“The attacks on Christians continue and the world remains totally silent. It’s as if we’ve been swallowed up by the night” — Iraqi Christian

Egypt’s Maspero massacre—where the military killed dozens of Christians protesting the destruction of their churches—dominates October’s persecution headlines.  Facts and details concerning the military’s “crimes against humanity” are documented in this report, and include videos of armored-vehicles running over civilians, a catalog of lies and deceitful tactics employed by Egypt’s rulers and state media, and other matters overlooked in the West.

More damning evidence continues to emerge: not only did Egypt’s military plan to massacre Christians to teach them a “lesson” never to protest again, but “death squads” were deployed up buildings the night before to snipe at protesters.  Instead of trying the soldiers who intentionally ran-over demonstrators, the military has been randomly arresting Copts, simply “for being Christian.” Finally, the fact-finding commission of Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights just submitted its report which, as expected, “whitewashes” the military’s role, including by “asserting that no live ammunition was fired on the protesters by the military, as the army only fired blanks in the air to disperse the protesters,” a claim many eyewitnesses reject out of hand.

Meanwhile, not only are Western governments apathetic, but it was revealed that “Obama’s top Muslim advisor blocks Middle Eastern Christians’ access to White House.”  Newt Gingrich asserted that Obama’s “strategy in the Middle East is such a total grotesque failure” and likened the “Arab spring” to an “anti-Christian spring.”  Ann Widdecombe accused the British government of “double standards in its threats to cut aid to countries which persecute gay people while turning a blind eye to persecution against Christians.”  Even Christian pastors in the West, apparently more concerned about appearing tolerant and in “dialogue” with Muslims, are reluctant to mention persecution to their flock.

Categorized by theme, the rest of October’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is hardly limited to) the following accounts, listed according to theme and in alphabetical order by country, not necessarily severity.

Churches

Afghanistan: Ten years after the U.S. invaded and overthrew the Taliban—at a cost of more than 1,700 U.S. military lives and $440 billion in taxpayer dollars—the State Department revealed that Afghanistan’s last Christian church was destroyed. The report further makes clear that the Afghan government—installed by the U.S.—is partially responsible for such anti-Christian sentiments, for instance, by upholding apostasy laws, which make it a criminal offence for Muslims to convert to other religions.

Indonesia: Muslims and authorities expelled Christians from their church and shut it down “for allegedly engaging in ‘proselytizing’ in a predominantly Muslim area.”  As in previous cases when churches were seized, “the fundamentalists were aided and abetted by the local administration.” Also, the Muslim behind a September church attack that left three dead confessed that he was operating under his jihad leader’s orders, “based on the Koran and Sunna.”

Kazakhstan: The Muslim majority nation enacted new laws further restricting freedom of religion: “All registered churches must now re-register with the government, and only churches meeting new criteria will be registered.” Accordingly, “police and secret police agents reportedly raided a worship meeting of officially registered Protestant church New Life, saying that under the new Religion Law the congregation ‘cannot meet outside its legal address.’ During the raid, a 17-year old woman was hit by a policeman, leaving her unconscious.”

Sudan: Soon after President Bashir “confirmed plans to adopt an entirely Islamic constitution and strengthen sharia law,” “emboldened” Muslims attacked Christians trying to construct a church, “claiming that Christianity was no longer an accepted religion in the country.” Likewise, authorities threatened to demolish three church buildings “as part of a long-standing bid to rid Sudan of Christianity.”

Christian Symbols

Egypt: A Christian student was strangled and beaten to death by his Muslim teacher and fellow students for refusing to cover his cross. When the headmaster was informed of the attack in progress, he ignored it and “continued to sip his tea.”  In the words of one prominent Egyptian commentator: “a teacher forced a student to take off the crucifix he wore, and when the Christian student stood firm for his rights, the teacher quarreled with him, joined by some of the students; he was beastly assaulted until his last breath left him.”

Saudi Arabia: A Colombian soccer-player “was arrested by the Saudi moral police after customers in a Riyadh shopping mall expressed outrage over the sports player’s religious tattoos, which included the face of Jesus of Nazareth on his arm….  A similar event occurred in Saudi Arabia last year when a Romanian player kissed the tattoo of a cross he had on his arm after scoring a goal, which also caused public outrage.”

Maldives: Police arrested a 30-year-old teacher from India for having a Bible and rosary, finally deporting him after a two-week interrogation. According to the principal, he “was a very good teacher, we’ve not had any complaints of him in the past.” Such cases are not aberrant: “Last year, Maldivian authorities rescued another Christian teacher from India when Muslim parents of her students threatened to throw her into the sea for ‘preaching Christianity’ after she drew a compass in class, which they alleged was a cross.”

Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism

India: A mufti summoned a Christian priest to appear before his court: according to the mufti, the priest “is involved in converting young Muslim boys and girls to Christianity. This warrants action as per Islamic law….  I will take all necessary measures in exercise of the powers vested in me by Islamic Sharia.”

Iran: Militants with suspected ties to Iranian security threatened to kill nearly a dozen evangelical Christians who fled Iran; unless they “repent and ask forgiveness” and return to Islam, they must die.  Likewise, a “group of four officers engaged in a commando-style raid on the house” of a Muslim convert to Christianity, arresting him, confiscating his Bible, and “transferring him to an unknown location….  His family was also threatened to remain silent and not to talk about this incident to anyone.” Also, a Christian named “Muhammad” was arrested, interrogated “for the charge of Christianity.” And Iran’s Supreme Court has ordered the retrial of the pastor sentenced to death for refusing to renounce his Christian beliefs, partially because “Iran is feeling the pressure” from the international community, since the mainstream media actually reported the pastor’s case.

Editor’s note: Visit Frank Kitman’s site at kitmantv.blogspot.com.

I edited and translated a most heartbreaking testimony by Sister Hatune of the Syrian-Orthodox monastery in Warburg, Germany. She makes an amazing effort to help and  protect the ruthlessly persecuted Christians in Iraq.

In recent years, a horrifying number of kidnappings, rapes and mutilations of Iraqi Christian girls has been perpetrated by Muslim gangs. Some 700,000 Christians are fleeing this terror, but often find themselves exposed to similar dangers when they arrive in neighboring Muslim countries. With no rights and no help from authorities, they are surely in the most desperate of situations.

Please take the time to contemplate why this is not being reported more often.

And visit Sister Hatune’s foundation for more information about her great work.

See the testimony of Sister Hatune below:

You know what really gets under the skin of liberal Jews? Reminding them that Israel’s most reliable supporters are Christian conservatives.

Sunday night I attended a dinner for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) where Mike Pence was one of the keynote speakers. Pence spoke beautifully about how he was raised to admire the Jewish state. He quoted the Torah—which he called the “old book”— stating that he supports Israel because “he who blesses her [Israel] will blessed, and he who curses her [Israel] will be cursed Genesis 12:3.” He told of his belief that Israel is not a manmade idea, but rather “someone else’s idea”; meaning, of course, God’s idea. Furthermore, he said he never imagined he would see a time when an American President (Obama) would criticize Israel for rebuilding in Jerusalem. When I saw Pence speak at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington D.C in 2009 he said, “My Christian faith compels me to cherish the state of Israel.” What I witness in Christian conservatives such as Mike Pence is an unshakable support for Israel, that is clearly lacking in someone like President Obama.

You see, to so many Christians on the right, support for Israel is a religious imperative, a command from God. This is why their support is so rock solid and unwavering. Jews should be able to relate to this as Judaism abounds with commandments of our own. Although many Jews are not religious, they still give generously to charities because it is a commandment from God—a moral and religious imperative. This is why support for Israel (and charity contributions) is greater on the right, as conservatives tend to be more religious than liberals. In a debate with Alan Dershowitz, Dennis Prager brilliantly explains how the left’s support of Israel is more fickle than the right’s.

For those on the left who do support Israel, hate of the right supersedes love of the tiny Jewish country. Dennis Prager wrote a very instructive column on this sad fact a couple years ago with regard to the dissolution of an anti-nuclear Iran rally because of Hillary Clinton’s hatred of Sarah Palin:

“What was alarming was the realization that for much of the Jewish left — not leftists who happen to be Jews and for whom the welfare of the Jewish people is not particularly significant, but left-wing Jews who claim to care deeply about Jewish survival — fighting Palin is of greater importance than fighting Ahmadinejad.”

Glenn Beck, the devoutly religious conservative firebrand, is arguably the most pro-Israel cable news host on television (with several other conservatives in at a close second). Check out this segment on his Fox news show after the brutal murder of the Fogel family in the West Bank. There is no question that Beck’s support for Israel is influenced by his profound faith. Meanwhile, four hundred leftist Jewish Rabbis recently signed a letter demanding Beck be reprimanded for his “unacceptable attacks” on George Soros; the same George Soros who said Israel was “the main stumbling block” to Democracy in the Middle East. Do these rabbis have any perspective? Do they support Israel?

Despite these facts, the left mocks and belittles the Christian right’s love of Israel. A couple weeks ago Chris Matthews mocked the Religious Right’s support of Israel:

“This coalition between the right and Israel…is not founded on personal friendships or anything like that, or even values. Its founded on some sort of right-wing thing, where you just high-five each other over there at the Western Wall.”

What a low life. If it were not for Christian conservatives in the United States, Israel would be left to the savages who wish her destruction, as the left is totally unreliable in its support for Israel.

If leftist Jews really care for the survival of Israel, they will thank the Christian right for their unwavering support.

Muslims in Ethiopia have torched 69 Christian churches, a Bible school and an orphanage –in less than one month. Not content with this alone, at least two Christians have been murdered simply because they were Christian. As the “machete-wielding” Muslims warned that more killings would be coming, thousands of Christians have fled in fear. Ethiopian Christians, who have been dominant in their country since the 4th century, are in a state of crisis due to the “religious hatred and violence” of their Muslim neighbors.

Here in America, there is silence from the White House, the Left and the Muslim community about this horrific story out of Ethiopia. Silence is consent.

We knew that they were peddling this ideology of intolerance, but it was not possible for us to stop them administratively because they are within their rights,” [Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles] said. “If we can find some association between what they are doing by way of preaching and what happened by way of violence, then of course we can take them to court.

From that comment by the Prime Minister, it’s fairly clear that Ethiopia might well have been served by radicalization hearings but the government considered that the Muslim community is within their rights to be free of such an inquiry. Christians are now paying the price for that failure as an inferno of burning churches has been blazing since March 2.

The White House is silent.

The last message from the State Department in regard to Ethiopia was a January 31 press briefing that was supposed to address the situation in Ethiopia, but in reality, did not actually mention Ethiopia. As Christian Ethiopians flee amid shouts of ‘Allah Akbar’, President Obama and Islamapologists in the leftist media are fleeing from their responsibility to speak out. They have also failed to speak out for the Christians of Egypt and Iraq while continually preaching the virtues of Islam.

Under the leadership of Barack Obama, Christian blood has become utterly meaningless, not only to Islamists, but also to his White House team and to the mainstream media who are turning a blind eye.

What did the Christians of Ethiopia do to provoke their Muslim neighbors? One account is that a copy of the Qur’an was found in a toilet. Another account claims that the cause is “Christian evangelism in Muslim areas.” Whatever the case, no one is even bothering to claim that any Christian raised a hand in violence toward any Muslim in Ethiopia. Here we have a lesson in both Islamism and the values of the Left: freedom of conscience is the enemy and violence is okay. Provided that the “right people” are doing it.

Remember…Stalin was a leftist.

Next: Christian Bloodbaths and Church Burnings Aren’t Newsworthy to the Left

Although many won’t admit it, we are in the midst of an ideological war with Islam. And since the advantage goes to the side that fully realizes they are at war, the West is losing. The propaganda war is going in favor of Islam precisely because the West doesn’t realize it is supposed to be fighting one. The ability of Islam to rally much of the world behind its hatred of Israel is a telling indication of who is winning the war of ideas. As for war aims, it’s not clear that there are any. Even those who see the danger clearly rarely talk in terms of victory; they talk mainly in terms of resisting cultural jihad. You know you’re in trouble when your ideological opponent is a primitive seventh-century belief system, and yet the best that your top strategists hope for is to put up a good resistance.

As the Dracula-like return of Communist ideology demonstrates, an ideological war needs to be fought to complete and total victory. The enemy ideology should be so thoroughly discredited that no one—not even its former staunchest defenders, not even the most doctrinaire college professor—will want to be associated with it. In regard to Islam, then, our aim should go beyond simply resisting jihad; it should be the defeat of Islam as an idea. But, aside from inflicting crushing military defeats on Islamic powers, how do you accomplish that?

One answer is that you do all you can to force Muslims to question their faith in Islam. As Mark Steyn observes, “there’s no market for a faith that has no faith in itself.” He was speaking, of course, of the more mushy versions of Western Christianity—the post-Christian Christians who seem anxious to dialogue themselves into dhimmitude. But there’s no reason the concept can’t be applied to Islam. Surely the average intelligent Muslim has occasional doubts about the founding revelations. And just as surely he keeps them to himself, not only because he fears his fellow Muslims, but also because the rest of the world seems to be going along with the pretense that he belongs to a great religion. It may be time for the rest of the world to drop the pretense.

If one of your opponents’ core beliefs is that you need to be subjugated, why wouldn’t you want to foster doubts in his mind? Jihadists commit jihad because they correctly perceive that their religion calls them to it. As long as they are kept secure in the illusion that their faith is unassailable, they will continue the jihad by whatever means seem most expedient. They won’t question their faith—and neither will the majority of Muslims—unless they get used to the fact that it can be questioned and criticized.

One man who has done a lot to shake up the faith of Muslims is Fr. Zakaria Botros, a Coptic priest who hosts a weekly Arabic language TV program watched by millions of Muslims around the world. Among other things, the engaging Fr. Botros forces his Muslim audience to confront unflattering facts about their prophet. He also talks to them about the Christian faith—something that most Muslims know very little about, beyond some simple caricatures. Apparently he is very successful at what he does. According to reports he is responsible for mass conversions to Christianity.

Does such questioning of Muhammad’s character provoke anger among Muslims? Well, yes, it does. The elderly Fr. Botros has been labeled Islam’s “Public Enemy #1,” and a reported $60 million bounty has been put on his head. But, according to a recent piece by Raymond Ibrahim, “the outrage appears to be subsiding.” Ibrahim contends that Life TV (the satellite station that carries Fr. Botros’ program) “has conditioned its Muslim viewers to accept that exposure and criticism of their prophet is here to stay.” The first time a Muslim hears the moral flaws of the Prophet exposed, he may well be angry at the exposure. But how about the third time? The tenth time? The twentieth time? What initially provokes anger might eventually provoke doubts about Muhammad’s claims.

There are those who think that such efforts are doomed to failure—that Islam is too deeply rooted in the Muslim world. But deeply held beliefs are not always as deeply rooted as they seem. Thirty-five years ago it would have been non-controversial to say that the Catholic faith was deeply rooted in Ireland, but if you said it today you would be going out on a limb. More to the point, Islam itself was less “deeply rooted” 60 years ago in the Middle East than it is now. Consider this recollection by Ali A. Allawi, a former Iraqi cabinet minister:

I was born into a mildly observant family in Iraq. At that time, the 1950’s, secularism was ascendant among the political, cultural, and intellectual elites of the Middle East. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Islam would lose whatever hold it still had on the Muslim world. Even that term—“Muslim world”—was unusual, as Muslims were more likely to identify themselves by their national, ethnic, or ideological affinities than by their religion.

Deeply rooted? Perhaps you’ve seen that sequence of photos of the University of Cairo graduating classes for the English Department. The women of the Class of 1959 look like college students anywhere in the Western world circa 1959. They wear Western style skirts and dresses and no head covering. Ditto for the class of 1978. It could be the class of ’78 at the University of Chicago. But by 1994 half the women are wearing hijabs. By 2004 almost all the women are wearing hijabs and ankle-length clothing. So, sometime in the 1990’s educated Muslims apparently began to take their faith more seriously. They appear to take it very seriously now. But how “deeply rooted” is twenty years?

Given that the penalty for leaving Islam—or even criticizing it—can be death, we may be mistaking deeply rooted fear for deeply rooted faith. Moreover, the fact that Islam prescribes such harsh penalties for doubters suggests that the faith itself is not intrinsically convincing. As the Ayatollah Khomeini once said, “People cannot be made obedient except with the sword.” Any religion that needs so many external incentives—swords behind you, and virgins in your future—cries out to be questioned. Unfortunately, instead of exploiting its theological weaknesses the West insists on chivalrously shielding Islam from the kind of scrutiny that the West reserves for its own institutions and traditions. And with good reason. Because it’s generally understood, though rarely said, that Muhammad’s claims would not meet the tests of critical reason and historical evidence that we apply to the Judeo-Christian revelation. The much revered sufi theologian al-Ghazali wrote, “The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or his Prophet…” You can see why. Curiosity didn’t kill Christianity, but curiosity would almost certainly kill the Caliphate—or, in our times, the hope for a resurrected Caliphate. Obliged not to mention the Prophet? Given the threat Islam poses to the world and to Muslims themselves, it’s beginning to look as though the obligation runs the other way. The world needs to take a much closer look at the Prophet and his claims. The Prophet is Islam’s main prop. If he is discredited, Islam is discredited. Hence, the mighty efforts by the OIC to make it a crime to blaspheme a prophet.

The Prophet’s integrity is not the only thing in doubt. Theologically speaking, Islam is a house of cards. The whole faith rests on the belief that Muhammad actually received a revelation from God. But where’s the proof? Were there any witnesses to this revelation other than Muhammad? Why should we take his word for it? Why were there so many revelations of convenience that worked directly to Muhammad’s personal advantage? Are there really dozens of renewable virgins awaiting young warriors in paradise, or was this revelation simply a clever recruitment tool manufactured by Muhammad to provide an incentive for following him? And why is the Koran, despite its flashes of poetic brilliance, put together like a soviet-era automobile? As an exercise in composition the Koran would not pass muster in most freshmen writing courses. Why can’t God write as well as the average college student?

Ordinarily it’s not a good idea to go around questioning other people’s firmly held beliefs. But these are not ordinary times, and Islam is no ordinary religion. As any number of observes have noted, it’s partly a religion and partly a supremacist political ideology—although no one seems to be able to say exactly what percent is political ideology and what percent is religion. Is it 50/50 or 60/40 or 80/20? Is it legitimate to criticize the political part of it, but not the religious part? How do you tell where the politics leaves off and the religion begins? Or are they so bound together that they can’t be separated?

If you remember “Joe Palooka,” the old comic strip series about a decent but not-too-bright heavyweight boxer, you might remember that one of Joe’s craftier opponents once tattooed his rather expansive stomach with the word “Mother” inscribed within a large heart. His midsection was his weak spot, of course, but he knew he could count on Joe to avoid hitting him there, Joe being too much of a gentleman to do otherwise. In On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando’s character refers to the place where failed fighters go as “palookaville.” Currently, our whole culture is in danger of ending up in “palookaville” because there are large areas of Islam we decline to examine out of a sense of delicacy that would be excessive in a Victorian matron. Islamic strategists are counting on polite Westerners not to hit them in their soft spot.

Islamic strategists invoke the supremacist principles of the Koran in order to stir up aggression against the Muslim world, yet any criticism of Islam is met with cries of, “No fair! You are blaspheming a prophet and his religion.” So far, the shame-on-you-for-criticizing-a-religion strategy has worked very effectively. Fortunately, a few, like Fr. Botros, aren’t buying into the ruse. He has enough respect for Muslims as individuals to realize that their religion should not be put beyond discussion. Many Muslims, especially Muslim women, suffer a profound sense of desperation: the feeling of being trapped in a 1400-year-old nightmare, with no way out. It’s difficult to see any convincing argument for propping up the system that oppresses them. On the contrary, it seems almost a duty to undermine that system—political and religious—and call it into question at every turn.

In past ideological struggles we wisely sought ideological victory—the discrediting of the belief system that inspired our enemies. Because the driving force behind Islamic aggression is Islamic theology, it makes no sense to treat Islamic theology like a protected species. Rather, we should hope that Muslims lose faith in Islam just as Nazis lost faith in Nazism and Eastern-bloc Communists lost faith in communism.

Of course, it would be all the better if, like Fr. Botros, we had something to offer them in its place. Winston Churchill once said that Greer Garson, for her role in Mrs. Miniver, was worth six divisions in the war against Hitler. It seems safe to say that Fr. Botros, for his role in instilling doubts about Islam and giving Muslims something solid in its place, is worth at least a couple of Departments of Homeland Security.

William Kilpatrick’s articles have appeared in FrontPage Magazine, First Things, Catholic World Report, National Catholic Register, Jihad Watch, World, and Investor’s Business Daily.

Dear Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer,

I am Joseph Nassrala, a Coptic Christian activist from Egypt and founder of The Way TV, a Christian Satellite TV station.

I attended the 10,000 person protest rally against the building to the ground zero mosque which took place at ground zero in NY on Sunday June 6th. We Coptic Christians wanted to express our full support to your initiative and to this important rally.

There was a minor incident at the rally that was blown out of proportion, when my partner, Mr. Karam El Masry, and I were distributing material with some Quran verses and we were also speaking Arabic thus we were mistaken by a few people in the huge crown, for being Muslims infiltrators trying to disrupt the event. This misunderstanding was clarified when we explained who we were and that we are there to support the crowd against the building of the mosque. I was a little frustrated initially for being identified as a Muslim infiltrator, but was glad that the issue was resolved later. My partner, Mr. El Masry, was even able to freely speak to the crowd after our identity was clarified. He explained how Christians are tortured, killed and oppressed in Egypt at the hands of Muslims who are encouraged to persecute Christians from the pulpit of mosques by Muslim preachers.

The reason I am writing to you, is because I am very disappointed in the mainstream media who used this minor incident to make a blanket generalization about all the attendees of the rally as Muslim haters.This kind of generalization was unfair to the good American people who legitimately stand against the building of a mosque next to ground zero and who are against Islamist agenda in the US. I am very well aware of such an agenda which has destroyed the Christian and Jewish existence in the Middle East.

The same mainstream media who denounces painting all Muslims with a broad brush, is doing the same thing they claim to stand against. They shamelessly use our incident to paint with a broad brush that everyone in the rally was a Muslim hater. I want to make it clear that we are not haters of Muslims, but we are against the Islamist agenda in America, the same agenda that drove us out of our homeland Egypt. We have the right to expose Muslim hate and oppression against us, the minorities in the Middle East who are oppressed on a daily basis by the Muslim majority. This mosque should never be built next to ground zero, it is an insult to the memory of the 3000 fellow Americans.

We did not mean to cause any misunderstanding at the rally, on the contrary, we came to support you and your organization. We come from a Muslim country where we suffered from Muslims and the Islamic Shariaa ourselves. That's why we felt burdened to attend this rally and flew for 9 hours to be part of it.. We do support you with our heart and soul, and will always support you and everyone who is opposing Islam. We do honor Mr. Robert's invitation to attend your next rally in September, God's willing, and are looking forward to seeing you there.

We have come to America to seek refuge from the oppression of Islam and expose to the American public what kind of instigation we suffered at the hands of hateful Muslim preachers who incite the worshiping crowds to burn our homes, kidnap our girls and suppress our freedom to practice our religion. We will never allow media misrepresentation to stop us from our mission.

Yours truly,
Joseph Nassralla

Prince Charles yesterday urged the world to follow Islamic 'spiritual principles' in order to save the environment.

In a high-profile speech, the heir to the throne argued that man's destruction of the world was contrary to the scriptures of all religions - but particularly that of the Islamic faith.

He said the current 'division' between Man and Nature had been caused not just by industrialisation, technological development and the relentless pursuit of economic growth, but also by our attitude to our relationship with Nature - which goes against the grain of 'sacred traditions'.

Charles, who is a practising Christian, spoke in depth about his own study of the Qu'ran [sic] which, he said, tells its followers that there is 'no separation between Man and Nature' and says we must always live within Nature's mean and limits

'From what I know of the Qu'ran [sic], again and again it describes the natural world as the handiwork of a unitary benevolent power,' he said.

'It very explicitly describes Nature as possessing an "intelligibility" and that there is no separation between Man and Nature, precisely because there is no separation between the natural world and God.

'It offers a completely integrated view of the Universe where religion and science, mind and matter are all part of one living, conscious whole.

'This suggests to me that Nature is a knowing partner, never a mindless slave to humanity, and we are Her tenants; God's guests for all too short a time.'

The prince was speaking to an audience of scholars at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, which attempts to encourage a better understanding of the culture and civilisation of the religion, of which he is patron....

A U.S. Marine who served in Iraq is suing the federal government for distributing billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to the Shariah-supporting American International Group.

The lawsuit, Murray v. Geithner et al., was brought against the Fed and the Treasury by the Thomas More Law Center on behalf of Kevin Murray, a former Marine who served honorably in Iraq to defend the United States from Islamic terrorists.

Murray argues that he is being forced as a taxpayer to contribute to the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Shariah law, which he says is hostile to his Christian religion.

He is represented by Thomas More attorney Robert Muise and David Yerushalmi, an associated attorney who is an expert in Shariah law and Shariah-compliant financing, as well as general counsel to the Center for Security Policy. They filed the initial complaint in December 2008.

On June 7, Murray's attorneys filed a motion for summary judgment asking federal District Court Judge Lawrence Zatkoff to rule against Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Federal Reserve Board.

The Thomas More Law Center explained the motion for summary judgment is based on depositions of Treasury officials, court-sealed affidavits of AIG officials and sworn declarations of two notable experts on Islamic law and terrorism: Stephen C. Coughlin and Robert Spencer.

Coughlin, a lawyer and decorated Army Reserve officer, is a leading Pentagon expert on the link between Islamic law and jihad. He explained that by engaging in Shariah-compliant financing, AIG and the federal government - which owns 79.9 percent of AIG - are engaging in the religious practice of Islam.

Islam teaches hostility and discrimination against Jews, Christians and anyone who doesn't accept the Quran as the "word of Allah," he said, explaining that the indoctrination stems from the same law that motivated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

As WND reported, Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has studied Islamic theology and history for 30 years. He is author of "Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs,""The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades" and eight other books dealing with Islam. He has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the U.S. Central Command, the U.S. Command and General Staff College, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the U.S. intelligence community.

Spencer explained that by offering Shariah-compliant financing, AIG is promoting religious behavior that teaches hatred and discrimination against Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims....

Indeed I did. Read it all.

Last weekend, the feds popped two more US citizens who yearned to kill their fellow Americans for Allah.  They hoped to join al-Shabab, Somali’s ruthless jihadis, but fantasized about slaughter right here at home.

And, once again, any mention of Islamist extremism was absent from government statements, as if these guys were just angry about parking tickets.

The would-be Times Square car bomber, the guess-what’s-in-my-knickers Christmas Day airline bomber, no end of got-‘em-in-time apprehensions, plus the Ft. Hood butcher, Major Nidal Hasan…and even the media barely hint at what all these fanatics have in common.

Dare to suggest that radical Islam might be to blame, and you’re a bigot.  Just as pointing out that Palestinian terrorism led to Israel’s hard line stand makes you a fascist.  But those who reject radical Islam’s role as the driving force behind today’s terrorism must answer one obvious question:

Where are the Christian terrorists?

The ignored persecution, deprivation and massacres aren’t in Gaza, the global left’s favorite petting zoo.  The cover-up victims are the Middle East’s Christians.

Set aside for now the vast Christian communities that once thrived between Morocco and Mesopotamia.  The multiple holocausts they suffered for over a thousand years at Muslim hands doesn’t fit the White-House-approved narrative.

Let’s concentrate on today—when the only country left in the Middle East in which Christians enjoy complete freedom of worship, freedom from secret police surveillance, forced conversions, pogroms or civil strife, is Israel.

But that won’t do, either.  Can’t make Israel the good guy.  So how about those “suffering Palestinians?”  You know, the folks that chick-lit Che Guevara, Rachel Corrie, sought to rescue from an Israeli bulldozer…

Well, the Palestinians who’ve suffered the most have been Christians. And it hasn’t been the Israelis who’ve been persecuting them.

Take the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the literal cradle (or manger) of Christianity.  A half century ago, its Arab population was 80% Christian.  Today, Christians make up no more than 15% of the locals, and their numbers continue to shrink.

Throughout the Palestinian territories, the once-vibrant Christian population is estimated to have collapsed to a mere 25,000.  Muslim rapes, murders, kidnappings, extortion, death threats and property theft are to blame.

Where are the Christian terrorists?

In neighboring Egypt, Christianity’s intellectual center in its formative centuries, centuries of Islamization reduced, but failed to eliminate the Christian faith.

Coptic Christians, with their ancient traditions, still make up as much as 15% of Egypt’s population, which is nearing 80 million.  But the faith is under siege again.  The Mubarak regime appears to have decided to let its mortal enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, have some leash in the persecution department.

Copts suffer village pogroms, ghettoization in cities, and kidnappings and forced conversions (often of marriage-age girls).  They’re prevented from constructing new churches and suffer general discrimination.  Killings of Copts go uninvestigated by Egypt’s police.

Where are the Christian terrorists?

Then there’s Iraq, where a tragic unintended consequence of the removal of Saddam Hussein–the region’s worst mass murderer–has been the destruction of ancient Christian communities.

Prior to 2003, there were about a million Christians in Iraq.  Most are now refugees.  Successive Iraqi governments have shown little interest in protecting those who remain.  Leading churchmen have been assassinated, Christian families have been slaughtered, churches have been bombed and burned.  And we’ve done nothing—to avoid irritating Muslims.

Where are the Christian terrorists?

Given the excuses made for Islamist terror, shouldn’t we have seen a violent response by now?

Of course, none of this is an issue in Saudi Arabia, where the Christian (and Jewish) communities that thrived at the dawn of Islam were wiped out centuries ago.  Even Lebanon, long a state where Christians enjoyed religious freedom, suffers from the grim Islamist contagion.

The absence of Christian terrorism in the savagely anti-Christian Middle East goes beyond Christ’s call to “turn the other cheek.”  It further highlights extremist Islam as the source of today’s terror.

But Washington will continue to shut its eyes and bluster about the “legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,” etc., etc.  Dead Arab Christians are even less important than dead Jews.

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War.”

Tripoli - Firas Press: urged the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Muslims in the European Union to unite and join the People's Leadership of the Islamic World, which he chaired, to counter what he considered a threat to the Muslims there, pointing out that God - the Almighty - created the earth for all people and not for sex particular, in reference to the Europeans.

Gaddafi said at the meeting, on Thursday evening, in the Libyan capital Tripoli, the heads of delegations of leaders of the Social Popular Islamic Forum Muammar friendship and networking in the Balkans, and the Association of Gaddafi to young people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who were visiting Libya, «You are a rarity in Europe, you get the large number of willing God in the day, you will have the upper hand and higher levels, you will be imams and Oarthyn of the European continent ».

He added: «If Turkey joined the European Union, and the presence of both states the Balkans in the European Union and Albania in the European Union, the meaning of this is that the European continent is no longer a crusade or a Christian as it was, but Islam has become a strong partner in the European continent to the ground and human beings and actually».

«We await the day when Turkey joins the European Union to serve as a Trojan horse, which tells the history».

And reduced-Qadhafi, who holds the rotating presidency of the Arab summit, of the importance of statistics that declare the number of Muslims in Europe, said it was not true, because it is tendentious statistics show that Muslims are a minority. However, he added: «Muslims more than the number declared by the official statistics».

He added, saying: «Fortunately, the Muslims started to multiply and multiply more than the rest of the other religions, maybe this is a sign of God. Thus the will of God, made Muslims multiply times higher than other breeds. Perhaps this is proof that God wants to be more Muslims than anyone else in the end »....

He said: «We must unite in Europe, and to be an Islamic state and one under the banner of the World Islamic People's Leadership», pointing out that God created the earth for all people....

Can Islamic jihad be resisted simply on the basis of Western secular values? Some readers of my posts on the role of Christianity in resisting Islam have objected that bringing Christianity into the debate only muddies the water. As one reader wrote, “the anti-jihad movement can better be served if blatant theocons stay away.”

A number of important individuals in what might loosely be called the resistance movement do seem to believe that secular values are sufficient to rally citizens to a defense of Western civilization. A good example of this belief is the 2006 manifesto, “Together, facing the new totalitarianism,” which was signed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie, and others. The manifesto calls for “resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity, and secular values for all.” The document also speaks of “universal values,” “universal rights,” and “Enlightenment” with a capital “E.”

But how sturdy are Enlightenment values once they are cut off from their Christian roots? Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s own experience provides some perspective. In her autobiography, Infidel, she tells how, after escaping Somalia to the Netherlands, she fell in love with the thinkers of the Enlightenment. At the same time she became an atheist—rejecting not just Islam, but all religions (although she willingly admits that Jews and Christians have a more humane concept of God). Of Holland she wrote, “Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly.”

But the problem with substituting Enlightenment humanism for religion jumps out, if not from every page of Infidel, at least from many pages. On the one hand, Holland is “the peak of civilization,” and “no nation in the world is more deeply attached to freedom of expression than the Dutch.” On the other hand, her colleagues keep warning her to keep her thoughts to herself, and in the end, enlightened Holland forces her out of the Netherlands precisely for freely expressing her opinions about Muslim treatment of women. Ironically, Hirsi Ali’s next port of refuge was the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank which numbers quite a few traditionalist Christians among its scholars.

Others, such as Oriana Fallaci, Geert Wilders, and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff have discovered that “enlightened” but post-Christian Europe is not nearly as friendly to freedom of expression as one might expect to be the case in the birthplace of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an important civilizational advance, but of late it seems to have gone a bit wobbly. Why is that?

One possible answer is that the core Enlightenment values are inextricably tied to Christian values. This view has been put forward most forcefully on the Continent in recent years by Marcello Pera (former President of the Italian Senate, and an agnostic) and by Benedict XVI (not an agnostic). They have argued that the Enlightenment grew out of Christianity organically, as a tree grows from its roots. Cut off from its roots the tree dies.

In this view the rights of man are based on a belief in the importance of man. The belief that ordinary individuals have a value and dignity of their own apart from their membership in a tribe or a society has its origin in the Judeo-Christian declaration that man is made in the image of God. Thus, if you take away God, you take away the foundation of human importance. As Thomas Jefferson undoubtedly discovered while composing the Declaration of Independence, it’s a bit difficult to establish the case for human rights without reference to the Creator.  Purely secular societies can only assume human dignity and human rights as a given. We tend to forget that these concepts are now a given because they were given to the world by Christians. Before Christianity, the idea that all human beings are endowed with intrinsic value was not considered “self-evident,” it was considered ludicrous. Espousing human equality was a good way to get yourself laughed out of polite pagan society. Human dignity may seem self-evident to us now, but that is because the Christian moral view became internalized over the centuries. Gladiatorial combats and slavery didn’t go out of fashion because societies evolved but because people began to see one another in the light of the Christian revelation.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. Some seem to think that Enlightenment humanism came out of nowhere, thanks to spontaneous advances in science, reason, and ethics. In this view, Enlightenment values can get along fine on their own without reference to God. But then you’re still faced with explaining how it is that these values have fallen on hard times precisely in those places that might legitimately be called post-Christian. Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion are defended much more vigorously in still-Christian America than in post-Christian France or Holland. For that matter, there’s more freedom of speech in Bible-belt America than in your average American university. With their speech codes and “hate speech” rules and their habit of disinviting “controversial” speakers, universities are among the least free institutions in society. And it’s no coincidence that most of them can be described as post-Christian, and in some cases, anti-Christian. There is also, of course, an increasingly anti-Semitic climate on American campuses.

What happened in the universities is essentially what happened in Europe. Both suffered a loss of faith (recall that many prestigious universities began as seminaries or denominational colleges), and in the process of losing their religion both became increasingly uninterested in cultivating or protecting genuine freedoms. Moreover, like post-Christian Europe, the post-Christian university has shown little ability to resist Islamization. Thanks to Saudi money and well-organized Muslim student associations, many universities are beginning to act like apologists for the Wahabbi faith.

Judging by the sorry records of the highly secularized European state and the highly secularized American university, it might not be a good idea to place all your bets on “secular values for all” as the main point of resistance to totalitarian Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali deserves the gratitude of all for calling attention to the abuse of Muslim women, but she’s wrong to think that a rootless Enlightenment is going to bring them liberation. Likewise, we owe a lot to Ibn Warraq for his penetrating critique of Islam, but he’s mistaken to think that the universal values enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights would survive in the thoroughly secularized type of society he seems to favor. If these values are universal and self-evident, why is it that half the world doesn’t subscribe to them? Warraq seems not to have noticed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was composed for the most part by individuals who had grown up in Christian cultures, and had inherited a social conscience that had been formed by the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Two of the chief framers, Rene Cassin and Dr. Charles Malik, made no secret of the influence Christian and Jewish beliefs had on their thinking.  In a 1969 speech to the Decalogue Lawyer’s Society, Cassin, a Jew, outlined in detail how Jewish and Christian thought had paved the way for the Declaration.  It’s also telling that while drafting the final version of the Declaration he received advice and encouragement from Cardinal Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII), then the Apostolic Nuncio in Paris. Malik, who later served as President of the UN General Assembly, was a Greek Orthodox philosopher and theologian from Lebanon and the author of numerous commentaries on the Bible and on the early Church Fathers. While making his arguments to the drafting committee he was in the habit of quoting from Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian. Jacques Maritain, the eminent Catholic philosopher was also actively involved in the work of the committee, as well as the UNESCO committee which laid the groundwork for the Declaration. Eleanor Roosevelt, the Chairperson of the drafting committee later observed that the Declaration reflected “the true spirit of Christianity.” In short, although the Declaration of Human Rights makes no mention of God, the fingerprints of a certain religious tradition are all over it.

Western culture—indeed the whole world—owes a lot to the Enlightenment, but it’s important to remember that at crucial historical junctures it was Christian activists working on Christian principles who did most of the heavy lifting. Christian Evangelicals were at the forefront of the movement to abolish the slave trade; the Civil Rights movement was galvanized by the Reverend Martin Luther King and other Christian leaders; the end of Communism in Eastern Europe was brought about in large part by the work of the Catholic Solidarity Movement, of Pope John Paul II, and of numerous priests and pastors in Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and other countries who kept alive the spirit of resistance.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, it might be useful to think in terms of two Enlightenments: the Enlightenment which remained nourished by the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the Enlightenment which cut itself off from God. The former led to the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the abolition of slavery, and the Civil Rights movement. The latter led to the French Revolution, to the Reign of Terror, to the suppression of church by state, to Marx and Nietzsche, to Socialism, and Communism, and more recently to the Alice-in-Wonderland world of cultural relativism where human rights are looked upon as relative rather than universal.

It’s unlikely that a pure secularism—even a humanistic, enlightened secularism—can be the foundation for resisting an aggressive Islam. It’s precisely “enlightened” secularism that produced the spiritual and population vacuum in Europe which is now being filled by Islam. John Lennon invited us to imagine “no religion”… “nothing to kill or die for.” In Europe they don’t have to imagine anymore. Having lost their religion, many are discovering that post-Christian values may not, after all, be worth fighting and dying for—all the more so for those who are getting on in years, and are hoping the really bad things won’t happen in their lifetimes. The new motto for many middle –aged Europeans seems to be “Apres moi le dhimmitude.”

Which culture is more likely to protect human rights and freedoms against totalitarian movements? A thoroughly secular culture which has cut itself off from a transcendent reference point? Or a culture imbued with the Judeo-Christian belief that human beings possess an inalienable, God-given dignity? It’s one of those non-academic questions to which the wrong answer might prove fatal. And final exam time is fast approaching.

William Kilpatrick’s articles have appeared in Front Page Magazine, First Things, Catholic World Report, the National Catholic Register, Jihad Watch, World, and Investor’s Business Daily.

Srinagar, June 5: The alleged blasphemous images of a mosque on undergarments sparked protests in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir on Saturday with the protestors clashing with police and paramilitary soldiers, who fired tear smoke shells and resorted to cane charge.

And it turns out it wasn't even a mosque:

Police said after verification it was found that the image does not resemble to any Muslim religious place or building.

The protests started in Nowhatta area of Srinagar after some people spotted brown colored sketch of a building with a huge dome fitted with a cross mast and a transept imprinted on an undergarment. Some people termed it as blasphemous depiction of holy Al-Aqsa Mosque. The residents in Nowhatta and the adjoining localities of the old city started gathering and started protesting against the incident.

Terming it the blasphemous depiction of holy Al-Aqsa Mosque, the residents of the area and adjoining localities took out a protest march and staged demonstrations. Chanting pro-Islamic, anti-Israel and anti-India slogans, the agitating people alleged that conspiracies against Muslims are being hatched across the globe.

Just to reiterate: It's a pair of underwear.

"The images of sacred places on the undergarments have hurt our sentiments. It is a conspiracy of America, Israel and other Western countries to hurt Muslim sentiments," said a protestor Javed Ahmad.

He said Muslims cannot tolerate such indecent acts.

As the protestors amidst chanting of anti-India and anti-Israeli slogans tried to march towards city centre, police and paramilitary soldiers swung into action. They fired tear smoke shells and resorted to heavy baton charge to disperse the agitating people.

The clashes also broke out between the cops and protestors at Nowpora, Khayam, Rainawari, Maisuma, Koker Bazar and other other places in Indian Kashmir. At least a dozen persons including some protestors were injured in the clashes that continued for quite some time.

The shopkeepers in old city and some other parts of Indian Kashmir closed shutters of their business establishments as a mark of protest against the alleged blasphemous images.

However, police spokesman said the undergarment did not bear imprints of any Islamic workshop place.

"The underwear garment in question was produced and examined and it was found that it carries the imprints and sketches of various buildings on it which resemble places like Big Ben in London, St. Paul's Cathedral of London and other places. No sketch has any likeness to any Muslim religious place or building. The attempt to create tension in the society is a deliberate move to disturb the situation by indulging in blasphemous rumors.

St. Paul's Cathedral? When was the Christian riot? Oh, wait...

The general public is advised to remain calm and caution against such elements," he said.

There is an Egyptian saying to describe a masochist who constantly chooses pain, suffering, crying, yelling and screaming at every occasion possible. It says, “They need a funeral to gratify their hunger to slap their faces.” That saying perfectly fits Arab reaction around the world to the Gaza flotilla incident. If you doubt this, just attend a funeral in the Arab world and you will see what I mean.

More and more facts are coming out about the aforementioned incident and it does not look good for those who rushed to judgment and fell for the hype.  As we now know, for instance, video footage has proven that  the Gaza flotilla jihadists initiated the violence against Israeli soldiers:

However, those who conspired to manufacture such a crisis know that they have won the PR war since whatever facts come out later will not be covered with the same intensity and passion of the first days following the incident. What matters to Islamist crisis seekers is that the news for several days all over the world blames Israel as a bloodthirsty rogue nation that inflicted an unjustified massacre on peaceful, unarmed humanitarians.

Muslim street demonstrations like those following the incident are staged for Western audiences; we immigrants of Middle Eastern origin understand this hype and are no longer moved by it. On the other hand, Western culture is extremely moved by this big Islamist show — the cries, the tears, the pleading, the yelling, the covert threats and above all, the mass mania. Over nothing, hoards of people in the Middle East can be easily incited to go into a fit of rage and run into the streets seeking vengeance against a Christian or a Jew who supposedly dishonored Islam.

After news of massacres to non-Muslims by Muslims, we often say “there they go again” and just go on with our lives. Christian Copts in Egypt suffer at the hands of Muslim mobs extracting vengeance in the streets after hearing a fiery sermon in their mosque by their local Imam, telling a fabricated story of Christian crimes against Islam or that a Christian man violated a Muslim woman. These stories, supported by “witnesses,” ignite violent behavior often leading to horrific tragedies. Just recently, the homes of Christians in a coastal town in Egypt were all burnt to the ground after a Friday prayer rumor. The strategy and tactics of the flotilla incident are the same. The stage is set to start the same game over and over again; the Islamists provoke Israel and keep testing its patience. To them it is just a game where a few men will die and go to heaven, but to Israel it is life or death.

What is remarkable is that supposedly well-educated and informed Westerners in positions of power are buying this jihadist propaganda. Helen Thomas of the White House Press Corps cried out that the flotilla incident was a deliberate massacre.  Without investigation or reasoning, Western leftists go along with this game, much like the constantly outraged Arab street. As Rahm Emanuel said, they never want to allow a crisis go to waste. Leftist in the media are all too eager to support sick, hateful and baseless Muslim demonstrations crafted to boost their PR and promote anti-Semitism around the world. Their collaboration with Islamists in this incident has done a great disservice to the public who depend on mainstream media for their understanding of the Arab Israeli conflict.

When will the West learn Arab psychology? Whenever West Bank and Gaza Strip news become secondary or overshadowed by more pressing issues such as the economy, oil leaks and perhaps more urgent, human suffering around the world, Islamists immediately get in gear to create a crisis. In their mind, nothing should be more urgent than destroying Israel, not even human happiness, family, children or peace itself. Like the Egyptian saying, they need a funeral to be happy.

The world never learns from history. Arab and Muslim Jew-haters have perfected the art of hype, drama and dragging everyone down to their level. They are hell bent on convincing the world to hate and blame Israel. They have to resort to game playing to justify 7^th century Muslim obligation to kill Jews wherever they are found; that is the commandment from Mohammed himself. Every commandment by the prophet is an obligation and the Muslim mind must deal with the travesty; they must justify terror against Jews not only to the West, but also to Muslims themselves. The jihad against Israel, the Jews, Christians, the West, the Great Satan (USA), Little Satan (Israel) etc. all must be justified. Saying it is a commandment from Allah will not pass the UN general Assembly. Jihadist violence must be legitimized and institutionalized as a legitimate cause. Incidents must be created to justify the jihad. Mohammed had to accuse the Jews of violating a treaty to justify killing 800 Jewish men. Incidents such as the flotilla are just part of the strategy of justify jihad, violence, burning, killing and terror.  It is a commandment; it must be done and if a little provocation and lying is needed, then so be it.

Just watch Arab TV and you will learn that Israel went to help in the Haiti for the purpose of harvesting organs from the Haitian earthquake victims. Israel is so evil, that it must be annihilated. The Muslim public and the World must accept aggression against Israel as self-defense. Israel is suffering from constant and relentless intimidation and invitation to unnecessary confrontation. You would think the world would know that by now.

Muslims know exactly what they should do to stop the blockade against Gaza. First, they should be sincere with themselves, not just trying to convince the world, that they want peace with Israel and adopt a live and let live view. After that, major players in the region such as Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria etc. must pressure Hamas to end the barrage of missiles against Israel and that their financial support should be linked to Palestinian willingness to accomplish peace with Israel. Israel is fighting for its survival; everyone knows that and there is no need to kid ourselves any more.

With more and more facts coming out, it has become clear that this was a set up; a PR stunt to let Muslim countries surrounding Israel keep fooling the world over and over again.

Nonie Darwish is the author of “Now They Call Me Infidel” and “Cruel and Usual Punishment”

Iskanderun (AsiaNews) - The driver of Mgr. Luigi Padovese, killed yesterday in front of his house in Iskanderun has been formally charged with murder by a Turkish court. The police confirm that the man, who for over four years was a close collaborator of the slain bishop suffers from mental disorders. But some doubts remain surrounding his illness and there have been widespread calls on the authorities to deepen their investigations into the motives for the assassination.

Murat Altun, 26, was arrested yesterday, hours after the killing of the bishop. According to some witnesses the murderer was stilly carrying the knife with which he had butchered Mgr. Padovese. After hours of questioning, the police confirmed the insanity of Murat. AsiaNews sources had said yesterday that Murat was "depressed, violent, full of threats."

But faithful and the Turkish world are still finding it hard to accept the thesis of mental illness, which only became evident a few months ago. Several attacks in recent years were committed by young people deemed "unstable" at the time but who later proved to have connections with ultra-nationalist and anti-Christian groups.

To many observers it seems that governments, politicians, Turkish civil authorities are avoiding all serious analysis of these events. The risk is that these violent episodes will be merely brushed off with the excuse that they are the isolated acts of madmen, the casual gesture of an young Islamic fanatic.

Among the "isolated acts" of unbalanced people are: the wounding of Fr Adriano Franchini, Italian Capuchin, Smyrna on December 16, 2007; Fr. Roberto Ferrari, threatened with a kebab knife in the church in Mersin on 11 March 2006, Fr. Pierre Brunissen stabbed in the side, 2 July 2006 outside his church in Samsun. These three attacks were carried out without fatal consequences.

This was not the case for Don Andrea Santoro, shot and killed Feb. 5, 2006 while praying in church in Trabzon; the same fate for the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink assassinated January 19, 2007 just outside his home in a crowded street in Istanbul. And the even more tragic death April 18, 2007 of three Protestant Christians, including one German, tortured, stabbed and killed while working in the Zirve publishing house in Malatya, which publishes Bibles and Christian books.

Among Christians and some Turkish NGOs is the request that investigations do not stop at the arrest of a deranged turn, but dig deeper....

Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestine Authority, we are told, comprise the moderate Palestinian alternative to the Hamas-driven vision of mayhem and terror in Gaza.  This assurance is repeated despite Abbas’s well-established biography as someone antipathetic to Jews as a people.  In his doctoral thesis, written at Moscow’s Institute of Oriental Studies, Abbas presaged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by denying the Holocaust.  As a top lieutenant to Yasser Arafat – he named a son “Yasser” for his mentor – he was a terrorist leader, even sporting a nom-de-guerre:  Abu Mazen.  In his prominent role within Al-Fatah, Abbas provided the funds that Abu Daoud used to perpetrate the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munic Olympic Games. During the period Abbas has headed the Palestine Authority on the land that Arabs call the “West Bank” and Jews call “Judea and Samaria,” he has honored mass murderers by naming town squares for them, has permitted mass media under his control to savage Jews as people, and even has allowed anti-Jewish vituperative to be taught in the curricula of his schools.

Now comes word that his Government – ever on the international prowl with outstretched hand seeking hundreds of millions of dollars and euros to cushion its bankrupt economy – has found $50 million to fund a new initiative.  The Palestinian Authority will pay Arabs not to accept employment in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Will American tax dollars indirectly be financing this “fund”?  Inexorably so. Only last year we pledged the Palestinian Authority and Gaza $900 million, then rushed them another emergency infusion of $200 million as their economy crumbled.  Yet, while the Palestine Authority may not be wealthy, their sense of irony is rich: If Israelis hesitate to employ Palestinian laborers, sincerely fearing terrorism in their midst, they are berated as “racist” and “apartheid.” Now, in the face of tens of thousands of Palestinians working amicably with Jews, Mahmoud Abbas will pay them to revert to unemployed rather than to accept employment within Judea and Samaria.

More than 20,000 Palestinian Arabs now work at the industrial parks and construction sites that employ them throughout Judea and Samaria.  Despite continual efforts by Mr. Abbas and Israel’s haters throughout the world to slander Israel as an “Apartheid” entity, the reality is that Arabs often earn from their Jewish employers twice the income they command within Mr. Abbas’s polity.  These are good salaries, and those wages support large families. The people whose lives would be affected by the cynicism – the workers in the industrial parks – do not want to give up those jobs.  The Associated Press interviewed Suhail Jaber, who supports his family of eight by working in a picture frame company in the community of Barkan in Samaria, an industrial park employs some 5,000 Arabs. Jaber told the AP that, if forced by Abbas to quit without being assured a new job, he might turn to stealing to feed his family.  Another employee, Samer Awad, “said he would sleep in Barkan’s furniture factory to avoid detection by Palestinian law enforcement, rather than quit.”

This is the season when pockets of Western campus radicals enjoy proclaiming on their respective campuses their annual day or week of anti-Israel hate.  (They mark May 15, 1948 as the “Day of Catastrophe” because Israel was proclaimed into existence as the Middle East’s first democracy on that day.) Curiously, the anti-Zionists actually are half-correct when they bewail the presence of Apartheid segregation and Nazi-like hatred in the Middle East.  There really is “Apartheid in Palestine.” There really is “Nazi-like hate” in the Middle East. The only tweak on those anti-Israel posters, Jew-hating sloganeers, and haters who call Israel-supporters the “new Nazis,” is that the Apartheid and venom of Nazi-like hatred in Palestine is perpetrated by the Palestinian Arabs.  It is their unbridled insistence on demographic separation – complete, utter separation from Jews – and their concomitant dehumanization and demonization of Jews that sees them refuse to coexist permanently with a Jewish state next door or anywhere in the Middle East.  This social pathology mirrors the Apartheid and Nazi-like vitriol that sees the Coptic Christian minority persecuted in Egypt, the Berber minority persecuted in Algeria, the Christian minority persecuted in Saudi Arabia, African Christians persecuted in the Sudan, the Baha’i persecuted in Iran, Kurds mass-murdered in Iraq, and even Shiites persecuted in Sunni Muslim lands and Sunnis persecuted by Shiites. The affinity with Hitler’s Nazi paradigm of mass-murder and Jew-hatred may be traced back to the father of Palestinian nationalism, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

This pathological hatred of Jews transcends the worst images of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. At the core of Scripture, in its chapter five (“The Table”), Surah 5:57-62, the Koran discusses the “People of the Book,” portraying Jews as sub-human, despicable animals: “Believers, do not seek the friendship of the infidels and those who were given the Book before you . . . . Say: ‘People of the Book, do you hate us for any reason other than . . . that most of you are evil-doers?’. . . .You see many of them vie with one another in sin and wickedness . . . . Evil is what they do.”  Thus, Allah will lay his “worst reward” on the Jews, “transforming them into apes and pigs.”   The vicious ape/pig demonization of Jews recurs throughout the Koran (see, e.g., “The Cow,” 2:64-65), and that vicious imagery – a veritable Blood Libel – has been a central message propagated by the Palestine Authority in its mass media for years, even as it is a recurring Friday sermon topic telecast on Palestine Arab television – the literal demonizing of Jews as blood brothers or children of apes and pigs.

For all the hatred, perhaps nowhere in the world is Apartheid in Palestine more pernicious than . . . within the Palestine Authority.  Only within the Arab world do we find civilian populations in their thousands consigned to “refugee camps” for sixty years.  This perpetual consignment – indeed, virtual internment – constitutes one of the worst crimes against humanity we have witnessed in the modern era: the concerted persecution of Palestinian Arabs by cynical Arab regimes who have planted them in “refugee camps.”  Nowhere is the cynicism more manifest than it is within the Palestine Authority, which maintains “refugee camps” in cities like Jenin. Consider: If those denizens indeed are Palestinian Arabs, and if the Palestine Authority oversees the homeland of the Palestinians, then how in the world can people living in their own land, under a government freely elected by their own people, be deemed “refugees”?

Those “refugee camps” are historical anomalies, thoroughly anachronistic. Their residents are dumped onto international welfare rolls, under the rubric of a cynically anti-Jewish United Nations agency, the “United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East” (UNRWA), which runs the camps and their schools.  The UNRWA has a vested interest – namely, preserving their own existence, preserving their own continued employment and pay checks, preserving their jobs –  in perpetuating the historical crime of refusing to let the residents be absorbed into their local environments.

During the last century, the world has seen so many tragically painful “population exchanges” play themselves out on the world stage. Greek ethnics were forced out of Bulgaria and into Greece, while Bulgarian ethnics were forced from Greece into Bulgaria. In 1922, under the League of Nations, 1.25 million Greek Orthodox ethnics were transferred from Turkey, and half a million Moslems were transferred reciprocally to Turkey from Greece. Fridtjof Nansen, who oversaw the population exchange, was awarded the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize for his effort. In 1940, under the Treaty of Craiova, there was a massive population exchange: 80,000 Romanian ethnics were forced into Bulgaria, and 65,000 Bulgarian ethnics forced out of Romania. After World War II, between 14-16 million ethnic Germans were transferred out of Central and Eastern Europe, and into Germany. Poland and the Soviet Union exchanged populations: between 1944 and 1946, some 2 million people, Polish ethnics sent to Poland from the Ukraine and Ukrainians sent out of Poland, were transferred. More than 5 million Hindus and Sikhs were forced to India from the regions that became Pakistan, and more than 6 million Moslems were pushed from India into Pakistan.

Where are the languishing Bulgarian refugee camps? Greek refugee camps? Romanian/ Polish/ German/ Ukrainian/ Hindu/ Sikh refugee camps? Where are the Bosnian Moslem refugee camps?  Why is there no massive international welfare apparatus in the rubric of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for any of these  refugees? How is it that no one even thinks to ask?

Maybe, as Mr. Abbas directs $50 million to pay Palestinian Arabs to leave their jobs alongside Jews, and to return to the squalor of his homespun “refugee camps,” it is time for Americans to ask that question – before we write him our next billion-dollar check.

Dov Fischer is a legal affairs consultant and adjunct professor of the law of civil procedure and advanced torts. He was formerly Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and writes extensively on political, cultural, and religious issues.  He is author of general Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine and blogs at www.rabbidov.com.

Over the years I have seen it happen more than once: a plausible “moderate Muslim” appears on the scene and becomes the darling of hopeful non-Muslims who believe that he epitomizes the peaceful, reasonable face of Islam upon which they have placed so much hope (and based so much policy). His non-Muslim patrons loudly sing his praises and denounce anyone who is rude or “Islamophobic” enough to examine his statements closely and find that they don’t actually amount to what those patrons think they do or wish they did: a genuinely peaceful and pluralistic version of Islam that is strong enough on Islamic grounds to convince Muslims that they should abandon jihad against Infidels in all its manifestations.

Not infrequently I have been the first to burst the bubbles of these “moderates,” thereby arousing the ire of the willfully ignorant and self-deceived, who found my unwillingness to be satisfied with these moderates’ blandly incomplete or deceptive versions of Islam to be evidence of my “Islamophobia” or bigotry or what have you. In reality, it was nothing of the kind. It was just an unwillingness to be fooled.

There was Khaleel Mohammed, who won many bemused non-Muslim hearts (and opened many non-Muslim wallets) by appearing in Obsession, but who later denounced the film as “Satanic.”

There was Ed Husain, who continues to bamboozle many in Britain, but not the redoubtable and clear-sighted Melanie Phillips, who saw through him when he began inciting young Muslims to hate Israel over earlier false charges of atrocities against Gazans.

There was Hamid Mir, who wowed audiences in the U.S. with his tales of interviewing Osama bin Laden and avowals of a peaceful, tolerant Islam, who was recently discovered to be aiding the Pakistani Taliban.

There is the cuddly Tarek Fatah, who reassures everyone with his comfortable manner — but who, when confronted with Wafa Sultan’s unblinking truth-telling about Islam and Muhammad, resorted in the blink of an eye to tried-and-true CAIR-like tactics of personal defamation and character assassination.

There have been others also, including a still-prominent, much-ballyhooed moderate who was caught in an interview decrying the Israeli “occupation” — but that is a story for another day. Today there is Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish moderate with whom I had several exchanges a few years ago.

Akyol, like Ed Husain and the other moderate I mentioned above, finds one great obstacle in the way of a lucrative and adulation-filled career as a “moderate”: Israel. It is one thing to sell unsuspecting and ignorant Infidels on the idea that Islam is peace. But Islamic antisemitism, based on the Qur’an’s designation of the Jews as the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82) and their repeated cursing by Allah (2:62-65; 2:89; 5:59-60; 7:166; 9:30, etc.), is harder for even these “moderates” to shake off, and it leads them to take postures toward Israel that are frequently revealing.

I hate to say I told you so, but I don’t hate it all that much.

“Who the hell does Israel think she is?,” by Mustafa Akyol in the Hurriyet Daily News, June 1 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Two days ago, Israeli forces attacked a humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters. The whole purpose of the activists on the raided Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, and several others around it, were to bring aid and supplies, including playgrounds for children, to Gaza. They paid the price by being the targets of Israeli machine guns.

Back to Akyol:

At least 10 unarmed civilians, most of whom are Turks, were killed. Dozens of others were injured.There is no need to mince words in the face of this atrocity: Israel has committed piracy, barbarism and state terrorism.

Beyond doing all these shamelessly, Israeli spokesmen have also lied shamelessly. One of them, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, was doing exactly that when he portrayed the ship, and the whole aid flotilla, as full of people “well-known for their ties with global Jihad, Al-Qaeda and Hamas.”

Damned lies

In fact, the 600 or so activists in the flotilla were a diverse group from 32 countries and many faiths. They included Christian priests and secular humanists. They included Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, the 85-year-old Nobel peace laureate from North Ireland, and Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor. They included children, including a 1-year-old.

Does the presence of these Useful Idiots actually refute the contention that the ship was also full of people tied to Al-Qaeda and other jihad groups? Of course not.

These two Dutch-language stories (thanks to Denise) reveal that one of the two Dutch citizens on the Flotilla, Amin Abou Rashed, is a Hamas leader who has also worked for the Al-Aksa Foundation, which was suspected of raising money for Hamas. One of the articles mentions that he lost his arm in battle against Israel.

Ayalon was also lying when he said, “we found weapons that were prepared in advance and used against our forces.” The Turkish authorities had checked the ships thoroughly before their departure, and there were simply no firearms on board. The only “weapons” that can be spoken of were the wooden or metal sticks that some of the activists had in their hands, apparently taken from the chairs or other ordinary materials on the vessels.Yesterday, Israel released the photos of some other “weapons” on board, which were just knives taken from the ship’s kitchen.

Akyol:

The video footage we have seen on TV actually gives a sense of what happened: Israeli commandos raided the ships at dawn, sliding down from helicopters via ropes with machine guns in their hands. Some of the activists on board took this as an assault on their ship, which was, to repeat, in international, not Israeli, waters. (How could they take it otherwise?) Then they tried to resist the commandos with the sticks in their hands. The soldiers, in return, fired on the activists, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens.

Actually, the “activists” took it upon themselves to “resist the commandos” before the “commandos” had done anything. Here is the actual videotape — see for yourself:

From the Israeli point of view, everything is perfectly fine here: They have a policy of blockading Gaza, and those who defy it have to face the consequences.

Note that Akyol utters not a word about the indiscriminate rocket attacks upon Israeli civilians, launched from Gaza for many years.

The question is why in the world do people have to obey Israel’s dictates and recognize its inhumane blockade on Gaza?Who the hell is Israel, in other words, to force 1.5 million people to live in an open-air prison for years?

Scenes from that hellish open-air prison:

Akyol:

The answer from Israel is that “Hamas fires rockets from Gaza.” Well, the last time those rockets were flying in the air, Israel was also firing rockets (and phosphorus bombs) into Gaza, killing a hundred times more civilians than Hamas did. According to a United Nations report, the actions of both sides equally amounted to war crimes….

Akyol doesn’t mention that that UN report was funded by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Nor does he bother to note that it has been thoroughly debunked.

Akyol:

There is even a more fundamental question here, relating to the elephant in the Middle Eastern room: Who the hell is Israel to occupy the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967, and to systematically steal these territories by building illegal settlements?

Question to Akyol: why didn’t the “Palestinians” fight against Egyptian “occupation” of Gaza and Jordanian “occupation” of the West Bank between 1948 and 1967?

And how can she expect the Palestinians, and other nations like us, the Turks, to bow down to this unabashed theft of land? When I asked that question to an Israeli hawk some years ago, I received a very revealing response: “Might,” he said, “makes right.”

Well, that might be a popular belief in Tel Aviv and Occupied Jerusalem, but not here in Istanbul. In fact our creed tells us that the exact opposite is true: Right, sooner or later, makes might.

The hundreds of heroes who sailed to Gaza last weekend had this faith in their hearts. Here in Turkey, 70 million more stand by them. We mourn for our fallen, but also know that they did not die in vain. Their sacrifice unveiled to the world not just the suffering of the innocents in the Gaza ghetto, but also the brutality of the rogue state that imposes it.

Read my lips: This spirit is really not going to die. We Turks will continue to stand for what is right, regardless of Israel’s might. None of her lobbying, bullying or killing is going to change that.

Nor will truth, evidently.

But wait! I thought all the learned analysts had assured us that there is no death penalty for apostasy in Islam! Isn't that right, Dr. Bassiouni? Mr. Kruse? Ms. Heagney?

"Afghan Parliamentarian Calls for Execution of Christians," from International Christian Concern, June 2:

Washington, D.C. (June 2, 2010) - International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that an Afghan parliamentary secretary called for the public execution of Christian converts on the parliament floor.

On Tuesday, the Associated Free Press reported that Abdul Sattar Khawasi, deputy secretary of the Afghan lower house in parliament, called for the execution of Christian converts from Islam. Speaking in regards to a video broadcasted [sic] by Afghan television network Noorin TV showing footage of Christian men being baptized and praying in Farsi, Khawasi said, "Those Afghans that appeared in this video film should be executed in public, the house should order the attorney general and the NDS (intelligence agency) to arrest these Afghans and execute them."

The broadcast triggered a protest by hundreds of Kabul University students on Monday, who shouted death threats and demanded the expulsion of Christian foreigners accused of proselytizing.As a result, the operations of Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) and U.S.-based Church World Service (CWS) have been suspended over allegations of proselytizing. The Afghan government is currently undertaking an intensive investigation into the matter. According to Afghan law, proselytizing is illegal and conversion from Islam is punishable by death. ...

Not infrequently I have been the first to burst the bubbles of these "moderates," thereby arousing the ire of the willfully ignorant and self-deceived, who found my unwillingness to be satisfied with these moderates' blandly incomplete or deceptive versions of Islam to be evidence of my "Islamophobia" or bigotry or what have you. In reality, it was nothing of the kind. It was just an unwillingness to be fooled.

There was Khaleel Mohammed, who won many bemused non-Muslim hearts (and opened many non-Muslim wallets) by appearing in Obsession, but who later denounced the film as "Satanic."

There was Ed Husain, who continues to bamboozle many in Britain, but not the redoubtable and clear-sighted Melanie Phillips, who saw through him when he began inciting young Muslims to hate Israel over earlier false charges of atrocities against Gazans.

There was Hamid Mir, who wowed audiences in the U.S. with his tales of interviewing Osama bin Laden and avowals of a peaceful, tolerant Islam, who was recently discovered to be aiding the Pakistani Taliban.

There is the cuddly Tarek Fatah, who reassures everyone with his comfortable manner -- but who, when confronted with Wafa Sultan's unblinking truth-telling about Islam and Muhammad, resorted in the blink of an eye to tried-and-true CAIR-like tactics of personal defamation and character assassination.

There have been others also, including a still-prominent, much-ballyhooed moderate who was caught in an interview decrying the Israeli "occupation" -- but that is a story for another day. Today there is Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish moderate with whom I had several exchanges a few years ago.

Akyol, like Ed Husain and the other moderate I mentioned above, finds one great obstacle in the way of a lucrative and adulation-filled career as a "moderate": Israel. It is one thing to sell unsuspecting and ignorant Infidels on the idea that Islam is peace. But Islamic antisemitism, based on the Qur'an's designation of the Jews as the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82) and their repeated cursing by Allah (2:62-65; 2:89; 5:59-60; 7:166; 9:30, etc.), is harder for even these "moderates" to shake off, and it leads them to take postures toward Israel that are frequently revealing.

I hate to say I told you so, but I don't hate it all that much.

"Who the hell does Israel think she is?," by Mustafa Akyol in the Hurriyet Daily News, June 1 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Two days ago, Israeli forces attacked a humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters. The whole purpose of the activists on the raided Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, and several others around it, were to bring aid and supplies, including playgrounds for children, to Gaza. They paid the price by being the targets of Israeli machine guns.

Aid and supplies from the Mavi Marmara

"Flotilla 'Aid' to Gaza Includes Expired Medicines, Old Equipment," by Hillel Fendel for Israel National News, June 1: "Much of the equipment and supplies aboard the 'humanitarian' ships for Gaza has been checked and found to be worthless....An IDF source said that the poor condition of the supplies renders most of it unusable. 'This once again strengthens the evaluation that the intentions of the flotilla organizers were not humanitarian in the first place,' he said."

Back to Akyol:

At least 10 unarmed civilians, most of whom are Turks, were killed. Dozens of others were injured.

There is no need to mince words in the face of this atrocity: Israel has committed piracy, barbarism and state terrorism.

Beyond doing all these shamelessly, Israeli spokesmen have also lied shamelessly. One of them, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, was doing exactly that when he portrayed the ship, and the whole aid flotilla, as full of people "well-known for their ties with global Jihad, Al-Qaeda and Hamas."

Damned lies

In fact, the 600 or so activists in the flotilla were a diverse group from 32 countries and many faiths. They included Christian priests and secular humanists. They included Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, the 85-year-old Nobel peace laureate from North Ireland, and Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor. They included children, including a 1-year-old.

Does the presence of these Useful Idiots actually refute the contention that the ship was also full of people tied to Al-Qaeda and other jihad groups? Of course not.

These two Dutch-language stories (thanks to Denise) reveal that one of the two Dutch citizens on the Flotilla, Amin Abou Rashed, is a Hamas leader who has also worked for the Al-Aksa Foundation, which was suspected of raising money for Hamas. One of the articles mentions that he lost his arm in battle against Israel.

Ayalon was also lying when he said, "we found weapons that were prepared in advance and used against our forces." The Turkish authorities had checked the ships thoroughly before their departure, and there were simply no firearms on board. The only "weapons" that can be spoken of were the wooden or metal sticks that some of the activists had in their hands, apparently taken from the chairs or other ordinary materials on the vessels.

Yesterday, Israel released the photos of some other "weapons" on board, which were just knives taken from the ship's kitchen.

Knives from the ship's kitchen

The ship's chef, no doubt

Akyol:

The video footage we have seen on TV actually gives a sense of what happened: Israeli commandos raided the ships at dawn, sliding down from helicopters via ropes with machine guns in their hands. Some of the activists on board took this as an assault on their ship, which was, to repeat, in international, not Israeli, waters. (How could they take it otherwise?) Then they tried to resist the commandos with the sticks in their hands. The soldiers, in return, fired on the activists, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens.

Actually, the "activists" took it upon themselves to "resist the commandos" before the "commandos" had done anything. Here is the actual videotape -- see for yourself:

From the Israeli point of view, everything is perfectly fine here: They have a policy of blockading Gaza, and those who defy it have to face the consequences.

Note that Akyol utters not a word about the indiscriminate rocket attacks upon Israeli civilians, launched from Gaza for many years.

The question is why in the world do people have to obey Israel's dictates and recognize its inhumane blockade on Gaza?

Who the hell is Israel, in other words, to force 1.5 million people to live in an open-air prison for years?

Scenes from that hellish open-air prison:

Akyol:

The answer from Israel is that "Hamas fires rockets from Gaza." Well, the last time those rockets were flying in the air, Israel was also firing rockets (and phosphorus bombs) into Gaza, killing a hundred times more civilians than Hamas did. According to a United Nations report, the actions of both sides equally amounted to war crimes....

Akyol doesn't mention that that UN report was funded by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Nor does he bother to note that it has been thoroughly debunked.

Akyol:

There is even a more fundamental question here, relating to the elephant in the Middle Eastern room: Who the hell is Israel to occupy the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967, and to systematically steal these territories by building illegal settlements?

Question to Akyol: why didn't the "Palestinians" fight against Egyptian "occupation" of Gaza and Jordanian "occupation" of the West Bank between 1948 and 1967?

And how can she expect the Palestinians, and other nations like us, the Turks, to bow down to this unabashed theft of land?

When I asked that question to an Israeli hawk some years ago, I received a very revealing response: "Might," he said, "makes right."

Well, that might be a popular belief in Tel Aviv and Occupied Jerusalem, but not here in Istanbul. In fact our creed tells us that the exact opposite is true: Right, sooner or later, makes might.

The hundreds of heroes who sailed to Gaza last weekend had this faith in their hearts. Here in Turkey, 70 million more stand by them. We mourn for our fallen, but also know that they did not die in vain. Their sacrifice unveiled to the world not just the suffering of the innocents in the Gaza ghetto, but also the brutality of the rogue state that imposes it.

Read my lips: This spirit is really not going to die. We Turks will continue to stand for what is right, regardless of Israel's might. None of her lobbying, bullying or killing is going to change that.

Nor will truth, evidently.

PBS's Tavis Smiley recently claimed that "every single day in this country" Christians commit terrorist acts. Interviewing the heroic ex-Muslim freedom fighter Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Smiley repeated common leftist dogmas about how Christian terrorists are more numerous and violent than Muslim terrorists, and have committed more terrorist acts inside the U.S. than Muslims have. Smiley's views are silly, but they're also ultimately misleading and dangerous, as they divert attention from the genuine threat from Islamic jihadists and, by sapping our civilizational self-confidence, weaken our ability and will to resist those jihadists.

On the show, Hirsi Ali was speaking about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Islamic jihadist and U.S. Army psychologist who, shouting "Allahu akbar," murdered 13 people at Fort Hood last November; and about Faisal Shahzad, the jihadist with ties to the Pakistani Taliban, who attempted to set off a car bomb in Times Square just weeks ago. "Somehow," said Hirsi Ali, "the idea got into their minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter."

Actually, there is no mystery about how they got this idea. The Koran guarantees Paradise to those who "kill and are killed" for Allah (9:111). Recruiters for suicide bombings the world over use this verse to promise Muslims troubled by a guilty conscience that they can be free of fears of hell if they kill some infidels and die in the process. But instead of asking Hirsi Ali to elucidate the motivations of such people, Smiley played the moral equivalence card, asserting: "Christians do that every single day in this country."

Hirsi Ali, an atheist, but realistic and clear-eyed enough not to fall for Smiley's moral-equivalence con job, was incredulous, and asked Smiley: "Do they blow people up?"

Smiley plowed doggedly ahead into Rosie ("Radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam") O'Donnell fantasyland: "Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that's what Columbine is -- I could do this all day long. There are so many more examples of Christians -- and I happen to be a Christian. That's back to this notion of your idealizing Christianity in my mind, to my read. There are so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country, where you live and work."

Smiley, like so many others, is ignorant of or indifferent to the key distinction here: that neither the Columbine killers nor any other mass murderer that he could invoke, even if they come from a Christian background, were motivated to kill by Christian texts and teachings. Islamic jihadists, in contrast, invoke Islamic texts and teachings both to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims....

Read it all.