Haveil Havalim #31 is up

The latest round-up of the best of the Jewish blogosphere is up, at Soccer Dad. Mentioned within are this post here, as well as the latest in my continuing series of Palestine Post-ings.

As usual, it is an excellent compilation, so check it out!

The flip-sides of Arab honor

One of the driving factors of Arab behavior is a twisted, almost perverse sense of "honor."

You will see Arabs talking obsessively about honor, including bizarre concepts about their "honor" of women. (The fact that something called "honor killings" exists at all is powerful evidence to this.)

Beyond that, the entire idea that the concept of hated Jews owning their own land in the Middle East being so unacceptable is mostly because of this twisted sense of honor - the very existence of Jews controlling land that once was administered by Muslims is an affront to their honor. It is no coincidence that Bin Laden referred to Andalusia as well, as the 15th century eviction of Muslims from Spain was a similar offense to Islamic honor.

I can see a few corollaries to such extreme concepts.

One is that, since the Western world has so completely dominated the Islamic and Arab worlds in all spheres of influence (miltarily, culturally, scientifically), it is inevitable that a people obsessed with honor would get a massive, cumulative inferiority complex, and have an extreme need to "prove" themselves over and over again that they are still relevant. Hence, things like suicide bombings against Western targets are in some ways a way to grab the world stage, to show relevance of a culture that has been utterly and repeatedly defeated.

Another corollary is that Muslims will obsessively use Western concepts of freedom to protect their "honor," demanding rights for themselves in the name of their religion when in fact these rights are meant to protect honor. Examples would include the fight over the hijab in France and the idea that Muslims should be able to have public calls to prayer in Western cities.

A third, and under-reported corrolary is that a people obsessed with honor will inevitably want to use honor to humiliate their enemies. What is a beheading if not a way to humiliate one's enemy? And here is a story, mis-reported by the Reuters' Arab correspondent, which is ultimately about honor:

Tens of thousands of white-black-green-and-red Palestinian national flags are being sewn in workshops in Gaza City to fly over the 21 settlements, hated symbols of occupation, once the pullout starting in mid-August is complete.

Abu Dayya said the Palestinian Authority had ordered 60,000 flags for the pullout. Workers at one factory have been sewing some 3,000 pennants a day, labouring to meet an Aug. 7 delivery deadline.

Some 35,000 other flags will carry the logo of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and 20,000 will be imprinted with white-and-black headresses and pictures of Abbas and the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.

Abu Dayya said sales at his PLO Flag Shop increased during the revolt, thanks to orders by Palestinian militant groups for national flags and banners bearing the symbols of armed factions. He also sold Israeli flags to be burnt at anti-Israeli rallies.

What is not reported is the fact that thousands of Palestinian flags flying over Jewish-built homes is not only meant to instill Arab pride, but more importantly it is to humiliate Israel.

Qurei again shows that Israel's destruction is the goal

Once again a Palestinian "leader" shows that his commitment is to destroy Israel. Once again a "pragmatic, moderate" man shows utter disregard for what is best for his people and shows his true colors.

And once again the world media, including Israel's media, chooses to ignore what he says clearly and what he broadly implies, in favor of wishful thinking.

With just 19 days left to disengagement, the Palestinians have already set their sites on a new goal: Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Wednesday that the prize is a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as is its capital. (In other words, anything less than that is unacceptable - he'd rather have his people under "occupation".)

"We are telling the entire world, today Gaza and tomorrow Jerusalem. Today Gaza and tomorrow and independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," he said while reviewing Palestinian forces in Gaza. (Don't leaders usually review their military troops, not "police"?)

Qureia said that the Palestinians would not establish a state without Jerusalem: "We won't establish a country with the racist separation fence; there won't be a (Palestinian) state with aggressive settlements and a state will not arise without our achieving all the rights of our Palestinian nation and the right of return." (So this so called "pragmatic moderate" leader says explicitly that compromise is completely unacceptable, and that his position is indistinguishable from that of Yassir Arafat.)

Qureia turned to Palestinian security personnel and said, "Our faith in you is great … We are facing great challenges and we'll succeed in overcoming this one and we'll bring an end of the occupation of our land, an irreversible withdrawal. " (Who exactly are "we"? It sure sounds like the Palestinian "police" are being treated exactly like an army meant to fight Israel. )

His message couldn't be clearer, and yet this story is just a tiny footnote and his reputation as a moderate is solid. The media is again completely negligent in doing its job of exposing truth in favor of going along with their agenda of giving Palestinians everything they want.

Meanwhile, Hamas says the goal a little more explicitly:

A senior Islamic Hamas movement leader announced on Thursday that the upcoming Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank is "a Palestinian national achievement."

Isma'eel Haneya told reporters that the withdrawal from Gaza and northern West Bank came as a result of "the armed resistance", adding that "it is the first step towards the liberation of the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories."

And we all know what that means.

Egypt bomber group says they were targeting Jews

For some reason, a major part of the message from the group claiming responsibility for the Sharm el-Sheikh bombings is not being reported by the news media.

Dubai - An unknown group calling itself Mujahedeen Egypt has claimed the deadly triple bombings in Sharm al-Sheikh and given the names of five "martyrs" who allegedly died carrying out the attacks.

Its claim, which included a warning for Jews to leave Egypt, followed a statement from a group calling itself the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Levant and Egypt which said it carried out the bombings that killed 88 people.

The Mujahedeen Egypt statement posted on an Islamic website and dated July 23, the day of the attacks, mentioned seven bombings. Initial police reports also mentioned seven blasts.

"Your brothers in the Mujahedeen Egypt carried out the blessed earthquake in Sharm al-Sheikh," the group said in a statement which was not on usual sites used by Islamist militant groups to make announcements.

"Do not believe what is being said about the claim made by al-Qaeda, may God protect it," it said.

The group said the five "martyrs" carried out seven bombings against hotels and tourist buses used by "Zionists."

"As long as the Zionists do not get out of the land of the Muslims, they will be digging their own graves with their own hands," it said.

The statement identified them as Faisal Khalil, Hassan Abi Rawa, Mohamad Abdel Majid, Nader Mohamad Abdel Ghani and Mohamad Hammoudi al-Masri, said to be the son of the general common with a booby-trapped car that targeted the Ghazala Gardens in Naama Bay which is a resort crowded with Jews, and the hotel was totally destroyed," it said.

"The second (explosion) targeted the old commercial centre area with a second booby-trapped car.

"After 15 minutes, five explosions occurred, three of them with booby-trapped cars and two of them with explosive charges that targeted Jewish hotels and tourism buses."

A second statement by the same group, dated from Sunday, said the five men drove "one local car, three others from abroad and a bus".

It also gave "not more than 60 days for the Zionist Jews to get out of Egypt or else you will see what you have never even seen it in your dreams," said the statement posted on the same Islamic website.

Canadian Imam threatens Canada

This is a variant of the old threat that the "Arab street" will rise up and do things out of the control of their leaders. It is all complete bull, of course, but Muslims seem to like this threat, because it has a history of scaring Westerners.

But what is noteworthy is that now they are threatening that Muslim citizens of Western countries will cause problems ( demonstrate? Riot? Blow people up? It seems to be purposefully ambiguous.)

Meaning that this Imam is implying that Muslim Westerners have more loyalty to Muslim concepts of 'honor' than to the law of their land.

How many times have Jews been accused of "dual loyalty?" Well, this Muslim leader is seeming to brag about Muslim dual loyalty.

A controversial Toronto imam warned Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan at a closed-door meeting to stop 'terrorizing' Canadian Muslims.

'If you try to cross the line I can't guarantee what is going to happen. Our young people, we can't control,' Aly Hindy, the head of Scarborough's Salaheddin Islamic Centre, recalls telling the minister at the May meeting she held in Toronto with dozens of Muslim leaders.

The meeting was part of an effort by Ms. McLellan to reach out to Canadian Muslims amid complaints that the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service are engaging in racial profiling.

The minister and her officials have been meeting community leaders to explain they are not targeting Muslims generally, only individuals with possible terrorist links.

By many accounts, the meetings have been positive and are contributing to a thaw in relations between Muslims and security agents, even if the exchange in May was a little heated.

Mr. Hindy, who has long complained that CSIS is spying on him, his family and his mosque, told Ms. McLellan that a young Muslim woman complained to him she was roughed up by Canadian spies while her husband was away at prayers. This allegation could spur reprisals because 'our women are the most valuable thing to us' and 'for a Muslim, honour is more important than his life,' Mr. Hindy said in a recent interview.

He made the point to the minister. Several people who attended shrugged off the imam's remarks, but some Muslims and government agents later approached Mr. Hindy asking him to explain himself.

'The police came to me and said, 'This is a kind of threat,' and I said yes,' he said. 'But it's for the good of this country.

'And they said, 'Do you know some of the names of those people you expect to cause some problems?' And I said, 'You just open the telephone directory.' "

Pavlov and the Terrorists

Why do Palestinian leaders and press lie? Why did Palestinians switch from hijacking airplanes to package bombs to suicide bombs? Why did they seem to accept Camp David and then turn around and start the second intifada?

In short, why do Palestinian terrorists act so seemingly irrationally?

This question has been asked in various ways thousands of times over the decades. And in many cases, I have looked at these questions from a goal-oriented approach: if the Palestinian goal is to have an independent Palestinian state, none of the actions make sense. If the goal is the destruction of Israel, then all of their actions are consistent.

But one can also look at the problem, especially some of the specifics, with a behavioral approach. In short, actions that are rewarded tend to be repeated, while actions that cost more than their rewards tend to be abandoned.

As has been noted, Palestinian spokespeople and press lie continuously. Just to give two examples from the past week: they described the two murdered grandparents as "settlers" and they claimed that "witnesses" saw Gaza settlers kill a 12-year old Palestinian boy when it was later proved that it was Palestinians themselves who killed him.

If Israel's spokespeople lied, you can be sure that the world media would not hesitate to call them on it - and rightfully so. Israel's government and army have volumes of information on their websites and even a single purposeful error would make them useless.

But Palestinian media, even their English websites, are so full of holes that they are a joke. Their spokespeople have lied so often that they are completely unreliable. Yet the Western press continues to quote them seriously, without so much as a single caveat that they are known to have made up facts out of thin air in the past.

In short, lying works for Palestinians. It is rewarded with news stories that either never get retracted or get corrected so silently that the damage can never be undone. When a behavior is rewarded, it gets repeated; this is simple behavioral psychology.

On the flip side of the coin, Palestinian terrorists first made headlines with their famous series of airplane hijackings in the 1970s. For a while it got them rewarded with world press, and free publicity for their cause of destroying Israel. But soon, the reward turned into a punishment as the world governments who they wanted sympathy from turned against them. So they started their diplomatic offensive and abandoned explicit international terror, because the rewards had dried up.

For a while there, Israel could claim to have won the intifada war against Palestinian terrorists - Israel's building of the fence combined with pro-active targeted killings against terror leaders curtailed terror attacks dramatically. Terror leaders were in hiding and even the Palestinian people were turning against them in some circumstances.

But now, Israel has turned a punishment into a reward. The retreat from Gaza is the biggest reward that Palestinians could have asked for - it directly gives them a piece of what they always wanted, control over land that Jews had control over. No amount of doubletalk can deny that the Palestinian terrorists perceive that they are now being rewarded for terror. And as in countless other situations, the reward ensures that the behavior that caused the reward will continue.

The only way to stop terror, whether in Tel Aviv or London or Egypt, is to ensure that the cost is higher than the reward. "Proportional" and "measured"responses do not punish terror, it needs to be disproportionate and immediate.

This is how you train a dog, and this is how you train terrorists.

Disgusting AP idolizes terrorists

AP - Sun Jul 24,10:54 AM ET

This picture released by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement on Sunday, July 24, 2005, shows Islamic Jihad activist Yahea Abu Taha, 22, right, and Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades activist Tareq Yassin, 23, getting ready prior to attacking an Israeli target at the Kissufim crossing, between Israel and the Gush Katif.

AP doesn't bother mentioning that the "Israeli target" was a car with two Israeli grandparents, Dov and Rachel Kol, who were murdered by the laughing "activists" :


AP also doesn't bother to point out that the terrorists affiliations prove that the Al Aqsa group, who gets paid by Abbas' PA, is clearly working hand in hand with Islamic Jihad and Hamas (while Condi Rice was praising Abbas for his pretense of fighting Hamas, his own people were planning terror attacks.)

(Hat tip to Boker Tov Boulder)

Friday, July 22, 1938: Another day of Arabs murdering Jews

The sheer number of terror attacks by Arabs against Jews in Palestine in the 1930s is astounding. The atrocities are reported in the Palestine Post with revulsion but also somewhat matter-of-factly; this day was not particularly unusual for the time period - before "occupation", before "settlements", when most of the land was still empty. The methods are eerily familiar to those who look at current terror attacks. The chaos and lawlessness that we now see daily in Gaza and in Arab areas of the West Bank were happening then - but the targets were mostly Jews.

All these events took place in one day. All of the following articles came from the July 22, 1938 Palestine Post.

The headline was for an especially gruesome act of terror, with the "bandits" murdering women and children at point-blank range while shouting praise to Mohammed.


Meanwhile, an attack against a vineyard resulted in another Jew being killed before the attackers were driven off:

Near the Dead Sea, another attack killed three more Jews doing surveying:

A man who was attacked by a mob in Haifa died of his injuries:

Another Arab Haifa mob attacked Jews as well:

Arabs were stopped while trying to bomb Tel-Aviv:

Of course, Jews weren't the only targets when tolerant, civilized Arabs went wild:

And for some strange reason, even Jews in neighboring countries were considered legitimate targets:

The British had an interesting punishment for Arabs who attacked them. Amazingly, there is not one record of international condemnation for this "crime":

At that time, Jews had a most appropriate response to Arab terror.

It is a shame that today's Zionists don't understand the power of such a move anymore. For those who fell, the early Zionists created a new settlement in their memory.

The only way terror can be fought is to make it counterproductive, and if every terror attack in the name of real estate would have a firm response of "Fine, now you lose more land," it would cease.

Giving away land for free would appear to have the opposite effect.

Cross-posted to Palestine Post-ings.

Electric Shabbat scooters?

This isn't my normal kind of topic, but it would be interesting to see what other bloggers think.

This isn't talking about Razor-type scooters but rather devices that are closer to electric wheelchairs for people who cannot move around on Shabbos otherwise.

Orthodox Jews now have a friend on the Sabbath.

Bridgeport Township-based Amigo Mobility International Inc. has devised a scooter that will give Orthodox Jews, forbidden by faith from turning on electrical devices on the Sabbath, wheels on the holy day.

The 'Shabbat' scooter -- a name derived from the Hebrew word meaning Sabbath -- is specially designed to keep users from switching circuits on or off.

Today's Jewish world domination news

An interesting editorial from an apparent professor of History in Nigeria, named Abubakar A. Fari, about the global conspiracy against Islam, Jewish domination of the media, comparisons between Jews and Nazis, and of course justification for suicide bombings.

Someone forgot to send him the memo to substitute Zionist for Jew in this little screed.

Every day the news that is dished out from the western media represented namely by the VOA, the BBC and to a lesser extent the German and French radios are on Islamic terrorists and fundamentalist incursion or suicide bombers against the so called western targets or interests. The CNN is the king. One thing common with these imperialist and Jewish dominated media is a deliberate and orchestrated campaign of falsehood against Islam and Muslims and any governments that want to live under the dictates of Islamic laws and values the Sharia.
Their strategies are based on deliberate mischief, propaganda and repeated lies and lies and lies which they believe when repeated on and on and on, no matter what, the docile especially the so called civilized but ignorant U.S and western audience shall accept and indeed have accepted, hook line and sinker, except for a few broadminded ones.
As a concerned Muslim, and I believe that many like me, feel sad at these orchestrated lies and falsehoods designed to humiliate and abuse Muslims and our religion, Islam simply because, we do not subscribe to their values. To make matters worse none of the Muslim leaders in the Middle East, Asia and Africa is willing and ready to defend the interest of Islam and Muslims, except a few ones like Malaysia’s Mahathir Muhammad, in words and deeds. As a result only dedicated and incon-sequential ones resort to the inevitable - suicide bombing which is so far the only effective cry against these arrogant and terrible western leaders and their Jewish masters.
[...]As a concerned Muslim, again and’ again, I keep asking myself why is it that out of over 7 billion inhabitants on earth, it is only the Muslims, who comprise about 1 billion, or 14.3%’, that are daily being branded as terrorists. Are there no Christians, no Jewish, no pagan, no Masonic, no Zionist, no Buddist, no Hindu, no US citizen, no British citizen, no yellow, no white, no brown, and no capitalist terrorists?
The terrible and mischievous CNN, BBC World, Sky News, the Time Magazine: the Newsweek, the Economist and other Jewish dominated media that are as disastrous as AIDS endemic is, have rather chosen to only select Islam and Muslims for this dirty campaign and use it to justify the genocide against them.
It is instructive here to say that these orchestrated campaigns to insult, abuse, condemn and denigrate the Islamic religion spearheaded by the US and instigated by the Jewish media, is akin to the negative campaign of hate against the Jews in the 1930s. This campaign of hate and xenophobia were what led to the massacre of the Jews by Hilter and other Europeans in the 1940s. The same strategy is being used by the Jews against Muslims since 1945 to date.
This campaign is what has led to the murder and genocide of Muslims in Chechnya, Bosnia, Srebrenica, Afgha-nistan, Iraq, Palestine, Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria and elsewhere in the world.
Ironically, the Jew cry foul against the persecution metted on them and are exploiting the tragedy by making billions and have made billions in US Dollars and Deutch Mark from compensations, are daily committing murder, abuse of human rights and demolishing of homes of innocent Palestinians. The CNN owned and managed by their enemies, derives pleasure and with relish, displays it daily on their screens, while in the same vein shed crocodile tears, deceptively, when few of their relations are killed by so called terrorists, which is more often than not, are contrived killings, arranged by them to deceive the innocent public. Recently, the mayor of London declared that Arial Sharon, the Israeli prime minister is a terrorist and he is not saying anything new. Kofi Anan the UN Secretary General also declared that the invasion of Iraq was illegal. And for the UN Secretary to declare it illegal, means that this is against the international law and democratic principles of the United Nations.

He also added this priceless example of logic:

If these people do not trust and feel safe to see the Ayatullahs, the Hamas, the Hisbullah, the Arabs, the Africans, the North Koreans with weapons of mass destruction and who have no record of using them as opposed to Eisenhower of the US who dropped them against the Japanese in the-Second World War, why then should the Ayatullahs and any sane mind, trust and feel safe to see the US president in the shape and persons of the Bushes and co. in possession of these dangerous weapons and or in control of governments with such weapons?

A lovely man, Mr. Fari. It was especially interesting that he should mention capitalism, as he is a broker/dealer for the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

This news that the Jews control the world would be good enough for today, but wait! There's more!

This is from an interview of "retired Lebanese general and public relations expert Dr. Hisham Jaber." Among his rants that Zionists were behind 9/11 was this gem (hat tip to News for Members of the Tribe):

"Regardless of the logic of conspiracy, I would like to say something. We read history, and we know that since The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Zionism has forged the New Testament – and by now, 60 million in the U.S. alone have left Christianity to become believers in the Torah."

At least he got the memo!

British Muslims issue fatwa against suicide bombers - does it apply to Palestinians?

There have been a few articles lately about a very strong fatwa condemning suicide bombing and terror written by a group of British religious Muslim leaders. Here is the relevant text:

On behalf of over 500 clerics, scholars and Imams the British Muslim Forum issues the following religious decree:

Islam strictly, strongly and severely condemns the use of violence and the destruction of innocent lives.

There is neither place nor justification in Islam for extremism, fanaticism or terrorism. Suicide bombings, which killed and injured innocent people in London, are haram - vehemently prohibited in Islam, and those who committed these barbaric acts in London are criminals not martyrs.

Such acts, as perpetrated in London, are crimes against all of humanity and contrary to the teachings of Islam.

The Holy Koran declares:

"Whoever kills a human being, then it is as though he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a human life, it is as though he had saved all mankind." (Koran, Surah al-Maidah (5), verse 32).

Islam teaches us to be caring towards all of Allah's (God's) creation, not just mankind. The Prophet of Islam who was described as "a mercy to the worlds" said: "All creation is the family of Allah and that person is most beloved to Allah who is kind and caring towards His family."

Islam's position is clear and unequivocal: murder of one soul is the murder of the whole of humanity; he who shows no respect for human life is an enemy of humanity.

We pray for the defeat of extremism and terrorism in the world.

We pray for peace, security and harmony to triumph in multicultural Great Britain.

On first glance, it looks like this may include condemnation of Palestinian terror attacks against Jews as well. But Islam is a legal based system, and systems of law often have loopholes.

Here is one possible loophole, from a fatwa on IslamOnline.net:

We'd like to address a point; all scholars agreed that what the Palestinians carry out in showing resistance against their enemies is not a suicide bombing; rather, it's to be called martyr operation.

As regards your question, the late Azharite scholar and the head of the Sunni Egyptian Institutions in Egypt, Sheikh Fu'ad Mukhaymar, states the following:

"The view adopted by the majority of our contemporary Muslim scholars, describing as martyrs the Palestinians who blow themselves up in the occupied land in showing resistance against the aggression, is correct for the following reasons:

A person who blows himself up sacrifices his life for the survival of others. He dies for his homeland and his holy sites.

Those disarmed people are annihilated every day. Their houses and factories are destroyed and their farms are devastated. They stand with their hands tied before the tanks and armored vehicles of their enemies. The least they can offer is this sacrifice. A person who does this operation is considered by Ulama as a martyr especially as he sacrifices his life, not for a material gain, but for the sake of Allah.

The Palestinians lack the military support of the whole world. In this case, do they have to wait their doom or try their best to defend themselves?

The instances cited by scholars, in supporting their arguments, are also correct. History is full of many fascinating examples in which Muslims demonstrated an outstanding courage and strong spirit in fighting their enemies; they would sacrifice their lives for the sake of achieving their aim.

As regards the questioner’s reference to the narration that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) disapproved the act of a fighter who killed himself, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did this when he knew that the man killed himself out of despair and discontent. But on the issue at hand, a Palestinian knows well what he does and chooses it with his free will. It’s for this great sacrifice that he deserves martyrdom.

It may not be fair to compare fatwas issued by two different groups. But since the entire Arab and Muslim world is so overwhelmingly supportive of Palestinian terror, it is reasonable to ask: does the British fatwa apply to Palestinians or are they considered martyrs when they blow up Jewish woman and children? An unequivocal, explicit condemnation of Palestinian terror would speak volumes, and conversely, the refusal of the British Muslim leaders to specifically address that issue would cast severe doubts over the relevance of this fatwa to the West.

For example, last Friday the leader of the most holy mosque in Mecca, Al-Sudayyis, said that the "enemy" is engaged in "moral terrorism against the values, ideals, and virtues of the Islamic nation" - referring here to pornography and loose moral standards. Is it unreasonable for a Muslim to interpret this as a call to war against the West, to defend the honor of Islam? If the Western world is explicitly called the "enemy" does that not mean that killing, say, a woman who is not covered with a hijab may be considered a required act?

The original British fatwa seems solid at first glance. But without a definition of "extremism, fanaticism and terrorism," it may only be empty words, especially since the Muslim world's definition of terror has never included attacks against Jews in israel.

Gaza retreat dangerous to America

It very refreshing, and way too rare, to see articles that point out the obvious truths - about Abbas' lack of any real power, about how Hamas will take over Gaza, about Hamas' involvement in international terror.

Hat tip to Israpundit.

Eyeless in Gaza
What the terrorists know that we don’t.
By Barbara Lerner

The Israeli retreat from Gaza — now scheduled for August 17 — wasn't George Bush's idea. It was Ariel Sharon's. Sharon didn't succeed in selling it to his military and intelligence chiefs or to the party and people who elected him, but he was very successful in selling it to national elites in Israel and America, and to the media in both countries. In time, President Bush decided to buy it too.

We can, perhaps, see why. The president has other things on his Middle Eastern plate: a stubborn, bloody war in Iraq; looming deadlines with regard to Iranian nukes; a deadly flow of international jihadists through Syria into Iraq and Lebanon; fanaticism and instability in oil-rich Saudi Arabia; and restless decay in populous Egypt, where the mass following of the Muslim Brotherhood is a looming danger. On the Palestinian front, the moment of hope when Arafat died quickly faded, and was replaced by a weary recognition that Abu Mazen's incredible weakness made real progress impossible and continuing Palestinian violence inevitable. What was George W. Bush to do? Confront Palestinian terrorism directly, drawing the red line he promised to draw in his bold, no-peace, no-state speech of June 24, 2002? That would send the Al Jazeera crowd into overdrive and bring down the combined wrath of the Democrats, Old Europe, and the U.N., echoed and amplified by our own media.

This didn't seem a propitious time to take all that on. And there was Ariel Sharon with his Gaza withdrawal plan, offering an out — offering the illusion of progress, and claiming that behind it he could establish a better Israeli defensive line and some temporary peace and stability. It was a tempting apple, and the president bit.

But Gaza isn't Eden, and this isn't the apple of knowledge. It's a Rohypnol-like apple of ignorance, and it is blinding us to the danger America faces — a danger our Islamofascist enemies see clearly and are primed to take advantage of. We think Gaza is all about Israel and the Palestinians; our enemies know it's mainly about us. We think we are encouraging Israel to hand Gaza over to Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, local Palestinians with purely local ambitions — ambitions that encompass the whole of Israel, perhaps, but nothing beyond it — ambitions that have nothing to do with us. Our enemies know that behind a Fatah fig leaf, we are handing Gaza over to Hamas, an international terrorist organization of global reach and ambition that is one of America's deadliest enemies. We think Hamas only attacks Jews. They know that Hamas is a main recruiting agent for Arab jihadists, not just from among the 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and from the much larger numbers of Palestinians scattered in strategic enclaves throughout the region and the world, but for other Arabs too. We think Hamas sends all these jihadists only to Israel. They know Hamas sends a never-ending stream of them to Afghanistan, Chechnya, the Balkans, Kashmir, Lebanon and, most critically for us right now, to Iraq. And when our press insistently refers to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the master terrorist who directs the foreign jihadists in Iraq, as "a Jordanian," our enemies laugh. They know Zarqawi has always called himself a Palestinian, and is recognized as such, in Jordan and throughout the Middle East.

To see what Hamas control of Gaza will mean for us in Iraq, we have to see it as our enemies do — not just Hamas, but its parent organization, the Brotherhood, and its longtime partners Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and the Wahhabi and Salafist movements. To do that, forget Israel entirely for a moment. Look only at the terror war against America, and at the geography of Islamofascism that supports it. Place Gaza in that context, and its strategic location jumps out at you. Control of Gaza gives Hamas and its partners direct access to the land border with Egypt, as well as access by sea to terrorist supply ports in Lebanon and Syria, and from them, overland, to the terror training camps in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran and to the ratlines from Syria into Iraq.

This is the reality we face: The "Palestinian democracy" we rattle on about is a mirage no desert-dweller is seduced by. Abu Mazen is president of nothing; his Fatah party no longer exists. It never was anything but a collection of competing terrorist gangs, but Arafat was a master manipulator who controlled them all by keeping the big carrots and sticks in his own hands and wielding them with ruthless cunning. With his death, Fatah splintered into a multitude of shifting groups and now they're not just competing — they're at war, regularly breaking up each others meetings with gunfire and shooting each other down in the streets, along with hapless bystanders. We pretend that with our help and a huge new infusion of Western cash the 58,000-man Palestinian security forces will be able to create order out of this internecine chaos, but this too is a mirage. It's the security forces that are doing most of the shooting, mostly at each other. As U.S. special envoy General William Ward, our no-nonsense military expert on the ground in Gaza told us last week, Palestinian security forces are "dysfunctional." Only about a third of them actually show up for work, and it doesn't make much difference when they do, because the chain of command that supposedly links them to their leaders is so broken that Abbas and his few remaining loyalists can barely get them to protect his headquarters in Ramallah, let alone the whole of Gaza and the West Bank.

What, then, of Abu Mazen's presumed popularity, you ask, the popularity that led to his easy victory in the first post-Arafat election, which so many American pundits of the right as well as the left praised as a birth of democracy, like the election in Iraq? That too is a mirage. The Palestinian election was nothing like the one in Iraq. Abu Mazen won the top job only because Hamas chose not to run, preferring to take control from the bottom up. Hamas ran in the subsequent municipal elections and swept to victory in almost every major Palestinian population center. It was poised to do the same in the parliamentary elections, until Abu Mazen postponed them indefinitely, and invited Hamas to join him without an election. It hardly matters. Hamas is taking over, with or without elections or invitations, and most Palestinians are glad. Hamas is a disciplined terrorist organization, and they are sick of chaos and corruption. Besides, like their Islamofascist brothers everywhere, they believe that it is Hamas that is forcing the Israelis to retreat in Gaza, and America with her. They see it as another terrorist victory, a harbinger of more to come. Meanwhile, they are enjoying the sight of the great American Samson, stumbling about, "eyeless in Gaza." They think our acquiescence in the once-mighty Sharon's appeasement plan puts us "at the mill with slaves," and they are jubilant.

The good news is that unlike the Biblical Samson, we are not irrevocably blind, only seduced and blindfolded by a mix of propaganda, ideology, and wishful thinking that prevent us from seeing reality. If we tear off our blindfold and call a halt to the Gaza retreat before August 17, we will save ourselves and our friends in Iraq much anguish, and save our Israeli friends and perhaps our Lebanese friends too. And if we do it boldly, proclaiming our determination to defeat Islamofascist terror in Gaza as we are defeating it in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will bring a final American victory much closer.

Zero percent of Lebanese, Jordanians like Jews

The Pew Research Center periodically surveys people in countries worldwide. Its most recent survey of global attitudes showed a rising concern about Muslim extremism in predominantly Muslim countries, as well as evidence for reduced support for terror in Muslim countries. These parts of the survey got some press. But what was barely reported was the unfathomable amount of Jew-hatred in various Muslim countries.

Here is a graphic summarizing the results of what each country surveyed thinks about the three major monotheistic religions:



Look at how Jews are perceived in Arab countries: zero percent of Jordanians and Lebanese look at Jews favorably. When was the last time you ever saw a poll with a zero in it? I doubt that an honest poll in Nazi Germany would have come up with the same numbers.

And in "moderate" Indonesia and "secular" Turkey, the numbers are hardly better.

So whenever you see someone claiming how tolerant Muslims are of Jews, and that it is only Zionism they despise, remember that the truth does not quite jive with soothing words meant for Western ears.

Sharon to Ban Oranges (Punks of Zion)

I have a warm spot in my heart for the Punks of Zion, who are anxiously awaiting my retirement (or perhaps demise) so they can take over the family business of world domination. I remember well my younger days when I posted satirical spoofs on the pre-Web Usenet, and it is great to see these whippersnappers living up to the name.

(Not to be confused with the beautiful and talented Daughter of Ziyon, who has yet to dabble her toes in the murky Jew pool of international banking, world media ownership, and Hollywood. What can I say, she has more pressing teenage concerns. She is being carefully groomed for greatness...)

Sharon to Ban Oranges
JERUSALEM, don’t expect a country name here (AP) – Following the recent ban on orange bracelets and Hindus, the Israeli government has decided to take it a step further by announcing a ban on the sale of oranges. According to government officials, the move is intended to curb the burgeoning anti-disengagement movement which is represented by the fruit’s eponymous hue.

The Orange Revolution, as it is known, is modeled after the people-power movement which led to the overturning of election results in the Ukraine last winter. Hatched by a small but determined band of zealous settlers in response to Ariel Sharon’s proposal for unilateral disengagement from settlements in Gaza and northern Samaria, it has since matured into a political juggernaut that has gained the sympathy of many across the political spectrum and is not showing any sign of abatement.

Effective August 1, the ban will also cover tangerines, clementines and navels. Grocery stores, supermarkets and other retailers violating the ban will face hefty fines and possible misdemeanor charges. The government will now view all those who purchase the delicious citrus as a subversive fifth column who must be dealt with harshly.
[...]
“Although it will hurt my business, I will throw my support behind any decision that will hasten the expulsion of Jews from Gaza,” said Ahmed Jalili, who runs a fruit stand in Jaffa. “As the old Arab maxim goes: ‘When in doubt, kick ‘em out!’”

Similar sentiments were shared by Liora Steinberg, a student activist at Haifa University.

“I doggedly hold by a belief in free choice and civil liberties, so my gut reaction would be to oppose this government’s latest draconian decree,” she stated. “However, I’m all for any move that will screw over the settlers. Oh, how I loathe those little Eichmanns!”

Her religiously secular “companion,” Eynet (insert Ashkenazi surname) agrees. “I don’t believe in G-d, but if I did, I’d pray for Him to kill off those settler heathen in the most gruesome manner possible,” she callously proclaimed.

The UK press is on the Jihadist case

An interesting byproduct of the London terror bombings is the British press' willingness to unflinchingly look at the radical terrorist Islamist subculture in their midst. I do not remember any similar actions by the mainstream US press after 9/11 - it appears that the PC crowd is much stronger in US media compared to the British media. I cannot imagine the New York Times having written something like this in late 2001.

AN ISLAMIC scholar who loathes Western values is advocating “physical jihad” in the Yorkshire home town of one of the London suicide bombers.

While Tony Blair and leaders of Britain’s Muslims were condemning extremism at their Downing Street summit, Mufti Zubair Dudha explained why British foreign policy led directly to the 7/7 atrocities. Mr Dudha, 29, teaches primary school children, teenagers and young adults at his Islamic Tarbiyah academy in Dewsbury.

He condemned the London atrocities and signed the Sunni Muslim fatwa against suicide bombings, but he is also an advocate of jihad. In his foreword to a 1996 translation of a pamphlet by one of his mentors, entitled Jihaad, Mr Dudha wrote: “Today many of us are misled into believing that in our times jihad of the sword is not warranted. Most definitely physical jihad is, and will be needed to a large extent.”

Later he added: “Besides the jihad of the pen and tongue, the Muslim ummah [nation] cannot be exempted from physical jihad. No learned person and no true Muslim can deny the benefits, fruits and blessings of physical jihad for the course of Allah.” One chapter title in the book is: “Preparing for Jihad and obtaining warfare equipment is also compulsory.”"

Is the "Jordanian Option" still alive?

This is an interesting article about recent closer ties between Jordan and the (West Bank) Palestinians, raising the question of what role Jordan can play in an ultimate peace treaty.

It may be a bit too premature and optimistic to think about something like this but it is an intriguing read. I would guess that a huge majority of Israelis who would prefer Jordan taking care of security rather than the ineffectual and doomed Abbas.

The capitalist Gaza tunnel subculture

Although this long article has the usual British fawning over Palestinian Arab terrorists, it is an excellent piece of investigative journalism that reveals the real motivation for tunnel-building between Gaza and rafah: pure profit, and lots of it.

It is ironic that these are the high-minded ideals that Rachel Corrie "martyred" herself for - so that some Arabs can make hundreds of thousands of dollars off of other Arabs.

Excerpt:

But a chance conversation resulted in my living in Rafah for a week with the "tunnel people". It was like discovering a lost tribe in a city I had been visiting for 15 years. I found an extraordinary, secret tunnel culture known only to a few Palestinians. The tunnel people told me they originally smuggled in contraband drugs, women, cigarettes (5 shekels in Egypt, 12 shekels in Gaza), and even the python that still slithers around in the Rafah zoo, and the ostrich that escaped during the May 2004 Israeli incursion, to the great glee of Rafah kids, who rode bareback on the big bird until the zookeepers recaptured him. Since the second intifada began five years ago, however, the tunnellers have mostly smuggled weapons.

The profits are huge. A Kalashnikov sells for $200 on the Egyptian side, but fetches $2,000 on the Gaza black market. A good night's delivery is 1,200 Kalashnikovs — a profit of more than $2m. Bullets — 50 cents in Egypt, $8 wholesale in Gaza — are even more profitable. A standard one-night delivery returns a profit of $750,000. The tunnels are financed by wealthy families — locals call them the "snakeheads" — who run the tunnels as businesses. They rent the passage to anyone who pays $10,000 for one night's use — a gun dealer, Hamas or Islamic Jihad, the militant Islamic fundamentalist groups, or a man who can't get his wife legally into Gaza. Cash is the currency, not politics, patriotism or sentimentality.

They rent, build or buy a house, even an entire farm, just to disguise a tunnel's "eye", as they call the entrance. The gun dealers are their biggest clients. "We call them blood dealers," said Abu Sibah, 36, the bearded head of a rogue Palestinian militia in Al-Bureij refugee camp north of Rafah, outside a car mechanics' shop where he had stored his latest shipment of Kalashnikovs and a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). "But there is nothing to do about them. We depend on the tunnels for guns." He was particularly proud of the shiny black Belgian revolver in his belt — at $3,000, a special order. It was to this world that Nadr Keshta turned for the money to marry.

His relatives were in the tunnel business and he heard a "big project" was about to start. He signed on with a group of eight young men, all relatives. In the tunnels there is a hierarchy: those not related to the patron work for $100 a day as diggers, while those who are relatives get a share of the profit in return for their labour, a much better deal. When the tunnel is finished they are entitled to a percentage on every load that passes through it.

Obligatory Harry Potter review (no spoilers)

I had ordered 2 Harry Potter books from Amazon for my two kids, to avoid their fighting over it. And, sure enough, the books arrived on Shabbos, right on time.

But I didn't figure on being on a business trip this week. So I had to buy a third Half-Blood Prince at the airport just to make sure that I would get to read it this week.

The book breaks the successful but tired formula of the other books, where Harry and his pals try to interpret events based on incomplete information and therefore get themselves in trouble, with the final hundred pages dedicated to explaining how all the pieces fit together. In fact, this book contains surprisingly little action until the last few chapters; most of it fills in the backstory of Voldemort.

It is also interesting to see how Harry is far more confident then he was in Book 5, and has less self-pity. He speaks to adults in positions of power as equals, and in the case of the new Minister of Magic, he is dismissive.

Much of the book concerns the romantic entanglements of the main characters, and the maturity that Harry shows in dealing with the adult world is understandably missing in his interactions with girls. There are amusing riffs on how public displays of affection can alienate bystanders, as well as the games people play to make the objects of their affections jealous.

A couple of ethical issues were dealt with very well, if only in passing. One of the troubling things about Book 5 was the seeming loss of Harry's free will; the Prophecy seemed to foretell his future and place him in a position of having no choice but to go towards his pre-ordained destiny. Dumbledore neatly shows Harry that this is not true.

Another lesson from Dumbledore that I found interesting was his insistence on being polite even to those who clearly do not deserve such consideration. Manners are not optional.

As the next-to-last book in the series, it has to set up the final volume, leaving us feeling that it ends in the middle of the story. This can't be avoided, just as the death of a major character couldn't be avoided, to bring the series to its final battle in Book 7.

Altogether, it is a satisfying read and aimed at an older audience than the earlier books. The book also managed to shake up our comfortable ideas of how each installment would be - it is not altogether clear that the majority of Book 7 will even take place at Hogwart's. The fact that we can still be surprised after we know the series so well is a testament to Rowling's skill.

"They're evil and I hate them"

Oh my G-d, I can’t deal with this anymore. I hate them. I hate them. They’re evil and I hate them.

Maybe I’m dumb. But I just don’t get it. Why are they still shelling us? The explanation has always been because we’re in their territory. We’ve moved into their homes and they want us to get out, so they try to kill us. But we’re freaken LEAVING. The government has decided to evacuate every single Jew by force from the entire Gaza strip. SO WHY DO THEY STILL WANT TO KILL US? What explanation can be provided now? Since Thursday night, the shelling has not let up. We came home at 2:00 a.m. to find our guests at the kitchen table, pale and frightened. The woman had awakened to the sound of nearby explosions. We explained that it was nothing, that they were always sending mortars, that the roof of the house was reinforced and protected.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Mirty.

Palestinian TV calls for genocide against infidels

It is funny that no matter how many times Palestinian-controlled TV broadcasts the most vicious hatred, the most vile bigotry, the most intolerant ideas - yet most Westerners choose to willfully ignore the plain facts that a Palestinian state would be a criminal terror state that would be used as a launchpad to further destroy Western civilization. The tolerant, civilized, liberal Westerners who want a Palestinian state are the desired victims of mass murder espoused by a significant number of potential members of that same state.

No, it is easier to close our eyes and pretend that a Palestinian state would bring peace. The truth is so much more uncomfortable, it is simpler to look for the easy solution where it appears only Israel would have to pay.

Less than 24 hours after the July 7 terrorist bombings in London, a Palestinian Authority Television sermon called for the extermination of every single Infidel:

'Annihilate the Infidels and the Polytheists! Your [i.e. Allah's] enemies are the enemies of the religion! Allah, disperse their gathering and break up their unity, and turn on them, the evil adversities. Allah, count them and kill them to the last one, and don't leave even one.'
[Suleiman Al-Satari, PA TV, July 8, 2005.]

This call for the genocide of all Infidels is particularly striking coming as Britain was still reeling from the London terror attacks - especially since PA religious usage routinely includes Britain in the 'Infidel' category. [See examples below.] (not in this excerpt - EoZ)

Such a call does not represent a new policy - or even a shift in policy. While the PA is careful to exclude this hate ideology from the image it presents to the foreign media, to its own people in Arabic the PA has always presented itself as part of a greater Arab-Islamic conflict against the West. This enmity is focused primarily on the US and Britain, who are seen as the dominant forces of Western civilization. This enmity is neither time nor event dependent, but is presented as part of Allah's plan. The ultimate victory is predetermined, Palestinians are taught, and Islam will eventually rule over America and Britain.

This representation of current affairs as an Islamic-Western religious conflict is of particular significance given the overwhelming religious sentiment in PA society. In a recent poll, 69% of Palestinians preferred that the PA follow the Shari'a - Islamic religious law, while only 16% preferred laws passed by their own Palestinian Legislature. Another 11% wanted both. [Palestinian Center for Research and Cultural Dialogue, March 3, 2005]"

1936: Arab incitement, terror, "condemnation." Repeat.

In 1936, the Arabs of Palestine and neighboring areas intensified their campaign of incitement against Jews moving into Palestine, with the usual lies about Jewish threats to Muslim holy places:



This incitement culminated in a series of murderous terror attacks against Jews by the Arabs in Palestine. Fatal shootings and bombings were everyday occurrences, with the victims invariably innocent civilians.

One particularly horrific day in Jaffa had two Jewish nurses murdered, with a third woman murdered as well while acting as a lookout. In the days surrounding these murders a 7-year old boy was blown up with an Arab bomb, a Jewish college student was shot and killed, a Jewish telephone repairman was murdered, a Jewish taxi driver was shot to death.

This was a few weeks into the Arab terror spree, and the world pretty much ignored Arabs murdering Jews. But the murder of the nurses touched a nerve and there was a measure of worldwide outrage towards this disgusting act of terrorism. So much so, that even an Arab organization decried the murders, as the Palestine Post opinion page that follows shows.

But then, as now, the "condemnation" of terror was hollow, and the Post pointed out the hypocrisy of denouncing a specific act of terror while not bothering to call for an end to the incitement and terror that preceded it.



So, just like today, we have Palestinian Arab leaders who incite their people to murder Jews, who whip up their people into a Jew-hating frenzy, who use their media and their mosques to broadcast the most hateful kinds of bigotry - and then who dutifully parrot their "condemnation" at any murders that occur in the wake of their agitation and who do nothing to stop the terror from continuing.

Cross-posted to Palestine Post-ings.

"Some of my best friends are terrorists" - Reuters finds them hilarious

Those terror-supporters (sorry, militant-supporters) at Reuters sure know how to tickle the funny bone - and especially how to get yuks from their colleagues at the BBC, ITN, other "news" outlets. Jew-killing hasn't been this hilarious since Goebbels called the yellow star "humane."

I can't wait for the side-splitting London bombing videos that will be shown at responsible journalists' parties. Hell, it looks like Reuters can round up those murderers faster than the British police can - they probably have them on speed-dial.

Top terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi made a “guest appearance” in a video prepared by the staff of Reuters news agency in Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a “going away” gift for a colleague, Ynetnews has learned.

Zubeidi, who heads Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin, has been named by security officials as a key figure in organizing terror attacks on Israeli civilians.

Zubeidi’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have claimed responsibility for more than 300 terror acts in the last five years.

A Reuters spokeswoman confirmed the video’s existence, but said the London-based news organization is “not associated with any group or faction in any conflict.”

The screening, which occurred in a Jerusalem restaurant last March, involved the showing of a video during a private party.

'The video's theme was what Israel would be like in 10 years,' said an Israeli government official who attended the party and viewed the video.

'All of a sudden, at the end, there is Zakaria Zubeidi, playing the head of Reuters. Zubeidi was sitting in Reuters' Jenin office, saying he was Reuters’ chief,” the official said.

The party included guests from the BBC, ITN, the Independent newspaper, and French journalists.

'They all thought the video was hilarious,' the official said. He added that only a few individuals did not seem amused during the screening.

'They were laughing; they thought it was very funny, he said.”

Hat tip to Backspin:

November 1933: Arabs use Koran for political purposes

In 1933, the Palestinian Arabs wanted to pressure the British not to allow Jews to immigrate to the area. They chose to use mass demonstrations, as a follow-up to the 1929 riots. The British didn't want to see a repeat of 1929 and made such demonstrations illegal. The Arabs held them anyway, in Jerusalem and Jaffa, and there were a number of injuries that were greatly exaggerated by Arab newspapers.

Anyway, as the following article shows, a month later the Arabs used Islam as an excuse to have the demonstrations. They claimed that Britain, by making their anti-Jewish demonstrations illegal, was infringing on their religious freedom! And they were using Western standards of "freedom of religion" to push their own purely political (and, incidently, bigoted) agenda!

This is perhaps one of the first times that Arabs who despise Western ideals used those same ideals as weapons against the West.

Things have not changed much since 1933.



Cross-posted to Palestine Post-ings.

Reuters' editorial quality shines through

Apparently, Reuters in England doesn't know English. Either that, or pieces of land have turned murderous.

Here was the headline:

Gaza kills Israeli woman, Palestinians clash

I guess it was just too hard for the "news" agency to say that Palestinians killed an Israeli.

NYT cluelessness

A jaw-dropper:

LEEDS, England, July 13 - In the gritty, working-class suburbs of Leeds, Shahzad Tanweer, 22, was the fun-loving, rich kid of the neighborhood, the son of a savvy, Mercedes-driving shop owner.

Hasib Hussain, 18, who lived nearby, was the impressionable one, a charming young man who had been drifting into a reckless teenage life until religion set him straight.

And Mohamed Sadique Khan, 30, was the grown-up one, with a wife and a baby daughter at home. The three men used to work out together at the Hardy Street mosque in Beeston, the Leeds neighborhood that two of the suspects called home.

As the identities of these suicide bombing suspects slowly emerged Wednesday behind a thicket of disbelief, the question that nobody in these neighborhoods could answer was this: What kind of radical force threw the three men together, with another bomber, to commit such a heinous crime against their country, the one they rooted for in soccer matches, and their people?

Obviously it couldn't have been the religion that set them straight, could it?

45% of terror attacks during "lull" from Fatah

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center publishes a bi-weekly review of all Palestinian terror attacks since the "cease-fire" was announced. Here was an interesting statistic: Mahmoud Abbas' own Fatah organization was responsible for far more terror attacks than Islamic Jihad or Hamas.

So, which is it: that he cannot control the "militants," or that he doesn't want to? After all - these guys are on his payroll. This shows yet another lie of his, that somehow by paying the terrorists to be "policement" they would stop their attacks.

Distribution of total terrorist attacks perpetrated since the
Sharm el-Sheikh summit by terrorist organization
(estimate based on claims of responsibility)

Every rabbi has his price

Working late nights and browsing JBlogs I came across this at mentalblog in between the GoogleAds for Jews for Jesus and Third Temple supporters:



(Apologies for diappointing those who thought I was writing an article showing how all rabbis of persuasion X are hypocritical scum. There are plenty of other blogs for that.)

Why Muslim leaders don't truly condemn Islamic terrorism

In the aftermath of the London bombings there have been a number of excellent articles in the British press that take an honest look at the role of Islam in modern terrorism. This long one is also excellent, and although he parrots the "tiny minority of extremists" line, the author raises some very good points. Here is an excerpt:

There seem to be two broad reasons why many Muslim leaders appear unable or unwilling to break absolutely with the teachings that give cover to violence. The first is that their religion is much more literal and much more political than modern Christianity. Its Prophet was a political and military leader.

The faith Mohammed taught does not just hope that the world will become Muslim. It wants all human society and politics to be governed by religious law: it draws no distinction between the secular and religious sphere (except to condemn the secular). Therefore, Muslim leaders find it very difficult to resist the hotheads who say that Sharia - the divine law - should be imposed wherever possible.

In addition, the religion is absolute in its attitude to particular bits of territory. It is forbidden, for example, that any other religion be practised in the Arabian peninsula, because that land is considered sacred to Islam. Therefore, it is hard for a "moderate" to oppose the second-class citizenship of Christians or Jews in Muslim lands, or to say that "infidels" fighting in Muslim countries should not be murdered - even when they are his fellow citizens in a Western country.

When someone like bin Laden says that Islam should confront the "Cross-worshippers" and the "Zionists", he is making a claim in which politics and religion dangerously reinforce one another - a claim which most Muslims might not like, but which most of their leaders cannot find quite the right words to resist.

The second reason is that the leaders are frightened. In private conversations with the moderates, one is always told that they are under "enormous pressure", that they risk losing control of their own people, and therefore they cannot say very fierce things against the extremists. One must accept that this pressure exists, which only goes to show how serious the problem is.

The Bishop of Stepney, say, would not have to look over his shoulder before he dared to condemn Christian suicide bombers (if there were any). But if his friend Mohammed Abdul Bari wants to condemn Muslim ones in Israel, then his life - or certainly his career - might be threatened.

The Jews (Michael Ledeen, National Review Online)

An interesting article on British anti-semitism's role in the proliferation of terrorists in the UK.

It was widely noted, most passionately by the Iraqi blogger Hammorabi, that when Tony Blair reminded the House of Commons that many countries had been scourged by the terrorists in recent years, he omitted Iraq from the list. His speechwriters had Iraq in a different part of their database; Iraqis weren't victims of terrorism in the same way as Brits, Americans, Kenyans, and Indonesians. One's instinct is to let it go as an oversight, but there was another country missing from the list, and this case was somewhat less widely noted: Israel. And at this point, one is forced to do some thinking. What do these two countries have in common, that they should both be ignored in the British government's response to the London attacks?

Fake Palestinian terror "condemnation" #1473

Yet again, the Palestinians attack and kill Jewish civilians in a terror attack.

Yet again, the head fo the PA pretends to "condemn" the attack - but a closer look at his words shows that he has no moral qualms with Jews being blown up, it's just that it was done at the wrong time.

And yet again, the world media prints this "condemnation" as if the head of the PA is anything less than a pathological, habitual liar.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday condemned a suicide bombing that killed two Israeli women in a seaside city hours earlier, using unusually strong language.

'We condemn this terrorist attack. It's a crime against the Palestinian people,' he said. 'Those traitors are working against the Palestinian interest. There is no rational man who can do those things on the eve of the Israeli withdrawal from 22 settlements,' Abbas said.

'They did a stupid thing that they should be punished for,' he told reporters."

Sometimes you need to believe Al Qaeda

After every major terror attack, pundits try to come up with reasons that Al Qaeda decided to choose this place, this time, this date; they try to relate the bombings to other recent world events like Iraq or "Zionist aggression,", and in general they try to make it appear like it has a semi-rational cause.

Here is a reminder for everyone. The following is the entire text of the fatwa that Bin Laden and his pals issued in 1998, who they issued it against ("Jews and Crusaders"), and their deranged "reasons." It is a blueprint for worldwide Jihad that "explains" the London bombings as well as every other Al Qaeda terror attack since then. It shows that nothing will stop them besides their utter destruction.

Keep in mind that if the "tiny minority" of Muslims who take this fatwa seriously is "only" 10%, that is still a hundred million potential Jihadis worldwide.

And in fact, the number of Muslims who support Bin Laden is significantly higher than 10% in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco, Jordan, - and even one third of Muslim Americans think that the US is engaged in a "war on Islam," which is Bin Laden's entire justification for his fatwa. And of course, those somewhat sympathetic to Bin Laden are a much higher percentage, ensuring that Islam will not solve the problem of genocidal terrorist Islamists in the foreseeable future.

Isn't it time that the West takes these explicit threats at face value rather than continually try to spin the unspinnable? The battle lines have been drawn since 1998 and the war is now seven years old. Too bad most of the West doesn't realize it, even today.

Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders

World Islamic Front Statement

23 February 1998 Shaykh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin
Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt
Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group
Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan
Fazlur Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh

Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.

The Arabian Peninsula has never -- since Allah made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas -- been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter. No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al-Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: "As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."

On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah." This is in addition to the words of Almighty Allah: "And why should ye not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -- women and children, whose cry is: 'Our Lord, rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from thee one who will help!'"

We -- with Allah's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.

Almighty Allah said: "O ye who believe, give your response to Allah and His Apostle, when He calleth you to that which will give you life. And know that Allah cometh between a man and his heart, and that it is He to whom ye shall all be gathered."

Almighty Allah also says: "O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For Allah hath power over all things."

Almighty Allah also says: "So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith."

The Mufti and the Arab refugees

I've been looking through the pages of the Palestine Post to find contemporaneous information about the Arab refugees from Palestine. There are many articles about the issue, I touched upon it specifically for the Arabs of Haifa over here.

Among Zionists, it is an article of faith that the Arab leaders encouraged Palestinian Arabs to leave, and far more left from the urging and rumors caused by Arabs than from anything the Jews did. In the future I hope to put together an article of the number of times that Jews encouraged Palestinian Arabs to stay where they were.

It becomes apparent upon researching the issue that there were a specific set of Arab leaders who consistently encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to flee, but not the entire Arab world - especially not the leaders of Arab countries who were expected to host these thousands of undesirables. It was, in fact, the members of the Arab Higher Committee, which was led by the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, who consistently led the Palestinian Arabs to ruin because of their own narrow political goals. And the Arabs at the time, especially the Palestinian Arabs, knew this quite well.

First, here are the players' positions on the refugee issue in August, 1948:


Now, here is a good analysis of the Mufti's position and motives:


So the Mufti and the Arab Higher Committee once again showed that their interests lied not in their people but only in their own power. Today's Palestinian leadership, from Arafat to Abbas, has shown remarkably similar characteristics. Reading the vitriol from the Mufti in the 40's it is striking how similar it is to the same idiocy spewed out today, and how little it has to do with bettering the lives of actual Palestinian Arabs.

Which was well-known even in 1941 when the Mufti was partying with his pal Adolf: (December 31, 1941)

Crossposted to Palestine Post-ings.

Operation Divest Terror

The website is a little shrill but the idea makes sense. If the many anti-Israel divestment campaigns gain so much traction, shouldn't anti-terror divestment campaigns work as well? The fact is that in the end, it is Western money that funds terror through various investments in countries that support terror either explicitly or implicitly.

And here is a link to the only terror-free mutual fund there is.

The Islamist fifth column in England

Great and scary article in the CSM. Excerpts:

Since the bombings, the media and Muslims have been at pains to explain that most of the country's 2 million Muslims are peaceful. "The Muslim community in Britain has a long history and is enormously diverse," says Anas al-Tikriti, a member of the Muslim Association of Britain.

But the attacks are turning attention to the increasing numbers of young British Muslims (hundreds of thousands? -EoZ) who are rejecting their parents' traditional culture in favor of a radical and expansionist Islam. This strikingly Western version of Islam combines an independence of thought with a contempt for established traditional scholarship and a theme of teenage rebellion.

"Getting involved in radical Islam is an emotional thing rather than a rational decision," says Abdul-Rahman al-Helbawi, a Muslim prayer leader. "And it's not a matter of intelligence or education - a lot of these radicals in Britain are very well-educated."

In Dalston market in north-east London on Thursday, "Abdullah," a Muslim watch-mender and evangelist, was in a pugnacious mood.

"We don't need to fight. We are taking over!" he said. "We are here to bring civilization to the West. England does not belong to the English people, it belongs to God."

Hours after the bombings, Helbawi logged onto an Internet chat room run by British Muslim extremists. "They were all congratulating each other on the attacks," he said. "It was crazy. They were talking about how they had won a great victory over the infidels, as if they had just come back from a battle."

Although so far, there is no evidence that British Muslims were involved in the bombs, there is little doubt that many British Muslims feel that Britain "deserved" the attacks for supporting the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The hypocrisy of Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi

Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and the head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, told www.islamonline.net [9] that he condemned the bombings in London: "We were dumbfounded by the grave news which surprised us, and all the world today, about the bombings that took place in the city of London, that killed dozens and wounded hundreds of innocent people who attacked no one and had committed no crime to remove the immunity of their blood."

Al-Qaradhawi described the bombings as "cruel and barbaric black actions that Islam harshly condemns." He also said, "[Even] In an official war, when state armies battle face to face, Islam does not permit the killing of women, children, elders, priests, farmers and merchants, and those like them, who are non-combatants, and whom nowadays we call civilians."

Al-Qaradhawi offered his condolences to the families of the victims, and sent a special letter of condolence to the mayor of London, which stated: "We express our condolences to our dear friend, London Mayor Ken Livingstone, a man of justice who always defends Arab and Muslim causes."
------------------
And concerning other types of attacks against civilians, he says:
------------------

SHEIKH YUSEF AL-QARADAWI
(Qatar University)
TRANSLATION:
It's not suicide, it is martyrdom in the name of God, Islamic theologians and jurisprudents have debated this issue. Referring to it as a form of jihad, under the title of jeopardising the life of the mujahideen. It is allowed to jeopardise your soul and cross the path of the enemy and be killed.

MARSHALL:
In the mind of Sheikh Yusuf Al- Qaradawi, that view prevails even though women and children are often the innocent victims.

SHEIKH YUSEF AL-QARADAWI
TRANSLATION:
Israeli women are not like women in our society because Israeli women are militarised. Secondly, I consider this type of martyrdom operation as indication of justice of Allah almighty. Allah is just. Through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak what the strong do not possess and that is the ability to turn their bodies into bombs like the Palestinians do.

Haveil Havalim #28 is out, and something about Islamic womens wear

This blog is mentioned in HH for this post.

As usual, it is an excellent collection of articles around the Jewish blogosphere, this time hosted by Soccer Dad.

For the two fans out there that I have, you can submit any articles you think are particularly noteworthy to this page. Unfortunately I haven't had the time recently to post really noteworthy articles, although I thought that this one was a pretty good find.

Another tidbit about Islam courtesy of Daf Yomi: The custom of Arab women covering their faces completely except for their eyes predates Islam by at least a few centuries, as a Mishnah discusses this in BT Shabbos 65A. Which is interesting, at least to me; both because it indicates that wearing a chador is not an Islamic innovation, but the idea is much older than the mid-'70s as is implied by the excellent Amir Taheri. (Re-reading the article he is speaking about a very specific kind of hijab, so he is strictly correct, but the implication that I took from the article was that major face-covering was a newer innovation.)

UK-Sun: Israel not victim of Islamic terror

Thanks to Media Backspin for posting this map in the Sun (UK) of major terror attacks by Islamic terrorists in recent years:


So they do recognize that it is "Islamic" terror. They do recognize that it is a worldwide phenomenon.

But no matter what happens, they will not acknowledge that the hundreds of terror attacks against Israel fit the same definition. Somehow, they still think that terror attacks against Jews in Israel are not terror but a legitimate freedom fighter movement - even though Hamas' and Islamic Jihad's philosophy is indistinguishable from that of Al Qaeda.

Interestingly, synagogues in London are built like fortresses to foil terror attacks. But there is still the cognitive dissonance between Arabs wanting to kill Jews in Britain (bad) and Arabs wanting to kill Jews in Israel (justifiable.)

Genteel Jew-hatred is alive and well in England.

Here's how "moderate" British Muslims were in 2004

From a poll of British Muslims in March, 2004:

Q5. President Bush and Tony Blair have said war against terrorism is not a war against Islam. Do you agree or disagree?
Agree 20%
Disagree 68%
Don't know 12%

Q6. Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat MP said she condemned all forms of violence, but if she had to live in the same situation as a Palestinian she might consider becoming a suicide bomber herself. Do you agree or disagree with her?
Agree 47%
Disagree 43%
Don't know 10%

Q7. Would you regard further attacks by Al Qaeda, or similar organisations on the USA as justified or unjustified?
Justified 13%
Unjustified 73%
Don't know 15%

So we see that over 200,000 British Muslims (out of nearly 1.6 million) think that 9/11 was justified. And many, many more would consider blowing themselves up to kill Jews in Israel.

But they are only a "tiny minority," right?

Tony Blair, idiot

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Saturday it is crucial to address terrorism's underlying causes, which he identified as deprivation, lack of democracy and ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Thursday's bomb attacks on London demonstrate the pressing need for world leaders to tackle problems like poverty, he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. He said leaders had taken on some of those issues at the G-8 summit of the world's wealthy nations in Scotland this week.

'I think this type of terrorism has very deep roots,' Blair said. 'As well as dealing with the consequences of this — trying to protect ourselves as much as any civil society can — you have to try to pull it up by its roots,' he said.

That meant boosting understanding between people of difference religions, helping people in the Middle East see a path to democracy and easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, he said.

Wow. Lockerbie, the USS Cole, the first WTC attack, the Luxor massacre, Bali nightclub, Madrid, Istanbul, Tripoli, and now London - what they have in common is poverty, lack of democracy and the Middle East?

Somehow, I thought that what they had in common was a murderous political ideology aimed at world domination under the name of Islam. Silly me....if only Israel would give up land, none of these attacks would have occurred, according to Mr. Blair.

I guess the fact that much of the incitement to kill Jews comes out of merry old England doesn't bother Tony one bit. We just have to "understand" the murderers better, so they will feel more "fulfilled."

I really, really hope that he was playing politics with this incredibly stupid statement and that he doesn't believe it.

UPDATE:

AL-QAEDA is secretly recruiting affluent, middle-class Muslims in British universities and colleges to carry out terrorist attacks in this country, leaked Whitehall documents reveal.

A network of “extremist recruiters” is circulating on campuses targeting people with “technical and professional qualifications”, particularly engineering and IT degrees.

But I thought the terrorists were poverty-stricken!

Time to wake up, Mr. Blair. The terrorists include people who are smart, technical, and dedicated to wiping out Western civilization. To even imply that Israel is part of the problem is to hand them a big, fat reward for killing scores of Londoners.

UPDATE 2: It seems Blair never said that; it came from the fevered imaginations of the AP.

LONDON - In a July 9 story about Prime Minister
Tony Blair's comments on overcoming global terrorism, The Associated Press erroneously reported that he spoke of easing the conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians. Blair did not specifically mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

We are all infidels

A very nice post in the Is Full of Crap blog.

The world will be a better place when it realizes that we are all in the fight against the same enemy. As long as "enlightened" Westerners try to make hair-splitting distinctions between the murderous intentions of Hamas/Hezbollah/Al Aqsa/Islamic Jihad and the murderous intentions of Al Qaeda, they will not understand the nature of the war that we are in now, one that we didn't declare but that the enemy declared against us centuries ago.

Five op-eds on London

Excerpts from Daily Alert:

British Islamists Threatened Violence - Daniel Pipes
In April 2004, Sayful Islam, head of the Luton branch of Al-Muhajiroun (Arabic: "the immigrants"), an Islamist British group, announced that he supports Osama Bin Laden "100 percent" in the quest to achieve "the worldwide domination of Islam." "When a bomb attack happens here, I won't be against it, even if it kills my own children....But it is against Islam for me to engage personally in acts of terrorism in the UK because I live here."
In an August 2004 story in the New Statesman, "Why Terrorists Love Britain," Jamie Campbell cited Mohamed Sifaoui, author of Inside Al Qaeda, that it has long been recognized by the British Islamists, by the British government, and by UK intelligence agencies that as long as Britain guarantees a degree of freedom to the likes of Hassan Butt [an overtly pro-terrorist Islamist], the terrorist strikes will continue to be planned within the borders of the UK but will not occur there.
But in January 2005, Omar Bakri Mohammed, a Syrian immigrant to the UK who headed Al-Muhajiroun, determined that the covenant of security had ended for British Muslims because of post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation that meant "the whole of Britain has become Dar ul-Harb [the Abode of War, the territory open for Muslim conquest]." Therefore, "the kuffar [unbelievers] has no sanctity for their own life or property." Thursday's explosions mark the end of the "covenant of security."
Let's hope they also mark the end of an era of innocence, and that British authorities now begin to preempt terrorism rather than wait to become its victims. (FrontPageMagazine)

Rules of Conflict for a World War - Efraim Halevi
The multiple, simultaneous explosions that took place on the London transportation system were the work of perpetrators who had an operational capacity of considerable scope. There was careful planning, intelligence gathering, and a sophisticated choice of timing as well as near-perfect execution. We are faced with a deadly and determined adversary who will stop at nothing and will persevere as long as he exists as a fighting terrorist force. We are in the throes of a world war, raging over the entire globe. We are in for the long haul and we must brace ourselves for more that will follow.
The executives must be empowered to act resolutely and to take every measure necessary to protect the citizens of their country and to carry the combat into whatever territory the perpetrators and their temporal and spiritual leaders are inhabiting. The rules of combat must be rapidly adjusted and international law must be rewritten to permit civilization to defend itself. There is no doubt that international cooperation is essential. Yet this cannot replace the requirement that each and every country effectively declare itself at war with international Islamist terror and recruit the public to involve itself actively in the battle. The writer, who heads the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is a former head of the Mossad. (Jerusalem Post)

The Attacks on London - and the Battles to Come - Johann Hari
Anybody who tells you these bombers are fighting for the rights of Muslims in Iraq, Palestine, or Chechnya should look at the places they chose to bomb. Aldgate? The poorest and most Muslim part of the country. Edgware Road? The center of Muslim and Arab life in London and, arguably, Europe. Does anybody need greater evidence that these Islamic fundamentalists despise Muslims who choose to live in free societies, and they would enslave Muslims everywhere if they were given the opportunity? Nor is this tit-for-tat revenge for deaths in Iraq: very similar jihadist plots have been foiled in France and Germany, countries that opposed the invasion. Anybody who doubted that the fight against Islamic fundamentalism - a murderous totalitarian ideology - was always our fight should know better now. (Independent-UK)

And This Is Why They Did It - Amir Taheri
According to witnesses, Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker, who was shot by an Islamist assassin on his way to work in Amsterdam last November, tried to reason with his assailant. "Surely we can discuss this," he kept saying as the shots kept coming. Van Gogh was reacting like BBC reporters did Thursday, assuming that the man who was killing him may have some reasonable demands which could be discussed in a calm, democratic atmosphere. But sorry, old chaps, you are dealing with an enemy that does not want anything specific, and cannot be talked back into reason through anger management or round-table discussions. Or, rather, this enemy does want something specific: to take full control of your lives, dictate every single move you make round the clock and, if you dare resist, he will feel it his divine duty to kill you. (Times-UK)

If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution - Thomas L. Friedman
When jihadist-style bombings happen in Riyadh, that is a Muslim-Muslim problem. That is a police problem for Saudi Arabia. But when al-Qaeda-like bombings come to the London Underground, that becomes a civilizational problem. Every Muslim living in a Western society suddenly becomes a suspect, becomes a potential walking bomb. Either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit, and denounce its own extremists, or the West is going to do it for them.
The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. To this day, no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden. (New York Times)