Yes, We Have No Sharia, or, So Darling, Save the Lap Dance for Me

Could it really be all that stands between us and paying the jizya tax is a G-string?

In an open letter Wednesday to Pastor Terry Jones, Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly Jr. blasted claims that his city is under Islamic law, noting it has three strip clubs and a factory that makes pork products sitting across the street from a mosque.

“None of that should be allowed under Shari'a law,” O'Reilly wrote, referring to a set of Islamic rules and customs. (“Mayor O'Reilly's open letter to Pastor Terry Jones”).

Mayor Jack forgot to mention that Dearborn also has Miss USA Rima Fakih, who’s not afraid to pole dance.

As Niraj Warikoo at the Detroit Free Press reports it, “city officials, Muslim Americans and others see the anti-Shari'a efforts as part of a campaign to whip up hysteria against Muslims and score political points.” (“Detroit Suburb Fights Pastor's Mosque Rally”).

This kills me, because we’re the ones who are supposed to be hysterical. And yet this Terry Jones thing has Mayor Jack so worked up that His Honor is actually publishing an open letter that Dearborn boasts three strip clubs and enough bars to people skid row for a hundred years. (“Mayor O'Reilly's open letter to Pastor Terry Jones”).

O’Reilly usually can’t say ten words in public without breaking into a plug for Greenfield Village, “where more than 1.5 million visitors come each year from across the country!” and now he’s updated his tourist tagline to “Visit Dearborn! Come for our Constitutional freedoms, but stay for our VIP Rooms!”

Why is it I can’t shake this image of a 12-year-old kid sucking desperately on a cigarette to impress hoodlums demanding proof he’s not a sissy?

Suggestion to Mayor O’Reilly: If you want to reassure us that we’re enjoying the First Amendment here and there’s no Sharia, skip the examples of how depraved we all still are and show us some proof of where Islam can be publicly criticized in Dearborn without the chief of police getting involved.

This is what Mayor Jack has driven himself to. He first dug himself into this when he deprived those Acts 17 fundamentalists of their civil rights two years in a row at the Arab Festival. That was such a transparent effort to placate Dearborn’s Muslims that no one believes him now when he insists he supports nonMuslims’ rights, no matter how much he talks about the Bill of Rights. Now we have a county prosecutor (and shame, shame, SHAME on you, Kym Worthy) filing a criminal “complaint to institute proceedings to prevent crime,” and alleging, ludicrously, that “Pastor Jones will jeopardize the safety of the public by committing an act against the person or property of another in the form[ ] of burning a Koran." In other words, he might actually commit an act that is protected by the Constitution, but a capital crime under Sharia!

Maybe we should be grateful that Mayor Jack at least admits the existence of Sharia somewhere in the universe. I’m talking about when his open letter explains that it would never be allowed under Sharia to have a pork-processing plant across the street from a mosque.

And what is that supposed to prove? We’re not idiots. Those of us raising concerns about Sharia have never tried to say Dearborn is under as tight a Sharia grip as Iran is under the Mullahs. When we discuss Sharia we characterize it as “creeping,” as Islam in Dearborn.

It’s an axiom with us that where the Muslim community’s a minority, it’s not going to be imposed with the rigor with which it’s imposed now in Gaza, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Southern Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, and, oh, you get the idea: all localities where Islam is the dominating majority. We don’t have to have a total Sharia to have Sharia. If the MSA exists in Dearborn, (it does), there is Sharia, along with the Muslim Brotherhood. (One word: footbaths). If Hezbollah is being funded and supported here, (which it is), that is Sharia. If you see a woman whose face is covered, you are looking at the face of Sharia. Christian missionaries are being arrested for evangelizing at public festivals. What else is that supposed to be but the civil law enforcing the strictures of Islam against evangelizing Muslims?

Mayor Jack’s pronouncement that there is no “Sharia law being practiced in the courts or civil law of Dearborn [or] … in our courts, [or] at our City Hall, [or] in any of our places of worship” protests too much, as false protests always do.

We can ask the Acts 17 evangelists, or now, Terry Jones (whose jury is being selected as we speak) if there’s any Sharia in our civil law. That’s the big argument, now, isn’t it? But then our Mayor Jack insists in his open letter that “Sharia Law is church- or faith-based law that is applicable only to the followers of that faith. For me it is Cannon [sic] Law of Catholicism, in Judaism it is Torah Law, and for Muslims it is Sharia Law.”

But as for its private practice, are there really no Muslims who follow Sharia, (or no Catholics who follow Canon Law, even in our “places of worship”)? This is how desperation talks. Deny Sharia in civil law you may have an argument. Deny no one anywhere in Dearborn is under Sharia, and now you’re just lying to us.

No one’s buying it. Even the ACLU has to admit that, “The government can not silence demonstrations in anticipation that their message will not be welcomed,” and, “As reprehensible as [Jones’s} beliefs may be, we believe this is an unconstitutional attempt to limit his unpopular speech.”

Which leaves Plan B, the excuse that Terry Jones and his one-man entourage will overwhelm a huge grassy easement along Altar Road and cause the media to block access to Good Friday services at the neighboring churches. The Dearborn Press & Guide is reporting that “city officials said they will not allow the expected gaggle of media and counter protesters to prevent parishioners from attending services.”

Jones’s protest is scheduled for 5:00 pm, two hours after the end of Christians’ traditional noon to 3:00 pm Good Friday services. Who exactly is buying all this?

The fact remains that all this hullabaloo isn’t about preventing a riot or a media crush at all. It’s all about getting Jones to deploy his one-man entourage and his megaphone somewhere else than the front doorstep of the Islamic Center of America. No one has explained yet who it is exactly that’s expected to riot if Jones protests in front of the ICA. Nor has Kym Worthy filed a complaint against the future crime of whomever it is she thinks is going to break out into a riot in response. Nor is she explaining why she hasn’t filed a criminal complaint against them. Civil liberties experts agree that it’s not Jones’s problem Jones insists he has no intention of burning another Qu’ran.

But even if he does, who exactly is expected to riot? And why wouldn’t a riot break out at City Hall, located in the heart of Arab east Dearborn, under the same circumstances? No one has a dimmer view of Dearborn’s Islamic leaders than I do, but the jihadist program is not taking the form here it does in the Middle East and the Maghreb, where Friday prayers in the mosques lead to violent rampages against infidels. Islam does not manifest in Dearborn as that kind of violence, or even violence at all. Nor have I ever said it does. I am the last person who expects that, even if Terry Jones were to break his word and do a Full Monty by setting alight a Qu’ran outside the Islamic Center of America, that a crowd of Dearborn Muslims are going to break out into a riot.

And I don’t believe Mayor Jack or Kym Worthy or Chief Haddad really expect that, either. Which is all the more reason I’m disgusted with them for hiding behind public safety to impose a lawless speech ban on Terry Jones.

Wanted: Minority Report

In another defeat for the First Amendment in Dearborn, Dearborn police and Wayne County prosecutors are attempting to impose prior restraint on Terry Jones’s protest against Sharia in front of the Islamic Center of America this Friday.

People argue about whether or not we’re under Sharia here in Dearborn.

I only wonder when we stopped being under the Constitution.

According to the Detroit News: “The prosecutors' petition — ‘a complaint to institute proceedings to prevent crime’ — is believed to be unusual.”

Unusual? I’ll say. I’ve only heard of proceedings to prevent crime in that Tom Cruise movie where people are arrested in the present for “futurecrimes” they’re predicted to commit in the future.

The motion against Jones predicts the "likelihood of a riot ensuing, complete with discharge of firearms." A riot? All Jones said is that he was going to demonstrate against Sharia. He carries a pistol openly, but there’s no evidence he ever threatened to discharge it, nor has he threatened any vandalism against the mosque.

Nonetheless, police chief Ronald Haddad has stated to the court that, "Intelligence received leads me to believe that Pastor Jones will jeopardize the safety of the public by committing an act against the person or property of another in the form[ ] of burning a Koran."

Jones hasn’t announced any intention of burning a Qu’ran. But even if he did, if it’s Terry Jones’s Qu’ran, who is the person, or what is the property of another against which he’s committing an act? Allah and his good name? The followers of Islam and their right to never hear their religion being maligned?

So far it’s still no crime to burn a Qu’ran in Dearborn, America. Unless Haddad has in mind that Hezbollah has declared it an “abominable crime,” and a “cause for warfare” (fitna), to burn a Qu’ran. As far as anything Jones does being a threat to public safety, there’s no conceivable way that burning even a large edition of a Qu’ran in an open space outdoors poses any kind of physical threat to me or any other member of the public – even if the public is standing three feet away. As for a “riot,” Jones will be doing well to get five guys to come along with him.

Still, the FBI has said Hezbollah put a $2.4 million bounty on Jones’s head after he burned that Qu’ran in March. And Dearborn is Hezbollah’s North American headquarters. Frankly, I’ll bet that Terry Jones, who, while deserving of First Amendment protection, still strikes me as on the clueless side, is even aware he’s stepping into Hezbollah territory. Maybe that’s what’s got Haddad worried?

Let’s face it, the whole problem with Jones is that his protests forseeably lead to violent outbursts by Muslims somewhere, even if thousands of miles away. Why not be honest about it?

People are desperate to stop Terry Jones not for being rude, ignorant, inconsiderate, mean, tacky, or for wearing a mustache that went with the Bullmoose Party. It’s because he’s lighting matches beneath a giant sign that says “FLAMMABLE.”

I love free speech. But even I might be reconciled to legal restraints on forms of provocative, but constitutionally protected, acts like burning a Qu’ran. That’s right. With this important condition: that such a regulation includes an explicit finding that adherents of Islam pose a uniquely dangerous risk when criticized, thus necessitating the limit on speech.

What I can’t stand about all this are all the people who are convinced what a reckless son of a bitch Terry Jones is for burning a Qu’ran and provoking untold thousands of Muslims to violence, even while the same people are swearing on the Bible that the Islamic scriptures preach a pacific religion of love and universal brotherhood.

Focus is everything in these kinds of things. Right now, Jones, about whom I know little and could care less, (maybe he is a publicity junkie, who cares?), has placed focus on the violence inherent in Islam. The result is violence and murders by outraged Muslims. When Pope Benedict, whom no fair-minded person would characterize as rude, ignorant, inconsiderate, mean, or tacky, gave a speech in Regensburg, Germany that incidentally placed the focus on the inherent irrationality and violence in Islam, the result was violence and murders by outraged Muslims.

Forget about the morality of it. It’s arithmetic. Take a truly peaceful religion and add the worst slander and the sum is always peace. It’s never revenge, murder, and bloodthirst. It just don’t add up.

That’s why no one’s ever heard of an Ohio feed store being blown up by an Amish suicide bomber. That’s why you never hear about outraged Red Cross workers rampaging against ungrateful aid recipients, as often as we hear about Red Cross workers murdered by angry Muslims. That’s why on the first Good Friday Jesus didn’t call on 10,000 legions of angels to incinerate His false accusers.

The truth of it is, no one’s scared about Jones or similar protesters because Muslim feelings might get unfairly hurt. We’re scared because Muslims have a well-earned reputation for violence whenever their religion is dissed, and we don’t want anybody to get killed.

And they’re desperate to get the focus off that. And not because it’s a ludicrous mischaracterization.

Which brings us to how, whenever this particular debate over free speech vs. Islam comes up, it’s never long before someone trots out that recognized exception about “shouting fire in a crowded theater.” Lindsay Graham said it only a couple weeks back during his incomprehensible comments on Terry Jones. The exception against shouting fire was an existential recognition that the deadly stampede surely resulting when you combine a close-packed crowd, with the irresistible flight instinct when that crowd is suddenly threatened with being trapped in a fire. The safety of the theatergoers outweighs the shouter’s right to say whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

Importantly, the crowded-theater exception also assumes that there is no fire. If there’s a fire, you can shout all you want.

But what I want to know is, if Jones is the shouter, then who is the crowd in the theater? The implied comparison is unmistakable. To me, anyhow, though no one wants to say it out loud. Muslims, when confronted about an admittedly grievous but non-violent attack upon their religion, (or propagandized at Friday prayers), are expected to react with an instinctual and violent disregard for life comparable to what one might witness in a mob of theater-goers heedlessly crushing their neighbors to escape death by fire. A crowd in such an emergency is inhuman, per se, precisely because it’s mindless, beyond reason, and driven only by a blind instinct to survive. It’s a natural, death-wreaking force.

I think Dearborn’s Muslims (saving any cold-blooded Hezbollah agent bent on that $2.4 mil), are a mindless, unthinking mob. I believe they can endure Terry Jones’s protest without “a riot ensuing, complete with discharge of firearms.” But them I’m only what commonly passes for an Islamophobe. The people who use that term for people like me don’t think the Muslims in Afghanistan or Yemen or Pakistan or Sudan have any control over themselves. Ridiculous, n’est-ce pas?

But you know who said they do have free will?

Terry Jones did.

That hick Bible-thumper with the bad mustache. He said that “there is no excuse for what happened in Afghanistan, and we do not believe we are responsible. People are responsible for their own actions. If anything this proves there is a radical element to Islam.”<

Has Qazwini said that?

If you have an argument against that, I’d love to hear it.

Happy Easter.

Book Burnings Don’t Kill People, Friday Prayers Do

According to Joe Klein at Time Magazine, the murders in Afghanistan that indirectly resulted from Terry Jones’s Qur’an-burning are to be laid directly at the doorstep of Terry Jones:

“[T]here should be no confusion about this: Jones's act was murderous as any suicide bomber's. If there is a hell, he's just guaranteed himself an afterlifetime membership.”

For someone who doesn’t know if there’s a hell or not, Klein sounds awfully positive about who’s going there. Anyhow, lots of liberals agree that Jones is directly responsible for the deaths of the Mazar-e-Sharif riot victims. And in at least one way, this reaction is perfectly understandable. When heinous outbursts of Islamic violence take place, someone has to be blamed. And when you’ve already forbidden yourselves from blaming any of the misdeeds of Islam on Muslims, who else is left?

The foggy ideas behind all this are various. One is that Jones is morally responsible for the clearly foreseeable end results of his action, since he must certainly know that burning a Qur’an is a provocative act guaranteed to lead to murderous reprisals by Islamists against Westerners. If you own a vicious dog and you release it into the neighborhood, isn’t it pretty much your fault when someone gets mauled? If your friend tells you he’s caught his wife cheating on him and needs your gun to go get some justice, you won’t be innocent if you lend it to him. Of course, the Terry Jones case isn’t quite the same. Jones obviously didn’t do anything to facilitate the Mazar-e-Sharif murderers. He wasn’t even there. Muslims have been murdering people who’ve upset them since, well, as long as there’ve been Muslims. Jones neither facilitated the Mazar-e-Sharif murderers nor offered encouragement to their bloodthirsty rioting. They almost certainly hadn’t even heard of Jones until the day of the rampages, “after being,” as Andy McCarthy notes, “whipped into the familiar frenzy at Friday prayers.”

In fact, it is not even accurate to say that Jones incited the Afghans. His Koran-torching stunt took place on March 20. The murderous riot did not occur until nearly two weeks later — only after the natives were whipped up not just by the fire-breathing Friday imams but by the inflammatory rhetoric of Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

Where Klein and Lindsey Graham and their other fogbound friends almost have a point is in the idea, an idea they haven’t bothered to examine too closely, that the Mazar-e-Sharif rampage, or some other similar rampage, was foreseeable. According to this idea, Terry Jones knew that if he burned his Qur’an it would incite Muslim mass rage, a predictable deadly eruption, reliably as Old Faithful, manifesting in a spree of Islamic murders, (e.g., “Cartoon Rage, Pope Rage, Fitna Rage, Teddy Bear Rage....”).

Actually, I happen to agree, at least that the Mazar-e-Sharif rampage, or some other similar rampage, was foreseeable to Jones. It was also foreseeable to me. In fact, I foresaw that I’d be hearing about Islamic violence somewhere on the planet where Islam predominates, regardless of whether Terry Jones did anything or not. All you need to foresee things like this is to walk around with your eyes open at least a few hours a day. Then Jones had the extra advantage of last September’s public lectures from no less than the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and General David Petraeus on on the subject of how his Constitutionally-protected act might be taken in the Ummah. As Ann Coulter observed at the time:

Gen. Petraeus objected to the Quran-burning protest on the grounds that it could be used by radical jihadists to recruit Muslims to attack Americans. . . . If the general's main objective is to hamper jihadist recruiting, may I respectfully suggest unconditional surrender? Because on his theory, you know what would really kill the terrorists' recruiting ability? If we adopted Sharia law!

Last fall The Daily Mail reported Petraeus’s warning that, if Jones went ahead with his original Quran-burning on September 11, ‘It will spark war against all Christians’. As we now know, Jones backed off his Quran-burning last September, denying Islam the casus belli against all Christians. And as we also now know, Jones’s forbearance led to a dramatic reduction in terrorist recruiting, a drop in jihadist attacks worldwide, and a continuation of the centuries-long peace with all Christians -- oh, no, wait! Never mind. I can’t find any documentation for that! Sorry. Naturally, Gen. Petraeus’s objection abut sparking a war overlooks the reality that Islam is already at war with all Christians, and has been, lo these many centuries.

As I see it, just because Jones, or any of us, found the Mazar-e-Sharif rampage foreseeable doesn’t mean that what Jones did caused it. If something is already in motion, and has been for a long time, nothing I do now can be said to be its cause. Jones no more caused the frenzy of Muslims looking for Westerners to behead than Churchill caused the Blitz when he declared Britain would never surrender to Nazi rule. In both cases the aggressor was already on the march. The war was on. The jihadi sword, long since unsheathed, only needs to be directed to its next victim.

That’s why for Karzai and the imams, or for any other arch-jihadists looking for an excuse for bloodshed, Terry Jones’s Quran-burning didn’t cause them to do what they did: all it did was provide a pretext. Jones and Klein and Graham, and for that matter, I and most of you, find this type of Muslim violence utterly foreseeable from knowledge of the simple fact that they’re already at war with us, and have been commanded to be so by the very terms of the book Gen. Petraeus insists on referring to as “the Holy Quran.”

I believe this was Jones’s whole point when he came up with his idea in the first place. “We must take a serious, serious look at Islam. It's a violent religion that promotes acts of violence.” Nor is the point of disagreement between people like Jones on one side and people like Lindsey Graham on the other that Jones knows that Islam is a violent religion and Graham doesn’t. Graham appreciates the violence in Islam, and Gen. Petraeus does, too, as well as anyone, and better than most. How couldn’t he, having presided over the defeat of the savages of al Qaeda in Iraq? No, the difference isn’t that Jones knows and they don’t, but that Jones knows and is free to say what he knows, and Graham and Gen. Petraeus are not free, for whatever reason, to say what they know. And perhaps not even free to think what they know. That’s what a contradiction can do to your head.

I don’t really consider all this an argument about either free speech or how best to prevent outbreaks of Islamic violence. It’s about the American mind forced to attempt the impossible: grasping two contradictory, mutually exclusive ideas at once, and the unbearable tension that results. I think we’re about at the end of a long period of national muddledom, stretching back to the first the first weeks after 9/11, and since which the majority of America’s public thinkers have felt obliged to propose the peacefulness of Islam as a fact, while at the same time having to witness a procession of graphic instances, far as the eye can see, of how Islam, as Terry Jones set out to show, is “a violent religion that promotes acts of violence.”

Lindsey Graham’s blather is the perfect example of what results. Take his remark on Face the Nation last week, when he said that,“During World War II, you had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy.” Never mind for now what he said about free speech, and never mind either about what form censorship did or didn’t take during World War II. We all know about Popeye punching out a Japanese submarine and Daffy Duck ridiculing Mein Kampf withour FDR lecturing Walt Disney. What strikes me in Graham’s mostly incoherent response was what he reveals when he mentions “the enemy.” Remember how the context is Graham blaming Jones for “inspiring the enemy” by burning the Qur’an. If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a million times, that Islam is not the enemy. But it wasn’t the Taliban or al Qaeda (as far as I know) that committed the Mazar-e-Sharif murders. Joe Klein makes a point of this:

The first thing that you need to know about the massacre of 12 people that took place in Afghanistan today is that Mazar-e-Sharif is not a particularly radical town. It is not Pashtun, it is not Taliban. It is so quiet that NATO dispatched the near-pacifist Germans to keep the peace there.

And yet, according to Lindsey Graham, these very people were “the enemy” who were inspired to murder by what Jones did. And according to Klein, this “massacre” (which he also calls a “protest”), “. . . may be only a taste of what we're going to see when the real religious fanatics get ginned up.”

In other words, these killers aren’t even the real fanatics. They aren’t even the fringe “unIslamic” extremists of unknown motivation, the “hijackers of a great religion” against whom we’ve been battling for ten years. They’re not Taliban, not Pashtun, just ordinary villagers, your everyday peace-loving Muslims being babysat by German peace soldiers and attending Friday prayers. Probably all they have in common with Ayman al-Zawahiri is mosque attendance!

And if they ended up beheading UN workers later that day, that’s Terry Jones’s fault. Why? Because it was foreseeable. Because Jones had to know that these pacific villagers, or other pacific villagers like them in some other pacific Islamic village, were going to cut infidel heads off when they found out what he’d done to their holy book. Because Islamic violence is as predictable as sunup and sundown. Jones is vilified as morally culpable for lack of due regard for the foreseeable violence crouching in the breasts of the people of the Qur’an, and at the same time is vilified by the same people for drawing attention to the danger. Remember when O’Reilly said Muslims killed us on 9/11? “You can’t say that!” commanded Whoopi Goldberg.

This is exactly what I mean when I say we can’t hold this contradiction together any longer. Jones says Islam is violent and is condemned for it by America’s highest officials. But the gist of what Graham says is that Islam is a powder keg so unstable a feather can set it off, so we should curtail free speech to prevent that. Klein sentences Jones to hell because deliberately angering even Islam’s most peaceful, nonfanatical adherents is so dependably going to lead to a river of blood that it makes him an accessory to their massacres, an act “murderous as any suicide bomber's”: And just how murderous is that? The suicide bomber knows that if all he does is press the detonator the dynamite will explode and the ball bearings will fly out and kill, and maim, and destroy. Klein views Islam as a suicide belt designed to explode and kill and maim, and that all it needs for detonation is to be maligned by an infidel’s free speech.

Where exactly is the disagreement amongst these people about the violent nature if Islam?

I really believe now that it’s not that Graham and Klein and Petraeus and the rest of these guys don’t know Islam is violent. It’s just that they’re so dishonest about it, at least intellectually dishonest. They’re desperately trying to hold that contradiction together, inside which a peaceful, humanitarian religion can be set off into violent bloodshed by a word, an action, a gesture. And the result of their pretzel logic is their incomprehensible, irrational, and silly statements about Terry Jones and the “Holy Qur’an.” This is what the contradiction is doing to their heads.

They’re not going to be able to hold that contradiction together much longer.

None of us is.

And that’s a good thing.

Ann Barnhardt

I just learned about this remarkable lady today. She has the best response to Lindsey Graham I’ve heard.

WSU Goes Back to the Diversity Drawing Board

How do I say this? I think I’m proud of my alma mater for the first time in my adult life?

This report from the Chicago Sun-Times:

University pulls diversity award named after Helen Thomas

December 4, 2010

BY LORI HIGGINS
DETROIT -- Wayne State University is yanking an award named for journalist Helen Thomas, citing remarks she made criticizing Israel during a conference in Dearborn.

In a brief statement e-mailed to reporters Friday, the university said it "strongly condemns the anti-Semitic remarks made by Helen Thomas."

Thomas, 90, a longtime White House correspondent who grew up in Detroit as the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, was in Dearborn on Thursday for a workshop on anti-Arab bias.

At the conference, Thomas said she stands by controversial comments about Israel that led to her resignation as a correspondent earlier this year.

She also sparked additional controversy with new comments.

"Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street are owned by the Zionists. No question, in my opinion," she said. "They put their money where their mouth is. . . . We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way."

Robert Cohen, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit, said Wayne State made the right decision.

"I think it was just very ironic that she made these comments at an event, the purpose of which was to address stereotyping, negative stereotyping, of members of the Arab community. And it was very disappointing to know that she received a standing ovation from that audience."

As reported in the Detroit News on Thursday:

During her brief speech, Thomas told about how she was jokingly referred to as “Hezbollah,” “Hamas” and a “terrorist” by White House press officials. She said she didn't protest the comments because “I know who I am.”

So do we.

Oregon Caroler Attempts 'O Tannenbomb,' or, Paradise or Bust!

The president of the Muslim Students Association at Oregon State University, Omar Mohamed, is making the obligatory remarks intended to drive a wedge between Mohamed Mohamud’s hoped-for act of mass murder at an Oregon tree-lighting ceremony, and the religion that inspired him to undertake it. The MSA, as has been documented about four ways from Sunday by now, is the front organization for the Muslim Brotherhood on American college campuses. And the Brotherhood’s motto, if you aren’t familiar with it, includes this:

Jihad is our way/Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.

Mohamed, (the MSA president), told the media that “It doesn't take much thought from a reasonable person to see that his actions and behavior in this instance are not very reflective of Islam.” The MSA president also says Mohamud wasn’t known for being pious. “From what I understand, he wasn't the most religious person. He didn't regularly go to mosque.” That’s as may be. But then it’s not really mosque attendance that the really popular firebrand preachers are pushing as the express route to a hot tub in Paradise splashing with 72 virgins, is it? That’s what jihad is for.

Meanwhile, the Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center in Carvallis, Oregon, the mosque where Mohamud attended and, possibly, was radicalized, released its own statement. In it, the Islamic Center declares that the murderous explosion Mohamud was hoping to set off “does not in any way represent Islam or Muslims, rather it goes against it. In Islam, one finds no justification whatsoever for any form of a violent act against civilians even during wars,” and so on and so on.

The statement concludes with the mandatory statement that “Islam is a religion of peace and these acts are not the legitimate acts of Muslims.”

We can expect over the next few days that the anti-anti-jihadists will surface across the media reinforcing their suggestion that Mohamud was acting all alone, that he represents only a tiny fringe of Muslims, and actually wasn’t representing Muslims at all, because, as the statements from the MSA and the Islamic Center should place beyond all doubt, Islam is a religion of peace, and blah, blah, blah.

When all that gets going, talking heads will point at how the FBI made helpful suggestions to Mohamud through their undercover contacts, even at one point offering Mohamud the opportunity to become “operational,” trying to get folks thinking this plot wasn’t even Mohamud’s idea.

That’s why it’s good to keep this in mind, too. Before the FBI ever became aware of Mohamud he was already deeply devoted to the idea of becoming a jihadist martyr. In statements he freely offered, (which the FBI recorded), he recalled that during Ramadan when he was fifteen “someone told him about the martyrs and the virtues, and MOHAMUD ‘didn’t even have to hear anything else.’” Mohamud now knew what he wanted to do with his life: end it killing his fellow Americans or other suitable infidels in violent jihad.

It’s reasonable to assume that the “someone” who told him “about the martyrs and the virtues,” (or perhaps he was told about “the virgins”) was someone in his mosque, or certainly within his Islamic community. Mohamud repeatedly said that he had been thinking about becoming a jihadist since before he was fifteen. And why? To go to Paradise, he says. Last January, before the FBI ever tried to contact him, Mohamud sent an email to a friend who’d gone to Sauda Arabia to visit Mecca:

“oh, nice, makes lots of prayers for me, make [prayer] that I will be the one to open up Al Quds and make [prayer] that I will be a martyr in the highest chambers of paradise”.

Later on he dismissed all worries about blowing himself up in a suicide attack: “Because if you were going to [Paradise] you wouldn’t have to worry, right?”

In an email Mohamud believed he was sending to a contact in northwest Pakistan, he wrote: “i will contact you when i am able to travel. pray for me that allah will free my passage from the lands of the ploytheists [sic] . . . .”

Before the FBI began their operation against him, Mohamud had already been submitting articles to “Jihad Recollections” magazine, and had submitted one to al Qaeda’s “Inspire” magazine, the online publication the Wall Street Journal says “wants to make news, by inspiring young American Muslims to kill their neighbors.”

Mohamud appears to believe that “residing amongst the [infidels]. . . is a sin,” as he said in what he believed was his farewell video. Living amongst the infidels was looked upon dimly by the Prophet, and this may explain why Mohamud was so determined to get out of America to go to Yemen or Pakistan to do jihad. But, he wants to know from his fellow Muslims, as long as they are are living here, “What has stopped you from fighting in the cause of Allah [and the raising of the banner of ‘no god but Allah’?].”

The lawyers and the legal experts and the media guys will soon be hashing out how good a job the government did in catching Mohamud, or how bad a job they did violating his constitutional rights. At this point I see all that as less important in the big picture than what it was that motivated Mohamud. It’s quite clear that his motivations were purely religious. He was challenged by Islamic teachers to aspire to martyrdom as a good Muslim, and promised Paradise the instant he killed himself attempting “to damage the enemies of Allah as much as possible.”

All this badly contradicts the incessant statements from Islamic leaders, and their useful mouthpieces in the media, that these actions are not motivated by the teachings of Islam, and that we’re not struggling against radical Islamists.

Let them say this is not Islam.

'I Was a Patdown Officer for the TSA!'

The following true story was originally published in the November edition of “The Orange Alert,” the agency newspaper of the Department of Homeland Security.

I Was a Patdown Officer for the TSA!




HER EYES BORED into mine for the first time in forty years. We both knew this one was going to be personal.

“Hello, Johnny.”

“Hi, Sister Stanislaus.”

“You look well.”

“I ain’t complaining.”

“I’m not complaining.”

Same old battleaxe. Even back at All Saints we all speculated she was past 90. And here she was, looking not a day older, which is not to say, young.

Now I laughed at her trying to correct me. I let the sound of the latex snapping on my wrist tell her that this time she wasn’t the one in charge.

“You could’ve let them scan you, Sister.”

“You think I’d let them do that, Johnny?”

No, not really. One look at the old-style get-up she still wore told me that much. The floor-length habit, the black veil stretched over a tunnel of starched cardboard, the immaculate wimple, the same black high-button shoes. I’d seen the agency bulletins warning that our most powerful scanners were helpless against rigs like these.

That made it my job.

“You want to hold your arms out like this, Sister?”

“You aren’t going to do this, Johnny. You’re a good boy.”

That was rich.

“A good boy?,” I said. “Last time you shared your thoughts on that you told me I was going to hell. Besides, it’s TSA rules. You know what you always taught us about obeying the rules.”

The way I grinned at her would have got my block knocked off in her home room.

“Yes,” she said. She sure didn’t scare easy. “I just don’t see how all this helps you find those wicked Mohamedans. You all need to put on your thinking caps.”

I didn’t tell her that TSA wasn’t budgeted for anything like that.

I reached around for what was hanging from her waist like a sash. None too gently, I yanked it free. She didn’t flinch. “Oh, HO,” I said. “And what have we here?”

“You really don’t recognize it, Johnny? Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little rosary.”

It wasn’t all that little. It was four feet if it was an inch, with black beads the size of garbonzos and a steel-edged crucifix just right for opening up a daydreamer’s cheekbone from seven paces.

“Ain’t this the same one you used to garrote Benny Majekowski in fifth grade? He still talks like Marge Simpson.”

Her eyes closed for a moment in a gesture of sacrificial patience.

“That should be, ‘isn’t it the same one,’ Johnny. And Benny needed my help remembering the difference between ‘lain’ and ‘laid.’”

Sister Stan, still original gangster. I was still in school when the big changes started and even the hard Orders had to soften up and disarm their sisters, taking away all the heavy-duty yardsticks and the brass knuckles. Even then, Sister Stan was one of that warrior class who weren’t going to just run off and marry renegade priests or take jobs with the welfare office. She’d stayed plenty tough.

But I’d gotten tougher, too. After learning all I could from having a whole card of IHMs work over my chin like a speed bag, I thought I’d see how the soft life felt. Eventually I did six tours of duty with Special Forces. Then some time with Blackwater. Now TSA. I’d seen things.

I let the rosary rattle into the Tupperware like a rockslide. For all the reaction I got her face could have been unpainted plaster.

“You won’t dare touch me, Johnny. Because you know it isn’t right.”

“There’s no right or wrong, here, Sister,” I said. “This is the airport.”

I grabbed her. Hard. She let out a whimper of shock, another of submission, another, probably, of ecstasy.

“Whoo-hoooooooooo!” Off to one side a kid in a knit cap was pointing his camera phone our way. “YouTube!”

I gave her none of the special handling they all expect from their goody-goody podiatrists and their dentists and their morticians. Once I go to work on a passenger, he gets the same level of service as the one before him and the one after. I may not be an angel, but I’m no lousy profiler.

When I finished it wasn’t half a second before she was all pulled back together again. I found my eyes avoiding hers. I focused on de-gloving.

“Do you feel better now, Johnny?”

I had to reach way down for the guts to eyeball her again, but I found some.

“Just a job.”

She was gathering her rosary back from the bin.

“I see,” she said. Her old voice had that skeptical note I’d hear when I used to tell her how a gang of kids mugged me for my homework. “Speaking of jobs,” she said, “do you remember that lovely Jeffy Hugmore from All Saints? I’m sure you’ve heard that he’s a very successful brain doctor now. He’s even operated on Phil Donahue.”

Hugmore was a kiss-up weasel who held the school record for getting the most swirlies in a single day. Sister used to let him clean the chalkboards.

“Good for him,” I said. The line behind her was getting restless. So was I.

“They do say all this makes us safer,” she said. Then her eyes to pin me the way they always could when it was life or death if I couldn’t come up with what 11 x 12 was.

“Johnny, do you think that’s true?”

I had to break the spell. I tapped my badge and said: “They ain’t payin’ us to think, Sister.”

It did the trick. I got her eyes to do the martyr thing again. But this time she didn’t correct my grammar. Probably figured: what’s the use?

“Have a nice flight,” I said. They make us say it. She didn’t let on she heard me, fussing with her veil to make it more uncomfortable.

And then she said: “Have a nice flight, Sister.”

Damn! “Have a nice flight, Sister,” I said. After where my mitts had just been, I guess I owed her that.

Two seconds later she was floating off towards Departures.

I turned back to meet the next passenger they were handing up to me. “Hey, Johnny, old pal!” the guy was saying. “Long time, no see!”

Jeffy Hugmore’s terrified eyes stared into mine for the first time in forty years.

Saints Doing the Miracles No Other Saints Will Do

The Detroit Free Press has an article today about the arrival at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church of a relic of St. Toribio Romo Gonzalez, said, (it’s not reported by whom) to be “the patron saint for undocumented immigrants, especially those who have crossed the border from Mexico to the U.S.” (“Holy Redeemer Catholic Church to install relic of Mexican saint”).

Reporter Niraj Warikoo writes:

Many have stories about the saint that circulate throughout the community. They tell of people who cross the border in search of a better life. On their way, they worry about getting caught or finding enough food and water to make the journey. According to some, St. Toribio appears and helps them as they're crossing.

"He is the patron of many of us," Mely Arredondo of Dearborn said. "There are testimonials of people crossing the border. Sometimes, the Border Patrol is coming to get them and suddenly he appears to help. It's only about an inch long, a sliver of bone encased behind glass in a gold-plated vessel.

I think this may be the first time the Church has recognized a patron saint assisting people engaged in unlawful activity, (but DU has been unable to confirm that several east coast bishops have been putting forward Ted Kennedy as patron saint of people avoiding charges of negligent homicide). But the new devotion to St. Toribio has also led to what some theologians are calling a clash amongst intercessors.

It turns out that U.S. Customs and Border Protection falls under the patronage of St. Michael the Archangel, patron saint of law enforcement officers. Lately those Catholic officers who’ve always been able to rely on St. Michael to help them catch illegal crossers have been complaining about an unexplained decline in answered prayers. Several report seeing fleeing suspects, the fat ones whom they used to catch easily, suddenly receive strength to outrun their SUVs, while other undocumented persons vanish in a burst of light, instantly reappearing outside Home Depots all ready to go to work.

Attempts by church officials to sponsor “dialogues” between the conflicting constituencies haven’t gone well. Sessions break down when customs officers drink all the coffee, and then insist that St. Michael’s status as an archangel ought to guarantee their requests get priority. On the other side, St. Toribio’s devotees keep disappearing through fire exits, leaving behind empty tuna cans and water jugs.

The solution awaits some kind of comprehensive reform, theologians say. Experts say that for the immediate future Mexican Catholics sneaking into America to make more money or to commit drug executions or home invasions will probably be able to count on St. Toribio’s assistance; and any Catholic border officer who wants to implore St. Michael’s help to catch some of these Catholic Mexicans, or for protection against being shot down by a sadistic hitman whose madre is back in Juarez lighting vigil candles for the success of the cartel is free to do so, but there are no guarantees.

And don’t even ask about who some people have in mind as patron saint for condom users.

'Fair Game'

Detroit News film critic Tom Long reviewed “Fair Game” over the weekend, the cinematic re-telling of the liberal-media version of the Valerie Plame story, a sort of fictionalized version of a fairy tale. I don’t care for Long’s reviews generally, and in this particular review he seemed more interested in restating Valerie Plame’s and Joe Wilson’s talking points than in actually doing his job. I felt the need to send him an e-mail response.

Mr. Long:

You could’t just write a movie review, you had to try educating us on history. Well, I see 280 words and at least twelve easily checked historical myths. Not quite one for every 16 words, but close.

You see, this is exactly the kind of journalism I recall going on during the “Plame affair.” I don’t need to see “Fair Game” to tell me what happened (or didn't): I was there. We all were. I was just one of the few who actually paid attention.

You could have done all of your fact-checking in The Washington Post.

Falsehood number one: The story of “Fair Game” is “too ugly to be true. . . .[but] it is.” But it isn’t. Richard Armitage has no role in the film. That makes it ugly AND untrue.

Falsehood two: The film is “an examination of one of the slimiest moments of George W. Bush's administration.” But if the movie tracks your restatement of what happened, then it’s not an “examination” at all, just another hate-Bush hit piece like the hundreds churned out in the media at the time.

Falsehood Three: Scooter Libby was the “chief bad guy involved.” You forgot to mention that Libby wasn’t convicted of doing anything to Plame, let alone “outing” her. No one was. Libby’s conviction was for a “process” crime of perjury, trapped by Patrick Fitzgerald into contradicting himself after numerous grand-jury cross-examinations about a conversation with Tim Russert thousands of conversations ago. And in 2003 weren’t you all insisting that the “chief bad guy” was Dick Cheney or Karl Rove?

Falsehood Four: Plame “was a CIA agent trying to halt nuclear proliferation.” Regardless of what Plame’s non-covert CIA assignment was in 2003, in this particular episode her self-assigned brief was to get her husband sent to Niger to try to debunk Bush’s basis for deposing Saddam for her own political reasons.

Falsehood Five: “The CIA asked Joe to go to Africa .” See Falsehood Four. I remember that in the earliest version of this fib, Wilson started out claiming that Dick Cheney had asked him to go, until Cheney made him take it back.

Falsehood Six: Wilson made the trip to investigate whether Iraq had been to Niger trying to buy yellowcake uranium but “found nothing.” No, Wilson found that Iraq HAD been to Niger trying to buy yellowcake uranium, and his report to the CIA actually bolstered Bush’s case. Wilson just lied about it later in his New York Times article, and lied about what was in his own report. The WP reported that, “According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.”

Falsehood Seven: “Bush cited that non-existent uranium story while building a case for the invasion.” Really? Still with the 16 words? The truth (still) is that Bush cited British intelligence reports that Saddam had “sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” every word of which is accurate: Saddam had sought uranium in Africa , as everyone knew then and knows even better now--us, the British-- even Wilson knows. Why don’t you? Eventually, we found 1.2 million pounds of (nonexistent?) yellowcake in Saddam’s stockpile.

Falsehood Eight: “ Wilson wrote an op-ed piece debunking Bush's ‘facts.’” He didn’t debunk anything, except the honesty of his own reports to the CIA, which, according to the Washington Post, actually “added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger .”

Falsehood Nine: “The administration leaked the fact that Plame was a CIA agent.” No the administration didn’t. It was Clintonite Richard Armitage, and it wasn’t a leak, it was gossip. An alternative source for that information was identified by The Washington Post back in 2006, when they recognized “that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson.” How? Because Wilson’s (and Plame’s) decision to go public with their outlandish charges inevitably had to lead back to exposure of her role in sending Wilson on that trip. Armitage told Bob Woodward Wilson had been “calling everybody” about the trip his CIA wife had sent him on. "Everyone knows."

Falsehood Ten: Plame’s exposure put her, “and many of her contacts, as well as her operations, in danger.” Is THAT why she had to go to ground on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine? Retired CIA veteran R.E. Pound was charged with assessing damage to Plame’s career and operations, and stated publicly that it “was ludicrous for her to claim that the exposure forced an end to her career in intelligence.” As to damage he found: “There was none.”

Falsehood Eleven: Plame and Wilson were “demonized as traitors” in the media. Phooey. They were criticized by the conservative press, and by a few honest journalists at The Washington Post, but largely they were lionized as heroes by the mainstream media, just as they’re being lionized now in movie reviews of this picture. Like yours.

Falsehood Twelve: The Plame-Wilson’s lives were ruined “because a political schoolyard bully took affront when someone dared to speak the truth.” You may want to recycle that line if anyone ever makes a movie about Juan Williams. It's closer to reality that this couple brought this on themselves by their own lies and eagerness to use government positions to hinder an administration that offended their politics. The Washington Post editorialized back in 2006 that Wilson “diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.”

And it's unfortunate that they still do.

TR Clancy
Dearborn

Sharp as a Pistol

And once you dance with me,
You'll fall in love, you see.
The Bristol Stomp will make you,
Mine all mine.

Even a dance show can illustrate the way of things. Since Sarah Palin’s national debut at the Republican Convention in September 2008, the unreasoned invective that swelled overnight into a torrent, (“I hate her because she’s stupid” is not reasoned criticism) has never weakened to this day. All of the anger isn’t partisan, either, though most of it is. A certain segment of the population are going to hate beautiful, likeable women out of sheer jealousy. Kathleen Parker, for example, and, Peggy Noonan, and others I won’t mention.

The flood grew quickly, and quickly widened to include Palin’s family, like her son, Trig, then her husband, Todd, and their daughters Willow and Bristol. I can’t help but recall that portent in Revelation of the mother and child who are hated so much by the dragon that he pours “water like a river out of his mouth” to sweep her and her offspring away, except that “the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon had poured from his mouth.” (Rev. 12.16).

Now I’m well aware that the Woman in the Bible, whoever she is, is not Sarah Palin. But keep in mind that once the dragon in that story was thwarted he went off, angry as ever, enraged as ever, “to make war on the rest of her offspring,” and I definitely consider Sarah to be one of the Woman’s offspring. As for the dragon, I just figure he’s the identical fiend he always is. That’s why I don’t want to be on his side.

Now Bristol Palin threatens to win the trophy on Dancing With the Stars. This potentiality has a lot of people upset, convinced it’s unfair when Bristol’s clearly not the best dancer. Bristol returns week after week in spite of her low scores by virtue of a landslide of votes from viewers. If she were to win now the show might be reduced to a mere popularity contest, instead of just a popularity contest combined with a dance competition, which is exactly what DWTS is.

Personally, I hope Bristol doesn’t win. She’s already proved herself. And if she wins now it will just turn into Bush v Gore all over again, and I’d rather not go through that a second time. I’d rather not hear Shirley Jackson Lee’s and Keith Olbermann’s ingenious explanations of how Jennifer Grey was denied the trophy because of race.

The issue isn’t Bristol’s dancing, but her popularity. And because of who Bristol is, that means the issue is the popularity of her mother. The unexpectedly large number of people voting for Bristol contradicts the going mood of the gallery of bubble-wrapped Palin-haters who really believed that Palin was being booed that night in the audience at DWTS, and that all of America was booing her, too. Like the old story of Pauline Kael, flabbergasted by Nixon’s landslide in 1972 when she didn’t know a single person who voted for him, the average Palin-hater has existed until now in safe ignorance there’s anyone around who can stand her.

There are certain kinds of collective hate that only feel good when it’s unanimous. Once have a gainsayer in the crowd and you start feeling shameful and small, and next thing you know you’re questioning the rightness of loathing someone just for saying, “refudiate,” while still driving around with that “Mean People Suck” bumper sticker on your Subaru.

'But Grand Imam, What Big Eyes You Have!'

Not everything about the recent Vatican Synod of Bishops for the Middle East was discouraging. According to the Catholic News Service:

Two Syrian Catholic bishops living in Lebanon told the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East that the blossoming number of Catholic-Muslim dialogue projects has not and may never lead to real understanding. . . .

Their statements differed significantly from most of the other synod members' speeches on dialogue with Muslims in the Middle East; the majority of synod members -- and the two Muslims Pope Benedict XVI invited to address the assembly -- focused instead on progress in understanding and cooperation.

In his written submission, Archbishop Raboula Beylouni, who works in the Syrian Catholic curia in Lebanon, wrote that formal Catholic-Muslim dialogues are "difficult and often ineffective," partially because the Quran tells Muslims they belong to "the only true and complete religion."

Muslims, he said, come "to dialogue with a sense of superiority and with the certitude of being victorious."

In addition, the archbishop said, "The Quran allows the Muslim to hide the truth from the Christian and to speak and act contrary to how he thinks and believes."

Islam does not recognize the equality of men and women and does not recognize the right of religious freedom, he also wrote. (“Two bishops at synod question effectiveness of dialogue with Muslims”).

If we had more Christian leaders like Archbishop Beylouni, there’d be a lot less dialogue -- and a lot more understanding. Dialogue is overrated, anyway. Not all dialogues turn out well, as Little Red Riding Hood discovered at grandma’s house when the topic turned to the size of grandma’s teeth.

Nor is understanding all that comes out -- if it ever really does -- of Muslim-Christian dialogues -- especially when one side is lying. Other harmful byproducts have included the spread of disinformation, a false sense of security, and fatal delays in identifying an enemy who means us harm.

The problems we’re having with Islamic jihad aren’t caused by a lack of understanding. They’re caused by our refusal to face what we already know.

Caroline Glick calls this the “Age of Dissimulation.” Dhimmi leaders, she writes, daren’t speak out loud what they know about their Islamic masters for fear of punishment and even annihilation. “But what can explain the West’s embrace of lies about Islam?”

Rather than discuss the nature and threat of Islamic supremacism, the Western media, Western political leaders and academics deny it.

Years from now, when historians seek an overarching concept to define our times, they could do worse than refer to it as the Age of Dissimulation. Today our leading minds devote their energies and cognitive powers to figuring out new ways to hide reality from themselves and the general public.

Take US President Barack Obama’s senior counterterrorism advisor for example. On Sunday, John Brennan spoke on Fox News about the latest attempted Islamic terrorist attack on American soil.

Since the Obama administration has barred US officials from referring to terrorists as terrorists and effectively barred US officials from acknowledging that Islamic terrorists are Muslims, Brennan simply referred to the Islamic terrorists in Yemen who tried to send bombs to synagogues in Chicago as “individuals.”

Today, practically, the only individuals willing to speak honestly about who Islamic supremacists are and what they want are the Islamic supremacists themselves.

The CNS also confirms some of her observations, and those of Robert Spencer, that statements coming out of the Synod reflect the fact of Christian leaders in the Middle East being “so terrified of Islamic aggression” against their communities, whose only protection is their dhimmi status, which is no protection at all:

[Monsignor Robert Stern, secretary general of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association] also acknowledged that fear for the safety of Christians in some Muslim countries may have prompted the synod fathers to moderate their comments. This was, he said, a “prudential judgment,” since Christians throughout the region can suffer consequences of their leaders' remarks.

“Most of these bishops come from ... places where they're a very small minority, they're bishops of a very small community, and they feel a lot of social pressure living in an Islamic world,” he observed. “A lot of them are in politically very uncertain circumstances-- where they're at risk, and their people are at risk. So, they don't have quite so open and expansive of a way of talking about the situation.”

“Just the experience for them to come to Rome, and talk to one another, and experience a kind of free ambiance where anything can be said ... was a very powerful experience for them-- to have solidarity, to be gathered around the Pope, and to be able to reflect.”

It’s a pathetic admission, evasively phrased, (“a lot of social pressure living in an Islamic world . . . politically very uncertain circumstances”), but it tells the truth nonetheless. Christians in the Muslim Middle East fear for their safety. The shepherds can’t protect their flocks from the wolves.

Maybe that lungful of free air, and proximity to Pope Benedict, who told some truth himself on Islam at Regensburg, liberated Archbishop Beylouni enough so he could utter aloud that a spade is a spade is a spade.

Baghdad Massacre

A Front Page Magazine article by Robert Spencer on October 28, (“A Tale of Two Bishops”), reported on the curious shift in the opinions of two Eastern Catholic bishops attending the Vatican Synod on Christians in the Middle East.

In contradiction to their own critical statements about Islam and the treatment of Christians in Iraq by Muslims of only a few years before, both men, Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, Eparch of Newton for the Melkite Greek Catholics in the United States, and Emmanuel III Delly, the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, were now stating opinions based upon Islamic talking points. Archbishop Bustros blames Israel for everything, repeating the heresy that Christ “nullified” Yahweh’s covenant with Israel, leaving Jews “no longer a chosen people.”

Archbishop Delly also pretended, after years of ugly evidence to the contrary, that the few Iraqi Christians who haven’t fled persecution in that country in the past few years are getting along great with Iraq’s Muslim majority. “Christians are good with their fellow Muslims and in Iraq there is mutual respect among them.”

Three days after Spencer’s article was published, Muslims attacked Baghdad’s Our Lady of Deliverance Church, murdering the priest as he said mass and taking 120 Christians hostage. By the time it ended at least 52 persons had lost their lives, and scores were seriously maimed and wounded.

In 2006 Archbishop Bustros said, “the doctrines of Islam dictate war against unbelievers.” He also said that “the concept of nonviolence is absent from Muslim doctrine and practice.” And that “peace in Islam is based on the surrender of all people to Islam and to God’s power based on Islamic law. They have to defend this peace of God even by force.”

In 2007 Emmanuel III Delly described the dire situation of Christians in Iraq this way: “Christians are killed, chased out of their homes before the very eyes of those who are supposed to be responsible for their safety.” In 2008, he said: “The situation in some parts of Iraq, is disastrous and tragic. Life is a Calvary: there is no peace or security… Everyone is afraid of kidnapping.”

Spencer believes that Christians in the Middle East, and their leaders, as exemplified by these two prelates, “dissemble” to protect their people from even worse violence from their persecutors were they to speak out. “Their odd statements of late were almost certainly made in an attempt to protect their communities. The situation of Christians in the Middle East is bad enough, and they may fear they will make it even worse by speaking more honestly about Islamic supremacism and jihad.”

Behind the Veil: Sharia

Is it unfair to point to the growing number of women and girls in hijab as evidence of the Sharia law the mayor and others flatly deny exists here in Dearborn?

In my unscientific reckoning the number of women in Dearborn wearing hijab is increasing. Whether or not this means that more Sharia-compliant women are immigrating to Dearborn, or that more assimilated women who’ve been living here are being pressured to adopt hijab, I can’t say. I can say that the choice to cover is inconsistent with a desire to assimilate into American culture. I say that even more emphatically for the niqab and the chador. It’s possible to be modest without hiding your hair.

The hijab isn’t only an ethnic or cultural phenomenon, like the hookah or lamb dishes. It’s strictly religious. It’s Sharia. And if the headscarf as a gesture of female modesty in dress were the extent of Sharia, it might even be admirable, considering the sexual excesses of the times.

But the headscarf is not the extent of Sharia. It’s more like a signpost letting you know you’ve just entered the precincts of Islam. The weight of its symbolism is significant even in Islamic nations like Turkey, where it was banned, and where it’s re-appearance terrifies secularists who recognize it as the vanguard of Islamist radicalism even in the home of the caliphate. It’s important enough that bin Laden cited France’s “burqa ban” as one of the reasons for going to war on French interests.

Professor Iqbal Al-Gharbi, a Muslim scholar from the Islamic Zaytouna University in Tunis, explained it this way: “The veil is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the veil, there is the regressive interpretation of the sharia [Koranic law]. There are the three essential inequalities which define this interpretation: inequality between man and woman, between Muslim and non-Muslim, between free man and slave.”

Do many women and girls in America cover themselves voluntarily? Sure they do. Are there also many who feel they have little choice? I can’t believe that doesn’t happen, too. It happens in other countries, and not only Saudi Arabia and Iran and Hamas-ruled Gaza. According to a 2003 survey conducted in France, “77 percent of girls wearing the hijab said they did so because of physical threats from Islamist groups.”

Muslim women who try to rebel are considered “whores” and treated as outcasts. Some of them want to move to areas “with no Muslims” to escape. However, that might not be a solution, as Islamists are at work all over France. The Communist newspaper L'Humanité in 2003 interviewed two Catholic-born French women who said they had converted to Islam and started wearing the niqab after systematic indoctrination by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The following story is from Tuesday’s Washington Times:

Three years ago, my husband and I were walking through London's Heathrow Airport on the way to our honeymoon in Italy. Men in the traditional Islamic garb of Saudi Arabia were walking through the security checkpoints behind us.

To my surprise, my husband, a man who was raised by an observant Muslim mother, stopped to watch as they went through security. He wanted to make sure the employees checked each man thoroughly. My husband had just returned from his homeland of Iraq, where he had been working as an Arabic translator with U.S. soldiers. When my husband saw certain Muslim garb, he naturally felt nervous.

His niece, an observant Muslim who fasts during Ramadan even though it leaves her parched and tired at work, feels nervous when she sees men whose appearance expresses extreme Muslim observance, such as men with a long, thick beards without mustaches. While she lived in Iraq, she learned to fear those who wanted to imitate most closely seventh-century norms of dress. Why? One day when she was in a salon in Baghdad, men came in and told her in threatening tones that her dress was “un-Islamic.” They told her she needed to change her clothes or she would “be punished.” She never understood why. She was wearing the hijab and covering her arms and legs. The men waited for her in a car outside the salon. Out of fear, my niece called male relatives to come and pick her up. Now that she is in the United States, she will walk out of Starbucks, never mind an airplane, if she sees men dressed in Islamic styles associated with hard-line ideas, even though she knows the hard-liners in Iraq often dressed in Western clothes in order to blend in. . . .In Ed Husain’s excellent book, “The Islamist” (Penguin Global, 2008), the author describes how older and devoutly Muslim parents of Southeast Asian heritage in London feel nervous when their children adopt seventh-century Middle Eastern styles. Such dress is foreign to their heritage. The parents are not bigots. They are concerned with the radicalism the dress can sometimes indicate.

The point isn’t headscarves, but the advance of Sharia in the United States. Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen and useful media idiots have taken maximum advantage of the recent Sharron Angle remarks to reframe the misinformation about Sharia in America from its innocuousness (Faisal Abdul Rauf saying the Constitution has many elements of Islamic law) to the hilarious fact that Sharia doesn’t exist. The very subject of Sharia in the USA, mocks Islamist Reza Aslan at The Daily Beast “is a bit like passing a federal law banning Americans from riding unicorns.” (“America's Anti-Islam Hysteria”).

Very funny. Except no teenage girls were ever executed by their father on orders from a unicorn.

Oh, oh, Ohio!

From Townhall.com:

Why is Ohio Dem Hanging with Islamic Extremists?

By Joel Mowbray
10/29/2010

While the news this election cycle has been focused on horse races and high-wattage personalities like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, one of the most important races in the country has slipped below the national radar—despite the fact that one of the key figures involved has a nasty habit of mingling with Islamic extremists.

In the crucial bellwether state of Ohio, there are two up-and-coming candidates squaring off for state treasurer—and the stakes are very high. Democrats are desperate to defeat the Republican, state Rep. Josh Mandel, a Marine veteran whom many observers see as a major star-in-the-making after he helped spearhead the effort to divest Ohio’s pension funds from companies that do business in the Iranian energy sector.

But Democrats’ obsession with knocking off Mandel means that they are backing incumbent Treasurer Kevin Boyce, whose competence and ethics have been called into question by mainstream media outlets.

George Soros-backed Progressive Majority, a moveon.org-style group that focuses on state and local races, has looked past these problems and made Boyce its top candidate this cycle.

Backing Boyce means more than just supporting a flawed candidate, however, as he has handed control of his office over to his top staffer, Deputy Treasurer Amer Ahmad, who has a habit of hanging around people who are well-known for ties to Islamic radicals and terrorists. Ahmad does so in his professional capacity, as well as in his personal life, choosing to attend an infamous mosque near Columbus, Ohio.

Although Boyce’s name is the one voters will see next Tuesday, Ahmad will continue to be the one effectively running the office if the Democrat wins. Several former Ohio Treasury officials who spoke with this journalist on the condition of anonymity say that Boyce has given Ahmad “free reign” to run the office as he sees fit.

One of Ahmad’s most questionable decisions was to spend his July 4 holiday as the keynote speaker at a dinner sponsored by Amana Funds, a Sharia-compliant mutual fund company whose co-founder and current trustee Yaqub Mirza was targeted for terrorist connections in an FBI raid in 2002, as were two other longtime trustees, Iqbal Unus and Jamal Barzinji. (Barzinji left the board in 2001.)

According to an FBI affidavit, Amana’s co-founder Mirza was paymaster for an Islamic charity that funneled millions to Hamas. Mirza signed at least three checks totaling over $300,000 from the account of Safa Trust, which were given to the Holy Land Foundation. HLF was eventually shut down for supporting Hamas, and its founders were sentenced last year to lengthy prison terms for terrorism-related convictions.

Amana has shown itself to be radical in other ways. Its website, for example, approvingly cites the expertise of extremist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is banned from the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Qaradawi has issued fatwas legitimizing terrorism against Israeli civilians, as well as approving the murder of Americans in Iraq.

Additionally, Amana has utilized a Qaradawi protégé, Salah Soltan, as a Sharia advisor for its funds, according to a 2006 SEC filing.

Echoing his mentor, Soltan has engaged in virulent anti-Semitism and promoted bloodshed. During a December 2008 interview on the Egyptian TV network al-Nas, Soltan called for the murder of Jews, and predicted that the “U.S. will suffer more deaths than all those killed in this third Gaza holocaust.”

Ahmad is likely well aware of Soltan, who earlier this year appeared on Hamas’ TV network. After all, the fiery cleric is the former resident scholar at the mosque Ahmad attends, the Noor Islamic Center. Although Soltan ended his regular role at the mosque before Ahmad arrived in mid-2008, documents filed by attorneys in an unrelated civil case last year showed that Soltan preached at Noor as recently as December 2008.

Noor’s radicalism goes much beyond Soltan, however.

The founder of the mosque, Dr. Hany Saqr, was listed in a leadership directory of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, which was submitted as a government exhibit in the successful Holy Land Foundation prosecution. “The Muslim Brotherhood is an international organization that seeks to spread a puritanical form of Islam, and it has served as the parent for every major Sunni terrorist group, from Hamas to Islamic Jihad to al Qaeda,” explains terrorism expert Steve Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Ahmad doesn’t just attend services at Noor Islamic Center, either. When he was looking for a receptionist, he shunned the common practice of publicly posting the opening and instead announced it only at his mosque. The woman he hired is the wife of his personal friend, Noure Alo.

As it happens, Alo scored a lobbying contract from State Street Bank this year shortly after the firm submitted bids for custodianship of Ohio’s massive pension funds. Alo—whose specialty as a lawyer is immigration, not banking—had never before had been hired as a lobbyist. State Street won three of the four bids, winning custodianship of over $32 billion in assets.

It is possible that Ahmad, who refused comment for this story, does not share the radical Islamic beliefs of the leading figures at Amana Funds and the Noor Islamic Center. But even assuming he doesn’t, Ohio voters must ask themselves: Why does he choose to associate with people whose troubling ties are so well-documented?

If Ahmad’s boss, Democrat Kevin Boyce, wins next Tuesday, Ohioans would be understandably concerned about what Ahmad would do over the next four years.

Although this race has not received its fair share of national attention, there are few clearer—or more important—choices that voters will face.
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UPDATE: The Noor Islamic Center has been described as “one of the primary sources of Islamic extremism in Central Ohio.” It’s the mosque attended by Rifqa Bary’s family, and “leaders of the Noor Center community” pressured Ms. Bary’s father that the matter of her conversion to Christianity needed to be dealt with “immediately.”

Dearborn 'Miserable'? Must Be Those Road Repairs

Oh, boy. It looks as if Adam (“Azzam the American”) Gadhan missed Anderson Cooper 360 the night Mayor O’Reilly declared to the world that there’s no Sharia in Dearborn. Or maybe Azzam’s video for Al-Qaida calling on area Muslims to fulfill their jihad duty and “retaliate” against the infidel leaders “on their own soil” was already in the can for broadcast before last Friday.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Gadahn, “In a 48-minute recording posted on the Internet. . . called upon Muslims living in what he called ‘the miserable suburbs of Paris, London, Detroit’ to attack Americans, citing as examples the Ft. Hood shooter in Texas and the man who tried to set off a bomb on a plane descending into Detroit Metro Airport on Christmas Day.”

Dawud Walid does his inevitable damage control by arguing that Gadahn doesn’t understand Dearborn Muslims. That’s as may be, but Gadahn and Walid certainly understand one another. They both share the Muslim Brotherhood conviction “that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

That is the language of the Muslim Brotherhood, the international jihadist organization whose American agencies include the Muslim Students Association, and CAIR, among others. Walid wants to distance himself from Al-Qaida, but bin Laden got his start with the Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood and Al-Qaida share nearly the same ideological roots, even if they may disagree on tactics. Al-Qaida is more violent, the Brotherhood more focused on “dawa,” incremental implementation of Sharia law, but all leading to final Muslim domination. That’s why Omar Ahmad, onetime chairman of CAIR, could say that “Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

Nor is Walid altogether right when he denies that AQ has any supporters in “any Western countries.”

Then Tarek Baydoun has gotten himself onto some more speed dials. Last week he got some notice in the Press & Guide by agreeing with Mayor O’Reilly’s criticism of Sharron Angle. Today Niraj Warikoo quotes Baydoun slamming Gadahn: “’He's either mentally ill or utterly evil,’ Baydoun said. ‘He has nothing to do with any faith tradition. He's disconnected from Muslim-American as can be.’”

Except Azzam does have something to do with a faith tradition, as he converted to Islam and joined Al Qaida so he could do jihad. And he’s been working pretty hard at it ever since, including dodging who knows how many drones. There’s no mistake that he couches his sermon to area Muslims in Islamic terms:

Know that jihad is your duty as well, and you have an opportunity to strike the leaders of unbelief and retaliate against them on their own soil. As long as there is no covenant between you and them, here you are in the battlefield just like heroes before you.

Baydoun’s usual defense to bad facts is to cite the imaginary wall of separation between Islam and Islamic terrorism. He called the Ft. Hood massacre “an outrageous attack [that] has nothing to do with religion. It was strictly criminal.” Before that, he blamed 9/11 “on American policies and power, while denying that any of the hijackers could be “affiliated with Islam.”

Apparently, Allahu Akhbar! is an Arabic phrase meaning, “I’m an atheist criminal, and I’m going to sacrifice my life to prove it!”

Maybe Azzam won’t get many takers on his recruitment message. But I’ll wager he’s as good at knowing what the Ummah is thinking as Walid will ever admit to. And Al-Qaeda had always been an effective recruiter, including recently, inspiring Nidal Hasan, Abdulmutallab, Faisal Shahzad, and all those Somalis from Minnesota. And it only takes a few.

Do you believe all this? First sabotaging our miserable house, and now our miserable suburbs.

I’m glad Barbara Billingsley isn’t around to have to see this.

Letter from City Hall

Fresh from responding by letter to Senate candidate Sharron Angle, His Honor Mayor Jack O’Reilly has once again had to set pen to paper in response to defamation of the hometown.

An Al-Qaida video was released online Friday featuring “Azzam the American” (Adam Gadahn) calling on Muslims to attack on their home soil. In the video, Azzam addresses Muslim emigrants forced to live in the margins of society in “the miserable suburbs of Paris, London, Detroit,” an unmistakeable, and unflattering, reference that includes Dearborn.

Thanks to a correspondent with an inside track at the city, DU managed to get hold of a copy of Mayor O’Reilly’s letter to Adam Gadahn:

Adam “Azzam the American” Gadahn
Cave # 14UBL
Waziristan, Pakistan

Dear Mr. Gadahn:

I am deeply distressed about your misperceptions about our community and what outstanding opportunities of dining, entertainment, and top-flight public services Dearborn offers to people of all ages, religions, and ethnic backgrounds. Your recent reference to our city as a “miserable suburb” of Detroit ignores the fact that Dearborn ranks consistently in national surveys as one of the most livable communities in America! Dearborn is not miserable! Do not attack!

I am afraid that many share the misconception that Dearborn’s Muslims are confined to squalid ghettoes, cowering in constant terror of summary arrest, deportation, or outright disappearance -- probably because American media has been reporting this for years. I also have heard somewhere that Dearborn boasts numerous members of Muslim civil rights organizations committed to working in America to eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house. That report is true. Still, we all accept and celebrate such views as part of the richness and diversity that is Dearborn, provided they are held in a moderate way.

But let me assure you again that Dearborn is not a miserable place. Our Muslim community includes a thriving middle-class. Visit any of Dearborn’s diverse and well-stocked retail collections and instead of emigrants on the margins of society you will see parking lots zooming with high-end SUVs with prosperous Muslims at the wheels, attractive and stylishly-dressed young Arab shoppers, and countless Middle Eastern women sporting Gucci bags and shoes -- and all of them enjoying the absolute latest in cell phone technology. As a former Californian you may also appreciate a store like Dearborn Music, where you could be sure to find the latest Brian Wilson compilation CD at a very competitive price.

Many people are misinformed that Dearborn, which I like to call the quintessentially America City, is part of a "Zio-Crusader coalition," but let me assure you that nothing of the kind is the case. The only coalition we're a part of is the Coalition to Build a Better Dearborn! But seriously, there is no Zionism in Dearborn. For that matter, there’s not really that much Zionism in the Middle East, as I believe it is only hanging on in one little country. As to Dearborn, I honestly can’t say if there even are any Jews here, and if there are, I’m pretty sure no one pays them any attention. I know I don’t. Did I mention we have 7 mosques?

In the event your indictment is dismissed and you are not killed by a Predator drone (much of the technology for which was developed right here in the Detroit area!) I invite you to visit Dearborn and see for yourself that Dearborn is indeed not miserable. We have Greenfield Village and The Padzieski Art Gallery, (hours from noon to 6:00 PM Tuesday through Friday; Saturday, noon to 5:30 p.m.), and I personally will escort you to our next meeting between Muslim leaders and area counterterrorism officials.

I don’t blame you entirely for misunderstanding Dearborn. The international and national media often cast our community in a false light. Only recently I had to appear on national television to clarify that there is no Sharia in Dearborn, an absurd rumor being spread around by some Christian missionaries I recently had arrested. While Dearborn has seen its fair share of criminal prosecutions against individuals for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, or for money laundering on behalf of jhadist organizations, or for running charities sending illegal support to terror organizations, or for running around in a park with an AK-47 -- not to mention the Underwear bomber who recently tried to crash an airliner into our city, which you may have seen on CNN! -- I am proud to report that Muslims have been practicing their faith in our community for almost 90 years without a single incident or conflict.

Anyway, there’s nothing like a personal visit to experience firsthand that there is no need to urge any of your followers in Dearborn to rise up and do anything, er, violent, because I really consider Dearborn to be one really world class hometown. If circumstances make a visit impractical right now, I would welcome a phone call so I can tell you more about our community. Space prevents me from telling you about the Dearborn Homecoming, which this year will be featuring that guitar player who used to play with Billy Ray Cyrus, but I invite you to Google it for more information.

Sincerely,

John B. “Jack the American” O’Reilly
Mayor