We Must Fight Terrorism

Fighting Terror
Old Arab War
Miscellaneous
Main perpetrators of terrorism are Muslims
War on Terrorism
Terrorist Attacks
Terrorism
Israeli Security Barrier
Martyrs, Virgins and Grapes
Muslim Population Statistics
Koran (Qur'an) excerpts - important understanding
Muslims in Europe     Spain  Spain2  Belgium  Denmark  Denmark2  France  Germany   England
Arabs in U.S. 
Hollywood loudmouths say nothing
Terror on the streets (U.S. Gangs)
Terror's best friend (passports)
Illegal Immigration
Geneva Conventions and Terrorists

An e-mail contained an extract from Ralph Peters'  book, "When Devils Walk the Earth." It says you must fight terrorism, not try to appease it.

Chapter III. Fighting Terror:  Do's and Don'ts for a Superpower:

1. Be feared!

2. Identify the type of terrorists you face, and know your enemy as well as you possibly can. Although tactics may be similar, strategies for dealing with practical vs. apocalyptic terrorists can differ widely. Practical terrorists may have legitimate grievances that deserve consideration, although their methods cannot be tolerated.  Apocalyptic terrorists, no matter their rhetoric, seek your destruction and must be killed to the last man.  The apt metaphor is cancer: you cannot hope for success if you only cut out part of the tumor.  For the apocalyptic terrorist, evading your efforts can easily be turned into a public triumph. Our bloodiest successes will create far fewer terrorists and sympathizers than our failures.

3. Do not be afraid to be powerful. Cold War-era gambits of proportionate response and dialog may have some utility in dealing with practical terrorists, but they are counter-productive in dealing with apocalyptic terrorists.  Our great strengths are wealth and raw power.  When we fail to bring those strengths to bear, we contribute to our own defeat.  For a superpower to think small, which has been our habit across the last decade, at least, is self-defeating folly.  Our responses to terrorist acts should make the world gasp!

4. Speak bluntly. Euphemisms are interpreted as weakness by our enemies and mislead the American people. Speak of killing terrorists and destroying their organizations. Timid speech leads to timid actions.  Explain when necessary, but do not apologize.  Expressions of regret are never seen as a mark of decency by terrorists or their supporters, but only as a sign that our will is faltering.  Blame the terrorists as the root cause whenever operations have unintended negative consequences. Never go on the rhetorical defensive.

5. Concentrate on winning the propaganda war where it is winnable. Focus on keeping or enhancing the support from allies and well-disposed clients, but do not waste an inordinate amount of effort trying to win unwinnable hearts and minds.  Convince hostile populations through victory.

6. Do not be drawn into a public dialog with terrorists, especially not with apocalyptic terrorists. You cannot win. You legitimize the terrorists by addressing them even through a third medium, and their extravagant claims will resound more successfully on their own home ground than anything you can say. Ignore absurd accusations, and never let the enemy's claims slow or sidetrack you. The terrorist wants you to react, and your best means of unbalancing him and his plan is to ignore his accusations.

7. Avoid planning creep. Within our vast bureaucratic system, too many voices compete for attention and innumerable agendas, often selfish and personal - intrude on any attempt to act decisively.  Focus on the basic mission: the destruction of the terrorists with all the moral, intellectual and practical rigor you can bring to bear. All other issues, from future nation building, to alliance consensus, to humanitarian concerns are secondary.

8. Maintain resolve. Especially in the Middle East and Central Asia, experts and diplomats will always present you with a multitude of good reasons for doing nothing, or for doing too little (or for doing exactly the wrong thing).  Fight as hard as you can within the system to prevent diplomats from gaining influence over the strategic campaign.  Although their intentions are often good, our diplomats and their obsolete strategic views are the terrorist's unwitting allies and diplomats are extremely jealous of military success and military authority in their region (where their expertise is never as deep or subtle as they believe it to be). Beyond the problem with our diplomats, the broader forces of bureaucratic entropy are an internal threat.  The counter-terrorist campaign must be not only resolute, but constantly self-rejuvenating in ideas, techniques, military and inter-agency combinations, and sheer energy.  Old hands must be stimulated constantly by new ideas.

9. When in doubt, hit harder than you think necessary. Success will be forgiven.  Even the best-intentioned failure will not. When military force is used against terrorist networks, it should be used with such power that it stuns even our allies.  We must get over our cowardice in means. While small-scale raids and other knifepoint operations are useful against individual targets, broader operations should be overwhelming.  Of course, targeting limitations may inhibit some efforts but whenever possible, maximum force should be used in simultaneous operations at the very beginning of a campaign.  Do not hesitate to supplement initial target lists with extensive bombing attacks on nothing if they can increase the initial psychological impact.  Demonstrate power whenever you can.  Show; don't tell!

10. Whenever legal conditions permit, kill terrorists on the spot (do not give them a chance to surrender, if you can help it).  Contrary to academic wisdom, the surest way to make a martyr of a terrorist is to capture, convict and imprison him, leading to endless efforts by sympathizers to stage kidnappings, hijacking and other events intended to liberate the imprisoned terrorist(s).  This is war, not law enforcement.

11. Never listen to those who warn that ferocity on our part reduces us to the level of the terrorists. That is the argument of the campus, not of the battlefield, and it insults America's service members and the American people.  Historically, we have proven, time after time, that we can do a tough, dirty job for our country without any damage to our nation's moral fabric (Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not interfere with American democracy, values or behavior).

12. Spare and protect innocent civilians whenever possible, but: do not let the prospect of civilian casualties interfere with ultimate mission accomplishment.  This is a fight to protect the American people, and we must do so whatever the cost, or the price in American lives may be devastating. In a choice between them, and us the choice is always us.

13. Do not allow the terrorists to hide behind religion.  Apocalyptic terrorists cite religion as a justification for attacking us; in turn, we cannot let them hide behind religious holidays, taboos, strictures or even sacred terrain.  We must establish a consistent reputation for relentless pursuit and destruction of those who kill our citizens. Until we do this, our hesitation will continue to strengthen our enemy's ranks and his resolve.

14. Do not allow third parties to broker a peace, a truce, or any pause in operations. One of the most difficult challenges in fighting terrorism on a global scale is the drag produced by nervous allies.  We must be single-minded.  The best thing we can do for our allies in the long-term is to be so resolute and so strong that they value their alliance with us all the more. We must recognize the innate strength of our position and stop allowing regional leaders with counterproductive local agendas to subdue or dilute our efforts.

15. Don't flinch. If an operation goes awry and friendly casualties are unexpectedly high, immediately bolster morale and the military's image by striking back swiftly in a manner that inflicts the maximum possible number of casualties on the enemy and his supporters.  Hit back as graphically as possible to impress upon the local and regional players that you weren't badly hurt or deterred in the least.

16. Do not worry about alienating already-hostile populations.

17. Whenever possible, humiliate your enemy in the eyes of his own people. Do not try to use reasonable arguments against him.   Shame him publicly, in any way you can.  Create doubt where you cannot excite support. Most apocalyptic terrorists, especially, come from cultures of male vanity. Disgrace them at every opportunity.  Done successfully, this both degrades them in the eyes of their followers and supporters, and provokes the terrorist to respond, increasing his vulnerability.

18. If the terrorists hide, strike what they hold dear, using clandestine means and, whenever possible, foreign agents to provoke them to break cover and react.  Do not be squeamish.  Your enemy is not.  Subtlety is not superpower strength but the raw power to do that, which is necessary, is our great advantage. We forget that, while the world may happily chide or accuse us-or complain of our inhumanity-no one can stop us if we maintain our strength of will.  Much of the world will complain no matter what we do. Hatred of America is the default position of failed individuals and failing states around the world, in every civilization, and there is nothing we can do to change their minds.  We refuse to understand how much of humanity will find excuses for evil, so long as the evil strikes those who are more successful than the apologists themselves.  This is as true of American academics, whose eagerness to declare our military efforts a failure is unflagging, or European clerics, who still cannot forgive America's magnanimity at the end of World War II, as it is of unemployed Egyptians or Pakistanis.  The psychologically marginalized are at least as dangerous as the physically deprived.

19. Do not allow the terrorists sanctuary in any country, at any time, under any circumstances. Counter-terrorist operations must, above all, be relentless.  This does not necessarily mean that military operations will be constantly underway sometimes it will be surveillance efforts, or deception plans, or operations by other agencies.  But the overall effort must never pause for breath.  We must be faster, more resolute, more resourceful and, ultimately, even more uncompromising than our enemies.

20. Never declare victory. Announce successes and milestones.  But never give the terrorists a chance to embarrass you after a public pronouncement that the war is over.

21. Impress upon the minds of terrorists and potential terrorists everywhere, and upon the populations and governments inclined to support them, that American retaliation will be powerful and uncompromising. You will never deter fanatics, but you can frighten those who might support, harbor or attempt to use terrorists for their own ends.  Our basic task in the world today is to restore a sense of American power, capabilities and resolve.  We must be hard, or we will be struck wherever we are soft.  It is folly for charity to precede victory.  First win, then unclench your fist.

22. Do everything possible to make terrorists and their active supporters live in terror themselves. Turn the tide psychologically and practically. While this will not deter hard-core apocalyptic terrorists, it will dissipate their energies as they try to defend themselves and fear will deter many less-committed supporters of terror.  Do not be distracted by the baggage of the term assassination.  This is a war. The enemy, whether a hijacker or a financier, violates the laws of war by his refusal to wear a uniform and by purposely targeting civilians.  He is by definition a war criminal.  On our soil, he is either a spy or a saboteur, and not entitled to the protections of the U.S. Constitution.  Those who abet terrorists must grow afraid to turn out the lights to go to sleep.

23. Never accept the consensus of the Washington intelligentsia, which looks backward to past failures, not forward to future successes.

24. In dealing with Islamic apocalyptic terrorists, remember that their most cherished symbols are fewer and far more vulnerable than are the West's. Ultimately, no potential target can be regarded as off-limits when the United States is threatened with mass casualties. Worry less about offending foreign sensibilities and more about protecting Americans.

25. Do not look for answers in recent history, which is still unclear and subject to personal emotion. Begin with the study of the classical world, specifically Rome, which is the nearest model to the present-day United States.  Mild with subject peoples, to whom they brought the rule of ethical law, the Romans in their rise and at their apogee were implacable with their enemies.  The utter destruction of Carthage brought centuries of local peace, while the later empire's attempts to appease barbarians consistently failed!

Our Arab War, The One 200 Years Ago
Dennis Byrne--He is a  Chicago-area writer and public affairs consultant
January 5,  2004 (from an e-mail)

For those who think it is always wiser to put together an international panel of negotiators to try to talk foreign enemies into  being nice, I present to you our Arab war. The one 200 years ago.  The one in which diplomacy failed miserably.  The one in which  Europe refused to help. The one we conducted alone. And won. The Barbary Wars --Talk about forgetting the  lessons of history.  One of the first ones we learned 200 years ago was  that "diplomacy" and "multilateralism" sometimes must end and direct  action must begin.  Back then, pirates from the North African states of  Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and  Tripoli routinely plundered and seized our ships, demanded ransoms for captive crews or sold our sailors into slavery. European shipping routinely suffered the same fate.

Europe's answer was "let's negotiate," which meant sitting down with some pasha and asking him how much money he wanted to  leave them alone.  Then forking over millions. Thomas Jefferson  thought that approach ridiculous, inviting never-ending blackmail. As  the American minister to France, he  strongly urged a  multinational alliance to "reduce the piratical states to peace."  Pick  them off one at a time "through the medium of war," so the others get the  message, and they'll give up their piracy too.

Some European  powers were "favorably disposed," as Jefferson said, to a joint operation.  But guess who had reservations? France. (No kidding, you can't make up this stuff). France,  because of its own interests, was suspected of secretly supporting the  Barbary powers. So, the plan collapsed in  favor of a policy of continued negotiations (read: appeasement) -  meaning supplicating the blackmailers to tell us how much money they wanted for the ransom of ships and sailors and for annual  tributes.

When Jefferson became  president in 1801, he finally could do something about it himself.  He  simply refused Tripoli's demand for a tribute.  That  provoked Tripoli to declare war on us, as if this young,  upstart pup of a nation had any right to stand up for its principles. Jefferson's response was a no-nonsense  piece of clarity. He sent a squadron of ships to blockade and  bombard Tripoli.  The results of these efforts  were somewhat mixed. But on Feb. 16 of this year, we  will celebrate the bicentennial of Lt. Stephen Decatur leading 74 volunteers into  Tripoli harbor  to burn the previously captured American frigate, The Philadelphia, so it  could not be used for piracy.

It was considered one of the most  heroic actions in U.S. naval history.    The next year, Marines bravely stormed a harbor fortress, an act now  commemorated in the "Marine Corps Hymn" with the words "... to the   shores of Tripoli." Eventually, Morocco, seeing what was in store for it, dropped out of the fight  And the threat of "regime change" in  Tripoli led to a treaty of somewhat dubious  benefits for the United  States.

Demonstrating the need for  perseverance and patience, a series of victories in 1815 by Commodores  William Bainbridge and Decatur finally led to a Treaty ending both piracy against us and tribute payments by us. We even  extracted monetary compensation for property they seized from  us. Meanwhile, Europeans, continuing their multilateral, diplomatic approach kept paying and paying and paying.

Lessons?  No, it doesn't prove that diplomacy and international cooperation never  work.  But it demonstrates a principle: The United States, when  confronted with weak resolve from the international community against  enemies, sometimes needs to stand alone for what is right.  And it sometimes works. By coincidence, Tripoli today is the capital of Libya, whose leader Moammar Gadhafi, noticing  the pounding that the United  States gave to tyrants in Afghanistan and Iraq, abandoned his own weapons of mass destruction program. Perhaps Gadhafi, unlike some of our own blindly anti-war academics,  commentators and politicians, has read history, especially as it happened in Libya.

One more  footnote:  France  finally settled the hash of the Barbary  Coast states in 1830 when it simply went in and took over the  place.  The  official provocation, according to France, was some sort of an insult to the  French consul in Algiers. France,  demonstrating its superior humanitarian instincts, remained there as a  colonial power for a century.  Unlike the United States,  which, wanting only to protect its citizens and its ships, got out when it won.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/hl940.cfm  more complete story

Free Speech on Trial in Europe

by Soeren Kern
January 27, 2011 at 5:00 am

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1829/free-speech-on-trial-in-europe

The "hate speech" trial of Lars Hedegaard, the president of the Danish Free Press Society and the International Free Press Society, began in a courthouse near Copenhagen on January 24. Hedegaard, who has been charged with "racism" for critical comments he made about Islam, faces up to two years in prison.

Hedegaard's trial, which is similar to recent or current ones in Austria, Finland, France, Italy and the Netherlands, represents a landmark case that will establish the limits of free speech in a country where the politically correct elite routinely seek to silence public discussion about the growing problem of Muslim immigration. The trial also exemplifies the increasing use of lawfare: the malicious use of European courts to silence criticism of Islam.

Hedegaard's legal problems began in December 2009, when he remarked in a taped interview that there was a high incidence of child rape and domestic violence in areas dominated by Muslim culture. Although Hedegaard has insisted that he did not intend to accuse all Muslims or even the majority of Muslims of such crimes, Denmark's thought police have refused to drop the case.

Instead, the Danish public prosecutor's office says Hedegaard is guilty of violating Article 266b of the Danish penal code, which states: "Whoever publicly or with the intent of public dissemination issues a pronouncement or other communication by which a group of persons are threatened, insulted or denigrated due to their race, skin colour, national or ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation is liable to a fine or incarceration for up to two years."

The Hedegaard trial is the second one in Denmark involving Islam-related "hate speech" in as many months. On December 3, 2010, a Danish court found Jesper Langballe, a Danish politician and Member of Parliament, guilty of hate speech for saying that honor killings and sexual abuse take place in Muslim families.

Langballe was denied the opportunity to prove his allegations because, under Danish law, it is immaterial whether a statement is true or false. All that is needed for a conviction is for someone to feel offended. Langballe was summarily sentenced to pay a fine of 5,000 Danish Krone (approximately $1,000) or spend ten days in jail.

The two trials in Denmark are similar to the one against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria, which resumed on January 18 following a two-month suspension in the hearings. Sabaditsch-Wolff, who has been charged with "incitement of hatred" and "denigrating religious teachings" after giving a series of seminars about the dangers of radical Islam, faces a possible three year prison sentence.

Sabaditsch-Wolff's legal problems began in November 2009, when she presented a three-part seminar about Islam to the Freedom Education Institute, a political academy linked to the Austrian Freedom Party. A glossy left-wing magazine, NEWS -- all in capital letters -- planted a journalist in the audience to secretly record the first two lectures. Lawyers for the socialist publication then handed the transcripts over to the Viennese public prosecutor's office as evidence of hate speech against Islam. Formal charges against Sabaditsch-Wolff were filed in September 2010; and her bench trial, presided on by one judge and no jury, began November 23.

On the first day of the trial, however, it quickly became clear that the case against Sabaditsch-Wolff was not as air-tight as prosecutors had made it out to be. The judge pointed out, for example, that only 30 minutes of the first seminar had actually been recorded. He also noted that some of the statements attributed to Sabaditsch-Wolff were offhand comments made during breaks and not a formal part of the seminar. Moreover, only a few people heard these comments, not 30 or more -- the criterion under Austrian law for a statement being "public." In any event, Sabaditsch-Wolff says her comments were not made in a public forum because the seminars were held for a select group of people who had registered beforehand.

More importantly, many of the statements attributed to Sabaditsch-Wolff were actually quotes she made directly from the Koran and other Islamic religious texts. Fearing that the trial would end in a mistrial, the judge abruptly suspended hearings until January 18, ostensibly to give him time to review the tape recordings, but also to give the prosecution more time to shore up its case.

Sabaditsch-Wolff is not the only Austrian to run afoul of the country's anti-free speech laws. In January 2009, Susanne Winter, an Austrian politician and Member of Parliament, was convicted for the "crime" of saying that "in today's system" the Islamic Prophet Muhammad would be considered a "child molester," referring to his marriage at the age of 56 to a six-year-old girl. Winter was also convicted of "incitement" for saying that Austria faces an "Islamic immigration tsunami." Winters was ordered to pay a fine of €24,000 ($31,000), and received a suspended three-month prison sentence.

Similar free speech cases involving Islam are blazing across Europe.

In Finland, for example, Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, a politician and well-known political commentator, was taken to court in March 2009 on charges of "incitement against an ethnic group" and "breach of the sanctity of religion" for saying that Islam is a religion of paedophilia. A Helsinki court later dropped the charges of blasphemy but ordered Halla-aho to pay a fine of €330 ($450) for disturbing religious worship. The Finnish public prosecutor, incensed at the lower court's dismissal of the blasphemy charges, appealed the case to the Finnish Supreme Court, where it is now being reviewed.

In France, novelist Michel Houellebecq was taken to court by Islamic authorities in the French cities of Paris and Lyon for calling Islam "the stupidest religion," and for saying the Koran is "badly written." In court, Houellebecq (pronounced Wellbeck) told the judges that although he had never despised Muslims, he did feel contempt for Islam. He was acquitted in October 2002.

Also in France, Brigitte Bardot, the legendary actress turned animal rights crusader, was convicted in June 2008 for "inciting racial hatred" after demanding that Muslims anaesthetize animals before slaughtering them. Bardot's lawyers said her passionate denunciation of the ritual slaughter of Eid al-Adha had been misinterpreted as an attack on Islam in France. Her conviction has not deterred Bardot, who says thousands of tons of Islamically slaughtered halal meat is entering France's general food chain, where it is being unwittingly consumed by the country's non-Muslim population.

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician and Member of Parliament, faces five charges of inciting racial and religious hatred for criticizing Islam. His first trial was abruptly terminated in October 2010 after it emerged that one of the judges presiding over the trial tried to influence an expert witness to testify against Wilders. In that case, a hastily convened judicial panel agreed with Wilders that the judges were biased against him, and ordered a retrial -- sending the closely watched case back to square one before an entirely new panel of judges. Wilders, who called the trial a farce, a disgrace, and an assault on free speech, welcomed the decision, saying: "This gives me a new chance with a new fair trial."

Also in the Netherlands, Gregorius Nekschot, the pseudonym of a Dutch cartoonist who is a vocal critic of Islamic female circumcision and often mocks Dutch multiculturalism, was arrested at his home in Amsterdam in May 2008 for drawing cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims. Nekschot (which literally means "shot in the neck," a method used, according to the cartoonist, by "fascists and communists to get rid of their opponents") was released after 30 hours of interrogation by Dutch law enforcement officials.

Nekschot is expected to be prosecuted for eight cartoons that "attribute negative qualities to certain groups of people," and, as such, are insulting and constitute the crimes of discrimination and hate according to articles 137c and 137d of the Dutch Penal Code. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, Nekschot said it was the first time in 800 years of the history of satire in the Netherlands that an artist was put in jail. (That interview has since been removed from the newspaper's website.)

In Italy, the late Oriana Fallaci, a journalist and author, was taken to court for writing that Islam "brings hate instead of love and slavery instead of freedom." In November 2002, a judge in Switzerland, acting on a lawsuit brought by Islamic Center of Geneva, issued an arrest warrant for Fallaci for violations of Article 261 of the Swiss criminal code; the judge asked the Italian government either to prosecute or extradite her. The Italian Justice Ministry rejected this request on the grounds that the Italian Constitution protects freedom of speech.

But in May 2005, the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, filed a lawsuit against Fallaci, charging that "some of the things she said in her book 'The Force of Reason' are offensive to Islam." An Italian judge ordered Fallaci to stand trial in Bergamo on charges of "defaming Islam." Fallaci died of cancer in September 2006, just months after the start of her trial.

Back in Denmark, Hedegaard says the International Free Press Society is a single issue organization: "We have no other objective than free speech. That is what has kept us together and allowed us to rally people with all manner of political persuasions, programs, religions, and outlooks on life."

He also says: "We have made no bones about the fact that we consider Islam -- as it is presently being preached by all influential clerics and ideologues -- a deadly threat to all our freedoms, among which are freedom of expression. For this consistent stance we have been vilified and called every name in the book, but we will not budge."

Bob Kerrey of the 9/11 Commission says that "this war on terrorism is really a war on radical Islam. Terrorism is a tactic. It's not a war itself." Our need to locate and destroy radical Islamists, before they destroy us, is as urgent as ever. (USN&WR, 4/19/04, 68) ..... Richard Clarke, counterterrorism advisor, has been very critical of the Bush administration for not preventing 9/11. Clarke was asked if all his suggestions were immediately implemented, is there the remotest chance that 9/11 would have been prevented? He answer was "No."  (USN&WR, 4/19/04, 86) ..... "We are now facing a group of religious terrorists consumed by a culture of death, mostly from the Arab world, in a world without clear battle lines."  Bush recognizes the need for pre-emption. We must deal with terrorist threats before they materialize. (USN&WR, 4/19/04, 85) ..... The International Institute of Strategic Studies annual report estimates that al-Qaida has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world. (OCR, 5/26/04, News 23) .....Since 9/11 there have been major terrorist attacks in Indonesia, Spain, Bosnia, India, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Somalia, Chechnya, and Israel. Wherever there is violence, there are Muslim radicals, more suicide attacks (98) last year than any other year. The mullahs of Iran sent children to clear mine fields in the war against Iraq. Hezbollah transformed this into suicide bombers. They believe it is more important to kill their enemies than to live, and Islam asserts that martyrdom pleases Allah and brings honor to the martyr's family. (USN&WR, 6/14/04, 84) ..... "We have no choice but to continue seeking to stop the terrorists before they can terrorize us - and to do what we can to prevent these deluded young Islamists from becoming terrorists in the first place." (USN&WR, 8/9/04, 64)  ..... "The nuclear arms race has been transformed from a race between the superpowers to a race between terrorists seeking weapons of mass destruction and a civilized world scrambling to stop them. It is a race we simply can't afford to lose." (USN&WR, 9/27/04, 76) ..... In Chicago, three Islamic charities and an alleged fund-raiser for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas were ordered to pay $156M to the parents of David Boim, shot down at a Jerusalem bus stop 8 years ago. (OCR, 12/9/04, News 24) ..... Mohammed Bouyeri, 26, murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for making a film that criticized Muslims for their treatment of women. Bouyeri wanted to replace the Dutch government with an Islamic theocracy, and was supported by a network of like-minded fanatics. (OCR, 1/27/05, News 18) ..... In 1989, Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared a death sentence fatwa against Salman Rushdie, because Khomeini considered Rushdie's novel to be blasphemous. Iran's National guards recently  said that the fatwa is irreversible, since Khomeini now is dead. (OCR, 2/13/05, News 40) ..... About 75% of anti-Western terrorists are middle or upper-middle class. 65% have gone to college and 75% have professional or semi-professional job, most in science or engineering. They are mobile, multi-lingual, self-made men, who gave up cricket and medical school to take up jihad. (OCR, 8/5/05, Local 7) ..... Over the last three decades, Islamic extremism and violence have been funded from two countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran, not coincidentally the world's first and second largest oil exporters. Both countries are now awash in money and, no matter what the controls, some of this cash is surely getting to unsavory groups and individuals. (Newsweek, 8/29/05, 41)

But anyone who goes beyond the first newspaper stories and reads the book will find another message. For one thing, Goldsmith also supports many much-criticized policies—the detention of unlawful combatants in Afghanistan and their confinement in Guantánamo, trials by military commissions, the terrorist surveillance program. And he rejects the charge that the administration has disregarded the rule of law. Quite the contrary. "The opposite is true: the administration has been strangled by law, and since September 11, 2001, this war has been lawyered to death." There has been a "daily clash inside the Bush administration between fear of another attack, which drives officials into doing whatever they can to prevent it, and the countervailing fear of violating the law, which checks their urge toward prevention."

It was not always so, he points out. In 1942, Franklin Roosevelt ordered military commissions to try the eight Nazi saboteurs who had landed on our shores; the Supreme Court unanimously approved, and six were executed six weeks after they were apprehended, to the applause of the media of the day. But FDR "acted in a permissive legal culture that is barely recognizable to us today." In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, Congress passed laws that criminalized military and civilian officers who broke the rules on electronic surveillance and detainee treatment: "the criminalization of warfare." Its ban on political assassination deterred the Clinton administration from gunning down Osama bin Laden. The cia has become so wary of possible criminal charges that it urges agents to buy insurance. Developments in international law, especially the doctrine of universal decision, also threaten U.S. government officials with possible prosecution abroad. All of this creates a risk-averseness that leaves us more vulnerable to terrorists.

The cia today employs more than 100 lawyers, the Pentagon employs 10,000  lawyers. "Every weapon used by the U.S. military, and most of the targets they are used against, are vetted and cleared by lawyers in advance," Goldsmith notes. In this respect, the national security community resembles the larger society. As Philip Howard of Common Good points out, we are stripping jungle gyms from playgrounds and paying for unneeded medical tests for fear of lawsuits.

The audiotapes released last week of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's interrogation remind us that we are faced with evil enemies and that getting information from them can save lives. Goldsmith, who withdrew his predecessor's interrogation opinions, nevertheless understands this and makes a strong case that our national security apparatus is overlawyered. Most Americans seem to agree; an Investor's Business Daily poll shows that more than 60 percent of Americans—and majorities of Democrats as well as Republicans—favor wiretapping terrorist suspects without warrants, increased surveillance, retaining the Patriot Act, and holding enemy combatants at Guantánamo. Unfortunately, the 30 percent or so who disagree are disproportionately represented in the legal profession and in the media. The 1970s laws that have helped produce the overlawyering of this war were prompted by the misdeeds of one or two presidents. But they will hamper the efforts of our current president as well as his successors in responding to a threat that is likely to continue for many years to come.  (USN&WR, 9/24/07, 43) http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/mbarone/2007/09/14/the-criminalizing-of-warfare-has-brought-the-overlawyered-war.html

NEW YORK  - Left-Leaning Attorney Is Guilty of Aiding Terror. A veteran civil rights lawyer known for representing radicals and revolutionaries in her 30 years on the New York legal scene was convicted for smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients to his terrorist disciples.  Lynne Stewart, 65, a firebrand, left-wing activist, was convicted Thursday of conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, defrauding the government and making false statements.  Stewart took over Abdel-Rahman's case and represented him until her arrest in 2002. The blind cleric was convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up New York landmarks and assassinate Egypt's president. ''I hope this is a wake up call to all the citizens of this country,'' she said outside court. ''You can't lock up the lawyers.'' Lawyers have said Stewart most likely would face a 20-year sentence. She will remain free on bail but must stay in New York until her July 15 sentencing. The evidence  included videotape of Osama bin Laden urging support for the jailed Abdel-Rahman, who prosecutors said communicated with the outside world with Stewart's help. ''I think lawyers need to be advocates but they don't need to be accomplices,'' said Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island who has studied terrorism cases. ''I think the evidence suggested that Lynne Stewart had crossed the line.'' The trial focused on the line between zealous advocacy and criminal behavior by a lawyer. Some defense lawyers saw the case as a government warning to attorneys to tread carefully in terrorism cases. The trial before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl began in late June, with prosecutor Christopher Morvillo telling the jury in his opening statement that Stewart ''used her status as a lawyer as a cloak to smuggle messages into and out of prison.'' He said she allowed Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik, to ''incite terrorism.'' Prosecutors said Stewart broke a promise to the government by letting outsiders communicate with the sheik, who was in solitary confinement under special prison rules designed to stop him from communicating with anyone except his wife and his lawyers. The anonymous jury, which deliberated 13 days over the past month before convicting Stewart, also convicted a U.S. postal worker, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, of conspiracy for plotting to ''kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country'' by publishing an edict urging the killing of Jews and their supporters. A third defendant, Arabic interpreter Mohamed Yousry, was convicted of providing material support to terrorists. Sattar could face life in prison and Yousry about 20 years. (2/11/05, AP)

In much of the Muslim world there are scores of terrorist groups that believe mass killing is a "religious obligation."  We are uniquely vulnerable because of the frustratingly amorphous nature of nonstate terrorism and the fearful ease of mass murder by suicidal maniacs willing to die in order to effect carnage. They reflect the dysfunctionality of much of the Arab world, which has proved a breeding ground for dictators, fanaticism, and terrorist networks determined to exploit our civic values by shooting from hospitals, mosques, and ambulances and corrupting the innocent and the ignorant. Suicide murder is the Palestinians' major contribution to our civilization, though no Muslim preacher has ever blown himself up. Nor has any relative of an influential Islamist. Rather, the suicide killers are mostly outcast women, naive children, and excited young hotheads whose minds are clouded by the promise of delights--mostly sexual and of the next world--while their families reap handsome rewards for murder. The emotional infrastructure for these atrocities arises from the deliberate fabrication of political facts by the Muslim leadership. We must eliminate terrorists wherever we find them. We also devote resources to transforming education in the Muslim world, replacing the odious madrasahs that are the breeding grounds for hate. These so-called religious schools are often financed by Saudi Arabia. Shiite Iran remains the greatest threat. It is radically ideological, seeks nuclear weapons, and sponsors Syrian terrorism as well as most of the terrorism in Iraq. If that weren't enough, it also sponsors and arms most of the face cards in terrorism's unholy deck--Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah. Iran, truly, is the problem of the future. So we must promote political democracy whenever we can in the region. Remember what Abu Musab Zarqawi, the ruthless terrorist leader in Iraq, wrote in his memo to al Qaeda? "Democracy is coming. There will be no excuse thereafter for terrorism in Iraq." We must remember that we did not choose the war on terrorism. It chose us. Nor can we walk away from it. (USN&WR,  9/13/04, 64)

US General John Abizaid believes that America has a chance to confront and stop  Islamic extremism  akin to fascism and communism in its early stages, before it metastasizes and dominates a significant chunk of the world. We did not have the guts to get out in front of the fascists or Bolsheviks. This time we have a chance. If we do not fight this fight here [Iraq and Middle East], we will fight it at home. (USN&WR,  9/28/05, 34) ..... Switzerland arrested five Islamic extremists for using the Internet to show the killing of hostages. The Netherlands has passed a new terrorism bill giving law-enforcement authorities far-reaching powers of investigation, including entrapment and infiltrating terrorist cells. They will be able to hold suspects up to two weeks without charges. (OCR, 3/5/05, News 31) ..... To the Islamifascists, they are winning. So they are, with every whimper, every retreat, and with every endorsement of the nascent anti-Semitism among the elites of Europe (always ready to condemn an Israeli response but never to withdraw support from the suicide bombers and their Muslim financiers). How much freedom do you give to enemies of freedom? In the classic question, Britain has been notably tolerant of Muslim dissidents. They have been free to preach their baleful idiocies and use their supposedly sacred mosques as recruiting grounds for al Qaeda. Only a few days ago, before the outrages, Blair's sensible plan to introduce biometric identity cards was met by a wail of disapproval from the left, sincere in their devotion to civil liberties but as blind as ever to the real nature of evil. (USN&WR, 7/18/05, 148) ..... DENVER (7/18/05) - A Colorado congressman told a radio show host that the U.S. could "take out" Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons.
Rep. Tom Tancredo made his remarks on WFLA-AM in Orlando, Fla. His spokesman stressed he was only speaking hypothetically. Talk show host Pat Campbell asked the Littleton Republican how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons. "Well, what if you said something like - if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered. "You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said. "Yeah," Tancredo responded.  "We have an enemy with no uniform, no state, who looks like you and me and only emerges right before an attack. How do we go after someone like that?" Adams said.
"What is near and dear to them? They're willing to sacrifice everything in this world for the next one. What is the pressure point that would deter them from their murderous impulses?" he said. ..... The Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, Taj Al-Din Hamed Abdallah Al-Hilali, is claiming that Australia was originally Muslim land, settled by Afghans. The Aborigines are their descendants. Australia is now Muslim land. Islamic law stipulates that Muslims possess by right any land that once formed part of the House of Islam. The same claim is made for America [and Spain].  http://www.islamic-paths.org/home/default.asp

Cultures Aren't Equal. Multiculturalism preaches that we should allow and encourage immigrants and their children to maintain and celebrate their own culture apart from the national culture. Society should be not a melting pot, but this looked less gorgeous as people surveyed the work of the British-born-and-raised bombers. Tony Blair now says, "It is important, however, that the terrorists realize our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause the death and destruction of innocent people and impose their extremism on the world" (italics added). Sadly, the multiculturalist policies of Blair's Labor government and its Conservative predecessors gave refuge to preachers of Islamist hate in what some have called "Londonistan." Now the Blair government has moved to expel Muslim clerics who preach hatred and terrorism, and the left-wing Guardian fired a writer who was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical group that advocates a "clash of civilization" and urges Muslims to kill Jews. The Dutch novelist Leon de Winter wrote that as traditional Calvinist discipline frayed and Muslim immigrants rejected Dutch tolerance, "the delicate mechanism of Holland's traditional tolerant society gradually lost its balance." In The Age, the Melbourne, Australia, newspaper, Pamela Bone wrote, "Perhaps it is time to say, you are welcome, but this is the way it is here." The Age 's Tony Parkinson quoted the French writer Jean Francois Revel's Cold War comment: "A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself." Tolerating intolerance, goodhearted people are beginning to see, does not necessarily produce tolerance in turn. Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures all morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties, and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures but in certain specific times and places--mostly in Britain and America but also in other parts of Europe. In America, as in Britain, multiculturalism has become the fashion in large swaths of our society. So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders, World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima. Slavery is identified with America though it has existed in many societies, and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians. But most Americans know there is something special about our cultural heritage. Multiculturalist intellectuals do not think our kind of society is worth defending. But millions here and increasing numbers in Britain and other countries know better. (USN&WR, 8/15/05, 26)

They say if you want a donkey to do something, get his attention first. So, whack him on the head with a 2-by-4. That'll do it. But what about people? How many times do humans have to be hit on the head before they pay attention? Oh, I don't know. Let me count the ways: The U.S. Embassy takeover in Iran; the Hezbollah kidnapping of 20 U.S. and other hostages in Lebanon; destruction of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut; destruction of the U.S. military barracks at Beirut airport; truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait; truck bombing of U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut; downing of Kuwait Airways Flight 221; Madrid restaurant bombing of U.S. military; TWA flight 847; the Achille Lauro hijacking; the Rome and Vienna airport bombings; TWA flight 840; West Berlin disco; Pan Am flight downed in Lockerbie, Scotland; the first World Trade Center Bombing; Oklahoma City bombing; car bomb at Riyadh headquarters of U.S. military, Khobar Towers at Dhahran; U.S. embassies at Nairobi and Dar es Salaam; USS Cole, 9-11; American Consulate in Karachi; attacks in Saudi Arabia of housing compounds, Saudi oil company kidnapping and U.S. Consulate; Madrid trains; the murder of Theo van Gogh; the London bombings. There's more. What's the link? Islamic militants with the stated aim of destroying the West, the United States, Israel, all we've done and all we stand for. They make no bones about it. Oh. Consider the comments by the head of the Al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies in London. Hani Al-Siba'i, was asked by Al-Jazeera, the Arab news channel, about the London terrorist attack that killed 54 and left 700-plus injured – all civilians. He said anyone could have done it, even a "Western country hostile to Britain." He also said the culprit could have been "Zionist Americans." Of course, blame the Americans, then blame the Jews. But, he said, if al-Qaida did it, it was a "great victory" because "it rubbed the noses of the world's eight most powerful countries in the mud." What about targeting civilians? According to Al-Siba'i, under Islamic law, there's no such thing as a civilian; no distinction between military and civilians. They're all fair game. As for where non-Muslims stand in relation Islamic belief: The world is divided into two houses – Islam and everything else, which is considered the House of War. Here comes that 2-by-4! Prime Minister Tony Blair immediately spoke strongly against the attack. He said it was probably done by "Islamist extremist terrorists" and promised to seek new anti-terror laws and to stop radical clerics from inciting and preaching hate. But then, political correctness set in and the emphasis switched to concern for Muslims' feelings, and he urged looking into the root causes of terrorism. Duck! The BBC fell into lock step and eliminated the word "terrorism" from its news reports. The network's reason is that the T-word is a "barrier ... to understanding." Here's that 2-by-4 again. Some consider such terror attacks "random," carried out by poor, disenfranchised, angry and illiterate people. Those people are wrong. The London suspects are all well-to-do and educated. In fact, the 9-11 terrorists were the same, as are most of the terror perpetrators. Refusing to see this is a fatal error. The London explosives appear to have been military and composed of chemicals not legally available in England. Either they were smuggled in, ready to use, or put together by people with the money and the know-how. This was the work of people with an intent to kill and maim, to hurt a certain group and to have it part of the overall war against the West, Christians and Jews. Ignoring that warrants another whack on the head. More to the point is the trial in Amsterdam of the Dutch-Moroccan national accused of murdering Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh on the morning of Nov. 2, 2004, as he rode his bike to work in Amsterdam. Twenty-seven-year-old Mohammed Bouyeri told the court: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion." He said he followed "the law that instructs me to chop off the head of everyone who insults Allah or the prophet." Whack. What if he were ever set free? "I'd do the same again. Exactly the same."  And what was that? With more than 50 witnesses in the area, he attacked van Gogh, shooting him 15 times, stabbing him repeatedly, and then slitting his throat. Finally, he jammed a knife in his chest which held in place a letter containing quotes from the Quran and threats against a number of Dutch politicians, including Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali and van Gogh had produced a short film about the abuse of Muslim women, which had been televised. The two immediately received death threats. After van Gogh's murder, Ali was in hiding for more than two months and remains under 24-hour police guard. Whack, whack. In the courtroom, in his short and only statement, Bouyeri spoke to van Gogh's mother, telling her: "I cannot feel for you ... because I believe you are an infidel." Whack, whack, whack. How long will it take us to admit this is a religious war and they're playing for keeps? There are none so blind as those who will not see. I hope we're not the blind man about to be fatally mugged with that 2-by-4. Barbara Simpson, "The Babe in the Bunker" as she's known to her KSFO 560 radio talk-show audience in San Francisco, has a 20-year radio, television and newspaper career in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45308   7/18/05

"Our terrorist sons are an end product of our corrupted culture," Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television, wrote in his daily column published in the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. It ran under the headline, "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!" Al-Rashed ran through a list of recent attacks by Islamic extremist groups - in Russia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - many of which are influenced by the ideology of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of the al-Qaida terror network.

"The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us." Arab TV stations repeatedly aired footage of terrified young survivors being carried from the school siege scene, while pictures of dead and wounded children ran on front pages of Saturday's newspapers in the region. Ahmed Bahgat, an Egyptian Islamist and columnist for Egypt's leading pro-government newspaper, Al-Ahram, wrote that the images "showed Muslims as monsters who are fed by the blood of children." (OCR, 9/5/04, News 23)

http://www.terrorismawareness.org/    good web site

Saudi columnist, Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, in the London-based Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, ignited a storm with a piece of writing of extraordinary daring entitled "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists Are Muslims!" It was time, he said, to acknowledge that the terrorist attacks of the past decade, in "buses and schools and houses" the world over, were carried out by Muslims. There is a "malady" in Islamic lands, he wrote, and a cure for this malady begins with "self-knowledge" and the end of denial. "Our sons, the terrorists," he wrote, "are loose in the world, the natural products of a deformed culture." In his autopsy, al-Rashed took on the preachers and the muftis, the religious judges, who have found in the Scripture warrant for this deadly radicalism. He singled out Sunni Islam's most influential preacher, the Egyptian-born cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. That cleric rules the airwaves with his access to television and the Web. He had issued a fatwa authorizing attacks on American civilians in Iraq, and al-Rashed saw in this ruling the ruinous ways of the radical preachers: "Imagine a man of religion encouraging the murder of civilians, a man in the fullness of old age inciting young boys to murder when two of his daughters are studying in the United Kingdom under the protection of a presumably 'infidel' power. We can't redeem our youth unless we take on the men of religion who have turned into revolutionaries who send other people's kids to war while they send their own to European and American schools." This war for Islam is one for Muslims to fight. It is for them to recover their faith from the purveyors of terror. (USN&WR, 9/20/04, 31)

SYDNEY, Australia (AP, 11/08/05) - Police in Australia arrest 17 terror suspects, say they foiled attack. Two Islamic terror cells were rushing to become the first to stage a major "jihad" terror bombing in Australia, a prosecutor said Tuesday after armed police arrested 17 suspects in a string of coordinated pre-dawn raids in two cities. "Thankfully, the police forces of this country might just have prevented a catastrophic act of terrorism ... either in Melbourne or in Sydney," said New South Wales state Police Minister Carl Scully. One of the suspects, Abdulla Merhi, wanted to carry out attacks to avenge the war in Iraq, police said in a Melbourne court. Australian Prime Minister John Howard was a strong supporter of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and still has hundreds of troops in the country. Norm Hazzard, who heads the state's counterterror police unit, said the suspects were followers of the al-Qaida chief. "I think you can go back to Osama bin Laden and those who follow his philosophy - that is what terrorism in its modern form is all about and there's no doubt that this group followed that same philosophy," he said. About 500 armed police arrested nine men in the southern city of Melbourne and eight in Sydney, including one man critically injured in a gun fight with police. Police said they expected more arrests in coming days and weeks. Federal police raided another Sydney home Tuesday night, but there were no immediate reports of arrests. The raids came less than a week after Howard strengthened counterterror laws after saying intelligence agencies had warned of a possible imminent terror attack. And he went on national television to say the risk was not over despite Tuesday's arrests. "This country has never been immune from a possible terrorist attack," he said. "That remains the situation today and it will be the situation tomorrow." Police said the raids appeared to have come before the plotters settled on a target. Both cells were led by 45-year-old firebrand cleric Abu Bakr, an Australian who was born in Algeria, a prosecutor said. Bakr made headlines earlier this year by calling bin Laden a "good man." The suspects were stockpiling the same kind of chemicals used in the July 7 bombings that killed 57 people on buses and trains in London, prosecutor Richard Maidment told Melbourne Magistrates Court at a hearing for the nine people arrested in that city. "Each of the members of the group are committed to the cause of violent jihad," he added, saying they underwent military-style training at a rural camp northeast of Melbourne. Bakr was charged with leading the terror group while the other Melbourne suspects were charged with membership of a terror group. Seven, including Abu Bakr, were ordered detained until a court appearance on Jan. 31. Two others were to hear Wednesday whether they would be released on bail. Detective Sergeant Chris Murray told the court that police surveillance had picked up one suspect, 20-year-old Merhi, pleading for permission to become a martyr. Murray said Merhi appeared impatient, and it was clear to police he wanted to die in a way "similar to the nature of a suicide bomber." Maidment said the Melbourne cell appeared keen to be first to stage an attack. "There has been discussion amongst the Melbourne group that the Sydney group were further ahead of them and they were anxious to do something themselves," he said. Seven men arrested in Sydney were held in cells under a heavily guarded downtown court during a five-minute hearing at which they were ordered jailed until another hearing on Friday on charges of preparing a terror act by manufacturing explosives. The man shot by police was under guard in hospital and was not immediately charged. In a sign that the arrests could spark a backlash among Australia's nearly 300,000-strong Muslim community, angry supporters of the suspects clashed violently with news cameramen in Melbourne and Sydney. New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney reassured the Muslim community they were not being targeted.

Spanish Muslims Issue Fatwa Against Bin Laden

MADRID (3/11/05, Reuters) - Spain's leading Islamic body has issued a religious order declaring Osama bin Laden to have forsaken Islam by backing attacks such as the Madrid train bombings a year ago. The Islamic Commission of Spain timed its "fatwa" for Friday to coincide with the first anniversary of last year's attacks, which killed 191 people and were claimed in the name of al Qaeda in Europe. The commission's secretary general Mansur Escudero said the fatwa had moral, rather than legal weight and would serve as a guide for Muslims. "We declare ... that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization, responsible for the horrendous crimes against innocent people who were despicably murdered in the March 11 terrorist attack in Madrid, are outside the parameters of Islam," the commission said. The commission said the Koran barred Muslims from committing crimes against innocent people. The commission is the top Islamic body in Spain. Its leaders are elected by an assembly and represent the Muslim community in talks with the Spanish government. Most of the 42 suspects held in connection with the investigation are of Moroccan origin whom investigators say were committed to holy war against the West. "The terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization ... which result in the death of civilians, such as women and children ... are totally prohibited and are the object of strong condemnation within Islam," it said in a statement citing extensively from religious texts. The commission issued its fatwa as Spaniards paid tribute to the passengers killed on four Madrid commuter trains a year ago. At Madrid's main mosque, worshippers observed a minute's silence before Friday prayers, and Morocco's King Mohammed attended a wreath-laying ceremony in honor of the victims. At least half a million Muslims live in Spain and many have felt increased isolation as a result of the March 11 bombings. Escudero told Reuters by telephone: "Any group that invokes Islam to justify terrorist attacks places itself outside of Islam." Bin Laden's claim to recover al Andalus -- the Arabic term for Spain during the nearly 800 years parts of the country were under Moorish rule -- "totally contradict God's will," the commission said.

Iran today is the mother of Islamic terrorism. Tehran openly provides funding, training, and weapons to the world's worst terrorists, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and it has a cozy relationship with al Qaeda. It has given sanctuary to major al Qaeda terrorists, including senior military commander Saif al-Adel, three of Osama bin Laden's sons, and al Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith. It supports many of the barbaric terrorists in Iraq who are murdering innocent civilians in order to destroy Iraq's fragile hold on democracy. Through its 900-mile border with Iraq, Iran is flooding its neighbor with money and fighters. It is infiltrating troublemakers into Afghanistan, supporting terrorism against Turkey, sustaining Syria, and had a hand in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. Iran today is in the grip of yet a new wave of extremists. Its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a revolutionary firebrand who has directly threatened the West. In his own words, "We are in the process of an historical war between the World of Arrogance [i.e., the West] and the Islamic world." His foreign policy ambition is an Islamic government for the whole world, under the leadership of the Mahdi, the absent imam of the Shiites--code language for the export of radical Islam. And he casts himself as Hitler reincarnated, calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Who can think that Iran poses no threat to world peace? History tells us that when madmen call for genocide, they usually mean it. (USN&WR, 2/6/06, 76)

LOS ANGELES (New York Times, 01/26/06) - One of the longest, most sophisticated tunnels was discovered in recent years along the Mexican border. The tunnel is 60 feet below ground at some points, five feet high, and nearly half a mile long, extending from a warehouse near the international airport in Tijuana, Mexico, to a vacant industrial building in Otay Mesa, Calif., about 20 miles southeast of downtown San Diego. The sophistication of the tunnel surprised officials, who found it outfitted with a concrete floor, electricity, lights and ventilation and groundwater pumping systems. The authorities said a tip led to the discovery. The tunnel is one of the latest to be found along the border. Most are attributed to Mexican drug cartels searching for ways to move contraband into the United States, but some appear to be the work of smugglers of illegal immigrants. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when border security was tightened, agents have uncovered 21 tunnels of varying degrees of length and sophistication, from "gopher holes" to engineered

marvels. The tunnel is almost like a mineshaft.  The builders, had to have access to money and somebody with a strong construction and the engineering background. Also, several miles west of big tunnel, the authorities found a smaller one — about two feet underground and extending 30 feet across the border near a storm drain — after a United States Border Patrol vehicle hit a sinkhole.

Smugglers Build Underground World

Muslims' painful truth

The main perpetrators of terrorism are Muslims, says leading Arab writer. Cairo images of dead, wounded and traumatised Russian children being carried from the scene of a school siege horrified Middle-Eastern Muslims, prompting forthright self-criticism yesterday. It also sparked fresh concerns about an international backlash against Islam and its followers.  Arab leaders, Muslim clerics and parents across the Middle East denounced the school siege that left more than 320 people dead, many of them children, as unjustifiable. Some warned that such actions damage Islam's image more than all its enemies could hope for. Even some supporters of Islamic militancy condemned it, though at least one insisted Muslims were not behind it. 'Holy warriors' from the Middle East have long supported fellow Muslims fighting in Chechnya, and Russian officials said nine or 10 Arabs were among militants killed when commandos stormed the Beslan school in southern Russia on Friday to end a siege that began on Wednesday by rebels demanding Chechen independence. Middle East security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was too early to know the nationalities of the Arabs among the dead militants. However, a prominent Arab journalist wrote that Muslims must acknowledge the painful fact that Muslims are the main perpetrators of terrorism.

'Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture,' Mr Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television, wrote in his daily column published in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. It ran under the headline, The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims! Mr Rashed ran through a list of recent attacks by Islamic extremist groups - in Russia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - many of which are influenced by the ideology of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of Al-Qaeda terror network. 'Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims,' he wrote. Muslims will be unable to cleanse their image unless 'we admit the scandalous facts', rather than offer condemnations or justifications. 'The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us,' he said.

Arab TV stations repeatedly aired footage of terrified young survivors being carried from the school siege scene, while pictures of dead and wounded children ran on the front pages of Saturday's Arab newspapers. Mr Ahmed Bahgat, an Egyptian Islamist, wrote in his column in Egypt's leading pro-government newspaper Al-Ahram that the images 'showed Muslims as monsters who are fed by the blood of children and the pain of their families'. 'If all the enemies of Islam united together and decided to harm it... they wouldn't have ruined and harmed its image as much as the sons of Islam have done by their stupidity, miscalculations and misunderstanding of the nature of this age,' Mr Bahgat wrote. 

Other Islamists were more cautious in their criticism. Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of Egypt's largest Islamic group, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said the siege did not fit the Islamic concept of jihad, or holy war, but took care not to characterise it as terrorism. 'What happened...is not jihad because our Islam obligates us to respect the souls of human beings,' he said. 'Real jihad should target occupiers of our lands only like the Palestinian and Iraqi resistance.' Mr Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain who follows the ultra-conservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as 'un-Islamic' but insisted Muslims were not behind it. 'I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,' said Mr Abdullah, reviving an old conspiracy theory altered to fit any situation. Salafism and its similarly conservative kin, Wahhabism, which is widely observed in Saudi Arabia, are accused by critics of fostering extremism. 

Some contributors to Islamic websites known for their extremist content praised the separatists and predicted that the Islamic fighters across Egypt would avenge the killings of Muslims elsewhere. Heads of state from around the region condemned the attack. It struck a chord with parents, including Jordan's King Abdullah II, who denounced it on state-run television. 'As a father, I can tell you that all the fathers and mothers in Jordan pray humbly to God to stand by their counterparts in Russia in their grief,' said the king, whose wife is expecting their fourth child. Mr Mohammed Saleh Ebrahim, a 31-year-old Bahraini, described the hostage-takers as 'worse than animals'. 'It's because of these people Muslims and Arabs are getting a bad name around the world,' he said. -- AP (9/7/04) http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4386,271049,00.html   

Extermination of Jews and Subjugation of Christians-Inevitable Goal of History 
(Excerpt from Palestinian Authority TV Sermon)
The final stage of history will be the subjugation of all Christian countries under Islam and the extermination of every single Jew - this according to the PA religious leader during Friday’s Sermon. The Jews are so evil, Ibrahim Mudayris teaches, that they cannot be subjugated like the Christian countries, and therefore the only solution awaiting them is death – literally the extermination of every Jew. In his words: “The day will come and we shall rule America, Britain, we shall rule the entire world, except the Jews.” In the sermon Ibrahim Mudayris reiterated many of the often-repeated PA justifications for the anticipated genocide, including the following hate messages:  God has predetermined that the Jewish problem will be solved with the extermination of the Jews. God has predetermined that the Christian -Islam interactions will end with today's Christian countries under Islam. Israel has no right to exist and will be destroyed. http://www.pmw.org.il/Latest%20bulletins%20new.htm#May13    5/16/05

http://www.islamreview.com/  interesting information about Islamic goals

http://www.worldunderfire.com/     shows worldwide terrorism events and locations

If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution

(7/8/05, The New York Times)

JIHAD - EUROPE ISLAMIZATION

This is a long discussion of an unpleasant, but very important topic. Our society and way of life is being seriously threatened, but most ignore the clear warning signs. The short video mentioned in the article below can be seen at the link below. Because of threats, several web site removed the video. Bravo for Google not to be intimidated. [10/23/08]
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410

"In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe ?"

Below is the speech by Geert Wilders, chairman the Netherlands' Party for Freedom, delivered on September 25, 2008 at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York. The speech was sponsored by the Hudson Institute, and was an introduction to the formation of the Alliance of European Patriots, and an announcement about the upcoming Facing Jihad conference to be held in Jerusalem in December 2008 .

Dear friends,

Thank you very much for inviting me. [It is] great to be here at the Four Seasons. I come from a country that has one season only: a rainy season that starts January 1st and ends December 31st. When we have three sunny days in a row, the government declares a national emergency. So Four Seasons, that's new to me. It's great to be in New York . When I see the skyscrapers and office buildings, I think of what Ayn Rand said: "The sky over New York and the will of man made visible." Of course, without the Dutch you would have been nowhere, [and probably] still figuring out how to buy this island from the Indians. But we are glad we did it for you. And frankly, you did a far better job than we possibly could have done.

I come to America with a mission.

All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is [also] a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as "the last man standing", the United States as the last bastion of western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe ? Patriots from around Europe risk their lives every day to prevent precisely this scenario from becoming a reality.

My short lecture consists of four parts.

1) First, I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe .
2) Then, I will say a few things about Islam.
3) Thirdly, if you are still here, I will talk a little bit about the movie you just saw.
4) To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem .

The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square, and Rome's ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam . They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass migration. All throughout Europe, a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world where women with head scarfs walk around in figureless tents, pushing baby strollers and leading a group of children; their husbands, or slaveholders, if you prefer, walk three steps ahead; and mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe --- street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe w ith larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city, there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam [in Holland] , Marseilles [in France], and Malmo [in Sweden] . In many cities, the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam, the farm can no longer be mentioned because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam, gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear "whore, whore". Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the [neighbour's] country of origin. In France, school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin . The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England, Shari'a courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighbourhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarfs. Last week, a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels because he was drinking during Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers --- on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya , Israel . I could go on forever with stories like this ---stories about Islamization.

A total of 54 million Muslims now live in Europe . A San Diego University study recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century. Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France . One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favour of a worldwide caliphate. A Dutch study reported that half of Dutch Muslims admit they understand the 9/11 attacks.

Muslims demand what they call "respect". And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in, to give up. In my own country, we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays; to statements by another cabinet member that Islam is part of Dutch culture; to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept Shari'a in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey .

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence --- for example, against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. Some prefer to see these as isolated incidents, but I call it a Muslim intifada. I call the perpetrators settlers because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers. Much of the street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighbourhoods, their cities, their countries.

Politicians shy away from taking a stand against this creeping Shari'a. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.
Our many problems with Islam cannot be explained by poverty, repression, or the European colonial past, as the Left claims. Nor does it have anything to do with Palestinians or American troops in Iraq . The problem is Islam itself.

Allow me to give you a brief Islam 101.

The first thing you need to know about Islam is the importance of the book Quran. The Quran is [considered by Muslims to be] Allah' s personal word revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the Muslim prophet. This is where the trouble starts. Every word in the Quran is Allah's word and therefore not open to discussion or interpretation. It is valid for every Muslim and for all times. Therefore, there is no such a thing as moderate Islam. Sure, there are a lot of moderate Muslims. But a truly moderate Islam is non-existent. The Quran calls for hatred, violence, submission, murder, and terrorism. The Quran calls for Muslims to kill non-Muslims, to terrorize non-Muslims and to fulfil their duty to wage war: violent jihad. Jihad is a duty for every Muslim, Islam is to rule the world by the sword. The Quran is clearly anti-Semitic describing Jews as monkeys and pigs.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed, the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribal sect of Banu Qurayza. He advised on matters of slavery, but never advised to liberate slaves. Islam has no other morality than the advancement of Islam. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. There is no gray area or other side.

The Quran as Allah's own word and Mohammed as the perfect man are the two most important facets of Islam. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a hereafter, and 72 virgins. But in its true essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means submission. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy because what it strives for is Shari'a. If you want to compare Islam to anything compare it to communism or national socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

This is what you need to know about Islam, in order to understand what is going on in Europe . For millions of Muslims, the Quran and the life of Mohammed are not 14 centuries old, but are an everyday reality, an ideal, that guide every aspect of their lives. Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam the most retrograde force in the world, and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.

Which brings me to my movie, Fitna. I am a lawmaker, and not a moviemaker. But I felt I had the moral duty to educate about Islam. The duty to make clear that the Quran stands at the heart of what some people call terrorism but is in reality jihad. I wanted to show that the problems of Islam are at the core of Islam, and do not belong to its fringes. Now, from the day the plan for my movie was made public, it caused quite a stir in the Netherlands and throughout Europe . First, there was a political storm with government leaders across the continent in sheer panic. The Netherlands was put under a heightened terror alert because of possible attacks or a revolt by our Muslim population. The Dutch branch of the Islamic organisation Hizbut-Tahrir declared that the Netherlands was due for an attack. Internationally, there was a series of incidents. The Taliban threatened to organize additional attacks against Dutch troops in Afghanistan , and a website linked to Al-Qaeda published the message that I ought to be killed, while various muftis in the Middle East stated that I would be responsible for all the bloodshed after the screening of the movie. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the Dutch flag was burned on several occasions. Dolls representing me were also burned. The Indonesian President announced that I will never be admitted into Indonesia again, while the UN Secretary General and the European Union issued cowardly statements in the same vein as those made by the Dutch Government. I could go on and on. It was an absolute disgrace, a sell-out. A plethora of legal troubles also followed, and have not ended yet. Currently the state of Jordan is litigating against me. Only last week, there were renewed security agency reports about a heightened terror alert for the Netherlands because of Fitna.

Now, I would like to say a few things about Israel . Because very soon, we will get together in its capital. The best way for a politician in Europe to lose votes is to say something positive about Israel . The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I, however, will continue to speak up for Israel . I see defending Israel as a matter of principle. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel . First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz. Second, because it is a democracy. And third, because Israel is our first line of defense.

Samuel Huntington writes it so aptly: Islam has bloody borders. Israel is located precisely on that border. This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines , Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan , Lebanon , and Aceh in Indonesia . Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel . It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel , Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming. Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. Therefore, it is not that the West has a stake in Israel. It is Israel.

It is very difficult to be an optimist in the face of the growing Islamization of Europe. All the tides are against us. On all fronts we are losing. Demographically the momentum is with Islam. Muslim immigration is even a source of pride within ruling liberal parties. Academia, the arts, the media, trade unions, the churches, the business world, the entire political establishment have all converted to the suicidal theory of multiculturalism. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as right-wing extremists or ‘racists. The entire establishment has sided with our enemy. Leftists, liberals and Christian-Democrats are now all in bed with Islam.

This is the most painful thing to see: the betrayal by our elites. At this moment in Europe's history, our elites are supposed to lead us. To stand up for centuries of civilization. To defend our heritage. To honour our eternal Judeo-Christian values that made Europe what it is today. But there are very few signs of hope to be seen at the governmental level. Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown, Berlusconi, in private, they probably know how grave the situation is. But when the little red light goes on, they stare into the camera and tell us that Islam is a religion of peace, and we should all try to get along nicely and sing Kumbaya. They willingly participate in what President Reagan so aptly called: the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.

If there is hope in Europe, it comes from the people, not from the elites. Change can only come from a grass-roots level. It has to come from the citizens themselves. Yet these patriots will have to take on the entire political, legal and media establishment.

Over the past years there have been some small, but encouraging signs of a rebirth of the original European spirit. Maybe the elites turn their backs on freedom, the public does not. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat to our national identity. I don't think the public opinion in Holland is very different from other European countries.

Patriotic parties that oppose jihad are growing against all odds. My own party debuted two years ago with five percent of the vote. Now it stands at ten percent in the polls. The same is true of all similarly-minded parties in Europe. They are fighting the liberal establishment, and are gaining footholds on the political arena, one voter at the time. Now, for the first time, these patriotic parties will come together and exchange experiences. It may be the start of something big. Something that might change the map of Europe for decades to come. It might also be Europe's last chance.

This December a conference will take place in Jerusalem. Thanks to Professor Aryeh Eldad, a member of the Knesset, we will be able to watch Fitna in the Knesset building and discuss the jihad. We are organizing this event in Israel to emphasize the fact that we are all in the same boat together, and that Israel is part of our common heritage. Those attending will be a select audience. No racist organizations will be allowed. And we will only admit parties that are solidly democratic. This conference will be the start of an Alliance of European patriots. This Alliance will serve as the backbone for all organizations and political parties that oppose jihad and Islamization. For this Alliance, I seek your support.

This endeavor may be crucial to America and to the West. America may hold fast to the dream that, thanks to its location, it is safe from jihad and Shari'a. But seven years ago to the day, there was still smoke rising from ground zero following the attacks that forever shattered that dream. Yet there is a danger even greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem.

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom. It was offered to us on a silver platter by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe, American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe's children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

This is not the first time our civilization is under threat. We have seen dangers before. We have been betrayed by our elites before. They have sided with our enemies before. And yet, then, freedom prevailed.

These are not times in which to take lessons from appeasement, capitulation, giving away, giving up or giving in. These are not times in which to draw lessons from Mr. Chamberlain. These are times calling us to draw lessons from Mr. Churchill and the words he spoke in 1942: "Never give in --- never, never, never, never in anything great or small, large or petty, never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

Why we fight

On 11 September 2001, we Americans awoke to the horrifying reality that—like it or not, accept it or not—our nation was at war with a formidable enemy.

Islam is the locus of the ideology behind modern terrorism. It’s an ideology that is also inherently fascist. It is no coincidence that these terrorist-fascists happen to be Muslim, for Islam itself is a clerical-fascist system of belief.

Next, having identified the origin of the threat, we examined the nature of it. While the September 11 attacks constitute a grave tragedy, it is hardly the gravest possible.

The Real Islam

Is our fight against terrorism or against Islamic fascism? To wit, is Islam peaceful, or intrinsically fascist?

The answers couldn’t be clearer. Terrorism is not an enemy; it’s a tactic. Muslim examples aside, terrorist tactics have been adopted by groups as varied as Northern Ireland’s IRA, Colombia’s FARC, the Shining Path of Peru, West Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy’s Brigate Rosse, Spain’s Basque ETA, and our homegrown Symbionese Liberation Army. Mostly separatists and leftists, none of these groups viewed terrorism as an end in itself, but as a means to another, political end.

Unlike terrorism, Islam is an ideology bent on territorial expansion and political domination. These traits, along with iron-fisted socioeconomic controls, are the essential characteristics of fascism.

(from an e-mail, 7/7/07)

Small minority, big problem

By Michelle Malkin, May 26, 2007    http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20070525-090243-5298r.htm

If we believe the spin of Associated Press headline writers, there's little cause for concern about a new Pew poll of American Muslims. "Most U.S. Muslims reject suicide bombings," the AP headline writer blithely reports.
    But the details of the poll show the always-downplayed tiny minority of jihadi sympathizers in America is cause for big concern.
    The poll found that while 80 percent of U.S. Muslims believe suicide bombings of civilians to defend Islam cannot be justified, fully 13 percent said they can be justified, at least rarely. One in four younger American Muslims find suicide bombings in defense of Islam "acceptable at least in some circumstances."
    About 29 percent of those surveyed had either favorable views about al Qaeda or did not express an opinion. Yes, they either gave al Qaeda thumbs-up or had no opinion about the terrorist group responsible for slaughtering nearly 3,000 of their fellow Americans on September 11, 2001, and responsible for a global bloodbath from Bali to Britain, the Middle East, and beyond.
    A third believe the invasion of Afghanistan to take out al Qaeda training camps after September 11 was wrong. In addition, only 40 percent of all American Muslims believe Arab men carried about the September 11 attacks -- joining Charlie Sheen, Rosie O'Donnell and the inside-job conspiracy-mongers. The poll focused particular concern on jihadi sympathy among young Muslims and black Muslims:
    "Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified."
    "It is a hair-raising number," Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, told the AP. Indeed. The numbers should be a wake-up call, not another excuse for the mainstream media to downplay the threat of homegrown jihad.
    The poll comes on the heels of the Fort Dix jihadi terror bust involving young, American-raised Muslims and the conviction this week of Muslim doctor Rafiq Abdus Sabir -- born in Harlem, based in Florida -- who had pledged loyalty to al Qaeda and vowed to treat injured al Qaeda fighters so they could return to Iraq to kill Americans. A Brooklyn bookstore owner and a Washington, D.C., cabdriver also pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison in the case. The tiny minority of jihadi sympathizers aren't just sitting around stewing harmlessly about their beliefs. They are recruiting, proselytizing, plotting and growing.
    I'm reminded of a similar poll in Indonesia last fall. One in 10 Indonesian Muslims were found to support bombings in defense of Islam. They took the news a little more seriously in "moderate" Indonesia. One in 10 in Indonesia, you see, equals 19 million Muslims for violent jihad. That's just Indonesia.
    Recent polling in Britain found that 13 percent of British Muslims believe the London subway bombers are righteous "martyrs," and 7 percent approve of suicide bombing attacks on civilians in Britain in some circumstances.
    Now, add that to the 16 percent of French Muslims, 16 percent of Spanish Muslims, 7 percent of German Muslims, 28 percent of Egyptian Muslims, 14 percent of Pakistani Muslims, and 46 percent of Nigerian Muslims who told Pew last summer that "violence against civilian targets in order to defend Islam" can be justified "often/sometimes."
    A few fringe jihadists here, a few fringe jihadists there, and soon you're talking about bloody real numbers

 Absolutely  No Profiling!  

 These  events are actual events from history. They really happened! 
  
1.    1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by    A Muslim  male extremist between the ages of 17 and  40
   
2.    In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and  massacred by:  Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages  of 17 and  40
   
3.  In 1979, the US embassy  in Iran was  taken over by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17  and  40
   
4.   During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by:   Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and    40
   
5.  In 1983, the US Marine  barracks in Beirut was  blown up by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17  and  40
   
6.   In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old  American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his  wheelchair by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17  and  40
   
7.   In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy  diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by: Muslim male  extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and  40
   
8.   In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by: Muslim male extremists  mostly between the ages of 17 and  40
   
9.  In 1993 the World Trade Center was  bombed the first time by:  Muslim male extremists mostly  between the ages of 17 and  40
   
10.  In 1998, the US embassies  in Kenya and Tanzania were  bombed by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and  40
   
11.  On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked;  two were used as  missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining  two,  one crashed into the US Pentagon  and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands  of people were killed by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the  ages of 17 and   40
   
12.  In 2002 the United   States fought  a war in Afghanistan against:  Muslim male extremists mostly between  the ages of 17 and  40
   
13.  In 2002 reporter Daniel  Pearl was kidnapped and murdered  by:Muslim male extremists mostly between  the ages of 17 and  40
   
No,  I really don't see a pattern here to justify profiling, do  you?  So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone,  particularly  fanatics intent on killing us, airport security  screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people. They  must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids,  airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are  members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen  with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe  Foss, but leave Muslim Males between the ages 17 and 40  alone,  lest they be guilty of profiling. As the  writer of the award winning story "Forrest Gump" so aptly put it,  "Stupid is as stupid  does."
  

Psychology Behind Suicide Bombings

By Pierre Rehov, French Documentary Filmmaker
September 12, 2005

On July 15, MSNBC’s “Connected” program discussed the 7/7 London attacks. One of the guests was Pierre Rehov, a French filmmaker who has filmed six documentaries on the Intifada by going undercover in the Palestinian areas.

Pierre’s upcoming film, “Suicide Killers,” is based on interviews that he conducted with the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers in an attempt to find ! out why they do it. Pierre agreed to a request for a Q&A interview here about his work on the new film. Many thanks to Dean Draznin and Arlyn Riskind for helping to arrange this special interview.

MSNBC: What inspired you to produce “Suicide Killers,” your seventh film?

Rehov: I started working with victims of suicide attacks to make a film on PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) when I became fascinated with the personalities of those who had committed those crimes, as they were described again and again by their victims. Especially the fact that suicide bombers are all smiling one second before they blow themselves up.

MSNBC: Why is this film especially important?

Rehov: People don’t understand the devastating culture behind this unbelievable phenomenon. My film is not politically correct because it addresses the real problem-showing the real face of Islam. It points the finger against a culture of hatred in which the uneducated are brainwashed to a level where their only solution in life becomes to kill themselves and kill others in the name of a God whose word, as transmitted by other men, has became their only certitude.

MSNBC: What insights did you gain from making this film? What do you know that other experts do not know?

Rehov: I came to the conclusion that we are facing a neurosis at the level of an entire civilization. Most neuroses have in common a dramatic event, generally linked to an unacceptable sexual behavior. In this case, we are talking of kids living all their lives in pure frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex, love, tenderness or even understanding from the opposite sex. The separation between men and women in Islam is absolute. So is contempt toward women, who are totally dominated by men. This leads to a situation of pure anxiety, in which normal behavior is not possible. It is no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil. Since Islam describes heaven as a place where everything on earth will finally be allowed, and promises 72 virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution.

MSNBC: What was it like to interview would-be suicide bombers, their families and survivors of suicide bombings?

Rehov: It was a fascinating and a terrifying experience. You are dealing with seemingly normal people with very nice manners who have their own logic, which to a certain extent can make sense since they are so convinced that what they say is true. It is like dealing with pure craziness, like interviewing people in an asylum, since what they say, is for them, the absolute truth. I hear a mother saying “Thank God, my son is dead.” Her son had became a shaheed, a martyr, which for her was a greater source of pride than if he had became an engineer, a doctor or a winner of the Nobel Prize. This system of values works completely backwards since their interpretation of Islam worships death much more than life. You are facing people whose only dream, only achievement is to fulfill what they believe to be their destiny, namely to be a shaheed or the family of a shaheed. They don’t see the innocent being killed, they only see the impure that they have to destroy.

MSNBC: You say suicide bombers experience a moment of absolute power, beyond punishment. Is death the ultimate power?

Rehov: Not death as an end, but death as a door open to the after life. They are seeking the reward that God has promised them. They work for God, the ultimate authority, above all human laws. They therefore experience this single delusional second of absolute power, where nothing bad can ever happen to them, since they become God’s sword.

MSNBC: Is there a suicide bomber personality profile? Describe the psychopathology.

Rehov: Generally kids between 15 and 25 bearing a lot of complexes, generally inferiority complexes. They must have been fed with religion. They usually have a lack of developed personality. Usually they are impressionable idealists. In the western world they would easily have be! come drug addicts, but not criminals. Interestingly, they are not criminals since they don’t see good and evil the same way that we do. If they had been raised in an Occidental culture, they would have hated violence. But they constantly battle against their own death anxiety. The only solution to this deep-seated pathology is to be willing to die and be rewarded in the after life in Paradise.

MSNBC: Are suicide bombers principally motivated by religious conviction?

Rehov: Yes, it is their only conviction. They don’t act to gain a territory or to find freedom or even dignity. They only follow Allah, the supreme judge, and what He tells them to do.

MSNBC: Do all Muslims interpret jihad and martyrdom in the same way?

Rehov: All Muslim believers believe that, ultimately, Islam will prevail on earth. They believe this is! the only true religion and there is no room, in their mind, for interpretation. The main difference between moderate Muslims and extremists is that moderate Muslims don’t think they will see the absolute victory of Islam during their life time, therefore they respect other beliefs. The extremists believe that the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Islam and ruling the entire world as described in the Koran, is for today. Each victory of Bin Laden convinces 20 million moderate Muslims to become extremists.

MSNBC: Describe the culture that manufactures suicide bombers.

Rehov: Oppression, lack of freedom, brain washing, organized poverty, placing God in charge of daily life, total separation between men and women, forbidding sex, giving women no power whatsoever, and placing men in charge of family honor, which is mainly connected to their! women’s behavior.

MSNBC: What socio-economic forces support the perpetuation of suicide bombings?

Rehov: Muslim charity is usually a cover for supporting terrorist organizations. But one has also to look at countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are also supporting the same organizations through different networks. The ironic thing in the case of Palestinian suicide bombers is that most of the money comes through financial support from the Occidental world, donated to a culture that utterly hates and rejects the West (mainly symbolized by Israel).

MSNBC: Is there a financial support network for the families of the suicide bombers? If so, who is paying them and how does that affect the decision?

Rehov: There used to be a financial incentive in the days of Saddam Hussein ($25,000 per family) and Yasser Arafat (smaller amounts), but these days are gone. It is a mistake to believe that these families would sacrifice their children for money. Although, the children themselves who are very attached to their families, might find in this financial support another reason to become suicide bombers. It is like buying a life insurance policy and then committing suicide.

MSNBC: Why are so many suicide bombers young men?

Rehov: As discussed above, libido is paramount. Also ego, because this is a sure way to become a hero. The shaheeds are the cowboys or the firemen of Islam. Shaheed is a positively reinforced value in this culture. And what kid has never dreamed of becoming a cowboy or a fireman?

MSNBC: What role does the U.N. play in the terrorist equation?

Rehov: The UN is in the hands of Arab countries and third world! or ex-communists countries. Their hands are tied. The UN has condemned Israel more than any other country in the world, including the regime of Castro, Idi Amin or Kaddahfi.

By behaving this way, the UN leaves a door open by not openly condemning terrorist organizations. In addition, through UNRWA, the UN is directly tied to terror organizations such as Hamas, representing 65 percent of their apparatus in the so-called Palestinian refugee camps. As a support to Arab countries, the UN has maintained Palestinians in camps with the hope to “return” into Israel for more than 50 years, therefore making it impossible to settle those populations, which still live in deplorable conditions. Four-hundred million dollars are spent every year, mainly financed by U.S. taxes, to support 23,000 employees of UNRWA, many of whom belong to terrorist organizations (see Congressman Eric Cantor on this subject, and in my film “Hostages of Hatred”).

MSNBC: You say that a suicide bomber is a "stupid bomb and a smart bomb" simultaneously. Explain what you mean.

Rehov: Unlike an electronic device, a suicide killer has until the last second the capacity to change his mind. In reality, he is nothing but a platform representing interests which are not his, but he doesn’t know it.

MSNBC: How can we put an end to the madness of suicide bombings and terrorism in general?

Rehov: Stop being politically correct and stop believing that this culture is a victim of ours. Radical Islamism today is nothing but a new form of Nazism. Nobody was trying to justify or excuse Hitler in the 1930s. We had to defeat him in order to make peace one day with the German people.

MSNBC: Are these men traveling outside their native areas in large numbers? Based on your research, would you predict that we are beginning to see a new wave of suicide bombings outside the Middle East?

Rehov: Every successful terror attack is considered a victory by the radical Islamists. Everywhere Islam expands, there is regional conflict. Right now, there are thousands of candidates for martyrdom lining up in training camps in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Inside Europe, hundreds of illegal mosques are preparing the next step of brain washing to lost young men who cannot find a satisfying identity in the Occidental world. Israel is much more prepared for this than the rest of the world will ever be. Yes, there will be more suicide killings in Europe and the U.S. Sadly, this is only the beginning.
 http://www.allsafedefense.com/Special_Pages/SuicideBombers.htm

Canada faces 'jihad generation'

TORONTO (Christian Science Monitor, 6/6/06) - Canadians are struggling to understand the threat of "home-grown" terrorism after the arrest of 17 Toronto-area young men in connection with what investigators said were plans to commit massive terrorist attacks in Canada.

The suspects all lived in Canada at the time of arrest; many are longtime residents and citizens. Like the perpetrators of last summer's London bombings, these young Muslims apparently became radicalized not in Al Qaeda training camps abroad but in suburban neighborhoods where they led relatively unremarkable lives.

Such home-grown terrorism is a growing concern, says security analyst John Thompson.

"The cops have a nickname for it - the jihad generation," says Mr. Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute, a Toronto think tank.

"These are kids at a transition, between Islamic society and Western society," he adds. "A lot of people will get militarized if they're unsure of their own identity." Plus, Thompson says, "They're just young and stupid. If you're 17, bored, restless, you want to meet girls - hey, be a radical."

Five juveniles were among the 17 males arrested Friday night and early Sunday morning on terrorism charges related to planned attacks with explosives on Canadian targets. The group allegedly bought three tons of ammonium nitrate - 1-1/2 times the estimated amount used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 - according to Assistant Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Mike McDonell. Investigators says that the group was inspired by Al Qaeda, but that there is no evidence of a direct link to the organization.

"These individuals were allegedly intent on committing acts of terrorism against their own country and their own people," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said. "As we have said on many occasions, Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism."

But here in Toronto, a city of 2.5 million people that prides itself on its multiculturalism and tolerance, the arrests came as a shock to many.

"That's really disturbing, to think it was a Canadian citizen. How is that for a low blow? It's 'Hello Toronto, wake up,'" says the neighbor of one of the suspects, 25-year-old Steven Vikash Chand. She asked not to be named, fearing repercussions from friends of the arrested man.

Another neighbor, Jack Lovell, says nothing about Chand set off alarm bells on the quiet, suburban street. "I knew him enough to say hi, [and] wave," Mr. Lovell says. "Seemed like nice enough people."

A 2005 Canadian government report on the homegrown terror threat, declassified and obtained by the National Post newspaper under Canada's Access to Information Act, described the paths to radicalism taken by Canadian youth: "

The reasons for this are varied, and include parental influence, the efforts of charismatic spiritual leaders with extremist views, and a general sense of anger at what is seen as Muslim oppression. There does not appear to be a single process that leads to extremism the transformation is highly individual."

By far the oldest Canadian suspect arrested over the weekend - all but two of whom are aged 25 or under - is 43-year-old Qayyum Abdul Jamal, a school bus driver and an active volunteer leader at the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre in Mississauga, a western Toronto suburb. Mr. Jamal's extreme interpretations of Islam alarmed some of the other leaders at the storefront mosque, according to the Toronto Star newspaper. But because he acted as a volunteer caretaker who would always make time to open the doors of the mosque for daily prayer services, the directors relied on him. Jamal was frequently surrounded by young men and teenagers who seemed to hang on his every word, the paper reported.

Sheikh Husain Patel, an imam across town at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto, didn't know Jamal. But he says someone must have led the young suspects into extremism. "They were young kids, and they were taken down this road by someone," Mr. Patel says.

Police have said the Internet played a big role in the suspects' planning, Canada's ambassador to the US Michael Wilson told CNN. According to a report in the Toronto Star newspaper, the plot began in 2004 in a chat room, where anti-Western rhetoric quickly attracted the attention of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which began monitoring the group.

The official report on the July 7, 2005, London suicide bombings also noted that the Internet is becoming a valuable tool for extremists: "The internet is widely used for propaganda; training (including in weapons and explosives); to claim responsibility for attacks; and for grooming through chatrooms and elsewhere."

And CSIS deputy director of operations Jack Hooper told a Senate committee last week that young Canadians are becoming radicalized through the Internet.

"They are virtually indistinguishable from other youth," Mr. Hooper said. "They blend in very well to our society, they speak our language, and they appear to be, to all intents and purposes, well-assimilated." Many of the Toronto-area suspects - whose parental origins range from Somalia to Egypt to Jamaica - are described by friends and neighbors as normal young adults - some with well-to-do parents, promising careers, and young families.

London authorities are also grappling with a similar lack of outward trouble signs as they try to glean lessons from last summer's bombings. "[The London bombings] case demonstrates the real difficulty for law enforcement agencies and local communities in identifying potential terrorists," the official report on the London attacks said. "All four were open about their strict religious observance but there was little outward sign that this had spilled over into potentially violent extremism."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0606/p01s02-woam.html

The Sorry Bunch,    Listen and learn from our enemies.
Victor Davis Hanson  (National Review Online, 6/17/05) http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200506170746.asp ) 

In a single day last week, in various media — the liberal International Herald Tribune and the Washington Post — the following information appeared.  A Syrian smuggler of jihadists to Iraq, one Abu Ibrahim, was interviewed. He made the following revealing statements:

(1) that the goal of the jihadists is the restoration of the ancient caliphate ("The Koran is a constitution, a law to govern the world")

(2) that September 11 was "a great day"

(3) that two weeks after the attack, a celebration was held in his rural Syrian community celebrating the mass murder, and thereafter continued twice-weekly

(4) that Syrian officials attended such festivities, funded by Saudi money with public slogans that read, "The People ...Will Now Defeat the Jews and Kill Them All"

(5) that despite denials, Syrian police aided the jihadists in their efforts to hound out Western influence: They were allowed to enforce their strict vision of sharia, or Islamic law, entering houses in the middle of the night to confront people accused of bad behavior. Abu Ibrahim said their authority rivaled that of the Amn Dawla, or state security. "Everyone knew us," he said. "We all had big beards. We became thugs."

(6) that the Syrian government does not hesitate to work with Islamists ("beards and epaulets were in one trench together")

(7) that collateral damage was not always so collateral: "Once the Americans bombed a bus crossing to Syria. We made a big fuss and said it was full of merchants," Abu Ibrahim said. "But actually, they were fighters."

(8) That once Syria felt U.S. pressure, there was some temporary cosmetic change of heart: "The security agents said the smuggling of fighters had to stop. The jihadists' passports were taken. Some were jailed for a few days. Abu Ibrahim's jailers shaved his beard."

(9) that supporters in Saudi Arabia always played a key role: "Our brothers in Iraq are asking for Saudis. The Saudis go with enough money to support themselves and their Iraqi brothers. A week ago, we sent a Saudi to the jihad. He went with 100,000 Saudi riyals. There was celebration amongst his brothers there!"

Note how in this one Washington Post story how almost every one of our Western myths promulgated by the antiwar Left is shattered by a candid jihadist himself. First, there was always radical Islamic anti-American hatred that preceded Iraq. Indeed, celebrations were spontaneous immediately after September 11 on the mere news of slaughtered Americans.

We have been told that jihadists and secular Baathists have little in common, and that only our war brought them together. But like the Japanese and Nazis in World War II, autocrat and jihadist have shared interests in hating liberal democracies — and well before our response they were jointly fanning efforts against the United States.

Note too the passive-aggressive nature of Syria that gives into rather than resists American pressures. When the U.S. threatens, it backsteps; when we relent, it goes back on the offensive.

Americans worry that captured terrorists have proper Korans and are allowed traditional grooming. Arab jailors immediately shave the traditional beards of those they arrest.

Saudi Arabia claims to be our ally, but its Wahhabi roots are so deep and its oil revenues so vast that much of its multilayered ruling class could not cease its support for jihad even if it wished. We forget that their 'war against terror' is a war against Muslim terrorists who attack Muslims — not necessarily against Muslim terrorists ("militants") who attack Westerners.

Some claim that anti-Semitism is an exaggerated charge, yet the jihadists blame the Jews, not just Israel, instinctively.

Westerners also worry about collateral damage; the terrorist Ibrahim confesses that military operatives routinely count on falsely claiming civilian casualties.

For more of this sorry bunch, the same day I turned to the International Herald Tribune. Its headline ran: "For Saudis' promised liberalizations, a snail's pace." The story followed about the routine persecution of any who questioned government autocracy and Wahhabist Islam. We learned once more that there is no freedom of any kind in Saudi Arabia and that dissidents are routinely jailed for their mere protests (sentences ranging from six to nine years).

More interestingly, Arab reformers, few though they are, most certainly don't blame the West for the misery of the Middle East. Instead, they confess that the Arab world itself is parasitic: "Western governments, reformers say, should question why curriculums are so weak and why Arab societies contribute nothing to the world's scientific or technological advancements."

In the words of one persecuted novelist Turki Al-Hamad, "The problem is not from the outside, the problem is from ourselves; if we don't change ourselves, nothing will change."

In the United States, we are told that we have created terrorists. Saudi liberals would beg to differ. So the theologian Al-Maleky confesses, "If Wahhabism doesn't revise itself, it will produce more terrorism."

This is all so strange.

Free-thinking Arabs refute all the premises of Western Leftists who claim that colonialism, racism, and exploitation have created terrorists, hold back Arab development, and are the backdrops to this war.

Indeed, it is far worse than that: Our own fundamentalist Left is in lockstep with Wahhabist reductionism — in its similar instinctive distrust of Western culture. Both blame the United States and excuse culpability on the part of Islamists. The more left-wing the Westerner, the more tolerant he is of right-wing Islamic extremism; the more liberal the Arab, the more likely he is to agree with conservative Westerners about the real source of Middle Eastern pathology.

The constant? A global distrust of Western-style liberalism and preference for deductive absolutism. So burn down a mosque in Zimbabwe, murder innocent Palestinians in Bethlehem in 2002, arrest Christians in Saudi Arabia, or slaughter Africans in Dafur, and both the Western Left and the Middle East's hard Right won't say a word. No such violence resonates with America's diverse critics as much as a false story of a flushed Koran — precisely because the gripe is not about the lives of real people, but the psychological hurts, angst, and warped ideology of those who in their various ways don't like the United States.

I will pass over quickly the day's other sorry stories, but they were equally revealing. From Karachi, we learn that Pakistani Shiite Muslims burned down a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. You see, a Sunni suicide bomber had just blown up 19 Pakistani Shia. In reaction to that attack, the Shiite mob went out and killed six employees of a business owned and operated by a Pakistani Muslim. Follow the logic of the Middle East: When you are angry at your own for their murdering, and are too weak or terrified to do anything about it, go out and destroy anything remotely American-affiliated.

I read most of these news accounts last week while sitting in a Starbucks (Dunkin' Donuts next door) on the eastern side of the Brandenburg Gate in the former Communist sector of Berlin — watching a parade of protestors damn the militarism of the United States (a.k.a. "Top Gun") while a nearby TV blared accounts of a recent German mystery on state-run television, whose subtext was that the United States intelligence planned September 11 and blamed it on the poor jihadists.

So there we have a snapshot of 60 years of American efforts to rid Germany of Hitler, pour in Marshall Plan money, keep 300 Soviet divisions out of Germany, and convince skeptical British, French, and Russians to support reunification: In response, welcome in American popular culture as you damn the United States in the conveniently abstract.

A war that cannot be won entirely on the battlefield most certainly can be lost entirely off it — especially when an ailing Western liberal society is harder on its own democratic culture than it is on fascist Islamic fundamentalism.

So unhinged have we become that if an American policymaker calls for democracy and reform in the Middle East, then he is likely to echo the aspirations of jailed and persecuted Arab reformers. But if he says Islamic fascism is either none of our business or that we lack the wisdom or morality to pass judgment on the pathologies of a traditional tribal society, then the jihadist and the police state — and our own Western Left — approve.

The problem the administration faces is not entirely a military one: Our armed forces continue to perform heroically and selflessly under nearly impossible conditions of global scrutiny and hypercriticism. There has not been an attack on the U.S. since 9/11 — despite carnage in Madrid and over 1,000 slaughtered in Russia by various Islamic terrorists during the same period.

Rather, the American public is tiring of the Middle East, its hypocrisy and whiny logic — and to such a degree that it sometimes unfortunately doesn't make distinctions for the Iraqi democratic government or other Arab reformers, but rather is slowly coming to believe the entire region is ungracious, hopeless, and not worth another American soldier or dollar.

This is a dangerous trend. Despite murderous Syrian terrorists, dictatorial Saudis, crazy Pakistanis, and triangulating European allies, and after so many tragic setbacks, we are close to creating lasting democratic states in Afghanistan and Iraq — states that are influencing the entire region and ending the old calculus of Middle Eastern terror. We are winning even as we are told we are losing. But the key is that the American people need to be told — honestly and daily — how and why those successes came about and must continue before it sours on the entire sorry bunch.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.

From Europe's biggest-selling newspaper, the Sun: ''Furious Muslims have blasted adult shop [i.e., sex shop] Ann Summers for selling a blowup male doll called Mustafa Shag." The Muslim Association's complaint, needless to say, is that the sex toy "insults the Prophet Muhammad -- who also has the title al-Mustapha.'' In a world in which Danish cartoons insult the prophet and Disney Piglet mugs insult the prophet and Burger King chocolate ice-cream swirl designs insult the prophet, maybe it would just be easier to make a list of things that don't insult him. 

I've met plenty of "moderate Muslims" in Jordan and Iraq and the Gulf states. But, in Europe and North America they aren't so much "moderate Muslims" as quiescent Muslims. The few who do speak out wind up living in hiding or under 24-hour armed guard, like Dutch MP Ayaab Hirsi Ali. So when the EU and the BBC and the New York Times say that we too need to be more "sensitive" to those fellows with "Behead the enemies of Islam" banners, they should look in the mirror: They're turning into "moderate Muslims," and likely to wind up as cowed and silenced and invisible.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn12.html    (OCR, 2/12/06, Commentary 1)

CANBERRA: Get out if you want Sharia law, Australia tells Muslims. Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks. A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown. Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament. “If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you,” he said on national television. “I’d be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false. If you can’t agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practises it, perhaps, then, that’s a better option,” Costello said. Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked move to the other country. Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should “clear off”. “Basically, people who don’t want to be Australians, and they don’t want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off,” he said. Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims by saying he supported spies monitoring the nation’s mosques.  (8/25/05)  http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_25-8-2005_pg1_2

How can Europe even begin to think about subsidizing terrorism? That would be the effect of the stealth efforts to keep money flowing to Palestine despite its takeover by Hamas. The quaint notion that this terrorist organization will change its spots doesn't survive even a moment's scrutiny. A video message on the Hamas website proclaims: "We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of the Jews."

But the lust to kill Jews is only part of it. Hamas, like Osama bin Laden and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has ambitions that threaten us all. Khaled Mashal, Hamas's top leader, spelled them out: "The nation of Islam will sit at the throne of the world ... Muhammad is gaining victory in Palestine [and] in Iraq. ... The Arab and Islamic nation is rising and awakening. ... Tomorrow we will lead the world." Not to be outdone is the Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar: "We are part of the great world plan whose name is the world Islamic movement." According to the Jerusalem Post, the Hamas victory will "lift the morale of the Arab and Islamic world and affect the battle for Afghanistan and Iraq."

Just a few days before the Palestinian election, Ahmadinejad met Mashal and Hamas's other leader-in-exile, Musa Abu Marzuk, in Damascus, along with the leaders of nine other Syria-based terrorist groups. The Palestinian conflict, they concluded, will become a "focal point of the final war" between Islam and the West. Hezbollah has already moved its operational headquarters from Beirut to Gaza; al Qaeda elements are already there. 

These are omens of an evil confluence, the formation of a Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah-Gaza axis in which Iran will fund and arm a new front of terrorism with its head in Iran, its body in Iraq and Lebanon, and its feet in Gaza and the West Bank. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's leader, warned that financial aid to the Palestinians would be conditional on continued terror and resistance against Israel.

It is important to understand that what fuels such fanaticism isn't just the existence of a democratic Israel or even U.S. policy. To think this is to underestimate the depth of a set of shared political and religious fantasies. Hamas's election victory, on top of advances by Islamists in Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt, has energized and unified the radicals. This is no longer a political conflict about borders and identity. Militant Islam has declared a religious war in which the destruction of Israel is seen as but the first step in establishing a Muslim caliphate.

It is said that Hamas will have to change because most Palestinians want peace. Would that that were so. In one poll, Hamas's hate-filled platform is supported by 68 percent of Palestinians, with 56 percent in favor of continued suicide bombings of Israeli citizens. 

Buying time. This wider jihad against the West will either gather momentum and succeed or be confronted and defeated. America must not follow the European way of "walking softly and carrying a big carrot." We must not be fooled by Hamas's Mr. Nice Guy campaign: Its purpose is simply to buy time to consolidate power. 

Washington made a grave error in rejecting Israeli and Fatah warnings about Hamas's participation in the election. But the democratic legitimacy of Hamas does not whitewash the moral illegitimacy of its terrorism. A one-time vote by people acculturated to an ideology of violence, intolerance, and hatred does not make them a force for peace and stability. Hamas and all who support it must accept the consequences of their position--a cessation of aid from the West they want to attack. The clear message must be that terrorism will not pay. This means no more money for roads, water systems, classrooms, health clinics, and community centers. Nor must a cent go to pay administrators and security forces, especially since the latter have been turned over to Hamas by the perpetually weak Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Yes, Hamas presides over social welfare institutions and is relatively free of corruption, but as the New Republic put it: "Are they to be admired because they will murder but will not steal?" Any humanitarian assistance we might give should be limited to food, water, and medicine. We must be careful to avoid fungibility whereby aid frees money for terrorism. We do not owe this group the means to lock up the entire Palestinian population in an internal prison while it prepares to make war on western civilization. America must be careful about "democracy." It is not just about elections. It is a system of free and independent institutions. A naive advocacy of democracy without such institutions may open the way to our worst enemies, even though a new regime may replace nasty friends. There is, after all, a difference between a benign tumor and a malignant cancer. At this delicate moment, our policies must not pave the way for totalitarian enemies to replace authoritarian friends. (USN&WR, 3/20/06, 72)

THE SWORD OF THE PROPHET:
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

by Serge Trifkovic

(Boston: Regina Orthodox Press, 2002)

Reviewed by Paul Eidelberg

In her extraordinary work, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, Bat Ye'or avoids discussing Islam per se. She lets Islam's thirteen-century record of plunder, rape, and genocide discredit that religion. One would hardly know of such barbarism reading the doyan of Islamic scholars, Bernard Lewis. Judging from his book What Went Wrong? (2002), nothing is intrinsically wrong with the religion that enthralls 1.2 billion people. And Lewis, unlike John Esposito, is not known as an apologist of Islam.

Enter Serge Trifkovic, a man of extraordinary intellectual courage. His The Sword of the Prophet departs from the moral "neutrality" of academia and, in six lucid and well-documented chapters, provides a "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam." Citing the Kuran and the voluminous Hadiths—the Traditions of what Muhammad said and did—Dr. Trifkovic exposes Islam's prophet as cruel, ignorant, and lascivious. He examines Islam's fatalistic theology; reviews this religion's devastation of other civilizations; warns of the Muslims' insidious penetration of America and Europe; criticizes U.S. appeasement of Saudi Arabia and other Islamic regimes; and goes to the heart of what must be done to prevent Islam's global ascendancy.

Chapter 1, "Muhammad," portrays a simple preacher who became a fanatical warlord in the process of conquering Mecca and Medina. After slaughtering Arab tribesmen and looting their camels, the prophet and his followers kidnapped their women and staged an orgy of rape. One Hadith explains:

We desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, but at the same time we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl [coitus interruptus]. But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah's Messenger … and he said: It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born.

To the men of one Jewish tribe, Muhammad offered the choice of conversion to Islam or death. Upon their refusal, up to 900 were decapitated in front of their women and children. "Truly the judgment of Allah was pronounced on high," was Muhammad's comment. The women were subsequently raped. Trifkovic comments: "That Muhammad's actions and words, as immortalized in the Kuran and recorded in the Traditions, are frankly shocking by the standards of our time—and punishable by it laws, that range from war crimes and murder to rape and child molestation—almost goes without saying." Trifkovik is aware of the cultural and historical relativism that would prompt Western intellectuals to say, "we must not extend the judgmental yardstick of our own culture to the members of other cultures who have lived in other eras." He counters this relativism by pointing out that "even in the context of seventh century Arabia, Muhammad had to resort to divine revelations as a means of suppressing the prevalent moral code of his own milieu."

Muhammad repeatedly invoked Allah as a deus ex machina, professing revelations to justify the prophet's political and personal needs. "Nowhere was this more obvious than when it came to his exaggerated sensuality." Trifkovic cites Ibn Warraq, author of Why I am Not a Muslim (1995), who asks whether Muhammad was a "known fraud, or did he sincerely believe that all his 'revelations' that constitute the Kuran were direct communications from God?" Warraq does not see how this can possibly matter to our moral judgment of Muhammad's character. "Certain racists sincerely believe that Jews should be exterminated. How does their sincerity affect our moral judgment of their beliefs?"

Trifkovic adds: "On the Prophet's own admission, Islam stands or falls with the person of Muhammad, a deeply flawed man by the standards of his own society, as well as those of the Old and New Testaments … and even by the law of which he claimed to be the divinely appointed medium and custodian. The problem of Islam, and the problem of the rest of the world with Islam, … is the religion's claim that the words and acts of its prophet provide the universally valid standard of morality as such, for all time and all men."

Our author sums up his assessment of Muhammad with the words of Sir William Muir (1819-1905), one of the world's greatest orientalists: "the sword of Muhammad and the Qur'an are the most fatal enemies of civilization, liberty, and truth which the world has yet known." No academician today would dare such a judgment. Even the outspoken Daniel Pipes feels compelled to distinguish Islam from "Islamism" and say Islam is compatible with democracy!

Chapter 2, "The Teaching," portrays Allah as very different from the God of the Bible. Allah is absolutely transcendent. He is pure will without personality. Islam offers an "empty and barren concept of deity." (Avraham Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine, regarded Islam's monotheism as barren and devoid of joy and life.) "One consequence of Allah's absolute transcendence and lordship," says Trifkovic, "is the impossibility of free will." Sinners are as predestined as virtuous believers. Whereas sinners will "fill up the burning regions of Hell," the virtuous believers will dwell in Paradise where, according to one Muslim commentator, "The men … have sexual relations not only with the women ... but also with serving boys… In Paradise a believer's penis is eternally erect."

Given its fatalism, Islam is theologically incompatible with democracy, whose cardinal principle is freedom. The root of freedom is man's creation in the image of God—the God of Abraham. Abraham can argue and plead with God, as did Moses, because the God of the Jews is a personal God, immanent as well as transcendent. In contrast, the Muslim prostrates himself before Allah as a slave before a master. Trivkovic rightly states that it is more pertinent to compare Islam with totalitarian communism—despite its atheism—than with Judaism or Christianity. He could have pointed out that human dignity is not a normative principle of Islam if only because Islamic theology cannot abide the Jewish conception of man's creation in the image of God.

Turning to the Kuran, Trifkovic, like other critics, reveals Muhammad's distorted account of the various narratives of the Five Books of Moses. (Muhammad was ignorant of the books of the prophets). Noting that the Kuran underwent revision during Muhammad's tribulations and triumphs in Mecca and Medina, Trifkovic states that Islam's holy book "looks, feels, and sounds like a construct entirely human in origin and intent, clear in its earthly sources of inspiration and the fulfillment of the daily needs, personal and political, of its author."

"Of all major religions known to man," writes Trifkovic, "the teaching of Islam makes it the least amenable to dialogue with other faiths." Nevertheless, he informs us that President George W. Bush has internalized the ecumenical views of his adviser on Islam, Professor David Forte, a conservative Catholic who believes that Christianity and Islam can together foster family values. Forte, who is not an Islamic scholar, contends that Islamic terrorists are heretics or not authentic Muslims. He seems to have reinforced Mr. Bush's naïve belief that all religions are peace-loving, and that a religious person cannot possibly be a terrorist, i.e., evil. Trivkovic comments: "Their faulty understanding of Islamic theology leads them to imagine that 'Allah' is more or less interchangeable with the 'God' of the monotheists." Their ecumenism is intended to counter the globalization of secularism.

Chapter 3,"Jihad Without End," demonstrates that the goal of Islamic jihad is world conquest, and that willingness of Muslims to sacrifice their lives to this end "is neither extreme nor even remarkable from the standpoint of traditional Islam." The notion of "inner" jihad—of one's personal fight against his ego and sinful desires—came into being only after the Islamic Empire had been established. Of its countless jihads against unbelievers, Trifkovic emphasizes Islam's massacres in India, which "are unparalleled in history, bigger in sheer numbers than the Holocaust, or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks." Regarding the Turks, "being a Greek, Armenian, Serb, or indeed any other Christian in the Ottoman Empire meant living in daily fear of murder, rape, torture, kidnap of one's children, slavery, and genocide."

Trifkovic, a Christian who acknowledges the crimes committed against the Jews during the Crusades, nonetheless emphasizes Islam's crimes against Christian communities throughout the Middle East and North Africa. He deplores "politically correct" academics: "Thirteen centuries of religious discrimination, causing suffering and death of countless millions, have been covered by the myth of Islamic 'tolerance,' that is hurtful to the few descendants of the victims as it is useless as a means of appeasing latter-day jihadists."

This leads to Chapter 4, "The Fruits," which explodes the myth of Islam's "Golden Age." Our author correctly notes that the medieval philosophers al-Farabi and Avicenna, both Persian, "belong to 'Islam' just as much as Voltaire belongs to 'Christianity.'" (Muhsin Mahdi has shown that Farabi, to avoid being executed, crafted his work on Plato and Aristotle in an esoteric style. On the surface he appears as a devout Muslim; but a close reading reveals him as a disciple of Greek philosophy.) Contrary to its apologists, the Muslim Empire inherited the knowledge and skills of Greece, Persia, and India (including what are still mistakenly known as "Arabic" numbers.) "Whatever flourished," writes Trifkovic, "it was not by reason of Islam, it was in spite of Islam." Thus, in 1993, the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, issued an edict, declaring that the world is flat: anyone of the round persuasion does not believe in God and should be punished."

The chapter concludes with these words of Alexis de Tocqueville:

I studied the Kuran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.

Islamic decadence is rooted in its impersonal and empty monotheism. In contrast, Hebraic monotheism, as may be seen in the Biblical account of creation, seeks to probe the unity underlying the totality of existence—of man and the universe. Moreover, the creativity for which Jews are famous, especially in the sciences, is rooted in the Genesis conception of man's creation in God's image—the divine source of human creativity as well as the intellectual basis of Jewish faith. (In this latter respect, Judaism also differs from Christianity,)

Returning to Trivkovic, Chapter 5, "Western Appeasement," focuses on Washington's appeasement of Muslims in Bosnia, which has become a safe haven and transit for Arab terrorists. Israeli intelligence conveyed to the American State Department that "about 6,000 fighters in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia are ready to do Bin Laden's bidding, and that a nucleus of Bin Laden followers in the Balkans could balloon into an army of about 40,000 men." Also, some 2,000 to 10,000 Muslim migrants are arriving in Bosnia every month.

Trivkovic reveals how the State Department, while accusing Russian forces in Muslim Chechnya of "human rights" violations, exempts from human rights requirements such predominantly Muslim countries as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. (This hypocrisy is even more obscene in Washington's appeasement of the Arab Palestinians.) But our author's most dire warnings concern Washington's appeasement of Saudi Arabia. This totalitarian regime, linked to American corporations willing to sacrifice their country's interests to Mammon¸ is the financier of global terrorism.

Chapter 6, "Jihad's Fifth Column," surveys the incredibly rapid growth of the Muslim population in the West. Thanks to Saudi Arabia, thousands of mosques have sprung up throughout the U.S. and Europe. Their predominant message? Islam is the wave of the future. Despite Islam's openly declared objectives, the West refrains from restricting Muslim immigration and from enforcing the laws against Muslims who exploit democratic values to advance Islam's totalitarian ends.

Allied with these Muslims are postmodern liberals. These liberals are motivated by a hatred of Western civilization, primarily its biblical roots. Their pro-Muslim attitude—most pronounced in their support of the Palestinians—evinces an anti-Jewish animus. Academia is the seedbed of this unholy alliance of believers and atheists.

"Islam," Trivkovic concludes, "is a collective psychosis seeking to become global, and any attempt to compromise with such madness is to become part of the madness oneself." But what most threatens the West, says our author, is not Islam so much as the West's own "loss of Faith, and … the arrogant doctrine—rampant in 'the West' for three centuries now—that man can solve the dilemma of his existence by his unaided intellect alone. If that loss is not reversed, the game is over anyway—proving that where God retreats, Allah advances."

http://www.freeman.org/m_online/aug03/eidelberg.htm

[NOTE: The following is from an e-mail and on some web sites. It was created about 2002. The creator has not been verified. However, the thoughts presented are worth pondering.]

YOU WORRY ME!
By American Airlines Pilot - Captain John Maniscalco

"I've been trying to say this since 9-11 but you worry me. I wish you didn't. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don't blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me.

I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.

On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants and children's mothers.

The Palestinians celebrated, the Iraqis were overjoyed as was most of the Arab world. So I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you and the Arab/Muslim terrorist.

How do I differentiate between the true Arab/Muslim-Americans and the Arab/Muslims in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter these same good neighbors and children? The events of September 11th changed the answer. It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of its religions, with ALL of its different citizens, with all of its faults.
It is time for every Arab/Muslim in this country to determine it for me.

I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know whether or not you love America . Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you proudly display it in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it? Or do you pray that Allah will destroy it in one of your "Jihads"? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords?


A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America ? If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it.

Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States >of America .


Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. No more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy. I am only interested in action. What will you do for America - our great country -- at this time of crisis, at this time of war?

I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America " I want to see young Arab/Muslim men enlisting in the military I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole. The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Hand them over to us, now! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action.


Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets.  You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals.

The very few Arab/Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States proves who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing "leaders" like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat.

If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good and pure and true when your "leaders" are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance?


It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if large numbers of the world's Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion.

Ø       A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide.

Ø       A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world.

Ø       A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. 

Ø       A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America , the country of their birth.

Ø       A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.

Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because our women proudly show their faces in public rather than cover up like a shameful whore? Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we drink wine with dinner or celebrate Christmas? Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we have befriended Israel, the ONLY FRIENDLY CIVILIZED SOCIETY in the Muslim/Arab area that thinks and acts like most Americans?

And if you and your fellow Muslims hate us, then why in the world are you even here? Are you here to take our money? Are you here to undermine our peace and stability? Are you here to destroy us? If so, I want you to leave. I want you to go back to your desert sandpit where women are treated like rats and dogs. I want you to take your religion, your friends, and your family back to your Islamic extremists, and STAY THERE! We will NEVER give in to your influence, your retarded mentality, your twisted, violent, intolerant religion.

We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world. I want to know where every Arab Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family.

Ø      I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand." "Until then, you worry me"

The War on Terrorism is WW III

You have to read the catalogue of events in this brief piece. Then, ask yourself how anyone can take the position that all we have to do is bring our troops home from Iraq, sit back, re-set the snooze alarm, go back to sleep, and no one will ever bother us again.

In case you missed it, World War III began in November 1979...that alarm has been ringing for years.  U.S. Navy Captain Ouimette is the Executive Officer at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. Here is a copy of the speech he gave last month. It is an accurate account of why we are in so much trouble today and why this action is so necessary.  Captain Ouimette speech follows:

AMERICA NEEDS TO WAKE UP!

That's what we think we heard on the 11th of September 2001 (When more than 3,000 Americans were killed-AD) and maybe it was, but I think it should have been "Get Out of Bed!" In fact, I think the alarm clock has been buzzing since 1979 and we have continued to hit the snooze button and roll over for a few more minutes of peaceful sleep since then.

It was a cool fall day in November 1979 in a country going through a religious and political upheaval when a group of Iranian students attacked and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This seizure was an outright attack on American soil; it was an attack that held the world's most powerful country hostage and paralyzed a Presidency. The attack on this sovereign U. S. embassy set the stage for events to follow for the next 23 years.

America was still reeling from the aftermath of the Vietnam experience and had a serious threat from the Soviet Union when then, President Carter, had to do something. He chose to conduct a clandestine raid in the desert. The ill-fated mission ended in ruin, but stood as a symbol of America's inability to deal with terrorism. 

America's military had been decimated and downsized/right sized since the end of the Vietnam War. A poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly organized military was called on to execute a complex mission that was doomed from the start.

Shortly after the Tehran experience, Americans began to be kidnapped and killed throughout the Middle East. America could do little to protect her citizens living and working abroad. The attacks against US soil continued.

In April of 1983 a large vehicle packed with high explosives was driven into the US Embassy compound in Beirut. When it explodes, it kills 63 people. The alarm went off again and America hit the Snooze Button once more.

Then just six short months later a large truck heavily laden down with over 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through the main gate of the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut and 241 US servicemen are killed. America mourns her dead and hit the Snooze Button once more.

Two months later in December 1983, another truck loaded with explosives is driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait, and America continues her slumber.

The following year, in September 1984, another van was driven into the gates of the US Embassy in Beirut and America slept.

Soon the terrorism spreads to Europe. In April 1985 a bomb explodes in a restaurant frequented by US soldiers in Madrid.

Then in August a Volkswagen loaded with explosives is driven into the main gate of the US Air Force Base at Rhein-Main, 22 are killed and the snooze alarm is buzzing louder and louder as US interests are continually attacked.

Fifty-nine days later a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro is hijacked and we watched as an American in a wheelchair  is singled out of the passenger list and executed.

The terrorists then shift their tactics to bombing civilian airliners when they bomb TWA Flight 840 in April of 1986 that killed 4 and the most tragic bombing, Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 259.

Clinton treated these terrorist acts as crimes; in fact we are still trying to bring these people to trial. These are acts of war. 

The wake up alarm is getting louder and louder. The terrorists decide to bring the fight to America. In January 1993, two CIA agents are shot and killed as they enter CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The following month, February 1993, a group of terrorists are arrested after a rented van packed with explosives  is driven into the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and over 1000 are injured. Still this is a crime and not an act of war?

The Snooze alarm is depressed again.

Then in November 1995 a car bomb explodes at a US military complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killing seven service men and women.

A few months later in June of 1996, another truck bomb explodes only 35 yards from the US military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It destroys the Khobar Towers, a US Air Force barracks, killing 19 and injuring over 500. The terrorists are getting braver and smarter as they see that America does not respond decisively.

They move to coordinate their attacks in a simultaneous attack on two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These attacks were planned with precision. They kill 224. America responds with cruise missile attacks and goes back to sleep.

The USS Cole was docked in the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling on 12 October 2000, when a small craft pulled along side the ship and exploded killing 17 US Navy Sailors. Attacking a US War Ship is an act of war, but we sent the FBI to investigate the crime and went back to sleep.

And of course you know the events of 11 September 2001. Most Americans think this was the first attack against US soil or in America. How wrong they are. America has been under a constant attack since 1979 and we chose to hit the snooze alarm and roll over and go back to sleep. (From an e-mail, 6/20/04)

MG Vernon Chong, USAF(RET), This WAR is for REAL (excerpts from an e-mail received 7/11/05)

  1. When did the threat to us start?   Many will say September 11th, 2001. The answer as far as the United States
is concerned is 1979, 22 years prior to September 2001, with the following attacks on us:   Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979; . Beirut, Lebanon Embassy 1983; . Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983; . Lockerbie, Scotland Pan-Am flight to New York 1988; . First New York World Trade Center attack 1993; . Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996; . Nairobi, Kenya US Embassy 1998; . Dares Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy 1998; . Aden, Yemen USS Cole 2000; . New York World Trade Center 2001; . Pentagon 2001. (Note that during the period from 1981 to 2001 there were 7,581 terrorist attacks worldwide).
  2. Why were we attacked?   Envy of our position, our success, and our freedoms. The attacks happened during the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2. We cannot fault either the Republicans or Democrats as there were no provocations by any of the presidents or their immediate predecessors,
Presidents Ford or Carter. 
  3. Who were the attackers?   In each case, the attacks on the US were carried out by Muslims. 
  4. What is the Muslim population of the World? 25%.
  5. Isn't the Muslim Religion peaceful?   Hopefully, but that is really not material. There is no doubt that the predominately Christian population of Germany was peaceful, but under the dictatorial leadership of Hitler (who was also Christian), that made no difference. You either went along with the administration or you were eliminated. There were 5 to 6 million Christians killed by the Nazis for political reasons (including 7,000 Polish priests). (see http://www.Nazis.testimony.co.uk/7-a.htm ).   Thus, almost the same number of Christians were killed by the Nazis, as
the six million holocaust Jews who were killed by them, and we seldom heard of anything other than the Jewish atrocities. Although Hitler kept the world focused on the Jews, he had no hesitancy about killing anyone who got in his way of exterminating the Jews or of taking over the world - German, Christian or any others.   Same with the Muslim terrorists. They focus the world on the US, but kill all in the way -- their own people or the Spanish, French or anyone else. The point here is that just like the peaceful Germans were of no protection to anyone from the Nazis, no matter how many peaceful Muslims there may be, they are no protection for us from the terrorist Muslim leaders and what they are fanatically bent on doing -- by their own pronouncements -- killing all of us "infidels." I don't blame the peaceful Muslims. What would you do if the choice was shut up or die?
  6. So who are we at war with?   There is no way we can honestly respond that it is anyone other than the Muslim terrorists. Trying to be politically correct and avoid verbalizing this conclusion can well be fatal. There is no way to win if you don't clearly recognize and articulate who you are fighting. So with that background, now to the two major questions:
  1. Can we lose this war?
  2. What does losing really mean?
  If we are to win, we must clearly answer these two pivotal questions. We can definitely lose this war, and as anomalous as it may sound, the major reason we can lose is that so many of us simply do not fathom the answer to the second question - What does losing mean?   It would appear that a great many of us think that losing the war means hanging our heads, bringing the troops home and going on about our business, like post Vietnam. This is as far from the truth as one can get. What losing really means is:   We would no longer be the premier country in the world. The attacks will not subside, but rather will steadily increase. Remember, they want us dead, not just quiet. If they had just wanted us quiet, they would not have produced an increasing series of attacks against us, over the past 18 years. The plan was clearly, for terrorist to attack us, until we were neutered and submissive to them.   We would of course have no future support from other nations, for fear of reprisals and for the reason that they would see, we are impotent and cannot help them. They will pick off the other non-Muslim nations, one at a time. It will be increasingly easier for them. They already hold Spain hostage. It doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train and told them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do will be
done. Spain is finished. The next will probably be France. Our one hope on France is that they might see the light and realize that if we don't win, they are finished too, in that they can't resist the Muslim terrorists without us. However, it may
already be too late for France. France is already 20% Muslim and fading fast!   If we lose the war, our production, income, exports and way of life will all vanish as we know it. After losing, who would trade or deal with us, if they were threatened by the Muslims.   If we can't stop the Muslims, how could anyone else?   The Muslims fully know what is riding on this war, and therefore are completely committed to winning, at any cost. We better know it too and be likewise committed to winning at any cost. 

 Although all of the terrorist attacks were committed by Muslim men between 17 and 40 years of age, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta refuses to allow profiling. Does that sound like we are taking this thing seriously? This is war! For the duration, we are going to have to give up some of the civil rights we have become accustomed to. We had better be prepared to lose some of our civil rights temporarily or we will most certainly lose all of them permanently.   I blame us for blithely assuming we can maintain all of our Political Correctness, and all of our civil rights during this conflict and have a clean, lawful, honorable war. None of those words apply to war. 
 
The uproar fueled by the politicians and media regarding the treatment of some prisoners of war, perhaps exemplifies best
what I am saying.  We have recently had an issue, involving the treatment of a few Muslim prisoners of war, by a small group of our military police.   These are the type prisoners who just a few months ago were throwing their
own people off buildings, cutting off their hands, cutting out their tongues and otherwise murdering their own people just for disagreeing with Saddam Hussein. And just a few years ago these same type prisoners chemically killed 400,000 of their own people for the same reason. They are also the same type enemy fighters, who recently were burning Americans, and dragging their charred corpses through the streets of Iraq.   And still more recently, the same type enemy that was and is providing videos to all news sources internationally, of the beheading of American prisoners they held.   Compare this with some of our press and politicians, who for several days have thought and talked about nothing else but the "humiliating" of some Muslim prisoners -- not burning them, not dragging their charred corpses through the streets, not beheading them, but "humiliating" them.

Remember, the Muslim terrorists stated goal is to kill all infidels! That translates into all non-Muslims -- not just in the United States, but throughout the world.   We are the last bastion of defense.  If we don't recognize this, our nation as we know it will not survive, and no other free country in the World will survive if we are defeated.   And finally, name any Muslim countries throughout the world that allow freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equal rights for anyone -- let alone everyone, equal status or any status for women, or that have been productive in one single way that contributes to the good of the world.

Democracies don't have their freedoms taken away from them by some external military force. Instead, they give their freedoms away, politically correct piece by politically correct piece.   And they are giving those freedoms away to those who have shown, worldwide, that they abhor freedom and will not apply it to you or even to themselves, once they are in power.   They have universally shown that when they have taken over, they then start brutally killing each other over who will be the few who control the masses. Will we ever stop hearing from the politically correct, about the "peaceful Muslims"?

Confronting the terror threat: In order to combat terrorism, one has to understand the ideology fueling it. Steven Emerson, Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of The American House of Saud - The Secret Petrodollar Connection, explained that "it is incorrect to talk of a 'War against Terror.' Terror is a tool, a tactic, a strategy. War is never against a tool - it's against an ideology." 

And if the ideology is global Jihadism, how is the civilized world responding to a menace that ironically is killing more Muslims than any other religious group? Not very well, by all accounts. The heart of the battle is often less against the actual perpetrators of terror than the mindset that protects them. Emerson revealed that two weeks prior to the conference in Israel, the New York Police Department (NYPD) issued a semiannual report on homegrown radicalization of Islamic terrorism. "Unsanitized (sic), the report was pioneering in that it did not whitewash the conduct and rhetoric of some of the most prominent Muslim organizations in the US, as was customary with previous such reports. Providing names and specific cases, the report found that Arab Muslim males were the most likely subjects to be radicalized." 

"What was more interesting," added Emerson, "was the reaction of the Islamic groups throughout America to the report. With few exceptions, most of them condemned it as racist and discriminatory." 

Instead of acknowledging much of the findings that had been based exclusively on facts in the field, "they proliferated," according to Emerson, "a narrative that there is a conspiracy by Jews and Christians to subjugate and repress Islam in order to prevent it from emerging as the ultimate sovereign power in the world today." 

What the Muslim organizations were ultimately doing, says Emerson, "was paving the way for the violent manifestations of their rhetoric." 

This will explain how a Muslim doctor or student can surprise a wife or mother, who will one day cry out in anguish: "I cannot understand it. Somebody must have led him astray." Who is this "somebody?" 

Lubricating this trend to terror, said Emerson, are the Muslim organizations posing as human rights groups. "Having anointed themselves as human rights organizations, they have free reign in presenting the Muslims of America as victims of hate crimes. Nobody questions the credentials of human rights groups. How can you? They stand above suspicion." 

The irony, he revealed, is that "there are 10 times more hate crimes in the US against Jews than against Muslims. Nevertheless in terms of news coverage, there are 100 times more articles and news reports about hate crimes against Muslims. And what constitutes a hate crime by these human rights groups? Look at their list. It includes the arrest of a prominent Hamas operative with suspected links to terrorism." 

Emerson is recognized as being the first terrorist expert to have testified and warned about the threat of Islamic militant networks operating in the US, and their connections worldwide. He specifically warned about the threat of Osama Bin Laden in a Congressional hearing in 1998, four years prior to 9/11. Nearly every one of the terror suspects and groups first identified in his 1994 film have been indicted, prosecuted or deported since 9/11. Today, people take keen note of Emerson. Unfortunately, so do his enemies, and he now lives under false cover in the US. (The Jerusalem Post, 10/2/07)
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=4&cid=1189411479752&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Terrorist Attacks

(within the United States or against Americans abroad)

1920

Sept. 16, New York City: TNT bomb planted in unattended horse-drawn wagon exploded on Wall Street opposite House of Morgan, killing 35 people and injuring hundreds more. Bolshevist or anarchist terrorists believed responsible, but crime never solved.

1975

Jan. 24, New York City: bomb set off in historic Fraunces Tavern killed 4 and injured more than 50 people. Puerto Rican nationalist group (FALN) claimed responsibility, and police tied 13 other bombings to the group.

1983

April 18, Beirut, Lebanon: U.S. embassy destroyed in suicide car-bomb attack; 63 dead.

Oct. 23, Beirut, Lebanon: Shi'ite suicide bombers exploded truck near U.S. military barracks at Beirut airport, killing 241 Marines. Minutes later a second bomb killed 58 French paratroopers in their barracks in West Beirut.

1988

Dec. 21, Lockerbie, Scotland: N.Y.-bound Pan-Am Boeing 747 exploded in flight from a terrorist bomb and crashed into Scottish village, killing all 259 aboard and 11 on the ground. Passengers included 35 Syracuse University students and many U.S. military personnel. Libya formally admitted responsibility 15 years later (Aug. 2003) and offered $2.7 billion compensation to victims' families.

1993

Feb. 26, New York City: bomb exploded in basement garage of World Trade Center, killing 6 and injuring at least 1,040 others. In 1995, militant Islamist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 9 others were convicted of conspiracy charges, and in 1998, Ramzi Yousef, believed to have been the mastermind, was convicted of the bombing. Al-Qaeda involvement is suspected.

1995

April 19, Oklahoma City: car bomb exploded outside federal office building, collapsing wall and floors. 168 people were killed, including 19 children and 1 person who died in rescue effort. Over 220 buildings sustained damage. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols later convicted in the antigovernment plot to avenge the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Tex., exactly two years earlier. (See Miscellaneous Disasters.)

1996

June 25, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: truck bomb exploded outside Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds of others. Thirteen Saudis and a Lebanese, all alleged members of Islamic militant group Hezbollah, were indicted on charges relating to the attack in June 2001.

1998

Aug. 7, Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: truck bombs exploded almost simultaneously near 2 U.S. embassies, killing 224 (213 in Kenya and 11 in Tanzania) and injuring about 4,500. Four men, two of whom had received training at al-Qaeda camps inside Afghanistan, were convicted of the killings in May 2001 and later sentenced to life in prison. A federal grand jury had indicted 22 men in connection with the attacks, including Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who remained at large.

2000

Oct. 12, Aden, Yemen: U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole was heavily damaged when a small boat loaded with explosives blew up alongside it. Seventeen sailors were killed in a deliberate terrorist attack. Osama bin Laden, or members of his al-Qaeda terrorist network suspected.

2001

Sept. 11, New York City, Arlington, Va., and Shanksville, Pa.: hijackers crashed two commercial jets into twin towers of World Trade Center; two more hijacked jets were crashed into the Pentagon and a field in rural Pa. Total dead and missing numbered 2,995¹: 2,752 in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon, 40 in Pa., and 19 hijackers. Islamic al-Qaeda terrorist group blamed. (See September 11, 2001: Timeline of Terrorism.)

2003

May 12, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: suicide bombers killed 34, including eight Americans, at housing compounds for Westerners. Al-Qaeda suspected.

See also U.S.-Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations; Suspected al-Qaeda Terrorist Acts.

Above From (7/15/04):      http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001454.html

http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php   currently updated map of terrorists' acts, very good

At dawn on November 5, 2005, a cruise liner named the Seabourn Spirit was attacked by machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades about 160 kilometers (99 miles) off the coast of Somalia. The Spirit was carrying 151 passengers and 161 crew members when it was targeted by what are now believed to be pirates, operating from two small vessels. The ship, with only one crew member injured, escaped by changing course, increasing speed and using a high-tech sonic weapon, which sends an earsplitting noise toward the attackers.

Despite the fact that the ship successfully evaded the threat and on this occasion the assailants were most likely pirates, it has sparked a fear that cruise liners are vulnerable to attack by militant groups with maritime capability. Indeed, cruise ships are certainly an attractive target; the biggest can carry up to 2,500 passengers. Moreover, Islamist militant organizations such as al-Qaeda and/or its associate groups have clearly demonstrated a desire to attack maritime targets. A brief survey of the last five years provides a plentiful array of examples of both successful and failed attacks in the maritime domain.

Previous Attacks on Maritime Targets

In October 2000, al-Qaeda carried out an attack on the U.S. Navy destroyer the USS Cole while it was anchored in Aden Harbor in Yemen. Shortly before noon, two suicide bombers approached the USS Cole in an explosive-laden speed boat and detonated it along the port side of the vessel. The blast tore open the Cole's steel hull and killed 17 members of the crew.

Two years later, the MV Limburg was the target. The super-tanker was attacked in the Gulf of Aden as it approached Yemen's Ash Shihr oil terminal. Again, a small boat was used which exploded as it approached the vessel. Despite causing substantial damage to the side of the Limburg, only one crew member was killed in the attack.

In June 2002, Moroccan authorities foiled a number of attempts to attack commercial and naval vessels transiting the Straits of Gibraltar. Following the arrests of several Jemaah Islamiyah (J.I.) operatives in Singapore in 2001, it was revealed that the group has planned to attack visiting U.S. naval warships in the region.

In February 2003, after the arrest and interrogation of al-Qaeda's Abdelrahim al-Nashiri, it emerged that the group had intended to attack ships in the Straits of Hormuz. The planned operation would use a number of small craft, which would be packed with explosives and discharged from a "mother ship" once in position near passing U.S. warships.

By far the most lethal maritime terrorist incident this millennium was the attack on the M/V Superferry 14 in Manila by the Abu Sayyaf Group in February 2004. Just after midnight local time, a bomb exploded onboard the passenger ferry, which had left Manila Bay two hours earlier. The resulting fire caused the ship to capsize, and more than 100 people were killed in the attack.

Concern over Large-Scale Maritime Attacks

In Southeast Asia in particular, since the September 11 attacks a number of worst case scenarios have been postulated by the media and academics alike. The formation of a terrorism-piracy nexus was, and still is, seen as a potential alarming development. It was believed that given the high rates of piracy seen in the region's waterways, coupled with the valuable knowledge and skills of the pirates, it was only a matter of time before terrorists teamed up with pirates.

The possibility of terrorists blocking strategic waterways like the Malacca and Singapore Straits was also seen as a real threat. Predictions were made that militants could sink a large vessel at a narrow chokepoint in one of the region's waterways, block the passage of shipping and cause widespread economic chaos. [See: "The Malacca Straits and the Threat of Maritime Terrorism"]

Despite these isolated incidents of maritime terrorism and the predictions of worst case scenarios, maritime terrorist attacks are, and have remained, quite rare. They constitute only two percent of all international terrorist incidents over the last three decades.

While there is no doubt that a number of terrorist organizations have the desire or motivation to carry out attacks of this kind, in general there is still currently a lack of capability in this area of operation and it is likely to remain the case in the immediate future. Attacks against maritime targets require specialized equipment and skills; they also might require some knowledge of local shipping patterns, boat operation and maintenance, and boarding techniques. Even the attack involving the USS Cole, conceivably one of the simplest methods of attacking a maritime target, failed in its first attempt. The original intended mark was in fact the USS The Sullivans. However, in their first try at launching the suicide boat, the al-Qaeda operatives underestimated the weight of the explosives they were carrying onboard and the boat sank as it entered the water.

Although, at present, the probability of a large-scale maritime attack is low, the threat of maritime terrorism must not be ignored altogether. There is evidence that preliminary steps have been made by the al-Qaeda network in particular to develop some competency in this area. Recently, a basic diving manual was recovered in Kandahar in Afghanistan, and it is believed that this is evidence of a larger plan to set up and run a diving school. J.I. has also been conducting training in the southern Philippines in order to develop underwater destruction capability. In addition, J.I. and a number of other jihadist groups based in Indonesia already fully exploit the maritime domain for the purposes of transporting people and arms to and from the Philippines. (12/12/05)   http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=410&language_id=1

Looking evil right in the eye

Editorial , By Mortimer B. Zuckerman  (USN&WR, 7/19/04, 88?)

The grotesque cruelties of the radical Islamists leave no doubt about the enemy we're up against. News of their horrific abductions and beheadings fly around the globe on the Internet and satellite TV--technologies, in their twisted minds, invented by the infidel--but the perpetrators of the outrages are throwbacks to the Dark Ages. The masked cowards pose with their helpless captives while presenting demands they know cannot, and will not, be met. Their purpose is manipulation: to increase the pain of the victim's family and friends; to force western governments to moderate their opposition to the terrorist networks; to panic foreigners into leaving Muslim lands.

This is not simply a war against America. These killings are not about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal or American actions in Iraq and Afghanistan--they're not even about Israel. They are a tactic in a war to claim the world for a perverted version of Islam. It is not what we do but who we are--and we are in the way as these misguided men seek to restore a new unified Muslim umma (community), ruled by a new caliphate, governed by Islamic law, and organized to wage jihad against the rest of the world. These men, as Osama bin Laden wrote, are bent on the "disappearance" of the United States and "the infidel West" from the Islamic world. In their war against the "infidels," the terrorists kill irrespective of nationality, race, religion, or politics: Filipinos, Greeks, Italians, South Africans, South Koreans, Christians, and Hindus are victims--many from countries that played no part in the invasion of Iraq.

Joyous killing. The unfathomable depths of the terrorists' moral depravity is manifest in the remarks of one of the jihadists, whose interview on an al Qaeda-linked website was translated from Arabic by the Middle East Media Research Institute. The speaker was Fawwaz bin Mohammed al-Nashami, commander of the al-Quds Brigade, who took responsibility for the recent murders of westerners in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. He described how he and his brothers shot their way into the compound, where they killed a British worker, then tied his body to their car. The four men drove, he said, until "the infidel's clothing was torn to shreds and he was naked in the street, and everyone watched the infidel being dragged. Praise and gratitude be to Allah." Then the terrorists stormed another compound and found an American. "I shot him in the head, and his head exploded," Nashami recounted. "We entered another office and found one infidel from South Africa, and our brother Hussein slit his throat. We asked Allah to accept [these pious acts] from us and from him." Then they caught a few more workers, checked on their religion, and then slit their throats, except for one American because he was a Muslim. All of this Nashami described with a sense of joy.

What is to be done in this new war? Certainly, we must win, for these are the same people who want to conduct chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear attacks against us, according to the 9/11 commission. Western democracies, wedded to freedom and the rule of law, have a tough road ahead. The pressure from families of hostages, and from public emotion stirred up by the media, narrows the discretion of democratic governments. In Madrid, terrorist bombings of commuter trains were followed by a change of government. In Seoul, the decapitation of a South Korean led people to take to the streets demanding the withdrawal of Korean forces from Iraq. Such responses will only encourage the terrorists. To recognize them through any kind of negotiation would lead only to more atrocities, leaving innocent civilians exposed to killers whose warped ideology celebrates suicide and murder.

One approach might be a new international law, promulgated through a United Nations resolution, by which states agree to forgo negotiations with kidnappers. This might make it easier for governments like those of Spain and South Korea to withstand powerful domestic political pressures, especially from the families of hostages, and make it clear to every potential kidnapper that there will be no payoff for their actions--only payback.

As for the Muslim world, which has bred this plague, it will have to decide who is the enemy, these savage hijackers of their religion or the West. Muslim regimes in the Middle East want to have it both ways, the indulgence of deriding the West while tolerating the evil in their midst. It is outrageous that the madrasahs in Pakistan and other Muslim schools continue to preach hate and that Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 September 11 murderers, has done virtually nothing to clean up its colleges of intolerance. We must persuade the Muslim regimes to condemn this new barbarism--before it consumes them, too.

Comparative advantages

Editorial, By Mortimer B. Zuckerman (USN&WR, 8/2/04, 88)

Compare scenes. In The Hague, 15 justices of the International Court of Justice solemnly order Israel to dismantle the security fence it is building to separate Israelis from Palestinians. In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, the Palestinians, prevented from killing Israelis by a barrier that exists now, are busy murdering one another in factional warfare of gunfire, arson, and kidnappings. And in Ramallah on the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is in turmoil yet again over the corrupt and incompetent leadership of the terrorist Yasser Arafat, one of whose chief critics emerged from a television interview to be shot twice in the leg.

Violence is the syntax of debate among Palestinians, as it has been the syntax of negotiation with Israel. It escalated in the first place not as the result of Israeli aggression but because of Israeli willingness four years ago at Camp David to yield control of 95 percent of the occupied lands as Israel had previously yielded all of the Sinai to Egypt. Even the United Nations Mideast envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, a longtime supporter of Arafat, publicly attacked the PA recently for its failure to end violence, combat terrorism, and institute reforms that ordinary Palestinians have been demanding for years.

The flat-Earth assumption of the justices in The Hague, reinforced by a U.N. General Assembly vote on July 20--instigated in part by France--is that all Palestinians are ready to live in peace with the State of Israel and are thwarted only by Israel's intransigence. The General Assembly vote, under European pressure, did add a couple of ambiguous paragraphs about the duty of restraint on all sides, but in The Hague's judgment there was little mention of terrorism. It was a ruling taken in a practical and moral vacuum. The court washed its hands of the sure consequence: If Israel complied, scores more Israelis would be blown up by suicide bombings. Ultimately, the court placed the victims of terrorism on trial instead of the terrorists--a move emblematic of the hypocrisy of international diplomacy, remorseless in the face of the murder of Israelis yet highly agitated over a fence aimed at saving lives--just because it ostensibly impinges a little on land in the disputed West Bank.

In truth, the decision was preordained by politics--handed down, it should be noted, by a court composed in part of justices with only a nodding acquaintance with the rule of law and democracy. The head of the court, a Chinese justice, represents a country that invaded Tibet and has a questionable human-rights record. Some of the court's members come from foreign enemies of Israel, e.g., Egypt. The one dissenting American judge on the court nailed the key legal point: "To reach that conclusion with regard to the wall as a whole without . . . seeking to ascertain all relevant facts bearing directly on issues of Israel's legitimate right to self-defense, military necessity, and security needs, given the repeated deadly terrorist attacks in and upon Israel . . . cannot be justified as a matter of law."

Compare that blind justice with the careful ruling against the Israeli government on the routing of the fence by Israel's High Court of Justice, which the government has said it will accept. The court found the fence was not expressing a political border or any other border but was simply a barrier against the reality of Palestinian terrorism. But it still ordered the Army to alter a section to make it less oppressive to the Palestinians. This court had its eyes open--as The Hague's justices did not--both to the Palestinians most immediately affected and to the Israeli victims of the Palestinian campaign of terror, 900 dead and more than 6,000 wounded. It insisted that there must be a balancing of military necessity and humanitarian considerations: "Both international law and fundamental principles of Israeli administrative law recognize proportionality as a standard for balancing the authority of the military commander in the area with the needs of the local population."

Expertise over magic. In a memorable passage, the Israeli court affirms: " 'The security of the state' is not a 'magic word' which makes judicial review disappear. . . . The military commander is the expert on the military aspects of the fence's route. We are the experts on the humanitarian aspects of the route . . . whether the military commander's route inflicts disproportionate injury upon the local inhabitants. This is our expertise."

The court's ruling is a remarkable demonstration of the role of an honorable judiciary in a democratic state under mortal challenge. "Our task is difficult. We are members of Israeli society. Although we are sometimes in an ivory tower, that tower is in the heart of Jerusalem, which is not infrequently struck by ruthless terror. . . . As any other Israelis, we, too, recognize the need to defend the country and its citizens against the wounds inflicted by terror. . . . But we are judges. When we sit in judgment, we are subject to judgment. We act according to our best conscience and understanding."

With that perspective, the court decided to make the fence, in certain areas, more responsive to the needs of the local population while recognizing that its decision did not make it easier for military security. In effect, the court acknowledged that the delay in its completion might well come at the cost of terrorist attacks. "This is the destiny of a democracy: She does not see all means as acceptable, and the ways of her enemies are not always open before her. A democracy must sometimes fight with one arm tied behind her back. Even so, a democracy has the upper hand. The rule of law and individual liberties constitute an important aspect of her security stance. At the end of the day, they strengthen her spirit and this strength allows her to overcome her difficulties."

Indeed, building a fence is one of the most civilized ways in which nations can defend themselves, in Shakespeare's words, "against the envy of less happy lands," when they share a border with armed attackers who lack an effective government to constrain them. The Roman Emperor Hadrian ordered a wall to be constructed across the width of England to keep barbarians out. The Chin emperor ordered several walls to be linked to the Great Wall of China to repel barbarians. Well, we don't have barbarians today, but we have their modern equivalent in terrorists--with the Palestinian Authority a known safe haven and favorite breeding ground for them, especially the suicide bomber.

The U.N. itself built a fence around its headquarters in New York for protection. Likewise, India, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Turkey have built barriers to contain their neighbors. India just completed a 460-mile barrier in contested Kashmir to contain terrorist infiltration from Pakistan and is building a security fence similar to that being built by Israel to protect itself from Muslim terrorists coming in from Bangladesh. Saudi Arabia built a 60-mile barrier along an undefined border zone with Yemen to stop the smuggling of weapons.

Success. The bottom line is that the fence has worked. Secretary of State Colin Powell emphasized this in saying the fence issue should not even have been brought to The Hague. The American people recognize this full well. In a poll this year, 68 percent say the Israelis have a right to a security fence "even if many other countries disagree." The House of Representatives voted 361 to 45 deploring the misuse of the International Court of Justice and its advisory opinion that Israel's security fence should be dismantled.

The facts are conclusive: Before the fence was erected, the average number of terrorist attacks was 26 per year. Since its partial construction, the number has dropped to three per year, while the death toll has dropped by over 70 percent from 103 to 28, and the number of injured has dropped by more than 80 percent, from an annual average of 628 to 83. Terrorist penetration into Israel from the northern West Bank, where the initial portion of the fence was completed, has dropped from 600 a year to zero--as Israel was able to foil every suicide bombing originating from the northern West Bank and specifically from the cities of Nablus and Jenin, areas that had previously been infamous for exporting suicide bombers.

Only 5 percent of the fence is a wall to prevent fire from adjacent Palestinian communities onto Israeli areas. The height of this portion has in some places been raised, for example, as in Jerusalem--from 2 yards to 8 yards--because the terrorists jumped over the shorter wall. But in any event, it is a temporary, nonviolent way to reduce terrorism that has already saved many lives.

The fence brings benefits to the Palestinians as well: It will reduce friction between Israelis and Palestinians through the withdrawal of Israel from many settlements. The fence will also facilitate the removal of Israeli checkpoints and thus encourage greater freedom of movement within Palestinian areas. It will create an incentive for the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the Palestinian side of the barrier, making the removal not a question of if but when. Fewer successful terrorist attacks mean fewer Israeli retaliatory defensive operations; finally, the route of the fence under this Israeli court decision will be much closer to the territorial proposals agreed to by the left-wing Israeli government in the Camp David talks and to the territorial settlements previously imposed.

Under the new court ruling, about 75 percent of Israeli settlers would be incorporated into roughly 8 percent of the West Bank on the Israeli side of the barrier. Fewer than 1 percent (13,000) of West Bank Palestinians would be stranded in these Israeli areas, while over 99 percent (1,970,000) would be left in the approximately 92 percent of the West Bank on the other side of the fence, which would be a contiguous area.

The Palestinians cannot have it both ways. They cannot avoid their security responsibilities while denying the Israelis the right to defend themselves, and they must pay a territorial price for the four years of terror they unleashed, for terrorism cannot be seen to succeed.

It has been said that if Israel is 10 percent more moral, it will be a light unto the nations; if it is 25 percent more moral, it will bring the Messiah; if it is 50 percent more moral, it will be dead. The Israeli High Court of Justice's decision brings a light unto the nations of the world. The International Court of Justice's advisory opinion would produce nothing but more dead innocents.

Martyrs, Virgins and Grapes

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: August 4, 2004, New York Times

The virgins are calling you," Mohamed Atta wrote reassuringly to his fellow hijackers just before 9/11.

It has long been a staple of Islam that Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins. But a growing body of rigorous scholarship on the Koran points to a less sensual paradise - and, more important, may offer a step away from fundamentalism and toward a reawakening of the Islamic world.

Some Islamic theologians protest that the point was companionship, never heavenly sex. Others have interpreted the pleasures quite explicitly; one, al-Suyuti, wrote that sex in paradise is pretty much continual and so glorious that "were you to experience it in this world you would faint."

But now the same tools that historians, linguists and archaeologists have applied to the Bible for about 150 years are beginning to be applied to the Koran. The results are explosive.

The Koran is beautifully written, but often obscure. One reason is that the Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and there's growing evidence that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic.

For example, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get "hur," and the word was taken by early commentators to mean "virgins," hence those 72 consorts. But in Aramaic, hur meant "white" and was commonly used to mean "white grapes."

Some martyrs arriving in paradise may regard a bunch of grapes as a letdown. But the scholar who pioneered this path-breaking research, using the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for security reasons, noted in an e-mail interview that grapes made more sense in context because the Koran compares them to crystal and pearls, and because contemporary accounts have paradise abounding with fruit, especially white grapes.

Dr. Luxenberg's analysis, which has drawn raves from many scholars, also transforms the meaning of the verse that is sometimes cited to require women to wear veils. Instead of instructing pious women "to draw their veils over their bosoms," he says, it advises them to "buckle their belts around their hips."

Likewise, a reference to Muhammad as "ummi" has been interpreted to mean he was illiterate, making his Koranic revelations all the more astonishing. But some scholars argue that this simply means he was not "of the book," in the sense that he was neither Christian nor Jewish.

Islam has a tradition of vigorous interpretation and adjustment, called ijtihad, but Koranic interpretation remains frozen in the model of classical commentaries written nearly two centuries after the prophet's death. The history of the rise and fall of great powers over the last 3,000 years underscores that only when people are able to debate issues freely - when religious taboos fade - can intellectual inquiry lead to scientific discovery, economic revolution and powerful new civilizations. "The taboos are still great" on such Koranic scholarship, notes Gabriel Said Reynolds, an Islam expert at the University of Notre Dame. He called the new scholarship on early Islam "a first step" to an intellectual awakening.

But Muslim fundamentalists regard the Koran - every word of it - as God's own language, and they have violently attacked freethinking scholars as heretics. So Muslim intellectuals have been intimidated, and Islam has often been transmitted by narrow-minded extremists.

(This problem is not confined to Islam. On my blog, www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds, I've been battling with fans of the Christian fundamentalist "Left Behind" series. Some are eager to see me left behind.)

Still, there are encouraging signs. Islamic feminists are emerging to argue for religious interpretations leading to greater gender equality. An Iranian theologian has called for more study of the Koran's Syriac roots. Tunisian and German scholars are collaborating on a new critical edition of the Koran based on the earliest manuscripts. And just last week, Iran freed Hashem Aghajari, who had been sentenced to death for questioning harsh interpretations of Islam.

"The breaking of the sometimes erroneous bonds in the religious tradition will be the condition for a positive evolution in other scientific and intellectual domains," Dr. Luxenberg says.

The world has a huge stake in seeing the Islamic world get on its feet again. The obstacle is not the Koran or Islam, but fundamentalism, and I hope that this scholarship is a sign of an incipient Islamic Reformation - and that future terrorist recruits will be promised not 72 black-eyed virgins, but just a plateful of grapes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/opinion/04krist.html?ex=1092639991&ei=1&en=e7b22a2f06141426

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Muslim Population Statistics

Note that the information here is a few years old so the populations are slightly higher. The statistics are also updated periodically as more accurate information becomes available. A question mark indicates that the information has not been found yet.  

Country	Total Population	Muslim Percentage	Number Of Muslims
Total	6,068,708,934	25%	1,509,820,277
Afghanistan	26,813,057	99%	26,544,926
Albania	3,510,484	70%	2,457,339
Algeria	31,736,053	99%	31,418,692
Angola	10,366,031	25%	2,591,508
Antigua Barbuda	66,970	?	?
Argentina	37,384,816	2.1%	785,081
Armenia	3,336,100	1%	33,361
Aruba	70,007	5%	3,500
Australia	19,357,594	2%	387,152
Austria	8,150,835	15%	1,222,625
Azerbaijan	7,771,092	93.4%	7,258,200
Bahamas, The	297,852	?	?
Bahrain	645,361	100%	645,361
Bangladesh	131,269,860	83%	108,953,984
Barbados	275,330	?	?
Belarus	10,350,194	5%	517,510
Belgium	10,258,762	4%	410,350
Belize	256,062	?	?
Benin	6,590,782	20%	1,318,156
Bhutan	2,049,412	5%	102,471
Bolivia	8,300,463	?	?
Bosnia-Herzegovina	3,922,205	40%	1,568,882
Botswana	1,586,119	5%	79,306
Brazil	174,468,575	1.1%	1,919,154
Brunei	343,653	67%	230,248
Bulgaria	7,707,495	13%	1,001,974
Burkina-Faso	12,272,289	50%	6,136,145
Burma	41,994,678	4%	4,597,563
Burundi	6,223,897	20%	1,244,779
Cambodia	12,491,501	1%	124,915
Cameroon	15,803,220	55%	8,691,771
Canada	31,592,805	1.5%	473,892
Cape Verde	405,163	?	?
Central African Republic	3,576,884	55%	1,967,286
Chad	8,707,078	85%	7,401,016
Chile	15,328,467	?	?
China	1,273,111,290	6%	76,386,677
Christmas Island	2,771	10%	277
Cocos (Keeling) Island	633	57%	361
Colombia	40,349,388	?	?
Comoros	596,202	98%	584,278
Congo, Dem. Rep. of the	53,624,718	10%	5,362,472
Congo, Republic of the	2,894,336	15%	434,150
Costa Rica	3,773,057	?	?
Cote d'Ivoire	14,762,445	60%	8,857,467
Croatia	5,004,112	1.2%	60,049
Cuba	11,184,023	0%	550
Cyprus	744,609	33%	245,721
Czech Republic	10,264,212	2%	205,284
Denmark	5,352,815	2%	107,056
Djibouti	427,642	94%	401,983
Dominican Republic	8,581,477	?	?
Ecuador	13,183,978	?	?
Egypt	69,536,644	94%	65,364,446
El Salvador	6,237,662	?	?
Equatorial Guinea	431,282	25%	107,821
Eritrea	3,427,883	80%	2,742,306
Estonia	1,423,316	?	?
Ethiopia	57,171,662	65%	37,161,580
Fiji	782,381	11%	86,062
Finland	5,175,783	1%	51,758
France	59,551,227	3%	1,786,537
Gabon	1,172,798	1%	11,728
Gambia	1,204,984	90%	1,084,486
Gaza Strip	923,940	98.7%	911,929
Georgia	5,219,810	11%	574,179
Germany	83,536,115	3.4%	2,840,228
Ghana	17,698,271	30%	5,309,481
Gibraltar	28,765	8%	2,301
Greece	10,538,594	1.5%	158,079
Guatemala	12,974,361	?	?
Guinea	7,411,981	95%	7,041,382
Guinea Bissau	1,151,330	70%	805,931
Guyana	712,091	15%	106,814
Haiti	6,964,549	?	?
Honduras	6,406,052	?	?
Hong Kong	6,305,413	1%	63,054
Hungary	10,106,017	6%	606,361
Iceland	277,906	?	?
India	1,029,991,145	14%	144,198,760
Indonesia	228,437,870	88%	201,025,326
Iran	66,094,264	99%	65,433,321
Iraq	21,422,292	97%	20,779,623
Ireland	3,840,838	2%	76,817
Israel	5,421,995	14%	759,079
Italy	57,460,274	1%	574,603
Jamaica	2,665,636	?	?
Japan	125,449,703	1%	1,254,497
Jordan	4,212,152	95%	4,001,544
Kazakstan	16,916,463	51.2%	8,661,229
Kenya	28,176,686	29.5%	8,312,122
Korea, North	21,968,228	?	?
Korea, South	47,904,370	1%	479,044
Kuwait	1,950,047	89%	1,735,542
Kyrgyzstan	4,529,648	76.1%	3,447,062
Laos	5,635,967	2%	112,719
Latvia	2,385,231	?	?
Lebanon	3,776,317	70%	2,643,422
Lesotho	1,970,781	10%	197,078
Liberia	2,109,789	30%	632,937
Libya	5,445,436	100%	5,445,436
Lithuania	3,610,535	1%	36,105
Macedonia	2,104,035	30%	631,211
Madagascar	13,670,507	20%	2,734,101
Malawi	9,452,844	35%	3,308,495
Malaysia	19,962,893	52%	10,380,704
Maldives	270,758	100%	270,758
Mali	9,653,261	90%	8,687,935
Malta	375,576	14%	52,581
Mauritania	2,336,048	100%	2,336,048
Mauritius	1,140,256	19.5%	222,350
Mayotte	100,838	99%	99,830
Mexico	101,879,171	?	?
Moldova	4,431,570	?	?
Mongolia	2,496,617	4%	99,865
Morocco	29,779,156	98.7%	29,392,027
Mozambique	17,877,927	29%	5,184,599
Namibia	1,677,243	5%	83,862
Nepal	22,094,033	4%	883,761
Netherlands	15,568,034	3%	467,041
New Zealand	3,864,129	1%	38,641
Nicaragua	4,918,393	?	?
Niger	9,113,001	91%	8,292,831
Nigeria	126,635,626	75%	94,976,720
Norway	4,438,547	1.5%	66,578
Oman	2,186,548	100%	2,186,548
Pakistan	144,616,639	97%	140,278,140
Panama	2,655,094	4%	106,204
Paraguay	5,734,139	?	?
Papua New Guinea	5,049,055	?	?
Peru	27,483,864	?	?
Philippines	74,480,848	14%	10,427,319
Poland	38,633,912	2%	772,678
Portugal	10,066,253	?	?
Puerto Rico	3,937,316	?	?
Qatar	547,761	100%	547,761
Reunion	679,198	20%	135,840
Romania	21,657,162	20%	4,331,432
Russia	145,470,197	9%	13,092,318
Rwanda	7,312,756	14%	1,023,786
Saudi Arabia	19,409,058	100%	19,409,058
Senegal	9,092,749	95%	8,638,112
Sierra Leone	4,793,121	65%	3,115,529
Singapore	3,396,924	17%	577,477
Slovakia	5,414,937	2%	108,299
Slovenia	1,951,443	1%	19,514
Somalia	9,639,151	100%	9,639,151
South Africa	41,743,459	2%	834,869
Spain	40,037,995	?	?
Sri Lanka	18,553,074	9%	1,669,777
Sudan	31,547,543	85%	26,815,412
Suriname	436,418	25%	109,105
Swaziland	998,730	10%	99,873
Sweden	9,800,000	3.6%	320,000
Switzerland	7,283,274	?	?
Syria	15,608,648	90%	14,047,783
Taiwan	22,370,461	?	?
Tajikistan	5,916,373	85%	5,028,917
Tanzania	29,058,470	65%	18,888,006
Thailand	58,851,357	14%	8,239,190
Togo	4,570,530	55%	2,513,792
Trinidad and Tobago	1,272,385	12%	152,686
Tunisia	9,019,687	98%	8,839,293
Turkey	66,493,970	99.8%	66,360,982
Turkmenistan	4,149,283	87%	3,609,876
Uganda	20,158,176	36%	7,256,943
Ukraine	48,760,474	?	?
United Arab Emirates	3,057,337	96%	2,935,044
United Kingdom	58,489,975	2.7%	1,579,229
United States	278,058,881	3.5%	9,732,061
Uruguay	3,360,105	?	?
Uzbekistan	23,418,381	88%	20,608,175
Venezuela	23,916,810	?	?
Vietnam	79,939,014	1%	799,390
West Bank	2,090,713	75%	1,568,035
Western Sahara	222,631	100%	222,631
Yemen	13,483,178	99%	13,348,346
Yugoslavia	10,677,290	19%	2,028,685
Zambia	9,159,072	15%	1,373,861
Zimbabwe	11,271,314	15%	1,690,697

From (7/15/04): http://www.iiie.net/Intl/PopStats.html

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Dr. Peter Hammond, "Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat", 2/10/10, 2nd edition. Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life. Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components. Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges. When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well. Here's how it works: As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in: United States -- Muslim 0.6% Australia -- Muslim 1.5% Canada -- Muslim 1.9% China -- Muslim 1.8% Italy -- Muslim 1.5% Norway -- Muslim 1.8% At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. This is happening in: Denmark -- Muslim 2% Germany -- Muslim 3.7% United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7% Spain -- Muslim 4% Thailand -- Muslim 4.6% From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards# food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in: France -- Muslim 8% Philippines -- 5% Sweden -- Muslim 5% Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3% The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5% Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8% At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves #within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world. When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris , we are already seeing car-burnings. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam , with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections in: Guyana -- Muslim 10% India -- Muslim 13.4% Israel -- Muslim 16% Kenya -- Muslim 10% Russia -- Muslim 15% After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in: Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8% At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in: Bosnia -- Muslim 40% Chad -- Muslim 53.1% Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7% From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in: Albania -- Muslim 70% Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4% Qatar -- Muslim 77.5% Sudan -- Muslim 70% After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in: Bangladesh -- Muslim 83% Egypt -- Muslim 90% Gaza -- Muslim 98.7% Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1% Iran -- Muslim 98% Iraq -- Muslim 97% Jordan -- Muslim 92% Morocco -- Muslim 98.7% Pakistan -- Muslim 97% Palestine -- Muslim 99% Syria -- Muslim 90% Tajikistan -- Muslim 90% Turkey -- Muslim 99.8% United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

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Koran (Qur'an) excerpts - important understanding

The contents of this section have been gleaned from the internet, and not verified. There has been much discussion and confusion about the teachings of Islam. Much appears to be subject to interpretation. A USC web site give an interesting historical perspective. http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/maududi/mau9.html   Some excerpts: 
"Caesar had begun to muster his armies, but the Holy Prophet forestalled him and arrived on the scene before he could make full preparations for the invasion. Therefore, believing that 'discretion is the better part of valor,' he withdrew his armies from the frontier. For he had not forgotten that the three thousand fighters for the cause of Islam had rendered helpless his army one hundred thousand strong at M'utah. He could not, therefore, even with an army of two hundred thousand, dare to fight against an army of thirty thousand, and that, too, under the leadership of the Holy Prophet himself." 
"In order to enable the Muslims to extend the influence of Islam outside Arabia, they were enjoined to crush with sword the non- Muslim powers and to force them to accept the sovereignty of the Islamic State. As the great Roman and Iranian Empires were the biggest hindrances in the way, a conflict with them was inevitable. The object of Jihad was not to coerce them to accept Islam they were free to accept or not to accept it-but to prevent them from thrusting forcibly their deviations upon others and the coming generations. The Muslims were enjoined to tolerate their misguidance only to the extent that they might have the freedom to remain misguided, if they chose to be so, provided that they paid Jizyah (v. 29) as a sign of their subjugation to the Islamic State."
Introduction to Multiple Translations of the Qur'an  http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/qmtintro.html

There is too much material, some biased, to include here. There is much confusing rhetoric. Draw your own conclusions.   Some links are:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/islamquotes.htm   summary
http://www.wvinter.net/~haught/Koran.html    summary
http://a-voice.org/discern/islam.htm   broad historical discussion
http://jihadwatch.org/   current and historical, many links

A Review of Robert Spencer’s Book: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), 2005
http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/TFPRecommends/Books/politically_incorrect_guide_to_islam.htm

The Life and Religion of Mohammed by Menezes, J.L.

Fr. J.L. Menezes knew Islam up close: as a priest in India, he devoted his priestly life to introducing that nation's tens of millions of Muslims to Christianity. With this life of Mohammed, he left us the record of his appeals: a frank, honest, and exhaustively researched exploration of the life of the "prophet" of Islam, the development and contents of the Koran, and an introduction to various Muslim sects.

Working from the earliest Islamic sources, Fr. Menezes provides a complete account of Mohammed's life, from his days as a simple merchant to his triumphs as a leader of armies and revered prophet. Menezes delved so deeply into his subject that he was even able to describe Mohammed's physical appearance. He explains why Mohammed couldn't possibly be a true prophet, and reveals the true sources of his "revelations."

Fr. Menezes could be writing about today's Muslim terrorists when he explains that "Mohammed posed as the apostle of God, the seal of the prophets; as the destroyer of idolatry; as preacher of one true God, and the reformer of morals: while his life is marked by innumerable marriages; and great licentiousness, deeds of rapine, warfare, conquests, unmerciful butcheries, all the time invoking God's holy name to sanction his evil deeds, ordering prayers and alms deeds and at the same time propagating Islam everywhere by fire and sword."

Turning to the Koran, Fr. Menezes delineates the distinctive teachings of Islam, explaining the elements of the Muslim holy book that make it so difficult for Muslims to convert to Christianity -- and showing how the Koran, when read honestly and without Islamic preconceptions, nonetheless depends upon and leads to Christianity.

Fr. Menezes concludes with an "appeal to candor and common sense," inviting Muslims to think critically about their religion, and to embrace Christ instead. With Islam on the march everywhere and Muslims streaming into the U.S. in record numbers, the candor, common sense, and solid Christian faith of this book are needed more than ever.

The bizarre circumstances of Mohammed's "revelations": "it was a painful sight to behold the nervousness of his features, the distortion of his countenance and the anxiety of mind portrayed on his face." How worldly ambition gradually blinded Mohammed's mind and overwhelmed his early searches for the true God. How Mohammed borrowed many of his ideas of Paradise from contemporary Jews and Christians -- and mixed them with base and lewd imaginings. How Mohammed again and again justified his rapine and licentiousness with new "divine revelations". Why Mohammed grew so bitter against both Jews and Christians, after initially courting their favor. Mohammed's fateful order that all churches and synagogues in his domains be demolished. How Mohammed ordered the assassinations of several of his chief opponents. How even Mohammed's replies to his critics in the Koran are insufficient to refute the charge that he was a false prophet who fabricated revelations. Why Mohammed adopted -- and later discarded -- many Jewish customs and ritual observances. Islamic tolerance: Mohammed let Jews and Christians live in his domains -- if they paid tribute and accepted second-class status. What the Koran really teaches about Christianity and Christ. What Mohammed learned from heretical Christian sects -- and incorporated into the Koran. The early history of Islam: just as bloody as the life of its founder. How the Koran doesn't limit Muslims to four wives, as is widely believed, but actually sets no real limit. Why the new religion Mohammed taught became so commonly identified with war and politics. The crisis caused in Islam by the death of Mohammed's only son -- which continues to this day. Sunnis, Shiites, Sufis, Motazalites and more: the differences between the various Muslim sects. http://www.conservativebookservice.com/products/bookpage.asp?prod_cd=c6614&sour_cd=CZB000101

The Sword of the Prophet by Trifkovic, Serge

Since the attacks of September 11, dozens of books have been rushed to market purporting to "explain" the religion in whose name the terrorists acted. Most of them strike a common theme: "true" Islam -- as opposed to the "fundamentalist" variety of the hijackers -- is a "religion of peace" that promotes charity, tolerance, freedom, and culture no less than "true" Christianity.

Such a viewpoint, argues Serge Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor of Chronicles magazine, is not only false but dangerous, since it blinds to the true nature of the enemy that threatens us. Moreover, it betrays a hidden agenda: to discredit Christianity and the West by comparison to a sanitized, idealized Islam that bears no resemblance to its actual teachings or history.

To correct this, Trifkovic gives us the unvarnished, "politically incorrect" truth about Islam -- including the shocking facts about its founder, Mohammed; its rise through bloody conquest; its sanctioning of theft, deceit, lust and murder; its persecutions of Christians, Jews, Hindus and other "infidels"; its cruel mistreatment of women; the colossal myth of its cultural "golden age"; its irreformable commitment to global conquest by any means necessary; the broad sweep of the military, political, moral, and spiritual struggle that faces us; and what we must do if we wish to survive.

The Koran sanctions pillage, looting, ransom, and the rape of captive women as an incentive to join in jihad or "holy war". Mohammed kept one-fifth of all spoils of war for himself. The Koran allows a man to have up to four wives -- at any one time. He can divorce a wife by simply saying so 3 times. Mohammad had as many as 25 wives. One was six when they married; he was 54. He consummated the marriage when she was 9. At least 27 people were murdered on Mohammed's orders. Mohammed allowed temporary marriage "for three nights" or more, so that soldiers in the field could "marry" prostitutes. The Koran assures the Muslim the right to own slaves by purchasing them or as a bounty of war. Mohammad had dozens. Almsgiving and mercy is commended in Islam -- but the beneficiaries have to be Muslims only. In Islam, the definition of what is "right" or "just" is not fixed, but changeable by divine decree -- enabling the most heinous sins and crimes to be declared "the will of Allah". The joys and glories of the Islamic "paradise" are tangible and sensual and include sex with virgins -- and young boys. As Mohammad progressed from visionary and teacher to warlord and ruler, his style and message became more depraved, violent and intolerant. It is these later "revelations" that are considered definitive by Islamic authorities when they conflict with earlier ones often cited for Western consumption. The Crusades were a belated military response to three centuries of Muslim aggression against Christian lands and peoples. Islam divides the world into the House of Islam (where Islam rules) and the House of War (where it doesn't). The two are permanently at war; there may be temporary truces, but peace will come only upon the completion of global conquest. When Muslims are a minority community, the Koran permits them to adopt a peaceful attitude to deceive their neighbors, until they feel strong enough to dispense with the pretense. The massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger in sheer numbers than the Holocaust. Muslim persecution of Christians has caused suffering and death for millions over 13 centuries -- and continues today. The myth of Islam's "tolerance" of religious minorities contradicts its teaching, history, and present reality. Islam's "golden age" was parasitic on the Christian cultures and peoples it conquered, and ended when it "killed the host". In 1993, Saudi Arabia's supreme religious authority declared that the world is flat, and that anyone who disagrees is an infidel to be punished. Like Communism, Islam cannot foster prosperity, and is always reliant on plunder or unearned wealth (e.g., from oil). Islam recognizes no distinction between temporal and divine authority; the only "legitimate" government is a theocracy. America's "ally" Saudi Arabia remains the most intolerant Islamic regime in the world, where the practice of any religion besides Islam is as strictly prohibited as in Mohammed's day. The first imam to deliver a Muslim prayer for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1991, declared in 1997 that Muslims will eventually elect the president and replace the [U.S.] constitutional government with an Islamic caliphate.
http://www.conservativebookservice.com/products/bookpage.asp?prod_cd=C6077

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 AGENDA OF ISLAM - A WAR BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS -  by Professor Moshe Sharon
(Excellent  "Reality Check " historical overview . . .concerning our coexisting with the Moslems.)

The war has started a long time ago between two civilizations - between the civilization based on the Bible and between the civilization based on the Koran. And this must be clear. 

There is no fundamental Islam.
"Fundamentalism" is a word that came from the heart of the Christian religion. It means faith that goes by the word of the Bible. Fundamental Christianity, or going with the Bible, does not mean going around and killing people. There is no fundamental Islam. There is only Islam full stop. The question is how the Koran is interpreted. 

All of a sudden we see that the greatest interpreters of Islam are politicians in the western world. They know better than all the speakers in the mosques, all those who deliver terrible sermons against anything that is either Christian or Jewish. These western politicians know that there is good Islam and bad Islam. They know even how to differentiate between the two, except that none of them know how to read a word of Arabic. 

The Language of Islam
You see, so much is covered by politically correct language that, in fact, the truth has been lost. For example, when we speak about Islam in the west, we try to use our own language and terminology. We speak about Islam in terms of democracy and fundamentalism, in terms of parliamentarism and all kinds of terms, which we take from our own dictionary. One of my professors and one of the greatest orientalists in the world says that doing this is like a cricket reporter describing a cricket game in baseball terms. We cannot use for one culture or civilization the language of another. For Islam, you've got to use the language of Islam. 

Driving Principles of Islam
Let me explain the principles that are driving the religion of Islam. Of course, every Moslem has to acknowledge the fact that there is only one God.
But it's not enough to say that there is only one God. A Moslem has to acknowledge the fact that there is one God and Mohammed is his prophet. These are the fundamentals of the religion that without them, one cannot be a Moslem.
But beyond that, Islam is a civilization. It is a religion that gave first and foremost a wide and unique legal system that engulfs the individual, society and nations with rules of behaviour. If you are Moslem, you have to behave according to the rules of Islam which are set down in the Koran and which are very different than the teachings of the Bible. 

The Bible
Let me explain the difference.
The Bible is the creation of the spirit of a nation over a very, very long period, if we talk from the point of view of the scholar, and let me remain scholarly. But there is one thing that is important in the Bible. It leads to salvation. It leads to salvation in two ways.
In Judaism, it leads to national salvation - not just a nation that wants to have a state, but a nation that wants to serve God. That's the idea behind the Hebrew text of the Bible. 

The New Testament that took the Hebrew Bible moves us toward personal salvation. So we have got these two kinds of salvation, which, from time to time, meet each other. 

But the key word is salvation. Personal salvation means that each individual is looked after by God, Himself, who leads a person through His word to salvation. This is the idea in the Bible, whether we are talking about the Old or the New Testament. All of the laws in the Bible, even to the minutest ones, are, in fact directed toward this fact of salvation. 

Secondly, there is another point in the Bible, which is highly important. This is the idea that man was created in the image of God. Therefore, you don't just walk around and obliterate the image of God. Many people, of course, used Biblical rules and turned them upside down. History has seen a lot of massacres in the name of God and in the name of Jesus. But as religions, both Judaism and Christianity in their fundamentals speak about honoring the image of God and the hope of salvation. These are the two basic fundamentals. 

The Essence of Islam
Now let's move to the essence of Islam. Islam was born with the idea that it should rule the world. 

Let's look, then, at the difference between these three religions. Judaism speaks about national salvation - namely that at the end of the story, when the world becomes a better place, Israel will be in its own land, ruled by its own king and serving God. Christianity speaks about the idea that every single person in the world can be saved from his sins, while Islam speaks about ruling the world. I can quote here in Arabic, but there is no point in quoting Arabic, so let me quote a verse in English. "Allah sent Mohammed with the true religion so that it should rule over all the religions." 

The idea, then, is not that the whole world would become a Moslem world at this time, but that the whole world would be subdued under the rule of Islam.
When the Islamic empire was established in 634 AD, within seven years - 640 - the core of the empire was created. The rules that were taken from the Koran and from the tradition that was ascribed to the prophet Mohammed, were translated into a real legal system. Jews and Christians could live under Islam provided they paid poll tax and accepted Islamic superiority. Of course, they had to be humiliated. And Jews and Christians living under Islam are humiliated to this very day. 

Mohammed Held That All the Biblical Prophets Were Moslems
Mohammed did accept the existence of all the Biblical prophets before him. However he also said that all these prophets were Moslems. Abraham was a Moslem. In fact, Adam himself was the first Moslem. Isaac and Jacob and David and Solomon and Moses and Jesus were all Moslems, and all of them had writings similar to the Koran. Therefore, world history is Islamic history because all the heroes of history were Moslems. 

Furthermore, Moslems accept the fact that each of these prophets brought with him some kind of a revelation. Moses, brought the Taurat, which is the Torah, and Jesus brought the Ingeel, which is the Evangelion or Gospel - namely the New Testament.
The Bible vs. the Koran
Why then is the Bible not similar to the Koran? 

Mohammed explains that the Jews and Christians forged their books. Had they not been changed and forged, they would have been identical to the Koran. But because Christians and Jews do have some truth, Islam concedes that they cannot be completely destroyed by war [for now]. 

Nevertheless, the laws a very clear - Jews and Christians have no rights whatsoever to independent existence. They can live under Islamic rule provided they keep to the rules that Islam promulgates for them. 

Islamic Rule and Jihad
What happens if Jews and Christians don't want to live under the rules of Islam? Then Islam has to fight them and this fighting is called Jihad. Jihad means war against those people who don't want to accept the Islamic superior rule. That's jihad. They may be Jews; they may be Christians; they may be Polytheists. But since we don't have too many Polytheists left, at least not in the Middle East - their war is against the Jews and Christians. 

A few days ago, I received a pamphlet that was distributed in the world by bin Laden. He calls for jihad against America as the leader of the Christian world, not because America is the supporter of Israel, but because Americans are desecrating Arabia with their filthy feet. There are Americans in Arabia were no Christians should be. In this pamphlet there is not a single word about Israel. Only that Americans are desecrating the home of the prophet. 

Two Houses
The Koran sees the world as divided into two - one part which has come under Islamic rule and one part which is supposed to come under Islamic rule in the future. There is a division of the world which is very clear. Every single person who starts studying Islam knows it. The world is described as Dar al-Islam (the house of Islam) - that's the place where Islam rules - and the other part which is called Dar al-Harb - the house of war. Not the "house of non-Muslims," but the "house of war." It is this house of war which as to be, at the end of time, conquered. The world will continue to be in the house of war until it comes under Islamic rule.
This is the norm. Why? Because Allah says it's so in the Koran. God has sent Mohammed with the true religion in order that the truth will overcome all other religions. 

Islamic Law
Within the Islamic vision of this world, there are rules that govern the lives of the Moslems themselves, and these rules are very strict. In fundamentals, there are no differences between schools of law. 

However, there are four streams of factions within Islam with differences between them concerning the minutiae of the laws. All over the Islamic world, countries have favored one or another of these schools of laws.
The strictest school of law is called Hanbali, mainly coming out of Saudi Arabia. There are no games there, no playing around with the meanings of words. If the Koran speaks about war, then it's war. 

There are various perspectives in Islam with different interpretations over the centuries. There were good people that were very enlightened in Islam that tried to understand things differently. They even brought traditions from the mouth of the prophet that women and children should not be killed in war.These more liberal streams do exist, but there is one thing that is very important for us to remember. The Hanbali school of law is extremely strict, and today this is the school that is behind most of the terrorist powers. Even if we talk about the existence of other schools of Islamic law, when we're talking about fighting against the Jews, or fighting against the Christian world led by America, it is the Hanbali school of law that is being followed. 

Islam and Territory
This civilization created one very important, fundamental rule about territory. Any territory that comes under Islamic rule cannot be de-Islamized. Even if at one time or another, the [non-Moslem] enemy takes over the territory that was under Islamic rule, it is considered to be perpetually Islamic.
This is why whenever you hear about the Arab/Israeli conflict, you hear - territory, territory, territory. There are other aspects to the conflict, but territory is highly important. 

The Christian civilization has not only been seen as a religious opponent, but as a dam stopping Islam from achieving its final goal for which it was created.
Islam was created to be the army of God, the army of Allah. Every single Moslem is a soldier in this army. Every single Moslem that dies in fighting for the spread of Islam is a shaheed (martyr) no matter how he dies, because - and this is very important - this is an eternal word between the two civilizations. It's not a war that stops. This was is there because it was created by Allah. Islam must be the ruler. This is a war that will not end. 

Islam and Peace
Peace in Islam can exist only within the Islamic world; peace can only be between Moslem and Moslem. 

With the non-Moslem world or non-Moslem opponents, there can be only one solution - a cease fire until Moslems can gain more power. It is an eternal war until the end of days. Peace can only come if the Islamic side wins. The two civilizations can only have periods of cease-fires. And this idea of cease-fire is based on a very important historical precedent, which, incidentally, Yasser Arafat referred to when he spoke in Johannesburg after he signed the Oslo agreement with Israel. 

Let me remind you that the document speaks of peace - you wouldn't believe what you are reading! You would think that you were reading some science fiction piece. I mean when you read it, you can't believe that this was signed by Israelis who are actually acquainted with Islamic policies and civilization. 

A few weeks after the Oslo agreement was signed, Arafat went to Johannesburg, and in a mosque there he made a speech in which he apologized, saying, "Do you think I signed something with the Jews which is contrary to the rules of Islam?" (I have obtained a copy of Arafat's recorded speech so I heard it from his own mouth.) Arafat continued, "That's not so. I'm doing exactly what the prophet Mohammed did." 

Whatever the prophet is supposed have done becomes a precedent. What Arafat was saying was, "Remember the story of Hudaybiya." The prophet had made an agreement there with the tribe of Kuraish for 10 years. But then he trained 10,000 soldiers and within two years marched on their city of Mecca. He, of course, found some kind of pretext. 

Thus, in Islamic jurisdiction, it became a legal precedent which states that you are only allowed to make peace for a maximum of 10 years. Secondly, at the first instance that you are able, you must renew the jihad [thus breaking the "peace" agreement].
In Israel, it has taken over 50 years in this country for our people to understand that they cannot speak about [permanent] peace with Moslems. It will take another 50 years for the western world to understand that they have got a state of war with the Islamic civilization that is virile and strong. This should be understood: When we talk about war and peace, we are not talking in Belgium, French, English, or German terms. We are talking about war and peace in Islamic terms. 

Cease-fire as a Tactical Choice
What makes Islam accept cease-fire? Only one thing - when the enemy is too strong. It is a tactical choice. 

Sometimes, he may have to agree to a cease-fire in the most humiliating conditions. It's allowed because Mohammed accepted a cease-fire under humiliating conditions. That's what Arafat said to them in Johannesburg.
When western policy makers hear these things, they answer, "What are you talking about? You are in the Middle Ages. You don't understand the mechanisms of politics." 

Which mechanisms of politics? There are no mechanisms of politics where power is. And I want to tell you one thing - we haven't seen the end of it, because the minute a radical Moslem power has atomic, chemical or biological weapons, they will use it. I have no doubt about that. 

Now, since we face war and we know that we cannot get more than an impermanent cease-fire, one has to ask himself what is the major component of an Israeli/Arab cease-fire. It is that the Islamic side is weak and your side is strong. The relations between Israel and the Arab world in the last 50 years since the establishment of our State has been based only on this idea, the deterrent power. 

Wherever You Have Islam, You Will Have War
The reason that we have what we have in Yugoslavia and other places is because Islam succeeded into entering these countries. Wherever you have Islam, you will have war. It grows out of the attitude of Islamic civilization. 

What are the poor people in the Philippines being killed for? What's happening between Pakistan and India? 

Islamic Infiltration
Furthermore, there is another fact that must be remembered. The Islamic world has not only the attitude of open war, but there's also war by infiltration.
One of the things which the western world is not paying enough attention to is the tremendous growth of Islamic power in the western world. What happened in America and the Twin Towers is not something that came from the outside. And if America doesn't wake up, one day the Americans will find themselves in a chemical war and most likely in an atomic war - inside the U.S. 

End of Days
It is highly important to understand how a civilization sees the end of days. In Christianity and in Judaism, we know exactly what is the vision of the end of days.
In Judaism, it is going to be as in Isaiah - peace between nations, not just one nation, but between all nations. People will not have any more need for weapons and nature will be changed - a beautiful end of days and the kingdom of God on earth. 

Christianity goes as far as Revelation to see a day that Satan himself is obliterated. There are no more powers of evil. That's the vision.
I'm speaking now as a historian. I try to understand how Islam sees the end of days. In the end of days, Islam sees a world that is totally Moslem, completely Moslem under the rule of Islam. Complete and final victory. 

Christians will not exist, because according to many Islamic traditions, the Moslems who are in hell will have to be replaced by somebody and they'll be replaced by the Christians. 

The Jews will no longer exist, because before the coming of the end of days, there is going to be a war against the Jews where all Jews should be killed. I'm quoting now from the heart of Islamic tradition, from the books that are read by every child in school. They Jews will all be killed. They'll be running away and they'll be hiding behind trees and rocks, and on that day Allah will give mouths to the rocks and trees and they will say, "Oh Moslem come here, there is a Jew behind me, kill him." Without this, the end of days cannot come. This is a fundamental of Islam. 

Is There a Possibility to End This Dance of War?
The question which we in Israel are asking ourselves is what will happen to our country? Is there a possibility to end this dance of war? 

The answer is, "No. Not in the foreseeable future." What we can do is reach a situation where for a few years we may have relative quiet. 

But for Islam, the establishment of the state of Israel was a reverse of Islamic history. First, Islamic territory was taken away from Islam by Jews. You know by now that this can never be accepted, not even one meter. So everyone who thinks Tel Aviv is safe is making a grave mistake. Territory, which at one time was dominated by Islamic rule, now has become non-Moslem. Non-Moslems are independent of Islamic rule; Jews have created their own independent state. It is anathema. 

And (this is the worse) Israel, a non-Moslem state, is ruling over Moslems. It is unthinkable that non-Moslems should rule over Moslems. 

I believe that Western civilization should hold together and support each other. Whether this will happen or not, I don't know. Israel finds itself on the front lines of this war. It needs the help of its sister civilization. It needs the help of America and Europe. It needs the help of the Christian world. One thing I am sure about, this help can be given by individual Christians who see this as the road to salvation.

http://www.americancongressfortruth.com

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Why American Muslim Converts Turn to Terrorism

The new face of Islamic terrorism is a pudgy, long-haired American kid who appears to be locked in a desperate, losing struggle to grow a beard: Adam Yahiye Gadahn.

Just as they did in the cases of Gadahn's fellow Muslim converts (John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, and others), Western analysts have ascribed Gadahn's involvement with Al Qaeda as a product of his alienation. Gadahn obligingly expresses this alienation in a written account of his conversion, revealing that he "had become obsessed with demonic Heavy Metal music" and even "eschewed personal cleanliness." Around that time he discovered Islam by cruising the Internet.

Unfortunately, Gadahn's conversion story ends before he landed in the Al Qaeda camp. All the talk of disaffected youth that has filled the airwaves over the last few days doesn't even come close to explaining that. Gadahn could have just as easily become a Jehovah's Witness, or a Mormon, or a follower of Phish. None of those choices, made daily by other disaffected youth, would have landed him in a terrorist training camp and made him the new face of Al Qaeda. Why did his choice of Islam do so?

Western converts must approach the Qur'an and other Islamic texts without the culturally ingrained ways of understanding them that Muslims pick up in Islamic societies. Thus they come to Islam more or less in a pure, abstract form. The force of any given passage of Qur'an or Hadith, not blunted by culture or familiarity, can be presented by whoever instructs the convert with any spin the teacher might favor. Gadahn and other Western converts were probably recruited by straightforward appeals to numerous passages in the Qur'an and Sunnah. Violent jihad is founded on numerous verses of the Qur'an -- most notably, one known as the "Verse of the Sword": "Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them . . . " (Sura 9:5).

Such verses are not taken "out of context" to justify armed jihad by radical imams such as those who may have taught Gadahn; on the contrary, that's how they have been understood by Muslims from the beginning of Islam. One manual of Islamic law, which in 1991 gained the approval of Cairo's influential Al-Azhar University as conforming "to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community," is quite specific about the meaning of jihad. It is, it says, "war against non-Muslims."

This manual stipulates that the Muslim community "makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax." The requirement that non-Muslims first be "invited" to enter Islam and then warred against until they either convert or pay the jizya, a special tax on non-Muslims, is founded upon the Qur'an: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29).

This is the explanation that radical Muslim spokesmen around the world have given for what they're doing: they are not terrorists, they are mujahedin, warriors of jihad. In this they are carrying on an illustrious tradition: violent jihad is a constant of Islamic history. Although after the Muslim siege of Vienna was broken in 1683 jihads became less common (at least in Europe), at no point did Islamic theology reject the doctrine of jihad. It can always be revived again where possible and necessary.

Yet the simple fact that violent jihad remained and remains today a vital component of Islamic theology is today smothered under a fog of political correctness. This plays into the hands of Islamic radicals by making it unnecessary for self-proclaimed moderates to renounce these doctrines, or even to acknowledge their existence. But unless or until a large number of Muslims around the world do so, the call to violent jihad will continue to inspire young people like Gadahn.

Thus whenever someone proclaims that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists (instead of a religion that contains a violent doctrine that sets it at odds with the rest of world and cries out for reform), they are helping to make sure that more and more disaffected youth like Adam Gadahn will end up in radical Muslim training camps -- and will eventually carry their struggle back to their infidel homeland.

This article appeared on June 3, 2003 on Human Events Online, by Robert Spencer http://www.sullivan-county.com/immigration/rob_trade.htm

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Muslims in Europe

Muslim growth is transforming Europe. France and other Western nations struggle with widening cultural chasm. What is happening in Europe might provide a partial preview of what lies ahead for the United States and its fast-growing Muslim population. For the first time in history, Muslims are building large and growing minorities across the secular Western world - nowhere more visibly than in Western Europe, where their numbers have more than doubled in the past two decades. The effect is unfolding from Amsterdam to Paris to Madrid, as Muslims struggle - with words, votes and sometimes violence - to stake out their place in adopted societies. Disproportionately young, poor and unemployed, they seek greater recognition and an Islam that fits their lives. Just as Egypt, Pakistan and Iran are witnessing the debate over the shape of Islam today, Europe is emerging as the battleground of tomorrow. By midcentury, at least one in five Europeans will be Muslim. That change is unlike other waves of immigration because it poses a more essential challenge: defining a modern Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization. The West must decide how its laws and values will shape and be shaped by Islam. For Europe, as well as the United States, the question is not which civilization, Western or Islamic, will prevail, but which of Islam's many strands will dominate. Will it be compatible with Western values or will it reject them? Center stage in that debate is France, home to the largest Islamic community on the continent, an estimated 5 million Muslims. Here, the process of defining Euro-Islam is unfolding around questions as concrete as the right to wear head scarves and as abstract as the meaning of citizenship, secularism and extremism. In some cases, conservative Muslims have refused to visit co-ed swimming pools, study Darwinism or allow women to be examined by male doctors. France is hoping to use the legal system to influence the direction of Islam within its borders. The government has deported 84 people in the past six months on suspicion of advocating violence and drawn wide attention for banning head scarves and other religious symbols in public schools. Thirteen hundred years after the Frankish King Charles Martel repelled Muslim armies from the central city of Tours, Islam is now the second religion of France; there are about 10 times as many Muslims as Jews. From the Paris suburbs 25 years ago, Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini planned a revolution that ultimately overthrew the Shah of Iran and, in turn, helped inspire a global Islamic revival. The fallout is easily visible today as the children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants in Europe increasingly embrace religion. In France and England, polls show greater commitment to daily prayers, mosque attendance and fasting during Ramadan than there was a decade ago. Unlike earlier immigrants, who were bent on returning home flush with cash, more-recent arrivals have been deterred by the turmoil in their homelands and stayed, building families that are larger than those of their graying ethnic European neighbors. The effect is amplified by the decline of European Christianity. The number of people who call themselves Catholic, the continent's largest denomination, has declined by more than a third in the past 25 years. The results are stark. Within six years, for instance, the three largest cities in the Netherlands will be majority Muslim. One-third of all German Muslims are younger than 18, nearly twice the proportion among the general population. With that growth, and the deepening strains between the U.S. and the Islamic world, radical Muslim clerics have found no shortage of adherents. A 2002 poll of British Muslims found that 44 percent believe attacks by al-Qaida are justified as long as "Muslims are being killed by America and its allies using American weapons." Germany estimates that there are 31,000 Islamists in the country, based on membership lists of some federations.

Muslims in Europe 1982/2003 (millions):  France 2.5/5.0; Germany 1.8/3.5; Albania 2.1/2.2; Serbia 1.9/2.0; U.K. 1.3/1.6; Bosnia 2.1/1.5; Italy 0.120/1.0; Spain 0.120/1.0    (OCR, 12/26/04, News 35) ..... An aggressive form of secularism is pushing Christianity from Europe. Some are predicting that Europe will be Islamic by the end of the 21st century. (USN&WR, 5/30/05, 52) ..... France (5M, 8.2%), Germany (3.7M, 4.5%), Britain (!.64M, 2.2%), Netherlands (804K, 4.9%), Italy (685K, 1.2%), Spain (427K, 1.0%), Switzerland (307K, 4.3%), Sweden (179K, 2.0%), Denmark (114K, 2.1%)  (OCR, 7/23/05, News 23)

Europe's rising class of believers: Muslims, 2/2405, The Christian Science Monitor
Religion's place in public life has shot to the top of the agenda in France, and in the rest of Europe, for one reason: Islam, and the growing millions of people on the Continent who practice it. Shocked by the discovery of Islamic terrorist networks on their soil, Europeans have suddenly woken up to the existence of an often marginalized Muslim minority that takes religion more seriously than they do. Particularly unnerving are the violent messages spread by a number of radical Muslim preachers. "I believe the whole of Britain has become Dar ul Harb [abode of infidels]," Syrian-born cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed told followers in a webcast on "PalTalk" last month. "The jihad is halal [acceptable] for the Muslims wherever they are." "Active Christians in mainstream churches across the Continent are worried by the rise in fundamentalist nationalism," says Jorgen Nielsen, a professor of Islamic studies at Birmingham University in England. Europe's Muslim population has tripled in the past 30 years, fueled by immigration from North Africa, Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This rapid growth "questions our ... ability to integrate" them, warns Patrick Weil, a French sociologist. Today, the relationship between native Europeans and their Muslim neighbors is fraught with tension. Mistrust on both sides threatens to explode into violence. Late last year, arsonists destroyed two mosques and a Muslim school in the Netherlands after an Islamic radical there was arrested for murdering filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who had criticized Muslim treatment of women. At the same time, acknowledges Tariq Ramadan, one of the foremost Islamic thinkers in Europe, Muslims must change their thinking on many customs that alienate Europeans, such as their attitudes about women. "From Arab Islam, or African Islam, we have to come to European Islam," he argues. Arguments over how to integrate Muslims into modern European life, and how much Islam Europe can accept without betraying its values, have been tainted by the link to terror. Governments have reacted by tightening controls on Muslim preachers, many of whom do not speak the language of their adopted country. Britain has introduced civics tests for imams. French authorities are planning to set up a school that would also send preachers in training to secular universities. And in Denmark, the right-wing People's Party, a government coalition member, urges a ban on all foreign imams. Such moves have won support even in some Muslim quarters. "It is not xenophobic for Europeans to be genuinely worried about the radicalization of Islam," says Tim Winter, a British Muslim convert who teaches at Cambridge University and preaches at a mosque. "But it is not acceptable to say that Islam cannot adapt to European life." Many Europeans who fear that Europe could soon lose its Christian identity. The prospect of Turkey joining the European Union (EU) in 10 years' time, which would add an expected 83 million Muslims, deepens their fear. "Europe is becoming Islamicized," warned Fritz Bolkestein a few weeks before he left his job as the EU's competition commissioner last December, noting that the two biggest cities in his native Netherlands, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, will be minority European within a few years. "Europeanizing" Islam, says Professor Nielsen, whose home town, Birmingham, is knows as the "Muslim capital of Britain," "requires changes in relations between the sexes, in relations between parents and children, significant changes in attitudes to people of other religions, and in attitudes toward the state." Police in several European countries have arrested hundreds of young Muslim men in connection with alleged terrorist plots since 9/11. In Britain, Scotland Yard is investigating Mr. Bakri Mohammed after reporters heard him proclaiming that "death will be inevitable ... if people reject the call of mighty Allah" at a secret rally in London in January. "There is a struggle for the soul of Islam," says Dr. Winter, also known as Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad. Even as young European Muslims seek new ways of living their religion, "Gulf embassies ... spend tens of millions of pounds to ensure that the most fundamentalist form of Islam prevails in schools and bookshops," he laments. "Liberal Islam - economically, culturally, and socially - is crying in the wilderness." The stronger fundamentalist Islam grows, the harder it will be for most Muslims to integrate, Ramadan says. "It is important for us as Muslims to be unambiguous that we respect the law and the secular framework," he insists.

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Europe's Fatwa Factories

by Soeren Kern
February 3, 2011 at 5:00 am

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1857/europe-fatwa-factories

Britain will have more Muslims than Kuwait in 2030, while France will have more than Jordan; and Germany will have more than Oman and the United Arab Emirates combined, according to a new study titled "The Future of the Global Muslim Population." The sobering projections (which are highly conservative estimates) about the exponential increase of Europe's Muslim population over the next 20 years will fuel the growing controversy over Muslim mass immigration to Europe, and also add pressure on European policymakers to find ways to ensure that Muslim immigrants are better integrated into European society.

Efforts to improve the integration of Muslim immigrants in Europe will, however, be fiercely resisted by influential figures from within Europe's Muslim community itself, many of whom, instead, are actively working to build parallel societies that keep Muslim immigrants isolated in exclusivist communities, and thus socially separated from their European host countries. Critics say these Muslim mini-societies are undermining not only European social cohesion but also European democracy.

Advocates of Muslim separatism say the Islamic worldview cannot be harmonized with Europe's secular worldview, and therefore call on Muslims living in European countries to segregate themselves and adhere only to Islamic Sharia law. European Islamic leaders, many of whom are openly hostile to Western values and laws, are also establishing Muslim lobbies to pressure European governments into synchronizing secular Western laws with Muslim religious beliefs. These initiatives are usually couched as the peaceful advocacy of minority rights, but the end result is that European societies have to adapt to Islam rather than the other way around.

European fatwa councils are at the forefront of Muslim efforts to build parallel legal systems based on Sharia law. A fatwa is a legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar on an issue where Islamic jurisprudence is unclear. In Europe, for example, fatwas routinely are issued to instruct Muslim immigrants that Sharia law is to be respected as superior to civil law and to democracy.

The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) is the most influential fatwa council in Europe. Based in Ireland, the ECFR is chaired by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a demagogic Egyptian Islamic scholar, and an intellectual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Qaradawi, who is also a spiritual advisor for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, has defended suicide attacks against Jews as "martyrdom in the name of Allah," and has been banned from entering Great Britain and the United States.

The ECFR is an integral part of the Brussels-based Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), an umbrella group that unites more than 30 Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Europe, and acts as the main vehicle for propagating Muslim Brotherhood ideology in Europe.

The ECFR's objective is to "present to the Muslim minorities in the West particularly" its interpretation of "the manifestation of Allah's infinite mercy, knowledge and wisdom." More specifically, an ECFR fatwa says: "Sharia cannot be amended to conform to changing human values and standards; rather, it is the absolute norm to which all human values and conduct must conform; it is the frame to which they must be referred; it is the scale on which they must be weighed."

The ECFR (the English-language mission statement has been removed from ECFR's website) says it wants to achieve its aims by: a) bringing together Islamic scholars who live in Europe; b) attempting to unify the views within Islamic jurisprudence with regard to the minority status of Muslims in Europe; c) issuing collective fatwas that meet the needs of Muslims in Europe, and that solve their problems and regulate their interaction with the European communities, all according Sharia; and d) conducting research on how issues arising in Europe can be resolved with strict respect for Sharia.

The fatwas issued by the ECFR reflect the Muslim Brotherhood's fierce opposition to the separation of church/mosque and state. For example, a fatwa issued by al-Qaradawi on the question of "How Does Islam View Secularism" states: "Since Islam is a comprehensive system of Ibadah [worship] and Sharia ["the path":legislation], the acceptance of secularism means abandonment of Sharia, a denial of the divine guidance and a rejection of Allah's injunctions…. The call for secularism among Muslims is atheism and a rejection of Islam. Its acceptance as a basis for rule in place of Sharia is a downright apostasy."

A fatwa titled "Challenging the Applicability of Sharia" rules on equal rights for women. It states: "Those misguided people cudgel their brains in finding out lame arguments that tend to give both males and females equal shares of inheritance… It is the nature of woman to be maintained and cared for by man ... irrespective of whether she is poor or rich."

A fatwa titled "Source of the Punishment for Apostasy" rules on the freedom of religion. It states: "All Muslim jurists agree that the apostate is to be punished. However, they differ regarding the punishment itself. The majority of them go for killing; meaning that an apostate is to be sentenced to death."

In a fatwa titled "Islamic Ruling on Female Circumcision," al-Qaradawi states that although the practice is not obligatory, "whoever finds it serving the interest of his daughters should do it, and I personally support this under the current circumstances in the modern world." In an interview with the London-based Guardian newspaper, al-Qaradawi says he accepts wife-beating "as a method of last resort -- though only lightly." He also says female rape victims should be punished if dressed "immodestly" when assaulted.

In an article called "Islamic Justice Finds a Foothold in Heart of Europe," the Wall Street Journal reports that the ECFR uses the infamous anti-Semitic forgery known as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in its theological deliberations. The Journal also says the ECFR "is part of a web of organizations that spread ideology close to the Muslim Brotherhood throughout Europe."

The Muslim Brotherhood outlined its vision for the globalization of Sharia law in a 14-page policy document called "The Project." Authorities in Switzerland, acting on a special request from the United States government, discovered the document in November 2001 after they entered the Swiss villa of a Muslim Brotherhood operative, Yusuf Nada.

"The Project" is a long-term multi-phased roadmap to "establish an Islamic government on Earth." The document specifically calls for Muslims in Europe to establish "a parallel society where the group is above the individual, godly authority above human liberty, and the holy scripture above the laws."

Elsewhere in Europe, the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF), a large Muslim umbrella group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, has issued fatwas that encourage French Muslims to reject all authority (namely, secular) that does not have a basis in Sharia law.

In November 2005, for example, the UOIF issued a fatwa banning Muslims from participating in the riots that engulfed parts of France that year. At the time, Muslim youth (mostly teenagers of Arab and African origin) took to the streets after two of them were accidentally electrocuted while fleeing police.

The fatwa stated: "Under Islam, one cannot get one of his/her rights at the expense of others." The UOIF reached its conclusion by citing verses from Islamic religious texts: "Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors;" "Eat and drink of that which Allah hath provided, and do not act corruptly, making mischief in the earth," and "Lo! Allah loveth not the corrupt."

Sheikh Ahmad Jaballah, a member of the French fatwa council, said the fatwa would send a strong message to France that the riots were un-Islamic. But French officials were infuriated that in its call for calm, the UOIF's fatwa only invoked the name of Allah and made no mention of the need for Muslim immigrants to obey French secular laws.

In Germany, the Central Council of Muslims (ZMD), a group that is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, recently asked the ECFR to issue a fatwa on whether professional Muslim soccer players may break their fast during the holy month of Ramadan. The move followed a contract dispute involving second-division soccer club FSV Frankfurt, which in 2009 gave three of its players a formal warning for fasting. The fatwa states: "The Muslim professional can make good the fasting days in times when there are no matches, and so continue to pay God and the holy month of Ramadan honor and respect." In any case, the ZMD also notes that "keeping the body healthy plays a leading role in Islam."

In Norway, the Islamic Council of Norway (IRN), a group that represents 60,000 Muslims there, was involved in an imbroglio about the Islamic approach to homosexuality. The IRN wavered on whether homosexuals should face the death penalty, even though capital punishment is outlawed in Norway. It attempted to defuse criticism for its stance by asking the ECFR to issue a fatwa on the issue. The ECFR, in a fatwa titled "Homosexuality and Lesbianism: Sexual Perversions," states: "Islam emphatically forbids this deed [homosexual sex] and prescribes a severe punishment for it in this world and the next. (…) The scholars of Islam (…) said that the person guilty of this crime should be stoned, whether he is married or unmarried."

In Sweden, the Swedish Fatwa Council recently issued a fatwa calling the December 2010 suicide attack in central Stockholm "deplorable" and "reprehensible." The attacker, however, attended Stockholm's biggest mosque which, like the Swedish Fatwa Council, is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. The imam of the mosque, Sheik Hassan Mousa, is known for delivering fiery sermons (with sinister titles like "America Rapes Islam") that call for Muslims to take violent action against "infidels."

As for al-Qaradawi, he speaks openly about the goals of Islam: "What remains, then, is to conquer Rome. (…) This means that Islam will come back to Europe for the third time, after it was expelled from it twice. (…) Conquest through Dawa [proselytizing], that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through our Dawa.

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Jihad Express: Islamic militants in Europe

Muslim boys were trained in a Paris park last year for holy war in Iraq. Several were in their teens, born and raised in France, and many knew nothing more about guns and bombs than what they'd seen in movies. Some spoke no Arabic. But they heard the call to jihad that was raised by radical Islamist preachers, and they answered it. One died in Fallujah. Three are known to be imprisoned in Iraq, at least one of them in Abu Ghraib. Three others are jailed in France. One blew himself up in an attack on the road to Baghdad airport.

The boys represent a growing threat to Europe—and, some studies suggest, to the United States. Over the last three years, starting even before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Jordanian terrorist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and groups close to him developed a sort of underground railroad to smuggle zealous fighters from Europe through Turkey and Syria into Iraq—and home again, if they survived. Now those recruits have been joined by a stream of young Islamists from Western Europe who are making their own way to the battlefield. Some are looking for Paradise as "martyrs," some just for street cred back home and some for serious combat experience in urban warfare. "Those who don't die and come back will be the future chiefs of Al Qaeda or Zarqawi [groups] in Europe," says French terrorism authority Roland Jacquard.

"We're watching very closely," says Gijs de Vries, the European Union's counterterrorism coordinator. "It only takes one or two dedicated individuals to create serious damage." All over Europe, in fact, investigators now face the threat of terrorists who are virtually self-taught, organized in groups with little or no central command and united by their obsession with the jihad against Americans in Iraq. "It has become a battle cry for Islamists around the world," says Michael Taarnby, author of a report on terrorist recruiting for the Danish Justice Ministry. Their most devastating blow to date was not inside Iraq but in Madrid last year, when a gruesome bombing spree killed 191 people in retaliation for Spain's presence in Iraq.

At a conference marking the anniversary of the Madrid atrocity last week, Robert Leiken of Washington's Nixon Center presented a provocative study of 373 radical Muslim terrorists arrested or killed in Europe and the United States from 1993 through 2004. His conclusion: some 87 percent are from immigrant backgrounds, but 41 percent are Western nationals, either naturalized, second generation or converts to Islam. "More French nationals were arrested than nationals of Pakistan and Yemen combined," says Leiken. While homegrown Muslim terrorists have so far been rare in the United States, in Europe they virtually recruit themselves, and Leiken points out that those who have European passports have almost open access to American territory through an ongoing visa-waiver program.

All this becomes especially disturbing in light of a recent notice circulated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security suggesting Al Qaeda's leadership has asked Zarqawi, officially Osama bin Laden's ally and "prince" in Iraq since last year, to expand his grisly terror campaign into Europe and the United States. As early as 2002, Zarqawi understood the potential for recruiting "Euro-jihadists," and the attraction the impending Iraq war would have for them. In February of that year, according to recently unsealed Spanish court documents, Zarqawi set up a meeting in Istanbul with prospective North African allies.

He proceeded to build a new network of existing cells spanning Western Europe, effectively creating a second Qaeda. The overall direction came from members of his Tawhid group in Germany, according to papers presented by Italian prosecutors. Other participating cells have been traced to Spain, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Switzerland, even Norway. Apart from their shared religious extremism, they answered to no racial or national profile. There were women as well as men. Some had no papers; some had legal refugee status. Some were European citizens.

Recent arrests suggest how Europe's jihadi movement has grown. In Germany, for example, officials rounded up 22 people in the city of Ulm and charged them with forging passports and other travel documents that could be used for travel to Iraq. A few weeks ago, near Mainz, the Germans arrested an Iraqi identified only as Ibrahim Mohamed K., who was charged with trying to enlist a Palestinian immigrant in Germany for a suicide mission in Iraq. More ominously, Ibrahim Mohamed K. was also accused of trying to obtain 48 grams of enriched uranium through a middleman in Luxembourg so he could make a radiological "dirty bomb."

Since the Madrid bombings, police across Europe have intensified their crackdowns. But as old cells are dismantled, new ones emerge to take their place. Often they are close-knit groups of friends and relatives, making them even harder for investigators to crack. "That frustrates the security services," says Taarnby. But the news isn't all bad. "It's also a frustrating situation for the wanna-be jihadists," Taarnby says. "How do they join? You need to know someone. You don't just buy a ticket to Baghdad." The arrests and surveillance in Western Europe have in many cases focused on the "gatekeepers," often associated with radical mosques, who facilitated travel to Iraq and earlier jihads. Tape transcripts submitted to Italian courts, for instance, show that the police have not only bugged phones, cars and apartments, but the mosques themselves.

And yet the jihad keeps growing. Outside the wrought-iron fences of the Buttes Chaumont, you can get a glimpse of why. Dozens of grim housing projects loom out of barren pavements. Some of the immigrant-filled towers have police outposts designed into their ground floors. Unemployment is as high as 60 percent, according to a municipal official. Kids spend the day in second-rate schools and then loiter in the streets with nothing better to do. "They have French nationality but they don't have a job," says Sabah Khadim, a senior official at the Interior Ministry in Baghdad. "They don't have a good life. And Iraq becomes an attractive place." Until that pattern is broken, the lure for Euro-jihadists will persist—as will the risks for the rest of us. (Newsweek, 3/21/05, 34)

An eight-year investigation concluded that Muslim extremists, leading quiet lives as businessmen, laborers, and waiters, operated in Spain for years. They recruited men for terrorist training in Afghanistan, preaching holy war, and laundering money for al-Qaeda. 24 men, arrested between 2001 and 2004, are being tried for terrorists acts, including links to 9/11 and Madrid train bombings. Most of the men are Syrian or Moroccan, one is Spanish. (San Diego U-T, 4/23/05, A3) ..... MADRID, Spain (6/15/05, AP) -- Spanish police arrested 16 Islamic terror suspects in raids in several cities, including 11 men accused of having ties to Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's group al-Qaida in Iraq and recruiting people for suicide attacks there. The 11 were part of a support group for a Syrian-based recruitment network for attacks on U.S. and allied forces, and some of them had said they themselves wanted to become ''martyrs for Islam'' and were awaiting orders to do so. Most of the 11 are Moroccan and practically all of them sold drugs and committed robberies to finance the network, the ministry said. They were arrested as part of an investigation that began in 2004. The other five detainees were described as suspects in last year's train bombing in Madrid. Some 500 Spanish police took part in raids in Barcelona, Valencia, the southern Andalusia region, and Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the northern coast of Morocco. Al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq is believed to be responsible for many of the bloodiest terror attacks in the country. The Spanish Interior Ministry said the 11 detainees belonged to a terrorist network that was established in Spain and linked to Ansar al-Islam, believed to have ties with the group run by al-Zarqawi. It said the apparent leader of the Spanish group's recruitment activities was a 28-year-old Moroccan named Samir Tahtah, arrested near Barcelona. He coordinated communications with overseas leaders of the network and the sending of recruits to Iraq for terrorist attacks, the statement said. Some of the other five detainees had close ties to ringleaders of last year's commuter train bombing in Madrid, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500.  A total of 26 people have been jailed in the train bombings, and more than 70 others have been questioned and released but are still considered suspects.

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MONCEAU-SUR-SAMBRE, Belgium (12/1/05, AP) - 'Belgian Kamikaze' Shocks a Nation Local Woman Dies in Failed Attack Against U.S. Troops in Iraq How could a young woman turn from Belgian baker's assistant to Baghdad suicide bomber? Belgian Muriel Degauque may have been influenced to become a suicide bomber in Iraq after her marriage to an Algerian man. Belgium has been shocked by revelations that Muriel Degauque, an unassuming woman who grew up near the rust belt city of Charleroi, had entered Iraq from Syria and detonated explosives strapped to her body in a failed attack against U.S. troops. The 38-year-old woman's mother, Liliane Degauque, told local TV networks that her daughter was "so nice'' - but began to change when she married an Algerian man and turned to Islamic fundamentalism. The case underscored the growing reach of international terrorism.

"It is the first time that we see that a Western woman, a Belgian, marrying a radical Muslim, and is converted up to the point of becoming a jihad fighter,'' federal police director Glenn Audenaert said. In her younger years, Muriel Degauque lived a conventional life in an industrial belt of southern Belgium. Media reports said she finished high school before taking on several jobs, including selling bread in a bakery. They also said that as an adolescent she had run into problems with drugs and alcohol. Authorities say Degauque went on to become a member of a terror cell that embraced al-Qaida's ideology. It included her second husband, a man of Moroccan origin who died in a separate terror attack in Iraq. "This is our Belgian kamikaze killed in Iraq,'' read the headline of Thursday's La Derniere Heure newspaper, over a picture of a smiling young woman looking into the camera. When Liliane Degauque saw police coming to her doorstep on Wednesday, she immediately knew what it was about. She had heard reports the evening before there had been a terrorist attack on Nov. 9 by a Belgian woman. "For three weeks already I tried to contact her by telephone but I got the answering machine,'' she told the RTBF network on Thursday. Authorities on Thursday formally arrested 5 of the 14 suspects detained in dawn raids the day before and charged them with involvement in a terrorist network that sent volunteers to Iraq, including Muriel Degauque. Nine were released. Those placed under arrest were a Tunisian and four Belgians, three of whom had North African roots. "This action shows how international terrorism tries to set up networks in western European nations, recruit for terror attacks in conflict areas and look for funds to finance terrorism,'' said Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. In France on Wednesday, police in the Paris region arrested a 15th suspect, a 27-year-old Tunisian man thought to have had contacts with the Belgian group. Authorities said the Belgian network had been planning to send more volunteers to Iraq for attacks. The raids in Brussels and three other cities across the country involving more than 200 police officers followed media reports of the Belgian woman's suicide. Nine of the 14 suspects were Belgian citizens. Three were Moroccan and two were Tunisian. Police carried out raids and detained 11 people in the capital Brussels, and one each in southern Charleroi, northern Antwerp and eastern Riemst. Belgium has been mentioned as a breeding ground for terrorists in the past and there are currently 13 Belgian and Moroccan nationals on trial for allegedly being members of an Islamic group suspected in recent bomb attacks in Spain and Morocco. Islamic radical groups linked to al-Qaida terror network are suspected of setting up networks in Belgium and other European nations with large Muslim communities. For many in Belgium though, Wednesday's arrests were a chilling reminder that no one is immune. "Belgium is directly involved in the terrorist threat,'' said Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx.

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Culture Clash in Denmark

The close-knit Danes find their liberal ideals tested by a growing, alienated Muslim population

By Thomas Omestad

Posted Sunday, December 31, 2006

COPENHAGEN–This, a recent study concluded, is the happiest country on Earth. With Denmark's cradle-to-grave social welfare, highly regarded healthcare and education, prosperity, and small-country ethnic cohesion, the land that gave us Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales also excels at producing a good life in reality.

And yet, over the past year or so, the contented Danes have been forced to face both their greatest international crisis since World War II and the rise here of separate Muslim communities where many are unable or unwilling to enter the Danish mainstream. The international uproar over publication of 12 prophet Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper triggered violence that left at least 139 people dead, Danish diplomatic outposts torched in Lebanon and Syria, and Danish goods boycotted. Suddenly, Denmark felt dangerously exposed–a country of just 5.4 million people facing the wrath of an Islamic world exceeding a billion people.

The violence outside Denmark ultimately quieted down, though the country's security-threat level remains elevated. At home, the bitter disputes over the cartoons have highlighted an unhealed–and potentially hazardous–rift between the dominant Danes and the Muslim immigrants living in what are being called "parallel societies." Ask Danes and Muslim immigrants alike, and many will say there is something a bit rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark.

The legacy of the cartoon uproar is not all bad. Private efforts at building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslim Danes have accelerated. Secular Danish Muslims condemned the violence overseas and appealed for dialogue. That, say Danes, has encouraged a greater appreciation of the differences–political and otherwise-among Muslims here.

"Time bomb." Still, the cartoon crisis itself did not prompt any basic rethinking of how to integrate Muslims more deeply into Danish society. And the country is now preoccupied with things Muslim. Attention is riveted on any controversy linked to its Muslim residents–so-called honor killings of female relatives, street crime, terrorism probes, unemployment, forced marriages, use of veils, and so on. Denmark is pondering the specter of ever more young Muslims–unemployed and undereducated–finding their identities not as coolly secularized Danes but as fervent or even radical Muslims. "We are sitting on a time bomb," warns Eva Smith, a law professor and racism expert at the University of Copenhagen.

The ferment in Denmark is especially striking because of its progressive traditions, but it also reflects the broader tremors rattling western Europe, where tangled issues of national identity, culture, religion, and security arising from Muslim immigration have bolted to the fore. Old, ethnically grounded societies are being roiled by the presence of Muslim newcomers–or at least by the reaction to them. "There's kind of an unspoken assumption that they're not really Dutch, not really Danes, and so forth," reasons one senior U.S. official who follows the phenomenon. "Europeans are uncomfortable with Islam, and they see it as an alien body in their midst. ... Europe's got a huge problem, and they're just getting their minds around it now."

The cartoon controversy, along with frustration over the slow pace of Muslim integration, is leading some Danes to question their prized image as an open and tolerant nation. This, after all, is a people who under Nazi occupation spirited nearly all of their 7,000-some Jews to safety in Sweden. In the 1960s and 1970s, Denmark sought to offer one of Europe's most liberal immigration policies. Many came as guest workers and were later joined by family members and asylum seekers. Even so, Denmark remained remarkably mono-ethnic; only about 4 percent of the population is Muslim. Coming mostly from Arab states, Iran, and Pakistan, the immigrants have clustered in a few neighborhoods in Copenhagen and other cities

Yet as the preoccupation with Muslims has deepened in recent years, Denmark has swung in the opposite direction, erecting perhaps Europe's most restrictive set of rules. A rightist, anti-immigration party sits not in government but at its side; the ruling coalition relies on its votes to govern. The mood toward immigrants has, with exceptions, soured. The share of Danes who view Islam as incompatible with democracy has shot up. And Muslims are often portrayed as troublemakers who sup at the table of Danish generosity–all the while rejecting what makes Denmark special. "They create ghettos. ... There are a lot of criminals," says Henrik Pedersen, a Dane who runs a Copenhagen trucking business. "Muslim people should be in a Muslim country."

More sophisticated immigration skeptics worry that "Danish values" are under threat by politicized Muslims who resist assimilation. These values include democracy, far-reaching personal freedoms, equality between the sexes, and the trust born of unusually strong social bonds. One government minister frankly called the Danes a "tribe" in describing their group identity. "The whole quality of Danish life stands or falls with this community of values," adds Ralf Pittelkow, a newspaper columnist and coauthor of a bestselling book on the Islamist challenge. "Danes need to feel reassured that the main features of Danish society remain unchanged. ... We are at a crunch point."

Some Danes argue that evading the impact of immigration is impossible. "Some people want to keep Denmark as a kind of museum," says Helle Stenum, the chairwoman of MixEurope, a pro-integration group. "We are a rich, safe society that is scared." Adds Copenhagen schoolteacher Maia Lisa Petersen as she rushes to a subway station, "These other cultures, other values force us to wake up. ... We can't hide anymore in this nice, perfect little Scandinavian world."

Nor can the Muslim immigrants easily hide in enclaves that insulate them from the culture that surrounds them. They say that the political and media atmosphere has turned against them–particularly since the cartoon crisis. "It totally changed my view of Danish society," says Mustafa Kucukyild, 26, who came from Turkey as a 1-year-old boy. "The spotlight is on Muslims. I'm much more cautious about what I say." As the kebab and pizza restaurant where he works fills up with blond-haired college students, he is talking about his estrangement from the Danes. Kucukyild is asked if, having spent nearly all his life here, he feels Danish. "Definitely, no," he replies. "No matter how much you want to be, you always have this black hair," he says, grabbing at a lock of his own. "I will always be a foreigner."

The alienation is pervasive, and it goes well beyond the discomfort some Muslims feel toward Denmark's permissive atmosphere. "Danish people are very hard people, very cold," claims Hassan, a middle-aged, Iraqi-born businessman in the Copenhagen district of Norrebro, where Danes often mix with immigrants. Hassan says that his children are adapting better than he is, though his 15-year-old daughter has faced problems in class–a teacher has chided her about her head scarf. Other immigrants report occasional hassles of other sorts: snide comments or being bumped on buses, being barred from nightclubs or followed by department store security officers–or the "what are you doing here?" stares in coffee shops. (Some Danes counter that Muslims are being overly sensitive, playing up an image of victimhood.)

A young doctor of Palestinian descent–fluent in Danish as well as Arabic and English and a fan of the country's famed pastries–describes tensions that have ensued from being overtly Muslim. A radiologist colleague turned to Suher Othman one day and announced, "I don't like scarves." One patient refused to be treated by her; another resisted until a fellow patient intervened. Othman, 27, says immigrants are routinely seen as "a burden." Still, she adds, "this is the only society I've ever known. They have to face that we're going to stay here."

Stay indeed, but many without jobs. In a country with an aging workforce, negligible unemployment overall–and even labor shortages–joblessness among non-European immigrants is shockingly high: Barely half work. Employers say that discrimination is not to blame but rather language barriers, scant job experience, and lack of motivation to work. Jobless benefits rival the wages of entry-level positions. Companies even cite immigrants' inability to understand the ironic Danish sense of humor.

The depth of alienation between ethnic Danes and the Muslim newcomers is, in one respect, surprising. Denmark has long been one of Europe's bastions of tolerance and openness. Part of the Danish mentality is an outsize will to do good in the world. The country ranks fifth in the share of income donated to overseas development aid. Especially in the past, newcomers to Denmark received generous benefits, including three years of free instruction in Danish–a perk that continues. It is an impressive record that might encourage some Danes to feel that nothing more is required of them–perhaps even create some blind spots. "We are so sure we are good," says Smith of the University of Copenhagen.

Close-knit. The closeness of the Danes, though, leads Muslims to conclude that the Danish club is a hard one to join. Othman has the education and language skills to fit in. Yet, she says, "it is very difficult to break into this culture." Other Muslims contend that too many Danes lack respect for them and their cultures. "They have a picture of the Muslim immigrant as a parasite," says Mahmoud Alsaadi, who runs a sweets shop in Norrebro and has worked as a carpenter. Alsaadi, 37, is a Palestinian from Lebanon who arrived here in 1990. "We appreciate a lot about Denmark, but we feel that they could also learn from us"–particularly about close-knit families, he says. "I don't want to impose my ways on them, and I don't want them to impose their ways on me."

The sheer religiosity–and signs of devotion are said to be growing–of some Danish Muslims is itself a source of worry in Denmark. The Danes generally take a relaxed approach to their leading religion, Lutheranism. A mere 3 percent of Danes attend church at least weekly, the lowest such rate in a recent survey of 21 countries. Secularism is celebrated, and religion, in a typical Danish view, is a strictly personal affair that should be kept out of the public eye as much as possible. Some Danes are offended by demonstrative manifestations of Islam, including the veil. Concerns also arise from the growing number of Muslim parents who are opting to send their children to private, religiously oriented schools. The government's culture minister has publicly commented on the inferior status of a "medieval Muslim culture." Says Tim Jensen, a religious historian at the University of Southern Denmark, "There is a sense of threat by an antimodern, medieval force [Islam]." Pressures from immigration, globalization, and the European Union all "make Danes feel more insecure. We are constantly being asked what you are, constantly being confronted with people who behave differently."

Against this backdrop of clashing cultures came the Muhammad cartoons on Sept. 30, 2005, in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The impetus for publication, says the paper's cultural editor, Flemming Rose, was to stir a debate about self-censorship after he learned that illustrators refused to work on a children's book about Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims. Muslims regard any depiction of Muhammad as sacrilegious. Danish Muslims protested the publication, albeit peacefully, contending that the cartoons mocked their prophet. One cartoon showed a turban in the shape of a lit bomb.

Their complaints met with a stiff response from the paper, which saw the issue as a fundamental test of freedom of speech. The paper eventually expressed regret for any offense caused-but not for publishing the caricatures. Rose, who has received death threats and was working from Washington until recently, says that demands for observing such taboos amount to "asking for my submission." He adds, "You should not allow special treatment of religion."

"Smearing." Islamic activists also pressured the Danish government to rein in the paper. There, as well, they got nowhere. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he could do nothing that might erode freedom of speech. He also rejected a request to meet with Muslim-country ambassadors who complained about a "smearing campaign" against Islam and Muslims by Danish politicians and media.

Lacking clout in Denmark, some of the local imams decided to export the controversy. Two missions were dispatched to the Middle East to publicize the cartoons and the Danish government's uncompromising response. Some Arab ambassadors in Copenhagen also played up the controversy. Within weeks, violence flared on the streets of the Middle East, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Indonesia–some of it orchestrated by national governments and Islamists, according to both Danish and U.S. officials. "The Danes didn't know what hit them," says a senior U.S. official. The Bush administration at first reacted cautiously, hoping not to do anything that might align itself with religiously offensive drawings and further harm its own standing in the Islamic world. Then the shaken Danes complained to their American allies that they were not getting enough public support. They got it.

Though Denmark itself saw no violence, the images of deadly mobs burning Danish flags deepened the sense of threat from Islamists, wherever they may be. But the crisis did not lead to any rethinking of the government's strategy for integrating Muslims. "We have to agree on some fundamental values," says Rikke Hvilshoj, the integration minister. "Denmark is not just a piece of geography where we live side by side." In power since 2001, the current government has tightened the immigration rules that affect many Muslims, slicing arrivals in the categories of family reunification and asylum from more than 17,000 that year to fewer than 5,000 in 2005. A foreign spouse must now be at least 24 before legally coming to live in Denmark; benefits for newcomers were reduced, and collateral was required for their support. At the same time, overall immigration, especially from within Europe, is rising.

The government's moves, at the least, have sought to give Danes a breather from rapid immigration. After years of policy neglect, Hvilshoj says, "the number [was] too high. ... we needed to get control of immigration." The government is stepping up efforts to reduce immigrant unemployment and emphasizing success stories, sending "role models" into Muslim communities.

The governing coalition has a persuasive reason not to soften its stand on immigration: It needs the tacit backing of the right-wing Danish People's Party to stay in power. With 13 percent of the seats in parliament, it appears to wield more influence than any other such party in Europe. Critics accuse it of outright xenophobia, a charge it rejects. But Danes know where the group stands in the culture wars. Its party chairwoman has called Islamic leaders here the "Trojan horse in Denmark," and another lawmaker's website referred to Muslims as "cancer tumors." The party aims to keep Denmark the way it is. "We don't want to change our ways. They [immigrants] have to adapt their ways," says Soren Espersen, a prominent People's Party lawmaker. Espersen likens political Islamists to communists and Nazis and says they aim to limit Denmark's democracy. "There are people now who want to tell us what we can laugh at," he says. "I don't want to respect Islam. Why should I respect the prophet Muhammad?"

There is political combat within Denmark's Muslim communities as well. Ahmed Abu Laban, an imam who leads Copenhagen's Muslim Faith Society, tells U.S. News that he helped organize the foreign missions publicizing the Muhammad cartoons in order to counter "an anti-Islamic campaign." Says Laban, "We have been demonized for six, seven, eight years–then the cartoons." Laban adds, "The Danes don't like religion, and they don't like Islam. ... I see nothing bad in this country except the spirit itself." Many Danes now loathe Laban as a virtual traitor for having promoted the controversy overseas.

Bodyguards. Laban dismisses a recent political initiative by moderates to form the group Democratic Muslims, calling it a "fake approach." The leader of the new group, a secular Muslim lawmaker named Naser Khader, needs 24-hour-a-day bodyguards. His effort is popular with Danes, but hard-line Muslims like Laban call Khader a "shield" for the Danes and vilify him. The group makes it "very difficult to say, 'You Muslims,'" says Khader. "We are democratic without any reservations. ... We are Danes first and Muslims second." Naser says that the Islamists consider secular Muslims like himself as their principal enemy. "They are seen as more dangerous than Christians and Jews," he says. Still, only 14 percent of Danish Muslims back his group, according to a recent poll.

Meanwhile, Danes are edgy about growing Muslim radicalism–a development that is not quantified but is almost universally suspected. The primary threat to Denmark may be external: Its sturdy support for the Bush administration, including troop commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the cartoon case has raised its profile in the Muslim world–in a most unwelcome way. A poll of Egyptians rated Denmark as the second-most-hostile country after Israel. Officials have tallied some 200 threats against Denmark, including one from al Qaeda during the cartoon crisis.

Yet there are worries about what is happening inside Denmark as well. Two terrorism cases are headed for trial. One involves arrests in October 2005 of alleged militants in a Copenhagen suburb said to be connected to a Sarajevo-based plot against European forces in Bosnia or elsewhere. The other case emerged from police raids into an immigrant neighborhood near the city of Odense last September. Investigators uncovered supplies of ammonium nitrate, metal shavings, and the explosive TATP. Five of the nine arrested are still jailed for allegedly planning attacks that authorities say would have been "the most severe ever in Denmark."

Security agents enjoy wide latitude for spying on suspected extremists, and they employ that most Danish of practices: the "preventive visit." According to Hans Jorgen Bonnichsen, the former head of operations at the Danish Security Intelligence Service, the "knock on the door" sometimes leads to tense conversations, but more often they are "friendly." "It's a way to tell him, 'Be careful. We know what you're doing now,'" Bonnichsen says. The visits can serve to neutralize a suspect because his cohorts then cannot know whether he has turned informer. The Intelligence Service has more than doubled its size since 9/11, adding Arabic speakers and analysts.

Still, Danes talk as though it is only a matter of time before they are hit, and the alienation Muslims feel from unemployment, discrimination, and being portrayed as radicals may be feeding the danger. The government's philosophy is "always pushing these immigrants away," argues Fatih Alev, a moderate imam. "The government says it wants integration, but what it does is anti-integration." Adds Jensen, the religious historian, "They are constantly put under suspicion of being fifth-column people." He asks, "Are we contributing to the production of terrorists?" For the happy but wary Danes, it is a question as essential as it is grating.

This story appears in the January 8, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report, page 40. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061231/8denmark.htm

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Islam's Claim on Spain, L.A. Times, January 18, 2005

GRANADA, Spain — Across a valley of fragrant cedars and orange trees, worshipers at the pristine Great Mosque of Granada look out at the Alhambra, the 700-year-old citadel and monument to the heyday of Islamic glory.

Granada's Muslims chose the hilltop location precisely with the view, and its unmistakable symbolism, in mind.

It took them more than 20 years to build the mosque, the first erected here in half a millennium, after they conquered the objections of city leaders and agreed, ultimately, to keep the minaret shorter than the steeple on the Catholic Iglesia de San Nicolas next door.

Cloistered nuns on the other side of the mosque added a few feet to the wall enclosing their convent, as if to say they wanted neither to be seen nor to see.

Many of Spain's Muslims long for an Islamic revival to reclaim their legendary history, and inaugurating the Great Mosque last year was the most visible gesture. But horrific bombings by Muslim extremists that killed nearly 200 people in Madrid on March 11 have forced Spain's Muslims and non-Muslims to reassess their relationship, and turned historical assumptions on their head.

"We are a people trying to return to our roots," said Anwar Gonzalez, 34, a Granada native who converted to Islam 17 years ago. "But it's a bad time to be a Muslim."

Spain has a long, rich and complex history interwoven with the Muslim and Arab world, from its position as the center of Islamic Europe in the last millennium to today's confrontation with a vast influx of Muslim immigrants.

For more than seven centuries of Moorish rule, "Al Andalus," or Andalusia, was governed by Muslim caliphs who oversaw a splendid flourishing of art, architecture and learning that ended when Granada fell to Christian monarchs Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in 1492.

Muslims were expelled or exterminated in the Inquisition that followed, but the legacy of the Moors is seen throughout Andalusia, Spain's southern tier, in its language, palaces like the Alhambra, and food.

Yes, Isabella and Ferdinand ended all that flourishing of art, architecture, and learning. Sure. Aside from the dubious nature of that "flourishing" in itself, Muslim Spain was hardly a paradise for non-Muslims. Even Maria Rosa Menocal, in her extended whitewash of Muslim Spain called The Ornament of the World, admits that at the laws of dhimmitude were very much in force in the great Al-Andalus:

The dhimmi, as these covenanted peoples were called, were granted religious freedom, not forced to convert to Islam. They could continue to be Jews and Christians, and, as it turned out, they could share in much of Muslim social and economic life. In return for this freedom of religious conscience the Peoples of the Book (pagans had no such privilege) were required to pay a special tax — no Muslims paid taxes — and to observe a number of restrictive regulations: Christians and Jews were prohibited from attempting to proselytize Muslims, from building new places of worship, from displaying crosses or ringing bells. In sum, they were forbidden most public displays of their religious rituals.

So much for paradise. Also, historian Kenneth Baxter Wolf observes that “much of this new legislation aimed at limiting those aspects of the Christian cult which seemed to compromise the dominant position of Islam.” After enumerating a list of laws much like Menocal’s, he adds: “Aside from such cultic restrictions most of the laws were simply designed to underscore the position of the dimmîs as second-class citizens.” These laws were not uniformly or strictly enforced; Christians were forbidden public funeral processions, but one contemporary account tells of priests merely “pelted with rocks and dung” rather than being arrested while on the way to a cemetery.

If Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together peaceably and productively only with Christians and Jews relegated by law to second-class citizen status, then al-Andalus has absolutely no reason to be lionized in our age. The laws of dhimmitude give all of Menocal’s accounts of Jewish viziers and Christian diplomats the same hollow ring as the stories of prominent American blacks from the slavery and Jim Crow eras: yes, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington were great men, but their accomplishments not only do not erase or contradict the records of the oppression of their people, but render them all the more poignant and haunting. Whatever the Christians and Jews of al-Andalus accomplished, they were still dhimmis. They enjoyed whatever rights and privileges they had not out of any sense of the dignity of all people before God, or the equality of all before the law, but at the sufferance of their Muslim overlords.

Unfortunately for Spain's Muslims, the militants who swear loyalty to Osama bin Laden are history buffs too. In claiming responsibility for the March bombings, they cited the loss of "Al Andalus" as motivation.

"We will continue our jihad until martyrdom in the land of Tarik Ben Ziyad," they said in a communique issued after the massacre, alluding to the Moorish warrior and original Islamic conqueror of the Iberian peninsula.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/004693.php

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COPENHAGEN - (Christian Science Monitor, 11/10/05) Danish editor tests right to violate Muslim taboos. When Flemming Rose heard last month that Danish cartoonists were too afraid of Muslim militants to illustrate a new children's biography of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, he decided to put his nation's famous tolerance to the test. The cultural editor of Denmark's largest newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, then recruited cartoonists to depict Islam's Prophet Muhammad and published them in the paper. Since then, thousands of Danish Muslims, whose religion strictly prohibits depictions of the prophet, have demonstrated in protest, though some have rallied in support of the paper, too. Ambassadors from 11 Islamic countries including Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey signed a letter demanding that the Danish prime minister "punish" the newspaper. In contrast, a young Iranian woman started a petition in favor of the move. "This issue goes back to Salman Rushdie. It's about freedom of speech and Islam," says an unrepentant Rose, who feels a culture of fear and self-censorship has taken hold across Europe since Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered for criticizing traditional Islam's treatment of women. As accusations of racism and discrimination fly amid the ongoing unrest in France, European countries are being pushed to pinpoint the causes of - and solution to - the social exclusion of their significant Muslim populations. A key ingredient to the dialogue, Rose says, is making room for a frank discussion of the compatibility of democratic principles such as free speech, and traditional Islam. "Some Muslims are asking for an apology pointing to a lack of respect," he says. "They're not asking for respect; they're asking for subordination - for us as non-Muslims to follow Muslim taboos in the public domain." Although Rose expected some complaints, he was unprepared for the deluge of criticism. Among those who attacked the newspaper's lack of sensitivity was prominent Copenhagen imam Raed Hlayhel, saying "I will not tolerate this. If this is democracy, we disagree with democracy."

But despite the barrage of criticism, Rose defends his decision, which coincided with the arrest of seven Danish Muslims two weeks ago for planning a terrorist attack - the first evidence of Islamic militancy among Denmark's 200,000 Muslims. As evidence of the Islamic pressure for censorship, he points to several events in the last month. The individual who translated a new book by Van Gogh's collaborator, Dutch MP Aayan Hirsi Ali, has requested anonymity. A London art gallery removed a modern art exhibit "God is Great," which featured a Koran, for fear of retaliation. While in Copenhagen, a delegation of Danish imams asked the prime minister to force Denmark's media to supply "more positive coverage" of Islam. For its part, the newspaper has found Muslim allies. When the controversy first broke, hundreds of Danish Muslims demonstrated in Copenhagen in support of the newspaper. Among them were refugees that right-wing, anti-immigration parties would like to see turned away at Denmark's borders. "People have a right to say what they want without being killed," says Nasim Rahnama, the 20-year-old Iranian woman who started a petition in support of the newspaper. "These Islamic groups have to be stopped. I just can't sit down and do nothing." So far Ms. Rahnama, who moved here from Tehran four years ago, has collected over 150 signatures from Danish Muslims who support the paper's stance but says that she would have got many more if it weren't for people's fear that Islamic groups would find out. "I am so happy here," she says. "I have learnt the language. I have a lot of friends. I live in freedom; I love it." But some warn that the newspaper's actions might push other young Muslims in the opposite direction by fueling their sense of persecution and obliging them to defend even the most anachronistic aspects of their religion. "The cartoons seem to have been a deliberate move by the newspaper to provoke Muslim sentiment in a totally legal manner," says Bjorn Moller, a senior research fellow at the Danish Institute of International Studies, who says that public expressions of racism are increasing, citing one right-wing member of parliament who compared Denmark's Muslim community to cancer. "Things which people wouldn't have been allowed to say a couple of years ago are now being said openly," says Mr. Moller. "It's becoming more socially acceptable to use that kind of language and that's bound to alienate Muslims and create fanaticism." But already Danish voters are flocking to the right-wing Danish People's Party, which has pointed out that crime in general and the rape of Danish girls in particular are disproportionately committed by Muslim immigrants. The party's provocative slogan "Dit Land, Dit Valg" (One land, one people) for many people conjures up unwelcome reminders of Denmark's ambiguous role in the Nazi occupation. "A growing number of people see being a Dane and being a Muslim as incompatible," says Moller, adding that the Danish Peoples' Party, the country's third largest, is behind controversial government attempts to stabilize Denmark's growing Muslim community at no more than 10 percent of the total 5.5 million population. Right now, Muslims make up nearly 4 percent of the population. "The emphasis is rapidly becoming to keep out as many people as possible, regardless of whether they've been tortured or persecuted," says Moller. But many Danish Muslims attempt to strike a conciliatory tone - aware that in contrast to France's rapidly increasing Muslim population of about five million - they remain a small and vulnerable minority. "The parliament is dominated by right-wing parties," says Naveed Baig, who promotes the peaceful Sufi strain of Islam through the group Muslims In Dialogue. "They are trying to control immigrants, not facilitate them. And at the same time Muslim extremists are making things hard for the majority of Muslims who fully accept secularism and democracy." Rose meanwhile says he is happy that he has sparked a debate about how traditional Islamic ideas often clash with Western secular and democratic ideals. He also says that the controversy has helped bring native Danes and Muslim immigrants together. "Usually we speak about them and us, Muslim immigrants and the local population, but in this case many Danes criticized the paper while many Muslims supported the paper," says Rose. "This is actually the first time Muslims participated on a public platform alongside Danes."
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In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven." In the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. No major French newspaper carried the story. This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran. The French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. As one police detective put it, ''Jews equal money.'' A lot of folks are indifferent to Jews. In 2003, a survey by the European Commission found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the "greatest menace to world peace."  In Germany, it was 65 percent; Austria, 69 percent; the Netherlands, 74 percent. Since then, Iran has sportingly offered to solve the problem of the Israeli threat to world peace by wiping the Zionist Entity off the face of the map. But what a tragedy that those peace-loving Iranians have been provoked into launching nuclear armageddon by those pushy Jews. A Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well: ''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.'' Every year more and more of the world lives under Islamic law: Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984. Four decades ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it's in the grip of sharia, and the other half's feeling the squeeze, as the death toll from the cartoon jihad indicates. But just as telling is how swiftly the developed world has internalized an essentially Islamic perspective. In their pitiful coverage of the low-level intifada that's been going on in France for five years, the European press has been barely any less loopy than the Middle Eastern media. What, in the end, are all these supposedly unconnected matters from Danish cartoons to the murder of a Dutch filmmaker to gender-segregated swimming sessions in French municipal pools about? Answer: sovereignty. Islam claims universal jurisdiction and always has. The only difference is that they're now acting upon it. The signature act of the new age was the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran: Even hostile states generally respect the convention that diplomatic missions are the sovereign territory of their respective countries. Tehran then advanced to claiming jurisdiction over the citizens of sovereign states and killing them -- as it did to Salman Rushdie's translators and publishers. Now in the cartoon jihad and other episodes, the restraints of Islamic law are being extended piecemeal to the advanced world, by intimidation and violence but also by the usual cooing promotion of a spurious multicultural "respect" by Bill Clinton, the United Church of Canada, European foreign ministers, etc. 
(OCR, 2/26/06, Commentary 4)   http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn26.html

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HAMBURG, Germany (AP, 1/8/07) - A Moroccan convicted as an accessory to murder in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was sentenced Monday to the maximum 15 years in prison, minutes after telling the son of a woman killed that day "my future is ruined." A federal appeals court convicted Mounir el Motassadeq, a friend of three of the suicide pilots, in November of knowingly helping the hijackers and sent the case to a state court in Hamburg for sentencing. Just before Monday's verdict, the 32-year-old defendant spoke with an American whose mother died on board one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Dominic Puopolo Jr., a co-plaintiff in the case, earlier joined prosecutors in calling for the maximum penalty, urging the judges to consider the "human and emotional cost" of the 2001 attacks. "Anyone who helped in this has earned stiff punishment," presiding Judge Carsten Beckmann said after announcing Monday's verdict.

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MUSLIMS: 'BAN' UN-ISLAMIC SCHOOLS

21/02/07, Daily Express,  http://www.express.co.uk/news_detail.html?sku=1264,   By Gabriel Milland

DEMANDS for a ban on “un-Islamic” activities in schools will be set out by the Muslim Council of Britain today. Targets include playground games, swimming lessons, school plays, parents’ evenings and even vaccinations. And the calls for all children to be taught in Taliban-style conditions will be launched with the help of a senior Government education adviser. Professor Tim Brighouse, chief adviser to London schools, was due to attend the event at the capital’s biggest mosque. His presence there was seen as “deeply worrying”, and a sign that the report was backed by the Government. Tory MP Greg Hands said: “The MCB needs to realise it has to move closer to the rest of the community, not away from it. “The presence of Tim Brighouse implies Government back­ing of this report. This is very worrying.” Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society said the report was a “recipe for disaster”. He added: “Schools with even just a handful of Muslim kids will find they have to follow these guidelines because there aren’t the staff to have one set of classes for Muslims and another for the rest. “The MCB shouldn’t try to force its religious agenda on children who may not want it. The Government needs to send the MCB packing. Schools should be about teaching, not preaching.” The report, Towards Greater Understanding – Meeting The Needs of Muslim Pupils In State Schools, says all schools should bring in effective bans for all pupils on “un-Islamic activities” like dance classes. It also wants to limit certain activities during Ramadan. They include science lessons dealing with sex, parents’ evenings, exams and immunisation programmes. The holy month – when eating and drinking is not allowed in daylight hours – should also see a ban on swimming lessons in case pupils swallow water in the pool. When swimming is allowed, boys should wear clothing covering their bodies “from the navel to the neck”, even during single-sex pool sessions, while girls must be covered up completely at all times, apart from the face and hands. The MCB adds that schools should ensure contact sports, including football and basketball, “are always in single-gender groups”. Even school trips are targeted in the report, which wants them all to be made single-sex “to encourage greater participation from Muslim pupils”. It wants Arabic language classes for Muslim pupils, and says the Koran should be recited in music classes. And all schools should ensure they have prayer rooms with washing facilities attached, it says. In art classes, Muslim children should not be allowed to draw people, as this is forbidden under some interpretations of Islamic law. And while the MCB insists that all British children should learn about Islam, it wants Muslims to have the right to withdraw their children from RE lessons dealing with Christianity and other faiths. The MCB says special treatment and opt-outs are necessary because otherwise Muslim pupils will feel excluded from school activities and lessons. The MCB claims to be the voice of Britain’s 1.5million Muslims and was heavily courted by politicians including Tony Blair following the September 11 attacks. Its former secretary-general Iqbal Sacranie was awarded a knighthood in 2005. But other Muslim groups criticised the report. Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain said: “There has been no discussion on these issues in the Muslim community.” And the Sufi Muslim Council – which claims to represent far more British Muslims than the MCB – said the report misunderstood Ramadan. It added: “This is not what Islam or Ramadan is about. Ramadan is about training yourself while carrying on with everyday life.” The Department for Edu­cation tried to distance itself from the report last night, and insisted Professor Brighouse was attending the launch only in a “personal capacity”. A spokesman said it would read the report “with interest”. The MCB did not comment. It came as Britain's first Muslim peer called for women to stop wearing veils, claiming that they represent “a barrier to integration”. Reigniting the debate over the face veil, or niqab, Lord Ahmed of Rotherham said there was no religious reason why Muslim women should wear them – and claimed that veils now cause society more harm than good. The peer, who has urged the authorities to clamp down on preachers of hate, spoke during a debate held in the heart of the Arab world. He told a mainly Muslim audience in Doha, Qatar, that he does not want a legal ban on the veil being worn in public – as many other nations are introducing, including Muslim Turkey and Egypt. But he said: “The face veil is a barrier to integration in the West. The veil is now a mark of separation, segregation and defiance against mainstream British culture. “There’s nothing in the Koran to say that wearing a niqab is desirable, let alone compulsory. It’s purely cultural. It’s an identity thing which has been misinterpreted. “They were supposed to be worn so that women wouldn’t be harassed. But women, and communities as a whole, are now being harassed because they are wearing them." The Muslim Council of Britain’s assistant secretary general, Inayat Bunglawala, said yesterday: “Peoples’ attitudes are responsible for harming integration, not veils. “And wearing them is very much a matter for individual Muslim women.” * What do YOU think? Should Muslims tell us how to run our schools? Comment NOW at Have Your Say.

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Arabs in U.S. 

WASHINGTON - (3/8/05, AP) People of Arab descent living in the United States tend to be better educated and wealthier than other Americans, the Census Bureau says. There are about 1.2 million U.S. residents whose ancestry is solely or partly Arab, less than a half-percent of all Americans. The details in Tuesday's report covered the 850,000 people who identified themselves in the 2000 census as having only Arab ancestries. Arabs are nearly twice as likely as the typical U.S. resident to possess a college degree - 41 percent to 24 percent. Better education typically translates into higher income, and that was highlighted in the report: The median income for an Arab family was $52,300, about $2,300 more than the median income for all U.S. families. The proportion of U.S. Arabs working in management jobs was higher than the U.S. average, 42 percent to 34 percent. Since the data stops at 2000, it was not possible to measure the impact of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Arab-American groups say the 1.2 million tallied in the census is probably an undercount since many people with Arab ancestry may be reluctant to fill out government forms because they came from countries with oppressive regimes. [No mention of illegal immigrants.] Lebanon was the country of origin for the most U.S. Arabs (440,000), followed by Egypt and Syria (about 143,000 each). The population numbers, first released in 2003, showed the states with the largest Arab populations were California (191,000), New York (120,000) and Michigan (115,000). The nation's Arab population is 57 percent male and has a median age of 33, two years younger than the U.S. population overall. Among specific groups, Palestinians were the youngest at 29, while Lebanese and Syrians were the oldest at nearly 39. About 64 percent of residents with Egyptian ancestry had a college degree, the highest among Arab groups, followed by Lebanese (39 percent) and Palestinian (38 percent). Lebanese residents in the United States made the most money - the median family income was nearly $61,000, about $3,000 more than for U.S. Syrians and $4,000 more than for Egyptian residents.  Yet U.S. Arabs also had a higher poverty rate (16.7 percent) than the nation (12.4 percent). Samhan said that's probably a reflection of a lack of wealth possessed by refugees who have resettled in the United States since 1990 from countries like Iraq. (OCR, 3/9/05, News 9)
Census Bureau report:     http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/censr-21.pdf
Arab American Institute census information:   http://www.aaiusa.org/census.htm 

U.S. Census in 2000 counted 1.2 million Arab-Americans, twice the number in 1980.  Arab American Institute estimates 3.5 million Arab-Americans. Zogby poll estimates 66% of Arab-Americans are Christians,  24% Muslims. There are between 2.8 and 7 million Muslims in the U.S. African-Americans are 35% to 40% of American Muslims. Worldwide: about 300 million Arabs and about 1.2 billion Muslims. (Parade, 4/17/05, 7)

Info on and history of jihad movement:  http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/001665.php
On 3/11/03,  Muslim terrorism killed 200 and wounded 1,400 in Madrid train bombing. The terrorists had materials in their apartment that referred to Spain as Andalusia, what it was called by the Muslim Moors before they were driven out in 1492. In the eyes of Islamic terrorism,  they feel that to recover Spain is to get back some of their territory.

An Activist's Guide to Arab and Muslim Campus and Community Organizations in North America, FrontPageMagazine.com | May 26, 2003     http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=7991

LODI, Calif. (6/9/05, AP) - Father, Son Charged With Lying About al-Qaida Ties. Prosecutors Say Son Trained to Use Explosives at Camp in Pakistan. A terrorism investigation in this quiet farming town has led to the arrests of a father and son who said he trained at an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan and planned to attack U.S. hospitals and supermarkets, authorities said. Federal investigators believe a number of people committed to al-Qaida have been operating in and around Lodi, a wine-growing region about 30 miles south of Sacramento. Two local Muslim leaders also have been detained on immigration violations. The son, Hamid Hayat, was interviewed by the FBI last Friday and at first denied any link to terror camps. But the next day he was given a polygraph test and admitted he attended the camp in 2003 and 2004. Hayat, 22, said photos of President Bush and other American political figures were pasted onto targets during weapons training, the affidavit said. At the end of training, participants were given the opportunity to choose the nation where their attacks would be carried out. ''Hamid advised that he specifically requested to come to the United States to carry out his jihadi mission,'' according to an affidavit released through the Justice Department in Washington. ''Potential targets for attack included hospitals and large food stores.'' The father, 47-year-old Umer Hayat, lied about his son's involvement and money he sent for the son's training, the affidavit said. A cousin of the younger Hayat, Usama Ismail, said he was in Pakistan with his relative and that Hayat never had terrorist training. He said his cousin went to Pakistan to marry and ''never got into politics. All he talked about was cricket.'' ''We were always together,'' said Ismail, who lives down the street from the Hayats in a modest, blue-collar neighborhood. ''He never went anywhere. He was always in the village.''  Neighbors described the elder Hayat as a nice man who sold ice cream during summer months from a van. [Who financed the operation?]

Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States and Latinos represent one of the fastest-growing minorities. Increasingly, the two trends are meeting in the form of Hispanic converts to Islam. Islam was in Spain for over 700 years. Spanish, as we speak it today, has been highly influenced. There are over a thousand words which have Arabic roots. The Islamic period in Spain came to an end when Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella succeeded in driving the Muslim Moors from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. To this day, many Hispanic Christians maintain a negative view of Islam, which has been reinforced by images of terrorism and unrest in the predominantly Muslim Middle East. Muslim converts try to counter that image by presenting theirs as a religion of peace and brotherhood. Latino Muslims are encouraged by the success of Islam among African-Americans. Nearly half of all Muslims in the United States today are black, as are around 90 percent of all new converts to the religion. One of the biggest sources of new converts to Islam is the U.S. prison system. Muslim brothers offer support to those inmates who want to change their lives. They start the transformation in prison and then they get help to stay out of prison once they get out. There are no firm figures on how many Latinos have converted to Islam, although there is an estimate of around 40,000, a small number compared to the overall U.S. Latino population of more than 35 million. By Greg Flakus, Dallas, Texas  13 July 2005      http://author.voanews.com/english/2005-07-13-voa49.cfm

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The Threat From Within

Britain was proud to have created a multicultural society. But apparently well-adapted young Muslims who were born in Britain exploded the subway bombs of July 2005. Now the head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency, Eliza Manningham-Buller, has come out with a grave warning. She says that there are many more British Muslims who back the terrorists. MI-5 has stopped five plots to date. We know of the one to blow up 10 planes over the Atlantic, but MI-5 is monitoring 1,600 other suspects, mostly homegrown Islamic terrorists who get their training in murder and mayhem on the Internet. In Germany, too, only an alert train conductor prevented the detonation of propane and gasoline bombs that would have horribly burned and killed hundreds of commuters. 

A new training ground. Interviews with the heads of counterterrorism and local police officials in the United States yield similar assessments. The threat is from second- and third-generation children of immigrants, fluent in English and accustomed to American society but using the legal rights of U.S. citizenship to rebel from within. They have learned the Koran on the Internet; they lead small clusters of 20 to 25 mostly young men who share feelings of alienation, a longing for self-importance, a need to be a part of some larger group or cause. They have developed what is called "adversarial assimilation."

The Internet has replaced Afghanistan as a training ground. It is effectively the university of jihadist studies, where hundreds of Muslims from all corners of the world can study the rules of jihad, while they live in it anonymously. Here they learn to fire a shoulder-held antiaircraft missile; to prepare explosives and make bombs out of batteries and improvise hand-thrown charges to hit vehicles; to seek a position on a crowded bus to achieve maximum casualties; to plan kidnappings; and to concoct botulism toxin. 

Marc Sageman, who collected the life histories of 400 would-be jihadists, found that most were well-to-do, with two thirds having some college education and only 27 percent characterized as lower class. Some 70 percent joined the ranks of the global jihadists while away from home. Separated from the traditional bonds of family and culture, they drifted to the mosques more for companionship than for religion, but there they found extremists who appeared to offer a compelling, all-encompassing explanation for their feelings of anomie and lack of self-worth. 

If we are to avert mass casualties from the enemies within, it is imperative to fashion a new approach to find these people. Our criminal justice model has been to look for the criminal after the crime. This won't do any longer. How do you punish a suicide bomber? We must disrupt plots before they are carried out. Gathering this intelligence will impinge on traditional civil liberties, but we simply don't have much choice. As the well-known journalist, Harold Evans, told the Hudson Institute recently, "I'd rather be photographed by a hidden surveillance camera than travel on a train with men carrying bombs in their backpack. I'd regard being blown to bits on the street as more of an intrusion of privacy than having an identity card."The jihadists are not just another protest group. They recognize no moral and legal standards-and we are fighting them with one hand behind our backs: The sad fact is that over the years our government has not earned enough trust to allow for reasonable compromises by which the intelligence agencies could get the bad guys without violating the privacy of the good guys. What has been done to date-border controls, intensity of interrogation, even airport searches-has not diminished most citizens' "feel of freedom." But if we were to experience a major attack that could have been thwarted by effective countermeasures, the public outcry for action would make the present restrictions seem a mere bagatelle. So the greatest threat to civil liberties today is not preventive measures, but failing to take them.
(USN&WR, 12/18/06, 80)   http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/061210/18edit.htm

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The 'home-grown' threat: Is it overstated?

A small but growing number of analysts believe that some US officials have overstated the threat of homegrown Islamist radicalism in the United States. While Al Qaeda and foreign terrorists remain determined to attack in America, they say, the focus on potential American cells may be leading the US to misdirect its antiterror efforts. "My theory as to why we haven't found any [homegrown Islamist terrorist cells] is because there aren't very many of them.... They aren't the diabolical, capable, and inventive people envisioned by most politicians and people in the terrorism industry," says John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University. "The danger is that we've wasted an enormous amount of money with all of the wiretaps [and] investigations, and diverted two-thirds of the FBI from criminal work to terrorism work." The FBI calls such conclusions "uninformed," citing alleged plots by radicalized US citizens. The most notable was the case of the Lackawanna Six, so named for the six Yemeni-Americans from Lackawanna, N.Y., who went to Al Qaeda training camps in the spring of 2001. "The people who make these claims [about threats being exaggerated] are never the ones responsible for preventing these attacks," says John Miller, the FBI's assistant director of public affairs. "The point is that if you're the dead guy, or you're a family member of one of those guys, all you know is that you wanted someone to develop the intelligence and take the actions to prevent it." Still, a lack of public evidence pointing to extensive Islamist extremism in the US is leading a small but growing number of experts to agree with Professor Meuller's assessment. Like Meuller, though, they add a cautionary note. "There's not zero threat in any community, but it is good news and we have to hope that reflects an underlying reality that [homegrown extremist cells] don't exist here," says Jonathan Winer, a terrorism expert in Washington. "You've always got lone nuts in every imaginable ethnic group grabbing every imaginable ideology to justify terrorism."

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1023/p01s04-ussc.html?ref=aol

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Look Who Isn't Talking
A filmmaker is murdered, and Hollywood loudmouths say nothing.

BY BRIDGET JOHNSON
Wednesday, November 24, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh's short film "Submission," about the treatment of women in Islam, written by female Dutch parliamentarian and former Muslim Aayan Hirsi Ali, had aired in August on Dutch TV. Van Gogh was riding his bike near his home when a Muslim terrorist shot him, slashed his throat, and pinned to his body a note threatening Ms. Ali. This appears to be an organized effort, not the act of a lone nut; Dutch authorities are holding 13 suspects in the case.

After the slaying, I watched "Submission" (available online at ifilm.com) and my mind is still boggled that 11 minutes decrying violence against women incites such violence. There've been many films over the years that have taken potshots at Catholics, but I don't remember any of us slaughtering filmmakers over the offense. You didn't see the National Rifle Association order a hit on Michael Moore over "Bowling for Columbine."

One would think that in the name of artistic freedom, the creative community would take a stand against filmmakers being sent into hiding à la Salman Rushdie, or left bleeding in the street. Yet we've heard nary a peep from Hollywood about the van Gogh slaying. Indeed Hollywood has long walked on eggshells regarding the topic of Islamic fundamentalism. The film version of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" changed Palestinian terrorists to neo-Nazis out of a desire to avoid offending Arabs or Muslims. The war on terror is a Tinsel Town taboo, even though a Hollywood Reporter poll showed that roughly two-thirds of filmgoers surveyed would pay to see a film on the topic.

In a recent conversation with a struggling liberal screenwriter, I brought up the Clancy film as an example of Hollywood shying away from what really affects filmgoers--namely, the al Qaeda threat vs. the neo-Nazi threat. He vehemently defended the script switch. "It's an easy target," he said of Arab terrorism, repeating this like a parrot, then adding, "It's a cheap shot." How many American moviegoers would think that scripting Arab terrorists as the enemy in a fiction film is a "cheap shot"? In fact, it's realism; it's what touches lives world-wide. It's this disconnect with filmgoers that has left the Hollywood box office bleeding by the side of the road.        
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005935

Terror on the streets
The FBI prepares to help beleaguered police chiefs fight a new brand of gang violence
By Chitra Ragavan and Monika Guttman  (excerpts, USN&WR, 12/13/04, 22)

Last January,  400 armed Los Angeles police officers and FBI agents targeted the ultraviolent Bounty Hunters gang, which was terrorizing the residents of the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts. Flash-bang grenades exploded, doors were battered down, and dozens of men were taken into custody, including federal indictments of 15 people.

The FBI is preparing a broad new attack against gangs, to respond to the growing barbarity and the willingness to utilize homicide, torture, and assaults in furtherance of violent gang activities. Gang-related killings have again reached alarming levels. And not just in cities like Los Angeles that long have had gang problems. Stunning levels of violence are also afflicting areas like Denver, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, Long Island, N.Y., and Washington, D.C.'s Virginia suburbs.

Among other activities, the FBI will create a national gang task force to decimate one major gang--Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a Latin gang that is "spreading like a virus" up and down both coasts.  MS-13 was created in Los Angeles by the children of immigrants who fled the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s, to protect themselves against a rival Mexican-American gang. As MS-13 members were convicted of crimes, they were deported from the United States, taking their violent gang culture deep into El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. As those governments began cracking down, MS-13 members illegally re-entered the United States and proliferated along the U.S. coasts. MS-13 is now a major problem even in southern cities like Charlotte and Durham, N.C., where Hispanics are the fastest-growing minority. 

Between 2000 and 2003, 20 MS-13 gang members were charged with murder in Charlotte and surrounding Mecklenburg County; Charlotte police estimate that about 200 MS-13 members live in and around the city. In Durham County, police say there may be 40 to 60 gangs, with 3,500 to 4,000 members. "I didn't expect to see any gang activity here," says Durham County sheriff's deputy Elliott Hoskins, who formerly worked in San Diego. "I moved from California to get away from gangs, and I got here and ended up running into them again." Last August in Durham, a 19-year-old Honduras native named Franklin Manacer-Herrera was arrested and charged with stabbing Chanda Brown Mwicigi, 26, to death. The construction worker then allegedly stomped on Mwicigi's skull and carved "MS-13" into her thigh. Authorities contended in court that he confessed to the crime. Even hardened cops are rattled by gang members' seemingly casual embrace of violence. Just this year, a Virginia gang member was convicted of conspiring to murder a police officer, and Charlotte, N.C., and Prince George's County, Md., police got death threats after arresting MS-13 gang members. Two purported gang members, one with an AK-47, allegedly murdered an off-duty Los Angeles County police captain during an apparent robbery attempt.

The FBI has now identified 1,500 to 2,000 MS-13 members and 15 Asian gangs in Northern Virginia alone. Hispanic gang members and gang graffiti are even proliferating throughout the bucolic Shenandoah Valley, known for its quaint bedroom communities and bed-and-breakfast inns. In July 2003, the body of a former gang member and FBI informant, Brenda "Smiley" Paz, was found by the Shenandoah River in Virginia. Paz, 17, pregnant, had been repeatedly stabbed, her throat slashed so violently that her head was nearly severed. Paz had left the federal witness protection program against the FBI's advice. Authorities allege that an MS-13 leader, Denis Rivera, 20, commissioned the killing from his jail cell--while awaiting trial in another federal murder case--to prevent Paz from testifying against him. Rivera has pleaded not guilty. Another eye-opener was the attack last May by three teenage Virginia MS-13 members, who cornered a 16-year-old rival gang member and slashed him with machetes, nearly severing four fingers on one of his hands and a thumb on the other. He survived. 

The Justice Department estimates there are 21,400 gangs nationwide with 731,500 members who are engaged in drug and weapons trafficking, prostitution, alien smuggling, counterfeiting, burglary, forgery, welfare fraud, arson, motorcycle thefts, money laundering through tattoo parlor operations, bank robberies, and murder. The FBI's 2003 Uniform Crime Report released this fall showed violent crime continuing its downward spiral, even as juvenile gang murders had shot up 25 percent since 2000. 

Many cops are still trying to fight the good fight, but they're badly outmanned. Last month, Los Angeles County residents defeated a half-percentage-point sales tax hike that would have put hundreds of new cops on the street. And on a recent cold evening, two LAPD officers were observed trying to chase nearly three dozen gang members on foot. Chief Bratton hopes more federal assistance will help even the score. But 10 months after that much ballyhooed LAPD-FBI gang raid at Nickerson Gardens, the City of Angels is still a city under siege. (USN&WR, 12/13/04, 22)

FAIRFAX, Va. (3/5/05, AP) - The third and final gang member convicted of attacking a 16-year-old boy with a machete last spring was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Jose Cruz-Melendez, 19, of Annandale received three years less than his two co-defendants. Attorneys in the case and the judge said Friday that Cruz-Melendez has not been an MS-13 gang member for long and that he cooperated with police. They also said he did not swing a machete during the May 10 attack. The victim, who lost four fingers and had to have his thumb surgically reattached, did not appear in court. Prosecutors say the victim and defendants were members of rival gangs. "The injuries are horrific," Fairfax Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Jay R. Nanavati said. "The societal cost, in terms of fear for the neighbors, is tremendous. It makes certain neighborhoods essentially subject to the law of the jungle." The machete attack in the Alexandria area of Fairfax and a gang-related slaying days later in Herndon rekindled public outrage over gang violence and generated additional government funding to combat northern Virginia's nascent gang problem. Authorities say MS-13 is the dominant street gang with more than 2,000 members. ..... WASHINGTON (3/14/05, AP) - The government on Monday announced the arrests of 103 alleged members of MS-13, a street gang rooted in Central America where members have been known to behead enemies and attack with grenades and machetes. The arrests, in seven cities since early January, are the first of a nationwide crackdown on Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, which is one of the largest and most violent street gangs in the United States. Federal officials estimate between 8,000 and 10,000 MS-13 members live in 31 states - the majority of them in the country illegally. There have been machete attacks in U.S. cities along the East Coast. Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement used information from state and local law enforcement authorities to target MS-13 activities in the New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Newark, Miami and Dallas metropolitan areas. Half of the suspects charged in the sting, nicknamed ''Operation Community Shield,'' have prior arrests or convictions for violent crimes, including murder, sodomy, assault and arson. All of them can be deported for violating immigration laws, said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia. ''Our goal is simple: Operation Community Shield aims to dismantle the MS-13 criminal gang by removing gang members from the streets and from the community,'' said Garcia, director of ICE. In Los Angeles on Sunday, agents arrested a man suspected of being a founding member and leader of the MS-13 cell in Hollywood who has previous robbery and weapons convictions. Last week, authorities also arrested the purported leader of the MS-13 cell in Long Branch, N.J., who had previous arson, weapons and grand larceny charges. In Miami, where local officials arrested four more MS-13 suspects over the weekend, police set up surveillance operations to photograph or otherwise identify the gang members to check whether they are in the country illegally. ''We hit these areas where we know they are,'' said Miami-Dade Police Department Division Chief Willie B. Marshall. ''Every single one that we've seen so far have some type of criminal background.'' MS-13 began in El Salvador and now includes members from Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. Last month, former Homeland Security Deputy Secretary James Loy called MS-13 an emerging threat to the United States, referring to the gang and the al-Qaida terrorist organization in the same breath in testimony to Congress. Garcia said Monday that while there is no definitive link between MS-13 and al-Qaida, the gang's operations show that ''you have to accept that as a homeland security risk as well.'' Officials arrested 30 alleged gang members in the New York metropolitan area, the most of any of the seven cities targeted. Twenty-five were arrested in Washington, 17 in Los Angeles, and 10 each in the Baltimore, Newark and Miami areas. The last arrest came in Dallas, officials said.

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Terror's best friend

10 million missing passports floating around the world could mean a real security nightmare

By Samantha Levine (excerpts, USN&WR, 12/6/04, 35)

When it comes to terrorists' most valuable weapons, passports and visas probably rank higher than bullets and bombs. Without such documents, terrorists can't easily travel. All 19 of the 9/11 hijackers had made it into the United States with doctored or suspicious passports. About 10 million  lost and stolen travel documents are believed to be in circulation worldwide. 

 One of the men behind the March 12, 2003, assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in Belgrade, for instance, traveled through six European countries on a Croatian passport stolen from Bosnia. And new evidence "strongly suggests that some stolen passports have been used to successfully enter the U.S. even to the present," according to DHS Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin.

The most ominous problem involves passports stolen from countries with open travel relationships with the United States. The State Department's visa-waiver program allows citizens from countries that meet certain standards, such as low rates of illegal immigration, to travel to the United States for 90 days just by showing their passport--meaning they avoid the more rigorous visa-screening process. The program covers 27 nations, including most of Western Europe. Between June 1991 and February 2004, more than 200 people carrying visa-waiver passports popped up on terrorist watch lists, according to Ervin. So security experts worry when passports from those countries go missing--like the 16,000 stolen from France since June 2001--or aren't reported. 

Another way to stop terrorists from infiltrating the United States is to closely inspect visa applications. It was definitely a soft spot before 9/11, when al Qaeda ran a "travel office" at the airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Only after the attacks were homeland security officials given authority to investigate visa applications overseas, beginning in Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 hijackers had obtained visas. Since September 30, travelers from countries in the visa-waiver program have had to go through the Homeland Security Department's nearly year-old U.S.-Visit program, which requires foreign citizens to submit fingerprints and digital photos to U.S. border agents. Once those are in the system, U.S. agents can confirm travelers' identities and check them against watch lists.

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Illegal Immigration  
[More at:  http://win4sports.com/sp.html#imigra]

"The American people don't want open borders; they don't want amnesty," says Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican.  Rep. David Dreier of California will introduce legislation to stop American businesses from hiring illegal aliens, using a photo-embedded Social Security card, which employers would be required to check with a national database to determine whether the job applicant is legal or illegal. Three million illegal aliens entered this country last year. We must take control of our borders, enforce our immigration laws, and ultimately take responsibility for our first line of defense in the war on terrorism, specifically our borders and ports. Until this administration and the federal government can ensure that we have control of our borders and ports, the Homeland Security Department is simply a federal bureaucracy indulging in nothing less than a sham, spending billions of dollars in taxpayer money to game the American people. These shameless border games must end. And real reform must begin. We must be able to control the flow of people and goods across our borders and through our ports. We must exact heavy penalties on businesses, large and small, as well as individuals who hire illegal aliens. Not only do illegal aliens cost the nations tens of billions of dollars in social services, principally in healthcare and education, but they depress wages for American citizens by an estimated $200 billion a year. American business is exploiting cheap labor and paradoxically doing so with the blessing and support of national unions. An estimated 6 million illegal aliens work in the underground economy, where neither they nor those who employ them pay taxes. That accounts for part of an additional $400 billion a year in taxes that should be paid to the Internal Revenue Service. Once again, the middle class is under assault by a government that is functioning as if it had never heard of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. A panel of the most liberal federal appellate court in the nation upheld Proposition 200, which the people of Arizona voted into law to counteract the failure of the federal government to enforce long-standing immigration laws. And GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, appears to have won the support of the House leadership and most of his colleagues to begin the process of true reform on at least a small portion of our immigration policies. But if the Dreier proposal is given precedence over Sensenbrenner's, we will have a clear, early indication of whether this House, and eventually the Senate, have mustered the will to truly represent the national interest instead of the special interest they've long served in their positions and votes on immigration. Let's hope the border games are drawing to a close. (USN&WR, 1/31/05, 42)

Officials concede the 370-mile Arizona border is the most porous stretch on the U.S.-Mexico line. Moreover, recent intelligence show that al-Qaida terrorists are likely to enter the country through the Mexico border, James Loy, the deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department, said last week. "Several al-Qaida leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico, and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons," Loy said in written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants caught by the U.S. Border Patrol last year, 52 percent crossed into the country at the Arizona border. The agency increased the number of agents in the Tucson sector, which has its largest staff, from 1,700 to 2,100 over the last 18 months. More will be added to plug the remaining holes, said Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner. About 10,000 federal agents now patrol the 2,000-mile southern border, he said. (AP, 2/21/05)

There are 162,000 prison inmates in CA. About 22,000 (14%) are criminal aliens, mostly illegal. 17,000 are from Mexico. About 3600 criminal aliens are murderers, 600 rapists, and 1300 burglars. It costs about $31,000 per year per inmate, so the total cost for the criminal aliens is $682 million per year. (OCR, 2/9/05, Local 1)

Terrorists Manipulate Immigration Laws, '9/11 Was Not an Isolated Instance of al-Qaida Infiltration'
WASHINGTON (8/30/05, AP) - Some used false documents to enter the United States; others let their legal visas expire once in the country. And at least 21 foreign nationals became naturalized U.S. citizens before being charged or convicted as terrorists. In all, at least 94 foreign-born visitors accused of terror activity between 1993 and 2004 exploited federal immigration laws to enter or remain in the United States. "In fact, dozens of operatives both before and after 9/11 - other than the 9/11 hijackers - have managed to enter and embed themselves in the United States, actively carrying out plans to commit terrorist acts against U.S. interests or support designated foreign terrorist organizations." Overall, 59 of 94 foreign-born nationals who were either convicted or indicted on terror charges broke federal immigration laws to enter or remain in the country between 1993 and 2004. Twenty-two of the 94 either had student visas or other applications approving them to study in the United States; another 17 used visitor visas to enter the country. In at least 13 instances, suspected and convicted terrorists overstayed their temporary visas. Seven of the 94 were indicted for using false driver's licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards and immigration records. Twenty-one became naturalized citizens. Many of the immigrants as affiliated with at least one terror organization, including 40 with al-Qaida, 16 with Hamas, 16 with the Palestinian or Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and six with Hezbollah.  Since June 2003, the department has investigated 7,100 cases of immigrants suspected of violating temporary visas, resulting in 1,339 arrests. Recent studies indicate immigration-related cases made up for nearly 33 percent of all federal prosecutions last year, more than any other crime.

The Hard Truth of Immigration   
No society has a boundless capacity to accept newcomers, especially when many of them are poor or unskilled workers. There are now an estimated 34 million immigrants in the United States, about a third of them illegal. About 35 percent lack health insurance and 26 percent receive some sort of federal benefit, reports Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies. Mexicans are now the single largest group of U.S. immigrants, 30 percent of the total in 2000. Indeed, the present Mexican immigration "is historically unprecedented, being both numerically and proportionately larger than any other immigrant influx in the past century," note Borjas and Katz. In 1920, for example, the two largest immigrant groups—Germans and Italians—totaled only 24 percent of the immigrant population. Some Mexican-Americans have made spectacular gains, but the overall picture is dispiriting. Among men, about one in 20 U.S. workers is now a Mexican immigrant; in 1970, that was less than one in 100. The vast majority of Mexican workers lacked a high-school diploma in 2000 (63 percent for men, 57 percent for women). Only a tiny share had college degrees (3 percent for men, 5 percent for women). By contrast, only 7 percent of native-born U.S. workers were high-school dropouts and 28 percent were college graduates in 2000. Mexican workers are inevitably crammed into low-wage jobs: food workers, janitors, gardeners, laborers, farm workers. In 2000, their average wages were 41 percent lower than average U.S. wages for men and 33 percent lower for women. In 2000, Americans of Mexican ancestry still had lower levels of educational achievement and wages than most native-born workers. Among men, the wage gap was 27 percent; about 21 percent were high-school dropouts and only 11 percent were college graduates. For today's Mexican immigrants (legal or illegal), the closest competitors are tomorrow's Mexican immigrants (legal or illegal). The more who arrive, the harder it will be for existing low-skilled workers to advance. Despite the recession, immigration did not much slow after 2000, says Camarota. Not surprisingly, a study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that inflation-adjusted weekly earnings for all Hispanics (foreign and American-born) dropped by 2.2 percent in 2003 and 2.6 percent in 2004. "Latinos are the only major group of workers whose wages have fallen for two consecutive years," said the study. Similarly, the more poor immigrants, the harder it will be for schools to improve the skills of their children. The schools will be overwhelmed; the same goes for social services. We could do a better job of stopping illegal immigration on our southern border and of policing employers who hire illegal immigrants. At the same time, we could provide legal status to illegal immigrants already here. We could also make more sensible decisions about legal immigrants—favoring the skilled over the unskilled. (Newsweek, 6/13/05, 64)

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Troops flee from border outpost

THE WASHINGTON TIMES, January 6, 2007.  Armed men overran a National Guard observation post along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona this week, forcing the soldiers to retreat and prompting an investigation by the U.S. Border Patrol that has focused on the intruders' identity.
    No shots were exchanged and no one was injured in the incident, which occurred shortly after 11 p.m. on Wednesday. The National Guard troops were members of an entry-identification team, assigned to monitor major illegal-alien and drug-smuggling corridors.
    After forcing the soldiers to flee, the unidentified men retreated into Mexico.
    National Guard Sgt. Edward Balaban said the troops did not know how many men were involved in the attack "because obviously it took place in the dark." He said National Guard officials are investigating the incident and will determine shortly whether to change any procedures for troops at the border.
    The Border Patrol probe has focused on determining who the armed men were, what they were doing and why they approached the observation post, which is located near Sasabe, Ariz., in one of this country's major alien and drug-smuggling corridors. The outpost sits on a hillside overlooking the border and is covered by a tent and camouflage netting.
    Several Border Patrol agents in the area told The Washington Times yesterday the armed men might have been trying to find out what the Guard troops would do if they were confronted by drug or alien smugglers. They said the increased presence of troops and additional Border Patrol agents in recent months had frustrated many of the area's drug and alien smugglers.
    "I guess they got their answer," said one veteran agent. "When in doubt, the troops will run."
    Earlier this year, several Border Patrol agents said they had been assigned to guard National Guard personnel, given standing orders to be within five minutes of the troops deployed along the border. The agents, who referred to the assignment as "the nanny patrol," said most of the Guard troops are not allowed to carry loaded weapons, despite a significant increase in violence directed at Border Patrol agents during the past year.
    Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar disputed the assertions, saying only that "a small percentage" of his agents were working as "force protection" for the Guard members. He said those agents also were performing their traditional border-enforcement functions.
    National Guard troops taking part in Operation Jump Start are not empowered to get involved in law-enforcement duties. They cannot detain, arrest or interdict anyone or anything coming across the border -- only report them to the Border Patrol.

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Fence makes good neighbor

At the international port of entry at San Ysidro, at the levee along the Tijuana River, from all along this section of the border, illegal immigrants would stage what Border Patrol agents called "banzai runs," simultaneously swarming across by the hundreds, knowing there was no way the Border Patrol could catch all of them, or even most of them.

Sure, the Border Patrol would snag big groups of them – 20 here, 30 there, 50 over there. They would send them back across the border by the hundreds of thousands every year.

Still, it was like trying to hold back the tides; the Border Patrol was simply overwhelmed.

But it's different now, at least along this small section of the border. As Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Robert Harvey told me, "The difference between then and now is like night and day."

And part of the reason is the fence.

Actually it's not so much simply a fence as a security system. It's short – just 9 1/2 miles long, with 4 1/2 miles still in the works – which means it covers only a tiny fraction of the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border. But its impact on that fraction has been astonishing.

Part of it is called the "primary fence," a 10-foot-high steel barrier right on the border line that was built in the early 1990s with military-surplus aircraft "landing mats." By itself it wasn't much of a deterrent to illegal border crossers, although it did reduce illegal cross-border vehicle traffic.

So in 1996 construction began on a second fence, roughly parallel to the first fence, with an improved access road between the two. The second fence is mostly a steel mesh that rises vertically for 10 feet and then angles out, making it more difficult to climb over.

But there's more than just a couple of fences. The 9 1/2 -mile, $31 million double-fenced section of the border is also packed with high-tech security gear: motion sensors, cameras, infrared scopes, stadium-style lights to illuminate the "enforcement zone" along the fences.

And there are also more than twice as many Border Patrol agents in the San Diego sector as there were 20 years ago, some 1,700 of them. That's part of a Border Patrol expansion that has boosted the number of agents nationally from a mere 3,600 two decades ago to about 13,000 today – and the Border Patrol expects to add 6,000 in the next two years.

In short, this small section of the border uses a mix of technology (the sensors, cameras, etc. ), "tactical infrastructure" (the fences and roads) and extra manpower to deter illegal immigration all along its length.

Does it always work? Of course not. Illegal immigrants still climb over the fences, using ladders and even grappling hooks. Drug- and human-smugglers also go under the border through tunnels, more than a dozen of which were discovered in the San Diego sector last year. Just as no local police chief would ever promise to reduce crime to zero, the Border Patrol won't promise that the fences and other measures will ever completely eliminate illegal border crossings.

But consider these numbers. In 1992 there were 360,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants within the Imperial Beach and Chula Vista Border Patrol stations, which cover the now double-fenced portion of the border. But in 2004, after the introduction of the fences and the technology and the increased manpower, the number of apprehensions had plummeted to about 19,000 – a decrease of 95 percent.

Generally speaking, fewer apprehensions means fewer people are trying to illegally cross that section of the border – far fewer in this case.

In fact, compared with the wild old days, some Border Patrol agents say working this double-fenced section of the border now is almost "boring."

True, the short section of border fences in western San Diego County hasn't had much impact on illegal border crossings nationally, as many illegal immigrants and smugglers have simply moved eastward, beyond the fences.

But what if we built an additional 800 miles of similar fencing – as Congress said last fall it wanted to do – or even fenced off the entire 2,000-mile border in the same way?  (OCR, 1/10/07, Local 1)    http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/news/columns/article_1539434.php

The Border Patrol prefers a series of San-Diego style fences along populated sections, forcing illegals to remote areas, where they are more easily caught. The illegals include murderers, smugglers, child molesters, etc. Mexico must provide jobs for their people. American employers have to stop hiring illegals. (OCR, 1/14/07, Local 1)

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Administration to Drop Effort to Track if Visitors Leave 

WASHINGTON, NY Times, 12/15/06 — Domestic security officials have for now given up on plans to develop a facial or fingerprint recognition system to determine whether a vast majority of foreign visitors leave the country. One-third of the overall total of illegal immigrants are believed to have overstayed their visas, a Congressional report says. Tracking visitors took on particular urgency after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when it became clear that some of the hijackers had remained in the country after their visas had expired. A vast majority of foreign visitors enter and exit by land from Mexico and Canada, and the policy shift means that officials will remain unable to track the departures. It will take 5 to 10 years to develop technology that might allow for a cost-effective departure system. Domestic security officials, who have allocated $1.7 billion since the 2003 fiscal year to track arrivals and departures, argue that creating the program with the existing technology would be prohibitively expensive. Congress ordered the creation of such a system in 1996. In an interview last week, the assistant secretary for homeland security policy, Stewart A. Baker, estimated that an exit system at the land borders would cost “tens of billions of dollars” and said the department had concluded that such a program was not feasible, at least for the time being. In January 2004, domestic security officials began fingerprint scanning for arriving visitors. The program has screened more than 64 million travelers and prevented more than 1,300 criminals and immigration violators from entering, officials said. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other officials often call the program a singular achievement in making the country safer. U.S. Visit fingerprints and photographs 2 percent of the people entering the country, because Americans and most Canadians and Mexicans are exempt. Efforts to determine whether visitors actually leave have faltered. Departure monitoring would help officials hunt for foreigners who have not left, if necessary. Domestic security officials say, however, it would be too expensive to conduct fingerprint or facial recognition scans for land departures. Officials have experimented with less costly technologies, including a system that would monitor by radio data embedded in a travel form carried by foreigners as they depart by foot or in vehicles. Tests of that technology, Radio Frequency Identification, found a high failure rate. At one border point, the system correctly identified 14 percent of the 166 vehicles carrying the embedded documents, the General Accountability Office reported. The Congressional investigators noted the “numerous performance and reliability problems” with the technology and said it remained unclear how domestic security officials would be able to meet their legal obligation to create an exit program. Some immigration analysts said stepping away from the program raised questions again about the commitment to enforce border security and immigration laws. A senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, Jessica Vaughn, said the government had long been too deferential to big businesses and travel groups that raised concerns that exit technology might disrupt travel and trade.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/washington/15exit.html?em&ex=1166331600&en=3117a7ddf8b2e721&ei=5070

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U.S. Undocumented Population Surges

SAN DIEGO (3/21/05, AP) - The tightening of homeland security since 2001 has not stemmed undocumented immigration into the United States, with a report released Monday showing the number of illegal immigrants growing by roughly 485,000 people a year. An analysis of government data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a private research group in Washington, showed an estimated 10.3 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States last year, an increase of about 23 percent from 8.4 million in 2000.

Currently, there are fewer than 11,000 agents to patrol more than 6,000 miles of the nation's perimeter around the clock. Arizona and North Carolina have some of the fastest-growing populations of illegal immigrants. Mexicans by far remain the largest group of undocumented migrants at 5.9 million, or about 57 percent of the March 2004 estimate. Some 2.5 million others, or 24 percent, are from other Latin American countries. Immigration reform must be part of the answer. Immigrants who are forced to wait years to legally bring over family members have a strong incentive to look instead to smugglers. Bush has promoted a guest-worker program that would allow migrants to work in the United States for a limited time. 

Rep. John Hostettler, an Indiana Republican who chairs a subcommittee on immigration and border security, said the government has failed to punish employers who hire illegal workers or sufficiently fund efforts to find and deport illegal immigrants. "The idea that we're going to completely seal the border, even with the National Guard or 20,000 to 30,000 Border Patrol agents is a little naive,'' he said. "We need the manpower. Without that, we are just going to continue to grow the number of illegal aliens in the country. And we will build a huge haystack where it's going to be more difficult to find that needle - which will be that terrorist or that terrorist cell - that will strike this country.''

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THE BOUNDARY: A US border patrol vehicle rolls down the road in Douglas, AZ. [Do you really think this relatively low fence is much of a deterrent? Compare this fence with the  concrete and steel fence in Israel, see Middle East web page for photos.  me.html#fence ] (AP photo)

WASHINGTON – (CSM, 3/22/05) Concern is growing at the top levels of government about the US-Mexican border becoming a back door for terrorists entering the United States. While Al Qaeda infiltration across the nation's southern border has been a constant concern since 9/11, US officials cite recent intelligence giving the most definitive evidence yet that terrorists are planning to use it as an entry point - if they haven't already. As a result, a number of Republican and Democratic lawmakers - mainly from border states - are pushing to tighten checkpoints and other ways of monitoring the porous 1,400-mile boundary. 

One of the biggest concerns is that terrorists may exploit the current crossing procedures to make their way into the US. One way they might do this - and members of Congress say evidence is mounting that terrorists are trying this - is by paying smuggling networks, especially organized gangs. The other is through a loophole in the system to separate the large number of illegal Mexican migrants, who are automatically turned back at the borders, from citizens of other countries who are allowed in, pending immigration hearings. These others are referred to as "other than Mexicans," or OTMs, by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They come from other Latin American countries as well as other parts of the world, many of them designated by the government as countries of "special interest." In 2004, some 44,000 OTMs were allowed into the US.

It's not clear how many terrorists or people having connections to terror groups may have entered the US as OTMs. But FBI Director Robert Mueller, in a House Appropriations Committee hearing March 9, said he was aware that individuals from countries with known Al Qaeda ties had entered the US under false identities.

Furthermore, in a Feb. 16 Senate hearing, Mr. Mueller cited the case of Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, who paid to be smuggled across the US-Mexico border in 2001. He pleaded guilty on March 1 to providing material support to Hizbullah and was sentenced to no more than five years in prison. The most recent sign, though, that terrorists may be thinking of entering the US from the south came from the mastermind of many of the terror attacks in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Last week, US officials revealed that Mr. Zarqawi may be planning to broaden his campaign to include strikes in the US - and suggested it would be easy to infiltrate the US through the southern border.

Of the 44,000 OTMs who entered the US last year, it is not known how many were detained and how many remain free. Members of Congress are continuing to lean on government officials, asking for clear assessments of numbers as well as policies intended to thwart the entry of those who would harm the US. The DHS supplied numbers of OTMs registered, by country of origin, who had been released on their own recognizance for fiscal years 2002, 2003, and 2004. The totals were 5,775, 9,139, and 30,756 respectively. Some countries, such as those known to export gang members, showed dramatic increases in numbers entering the US. The DHS document, for instance, shows 1,463 OTMs entering the US from El Salvador in 2002. That number increased to 7,963 in 2004. Some 2,539 OTMs entered the US from Honduras in 2002, and that number increased to 12,549 in 2004. Representative Ortiz, though, disputes many of the DHS numbers. He says he regularly hears reports of much higher figures from border patrol officials from his district in Texas, which includes the border-crossing area of Brownsville. "In the Brownsville sector alone, border patrol officials reported they caught 23,178 OTMs crossing through August 2004," Mr. Ortiz says. "Of those, 16,616 were released." Ortiz also points out that another loophole is entering Mexico through Brazil, where a visa is not required to travel to Mexico.

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MEXICALI, Mexico, 3/23/05, NYTimes - At Mexican Border, Tunnels, Vile River, Rusty Fence. When United States Customs officials discovered the latest tunnel under the border here last month, they were stunned. With a cement floor and an intercom system, the passage ran nearly 200 yards from a house on one side of a rusty metal fence, under two streets and an apartment complex, to emerge in an unassuming tract home in California. Though more elaborate, the tunnel is not unlike the 13 others found during the 1990's, built by drug cartels. But everything in the world after Sept. 11, 2001, has taken on a different hue. Today such tunnels are where the failures of drug policy, border control and immigration reform meet ever pressing issues of national security. American officials fear the tunnels could be used just as easily to smuggle terrorists and explosives as cocaine or illegal immigrants. Investigators say they doubt that the builders of the elaborate tunnel here would have spent an estimated $1 million just to smuggle migrant workers. It is more likely, they said, that the tunnel was built to smuggle lucrative drugs like cocaine and heroin, but another line of investigation is that its builders might have intended to sell passage to terrorists. A measure was passed in the House of Representatives that would mandate completion of a long-stalled security wall between Tijuana and San Diego.

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Border family's strange encounters with illegal crossers

NACO, AZ (4/7/05, Christian Science Monitor) - The Garner family on Purdy Lane doesn't know exactly how many chickens, roosters, Guinea hens, or geese they own on their 5-acre farm in this dusty town on the US-Mexico border. But they know the number is smaller than the number of illegal immigrants who can be seen daily in groups of three, 10, 40, 60, and more on their property. They are often huddled in centipede form (hands on the hips of the person in front), kneeling under windows, crouched behind trees, and sleeping in their egg house.

Mr. Garner, a carpenter, his wife, and three daughters (age 10, 12, and 15) tell countless stories that are as alarming to outsiders as they are matter-of-fact to them. Theirs is a life dominated by self-defense lessons, family practice drills to huddle in the master bedroom, obligatory two-way radios for kids who walk to school, and a handgun on the hip for mom. Although violent encounters are relatively rare, their stories tell a narrative of how surreal - and spooky - life can be for families that straddle the 1,400-mile Maginot Line known as the US-Mexican border. "You'll be weeding in your garden and turn around to see 20 of them standing in front of you, demanding water and food," says Dawn Garner, the mother. "I come out to go to school, and they are changing their clothes under my bedroom window," says daughter Shayne. "They leave backpacks filled with drugs on the lawn," says sister Ciara. "It's scary and creepy."

Despite increasingly harsh crackdowns over the years by the US Border Patrol (both pre- and post-911), the presence of illegal immigrants is also a growing phenomenon, says Ms. Garner, who grew up here in Naco, population 7,000. And it is more dangerous and pernicious, she says, with a growing number of people of different nationalities coming across the border, including from the Middle East, India, and Afghanistan. The evidence of that comes in Islamic prayer rugs found in the desert dust, Arabic literature left by still-warm campfires, and Afghani head garb caught on cactus quills. The FBI also recently found a drug tunnel beneath the bedroom of a schoolmate of one of the Garner girls, with $250,000 cash hidden inside. "The diversity of those who are coming across has grown and their desperation has definitely heightened," she says. "Years ago, they would politely ask you for water outside. Now you come home and someone is in your house, eating your food, trashing your bedroom, stealing your stuff, and leaving garbage everywhere."

Stories like those of the Garners are being corroborated from San Diego to Houston this week as the high-profile citizen's effort known as the Minutemen Project unfolds across a 20-40 mile section of the border here. A woman who lives in Laredo, Texas, tells of being choked in her own bedroom and being yanked off her horses. A San Diego couple complains of fields strewn with plastic bottles and human excrement. But the most intense scrutiny is coming, here south of Tucson, where last year agents apprehended 500,000 migrants, catching - they say - only one in three who attempt to cross. By placing citizen volunteers at outposts 300 yards apart, the minuteman group is hoping to prove a point: that the influx of illegal immigrants could be slowed, if not stopped, at even the border's most porous sections if the Border Patrol could carry out similar saturation patrolling.

"Everyone here welcomes the Minutemen," says mechanic Dylan Cron, who fixes cars in a metallic Quonset hut about a mile from the Garner farm. "The illegal phenomenon is not just changing the nature of this little town. The people who pass through here are headed to New York, Chicago ... all over the US." A few weeks ago, Mr. Cron says a desperate man walked up to him while he was fixing a car, and offered to buy it on the spot for $5,000 cash. Mr. Cron pointed to a tower of video cameras placed about 100 yards away by the Border Patrol. "It's pretty clear he wanted it to help move a bunch of illegal immigrants inland, but when he saw the cameras, he suddenly thanked me and hurried off," says Cron, who lauds the minutemen for bringing attention to the understaffed and underfunded Border Patrol.  "I call them two to three times a week to report groups of illegal immigrants coming across my property in groups of 10 to 20," says Cron. "They say they are busy grabbing bigger groups of 40 to 60."

Watching from his fix-it shop or bedroom window, Cron says he has identified the modus operandi of groups big and small. Usually, they are directed by three helpers, one holding a cell phone or two-way radio on higher ground, a second leading groups through the low-lying water gully behind his home, and a third on nearby streets or highways coordinating mobile pick-ups to spirit immigrants inland. "What makes it most disturbing now is that you can't leave a window open in summer, or leave anything unlocked at night anywhere," says Cron. He recently put bars on his windows because he found a group of illegal immigrants sleeping just inside his shop after breaking in through the glass window.

For her own piece of mind, Mrs. Garner - a stay-at-home mother who also teaches pilates and aerobic kickboxing - signed her three daughters up for an Israeli-army self-defense course. It teaches how to defend yourself without weapons. Shayne, who speaks Spanish, says the migrants do not respond to her attempts to communicate in any language, coached as they are by professional coyotes, who smuggle people across the border, to say nothing. Handbook on crossing border. She translates aloud from a paper handbook that she found in an abandoned backpack, published by a Mexican group that aids people on the other side of a waist high barbed-wire fence that separates the two countries. The book explains why not to bribe American officials, what terrain to avoid, and spells out what the Border Patrol is obligated to do upon catching illegal immigrants. "Whenever you go to America, they are required to give you emergency medical attention," says Shayne, translating from Spanish. "The authorities are obligated to give you basic services of hygiene, and they have to help you if you are sick." Her mother says booklets like this show what residents on the US of the border are up against. "It's invasive. It's a lifestyle we live and can't ever forget about every day," she says. Living briefly in Wyoming and Alaska has given her the only perspective that life in the rest of America is not like the life she leads. "I'm thinking that if we don't take the time and effort to stop this here, we are going to see more and more of it elsewhere," she says. "Now, with the added element of terrorism threats, we'd better rethink our resolve on this issue."

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Eleven million illegals live in a shadow world within our borders, reinforced annually by an influx of hundreds of thousands more. They are mainly from Mexico, just a car ride away, so they can maintain real and emotional ties to their home country. The anxiety is that Hispanics will retain their language and culture and thus remain separate from and isolated within America. The popular phrase is that they will acculturate rather than assimilate, for Hispanics can remain within their own culture given the easy accessibility to Spanish TV networks, newspapers, and radio stations--and the fact that many tend to live in large Spanish-speaking enclaves, in places like California--all of which raises the concern that we might become a bilingual country. Hispanics are learning English as fast as any immigrant group. True, they are retaining their native language longer, but the transition from Spanish to English is virtually completed in one generation, on average. Of the children born here to immigrants, only 7 percent rely on Spanish as their primary language, and nearly half have no Spanish skills at all. Of the third generation, that is, Latinos born of U.S.-born parents, virtually none speak only Spanish, and less than a quarter are bilingual. According to the Pew Hispanic Center poll of 2004, 96 percent believe English is fundamental to their future. By the third generation, 60 percent of Mexican-American children speak only English at home. When Hispanics have children in America, they tend to sink deeper roots here and lose touch with the homes they left behind. That's why there is little difference, for example, between Mexican-American lifestyles and other American lifestyles. Hispanics are embracing the American way. Their goals are the essence of the American dream: economic opportunity and security, health and education, and home ownership. They place as much emphasis on the American values of hard work and family as any group in America. They are also intermarrying at a rate similar to that of other immigrant groups. By the third generation, a third of Hispanic women marry non-Latinos. They serve and die in the military as much as any other group in proportion to their population and now compose about 10 percent of the U.S. military. They have also done relatively well financially for a community that came here with virtually nothing. Nearly 80 percent live above the poverty line, and 68 percent of those who have lived here for 30 years or more own their own homes. Their culture of hard work, in other words, has enabled them to climb out of poverty, and they are going through the same powerful process of change as any of the immigrant groups that have come to the United States, melting gradually but inexorably into our middle and working classes. The one area where they lag is education. Roughly 60 percent of Hispanics graduate from high school, compared with 90 percent of nonimmigrant Americans; only 8 percent get college degrees, compared with 26 percent of whites. (USN&WR, 6/20/05, 64)  ..... Overstayed visas in 2001: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, and United Arab Emirates. These countries had 123,000 total “overstay cases” (all modes of arrival) in fiscal year 2001. Included in the 123,000 were 49,000 overstay cases from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. 18 terrorists of those 49,000 decided to fly planes into buildings. Mohammed Atta was from Egypt, so not counted. (E-mail, 4/9/06) ..... In Michelle Malkin's book Invasion, she recounts the tale of two fellows who in August 2001 pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot in Falls Church, Va., in search of fake ID from the illegal-alien assistance network that hangs around there. Luis Martinez-Flores, who'd been living here illegally since 1994, took them along to the local DMV, supplied them with a fake address and falsely certified they lived there. The very next day, the two guys returned with two pals of their own, and used their own brand-new state ID on which the ink was not yet dry to obtain in turn brand-new state ID for their buddies. A couple of weeks later, all four of them used their Virginia ID to board American Airlines Flight 77 at Dulles Airport and plowed it into the Pentagon. (Chicago Sun-Times, 4/9/06)  http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn09.html  

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Legal Immigration to US Still Declining

New data released by the Department of Homeland Security show that in FY 2003:
* Legal immigration fell by 34 percent
* The number of people in the US who were able to adjust their status to legal residence dropped 50 percent,
   explaining much of the overall decline
* The level of newly arriving legal permanent residents remained relatively steady
* Refugee admissions rebounded slightly from the 25-year low following 9/11
* The level of temporary visitors continued at 15 percent below pre-9/11 levels
* Naturalizations decreased by 19 percent

Permanent Immigration: The number of people granted legal permanent residence in the United States in FY 2003 dropped 34 percent to just under 706,000. This included 358,000 new arrivals and 347,000 persons who adjusted their status. Mexican nationals were among those most affected by the slowdown in adjustments of status, with their numbers declining by 47.2 percent. Fewer than 116,000 Mexicans became legal permanent residents in FY 2003, compared to over 219,000 in FY 2002. According to the new figures, Mexican nationals accounted for 16.4 percent of legal immigrants in FY 2003. They had represented 20.6 percent in the previous fiscal year.

Over half of all new legal immigrants arrived from just 10 countries. The 10 countries of origin were Mexico (116,000), India (50,000), the Philippines (45,000), China (41,000), El Salvador (28,000), the Dominican Republic (26,000), Vietnam (22,000), Colombia (15,000), Guatemala (14,000), and Russia (14,000). The last three countries were newcomers to the top 10 list in 2003, while Cuba, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Ukraine fell out of the top 10.

Six states remain key destinations for many new legal immigrants. Sixty-three percent of immigrants live in six states – California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. There was a slight decline in the percentage of immigrants heading to California, Texas, and Florida, with increases for other states. Temporary admissions from certain countries declined sharply. 

Between 2002 and 2003, admissions from Asian Islamic countries and African Islamic countries dropped by an average of 10 percent, after having dropped nearly 36 percent one year earlier. Between 2001 and 2003, for instance, admissions from Jordan fell nearly 40 percent and Malaysia nearly 46 percent, while admissions from Saudi Arabia plummeted by nearly 76 percent and Somalia 71 percent. Other parts of the world were affected as well. Non-immigrant admissions from Brazil fell to 497,000 in FY 2003, down from 576,000 in 2002 (a 13.8 percent decline) and 734,000 in 2001 (a 21.5 percent decline).

Reductions occurred across many temporary admissions categories, including foreign students (625,000 in FY 2003) and temporary workers and trainees (650,000 in FY 2003). The number of foreign students has not yet recovered to pre-9/11 levels of nearly 699,000 and declined another 3.3 percent from the previous year (646,000 in 2002.) Certain temporary worker categories also continue to experience visible declines three years after 9/11. In FY 2003, there were 14,000 H-2A temporary agricultural workers (about half as many as two years earlier), and there were only 59,000 TN workers (holders of NAFTA visas for professionals), compared to 74,000 in 2002 and 95,000 in 2001, a two-year decline of 37.7 percent.

Forty-two percent of the 463,000 people who naturalized in FY 2003 were born in Asia, while 28 percent were born in North America. The single largest country of origin for newly naturalized US citizens in FY 2003 was Mexico, with 56,000. Other key countries of origin this past year were India (30,000), the Philippines (29,000), Vietnam (26,000), China (24,000), South Korea (16,000), the Dominican Republic (13,000), Jamaica (11,000), Iran (11,000), and Poland (9,000). Nearly half of all naturalizations in 2003 were of nationals from these 10 countries.  (E-mail, 4/10/06)

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Geneva Conventions and Terrorists

For several hundred years, the civilized world has been making up rules to govern the actions of states at war--states with identifiable flags, uniforms, and borders--regulating which weapons and military practices are acceptable and which are not. But today we know, to our bitter cost, that for the most part the enemies of civilization are not military branches of specific states; they are shadowy terrorist groups--Islamofascists committed to mass murder, their suicide attacks a message of uncompromising struggle unrestrained by fear of reprisal.  How are we to fight this new war against terrorists who do not fight in uniforms but dress up as civilians? They shoot from mosques, hospitals, and churches. They hide behind children. Which is more consistent with our values, shooting back in self-defense but risking the loss of innocent lives or refraining and seeing other innocents killed and maimed?  The Geneva Conventions say prisoners of war essentially cannot be interrogated but provide only their name, rank, and serial number. Are we therefore to honor our values by stopping with those questions when there's reason to believe that a detained suspect knows of an impending attack? Obviously, we cannot countenance wanton cruelty, but how much of an outrage is it if we use stress techniques, such as sleep deprivation, on someone with murder in his heart? Blowing up nightclubs, hijacking planes to fly into offices, planting bombs to blow up buses--surely such acts cannot earn those who would plan them the privilege of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, which were organized after World War II to protect civilians from states, not to protect states from civilians. The counterargument is that if we don't treat our prisoners with respect, America's uniformed services will pay the price when its members fall into enemy hands. But what happens when American soldiers or innocent civilians are captured by al Qaeda? When the terrorists seize hostages, what we see are the horrific videos of prisoners pleading for their lives, then having their heads hacked off while the murderers yell "Allahu akbar." Surely, these killers, when caught, have forfeited any presumption to be treated as prisoners of war. Some suggest we can get around the challenge by solving the root causes of Islamic unrest. Americans in their ceremony of innocence always think that there are root causes, that there is an explanation for the inexplicable, an explanation for the privileged young men of the Arab Muslim world who would plot to kill themselves while murdering thousands of American civilians. We look for the usual suspects--poverty, injustice, exploitation, and frustration. But the data don't fit the model. The killers of 9/11 were, without exception, from families of privilege. Indeed, revolutionary violence has been a virtual monopoly of the relatively privileged and educated. A study of 18 revolutionary groups found that terrorists were, on average, more educated and less impoverished than their peer groups and that support for terrorism was not reduced by increases in education. Indeed, researchers Charles Russell and Bowman Miller found that the vast majority of those involved, as cadres or leaders, were quite well educated, with some two thirds having some university training and over two thirds coming from the middle or upper classes. The West cannot solve this puzzle. Islamic unrest is produced in and by the Islamic world. It is Muslims who will have to find a solution. Skillful diplomacy might reduce some of the animosity, but there will always be fanatics whose hatred of the West cannot be satisfied by diplomacy. We cannot become a  society  crippled by political correctness and inhibited from doing what is necessary to protect ourselves.  (USN&WR, 2/21/05, 80)

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Last update = 02/28/2019 09:29 AM