Missed It By That Much

(CBS/AP) ALAMEDA, Calif. - The day after his prediction that the world would end on May 21, 2011 failed to materialize, Harold Camping told the San Francisco Chronicle he was "flabbergasted."

The 89-year-old fundamentalist minister and head of the Family Radio media empire, who had led his Christian followers to believe last Saturday marked the Rapture and the countdown to Judgment Day, told the Associated Press that he will make a full statement on his radio broadcast later on Monday.

But when he answered the door at his Alameda home to San Francisco Chronicle reporter Will Kane on Sunday, Camping said he was looking for answers - through frequent prayer and discussions with friends - as to why his prediction of the Rapture and the run-up to the destruction of Earth had not come to pass. (“Harold Camping "flabbergasted" by non-Rapture”).

Anyone can make a mistake. And the prediction was not completely wrong.

Just after 6 PM on Saturday emergency room doctors across the Earth’s time zones began reporting a mysterious rush of patients requiring treatment for ruptures.

They Shoot Amtrak Passengers, Don’t They?

America’s mellow West Coast was harshed this past week when an Amtrak passenger was escorted off a train in Salem, Oregon after 16 hours of non-stop loud talk on her cell phone.

Reportedly, her fellow passengers thought Lakeysha Beard “was being rude by refusing to stop yapping while sitting in one of the train’s designated quiet cars. She had not stopped talking since the train pulled out of Oakland, California, 16 hours before it reached Salem, Oregon, when a passenger confronted her about the talking. That’s when Beard got ‘aggressive,’ KATU reports, and conductors stopped the train so that police could remove her and charge her with disorderly conduct.”

DU has not confirmed reports that Ms. Beard’s “aggressive” posture towards her fellow passenger included the warning, “I will knock you out.”

There’s a lot in this little slice of life to find newsworthy, but here are the three points people I’ve mentioned this to find most interesting: 1) that a human being could be so thoughtless to others, 2) that a cell phone’s battery didn’t run out before 16 hours, or 3) how in hell one person could talk for 16 hours without stopping.

As to her thoughtlessness, I think the video footage of Ms. Beard being brought forth from the train bears out that she may have begun her journey in Oakland still committed to a Lakeysha-centric worldview, but getting arrested led to a kind of re-birth of awareness. Instead of the loud, rancorous arrestee we might expect to see at the unscheduled Salem stop, Ms. Beard emerges with the calm, wondering caution of a newborn, (still clutching her phone, no less), astonished to discover a brand new world containing lots of beings similar to herself, at whose existence she had never guessed.

The mystery of the undying cell-phone doesn’t interest me that much. Ms. Beard is clearly a highly-proficient cell-phone user, and likely carries spare batteries. I do know that if she plays her cards right she’s got a shot at becoming a real-life spokesperson for the manufacturer of her favorite phone (now denoted by Salem PD as “Exhibit A”). She can say, “My Droid and I talked from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, and the only thing that kept us from going another six hours was the damned police. Now don’t you disrespect me, and buy a Droid right now!”

The most surprising thing about all this to me is that Ms. Beard was able to talk so long without any apparent end to the conversation in sight. What could be so important, and at the same time, take so long to say? Then a few rather obvious possibilities occurred to me:

She was actually reciting from memory Virgil’s Iliad in the original Latin, and if she stopped during the ride she’d have to start over from the beginning.

She was actually listing the more notable accomplishments of the Obama administration.

She is actually a brilliant surgeon and was talking a less-skilled colleague through a complex operation entailing the re-attachment of all four limbs, a heart-lung transplant, and a reverse lobotomy.

She is actually a customer-service representative for the cell-phone company, pulling a double shift. (If this turns out to be the case, expect an unfair labor practice lawsuit against both the Amtrak passengers and the Salem Police Department by the National Labor Relations Board.)

My own view is that Ms. Beard just talks too much. And if the amount of public cell-phone conversating going on, both hand-held and hands-free, is any indicator, she’s not the only one.

I don’t know if the ability to crank out 240,000 words without stopping qualifies as a talent. But if nothing else, that much yak is a natural resource, and for the time being the EPA hasn’t banned it yet. (Never mind that Ms. Beard was puffing out more CO2 per mile than the Amtrak’s diesels.)

So I figure: Why can’t this resource be put to a good purpose, or at least a better purpose than perplexing the rest of why it is there’s not a human activity left that can’t be done while having a phone conversation? (Or do you really think the expression “phone sex” still means what it used to mean?)

Why not cell-phone marathons, where the person who talks longest can win a valuable prize, like more cell-phone minutes or some new app that requires 100% concentration while driving?

I realize cell-phone marathons would be much more complicated than a dance marathon, where couples just had to drag themselves around to the music for hours and hours, but at least stayed in one place. On the other hand cell-phone addicts, as we all know, are everywhere.

But in these days of reality-TV crews, filming people anywhere and everywhere has become routine. And we know people will watch it because, well, let’s face it, the phrase “reality TV” is just another way of saying, “people will watch anything.”

Maybe the marathon rules can require that contestants must spend at least 15 minutes each hour not just talking, but talking while doing some highly dangerous activity, like landing a 747 or defusing a bomb. That would be great for the ratings and the promos. The problem is, I’m pretty sure both these activities have been attempted when there was no contest going on.

Okay, I guess my marathon idea isn’t so great, after all. While the Great Depression once led desperate Americans to shuffle around a dance floor for 48 hours on the slim chance of winning enough to pay a month’s mortgage, today’s cell-phone talkers are willing to pay Sprint and AT&T for the opportunity of never, ever, having to shut up again.

So no contest.

‘I’ of Newt

I was never going to be a big supporter of Newt Gingrich. But I do feel some relief that we probably aren’t going to have a President Gingrich. I can’t get out of my head the image of a special news report breaking in from the Oval Office during some national crisis, and President Gingrich opening with the words, “My fellow Americans, Callista and I . . . .”

Inside, Outside, Upside Down

A new Assistant United States Attorney was sworn in Monday for the Eastern District of Michigan, Abed Hammoud, formerly of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, where he led mortgage fraud prosecutions.

And I may add, currently of the ADC (Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee).

And AAPAC (Arab American Political Action Committee).

And the CAAO (Congress of Arab American Organizations).

Glenn Beck’s blackboard could come in real handy right now.

Okay, maybe my flow charts aren’t tight enough for Glenn. But I still find it most disturbing that the same Department of Justice that’s supposed to be handling terrorism prosecutions in this area has just welcomed to its team a man actively involved in three organizations that are on record for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas.

Item: Following the 2006 Israeli incursion into Lebanon, Hammoud was right out front in protest rallies in downtown Dearborn organized by the CAAO, of which he was then chairman.

An article from Dearborn’s pro-Hezbollah newspaper, the Arab-American News, triumphantly reported on the protests (“Michigan: 10000 March to Protest Israeli Attacks”):

As the crowd continued down the road, thundering cries of “Israel out of Lebanon!” “Down, down Israel!” and “Death to Israel!” rang out. As the rally continued its move down Schaefer, more and more people came running. They were joining in from back alley-ways, jumping out of cars and sprinting down sidewalks to take part in the rally.

“Other than our own leaders, Israel pulls us together like no one else can,” said Abed Hammoud as he helped lead the rally down the road. Hammoud is chairman of the Congress of Arab American Organizations (CAAO).

Hatred for Israel pulls us together, that is. Hatred for Israel and devotion to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah can be very powerful motivators around here. At the time, NPR was reporting on the CAAO rallies:

At one recent demonstration organized by the Congress of Arab-Americans, about 1,000 people attended. College-age men asked, in call and response fashion, "Who is your army?" Protestors responded: "Hezbollah." "Who is your leader?" they were asked. "Nasrallah," the chanters responded. Many carried placards of the Hezbollah leader.
A few days earlier at an even larger demonstration, more than 15,000 turned out, about half of Dearborn's Arab community. . . . "Oh, Jews, remember Khaibar," the marchers chant. "The army of the Prophet will return."

Hammoud came here from southern Lebanon some time around 1990. He told NPR that his “hometown is just a few miles from the Israeli border. His day job is assistant county prosecutor, but his passion is advocating on behalf of the Congress of Arab-American organizations.”

They say it’s healthy to have a hobby. But does Hammoud’s passion for advocacy require shouting allegiance to Hezbollah, and death to Israel?

Hammoud told NPR

he regards Israeli airstrikes as “war crimes and atrocities” — attacks he does not hesitate to compare with Nazi Germany.

“The Nazis used to kill, especially Jewish people, using the ovens and the concentration camps,’ he says. “The Israelis use F-16s and burning bombs and smart bombs. I'm sorry. A death of a child is a death of a child.”

I’d be sorry too if I tried out an argument like that. Reflexively playing the Nazi card is a trick favored by the ADC.

Hammoud has shared leadership duties at AAPAC and CAAO with Osama Siblani, who publishes the Arab-American News, the current issue of which is calling for a “Third Intifadah” against Israel. Siblani is an outspoken supporter of Hezbollah and Hamas, whom he considers “freedom fighters.” Hezbollah has such deep support in Dearborn that the local feds have had to spend a lot of time, or anyway, used to spend a lot of time, trying to keep track of all the money launderers, cigarette smugglers, mortgage fraudsters, and tax cheats wiring proceeds to fund Nasrallah’s rocket arsenal. In 2006 Siblani as good as dared federal investigators to try and do anything about it.

“If the FBI wants to come after those who support the resistance done by Hezbollah, then they better bring a fleet of buses,” said Osama Siblani, publisher of the local Arab-American News and an outspoken activist. “I for one would be willing to go to jail.”

You can talk big like that when you know the FBI has been warned to leave you alone.

Hammoud has also used his position as a prosecutor a time or two to try to put the kibosh on speech he didn’t like. That could be a handy skill right now when government efforts to “right-size” the First Amendment are all the rage in Michigan. In 2006 Hammoud was displeased about what he called a “smear” by an anonymous poster on the Russ Gibb online forum, Russ Gibb at Random, alleging that the president of the Life for Relief and Development charity, Khaleel Jassemm, was an AAPAC member. The Life for Relief organization had recently been raided by the FBI for suspected financial support to Hamas.

In his post, Hammoud denied that Jassemm was ever a member of AAPAC. I guess that’s true. (But, in fairness to the original poster, who was first in the members list at CAAO? Life for Relief). (And, while we're at it, who is 16th on the list but the MAS Political Action Committee, a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood.) Hammoud concluded his angry post with this creepy threat:

“I do however like to remind everyone that we all live under the law and that writing and posting falshoods (sic) can be punished. We also know that the great technology that allows people to smear others while they hide under screen names allows us to find out who they are if there is a need for a legal action. Thank you.” (Italics in original).

Kind of heavy-handed for an anonymous post on a blog mostly of local interest, wouldn’t you say? Now who on Earth ever heard of a county prosecutor trying to use his office to punish someone for saying something he doesn’t like?

And while we're on the subject of Kym Worthy, Hammoud’s boss as the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office since 2004, did you know she also had close ties with the ADC even before she sent Terry Jones to jail for the crime of visiting Dearborn?

Could use that chalkboard right about now.

Hammoud also once lent his professional support to an ill-advised Michigan House effort, Resolution 214, to censure Detroit News editor and columnist Nolan Finley for describing Palestinians as lusting for Jewish blood. The Resolution was a screed directly aimed at enforcing an Islamic speech code in Detroit’s mainstream press. (Sample language: “Whereas, A state that prides itself on the diversity of its people should speak out against statements that foster hatred and intolerance;”).

Dearborn’s State Representative Gino Polidori, who signed on as co-sponsor to this resolution at the same time he was paying his jizya tax, explained himself to a concerned constituent this way:

This resolution is an expression of our support for free speech yet against discriminating opinions. While we must respect Mr. Finley's right to free speech, we must also recognize that we endure this same right.

That’s pretty clear. The legislature is for free speech, just against opinions they don’t share. Is there any wonder these rubes can't balance a budget? Between these guys and Jack O’Reilly, it’s a good bet Michigan license plates won’t soon be bearing the motto: “The First Amendment State.”

And as for Hammoud’s free speech, he’s certainly entitled to his opinions, no question. Nor has he been stingy with them before this. And as far as his landing that new federal job goes, it’s strictly verboten for DOJ officials to consider the political points of view of career attorneys in hiring and firing decisions. Who can forget how that was stressed to us all those years when Democrats like Pat Leahy and Carl Levin were getting so emotional about it (they called it, “politicizing the Justice Department”). It was a moral infraction slightly below serial oil-drilling. At least right up until Eric Holder was appointed Attorney General.

So it isn’t that I think Mr. Hammoud should have been denied employment with DOJ just he holds strong political opinions that disagree with mine.

But Hammoud’s heavy involvement with Hezbollah-supporting organizations is more than just a political viewpoint. It’s the basis for a conflict of interest in a federal district where the majority of terror-related prosecutions are against criminals engaged in lucrative crimes, while fully committed to sharing their ill-gotten proceeds with Hezbollah.

And we shouldn’t forget how Hammoud told NPR that, while being an assistant prosecutor was his day job, “his passion is advocating on behalf of the Congress of Arab-American organizations.” And remember how Hammoud’s CAAO organized 1000 protestors in Dearborn, who were asked, “Who is your army?” to which protestors responded: "Hezbollah."? Why weren't red flags popping up during this guy's security clearance review?

Hezbollah’s status as a terrorist organization is more than one party’s political opinion. That’s the judgment of the State Department and official U.S. policy. It’s the job of the U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute terrorists and supporters of terrorism, including those who materially support Hezbollah and Hamas.

Are we to believe that that kind of passion vanishes the moment you get sworn in as a new Assistant United States Attorney?
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Dry Runs Continue, But Does Anybody Care?

Another jihadist probe on an American airline flight last week. (“A hijacking dry run?”) It’s awfully interesting how different these stories are when they’re reported by the potential victims of the jihadist, instead of by the media, the airlines, or law enforcement authorities.

This event also bears similarities to the probe on Northwest Flight 243, reported on here at length last August. Michelle Malkin gives her take on it below.

What Happened on AA Flight 1561

Self-defense is the only remedy for
Sudden Jihad Syndrome

If you listen to the passengers and crew who flew on American Airlines Flight 1561 last weekend, there’s no doubt about what happened on their harrowing trip:

A Yemeni man, shrieking “Allahu akbar!” at the top of his lungs more than 30 times, rushed the cockpit door twice intending to take down the plane and kill everyone on board.

The clammy, sweaty lone male passenger exhibited classic symptoms of what Middle East scholar and author Daniel Pipes has dubbed “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” — a seemingly random outbreak of threatening behavior or violence by a hysterical Muslim adherent who had not previously exhibited signs of Islamic radicalization. It took at least four men to tackle and restrain Rageh Ahmed Mohammed al-Murisi. “There was no question in everybody’s mind that he was going to do something,” passenger Angelina Marty told the San Francisco Chronicle.

And no, that “something” did not mean enlisting his fellow flyers in a midair flash-mob performance of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Not everyone was so grounded in reality. Bleeding-heart sympathizers seriously speculated that al-Murisi had simply mistaken clearly marked lavatory doors for the clearly marked cockpit door (because, you know, it’s normal to shout “God is great” repeatedly just before relieving yourself as your plane is about to land). Some federal authorities and media whitewashers proclaimed that al-Murisi’s motives were “unknown.”

If only al-Murisi had been screaming phrases from the Constitution. The Selective Motive Determination Machine — the same one that rushed to pin the Tucson massacre on the Tea Party, the GOP, and Fox News without a shred of evidence — would have kicked into full gear.

On Wednesday, a San Francisco judge denied al-Murisi bail. Unburdened by the paralyzing prissiness of political correctness, federal prosecutors noted that “Allahu akbar” was the same refrain invoked by the 9/11 hijackers over Shanksville, Pa., and by the would-be Christmas Day bomber over Detroit. Not to mention Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan; the Frankfurt, Germany, jihadist who killed two U.S. airmen on a bus in March; the young Portland, Ore., Christmas-tree-lighting bomb plotter; every last suicide bomber across Europe, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East; and every last evil al-Qaeda beheader broadcast on video over the past decade.

So how, despite a massive transportation and homeland-security apparatus, did al-Murisi get into this country and get on a plane? He had no keys, no luggage, $47 cash, two curious posted checks totaling $13,000, and a trove of expired and current state IDs from New York and California — where relatives said he had not notified them that he was coming. He is young, male, brought no family with him, had no job or other discernible income, and hails from the terror-coddling nation of Yemen.

Yes, the same Yemen that is Osama bin Laden’s ancestral home, harbors al-Qaeda operatives who are burning the “torch of jihad,” and is deemed a “special interest country” whose citizens warrant increased scrutiny by DHS when they cross the border illegally.

As I reported last month, a federal watchdog revealed that TSA’s counterterrorism specialists failed to detect 16 separate jihad operatives who moved through target airports “on at least 23 different occasions.” Neutered by Islamophobia-phobia and an “overtime over security” mentality, our State Department consular offices’ and airline security bureaucracy’s stance toward the al-Murisis slipping through their snaking lines is:

Nothing to see here; move along.

At least the heroes of Flight 1561 who refused to sit silent learned the proper 9/11 lesson. “I swore to myself that I would never be a victim” after the 2001 attacks, passenger Larry Wright, one of the men who brought al-Murisi down, told reporters earlier this week. The only effective homeland security begins and ends with a culture of self-defense. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no “see no jihad, hear no jihad, speak no jihad” delusionists on airplanes with Allahu akbar–chanting flyers beating down doors.

Wilders: 'Resistance to Evil Is Our Moral Duty'

Andrew G. Bostom has published the transcript of a speech by Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders (“A Warning to America: Geert Wilders in Nashville, Tennessee 5/12/11”).

In light of what took place in Dearborn since Good Friday, I consider the warning as timely as ever:

Speech by Geert Wilders, Cornerstone Church, Nashville, 12 May 2011

Dear friends from Tennessee. I am very happy to be in your midst today. I am happy and proud to be in this impressive church.

My friends, I am here to speak words of truth and freedom.

Do you know why America is in a better state than Europe? Because you enjoy more freedom than Europeans.

And do you know why Americans enjoy more freedom than Europeans? Because you are still allowed to tell the truth.

In Europe and Canada people are dragged to court for telling the truth about islam.

I, too, have been dragged to court. I am an elected member of the house of representatives in the Netherlands. I am currently standing in court like a common criminal for saying that islam is a dangerous totalitarian ideology rather than a religion.

The court case is still pending, but I risk a jail sentence of 16 months.
Last week, my friend Lars Hedegaard, a journalist from Denmark, was fined because in a private conservation, which was recorded without his knowing, he had criticised the way women are treated in islamic societies.

Recently, another friend, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a human rights activist from Austria, was fined because she had criticised islam’s founder Muhammad. She had said that Muhammad was a pedophile because he had married a 6-year old girl and raped her when she was 9.

Unfortunately, there are many similar cases.

I am especially happy to be in your midst because here I can say what I want to say without having to fear that I will be dragged to court upon leaving this church.

My dear American friends, you cannot imagine how we envy your First Amendment. The day when America follows the example of Europe and Canada and introduces so-called “hate speech crimes” which is only used to punish people who are critical of islam, that day America will have lost its freedom.

My friends, let us hope that this never happens.

Last week, we celebrated Liberation Day in the Netherlands. We celebrated the liberation from the Nazi occupation in 1945. Many American soldiers, including many young Tennesseans, played a decisive role in the liberation of the Netherlands from nazi tyranny. We are immensely grateful for that. Young Americans gave their lives so that the Dutch might be free. I assure you: The Dutch people will never forget this.

Unfortunately, however, the Europe which your fathers and grandfathers fought and died for is not the Europe we are living in today.

I travel the world to tell people what Europe has become. I wish I could take you all on a visit to my country and show you what Europe has become. It has changed beyond recognition as a result of mass immigration. And not just any mass immigration, but mass immigration driven by the dangerous force of islam.

My friends, I am sorry. I am here today with an unpleasant message. I am here with a warning. I am here with a battle cry: “Wake up, Christians of Tennessee. Islam is at your gate.” Do not make the mistake which Europe made. Do not allow islam to gain a foothold here.

Islam is dangerous. Islam wants to establish a state on earth, ruled by islamic sharia law. Islam aims for the submission, whether by persuasion, intimidation or violence, of all non-Muslims, including Christians.

The results can be seen in Europe.

Islam is an ideology of conquest. It uses two methods to achieve this goal: the first method is the sword. Do you know what figures on the flag of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a country where Christian churches are banned and Christians are not even allowed to wear a tiny crucifix? There is a huge sword on that flag, just below the Islamic creed. The message is clear. Without the sword islam would not have been able to spread its creed.

The second method is immigration. Islam’s founder Muhammad himself taught his followers how to conquer through immigration when they moved from Mecca to Medina. This phenomenon of conquest through immigration is called al-Hijra. My learned friend Sam Solomon has written a perfect book about it.

I had a copy of Sam’s book sent to all the members of the Dutch Parliament. But most of them are worse than Saint-Thomas in the Bible. Thomas did not believe what he had not seen. Most politicians refuse to believe the things they see before their very eyes.

In Europe we have been experiencing al-Hijra for over 30 years now. Many of our cities have changed beyond recognition. “In each one of our cities” wrote the well-known Italian author Oriana Fallaci shortly before her death in 2006, “there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran.” – end of quote.

How did the Europeans get into this situation? It is partly our own fault because we have foolishly adopted the concept of cultural relativism, which manifests itself in the ideology of multiculturalism.

Cultural relativism advocates that all cultures are equal. However, cultures wither away and die if people no longer believe that its values are better than those of another culture.

Islam is spreading like wildfire wherever people lack the guts to say that their values are better than the Islamic values.

Islam is spreading like wildfire because the Koran explicitly tells Muslims that they are “the best of peoples ever raised up for mankind” and that non-Muslims are “the worst of creatures.”

Islam is spreading like wildfire everywhere in the West where political, academic, cultural and media elites lack the guts to proudly proclaim, as I believe we all should proclaim:

Our Judeo-Christian Western culture is far better and far superior to the islamic culture. We must be proud to say so!

Multiculturalism is a disaster. Almost everyone acknowledges this today, but few dare say why. Let me tell you why: Multiculturalism made us tolerate the intolerant, and now intolerance is annihilating tolerance.

We should, in the name of tolerance, claim the right not to tolerate the intolerant. Let us no longer be afraid and politically correct, let us be brave and bold. Let us tell the truth about islam.

Before I continue I want to make clear that I do not have a problem with people. I always make a distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and islam.

Indeed, I have no problems with Muslims, but I do have a problem with the totalitarian Islamic ideology of hate and violence. The fact that there are many so-called moderate Muslims, does not imply that there exists a moderate islam. A moderate islam doen not exist and will never exist.

And because there is no such thing as a moderate islam, the islamization of our free Western societies is an enormous danger.

Only two weeks ago, the British press revealed how the so-called “London Taliban” is threatening to kill women who do not wear veils in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.

In some neighbourhoods Islamic regulations are already being enforced, also on non-Muslims. Women’s rights are being trampled. We are confronted with headscarves and burqas, polygamy, female genital mutilation, honor-killings where men murder their wives, daughters or sisters because they do not behave in accordance with Islamic rules.

Polls show that the influence of those Muslims who live according to islam’s aggressive requirements is growing, especially among young people.

Among 15-year-old German Muslims, 40 percent consider islam more important than democracy.

Among Muslim university students in Britain, 40 percent support sharia. One in three of those students considers it legitimate to kill in the name of islam.

Christians are asked to follow the example of Jesus. Muslims are ordered to follow the example of Muhammad. That is why islam is dangerous. While Christianity preaches love, islam preached hatred and practizes violence. Hatred and violence for everyone who is not a Muslim.

Muhammad personally participated in the ethnic cleansing of Medina, where half the population once was Jewish. Muhammad helped to chop off their heads. On his deathbed, he ordered his followers to cleanse Arabia of all Jews and Christians.

To this very day, Christian symbols are prohibited in Saudi-Arabia. If you wear a cross in Saudi Arabia, they sent you to jail.

And now, Europe is beginning to look like Arabia.

Just today, a poll revealed that in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, half the islamic youths are anti-semitic. It is dangerous for Jews to walk the streets in Brussels.

If you wear a cross or a kippah in certain urban areas in Europe today, you risk being beaten up. In the capital of my own country, Amsterdam, a tram driver was forced to remove his crucifix from sight, while his Muslim colleagues are allowed to wear the veil.

In June 2008, the Christian church authorities in the Danish town of Arhus decided to pay so-called “protection money” to islamic so-called “security guards” who assure that church goers are not harassed by islamic youths.

On March 31st, 2010, Muslims entered the Roman Catholic cathedral of Cordoba, Spain, and attacked the guards with knives. They claimed the cathedral was theirs.

Last month, the bishops of Sweden sent out a letter to priests advising them to avoid converting asylum seekers from islamic countries to Christianity, because the converts would risk losing their lives.

In the Netherlands, the city authorities in Amsterdam register polygamous marriages. The authorities in Rotterdam serve only halal meals in municipal cafeterias.

Theaters provide separate seats for women who are not allowed to sit next to men. Municipal swimming pools have separate swimming hours for men and women, Muslim lawyers do not have to stand when the judges enter court rooms.

Meanwhile Jews are no longer safe on our streets. In Amsterdam, the city of Anne Frank, Jews are again being harassed in the streets. Even political leaders acknowledged that life has become unsafe for Jews in Holland. Do you know what they said? They advised Jews to emigrate. Jews are already running for Israel. But I say:

Jews must not leave, violent Muslims must leave!

What is needed, my friends, is a spirit of resistance.

I repeat: What we need is a spirit of resistance.

Why? Because resistance to evil is our moral duty. This resistance begins with expressing our solidarity to Christians, Jews, indeed, to all people worldwide, who are the victims of islam. There are millions of them.

We can see what islam has in store for us if we watch the fate of the Christians in the islamic world, such as the Copts in Egypt, the Maronites in Lebanon, the Assyrians in Iraq, and Christians elsewhere.

Almost every day, churches are arsoned and Christians are assassinated in islamic countries.

In a report on the persecution of Christians in the world, Archbishop Twal of Jerusalem, wrote recently– I quote: “In the Middle East to be Christian means accepting that you must make a great sacrifice. All too often and in many places, Christians suffer various threats. On some occasions, their homes and churches are burnt, and people are killed. How many atrocities must we endure before somebody somewhere comes to our aid?” – end of quote.

Indeed, how many atrocities before we come to their aid?

Rivers of tears are flowing from the Middle East, where there is only one safe haven for Christians. You know where that is. The only place in the Middle East where Christians are safe is Israel.

That is why Israel deserves our support. Israel is a safe haven for everyone, whatever their belief and opinions. Israel is a beacon of light in a region of total darkness. Israel is fighting our fight.

The jihad against Israel is a jihad against all of us. If Israel falls, we, too, will feel the consequences. If Jerusalem falls, Athens, Rome, Amsterdam and Nashville will fall. Therefore, we all are Israel. We should always support Israel!

Today, we are confronted with political unrest in the Arab countries. The Arab peoples long for freedom. However, the ideology and culture of islam is so deeply entrenched in these countries that real freedom is simply impossible as long as islam remains dominant.

A recent poll in post-revolution Egypt found that 85 percent of Egyptians are convinced that islam’s influence on politics is good, 82 percent believe that adulterers should be stoned, 84 percent want the death penalty for apostates. The press refers to the events in the Arab world today as the Arab spring. I call it the Arab winter.

Islam and freedom, islam and democracy are not compatible.

The death of Osama bin Laden last week was a victory for the free world, but we will be confronted with Islamic terrorism as long as islam exists, because islam’s founder Muhammad himself was a terrorist, worse than Bin Laden.

And here is another truth: The rise of islam means the rise of sharia law in our judicial systems. In Europe we already have sharia wills, sharia schools, sharia banks. Britain even has sharia courts.

In my own country, the Netherlands, sharia is being applied by the courts in cases relating to divorce, child custody, inheritance, and property ownership. Women are always the victims of this because sharia discriminates women.

This is a disgrace. This is not the way we should treat women.

My friends, I told you that we have just remembered Liberation Day to commemorate the young Americans and all the heroes who offered their lives to free the Netherlands from nazi tyranny. It would be an insult to them if we Europeans would give up that precious freedom for another totalitarian ideology called Islam.

That is the goal for which my party and I work day after day. And we are having success.

In the Netherlands, we are successfully starting to roll back islam. The current Dutch government is a minority government which can only survive with the backing of my party, the Party for Freedom.

We have 24 seats of the 150 seats in parliament and we support the government, in return for measures to prohibit certain aspects of sharia law.

We have achieved that the Netherlands will soon ban the burka and the niqaab.


We will also restrict immigration from non-Western countries by up to 50% in the next four years. We are not going to allow islam to steal our country from us. It was the land of our fathers, it is our land now, our values are based on

Christianity, Judaism and Humanism and we will pass this on to our children with all the freedoms that the previous generations have fought for.

Let those who want to rob us from our freedoms, stay in their own countries. We do not need them. If you want to wear a burqa, stay in Saudi-Arabia. If you want four wives, stay in Iran. If you want to live in a country where the islamic ideology is dominant, stay in Pakistan, if you don’t want to assimilate in our society, stay in Somalia. But don’t come over here.

We are also going to strip criminals who have a double nationality – for instance Dutch and Moroccan, and who repeatedly commit serious crimes, of their Dutch nationality. We will send them packing, back to their homeland.

My friends, what the Party for Freedom has achieved, shows that it can be done. We can fight the islamization of our societies.

Dear friends, here is my warning. Make no mistake: Islam is also coming for America. In fact, it is already here. America is facing a stealth jihad, the islamic attempt to introduce sharia law bit by bit. Last March, a judge in Tampa, Florida, ruled that a lawsuit against a mosque and involving the control of 2.4 million dollars, should proceed under Islamic law.

My friends, be aware that this is only the beginning. This is also how it started in Europe. If things continue like this, you will soon have the same problems as we are currently facing.

Leaders who talk about immigration without mentioning islam are blind. They ignore the most important problem Europe and America are facing. I have a message for them: it’s islam stupid!

My friends, fortunately, not all politicians are irresponsible. Here, in Tennessee, brave politicians want to pass legislation which gives the state the power to declare organisations as terrorist groups and allowing material supporters of terrorism to be prosecuted. I applaud them for that.

They are true heroes.

Yesterday and today, I met some of those brave legislators. They told me that Tennessee in particular is a target of islam. Help them win their battle.

They need your support.

While Tennessee is in the frontline, similar legislative initiatives are also being taken in the states of Oklahoma, Wyoming, South Carolina, Texas, Florida, Missouri, Arizona, Indiana. It is encouraging to see that so many politicians are willing to resist islam.

This gives us hope and courage. I am not a pessimist. We can still turn the tide – even in Europe – if we act today.

There are five things which we must do.

First, we must defend freedom of speech.

Freedom is the source of human creativity and development. People and nations wither away without the freedom to question what is presented to them as the truth.

Without freedom of speech we risk becoming slaves. Frederick Douglass, the 19th century black American politician, the son of a slave, said – I quote – “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

I have already told you about my court case. This legal charade will not, however, prevent me from saying the truth. Never. I will speak out, even if they drag me before 500 courts and threaten to jail me for a thousand years.

The fact that we are being treated as criminals for telling the truth must not deter us. We are doomed if we remain silent or let ourselves be silenced. Let us not forget, this is our first and most important obligation: defend the right to speak the truth.

Second, we must end cultural relativism and political correctness. We must repeat it over and over again, especially to our children: Our Western culture based on Christianity and Judaism is superior to the islamic culture. Our laws are superior to sharia. Our judeo-christian values are better than islam’s totalitarian rules.

And because they are superior and better, we must defend them. We must fight for our own identity, or else we will lose it. We need to be warriors for the good, because the good is worth fighting for. Neutrality in the face of evil is evil.

Third, we must stop the islamization of our countries. More islam means less freedom. There is enough islam in the West already. We must stop immigration from non-Western countries, which are mostly islamic countries. We must expel criminal immigrants. We must forbid the construction of new hate palaces called mosques.

We must also close down all islamic schools because educating children in a spirit of hate is one of the worst things imaginable. We must introduce anti-sharia legislation everywhere in the free world. Enough is enough.

Fourth, we must take pride in our nations again. We must cherish and preserve the culture and identity of our country. Preserving our own culture and identity is the best antidote against islamization.

And fifth, last but certainly not least, we must elect wise and courageous leaders who are brave enough to address the problems which are facing us, including the threat of islam.

Politicians who have the courage to speak the truth about islam.

Politicians who dare to denounce the devastating results of the multicultural society.

Politicians who – without political correctness – say: enough is enough.

You and I, Americans and Europeans, we belong to a common Western culture. We share the ideas and ideals of our common Judeo-Christian heritage. In order to pass this heritage on to our children and grandchildren, we must stand together, side by side, in our struggle against Islamic barbarism.

That, my friends, is why I am here. I am here to forge an alliance. Our international freedom alliance. We must stand together for the Judeo-Christian West.

We will not allow islam to overrun Israel and Europe, the cradle of the judeo-Christian civilization.

My friends, we will stand together.

We will stand firm.

We will not submit. Never. Not in Israel, not in Europe, not in America. Nowhere.

We will survive.

We will stop islam.

We will defend our freedoms.

We will remain free.

Thank you.
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Abdridged, Bothered, and Bewildered, or, O'Reilly Writes Again

Flush from his victory over yet another very close call in Dearborn with what he refers to as “creeping free speech,” Mayor Jack O’Reilly is back at work on a follow up Open Letter to the one he published in the Press & Guide this past week.

A first draft of the letter has found its way to us here at Dearborn Underground. Naturally we’re happy to pass it along:


Open Letter to Dearborn Residents

People of Dearborn!

The threat has passed! And now, may we of Dearborn’s interfaith community all join hands around our city in a circle of Unity, Diversity, and Gratitude to the deity of your choice -- or no deity at all, we’re totally cool with that here: (did you know that over 40,000 atheists from all over world came to work at Henry Ford's Rouge Plant for $5.00 a day?) -- anyway, Gratitude for giving us this tremendous victory over those two guys in Harley Davison t-shirts.

Return to your homes! Enjoy your freedom to practice your religion without fear of contradiction! Consume in peace a Dearborn sausage! Allahu Akhbar!

This tremendous Good Friday victory could only come about because of the dedicated hard work of several leading notables, what I can only describe as a “Dream Team.”

First and foremost we’ve got Dearborn’s very own Chief of Police, Ronald Haddad. Without Chief Haddad’s courageous act of declaring under oath that he had hard information that Pastor Terry Jones intended to burn a Qu’ran on Friday and provoke a riot, prosecutors would never have been able to hale Pastor Jones into court to answer a trumped-up criminal complaint.

And while it’s true that the Chief had to admit during Friday’s trial that he had never had any such evidence that Jones intended to burn a Qu’ran, everyone who saw him there assures me that the Chief looked as splendid as he always does in his Chief of Police uniform. Lookin’ good, Chief!

Equally valuable was Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s dedicated focus on stopping Jones from speaking before he even got here. Thanks to the Prosecutor’s ingenious
unearthing of an unenforced 1846 law, our Dream Team was able to come up with a plan to put a restraint on what Jones had in mind, prior to his actual appearance at the protest site! What a GREAT Constitution we have! And you go, girl!

And what can I say of our Islamic partners in freedom, such as Imam Hassan Qazwini, of the Islamic Center of America, and Dawud Walid, of CAIR?














Imam Qazwini and Dawud both were constantly showing up in the media, and they both were constantly saying the same thing, which is that of course Pastor Jones has a perfect right to protest here. Meanwhile, they were both doing everything in their power to assist us in preventing it!

Thank you both. My hand is on my heart right now, guys, really.

And Imam Qazwini, I know you’re especially happy to know that the public property in front of your mosque is now a legally recognized “No Permit/No Free Speech Zone.” You know that’s gotta make the Mullahs in Tehran sit up and take notice. And, just as good, no one else will be allowed to spew any hate around the Islamic Center of America. Unless you invite them, naturally!

You’re welcome!

And you have to know that Judge Somers has become an indispensable addition to our executive/judicial partnership. Judge Somers has become Dearborn’s wisest jurist on the legal subtleties of “breach of the peace.” (For instance, I never realized before that “free speech” rhymes with “he breach”! Thanks, Judge! I wish I’d paid better attention in law school.)


Anyway, in 2010 Judge Somers had the opportunity to refuse to dismiss another bunch of trumped-up criminal charges against some Christian missionaries in another case that, just coincidentally, also “had nothing to do with First Amendment Rights; it [had] to do with public safety.”

Of course I’m talking about those crusaders who were breaching the peace at our World Famous Arab International Festival (which by the way gets over 300,000 visitors each year from all over the world). Chief Haddad helped us out on that one too! Along with breaching the peace, Chief Haddad also informed me he had solid intelligence from a local imam that the four missionaries were polytheists, but for some reason the city attorney pooh-poohed charging them with that, too. I guess there’s no ordinance against that in Dearborn at this time. In spite of Judge Somers’s efforts, all four polytheists did end up being acquitted by some dumb jury. But, as any one of the over 18,000 bar flies who visit one or more of Dearborn’s many alcohol licensed bars each month like to say so much, it was “all good”: I still got to go on national TV and explain that there is no Sharia in Dearborn, or anywhere else in the world!

You’re welcome!

What I want to say is, let’s just all remember what Abraham Lincoln said about our freedoms: “Constitution yesterday, Constitution today, Constitution forever!”

And I want to emphasize again that here in Dearborn everyone can rest assured that your freedom of speech will not be abridged, ever, unless, just like the First Amendment also says, letting you speak is going to violate someone’s right not to hear what you have to say.

So I’m hoping to see each and every one of you somewhere this Summer. Maybe at the world famous Henry Ford, (where over 1.5 million people visit each year), or at Dearborn Sausage, (where over 1.2 million sausages are purchased each year) or even at B.T.’s, (where over 14,000 lap -- well, never mind that. Just say where many hard-working autoworkers of every race, creed, and religion have been enjoying Sharia-free adult entertainment for over 30 years).

Yours in Keeping Dearborn Safe,

Mayor Jack (“Constitution”) O’Reilly

Now What, Dearborn?

Now what, Dearborn? We let Jack O’Reilly, a mob of lefty stooges, and a posse of unicorn-herding “interfaith leaders” drive Terry Jones -- and the First Amendment--out of Dearborn.

Do you think you’re more free, today. Or less free?

The American flag outside my house is flying upside-down. For me this is not a sign of disrespect, but of national distress.

It was the least I could do.

McCarthy on Zakat

From the indispensable Andrew McCarthy at NRO:

Uncharitable

Zakat is not about charity, but jihad.

‘In the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to
fulfill their religious obligation,” President Obama claimed during his 2009 Cairo speech. “That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.”

This statement contained two falsehoods. One, as I’ve previously detailed, was obvious: There are, in fact, no American laws or rules that make it harder for Muslims to give to charity. What we have are laws against material support of terrorism — against using devices like charitable fronts to channel money to jihadists. Those laws are not directed at Muslims. They apply to everyone but are applied most often to Muslims, because Muslims carry out most anti-American terrorism.

The other falsehood was more subtle: the president’s suggestion that the religious obligation of zakat — one of the “five pillars of Islam” — is the equivalent of “charitable giving.” It is not. Zakat is every Muslim’s obligation to contribute to the fortification of the ummah, the notional worldwide Islamic nation. And that very much includes the funding of violent jihad against non-Muslims.

When an earthquake devastated Haiti last year, the West, led as always by the Great Satan, instantly opened its heart and pocketbook. Within days, as the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Claudia Rosett reported, the U.S. government had pledged $90 million in public funds, 44 percent of the total anted up by governments worldwide. That was just a fraction of the true American contribution.

Despite a deep recession and widespread unemployment, private citizens contributed tens of millions of dollars to the relief efforts. In addition, our armed forces mobilized to provide food, medical treatment, and other humanitarian aid. Untold additional millions in American aid backed relief efforts by the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the World Bank. The economic downturn was global, but still European, Canadian, Japanese, and South American governments and citizens also donated millions.

What of the world’s Muslims? Over the same period of time, they accounted for a whopping 0.1 percent of the total donations committed by governments — basically, a rounding error for a Saudi sheikh’s weekend in Vegas. Drawing a telling contrast, Ms. Rosett noted that the House of Saud’s annual contribution to ICRC operations in 2008 came to a grand total of $216,460 — less than a penny per Saudi, though quite generous compared with the $50,000 kicked in by Iran, whose population is three times larger. By contrast, the United States gave $237.8 million.

How could it be that the oil-drenched realm of zakat – of what we are to believe is obligatory benevolence — lags so embarrassingly behind Dar al-Greed? Very simple: Zakat is not “charity” as we understand that term.

Muslims are taught that charity means Muslims aiding Muslims, for the purpose of fortifying and extending the ummah until all the world is Islam’s domain. “Of their wealth, take alms,” instructs Allah in the Koran (9:103), “that so thou mightest purify and sanctify them.” Thus, zakat may be given only to Muslims.

Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law (Umdat al-Salik) was compiled by the renowned Muslim jurisprudent Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri in the 14th century. It is the most authoritative source on the subject of sharia (Islamic law), having been certified by al-Azhar University in Cairo — the font of Sunni learning — as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.” In fact, when an English edition of Reliance (now available through Amazon.com) was published in 1994, it won gushing praise from the government of Saudi Arabia (where sharia is the only law), as well as the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, all of which incorporate sharia in their legal systems. Reliance is quite blunt on the matter: “It is not permissible to give zakat to a non-Muslim.”

That is mainstream Islam, as the Haiti earthquake-relief effort reaffirms. In Social Justice in Islam, the late but still highly influential Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb explained that zakat is the “share taken by the [Islamic] state and spent on the welfare of Muslims to supply their bodily needs, to preserve their dignity, and to protect their power of conscience.”

More recently, Shaykh Faraz Rabbani at Sunni Path, the “Islamic Academy” that has become popular among Muslim web-surfers, observed that in all major schools of Islamic jurisprudence “there is consensus . . . that a non-Muslim (dhimmi) cannot be given any zakat.” We grubby capitalists may see Haitians as suffering beyond calculation, but for Muslims there is a calculation: The Haitians are infidels. The families of Palestinian suicide bombers and imprisoned al-Qaeda terrorists
rate a brotherly helping hand, and the Haitians don’t.

In fact an essential purpose of zakat is to underwrite jihad. Americans see it as a dangerous fraud when Islamic charities are used as fronts for terrorist organizations. In mainstream Islam, however, there is no fraud at all — not if your understanding of “charity” is zakat.

“It is obligatory,” according to Reliance of the Traveller, “to distribute one’s zakat among eight categories of recipients, one-eighth of the zakat to each category.” The manual goes on to describe these categories, the seventh of which is “those fighting for Allah, meaning people engaged in Islamic military operations for whom no salary has been allotted in the army roster.”

Al-Misri, the 14th-century scholar, did not dream that one up — and there was no al-Qaeda around to “hijack” Islam from him. He pulled it right out of the Koran. Sura 9:60, the verse most often associated with zakat, directs that “alms are for the poor and the needy, and those employed to administer the funds; for those whose hearts have recently reconciled to Truth [i.e., to Islam]; for those in bondage [like those imprisoned terrorists] and in debt; in the cause of Allah; and for the wayfarer. Thus is it ordained by Allah.” Echoing Reliance, the official Saudi version of the Koran annotates this verse with the clarification that “in the cause of Allah” refers to “those who are struggling and striving in Allah’s cause by teaching or fighting . . . [and] who are thus unable to earn their ordinary living.”

The stark fact is that the Islamic conception of alms unabashedly embraces what the brilliant scholar of Islam Raymond Ibrahim describes as “the money jihad” (jihad al-mal). A canonical hadith quotes Mohammed’s sentiments: “He who equips a raider so he can wage jihad in Allah’s path . . . is himself a raider.” That is, he achieves the same status as those Mohammed said would be most richly rewarded in the afterlife for having done the greatest service to Allah. Indeed, the Koran actually prioritizes the need to fund violent jihad over the need to fight it. Sura 9:41 declares: “Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah! That is best for you if you but knew.” As Ibrahim elaborates, several other verses “make the same assertion and, more importantly, in the same order: striving with one’s wealth almost always precedes striving with one’s life, thereby prioritizing the former over the latter.”

Ibrahim is quite right when he says the West’s tireless portrayal of Islamic charities as akin to “the Salvation Army, a Christian charity organization whose ‘ministry extends to all, regardless of age, sex, color, or creed,’” is flatly false. In Islam, it’s all about Islam. Zakat, like all Islamic tenets, serves the overarching cause of elevating Islam, to the exclusion and at the expense of nonbelievers. When President Obama proclaims his determination to ensure that Muslims “can fulfill zakat,” and when his Justice Department follows up that proclamation by relaxing the enforcement of federal laws against material support of terrorism, this is the system they are abetting.

Announcing Dearborn's Official 'No Free Speech' Zone

From Reuters:

Terry Jones, 59, was sent to the county jail in Detroit after he declined to meet the terms of a ruling by District Judge Mark Somers in an apparent protest.

Somers had ordered Jones and a supporter, Wayne Sapp, to each pay $1 under the terms of an order that would have also barred them from the Islamic Center of America mosque and nearby public property for three years.

That should keep things quiet.

By the way, Jones and Sapp have been criminally convicted of absolutely nothing.

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.