From this source, on May 29, 2007:

The victims were stabbed, strangled and burned, according to the documents. The Dhanaks’ Anaheim Hills home was set on fire.

Iftekhar Murtaza was identified by a “victim,” according to police documents presented to the Superior Court.

The motive for the crime appears to be a dispute over religion.

“Information developed revealed the suspect was upset with Shayona’s parents and sister for discontinuing the relationship due to different religious backgrounds, Hindu and Muslim,” the papers said.

The Dhanaks were reported by friends and neighbors to be devout members of the strict Swaminarayan branch of Hinduism. Murtaza is Muslim.

Read the entire article.

This blogger has posted about the above story, here and here. From the second of those postings:

second recent hate crime in america by the beloved ’south asian’ brothers. first one last week was when a sikh boy had his hair chopped off forcibly in new york. second is this.it is clearly a religious hate crime.[…]this is a premedidated and absolutely brutal act of jihad by more than one mohammedan.

MSNBC has published this story on the web. In spite of the family’s financial and legal difficulties,

Anaheim police spokesman Sgt. Rick Martinez said police did not believe the crime to be a murder-suicide.“We’re treating this as a double homicide,” Martinez said.

Not as a hate crime, as was the bacon on the Koran?

According to this source:

…Van Nuys resident Iftekhar Murtaza was arrested by U.S. Marshals at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona, as he was attempting to leave the country.

Murtaza is being called a person of interest in the May 21, 2007, Anaheim murders of 56-year-old Jayprakash Dhanak and 20-year-old Karishima Dhanak, and the assault on 53-year-old Leela Dhanak. Karishima Dhanak was the daughter of Jayprakash and Leela.Leela Dhanak was beaten with a blunt instrument and taken to the hospital. The burned bodies of Jayprakash and Karishima were found later on May 22 on a remote bike path in Irvine.

According to court documents acquired by the Orange County Register, Murtaza was arrested at a Phoenix airport with a one way ticket to Bangladesh. The court documents detail for the first time a motive for the brutal crimes. Murtaza is Muslim. His girlfriend, 18-year-old Shayona Dhanak, younger sister of Karishma and daughter of Jayprakash who were killed are Hindu, according to the OC Register.

Court documents say that the parents and sister pushed Shayona to discontinue her relationship with Murtaza, according to the OC Register.

Witnesses told detectives they saw two people attacking Leela on the front lawn on May 21, and the Dhanak’s Anaheim house was set on fire; the cars in front of the house were also burned.

Details are still developing. Let’s see how much coverage the mainstream media will give the above story, particularly if the crime turns out to have been motivated by the kill-the-infidel ideology of Islam.

In the New English Review, Rebecca Bynum asks about the next steps in fighting Islamisation:

While I agree the more people who are aware of the dangers of Islam, the better, there comes a time when practical political steps must be formulated and implemented. Sue Myrick, a Representative from North Carolina, has already formed a bi-partisan Anti-Jihad Caucus which will undoubtedly begin to propose legislation to combat jihad in all its forms including propaganda, influence buying and demographics as well as terrorism. The time has come, then, for those already properly informed, and therefore alarmed, to begin the work of thinking through the drafting of legislation. We have talked about the problem for a long time. Many citizens are aroused. Robert Spencer’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades alone spent 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, which means it sold tens of thousands of copies. Conservative talk show hosts such as and even some liberal ones, such as Joey Reynolds at WOR in New York have been doing their part to awaken their wide audiences. Now is the time for practical steps – steps to lessen the menace, not to end it (for it will last as long as Islam lasts) to be put forward.

I feel her position is less engaged with moderating Muslim nations than is desirable - for example, with Indonesia. But she offers a clear position and raises the important questions:

It is reasonable for us to define Islam as it defines itself – as a Total System, which includes a well-defined politics; a political system that locates the source of its legitimacy in Islamic doctrine which is believed to be the will of God. Political legitimacy is not found in the will of the people, for those who obey man rather than God are not true Muslims but idolaters. Therefore Islam is openly subversive toward any non-Islamic political system and especially toward democracy which is inherently vulnerable, but can certainly be made less so.

Specifically, the Smith Act of 1940 makes it illegal to:

“knowingly or willingly advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association.”

I believe Islam falls within the Smith Act and should be identified as seditious. But even if there is opposition, the mere discussion of such measures forces those opposed to talk openly about the belief-system of Islam, and what it teaches. That discussion itself is useful, and one which Muslims wish to avoid or evade or suppress. At the very least, particular Imams could be jailed and their sermons banned under existing legislation. Perhaps this would serve to drive Islam underground and more laws may be needed. But this would be a critical start…

Read it all…

Those who care must be kept from knowing… at all costs.The Washington Times today updated its investigative report about Flight 327 (H/T HotAir), where a group of Syrian “musicians” may have conducted a dry-run for a terror act in 2004. According to the  article, the Department of Homeland Security failed to properly investigate when air marshals aboard the flight observed the incident, detained suspects, and filed their report. The initial investigation into DHS’ handling of the situation led to an investigation and a 51 page report, in which all but two sentences were redacted forcing an FOIA request.

An air marshal who told The Washington Times that he has been involved personally in terror probes that were ignored by federal security managers, called such behavior typical.
    ”Agency management was not only covering up numerous probes and dry-run encounters from Congress and other federal law-enforcement agencies, it was also hiding these incidents from their own flying air marshals,” said P. Jeffrey Black, an air marshal stationed in Las Vegas.
    Homeland Security officials initially denied that the complaints and blamed passengers who reported the incident to the press as behaving hysterically. However, the inspector general report shows that air marshals had the group of men under surveillance before they boarded the plane.
    ”Prior to boarding, one of the air marshals noticed what he later characterized as ‘unusual behavior’ by about six Middle Eastern males, who arrived at the gate together, then separated, and acted as if they did not know each other,” the report said.

Sound familiar?

It’s hard to have high hopes about efforts to educate passengers on what signs to look for in the case of a terror attempt when the government’s own trained agents are ignored, and those with the good sense to speak up are hounded into silence.

The Washington Times does have a tiny glimmer of hope however, as police unions across the country come out in support of the transit shield law. Police say they know the importance of citizens willing to speak out when they are suspicious.  I can see where an overabundance of false positives from concerned passengers may be a concern for federal authorities, which is why the CVF has called for a training course for interested citizens, so that they can learn what signs to look for, the same signs which led these Air Marshals back in 2004 for indicate concern. 

But then, it isn’t just the concerned citizen, or the astute Air Marshal which the jihad by lawsuit crowd is looking to dissuade. In the latest CAIR email newsletter, CAIR crows about this Washington Post piece:

 “The Informer: Behind the Scenes, or Setting the Stage”, is the story of a man recruited to report on jihadi activities at NYC mosques. Reports which led to the arrest of a 21 year old Muslim man seeking explosives to destroy a subway tunnel. But its clear from the reporting style what the Washington Post thinks of the man’s undercover service:

He doesn’t get many visitors these days. He is in hiding for his own safety. He has received no direct threats, he says, but has heard through friends of friends that there are those who want to kill him. Nobody likes a snitch.

…he has retreated into a kind of suburban depression. He wears the same black shirt two days in a row, with dark marks of perspiration under the arms. He can’t stop smoking and says he has gained weight. At night, while his wife, Fotna, and daughter Marwa sleep in the master bedroom, he stays up late using the Internet in the second bedroom, trawling for real estate deals or writing to defend himself on a Muslim-themed Web site that calls him an agent provocateur.

He hasn’t been to any mosques since he moved, he says, and prays only a few times a month.

Fotna (his wife), 52, who had a career as a dentist before her marriage, has dark eyes, a lively, humorous way and a take-charge attitude. She tells how last summer the lease on the family’s Pennsylvania apartment was about to run out, and they feared becoming homeless…She moved with Marwa (the daughter) back to Staten Island and left Eldawoody (informer)to his own devices. “He can be homeless — he is a man alone.”

Now, at the checkout line, she talks openly about divorce, but dismisses it.

All italics are mine.  While sting operations have always been the ugly red-head stepchild of law enforcement, with officers, citizens, and civil libertarians all holding certain concerns about them, they remain an important and often effective tool. In fact they remain perhaps one of the few effective tools to combat homegrown jihadis, who without warning or training from overseas groups seek to commit violence against the west. The message being sent by this article is clear. Muslims who want to help their nation by rooting out extremists face death threats, the possible loss of their family, and being ostracised by the rest of the muslim community. In short, they are telling potential cooperators, “Helping your country? Why risk it?” Between John Doe Lawsuits, suppressed DHS reports, and hit pieces like this one, CAIR and their allies are working to finish off any chance of preventing another attack. Their message?

Patriotic Muslims?  See no Evil.

Federal Bureacrats? Hear No Evil.

Concerned Citizens? Speak no Evil.

Ima€ge Credit: River Vices

NoisyRoom.net yesterday pointed to an article in the Pension and Investments Online about an effort in state legislatures to see funds divested from Iran. Some $18 billion dollars, which is no pocket change. The state bills are the target of fund managers who say they have a “fiduciary responsibility,” to get their clients the most for their money, even if it’s dealing with international companies with ties to Iran. Also beating the divestment drum last week was former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who calls for divestment an interview last week with James Taranto of the OpinionJournal: 

“”Because Iran is in desperate need of new investments for its sagging oil industry. It’s curtailed its oil production by 7%, I think, in each of the last three years. It’s running unemployment to a rate of close to 20%, and Ahmadinejad is continuously being criticized from rivals within the regime and outside the regime for failing to deliver on economic problems.”

Is your plan for retirement Iranian-free? Today would be a good day to check and find out. And if it’s not, perhaps call and tell your fund manager that you’d like a future to retire to, something you may not get if we continue to help prop up Iran.

Simply because of the nature of America these days, the House of Representatives is working on a shield law to protect fund managers who divest from Iran, in case there is a financial cost for doing the right thing and the public comes looking for someone to blame. And while these fund managers are looking to fight these divestment bills in the state legislatures right now, they will be onboard if the people tell them that we truly want a terror-free retirement.

The black hated villains in the spaghetti westerns tell the townsfolk, “Give us your money, and nobody get’s hurt.” But the Iranian regime rides into town saying, “Give us your money, AND get hurt.” After 9/11 we were generally told to get back to business, and for the most part we have.  But part of the great joy of a capitalist society is the right to choose with whom to do business. Did you really work all those years, and accumulate well earned retirement pay, to put money in the hands of the Mullahs? Divestment may come with a financial cost to it, but it’s a cost we can bear. Tell your investment broker that you won’t allow a nuclear armed Iran just “for a few dollars more.”

Video to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNGYyXchIwU

This blogger created the above:

http://hammeringsparksfromtheanvil.blogspot.com/2007/05/memorial-day-tribute-video-to-our_28.html

I recommend a practical book for effective execution of international counterjihad strategy - The Struggle Against Radical Islam: A Donor’s Guide, published in December 2006 by the Philanthropy Roundtable. A concise (59 pages) free download, it suggests a framework for large donors to support “efforts to counter the extremist ideology.” One chapter (”Supporting the Forces of Freedom Abroad”) recalls earlier efforts to help allies fight against earlier forms of totalitarian domination:

During the Cold War the United States created a wide-ranging strategy that supported political forces sympathetic to freedom and pluralism around the world. It did so through a range of institutions, some funded by government and others through private entities…The U.S. government provided assistance to groups such as Resistance International, a coalition of resistance groups in communist countries around the world, and also established the National Endowment for Democracy to facilitate contacts among political parties around the world. In short, the United States had a coherent strategy for identifying friendly political forces, understanding the nature and sources of their support, and discerning how America could aid indigenous anti-communist movements…

…For donors, the challenge is to support projects that effectively implement components of a public diplomacy campaign in key regions of the world.

In this global fight against Islamists, similar political resistance movements are emerging in each country. They face greater difficulties than the earlier indigenous anti-communist movements, and they may find the current U.S. State Department opposing them more than supporting them. The need for private donors to support them is great.

But private donors still face the question of how to support the forces of freedom in the war against Islamist extremism. Here are some suggestions.

In any war, we’d prefer to fight on terrain where we have a chance of winning. In this war of ideas we’re fighting against Islamist totalitarianism, we want to fight on terrain where our constitutional laws and values protect us and give us freedom to maneuver - what Sun Tzu in The Art of War calls the “raised and sunny spots.”

But our governments often refuse to admit that they are under an Information War siege, and they refuse to keep and defend that solid constitutional terrain they’ve received as a legacy from earlier generations. Demoralized by political correctness, they can’t believe that constitutional laws and Western values are the high ground - both moral and strategic. So, we are left to fight the war of ideas on dangerous terrain of a very different type - what Sun Tzu calls “entangling terrain”:

Ground which can be abandoned but is hard to re-occupy is called entangling. From a position of this sort, if the enemy is unprepared, you may sally forth and defeat him. but if the enemy is prepared for your coming, and you fail to defeat him, then, return being impossible, disaster will ensue.

With each government concession to Islamist preferences or sharia law, each CAIR-annointed Islamist appointee to the Bush administration or Congressional staff, each law that criminalizes criticism of Islamists passed and enforced in the US, Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands, our governments abandon more terrain that we may never re-occupy. They retreat and abandon, retreat and abandon, until our return to the dimly remembered normalcy of a country without sharia law may be impossible. We are deeply entangled.

The well-prepared Muslim Brotherhood and their front groups work hard at this entanglement and entrapment of European, US and other democracies in our own multicultural, politically correct laws. That entanglement is a Gordian knot, turning on itself with the inversion of ideas Fjordman calls the Rise of the Glossocracy - our familiar knotty dilemma:

If you speak against against Islamist terrorism, totalitarianism and sharia oppression, the Islamists will pressure your government to convict you of “Islamophobia,” racism or “hate” speech. And in Europe, Canada or the US, you may actually be convicted of this newly found thought crime.

But (here’s the twist in the knot) if an Islamist leader speaks against constitutional liberties, against equality and integration of ethnicities, religions and races, and then incites the genocide of Christians, jews, apostates, homosexuals, liberal Muslims and other infidels, then those same Islamists will pressure your government to protect that imam’s exercise of religious freedom.

And the imam will get his protection, even though his actions clearly violate long-standing incitement provisions in national laws.

The knot grows tighter and you become more entangled each time you protest your government’s refusal to exercise its minimal obligation to protect citizens from sharia infiltration, unlimited radical Muslim immigration, and domestic jihadists. With each protest, the sharia lawgivers and jihadists and your own government object to your objections, and the knot tightens. Publish your objections in Belgium, the Netherlands or Finland, or report suspicious behavior to an airline in Minneapolis, and you may get entangled right into jail. Every day, European and US governments endanger their citizens and constitutions as they open more and more social and political institutions to this entanglement. As Fjordman writes in On Bureaucracy, Liberty and the Rule of Law:

Why does the government dispense with the social contract and attack its own people? Well, for starters, because it can. The state has become so large and powerful that is has become an autonomous organism with a will of its own. The people are there to serve the state, not vice versa. And because state power penetrates every single corner of society, there are no places left to mount a defense if the state decides to attack you. Its representatives are no longer leaders of a specific people, but caretakers preoccupied only with advancing their own careers through oiling and upholding, and if possible expanding, the bureaucratic machinery.

With no social contract, the state creates a vacuum that Islamists are ready to fill; their copy of the dhimmitude social contract is always ready for signing. The Muslim Brotherhood’s future vision of the state - to be executed in 50 or 500 years, however long it takes - is the global caliphate, achieved through the four flanking actions of low-level state wars, non-state terrorist violence, mass immigration, and the slow substition of sharia law for constitutional laws and values. We’ve reached the middle stage of the Brotherhood’s plan, with most U.S. Democrats, the current U.S. State Department and the infinitely exanding EU bureaucracies competing to show their openness to the supremacy of sharia laws. The challenge is to see who will submit faster, the Tories’ David Cameron or the Democrat’s Nancy Pelosi or Bush’s Karen Hughes or Secretary of State Rice. France’s Sarkozy and to a lesser extent Germany’s Merkel provide some hope, but it is short-lived: in 2008, Slovenia will take over the EU’s presidency, and predictably, the Organization of Islamic Conference is already directing the agenda for Slovenia’s task force for the ‘European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008’ program.

This, then, is the entangled terrain of the war of ideas, abandoned by most governments, in which hardy groups of citizens are becoming the defenders of their constitutions. They are the usual motley crew that make political history, not just political analysis: small political parties, maverick legislators, civic associations, ordinary people becoming political leaders not from vocation but from desperation. Like other historical resistance movements starting out, these citizens’ groups are often fragmented, self-funded, fragile, isolated, inexperienced, in dire need of technical assistance and infrastructure support.

A valuable upcoming conference on “The Collapse Of Europe, The Rise Of Islam and the Consequences for the United States” includes an initial discussion of this Resistance. Speakers include Arnaud Dotézac of Switzerland, human rights lawyer and an editor of the European Parliament’s “Vision for Europe,” who has written (machine translation, my French is decades out of date):

“Le Coran contient des passages qui constituent des appels généraux à la violence. Ils ne visent pas des individus en particulier, mais des lecteurs du Coran peuvent penser qu’ils se conforment à ces injonctions en visant des individus. Je propose que ce risque soit pris en compte. Qu’on demande aux personnes qui font circuler ce texte de l’assortir d’une mise en garde précisant que la loi démocratique doit prévaloir sur les injonctions qui lui seraient contraires.”

“The Koran contains passages which constitute general calls to violence. They do not aim at individuals in particular, but readers of the Koran can think that they conform to these injunctions by aiming at individuals. I propose that this risk should be taken into account. That one should ask the people who circulate this text to match it with a warning specifying that the democratic law must prevail on the injunctions which would be contrary to it.”

Across several countries in this Resistance Spring of 2007, citizens are trying to re-occupy the abandoned terrain of their constitutional laws, their traditional values and their national cultures. Right now, they are outnumbered, outspent and out-organized by the petrodollar-funded Islamist organizations imposing sharia law wherever they get an inroad. With more support, they would have a chance to prove themselves.

But the fact that they are all emerging now makes this a season of hope.

Some examples follow, some from government agencies, others from political parties or associations, some well-known, others obscure. Most groups aren’t listed; over 100 groups (online, local, national) just in the US are now rising up against Islamist incursion or supporting liberal Muslims or apostates. Most recent events aren’t included, particularly the fight by many groups for free speech in countries where criticism of Islamists has been criminalized. What the groups below have in common is their mission: to define clear lines in defense of their constitutions against sharia law, and to define the territory to be re-occupied in this war of ideas:

United States, March 5, 2007: Delegates to the Secular Islam Summit in Florida release the St. Petersburg Declaration, signed by well-known Muslim apostates and secular Muslims, which states in part:

We call on the governments of the world to reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms;

oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostasy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;

eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women;

protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;

reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims;and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.

We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.

On March 28, 2007, the Mapping Sharia project is announced:

It is our task to conduct an extensive mapping of all the Islamic day schools, mosques, and other identifiable organizations in the US and to determine which ones teach or preach Islamic law, Shari’a. Further, the mapping will scale the Shari’a threat by identifying to which school of jurisprudence it belongs, its historical and contemporary call for Jihad, and whether the Jihad includes violent Jihad against non-believers.

This investigation will also map the leadership of these Muslim organizations and their other affiliations. We will also attempt to uncover any related businesses used or run by the organizations as fronts for money laundering and other illicit activities. Finally, we will examine and map any potential targets situated near these organizations, such as city, county, and federal government buildings, schools and universities, US military installations, major utility or infrastructure sites (i.e., nuclear installations, pipelines, water supply, etc.), and transportation hubs.

Germany, March 27, 2007: Well-known terrorism expert and author Udo Ulfkotte announces a new political party Pax Europa, founded in December 2006, specifically to limit radical Islam’s expansion. He also announces plans for a European-wide demonstration - Stop Islamisation of Europe - for September 11, 2007 in Brussels before the European Union parliament against the creeping islamizing of Europe, in cooperation with SIAD and other groups (see below).

Pax Europa’s platform calls for rolling back sharia law in Germany:

To reverse removal of Christian crosses from schools, kindergartens and hospitals;

To eliminate separate swimming times for Muslims and non-Muslims in public pools;

To eliminate separate kitchen implements for Muslims in European prisons;

To educate the public about Islamist jihad’s intent to spread Islam by any means, to encourage learning the Arabic language, and to educate the public that “islam” means “submission”, not “peace”;

To encourage European banks not to use sharia-compliant financial methods;

To eliminate Sharia boards for European banks and terror-related investments;

To educate the public on the role of Muslim leaders during WW II in the “final solution” for Jews;

To remove literature that incites hate against Christians and Jews from Muslim mosques and federations.

On May 9, 2007, Germany home affairs ministry Mr. Johans Orban announces that Germany is considering cooperation with Algeria to limit religious extremism in the Muslim community through mosques supervision by Algerian Imams.

Italy, April 23, 2007: Italy’s Interior Minister Giuliano Amato, publishes a seven-page “Values Charter” for religious minorities on April 23, 2007. It is non-binding with no force of law, drafted with the “help” of Mohamed Nour Dachan of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII) and “supported” by the President of Italian Islamic Religious Community (COREIS), Yahya Pallavicini, and the head of the Moroccan Community of Italy, Souad Sbai. In the short term, the “Values Charter” is dismissed by some as an empty gesture to the Italian center-right, since it was issued immediately after passing legislation that (with real force of law) reduces restrictions on foreigners. But the Charter’s originator, Professor Carlo Cardia, has longer term ambitions for the Charter:that it will clear up “any uncertainties or grey areas” for immigrants whose rights and duties are to be the same as those of other citizens. The charter….

1. enshrines the right to religious freedom and equality between man and woman

2. advocates the monogamous family and wants to prevent women from experiencing humiliation and polygamy

3. condemns terrorism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia

4. demands no restrictions on clothing exist in Italy … [veils that] cover the face are not acceptable because they prevent the recognition of the person and are an obstacle for establishing relationships with others.

5. acts as a guide for relations between the ministry and Italy’s various religious communities…to help “consolidate Italian Islam,” “the second largest religion in Italy.”

Mild stuff, but in the war of ideas, a skirmish develops. Islamic groups that helped draft the “Values Charter” immediately complain. Dachan (UCOII) is upset with the final product, complaining that the veil is not humiliating, as stated in the Charter, and that the report should have mentioned Islam’s “contributions” to Europe. Isabella Bertolini, the centre-right Forza Italia party’s deputy whip in the House, clarifies those gray areas with even greater precision:

“The UCOII doesn’t have the courage to accept a document that bans polygamy and the prohibition on the headcovering… At this point Amato should make signing the document obligatory for members of the Islamic Council, or risk automatic exclusion”.

Like Switzerland’s Dotézac, Bertolini is seeking to use her laws - the Values Charter - to exclude sharia laws and practices and demanding enforcement. Yes, he’s focused on the Koran and she on sharia-enforced behavior, but their reactions to defend their constitutions are essentially the same.

United Kingdom, April 29, 2007: Gerard Batten, Member of the European Parliament for London, UK Independence Party, proposes the Charter of Muslim Understanding in the House of Lords with these findings:

…

We have to assume that Muslims who have made a conscious choice to come and live in Britain and assume British citizenship did so because they wanted to enjoy the benefits material, social and political of living in a democratic country. If that is the case then faced with the growth of fundamentalist extremist Islam in Britain, moderate and peaceful Muslims must make a conscious choice to reject extremism, and be seen to reject it.

And that is where the Proposed Charter seeks to help. We call on all moderate and peaceful Muslims to:

Sign the Affirmation that sets out basic principles of freedom and tolerance that no reasonable person could disagree with.

Enter into a dialogue regarding those Islamic teachings and texts that are incompatible with those principles.

Consider and reappraise the suitability of those texts that were framed in a bygone age and which, in a modern society, have no purpose and can only give encouragement to extremists.

The Proposed Charter of Muslim Understanding is an effort to draw a line in the sand. On one side of that line will stand those who believe in tolerance and peaceful co-existence. On the other side of the line will stand those who believe in a fundamentalist, backward-looking, intolerant and violent Islam. By embracing its principles we ask moderate and peaceful Muslims to join their non-Muslim fellow citizens on one side of a line, and to leave the extremists and terrorists standing isolated on the other side.

Denmark, May 9, 2007: The Danish political party Stop the Islamisation of Denmark (Stop Islamiseringen af Denmark), having had two claims against the Koran rejected by the Ministry of Justice, files a complaint with local authorities and prepares to file a lawsuit, based on conflicts between the Koran and the Danish constitution. SIAD leader Anders Gravers states:

The Minster of Justice is breaking the Constitution of the Kingdom of Denmark Act. (the Danish constitution). We shall now take legal action.

We have now started a collection of money in the whole world in order to take legal action against passages of the Koran, i.e. passages which are contrary to the Danish constitution and the Danish Penal Code.

Sections 67, 69 and particularly section 78 of the Danish constitution are violated by Islamists in Denmark:

Readings of stanza from the Koran urging to murder of non believers and offending talk about other nations and religions will be examples of scriptural passages from the Koran which every imam (leader of the prayer) should be obliged to abjure before he obtains permission to keep a mosque. Then, perhaps, there would not be so much left of the Koran which the moslems then had to accept if they want to live in Denmark.

As to the political part of Islam the politicians ought to look closer at the Act of the Constitution they have promised to observe. Section 78, subsection 2 states as follows: Associations which act or try to reach their goal by violence, urge to violence or similar criminal influence on people of different opinions should be dissolved by law (Bliver at opløse). The Act of the Constitution is quite unambiguous. The expression “Bliver at opløse” is in the subjunctive (gram.) in Danish and means that it is an order. It is the responsibility of the Minister of Justice to bring an action in such cases, and if the legislation is too weak in relation to the unambiguous wording of the Act of the Constitution then the Minister of Justice must endeavour to tighten up the rules. Obviously, we cannot accept associations within our country, in the name of tolerance, which urge unambiguously to kill Jews “where ever you see them” even though the Koran tell moslems to do so ever so much.

Conclusion

These groups and many like them around the world are the “Forces of Freedom” that need support, from donors and from individual volunteers. These resistance efforts offer another vision of the future - one that is neither terrorist anarchy nor the “peace and justice” of submission to the Muslim Brotherhood’s proxies and puppet governments in each of our countries. Sun Tzu’s advice is relevant to this war of ideas:

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

Or we can learn from Alexander the Great, who solved the entanglement of the mythical Gordian knot. With a single slash of his sword, he cut it half.

——————————————————————–

Addition:

May 12, 2007, Venice, Italy: European security officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland back a plan by EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini, to be completed by fall 2007, to “profile mosques on the continent and identify radical Islamic clerics who raise the threat of homegrown terrorism.

The project, to be finished by the fall, will focus on the roles of imams, their training, their ability to speak in the local language and their sources of funding…Italian Interior Minister Guiliano Amato said Europe had extensive experience with the “misuse of mosques, which instead of being places of worship are used for other ends.

“This is bringing about a situation that involves all of our countries and involves the possibility of attacks and developing of networks that use one country to prepare an attack in another,” Amato said.

The ability of the U.S. to cooperate with the EU efforts will be limited. Six months ago, the FBI was revealed to have only 33 employees with at least limited proficiency in Arabic. We already know the tragic story of Arabic speakers who offered their services to the FBI and were ignored. In the U.S., there are between 1200 and 2000 mosques (including Islamic community centers that house prayer rooms with a local imam, usually as a city chapter of the Islamic Society of North America). Any of us can do the math; any of us who speaks Arabic can make a great contribution here by contacting the Mapping Sharia team.

This last weekend, the Commonwealth of Virginia was signed over to the Muslim Brotherhood, care of the Muslim American Society (MAS). Tim Kaine must be hoping for a VP nomination from Obama - after all, if the Democrat Party presidential ticket needs a Southerner, he’d better prove his dhimmitudiness early in the game.

He gave the keynote speech at the local Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation dinner. A real team player, he’s just following Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) game plan from her Syria visit, and Steny Hoyer’s (D-MD) charm offensive with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. With very little effort, his staff could have researched the connections of the MAS to the Muslim Brotherhood and some extreme jihadist doctrine. We have to assume this is a choice, not a mistake. Good to get to know you, governor…

Here’s some background on the Muslim American Society for Virginians. We live in occupied territory in this information war, and it’s about time we began winning some of it back from the occupiers:

A Chicago Tribune article describes the Muslim Brotherhood deciding to operate in the U.S. as the Muslim American Society.

Shaker Elsayed, a top MAS official, says the organization was founded by Brotherhood members but has evolved to include Muslims from various backgrounds and ideologies.

“Ikhwan [Brotherhood] members founded MAS, but MAS went way beyond that point of conception,” he says.

Way beyond indeed. The Brotherhood probably thought they wouldn’t get Virginia for another decade or two, but then they hadn’t planned on this level of help from Kaine.

A Weekly Standard article “MAS’s Muslim Brotherhood Problem,” quotes from MAS curricula. Although MAS has removed the links in that article, the same curricula is still available here at the San Diego MAS website - including as part of the Level I MAS required reading, the Muslim Brotherhood Project document, Milestones by Sayyid Qutb . Visit the link before they hide it again…Here, from the Weekly Standard article - a position that Kaine apparently has adopted as part of the 2008 Virginia Democratic Party platform:

For example, MAS requires all its adjunct members to read Fathi Yakun’s book To Be a Muslim. In that volume, Yakun spells out his expansive agenda: “Until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful.”

And also on that MAS curricula, the writings of Imam Hassan Al-Banna, who teaches the following (and yes, it will be on the final exam for All governors aiming for Democrat Party President/VP primaries, not just early adopters of salafism like Tim Kaine):

Reforming the government so that it may become a truly Islamic government, performing as a servant to the nation in the interest of the people. By Islamic government I mean a government whose officers are Muslims who perform the obligatory duties of Islam, who do not make public their disobedience, and who enforce the rules and teachings of Islam.

There is no problem if the Islamic government utilises the services of non Muslims when necessary, so long as they do not offer them positions of leadership. Islam is flexible as to shape and detailed structure of the government, but it must be in agreement with the general principles of the Islamic ruling system.

Or this letter to the Washington Post by the head of MAS, Esam Omeish, praising the Muslim Brotherhood -

The influence of Muslim Brotherhood ideas has been instrumental in defining our understanding of Islam within the American and Western context …..

At least now Kaine can deliver the Red House, Virginia Jamaat ul Fuqra vote in the 2008 election.
Here’s the press release in entirety:

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Governor of Virginia Gives Keynote Speech at MAS Freedom Foundation Standing for Justice Award Dinner

WASHINGTON, DC - May 21, 2007 (MASNET) Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia gave the keynote address for the 5th Annual Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation ‘Standing for Justice Dinner’.

The governor, joined by members of his cabinet, spoke individually with Muslim community leaders during a special leadership reception. The reception was followed by the Freedom Foundation Award Dinner.

In an occasion marking the first public speech to a Muslim gathering by a Virginia governor, he acknowledged the civic work and civil rights accomplishments of the Freedom Foundation, and stressed the need for people of all faith traditions to work together to overcome intolerance and bigotry.

Imam Sheikh Rashid Lamptey of the Muslim Association of Virginia (MAV) gave a powerful inspirational address that stressed civic participation as an essential dimension of the Muslim faith and our contribution to the larger society.

The 2007 MAS Freedom Foundation awards and their recipients included:

Lifetime Achievement Award

· Dr. Maher Hathout, Muslim Public Affairs Council

· Bahijah Abdus-Salaam

· Imam Abofazl Nahidian, Manassas Mosque

Sister Sharifa Al Khatib Award

· Maryam Funches (posthumously)

Humanitarian Award

· Asma Hanif, Coordinating Council Muslim Organizations of DC/MD/VA

Human & Civil Rights Award

· Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ

· Dalia Hashad, Amnesty International

· Ibrahim Abdil-Mu’id Ramey

Media Excellence Award

· Afaq Khiyali, Pakistan Post

· Hassanah I. Tauhidi, Inner-Attainment Television, Inc.

Labor & Justice Award

· Joslyn N. Williams, AFL-CIO

Peace & Justice Award

· Dr. Imad Damaj

· Reverend C. Douglas Smith, Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy

· Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center

The evening ended with the presentation of a free Hajj package and entertainment by Preacher Moss of the Allah Made Me Funny comedy tour.

————————————————————-

The Freedom Foundation is the public affairs arm of the Muslim American Society (MAS), a national grassroots religious, social, and educational organization. MAS is America’s largest grassroots Muslim organization with over 50 chapters nationwide. Learn more at www.masnet.org

————————————————————-

MAS Freedom Foundation

1050 17th Street NW, Suite 600

Washington, DC 20036

Tel:

Fax:

URL: http://www.masnet.org/index_publicaffairs.asp

Email: MAS4Freedom@aol.com

Most of us are familiar with the idea of Sudden Jihad Syndrome (SJS), whereby seemingly average Muslims suddenly engage in acts of violence, but yet have no established terrorism links. They are not Al-Qaeda operatives. They are individuals who are exposed to the Islamist ideology, and with makeshift arms engage in Jihad. As was the case with the Fort Dix Six, not all terrorists have filled out an official Al Qaeda Application like Jose Padilla. They are nevertheless committed to a violent ideology, and utilize knowledge and methodologies easily accessible via the internet to undertake Jihad. As I understand, SJS has come about largely in response to successful western efforts to decapitate and isolate terrorist leadership, so that even without effective command and control, the Jihad keeps rolling on. Where there is a will… as the saying goes.

I was at a meeting of an anti-islamist group this week. I was struck by how clearly the issue is understood. Authors like Spencer, Pipes, Phares and Ali are getting the message out there; blogs like GOV, Jihad Watch, and LGF are successful at keeping us informed. Many of us understand the threat, and the situation we face. But so many of us are left asking, as one woman the other day asked me (paraphrasing), “What do we do? I want to do something.”

The problem of course is that we don’t know what to do. No one has ever run a counter-jihad before. We are all amateurs at this. We wish that we had some kind of western version of Sheik Khalid Mohammad to set up and plan our operations, and give us our marching orders, but there isn’t one.

But we do have the same tools available to us that the opposition does. We have an ideology - liberty and freedom and the rule of law.  These are positive western values which should be promoted; violent Islamist totalitarianism is an evil which must be opposed. As a counter-jihad group our focus must be on creating methods which interested people can use to wage counter-jihad. Instead of diagrams for pipe bombs like Al-Qaeda, we need to provide information on how to organize a demonstration. What essential items are needed: permits, sound systems, portable bathrooms. Email lists for legislative contacts and grassroots lobbying. All the items to help answer the question, “what do we do?”

It only takes one person to put a burqa on the statue of a mermaid, attend and record audio a CAIR meeting, or to take some action which dramatically expresses our concerns and our insistence that we will not be cowed into submission by PC rhetoric, hate speech legislation, or threats of violence.  It only takes one person overcome with Sudden Counter-Jihad Syndrome. And when the forces of Islamism overreact, as we know they will, we win more converts to our position, as more people realize that they do not need anyone’s permission or approval to say what they think.

Of course Sudden Counter-Jihad Syndrome won’t solve the problem of global jihad and the spread of sharia law for us, but it may prove a useful model as those of us concerned about the problem search for a way to turn that concern from mere worry into effective action. And through networks between groups like the folks I met the other day, and Vigilant Freedom, and our European, Israeli, Thai, Australian, South Asian and Middle Eastern allies, we can learn what approaches work and which don’t. Through those learned experiences we can begin to develop our methodologies and share them, and thus take the next step from one individual’s Sudden Counter-Jihad, to organized, mass counter-jihad.

CAIR-Canada is ready to take advantage of the Terrorists Without Borders Bush/Kennedy/McCain Immigration Reform Bill.  Our Northern Islamist Neighbors are just waiting to make sure that Canadian-U.S. border is made completely porous. They’re lobbying hard to eliminate any anti-terrorism measures in Canada - just check out this appalling CAIR-Canada conference this Saturday in Montreal: Racism, Islamophobia and ‘National Security.’ (That’s right, National Security is in quotes - not cute postmodern ironic quotes, but “let’s delegitimize that whole idea of national security” quotes.)

You can download their leaflet and poster too, to get in the mood for open-borders and IEDs in your local neighborhood mall.

If you can possibly attend, please try to get in. Take notes, record audio or video (only if legal), and help get the information out to the public on what these interesting people are planning. This conference is defining the next steps to give terrorists free run in Canada and with a short jaunt through the northern woods, free run in the U.S. as a temporary worker/Z visa/amnestied illegal “immigrant.”

If you’re writing your congressman about the Immigration Reform Bill, you might mention that CAIR-Canada has plans for us. And they’re not about bringing families together.

Given the extremist speakers and points of view listed below, if you can attend we suggest blending in and getting the information out, but not speaking out. It’s just too radical a gathering:

RACISM, ISLAMOPHOBIA AND ‘NATIONAL SECURITY’
Teach-in and strategy forum

Saturday, 26 May, 1pm to 9pm
Pavillon J.-A.-Sève, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
320 Ste-Catherine East, Montreal (Berri-UQAM metro)
WORKSHOPS and a PANEL DISCUSSION with Sherene Razack, Adil Charkaoui, Faisal Kutty, Salam El Manyawi, Najlaa Bennis, Ross Perigoe …. and many more!
With

• Screening of footage from the People’s Commission
• Exhibit of Photos and Banners
• Action materials

:::: Free childcare onsite (room DSR-340) ::: Free and delicious food ::::
:::: Whisper translation in English, French, Arabic and Farsi::::

Spies, media, corporations and politically-constructed public debates … In the name of “national security”, many forces in our society are helping to mobilize underlying racism and Islamophobia against Muslims, Arabs and others. The result is often devastating on people’s lives.

Targetted communities are marginalized and unable to participate fully in political, economic or social life. When extreme measures such as security certificates are used against individuals, communities are often too intimidated, alienated or constrained to respond effectively.

Join us on Saturday, 26 May to take an in-depth look at some of the concrete ways in which the national security agenda is being advanced in Canada. The teach-in will bring together community members, academics, NGOs, legal experts and activists in order to develop effective strategies to resist racial profiling and defend the liberty and dignity of all.

PROGRAMME

1:30 to 3:30 Workshops

“National security” and targetting of Arab and Muslim communities (EN)

Room: DSR-520

facilitated: Helen Hudson

- Salam El Menyawi, Muslim Council of Montreal

- Faisal Kutty, Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association

- Sameer Zuberi, CAIR-CAN

The “Security Industrial Complex”: the new Homeland Security industry (FR) Room DSR-525

facilitated: Raymond Legault, Échec à la guerre

- Roch Tassé, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG)

- Sophie Schoen, Block the Empire

3:45 to 5:45 Workshops

Media and CSIS: partners in profiling (EN/FR)

Room: DSR-525

facilitated: Tamara Vukov

- Ross Perigoe, Associate Professor, Concordia University Journalism Department

- Alex Popovic, Political researcher

Racism and the debate on “reasonable accommodation” (FR/EN) Room DSR-520

facilitated: Khadija Benabdallah

- Nazila Bettache, No one is illegal

- May Haydar, Centre communautaire musulman de Montréal

- Layla Sawaf, Principal, JMC Secondary and Primary School

5:45 Light meal, followed by a testimony by Najlaa Bennis, Justice for Anas

6:45 Panel Discussion: Countering the instrumentalization of ‘national security’ (EN/FR) Room DRS-510

- video: extracts from testimonies at the People’s Commission hearings

- Sherene Razack, Professor, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, University of Toronto: Understanding “security” and racism

- Adil Charkaoui: Lessons from the campaign against security certificates

BIOGRAPHIES

Najlaa Bennis is the sister of Mohamed Anas Bennis, who was killed by police officer Bernier of Station 25 on 1 December 2005 in Côte des Neiges. The Bennis family and the Coalition Justice for Anas are demanding access to all information concerning the death of Anas, a public and independent inquiry and an end to police brutality and police impunity.

Nazila Bettache is a Montreal-based organizer and member of No One is Illegal-Montreal.

Salam El Menyawi is President of the Muslim Council of Montreal (MCM). He has been an outspoken defender of human rights and against racial profiling for many years.

May Haydar is a member of the public relations committee of the Centre communautaire musulman de Montréal.

Helen Hudson is a Montreal activist working in solidarity with Political Prisoners, primarily in the United States, as well as on other social justice issues including immigration and feminist questions. She is also a programmer at CKUT community radio.

Faisal Kutty currently serves as general counsel for the Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association (CMCLA) and as vice-chair and legal counsel to the Canadian Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN). He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. His dissertation explores the impact of anti-terror laws and policies on the rule of law. In the course of his legal practice, he has also advised and acted on behalf of dozens of individuals and charities that have been directly impacted and targeted by anti-terrorism laws and policies. He is currently acting as counsel to CAIR-CAN and the CMCLA at the Iacobucci and the Air India Inquiries.

Raymond Legault has been an active member and a spokesperson for Échec à la guerre over the past four and a half years.

Dr. Ross Perigoe has taught at Concordia’s Department of Journalism since 1985. Prior to joining the faculty, he was a full time journalist for 12 years, later working in CBC management. His early research focussed on the portrayal of visible minorities on television, particularly surrounding the Oka Crisis of 1990. Dr. Perigoe has done a study of the Montreal Gazette’s portrayal of Muslims immediately after September 11, 2001. Dr. Perigoe is now examing the representation of Muslims in the french press during the same period.

Alex Popovic is a political researcher with a keen interest in national security, law enforcement and governmental ethical issues.

Sherene H. Razack is a Professor at the Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, University of Toronto. She is the author of - among other works - “Dark Threats and White Knights: Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism”

(2004) and “Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics” (forthcoming December, 2007).

Sophie Schoen is an organizer in the student movement and with Block the Empire Montreal.

Roch Tassé is National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group / Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles, a pan-Canadian coalition of NGOs which formed in response to the introduction of Bill C-36. Tassé co-authored “Control Freaks:

“Homeland Security” and “Interoperability””, published in differenTAKES, January 2007.

Tamara Vukov has been active in a range of autonomous social movements, independent media and media arts in Montréal over the past 15 years (recently including SAB/SSF, the People’s Commission on Immigration Security Measures, Global Balkans, and the Volatile Works collective). She is currently completing her PhD in Communication at Concordia, where her research looks at the racialized impacts of Canadian news media events focused on migration, including the post-9/11’security’ agenda.

Sameer Zuberi is Communications and Human Rights Director at CAIR-CAN. Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Sameer has worked in Kuwait as an elementary and high school teacher. While studying Mathematics at Concordia University, he served two terms as Vice President of the Concordia Student Union.

Subsequently, through the United Muslim Students Association, he focused his activism on educating and linking the Muslim community to grassroots social justice movements.

————————————–

Coalition Justice pour Adil Charkaoui

www.adilinfo.org

tel.

justiceforadil@riseup.net

This posting was requested via email to me from Lak Vorha, D.C. Online Editor of The Washington Examiner Newspapers.

Picture caption:

(AACE Worldwide Pty Ltd)
An automatic wudu washer, shown here on a promotional brochure manufactured by Australia-based AACE Worldwide, has come under scrutiny as many public institutions have approved their use paying for their installation through tax-funded dollars while turning down other religious groups to install equipment to follow their own faith and service.

Article from the Washington DC Examiner Newspaper:

Editorial: No favors for Muslim studentsThe principle of separation of church and state in tax-funded institutions has been upheld in more than a dozen Supreme Court rulings. As a result, overtly religious symbols of mainstream religions such as Nativity scenes, the Ten Commandments and menorahs have largely been banished from the public square on the grounds that they offend unbelievers.But many public colleges and universities have been quietly accommodating some students’ religious activities while ignoring or even trampling on the First Amendment rights of other students.  

 

For example, last year administrators at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College banned a coffee cart operator from playing music “tied to Christmas,” but approved the use of tax dollars to install special basins for Wudu so that Muslims could ritually wash their feet before prayer. College President Phil Davis defended this glaring double standard by absurdly insisting that “the foot-washing facilities are not about religion, they are about customer service and public safety.” At least a dozen other public colleges and universities in the nation have also installed Wudu facilities, including George Mason University in Fairfax.

A GMU spokesman said there were no complaints from other student religious groups when the Muslim Student Association was given permission by administrators to convert a common third-floor meditation room into a makeshift mosque. Would Campus Crusade for Christ be allowed to turn the facility into a makeshift Resurrection scene? The spokesman acknowledged that the other student religious groups have to reserve rooms or meet off campus when they want to pray together. At another state-supported school in Virginia, The College of William & Mary President Gene Nichol recently agreed to return the cross he had removed last year from the college’s historically Christian chapel only after angry alumni threatened to withhold millions in donations.

The paradox strains logic. Church and state remain firmly separated on campuses where the majority of students are Christian, Jewish or of no faith, but administrators toss the principle right out the window to satisfy a minority of Muslim students. Many college officials are granting prerogatives to Muslim students in the United States and Canada that are not permitted to other groups. For instance, the Ontario Human Rights Commission regards failure to make special accommodations for Muslim students, including inserting “Islamic perspectives” into secular curriculums like nursing and finance, as a form of “Islamophobia.” Expect similar political correct demands soon on American campuses.

This Orwellian, some-religions-are-more-equal-than-others approach is both hypocritical and discriminatory. The Constitution, to say nothing of basic fairness, demands that the same rules regarding the public expression of religious faith be applied equally to everybody. And for once wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a college president show some real backbone when faced with unreasonable demands from activist minority students seeking exclusive privileges?

Read Other Articles About Muslims on Examiner.com

Northern Virginia blogs Islam

When I was a youth back in the early 1970s, there was an unusual restaurant just off the exit ramp from the Baltimore-Washington Parkway on Rt. 197 outside of Laurel, Maryland. It was a little bar and grill called Delaney’s Irish Pizza Pub, and its sign featured a leprechaun holding out a pizza.

Now that’s cognitive dissonance.

It’s a benign cognitive dissonance, the sort that makes you laugh out loud when you drive past, and exclaim, “Is this a great country, or what?”

But there are other more sinister and dangerous types of cognitive dissonance at work in the land.

Take, for example, the case of the Finnish blogger Mikko Ellilä. We have been writing a lot about him recently, and also about the general climate of repression that is emerging in Finland. The Finnish government, like other governments within the EU, is intent on exerting even more control of its citizens’ thoughts by cracking down on free speech in the blogosphere. The modus operandi is the usual one: applying the nebulous principles of Multiculturalism to hunt down “hate speech” and “racism”.

Finland’s Ombudsman for minorities, Mikko Puumalainen, believes that even facts can be “hate speech”:

[H]e repeatedly refused to specify his allegations and to email me the relevant material that he had sent to the police. I was able to obtain the material from him only after I notified him that I could sue him for failing to send me the relevant material because the police had explicitly asked me to comment on his allegations in written form, which I obviously could not do as long as I had not even seen the allegations in the first place. Puumalainen undoubtedly committed a crime by acting like this.In other words, a criminal bureaucrat is harassing me. Puumalainen is also seriously wasting taxpayer money by forcing the police to spend time reading my blog posts and discussing them with me, instead of trying to catch criminals.

In a similar vein, the EU created an internal regulation for bureaucrats, forbidding them to refer to “jihad”:

The European Union has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to refrain from linking Islam and terrorism in their statements.Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers “non-offensive” phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks.

Banned terms are said to include “jihad”, “Islamic” or “fundamentalist”.

The word “jihad” is to be avoided altogether, according to some sources, because for Muslims the word can mean a personal struggle to live a moral life.

One alternative, suggested publicly last year, is for the term “Islamic terrorism” to be replaced by “terrorists who abusively invoke Islam”.

An EU official said that the secret guidebook, or, “common lexicon”, is aimed at preventing the distortion of the Muslim faith and the alienation of Muslims in Europe.

According to the article, “Details on the contents of the lexicon remain secret.”Look what’s happening here: certain types of speech are proscribed or limited, but the exact rules aren’t revealed. So we know generally that many things are forbidden, but not exactly what they are.

I’ll bet I’m not the only one who is reminded of this quote:

“Catch-22,” the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. “Catch-22. Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.”[…]

“Didn’t they show it to you?” Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. “Didn’t you even make them read it?”

“They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.”

“What law says they don’t have to?”

“Catch-22.”

Forty-five years ago the famous exchange in Joseph Heller’s novel was a prescient description of the paradigm now being realized by the self-destructive governments of the West.All these speech codes remain non-specific, so that everyone will learn to self-censor broadly, hoping to comply somehow with the Catch-22 that no one is allowed to see. Rather than create the expensive and inefficient apparatus of the totalitarian state — secret police, a network of informers, brainwashing, torture, and a gulag — the soft totalitarian state simply applies a method designed to induce its citizens to perform the repression on themselves.

It’s a very effective technique, and is probably farthest advanced in the UK. An article in the Daily Mail tells the story of Codie Stott, a teenager who was arrested for “racism” because she didn’t want to sit with fellow students who spoke only in Urdu. Robert Whelan, deputy director of the Civitas think-tank, said this:

A lot of these arrests don’t result in prosecutions — their aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say.

Similarly, the authorities did not give Mikko Ellilä the charges — meaning that he could not know what specific speech code he had violated — and therefore, if he were to be charged, the message to other bloggers would be to self-censor in hope of remaining within the law. But — and this is important — there only has to be an occasional charge filed in order to make this stratagem successful.Random violence — random negative reinforcement, like shooting people in the head, but for no discernible reason — is the most efficient way to get the citizenry to behave with absolute compliance. The condition thus produced is cognitive dissonance — the shattered self, the disjointed mind, a psychological no-man’s land.

Dymphna spent many years working with victims of domestic abuse at a battered women’s shelter. One of the things she learned from her experience was that the most effective tool of control for an abuser was the capricious, intermittent, and unpredictable application of violence. If the abuser were to use a rational and consistent system, the victim could figure out the rules and simply comply. An irrational pattern of violence destroys the victim’s self-integration and creates an absolutely supple partner, a passive vessel waiting to be filled by her abusive master.

The same principle applies to political systems. Soft totalitarianism requires rules that are so general and unspecific that citizens comply with anything and everything, no matter how irrational, because people always try to find a rule, even where there is none. It’s human nature.

Simultaneously, by forcing people to hear and mouth nonsense over and over again, and to pretend to believe it, the system destroys their self-worth.

And then, in a ludicrous attempt to fix the dysfunctional products of this noxious regimen, the same people have to be given classes in “self-esteem”.

Do you think I have just described the United States public school system?

That’s some catch, that Catch-22.

Below is my translation of an article posted today at Uriasposten, one of the top two blogs in Denmark (along with Snaphanen).

It’s all about the smear job done on Anders Gravers and SIAD by the newspaper Nyhedsavisen yesterday. See our earlier postson the same topic for more information.

There are two reasons for posting it here: first, to present a view of the whole affair from an entirely Danish perspective, and secondly as an exercise in improving my Danish — and boy! was it a big job. Thanks to Phanarath for helping me correct my mistakes.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  

Nyhedsavisen’s radical leftist Rune Eltard-Sørensen: “SIAD is militant”

Imagine what would happen if critical journalists went over Nyhedsavisen’s Rune Eltard-Sørensen’s work thoroughly. Today he delivers an article of the sort that cries out to heaven. Here it is, at full length…

[text of the entire article follows]

Fact: the new organization called ‘Anti-Jihad Denmark’ has been founded. Within this coalition are, among others, SIAD, Frie Danske Nationalister and Frit Danmark. The chairman of Frie Danske Nationalister, Julius Børgesen was earlier convicted of unlawful possession of weapons. This chairman anounces that his group are armed at their meetings.

Postulate: ‘Anti-Jihad Danmark’ is a militant organization.

It goes without saying that a newly-formed organization cannot be militant when its mission statement indicates otherwise. Nothing in the article supports the headline, and the final quote from Frit Danmark’s chairman all but indicates the opposite. It should also come as a surprise that SIAD became a partipant in a militant network virtually overnight. In Århus SIAD could only assemble twelve or thirteen spectators for a demonstration, and according to the newspaper most of those were old-age pensioners.

SIAD has a prominent place in the story, and it says, among other things, that “they had been subject to a ban on demonstrating for fear of trouble”. Not incorrect, but the basis for prohibition has always been the circumstance that the police cannot guarantee their security during the demonstration. (example). Several months after it became a group, SIAD was attacked with bottles during a meeting in Valby. Just because the Reds and Greens failed to acknowledge the premises of democracy does not mean that SIAD became militants.

Rune Eltard-Sørensen quotes SIAD’s chairman Anders Gravers as saying “Criminal immigrants must be kept behind bars, have their citizenship removed and be sent out of the country”. Not exactly an indication that SIAD is armed… with anything but words.

At Nyhedsavisen’s web page there is quite a lively debate about the article. Most interesting is the snip from SIAD’s website to the press…

Anders Gravers emphasized again and again in a telephone interview on May 7th that we operate lawfully… Anders Gravers did not mention a word about being armed, but explained that the anti-jihad proceeds at a verbal level and absolutely lawfully. But that was not something that was ever explained to your readers.

To bash the radical right is a discipline that journalists love, and it is not the first time headlines have been written before the research is done, but since it is known that the journalist Rune Eltard-Sørensen is a radical leftist and has physically attacked the people’s elected politicians, the newspaper cannot be said to be acting in good faith. Editor-in-Chief David Trads markets his news as independent, but a man who appoints the radical left to write about the radical right — and approves “Armed network wants to stop Islam in Denmark” — is not acting in good faith.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Hat tip: Steen.

I find it interesting that posting the audio of Nihad Awad has generated a threatening comment and a threatening email. I take this as proof that we are being more effective. One way to expose groups like CAIR is to record what they actually say and make public their strategy to impose sharia on the U.S. That exposure obviously generates hostility from Islamist extremists who would prefer our politically correct silent submission.

We have suggested to several bloggers that any threats should be made public as soon as possible, in order to expose the danger.Therefore, here is the email I received in entirety (asterisks added for family viewers…)

i m going to f*** your mumy

how u dare to attack on islam and muslims..

write your adderess..ungratefull bitches you…

there are hundred thousand Nihad Awad..

you r swearin us ..provaketing us…and you want to go to hell..ok we will do it ..no worry..

The sender’s email address is given as “metin kondel [metin_k61@hotmail.com]”. The email address metin_k61@hotmail.com shows up here, with Metin Kondel as a commenter: http://www.memleket.com.tr/index.php?islem=detay&id=9320
And also here, again a comment with the email address: http://ofluhoca.blogcu.com/1976137/

And in a cached page here:

The name “Metin Kondel” shows up at other sites, although of course it could be a different Metin Kondel - the name occurs on Turkish websites.

If any readers can translate from Turkish to English, we would appreciate learning more about Mr. Kondel.

For those who find header information helpful, here it is:

A Danish newspaper ran an article about anti-jihad groups yesterday, and badly misrepresented the Stop the Islamisation of Denmark party and also Vigilant Freedom. Our response is below:

May 8, 2007
Chief Editor David Trads
Nyhedsavisens
Margretheholmsvej 2
1432 København K
Denmark

Dear Sir:

You have published a number of factual errors in an article today in Avisen.dk, titled “Armed network wants to stop Islam in Denmark,” by Rune Eltard. We demand a retraction and apology immediately that specifically corrects the following inaccurate statements from the article, as translated into English here: http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/05/hatchet-job-on-siad.html

1. In the first sentence, Eltard writes: “With loaded guns and support from abroad a newly founded extreme right network wants to set the agenda in the debate about immigration.” Since we are the “support from abroad,” this implies also that we are providing “loaded guns” and that we are supporting an “extreme right network.” The simplest due diligence would have sent you to our website at http://www.vigilantfreedom.org , where the text states:

“We are a big tent organization - Non-partisan, non-discriminatory, and open to all who are ready to join with their fellow citizens in the mutual defense of human rights and constitutional liberties. Our members encompass many religious beliefs, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, apostates, agnostics and atheists, all races, ages and genders, at least 21 nationalities, and a wide range of opinion on political and social issues.”

Our policies specifically reject violence of any kind, and require our members to work within the laws of their nations.

2. In the second sentence, you state “Danish Muslims have a new enemy.” In a following paragraph you write about Vigilant Freedom, “This organization gives support to Islam-critical movements all over the world.” It is a malicious, inciteful and false libel to imply that we are the enemy of Danish Muslims. We are indeed critical of the terrorist, imperialist aspects of Islam, particularly its apartheid policies towards women, but not of all Muslims. We support and work with Muslim groups who are determined to bring Islam into the modern era, to reform it, and to fight against the fascist and totalitarian aspects of Islamism. We are certainly against the imposition of sharia law in our countries, against jihadists who threaten lives and property, and against terrorism. We think that makes us a friend of peaceful, assimilated Muslims worldwide, including Danish Muslims.

Finally, we are surprised to hear that your newspaper considers these positions extreme right wing: support for equal rights for women instead of Islamist female apartheid, the right of gays to live and not be killed under sharia law, the right of Israel to exist, the right of financial institutions to charge interest, the right to follow the rules of constitutional law over religious sharia law, the separation of church and state, the right to free expression and many other traditional liberties. Most Danish citizens and people worldwide value those rights, and do not dismiss them as extreme right wing. Apparently your newspaper prefers the subjugation of women, murder of gays, beheading of Christians, elimination of capitalist institutions and all banking systems, destruction of Israel, dominance of the state by councils of imams, and other policies that you consider “moderate” - or perhaps you prefer to characterize those policies, and your editorial position as “liberal”?

In addition to the inaccurate statements about our organization, you have also maliciously misrepresented and libeled the organization SIAD and other organizations in the anti-jihad movement. Like all the groups in that movement and many others opposing extreme Islam worldwide, we support only non-violent and legal means of protest and assembly. However, we understand, given the attacks on constitutional liberties by Islamist totalitarian groups, why some people feel very strongly about defending their civil liberties from sharia laws.

We demand that you publish this retraction in your newspaper, in Danish:

The Center for Vigilant Freedom encompasses a wide range of opinion on political and social issues and does not support extreme right networks. The groups it supports politically in Denmark, such as SIAD, are not right wing. We apologize for the error.

Please notify us as soon as the retraction has been published.

Regards,

Etc.

Item from the May 6. 2007 edition of the Washington Post:

Johns Hopkins Gets Major Gift From Sheik

An Arab sheik has made a major gift to Johns Hopkins Medicine and will have a tower at Hopkins hospital named in honor of his father, a founder of the United Arab Emirates, officials announced.

The size of the gift was not disclosed, but Hopkins officials described it as “transformational.” The gift, from Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, will support heart research, an AIDS research program in Uganda and a billion-dollar construction project that will replace half of Hopkins Hospital by 2010.The sheik is the ruler of Abu Dhabi and the president of the United Arab Emirates. Hopkins has agreed to name a 355-bed clinic after the sheik’s late father, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

Now for some additional information about the sheikh….

Sheikh Kalifa, of equestrian-circles fame, is the head of the Supreme Petroleum Council. An article at Wiki includes the following about his philanthropic donations:

…[C]haritable contributions by Sheikh Khalifa are not from his own wealth but that of his nation’s, given the vast sums of the state’s wealth accumulated by his father and his family.

The sheikh gets the glory but the funds apparently come from UAE’s national treasury.It seems that the dollars which the West pays for UAE’s oil get used for all sorts of purposes. Consider the following information about the Sheik, from this source, emphases mine:

On July 27, 2005, the Palestinian Information Center carried a public HAMAS statement thanking the UAE for it’s “unstinting support.” The statement said: “We highly appreciate his highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan (UAE president) in particular and the UAE people and government in general for their limitless support…that contributed more to consolidating our people’s resoluteness in the face of the Israeli occupation”.

The HAMAS statement continued: “the sisterly UAE had… never hesitated in providing aid for our Mujahid people pertaining to rebuilding their houses demolished by the IOF… The UAE also spared no effort to offer financial and material aids to the Palestinian charitable societies.” Indeed, as documented by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S), HAMAS charitable societies,” are known as integral parts of the HAMAS infrastructure, and are outlawed by Israel and the U.S.

The HAMAS statement included a special tribute: “One can never forget the generous donations of the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan,” the father of the current UAE president. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahayan of Abu Dhabi, was the first Arab leader to understand the importance of waging economic Jihad against the West…

Does Johns Hopkins have a clue about Sheikh Khalifah’s and his family’s connections to Hamas?

To Recap:

Passengers have a right and a duty to report suspicious behavior on airlines, but that right is under attack by a CAIR lawsuit from the 6 flying imams incident. We have information below on CAIR’s legal and PR strategies, and we need your help in analyzing it. Suggestions for next steps in educating the public and our legislators are especially needed.
Vigilant Freedom received a recording from the April 27, 2007 CAIR briefing on the 6 Imams, given at the Muslim ADAMS Center in Virginia. CAIR advertised the meeting as “Cair Hosts Town Hall Meeting on Airport Profiling.” The speakers were Nihad Awad, CAIR Executive Director, Khadija Athman, CAIR Civil Rights Manager, and Imam Magid from the ADAMS Center.

Below are links to the audio files, and (mostly) complete transcriptions. We’ll add our analysis as an update to this post, and we ask for your help analyzing CAIR’s strategy in the comments section or at your own blogs or websites.

1. Awad’s first presentation on difficulties in generating reports of discrimination (transcription, just the first half of this audio file previously posted here):

Audio Transcription

2. Major presentation by Nihad Awad on CAIR’s arguments for the 6