KANO, Nigeria — Two senior officials in northern Nigerian have offered public apologies to an extremist sect for any rights violations suffered during military crackdown on its armed uprising in 2009.

Bauchi state governor Isa Yuguda and the ex-governor of neighbouring Gombe state Danjuma Goje, made their apologies in separate statements.

"I apologise to the members of Jama'atu Ahlussunnah lidda'awati wal Jihad for perceived injustices caused them as they have the full rights to be protected by the law," Yuguda said in a statement released to AFP Saturday.

"I hope this will further the healing of the trauma on Jama'atu Ahlussunnah, ...open the door to meaningful dialogue that will end hostilities and usher peace for which the religion of Islam is all about," he added.

Goje, now a senator, said "as a true Muslim, who believes in peace and brotherhood ... I hereby tender my public apology to the organisation for any wrong done to it in the course of performing my duty as the then governor of Gombe State".

The Boko Haram sect, which prefers to go by the name Jama'atu Ahlussunnah lidda'awati wal Jihad, is based in northeastern Borno state, but has also been active in nearby Bauchi and Gombe state.

It has been blamed for a recent wave of violence in the region.

The statements from the politicians appeared to be in reponse to the Boko Haram's demand for apologies as a precondition for dialogue with government.

The group's spokesman Abu Zaid had said they would hunt down the governors of Borno, Bauchi and Gombe states in comments published a week ago in the Daily Trust newspaper, which is widely circulated in the north.

"We would not relent in our efforts of searching for them until they come out publicly and apologize," Zaid told the paper.

Kashim Shettima, the newly elected governor of Borno state had already made overtures to the group.

He offered an amnesty to those of its members who renounced violence, a move backed by President Goodluck Jonathan.

But one of the conditions Boko Haram gave for dialogue was the strict application of Sharia law in the country's 12 predominately Muslim states....

Troops and policemen were accused of the extra-judicial killings of suspected sect members.

Seven policeman suspected of killing the sect leader Mohammed Yusuf are expected to face trial this month.

The sect has claimed responsibility for bomb attacks and shoot-and-run killings in the past year, including attacks on military and police personnel, community and religious leaders as well as politicians.

• Massage parlours (which often function as de facto brothels)

• Karaoke bars (with alcohol, music with sexually explicit lyrics, and sometimes much more)

• Chinese restaurants (serving pork, other 'non halal' food, and alcohol)
  

KUALA LUMPUR: The Federal Territory of Islamic Religious Council will build a house for Muslim converts so they can learn more about Islam.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom said the house, the first of its kind in Malaysia, would be used to guide converts towards strengthening their character.

“We will provide them a syllabus on obligatory prayers, reading the Quran and expose them to fasting,” he said here yesterday.

Jamil said the house costing RM15mil [USD$5 million] would be built in Sentul and was expected to be completed within two years. - Bernama

As everyone knows, Israel is the one nation on earth whose right to exist is being constantly questioned and challenged. It is the disproportionate target of the United Nations Human Rights Council which devotes the majority of its sessions to attacking the Jewish state while giving the world’s most egregious Human Rights violators a Get Out of Jail Free card. Israel is subject to a worldwide BDS campaign and to the vicious defamation of Israel Apartheid Weeks hosted on our morally debased university campuses. The ideology of the left demonizes Israel as a racist and conquistador nation that must be delegitimized, launching books, blogs, resolutions and flotillas against its very existence. Meanwhile, its Muslim neighbors have vowed to physically erase it from the map of the world, killing indiscriminately, firing rockets at its civil centers with the regularity of a metronome, and preparing for its version of the Final Solution.

Why should this be so? Are we witnessing the geographic displacement of a millennial prejudice from the diaspora to the nation, with Israel as the collective incarnation of the “international Jew”? Is the current assault on Israel merely the contemporary form of the age-old pogrom? Has the West embarked on a political and economic entente with the petro-tyrannies of the Muslim Middle East, selling its soul in the process to a triumphalist Islam, as Bat Ye’or has persuasively argued in Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide? The answer to such rhetorical questions is self-evident.

But bigotry and baseless aspersion are never openly admitted. Rather, for antisemites and anti-Zionists, Israel is regarded as a geopolitical irritant, a historical mistake, an artificial construct that should never have been established, however validly and legally. For the Quartet negotiators (the UN, The EU, the United States and Russia), and particularly for Britain, France and Germany, it is as if UN Resolution 242, guaranteeing “secure and recognized boundaries,” has no legitimate force. For Islam, Israel is an interloper in the region, despite the indisputable historical fact that Israel and Judea predate the Arab occupation of the Holy Land by more than a thousand years. For the so-called “realist” school of international relations, Israel is a political liability and therefore ultimately dispensable.

Moreover, Israel is by no means a great power. It is by normal census standards sparsely populated, and it covers about as much territory as Wales or New Jersey—as former mayor of New York Ed Koch says, one “might need a magnifying glass to see Israel” in a World Atlas since it could easily “disappear in the crease of a page.” In the larger scheme of things, presumably, its absence would scarcely be noticed.

Translated from al-fath.net, the website of Egyptian Shaykh Sa'id 'Abd-al-'Athim, 7 Dec 2010:

Title of the fatwa: The ruling on building and repairing churches for Christians in the lands of Muslims

Fatwa number: 7

Fatwa date: 7 Dec 2010

Question: Peace be upon you, as well as the mercy and blessings of Allah. Our eminent shaykh, I read in one of your fatwas on this good and blessed website that it is not permissible for Christians to build or repair churches. What is the evidence for this? Is there evidence in the Qur'an or Sunnah which says that it is forbidden to build churches, or does that only come from jurisprudence?

Answer: In the name of Allah, to Allah be the praise. Peace be upon the Messenger of Allah, as well as upon his family, companions, and whoever follows him.

This is explained in detail in the book, "The Rulings for the People of the Dhimma [i.e. Jews and Christians]" by Imam Ibn Qayyim. It should also suffice you to review my book, "Calling the People of the Book to the Religion of the Lord of Mankind," for there are useful things in it. I previously answered your question, and explained to you what they do with the Muslims in some European countries like Italy, in regards to preventing them from building mosques there. The shari'ah does not treat equally things which are different, nor does it treat differently things which are equal. This is the justice by which oppression is removed. For example, when a person of the Book congratulates me on my holiday, he is congratulating the truth, but when I congratulate him on his holiday, I am congratulating falsehood, for holidays are one of the greatest signs of the religion. Wherefore the infidels, even if they have to spend a great deal of money, would like for Muslims to participate with them in their holidays. There is the saying, "Whoever resembles a people is of them," and also, "Whoever loved a people will be gathered with them." Similarity on the outside leads to similarity on the inside...

The Rev. Steve Lawler should have just given up chocolate or television for Lent.

Instead, Lawler, the part-time rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, decided to adopt the rituals of Islam for 40 days to gain a deeper understanding of the faith.

Two days after it began, he faced being defrocked if he continued in those endeavors.

"He can't be both a Christian and a Muslim," said Bishop George Wayne Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. "If he chooses to practice as Muslim, then he would, by default, give up his Christian identity and priesthood in the church."

Lawler didn't foresee such problems when he came up with the idea. He merely wanted to learn more about Islam, he said, especially in light of the ongoing congressional hearings on the radicalization of the faith.

On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, he began performing "salah" five times a day, by facing east, toward Mecca, and praying to Allah. He also started studying the Quran and following Islamic dietary restrictions by abstaining from alcohol and pork.

During Holy Week, he planned to fast from dawn to sunset as Muslims do during Ramadan.

[I]n [Bishop] Smith's eyes, the exercise amounts to "playing" at someone else's religion and could be viewed as disrespectful.
...
"I believe what he's trying to accomplish or says he's trying to accomplish, which is to deepen his understanding of Islam, is admirable," the bishop said. "But you dishonor another faith by pretending to take it on. You build bridges by building relationships with neighbors who are Muslim."

Mohammed Ibrahim, chairman of the board of directors of the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis, isn't offended at all by Lawler practicing Islamic rituals.

"I think it's a good idea to understand better what Islam is," he said. "We do welcome it. People can come and watch us pray at the mosques and participate in prayer if they want to."

It's not the first time the Episcopal Church has confronted a priest over dabbling in Islam; in 2009, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding was defrocked two years after she embraced Islam because, her bishop said, "a priest of the church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim."

Smith said Lawler would face punitive actions if he continued with the rituals.

Lawler said he only planned to take his idea so far -- he did not intend to embrace one of the Five Pillars of Islam that requires Muslims to declare a belief in the oneness of God and to accept Muhammad as God's prophet.

There was never much hope of his conversion taking. The Prophet's seed fell on fallow ground, as became clear on Day Two of his Muslim Lent, when Lawler showed his deep faith in mainline Protestantism by performing its most sacred rite: He issued a press release.

On his second day of seeing Lent through Muslim eyes, Lawler issued a press release promoting his unique way of spending Lent. Speaking to a reporter that afternoon, he had no problem reconciling his Episcopal views with those of Islam.

"I could have sat down and read scholarly literature on Islam, but that's still stepping back from it rather than encountering it," he said, over a cup of tea in the office of St. Stephen's Church. "You can think about doing something, but once you do it, you really reflect on it."

Lawler doesn't seem to have learned much from his experience, except that even Anglicanism has its limits—and limits are one thing he has spent his life evading:

Lawler, who has been at St. Stephen's for eight years, was born and raised in the Roman Catholic Church but left during his early 20s because he didn't care for its conservative viewpoints.

"The Episcopal church is a fairly open church," he said. "If I was the pastor at a very conservative church, I could come in one day and have the locks changed (for doing the Islamic rituals)."

Lawler learned the Episcopal church is more rigid than he had thought. After hearing the objections of the bishop, Lawler reversed course, giving up the Islamic rituals.

More likely, Lawler learned from reading books like Karen Armstrong's that Muslims are merely Episcopalians with hookah pipes. Maybe the only real school for people like him is the one of hard knocks. It seems he wasn't knocked quite hard enough, however:

For his part, Lawler said he was not disappointed with the Episcopal church's reaction.

"It's a conversation, so I don't feel excluded or ordered about, and I understand Bishop Smith's concerns about what this would mean," he said. "I knew I was stepping into this as a discovery. It's turning out to be different than I thought, but also richer than I thought."

It is also worth noting, however, that it may have been a lingering politically correct impulse on Phillips' part that played into the hands of the Islamic supremacists who complained about her piece. For she refers to "Arabs" again and again, when the murderers of the Fogels were killing not because they were Arabs, but because they were Muslims, and Islamic jihadists. So many Western analysts will call jihadists anything -- anything -- so as to avoid calling them what they are, devout and observant Muslims. They just can't bear the idea that religious teachings might really have something to do with this conflict. Yet to characterize the Itamar murderers again and again as "Arabs" may have made it easier for the execrable Bunglawala to characterize what she wrote as a "generalised racist outburst." On the other hand, since resistance to jihad violence and Islamic supremacism is routinely described as "racism" also, if she had referred to the killers as jihadists or Muslims it may not have made any difference.

In any case, note the moral inversion from the complaining Muslims -- a moral inversion that is now so common that we may not even notice it. Bunglawala and the other complainers are full of righteous indignation against Melanie Phillips for her words, but where is the indignation of these supposed "moderates" against the jihadists who murdered the Fogels? Which is worse? Phillips's allegedly "racist" remarks, or the cold-blooded killing of a family sleeping in its home?

And if Bunglawala and co. has issued some pro-forma condemnation, deploring, "Islam forbids..." eyewash, what are they doing to back it up with real action? What programs have they instituted in mosques and Islamic schools in Britain to teach against the beliefs and assumptions that led Muslims to believe that it would be a good and righteous act to murder the Fogels in the first place?

Free Speech Death Watch Alert from Absurd Britannia: "PCC investigates Melanie Phillips' Spectator blog," by John Plunkett in The Guardian, March 18 (thanks to Phil):

A Melanie Phillips blogpost on the Spectator website which referred to the "moral depravity" of Arab "savages" is being investigated by the Press Complaints Commission.

The online comment piece, headlined "Armchair barbarism", focused on media coverage of the murder of five members of a Jewish family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar by Palestinian militants earlier this month.

"The moral depravity of the Arabs is finding a grotesque echo in the moral bankruptcy and worse of the British and American 'liberal' media," wrote Phillips.

"Overwhelmingly, the media have either ignored or downplayed the atrocity – or worse, effectively blamed the victims for bringing it on themselves, describing them as 'hard-line settlers' or extremists.

"To the New York Times, it's not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has jeopardised 'peace prospects' – because the Israelis will quite rightly never trust any agreement with such savages – but instead Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is legally and morally entitled, which is responsible instead for making peace elusive. Twisted, and sick."

The column, which also referred to coverage of the murders by CNN, the BBC and the Guardian – part of the group that publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk – prompted two complaints to the press watchdog, one of them from Engage, a group promoting Muslim engagement in British society.

Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4UK, said: "Her words went far beyond just denouncing the killings. It was a far more generalised racist outburst against Arabs as a whole.

"If you insert the word 'Jew' or 'Jewish' where she has referred to Arabs then I am sure she would have no doubt that those words would be antisemitic. Just as she abhors antisemitism it is important that she maintains the same vigorous anti-racist stance against Arabs. It is just unacceptable to use that kind of language."

Bunglawala said he had also complained to the police about the column....

If you wanted to be an academic you certainly did, but the average American who became an informed opponent of Communism was loath to dedicate so much of his time and energy to the intimate study of worldviews he knew—on the face of it—were incompatible with all his deepest values and the best interests of his country. What is more, he felt he could judge a tree by its fruits—the nature of which was clearly apparent to any honest observer (but not to dupes) from reports by escapees from Soviet Russia. Does one really need to master the thousands of pages of bad economics and clunky, reductionist philosophy penned by Marx and his minions to know that an economic system based on obliterating property rights and forcing men to abandon their inherent self-seeking was doomed to famines and tyranny?

Surely it helped that men like Ludwig von Mises provided devastating analyses of the flaws in Marxist theory—such as Mises' classic essay on how any form of socialism destroys the price system, that elegantly efficient method of matching human work with human wants, and can only hope to replace it by reshaping civilization on the model of a termite colony. But a simple knowledge of history and human nature would have pointed the same conclusion.

Even monasteries populated by men who have voluntarily renounced property, progeny, and freedom of action—by embracing the Evangelical Counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience—have frequently failed in their mission. The reason the world came to have so many Benedictine orders—the Cluniacs, the Trappists, the Cistercians—is that the original ideal was so hard to live, that monasteries quickly became corrupt, and had to give way to new “reform” branches that promised (this time!) to really live up to St. Benedict's Rule. Much the same story unfolded among the Franciscans and even the Carmelites. If voluntary recruits to self-selected communities upheld by contemplative prayer cannot reliably hold to such anti-instinctual standards of behavior, what conceivable earthly power could enforce them on the mass of men? Only an all-encompassing tyranny more comprehensive than any the world had yet seen. A simple reading of The Communist Manifesto would have revealed its final program: godless monasticism, enforced at the point of a bayonet. The real essence of socialism was exposed by a wistful socialist, George Orwell, whose depiction in 1984 of the ideology he called “Oligarchical Collectivism” unveiled the ideology in its essence: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.” His Ingsoc Party indeed favors an infernal, secular parody of monasticism, opposing on principle prosperity, eros, and liberty. Intelligent observers of Soviet policies could—and many did—draw such conclusions.

Likewise, honest readers of the Qur'an and other authoritative Muslim texts can draw certain conclusions, which all the evasions and obfuscations of pseudo-moderate Muslims (remember Eurocommunism? Anyone? It was all the rage in respectable liberal circles while I was in college in the 80s.) cannot obscure. Let me lay out my own no-nonsense take on the question, in a form I'll call the Riyadh Catechism:

What does Islam teach? Islam teaches that is the final revelation from God, and the only legitimate world religion. All other faiths, or secular world views, are either idol-worship, blasphemous parodies of Islam, or degenerate perversions of it.

When was Islam founded? Islam was founded when Abraham made his covenant with God. The Jews who claimed that this covenant constituted Judaism are lying (as is their wont), and relying on faked scriptures that their scheming ancestors crafted to suit their own ethnic aggrandizement.

Where are the original scriptures recounting the history of Abraham, Moses, and other early Muslims? These original scriptures no longer exist. They were destroyed and replaced by the crafty Jews.

Who was Jesus? Jesus (Isa) was a Muslim prophet who came as the Messiah to recall the faithless Jews to their Muslim faith. The true accounts of his life and message were altered beyond recognition by the scheming Christians—who also spread the lie that he was crucified, and rose from the dead.

Where are these original Gospels? These original Gospels were destroyed by the early Christians (who were also, we must remember, Jews), shortly after they were written—in order to cover up their clear predictions of the coming of Muhammad.

Will Jesus come again at the end of the world? Yes, Jesus will come again to destroy Christianity, kill all the pigs in the world, and end dhimmitude—by forcing all Christians either to convert to Islam or be killed (like the pigs).

What is the proper treatment of non-Muslims? When Muslims are weak, they should practice tolerance of unbelievers, and ask for similar tolerance. As they grow in numbers, they must harden their attitudes as Muhammad hardened his once he commanded an army in Medina. Muslims should spread their faith by conquest; by preaching; and by emigrating to non-Muslim countries and demanding tolerance—then once they are strong enough, they should impose the true faith on the government where they can. Polytheists should then be allowed to convert or else be killed; monotheist infidels such as Jews and Christians should be offered a third option: Utter, willing subjection to Muslims, with their obedience binding on pain of death. These non-believers must pay a special, heavy tax and keep quiet about their religion, not trying to spread it.

So if Jews accept their proper role as dhimmis, they are in theory welcome in Muslim societies? Yes and no. In theory, yes. In practice, no. The atrocity of Zionist control of the Muslim holy city of Jerusalem is so great that no Jews should remain in Muslim countries. They are simply too crafty and dangerous.

Is sharia law an intrinsic part of Islam? Yes, it is as basic to Muslims as the Torah is to Jews and the sacraments are to Orthodox and Catholics. It is how Muslims live out their faith in the world.

Must Muslims seek to impose sharia? Only where it seems likely they will succeed. Until then, they should deceive the unbelievers, as Islamic ethics allow.

What about Muslims who oppose sharia and religious discrimination? They are bad Muslims, and they will burn in hell with all the Christians, Jews, and idol-worshippers. But we should not say this openly until we are strong enough throughout the West. Until then, it benefits us to highlight such people, and claim that they are representative.

What about those who oppose Islam? They are enemies of God who deserve death in this life and eternal punishment in the next. However, if it helps us fight them more effectively, we can call them “racists,” “xenophobes,” and “Islamophobe.”

What is an Islamophobe? An Islamophobe is someone who opposes sharia, and is unwilling either to convert or beg for the protection of dhimmitude.

Whom should we call an Islamophobe? Anyone who gets in our way.

Thanks to all who sent this in.

White House officials have applauded advocacy efforts by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, even though top FBI managers refuse to meet its leaders, the council has been judged by courts to have been associated with the Islamic terror group Hamas, and several of its employees and members have been jailed or expelled for jihadi-related terrorist offenses since 2001.

CAIR was publicly applauded at a Mar. 10 White House event by Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement, for its work with MTV to counter “bullying.” “Bullying can be prevented if we all take action,” said Jarrett, as she cited the MTV project, and named CAIR as a partner.

After lauding the National Education Association, Cartoon Network and a litany of other Democratic-affiliated advocacy groups and companies that are part of the White House’s “anti-bullying” campaign to reshape children’s opinions, Jarrett thanked MTV for “launching a new coalition that will work to fight bullying and intolerance online.” The coalition partners include the Hispanic advocacy group, “the National Council of La Raza, the Anti-Defamation League, and the [Council on] American-Islamic Relations, GLAAD and many others,” Jarrett said.

“There’s no controversy,” said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s press secretary. To advance CAIR’s causes, including “cyber-bullying,” he said, “we do what we think is necessary…what other people do is up to them.”...

"...and if they cross us, we will destroy them," he might have added under his breath.

Like many other activists in the White House’s campaign, Hooper conflated physical bullying and intimidation with routine spoken and online criticism of ideas and behavior, and suggested that CAIR’s critics were violent. “There’s a cottage industry of ‘Muslim-bashers’ who seek on a daily basis to marginalize American Muslims and to demonize Islam,” said Hooper.

Honest Ibe Hooper must know that the ones who are actually demonizing Muslims are people like Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer; Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber; and so many other jihad murderers and would-be murderers who justify their murders by reference to the texts and teachings of Islam. They demonize Muslims far more effectively than anything any non-Muslim, no matter how genuinely hateful, could ever possibly accomplish.

The ‘-basher’ phrase was first used by gay-advocates to tar their critics as violent, and is now routinely used by Hooper and other Islamist advocates to portray their critics as violent. ‘Muslim-basher,’ Hooper said, is “colloquial American-English for someone who rhetorically bashes Muslims.”

When asked about CAIR’s view of Hamas, Hooper sent a statement saying “we unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group.” However, CAIR’s statement is ambiguous because Islamists describe Israeli military operations as “terrorism” and their attacks on Israeli civilians as justified “resistance” or “jihad.”...

Good on you for noticing that, Munro.

"Former Muslims Excluded From King Hearings," by Nonie Darwish in FrontPage, March 17 (thanks to Inexion):

I have admiration and respect for Congressman Peter King and I salute him for holding hearings on the “Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.” However, as a former Muslim I have not seen anyone testifying on our behalf in the hearings. At least one former Muslims should have been there to tell America of our plight. To tell them why we left Islam right here in America. How we had to choose between Islam and loving America. How radicals and jihadists followed us right here after we immigrated to the US to try to force us back into the same old culture of jihad, hatred and anti-Semitism — that we had escaped from in the first place. How radicals who want to deny us our freedom of religion under the US constitution threaten our lives and civil rights daily.

Most former Muslims in the US started by going to mosques but we soon discovered a political and jihadist agenda. In mosques I was told not to assimilate in America, to have more children and to wear Islamic clothes even though I never wore it in the Middle East before coming to the US. We were encouraged to pray wherever we wanted and do that with assertion even if we have to inconvenience others at airports, baseball games or at work. We soon found out that many mosques in America, as they are in the Middle East, are more of a political organization than a place of worship. We noticed that the more pious Muslims in the mosque were the ones seeking confrontation with American culture, such as getting offended if Americans have dogs or alcohol when riding cabs with Muslim taxi drivers.

Muslims are told openly in mosques that they have a mission in America and that is to make Islam the law of the land. Lying to America and getting offended to cover up the jihadist aspiration was encouraged, and became a perfected art and a religious obligation, which further alienated Muslims from American culture.

Many of us former Muslims have left the religion precisely because of the radicalization we confronted in America. But when we dared to stop going to mosques and left Islam altogether our lives turned into a nightmare. Many former Muslims contact me looking for shelter after their lives have been threatened. Just a couple of days ago I was contacted by a young 21 year old Muslim man telling me he left Islam years ago and has to hide the Bible from his family and friends after his own brother told him he was going to kill him if he does not return to Islam....

Read it all.

Iraqi Christians now face genocide and are claiming a “right of existence” for all non-Muslim minorities as Islamists continue their bloody holy war against all who dare profess belief in anything but Islam.

Since 2003, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians have either fled to the northern Iraqi province of Kurdistan and other countries, or have been massacred while the leftist media, the Islamapologist brigade at the White House, and even the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops maintain complete silence about their status. Regardless of what one’s views may be on the War in Iraq, there is no excuse for turning a blind eye to genocide. No matter who the perpetrators and victims are. The world needs to know the truth about the Christians of Iraq.

Freedom of conscience is one of the most important tenets of Christianity, but its infringement is among the harshest provisions of Sharia Law. While Islamapologists in the Obama Administration and the leftist media busy themselves with defending the virtues of Islam, smearing as bigots all who dare question the “‘religion of peace,” no one on the Left is mentioning how the Christians of Iraq are faring under Islamists who make up the majority in Iraq.

In January, Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda of northern Iraq announced that the Church is responding to the exodus of Christians from heavily persecuted regions farther south, like Baghdad, not by building bombs, but by building a hospital and a university.

The plans we have been developing over the past few months are symbols of hope for the Christian presence in our country.

Actions such as this are the only “crusade” you will find coming out of today’s Catholic Church, no matter what the Left may have you believe.

These plans, for the construction of the hospital and university, reflect three things the Catholic Church in Iraq would like to promote: respect for the health (not destruction) of the human person, opportunity for freedom in education, and employment for those who are fleeing to the north in the face of Islamic aggression.

Despite the nature of the Christian role in Iraq, in a March 15 report to Pope Benedict’s charity for persecuted Christians, Archbishop Warda could report no good news and said that Christians now face “near genocide conditions” as “one of the non-Muslim minority inhabitants of Iraq.” Since 2003, nearly one million Iraqi Christians have either fled or been murdered. A systematic bombing campaign” has resulted in attacks on 66 churches, two convents, a monastery and an orphanage.

Who attacks orphanages? Not Mormons. Not Jews. Islamists attack orphanages. Whether in Indonesia, Ethiopia, Sudan, or Iraq, it’s not the papists who are attacking orphanages–it’s Muslims. Unlike Cardinal Sfeir of Lebanon, Archbishop Warda is clearly not content to give those who promote government  based on Islamic law a pass for crimes against humanity.

In Iraq, 40 years of war and oppression have strengthened our endurance and our resolve to stand strong and to claim our legal and historical right as a Church and as a people in Iraq. We have not come this far to give up.

Through the international support and solidarity that this report will create, I believe we can be stronger in our unity and more strategic in our search for sustainable solutions.

What we Iraqis are suffering is a crisis in cultural change. We are living in a region which cannot decide if it is for democracy or for Islamic law. It cannot decide if it is for the rights of human beings to live in freedom in all its exciting and challenging forms, or if it is for the control of the spirit and the minds of its people.

This is the kind of control that welcomes the terrorist methods of intimidation, kidnapping and killing of religious minorities.

Next: Non-Muslims in Iraq Call for a Separate State

The Muslim advance was inexorable. "The apostle," according to Muhammad's earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, "seized the property piece by piece and conquered the forts one by one as he came to them." Another biographer of Muhammad, Ibn Sa'd, reports that the battle was fierce: the "polytheists...killed a large number of [Muhammad's] Companions and he also put to death a very large number of them....He killed ninety-three men of the Jews..." Muhammad and his men offered the fajr prayer, the Islamic dawn prayer, before it was light, and then entered Khaybar itself. The Muslims immediately set out to locate the inhabitants' wealth. A Jewish leader of Khaybar, Kinana bin al-Rabi, was brought before Muhammad; Kinana was supposed to have been entrusted with the treasure of on of the Jewish tribes of Arabia, the Banu Nadir. Kinana denied knowing where this treasure was, but Muhammad pressed him: "Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?" Kinana said yes, that he did know that.

Some of the treasure was found. To find the rest, Muhammad gave orders concerning Kinana: "Torture him until you extract what he has." One of the Muslims built a fire on Kinana's chest, but Kinana would not give up his secret. When he was at the point of death, one of the Muslims beheaded him. Kinana's wife was taken as a war prize; Muhammad claimed her for himself and hastily arranged a wedding ceremony that night. He halted the Muslims' caravan out of Khaybar later that night in order to consummate the marriage.

Muhammad agreed to let the people of Khaybar to go into exile, allowing them to keep as much of their property as they could carry. The Prophet of Islam, however, commanded them to leave behind all their gold and silver. He had intended to expel all of them, but some, who were farmers, begged him to allow them to let them stay if they gave him half their yield annually. Muhammad agreed: "I will allow you to continue here, so long as we would desire." He warned them: "If we wish to expel you we will expel you." They no longer had any rights that did not depend upon the good will and sufferance of Muhammad and the Muslims. And indeed, when the Muslims discovered some treasure that some of the Khaybar Jews had hidden, he ordered the women of the tribe enslaved and seized the perpetrators' land. A hadith notes that "the Prophet had their warriors killed, their offspring and woman taken as captives."

Compassion!

"Armstrong: Islam came to spread compassion among the nations of the world," by Siddeek Tawfeek for Islam Online, March 17 (thanks to Jan):

As part of its cultural events, Georgetown University’s CIRS (Centre for International and Regional Studies), School of Foreign Services in Qatar, invited professor Karen Armstrong to deliver a lecture titled, The Core of Our Religious Traditions on 13th March 2011.

Professor Armstrong started her lecture by saying that religion has a main role in that it can provide a major contribution to build a global community where people can live in peace and harmony. She said that some believe that religion is the cause of violence and wars throughout history, refuting this concept by saying that wars and violence are motivated by greed and power. Each religion has its own particular and exclusive insights, but all religions have a thing in common, and that is the belief in the Supreme Being who is God. Words stop and fail when we begin to define God. Professor Armstrong summed up the situation by quoting in Arabic: “Allahu Akbar” (God is greater).

She pointed out that religion teaches us mainly to worship Allah and to do good, and the Qur’an calls for good actions. She quoted the Arabic word: (al-salihat) which includes doing whatever good to help people, be it kindness to orphans, and giving alms to the poor. In other words, The Qur’an calls for compassion, and compassion is the core of the Golden Rule which says: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” This is the bond of suffering. Professor Armstrong quoted the hadith (prophetic saying) of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), where he says: “None of you will be a true believer until he desires for others what he desires for himself.”

Professor Armstrong said that after the September 11th event, the Muslim communities in the West have been exposed to a lot of suffering inflicted upon them. Such a treatment is too far from the Golden Rule of compassion. As a reaction to this injustice toward Muslims, cities in different parts of the world have developed campaigns to promote community compassion among its residents, where Muslim youths are significantly participating in these campaigns, especially in Amsterdam, Holland. The city of Seattle in north-western United States, leads the list of compassionate cities. On the other hand, Professor Armstrong cited Afghanistan and Iraq as examples of venues where compassion is non-existent.

It is doubtful that Professor Armstrong mentioned such inconveniently non-compassionate post-9/11 (and indeed, quite recent) Muslims as Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; or Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; or Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; or Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer; or Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; or Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber. Mentioning them might have interfered with her narrative of Muslim persecution in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

“Just like a mother has compassion for her child, Allah has compassion for man. There was a time when Allah’s revelation to the Prophet (PBUH) stopped and the Prophet (PBUH) felt desolate, abandoned, and depressed” she added. Later, revelation returned and the Prophet (PBUH), feeling that the grace of the Lord was proclaimed, he went public in his message. The first Sura (chapter) that was revealed to him from Allah was “Al Duha”, whose opening Ayas (verses), Professor Armstrong quoted from memory: “By the morning hours, and the night when it falls. Your Lord has neither forgotten nor forsaken you. And the hereafter is better for you than present life. And verily, your Lord will give you so that you will be pleased.”

Furthermore, Islam came to spread compassion among the tribes, and consequently among the nations of the world. Compassion is very well testified when Allah ordered the Prophet (PBUH) prayers five times a day and not fifty times. This also indicates another aspect of compassion and that is to be moderate in order to be tolerant. The Qur’an preaches compassion by avoiding the infliction of pain upon others; compassion makes us closely akin to God....

Professor Armstrong is well versed in The Qur’an and has intimate knowledge of Islamic discourse and the life of the Prophet. Whenever she mentioned his name, she followed it by the phrase: Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH)....

That's interesting. Has Karen Armstrong finally converted to Islam? Does she believe Muhammad was a prophet?

In an interview with Bill Moyers published on March 2009 at Public Broadcasting Service site, Armstrong states that "Islam is a religion of success.… Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength." Armstrong argued that “until the 20th century, Islam was a far more tolerant and peaceful faith than Christianity. The Qur’an strictly forbids any coercion in religion and regards all rightly guided religions as coming from God; and despite the Western belief to the contrary, Muslims did not impose their faith by the sword”.

Armstrong is referring to the dhimma, which was so much more tolerant and peaceful than anything Christianity offered that at the dawn of the twentieth century, there were sixteen to seventeen million Jews in Christian Europe, and one million Jews in Islamic lands. And yes, Islam did not spread by the sword; non-Muslims were subjugated as dhimmis, and made subject to so many deprivations and legalized hardships that they freely converted to Islam just to have a chance at a better life. But no, no one forced them!

In another interview, Armstrong states that "Muslims should try to use the media; they have got to have a Muslim lobby. This is a jihad, an effort, a struggle, that is very important. If you want to change the media, then you have got to make people see that Islam is a force to be reckoned with politically and culturally."

They're doing that quite well already.

"Muslim defendant can sue over hijab removal," by Bob Egelko for the San Francisco Chronicle, March 16 (thanks to all who sent this in):

SAN FRANCISCO -- A law guaranteeing religious freedom to prisoners applies to a courthouse holding cell where sheriff's deputies ordered a Muslim woman to remove her headscarf, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The 11-0 decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit by Souhair Khatib against Orange County, where officers made her take off her hijab for security reasons while she was held in the cell to await a court hearing.

The law, passed by Congress in 2000, prohibits the government from imposing a "substantial burden" on prisoners' religious practices unless officials can show a compelling need for the restrictions.

The Obama administration joined Khatib in arguing that the law applied to courthouse holding cells....

The court returned the case to a federal judge to decide whether the deputies interfered with Khatib's religious freedom without a compelling security need. Becky Kieffer, a lawyer for Khatib, said federal prisons allow Muslim women to wear approved headscarves and that the county should follow their practice.

The county could also appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Khatib and her husband pleaded guilty in 2006 to a misdemeanor welfare crime, which Kieffer said involved receiving overpayments. They were placed on probation and ordered to perform 30 hours of community service apiece.

When they went to court to ask for an extension of the community service deadline, a judge revoked their probation and put them in holding cells, where deputies ordered Khatib to remove her hijab.

She stayed in the cell most of the day, trying to cover her head with her vest. When she was brought into court, the judge extended the deadline and restored her probation.

Khatib says her religion forbids her to expose her head or neck to men outside her immediate family. She sued the county for damages.

The Islamic principle of qisas, or retaliation, allows for blood money (diyya) to be paid by the perpetrator to the relatives of the deceased in cases of accidental death or even murder. This is not just an Islamic ritual; it is part of Islamic law and suffices as punishment for the murder if the relatives of the deceased agree.

In any case, the amount of compensation required is higher if the victim was a Muslim than if he was a non-Muslim. Only the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence allows for the possibility of capital punishment in the case of a Muslim who has murdered an unbeliever. The Maliki and Hanbali schools set a Muslim's life as worth twice that of a non-Muslim. The Shafi'i school sets a Jew's or Christian's life as worth two-thirds that of a Muslim. Polytheists are valued less. The Shafi'i Sharia manual 'Umdat al-Salik dictates: "The indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man. The indemnity paid for a Jew or Christian is one-third the indemnity paid for a Muslim. The indemnity paid for a Zoroastrian is one-fifteenth that of a Muslim." (o4.9)

The Iranian Shi'ite Sufi Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh explains: "Thus if [a] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. But if the man is not a Muslim and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution...Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash....Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim...then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain...Again, the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed....Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them." -- Sultanhussein Tabandeh, A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

And why is the U.S. submitting to Sharia in this regard? In better days, a team of commandos would have done the job.

"Pakistan: CIA contractor released after '$2.34mln in blood is money paid,'" from AKI, March 16 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Lahore, 16 March (AKI) - A Pakistani court on Wednesday freed an American CIA contractor hours after he was formally charged with two counts of murder, officials said.

Raymond Davis, 36, shot dead two men in the eastern city of Lahore on 27 January. He said he defended himself during an armed robbery.

Davis was acquitted after family members of the victims received "blood money" as compensation in accordance with sharia law, Pakistani English-language daily Dawn cited Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah as saying.

A lawyer for the families of two Pakistani men killed by an American CIA contractor says the United States paid $2.34 million in "blood money" to secure the man's release, according to an Associated Press report....

United States ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter on the release of Davis said :”I wish to express my respect for Pakistan and its people, and my thanks for their commitment to building our relationship.”...

Here is a telling indication of how moral relativism encourages the worst forms of barbarity. "Honour killings term angers Trudeau," by Bryn Weese for the Toronto Sun, March 15 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

OTTAWA - Liberal MP Justin Trudeau said the government should not call honour killings "barbaric" in a study guide for would-be Canadian citizens.

On Monday, the federal government updated its Discover Canada guide, a pamphlet given to new immigrants to help explain life in Canada and prepare them for the citizenship test.

Among other things, it tells new Canadians that gay marriage is OK and forced marriages are not.

But the guide also says: "Canada's openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, 'honour killings,' female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence."

"Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada's criminal laws," it reads.

Trudeau blasted the Conservatives for using the term "barbaric," even though it's been in the guide since 2009. Forced marriages are the only new item on the list.

"There's nothing that the word 'barbaric' achieves that the words 'absolutely unacceptable' would not have achieved," Trudeau, the Liberal immigration critic, said.

"We accept that these acts are absolutely unacceptable. That's not the debate. In casual conversation, I'd even use the word barbaric to describe female circumcision, for example, but in an official Government of Canada publication, there needs to be a little bit of an attempt at responsible neutrality."

But Immigration Minister Jason Kenney fired back Monday, accusing the Liberals of choosing political correctness over women's rights.

"Despite Trudeau's opposition, we make no apologies for letting immigrant women know their rights. We won't turn a blind eye to the abuse of immigrant women, even if the Ignatieff Liberals prefer we err on the side of political correctness," said Alykhan Velshi, a spokesman for Kenney....

Good.

Yeah, sure, Velshi -- Peter King just has a "strange obsession." Who knows how he could have developed such a thing. One thing we know is that it was completely random. It could not possibly have had anything to do with Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; or Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; or Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; or Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer; or Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; or Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber; or Muhammad Atta, Anjem Chaudary, Omar Bakri, Abu Hamza, Abu Bakar Bashir, Zawahiri, Zarqawi, bin Laden and all the rest.

No, King is just "obsessed." Nothing to do with all those men and so many others like them. He could just as easily have become obsessed with collecting baseball cards, spending all his time searching for the elusive Honus Wagner Sweet Caporal issue, and sparing us this inundation of hatred, bigotry, and Islamophobia.

"CNN's Velshi: Rep. Peter King Has 'Strange Obsession with Islam,'" by Matthew Balan for the Media Research Center, March 12:

On Thursday's Newsroom, CNN's Ali Velshi claimed that Rep. Peter King has a "seemingly strange obsession with Islam and Islamists, or whatever you want to call it," given the lead up and the first day of hearings looking into the radicalization of American Muslims. Velshi also bizarrely stated that "I don't quite understand how when you put an -ist at the end of it [Islamism], it changes the subject."

The anchor discussed the hearings with former FBI agent Foria Younis, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen, and former Catholic turned Episcopal priest Rev. Alberto Cutie during the last segment of the 2 pm Eastern hour. Midway through the panel discussion, Velshi turned to Cutie and made his claim about the New York congressman, along with his doubt about the validity of "Islamist" as a term:

VELSHI: Let's put aside Peter King's seemingly strange obsession with Islam and Islamists, or whatever you want to call it. I don't quite understand how when you put an -ist at the end of it, it changes the subject. But let's just say, putting that aside, should Muslims be looking more carefully at themselves? Is there something that law-abiding American Muslims should be doing simply- to be doing to satisfy this call to action that Peter King has put out?

Perhaps he doesn't understand that Islamist is a synonym for a radical Muslim, and that the term, in its current usage, has been around for decades, and has its origin in French academia.

As you might expect, Cutie spouted the liberal talking point about not singling out one community and the need to examine extremism outside the Muslim population:

CUTIE: Well, listen, in my conversations with the ecumenical community, with rabbis, with imams, with pastors, and then priests, everybody agrees that the big problem for some people is that Muslims have not come out in thousands and thousands of numbers marching down the street, maybe in New York City or other places, and saying, we are against terrorism. This is what some people need and want. I'm not sure that that's going to do anything. I think that the sheriff said it right. My concern is the radicalization of people in all faith groups. I think we have to be very careful when we single out one group. Certainly, when are you in charge of Homeland Security, you are worried about terrorism. We're all worried about terrorism. But how are we going to end this stigma of Muslim equals terrorist?...

Hmm. That's a tough one, Cutie. Maybe it would help if Muslims stopped committing acts of terrorism and justifying them by reference to the texts and teachings of Islam?

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.

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....

I didn't post this video only because it came in while I was very busy with preparations for the mosque rally, and by the time I was able to watch it it had already gone viral -- and indeed, you have probably already seen it. But the story now is that Israeli authorities have taken clueless dhimmitude to new heights by actually apologizing for this video, as if it is somehow wrong to mock the Palestinian propaganda machine that does, in fact, con the world. Or is it wrong to mock the self-indulgent rock stars who created "We Are the World"?

"Israel Apologizes for Music Video Mocking Gaza Flotilla," by Mara Gay for AOL News, June 8 (thanks to Pamela Hall):

(June 8) -- The Israeli government has apologized for circulating a satirical video that uses Michael Jackson's hit single "We Are the World" to mock activists from the Gaza flotilla.

"There's no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the greatest bluff of all," one refrain in the parody goes.

Last week nine people aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of six ships carrying aid to Gaza in defiance of Israel's blockade, were killed under hotly contested circumstances during an Israeli raid on the flotilla. In the video, Israelis dressed up as activists offer their own take on the incident through song.

"We con the world, we con the people," the song continues, in an apparent reference to Hamas and the activists aboard the flotilla.

The Israeli Government Press Office distributed footage of the music video to foreign journalists on June 4, but then sent an apology to reporters just hours later, insisting it had been an accident.

"The contents of the video in no way represent the official policy of either the Government Press Office or of the State of Israel," Israel's Government Press Office later told CNN....

Ever since a ship filled with Turkish terrorists tried to enter an Israeli military zone to forge a permanent conduit for Jew-killing missiles to Hamas, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutogu, have broken the world record for running, jumping, and pole-vaulting-off-the-charts gall.

They were Turkish terrorists – sworn to help Hamas kill Jews. So naturally it follows that Ergodan rants about a “bloody massacre” and warns Israel not to “test Turkey’s patience,” while Davutogu intones that future Turkish-Israeli ties depend upon Israel’s “attitude.”

Let me get this straight. Turkish officials go on a three-day tirade about Israel’s “attitude” and whine about their feelings after they sponsored a ship of terrorist girly-men pretending to be unarmed pacifists in order to ambush the Israeli commandos they knew have no choice but to protect the millions whose security depends on that Gaza blockade.

The overtone of bigotry is deafening in Ergodan and Davutogu’s bizarre, misplaced expressions of outrage. There is a subtext of entitlement that harkens back to the old days of Muslim-Jewish dhimmitude. How dare those Jews “test” Turkey’s “patience” by not recognizing those diplomatic geniuses’ superiority and moral prerogative to preach, scold, threaten, pass judgment, and meddle in their business.

There is no such undercurrent of intrinsic superiority in Turkey’s relations with Sudanese president and genocidal maniac, Omar al-Bashir. Erdogan has stated plainly that he sees nothing wrong with his attitude. And what about Hamas’ attitude as they rip up peace offers, terrorize Israel, and throw political adversaries out of 15-story windows?

So, it follows that Turkey’s “patience” would be “tested” by Israel’s attitude which didn’t behead, hang, or even force the Turkish terrorist cowards to stand trial. Not to mention the intolerable Israeli attitude which cares for their own would-be murderers in hospitals or sets them free to see their families, take a vacation, or hop on board the next Turkish-sponsored terrorist ship that is already sailing for Gaza to repeat this week’s nightmare.

I can imagine it must be so irksome for Ankara to observe the way Israel deals with the hellish national security issues they face every day, and which, incidentally, are none of Turkey’s damn business.

Maybe even more trying than, I don’t know, women rocking their babies each night wondering whether a rocket might crash through their roof. Or, say, kissing husbands, wives, and kids good-bye every morning knowing they may get too close to the wrong guy and become a human jigsaw puzzle down at the morgue. Yes, it must be so wearisome for the Turks to observe Israel’s “attitude” every time their citizens are terrorized, butchered, burned, and blown up.

Forgive the sarcasm here, but my only other release valve involves a hammer, and this is the only face I’ve got.