Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, has fled a Pakistani city on the border with Afghanistan and found refuge from potential U.S. attacks in the teeming Pakistani port city of Karachi with the assistance of Pakistan's intelligence service, three current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.

Mullah Omar, who hosted Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders when they plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, had been residing in Quetta, where the Afghan Taliban shura -- or council -- had moved from Kandahar after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Two senior U.S. intelligence officials and one former senior CIA officer told The Washington Times that Mullah Omar traveled to Karachi last month after the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He inaugurated a new senior leadership council in Karachi, a city that so far has escaped U.S. and Pakistani counterterrorism campaigns, the officials said.

The officials, two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI, helped the Taliban leaders move from Quetta, where they were exposed to attacks by unmanned U.S. drones.

The development reinforces suspicions that the ISI, which helped create the Taliban in the 1990s to expand Pakistani influence in Afghanistan, is working against U.S. interests in Afghanistan as the Obama administration prepares to send more U.S. troops to fight there.

Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran and analyst on al Qaeda and the Taliban, confirmed that Mullah Omar had been spotted in Karachi recently.

"Some sources claim the ISI decided to move him further from the battlefield to keep him safe" from U.S. drone attacks, said Mr. Riedel, who headed the Obama administration's review of policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last spring. "There are huge madrassas in Karachi where Mullah Omar could easily be kept."

Mr. Riedel also noted that there had been few suicide bombings in Karachi, which he attributed to the Taliban and al Qaeda not wanting to "foul their own nest."

A U.S. counterterrorism official said, "There are indications of some kind of bleed-out of Taliban types from Quetta to Karachi, but no one should assume at this point that the entire Afghan Taliban leadership has packed up its bags and headed for another Pakistani city."

A second senior intelligence officer who specializes in monitoring al Qaeda said U.S. intelligence had confirmed Mullah Omar's move through both electronic and human sources as well as intelligence from an unnamed allied service....

Read the original story at Jihad Watch.

How on earth did Democracy Now end up grouped in search results with these folks? Hmmm (tapping my chin with index finger), I do wonder…

Read the original story at NewsReal Blog.

1. Spencer to Umar Lee:

Umar

How you doing? It's been a long time. I hope you're well.

I've read your post on Muslims in the military with great interest, and am posting about it now at Jihad Watch.

Would you be up for an interview with me on this and related issues?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Your friend as ever,
Robert Spencer

2. Umar Lee to Spencer:

Mr. Spencer, i do not have time to grant interviews at this time. Regarding my position on muslims in the military i stand by the fatawa posted on my blog and that is why i encorage all muslims in america to not join. My feelings on the ft hood shooting and brother nidal hassan will be in the next edition of muslim quarterly magazine in an article titled why the fort got hood.

3. Spencer to Umar Lee:

Thanks for your kind and informative note. I respect the fact that you base your position on Sharia norms as delineated by the Qur'an and Sunnah. In line with that, I was wondering about what you thought on a tangential but related matter: in light of all the publicity that the Rifqa Bary case has gotten, and the many statements by Muslim leaders in the U.S. denying that Islam mandates death for apostates, do you uphold the traditional death penalty for apostasy as taught by Muhammad and by all the madhahib?

Thanks and regards
Robert

4. Umar Lee to Spencer:

Im not that up on that case. What i do know is we live in a very imoral society and teens are bombarded with negative messages. Any teen girl who is not a serial fornicator is seen as square and if she has good muslim parents making sure she is not acting like a ho she may rebel. I am not a scholar but the ruling on apostacy is clear. In an ideal world the apostate would face death but there is no authority to implement the shariah in america so no she shouldnt be killed and besides this girl may very well be making the whole thing up.

Read the original story at Jihad Watch.

Ace videographer Dave Miles kindly sent along these superb videos from the Rifqa Rally for human rights and religious freedom, Columbus, Ohio, November 16.

Read the original story at Jihad Watch.

"Russian Priest Gunned Down in Church," by Alexander Marquardt for ABC News, November 20 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A Russian Orthodox priest known for his missionary work among Muslims was gunned down in his Moscow church, Russian officials said Friday.

Thirty-four-year-old Daniil Sysoyev was shot at least four times at in the head and chest in the Church of St. Thomas by a masked gunman Thursday night, according to the Prosecutor General's Investigative Committee. The assailant also wounded the church's choirmaster, Vladimir Strelbitsky.

Sysoyev died on the way to the hospital. Strelbitsky is in critical condition.

"The main theory is that religious motives are behind the crime," a prosecutor's office spokesman told reporters.

Sysoyev routinely denounced Islam and actively reached out to Muslims and various religious sects to convert them. In a recent interview with a Russian newspaper, Sysoyev boasted that he had baptized 80 Muslims.

But with his ambitious missionary work came death threats.

"They've threatened to cut my head off 14 times," Sysoyev told Komsomolskaya Pravda in the interview. "The FSB [Federal Security Service] got in touch with me a year ago to say they had uncovered a murder plot against me."

He told a television interviewer in February 2008 that he considered it a sin not to preach to Muslims, according to the Interfax news agency.

Sysoyev was originally from the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, where a large majority of the population is Muslim. He published books titled "An Orthodox Response to Islam" and "Marrying a Muslim," which criticized the faith and drew fierce responses from Muslim organizations.

'No Reason to Kill'

Russia's Council of Muftis strongly denounced the murder Friday, saying differences should be worked out in a civilized way....

Read the original story at Jihad Watch.

A 24-year-old local Somali man has been indicted in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on charges of conspiring to provide support to terrorists.

Omer Abdi Mohamed, an unemployed employment counselor and father of a 2-month-old boy, was indicted on charges of conspiracy to "kill, kidnap, maim or injure" people in foreign countries, according to an indictment filed Tuesday but made public Thursday.

Mohamed, of Minneapolis, is the sixth Somali man with local ties to be charged in connection with a two-year-old federal counterterrorism investigation aimed at finding out who recruited as many as 20 area men of Somali descent to return to their homeland and train and fight with the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab. The probe is considered to be one of the most sweeping international counterterrorism investigations since Sept. 11, 2001.

When asked if investigators allege that Mohamed was a recruiter, Peter Wold, his attorney, said: "In the end, I think you'll see that certainly wasn't the case."

The indictment released Thursday provides few details, but it links Mohamed to a broad conspiracy involving other men who returned to Somalia to fight or train with terrorists, including Shirwa Ahmed, a 26-year-old Minneapolis man believed to be the first U.S. suicide bomber.

According to the indictment, others connected to the conspiracy include: Salah Osman Ahmed, Kamal Said Hassan, Ahmed Ali Omar, Abdifatah Isse and Khalid Mohamud Abshir -- all of whom left the United States in December 2007 with a final destination of Somalia. Ahmed, Hassan and Isse all have pleaded guilty to the same charges Mohamed faces.

Wold said after the hearing Thursday that his client knew the other men through the mosque where they prayed. Isse Hussein, Mohamed's cousin, said Mohamed prayed "a lot" at Abubakar as-Saddique Islamic Center in south Minneapolis. [...]

A Minneapolis woman who described herself as an acquaintance of Mohamed said he was known by the nickname "Galeyr" and was good friends with Salah Ahmed. She said Mohamed also was related to Adarus Abdullah Ali, 25, who admitted in federal court this month to lying to a grand jury about knowing men who went to Somalia to fight.

The woman, who was close friends with Mohamoud Hassan, a local Somali who was killed in Mogadishu in September, said Mohamed and Ahmed and some of the other men who left Minnesota for Somalia often spent time at Abubakar, the largest Somali mosque in the state. [...]

The woman said she doesn't know for certain why all the men left for Somalia, but said she believes it's rooted in a combination of patriotic feelings toward the Somali homeland and religious fervor. [...]

Minneapolis has been at the center of the international counterterrorism investigation since the first of up to 20 young Somali men from Minnesota began quietly leaving to return to their homeland. In most cases, the men left without telling their families or friends of their plans.

The focus of the investigation has been uncovering the identities of those who recruited the men and financed their return to Somalia to train and fight.

The men are believed to have been recruited by Al-Shabaab, which has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization with links to Al-Qaida.

Since October 2008, five of the Minnesotans who left have died. A sixth man, a Muslim convert from Minneapolis, also is thought to have been killed.

Read the original story at Jihad Watch.

When I wrote my first article, “Everything I Need to Know About ACORN, I Learned From Sophie Scholl,” my brilliant husband raised an eyebrow. When I followed with, “Everything I Need to Know About Sarah Palin, I Learned From Sir Ernest Shackleton,” he raised both and said, “Is this a new way to analyze news, find two things that have absolutely nothing to do with each other and twist them together?” I understood that this sort of Cirque de Soleil-journalism might get old quickly, but after staying up most of the night reading Going Rogue, I am going to indulge in one last juxtaposition.

The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Trial in New York will be, in its very essence, a fight to the death between the American values extolled by Sarah Palin in her bestseller, Going Rogue, and the radically transformed America dreamt of by the“Unholy Alliance“ of leftist Americans and their Islamic Jihadi counterparts. In his book by that same marvelous title, David Horowitz, the founder of The Freedom Center, recalls the reaction of the Left to the patriotism that unified Americans following 9/11:

In the face of the nation’s grief, without knowing when the next terrorist attack might occur, prominent American leftists seized the occasion to state that the attacks had ‘root causes.’ In other words, America was to no small degree, guilty for what had happened.

The purpose of Mohammed’s trial, is to prosecute the “root cause” of 9/11 that is, America herself. Since Mohammed has already confessed to terrorist attacks, his attorneys will endeavor to show that he was justified in destroying 3,000 American lives.

All the Wrights and Dohrns and Dunns secretly hoping to see Khalid exonerated for his contribution to their “freedom fight” against American “arrogance” detest Sarah Palin and have spent the last year and a half trying to destroy her chances of firing the White House personal chef.

The story chronicled in An American Life exudes a spirit diametrically opposed to that of its Marxist detractors. In fact, according to Peter Johnson Jr., a legal analyst for Fox and Friends, it is precisely Sarah’s unabashed faith in and personification of American exceptionalism that make the left sneer condescendingly at her, while fearing her.

“She represents archetypal American values and American exceptionalism…this is why they despise her. They find her offensive, this woman who chose life over death, who chose to bring a disabled child into this world, this wife of whom they can find no reprehensible behavior.”

In Going Rogue, Palin speaks of her admiration for Ronald Reagan, the President who revived Americans’ pride in their country:

The new Republican president I was studying in school, unabashedly set out to make the United States the strongest power in the world. Reagan said, ‘America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny.’”

Reagan and Palin championed the oh-so-boorish ideal of an America that is synonymous with love of faith, family, children, a strong military and the hard- work ethic by which individuals can better themselves thanks to the freedoms we have been blessed with in this unique place on earth. This is why both leaders are so loved by “always-been-proud Americans.”

Across the table from America, tyranny will sit in that New York courtroom, not only the tyranny that destroyed part of the Pentagon in the name of radical Islamic oppression, but also the tyranny that destroyed part of the Pentagon in the name of Dohrnian-Marxism, the hatred of America by “never-been-proud Americans.”

At the close of Unholy Alliance, Horowitz records the words of Colombia professor, Nicholas De Genova, who said:

“A world in which there is justice and peace is a world where the U.S. would have no place.”

The parting words in Going Rogue are:

“I am thankful for God’s touch on America, which has given us all so many opportunities. By His grace, an American life is an extraordinary life.”

The America loved by Sarah Palin or American absence desired by Mohammed and the Left, there can be but one verdict in this trial. The court will hear the closing arguments from Horowitz:

If the United States did not exist, the Communist empire would still be standing, the Taliban would rule Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein would be in power, and the world would be a place of infinitely greater cruelty, injustice, and tragedy than the world that confronts us today.

Read the original story at NewsReal Blog.

Read the original story at Students For Academic Freedom - News.

One of my favorite Dutch singers, Ilse de Lange, performing her hit song “I’m Not So Tough” live for Dutch television.

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