HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY always falls during the week that follows Passover. At first glance, the two would seem to have little in common -- one memorializes the millions of European Jews annihilated by Nazi Germany; the other commemorates the deliverance of the Jews from slavery in ancient Egypt.

Yet for all their obvious differences, a fundamental similarity links these two crucial chapters in Jewish history. Both were attempts at genocide, and in both cases the perpetrators justified their savageries by claiming that they were the real victims, threatened by the people they intended to wipe out.

Zachery Chesser is a young man from Virginia serving a 25-year prison sentence for providing material support to an Islamic terrorist organization. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs recently published this case study on his radicalization.

There are many aspects to the current controversy over use of the “Israel Firster” term. There are people who use the term – continue to use it, resistantly defending its use – and there are those who criticize them for it. The critics claim that adopters of the term are continuing an ages-old anti-Semitic libel against Jews – of disloyalty to their home country because of greater, primary loyalty to their Jewish identity. The people who use the term have accused their critics of “smearing” them with the anti-Semitic label for political ends. Again, there are multiple issues buried in these counter charges – that of anti-Semitism itself, and of disloyalty, or divided loyalty or, as has mostly been expressed, “dual” loyalty – but first I consider the notion of the smear

Of all the bigotries, in the world today, one stands out for special consideration. That is not simply because it is so odious, though it is certainly that. It is because it is the one bigotry that presents a clear and present danger of translating into a genocidal outcome. It is also the one form of bigotry that has been openly accepted and internalised by large sections of a British and West-European political intelligentsia that remains dominated by the liberal-Left.

I am talking, of course, about anti-Zionism – a uniquely discriminatory agenda aimed at deligitimising the State of Israel and ending that country’s existence as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Why is it that no one bats an eyelash when a former United States national security adviser says, “The Israelis have a lot of influence with Congress, and in some cases they are able to buy influence”? Last week in an interview, Zbigniew Brzezinski accused the government of Israel of a crime. If he has evidence that Israeli officials have broken the law by bribing U.S. politicians, law enforcement authorities should compel him to produce it. But of course Brzezinski’s not really talking about Israelis. What he means is that American Jews have subverted the interests of the United States on behalf of a foreign power.

Recently the West Point Military Academy denied retired LTG Jerry Boykin, a candid speaker about Islam, a chance to be at a prayer breakfast at West Point. The usual suspects not only didn’t want any discussion that might involve Islam, they didn’t even want someone who had spoken about it in the past.

When even a man like Richard Nixon called Harvard the “Kremlin on the Charles,” he probably didn’t envision in how many horrible ways that would eventually ring true. In late 2010, Harvard, instead of doing the right and honourable thing, simply went ahead and showed exactly how Kremlinesque it was. Stalin would have nodded approvingly in his grave at its disgusting U-turn in a span of mere months. If you want the short version, Harvard has fallen from its hoary pedestal on which stood the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, and T.Roosevelt and has today become a sprawling den of petty fund-mongers who have exhibited no scruples in putting it on the fast-track to convert it to the Madrassa on the Charles.

The longer version began sometime early in December 2011 when it sacked Dr. Subramanian Swamy from teaching his Summer economics course, something he’s been doing there for ages. Here’s the dirty saga in full. Dr. Swamy has aptly characterized Harvard’s chicanery as a Spanish Inquisition.

Apple. Google. Facebook. Sharia?

Silicon Valley has become synonymous with modernity and innovation.

And naively, one might expect Islam in Silicon Valley to share the same traits: an advanced, forward-thinking interpretation.

Presumably, the Muslim Community Association (MCA) of the San Francisco Bay Area would serve as the stewards of such a perspective. Billing itself as "one of the largest Muslim communities in the US," the MCA proudly proclaims that its members are "well-educated, well-traveled, and earn higher than average incomes in the San Francisco Bay Area." Even the mayor of Cupertino (Apple's hometown) recently visited an MCA Open House.

Yet the MCA's own web site makes it clear that Silicon Valley Islam is anything but innovative. Their online bookstore, which features a small but revealing set of "authentic" books about Islam, yields an interpretation of Islam that is draconian and unbending: an Islam dedicated to bringing Sharia to the world.

While Obama administration officials have a stake in referring to the Muslim Brotherhood as "moderate" and largely secular, there is a reality very different from the view at Foggy Bottom.

The Brotherhood is a popular movement of Islam founded in 1928 by Hasan al Banna, the most prominent representative of what is sometimes referred to as Islamism.

It normally takes just a few minutes. But last week’s approval of the Summer School course catalog—which still included controversial Indian politician Subramanian Swamy on the teaching roster when it first came up for a vote—launched a lengthy discussion that has since spawned a vocal debate in the international media.

Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the largest school at Harvard, voted overwhelmingly at last Tuesday’s Faculty meeting to remove the two courses taught by Swamy at the Summer School.

In Its Their Nature I discussed how the character of a culture can fail when its elites adopt impossible standards for the societal ego ideal. An example from the life of George Soros, a man who has devoted himself to increasing freedom but has evolved into believing that West Civilization, exemplified by Israel and the United States, is the greatest danger to freedom in the world today, sparked a fair amount of discussion. It is clear that our character is being tested by the current times in fundamental ways. What of our enemies?

The people who speak in the name of Sharia supporting Islam, whether radical Sunnis in al Qaeda or Hamas or radical Shia in Iran or Hezbollah, have summed up their Cultural Ego Ideal in a simple statement:

We love death more than you love life!

from the article

Miqdam Al-Khadhari: "This is a very important book, a textbook reader, which is an important school subject at Al-Azhar. In the general education system, it is known as the reading subject. Through it, the student is educated, he reads, and listens to the sheik. Let's see what Al-Azhar is teaching our sons in this subject…"

Interviewer: "Let's take, for example, the 11th grade…"

Miqdam Al-Khadhari: "We'll take 11th grade because it is the most important grade, in which the youths are at a crucial stage of their lives. Let's see what they are being taught at A-Azhar. This is the 2007-2008 reader for the 11th grade. [...]

"After four or five chapters, the book moves to a topic with a large title, as clear as day: 'The Treachery of the Jews.'"

Former Muslims, those who by choice have left Islam, were like most Americans shocked by the mass shooting of innocent soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood, Texas on November 5^th, resulting in more than 13 killed and 30 seriously wounded. Major Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist was a self acknowledged devout Muslim who was overhead by his victims at Fort Hood screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he jumped onto a table and sprayed 100 lethal rounds into the lines of soldiers and civilians waiting to undergo medical and dental examinations.

After a good start, the West is faltering, notably in the face of Iran, and notably in America electing Obama.

The fall in violence in Iraq shows that in the long war, if the West keeps its resolve, the jihad will just give up, as it eventually did in Algeria and Israel. Eventually the jihad runs out of morons willing to die for a losing cause.

It has become an accepted trope of contemporary journalism that American Muslims are under siege and beset by hatred and prejudice. But the evidence for this conventional wisdom is lacking. The story line of Muslim persecution in the United States has always been a matter of anecdotes and perception, not facts. That truth was confirmed

from the articale

In a popular meeting in Sousse today, Hamadi Jebali of Enahdha party, certainly tunisian next prime minister in Tunisia, has announced that he and his party will be "the 6 th islamic Rightly Guided Caliphs", promising also that this tunisian Caliphate will, enlighten the worrld, as did the Jasmine revolution!

From the article

Sanctioned Violence

The mosques surveyed contained a variety of texts, ranging from contemporary printed pamphlets and handouts to classic texts of the Islamic canon. From the perspective of promoting violent jihad, the literature types were ranked in the survey from severe to moderate to nonexistent. The texts selected were all written to serve as normative and instructive tracts and are not scriptural. This is important because a believer is free to understand scripture literally, figuratively, or merely poetically when it does not have a normative or legal gloss provided by Islamic jurisprudence.

The moderate-rated literature was authored by respected Shari'a religious and/or legal authorities; while expressing positive attitudes toward violence, it was predominantly concerned with the more mundane aspects of religious worship and ritual. The severe material, by contrast, largely consists of relatively recent texts written by ideologues, rather than Shari'a scholars, such as Abul Ala Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb. These, as well as materials published and disseminated by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, are primarily, if not exclusively, aimed at using Islam to advance a violent political agenda.

Mawdudi (1903-79), for one, believed that it was legitimate to wage violent jihad against "infidel colonizers" in order to gain independence and spread Islam. His Jihad in Islam, found in many of the mosques surveyed, instructed followers to employ force in pursuit of a Shari'a-based order:

These [Muslim] men who propagate religion are not mere preachers or missionaries, but the functionaries of God [so that they may be witnesses for the people], and it is their duty to wipe out oppression, mischief, strife, immorality, high handedness, and unlawful exploitation from the world by force of arms.[17]

Similarly, Qutb's Milestones serves as the political and ideological backbone of the current global jihad movement. Qutb, for example, sanctions violence against those who stand in the way of Islam's expansion:

If someone does this [prevents others from accepting Islam], then it is the duty of Islam to fight him until either he is killed or until he declares his submission.[18]

These materials differ from other severe- and moderate-rated materials because they are not Islamic legal texts per se but rather are polemical works seeking to advance a politicized Islam through violence, if necessary. Nor are these authors recognized Shari'a scholars.

The same cannot be said for some classical works that are also supportive of violence in the name of Islam. Works by several respected jurists and scholars from the four major Sunni schools of jurisprudence, dating from the eighth to fourteenth centuries, are all in agreement that violent jihad against non-Muslims is a religious obligation.[19] Such behavior is normative, legally-sanctioned violence not confined to modern writers with a political axe to grind. Nor does its presence in classical Muslim works make it a relic of some medieval past. While Umdat as-Salik (Reliance of the Traveler) may have been compiled in the fourteenth century, al-Azhar University, perhaps the preeminent center of Sunni learning in the world, stated in its 1991 certification of the English translation that the book "conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community."[20] While addressing a host of theological matters and detailed instructions as to how Muslims should order their daily routine to demonstrate piety and commitment to Islam, this certified, authoritative text spends eleven pages expounding on the applicability of jihad as violence directed against non-Muslims, stating for example:

The caliph … makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians … provided he has first invited them to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax.[21]

The caliph fights all other peoples until they become Muslim … because they are not a people with a book, nor honored as such, and are not permitted to settle with paying the poll tax.[22]

From the article

Three weeks ahead of parliamentary vote in Egypt, the MB and Islamists, no longer hindered by Mubarak repression, mobilise supporters at Eid celebrations using verses from the Quran, flags, children's toys and visits to the dead

from the article

‘From a purely academic point of view, this translation is superior to anything produced by orientalists in the way of translations of major Islamic works.” Taha Jabir al-Alwani was writing about Reliance of the Traveller, the English version of Umdat al-Salik, the classic manual of sharia (“Islamic Sacred Law,” as the cover of Reliance puts it). Alwani

from the article

KINGSTON, ONT.—The secret life of dead girls: A biography in cellphone pictures.

Boldly, even sensually, the Shafia sisters posed to document their own brutally shortened existence.

Here is Zainab, stunningly beautiful, looking out coyly from under long eyelashes. She was the eldest daughter at 19, with a one-day marriage in her past, an engagement in her immediate future. The one who ran away from home, to a women’s shelter, complaining of an abusive family, and then, fatefully, returned home two weeks later.

from the article

A Coptic church near Aswan in Upper Egypt was attacked and burned by a Muslim mob, inflamed by the fiery words of their imam. This has happened with increasing frequency since the February revolution in Egypt.

The church, originally built in the 1940s, was undergoing badly needed renovations and some expansion. According to Sharia, it is forbidden to build or repair a Christian or Jewish religious building in a Muslim-ruled state. Some local Muslims demanded that the new building could not have either domes or a cross. When the rebuilding went ahead according to plan, they set the church on fire.

from the seeded article

Introduction

In Pakistan, a strong mass movement is being led by Sunni clerics against the death sentence handed down to Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri for assassinating liberal Punjab Governor Salman Taseer this year, and now a former Chief Justice of Lahore High Court is defending the assassin.

On January 4, 2011, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, 26, a member of the Punjab Elite Force which protects top Pakistani leaders, was deployed to guard Punjab Governor Salman Taseer. As the governor was coming out of a restaurant in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi, Qadri shot the liberal politician dead, for advocating of reforms in Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws.

Salman Taseer had campaigned for a presidential pardon for Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death over alleged reports that she committed blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad.

In the past few months, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and British Prime Minister David Cameron have all firmly rejected the disaster that is multiculturalism. Europe is finally waking up to the threat posed by decades of policies which preached tolerance, yet bred the exact opposite: an intolerance by many immigrants, particularly Islamists, for the values of their new homelands.

Former Harvard Kennedy School Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. met with Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya two times during the past four years and helped the colonel's son with his doctoral thesis, Nye wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson yesterday.

Sir Howard Davies, the director of the London School of Economics, has at last done the honourable thing and resigned from the university's governing council. The LSE's shameless prostituting of its good name in return for Muammar Gaddafi's blood money (as the Tory MP Robert Halfon has rightly called it) is as great a betrayal of the spirit of a university as there has ever been in Britain

(AINA) -- Christian Copts staged a massive demonstration on Monday, February 28, against the Governor of Minya Ahmed Dia-el-Din, calling for his resignation. The demonstration was prompted by the governor's decision to demolish a church community center for the care of the handicapped, located in the village of Deir Barsha, in Mallawi, Minya Governorate.

"If you want to live under sharia law, go back to the hellhole country you came from, or go to another hellhole country that lives under sharia law," says Mahfooz Kanwar, a member of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

At the Daily Beast, Bruce Riedel has posted an essay called "Don't fear Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood," the classic, conventional-wisdom response to the crisis in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is just fine, he'd have you believe, no need to worry. After all, the Brothers have even renounced violence!

Queen Rania Al-'Abdallah of Jordan has been internationally acclaimed for defending the rights of women and children worldwide, and is the recipient of numerous international prizes. She has contributed to the empowerment of Jordanian women by founding the Jordan River Foundation, which helps women to start small businesses, and recently she launched the Madrasati Palestine project, aimed at "combat[ing] the deteriorating state of education in East Jerusalem by renovating its disadvantaged schools, under the auspices of the Jordanian Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs."[1] She is also the author of The Sandwich Swap, a children's book promoting tolerance and acceptance of the other.

Up until the winter of 09, Muzzammil Hassan was known as the founder of Bridges TV, one of those ubiquitous ventures meant to normalize Islam in the American context. There was all the usual talk about promoting moderate Islam, even though Bridges TV broadcast "Current Issues" which focused on building bridges to such average Americans as David Duke and assorted other Neo-Nazis and shock collar wearing types.

Recently, Marvin Levant (Dec. 28), Steve Harris (Dec. 30), Syed Soharwardy (Jan. 2), and Riazuddin Ahmed (Jan. 5) debated Islam through the forum of the Herald's letters to the editor.

The issue of wife beating and gender inequality in Islam has become convoluted and highly controversial as many Muslims try to sugar-coat the ugly truths and others try to shed some light on the issue.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Islam+condones+wife+beatings/4118854/story.html#ixzz1BIvIecEm

'How embarrassing," wrote the feminist Muslim journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the UK Independent newspaper (2001).

"For the first and (I hope) only time in my life, I found myself agreeing a little with the irritating Boris Johnson as he argued with Harifiyah Haleem, a Muslim writer, on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. They were discussing Johnson's latest claim that the terrorists who attacked the US did so because they despise the liberation of women."

On December 1, 2010, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, posted a fatwa on his website, calling on Muslims to emigrate if they could not freely practice their religion in the Islamic countries where they live. The fatwa also cautioned these emigrants, however, to guard their Muslim identity, lest they assimilate into non-Islamic society. The same fatwa first appeared in 2006 on the website Islamonline.com.

Following is an excerpt from the fatwa, preceded by the question that prompted it:[1]

YOU really can take your pick from the interconnected headlines of the past fortnight: the church-massacres of Christians in Egypt and Iraq by al-Qa'ida, and the murder of the governor of the Punjab, followed by a petition of support for his killer from 500 "moderate" Islamic scholars in Pakistan.

At the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the term "Islamophobia" formed in analogy to "xenophobia". The aim of this word was to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist. This term, which is worthy of totalitarian propaganda, is deliberately unspecific about whether it refers to a religion, a belief system or its faithful adherents around the world.

Lawyers showered the suspected assassin of a liberal Pakistani governor with rose petals as he entered court.

In a move that caught the Israeli government and the Jewish world by complete surprise, on October 21, 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Tomb of the Hebrew Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories," admonishing the Israeli decision to add these biblical shrines to the list of Jewish historical and archaeological sites as "a violation of international law."[1]

The United Nations has become a foremost purveyor of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement. Nowhere has this obsession been more starkly demonstrated than at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, held in September 2001 in the South African town of Durban.

What is less known, however, is that the driving force behind "the attempt to detach the Nation of Israel from its heritage" (to use Israeli prime minister Netanyahu's words)[2] was the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which pressured UNESCO to issue the declaration and drafted its initial version

If 2010 was the year America finally woke up to political Islam's ne farious reach on US soil, with luck 2011 will be the year we launch an offensive against it. One way to begin that process is through hearings that Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the new chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, plans to hold on American Muslim radicalization.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/why_muslims_must_look_in_the_mirror_g6HY8SYPEtYo8gHubxnNhI#ixzz19aUN5oDb

British Prime Minister David Cameron recently called Gaza a "prison camp." Former President Jimmy Carter has called it a "cage." At first glance, these characterizations of the Hamas-ruled ­province seem like rhetorical excesses designed to cast Israel in the role of the unjust jailer blockading the strip. But Cameron and Carter have got it right, in a way. Gaza is a totalitarian paramilitary camp at war with its neighbors and other Palestinians. It is a paramilitary camp because it is a unique type of refugee camp. The narrow confines of the 139 square miles of the Gaza district—surrounded by Israel to the north and east, Egypt to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west—feature eight separate Palestinian refugee camps, plus dozens of surrounding ghettos. Altogether, they combine the features of a refugee camp and a military camp and, cut off from the world, look to some extent like the cages Carter mentioned.

These camps were established in 1949 and have been financed ever since by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Yet far from seeking to help residents build a new and better life either in Gaza or elsewhere, UNRWA is paying millions of refugees to perpetuate their refugee status, generation after generation, as they await their forcible return to the land inside the State of Israel.

Ankara provincial authorities have moved to close down a local Alevi association because it aims to build a cemevi "as a house of worship," daily Radikal reported Friday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A group of men recently ordered Siham al-Zubaidi to close down her Baghdad hair salon for two months for Shi'ite religious festivities. She had no idea who they were but complied because she feared for her life.

Last week we covered that authorities in Egypt placed the blame for recent Red Sea shark attacks on the Jews

Next year, as New Yorkers observe the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the United Nations is planning a celebration.

It's perverse. It's inexcusable. And it's business as usual in Turtle Bay.

The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee continues to honor Helen Thomas - not in spite of, but because of her anti-Jewish comments that she made in June as well as more recently when she spouted off anti-semitic stereotypes but tried to cover herself by using the word "Zionist."

The remains of a retired Canadian diplomat have been relocated to another corner in the Bodrum cemetery, following a local family's complaints. Wife of the late diplomat Hans Himmelbach is deeply unhappy about the incident and says her efforts to stop the relocation was futile

When that provocative question appeared on the cover of Time in August, the accompanying story strained to imply, on the basis of some anecdotal evidence, that the answer might be yes. The FBI's latest compendium of US hate-crimes data suggests far more plausibly that the answer is no

Introducing a new feature starting this weekend, which we hope will become a site regular. In conjunction with our friends at Smackdown Corps and The Jawa Report, we'll be bringing you a small selection of the most egregious Islamist videos, left up on YouTube for everyone to see – and that includes children.

Reporting from Beirut — A majority of Muslims around the world welcome a significant role for Islam in their countries' political life, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, but have mixed feelings toward militant religious groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

There is a very important—one might say, life-and-death—distinction that should be made in considering U.S. counterterrorism policy. Certainly, U.S. forces have had many successes in stopping intended terrorist attacks against the United States. Yet there have also been a number of failures in the war against terrorism or al-Qaida or whatever you want to call it. How to distinguish what made the difference?

The Gaza flotilla took place on the first day of HonestReporting's study of the AP, Reuters, and AFP/Getty's coverage of the region. Although the flotilla was undoubtedly the most covered and photographed event involving Israel since the 2008 Gaza War, this study will focus primarily on images originating from Israel and the Palestinian territories – with the exception of Reuters' questionably cropped photos taken on board the flotilla vessel, Mavi Marmara, which could not be ignored in a study of photo bias against Israel by the wire services.

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil" Isaiah 5:20

Every conspiracy theory by Anti-War activists and 9/11 Truthers has one thing in common. It calls good, evil... and evil, good. Its overriding message is that America is the center of all the world's evil. We are the imperialists. We are the colonizers and the occupiers. When terrorists kill us, we're the ones responsible. Either because we angered them, or because secretly we were the ones who did it. When we die, it's because we're sheep who deserve what we get. When we fight back, it's because we're amoral monsters.

Aceh is officially a horrible place to be a woman.

In Aceh today, it is a crime for two mature people of different sexes who are not married or related by blood to be together in an isolated place.

A few days ago, I was fortunate to attend a talk by Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh in Jerusalem.

Toameh gave an incredibly wide ranging talk about the peace process, the double standards rife in the West and the media when it comes to coverage of the Middle East and his perspective as a Muslim Arab of Palestinian descent living in Israel (and you thought you had identity issues!).

Sometime back, I noted that Muslims have been projecting the worst aspects of Islam(ism) onto the Copts, Egypt's Christian minority. This raised more questions: Is Islamist projection onto the Copts a unique phenomenon? Do Muslims project onto other non-Muslims, too? Is there a trend?

Following are excerpts from an interview with Francis Boyle, professor of international law at Georgetown University, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on October 26, 2010:

To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2677.htm.

Analyst Reuel Mark Gerecht, in a recent New Republic essay, condemned those who "demonized" Sharia—Islamic Law—despite conceding that the application of what he refers to deferentially as Islam's "Holy Law,"

"…can be ugly, not least for women. Westerners, especially Europeans, are quite right to be outraged by the importation of Sharia practices to their shores. And Westerners should cast a very dim eye on any financial institution that sets up Sharia-compliant offices that could, if left unchecked, discreetly normalize anti-Semitic practices in big global institutions……[E]ven some Muslim theologians have seen the strain of despotism in Islamic history as being related to the static and authoritarian nature of Islamic legal practice…"

In fine Alinskyite tradition, Pres. Barack Obama is ready to say anything at any moment if it seems expedient. So it was that he spoke some months back of the "unbreakable bond of friendship" between the United States and Israel. The occasion was the Jewish state's Independence Day. The proximate cause, however, was a backlash provoked by policies shot through with anti-Israeli animus — and none more so than President Obama's obsession over the construction of Israeli housing, a subject on which the president is no less doctrinaire than his good friend Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO mouthpiece turned U.S. academic

On October 15, 2010, Al-Alam TV (Iran) aired an interview with former Lebanese defense minister and former minister of education and higher studies Abdul Rahim Mourad, who serves as chairman of the Lebanese Union Party. Following are excerpts from the interview.

To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2645.htm.

In order to determine if 'Taqiyaa' is an integral part of Islam, the best place to look it up is probably the classical book of Islamic law named "Reliance of the Traveller", authored by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (1302–1367 AD). This is part of Sunni Islam, specifically the Shafi'i school, and the 1991 English translation carries the seal of approval from the Al-Azhar university in Cairo.