It is difficult for Americans to comprehend the challenge to Western civilization from Islam and Islamist ideology. While our political leaders tell us constantly that we are not at war with Islam, the Obama administration will not acknowledge the fact that we are at war with Islamist ideology.

In a slim new volume of four essays, “Islam in our Midst: the Challenge to our Christian Heritage,” Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo examines the roots of Islamist ideology and finds little difference between them and Islam itself as it is currently preached in the Muslim mainstream.

And therein lies the problem with Islam. “Politically correct approaches often present a sanitized view of Islam, ignoring its terrorist forms,” Sookhdeo writes.

The Obama administration has conscientiously excised words such as “Islamic terrorism,” “Islamist terrorism” and “jihad” from the lexicon of its national security doctrine, “because they are deemed to anger Muslims and increase tensions with the wider Muslim world,” Sookhdeo notes.

This has only encouraged the Islamists, who are using left-wing think tanks such as the Center for American Progress to send out the political thought-police to condemn anyone who dares to discuss such issues openly as “Islamophobe.”

Dr. Sookhdeo is a noted scholar of Christianity and Islam, and is the international director for Barnabas Aid, a Christian agency that gives assistance to Christians facing persecution around the world.

Because of his scholarship and his deep understanding of Islamic texts and Islamic law, it is harder for the pro-Sharia lobby to dismiss him as an Islamophobe.

He believes we need to understand the fundamental contradiction and incompatibility between the “Islamic worldview” (note: not “Islamist”) and its American secular counterpart.

First, “a fundamental doctrine of Islam is the unity of religion (din) and state (dawla),” he writes. “Islam is thus inherently political. In a very real sense, for Muslims Islam is the state.” [p39]

Sharia law, which is derived from the Koran, the Hadith, and the various accounts of the life of Mohammad, “contains a complete social and political order, with regulations not only on personal devotion but also on all elements of legal jurisdiction, political institutions, relations with other states and even military endeavors.”

Muslims are taught in their mosques that they form a community that spreads across national borders, even across continents, as opposed to the individualism of American society.

“This can create tensions and conflicts for Muslims living in societies such as the U.S.,” Sookhdeo writes. “It raises the question of where one’s first loyalty lies.” [p41]

If all this sounds familiar, it should. Sookhdeo’s message bears a strong family ressemblance to what you may have heard from the likes of Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney, Stephen Coughlin or John Guandolo, who have decrypted Islamist ideology and the efforts of Muslim Brotherhood front groups to gradually impose Sharia law on the United States.

But Sookhdeo’s approach is more spiritual, and he has written this latest slim volume as a challenge to Christians to better understand the differences between their worldview and the Islamic one.

Born a Muslim in exile from his native Pakistan, Sookhdeo moved from British Guyana to Britain and became a Christian while studying at university. He went on to become an ordained Anglican priest, in addition to doing his PhD at the University of London’s School of African and Oriental Studies.

For Muslims, therefore, Sookhdeo is an apostate, a man with a price on his head. In Britain recently, Islamist activists sought to get him condemned as an Islamaphobe by the UK Charities Commission for his efforts to educate Christians about Islamic doctrine and to promote Christian prayer.

“Islam in Our Midst” tackles the problem of Sharia law and the efforts by Muslim organizations to gradually impose it on the West, and why Sharia is totally incompatible with Western societies.

“The existence of a divine law, ordained by the god of Islam, excludes the possibility of any other kind of law, such as natural law or human law,” Sookhdeo writes. [p42] At its core, Islam is a political ideology, operating in the public space. “The concept of a personal devotional life of faith within the private space has little emphasis in mainstream Islam.”

Mainstream Muslim clerics such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the popular proselytizer who appears on al-Jazeera and other Arabic language networks, “explicitly rejects secularism as apostasy from Islam because it means abandoning the rule of Sharia,” Sookhdeo notes.

I hosted a panel in June on the future of the war on terror at Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom conference. In addition to excellent contributions from Frank Gaffney and CBN correspondent Erik Stakelbek, a lawyer named Marshall Bregar was added to our panel at the last minute at the assistance of Grover Norquist, a close friend of Ralph Reed’s.

Obama has announced the appointment of Azizah al-Hibri to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Al-Hibri (full name, Azizah Yahia Muhammad Toufiq al-Hibri) is a Muslim professor and the granddaughter of a Sheikh, who claims that the Koran inspired Thomas Jefferson and the Founders and that the Saudi criminal justice system is more moral than the American one because it accepts blood money from murderers.

Appointing a Muslim scholar to a commission on international religious freedom is only justifiable if that scholar recognized that much of the injustice in the world originates from Islamic law. But Al-Hibri has made her career whitewashing Islamic law and even presenting it as superior to American law. While she has been called a reformer, her call in 2001 for a return to the fundamentals echoes Wahhabi rhetoric. Rather than examining the incompatibilities of Islamic law and the modern world, and urging the appropriate adjustments, as genuine reformers have done, Al-Hibri instead builds myths that uphold the Islamist agenda.

According to Al-Hibri, “Islamic fiqh is deeper and better than Western codes of law”. She favorably compares Saudi Arabia’s willingness to accept blood money bribes to excuse a murder, to the “impersonal and powerful” American justice system. Al-Hibri is often billed as a Muslim feminist, but she is equally hypocritical on women’s rights. Rather than conceding that Islamic law discriminates against women, she whitewashes its discriminatory treatment of women, arguing that guardianship is meant to protect “inexperienced women”.

Rather than trying to bring Islam in line with the modern world, Azizah Al-Hibri pushes for the modern world to be brought in line with Islam. Rather than reforming Islam, it is America that she would like to reform to Islamic standards. Placing a woman who believes that American law is inferior to that of the Koran on an American commission to promote international religious freedom perverts the purpose of the commission and promotes religious tyranny instead.

Given a forum to call for reform, Al-Hibri unerringly insists that there is nothing to reform. At the UN, Al-Hibri expressed outrage that the Koran, which “established acceptance of others, now needed to be defended” and insisted that Islam “guaranteed freedom of thought”. Listening to her defend Mohammed’s tyranny as an early form of democracy at the UN is a reminder of the era when Soviet representatives to the UN angrily defended their record on human rights and insisted that there is no freedom outside of Communism.

In Al-Hibri’s distorted history, the wave of genocides and conquests that turned the multicultural Middle-East into a desert of brutality governed by minor variations of Islamic ideology, was actually a wave of enlightenment. The massacres of the region’s Jews and the purge of all other religions from the area never occurred in Al-Habri’s history book. Revisionist history of this kind would be dangerous even if it were not coming from a woman in a position to influence opinion leaders.

The twin approaches of the Islamist narrative may be described as the Caliph Omar bridge. When the Muslim armies of the Caliph reached the great Library of Alexandria, he decreed that it should be burned, for if the library’s scrolls held the same ideas as the Koran they were redundant, and if they opposed the Koran, they were heretical.

While some Islamists attack the United States Constitution as a heretical document and Western Civilization as worthless– others more cleverly represent the Constitution as an inferior version of the Koran and Western Civilization as derivative of Islamic civilization. Either way they must burn along with the Library of Alexandria. But the second approach is more seductive. Rather than launching a direct attack, it seeks to construct a bridge that connects Islam and the West. But the structure of the bridge is only a more insidious form of attack.

These bridge builders don’t come bearing a torch, rather an argument that since American law is derived from Islam, it must ‘revert’ to the higher standards of Islamic law. By contrasting the reality of American law with an ideal version of Islamic law that does not exist anywhere in the world, they manage to make the system that protects human rights seem shabby, while the system that represses women and minorities appears noble and righteous. That is the kind of revisionist history that Al-Hibri traffics in, creating a noble Islamic creed contrasted with a flawed American system.

Sunday, June 5, the National Congress Party (aka the National Islamic Front) regime began waging war in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. But even as the northern government stronghold of Khartoum brazenly is attacking the Nuba Mountains (Kordofan to the Arabs) as well as other north/south border areas, such as the oil rich region of Abyei, it also continues to violate the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that it signed with the SPLM (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement) by attacking South Sudan.

In attacking the South, Khartoum is not as brazen. Thinking that, in spite of the world’s track record of indifference, someone might actually hold it accountable for such an obvious CPA violation, Khartoum is using proxy militias to do its dirty work in the South. Attacks by these proxy militias are intended to destabilize the South, which is set to become Africa’s 54th nation less than a month from now on July 9, 2011.

One such proxy group creating havoc and misery in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria State is the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA is a Northern Ugandan rebel group led by the now-middle-aged madman Joseph Kony. For over twenty-five years it has been abducting children, and so brutalizing them that they become mindless killing machines. It has used these children to kill hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan, and more recently, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. By 2006, the LRA had abducted over 50,000 children to make child soldiers and sex slaves.

The Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment project warns “there remains no firm evidence of Sudanese government support for the group.” Maybe no “firm” evidence, but there is little doubt that it is Khartoum using the LRA to try to create a “failed state” in South Sudan. Escaped child soldiers and other LRA abductees frequently have reported seeing Sudan Armed Forces trucks during their time in captivity. The trucks were delivering food, weapons, and uniforms to LRA commanders. And in recent days, the LRA has teamed up with the Janjaweed, the killers in Darfur, receiving training and weapons at Islamic camps that have been set up there. For although some (usually secular elites, hostile to Christianity) refer to Kony as a “Christian,” his current belief system is a combination of the demonic and Islam. A New York Times reporter, C.J. Chivers, told of the various “spirits” that take possession of Kony.

Make Way Partners, a ministry to orphans and former child soldiers, last week reported that the LRA had attacked a village near their home for children on the South Sudan/Uganda border on Wednesday, June 1. Although they could not yet confirm hard numbers after receiving the news in a June 3 phone call, they knew that many had been wounded, some had been killed, and others had been captured. And they knew the details of horrific acts that have been repeated in villages all over East Africa since Kony began taking children in 1986, to ensure himself an ever-replenished army of boys and girls, some as young as five or six years old.

According to a Make Way Partners report, in this most recent of numerous LRA attacks, the rebels gathered all the children together and started killing people right in front of their eyes. They forced the children to kill their own parents. After the slaughter, the boys had to carry large metal barrels, and the girls had to fetch water to fill the barrels. They built fires around the barrels, and while the water was heating up, the children were forced to hack up their parents and fellow children’s bodies and throw their dismembered parts in the boiling water. After some time, the children were then made to eat the flesh. In this way the LRA commanders knew that the children were so traumatized that they would do anything. They would not try to run away because there was nowhere and no one left to which to run.

One South Sudanese official from Western Equatoria confirms that Khartoum is using the LRA to destabilize South Sudan. He says that they are targeting Western Equatoria State, which borders Uganda, because it is so fertile, and has the potential to be the breadbasket for the region. If it is destabilized, it will affect the food supply of the country, as well as lessening the possibilities of profitable commercial agriculture. Khartoum’s proxy militia is also targeting it because it is a strong Christian community.

In addition, ongoing LRA attacks would have a terrible impact on the people of Western Equatoria who have always been extremely self-sufficient. Even now people are abandoning their homes and attempting to find shelter in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. This was what happened to the Acholi people in Northern Uganda, fleeing from LRA attacks. Almost 90% of the entire population of Acholi ended up deserting their farms, living in miserable IDP camps where they were still not adequately protected from LRA attacks.

The Equatorians do not want to be dependent on NGOs and the U.N. for their existence. At present they are trying to provide their own security with “arrow boys,” young men armed with nothing but homemade bows and arrows who protect against the well-armed LRA. They want the government to supply them with real arms, but there is little chance of that taking place if only for the reason that the Government of South Sudan is well aware that it is under scrutiny by the global community, and it is always held to a higher standard than the Islamists in Khartoum.

What is really needed to help the people of Western Equatoria State as Khartoum wages its proxy war against them via the LRA is the full implementation of U.S. law found in the “Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act” of 2010. In this legislation, which was heartily supported on both sides of the aisle, Congress required the U.S. government to develop a regional strategy supporting multilateral efforts to stop the LRA. The president was to report on the creation of that strategy within six months of the act’s passage.

In November 2010, the Obama administration presented its strategy. The four major objectives were: protect civilians, apprehend Kony and senior commanders, promote the defection and disarmament of LRA fighters (remember these were abducted children), and increase humanitarian access to the region. But according to the young activists of The Resolve, an advocacy organization working to end Kony’s reign of terror in East Africa and help rebuild the affected communities, the administration’s performance has been poor. Resolve recently published a report card, giving President Obama a B, two Cs, and two Ds for the implementation of the strategy.

In days in which the Republicans are striving to bring fiscal sanity to the United States and to cut the budget, this act may seem doomed. But many of the most fiscally conservative members of Congress are supporters, understanding that in addition to any moral imperative to act, our own security and the security of East Africa are intertwined more than most people think. Ending Khartoum’s proxy war on South Sudan would cost far less than our continual bombing of Libya, or our largess to President Mubarak’s successors in Egypt, or our unending jizya to the Palestinian Authority. And in this case, we actually would know that in helping the people of South Sudan we were helping true friends and allies in the fight for secular democracy and religious freedom.

Faith J. H. McDonnell directs The Institute on Religion and Democracy’s Religious Liberty Program and Church Alliance for a New Sudan, and is the author of Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children (Chosen Books, 2007).

Despite the Taliban’s denial that it uses children as human explosives, its spring offensive began with a suicide bombing by a 12-year-old boy. The attack is just one more sign that the militant group and its terrorist allies are increasing their efforts to recruit, train and utilize child suicide bombers.

The young terrorist’s suicide blast, which killed four Afghan civilians and wounded twelve in the Afghan province of Paktika, was roundly condemned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as “inhumane and against all Islamic principles.”

Yet, it was one of two such suicide attacks carried out by child bombers in eastern Afghanistan over the past several weeks, attacks that killed over 15 people. Soon after those assaults, Afghan authorities showed off five captured would-be suicide bombers –all under the age of 13 — trained by Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan.

As one Afghan intelligence official said, “They have been told that infidels are in Afghanistan … and they have been encouraged to go for Jihad.” In a disturbing twist, one of the captured bombers thought he would survive the attack when he was told by his instructors that “the (infidels) will be killed and you will live.”

For its part, the Taliban denied using children as human explosives, saying they do not use “beardless” or underage boys in their militant operations. According to a statement released by the terror group, “Those who haven’t grown a beard due to being underage are prohibited to spend time with the mujahedeen in residential and military centers.”

Unfortunately for the Taliban, that statement contradicts its past claims to have trained anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand juveniles as suicide bombers. In fact, the Afghan government places the figure of trained child suicide terrorists closer to 5,000.

While the number of suicide bombers can range from as little as age seven to over forty, most suicide bombers are under the age of 18. Sadly, the recruitment and training of these children is not only extensive and well organized, but growing.

To that end, suicide training factories have sprouted up all over the Afghan-Pakistan border, with most located in the Pakistani province of Waziristan. There, it’s been estimated that the Fedayeen-e-Islam have trained over 1,000 suicide bombers at three facilities. More disturbingly, many suicide training centers have been designated into junior and senior camps.

The Pakistani army found one such junior camp, equipped with computers, video equipment and literature, where children as young as age 10, according to one army officer, “knew about the planting of explosives, making and wearing and detonating suicide jackets.”

The increased demand for child bombers comes as the Taliban have focused its efforts on attacking an expanding list of civilian targets, sites which include schools, mosques, markets, government offices and other public places.

Tragically, the results have been all too effective. In the month of February alone, Afghanistan saw suicide bombings in the capital of Kabul that killed 10 civilians; an attack in Khost that killed nine; an attack in Kandahar that killed 18; an attack in Jalalabad that killed 40; and an attack in Kunduz that killed 28.

To some, the emphasis on suicide bombings is seen as a sign of the terror group’s desperation. According to one Afghan army commander, the Taliban and its terrorist allies have “no ability to conduct large scale operations anywhere, so he has switched tactics.” As district leader Hamdullah Nazak, a reported survivor of 11 attempts on his life said, “Of course. It’s the only way for the Taliban now.”

A profound Islamic dialogue emerges:

Fatah’s military wing promises that the Jihad fighters will not be deterred in their path and ends its announcement vowing: “We say to the American and Israeli occupier: the [Islamic] nation which produced leaders who changed the course of history through their Jihad… is capable of restoring the glory of Islam and the flag of Allah’s oneness, Allah willing.”

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is the chairman of the Fatah movement, whose military wing released this statement.

The following is the text of the statement by Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades:

“The [military wing of Fatah] Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades announced the death of Sheikh Osama bin Laden (Abu Abdallah), and said that if bin Laden had indeed died as a Shahid (Martyr), this would not deter the resistance fighters from the path of Jihad against injustice, oppression and occupation in the world. 

In their announcement, a copy of which reached MAAN [private Palestinian news agency], the [Al-Aqsa Martyrs'] Brigades said: ‘The Islamic nation awoke to a catastrophe the reports of the Shahid – (Martyr-) death of the Sheikh, Jihad-fighter Osama bin Laden, in a treacherous manner, by the gangs of the heretics and those who stray.’

They continued: ‘The path irrigated with the blood of its leaders is the path of victory, Allah willing. If Abu Abdallah [Bin Laden] was killed, then he merited the Shahada (Death for Allah) which he had sought, and inscribed with his blood the landmarks of Jihad, leaving behind an entire generation that follows the path of Sheikh Osama.’

They said: ‘The military wings of the Jihad fighters in Palestine and outside of it, who have in the past lost many of their commanders and their men, will not stop. This has only strengthened their determination, their resolve and their loyalty to theirShahids (Martyrs), who have turned their words into a reality testifying to their honesty, and which in fact bolsters the drive and the strength of their brothers on the path to victory or Shahdada (Death for Allah)’.

The announcement continued: ‘We say to the American and Israeli occupier: the [Islamic] nation which produced leaders who changed the course of history through their Jihad and their endurance, is a nation that is capable of supplying an abundance of new blood into the arteries of the resistance and is capable of restoring the glory of Islam and the flag of Allahs oneness, Allah willing.’”

Last night, President Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden was killed in a gun battle in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It is being reported that four others, including one of Bin Laden’s sons, died in the fight. The U.S. is now in possession of his body and has tested his DNA for confirmation. This is a momentous event in the war against radical Islam that should be celebrated by all and as the story develops, crucial information about the state of the war will come forth.

The details coming out reveal that “U.S. Joint Special Operations Command Special Mission Unit (SMU) from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU — formerly known as Seal Team Six) did the shooting. There were other JSOC spotters on the ground, as well as two special operations helicopters and an unmanned drone overhead.” One of the helicopters crashed due to mechanical failures. A female who was used as a shield by Bin Laden and his protectors was killed and other women are being treated and will be valuable sources of information.

Bin Laden was apparently living comfortably in a city between Islamabad and Peshawar. President Obama said that Bin Laden was killed in a “compound” after intelligence was received in August. CNN originally reported that he was in a “mansion.” It is said to have a security wall between 12 and 15 feet high and of very large size. The site has already been mapped on Google, showing that a hospital and cinema are nearby. A police station is only 800 feet away, though the caption says it was slated for demolition. This location shows that he was not living in complete isolation, such as in a cave or deep in the mountains.

President Obama emphasized that the victory came with Pakistani cooperation but this location indicates that Bin Laden had inside help. Time will tell if the intelligence that pinpointed Bin Laden came from this cooperation or whether it was developed by the U.S. and the Pakistanis were forced to cooperate. The story of this victory will tell us a lot about the state of Pakistani cooperation and how to collect precise intelligence on the most secretive targets. This success will unearth a tremendous amount of intelligence that will prove very useful in combating terrorism.

It will be vital that the world watch for the reaction in the Islamic world. This will be the biggest indication of where Bin Laden’s support runs the deepest. Polls consistently show that Bin Laden has suffered a dramatic decline in popularity in the Middle East, including in Pakistan and this may well have been a factor in his demise. Al-Qaeda’s killing of eight times as many Muslims as non-Muslims and institutions of vicious theocracy caused a major backlash. It is inevitable that sympathizers will attempt to launch immediate small-scale reprisals with little preparation, but this is not reflective of opinion overall. The key factor to watch for will be large-scale demonstrations mourning Bin Laden or the absence of celebratory gatherings.

Reprinted from Ynetnews.com.

Only one nation on this planet is regarded as virtually having no civilians: Israel. Back in the 1970s already, international law expert Yoram Dinstein argued that according to UN definitions, terrorism and incitement against Israelis constitutes genocide.

David Ben-Gurion’s famous statement “Oom, Shmoom,” meaning “The UN – who cares?” summed up Israel’s indifference to world opinion in the past. It has been a failed policy as Israel’s enemies are now using all global means at their disposal to undermine the Jewish State.

In a few days, Israel will mark Holocaust Commemoration Day. There is no better time to support the historical battle just initiated by the Hebrew University-Hadassah Centre for Violence and Genocide Prevention and backed by former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

The campaign takes aim at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Islamic religious leaders and the media for “inciting to commit genocide” and fomenting lethal anti-Jewishness reminiscent of the 1930s. The Jews are demonized using accusations of conspiracy and thirst for blood or power.

The Jews are described as sub-humans by expressions like “pig,” “cancer,” “filth”, “microbes” or “vermin”; hate material such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or school maps without Israel are being disseminated; the Jewish right to self-determination is denied, by claiming that Israel’s existence is “racist” and akin to “apartheid”; comparisons are drawn between Israeli policy and the Nazis; world Jewry is being held responsible, collectively for the actions of Israel.

The legal basis for this anti-genocide campaign is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ratified on January 12, 1951 by 138 states including Iran. At this time, Tehran calls for Israel’s destruction and dehumanization, denies the Holocaust denial and incites to commit mass murder.

An upcoming example of incitement is the UN’s “Durban III” conference in September 2011. Israel will be declared an “apartheid” and “criminal” state, and the Jews will be slammed as inveterate racists.

The first Durban conference was held in South Africa in 2001, where well-known NGOs such as Amnesty International and Save the Children attached their names to the racist parade. NGOs distributed leaflets with a portrait of Hitler and the inscription: “What if Hitler had won? There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed.” Three months later the second Intifada broke out, with 1,500 Jewish civilians subsequently slaughtered in terror attacks.

Iran is not unique in inciting a new Jewish bloodbath. Another example of incitement is the fatwa issued by Muslim Brotherhood’s guru, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, permitting the killing of Jewish fetuses, on the logic that when Jews grow up they might join the Israeli army.

New accusations of collaboration between Pakistan’s top spy agency and terrorist groups have cast fresh doubts over Pakistani resolve to quash Islamic insurgents. The allegations are the latest indication that America’s security partnership with Pakistan is deteriorating.

Pakistan’s alleged duplicity was raised in released documents detailing American concern over Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and its links to terrorist groups. The documents show that as far back as 2007, the US military considered ISI to be one of 32 “terrorist support entities,” organizations “which al-Qaeda, the al Qaeda network or the Taliban has established working, supportive or beneficiary relationship for the achievement of common goals.”

The release of the damaging documents was preceded days earlier in a stinging attack from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, in which he accused ISI of having close connections with the Haqqani terror network, an Afghan militant group based in the Pakistani province of North Waziristan.

According to Mullen, the Haggani — an organization with close ties to Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents — “is supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners.”

Unfortunately, Pakistan’s loyalty in the war on terror is not the only American concern. Now, Pakistan’s counterinsurgency abilities have also been called into question.  That charge came in the Obama administration’s recently released bi-annual progress report to Congress on the Afghanistan war.

The report highlighted mounting frustration with the inability of Pakistan’s military to clear insurgents from northwest Pakistan, a failure which led to the report’s grim conclusion : “As such, there remains no clear path toward defeating the insurgency in Pakistan.”

Still, despite the report’s negativity, officials defended the administration’s strategic outreach efforts with Pakistan, insisting such a policy was vital to American national security interests. As one American official stressed, “The bottom line is that joint cooperation is essential … The stakes are too high.”

That being said, a bi-partisan rejection of a continued security partnership with Pakistan may be emerging on Capitol Hill. As Representative Gary Ackerman (D-NY) opined, “I doubt the (Pakistani) leaders are going to do anything except pursue their own narrow, venal self interests. I doubt the ISI will ever stop working with us during the day and going to see their not-so-secret friends in the terrorist groups at night.” For his part, Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said the current relationship between the two countries was based on “wishful thinking and what I call irrational optimism.”

An example of such irrational optimism surfaced recently when Pakistan’s army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, claimed his forces had effectively “broken the backbone” of Islamic militants in Pakistan.

The truth is the Afghan-Pakistan border remains a leaking vessel by which Islamic insurgents continue to flow through. In fact, the cascade of militants has heavily increased in recent months as NATO forces in Afghanistan contend with a newly launched Taliban and al-Qaeda spring offensive.

This article is reprinted from the New York Post.

First, the bad news. If you’re keeping score at home, another day passed with more slaughter of demonstrators in the streets of Syria without serious objection from the White House. The stalemate in Libya remained a stalemate and Jordan can’t get a handle on a new wave of protesters.

Now, for the really bad news.

There are increasing signs that the “Arab Awakening” is a gift to Iran and its terrorist franchises. In Bahrain and especially Yemen, anti-American and anti-Western forces are filling the gaps as government control shrinks.

And now for the worst news.

The most dangerous developments are happening in Egypt, which was a bulwark for 30 years against Iranian expansion and Arab Islamic fundamentalists. But the risky departure of Hosni Mubarak, under American pressure, threw the door wide open to both and the results already are disturbing.

Many people saw this coming — but apparently, they did not include a single soul in the White House.

Even though leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood were talking about getting Egyptians ready for “war with Israel” in January and sabotaging a natural-gas pipeline between the countries, President Obama still decided that Mubarak had to go even before a succession was clear. Saudi Arabia, among others, saw the push against Mubarak as a betrayal of an American ally and an invitation for Islamists to make a move.

They were right, and it didn’t take long for proof to emerge. Published reports around the world say Iran and Egypt are on the cusp of establishing diplomatic relations and exchanging ambassadors. The London Telegraph quotes a spokesperson for the Egyptian foreign minister as saying, “The former regime used to see Iran as an enemy, but we don’t.”

The paper also reports that the Egyptian leader of the Islamist Labour Party, who was imprisoned under Mubarak, has been released. He is running for president and, in Tehran to meet the Iranian foreign leader, declared that the revolt against Mubarak was “inspired by the Islamic revolution” in Iran.

This article is reprinted from Fiammanirenstein.com.

The cruelty of the public execution of a young man, as was the case with Vittorio Arrigoni, is always awful. This much is clear. What isn’t clear to the European public is that it is patently evident that the killers were Arrigoni’s old Islamic Jihadists friends from Gaza. But they could have been Afghanis, or Iraqis. In 2002, Daniel Pearl was killed in Karachi by similar methods because he was a Jew; in 2004, the decapitation of American Nick Berg in Iraq was filmed, the Jihadists said, “to send a clear message to the West;” the Italian Fabrizio Quattrocchi was executed because he was “an enemy of God, an enemy of Allah,” and Vittorio Arrigoni, as his butchers say in the video in the words that scrolled across the screen, because “he was spreading Western immorality in Gaza” and because “Italy fights against Islamic countries.” It has been repeated again and again that Hamas, with whom Arrigoni was on friendly terms, has condemned the crime. But in actual fact, it doesn’t matter if the assassins were members of Hamas or not. They have been, they will be, they are all controlled by Hamas. Hamas is always top dog in Gaza.

Hamas is responsible for the captivity of Gilad Shalit. It was responsible for the armed destruction of the UN recreational camp for children, which did not abide by Islamic dictates. It was responsible for arresting 150 women under the accusation of witchcraft and the execution of several of them. It is Hamas that has introduced laws on the death penalty, whipping, cutting off hands and crucifixion, according to Sharia. Hamas killed the 32-year old Christian book salesman Rami Khader Ayyad, guilty of selling Bibles. Not all those who carry out Hamas’s operations, or those who fire Qassam missiles into Israel, are “members” of the terrorist organization that rules Gaza. Indeed, at times Hamas pretends to fight them.

Hamas is a movement, a party, a fundamentalist affiliation. Its charter stipulates that it wants to destroy the Jewish State, to exterminate Jews, and impose an Islamic caliphate on the entire world. Salafite fringes and those aligned more with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — influenced to a greater or lesser extent by Iran or Al Qaeda and based in the Gaza Strip — join up and leave Hamas routinely. The fact that Hamas has now disowned the killers of Arrigoni is not of the slightest importance. In any case, they were still employed by Hamas as members of the Al Qassam Brigades.

Iran will step up measures to force retailers selling clothing to comply with "Islamic values," according to the police.

"Producing and distributing inappropriate clothes, those not complying with Islamic and Iranian culture, should be avoided," Abbas Miraei, who heads the Office of Supervision of the Public Sphere for the Iranian police, was cited as saying today by Iranian Labour News Agency. Further details weren't immediately available.

Iran has set aside $1.5 billion to promote "moral conduct," including enforcement of its dress code for women, "to solve the cultural and social ills" in society, Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said on May 10. His comments followed the introduction of a code of conduct at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences that bans loud laughter, nail polish, high heels and immodest clothing for women and men.

The police will "deal firmly" with violators of Iran's laws on moral conduct, Mohammad Najjar said last month. A cleric at Tehran's main Friday prayers, Iran's largest, said in April that women who dress immodestly cause earthquakes.

Iranian authorities increase their enforcement of the women's dress code annually to prevent them from abandoning Islamic dress amid summer temperatures that can reach 42 degrees Celsius (107 Fahrenheit) in Tehran.

Under Shiraz University's code, in effect since Feb. 20, women must wear loose, long coats in subdued colors that go below the knee. Men aren't permitted to wear jewelry, except for a wedding ring, nor short-sleeve shirts, and their trousers should be loose. Shoes shouldn't have pointed toes, make noise or have heels higher than 3 centimeters (1.2 inches).

I Support Justice, Not Jihad
By Mustafa Akyol

Recently Robert Spencer argued on Frontpage that I, once a "moderate Muslim," have joined the jihad against "infidels" and especially the state of Israel.

Well, not really. If I ever join an armed struggle one day, I will tell you. What I actually did was to condemn a particular action of the Israeli government: their bloody raid on the Free Gaza flotilla, an international group of NGOs that tried to bring in humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, defying Israel's blockade.

The incident has become a global issue, as nine Turkish activists on the flotilla were killed by Israeli commandos. The two sides, as you can expect, have their own versions of the events. Mr. Spencer seems to accept and defend the Israeli narrative, and that is just fine. I, for my part, don't accept the Israeli narrative, and hope that a "credible, independent international investigation," as a recent New York Times editorial suggested, will show us what really happened.

Meanwhile, I don't think that the fact that some of the activists on board were "Hamas sympathizers" justifies Israel's attack. In Turkey we have a few million "PKK sympathizers," and although I regard the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) as a terrorist organization, I don't regard those people as terrorists and thus legitimate targets. I understand that they just see the world quite differently.

I also don't accept that Israel has a right to put a blockade on the Gaza Strip -- a collective punishment on 1.5 million people -- for the terrorist actions of the radicals in that destitute part of the world. I actually think that the radicalism on the Palestinian side is only exacerbated by such brutal and humiliating policies of Israel, which include the occupation of Palestinian lands since 1967 and the building of illegal settlements on them. The latter recently infuriated even Joe Biden, who does not shy away from describing himself as "a Zionist."

I, on the other hand, am not a Zionist, but I certainly accept Israel's right to exist, in its internationally acknowledged pre-1967 borders. I also strongly support a two-state solution which will, hopefully, give peace and security to both the Jewish and the Palestinian peoples.

The bottom line, I guess, is that I am not "pro-Israel," as I believe Mr. Spencer is. I am rather trying to be pro-justice, and equally respect the rights of the both sides of the Middle Eastern conflict.

As for being a "moderate Muslim," I never recall calling myself as such. The only political-sounding term I prefer to use is "liberal," in the classical sense of the word. In other words, I do define myself as a "liberal Muslim," for I uphold individual liberty, and criticize some elements within the Islamic tradition that contradict this value -- things such as the ban on apostasy, the bans on "sinful" things, or the enforcement of certain religious practices.

I probably am "moderate," too, for I always prefer dialogue to confrontation and diplomacy to armed conflict. But if being a "moderate Muslim" means being uncritical of Israel, or any other government, in order to enjoy flattery by them and their supporters, then let me kindly return the badge.

Spencer responds:

Mustafa Akyol, oddly enough, seems in his note to equate “jihad” with “armed struggle,” and to ignore the jihad of the tongue, the jihad of the hand, the jihad of the heart, and the jihad against the lower self, all of which are abundantly represented in Islamic tradition. But for the record, I do not believe and did not intend to imply that Mustafa Akyol was going to blow himself up in a crowded restaurant in Tel Aviv, or hide explosives in his underwear and attempt to set them off on an airplane, or drive a bomb-rigged car into Times Square, or shoot soldiers on a U.S. Army base. I do not believe that he is ever going to take up arms in order to further the hegemony of Islamic law over the world — but that doesn’t mean that in endorsing the Jihad Flotilla, and accepting the Islamic supremacist Turkish government’s fantastic version of events, that he is not siding with the jihad against Israel, and hence with the larger global jihad of which the jihad against Israel is just one of many fronts, albeit the foremost.

For the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is indeed a jihad — if it weren’t, Mr. Akyol would have had his two-state solution in 1948, when the Arabs rejected a Palestinian state and went to war with Israel instead, motivated by the jihadist intransigence that demands all the land of Israel as an Islamic waqf. That line of thinking is also why the Camp David Accords, the Oslo Accords, the Road Map, and all other attempts to “solve” the Israeli/Palestinian conflict have failed, and why all future such initiatives will fail unless they involve the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and its incorporation into an Islamic Sharia state. That is the stated goal of the Hamas movement that runs the Gaza strip that was to be the recipient of this “humanitarian aid.”

The “radicals,” as Mr. Akyol calls Hamas and its ideological kin, are supported by the overwhelming majority of Gazans, who voted them into power by a large margin. The society they envision is not in any sense “pro-justice” except in the eyes of Sharia supporters and sympathizers, and given that Mr. Akyol acknowledges that “some of the activists on board were ‘Hamas sympathizers,’” it reflects poorly on the moral sense of the other “activists” that they made the trip at all in the company of such people.

Meanwhile, Mr. Akyol conveniently ignores the fact that what he characterizes as the “Israeli narrative,” to which he generously grants me permission to subscribe, is abundantly established by video footage showing that the “activists” attacked the Israeli soldiers first, and by the photographs showing that the weapons they used were anything but the harmless “kitchen utensils” he earlier characterized them as being. But it has already been abundantly established that the world will not accept Israeli evidence no matter how compelling, while swallowing Palestinian propaganda (which they are very skillful in packaging for the mainstream media) with eager credulity.

So I do not, by any means, expect Mr. Akyol to break ranks with the dominant mainstream, the overall objectives of which he accepts anyway. I do wonder, however, what would happen to this self-professed “liberal Muslim” if he himself were to visit Gaza and proclaim publicly his opposition to the Islamic death penalty for apostasy. He might in that event not find too many of the oppressed, starving, but inexplicably obese (indeed, one of the most obese populations in the world) people of Gaza not quite as “pro-justice” as he might have hoped.