab contributed to the “militant stance of contemporary jihadism.”^[33]

These are the madmen whom we empower through oil consumption.

Piss on Jesus? Why Not Piss on Mohammad, too?

After all, it’s just a joke.  Right?

Comedian Larry David is under attack from critics who say he pushed the mocking of religion and Christian belief in miracles over the edge in the latest episode of his HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which the cable network defended as “playful.”

On the show’s most recent installment, which aired Sunday, David urinates on a painting of Jesus Christ, causing a woman to believe the painting depicts Jesus crying.

Deal Hudson, author and publisher of InsideCatholic.com, said he doesn’t find any humor in the episode.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” Hudson told Foxnews.com. “Why is it that people are allowed to publicly show that level of disrespect for Christian symbols? If the same thing was done to a symbol of any other religions — Jewish or Muslim — there’d be a huge outcry. It’s simply not a level playing field.”

Hudson said an apology from the show’s producers and writing team should be issued.

“Somebody should [apologize],” Hudson said. “When is it going to stop? When is common sense going to dictate that people realize this willingness of artists to do to Christianity what they would never do to Judaism or Islam?”

In a statement to Foxnews.com, HBO downplayed the controversy.

“Anyone who follows Curb Your Enthusiasm knows that the show is full of parody and satire,” the statement read. “Larry David makes fun of everyone, most especially himself.  The humor is always playful and certainly never malicious.”

Liberals are a funny lot.  Liberals are a cowardly lot.

Sacrilege is fine when it brings with it no dangers.  They’ll piss on the image of Christ.  They’ll display a Bible in a jar of urine.  The average liberal will blaspheme Christians and Christianity to hell and back.  They know that there is no danger in these acts.  Most Christians will have become morally outraged.  They’ll be angry, offended, disgusted by these Liberal behaviors.

But they won’t riot or murder over it.

Of course, you have random murders of Abortion Doctors committed by a random Christian every decade or so.  And the Liberal will be quick to point this out as if in comparison to the Islamic Extremists who commit atrocious acts of murder such as Al Jazeera beheadings.

Take that same urine or even the rumor of urine being placed on or near a Qu’ran and Liberals will run amok with declarations of intolerance by the Christian community.

Why is it acceptable for Secularist Liberals to piss on the Bible and call it critical humor, yet, it is not acceptable to do the same with the holy books or personages of other religions such as Islam.

Is Jesus not as sacred to Christians as Mohammad is sacred to Muslims?

Mass riots were justified by the left as a rational response to cartoons of Mohammad in Denmark.  Yet, Christians are irrational if/when their beliefs are demeaned by that same Secular Left.

I’d love to hear the rationalization on that one by the Secular Multi-culturists.  Speaking of Culture.  Is Christianity not a part of the CULTURE of the West.  Why is it the Christian Religion not afforded the same respect as Islam in these matters.  Piss on the Qu’ran.  Bad.  No matter the circumstances.  Piss on the Bible.  “It’s a joke.  Sarcasm.  Critical humor.”  Portray Mohammad in cartoons depicting him with a bomb for a turban.  Bad.  Never mind the fact that Muslims worldwide have grafted this image into the mainstream consciousness.  Never mind the fact that there is no place on the planet wherein Muslims live peacefully side by side with non-Muslim neighbors.  Piss on a Picture of Jesus or caricature Jesus in a cartoon.  “It’s just a joke.”

The Secular Left are cowardly hypocrites on the subject of religion.  Period.

I grow tired of it.

Multi-cultural, they wish to call themselves.  I call them what they are.  Christian haters.

For the record, I’m not Christian.  I shed that belief ages ago.  That doesn’t mean that I can’t see hypocrisy when it is plainly evident.

Maybe Christians should start rioting in the streets and murdering artists for portraying their religious symbols inappropriately.  Apparently, that’s the only way that the average Secularist will respect your beliefs.

I dare say that not one of the cowards would piss on a picture of Christ if  he, afterwards, had to fear for his safety or life.

Try pissing on a picture of Mohammad on TV, Larry David.  Hell, just try showing a picture of Mohammad on TV.  I’d love to see Larry David defend that one as “playful” as a mob of angry Muslims beat him and threw rocks at him.  I’d love to witness his attempt to explain to the murderers of Van Gogh in Sweden as they wielded a knife in anticipation of gutting the infidel.  I’m sure they’d listen to him closely.  I’m sure the extremist elements of Islam would love to murder an infidel and a Jew.  Two birds with one stone and all.

Cowards and hypocrites all.

Christians need to stop whining over these things and take up arms against them.  Defend your ideals.  I’m not necessarily talking about violence or shooting.  There are other ways of dealing with this hypocrisy.  Just stop the incessant whining.

Larry David should test his comic theories on Muslims in America.  Piss on a picture of Mohammad.  Claim it was merely being “playful.”  When he and his fellow hypocrites start using the same standard for Muslims as for Christians, they’ll have a point.  Until then, they’re merely typical leftists bigots.

No Need for a Jewish Homeland?

Animosity against Jews intensified. Notes nailed to the homes of Jews accused them of working for Israel and corrupting Muslim morals. “Jews were specifically targeted by Houthi rebels,” says a spokeswoman for the Yemeni embassy in Washington.

In January 2007, Houthi leaders threatened Jewish families in Saada. “We warn you to leave the area immediately… [W]e give you a period of 10 days, or you will regret it,” read a letter signed by a Houthi representative cited in a Reuters article.

Virtually the entire Jewish community in the area, about 60 people, fled to the capital. Since then, they have been receiving food stipends and cash assistance from the government while living in state-owned apartments in a guarded enclave, says the Yemeni embassy in Washington.

President Saleh, a Shiite, has been eager to demonstrate goodwill toward the Jews. On the Passover holiday, he invited TV crews to videotape families in the government complex as they feasted on lamb he had ordered.

Raida became the last redoubt of Yemeni Jews, who continued to lead a simple life there alongside Muslims.

Ancient stone homes dot the town. Electricity is erratic; oil lamps are common. Water arrives via truck. Most homes lack a TV or a refrigerator. The cell phone is the only common modern device. Some families receive financial aid from Hasidic Jewish groups in Brooklyn and London, which has enabled them to buy cars.

Typically, the Jewish men are blacksmiths, shoe repairmen or carpenters. They sometimes barter, trading milk and cow dung for grass to feed their livestock. In public, the men stand out for their long side curls, customarily worn by observant Jewish men. Jewish women, who often marry by 16, rarely leave home. When they do, like Muslim women, only their eyes are exposed.

It is bewildering to me when people question the need for a Jewish Homeland.  The Jews have been persecuted for centuries.  Since the Roman era diaspora.  Christian purges, Czarist pogroms, Islamic expulsions.  The Holocaust of Nazi Germany.  Jews are forever the scapegoat for the inadequacies, incompetence and criminal acts of the elite.

Yet, today, people question the need for a homeland wherein the Jews can defend themselves and live with dignity.  A place where the Jewish people can live without fear.  A place where a future as a Jew is possible.

Palestine is a fiction.  There was never a Palestine in history except as a Roman province.  The name itself comes from the Roman language.  The Romans dubbed the area Palestine as an affront to the Jews.  Palestine is the Roman transliteration of the word Philistine.  Thus, the Romans named the area once known as Judea after the ancient enemy of the Kingdom of Judea.  Jews have had a constant presence in the area for thousands of years.  They have been present in the Levant since the time of the ancient Kingdoms of Assyria and Babylonia and the ancient Persian Kingdoms.  Alexander’s Generals and historians wrote of the Jews there.  The Romans conquered them there.

Then came the Muslim Empire.  The great and bloody Empire of Islam.

Islam conquered the area and forced mass conversion on the inhabitants of the region.  Well, technically the didn’t force conversion.  You had choices.  Flee.  Become a slave.  Pay a hefty tax called the Jizya.  To avoid all of these choices, one had merely to convert.  State three times the words “there is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his Prophet.” Yes, many people “chose” to convert to Islam.  And what a choice it was.

Today, all across the Muslim world, Jews are second or third class citizens.  They are treated poorly.  Subject to rules and regulations and the whims of a mostly illiterate populace.  Antisemitism is on the rise across the globe.  Especially in Europe and the Arab lands.

The Arabs like to say that Israel is a guilt price for the actions of Europe during World War II.

And perhaps there is some truth to that.

Even so, the Jews have paid their own blood price for that land.  When Israel declared independence in 1948, the Arabs attacked.  Killing thousands of Jews and proclaiming that they would drive the Jews into the sea.  The Jews fought back and held off that bloody calamity.  The Arabs maintained a steady war of attrition for the next 30 to 40 years.  Attacking at the borders.  Raiding across the border and murdering families and communities much like the bloodletting and rockets that the Palestinians and Hezbollah plan and execute today.  In 1956, 1967 and 1973, the various Arab factions have pursued outright war against Israel by closing the straits and bottlenecking the Red Sea, by bombarding the country with artillery and build ups on the borders of Israel and by outright attacking as Sadat did in the ‘73 October War.

Yet, through it all, Israel has survived.  They’ve had the assistance of the US at times.  Their enemies have also had assistance.  The Soviets paid for most of the militaries of Egypt and Syria.  The Army that attacked Israel in 1973 was “mentored” by Soviet “advisers.”  Soviet pilots were shot down in combat action in the ‘73 war.

These are things that the opponents of Israel will deny or claim inconsequential.

Israel has always existed in one form or another.  Most of the land that comprises Israel was owned by Jews in 1948.  This land was purchased from the Arabs who owned the land.  Most of the business in Israel in 1948 was Jewish owned.  The Arabs who lived in the area in 1948, moved there because of developments created by the Jewish immigrants to the area.

I have been to Israel.  What is striking about the region is that Israel is much like a mini-European country in a vast wasteland.  Exit Israel and enter Egypt or Jordan or Syria.  You enter a time warp.  As if traveling back to the Ottoman Empire.  If Israel were to fail as a nation, this is the same fate that awaits the land.  It will corrupt and fall into disuse and neglect.  This is why the Arabs want it?  The people of Israel took a barren wasteland and made it into a paradise.  The Arabs simply let the wasteland stand as it is.

I do not support the creation of a Palestinian State.  Never do I think this should happen.  A Palestinian State would be nothing more than another Islamic Despotism wherein the people are kept illiterate and a few corrupt leaders in the mold of Yassar Arafat will enrich themselves at the expense of  the masses.  The Arabs of Palestine would do better to make their own treaty.  Expel the thugs of the PLA, Hamas and FATAH and make their own treaty with Israel.  Create a non-religious state and live side by side with Israel in peace.  Either as an autonomous region or a City-State along the lines of the Vatican.  Live in peace with their neighbors and let religion be no issue at all.

Israel is the only beacon of light in the darkest region of the Planet.  In almost every country that claims Islam as it’s dominant religion, the people are merely slaves to the whims of despotism and tyranny.

Israel should be supported by all democracies and all liberal peoples.  The PLA and the other groups that keep this war going should be international pariahs.  Iran, Saudi Arabia and any other country who supports these groups should be ignored.

But, of course, oil makes that impossible.  America, China, Europe and India will kiss the feet of the Arab oil men of the Middle East and ignore the real injustice of the region.  And the despots of the Arab Nations will forever use Israel as the scapegoat for their corruption to avert the eyes of their illiterate masses away from the real enemies that are the leaders of their own nations.

Lipstick Jihad — an excerpt

Our tears are sweet, our laughter venomous,
We’re pleased when sad, and sad when pleased,
We have broken every stalk, like a wind in the garden
We have picked clean the vine’s caldelabra
And if we found a tree, still standing, defiantly,
We cut it’s branches, we pulled it up by the roots.

—-Simin Behbehani

Lipstick Jihad is an excellent book about a womans journey back into her Iranian homeland.  Azedeh Moaveni was born in the States and raised amongst the Iranian diaspora caused by the Revolution in 1979.  Later, she returns to her home in Teheran to cover the Reformist movement at the turn of the century.  She writes about the challenges of living in Iran as an Iranian-American and the inner conflicts of dealing with the [sur]reality of Islamic Iran as juxtaposed against her familial and diaspora created memories of her homeland.  It’s a moving story told from a unique inside outsider perspective.

I’ve enjoyed reading the book.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/03/lipstick-jihad-interview-azadeh-moaveni http://www.amazon.com/Lipstick-Jihad-Growing-Iranian-American/dp/1586481932 http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2008/10/lipstick-jihad/

Last year some time, France banned the Burqa.  I agreed with this ruling wholeheartedly.  Some argued that France should not meddle in cultures and customs of the various immigrant peoples who inhabit their country.  Still others argued that the burqa and by extension the hijab or veil is part of the right to “freedom”  of speech a part of the expression of the culture of Islamic peoples.  I simply can not agree with this.

To me the hijab/veil and the burqa is a symbol of oppression.  It’s a relic of the patriarchal systems of our forefathers and a means of control.  It’s the tool used to enslave women.  We used similar tools of oppression here in the dark ages of the west.

These things and like items used to oppress people should be relegated to the dark past.  Discarded and forgotten for all time.

How would I feel if I were forced to wear similar tools of oppression.  What’s the difference between the hijab and the star of David which the Nazis forced on the Juden of 1930s era Germany?  What is the difference between this attitude and the attitudes of White Americans towards Blacks in the early 1900s in the Jim Crow Era of the South?

I see no difference.  Women in Iran are thrown in prison and tortured and raped for the simple offense of being seen in public with a non-relative male or showing too much ankle or for having the audacity to think and speak out.  They’re beaten on the streets for showing an inch too much of hair.  Young Men are brutalized by the basiji thugs for accompanying non-relative females from a Cafe to the curb to hail a taxi.

Do we excuse these behaviors in the name of cultural diversity?  Do we welcome this into our countries?  Do we allow this barbaric behavior into our neighborhoods?

I think we should not.

Someone will make the comment eventually; “So what do you want to do?  Invade Iran?”  That is not what this is about.

We can’t do anything about the barbarism of Islamic Sharia in Saudi Arabia or Iran.

However, we do have the choice of not tolerating it’s introduction into our own home countries.

I think that is where the world should make it’s stand.

I’m of the opinion that banning the burqa was not going far enough. The hijab should be banned as well.  Similar resolutions should be introduced in the UN to end this oppressive reign of terror on women.

Please Do Not Sell Your Women — Daughters, Wives or Mothers.

A great problem in Central Asia and India, among other places, is the selling of women into slaver.  Usually sex slavery.  Happens quite frequently in Iran as well from what I’ve read.

Women in this part of the world are seen as property.  A daughter or a “disobedient” wife can bring a family out of debt or help a family purchase a tractor or other items which can enhance a Father or Husbands wealth or standing in the community.  Daughters are not seen as contributors to a family estate.  They’re more a nuisance or a drain on resources.  A man who has only daughters can be taken deep into debt for dowries.

It’s not seen as fortunate on this side of the planet to have a daughter.

They’re expendable or worse.

We, in the West, find this attitude abhorrent.  At the top of the world, it’s merely a fact of life.

There are several excellent books which touch on this subject.  Sold, by Patricia McCormick, is an excellent fictional account of a young girl who is sold into slavery in order to bring her family out of debt and deceived into thinking that she will be a house servant in order that she go willingly.

This is a horrible fact of life for women in this part of the globe.  A less mentioned facet of the sex slave trade is the number of these women who end up in the West in back alley rooms and decrepit hotels on the wrong side of town.  They’re kept prisoner and when used up, murdered and tossed out like so much waste.

Islamic Violence and Martyrdom

Islamic Sharia and the Rights of Muslim Women

After being kidnapped at the age of 16 by a group of thugs and enduring a year of rapes and beatings, Assiya Rafiq was delivered to the police and thought her problems were over.

Then, she said, four police officers took turns raping her.

The next step for Assiya was obvious: She should commit suicide. That’s the customary escape in rural Pakistan for a raped woman, as the only way to cleanse the disgrace to her entire family.

Instead, Assiya summoned the unimaginable courage to go public and fight back. She is seeking to prosecute both her kidnappers and the police, despite threats against her and her younger sisters. This is a kid who left me awed and biting my lip; this isn’t a tale of victimization but of valor, empowerment and uncommon heroism.

“I decided to prosecute because I don’t want the same thing to happen to anybody else,” she said firmly.

Assiya’s case offers a window into the quotidian corruption and injustice endured by impoverished Pakistanis — leading some to turn to militant Islam.

“When I treat a rape victim, I always advise her not to go to the police,” said Dr. Shershah Syed, the president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Pakistan. “Because if she does, the police might just rape her again.”

Yet Assiya is also a sign that change is coming. She says she was inspired by Mukhtar Mai, a young woman from this remote village of Meerwala who was gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council. Mukhtar prosecuted her attackers and used the compensation money to start a school.

Mukhtar is my hero. Many Times readers who followed her story in past columns of mine have sent her donations through a fund at Mercy Corps, at www.mercycorps.org, and Mukhtar has used the money to open schools, a legal aid program, an ambulance service, a women’s shelter, a telephone hotline — and to help Assiya fight her legal case.

The United States has stood aloof from the ubiquitous injustices in Pakistan, and that’s one reason for cynicism about America here. I’m hoping the Obama administration will make clear that Americans stand shoulder to shoulder with heroines like Mukhtar and Assiya, and with an emerging civil society struggling for law and social justice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/opinion/26kristof.html?_r=2&em

Blasphemy outlawed in Ireland

Political Correctness Gone Mad!!!!

Quote:

As part of a revision to defamation legislation, the Dail (Irish Parliament) passed legislation creating a new crime of blasphemy. Update: The bill went to the Seanad on Friday, July 10, passing by a single vote. This attack on free speech, debated for several months in Europe, has gone largely unnoticed in the American press. The text of the legislation is provided at the end of this post. How does this impact free speech? Just don’t be rude. * Atheists can be prosecuted for saying that God is imaginary. That causes outrage. * Pagans can be prosecuted for saying they left Christianity because God is violent and bloodthirsty, promotes genocide, and permits slavery. * Christians can be prosecuted for saying that Allah is a moon god, or for drawing a picture of Mohammed, or for saying that Islam is a violent religion which breeds terrorists. * Jews can be prosecuted for saying Jesus isn’t the Messiah. Is it really THAT big a deal? Ireland’s Blasphemy Bill not only criminalizes free speech, it also gives the police the authority to confiscate anything deemed “blasphemous”. They may enter and search any premises, with force if needed, upon “reasonable suspicion” that such materials are present. * The local Freethinkers society, with its copies of Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. * The video store, with copies of The God Who Wasn’t There. * The history teacher, who uses The Dark Side of Christian History to teach her class. * The library, with its collection of books deemed blasphemous. * Even the homeowner who lets the wrong person know he has a copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses could find his door broken in by the Thought Police, his bookshelves ransacked, and his books burning in the front yard! Satirizing religion in any way, shape, or form, if it “causes outrage”, is now a prosecutable offense in Ireland. Saying anything negative about a religion, if it “causes outrage”, can now be prosecuted as a crime. Just like in Muslim countries. Witness the return of the Dark Ages.

They’ve gone insane.  Too many pints, I reckon…

Islam: What is an extremist? What is a Terrorist?

Muslim "Extremists?"

Christianity and Islam

I can agree with this...

http://s3b.directupload.net/images/090522/aszmwic7.jpg

Afghan Women “mark” International Women’s Day

I swear to God.  I did not make this up.  That was the real title to this picture in an International Newspaper.

What a celebration?  Oh, the irony.  Utter lunacy…

They’re marking it alright.  Marking it right off the calender.  It means nothing to these women.  And even less to the men who force them to wear these disgusting bits of cloth.

My opinion.  These things should be outlawed INTERNATIONALLY.  The hijab.  The Burqa.  The Chadori.  The Veil.  They should all be outlawed.  

Period.

Islam and “Freedom” of Speech

Muslims in the Lords

From the desk of Thomas Landen on Mon, 2009-01-26 11:16

The House of Lords is a venerable British institution, but what does one get if one accepts Muslims in? This:

A member of the Lords intended to invite her colleagues to a private meeting in a conference room in the House of Lords to meet the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, an elected member of the Dutch parliament, to watch his controversial movie Fitna and discuss the movie and Mr. Wilders’ opinions with him.

Barely had the invitation been sent to all the members of the House when Lord Ahmed raised hell. He threatened to mobilize 10,000 Muslims to prevent Mr. Wilders from entering the House and threatened to take the colleague who was organizing the event to court. The result is that the event, which should have taken place next Thursday was cancelled.

Lord Ahmed immediately went to the Pakistani press to boast about his achievement, which he calls “a victory for the Muslim community.”

A victory for the Muslim community, but a defeat for British democracy where topics to which Muslims object cannot even be debated. That, apparently, is what one gets when one accepts Muslims into the House of Lords.

Lord Ahmed is considered to be a “moderate” Muslim. The Pakistani born Nazir Ahmed became the United Kingdom’s first Muslim life peer in 1998. He is a member of the Labour Party and was appointed to the Lords by Tony Blair. Lord Ahmed took his oath on the Koran. He led one of the first delegations on behalf of the British Government on the Muslim pilgrimage of the Hajj, to Saudi Arabia. In February 2005, Lord Ahmed hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for anti-Zionist author Israel Shamir. In 2007, he responded to the award of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie by stating that he was appalled, saying that Rushdie had “blood on his hands.”

Lord Ahmed was among the founders of The World Forum, an organization set up “to promote world peace in the aftermath of 9/11 with an effort to build bridges of understanding between The Muslim World and the West by reviving a tradition of Dialogue between people, cultures and civilizations based on tolerance.”

What does “dialogue” mean to those who make discussion about controversial issues impossible? Thank you, Mr. Blair, for bringing “diversity” to the House of Lords.

Only if you adhere to their beliefs are you allowed “free” speech in the Muslim mind and world.  The day is coming that Muslims in America will demand this same control over speech in America.  Not far off.

And with the Democrats in power, it will be easier for them to do so over the next 4 to 8 years.

It will be a slow and quiet surrender of our freedoms to the oppression of the Islamic thought police.

Prayer and Peace in Afghanistan

Riding out the gate recently.

The gunners are locking and loading.  The vehicle commanders are making sure that all of the combat checks are good to go.

I’m sitting back in my seat buckled in and getting my radio and Ipod adjusted so that I can hear my music and the other guys in the vehicle.  Gotta have those comms.  Never know what might happen.

We are all geared up and ready for the enemy.  I’m thinking about what I’m going to say to my Afghan counterparts and the training that I have planned for my ANP counterparts.

I just happen to glance out my window as we are passing one of the checkpoints.

There is an Afghan soldier praying.  He’s standing with hands folded in front of him.  Head facing down.  Prayer beads dangling from his hand.  His prayer carpet is laid out in front of him.  His eyes are closed and I can tell that he is silently reciting his prayers.  Lo illaha illala Mohammad rasulallah…Rahman, Bismullah, Rahim…Allahu Akhbar…

It’s such a peaceful scene.  Such contrast to all of the events taking place around him.

It’s bizarrely serene amidst all the unrest and disorder that is this country.  A bit of peace in the chaos and ravages of war that is Afghanistan in this era.

It was heartening.  As if God was saying; “This too shall pass.  In time, all will be well.”

It may.  All may be well in time.

Insha’allah…

The War on Terror is not the War on Islam

How can it be when scenes like this are common place? This is the casket of one of our fallen Soldiers.  Mohsin Naqvi.  He gave his life fighting against the monsters who have co-opted Islam into their insidious aims to crush freedom in the lands of Muslim peoples and ultimately all peoples across the globe.  The kid on the floor mourning is Hassan Naqvi.   Is there someone who has the nerve to tell this kid that Islam killed his brother.

Islam is not the enemy.  Wahhabism is the enemy.  Extremism is the enemy.   Extemism in any form.  Political, civil, religious, cultural.  It matters not.

The Death of the West

This about sums it up.

I am not saying that all Muslims are evil. Nor am I saying that all Muslims are the enemies of the West. Likewise, not all Germans or Japanese were evil or our enemies in 1940. Yet look at the destruction caused by those two nations in the name of their peoples.

The War Won’t End in Afghanistan

Senator Barack Obama said something at the presidential debate last week that almost perfectly encapsulates the difference between his foreign policy and his opponent’s: “Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself acknowledges the war on terrorism started in Afghanistan and it needs to end there.” I don’t know if Obama paraphrased Gates correctly, but if so, they’re both wrong.

If Afghanistan were miraculously transformed into the Switzerland of Central Asia, every last one of the Middle East’s rogues gallery of terrorist groups would still exist. The ideology that spawned them would endure. Their grievances, such as they are, would not be salved. The political culture that produced them, and continues to produce more just like them, would hardly be scathed. Al Qaedism is the most radical wing of an extreme movement which was born in the Middle East and exists now in many parts of the world. Afghanistan is not the root or the source.

Naturally the war against them began in Afghanistan. Plans for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were hatched in Afghanistan. But the temporary location of the plotters of that strike means little in the wide view of a long struggle. Osama bin Laden and his leadership just as easily could have planned the attacks from Saudi Arabia before they were exiled, or from their refuge in Sudan in the mid 1990s. Theoretically they could have even planned the attacks from an off-the-radar “safe house” in a place like France or even Nebraska had they managed to sneak themselves in. The physical location of the planning headquarters wasn’t irrelevant, but in the long run the ideology that motivates them is what must be defeated. Perhaps the point would be more obvious if the attacks were in fact planned in a place like France instead of a failed state like Afghanistan.

Hardly anyone wants to think about the monumental size of this task or how long it will take. The illusion that the United States just needs to win in Afghanistan and everything will be fine is comforting, to be sure, but it is an illusion. Winning the war in Iraq won’t be enough either, nor will permanently preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. The war may end somewhere with American troops on the ground, or, like the Cold War, it might not. No one can possibly foresee what event will actually put a stop to this war in the end. It is distant and unknowable. The world will change before we can even imagine what the final chapter might look like.

Most of the September 11 hijackers were Saudis. All were Arabs. None hailed from Afghanistan. This is not coincidental. Al Qaeda’s politics are a product of the Arab world, specifically of the radical and totalitarian Wahhabi sect of Islam founded in the 18th Century in Saudi Arabia by the fanatical Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab. He thought the medieval interpretations of Islam even on the backward Arabian peninsula were too liberal and lenient. His most extreme followers cannot even peacefully coexist with mainstream Sunni Muslims, let alone Shia Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, secularists, feminists, gays, or anyone else. Their global jihad is a war against the entire human race in all its diversity and plurality.

Wahhabism has spread outward from Saudi Arabia by proselytizers funded by petrodollars who have set up mosques, madrassas, and indoctrination centers nearly everywhere from Indonesia to the United States. In the Balkans, for instance, Wahhabis are actually replacing traditional moderate Ottoman mosques destroyed by the Yugoslav Army and Serbian paramilitary units with their own extremist knockoffs. They’re staking out new ground in the West where they deliberately gin up virulent hatred among immigrants from Muslim countries. They tried to car-bomb their way into power in parts of Iraq, and in the cities of Baqubah, Fallujah, and Ramadi they even succeeded for a while.

In some places the ideology flourishes more than in others. It was effectively transplanted to Afghanistan with the assistance of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. In thoroughly secular Muslim countries like Azerbaijan and Albania, bin Ladenism remains thinner on the ground than in Western Europe. Its adherents are unevenly distributed, but it began in the Middle East and has since metastasized.

Al Qaeda leaders did not spring up from the ground in Afghanistan, nor are they chained there. They move around. Any country where they are located becomes crucial whether American soldiers are present or not. Like the Cold War, this conflict is not exclusively military, but the theaters of armed conflict have already been widened well beyond Afghanistan. And the war isn’t America-centric. It is not all about us. Fighting between violent Islamists and their enemies broke out in Arab countries like Algeria and Lebanon, and even in countries without a Muslim majority like Russia and the Philippines. Many of these conflicts started before the attacks on September 11, before anyone could even imagine that American troops would fight a hot war in Afghanistan.

And let’s not forget the radical Shias. While Sunni Wahhabis export their fundamentalist creed from the Arabian Peninsula, the Khomeinists in the Islamic Republic of Iran are busy exporting their own revolutionary and totalitarian brand of Shia Islam to countries like Lebanon and Iraq. So far the Iranians and their proxies have been less violent and extreme than Al Qaeda, but Iran remains the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. While the leaders are Shias, that has not – contrary to mistaken conventional wisdom – stopped them from forming tactical alliances with radical Sunnis from Hamas in Gaza to Ansar Al Islam.

Before the U.S. demolished the regime of Saddam Hussein, Ansar Al Islam was based in and around the town of Biara in Northern Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq founder Abu Musab al Zarqawi was one of its members. American Special Forces and Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters pushed Ansar into the Northern Iranian city of Mariwan where they remain today and receive support from the government of Iran. They have since changed their name to Al Qaeda in Kurdistan.

On some level even Senator Obama himself understands that Afghanistan is unlikely be the beginning and the end of this war. He correctly argues that more needs to be done to shut down the safe havens bin Laden and company have established in Pakistan. He likely doesn’t believe some of his own rhetoric about Afghanistan even though it’s a standard staple of his campaign. His dovish liberal base seems sometimes desperate to believe that Afghanistan was the beginning and will be the end of a war they have little stomach to wage.

Wishing will not make it so. Afghanistan, indeed all of Central Asia, is on the periphery. The violent ideologies that animate the most dangerous terrorist movements in the world are Arabic and, to a lesser extent, Persian. The Middle East is central. It is not a distraction. It is where the war truly began because it is where most of the combatants, ideological leaders, and supporters were born and raised. While there’s a chance it won’t end there, most of it will be fought there.

Michael J. Totten – 09.29.2008 – 4:32 PM

Michael Totten speaks the truth.  Will anyone listen?

Islam and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Since I’ve been in country, that scene more than any other is universal. A guy with his lady hitting the road on a bike. She might be his sister. His wife. On the rare occasion, she may even be a girlfriend. It’s quite an odd scene. A burqa just doesn’t seem to fit in with the easygoing reputation of motorcyclists. Guys [and gals] on motorcycles are supposed to be rebels. Mavericks. That doesn’t seem to fit with the uptight, dogmatism of which the burqa is symbolic. The Burqa is for the woman anonymity and for the man it is honor. No man should look upon the face of his wife without his permission or it is a stain upon his honor. If the wife looks upon the face of another, that small act dishonors both the man and the wife. Strange thought process, that is. Thankfully, it’s one that is losing favor with the younger generation. Of course, this transformation occurs mostly in the cities. The countryside is still conservative.

Qandahar. Herat. Kabul. Bagram. This blue burqa is ubiquitous throughout the Big A. The first time I saw a burqa on a motorcycle I was a bit taken aback. LIke I said above, it just does not fit. They should all read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a good book and they could use some Zen in Afghanistan to go with their motorcycles.

Newt Gingrich on the Islamic Threat

He is totally correct here. The American people and especially those on the left will not wake up to the threat of Islam until we lose a city.

New York.

Chicago.

Washington D.C.

Los Angeles.

Houston.

The Islamic radicals will finally find success in their evil endeavors. It is almost inevitable.

Why?

America refuses to take the threat seriously. I give it ten years. It matters not if we are successful or a failure in Afghanistan, Iraq or both. My opinion. One city in America gets nuked. Mekkah should be the first retaliatory target. If that doesn’t get them the message.

Teheran.

Damascus.

Any belief system that employs children as suicide bombers is unworthy of existence. Period. The Saudis expect the United States of America to sit and take lectures on tolerance when you can’t find one Church, one Temple or one Synagogue on Saudi soil?

And we sit silently and take it because of OIL.

I don’t want to hear it from Democrats. It was a Democratic President who signed the deal with the devils in the first place. His name was FDR. And every President since, no matter party affiliation, has continued to suck at the teat and bend at the knee to the House of Saud. All of you Brits can keep silent as well. Mossadegh was taken out by the CIA at the request of none other than Winston Churchill. France. Everyone knows the cowardly history of French Colonialism. Russia is no better than anyone else. China and India will soon learn.

FDR, Truman, Ike, Camelot and his family of Mafioso wannabes, LBJ, Tricky Dicky, Jimmah the Peacemaker, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and our current Bushie.

By my count that is 6 Democrat Presidents and 5 Republicans. For most of that period, we had a Democratic Congress.

NOT ONE DEMOCRAT should say a word about oil wars or kissing the Royal and Gilded Saudi buttocks.

Obama — change to die for…

America’s first Kaliph. That would certainly be a “change.”

Obama can change America so that this mentality is common here as well as in the Middle East.

Change. We Can. Hope.

I agree. We need a change in our Politics. But socialism of the brand that Obama espouses was tried in Eastern Europe and Russia. It didn’t work. As a matter of fact, Ronald Reagan finally ushered it down the aisle and into the dust bin of history.

It should not be revived. No matter how charismatic it’s proponent may be. Obama should be allowed a final resting place near Karl, if he so desires. Marxism is dead. Let it remain so. I don’t want Obama telling me how to live. I don’t care if it’s through collectivism or Islam.