The Conservative Papers

March 9, 2010

Amnesty International Mainstreams the Jihad

Filed under: Terrorism — Tags: , , , , , , , — kalel @ 5:36 pm

by David J. Rusin  •  Mar 9, 2010 at 9:38 am

Amnesty International famously advocates on behalf of people persecuted just for expressing an opinion. However, last month the group suspended Gita Sahgal, the head of its gender unit, after she expressed an opinion of her own: that by working with Taliban supporter Moazzam Begg, Amnesty has betrayed its mission to advance human rights. Here is a look at the scandal that the American media — once known for championing whistleblowers — have all but ignored.

Begg, a British citizen, moved to Kabul in 2001, was captured in 2002 on suspicion of al-Qaeda links, and ended up at Guantanamo Bay after admitting that he had attended terror camps and was prepared to fight for the Taliban. Released without charge in 2005, he became the face of Cageprisoners, which implores that Gitmo be closed and displays a disturbing level of sympathy for terrorists, even convicted ones. Begg himself has called the Taliban “better than anything Afghanistan has had” in decades and cited positively jihad theorist Abdullah Azzam.

Begg’s troubling past did nothing to dampen Amnesty’s eagerness to team up with him; the two collaborated on a recent visit to Downing Street and a European tour urging countries to grant detainees “safe haven.” But while Sahgal endorses his views of Guantanamo, she thinks that the partnership is severely misguided, writing to her organization’s leaders in a January 30 email:

I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights. … To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.

Hours after she made the contents of the email public on February 7, Amnesty suspended Sahgal. She fired back by slamming the organization for having “created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights.” Care must be taken, she says, in “maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights.” A leaked memo from a senior Amnesty executive reveals that Sahgal is not alone in such fears.

Leftists and Islamists frequently portray individuals detained for possible terrorist offenses as martyrs. However, for the world’s most prominent human rights institution to collaborate so closely with a man of Begg’s track record is out of the ordinary — a result enabled by his unique station as a charismatic and articulate former Gitmo inmate released into the West.

The Amnesty-Begg convergence may be rare, but it has done quite a bit of damage — and not only to the group’s reputation. In working with Begg and standing by those efforts, Amnesty has set a dangerous precedent of making violent Islamists politically respectable. Just as worrisome, the bar now is even lower for radicals not tainted by violence to enter the mainstream.

As for the U.S. media, their ongoing blackout of this story demonstrates once again how scandals involving Islamists and left-wing icons fail to qualify for “all the news that’s fit to print.”

Iraq’s Cosmetic Election

Filed under: Freedoms, Terrorism — Tags: , , , , , , , — kalel @ 5:25 pm

by Daniel Pipes
March 9, 2010
Cross-posted from National Review Online

“It takes a cynical mind not to share in the achievement of Iraq’s national elections.” So writes the Wall Street Journal editorial board today. I’m no cynic, but my mood about Iraq could variously be described as depressed, despairing, despondent, dejected, pessimistic, melancholic, and gloomy.

Cosmetic inking for a cosmetic election; this Iraqi girl inked her finger, indicating she voted, even though she is too young to vote. 

That’s because the Iraqi regime (along with those of Afghanistan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority) is a kept institution that cannot survive without constant American support. As long as Washington pumps money and sacrifices lives to maintain the Baghdad government, the latter can hobble along. Remove those props and Iranian-backed Islamists soon take over.

Tehran has aspired to seize effective control of Iraq since the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. With many levers at hand, from mosques to schools to militias to politicians, the Iranian despots are well placed to inherit the country.

The end of U.S. backing looms. Indeed, Barack Obama responded to the well-run elections by declaring a hope that U.S. troops can leave Iraq months earlier than planned. As the American era closes, the Iranian one opens. In a year or two, the current elections will be looked back on as a cosmetic episode that somehow deceived otherwise savvy observers.

Objection, Your Honor: European Courts Placate Islamists

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , — kalel @ 3:09 pm

by David J. Rusin  •  Mar 5, 2010 at 10:39 am

Even as Shari’a courts sprout up like mushrooms on UK soil, secular ones across Europe increasingly bend to an Islamist worldview.

Consider the phenomenon of exempting Muslims from the standard practice of rising before judges. In January, seven radicals on trial for shouting insults at British soldiers during a 2009 homecoming parade refused to stand when the judge entered — because, in the words of one of their lawyers, “it is a grave and cardinal sin to show respect in this way to anyone other than God himself.” The response from Judge Carolyn Mellanby? Appeasement and more appeasement:

Eventually, a compromise was reached where they would enter the court after her during the trial, which is expected to last six days. The maximum penalty each of the men can receive is a £1,000 fine.

The defendants were given an extra 20 minutes on top of their lunch break to go to pray at a mosque a few minutes’ walk away.

A separate “quiet” room has been set aside for their regular prayer intervals for the rest of the week.

Mellanby “said she did not wish to ‘set a precedent‘ by charging them with contempt of court.” Instead, it was the defendants themselves who apparently “set a precedent” here. Also of note: Five were convicted in the harassment case but went unpunished. Ordered to reimburse court costs only, the men gleefully declared that, as they are on welfare, taxpayers will foot the bill.

In the Netherlands, the bar association is leading the way to mollify Islamists. An appeals chamber of that organization recently overturned a reprimand of attorney Mohammed Enait, who had been censured because he does not rise for judges and dons an Islamic hat in court sessions. It ruled that he can remain seated and wear his head covering; as the article explains, the panel found that “his refusal to rise and his headgear are not meant to show contempt of court.” (Be sure to read the humorous passage about Enait and his “secretaries” at the above link.)

Other events demonstrate the growing deference to Islam in Europe’s courtrooms: A woman made history last summer by becoming the first in Denmark to testify while wearing a niqab. Earlier this year, Judge Cherie Blair, wife of Tony, drew fire for her leniency toward a British Muslim convicted of assault, to whom she said, “You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behavior.” Finally, foot-washing basins have been installed in a German courthouse so Muslims can clean themselves before prayer; a spokesman justified the facility by “saying that in the past toilets have been stopped up with toilet paper and used for feet washing.”

How drenching one’s feet with toilet water advances cleanliness is unclear. Equally difficult to grasp is how Europe’s legal establishment could think that this spate of accommodations will inspire anything but more and more outrageous demands from Islamists.

March 2, 2010

Crisis in Turkey

Filed under: Terrorism — Tags: , , , , , — kalel @ 4:34 pm

by Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
March 2, 2010

The arrest and indictment of top military figures in Turkey last week precipitated potentially the most severe crisis since Atatürk founded the republic in 1923. The weeks ahead will probably indicate whether the country continues its slide toward Islamism or reverts to its traditional secularism. The denouement has major implications for Muslims everywhere.

“Taraf” broke the Balyoz conspiracy theory on Jan. 22, 2010.

 

Turkey’s military has long been both the state’s most trusted institution and the guarantor of Atatürk’s legacy, especially his laicism. Devotion to the founder is not some dry abstraction but a very real and central part of a Turkish officer’s life; as journalist Mehmet Ali Birand has documented, cadet-officers hardly go an hour without hearing Atatürk’s name invoked.

On four occasions between 1960 and 1997, the military intervened to repair a political process gone awry. On the last of these occasions, it forced the Islamist government of Necmettin Erbakan out of power. Chastened by this experience, some of Erbakan’s staff re-organized themselves as the more cautious Justice and Development Party (AKP). In Turkey’s decisive election of 2002, they surged ahead of discredited and fragmented centrist parties with a plurality of 34 percent of the popular vote.

Parliamentary rules then transformed that plurality into a 66 percent supermajority of assembly seats and a rare case of single-party rule. Not only did the AKP skillfully take advantage of its opportunity to lay the foundations of an Islamic order but no other party or leader emerged to challenge it. As a result, the AKP increased its portion of the vote in the 2007 elections to a resounding 47 percent, with control over 62 percent of parliamentary seats.

Repeated AKP electoral successes encouraged it to drop its earlier caution and to hasten moving the country toward its dream of an Islamic Republic of Turkey. The party placed partisans in the presidency and the judiciary while seizing increased control of the educational, business, media, and other leading institutions. It even challenged the secularists’ hold over what Turks call the “deep state” – the non-elected institutions of the intelligence agencies, security services, and the judiciary. Only the military, ultimate arbiter of the country’s direction, remained beyond AKP control.

Several factors then prompted the AKP to confront the military: European Union accession demands for civilian control over the military; a 2008 court case that came close to shutting down the AKP; and the growing assertiveness of its Islamist ally, the Fethullah Gülen Movement. An erosion in AKP popularity (from 47 percent in 2007 to 29 percent now) added a sense of urgency to this confrontation, for it points to the end of one-party AKP rule in the next elections.

Gen. Ibrahim Firtina, a former head of the air force, was questioned in court about a plot to overthrow the government.

 

The AKP devised an elaborate conspiracy theory in 2007, dubbed Ergenekon, to arrest about two hundred AKP critics, including military officers, under accusation of plotting to overthrow the elected government. The military responded passively, so the AKP raised the stakes on Jan. 22 by concocting a second conspiracy theory, this one termed Balyoz (“Sledgehammer”) and exclusively directed against the military.

The military denied any illegal activities and the chief of general staff, ?lker Ba?bu?, warned that “Our patience has a limit.” Nonetheless, the government proceeded, starting on Feb. 22, to arrest 67 active and retired military officers, including former heads of the air force and navy. So far, 35 officers have been indicted.

Thus has the AKP thrown down the gauntlet, leaving the military leadership basically with two unattractive options: (1) continue selectively to acquiesce to the AKP and hope that fair elections by 2011 will terminate and reverse this process; or (2) stage a coup d’état, risking voter backlash and increased Islamist electoral strength.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, President Abdullah Gul and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. ?lker Ba?bu? met on February 25.

 

At stake is whether the Ergenekon/Balyoz offensives will succeed in transforming the military from an Atatürkist to a Gülenist institution; or whether the AKP’s blatant deceit and over-reaching will spur secularists to find their voice and their confidence. Ultimately the issue concerns whether Shari’a (Islamic law) rules Turkey or the country returns to secularism.

Turkey’s Islamic importance suggests that the outcome of this crisis has consequences for Muslims everywhere. AKP domination of the military means Islamists control the umma’s most powerful secular institution, proving that, for the moment, they are unstoppable. But if the military retains its independence, Atatürk’s vision will remain alive in Turkey and offer Muslims worldwide an alternative to the Islamist juggernaut.

A Brief Taxonomy of Campus Free Speech Foes

Filed under: Terrorism — Tags: , , , , , , , , — kalel @ 3:32 pm

by David J. Rusin  •  Feb 28, 2010 at 11:04 pm

Efforts to suppress politically incorrect speech on campus continue apace, as seen in the hostility directed toward Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the U.S., during a lecture on February 8 at the University of California, Irvine. Based on this and other recent events, one may identify four general villains in the struggle to uphold the rights of speakers:

Boorish students. To quote Richard L. Cravatts, these are people with “no interest in listening to, or letting others listen to, ideas that contradict their own worldview.” Mostly Muslim versions were out in full force at UCI, shouting invective at Oren on ten separate occasions and aiming to silence him. At one point, he took a twenty-minute break as school officials expressed their embarrassment and disgust. Eleven ruffians were escorted from the venue and arrested.

We have seen such behavior before. Daniel Pipes experienced his own run-in with “goons of an Islamist persuasion” at Irvine in 2007. Later that year, a lecture by Islam critic Nonie Darwish at Berkeley suffered frequent interruptions, while one by conservative activist David Horowitz at Emory had to be abandoned due to an unruly crowd. Nor is the problem limited to the U.S. In February, Israeli minister Danny Ayalon encountered racial abuse at Oxford. And on and on.

Islamist pressure groups. Organizations like CAIR, MPAC, and MAS joined the enemies of free speech by defending the UCI students and calling on administrators to drop disciplinary action. CAIR stated that “the right to freely express one’s opinions is a most sacred freedom protected by our Constitution,” but failed to note that speakers and other parties also have rights. MPAC praised the students’ “courage and conscience to stand up against aggression” and demanded that the arrests be investigated. MAS even compared the obnoxious kids to Martin Luther King. Hence, shouting down speakers now has the blessing of prominent Muslim groups.

Adversarial campus officials. Though UCI vigorously defended free speech at the Oren event, its diligence is the exception to the rule. Not only do most U.S. universities employ speech codes, but administrators and professors have worked overtime to derail visits by anti-Islamists at countless schools. Among recent outrages: charging student groups for the extra security needed to protect lecturers from angry mobs, eleventh-hour requests that formats be altered, and very public condemnations of students organizing frowned-upon talks.

Cowed students. Equally frustrating, though perhaps somewhat forgivable, is that students who should know better often cave to the collective pressure. For example, following Muslim objections, Princeton’s Tigers for Israel withdrew its sponsorship of an appearance last November by Nonie Darwish; it was quickly canceled. Similarly, in February of this year, the Israel Society at Cambridge called off an address by Israeli historian Benny Morris, citing fears of “being portrayed as a mouthpiece of Islamophobia” after some Muslims criticized his work.

Popular speech does not require protection; unpopular speech does. The paucity of such protections in academic communities is disturbing. More disturbing: that pro-Western, pro-Israel, anti-Islamist speech is unpopular among so many administrators, professors, and students.

February 23, 2010

Islamists Play Shell Games with Security

Filed under: Terrorism — Tags: , , , , , — kalel @ 4:54 pm

by David J. Rusin  •  Feb 23, 2010 at 9:16 am

Despite the countless terror attacks perpetrated by their co-religionists, some Muslims still have the chutzpah to demand that security protocols conform to supposed Islamic sensitivities. But like a typical shell game, every time we think we know which procedures they grudgingly will tolerate, we discover that we have been hoodwinked yet again.

Responding to security measures implemented after the attempt to bomb a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day, CAIR characteristically charged that “the new guidelines, under which anyone traveling from or through 13 Muslim-majority nations will be required to go through enhanced screening techniques before boarding flights, … amount to religious and ethnic profiling.” CAIR’s proposed alternative: “First look at behavior, not at faith or skin color. Then spend what it takes to obtain more bomb-sniffing dogs, to install more sophisticated bomb-detection equipment, and to train security personnel in identifying the behavior of real terror suspects.”

All are fine ideas. But in reality, Islamists oppose each of them:

Scrutinizing behavior. Consider the “flying imams” imbroglio, where six Muslims who seemed to exhibit “the behavior of real terror suspects” were removed from a plane before takeoff in 2006. Passengers and crew members became alarmed when the men spoke loudly in Arabic, refused to sit in assigned seats, and requested unneeded seatbelt extenders. How did CAIR respond? By alleging religious discrimination and suing everyone in sight — with some success. True, the imams were fingered originally by alert citizens rather than dedicated security officers. But should we believe that CAIR’s reaction would have been different otherwise?

Bomb-sniffing dogs. Given that some Muslims see dogs as unclean, using them for security purposes often provokes Islamist criticism. Britain has experienced a litany of canine controversies, while a prominent Canadian Muslim recently voiced concerns about dogs patrolling Vancouver. The issue of police dogs also arose when a Detroit-based radical imam was killed in an October FBI raid. According to the Detroit News, the attorney representing his widow “said it was needlessly confrontational to send a dog after Abdullah because Muslims view dogs as unclean and anyone attacked by a dog could react violently”; an FBI canine was shot dead by the imam. How long until bomb-sniffing dogs in U.S. airports face objections?

Bomb-detection equipment. Body scanners are about as sophisticated as it gets, but now we know that these, too, run afoul of Islamist sensibilities. “The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) emphasizes that a general and public use of such scanners is against the teachings of Islam, natural law, and all religions and cultures that stand for decency and modesty,” the group explains in a fatwa issued on February 9. CAIR, which had championed “sophisticated bomb-detection equipment” just a month earlier, backed the ruling.

The shell game continues, with the Fiqh Council offering yet another idea: “FCNA appreciates the alternate provision of pat-down search” and advises Muslims to avail themselves of this option over the body scanners. After all, no Muslims balk at being touched, right?

February 17, 2010

Should We Believe Rashad Hussain?

Filed under: Barack Obama, Terrorism — Tags: , , , , , , , — kalel @ 12:12 pm

by Daniel Pipes
February 17, 2010
Cross-posted from National Review Online

Rashad Hussain, Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has run into a problem: He appears to be an Islamist. The evidence largely concerns a public statement he made six years ago, as Josh Gerstein reports in Politico: 

Hussain, now a deputy associate White House counsel, was quoted back in 2004 decrying the prosecution of a Florida professor accused of ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian. However, the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report noted Sunday that the article quoting Hussain, published in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, was subsequently sanitized on the Web to remove the quotes and all other references to Hussain. The changes appear to have taken place in 2007 or later. 

According to the original story, Hussain told a panel discussion at a Muslim Students Association conference in ‘04 that the criminal case against Al-Arian was one of a series of “politically motivated persecutions.” Hussain also reportedly asserted that Al-Arian was being “used politically to squash dissent.” 

Of course, this not at all the case: Sami Al-Arian was an accessory to terrorism by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and he sits at this moment in a U.S. jail for his actions. 

At this point, Hussain’s views hinge on the reliability of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Its news editor, Delinda Hanley, explained that his 

quotes were taken down because the quotes attributed to him actually came from Al-Arian’s daughter, Laila Al-Arian, who took part in the same panel discussion. “Laila Al-Arian said the things attributed to Rashad Hussain, and an intern who attended the event and wrote up the article made an error, which was corrected on our Web site by deleting the two quotes in their entirety,” Hanley wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. 

However, the author of the article, Shereen Kandil, said Tuesday that she stood by her original report. “When I worked as a reporter, I understood how important it was to quote the right person, and accurately,” Kandil wrote in response to an e-mailed query from POLITICO asking about the possibility of a misquotation. 

As someone who has experienced first-hand the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs‘ grossly inaccurate reporting, I should like to voice an opinion here. 

In July 2001, the magazine reported on a panel I took part in at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. It ascribed to me the statement that “The Palestinians are a miserable people … and they deserve to be.” I had not said this and immediately responded to the article. WRMEA (snidely) published my letter to the editor in its October 2001 in which I denied having made this statement, said it’s “not how I think, speak, or write,” and quoted from an article of mine published six days after the panel to show my actual views about Palestinians. 

Now, the WRMEA, an obsessively anti-Zionist publication that believes Israel’s Mossad killed Kennedy, overthrew Nixon, and considered assassinating George H. W. Bush, clearly likes Hussain more with than me, so his misquote eventually got pulled while mine, eight-plus years later, yet languishes on its website, and is still used against me. 

But that should now divert attention from WRMEA’s reliance on amateur ideologues to “report” on events for it and the publication’s lack of credibility. In an argument between Hussain and WRMEA, therefore, I am inclined to believe the former. (February 17, 2010)

February 16, 2010

In Mideast, Bet on a Strong Horse

Filed under: Terrorism — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — kalel @ 12:57 pm

by Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
February 16, 2010

The violence and cruelty of Arabs often perplexes Westerners.

Not only does the leader of Hizbullah proclaim “We love death,” but so too does, for example, a 24-year-old man who last month yelled “We love death more than you love life” as he crashed his car on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge in New York City. As two parents in St. Louis honor-killed their teenage daughter with thirteen stabs of a butcher’s knife, the Palestinian father shouted “Die! Die quickly! Die quickly! . . . Quiet, little one! Die, my daughter, die!” – and the local Arab community supported them against murder charges. A prince from Abu Dhabi recently tortured a grain dealer whom he accused of fraud; despite a video of the atrocity appearing on television internationally, the prince was acquitted while his accusers were convicted.

On a larger scale, one accounting finds 15,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11. Governments throughout the Arabic-speaking countries rely more on brutality than on the rule of law. The drive to eliminate Israel still persists even as new insurrections take hold; the latest one has flared up in Yemen.

Several excellent attempts to explain the pathology of Arab politics exist; my personal favorites include studies by David Pryce-Jones and Philip Salzman. Now add to these The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (Doubleday, $26), an entertaining yet deep and important analysis by Lee Smith, Middle East correspondent for the Weekly Standard.

Smith takes as his prooftext Osama bin Laden’s comment in 2001, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” What Smith calls the strong-horse principle contains two banal elements: Seize power and then maintain it. This principle predominates because Arab public life has “no mechanism for peaceful transitions of authority or power sharing, and therefore [it] sees political con?ict as a ?ght to the death between strong horses.” Violence, Smith observes is “central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.” It also, more subtly, implies keeping a wary eye on the next strong horse, triangulating, and hedging bets.

Smith argues that the strong horse principle, not Western imperialism or Zionism, “has determined the fundamental character of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.” The Islamic religion itself both fits into the ancient pattern of strong-horse assertiveness and then promulgates it. Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, was a strongman as well as a religious figure. Sunni Muslims have ruled over the centuries “by violence, repression, and coercion.” Ibn Khaldun’s famous theory of history amounts to a cycle of violence in which strong horses replace weak ones. The humiliation of dhimmis daily reminds non-Muslims who rules.

Smith’s prism offers insights into modern Middle East history. He presents Pan-Arab nationalism as an effort to transform the mini-horses of the national states into a single super-horse and Islamism as an effort to make Muslims again powerful. Israel serves as “a proxy strong horse” for both the United States and for the Saudi-Egyptian bloc in the latter’s cold war rivalry with Iran’s bloc. In a strong-horse environment, militias appeal more than do elections. Lacking a strong horse, Arab liberals make little headway. The United States being the most powerful non-Arab and non-Muslim state makes anti-Americanism both inevitable and endemic.


Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt suggests American car bombings in Damascus. 

Which brings us to policies by non-Arab actors: unless they are forceful and show true staying power, Smith stresses, they lose. Being nice – say, withdrawing unilaterally from southern Lebanon and Gaza – leads to inevitable failure. The George W. Bush administration rightly initiated a democratization project, raising high hopes, but then betrayed Arab liberals by not carrying through. In Iraq, the administration ignored advice to install a democratically-minded strongman.

More broadly, when the U.S. government flinches, others (e.g., the Iranian leadership) have an opportunity to “force their own order on the region.” Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese leader, has half-seriously suggested that Washington “send car bombs to Damascus” to get its message across and signal its understanding of Arab ways.

Smith’s simple and near-universal principle provides a tool to comprehend the Arabs’ cult of death, honor killings, terrorist attacks, despotism, warfare, and much else. He acknowledges that the strong-horse principle may strike Westerners as ineffably crude, but he correctly insists on its being a cold reality that outsiders must recognize, take into account, and respond to.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

February 15, 2010

Muslims Confront Islamism, Get Targeted by Islamists

Filed under: Terrorism — Tags: , , , , , , , , — kalel @ 11:03 am

by David J. Rusin  •  Feb 14, 2010 at 12:03 pm

French imam Hassen Chalghoumi recently learned firsthand that Islamists despise non-Islamist Muslims as much as they do anyone else. Chalghoumi attracted their ire by coming out strongly in favor of a ban on face-covering veils, a prohibition that is moving closer to reality. Echoing President Nicolas Sarkozy, he described the niqab as a “prison for women, a tool of sexist domination and Islamist indoctrination” that “has no place in France.” Moreover, he explained:

Having French nationality means wanting to take part in society, at school, at work. But with a bit of cloth over their faces, what can these women share with us? If they want to wear the veil, they can go to a country where it’s the tradition, like Saudi Arabia.

Islamist reaction to his comments was swift and fierce, with a gang of nearly a hundred men storming his Paris mosque during a meeting of an organization focused on interfaith relations:

“They started to cry ‘Allah akbar’ and ‘God is great,’” recounted Chalghoumi. “Then they insulted me, my mosque, the Jewish community, and the [French] republic. They left after an hour and a half.”

According to a member of the Conference of Imams, the mob condemned Chalghoumi as an apostate and threatened him with “liquidation, this imam of the Jews.”

Chalghoumi is not the only moderate risking “liquidation.” Abadirh Abdi Hussein, a Muslim rapper in Sweden, had his head slashed by attackers displeased with his outspoken opposition to al-Shabaab, which has been recruiting young men to join the jihad in Somalia. And, as IW noted in January, Majed Moughni received a death threat after organizing a demonstration by Detroit-area Muslims to denounce the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing.

Undeterred by this atmosphere of intimidation, many other Muslims have gone on offense against radicalism in recent months. Among them:

  • The Muslim Canadian Congress called on lawmakers to ban the niqab, declaring it a “political issue promoted by extremists” that “has absolutely no place in Canada.”
  • Minhaj-ul-Quran, a Sufi Muslim organization operating in the UK, issued a fatwa against suicide bombings, labeling them “totally un-Islamic” and “violations of human rights.”

As the above examples suggest, at the core of the resurgent jihad is a conflict between an authoritarian interpretation of Islam and a more spiritual, secular interpretation. The fate of two worlds — the Western and the Islamic — will be shaped profoundly by the outcome.

February 12, 2010

Western Civilization on Trial: Why We Should Be Watching Geert Wilders

Filed under: Freedoms, Terrorism — Tags: , , , , , , , — kalel @ 12:40 pm

by Daniel Pipes
February 8, 2010

As the Geert Wilders case goes into pre-trial, National Review Online asked our experts: Is there any legitimate reason he’s in court? What are the implications of such a trial being held, never mind its outcome? (For replies by Bat Ye’or, Paul Marshall, Clifford D. May, Nina Shea, and Robert Spencer, click here.) 

Pro-Wilders demonstrators outside the Amsterdam courthouse where he is to be tried. 

Wilders is in court because the Netherlands has no First Amendment and so, endlessly, tries to figure out what speech to permit or prohibit. Wilders is hardly the only victim of this predicament; the arrest and jailing in 2008 of a cartoonist who goes by “Gregorius Nekschot” notoriously symbolized the state’s incoherence. 

U.S. media should cover the Wilders proceedings because Wilders’ career has implications beyond one man, one party, or one country. It potentially affects all of Europe as the continent works out its response to the Islamic challenge. The U.S. media does an adequate job of informing its audience about this topic, so the near-silence about Wilders comes as a bit of a surprise. 

The Islamic challenge forces Europeans to take stock of themselves in an unprecedented way. Colorful examples include the British ICONS project that features 120 “national treasures” that help define English culture; the Dutch government’s film for potential immigrants that features a topless woman on the beach and two men kissing; and the French prime minister’s decision to expel a man from France for compelling his wife to wear a burqa.Europe’s future is in play. Wilders’ time in court affects the outcome. (February 8, 2010)

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