IRIS Blog

The jihad is global and allied, as this piece by Amir Taheri argues:

While Sunni and Shiite Muslims are divided by deep doctrinal differences, Sunni and Shiite extremists have always been united in their hatred of the U.S., and in their desire to bring it to destruction. The majority of Muslims does not share that hatred. The U.S. is the country most visited by Muslim tourists and it attracts the largest number of Muslim students studying abroad.

And we all know that any Muslim foreign student who chooses to study in America is essentially voting with his feet in philo-Americanism.

But to understand the extremists, it is important to set aside the Sunni-Shiite divide and focus on their common hatred of America.

The suicide attacks that claimed the lives of over 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, in Lebanon in 1983, were joint operations of the Khomeinist Hizbullah and the Marxist Arab Socialist Party, which was linked to the Syrian intelligence services. The Syrian regime is Iran's closest ally, despite the fact that Iranian mullahs regard the Alawite minority that dominates it as heretics.

There are no Palestinian Shiites, yet Tehran has become the principal source of funding for radical Palestinian Sunni groups, notably Hamas, Islamic Jihad and half a dozen leftist-atheist minigroups. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh refuses to pray alongside his Iranian hosts during his visits to Tehran. But when it comes to joining Khomeinist crowds in shouting "Death to America," he is in the forefront.

With Arab oil kingdoms no longer as generous as before, Iran has emerged as the chief source of funding for Hamas. In short, the claim that al-Qaeda and the Khomeinists would not work together because they have theological differences is both naive and dangerous.

The terror groups themselves admit the alliance. One need look no further than the 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas, who recently said:

We (Fatah) had the honor of leading the resistance and we taught resistance to everyone, including Hizbullah, who trained in our military camps.

The State Department conspicuously omitted the Palestinian Authority from its March 13 report on anti-Semitism around the world.

The report did note that Hamas, which rules Gaza, treats the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion as fact, denies the Holocaust, and broadcasts hateful TV shows aimed at children.

But the PA under Mahmoud Abbas, which controls the West Bank, managed to escape blame for the anti-Semitism that it promotes with no less energy.

The American Jewish Committee released a study showing the PA's schoolbooks characterize Jews in "hateful" and "derogatory" language, cite the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a legitimate source of historical information, and omit any mention of the Holocaust.

The State Department report did mention that in the 1990s, Holocaust denial became commonplace in popular media in the PA - without any acknowledgment that most of the "popular media" is government-controlled.

No mention that the leader of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, wrote two books of Holocaust-denial (including his doctoral thesis).

How's this for an Israeli strategy? Erase the old image of Bashar Assad as a terror-supporting Ba'athist dictator who assassinates the leaders of neighboring Lebanon. Replace it with a new one of him as a weak figurehead, captive of powerful political forces within the weak country of Syria. Maybe that will help next time Hizballah Katyushas rain down on Israeli homes:

Prime Minister Olmert has dispatched some 20 messages to Syrian President Assad during the past year to better assess Syria's intentions before the possible resumption of talks between the two countries, according to a senior minister in Israel's security-political cabinet. But Assad's responses did not meet Israeli expectations and Olmert believes that at this time it is not possible to initiate negotiations with Syria. Most efforts for contact with Syria were made through Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, but also through others, including U.S. congressmen and various European officials.

"Each one of the envoys returned from Damascus with empty hands," the minister said. "The sense was that Assad is captive in the hands of senior figures of the Syrian regime who are opposed to talks with Israel and are not interested in breaking off the alliance with Iran....

"Syria is a weak country with many problems, but under certain conditions Israel will be willing to open the door to it," Barak added."

The solution is obvious. Clearly not enough peace messages have yet been sent.

The only explanation for this story is that the truly moderate PA must be feigning cooperation with terror in order to gain credibility with extremists:

Israel recently authorized the deployment of 500 PA police in Nablus. According to a report that reached Defense Minister Barak, these forces are working in coordination with local terrorists.

The terrorists neutralize the bombs they have prepared when the PA police enter the Casbah, and hook them up again when they leave.

Authorizing the entry of 500 more PA security officers was a concession to Condaleeza Rice. Today's news is that US 'Very Surprised' at Extent of Israeli Concessions.

Despite the widespread condemnation of the "anti-Islamic" movie "Fitna," it essentially shows Islamists exactly as they portray themselves, a fact noted by one well-known jihad-supporter:

Omar Bakri, the Libyan-based radical Muslim cleric who is barred from Britain, did not think the film was very offensive. "On the contrary, if we leave out the first images and the sound of the page being torn, it could be a film by the [Islamist] Mujahideen," he said.

Here is an Iraqi television clip of a shariah expert defending the right of middle-aged men to marry girls beneath the age of ten:

Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-’Ubeidi: There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law....In some Islamic countries, the age of maturity can be 8 or 10 years....

Many criminals, the enemies of Islam, ask: “How could the Prophet Muhammad, at 52 years of age, marry ‘Aisha when she was only 8 years old, and consummate the marriage when she was 9 years old?” I say to them: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Why do you permit your young girls to fornicate? They consider it one of their liberties. Therefore, in these stupid countries, you rarely find girls aged 10 or 12 who are still virgins.

Many of Islam's commandments were taken directly from Judaism (like the prohibition of eating pork, circumcision, fasting and the facing of a holy city during prayer). One principle Islam clearly did not appropriate is the principle that it is forbidden to do a mitzvah at someone else's expense:

A Muslim bus driver told stunned passengers to get off so he could pray.

The white Islamic convert rolled out his prayer mat in the aisle and knelt on the floor facing Mecca.

Passengers watched in amazement as he held out his palms towards the sky, bowed his head and began to chant.

One, who filmed the man on his mobile phone, said: “He was clearly praying and chanting in Arabic.

“We thought it was a wind-up at first, like Jeremy Beadle.”

Jeremy Beadle was a UK televsion personality with a flair for practical jokes.

The 21-year-old plumber added: “He looked English and had a London accent. He looked like a Muslim convert, with a big, bushy beard.

“Eventually everyone started complaining. One woman said, ‘What the hell are you doing? I’m going to be late for work’.”

After a few minutes the driver calmly got up, opened the doors and asked everyone back on board.

But they saw a rucksack lying on the floor of the red single-decker and feared he might be a fanatic. So they all refused.

The passenger added: “One chap said, ‘I’m not getting on there now’.

“An elderly couple also looked really confused and worried.

“After seeing that no-one wanted to get on he drove off and we all waited until the next bus came about 20 minutes later. I was left totally stunned. It made me not want to get on a bus again.”

The bizarre event unfolded on the number 81 in Langley, Berkshire, at around 1.30pm on Thursday.

The passenger said he rang the bus firm to complain but claimed it did not believe him.

He said: “They asked me, ‘Are you sure?’. Then they said they would get back to me, but they weren’t taking me seriously at all.”

Yesterday the driver, who said his name was Hrun, told The Sun: “I asked everyone to get off because I needed to pray. I was running late and had not had time.

“I pray five times a day as a Muslim — but I don’t normally ask people to get off the bus to do it.”

LiveLink has removed the movie 'Fitna' in the wake of death threats. There are many versions now available on YouTube, however, at least until YouTube employees start getting death threats of their own.

See any similarity of this quote with the condemnations by Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders of terror attacks as "harming Palestinian interests?"

"Our call to Muslims abroad is follow our strategy and don't frustrate it with any violent incidents," Mohammed Rabbae, a Dutch Moroccan leader, told journalists in an Amsterdam mosque.

My favorite quote was from the spokesman for the Indonesian Foreign Ministry: "We call on Indonesian people not to be incited" by this "insult to Islam." Not "don't attack people because it's wrong," just try not to be incited.

Unfortunately, because the quasi-socialist Israeli government has a finger in every pot, there never seems to be enough money left for life-saving projects like actually finishing the fence:

Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shalah told the Qatari newspaper Al-Sharq on March 23 that rocket fire had replaced suicide bombing attacks because Israel had found ways to protect itself from such attacks.

"For example, they built a separation fence in the West Bank. We do not deny that it limits the ability of the resistance to arrive deep within [Israeli territory] to carry out suicide bombing attacks."

Here is the much-anticipated movie, predicted to cause rioting deaths worldwide.

The FBI is now involved in the theft of a car after it was found in Los Lunas with an explosive device and Iraqi currency inside FBI agents say that they have ruled out terrorism.

The car was reported stolen last week. After the theft, the car’s owner was fueling his motorcycle when he spotted his stolen car....

The car’s owner pulled the keys out of the ignition of his stolen car and the people in the car fled.

When police arrived, they found the explosive device and less than $1,000 worth of Iraqi cash.

“We don’t know what their intentions were,” said Nuanes. “We don’t know what they were planning on doing with any of this.”

The mass denial of the threat of the Global Jihad is partly due to left-wind media bias and partially because of Stockholm Syndrome. That is a psychological phenomenon in which a hostage copes with intense fear of being killed by imagining virtues in the ideology of one's captors.

Most objective outsiders understand that if the scales of power were reversed in Israel, for example, the jihadists would immediately implement their goal of genocide. Similarly, many Westerners fool themselves into believing that Islamists could be appeased with Israel only.

Remember the old joke about the definition of chutzpa? A young man who murdered his parents then sought mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.

This story is quite similar:

The Haifa District Court on Wednesday sentenced two brothers to life in prison for murdering their sister in what was termed an "honor killing."

The two brothers, 40-year-old Anwar Salameh and Hassan Salameh, 37, were convicted of conspiring to commit a crime, kidnapping with intent to murder, and premeditated murder.

The murder occurred in December 2005, when the victim was 21. The two defendants, residents of the village of Mrar, conspired to kill their sister after they discovered she had a secret romantic relationship, defying them. They viewed their sister's behavior as harming the family's honor and consequently planned to convince her to join them on a trip somewhere and then kill her.

The two arrived at their parent's home in a car belonging to the older brother and convinced their sister to join them to "go to her lover to work out their relationship." The sister was convinced and joined her brothers on the trip. However, during the ride, the defendants veered from the route into the woods near Mrar.

The two brothers locked the doors of the vehicle and closed the windows to prevent their sister's escape. Then they proceeded to strangle her with their hands. The later removed the victim's body from the car, confirmed that she was in fact dead, taped her nose and mouth with duct tape and placed the body in a ditch nearby. They then covered her upper body with dirt.

Anwar Salameh said to the judges that "the penalty is a little severe for us; we received a very serious punishment. I ask you to take into consideration our situation? My family is bereaved."

The Muslim attackers are described as "Asians" in the UK media's attempt to cover up evidence of a problem:

Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, was injured by two Asian youths at the church, in Tower Hamlets, east London.

Canon Ainsworth said a third youth watched as he suffered cuts, bruises and black eyes in the assault at the church of St George-in-the-East.

The youths also jeered at the priest for being a churchman in the attack on Wednesday night, the Met Police said.

When Muslim apologists claim that "there are extremists in all religions," consider that it is likely that no comparable incident has ever been perpetrated by Jews. Why might that be?

Barack Obama is trying to distance himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who has delivered anti-Semitic and anti-American sermons in Obama's church.

Here is some evidence to the contrary, from an extensive article in Rolling Stone:

The senator “affirmed” his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a “sounding board” to “make sure I’m not losing myself in the hype and hoopla.” Both the title of Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright’s sermons. “If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from,” says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, “just look at Jeremiah Wright.”

Here is more:

Mr. Wright is one of the first people Mr. Obama thanked after his election to the Senate in 2004. Mr. Obama consulted Mr. Wright before deciding to run for president. He prayed privately with Mr. Wright before announcing his candidacy last year.

In Rhode Island, the home of a Jewish Agency envoy was firebombed:

A Molotov cocktail was thrown Saturday into the home of a Jewish Agency envoy residing in Rhode Island in the north-eastern United States. The envoy, who was home at the time, was immediately evacuated to a nearby hotel following the incident.

The incident took place at 2 am (local US time) when a Molotov cocktail was throw through the living room window of the envoy’s apartment. He was in a different room at the time, and was therefore not injured. The Molotov cocktail set a nearby yard on fire, but firefighters dispatched to the scene easily extinguished the flames.

The FBI as well as local Rhode Island police personnel are investigating the incident. This is the first time that a Jewish Agency envoy is attacked in this fashion.

Meanwhile, those who spoke out against a notorious Islamist imam in Canada are under fire:

Several Muslims say their lives are at risk because they dared speak out in what has become an ongoing dispute in their community. Yesterday, one of the people claiming to be victims of ongoing violent attacks, Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed, watched in horror as a car pulled up outside his Panatella Blvd. N.W. home and a man armed with a jerrycan and booze bottle got out, scaled the fence and set his home ablaze as seven children and three other adults slept.

Hours earlier, Ahmed had called 911 after two threatening men came to the door.

"I was so upset," said Ahmed, adding that's why he was still awake at about 4 a.m. when he saw the stranger set his home on fire.

"Within two minutes, we had a big fire," he said.

"We have a fear of death."

Arson Det. Scott Sampson said the family was definitely targeted and the fire could easily have been deadly.

The suspects hurled two Molotov cocktails at the home, one which ignited grass and another which bounced off a window, setting the exterior of the house on fire, said Sampson.

"If he wasn't up, the house would have gone up," Sampson said....