Markmaking

Nick Spencer on Calvin

Calvin and the limits of earthly power:

Calvin was not an autocratic monarchist but preferred "mixed" government combining monarchical, aristocratic and popular elements. A number of his successors developed his political theology in a more radical direction, laying the basis for popular participation and eventually movements of democratisation: believers empowered to speak and lead in the church would become citizens empowered in the polity. And Calvin's notion of divine law standing over every human institution in time prompted the idea that each institution limited the other. Contrary to popular perceptions, Calvinism can be credited with contributing to the emergence of modern constitutional democracy.

Damon Linker on Calvin

Calvin and American Exceptionalism:

But by the middle of the century, the more modest views of providence that until that time had dominated throughout the mid-Atlantic and Southern colonies had been supplanted by the stringent Calvinism of Massachusetts and Connecticut. America was New Englandized. According to historian John F. Berens, the motor behind this extraordinary transformation was the Great Awakening of the 1740s, which helped to spread theological concepts throughout the colonies. In the electrifying sermons of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennent, Samuel Davies, and many other preachers, colonists from New York to South Carolina encountered for the first time the potent providential ideas that had previously transfixed the minds of the Puritan settlers of New England.

Not that these ideas were identical to the ones that originally inspired John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and other seventeenth-century writers. On the contrary, American providential thinking evolved dramatically as it circulated throughout the colonies. As Berens notes, the French and Indian War (1754-1763), which followed immediately on the heels of the Great Awakening, contributed decisively to the transformation. For the first time, Americans began to define themselves in contrast to a vision of tyranny -- namely, the (political and religious) absolutism of Catholic France. Unlike France, they concluded, the American colonies were a bastion of political and religious freedom. This freedom had been won, moreover, with the help of God's providence, which would continue to protect the colonies in times of danger, provided the colonists proved themselves worthy of it by maintaining their divinely favored civil and religious institutions.

Joseph Loconte on Calvin

Reflections on a mixed political legacy:

Calvin's infamous role in the trial and death of Michael Servetus, condemned and burned as a heretic in Geneva in 1553, shocked the conscience of the Protestant community. Many accused the Protestant leaders in Geneva of adopting the "popish" ways of the Catholic Church. Sebastian Castellio, a linguist and colleague, broke with Calvin over the principle of religious toleration: "I do not see how we can retain the name of Christian," Castellio said, "if we do not imitate His clemency and mercy."...

"They did not usually act as if they believed what their own theology said about the huge gap between divine omniscience and human finitude," writes Notre Dame historian Mark Noll, "nor did they seem to really believe their own claim that even believers continued to abuse the gifts of God for idolatrous, selfish ends."

Thus, John Calvin and the Reformed tradition he launched were simultaneously medieval and modern. Much like his Catholic antagonists, Calvin viewed the political and religious realms as part of an unbroken spiritual unity. For all his theological innovation, he never imagined that the church could maintain its fidelity to the truth without the assistance of the state.

Frances Williams on Calvin

Financial Times: Calvin and the work ethic key to modern Geneva’s destiny

Many ordinary Genevans do not see much to celebrate.

The legacy of the French theologian, they say, is a city that even today is passionless, moralistic and dull, where it is forbidden to make a noise after 10pm and restaurant kitchens close at 9pm on the dot...

Andrew Stallybrass, a lay preacher in Geneva who works for a foundation promoting inter-cultural dialogue, sums up Calvin’s economic philosophy as: “Money is a good thing but don’t flaunt it. Invest it for the public good and don’t screw the poor.”...

Though he enforced strict moral rules, including bans on swearing, gambling, fornication and even dancing, the same snooper system for reporting transgressors was also used to help the poor and sick. “It worked as a social service for the city,” Ms Graesslé says. Calvin also pioneered universal education, including for girls, so all would find meaning in the Bible, and founded what later became Geneva University.

Michael Jensen on Calvin

Decline of John Calvin:

Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson wrote: "Any reader of the Institutes must be struck by the great elegance, the gallantry, of its moral vision, which is more beautiful for the resolution with which its theology embraces sorrow and darkness."

Calvin is a moral realist. For all their created nobility, human beings are tragic figures, impaled on their own pride. That is why, although Calvin upheld the freedom of the individual conscience, he was also an advocate of collective and democratic decision making. It is not accidental that his followers have been some of the greatest promoters of republicanism and democracy in the modern era.

Calvin was not without flaws, some of them serious. Yet if we are to judge him cruel, we are failing to recognise that he was a man of remarkable moderation in an age of often extreme judicial cruelty. If we are to judge his view of humanity too bleak, we are seriously overestimating our own capacity for moral heroism. If we are to celebrate the waning of his influence, it is quite possibly because we have accepted too lazily the caricature of his critics. As Robinson reminds us: "There are things for which we in this culture clearly are indebted to him, including relatively popular government, the relatively high status of women, the separation of church and state, what remains of universal schooling and, while it lasted, liberal higher education, education in the humanities. How easily we forget."

Forgiveness and Irony by Roger Scruton, City Journal Winter 2009

Forgiveness and Irony by Roger Scruton, City Journal Winter 2009.

Muslims show a remarkable ability to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed in the name of their faith and to rally against anyone who disparages it. The notorious Danish cartoons caused outrage, uniting Muslims everywhere in acts of destruction and calls for revenge. A few days later, the al-Askari mosque in Samarra, one of the Shiite community’s holiest places, was blown up by Islamists. But where were the protests, outside Iraq? Far more Muslims than non-Muslims have been killed by Islamic terrorists. But when do those who claim to speak for Muslims mention this statistic? 

For that matter, the whole point of the infamous cartoons was to make us look at the atrocious things done in the Prophet’s name. Does he approve or doesn’t he? Muslims must face up to this question. But a rooted double standard often prevents their turning on fellow Muslims the self-righteous anger that they turn on enemies of the faith. 

Such double standards are the direct result of the loss of irony. They stem from an inability to accept the otherness of everything, to stand outside one’s own opinions, and even one’s own faith, so as to see it as the faith of someone else. Not that Islam has always lacked irony in this respect: the works of the Sufi masters are full of it. But the Sufi masters (I think of Rumi and Hafiz especially) belong to that great and self-knowing Islamic culture on which the Islamists have turned their backs, embracing instead the narrow-minded bigotry of Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab or the self-deceived nostalgia of the Muslim Brotherhood and Sayyid Qutb.

Updike on Karl Barth

David Lodge reviews Roger's Version (nyt).

The central character and narrator, pipe-smoking, 52-year-old Roger Lambert is a professor of divinity, a former Methodist minister who adopted an academic career after the scandalous breakup of his first marriage and his union with Esther, 14 years his junior. He teaches the history of the early Christian heresies at a large university in an unnamed Northeastern city that might be Boston. He is a somewhat dilettantish disciple of Karl Barth, the austere Swiss theologian who fiercely insisted on the utter separateness of the divine and the human, and the utter dependence of the latter on the former. Roger admits to insulating this ''hot Barthian nugget'' in ''layers of worldly cynicism and situation ethics.'' Mr. Updike is well able to evoke the ethos of an academic theology department, and to have sly fun with its professional rivalries, pretensions and jargon (this one has specialists in ''Ethics and Moral Logistics'' and ''holocaustics''). He has manifested an interest in religion and theology in previous books. If there was ever such a species as the Protestant novelist, comparable to that much discussed animal, the Catholic novelist, Mr. Updike may be its last surviving example.

Andrew Anthony on the Rushdie fatwa

In the Observer, Andrew Anthony on the Rushdie fatwa and its disgraceful fallout among spineless and self-abasing Westerners:

Iqbal Sacranie, the future head of the Muslim Council of Britain famously opined that "death, perhaps, is a bit too easy" for Rushdie. He was later knighted for services to community relations...

Ramin Gray, associate director of the Royal Court Theatre, recently admitted that he would be reluctant to stage a play that was critical of Islam. "You would think twice," he said. "You'd have to take the play on its merits but given the time we're in, it's very hard because you'd worry that if you cause offence then the whole enterprise would become buried in a sea of controversy. It does make you tread carefully."...

Almost any criticism of Islam or any of its adherents is likely to trigger accusations of Islamophobia. For example, in 2007 the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque exposed various preachers making hateful and violent statements regarding women, Jews, homosexuals and infidels. By any journalistic measure it was a compelling and revelatory documentary. But in the media storm that followed it was not the inflammatory preachers but the programme-makers who found themselves subject to an inquisition....

Even a critic of The Satanic Verses, the Egyptian novelist and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, who felt the book was insulting to Islam, signed a petition stating that "no blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer". Five years later Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck by Islamic extremists...

Inayat Bunglawala, spokesperson for the Jamaat-i-Islami-influenced Muslim Council of Britain, probably the most-often cited Islamic organisation in the country, passed both tests with flying colours. He was, in his own words, "elated" when Khomeini delivered the fatwa. "It was a very welcome reminder that British Muslims did not have to regard themselves just as a small, vulnerable minority; they were part of a truly global and powerful movement."...

Respecting culture has come to mean restricting debate. Malik quotes the sociologist Tariq Modood on this issue: "If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each other's fundamental beliefs to criticism."...

Three years ago we came within a single parliamentary vote of being saddled with a law (the Religious Hatred Act) that meant you or I could be imprisoned for seven years for using insulting language, even if the insult was unintentional and referred to an established truth...

Jimmy Carter US president, 1977-81: "Rushdie's book is a direct insult to those millions of Moslems whose sacred beliefs have been violated ... The death sentence proclaimed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, however, was an abhorrent response. It is our duty to condemn the threat of murder [but] we should be sensitive to the concern and anger that prevails even among the more moderate Muslims."

Germaine Greer writer and academic: "I refuse to sign petitions for that book of his, which was about his own troubles."

Sven Kalisch, German Muslim Gnostic

Spengler on the rather out-there idea that the Prophet didn't exist and early Islam was a "Gnosis"

Jeffrey Herf on the Red Army Fraction

Amidst a nauseating miasma of radical chic, moral bankruptcy and obfuscating verbosity, Jeffrey Herf calls the Red Army Fraction what they were: Communist, anti-Semitic, cold-blooded murderers (PDF).

Scott Atran on Jihad

Scott Atran's fascinating presentation on network properties, Madrid bombers, etc.

The new wave of terrorism is about youth culture, not the Koran.

"Who's your hero?" he asked in North Africa. Answers: Ronaldinho, Terminator, Osama bin Laden.

More Middle Eastern Peace Initiatives

Matthias Kuentzel, watching what Middle Easterners say when not speaking in English:

A few months ago, on November 16, 2006, Rahimian explained: “The Jew” – not the Zionist, note, but the Jew – is the most obstinate enemy of the devout. And the main war will determine the destiny of mankind. . . . The reappearance of the Twelfth Imam will lead to a war between Israel and the Shia.” The country that has been the first to make Holocaust denial a principle of its foreign policy is likewise the first openly to threaten another U.N. member state with, not invasion or annexation, but annihilation.

Consider this passage written by an Egyptian columnist for the state-controlled newspaper Al-Akhbar, Egypt’s second-largest daily, and published in April 2002:

“The entire matter [of the Holocaust], as many French and British scientists and researchers have proven, is nothing more than a huge Israeli plot aimed at extorting the German government in particular and the European countries in general. But I, personally and in light of this imaginary tale, complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my heart, “If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil and sin.”

...

In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt summarized the mood in the Arab world:

“The newspapers in Damascus and Beirut, in Cairo and Jordan did not conceal either their sympathy for Eichmann or their regret that he “did not finish the job”; a radio broadcast from Cairo on the opening day of the trial even included a little sideswipe at the Germans, reproaching them for the fact that “in the last war, no German plane had ever flown over and bombed a Jewish settlement.”

...

Ayatollah Khomeini, not only recognized the mobilizing power of anti-Semitism in the struggle against the shah, he made use of it himself, as far back as the 1960s. “I know that you do not want Iran to lie under the boots of the Jews,” he cried out to his supporters on April 13, 1963. That same year, he called the shah a Jew in disguise and accused him of taking orders from Israel. This drew a huge response from the public.

...

Then in September 1977, he declared, “The Jews have grasped the world with both hands and are devouring it with an insatiable appetite, they are devouring America and have now turned their attention to Iran and still they are not satisfied.”

...

Just two years ago, in 2005, at the Iranian booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair, I was readily able to buy an English edition of The Protocols published by the Islamic Propagation Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

...

The Jews in Iran are made clearly to feel their subordinate Dhimmi status. Thus, they are not allowed to occupy higher positions than Muslims and so are disqualified from the leading ranks in politics and the military. They are not allowed to serve as witnesses in court, and Jewish schools must be managed by Muslims and stay open on the Sabbath. Books in the Hebrew language are forbidden.

...

Basiji Nation: Iran's State-Sponsored Martyrdom Cult

Matthias Kuentzel outlined some of the Islamic Revolution's core values, endorsed by Ahmadinejad:  [I don't even want to know how many eminent academics would claim with a straight face that the Iranian regime is morally equivalent to the Bush administration.]

After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them....

"Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves."...

Ahmadinejad revels in his alliance with the Basiji. He regularly appears in public wearing a black-and-white Basij scarf, and, in his speeches, he routinely praises "Basij culture" and "Basij power," with which he says "Iran today makes its presence felt on the international and diplomatic stage."...

The chief combat tactic employed by the Basiji was the human wave attack, whereby barely armed children and teenagers would move continuously toward the enemy in perfectly straight rows. It did not matter whether they fell to enemy fire or detonated the mines with their bodies: The important thing was that the Basiji continue to move forward over the torn and mutilated remains of their fallen comrades, going to their deaths in wave after wave. Once a path to the Iraqi forces had been opened up, Iranian commanders would send in their more valuable and skilled Revolutionary Guard troops....

This attitude had a fatal implication for the Basiji: Whether they survived or not was irrelevant. Not even the tactical utility of their sacrifice mattered. Military victories are secondary, Khomeini explained in September 1980.The Basiji must "understand that he is a 'soldier of God' for whom it is not so much the outcome of the conflict as the mere participation in it that provides fulfillment and gratification."

...

At the end of July 2005, the Basij movement announced plans to increase its membership from ten million to 15 million by 2010. The elite special units are supposed to comprise some 150,000 people by then. Accordingly, the Basiji have received new powers in their function as an unofficial division of the police. What this means in practice became clear in February 2006, when the Basiji attacked the leader of the bus-drivers' union, Massoud Osanlou. They held Osanlou prisoner in his apartment, and they cut off the tip of his tongue in order to convince him to keep quiet. No Basiji needs to fear prosecution for such terrorists tactics before a court of law.

...

As Basij ideology and influence enjoy a renaissance under Ahmadinejad, the movement's belief in the virtues of violent self-sacrifice remains intact. There is no "truth commission" in Iran to investigate the state-planned collective suicide that took place from 1980 to 1988. Instead, every Iranian is taught the virtues of martyrdom from childhood. Obviously, many of them reject the Basij teachings. Still, everyone knows the name of Hossein Fahmideh, who, as a 13-year-old boy during the war, blew himself up in front of an Iraqi tank. His image follows Iranians throughout their day: whether on postage stamps or the currency. If you hold up a 500 Rial bill to the light, it is his face you will see in the watermark. The self-destruction of Fahmideh is depicted as a model of profound faith by the Iranian press.

...

What exactly does that mean? Consider that, in December 2001, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani explained that "the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything." On the other hand, if Israel responded with its own nuclear weapons, it "will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality." Rafsanjani thus spelled out a macabre cost-benefit analysis. It might not be possible to destroy Israel without suffering retaliation. But, for Islam, the level of damage Israel could inflict is bearable--only 100,000 or so additional martyrs for Islam.

And Rafsanjani is a member of the moderate, pragmatic wing of the Iranian Revolution; he believes that any conflict ought to have a "worthwhile" outcome. Ahmadinejad, by contrast, is predisposed toward apocalyptic thinking.

...

A politics pursued in alliance with a supernatural force is necessarily unpredictable. Why should an Iranian president engage in pragmatic politics when his assumption is that, in three or four years, the savior will appear?

Words of Wisdom from President Ahmadinejad

Courtesy of a helpful backgrounder from Realite-eu.org, a list of some of the remarks the Iranian president might not remember to repeat in New York:

We don't shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world.“ ¹

Israel is doomed to be "wiped from the map" in "a war of destiny." ¹¹

Ahmadinejad said that "the countdown for the destruction of Israel" has begun. ¹²

Zionists are „the personification of Satan.“ ¹³


1 Naïm, Mouna, “Damas et Téhéran entendent "résister" ensemble,” Le Monde, January 21st, 2006

11 Agence France Presse, April 28th, 2006

12 “Ahmadinejad: Countdown to Israel’s destruction has begun,” YnetNews, June 3rd, 2007

13 “Satan in Person," Süddeutsche Zeitung Online, March 1st, 2007

Mohammed Hegazy, apostate

Egypt, in the forefront of promoting the Islamic version of human rights:

Hegazy made an unusual public splash because he sought to raise a court case to officially change his religion on his national ID card, likely the first time a Muslim-born convert has sought to do so in Egypt. His first lawyer filed the case, but then quit after the uproar, and his second is still considering whether it's worth pursuing the attempt.

Hegazy said he received death threats by phone before he went into hiding, in an apartment bare of furniture where he lives with his wife, who is also a convert from Islam and is four months pregnant. He would not say where the apartment was located.

There is no law on the books in Egypt against converting from Islam to Christianity, but in this case tradition trumps the law. Under a widespread interpretation of Islamic law, converting from Islam is apostasy and is punishable by death — though killings are rare and the state has never ordered or carried out an execution.

Most Muslims who convert usually practice their new religion quietly, seeking to avoid attention, or flee the country to the West. In Egypt, at the very least they face ostracism by their families, but if their conversion becomes known they can receive death threats from militants, or harassment by police, who use laws against "insulting religion" or "disturbing public order" as a pretext to target them.

[...]

"I started readings and comparative studies in religions," he said. "I found that I am not consistent with Islam teachings. The major issue for me was love. Islam wasn't promoting love as Christianity did."

After his conversion was discovered, police detained him for three days and tortured him, he said.

Daniel Pipes: When Conservatives Argue About Islam

For those who refuse to take the EU's well-considered advice to avoid mentally associating Islam with terror, Daniel Pipes offers an interesting theoretical question concerning moderate versus immoderate Islamists.

Conservatives accept as moderates only those Muslims who actively oppose the Islamist goal of imposing the Shari‘a (Islamic law) worldwide; just because Muslim organizations or individuals denounce terrorism or work through the system does not make them, in their view, either moderate or mainstream, nor a suitable partner for government, media, or the academy.

...

I compare non-violent Islamists to French Communists, who worked through the democratic system to achieve Stalin's totalitarian goals.

...

Others may be excited to hear that the Muslim Brotherhood has sworn off violence in Egypt, if not in Israel. We are not satisfied with such promises. We do not trust them.

...

In his ignorance, they say, Gershman has created at NED "a value system that rewards radical Muslims when they do not commit continuous acts of violence and especially if they embrace electoral processes." The problem with NED is that it defines modernity simply as voting; doing so obscures "the essential religious issues that serve as pretexts for Islamist radicalism."

Jihad: cognitive dissonance and Orwellian doublethink

The mainstream media's brightest minds have uncovered the shocking news that the sort of person who drives a car full of nails into an airport terminal may be in some way motivated by "beliefs." These so-called "Beliefs" have a provenance and character which remains murky, but may be in some way atheistic, Hasidic, Pentecostal, Mahayana, panentheistic, Zoroastrian, Scientological, or animistic.

LA Times: Marjorie Miller and Sebastian Rotella, "British suspect's beliefs drove him, friends say"

Fortunately, the European Union has determined in advance that one possibility can be ruled out straightaway--there's no chance that the world's greatest Religion of Peace might have anything to do with it. From the Daily Mail:

Gordon Brown's ban on the word "Muslim" in relation to terrorism can be blamed on the EU.

The prime minister has told Cabinet members not to mention "Muslim" and "terrorism" in the same breath.

It comes after the European Commission issued a guide for government spokesmen to avoid offence by ruling out the words such as "jihad", "Islamic" or "fundamentalist" in statements about terrorist attacks.

Queens Students Devote Selves Entirely to Koran Memorization

It takes no special genius to speculate that the extreme prestige given to the task of completely memorizing 6,200 verses of crazed ranting by a narcissistic seventh-century desert loon, to the neglect of all other forms of science and learning, may have some connection with the utter backwardness and repression found in all parts of the Islamic world, from Morocco to Malaysia.

Now, thanks to multiculturalism, New York City parents can permanently warp their children in this same fashion, in lieu of receiving an actual education.

The carpeted room is full of children in skullcaps crouched on prayer mats, reciting verses from a holy text. Some mumble the words under their breath; others sing them out. They rock back and forth as they chant, their disparate voices blending into an ethereal melody.

The children, ages 7 to 14, are full-time students, in class 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, even in the summer. But they are not studying math, science or English. Instead, they are memorizing all 6,200 verses in the Koran, a task that usually takes two to three years.

It would hardly be an unusual scene in Pakistan, Afghanistan or elsewhere in the Muslim world, where religious schools devoted to memorization of the Koran and Islamic studies are common. But this class meets in the prayer room of a small mosque in Flushing, Queens, that caters mostly to South Asian immigrants and their children.

Schools like this one at the Muslim Center of New York are rare in the United States, but are emerging, especially among South Asians, as the Muslim American population becomes more established. ...

Because the task is so difficult, most of the children at the Muslim Center study only the Koran while they are enrolled in the class. Some parents try to tutor their children in other subjects on the side. But for the most part, it is after the children finish that they work to catch up in other subjects in preparation for going back to regular school.

By not offering instruction in other subjects, the school may be inadvertently running afoul of state law, according to city and state education officials. Private religious schools like the Muslim Center’s program are required to provide “substantially equivalent” instruction to that offered in public schools, they said. But tracking every school-age child who leaves the public school system can be difficult. ...

Making the work even more difficult, the students, for the most part, do not understand what they are reciting. Muslims believe the Koran was spoken to the prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel in Arabic. Because it is seen as the literal word of God, the use of translations is frowned upon. Students know how to pronounce the words but mostly do not know what they mean.

Right, because spending multiple years of your life memorizing words in a language that you don't even understand is the most productive use of time that the accumulated wisdom of the Islamic religion can offer its poor benighted progeny.

RIP Samaira Nazir & Banaz Mahmod

The Guardian:

Samaira Nazir knew well that her parents would disapprove. She wanted to marry her Afghan boyfriend, rather than someone from the family circle, and she was prepared to fight for him too.

So were they. Yesterday, Ms Nazir's brother was jailed for at least 20 years for her murder and her cousin, who is 17, will serve 10 years for his role in her death last April.

The Telegraph:

The brother and 17-year-old cousin of a young Pakistani woman were jailed for life yesterday for her murder in a so-called honour killing because she wanted to marry a man against her family's wishes.

Samaira Nazir, 25, a graduate and recruitment consultant, was stabbed 18 times and her throat was tied tightly with a scarf and slit.

The attack took place in front of her brother's two- and four-year-old daughters, who were spattered with blood. They saw Miss Nazir try to flee the knife blows from her cousin but her brother dragged her back from the door by her hair. Neighbours heard her scream for help.

The Independent:

Banaz Mahmod made no secret of her belief that her father wanted to kill her. She was in hospital, nursing wounds incurred in an escape from him, when her boyfriend recorded a video of her on his mobile phone, in December 2005.

"It was just me and him in the living room. I turned around every now and then because I didn't trust him," she told the camera. Ms Mahmod also told police, four times, that she feared for her life and produced a list of three men she believed would murder her - but all to no avail.

Less than a month after making the video she was strangled. Her body was packed into a suitcase and driven 100 miles from London to Birmingham where she was buried in a back garden with the ligature - a shoelace - still around her neck.

Yesterday, campaigners demanded an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigation into why Ms Mahmod, 20, died, at the end of a three-month Old Bailey trial in which her father, Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and his brother Ari Mahmod, 51, from Mitcham, south London, were convicted of murdering her.

Another day, another Muslim massacre of innocents

This should really teach Bush and Blair to think twice before desecrating the two holy mosques:

SANA, Yemen: A suicide bomber killed nine people including six Spanish tourists Monday when he drove his car into the site of an ancient temple, police officials said.

In addition to the Spanish tourists, three Yemenis, including the suicide bomber, died, said the police officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Witnesses said a car drove through a gate and then exploded at the Queen of Sheba temple in northeastern Yemen, which was built about 3,000 years ago.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but security officials said they had received information last month about a possible Al Qaeda attack. The officials said Al Qaeda had demanded the release of some of its members jailed in the Arab state and that Sana reconsider its cooperation with Washington.

Palestinian Arab Enthusiasm for Sept. 11 Attacks

Joseph Logan:

``Do you want to hear my honest opinion?'' asked Samira Mohamed, a 26-year-old lawyer. ``I was very happy when I heard the news. My happiness is based on my utter rejection of the U.S. treatment of the Middle East case.''

[...]

``We're ecstatic. Let America have a taste of what we've tasted,'' said Ali Mareh, a Lebanese resident of Beirut.

[...]

"This is the reaction required to confront the American and Israeli arrogance," said Mohamad Hallak, a 40-year-old Palestinian refugee from the southern Rashidiyeh camp in Tyre.

Charles A. Radin:

Palestinians in Jerusalem celebrated outside the Damascus Gate to the historic Old City, shouting, clapping, and passing around candies. Teenagers stoned Israeli buses and cars in nearby streets before a tight lid was clamped on the streets of East Jerusalem.

Cameron Brown:

Reports also described how upon hearing news of the attacks many Saudis immediately passed out sweets or slaughtered animals for celebratory feasts. Other Saudi admirers of bin Ladin sent one another congratulatory text messages on their mobile telephones.

One revealing indicator of public opinion in the Arab world was a survey of Palestinian public opinion conducted by Bir Zeit University about three weeks following the attacks. One of the most fascinating findings was the response to the question: "If it is proven that the party responsible for the attacks in New York and Washington is of Arab-Islamic descent, should these groups be seen as representing Arabs and Muslims as a whole?" Fifty percent of the respondents answered yes (54 percent in the Gaza Strip), and only 42 percent said no. Further, only 25 percent of the respondents agreed that "the United States [is] justified in attacking those parties responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington," while nearly 70 percent disagreed.

Jonah Goldberg, "The Swastika and the Scimitar"

Jonah Goldberg reviews Jeffrey Herf:

The Jews everywhere are “the Muslim’s bitter enemies,” said a prominent Islamic leader. Throughout history, the “irreconcilable enemy of Islam” has conspired and schemed and “oppressed and persecuted 40 million Muslims,” he said. In Palestine, the Jews are establishing “a base from which to extend their power over neighboring Islamic countries.” And, he proclaimed, “This war, which was unleashed by the world Jewry,” has provided “Muslims the best opportunity to free themselves from these instances of persecution and oppression.”

Sound like Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah? Or perhaps Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Nope. It was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Husseini, in 1942. An ardent Nazi supporter, Husseini delivered his speech at the opening of the Islamic Institute in Berlin, one day after the Allies denounced the Nazis for “carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.” Husseini’s address was approved by Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joseph Goebbels was in attendance. The Reich press office widely distributed the comments

[...]

In The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, he concedes that hatred and racism were important, but he argues that they don’t explain Germany’s unique efforts to destroy the Jews. It’s not as if no one hated the Jews until the 1930s.

The real answer isn’t hate, but fear. Poring through miles of speeches, private comments, journal entries, party memoranda and all 24,000 pages of Goebbel’s diaries, Herf concludes that the Nazis really believed that the Jews ran the world and wanted to destroy Germany. They believed that Jews controlled not only the Bolsheviks to the east but the capitalists to the west. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a mere pawn of his Jewish friends and advisors. The British Parliament, Goebbels wrote in one diary entry, was “in reality a kind of Jewish stock exchange.” The “Jewish-plutocratic enemy” was everywhere, benefiting from, and responsible for, every piece of bad news for Germany. In fact, the Nazis were sure that the Jews had declared war on Germany first, giving them no choice but to respond to the Jewish campaign to “exterminate the Germans.” This paranoia led the Nazis to believe that rounding up millions of Jews and gassing them was an act of self-defense.

What is so frightening is how similar this is to the sounds from the Middle East today. Ahmadinejad — dismissed by “sophisticated” academics as a blowhard — calls the Holocaust a myth. Indeed, there is no Jewish conspiracy theory too outlandish in the Muslim world. Huge numbers of Muslims — even 45 percent of British Muslims — believe that the Jews were behind 9/11. Theories that the Mossad is behind every bad headline, from the Indonesian tsunami to bad soccer performances, are common on the Arab street. According to Herf, this is only the second time the world has seen this sort of radical anti-Semitic paranoia. And, again, too many in the unspotless West are saying, “They can’t be serious.”

Muslim father stabs would-be convert daughter

Greg Stolz reports in the News:

A RELIGIOUS feud between a Muslim father and his teenage daughter may have sparked a bloody domestic dispute on the Gold Coast which left the man's wife dead and him fighting for life in hospital.

Police are investigating suggestions the violence erupted after the 17-year-old girl told her father she wanted to opt out of the Islamic faith and convert to Christianity. The girl's mother is believed to have stepped in to protect her daughter, only to be fatally stabbed with a kitchen knife.

[...]

Ms Dalton said that as residents tried to comfort the sobbing girl, she told how she had wanted to "convert from the Islam religion . . . and obviously her father didn't handle it very well".

"She said her parents were really strict," Ms Dalton said.

Pakistani minister envisions explosion of Rushdie

Via Perlentaucher and a link to Joerg Lau's blog in Die Zeit.

According to the Guardian, the Muslim Council of Britain and Pakistan's minister of religion have responded to Rushdie's knighthood with all the dignity and grace that could be expected from the reigning world champions of bloodthirstily aggrieved homicidal whining.

The award of a knighthood to the author Salman Rushdie justifies suicide attacks, a Pakistani government minister said today.

"This is an occasion for the 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision," Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, religious affairs minister, told the Pakistani parliament in Islamabad. "The west is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologises and withdraws the 'sir' title."

Also today, Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said many Muslims would regard the knighthood as the final insult from Tony Blair before he leaves office next week.

"Salman Rushdie earned notoriety amongst Muslims for the highly insulting and blasphemous manner in which he portrayed early Islamic figures," Dr Bari said.

"The granting of a knighthood to him can only do harm to the image of our country in the eyes of hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world. Many will interpret the knighthood as a final contemptuous parting gift from Tony Blair to the Muslim world."

Yesterday, Iranian politicians accused Britain of insulting Islam by awarding the knighthood to Rushdie, who was forced into hiding for a decade after the country's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for his assassination.

Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, said the decision to honour the novelist was an orchestrated act of aggression directed against Islamic societies.

Arafat, Statesman

OpinionJournal weighs in on the world's most bloodthirsty people:

In 1972 Palestinian terrorists murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Yet only two years later Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N.'s General Assembly--the first non-government official so honored. In 1970 Arafat attempted to overthrow Jordan's King Hussein and tried to do the same a few years later in Lebanon. Yet in 1980, the European Community, in its Venice Declaration, recognized Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization as a legitimate negotiating partner.

In 1973, the National Security Agency recorded Arafat's telephoned instructions to PLO terrorists to murder Cleo Noel, the U.S. ambassador in Sudan, and his deputy George Curtis Moore. Yet in 1993, Arafat was welcomed in the White House for the signing of the Oslo Accords with Israel. That same year, the British National Criminal Intelligence Service reported that the PLO made its money from "extortion, payoffs, illegal arms-dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud." Yet over the next several years, the Palestinian Authority would become the largest single recipient of foreign aid on a per capita basis.

In 1996, after he had formally renounced terrorism in the Oslo Accords, Arafat told a rally in Gaza that "we are committed to all martyrs who died for the cause of Jerusalem starting with Ahmed Musa until the last martyr Yihye Ayyash"--Musa being the first PLO terrorist to be killed in 1965 and Ayyash being the Hamas mastermind of a series of suicide bombings in which scores of Israeli civilians were killed. Yet the Clinton Administration continued to pretend that Arafat was an ally in the fight against Hamas. In 2000, Arafat rejected an Israeli offer of statehood midwifed by President Clinton and instead initiated the bloody intifada that left 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians dead.

Lina Joy tries, fails to leave the ummah

The International Herald Tribune reports on the dogged but unsuccessful efforts of one Lina Joy to leave the embracing, if perhaps suffocating, Muslim community of her birth.

Of course we must remember as always that the real enemy is fundamentalism in all its forms, and we must give our equal support to those individuals who are subjected to similar travails at the hands of the state on attempting to leave Christianity or Judaism. I'll link to those two as soon as I can find a single example in the twentieth or twenty-first century.

Lina Joy has been disowned by her family, shunned by friends and forced into hiding — all because she renounced Islam and embraced Christianity in Muslim-majority Malaysia.

After a 7-year legal struggle, Joy will be told by Malaysia's highest court on Wednesday whether her constitutional right to choose her religion overrides an Islamic law that prohibits Malay Muslims from leaving Islam...

Joy's decision to leave Islam sparked angry street protests by Muslim groups [imagine that! -ed.] and led to e-mail death threats against Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a Muslim lawyer supporting her [imagine that! -ed.]. The widely circulated anonymous e-mail described him as a "traitor" to Islam and carried his picture with the caption "Wanted Dead."...

Muslim groups, however, say Joy is questioning the position of Islam [heaven forfend! -ed.] by taking the case to the civil courts.

"It is not about one person, it is about challenging the Islamic system in Malaysia," said Muslim Youth Movement President Yusri Mohammad, who set up a coalition of 80 Islamic groups to oppose Joy's case.

"By doing this openly, she is encouraging others to do the same. [heaven forfend! -ed.] It may open the floodgates to other Muslims because once it is a precedent, it becomes an option."

If Joy wins her case, he warned, it could rend Malaysia's multiracial fabric by fomenting Muslim anger [Muslim anger! Such a thing is hard to conceive of, but we must imagine it -ed.] against minorities, who have largely lived in peace with Malays.

Jonathan Kay on Double Standards

Jonathan Kay notes the world's curious silence toward the Zionist, excuse me, Lebanese army's attack on the noble jihadi warriors in a Palestinian "refugee" camp.

http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=96c43ca9-ec26-470a-adda-93476ff79799

Jonathan Kay
National Post

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Last week, the Lebanese army attacked a squalid Palestinian refugee camp that's become infested with Islamist suicide terrorists and guerilla fighters. On May 20, government troops surrounded the camp, with tanks and artillery pieces shelling it at close range. Army snipers gunned down anything that moved. At least 18 civilians were killed, and dozens more injured. Water and electricity were cut off. By week's end, much of the camp had been turned into deserted rubble. Thousands of terrified residents fleeing the camp reported harrowing stories of famished, parched families trapped in their basements.

How did the rest of the world react? The Arab League quickly condemned "the criminal and terrorist acts carried out by the terrorist group known as Fatah al-Islam," and vowed to "give its full support to the efforts of the army and the Lebanese government." EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana also condemned Fatah al-Islam, and declared Europe's "support" for Lebanon. And the UN Security Council called the actions of Fatah al-Islam "an unacceptable attack" on Lebanon's sovereignty. As for the Western media, most outlets ignored the story following the first flurry of news reports.

At this point, please indulge me by re-reading the first paragraph of this column -- except this time, substitute the world "Israeli" for "Lebanese" in the first sentence. Let's imagine what the world's reaction would be if the ongoing siege were taking place in Gaza or the West Bank instead of the Nahr al Bared refugee camp on the outskirts of Tripoli, Lebanon.

Ramzy Baroud on the Rotterdam Palestinian Conference

Ramzy Baroud, an Arab American journalist writing in Al-Ahram, yet clearly under the malign influence of the Zionist-controlled media, has unpleasant things to say about the Palestinian Rotterdam conference:

Then there were failures of logistics. When I requested the media package in English, I discovered there was none. Only Arabic and Dutch were available. Why hold an international conference if you are not prepared to appeal to an international audience and speak to international media using an international language? I was dumbfounded. Further, the speakers were mostly Palestinians from the occupied territories speaking Arabic. As eloquent as they where in their own language, their fiery words were translated into Dutch only. Neither English nor French were important, apparently.

Moreover, angry speeches of angry sounding Arabic speaking men overshadowed or simply supplanted the contributions of some of the most brilliant and eloquent Palestinian scholars and activists who happen to be in Europe. Female participation was almost non-existent. All in all, a fantastic contribution to stereotyping Arabs, whose culture is readily depicted by the media as male-dominated, inherently angry and innately irrational!

Victor Davis Hanson: Why?

Victor Davis Hanson asks, why? (See also Pipes, "Sudden Jihad Syndrome.") And heaven forfend that anyone should imagine there is any element of Islam itself that may somehow encourage the violent side of the human character.

Why would Albanian-speaking Muslim refugees from the Balkans try to murder American soldiers? After all, the United States — not bin Laden’s rag-tag jihadists — saved Bosnia and Kosovo? And we did that by bombing the capital of a Christian European nation.

But then, why did a mixed-up Albanian Muslim in Salt Lake City, one Sulejman Talovic, go on a shopping-mall shooting spree? Five innocents were killed in the attack before the murderer himself was shot and killed.

And why, after pouring billions of dollars into Afghanistan, did poor, mixed-up Omeed Aziz Popal, an Afghan Muslim, try to run over several innocents in San Francisco near a Jewish center in September 2006?

Or, for that matter, why did an angry Muslim Pakistani [Naveed Haq] gun down Jews in Seattle?

Or, again, why earlier last year, did a 22-year-old Iranian-American Muslim [Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar] drive his sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone at the University of North Carolina?

Deroy Murdock on PBS suppression of film on Islam

Deroy Murdock: PBS commissions, then refuses to air, a documentary on Islam and Islamism.

The film showcases brave, moderate Muslims like Naser Khader, a Syrian-born Danish legislator who preaches the separation of mosque and state. The mere fact that he votes in Copenhagen’s parliament enrages Muslim zealots.

“To make laws — only a god does that. And there is only one god in Islam, and that is Allah,” says Slimane Abderrahmane, an Algerian-Danish alumnus of al Qaeda’s terror camps and, later, Guantanamo. “So you’re saying, ‘I’m just like Allah.’ And you can’t do that.”

Mohamed Sifaoui, a peaceful Algerian-French journalist, infiltrated a Parisian band of Muslim extremists. Some appeared via hidden camera. Others hammed it up, thinking Sifaoui was shooting an Islamist propaganda and training movie.

Since French TV showed his film, bodyguards have surrounded Sifaoui.

It is highly newsworthy that moderates such as Khader and Sifaoui need security agents to shield them from Allah’s potentially homicidal followers.

The documentary “was irresponsible because the writing was alarmist, and it wasn’t fair,” WETA executive Jeff Bieber has complained. (Full disclosure: I was a panelist on WETA’s Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered.)

Islam is abundantly fair. Those in it, all Muslim, represent themselves. They range from thoroughly relaxed, perfectly patriotic Arizona physician Dr. Zuhdi Jasser to Canadian imam Aly Hindy, who embraces the fatal stoning of adulterers. “It’s not controversial,” he laughs, waving a Koran. “This is Islam.”