Dingell's Overdue Retirement

It’s just possible that John Dingell may lose the seat that, between him and his father, John Sr., has been a Dingell family heirloom since the elder Dingell first won it in 1932. That means only Democrats, and only a certain flavor of Democrats, have been represented in this district for 78 years. Queen Victoria, arguably a more impressive ruler, reigned for a mere 64.

Dingell has most recently been feted in Washington as the grandfather of Obamacare. That's because he’s spent his life (shoot, he’s spent my life, as he’s been in Congress since I was born), trying to get a national health care plan through Congress. It takes a long time, Dingell explained to Paul W. Smith, to pass legislation “to control the people.”



Compared to some of Michigan’s other Democratic officeholders-for-life, Dingell has been less outspoken, showy, and outrageous. But now that Rob Steele is forcing him to actually run for the office he’s held by ancient Michigan custom for nearly six decades, a nasty side is coming out.

Never mind all that. It’s just wrong for a congressional district to be associated with one name since Prohibition.

'Ehr Kumt'

I learned about this Rosh Hashanah sermon, “Ehr Kumt,” given by Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Atlanta on The Michael Medved Show.

Rabbi Lewis is a self-described “dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU,” who voted against George W. Bush, and is still a registered Democrat. He was preaching to his primarily liberal congregation. But his urgent message is not one we usually hear from that quarter: “We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn't know it from our behavior.”

The sermon is quite lengthy, but I recommend following the link to get all of it.

But here are some highlights:

In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win‚ ... to rid the world of malevolence.

We are at war‚ yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don't put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.

Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London, from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists.To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.

And,

We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience. Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None. After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None. After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None. And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness.

And,

If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha's mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naive among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha's disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway. Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio. On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha's face should appear with the caption - "Radical Islamic savages did this." And underneath - "This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR."

And,

Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury.There is a message sent and consequences when our president visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel.There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights.

There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel.

There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states.

There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy.

There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Beware of Sheep in Wolves' Clothing

The Detroit Free Press on Tuesday published two editorials on the long-overdue release of the investigation that exonerates FBI agents in the shooting death of the radical Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah. Would it surprise you to learn that both opinion pieces call for further investigation, and question the use of government informants?

Jeff Gerritt wrote the blog version, and we expect he may have written the print version, too. Gerritt has been CAIR’s chief water carrier at the Free Press on the Abdullah case since about the time the imam’s rigor mortis started setting in. Now, when CAIR’s tattered battle flag has fallen in the campaign to transform Abdullah’s death into an FBI assassination, Gerritt has scooped it up again.

His blog article, (“Blazing big government? Don't forget Abdullah case”), is meant to needle the “Tea Party set,” whom he tongue-in-cheekily advises ought to be asking some hard questions about the government excess involved, like “how many millions of dollars did the feds spend on the Abdullah case, including two years of infiltrating the mosque with undercover informants?” We’ll see if Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin take the bait.

But what Gerritt really cares about is not government waste, but “the use of informants” by federal investigators. This is the real hobbyhorse Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR and the ISNA have been riding non-stop the past couple of years. As soon as President Obama, in his speech to the Turkish Parliament shortly after taking office, betrayed his weakness to the Islamic world, the Ikhwan in America, including the “American Muslim Alliance (AMA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), Muslim American Society-Freedom Foundation (MAS-FF), Muslim Student Association-National (MSA-N), Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC),” issued a joint statement demanding an end, among other things, to “1. Infiltration of mosques and systematic manipulation of Muslim religious affairs, 2. Use of agents provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Muslim youth.”

Steve Emerson relates how:

This message was made crystal clear by Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) - Los Angeles last year at an Anaheim, California mosque:

"We're here today to say our mosques are off limits. Our Koran is off limits. Our youth, who they [the FBI] try to radicalize, are off limits. Now is the time to tell them, 'We're not going to let this happen anymore.'" (“New Interactive Terror History Map”).

Michigan-CAIR’s Dawud Walid has been wearing out the same theme, using the media (like Jeff Gerritt) to describe “agent provocateurs who entice people into criminal activities.”

CAIR even got Congressman John Conyers in on the act, making him agree to call “for the DOJ to review the FBI’s current usage of confidential informants in houses of worship.”

Comically enough, CAIR’s Ayloush:

has claimed that the FBI is "paying convicted felons to 'infiltrate' mosques to radicalize Muslim youths and instigate talks about terrorism." In an interview with Southern California Public Radio, Ayloush said the FBI has been "hiring shady characters and individuals to try to instigate against the Muslim community. And instigate acts of violence to ruin the reputation of the Muslim community."

Abdullah was a convicted felon radicalizing Muslim youths and talking terrorist trash. The FBI sting that led to Abdullah’s death was about receiving stolen merchandise, which Abdullah told an informant would be good to sell at his mosque. Abdullah had previously been to prison for felonious assault and weapons violations, and he was no less violent or hateful after he got out. He vowed to his Muslim flock that “he would not go peacefully should law enforcement ever come to get him.” And we all know Abdullah, 53 at the time of his departure for Paradise, wasn’t a “Muslim youth.” So was he really enticed into that warehouse? It’s not as if the FBI offered him 72 brown-eyed virgins.

The point is, it would be hard to find a character any shadier than Abdullah. If he had been the one who turned informant against his crooked colleagues, you can bet Walid would be complaining that a guy with Abdullah’s criminal history was an agent provocateur. As it is he was widely praised as a martyr and a spiritual model for Muslims.

The Freep’s second editorial, (“Feds should review imam shooting”), criticizes the use of government informants, too. But instead of using the “government excess” gag it takes the position that the AG report, in spite of clearing the FBI agents of any wrongdoing, “does not close the book” on the matter. This regardless of the editorial’s own admission that the AG’s office did “a thorough and honest job.”

Well, if a thorough and honest investigation cleared the agents of wrongdoing, then the book ought to be closed, n’est-ce pas? But if you’re at all familiar with liberal ways, or for that matter with children wanting bedtime stories, or even with the 2000 presidential election, then you know how this works. Liberals never want the book to be closed, no matter how late it is, or no matter how many times you’ve read them Green Eggs and Ham. Because once the book is closed they’ll have to get under the covers and go to sleep. Read it again. Maybe it ends differently this time.

The Freep’s last-ditch hope for staying up past bedtime is to scoff that “Nothing short of a complete and independent investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice will restore credibility to ongoing fact-finding.”

How can the Freep be unaware that the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ under President Obama is a political cesspool that has driven out all vestiges of either independence or integrity?

Oh, that’s right: because it wasn’t reported in the media.

Abdullah's Son Insists His Father Was No Threat

The late Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah’s son said on Friday that the Dearborn Police Department report about the incident of his father’s death “sounds a little suspicious to me.”

Bet you didn’t see that coming.

The DPD report reaches the same conclusions as the Michigan Attorney General’s report on the shooting that was finally released last week.

Abdullah’s son, Omar Regan, said Friday that his father was shot when he was not a threat. “Why would you send a dog to attack him if he was lying down on his stomach?” (“Shooting report mirrors state’s”).

The AG’s report states that, after failing to obey repeated commands by agents to lie down and show his hands, Abdullah lay down on his stomach, concealing a handgun beneath him. Agents then gave him repeated commands that if he refused to show his hands the dog would be deployed. It was later learned that the handgun Abdullah was concealing with his body was loaded with 17 rounds. He rolled over after the dog was set upon him, and fired three rounds.

At that point the agents who ended up returning fire were standing as close as five to twelve feet of where Abdullah was laying. Some or all of the rounds Abdullah fired, in the direction of the agents, mortally wounded the K-9. Any one of Abdullah’s rounds could have just as easily killed an agent.

He was a threat.

So We Don't Get French Benefits?

That one FedEx ad a few years(?) ago was alway good for a laugh.

In “Wrong,” a guy is chastised by his co-workers for being a source of misinformation. “Steely Dan is not one person,” berates one guy. “We get fringe benefits, not French benefits, it’s not the Leaning Tower of Pizza, and James Dean was an actor—Jimmy Dean makes sausages.” The guy is then told that he’s wrong by thinking that FedEx ground is too expensive. “So we don’t get French benefits?” he replies.

Speaking of French benefits, but much less funny, is a recent newspaper exchange between MI-CAIR’s Dawud Walid and Detroit News editor, Nolan Finley. Walid, ungrateful for the cozy chair by the hearth the Detroit News has prepared for him these days, wrote an angry letter responding to Nolan Finley’s plea of a couple weeks ago that Muslims try harder to obey the Sermon on the Mount. Both of them embrace the “fringe” defense of jihadist violence. Writes Walid:

Nolan Finley's column, "Islam must turn the other cheek," (Sept. 12), was contradictory and short sighted, to say the least.

Islam is not responsible for the "lunatic fringe" that is protesting our nation because of the now canceled Quran burning of Terry Jones. A fringe by definition anyway means outside of the majority mainstream.

American Muslims have overwhelmingly acted responsibly in the face of hatred spewed against us on cable television programs and radio talk shows and by bigots who desecrate our mosques and the Quran.

Walid fails to address the way Finley’s headline about Islam “turning the other cheek” clumsily confuses two utterly dissimilar religions. Not that I’m going to attempt a digression explaining how Christianity is the only faith that actually counsels “turning the other cheek.” I simply can’t bear labeling the Gospel with that insipid and empty prattle about a “religion of peace.” Christianity may bring peace, or it might bring the sword. Either way, it’s true. Anyhow, I think peacefulness as a religious attribute is overrated. As Mr. Beaver replied when asked if Narnia’s Lion ruler, Aslan, was safe: “Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”

When I complain that Islam isn’t a religion of peace, it’s not the violence I’m objecting to. I abhor it, but I understand it. When you worship a god with as many insecurities as Allah, and who keeps commanding you to be violent too if you want to make it to Paradise, violence is going to result. It’s not the logic of violence that bothers me, but the lying about the nature of Islam. As Robert Spencer has pointed out, if any nonMuslim dares deny that Islam is a religion of peace, “they rain down the charges of "Islamophobia," "hate," "bigotry" and the like. But when a Muslim says it, they utter nary a peep.”

Nolan Finley still believes that at the heart of Islam beats the sincere Christian message of overcoming evil with good. From, the sound of it, and like so many journalists, (among the worst of whom is Bill O’Reilly), Finley has absorbed the secularist myth that all religions share the same values and the same goals, i.e., that all religions, underneath, are some form of Christianity. Get this wrong, and all the other errors follow as a matter of course.

Accordingly, as Finley sees it, all Muslims need is to “grow up” and learn to accept “antagonism.” After all, didn’t Christ teach his disciples to “turn the other cheek?” Christ, Mohammed. Eh! Same difference. Regardless of Finley’s training in Christianity, he clearly is not a student of the Prophet if he imagines Allah’s spokesman had any intention of tolerating antagonism.

Finley at least started out on the right track when he probed the false “fringe” logic usually deployed to neutralize Islam's violence: “But the lunatic fringe is apparently wide enough to trigger an extreme overreaction from our nation's top offices to a silly little publicity stunt.” Then Finley dropped it. Too bad.

Because I think he was wrong about how wide that so-called “fringe” is. It’s a whole lot wider than just something that triggers overreaction from U.S. security officials. It’s wide enough to knock down the World Trade Center, draw us into two wars, enslave hundreds of millions of people, dominate the news cycle for going on a decade, keep every Western power on a permanent state of alert, and will soon offer the world the first atomic attack since 1945.

The problem with conceding CAIR and the rest of the world’s Islamist front men the false premise that supporters of violent jihadism are just a tiny fringe is that the whole argument about Islam falls right along with it. Consider how, after scapegoating 16,000-plus terrorist attacks onto an Islamic “lunatic fringe,” Walid can bypass that gorilla and get on the with the serious business of blaming the whole thing on “intolerance” and “bigotry” in the USA.

Don’t look now, but he’s just completely removed Islam from the whole discussion of the problem of Islamic violence. That’s why, in response to Finley’s condemnation of “a worldwide wave of bloodshed at the hands of offended radicals” in response to the Terry Jones kerfuffle, Walid can say that “Islam is not responsible for the ‘lunatic fringe’ that is protesting our nation.”

Obviously Islam is responsible. He may as well say the sun has nothing to do with sunburn. Even the most conservative estimates place worldwide support for violent jihad amongst the world’s Muslims at ten percent, which, as has been pointed out, of “1.4 billion Muslims is a lot of people.”

If you want to see a real fringe, a genuine insignificance of lunatic kooks, consider that Terry Jones’s church has only 50 members (and you can bet fewer than that active members). The recent vandalized mosques, and the Qu’ran burned in Lansing, were truly unrepresentative of anything like the American mainstream, and were almost certainly acts committed by individuals acting alone.

You can bet that the Lansing Qu’ran burner was not getting Internet guidance (and financing) from a well-funded and well-protected spiritual advisor in a foreign country (such as al-Awlaki) controlled by a government constituted along the same lunatic principles the arsonist happens to hold. There are no lunatic mosque-defacing graffiti artists who have like-minded counterparts ruling modern nations running three shifts to complete atomic bombs so they can destroy all the Jews in Israel.

Our lunatics may be deplorably ignorant, but they don’t control nuclear programs, Middle Eastern oil, or genocidal armies with long-range missiles.
Most important, when these minor intolerant outbursts take place in America, historically, no one dies. Yet Walid wants us to believe that American intolerance and bigotry, not that Muslim “lunatic fringe,” are the bigger threat on which we should focus.

There are fringes of 30 or 40 people, then there are fringes that form a crescent of 300 million around the eastern Mediterranean.

I can’t see why any thinking American goes along with the pretense that Islamic violence is the product of a small fringe of “hijackers” of a peaceful religion.

'What Would Mohammed Do?'

In his autobiographical, “Surprised by Joy,” C.S. Lewis described his momentous first meeting with the influential schoolmaster, Kirk (or “the Great Knock”). Kirk was a rationalist and an atheist, a rigorous logician. On his first encounter with Kirk while de-training in Surrey, the young Lewis, lost for anything better to discuss, off-handedly noted his surprise at the “wildness” of the Surrey countryside. Kirk promptly pounced on the description, wanting to know exactly what Lewis meant by the proposition, and upon what his expectations of the flora and fauna of Surrey had been based. Lewis was soon admitting it hadn’t been based on anything -- not “maps, or photographs or books” -- or anything else. Whereupon Lewis learned his first lesson on the hazards of baseless opinions.

“Do you not see, then,” concluded the Great Knock, “that your remark was meaningless? Do you not see, then, that you had no right to have any opinion whatever on the subject?”

A couple of recent incidents have revealed that Henry Payne, Detroit News editorial cartoonist and sometime commentator, has made friends with CAIR’s Dawud Walid. I don’t begrudge either man his friends, surely. It’s still a free country.

Wrote Payne on Friday:

A leading Detroit-area Muslim has condemned the threats against a Seattle Weekly cartoonist who has been forced into hiding for drawing Mohammed.

"This is unacceptable," says Dawud Walid, president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islam Relations (CAIR). "We like to ask 'What would Mohammed do?', referring to the Muslim prophet's own pleading for tolerance when he was condemned for his point of view. (“Free speech thwarted in U.S. as cartoonist forced to hide”).

Here’s the thing: I’m no more going to buy that Walid believes in a Mohammed “pleading for tolerance when he was condemned for his point of view,” or that CAIR champions free speech, than I’m going to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. Both the Qu-ran and Mohammed’s biographers have left no doubt that he exacted cruel, bloody revenge against those who criticized him, and inspired his followers to do the same.

It is a perennial CAIR propaganda point -- trotted out whenever Islam’s insatiable need for bloody revenge hits the news -- that the Prophet didn’t have an angry bone in his body. In this case it’s the insane calls for revenge against former Seattle Weekly cartoonist, Molly Norris, now in hiding, that has Walid painting Mohammed as an exemplar of Christian forbearance. A few years back CAIR national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper tried to deflect world Islam’s irrational rage over the Mohammed cartoons by telling the media, knowingly full well it was a lie, that the Prophet always responded to attacks on himself with kindness. (“Muhammad's Dead Poets Society — Peaceful Non-assassinations of Critics”).

Walid may well say that he and his brothers in the Ikhwan “like to ask ‘What would Mohammed do?,’” but the Ikhwan sure doesn’t like it when nonMuslims ask, because the answer isn’t very nice. CAIR is dedicated to slandering critics as Islamophobes and bigots in an attempt to shut them up. CAIR’s primary tactic is to silence criticism of Islam, whether it’s in the media, in law enforcement agencies, or even from terrified airline passengers who overhear Ikhwan agents staging a terrorist dry run.

Anyone from that organization taking a stand for free expression is prima facie proof of lying.

Henry Payne seems to have taken a liking to Walid: he believes he’s sincere, even patriotic (!). Consequently, Payne is giving Walid (and CAIR, naturally) credibility by puffing him in his columns.

Payne has a right to do that, if we’re speaking in terms of his right to associate with, or hold an opinion of, or speak, about, anyone or anything he pleases. Payne is, after all, an opinion journalist, and cartoonist. Nor, unlike Dawid Walid, do I have any doubts about Payne’s sincerity.

But he is sincerely misinformed. His opinions that Walid is a straight shooter, that CAIR is a benevolent civil rights organization, that Mohammed was a preacher of tolerance and free speech, are simply all wet.

He cannot have done his homework. Payne can start with finding out what CAIR really is, and what the Muslim Brotherhood has in mind, and what really happened to people who crossed Mohammed.

And until he has done so, as Old Knock would surely say to him, Payne really has no right to have any opinion whatever on the subject of what Mohammed or his followers would do.

Tonight on 'Anti-Climax Theater'

After 11 months we’ve finally reached a point in the Imam Abdullah case where we can say, “Enough, already.” (“Cox: No laws broken in fatal FBI shooting of imam”).

According to the Michigan Attorney General’s office, investigators are reporting “undisputed evidence that Mr. Abdullah resisted arrest and fired a gun first in the direction of the agents. Under Michigan law, law enforcement agents are justified in using deadly force in these types of situations, and therefore we found no crimes.”

We’ve recently criticized AG Mike Cox, who lacks personal credibility, over how long it’s taken him to make this report public. Regardless, Cox’s problems don’t necessarily cast his investigators in a poor light. This overdue report clarifies once and for all that “Abdullah making a series of decisions that resulted in the use of deadly force against him -- and ultimately his death. None of Abdullah’s follower who complied with the police commands were injured in any way.”

Right on cue, and determined to keep the story alive forever -- which is how long I reckon it would take for CAIR to restore its undeserved facade as a legitimate organization -- Dawud Walid began demanding the surveillance footage of the raid.

“Walid’s group also requested test results showing whether Abdullah fired a weapon and the caliber of bullets that struck the FBI dog to see if the bullets were fired by Abdullah or a law enforcement agent.” It’s interesting that the AG’s report includes a conversation with CAIR’s retained pathologist, who concluded that abrasions on Abdullah’s face could only be explained as dog bites -- based on his scientific reasoning: “what else could it be?” (Right, as if aliens can be ruled out just that easy).

Walid believes there’s still a chance to prove the FBI conducted a “targeted assassination” of their K-9 Freddy while they were busy assassinating Abdullah. Whatever that would prove. (The AG’s office reports that bullet fragments reovered from the K-9, Freddy, are consistent with Abdullah’s handgun, and not the rifles used by the FBI.)

So we say: Enough already.

Why don’t we all just let Abdullah deflower his 72 virgins with whatever he has left to do it with.

And let Freddy rest in peace.

Four Missionaries Acquitted in Dearborn

The four missionaries charged with “inciting a crowd” while evangelizing at the Dearborn Arab International Festival last June were acquitted on Friday. One of the four, Negeen Mayel, was found guilty of failing to follow a police officer’s order. (“4 missionaries acquitted of inciting crowd”).

I’m glad the four were acquitted of the incitement charge, which was pure nonsense from the get-go. I’m also glad Ms. Mayel was convicted of disobeying a police officer. When I listened to Negeen on the tape of her arrest using what I have to describe as an unbearable girl-victim stage voice (“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”) I simply couldn’t find it in me to resent that poor cop for doing whatever it took to shut her up.

Don’t get me wrong. That kind of passive-aggressive wheedling, while clearly meant to be provocative, was hardly an incitement of a crowd, which is what the four were charged with. I support the cause of this acquittal because I support our cause of pushing back Shariah in Dearborn. I also support the First and Fourth Amendments, which tooka pretty bad beating with these arrests.

When this first happened, I was supportive of the missionaries. As things progressed, and I spent many tedious hours trying to make certain that these folks weren’t all the horrible things Jack O’Reilly said they were, I found myself liking the Acts 17 individuals less and less -- but not because I think they ever did anything that is against the law in Dearborn.

No matter: whether I find David Wood puffed up, or disapprove of the way Ms. Mayel exploits being itty-bitty enough for toting around in Paris Hilton’s handbag, the big facts about all this are impossible to miss.

First, these charges should have never been brought. This was a clear instance of the Dearborn executive authority being abused, (and the taxpayer’s money wasted on this hopeless trial), to prove to Dearborn’s Muslim leaders that in any public rumble that has gives an appearance of “Muslims against non-Muslims,” Dearborn government intends to outdo itself proving its prior commitment to take the Muslim side.

Second, Dearborn government, the mayor’s office and the police department, are badly compromised for the diligence at placating Muslim feelings -- real or imagine -- about all this. As Andrew McCarthy describes it, “Camouflaged as a crackdown on ‘disturbing the peace,’ [this] was transparently the enforcement of sharia’s prohibition against preaching religions other than Islam.”

O’Reilly was all in on the malicious prosecution of these four, including publishing a letter in which he pre-judged the criminal case and materially misrepresented what he had to know of the facts. O’Reilly had to know, and the police certainly did, that there was no “large crowd” gathered around the missionaries, or any “public danger.” While many may have reservations about the motives of Acts 17, there’s no doubt that both Chief Haddad and the mayor -- remember they are government officials, not private citizens -- falsely characterized events around the arrests as “incitement,” just so they could support the baseless charges they’d already laid against the four.

Even after the city lost this unnecessary trial on Friday, O’Reilly was still hurling unsupported claims against the acquitted defendants:

“It's really about a hatred of Muslims,” O’Reilly said. “That is what the whole heart of this is. ... Their idea is that there is no place for Muslims in America. They fail to understand the Constitution.”

I’ve got no idea what O’Reilly has in mind with that remark about the Constitution, because no one has suggested that any constitutional rights of Muslims were violated in this whole episode.

Unless, of course, it’s the constitutional right of hundreds of thousands of Muslims not to have to hear about Jesus Christ from four infidels.

Report: 'Shariah, the Threat to America'

From Family Security Matters:

Shariah, the Threat to America

September 15, 2010 - The Editor

A report (pdf) has just been published by the Center for Security Policy, which should be taken seriously by anyone with an interest in national security issues, and particularly those in government. The report has been written by “TEAM B”, a panel of 19 people, headed by Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin and Lieutenant General Harry Edward Soyster. From 2003 to 2007 Boykin was Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Soyster was a former Director of Defense Intelligence Agency and Commanding General at U.S. Intelligence and Security Command.

The 17 associates in the report include Maj. Stephen C. Coughlin (ret.), Andrew McCarthy , Ambassador Henry Cooper, Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons - US Navy (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet, John Guandolo—former Special Agent, Counter-Terrorism Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, R. James Woolsey—former Director of Central Intelligence and others.

The 177-page report itself is entitled: “Shariah, The Threat to America, An exercise in competitive analysis.” You can download it here (pdf format).

The message is simple but strong. There may be some libertarian interpretations of sharia law, such as that practiced by the late Gus Dur, an Indonesian religious leader, where sharia is seen as a guide to personal conduct. That interpretation of sharia is rare, however, and more people and most Muslim nations respect the other end of the sharia spectrum. This shade of sharia is connected with Islamic supremacists (Islamists) who are directly opposed to all of the liberties and democracy that could only have grown in the Enlightenment and later. The Enlightenment values that inspired and informed the Founding Fathers to create America, which epitomises Western Democracy, are the antithesis of the extremist – Islamist – side of sharia.

Even Tony Blair, who had allowed his government’s policies to be dictated by Islamist followers of Maududi and the Muslim Brotherhood, recently stated that Radical Islam is the world’s greatest threat.

The Team B report states:

What cannot credibly be denied, however, is that:

a. shariah is firmly rooted in Islam’s doctrinal texts, and it is favored by influential Islamic commentators, institutions, and academic centers (for example, the faculty at al-Azhar University in Cairo, for centuries the seat of Sunni learning and jurisprudence);

b. shariah has been, for over a half-century, lavishly financed and propagated by Islamic regimes (particularly Saudi Arabia and Iran), through the offices of disciplined international organizations (particularly the Muslim Brotherhood); and

c. due to the fact that Islam lacks a central, universally recognized hierarchical authority (in contrast to, say, the Roman Catholic papacy), authentic Islamic moderates and reformers have an incredibly difficult task in endeavoring to delegitimize shariah in the community where it matters most: the world’s Muslims.

The report demands that genuine moderate Muslims and Islamic reformers must be encouraged, for without them, the hardline “Islamist” ideology will prevail.

Chapter 4 deals specifically with the Muslim Brotherhood, and other subsections of Chapter 5 deal with Hamas, al-Qaeda, Khomeinism, Hezbollah, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tablighi Jamaat and Jamaat al-Fuqra.

For too long, governments in the West, including those in America, have taken on board a fictional version of Islam, a myth. This has allowed (p.17 of the report) individuals like Abdurahman Alamoudi to be an adviser at the White House, even though this Muslim Brotherhood member supported terrorist groups and was himself subsequently jailed for 23 years for terrorist offenses.

Alamoudi had claimed in 1996, at the time that he was nominating and vetting chaplains for the U.S. military and prisons, that: “either we do it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country.”

Other people who have masqueraded as “moderates” and have had the ear of government in America have had the same attitudes. Omar Ahmad, founder of CAIR had stated in 1998 that:

“If you choose to live here [in America]… you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam. Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

You can read the rest here.

Hunting Season Opens for Hamas

Do peace talks mean it’s open season for Hamas to murder Jews?

Caroline Glick writes this for The Jerusalem Post:

AND THIS brings us back to Tuesday evening's highway massacre. Predictably, the Obama administration led the way in framing the terrorist violence as a bid by Hamas to derail the newest round of negotiations. For example, after meeting with Netanyahu Wednesday Obama said, "The tragedy that we saw yesterday where people were gunned down on the street by terrorists who are purposely trying to undermine these talks is an example of what we're up against."

The only party that rejected the administration's rationalization of the attack was Hamas, whose operatives reportedly carried it out. In an interview Thursday with the London-based Asharq al Awsat, Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahar said that the talks have nothing to do with the attack. As he put it, "The bid to link this operation to the negotiations is completely wrong. When people have the opportunity, the capability and the targets, they act."

The truth is probably found neither in A-Zahar's claim nor in Obama's assertion. In all likelihood, Hamas was testing the waters. Iran's Palestinian proxy wanted to know whether the regular rules for peace processes have kicked into gear yet. Those rules -- as the families of the hundreds of Israelis murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the peak years of peace processes will attest -- involve Israel giving free rein to terrorists to murder Jews during "peace talks."

Since Yitzhak Rabin first shook Yassir Arafat's hand on the White House lawn 17 years ago, successive prime ministers have opted to not to retaliate for murderous attacks when peace talks are in session. They have justified their willingness to give the likes of Hamas a free hand to murder by claiming that fighting back would be tantamount to allowing terrorists to hold the peace process hostage. Conducting counter-terror campaigns in the midst of negotiations, they have uniformly argued, would endanger the talks and so, Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad must all be given a carte blanche to murder.

Echoing these sentiments precisely, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin all reportedly objected to launching any response to Tuesday's attack. According to the media, the three closed ranks against Netanyahu who reportedly wished to attack Hamas targets in Gaza following the massacre.

Wednesday's roadside shooting attack, in which a man and his wife were wounded, was a clear indication that Hamas and its ilk received the message. Just as A-Zahar said, they are always looking for an opportunity. And in not responding to Tuesday's attack, Israel told them that for the duration of these negotiations, Hamas can again kill with impunity. (“The New Netanyahu?”).

Ground Zero Crater: Nine Years of Lies Have Only Made it Deeper

You’ve noticed how much news coverage is being devoted to stories about alarmed Muslims taken aback by the sudden outpouring of xenophobic anger because of the Ground Zero mosque. (All the more curious, as we’ve monitored CAIR’s regular declarations that Islamophobia reached Kristallnacht levels after 9/11 and more or less remained constant).

For instance, from the Detroit Free Press:

“This year, the commemoration [of 9/11] follows a stunning summer in which opposition to a planned Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site escalated into a national uproar over Islam, extremism and religious freedom.” (“9/11, Ground Zero mosque uproar put Muslims on alert”).

The New York Times:

“Now, many of those same Muslims say that all of those years of work are being rapidly undone by the fierce opposition to a Muslim cultural center near ground zero that has unleashed a torrent of anti-Muslim sentiments and a spate of vandalism.” (“American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?”)

From CAIR:

(CNSNews.com) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is putting some of the blame on both the Tea Party and the Republican Party for what it sees as a growing tide of anti-Muslim anger. CAIR officials said the rise in “Islamophobia” stems from the controversy surrounding the Islamic center and mosque that Muslims plan to build a few blocks from Ground Zero. (“CAIR Director: 'Tea Party and Republican Party Have Given the Green Light for These People to Defame and Stereotype Muslims'”).

The misleading question planted in all these stories is, “Why, nine years after the 9/11 attacks, are Americans more mistrustful of Muslims than they were before?”

The misleading answer the reader is supposed to find, in one form or another, runs along these lines: Only because misinformation about Islam is being spread by extremists, Islamophobes, tea party supporters, the Republican party.

Buying it?

Not me. The narrative’s a phony. Skeptical questions about how Americans could still dare to think ill of Muslims nine years after 9/11 (it can only be explained by a mass sinking into bigotry and Islamophobia!), presumes that what happened on that date was a one-off crime that was no more the fault of Muslims than Charles Manson’s Helter Skelter murder rampage was the fault of The Beatles. “It was so long ago,” runs the script, “and besides, we were targeted, too.”

Never mind if Muslims were targeted, too. (Muslims weren’t targeted. It was a matter of indifference to bin Ladin who he killed accidentally alongside his infidel victims--hardly the same thing). Americans learned after 9/11 that the act of war committed on 9/11 only confirmed the declaration of war bin Ladin had made in 1996 against the United States on behalf of the Ummah.

At the time the September 11 attacks were called my generation’s Pearl Harbor -- the sudden blow that awakened a sleeping giant. But the comparison doesn’t go far. One difference is the way the other that started at Pearl Harbor was very publicly seen to end (thanks to the energetic focus of the sleeping giant), on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri in August 1945. Along with the war ended the final acts of Japanese belligerence against Americans. Healing between the two nations was possible because Japanese hostilities had ceased -- and because the Americans are not a grudge-carrying people. We can be accused of a lot of things, but having a long memory is NOT an American quality. I doubt anyone was asking in 1954 why Americans were still mad at the Japanese, and I know no one is asking it now.

But unlike what finally happened with Japan after Pearl Harbor, Americans have witnessed no final defeat, no surrender, no U.S.S. Missouri event to put to rest September 11. There has been no peace with Islam. The closest we’ve come have been off-key protestations of peace from a mismatched choir of: sincerely wrong non-Muslims, insincerely wrong leftists who share Islam’s lust for destroying Western values, and double-tongued cons like Ibrahim Hooper and Osama Siblani, who are flat out lying every time they talk about their religion.

If you have to ask how it is that, nine years after the Twin Towers fell, Americans still have a negative impression of Islam, consider this: From September 11, 2001 forward, we have fought two bloody wars against savage Islamist fighters, and we have witnessed, in no particular order or priority, the shoe-bomb attempt, the gruesome murders of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg, the mutilated corpses on the Fallujah bridge, the London and Madrid subway attacks, the murder of Theo van Gogh, the cartoon riots, the foiled British airliner attack, the Bombay massacres, the Fort Hood massacre, the foiled Fort Dix attack, massacres in Bali, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, suicide bombings so numerous they rise into the tens of thousands, the failed underwear bombing over Detroit, honor killings of daughters by their own fathers, the six imams suing U.S. Air, the president of Iran promising to destroy us with an atomic bomb, Hezbollah promising to destroy Israel and every Jew, and only last week Hamas murdering four Israeli civilians, one of them pregnant: every last one of these sons of bitches signing their work with an unmistakable profession that Allah is Great.

Most of us aren’t responding to 9/11 as explained by Rush Limbaugh. We’re responding to yesterday’s, or sometimes even today’s news crawls. We don’t need any “extremist” radio personalities to tell us what we can’t avoid seeing.

And the whole time all these things are going on we’ve got CAIR and an army of imams just daring us not to believe them over of our own lying, bigoted eyes.

Judea Pearl, father of the murdered Daniel, says he doesn’t buy the explanation that hostility to the Cordoba Center is Islamophobia, or the “product of a ‘rightwing’ smear campaign against one imam or another.

Americans are neither bigots nor gullible. . . .

If one accepts that the 19 fanatics who flew planes into the Twin Towers were merely self-proclaimed Muslims who, by their very act, proved themselves incapable of acting in the name of “true Islam,” then building a mosque at Ground Zero should evoke no emotion whatsoever; it should not be viewed differently than, say, building a church, a community center or a druid shrine.

A more realistic explanation is that most Americans do not buy the 19 fanatics story, but view the 9/11 assault as a product of an anti- American ideology that, for good and bad reasons, has found a fertile breeding ground in the hearts and minds of many Muslim youngsters who see their Muslim identity inextricably tied with this anti-American ideology.

THE GROUND Zero mosque is being equated with that ideology. Public objection to the mosque thus represents a vote of no confidence in mainstream American Muslim leadership which, on the one hand, refuses to acknowledge the alarming dimension that anti-Americanism has taken in their community and, paradoxically, blames America for its creation.

The American Muslim leadership has had nine years to build up trust by taking proactive steps against the spread of anti-American terror-breeding ideologies, here and abroad.

Evidently, however, a sizable segment of the American public is not convinced that this leadership is doing an effective job of confidence building.

In public, Muslim spokespersons praise America as the best country for Muslims to live and practice their faith. But in sermons, speeches, rallies, classrooms, conferences and books sold at those conferences, the narrative is often different. There, Noam Chomsky’s conspiracy theory is the dominant paradigm, and America’s foreign policy is one long chain of “crimes” against humanity, especially against Muslims.

Affirmation of these conspiratorial theories sends mixed messages to young Muslims, engendering anger and helplessness: America and Israel are the first to be blamed for Muslim failings, sufferings and violence.

Terrorist acts, whenever condemned, are immediately “contextually explicated” (to quote Tariq Ramadan); spiritual legitimizers of suicide bombings (e.g. Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi of Qatar) are revered beyond criticism; Hamas and Hizbullah are permanently shielded from the label of “terrorist.”

Overall, the message that emerges from this discourse is implicit, but can hardly be missed: When Muslim grievance is at question, America is the culprit and violence is justified, if not obligatory. (“Undercurrents below the Ground Zero mosque”).

Zakat’s Outta the Bag

Now just why is it that every time Muslims in America undertake a public-relations blitz to spruce up the old image and get people’s minds off all that international jihad, Hamas is always right around the corner?

Take Islamic Relief USA, the outfit that is behind the national “Day of Dignity” that came to Detroit on Saturday. (“Muslims express faith by giving on Day of Dignity”).

I looked at IR-USA’s website, and within two clicks I found out they are a partner of Islamic Relief Worldwide, (and also that one of IRW’s 21 international field offices is in “Palestine”: “You can help Palestinians who face difficult times under the siege. Please go inside to know more about the bank accounts and how to donate and help poor people.”

Ordinary Gazans are certainly entitled to get charity from whoever is willing to send it. God knows Hamas isn’t going to give it to them. But then it turns out that IRW has a history of links to Al Qaeda, Chechen rebels, and, naturally, Hamas.

Israel designated Islamic Relief a Hamas front in 2006.

But don’t all charities have questionable ties when you get down to it? Well, maybe not.

Poll: Two-Thirds of New Yorkers Are Ignorant, Islamophobic, Right-Wing Extremists, or, Big Apple 'Refudiates' Cordoba Center

“I mean, the extent of the ignorance- where you parse Islamophobia versus ignorance of Islam, I'm not exactly sure. But there is tremendous ignorance of Islam as a religion.” Declaring that Christianity Judaism and Islam have great similarities, he derided, “And I think, you know, the American misconception about Islam is amazing.”
--Time Magazine Editor, Richard Stengel

Then hadn’t somebody ought to alert the New York Times? Oh, wait, someone did:

New York Poll Finds Wariness for Muslim Site

By MICHAEL BARBARO and MARJORIE CONNELLY

Two-thirds of New York City residents want a planned Muslim community center and mosque to be relocated to a less controversial site farther away from ground zero in Lower Manhattan, including many who describe themselves as supporters of the project, according to a New York Times poll.

The poll indicates that support for the 13-story complex, which organizers said would promote moderate Islam and interfaith dialogue, is tepid in its hometown.

Nearly nine years after the Sept. 11 attacks ignited a wave of anxiety about Muslims, many in the country’s biggest and arguably most cosmopolitan city still have an uneasy relationship with Islam. One-fifth of New Yorkers acknowledged animosity toward Muslims. Thirty-three percent said that compared with other American citizens, Muslims were more sympathetic to terrorists. And nearly 60 percent said people they know had negative feelings toward Muslims because of 9/11.

Over all, 50 percent of those surveyed oppose building the project two blocks north of the World Trade Center site, even though a majority believe that the developers have the right to do so. Thirty-five percent favor it.

Opposition is more intense in the boroughs outside Manhattan — for example, 54 percent in the Bronx — but it is even strong in Manhattan, considered a bastion of religious tolerance, where 41 percent are against it.

UPDATE. From CNS News:

(CNSNews.com) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is putting some of the blame on both the Tea Party and the Republican Party for what it sees as a growing tide of anti-Muslim anger. CAIR officials said the rise in “Islamophobia” stems from the controversy surrounding the Islamic center and mosque that Muslims plan to build a few blocks from Ground Zero.

“We’ve seen a really strong uptick in Islamophobia recently – primarily sparked by the controversy over the Manhattan Islamic center,” Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s chief spokesman, told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. “We’ve seen hate vandalism at mosques in California; in Tennessee, we had an arson attack; at a mosque in Arlington, Texas, we had an arson attack; and something that wasn’t even reported nationwide, in May we had a bomb attack at a mosque in Jacksonville, Florida,” he said.
Hooper said the attacks could be driven by many factors: “The question is, why? Is it tied to the November elections? Is it tied to the rise of the Tea Party movement? Is it tied to the economy?” he asked. “I think it’s pretty clear that it’s been sparked…by these hate groups and their opposition to the Islamic community center in Manhattan.”

CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad was even more direct, saying that the Tea Party and the GOP have given the “green light” to a nationwide campaign to deny Muslims their civil rights and ultimately expel them from the United States. (“CAIR Director: 'Tea Party and Republican Party Have Given the Green Light for These People to Defame and Stereotype Muslims'”)

Speaking of Shibboleths

This is helpful. No sooner has Andy McCarthy suggested that refusal to condemn Hamas is a shibboleth for who should or shouldn’t lay claim to being a Muslim moderate, than Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative fails the test.

This was reported in Wednesday’s Weekly Standard:

Ground Zero Mosque Spokesman Refuses to Condemn Hamas Terrorist Attack Moderates?

BY Michael Goldfarb

On the eve of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Hamas gunmen murdered four Israeli civilians, including a pregnant woman. Even for those who see nuance in terrorist attacks, this one didn’t leave a lot of room for argument. The PA condemned the attack and, reportedly, picked up some 150 Hamas affiliates in the West Bank for questioning. The Obama administration condemned the attack in no uncertain terms. And even J Street, the home of moral equivalence in the U.S., offered a quick condemnation of this atrocity. But the “moderate” Muslims of the Ground Zero Mosque? They’re taking a pass.

There’s already been a lot of analysis of Imam Rauf’s position on Hamas – he’s against it, kind of, but unwilling to condemn the group as a terrorist organization. When asked point blank, this “moderate US cleric,” as State Department PJ Crowley likes to call him, punted: “The issue of terrorism is a very complex question…I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy.”

Even if that party murders pregnant women on the eve of peace talks with the aim of continuing this conflict between Arabs and Jews? Apparently, yes.

Yesterday I looked at the Twitter feed for Park51 – the Ground Zero Mosque’s primary point of contact with the media and everyone else over the last few weeks – curious to see if they’d offered some statement on the brutal attack near Hebron. There was plenty of activity – the usual fare of baiting Republican candidates like Ilario Pantano, who’s expressed his concern about their bridge-building project, accusing Newt Gingrich of “being to the right” of Il Duce, a smug invitation to Sarah Palin to come and “visit the locals” – the kind of thing you’d expect from a 12-year-old with a diary at Daily Kos. But nothing on the attack in Israel.

So I asked the folks at Park51 – “I know @park51 is loathe to call Hamas a terrorist group....but as a gesture, maybe now would be a good time to say something?”

The group’s response:

"@thegoldfarb We have condemned terrorism and will continue to do so. We are an apolitical community center. Please allow us that respect."

You’ll note that they have not, and apparently will not, condemn this attack. And no one should allow them the respect of hiding behind a claim to be “apolitical.” At this point, this mosque is entirely a political statement, and a political provocation. All its staff does is engage in political incitement – there is no swimming pool or basketball court or interfaith dialogue, just a snarky, inappropriate, hyper-partisan Twitter feed. And a blanket refusal to condemn acts of terrorism against Israeli Jews.

Update: The Ground Zero mosque supporters seem to have responded, and seem again to be unwilling or unable to condemn the murder of a pregnant Israeli woman and other innocent Jews. Via Twitter: "We have and repeatedly condemn acts of terrorism. We are a Community Center. Please do not ask us to get involved in international affairs."

Hamas the Shibboleth

Andrew C. McCarthy deploys an effective analogy to cut through some of the gobbledygook mucking up the public debate over the mosque. (Or am I imagining that, as the Cordoba Center becomes more and more unpopular with Americans in the last week or two, the media is increasing its one-sided coverage of “Islamophobia” in America?) Put simply, support for Hamas is as good a test as any for unmasking Ikhwan members set about the Grand Jihad. From NRO:

Why They Can’t Condemn Hamas

August 28, 2010 4:00 A.M.

Rauf and his friends employ different methods, but they are on the same team.

Hamas is a shibboleth. If you want to know whether an ostensible Muslim “moderate” is really moderate, ask him if Hamas is a terrorist organization.

It is really not a hard question, even if Feisal Rauf can’t — or won’t — answer it. Rauf, the would-be imam of the controversial Ground Zero mosque, is also a stud in the State Department’s stable of ready-to-travel-on-your-dime “moderates.” That same State Department has branded Hamas a terrorist organization, and we can’t even get it to say that about the Taliban, the guys we’re fighting in the overseas contingency operation formerly known as the War on Terror.

During a WABC radio interview, Aaron Klein three times pressed Rauf to admit that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Rauf bobbed and weaved in classic Islamist style. “I’m not a politician,” he replied, as if only politicians trouble themselves over whether terrorists are terrorists. “I try to avoid the issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.” Avoid the issues? You don’t say!

But it is not a complex question, no more complex than “Does Derek Jeter play for the Yankees?” It is a straightforward question that Islamists complicate with clever casuistry, carefully designed to ring all the right chimes for our opinion elites and their media pitchmen.

By all means, read the entire article here.

TSA Deems Suitcase Full of Mock Bombs 'Benign'

It’s nice to know at least one reporter, CBS News Justice correspondent Bob Orr, is awake enough to ask at least one of the obvious questions about the dry run planting of mock bombs in a United Airline flight to Amsterdam:

These were amateurish-like mock devices - the very kind of thing that security is designed to find. And in fact, TSA did find them on a flight from Birmingham to Chicago and deemed them benign. That's why they were allowed to go to Chicago and then on.

The question really is, how did they get on a plane to Washington when he wasn't on the plane too. (“2 Arrested in Possible Dry Run for Terror Attack”).

Another Detroit-Linked Airline Dry Run

I wish I could say this was unexpected. Not after what we told you about a few weeks ago. (“Gov’t Response to Dry Runs -- Blanket Denial?”).

ABC News is reporting that two men traveling from Chicago to Amsterdam were arrested today in the Netherlands on charges of “preparation of a terrorist attack.” You mean that’s a crime somewhere?

ABC News Exclusive: Two Men on United Flight from Chicago Arrested on 'Preparation of a Terrorist Attack' in Amsterdam

Suspects Had Been Cleared Sunday by TSA in Chicago, Birmingham Despite Security Concerns

By RICHARD ESPOSITO, CHRISTINE BROUWER and BRIAN ROSS

Aug. 30, 2010—
Two men taken off a Chicago-to-Amsterdam United Airlines flight in the Netherlands have been charged by Dutch police with "preparation of a terrorist attack," U.S. law enforcement officials tell ABC News.

U.S. officials said the two appeared to be travelling with what were termed "mock bombs" in their luggage. "This was almost certainly a dry run, a test," said one senior law enforcement official.

A spokesman for the Dutch public prosecutor, Ernst Koelman, confirmed the two men were arrested this morning and said "the investigation is ongoing." He said the arrests were made "at the request of American authorities."

The two were allowed to board the flight at O'Hare airport last night despite security concerns surrounding one of them, the officials said.

The men were identified as Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi, of Detroit, MI, [on left] and Hezem al Murisi, the officials said. A neighbor of al Soofi told ABC News he is from Yemen.

Airport security screeners in Birmingham, Alabama first stopped al Soofi and referred him to additional screening because of what officials said was his "bulky clothing."

In addition, officials said, al Soofi was found to be carrying $7,000 in cash and a check of his luggage found a cell phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle, three cell phones taped together, several watches taped together, a box cutter and three large knives. Officials said there was no indication of explosives and he and his luggage were cleared for the flight from Birmingham to Chicago O'Hare.

Once in Chicago, officials say they learned al Soofi checked his luggage on a flight to Washington's Dulles airport for connections on flights to Dubai and then Yemen, even though he did not board the flight himself.

Instead, officials say, al Soofi was joined by the second man, Al Murisi, and boarded the United flight from Chicago to Amsterdam.

When Customs and Border officials learned al Soofi was not on the flight from Dulles to Dubai, the plane was ordered to return to the gate so his luggage could be removed. Officials said additional screening found no evidence of explosives.

The two men were detained by Dutch authorities when the United flight landed in Amsterdam, according to the officials.

Your guess is as good as mine what it takes to get the TSA to actually stop someone from boarding a plane.

Those Easily Spooked White Christians are Terrorizing the Land!

Let’s all stipulate that it’s a wicked thing to pull a knife and stab complete strangers. And if the judgmental tone of the term “wicked” makes you uncomfortable, then we can all agree instead that stabbing people is “unacceptable.”

Now that we’ve resolved that, we can talk about what happened to the New York cabbie Ahmed Sharif. Sharif’s throat was slashed by a drunken 21-year-old passenger Tuesday night, after Sharif answered yes to the passenger’s question, “Are you a Muslim?” (“Ahmed Sharif, Muslim cab driver stabbed by bigot, says he was targeted because of his religion”).

The attacker, Michael Enright, now faces “charges of attempted murder and assault as hate crimes, and weapons possession.” On Thursday night he was transferred from Rikers Island to Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward following a medical evaluation.

People are still trying to figure out who Enright is, and why he did what he did. The media is dying to blame this on the tea party. But Enright was a volunteer for a liberal peace group that supports the Ground Zero mosque. Michelle Malkin puts it this way, “there is zero evidence that he is a Fox News fan, Glenn Beck listener, Republican voter, or conservative blog reader.”

But some pro-Islam advocates have flown right past all that, blaming it on opposition to the Ground Zero mosque.

According to the Daily News:

The head of the taxi workers union, which is 50% Muslim, said the political rhetoric over the proposed Park 51 mosque had reached such a fever pitch that "some sort of violence felt inevitable."

(But Cabbie Sharif said himself that he and Enright never discussed the mosque.)

For his part, the University of Michigan’s anti-Zionist scholar, Juan Cole, has no problem discounting Enright’s individual responsibility for his actions and laying it all on the real attackers:

It was the Republican National Committee. From August of 2006, the RNC decided to demonize Muslims and Islam as a campaign ploy, to scare apparently easily spooked white Christians. In recent weeks, Newt Gingrich sharpened the blade by comparing Muslims to Nazis. . . .

I have said for some time that the American Right’s scapegoating of ordinary American Muslims– Muslims who serve in the US military, die for our country, invest in our cities, find cures for diseases, save our children’s lives in hospitals– would eventually cause pogroms and get people killed. A New York cabbie came close to dying for the sake of the G.O.P. Tuesday night. (“Republican National Committee Slashes New York Muslim Cabbie”).

I realize I should know this, what with living in Dearborn all these years where it’s reported we’ve had them regularly since 2001, but is this what a pogrom looks like? Does it start with cabbies being attacked by drunk passengers? I wonder if Mayor Bloomberg holds a press conference with every cabbie in New York who gets attacked?

Perhaps Cole’s really just singing from the same hymnbook as many others on the Left, like the people who created this nasty ad.

What gets me is how the 9/11 families and everyone else opposed to placing a triumphalist mosque near Ground Zero (like 70% of Americans) are denounced as blaming the WTC attacks on “all Muslims” (which we don’t), and criticized for the audacity of linking the 9/11 attacks to the Muslim religion (which is beyond question).

The point of all those denunciations is that, regardless of hundreds, or thousands, or even tens of thousands of documented acts of terrorism committed by violent jihadists who kill with “Allahu Akhbar!” on their lips, the only reason anyone could ever conclude 9/11 had “anything to do with Islam” is by bigotry and a fallacious resort to collective guilt.

Like this lady:

“It’s simply wrong, for Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, public figures who frequently reference their Christian values, to malign all Muslims by comparing this cultural center and mosque with a radical ideology that led to the horrific attacks of 9-11,” said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a national lobbying group that advocates Catholic social justice.

I never was aware that comparing religious ideas with actions and then drawing inferences was a violation of Christian values. Maybe the depth of Sister Simone’s wisdom only becomes clear when she can impart it in person to you or me or Newt or Sarah with just as many well-swung blows with a standard-issue chalkboard pointer as it takes:

“I’ll. (whack!)
“Teach. (whack!)
“You. (whack!)
“Not. (whack!)
“To. (whack!)
“Make. (whack!)
“Comparisons. (whack!, whack!, whack!)
“Between. (whack!)
“A peaceful religion. (whack!, whack!)
“And. (whack!)
“Twenty. (whack!)
“Hijackers. (whack!)
“Crying. (whack!)
“Allahu Akhbar! (whack!, whack!)
“As. (whack!)
“They. (whack!)
“Flew. (whack!)
“Those. (whack!)
“Planes. (whack!)
“Into. (whack!)
“The. (whack!)
“World. (whack!)
“Trade. (whack!)
“CENTER! (whack!, whack!, whack!, whack!, crack!, splat!).”

Yet, when a single Muslim cab driver is attacked by an individual acting in response to his own private demons, then the collective blame for that somehow gets heaped on every person who has ever stood up to anything Muslim, ever, and to the Ground Zero mosque in particular.

Juan Cole says, “Shame on you, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Lazio, and Sarah Palin, and all the other hatemongers. You have blood on your hands, and will have more if you go on this way.”

Go on what way?

And how does all this compare (sorry, Sister, I’m doing it again), with the strange case of Elias Abuelazam, the Arab Israeli who went on a multi-state stabbing spree, racking up at least 20 victims, five of whom he killed.

As we noted previously, when investigators first figured out the assailant was targeting black men for stabbing attacks, the unidentified criminal was described in the media as a rampaging serial race-murderer. The media fully anticipated he was going to be found to be connected with the tea party movement. Or perhaps the Republican National Committee. Or at the absolute minimum be a friend on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page.

As soon as Abuelazam was captured and discovered not to be a representative of any hate group, (at least as authoritatively defined by Newsweek magazine or Keith Olbermann), and consequently ill-suited to symbolize the religious right's bigotry, hatemongering, and racism, the seriousness of his homicidal status was promptly downgraded. In one day he went from outraged serial racist killer to “stabbing suspect.” Oh, and I’m really supposed to mention he’s an Israeli citizen, and I’m really not supposed to mention that he’s what is generally identified in the MSM as a “Palestinian.”

Or do you think anyone’s going to compare the two “stabbing suspects” and ask if there’s possibly anything in contemporary Arab culture that encourages violent, bigoted outbursts?

Shhh! Here comes Sister! And she’s got her pointer!!

Liberty to Those Who Deny Liberty?

In Ang Lee’s outstanding 1999 Civil War film, “Ride With the Devil,” Toby McGuire’s character, a Missouri bushwhacker, reads to his illiterate companion – a freed slave -- from a letter taken from captured Union mail. In it, a federal soldier writes his view of the war: “The Confederates claim that we strike at their liberty and rights, but what kind of liberty is it that takes away the liberty of others?”

There shouldn’t be much doubt left that what motivates Imam Rauf and those behind the planned Cordoba Center near Ground Zero is something other than wanting a mosque to serve the Muslim population of lower Manhattan. If that were the case, offers by state officials of an alternative site -- a one-step solution to the problem -- wouldn’t have been rejected by Rauf without discussion. Nor is Rauf a moderate, no matter how many useful idiots say that he is.

Along with the growing list of unmoderate things Rauf has been found to have said, there are two facts that preclude him from the class, “moderate”: he refuses to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization, and, as Alyssa A. Lappen at Pajamas Media writes, Rauf was born into a Muslim Brotherhood family, a “provenance, radical by definition, . . . as authentic as it gets.” (“The Ground Zero Mosque Developer: Muslim Brotherhood Roots, Radical Dreams”).

Andrew McCarthy writes how:

it turns out, the top priority of Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative is the Sharia Index Project, which is designed to plant and expand Islamic law in every country. Wonder of wonders, that just happens to be the Muslim Brotherhood’s top priority — the installation of sharia being the necessary precondition to the Islamicizing of a society.

The Ground Zero site isn’t just the resting place of thousands who died at the hands of Islamic fanatics. It represents a unique historical moment when almost all Americans came together, united, crystal clear as to the growing danger of Islamic jhadism, and with a common will to do something about it. That moment lasted only a short few months, and that’s a whole other sad story. But in that moment America’s will to strike back was at its peak. For a time, scornful Islamic leaders saw a new American face: the face of America the Dangerous. President Bush promised that those who did that to us were going to be hearing from us, and many of them did. And it was the last thing they heard. For a time, the Muslim world had to stop laughing at us.

For much of America, those days of strength and national purpose are all but forgotten. But there’s something about Ground Zero that preserves it in perpetuity – perhaps because it’s the last remaining symbol of unified American response to Islam, where the anger over what happened there alcan still be refreshed. September 11, 2001 was the day the Taliban lost its iron grip on Afghanistan, and when Osama bin Ladin’s life narrowed down to one long cave-dwelling, sky-watching flight from justice. It’s the day Saddam Hussein’s neck was fitted for the noose.

Rauf’s Cordoba Center is precisely intended to prove to the Ummah that Islam in America has grown strong enough to push up against that very symbol of a strong, united America, and make it budge.

Even knowing this, many feel they must side with Imam Rauf and his “right” to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero. Because Islam is a religion (it’s much, much more than that, as well), and the Constitution prohibits government from “abridging the free exercise thereof,” they think there’s nothing the rest of us are allowed to do, either.

This has never been about the freedom of religion of Muslims in New York City. The most outspoken and highest-profile opponents of the mosque have been monolithic in agreeing that the right of a religious organization to construct buildings is not in question. Muslim liberty to worship is not the issue.

Andrew McCarthy provides a good reminder when he writes, “When it comes to liberty, no one in this society has been given a wider berth than the Islamists, the purveyors of this authoritarian Islam, which is the mainstream Islam of the Middle East.”

We’ve seen ritual footbaths provided for Muslims in public universities, and seen public schools change around schedules to make room for Ramadan. A parallel “civil rights” movement has sprouted up since 2001, counting in its ranks politicians, generals, lawmen, and media big shots, committed to protecting Muslim feelings from getting hurt or making sure Muslims don’t see or hear anything that might make them angry (one helluva long list). No other religion in America is indulged this way. And if you’re Jewish, Catholic, or evangelical, you feel the double standard every time your religion is ridiculed with impunity, while Islam is constantly being credited with the loftiest spiritual aspirations under heaven.

Putting a stop to the Cordoba Initiative doesn’t mean Rauf and his brother Muslims will be denied the freedom to practice their religion. Park51 isn’t the only place in New York to worship Allah. The Islam Rauf practies and preaches has always been, and will always be, an intolerant, triumphalist religion which, where proselytism fails, is completely comfortable with imposing on unbelievers the will of Allah by force. Even the Arab Middle East recognizes that Rauf’s trying to force this on New York is “an affront to American sensibilities.”

As that movie soldier asked, what kind of liberty is it that takes way the liberty of others? And do we owe the protection of that liberty to radical jihadists? Is that really what we stand for?