During Ramadan, the printed and electronic Arab media, including the jihadist websites, published numerous articles on jihad, with a special focus on the link between jihad and Ramadan.

The main motifs of these articles were:

· The month of Ramadan is the month of attacks, conquest, and victories, with an emphasis on the fact that many of the early Muslims' victories over their enemies, such as at the battles of Badr, Hittin, and 'Ain Jalut, came during Ramadan.

The secretary-general of the Hezbollah-Iran organization, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi, who is an elite member of Iran's Islamic regime,[1] recently published an article on the organization's website discussing the need to reestablish "Greater Iran," stretching from Palestine to Afghanistan and based on the pre-Islamic Persian Empire,[2] as a preparatory stage for the coming of the Mahdi – the Hidden Imam (the Shi'ite Messiah). In his article, Ayatollah Kharrazi stresses Iran's superiority over the Arabs and the other peoples in the region

Paul Berman's Investigative Project on Terrorism interview published May 5, 2010, promotes his new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals. Berman is to be lauded for drawing attention to the current plight of freethinkers of Muslim descent, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq, while decrying their rejection, and even vilification, by many of his fellow contemporary liberal intellectuals. Unfortunately, his attempt to elaborate upon the very real contrast between these former Muslims, and the pious, mainstream Muslim cultural jihadist, Tariq Ramadan, devolves into profoundly uninformed muddle, fraught with the same cultural relativism Berman's polemic excoriates in other liberals

A man was arrested at JFK Airport as he was trying to board a flight to Dubai in connection to the failed bombing in Times Square.

A Pakistan-born U.S. citizen accused of driving a bomb-laden SUV into Times Square and parking it on a street lined with restaurants and Broadway theaters was to appear in court Tuesday to face charges that he tried to set off a massive fireball and kill Americans, federal authorities said.

No contemporary state faces such an array of threats as does Israel – indeed, probably no state in history ever has

One of the orthodoxies of Middle East peace advocacy is that Jewish settlements in the West Bank (which by now has come to include Jewish neighborhoods in the city of Jerusalem) are a terrible obstacle to peace. You see, so long as Jews are building homes in these places, the Palestinians and their supporters can't believe in peace. So those who claim to be peace advocates insist that the number of houses and Jews in these towns and villages must be absolutely frozen as prerequisite for peace. And we are assured that, once a peace agreement is signed, this will mean without doubt that all of these settlements, including every single house and every single Jew living in the houses, must be removed. That is, we are assured, the definition of peace for Palestinians.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Two suicide bombers dressed in burqas struck a crowd of displaced people collecting aid handouts, killing at least 41 and wounding more than 60 on Saturday at a camp in northwest Pakistan.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler introduced her article, POTUS Says: Jihad Is Only a Figment of Our Imaginationwith this citation:

"Earlier today, Matt Apuzzo, of the Associated Press, led me straight down the rabbit-hole when he wrote that:

'President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as 'Islamic extremism' from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.'"

We need to address the issue of the indoctrination of children who are taught to hate from a very young age.

April is the cruelest month for the people of Armenia, who every year at this season have to suffer a continuing tragedy and a humiliation. The tragedy is that of commemorating the huge number of their ancestors who were exterminated by the Ottoman Muslim caliphate in a campaign of state-planned mass murder that began in April 1915. The humiliation is of hearing, year after year, that the Turkish authorities simply deny that these appalling events ever occurred or that the killings constituted "genocide."

Back in 2003, few Americans had heard of Lt. Col. Allen West, then commanding a battalion of roughly 600 in Iraq. Attacks on his platoon suddenly spiked, and his intelligence operations got wind of an Iraqi policeman having leaked their maneuvers, in advance, to Islamic terrorists. West got nowhere by interrogating the suspected collaborator for several hours.

ANKARA (RFE/RL)–Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday claimed that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire never faced genocide and, on the contrary, themselves plotted to exterminate Turks.

A good first step in waging war is to figure out why your enemy is fighting. For over eight years, we've refused to do that in Afghanistan. In the recent Marine offensive against the Taliban in Marjah, this resulted in a clear geographical objective, but a vague pacification mission targeting a stick-figure enemy. Tactical success is built on strategic quicksand.

While we are all distracted by the health care summit the House has decided to declare war on the CIA. Just before the debate began on the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act (H.R. 2701) it was learned that the progressive Democrats have slipped into the bill a new provision that would establish criminal punishments for CIA agents and other intelligence officials who engage in "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" during interrogations.

On the eve of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Syria, set for February 25, 2010, during which he is to meet with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and Hamas political bureau head Khaled Mash'al, the Syrian government daily Teshreen published a front-page article by columnist Muhammad Sadeq Al-Husseini, who is close to the Iranian regime, in which he predicted the imminent end of Israel in light of the new balance of terror that Iran has created vis-à-vis the West.

Following are the excerpts from the article

A sermon calling for the genocide of Jews was broadcast Friday by PA TV, which is under the control of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The speech called the Jews the enemies of God and humanity, and compared Jews to Nazis.

In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Abbas proudly declared that there is no more incitement in the mosques:
"They [Israel] said there is a problem with incitement in speeches in mosques
during Friday prayers. Today there is no more incitement at any mosque," he
[Abbas] said." [Haaretz, Dec. 16, 2009]

The following

Words matter in the battle against radical Islam. As Raymond Ibrahim explains, "In the war on terror, to acquire accurate knowledge — which is pivotal to victory — we need to begin with accurate language." And nowhere is accuracy more wanting than in discussions of jihad.

While the term does translate to "struggle," Ibrahim notes that each school of Islamic jurisprudence emphasizes the military aspect of struggling in the path of Allah (i.e., jihad as holy war). Yet PC-addled "experts" continue to insist that jihad is a purely benign endeavor, more spiritual self-improvement than al-Qaeda-style self-immolation (and infidel-immolation). Below are three recently highlighted examples that fail the giggle test.

A radical New York imam who was once investigated as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center will share the stage Saturday night as a featured guest and speaker when the Council on American-Islamic Relations celebrates its 15th anniversary in Washington.

Siraj Wahhaj, imam of the Masjid Al-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y., became the first Muslim to lead the opening prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1991. Four years later, he was a character witness for Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called "blind sheik" convicted of conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. Although Wahhaj was never charged, then-U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White identified him in 1995 in a list of "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators."

NYALA, Darfur — When Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March, he responded by expelling 13 international aid agencies from Darfur and disbanding three other domestic relief groups. Khartoum claims the organizations were sharing information with the ICC, which both the groups and the court deny. With the void left by the ousted organizations, the United Nations has instituted emergency measures to help provide food, water, and other vital aid. But one service remains virtually decimated: support for rape survivors.

THE car's engine roared as the gunman punched the accelerator and we crossed into the open Afghan desert. I was seated in the back between two Afghan colleagues who were accompanying me on a reporting trip when armed men surrounded our car and took us hostage.

In a televised address screened at the Sayyed Al-Shuhada complex in Dhahiya on International Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day, September 18, 2009, Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah laid down the main tenets of his organization. He stated: 1) that the historical Palestine – from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan – belongs to the Palestinian people and to the entire Muslim nation; 2) that no one has the right to relinquish even a grain of Palestine's soil or a drop of its waters; 3) that the Israeli entity is an occupying, aggressive, cancerous body that contravenes religious law, and is therefore illegal; 4) that it is forbidden to recognize the Israeli entity or to acknowledge its legitimacy or existence; and 5) that it is forbidden to establish ties or to normalize relations with Israel. Nasrallah went on to state that Israel must cease to exist, that the next war would change the regional map, and that Hizbullah can destroy half of the Israeli army.

The following are excerpts from his speech, from the official English translation on the Hizbullah website:(1)

Those peaceful Muslim worshippers were planning to riot today in the third holiest site in Islam, as JPost explains:

The head of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, Yusuf Al Qaradawi, is urging Egyptians to turn this Friday into a nationwide day of anger against the "Israeli practices at the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem."

Following are excerpts from an interview with Sheikh Hamed Al-Ali, former head of the Salafi movement in Kuwait, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV [1].

To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2234.htm.

"Is There Any Solution For Occupation Other Than Jihad For The Sake Of Allah?"

Interviewer: "Our nation suffers many crises - occupation, siege, and so on. Is Jihad the best way to handle these problems today?"

[...]

Sheikh Hamed Al-Ali: "I salute our great nation, which continues to wage Jihad, driving the occupation out of its land, and defending its honor with all its glory. The nation has been fighting for the past 100 years. I salute the nation in general, and especially all those who wage Jihad for the sake of Allah, from the Philippines to Palestine, including Afghanistan and the courageous Iraqi resistance. All the mujahideen - whether they use bullets, words, or even shoes - are part of the circle of Jihad, of resistance, and they are worthy of our salutation, esteem, and support.

According to Arab liberals, today, eight years after September 11, 2001, Islam has been stigmatized, and Al-Qaeda is attacking Muslims with total disregard for the sanctity of their lives, public places, or holidays. They claim that Arab countries have not implemented sufficient reform, that they remain under the sway of conspiracy theories, that they are incapable of apologizing collectively to those whom they have harmed, and that they still believe fictional tales praising the Taliban. The liberals also contend that there has been no change in the Arab mentality, that the Arabs still object to any Western military action on Arab or Muslim territory, and that U.S. President Barack Obama's policy of extending his hand to Iran and to extremists worldwide is being interpreted as weakness.

Following are excerpts from relevant articles:

"Homosexuality is one of the most disgusting sins and greatest crimes.... It is a vile perversion that goes against sound nature, and is one of the most corrupting and hideous sins.... The punishment for homosexuality is death. Both the active and passive participants are to be killed whether or not they have previously had sexual intercourse in the context of a legal marriage.... Some of the companions of the Prophet stated that [the perpetrator] is to be burned with fire. It has also been said that he should be stoned, or thrown from a high place." Saudi Textbook Jurisprudence (Fiqh)

One of the ways the IDF arrives at the conclusion that Hizbullah is more cautious today than it was several years ago is by analyzing the Lebanese Shi'ite group's behavior during Operation Cast Lead, which the IDF waged against Hamas in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

Call it the grand slam. The Obama/Holder Justice Department is about to: (1) undermine a critical tool for prosecuting terrorists by military commission, (2) force more enemy-combatant cases into the civilian federal courts, (3) advance the transnationalist agenda to subordinate the Constitution to international law, and (4) provide what we might call "material support" to a convicted terrorist.

A supplication to that effect is often reiterated at the end of every Friday prayer in Arab countries, something critics say can radicalise youth.

Sheikh Salman al-Awda said such prayers were against Islamic sharia.

But he added they were permissible if the interests of Muslims were harmed, so his words may have little effect on radicals who oppose the US or Israel.

Ahmad Vahidi, nominated Thursday by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to serve as Iran's defense minister, is a suspected international terrorist sought by Interpol in connection with a deadly 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Argentina.

Last week, John Brennan, the assistant to President Obama for homeland security and counterterrorism approvingly recalled a key point in the speech Mr. Obama delivered in Cairo in June: "America is not and never will be at war with Islam." Unfortunately, that statement ignores the fact that the decision as to whether the United States is at war with anybody is not entirely up to our leadership or people. The real question: Is Islam at war with us?

"The Jihad of a Nation Over 1.5 Billion Strong Has Been Reduced to the Killing of an American in Iraq, a Briton in Afghanistan, a Jew in Palestine, or a Russian in Chechnya"

Salah Al-Din 'Adhadhda, member of the press bureau of Hizb Al-Tahrir in Lebanon: "We have come here to talk about the pinnacle of Islam – Jihad for the sake of Allah. Since Jihad – like other precepts of the shari'a – has been subjected to distortion and perversion, due to the ideological and cultural invasion from which our nation continues to suffer, and since the nation has lost the true meaning of Jihad, and in the mind of many of us, Jihad has become tantamount to resistance, conducted by a group of young Muslim men with some capabilities – the Jihad of a nation over 1.5 billion strong has been reduced to the killing of an American in Iraq, a Briton in Afghanistan, a Jew in Palestine, or a Russian in Chechnya.

"Thus, the nation takes to the streets of its cities to celebrate the killing of a dozen here or a hundred there."

Almost as soon as news broke that the murders of three Afghan-Canadian teenage sisters and their father's first wife in Kingston, were possible "honour killings," some in the Muslim community reacted in the most predictable fashion: defensiveness and denial.

Three years after Israel fought a bloody war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, there are fears that hostilities could erupt again — this time with the militant group better armed than ever.

According to Israeli, United Nations and Hezbollah officials, the Shia Muslim militia is stronger than it was in 2006 when it took on the Israeli army in a war that killed 1,191 Lebanese and 43 Israeli civilians.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Samuel Yunana's father, Fayam, was taken from his home, stabbed in the side of the stomach and told to convert to Islam. When he refused, his throat was slit.

Fayam was among more than 700 people killed in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri during an uprising last week by a radical Islamic sect which wants sharia (Islamic law) imposed across Africa's most populous nation

KEYSAR Trad, the long-time spokesman for Muslim cleric Taj Din al-Hilali, was yesterday denounced as "racist", "offensive" and "untruthful" by the Supreme Court judge who rejected his defamation claim against radio station 2GB.

Judge Peter McClellan said he agreed Mr Trad "incites acts of violence, incites racist attitudes, is dangerous and perhaps most significantly is a disgraceful individual".

He added that the founder of the Islamic Friendship Association held views that were "entirely repugnant" to most Australians

KORIAN, Pakistan (UCAN) -- Smoke was still rising from the Christian village of Korian in Punjab province on July 31 after it was completely destroyed in a violent raid the previous night by thousands of Muslims.

A Christian house set ablaze by Muslims

Korian was home to about 100 Christian families, most of them laborers, who all fled the area in the wake of the attack. No one died in the incident.

The following are transcripts from programs that aired on the Egyptian television channel Al-Rahma. They include segments from children's shows, and of speeches and discussions with numerous sheikhs.

In the United States, Muslim communities and Islamist advocacy groups are demanding establishment and support of Arabic and Muslim schools. In New York City, controversy erupted over the charter Arabic-language Khalil Gibran International Academy after exposure of the radical associations and statements of its principal Deborah Almontaser,[1] and over Minnesota's Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy after an investigative reporter exposed Islamist indoctrination in the state-funded school.[2] Expansion of the Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia has also come under fire after exposure of textbooks preaching hate and intolerance.[3] While Muslim schools in the United States are a relatively new phenomenon, in the United Kingdom they are better established. In February 2009, Civitas, a London-based think tank dedicated to the discussion of social problems and civic society, published a 154-page report,[4] excerpted below, exploring the challenge to social cohesion presented by many Muslim schools in the United Kingdom. There are twenty-four Saudi schools in the United Kingdom alone; many of the other 132 registered Muslim schools have Saudi ties.

Bayt al-Maqdis (Holy House), as the al-Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem's disputed Old City is often referred to in Muslim religious texts and speech, is a subject of great important to Muslims worldwide. It is also a much-discussed subject in the discourse of both Islamist nationalists, such as those in the Muslim Brotherhoods across the Arab world and the Palestinian HAMAS movement, and transnational Salafi jihadis, such as those in al-Qa'ida "Central" (AQC) and its affiliates and allies. In this cyber mural, the late Jordanian jihadi leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi (left) and AQC chief Usama bin Laden (right) appear above the al-Aqsa Mosque as a mobile missile launcher bearing a black flag emblazoned with the shahadah, the Islamic statement of faith ("There is no god but [the] God and Muhammad is His Messenger"), points in its direction. This flag, and variations of it, are used by Salafi jihadi groups worldwide.

If (God Forbid) Obamacare does get passed there would be only one good thing coming out of it, Minister Louis Farrakhan is so old that he will be turned over to a Hospice instead of being given medical care.

Just a week ago Farrakhan found himself in Lebanon where delivered his rancid hatred in an interview with the Tripoli Post:

St. Paul, Minn. — A federal grand jury has indicted two men on terrorism charges in connection with the ongoing investigation of about 20 missing Somali-American men from the Twin Cities. Authorities think the men joined an extremist Islamic group with ties to al-Qaida in their homeland.

Prior to World War II, what if Adolf Hitler had tried to infiltrate the United States, not with a series of German "Bund" organizations, but with a series of groups claiming that they were "religious" organizations? What if American federal, state, and local government organizations then engaged with such groups, gave them respectability, and even offered government support for their propaganda mission for fear of offending such "religious" organizations? During the 1960s, what if the American federal government feared to act against the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacist organizations, and white supremacist segregation laws for fear of offending their "religious" beliefs?

Far-fetched? In fact, supremacist ideologies using the disguise of "religion" is one of the most serious propaganda threats to our human rights of equality and liberty today.

Presently, fanatical Islamists are lashing out with mad fury before their own final demise. The "infidel" world has been complicit in the surge of Islamism through its mistakes, complacency, and greed.

Our academia leftists even engage in willful misinformation and deception when it suits them. Terms such as "Political Islam," or "Radical Islam," for instance, are contributions of our leftist intellengtsia. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam itself, simply because they are redundant. Even a cursory study of Islam and its charter—the Quran—will clearly reveal that it is a radical political movement. It is the socialist leftists and paid-for-media and politicians who sanitize Islam and misguide the populace by saying that the "real Islam" constitutes the main body of the religion; and, that this main body is non-political and moderate.

Islamic militants in Somalia so far this year have killed eight Christians.

Two of them were sons of a Christian leader says Reuters Africa and Compass Direct News.

Nine of the 10 victims were beheaded.

In the course of the analysis, Ahmad notes that religious and political commentators in Pakistan often frame the issue in terms of an international conspiracy involving the Jews and Israel." Here are some extracts:

Majeed Nizami, editor-in-chief of Pakistan's influential Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt: Pakistan faces "Three Satans," being India, the United States, and Israel.

Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon in Khartoum, delivered by Sheikh Abd Al-Jalil Al-Karouri. The sermon aired on Sudan TV on June 5, 2009.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (ANS) -- A human rights organization has learned that a Christian businessman was shot eight times in the legs while driving through Lahore, Pakistan after refusing to pay protection money to a Muslim.

According to a news release from Christian human rights organization International Christian Concern (ICC),Suqlain Shah, a former policeman, and another man, Sudia, stopped Ayub Gill's car at 2:25 p.m. on July 7, as Ayub was going to buy a property in a nearby town.

Great moments in opera include memorable entrances, such as the villain Scarpia's in Puccini's Tosca. The late Tito Gobbi did it unforgettably. Interviewing the Italian baritone in Rome near the end of his life, I asked how he could make such an impact before singing the first note. What did he do?

"Ah!" Gobbi replied, perhaps a little smugly "I tell you. Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. I let the music play."

I was reminded of Gobbi when someone raised the question of how we should integrate immigrants into Canadian society. The answer (if you ask me) is we shouldn't. We should let immigrants integrate themselves. Should we offer incentives for integration? No, integration is its own reward. Should we penalize failure to integrate? Whatever for? The penalty is failure itself. Let the music play.

ABU Bakar Bashir has endorsed the deadly work of Southeast Asia's most wanted terrorist, Noordin Top, saying Allah would protect him in his fight for Islam.

The fanatical Muslim cleric, who is the spiritual adviser to the al-Mukmin Islamic school for children on the outskirts of Solo, in central Java, said if the victims of the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton suicide bombings had ever held any thoughts against Islam, they deserved to die.

"Obama is not 100 percent right to confront Bibi on settlements," a Clinton advisor blew back at me after my July 1 ForeignPolicy.com piece "Cut Bibi Some Slack." "He is 200 percent right!" This from a guy who had argued for years that public confrontation is not the right way to deal with Israel because it undermines the confidence that is a prerequisite for progress in the peace process.

The issue of abuse of women by Sudan's public order police [1] recently gained prominence in the Sudanese and other media, after Sudanese journalist Lubna Ahmad Hussein and 12 other women were arrested in Khartoum on July 3, 2009, for wearing trousers. Two days later, 10 of the women were summoned to the police station and received punishments of 10 lashes each. Charges were brought against three others, including Hussein, for inappropriate dress and conduct.

Clause 152 of Sudanese criminal law mandates up to 40 lashes and/or a fine for inappropriate dress as well as for conduct that contravenes accepted norms.

Incidents of this kind are widespread in Sudan, and are usually disregarded by the local and global media. Hussein, however, decided to bring the issue to the attention of the public, and printed 500 invitations to her court proceedings and to the flogging to which she would likely be sentenced, distributing them to journalists and friends. Her move was intended as a protest against the aforementioned criminal law clause, as well as against the actions of the public order police, which, she believes, systematically violate the human rights of Sudanese women.

In an interview with Al-Arabiyya TV, Hussein explained that she had given out the invitations because otherwise no one would believe that she was to be flogged for wearing ordinary clothes: "I wanted the punishment to be executed in the presence of observers, so that they see for themselves why I was being flogged."

Reporting from New Delhi and Islamabad, Pakistan -- A dossier compiled by Pakistani investigators acknowledging that a Pakistani extremist group was behind last year's Mumbai attacks could help set the stage for the beginnings of a thaw in relations with India.

The dossier, which Pakistani officials handed over to their Indian counterparts during talks in Egypt last week, concludes that the militant Islamic group Lashkar-e-Taiba organized the attacks on luxury hotels, a railway station and other targets in Mumbai in November that killed 166 people.

In a shocking and unprecedented interview, directly exposing the inhumanity of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's religious regime in Iran, a serving member of the paramilitary Basiji militia has told this reporter of his role in suppressing opposition street protests in recent weeks.

A teacher claims he has been sacked for reprimanding pupils who made racist remarks about his being a Christian.
Nicholas Kafouris said he lost his £30,000-a-year post because he would not tolerate the 'openly racist' behaviour of pupils as young as eight.

On this most holy of days for Islam what have the followers of the Religion of Peace™ been up to?

IF you were hiring a lawyer to help pro tect Americans from terrorists, you likely wouldn't choose a left-wing ac tivist who's been a champion of the killers held at Guantanamo Bay.

Then again, you're not President Obama. His Justice Department has raised eyebrows by tapping Jennifer Daskal, formerly "senior counterterrorism counsel" at Human Rights Watch, to work as counsel in its National Security Division and to serve on a task force deciding the future of Guantanamo and its detainees.

When Dominic Grieve — the Tory U.K. shadow home secretary and attorney general — took to the podium at the grotesquely misnamed 2008 Global Peace and Unity event, he pulled no punches.

While thanking his hosts for the opportunity to speak, he became highly unpopular with the audience when he attacked other event speakers who espouse conspiracy theories and extremist interpretations of Islam and who reflect a "deranged or deeply-warped mindset."

One of those he mentioned by name was Yasir Qadhi.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's hardline Islamist rebels beheaded seven people on Friday for being "Christians" and "spies" in the latest implementation of strict sharia law by the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab movement, witnesses said.

"Why Islam" is Muslim outreach group, run by the ICNA a Islamic group loosely tied to the Jamaat-e-Islami organization of Southeast Asia and allied with the Muslim Brotherhood

The "Why Islam" effort supposedly has "nicer" goals then its parent organization.

Which Pennsylvania institution do you think is doing the better job educating its students about Islam, West Chester University or the Municipal Police Officer Education & Training Commission?

The answer lies in a comparison between a conference West Chester University hosted recently called "Islam In America: Understanding Intercultural Differences" and a course the Commission is mandating for its law enforcement personnel, "Radical Islam: A Law Enforcement Primer."

The panelists chosen for the West Chester University program appear to have been plucked from a who's who of apologists for Islam.

If you ask American, Israeli and European liberals and leftists what the key problem with Islam is, they will answer that there is a lack of tolerance. Not, of course, a lack of tolerance on the part of the throat-slitters, car burners, gang rapists, car bombers and hate preachers of Islam. On the contrary, they will assert that there is a great tolerance deficit on the part of Western nations toward Islam.

In a rational political calculus, we take for granted that the people blowing up synagogues, stabbing their sisters to death for wearing jeans, and kidnapping and beheading people they don't like, are the ones suffering from a tolerance shortage. But to a progressive, brutal violence by a minority is always a symptom that they are being oppressed, rather than that they are the ones doing the oppressing.

Special Hamas tax: The Hamas government in Gaza has recently decided to cut the salaries of Palestinian Authority employees in the Strip in order to finance Koran studies.

Cultures collided Sunday when a gay man was harassed by more than a dozen Somali youths while heading home after the Twin Cities GLBT Pride Festival. Shouting "I hate gay people,"

The Imam in charge of the madrassa could not have been more welcoming.

I sat on the carpeted floor of his office enjoying the cool of the air conditioning, thankful for this temporary refuge from the broiling streets of Karachi - perhaps the most overcrowded and dangerous city on the continent of Asia.

Have you noticed how Islamic terrorists the world over who get on getting caught, always profess their innocence?

There is only one difference between Hamas the terrorist group that control's Gaza and Fatah, the terrorist group that controls Judea and Samaria. Hamas is open about it terrorist goals, Fatah (controlled by Palestinian President Abbas) tries to maintain a shroud of "moderation" Of course their moderation belies the truth. Take for example this little skit (video above) that Palestinian Media Watch found on PA Television where Fatah brags about its terrorist abilities

Reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates -- Iran's president rebuked his American counterpart Saturday as the two countries fell back into a familiar pattern of back-and-forth barbs that may imperil the Obama administration's plans to open a direct dialogue with Tehran over its nuclear program.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded to President Obama's criticism of the Islamic Republic's crackdown on dissenters during the civil unrest sparked by dispute over his reelection.

Reporting from London -- In an audio message from a hide-out in South Asia this month, an Al Qaeda chief did something new: He sang the praises of an ethnic group that once barely registered in the network.

"We consider the Muslims in Turkey our brothers," said Mustafa Abu Yazid, the network's operations chief. Lauding Turkish suicide bombers killed in recent attacks near the Afghan-Pakistani border, he declared, "This is a pride and honor to the nation of Islam in Turkey, and we ask Allah to accept them amongst the martyrs."

If there hadn't been dissidents in the Soviet Union, the Communist regime never would have crumbled. And if the West hadn't been concerned about their fate, Soviet leaders would have ruthlessly done away with them. They didn't because the Kremlin feared the response of the Free World.

Americans are proud, and rightly so, of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which, among other things, protects speech from government control. The Amendment says in part: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Increasingly, however, Americans seem content to regard the First Amendment not as the fundamental working tool of democracy, but as a national heirloom, a kind of antique to admire rather than put to use. I don't think many of my countrymen perceive how profoundly their attitude toward free speech has changed. But there is a difference between having freedom of speech and exercising freedom of speech

"The Stoning of Soraya M." lives up to its title quite literally -- and rightly so, for it is important to understand just how cruel and drawn-out this ancient form of execution is and how prevalent it remains, not just in Iran, the film's setting, but in countries throughout the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa that follow Islamic Sharia law.

The timing of the film's release is apt, for it serves as a metaphor for the current protests in Iran against the long-standing oppressiveness of the Islamic Republic

WHATEVER happens in Iran in the aftermath of this month's fraudulent elections, one thing is clear: we are witnessing not just a fascinating power struggle among men who've known each other intimately for 30 years, but the unraveling of the religious idea that has shaped the growth of modern Islamic fundamentalism since the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928.

The Islamic revolution in Iran encompassed two incompatible ideas: that God's law — as interpreted by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — would rule, and that the people of Iran had the right to elect representatives who would advance and protect their interests

THE CHOICE presented by the democracy protests in Iran could hardly have been clearer.

On one side: a brutal theocratic regime that jails and tortures its critics at home and is a deadly sponsor of terrorism abroad; that loudly proclaims its enmity for the United States and has murdered many Americans to prove it; that barely conceals its drive to amass a nuclear arsenal; that lusts for the annihilation of Israel; and that for 30 years has pursued a far-flung Islamist jihad.

Along the high street in Kumbar Bazaar, normally a bustling market town, every shop has either been smashed by shells and missiles or sealed with steel shutters.
The only sounds carried on the hot morning air are birdsong and the soft, throaty clatter of the engines idling in the tanks guarding our rear

While the European Union is avoiding upgrading ties with Israel, legitimizing the genocidal murderers in Hamas looks to be just around the corner.

Since the intifada, I have seen very few articles in the Palestinian Arab press about trials given for regular crimes - theft, murder, extortion, drug-dealing. Arrests, yes; trials, no.

With the exception of trials for "collaborators" with Israel.

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WASHINGTON -- International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that radical Muslims running a tea stall beat a Christian man to death for using a cup designated for Muslims on May 9. The young man, Ishtiaq Masih, had ordered tea at a roadside stall in Machharkay village, Punjab, Pakistan, after his bus stopped to allow passengers to relieve themselves.

When Ishtiaq went to pay for his tea, the owner noticed that he was wearing a necklace with a cross and grabbed him, calling for his employees to bring anything available to beat him for violating a sign posted on the stall warning non-Muslims to declare their religion before being served. Ishtiaq had not noticed the warning sign before ordering his tea, as he ordered with a group of his fellow passengers.

The St. Petersburg Declaration is the most eloquent articulation of Enlightenment principles ever given voice by Muslims

A group of Muslims met 2007 in St. Petersburg Florida recently to found a new movement for the reformation of Islam. Their movement is supported by a spectrum of dissidents seeking reform and enlightenment in Islam.

She grew up in the college town, traveled the globe as a journalist and returned home seeking comfort in the familiar to raise her newborn son. But when former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani tried to pray in the main hall of Morgantown, West Virginia's new mosque, she was forcefully told she couldn't.

Women had a separate prayer section. They also had their own entrance. Then she started hearing disturbing messages being preached during prayer services.

"The West is on a dark path."

"To love the Prophet is to hate those who hate him."

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. "I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer," he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. "I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up," Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it's a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

WASHINGTON -- Hell no, Uighurs won't go!

A leading advocate for 17 ethnic Uighurs from China held at Guantanamo Bay prison is throwing cold water on the Obama administration's plan to transfer the detainees to the tropical island paradise of Palau. Although the tranquil archipelago in the Pacific seems like a place to get away from it all, the Uighurs -- who have been held for years by the United States at Guantanamo -- want to be resettled at a place where they can interact with other Uighurs.

Moments after his son was convicted Wednesday of a terrorism conspiracy, Syed Riaz Ahmed said the young man never harmed anyone and committed nothing more than thought crimes.

"You think something and you're guilty of something," said Ahmed, somber and weary as he stood outside a federal courtroom. "He's not guilty of any crimes in the eyes of Allah. He's guilty of U.S. laws."

Two men with names linked to Islamic terrorism were aboard the Air France jet which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has been revealed.
Both were in their 20s and of unspecified nationality. Their bodies have not yet been found, making proper identification impossible.
The French secret service is treating the discovery as 'highly significant'.

Cairo (AINA) -- In another incident of abduction and forced Islamization of Coptic minor girls, 16-year old Nermeen Mitry was abducted by a Muslim man to coerce her into converting to Islam. She was successfully recovered on the same day by her family, who did their own investigation and search to locate her.

Nermeen was abducted from El-Mahalla by Muslim Hossam Hamouda in conspiracy with his aunt Leila Attia; she was hidden away by a third person called Nasser Abu Deif from Assuit in Upper Egypt, at the home of one of his female relatives called Rasha Soliman in Zagazig.

President Obama's speech in Cairo to the so-called Muslim world has Islamist organizations fawning about the "new beginning" of relations with Muslims globally. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF terror trial and was recently wholly rejected by the FBI, issued a statement calling the speech "comprehensive, balanced, and forthright." This was not to be outdone by the like-minded Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which lauded the speech as a "foundation for mutual recognition and positive engagement."

"There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur'an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam."[1] So announces former nun and self-professed "freelance monotheist," Karen Armstrong. This quote sums up the single most influential argument currently serving to deflect the accusation that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant: All monotheistic religions, proponents of such an argument say, and not just Islam, have their fair share of violent and intolerant scriptures, as well as bloody histories. Thus, whenever Islam's sacred scriptures—the Qur'an first, followed by the reports on the words and deeds of Muhammad (the Hadith)—are highlighted as demonstrative of the religion's innate bellicosity, the immediate rejoinder is that other scriptures, specifically those of Judeo-Christianity, are as riddled with violent passages

Fitzgerald: When Obama Channels Bush, Or, Qur'an 5.32 Without 5.33
"The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind." -- from the speech by Barack Obama

Is that really what the "Holy Koran" teaches? It's true, there is a verse in the Qur'an, taken verbatim from an earlier Jewish text, that says "whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind," etc.

But that verse, verse 5.32, in the Qur'an is followed by another verse, one that Barack Obama carefully or carelessly -- it hardly matters which -- chose to overlook, and by overlooking, mislead not his Muslim audience (who were no doubt pleased he left out, just as any Muslim apologist for Islam would have left out, the following verse 5.33) but rather, all of the world's Infidels, which includes 99% of the American people, whose welfare he is supposed to keep foremost in mind, for the right instruction and the protection of the American people is his solemn duty.

We've been here before, of course. When Barack Obama quotes 5.32 and leaves out 5.33, he is merely channeling George Bush. For Bush, in his deep respect for the "religion" of Islam, liked to quote the same Qur'anic passage, that is, 5.32. The passage, of course, one of the more appealing ones in the Qur'an, was lifted wholesale from the Jewish text of the Mishnah. Barack Obama might have recognized that, but he didn't dare -- for if he had said it, it would have infuriated Muslims. They don't want to have the Qur'an's sources in other, prior monotheisms, revealed, and they don't even want the elements, such as the djinn, borrowed wholesale from pre-Islamic Arab pagan lore, connected to their original sources. For the Qur'an is for Muslims never to be subjected to the kind of historical analysis that was done for both Judaism and Christianity by the practitioners of what is called the Higher Criticism, beginning with Julius Wellhausen and other German and English Protestant scholars of the mid-to-late 19th century.

Veteran Tory Lord Tebbit provoked anger among Muslims yesterday by comparing Islamic sharia courts to gangsters.
He likened the tribunals to the 'system of arbitration of disputes that was run by the Kray brothers'.
Lord Tebbit told the Lords: 'Are you not aware that there is extreme pressure put upon vulnerable women to go through a form of arbitration that results in them being virtually precluded from access to British law?'

A Briton kidnapped in Africa has been beheaded by Al Qaeda terrorists demanding the release of radical cleric Abu Qatada from a London jail.
The terror group's North African section said on its website that it had killed Edwin Dyer, adding that disbelievers would be 'smitten in the neck'. Gordon Brown said the Government had 'strong reason to believe' the claim.

The statement said terrorists 'killed Dyer on May 31, finding that Britain is unresponsive and does not seem to care for its citizens'.

The results of Kuwait's elections last month -- in which Islamists were rebuffed and four women were elected to parliament -- will likely reinvigorate the movement for greater democracy in the region that has stalled since the hopeful "Arab spring" of 2005. It also puts pressure on the Obama administration to end its deafening silence on democracy promotion.

Although ruled by a hereditary monarch, Kuwait is the most democratic of the Arab countries. The press is relatively free, parliament has real power, and politicians are chosen in legitimate elections. However, Kuwait is a part of the Persian Gulf, where the subordination of women is traditionally most severe. Historically, Kuwait's political process was for males only. But in 2005 parliament yielded to female activists and approved a bill giving women the right to vote and hold office.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian sociologist and the founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo, is one of the Arab world's foremost democratic dissidents. He was imprisoned from 2000 to 2003 on charges of "defaming Egypt" and convicted of a similar charge in absentia in 2008. On May 25, his conviction was overturned on appeal. Ibrahim, who has spent most of the past two years in self-imposed exile, was interviewed by Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, who prepared the following edited excerpts:

In a recent interview, activist Ines Laufer explains how female genital mutilation (FGM), which aims to destroy the ability to experience sexual pleasure, threatens thousands of Muslim girls in Europe. "The number of FGM victims and minor girls at risk and the prevalence of FGM in the EU are much higher than assumed," she reports. Some families send their daughters overseas for the procedure; others utilize practitioners who travel from those countries to the West.

Pakistan has recently been traumatized and severely buffeted by the Taliban and their front-man Sufi Muhammad, trying their best to bring the believing but largely non-practicing Muslims of Pakistan under the black-n-white banner of Prophet Muhammad, and all his teachings encoded in the Quran and Sunnah (prophetic tradition).

Mogadishu's best barometer of ­violence is the little blackboard on which Dr Taher Mahmoud daily records the number of patients in his hospital. For the last 20 years the tall surgeon with huge hands has been operating on the victims of the city's civil war.

"It's good times now," he told me when we met a few weeks ago. "We are only getting four to six gunshot casualties a day. That's very good." He pointed at the blackboard covered with his neat white handwriting: it recorded that 86 patients were undergoing treatment. "During the Ethiopian war [2007-08] we had 300 in this hospital."

On Thursday, Josh Meyer of the Los Angeles Times broke the story that the FBI is edging the CIA out of the business of fighting international terrorism. Under the bureau's "global justice" initiative, Meyer reported that "FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option." Who needs a War on Terror, or even an "overseas contingency operation," when all the world's a crime scene?

If you're thinking, "Hey, we've seen this movie before," you're right. Slowly but surely, it's September 10 again, a retreat into Clinton-era counterterrorism, when radical Islam prosecuted a war while we tried to prosecute radical Islam in court, playing cops-and-robbers while jihadists played for keeps.

In his article on how the Greco-Roman heritage impacted Christianity but not Islam, Fjordman has mentioned the different treatment of adulterers in the two religions. He correctly relates how Jewish law prescribed death by stoning as punishment for adultery (Deut.22:19-23), how Jesus overruled this law, how the Jews gradually let it lapse, and how Mohammed chose to uphold it, as his more zealous followers do until today. But the contrast is even sharper than this.

Reporting from Akora Khattak, Pakistan -- The Darul Uloom Haqqania campus is a sprawling labyrinth of ashen buildings where young men in black beards and white skullcaps spend their days and nights on hard concrete floors learning all 77,701 words of the Koran. Some people call it the University of Jihad.

The fact that some of Haqqania's graduates go on to become Taliban fighters and suicide bombers isn't the school's concern, said Syed Yousef Shah, the head of the 3,000- student madrasa, or Islamic seminary.