Al-Banna Had a Baby

Early Friday morning, the Obama administration announced its decision to back “the Arab street” in Egypt:

issuing a call for the Egyptian military to quickly hand over power to a civilian, democratically elected government.

In so doing, the president opened up a litany of risks, exposing a fault line between the U.S. and the Egyptian military which, perhaps more than any other entity in the region, has for 30 years served as the bulwark protecting a critical U.S. concern in the Middle East: the 1979 Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

In explicitly warning the military to swiftly begin a "full transfer of power" to a civilian government in a "just and inclusive manner," the White House served notice that the army in Egypt would continue to receive the Obama administration's support only if it, in turn, supported a real democratic transition. (“Obama sides with 'the street' in Egypt”).

President Obama had been hoping to ride the fence on this, but as usual forces beyond his control – and beyond his demonstrated ability to manage – have forced him into being decisive -- decisively wrong.

Even liberal observers recognize that supporting a movement whose public face is a mob of demonstrators with uncertain motives is a big risk. (Didn’t the Democrats just learn this lesson with Occupy Wall Street?).

Martin S. Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration, says Obama’s message to the Egyptian military is, "We want you to play the role of midwife to democracy, not the role of military junta."

Indyk also says this strategy is “a high-risk one,” but his mealy-mouthed English offers a great example of why diplomats’ fuzzy thinking does more harm than good. Indyk admits that the ones who benefit most from a rushed “transition” to civilian rule are “the Islamists,” but then blurs the danger by calling them “the people who don't necessarily have our best interests in mind,” and “who might not be as wedded to the peace treaty [with Israel] as the military.”

Let’s clean up Indyk’s spongecake English a bit. The Islamists Indyk says “don’t necessarily have our best interests in mind” don’t have our best interests in mind. And the ones who “might not be as wedded to the peace treaty as the military”  hate the peace treaty, because they want Israel to be destroyed. When Muslim Brotherhood leader Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi returned from exile to Cairo last February, his speech in Tahrir Square got the crowd of a million chanting ““To Jerusalem we go, for us to be the Martyrs of the Millions.”

Only people who talk like Indyk have trouble figuring that out.

“The Islamists” are the Muslim Brotherhood, the group whom all the Middle East experts agree are the most highly organized and best situated to win a majority in a parliamentary election through their political front, the Freedom and Justice Party.

But for anyone, whether it’s the Egyptian military or the U.S. or any of the western powers, to play “midwife to democracy” requires that what Egypt is laboring to being forth is, in fact, democracy.   And that depends on who the baby daddy is.

Jeff Jacoby wrote last winter:

The Brotherhood is the world's most influential Islamist organization, and Islamism -- the radical ideology that seeks the submission of all people to Islamic law -- is perhaps the most virulent antidemocratic force in the world today. In Daniel Pipes's phrase, "it is an Islamic-flavored version of totalitarianism." Like other totalitarian cadres, Islamists despise democratic pluralism and liberty in principle. But they are quite ready to make use of elections and campaigns as tactical stepping-stones to power.

As with Adolf Hitler in 1933 or the Czechsolovak communists in 1946, Islamists may run for office and hold themselves out as democrats; but once power is in their grasp, they do not voluntarily relinquish it. Just months after Hamas, a self-described "wing of the Muslim Brotherhood," won a majority of seats in the Palestinian elections in 2006, it violently seized control of the Gaza Strip. More than 30 years after Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran promising representative democracy, the Islamist dictatorship he built instead remains entrenched. (“No room at the table for the Muslim Brothers”).

Last February in Tahrir Square Qaradawi saluted “the Egyptian army, which is the shield of the people and its support . . . [b]y Allah, they will not let me down.” He also told his minions: “Beware of the hypocrites, who are ready to put on a new face every day.” On Tuesday he was criticizing the military, calling for “quick elections.” On Thursday he returned to Cairo.

Indyk interprets Obama throwing in with the “Arab street’ (gawd, I hate that expression) in demanding quick elections, as the U.S. “essentially coming down on the side of democracy."

We’re not. To improve on that irritating slogan of the American liberal “street,” this is not what democracy looks like.

We’re coming down on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of the mob.

###

Open Wide and Say ‘Shari-AAAAAH’

“There is no Sharia Law in Dearborn.”

-- Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly

If the allegations in a sex discrimination lawsuit reported in The Detroit News are true, then a male nurse was fired from a city-funded health clinic for violating Islamic rules against males treating Muslim females:

John Benitez Jr. . . . . worked at the city's taxpayer-funded health clinic. He alleges he was ordered by a female supervisor not to treat conservative Muslim women, specifically those wearing head scarves, according to the lawsuit. He was told the clinic's male Muslim clients did not want a male treating female patients.

He complied until November 2010, when a doctor ordered him to treat Muslim women as he would any other patient, the suit claimed. Benitez followed the doctor's order and was fired less than one month later, according to the lawsuit. (“Male nurse claims he lost job for treating Muslim women in scarves”).

I have not yet seen the lawsuit, so my opinions are conditional upon the allegations proving well founded.

For now, though, having Dawud Walid taking the clinic’s side tends to support Benitez’s version of the story.

“Hospitals and health clinics routinely make accommodations based on religion,” Walid told the News.

“’In general, unless it is for emergency situations, many Muslims would prefer being screened and touched by someone of the same gender,’ Walid said.”

That’s as may be, but a patient requesting accommodation is another matter.  This sounds more like a case of clinic management adopting a sexually discriminatory treatment policy in response to the demands of Muslim men – a policy Benitez lost his job for violating.

If taxpayer-funded clinics in Dearborn are adopting discriminatory policies to accommodate Islamic law, then once again Jack O’Reilly’s repeated claims that there is no Sharia in Dearborn is being shown up for the nonsense it is.

Three Guys Named Hammoud

Something stinks.

On Friday Dearborn Police, at the request of the FBI, arrested Ali Hammoud, president of Bintjbeil Cultural Center in Dearborn, in connection with a cigarette-smuggling conspiracy in support of Hezbollah. (“Arab leader from Dearborn released from police custody”).

According to the FBI, Hammoud was arrested by mistake because he “fit a description on an arrest warrant. A man named Ali Hammoud was indicted in 2003 in a conspiracy involving the sale of illegal cigarettes to support Hezbollah.”

So after talking to the banquet hall  Hammoud, the FBI let him go. According to Hammoud’s lawyer, Majed Moughni, "It's mind-boggling; it's uncalled for. To do this to one of the most respected members of the community, it's a slap in the face."

Well, it’s not mind-boggling, but a word on that later.   And even a lawyer ought to grasp that mistakes are usually “uncalled for.”  After Hammoud was released Moughni took a more moderate tone, admitting that the FBI “blundered."

But this is Dearborn. Law enforcement blunders are opportunities for the area’s Islamists to make mischief, usually by demanding  tighter shackles on terror-related investigations in the future. And at this stage it’s puzzling indeed how the FBI could have confused Bintjbeil Cultural Center’s president with an individual who fled to Lebanon several years ago, unless there is a factual link between the conspiracy and the banquet center.  But without knowing the facts behind the arrest warrant, I’m not going to speculate on that.

This early on a weekend, the response from the usual Islamist complainers has been low key, but I expect that to change. Arab-American News publisher Osama Siblani has already stuck his beak in.

"We will not rest until we find out what happened, and we want to make sure it will never happen again," Siblani said. "This is a respected community leader. I never doubted his innocence." (“Wrong man arrested: Head of Arab-American center in Dearborn released”).

If Siblani means that Hammoud is innocent of supporting Hezbollah, that’s especially rich, coming from arch-Hezbollah supporter Siblani. This is how Siblani sounded in 2006, when he was defending the open support by thousands of Dearborn’s Arabs for Hezbollah leader Sheik Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah:

"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."  (“They're 100% American, and pro-Hezbollah”).

After an invitation like that. Siblani has no business griping if the FBI actually follows up in some small way.   And, no, so far the big-talking Siblani hasn’t gone to jail.

But speaking of blunders, do you know who else was helping Siblani sing the praises of Hezbollah back then? That would be yet another Hammoud (relationship to Hammouds I and II unknown to me), namely Abed Hammoud, the former Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor and, in 2006, leader of the extremist Congress of Arab American Organizations who led the rally of 15,000 “100% American” Dearbornites chanting “Nasrallah is our leader!” So where’s the blunder? Abed Hammoud was recently sworn in as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. (“Inside, Outside, Upside Down”).

Bintjbeil’s Hammoud may well be innocent of the other suspect’s cigarette-smuggling conspiracy, but his banquet center is well-known in Dearborn as a meeting place for Hezbollah supporters, known to local law enforcement as the Hezbollah Social Club. The cultural center is named for the village of Bint Jbail in southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, from which thousands of Shi’ite Muslims emigrated to Dearborn. “They're 100% American, and pro-Hezbollah”).  Last year Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah leader Nasrallah exchanged evil hopes for Israel there, and A-jad made a speech: "The whole world knows that the Zionists are going to disappear," he said to thunderous applause before a frenzied crowd in Bint Jbeil.”  According to Debbie Schlussel, an event she attended at the Cultural Center in 2006 featured speeches from many speakers offering in common “multiple statements about the Jews, cheers for the total destruction of and end to Israel, and support for Hezbollah, the Mujahideen, and the Martyrs.” (“What I Saw in Dearbornistan”).

And, as we’ve discussed here for some time, Dearborn is a big source of illegal contributions to Hezbollah. (“Dearborn, Michigan: Where Hezbollah Gets Its Laundry Done”).

In spite of attorney Majed Moughni’s outburst, there’s nothing “mind-boggling” about Bintjbeil’s Hammoud being suspected by the FBI of being mixed up in a conspiracy to support Hezbollah.

And what Siblani and the rest are concerned about isn’t Hammoud’s “innocence” or his standing in the community. They’re much more upset that the Detroit FBI is actually targeting Hezbollah in Dearborn.

And that’s what they’ll be trying to stop.

###

Dearborn Bracing Itself?

Try as they might, media and other natural enemies of an undiluted Christian message have been unable to give the organizers of TheCall rally at Ford Field a black eye.

There was this lead in USAToday:

DETROIT (AP) – An area with one of the largest Muslim communities outside the Middle East is bracing itself for a 24-hour prayer rally by a group that counts Islam among the ills facing the U.S.

One would almost think that east Dearborn has been busily boarding up windows and stockpiling bottled water like gulf-coast homeowners facing the next big hurricane.

That’s not really happening.

Because no one with a shred of sense really believes that thousands of cheerful Pentecostals gathered for a giant prayer and worship service pose a threat to anyone, the media have had to turn to professional fearmongers to spice up their stories.

As we saw last week, CAIR’s Dawud Walid did his best to pretend that every Muslim in southeastern Michigan was in danger.  When even he didn’t think he sounded serious, he played the race card by accusing TheCall of feeding “divisiveness,” likening them to the “heydays of the White Citizens' Council in the turbulent 1960’s.”

The Detroit Free Press’s Niraj Warikoo took up the same theme in his coverage, emphasizing that rally organizers “were heavily targeting African Americans in Detroit, but most of the crowd was white.” (“Sides of faith collide at Ford Field prayer rally”). I haven’t been to Ford Field, so I can’t say what the proportions are, but the photo below of participants waiting to get in that ran with Warikoo’s story shows a fairly even mix. We already know there is significant participation from the area’s black clergy.

Or did the same kind of thing happen in the heyday of the White Citizens’ Council?

Anyway, every reporter knows that if the group you’re opposed to doesn’t live down to all the bad things you want to tar them with – like bigotry, intolerance, and violence -- you can always find a protest group who’ll gladly accuse them of all those things anyway.

So Warikoo and others have turned to the trusty Reverend Charles Williams II, whose words of wisdom on this occasion were, “God did not call us to hate.” Williams is Al Sharpton’s local Minister of No Justice No Peace ^®, and he can always be depended upon to organize a march. (“The Preacher, the Prosecutor, and the Lynch Law”). If there’s one thing no one can ever accuse Al Sharpton of, that’s spreading hate, division, and intolerance.

This time, according to Warikoo, Williams’s counter-rally,  “featured Catholic, Baptist and Methodist pastors from Detroit, as well as gay rights and women's activists. Chanting ‘Stop the hate’ and ‘Spread the love,’ the protesters said the prayer rally inside the stadium promotes division and intolerance.”

Williams also managed to fill out his ranks with some unoccupied Occupy Detroiters he came in Grand Circus Park across huddled under a blue tarp beneath a banner reading: “WILL HOLD UP SIGNS FOR FOOD.”

What better way to show their love for Detroit’s Muslims, whose religion by and large opposes both homosexuality and abortion, than by protesting on behalf of those things? I also thought the “DEMOCRACY NOT THEOCRACY” sign added some comic relief.

Though there’s no indication that any of them have been inside the rally, or even have any first-hand knowledge of what it’s all about, Warikoo makes free use of protesters’ comments:

"Their message is not one of inclusion; it's of hate," said Jennifer Teed of Detroit, who opposed Engle's prayer event. "I don't see how that's religious . . . .

“Cheryl Voglesong of Royal Oak held up a sign outside Ford Field that read: "Take Thy Fearmongering back to Kansas. We don't want it."

Terry Jones Update

A Wayne County Circuit Court judge hearing the appeal of Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp’s conviction last Good Friday in a kangaroo court proceeding before Dearborn District Judge Mark W. Somers has found the proceeding unconstitutional. As reported in WorldNet Daily:

The Florida pastor who wanted to protest jihad and Islamic Shariah law in Dearborn – but was jailed by a judge who worried about what he "intended" to say – has been cleared.

According to officials with the Thomas More Law Center, a circuit judge in Wayne County, Mich., has overturned the decision by Dearborn District Judge Mark W. Somers.

According to the ruling from Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Ziolowski, Somers violated the constitutional rights of Pastor Terry Jones and his associate, Wayne Sapp, when he held a “peace bond” proceeding last spring and ordered them to pay a $1 peace bond and ordered them not to go into the vicinity of a Muslim mosque, including on the surrounding public property, for three years.

Because the “bond” violated their constitutional free speech rights, they refused to pay, and the judge locked them up overnight.

Somers had required the bond because of what he thought the men intended to say.

But the Thomas More Law Center appealed the verdict, and the decision was overturned.

“Pastor Jones had committed no crime and was not charged with a crime. Yet, he was forced into court and ultimately jailed because he intended to speak out against jihad and Shariah law,” said Richard Thompson, chief counsel for the center.

“Regardless of how one feels about Pastor Jones, he has a constitutionally protected free speech right to express his message. The heavy-handed actions of the city of Dearborn and the Wayne County prosecutor’s office give us a glimpse of how imposition of Shariah law, which forbids any criticism of Islam, will destroy that fundamental constitutional right.” (“Judge says people can't be jailed over intended speech”).

Thompson isn’t exaggerating. Behind last April’s legal fiasco was an absolute determination the area’s political and law enforcement officials to enforce a ban on speech criticizing Islam. Mayor Jack O’Reilly, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, Chief of Police Ronald Haddad, and Judge Mark Somers – every one of them – abused their offices rather than stand up to Dearborn’s imams.

Christians ‘Definitely’ More Afraid After ‘Arab Spring’

 

David Ignatius writes an informative article at the Washington Post about those living in Cairo’s “Garbage City”:

Cairo’s Christians worry about Egypt’s next chapter

By David Ignatius, Published:November 8

CAIRO

Coptic Christians are worried about their future in the new Egypt, as I could see Thursday night at a political rally in a poor Coptic neighborhood known here as Garbage City.

Gathered in an alleyway framed by heaps of trash, and Christian symbols decorating every nearby wall, the residents heard a simple message: To protect their families, Christians must vote in the parliamentary elections that begin late this month. Otherwise, Egypt may be controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is mobilizing its own supporters.

“Muhammad and John need to live side by side,” admonished one of the speakers, arguing that Christians must fight for a secular state that will be moderate and tolerant.“If you don’t go vote, you have only yourself to blame for the consequences.”

Christians have “definitely” become more afraid since the revolution, explained Dina Beshay, a 29-year-old woman from the neighborhood. If the Muslim Brotherhood gained power, it would be a “big shock,” she said, because Christians would feel marginalized. “It is impossible for us to live in constant fear.”

This issue of sectarian tension lurks behind the election campaign now being waged across Egypt. People don’t often speak about it directly, but it’s an abiding fear here — as in most other countries shaken by the Arab Spring. The question is whether, as democracy empowers Islamist parties across the Arab world, Christian minorities will have a viable future.

The rally here was organized by the Free Egyptians Party, a secular, pro-market group founded by Naguib Sawiris, who is one of Egypt’s wealthiest businessmen and a prominent member of the Coptic minority. The party aims to get a turnout of 85 percent of the roughly 40,000 eligible voters in this district, who are mostly Copts.

Garbage City is an unforgettable spot, a vision that might have been imagined by a surrealistic movie director. Pickup trucks rumble in with towering loads of rubbish, which is picked over for anything that can be recycled. Fires burn across this trash landscape. Because garbage collection is seen by Muslims as “unclean” (garbage is fed to pigs), this work for untold generations has mostly been done by Christians, who labor in their gritty stalls surrounded by icons and crosses and posters of Jesus.

My guides were Karim Abadir and Omar Khashaba, two party officials. Abadir, an economics professor in London, says he came back to Egypt after the revolution to “stand my ground” as a Copt and be part of the new Egypt. “When Christians tell me they have no future in Egypt, my response is, ‘Go vote,’ ” he says.

Abadir was injured in the Oct. 9 Maspero incident, when police and the army attacked demonstrators who were protesting the burning of churches; 27 people died in the violence, mostly Christians. A Muslim who joined the marchers told me there was sectarian tension on both sides, with Copts chanting, “We are owners of the land” (meaning that Copts were in Egypt before Islam), and Muslims responding, “Islam, Islam.”

I talked with Christians from many areas of Cairo last week to gauge their worries. Every one of them expressed anxiety, but most said they remained hopeful that a democratic Egypt will remain tolerant of minorities. A sign of their wariness was that many asked me to use only their first names.

A woman named Nesrine said that every Sunday at her church in Heliopolis, several more Coptic families announce they are leaving the country. Nesrine has a Canadian passport, and her husband wants to move, but she’s waiting to see what the elections bring. The priests at her church are trying to calm the flock, telling them: “We have to stay. We have to take our place in our country.”

A woman named Raymonda, who lives in a mixed neighborhood and doesn’t attend church, says she fears the “very negative feelings to Christians” since the revolution. She doesn’t have another passport and never thought she would need one, but now she wonders. Her husband argues that they shouldn’t delay until it’s too late. “I don’t want to lose hope,” she says. “I want to bet on the Egyptian people.”

At a gathering of students and faculty at the Gerhart Center of the American University in Cairo, people talk honestly about religious tensions. They fervently hope this issue doesn’t subvert the promise of the revolution.

The Muslim woman who marched with the Christians to Maspero remembers hearing the sectarian chants, back and forth. “I started to cry,” she says. “I hated both sides.”

###

Krauthammer Asks ‘Who Lost Iraq?’

As if there could be any doubt.  From Charles Krauthammer and NRO:

Who Lost Iraq?

You know who.

Barack Obama was a principled opponent of the Iraq War from its beginning. But when he became president in January 2009, he was handed a war that was won. The surge had succeeded. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had been routed, driven to humiliating defeat by an Anbar Awakening of Sunnis fighting side-by-side with the infidel Americans. Even more remarkably, the Shiite militias had been taken down, with American backing, by the forces of Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. They crushed the Sadr militias from Basra to Sadr City.

Al-Qaeda decimated. A Shiite prime minister taking a decisively nationalist line. Iraqi Sunnis ready to integrate into a new national government. U.S. casualties at their lowest ebb in the entire war. Elections approaching. Obama was left with but a single task: Negotiate a new status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) to reinforce these gains and create a strategic partnership with the Arab world’s only democracy.

He blew it. Negotiations, such as they were, finally collapsed last month. There is no agreement, no partnership. As of December 31, the American military presence in Iraq will be liquidated.

And it’s not as if that deadline snuck up on Obama. He had three years to prepare for it. Everyone involved, Iraqi and American, knew that the 2008 SOFA calling for full U.S. withdrawal was meant to be renegotiated. And all major parties but one (the Sadr faction) had an interest in some residual stabilizing U.S. force, like the postwar deployments in Japan, Germany, and Korea.

Three years, two abject failures. The first was the administration’s inability, at the height of American post-surge power, to broker a centrist nationalist coalition governed by the major blocs — one predominantly Shiite (Maliki’s), one predominantly Sunni (Ayad Allawi’s), one Kurdish — that among them won a large majority (69 percent) of seats in the 2010 election.

Vice President Joe Biden was given the job. He failed utterly. The government ended up effectively being run by a narrow sectarian coalition where the balance of power is held by the relatively small (12 percent) Iranian-client Sadr faction.

The second failure was the SOFA itself. The military recommended nearly 20,000 troops, considerably fewer than our 28,500 in Korea, 40,000 in Japan, and 54,000 in Germany. The president rejected those proposals, choosing instead a level of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.

A deployment so risibly small would have to expend all its energies simply protecting itself — the fate of our tragic, missionless 1982 Lebanondeployment — with no real capability to train the Iraqis, build their U.S.-equipped air force, mediate ethnic disputes (as we have successfully done, for example, between local Arabs and Kurds), operate surveillance and special-ops bases, and establish the kind of close military-to-military relations that undergird our strongest alliances.

The Obama proposal was an unmistakable signal of unseriousness. It became clear that he simply wanted out, leaving any Iraqi foolish enough to maintain a pro-American orientation exposed to Iranian influence, now unopposed and potentially lethal. Message received. Just this past week, Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurds — for two decades the staunchest of U.S. allies — visited Tehran to bend a knee to both Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It didn’t have to be this way. Our friends did not have to be left out in the cold to seek Iranian protection. Three years and a won war had given Obama the opportunity to establish a lasting strategic alliance with the Arab world’s second most important power.

He failed, though he hardly tried very hard. The excuse is Iraqi refusal to grant legal immunity to U.S. forces. But the Bush administration encountered the same problem, and overcame it. Obama had little desire to. Indeed, he portrays the evacuation as a success, the fulfillment of a campaign promise.

But surely the obligation to defend the security and the interests of the nation supersede personal vindication. Obama opposed the war, but when he became commander-in-chief the terrible price had already been paid in blood and treasure. His obligation was to make something of that sacrifice, to secure the strategic gains that sacrifice had already achieved.

He did not, failing at precisely what this administration so flatters itself for doing so well: diplomacy. After years of allegedly clumsy brutish force, Obama was to usher in an era of not hard power, not soft power, but smart power.

Which turns out in Iraq to be . . . no power. Years from now we will be asking not “Who lost Iraq?” — that already is clear — but “Why?”

Nous Sommes Tous Charlie Hebdo?

Last week as reported in the New York Times:

Satirical Magazine Is Firebombed in Paris

By DAVID JOLLY

PARIS — The office of a French satirical magazine here was badly damaged by a firebomb early on Wednesday, the publisher said, after it published a spoof issue “guest edited” by the Prophet Muhammad to salute the victory of an Islamist party in Tunisian elections. The publication also said hackers had disrupted its Web site.

The magazine, Charlie Hebdo, had announced a special issue for publication Wednesday, renamed “Charia Hebdo,” a play on the word in French for Shariah law.

The magazine’s editor, Stephane Charbonnier, told Europe 1 radio that the police had called just before 5 a.m. to report a fire of criminal origin. News reports said a Molotov cocktail had been thrown through a window. The special edition was on its way to the newsstands, the editor said, and will appear as scheduled.

But, he added: “We are homeless and we have no way to put out the magazine. We hope this won’t be the last issue.”

“We can’t put out the magazine under these conditions,” he said. “The stocks are burned, smoke is everywhere, the paste-up board is unusable, everything is melted, there’s no more electricity.”

The magazine’s Web site appeared to have been restored by early Wednesday.

Caustically ironic and vulgar, Charlie Hebdo prides itself on being offensive to virtually everyone. It has drawn the ire of Muslim activists before, including in 2006, after it republished cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Islamic law usually forbids depictions of the prophet. The edition of Charlie Hebdo that apparently inspired the fire-bombing showed a cartoon of Muhammad and the words: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter.”

A Turkish hacker has taken credit for the website attack.  He’s now threatening to attack the website of the left-leaning French daily, Liberation, which offered space to the Charlie Hebdo staff and helped them put out their last issue. 

No one surpasses me in disliking the French;  I once spent 30 hours in Paris, and the experience is still seared into my memory like one of the more horrifying episodes of the Twilight Zone. 

But the French deserve their due.  After all, they’ve banned the burka.  And their leftists are still free to ridicule anything and everything, including Islam – (and, more important: it occurs to them to do so).  Our highly disciplined American lefties only imagine they’re  free to ridicule everything, when actually all they ever think to go after are  Christians and the Tea Party – they’d never dream of making a crack against the religion of the Prophet.

Revival Gets Rile Welcome, or, Your Fast Is My Furious

Muslim Brotherhood envoy Dawud Walid is directing area mosques to step up security.  A lot of Crusaders are coming to town!

As reported in Thursday’s The Detroit News (“Christian call to prayer riles Muslims”):

Dearborn — The local head of a national Muslim civil rights group says a Christian prayer summit to be held at Ford Field next week promotes anti-Muslim sentiment and is warning local mosques to step up their security.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — Michigan, met Wednesday with Muslim activists to voice his concern over the rhetoric he fears could be at the center of the event Nov. 11.

"There's a bigger force or movement behind this prayer summit and how they're literally demonizing Muslims," he said.

But Metro Detroit pastors involved in the event say the gathering is merely meant to help Detroit, not target Muslims.

"I don't know anything about that," said Bishop Edgar Vann of Second Ebenezer Church. "People are coming here to pray for our city and that's what I'm concerned about. Christians will be praying, but it's open to anyone."

The Call is being promoted as a 24-hour long prayer event aimed at lifting the city out of its "greatest darkness." Its website says attendees will "gather to this city that has become a microcosm of our national crisis — economic collapse, racial tension, the rising tide of the Islamic movement, and the shedding of innocent blood of our children in the streets and our unborn."

Senior pastor Jerry Weinzierl of Grace Christian Church in Sterling Heights said the event is not anti-Muslim."It's not to pray against anybody," he said. "It is a very positive movement of Christians gathering together to pray."

Walid advised the heads of local mosques to "maintain security at all entrances, and make sure to notify the police immediately if suspicious persons congregate on mosque property."

Thursday’s headline that all this “riles Muslims” overstates the reported facts. The only one who appears riled is Walid.  And he’s just faking it.

Walid knows perfectly well that area mosques haven’t a thing to fear from “suspicious persons” congregating on their property. According to the legal giants who recently brought us the Terry Jones debacle, subjects of Wayne County already face arrest if they even dare to congregate on public property in a mosque’s vicinity. 

I don’t know much about The Call.  It sounds like a movement with Pentecostal roots, which places a lot of emphasis on demons and Old Testament prophecies and such.  This particular group also embraces goals that are multi-racial, pro-life, and include “Reaching Muslims with the love of Christ.”

What’s so bad about that? It’s not as if they’re moving in with tents, sleeping bags, and pet ferrets, the way Occupy [“Your Town Here”] has done.

Evangelistic calls to conduct spiritual warfare by fasting and prayer is hardly the stuff of a violent movement. Even Walid realizes he’d sound foolish to say otherwise.  He admitted in a recent article on a CAIR website that “The Call can pray for Muslims or other non-Christian group [sic], which they deem to be heathens to be guided aright; that is no problem.” (“The Call: Connecting Radical Theology With the Islamophobia Network”).

But never mind all that fasting, praying, and Psalm-singing at Ford Field.  Walid sees right through all that:

The direct issue is The Call in its theological crusade could be endorsing, perhaps even inciting zealous persons to go onto mosque and Islamic school properties, which are private properties, to commit provocative acts. Moreover, The Call and its direct supporters are bigots, who actively engaged in attempting to marginalize American Muslims from the socio-political fabric of their own country, America.

The Call is not uplifting Detroit or uplifting America with its rhetoric. It is actually feeding into the current divisive climate, which America has not seen since the heydays of the White Citizens' Council in the turbulent 1960’s.

Provocative acts?  Trespassing? All these people and all their supporters are bigots? 

The White Citizen’s Council?!

Is it only me or does Walid sound as if he’s getting weaker by the day?

Maybe it’s all those prayers.

Train in Vain

In the past few weeks, Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the U.S. and their friends have significantly stepped up efforts to eradicate all references to Islam from federal agencies charged with investigating terrorism. Groups like Muslim Advocates and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the ACLU, and media helpers like Wired and TPM Muckraker have teamed up on the narrative that the FBI is training its agents in Islamophobia. The only cure, naturally, is an all-out ban on any training that correlates extremist violence with Islam. Oh, and “a new ‘interagency task force’ to review the training materials — a task force including representatives of the Islamist organizations the FBI is tasked with monitoring.”

Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog writer Spencer Ackerman kicked it all off with a bomb-throwing exposé of FBI counterterrorism training:

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.” (“FBI Teaches Agents: ‘Mainstream’ Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical’”).

Ackerman, who discloses that his wife works for the ACLU, previously criticized an intelligence analyst’s presentation to a Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney’s Office that “warns of a ‘Civilizational Jihad’ stretching back from the dawn of Islam and waged today in the U.S. by ‘civilians, juries, lawyers, media, academia and charities’ who threaten ‘our values.’” (“Justice Department Official: Muslim ‘Juries’ Threaten ‘Our Values’”).

Ackerman never bothered to report that the “Civilizational Jihad” phrase is taken directly from a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum obtained by the FBI and presented in the Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007.  If the phrase looks familiar, that’s because it’s anchored on our blog sidebar at the upper right.

The day after Ackerman’s Wired piece, Farhana Y. Khera of Muslim Advocates fired off a letter to the Acting Inspector General of the Justice Department demanding an investigation. Muslim Advocates has previously joined forces with the ADC, CAIR, and MPAC to counter government efforts to address homegrown Islamic terrorism. Khera has also posted advice on her Website “that tells Muslims not to speak with the FBI or other law enforcement personnel unless a lawyer is present.” Khera was also spokesman for a coalition of groups trying to stop Rep. Peter T. King’s House Homeland Security Committee hearings on Muslim extremism last spring. "Our first preference is for him to kibosh the whole thing," Khera said. (“Coalition urges halt to House hearings on Muslim radicalization”)

In her September letter to the acting inspector general, Khera cited Ackerman’s piece in Wired to demand an “immediate investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) use of grossly inaccurate, inflammatory, and highly offensive counterterrorism training materials about Muslims and Islam used to train its agents and other law enforcement.” Her letter then dishonestly co-opted a September 12^th letter from Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins to Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, completely mischaracterizing the senators’ letter as a “call for the administration to stop the funding of anti-Muslim trainers.” More on this letter below.

Next, MPAC president Salam Al-Marayati used Ackerman’s articles as a basis for an op-ed in the LA Times complaining about the “bigoted and inflammatory” views FBI agents were exposed to at Quantico. (“The wrong way to fight terrorism”). Claiming that the training “reveals a deep anti-Muslim sentiment within the U.S. government,” Al-Marayati threatened that if it isn’t “immediately addressed, it will undermine the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community.” MPAC’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood are well documented, and, as reported at the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, “has opposed virtually every counter-terror initiative undertaken or proposed by the U.S. government.” 

Aside from giving one another awards, there is no productive relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community.

But the most disgusting thing I’ve seen is the bizarrely misleading article by writer Ryan J. Reilly at TPMMuckraker, (“DOJ Official: Holder ‘Firmly Committed’ To Eliminating Anti-Muslim Training”). Perhaps in hopes of a fait accompli, Reilly attempted to credit the most extreme views of one of the DOJ’s dhimmi lawyers as the official policy of the Attorney General himself.

Beneath a gigantic head shot of Eric Holder, Reilly’s lead described Holder as “’firmly committed’ to nixing anti-Muslim material from law enforcement training,” and then makes use of quotations along this line:

“I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for,” Holton said. “They will not be tolerated.”

But notice it wasn’t Holder who said, this, but Holton.  It’s almost too cute.  In fact, Reilly’s article doesn’t contain a single syllable directly quoting the guy whose big head is in the picture, Eric Holder. (Reilly also uses Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez to put words in his boss’s mouth, confirming that the Attorney General “is upset.”)  No matter how weak Holder is on counterjihad, at the moment he’s preoccupied battling mounting calls for his resignation over the “Fast and Furious” debacle. I don’t believe Holder’s really that enthusiastic about launching a new counterterrorism policy premised on Islamic jihad having nothing to do with Islam.

Anyway, you ask, just who in the hell is Holton?

Dwight C. Holton is an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Oregon in charge of – well, nothing.  Thanks to district office “musical chairs” arising from the prior U.S. Attorney’s departure after appointment to the federal bench, Holton happened to be serving as the second of two acting U.S. Attorneys presiding over the Oregon district at the time of the Christmas-tree lighting plot of Mohamed Osman Mohamud in Portland last year. Before that, Holton’s specialty was prosecuting environmental and white-collar crimes. The extent of his contribution on the Mohamud case was that “[i]n the 37-page complaint that laid out the allegations against Mohamed Mohamud, he is never once identified as a Muslim.” This would be the prosecutorial equivalent of rewriting The Godfather without once identifying Don Corleone as a Mafioso.

Holton called the outreach he did with the Muslim community over the course of his tour as U.S. Attorney for Oregon the most important work of his career, joking that he put on “10 pounds in lamb weight” and recalling having 15 to 20 imams over at his house for a halal meal that went until 2 a.m.

As soon as the new U.S. Attorney – not Holton, but the actual nominee -- was commissioned on October 5, Holton resumed being a line attorney – and a self-appointed spokesman for the Attorney General and the Ikhwan.

As for TPM’s Reilly, based on what I’ve seen here the guy is a shamelessly dishonest reporter. Before he decided to use Holton to channel hearsay from the Attorney General, he was falsely reporting that Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins – both reliable counterjihadists – were upset about federal dollars “flowing to anti-Muslim terrorism training.”   (This is the lie Farhana Khera exploited in her letter to the assistant IG).  His headline even falsely quotes them saying, “If Obama won’t do something about anti-Muslim counterterrorism training, we will.”  (“Lieberman, Collins: If Obama Won’t Do Something About Anti-Muslim Counterterrorism Training, We Will”).

Reilly cast a false light on Lieberman’s and Collins’s September 12, 2011 letter to the disastrous John Brennan, Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security, claiming that their concerns about “trainers spewing . . . bigoted information” was the crux of their complaint “that agencies providing grants to state and local law enforcement lack meaningful standards for counter-terrorism curriculum and an adequate vetting process for individual trainers.”

This is nearly the direct opposite of the letter’s purpose.  First of all, Brennan is a disaster in national security, who has publicly referred to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, “Al-Quds,” described jihad as “a legitimate tenet of Islam,” and is rumored to have earned the Secret Service codename, Nakba.”  The Lieberman-Collins letter is a public rebuke of Brennan for a half-assed “Framework” he offered for countering domestic radicalization: “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.” Lieberman and Collins express their extreme disappointment with Brennan’s lack of effort on the Framework, noting, among other things, his failure to develop “rigorous counterterrorism training standards,” and failing to “explicitly identify the enemy as violent Islamist extremism”:

Our enemy has a distinct ideology, and that ideology has a name – violent Islamist extremism. The Framework, however, refuses to state this clearly. First, it says that we are at war with “al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents” and later more generally talks about countering “violent extremism.”

The first term is too narrow – and the second, too broad . . . .

. . . . Violent Islamist extremism has a particular – if twisted – message that must be understood and countered. The clearly stated goal of the Islamists is to establish a caliphate, or empire, within the Arab and Muslim world that would overthrow existing governments and impose upon the people a harsh and radical interpretation of Shari’ah (Islamic religious law).

If the senators talked this way at a Quantico briefing, they’d be banned for using grossly inaccurate, inflammatory, and highly offensive counterterrorism training materials.

At any rate, the senators did indeed call for training standards, but their focus wasn’t on alleged anti-Muslim trainers, but on a lack of rigor in defining and confronting violent Islamic extremism. In fact, the example they offer to Brennan of training failure wasn’t one of some innocent victim of FBI Islamophobic heavy-handedness, but the case of Major Nidal Hasan, “who was allowed to continue through his Army service in part because his commanding officers and fellow soldiers were not trained in the distinct difference between the religion of Islam and the violent political ideology of violent Islamist extremism.” Lieberman and Collins knew perfectly well that the failure to intervene with Hasan wasn’t caused by any “deep anti-Muslim sentiment within the U.S. government,” but by a culture of political correctness towards Muslims in the military that terrified officers away from reporting Hasan’s extremist behavior.

If anything, individuals facing  future Hasans will have even more to be afraid of if they report him, not less.

Since this media campaign commenced around September 12^th, there have been these related developments:

• October 13 – MPAC posts an “Action Alert” opposing creation of a Department of Homeland Security office “to ‘counter homegrown violent Islamist extremism,’ particularly focusing on the ‘ideology’ of violent extremists such as Al-Qaeda inside the US,” because MPAC claims “religiously laden terminology such as “Islamist” bolsters violent extremists and alienates mainstream Muslims.”
• October 19 -- Obama administration confirms “pulling back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive.”
• October 19 –Assistant AG for Civil Rights Tom Perez expresses enthusiasm for Islamists’ demands for DOJ civil rights lawyers to “come up with a way to redefine” criticism of Islam as illegal “racial discrimination.”
• October 20 -- the ACLU released its "Mapping the FBI" initiative, accusing the FBI of "mapping American communities around the country based on crude stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes."
• October 25 – For the 10^th anniversary of the Patriot Act, Muslim Advocates releases a 56-page report accusing “the FBI and other federal agencies of “’bad policing’ and flaunting the Constitution.” 

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Feds Win, With an Asterisk

The Justice Department didn’t lose a minute October 12 before taking full credit for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea to all counts in his terror trial.  According to the statement released by the DOJ, Attorney General Eric Holder said:

“Contrary to what some have claimed, today’s plea removes any doubt that our courts are one of the most effective tools we have to fight terrorism and keep the American people safe. Our priority in this case was to ensure that we arrested a man who tried to do us harm, that we collected actionable intelligence from him and that we prosecuted him in a way that was consistent with the rule of law. We will continue to be aggressive in our fight against terrorism and those who target us, and we will let results, not rhetoric, guide our actions.”

I’ll tell you at the outset I never doubted the government would have won a guilty verdict had the U-bomber’s trial continued. Not only did the FBI have his confession in a bag, but there were plenty of eyewitnesses and  drawers full of physical evidence to prove exactly what U-bomber tried to do.

That said, I’m at a complete loss how the AG gets off claiming Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea proves the AG’s theory that civilian trial are more effective than military tribunals for trying enemy combatants.

In case you missed the seven-minute news cycle on this, Abdulmutallab was in the second day of his trial when he unexpectedly offered to plead guilty to all counts – on his own initiative and against the advice of his attorney.

Defendants plead guilty frequently after their trials begin. Usually it happens once the defendant gets a load of how much evidence against him the prosecutor is showing to the jury.  Defendants  figure out their facing the maximum verdict and the maximum penalty if they don’t spare everyone the ordeal of the trial and plead to something lesser.

This isn’t what happened in the Abdulmutallab trial. His decision to plead was not in response to the evidence -- the trial had barely begun. It wasn’t in response to anything the government did during trial. More notable, he didn’t ask for anything in exchange for his plea. He wanted to plead to all counts, straight up. It was Abdulmutallab’s decision all the way. Why he did it this way doesn’t really matter, even if we knew.

But bear in mind that if he’d wanted to, Abdulmutallab could have entered the same plea at his arraignment last year. And, he could have also pleaded guilty if he’d been charged by a military commission. That’s exactly what Khalid Sheikh Mohammad tried to do. During his trial before a military commission, KSM announced he wanted to plead guilty and get the death penalty.  But then the trial was aborted when President Obama ordered a halt to the commissions. (“Holder “Reluctantly” Sends KSM to Military Commissions”).

I don’t know about you, but that stunt by itself removed any doubts I had about the competence of the Obama administration to handle national security. In April of this year, 2,500 halal meals later, Holder reluctantly agreed that the mastermind of 9/11 would go before a military commission after all.

As I said, had Abdulmutallab forced the government to try him all the way to a verdict, I’m sure the U.S. Attorney’s Office would have persuaded the jury to convict him.  That’s not the issue here.

But there’s no basis whatever for DOJ’s claim that Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea “removes any doubt” that civilian courts are more effective than military commissions for trying enemy combatants. It proves nothing on the subject one way or the other.

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Hey, Hey We’re the Mongees!

While the subject of the state of war between Islam and the western world is still fresh, I’d like to share something Andrew McCarthy has written in reaction to the recent Iranian plot to murder the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil:

Iran’s sharia state has been killing and plotting to kill Americans for more than 30 years. Critics who see that observation as war-mongering repeat the folly that gave us 9/11: When the other side is already at war with you, you cannot make the war go away by ignoring it — that only emboldens the enemy. I don’t want war with Iran. I want to win the war Iran has instigated. (“Breaking Tehran”).

I wish I’d written that.

At any rate, because a “war-monger” is the party who tries to stir up a war, I believe our enemies are actually the war-mongers, which, regardless of how we respond, would naturally make us the war-mongees.

Allah in the Dock

TR Clancy comments on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea via American Thinker:

Think of this as Islam's guilty plea.

Will we accept it?

Don't bet on it, because ten years after the worst sneak-attack on the U.S. so far in Islam's war on America, the nation's situational awareness is worse than ever.

1. Most of us still stubbornly refuse to admit what we already know about Islam: that it's a violent, malevolent religion whose adherents can't stop themselves from announcing to us their intentions to make war against us until they've either killed us or made us slaves.
2. Most of us still stubbornly profess our belief in a "true" Islam, peace-loving, egalitarian, more or less an Arabian version of Christianity.
3. Most of us reflexively channel all blame for the daily bombings, beheadings, murders, mutilations, honor killings, and sundry other savagery committed in the name of Allah away from "true" Islam onto what we're told is a distorted, hijacked Islam embraced by only a tiny fringe.
4. Most of us haven't lifted a finger since September 11, 2001 to find out if our opinions about 1, 2, and 3 have any basis in reality; we haven't read a single book, done a single Internet search, or tried reading a Qur'an.

For the past week media attention has focused on the "Occupy Wall Street" phenomenon. The commentariat justly criticize the mobs for their incoherent message. Panels debate, "Who are these people, and what do they want?"

I find no signs of such curiosity in response to what Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had to tell us. Not only did he fully answer the two questions the silly Occupiers cannot answer, but he answered them without even being asked. Too bad he was drowned out by the Occupier kid who wants free college tuition.

Please read the rest here at American Thinker.

The Squat Heard Round the World, or, We Have Nothing To Lose But Our Drains

The global planners behind Occupy Wall Street deemed it wise to send a contingent to Detroit. (“In wake of Occupy Wall Street, plans develop for Occupy Detroit”).  No one really knows why.  Until now the movement to unoccupy Detroit has been so frantic that the only remaining idea of the city’s one-party government has been “right-sizing” Detroit down to a heavily subsidized farm collective. (“In Havana, an impressive network of urban farms, first created amidst the severe food shortages of the ‘Special Period,’ are now providing most of Havana’s fruits and vegetables.”)  Detroit’s farm project, known as “Focus Hoedown,” has stalled pending a public school administrators’ study of best practices on how to embezzle fresh eggs and feed corn.

Undaunted, Occupy Detroit has established its headquarters at Grand Circus Park, welcoming  “‘Everyone who has suffered financial injustice.’” 

The Detroit Free Press described this scene last weekend:

In the early morning darkness, with a brisk breeze making the temperatures in the 40’s feel even colder, some of Detroit’s newest residents emerged from tents, folding their blankets after a night of slumber in Grand Circus Park just before dawn this morning. (“Occupy Detroit protesters say they'll be in park until mid-December”).

Now that’s a rare sight around downtown Detroit: people waking up in parks after spending the night.

“’This is meant to be a peaceful nonviolent act of civil disobedience,’” said Alexandra Borngesser, a member of the Occupy Detroit and Lansing Volunteer Group.”

In another show of civil disobedience last Saturday, New York’s Occupy Wall street demonstrators tried to take over Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park: “‘We don’t want to ask for public space, we want to take it,’ said Mike Andrews, a 30-year-old protester, during the planning meeting on Sunday night. (“Protesters’ Next Frontier: Washington Square Park”).

By contrast the Detroit Occupiers obtained a 60-day permit to camp in Grand Circus Park. A spokesman for the clerk’s office confirmed that the occupiers even forked over an additional $8.00 to get a “civil disobedience” endorsement.

Spokesmen for the city announced that the anti-corporate protesters have made a 2-month “commitment” to the city. The mayor’s office, following Detroit’s traditional method for attracting outside interest, granted campers $55 million in tax credits for a promise not to ditch town before December 15.

Recent Wayne State University graduate, Jacquie Piche of Dearborn Heights, has taken up temporary residence at the Grand Circus campground. She told the Free Press, “It’s really incredible we built a pretty awesome community in this park. There are a lot of people with a lot of different issues out here and I think every one of them is very important. I think the government needs to care about the people that it’s governing.”

Now there’s something you don’t see every day in Detroit: people in parks with a lot of different issues.

World leaders like Hugo Chavez and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have declared support for the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. On Thursday even Moamar Ghadafi, in one of his last public announcements, was heard to shriek anti-Wall Street sentiments from the drain pipe where he was cornered. Noted Hollywood celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Danny Glover have shown up at New York’s Zucotti Park to show solidarity with the movement.

Occupy Detroit hasn’t been so honored.  Detroit’s world-class political leaders, such as Congressman John Conyers and Senator Carl Levin  haven’t shown up yet, nor has the Grand Circus Park campsite  received any celebrity visits. A publicist for Slim Shady (aka Eminem) did say the artist might stop by “for a minute” a week from Wednesday, when his mom’s got a dentist appointment at the Whitney Building. On Friday, occupiers demonstrating at the Guardian Building branch of Bank of America cheered wildly when WDIV-TV weather personality Chuck Gaidica showed up. (“Occupy Detroit protest Bank of America over foreclosures”). Cheers turned to boos when they realized Gaidica was only trying to get inside to use the ATM.

So far, Detroit’s occupiers have remained peaceful, unlike other occupied cities that have witnessed ugly scenes. In San Francisco, one protester reportedly was “dragged away by his index finger while police officers threatened to break it.” Police explain the incident was ignited after the  protester  invited an officer to “pull my finger.”

In a report from another occupied city, the corporate headquarters of Susie’s Lemonade had its windows smashed out by a coalition of activists demanding Susie’s slash the price of its popular beverage to one cent. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka called for raising the hourly wage of lemon pickers to $75. Corporate CEO, Susie  allegedly replied to occupier demands by sticking out her tongue.

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Will DOJ Create an Anti-Blasphemy Division?

By Diana West:

Eric Holder, Meet John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams doesn't need to meet Abu Qatada

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The Justice Department's war on the facts about Islam, currently playing out in a purge of fact-armed trainers such as FBI analyst William Gawthrop, has taken a publicly aggressive turn as former US Attorney Dwight C. Holton declared AG Holder's "firm committment" to, as TPM reported, "nixing anti-Muslim material from law enforcement training."

“I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for,” Holton said. “They will not be tolerated.”

As obliquely noted yesterday, such a diktat would ban the Koran from the training curriculum due to its "portrayal of Islam as a religion of violence" and "tendency toward violence" -- Justice's Two Big No-Nos. This is something my friend and retired detective and police officer John Work well understands. At his blog today, he fires off a quick list of Koranic exhortations to violence -- a tiny sample of the Islamic teachings we as a people have been well and purposefully conditioned not only to ignore and regard as being "out of context" and therefore meaningless, but also as evidence of the harmonious, Hershey Kiss of an impact Islam has on the world.

John throws in a bonus quotation from John Quincy Adams, our erudite and accomplished sixth president:

“[Mohammed] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…The precept of the Quran is, perpetual war against all who deny that [Mohammed] is the Prophet of God.

The vanquished [dhimmi] may purchase their lives by the payment of tribute.”

Notably, one of William Gawthrop's thoughtcrimes is simply to acknowledge the role of Mohammed as the jihad model, a truism in Islam as elaborated on, for example, mega-Sheihk and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual advisor Yusef al-Qaradawi: "Allah has also made the prophet Muhammad into an epitome for religious warriors [Mujahideen] ..." (I am quoting from the 2001 MEMRI translation on p. 248 of Andrew Boston's The Legacy of Islamic Jihad.)

Clearly, this duh-point was not lost on John Quincy Adams.

How far we have fallen: If AG Holder had his way, the 6th President of the United States would be purged, too.

Why Dawud Walid Wants Abdulmutallab To Keep Quiet

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab stopped his trial on its second day and pleaded guilty to all eight charges against him yesterday in the U.S. District Court in Detroit. 

He was allowed to make his own statement. I think it’s important that his full explanation get around more widely.

I heard him give it yesterday, and while some of his more quotable comments are being repeated in lots of news articles, I haven’t seen his most instructive statements in the paper.

The Detroit Free Press published the full transcript of his statement, released by the U.S. District Court. 

What I haven’t seen in the papers, but I think is the most instructive thing he said yesterday, is this:

In late 2009, in fulfillment of a religious obligation, I decided to participate in jihad against the United States. The Koran obliges every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them, some parts of the Koran say, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

October 12, 2011

DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF

The following is the transcript of what accused underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab said to the court today as he pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges in federal court in Detroit. The transcipt was provided by the U.S. District Court in Detroit.

“In the name of Allah, the most merciful, if I were to say I the father did not do it, but my son did it and he conspired with the holy spirit to do it, or if I said I did it but the American people are guilty of the sin, and Obama should pay for the crime, the Court wouldn’t accept that from me or anyone else.

“In late 2009, in fulfillment of a religious obligation, I decided to participate in jihad against the United States. The Koran obliges every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them, some parts of the Koran say, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

“I had an agreement with at least one person to attack the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants.

“As a result, I traveled to Yemen and eventually to the United States, and I agreed with at least one person to carry an explosive device onto an aircraft and attempt to kill those onboard and wreck the aircraft as an act of jihad against the United States for the U.S. killing of my Muslim brothers and sisters around the world.

“I was greatly inspired to participate in jihad by the lectures of the great and rightly guided mujahedeen who is alive, Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, may Allah preserve him and his family and give them victory, Amin, and Allah knows best.

“Participation in jihad against the United States is considered among the most virtuous of deeds in Islam and is highly encouraged in the Koran; however, according to U.S. law, which is unjust and oppressive according to the Koran, my actions make me guilty of a crime in the United States, in particular, the following counts in my indictment.

"Count 1, conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries, so by me traveling to Yemen, then to Djibouti, to Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, the Netherlands, and eventually the United States, with an agreement with at least one person to carry an explosive device in an attempt to kill those onboard for the U.S. killing of innocent Muslims, I’m guilty in U.S. law of this count.

“Count 2, possession of a firearm or destructive device in the furtherance of a crime of violence, I carried with me an explosive device onto Northwest 253, again, to avenge the killing of my innocent Muslim brothers and sisters by the U.S. So I am guilty in U.S. law of this count.

“Count 3, attempted murder within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, again, in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and Israel massacres of innocent Palestinians, so I am guilty of this count, too.

“Count 4, use and carrying of a firearm, destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence by carrying an explosive device and attempting to use it on Flight 253 for the U.S. killing of innocent Muslims, I am guilty of this count, too.

“Count 5, willfully placing a destructive device in and upon, in proximity to a civil aircraft which was used and operated in interstate, overseas, and foreign air commerce which was likely to have endangered the safety of such aircraft, I intentionally carried an explosive device onto Flight 253, for the United States tyranny and oppression of Muslims, so I am guilty of this count in U.S. law, but not in the Koran.

“Count 6, possession of a firearm/destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence. I was in possession of an explosive device intended for use against the United States for U.S. interference in Muslim countries, so I am guilty in U.S. law of this count.

“Count 7, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, I attempted to use an explosive device which in the U.S. law is a weapon of mass destruction, which I call a blessed weapon to save the lives of innocent Muslims, for U.S. use of weapons of mass destruction on Muslim populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond. So I am guilty in U.S. law of this count and innocent in Muslim law.

“Count 8, willful attempt to destroy and wreck a civil aircraft, I intended to wreck a civil aircraft for the U.S. wreckage of Muslim lands and property, so I am guilty in U.S. law of this count.

“The United States -- the United States should be warned that if they continue and persist in promoting the blasphemy of Muhammad and the prophets, peace be upon them all, and the U.S. continues to kill and support those who kill innocent Muslims, then the U.S. should await a great calamity that will befall them through the hands of the mujahideen soon by God’s willing permission. Or God will strike them directly with a great calamity soon by his will, Amin.

“If you laugh at us now, we will laugh at you later in this life and on the day of judgment by God’s will, and our final call is all praise to Allah, the lord of the universe, Allahu Akbar.”

Source: U.S. District Court, Detroit

Umar and Me

I was jaywalking in front of the U.S. courthouse early Wednesday morning when I was nearly run over by the black SUV transporting Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab  and its police escort, sirens wailing up Fort Street, hell-bent-for election to get the prisoner to court for jury selection.   It occurred to me later how that was  the second near-miss I’ve had from passenger Abdulmutallab. The other was when he tried to blow up an Airbus 330 above my house.

Or am I just getting a complex?

Jury selection for the U-bomber’s trial was finished Thursday.

Exactly on cue the U-bomber’s legal adviser, Anthony Chambers, complained that he was “not pleased” with the racial makeup of the jury.

"By appearance, it does not represent the community. That should be clear."

And what he means “by appearance,” is that the jury– two blacks, one Indian, and nine whites -- isn’t divided equally enough between blacks and whites.  Chambers is a prominent fixture of the Detroit criminal defense bar. As such, it’s a mere reflex for him to attack the racial makeup of a jury.  For years Detroit’s defense attorneys have claimed that a black defendant can’t possibly get a fair trial unless the jury predominantly represents “the community,” which, in most cases, means black Detroiters.  The intrinsically racist logic behind this is that black jurors will not convict black robbers, rapists, drug dealers, and murderers because, obviously, the jurors understand that both they and the accused are all fellow victims of white injustice.

Which is, of course, nuts. For years low-profile black defendants have been getting convicted by majority black juries, who quite reasonably don’t want these punks destroying their neighborhoods any more than they already have.  In higher-profile cases, because they involve higher-profile attorneys and greater publicity, race will become an issue if at all possible.   

I do think this was a pro forma by Chambers; after the defendant is convicted, he’s going to have to have something upon which to base an appeal.  I seriously doubt Chambers believes that just because Abdulmutallab is black, he’s identified somehow with Detroit’s black community.  The case simply has nothing to do with race.  If the U-bomber had succeeded in bringing down Flight 253 over the heart of metro Detroit, the black community would have been well represented among his intended victims.

Detroit isn’t his community.  He’s not even an American. He wants to kill American blacks and whites with equal fervor.

The relevant community Abdulmutallab belongs to is the Ummah, worldwide Islam.