It has been widely reported, most recently by Al-Jazeera, that the Obama administration and the British government have been contemplating paying off “moderate” elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan – to the tune of perhaps one billion dollars – as a means of pacifying resistance in that troubled nation. That proudly defiant American slogan, “millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute,” which traces its roots to the eighteenth century, would fall to the wayside if this attempt at appeasement turns into public policy.

The idea that “moderate” Islamic terrorists exist and that their loyalties can be bought are central concepts to the philosophical construct that Obama has brings to the war on terror. The President naively believes that the majority of Muslim terrorists are misunderstood, disenfranchised freedom fighters who want nothing more than to take control of their lives and prosper. A billion dollars or so will go a long way, in Obama’s view, toward helping them organize their communities in a peaceful, loving way.

The reality behind the fanatic, ultra-fundamentalist mindset that guides the Taliban has been revealed time and time again. This disturbing BBC interview of a thirteen year old Pakistani girl named Meena is another reminder of the true nature of the Taliban, and the way that fundamentalist Muslims treat women in general.

At one point, Meena described how her family turned her nine-year-old sister Nahida into a suicide bomber:

“They attached a bomb to my sister Nahida. They tied rectangular pieces to both her arms, and a black strip was wrapped around both her legs. Then they connected the whole thing. She told my brother the bomb was heavy and she could not walk. He said she would be comfortable once she was sitting down in the car. They gave her medicine. But she was crying very loud for my mother. She kept going to her and hugging her. When my sister looked down at the bomb, she shivered. Then my brother and my father started beating my mother, and they were shouting: ‘Why you are distracting the girl from her mission?’ I heard my sister saying: ‘Where is Meena? I want to see her.’ But I didn’t have the strength. My heart couldn’t take it.

My mother fainted when they put her in the car. My brother said my sister’s attack was in Afghanistan.

I always think about my sister. She was healthy and a very nice girl. She was younger than me, but she was wiser. My mother used to tell me that I was an idiot, but she was very wise.”

No doubt that someone, probably claiming to be an American who has lived in the Arab world for at least a decade, will deny that this sort of thing could ever happen. We see that all of the time, at Front Page and other sites that dare to point out the horrors that accompany strict adherence to Islamic teachings.

These sorts of denials should come as no surprise. The Quran expressly allows Muslims to lie to non-Muslims whenever they can advance the teachings of the prophet Muhammad through the use of such deceptions. Muslim apologists can lie through their teeth about this sort of evil, but there are far too many examples of it for people who cherish liberty to ignore.

Which brings us back to the Taliban. You can’t pay someone off to abandon an ideology this evil and deluded. Does anyone believe that we can purchase the loyalties of people who think that they are fulfilling the “will of God” by strapping high-explosives to a nine-year-old girl, drugging her and sending her on a mission to blow herself up? Why on earth would anyone want to? The west is at war with an ideology, not impoverished, deluded freedom fighters who would abandon their evil ideas if only they could afford a big screen TV.

From painful experience, we know what happens when you try to appease evil fanatics. The fanatics make promises that they don’t intend to keep, wait a while, and then go back to work on their agenda. Dropping a billion dollars on the “moderate Taliban” in Afghanistan would amount to nothing more than providing terrorists with a grant that will cheerfully put to the worst use possible.

Ideas like this are an insult to our men and women in uniform on the front lines in Afghanistan and will ultimately place them in greater danger. Worse, trying to pay off terrorists makes it more likely, not less, that more fanatic Muslim fathers are going to be able to get their hands on enough C-4 to turn nine year old girls into bombs.

Climate science is under assault, progress towards a treaty to end global warming is shuddering to a halt, and Barack Obama is struggling to press on with his clean energy agenda.This was the last conversion to the environmental cause that anybody would have wanted.In a new audiotape that surfaced today on the al-Jazeera network, Osama bin Laden has pronounced himself a believer in climate change and blames America and other industrialised economies for failing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the atmosphere.”Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury — the phenomenon is an actual fact,” the tape says according to al-Jazeera. “All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis.”

via Osama bin Laden lends unwelcome support in fight against climate change | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

"Jordanian jailed for sister's 'honour killing,'" from AFP, January 29 (thanks to Maxwell):

AMMAN (AFP) - A Jordanian court sentenced a 19-year-old man to 10 years in jail for stabbing his sister to death in order to "cleanse the family honour," a judicial official said on Friday.

The defendant turned himself in to police after killing his 22-year-old sister last year for many unexplained absences from home, said the official who requested anonymity.

"The court sentenced the defendant to 15 years in prison for premeditated murder, but reduced the sentence to 10 years after the family dropped any legal claims" against him, the source said.

"The defendant killed his sister with knife stabs on April 5, 2009 to cleanse the family honour, because of her many absences from home," the official said. "He then turned himself over to the police."

Murder is punishable by death in Jordan but in so-called "honour" cases a court sometimes commutes or reduces sentences, particularly if the victim's family urges leniency.

Between 15 and 20 women are murdered in honour killings each year in Jordan despite government efforts to fight such crimes....

Check out the photo that Al-Jazeera chose to accompany its article on the Wilders trial here (thanks to Elias).

Could it be that maybe Wilders is not unjustified in sounding the alarm about the Islamization of Europe when Muslims demonstrate against him holding signs saying things like "Islam will be superior," "Islam will dominate the world," and "Freedom can go to hell"?

But is anyone listening? Pamela Geller reviews Wafa Sultan's superb and essential new book for FrontPage:

Wafa Sultan's seminal moment was when she took on an Islamic cleric on Al-Jazeera. The clip went viral on Youtube, and it really was a defining moment in the clash of civilizations. Here was a woman, basically considered "property" in the Muslim world and expected to do what she was told, turning around after she had been interrupted numerous times, and saying in effect, "Quiet, it's my turn."

Now comes her new book, A God Who Hates, which will undoubtedly prove to be a key resource in the resistance to jihad and Islamization. In it, the brilliant psychiatrist from Syria, now an American citizen, tells her own story.

It is the story of a Muslim woman who grew up in a country where she was indoctrinated in Islamic ideology. So her perspective is very important in terms of establishing the credibility of scholars like Robert Spencer and Dr. Andrew Bostom. But what makes this book great, apart from its breathtaking honesty and truth and the clarity and urgency of its warning, is that it is also a beautiful love letter to America.

Wafa speaks powerfully about what America means to her. It manifests itself in little things. She leaves her house at 5 am and makes her way to Starbucks to have her coffee without fearing that someone might see her and accuse her of immoral behavior. To her, America means saying "good morning" to her neighbor and chatting with him for a few moments without being accused of having spent the night with him. America, for this courageous woman, means that her daughter can come home and tell her that she had lunch with her boyfriend without being beaten or accused of having impugned the family honor.

It is clear throughout A God Who Hates that Wafa Sultan was always a very independent thinker, even though there were times in her life when she did not immediately allow herself to go to the next step to which her thinking was leading her. She writes lovingly about her husband, who was very supportive of her. He was an open-minded thinker -- initially more so than was Wafa herself. But she recounts in the book certain momentous events that jarred her thinking, such as in 1979 when Muslims screaming "Allahu akbar" murdered one of her professors, the ophthalmology lecturer Dr. Yusef Al-Yusef, whom she respected and admired. Wafa witnessed the murder - and at that exact moment started to question the nature of the Islamic faith.

"But I was afraid," she explained when I interviewed her recently, "to express my feelings. I was afraid to express my thoughts, because under Islamic sharia, a Muslim who dares to leave Islam or dares to convert to any other religion is to be killed. And every Muslim has the right to kill someone who has left Islam without being asked a question. This is the Islamic law. Once you were born as a Muslim, you're not allowed to leave it. This is simply the Islamic law, and it seems to me it's very hard to convince Americans that this is the way it is."

The recent Rifqa Bary apostasy case shows how right Wafa is about that, and how urgent her message is. Rifqa Bary is the teenage girl, a Muslim in Ohio, who left Islam four years ago and converted to Christianity. When her father found out about her conversion, she fled from her home in fear for her life. She said she ran away to Florida because she wanted to get as far away as she could -- because not only her family but the mosque and the community in Ohio is very devout, and as an apostate she is in danger. But now she has been returned to Ohio, in large part because American authorities don't know anything about Islamic apostasy law....

Read it all.

An offshoot of the al-Qaeda network has reportedly said its members kidnapped three Spanish aid workers in Mauritania and a Frenchman in Mali last month.

A spokesman for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb made the claim in an audio recording to the al-Jazeera TV station.

There has been no sighting of the four Europeans since the kidnappings, which took place within days of each other.

The same group is believed to be behind the murder of British hostage Edwin Dyer in June.

Pierre Camatte, 61, was taken from his hotel by gunmen in Menaka in Mali on 25 November, while Albert Vilalta, 35, Roque Pascual, 50, and Alicia Gamez, 35, were snatched from an aid convey near Mauritania's northern city of Nouadhibou on 29 November....

In the audio recording, al-Qaeda spokesman Saleh Abu Mohammad said his organisation had "managed to kidnap four Europeans in two distinct operations".

He added that the group would contact France and Spain at a later date with its demands, but gave no further details about what these were, AFP reported....

The UK recently warned its nationals not to visit northern Mali because of the threat of attack by the North African branch of al-Qaeda.

There goes my spring vacation.

In June this year an American teacher was killed in Mauritania, with al-Qaeda later claiming it had killed him for spreading Christianity in the Islamic state.