Ah, yes… So many people trying to get into the United States… And, one ugly bloke trying like Hell to stay out:

Extremist Cleric in Britain Moves Closer to U.S. Trial

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 24, 2008 - NYT

LONDON — An Egyptian-born Muslim cleric fighting extradition to the United States on terrorism charges failed in his bid to take the case to Britain’s highest appeals court in the House of Lords on Wednesday. One of the country’s most senior judges ruled that there was “no point of law or general importance” that justified a further appeal.

The ruling moved the 51-year-old cleric, Mostafa Kamel Mostafa, a step closer to facing trial in the United States on charges that include taking part in a worldwide conspiracy to wage Islamic holy war against the United States. Britain’s home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has signed an order approving his extradition, and officials have said they plan to fly the cleric out of Britain as soon as his last legal recourse has been exhausted.

But lawyers for the cleric, who goes by the pseudonym Abu Hamza al-Masri, have said they may try to take the case one step further, to the European Court of Human Rights, a move that could delay extradition by months.

The lawyers have said they would argue that Mr. Mostafa has reason not to trust formal assurances given to the British courts by American officials that he will not face the death penalty in an American court or be mistreated. That is the same argument that was rejected Wednesday by Igor Judge, the appeal court judge in London.

Officials of the United States Justice Department have said the cleric’s trial will probably take place in New York, with an 11-count indictment based on his activities in London during the years he was the imam of the Finsbury Park mosque, a center for Islamic militant ferment until the government closed it in 2004.

After the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, he became known for his fiery sermons in support of Al Qaeda and his praise of Muslims involved in suicide bombings.

His notoriety has been heightened by lurid coverage in British tabloid newspapers. One paper, The Sun, branded him Captain Hook, a reference to the steel prosthesis he has used as a hand since he stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, blowing off both his hands and blinding him in one eye.

Although he later said in his London sermons that he had suffered the injuries while fighting with a jihadist group against the Soviet-backed government in Kabul, he told a reporter for The New York Times in 1999 that the land mine explosion occurred after the war, when he was working as a surveyor on a road-building crew.

The federal charges against him in the United States include allegations that he masterminded a terrorist ambush in 1998 in which 16 foreign tourists, some of them Americans, were taken hostage in a remote area of Yemen. Four hostages — three Britons and an Australian — were later killed during a gunfight between government forces and the kidnappers.

Mr. Mostafa is also charged with conspiring to establish a terrorist training camp in Bly, Ore., where Muslim followers were said to have received combat training for possible missions in Afghanistan.

He has fought extradition with more than $2 million in government legal aid, from a base in the south London prison where he is serving a seven-year sentence imposed in 2006 for terrorist offenses in Britain, including inciting racial hatred and encouraging followers to kill non-Muslims.

Because of the two years he spent in custody pending trial, he has reached the point in his sentence where, with remission, he would have been eligible for release had he not been indicted in the United States.

9/11 date to be placed as star on crescent and star flag

Not all of us can make it to Pennsylvania next week to help Tom Burnett Sr. stop the re-hijacking of Flight 93, but if anyone needs another reason to try…

The crescent memorial to Flight 93 will have the 9/11 date inscribed on a separate section of Memorial Wall that is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag.

Check it out. As can be seen on our blogburst logo, there will be a copse of trees that sits roughly between the tips of the giant crescent (roughly in the position of the star on a crescent and star flag). That is the Sacred Ground Plaza, which sits just above the crash site. Inside the Sacred Ground Plaza is a two part Memorial Wall that follows the flight path down to the point of impact:

Elevation view of Memorial Wall. (Click picture for larger image. Source document here.)

The lower section of Memorial Wall (on the left) contains forty “translucent marble” blocks, inscribed with the names of the 40 murdered heroes (including Tom Burnett Jr.)

Next there is a gap marked “trail,” then the separate upper section of Memorial Wall has three more translucent blocks, inscribed with the 9/11 date. (There is one more translucent block on the flight path: the huge glass block that dedicates the entire site. It sits at the upper crescent tip, at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. That bring the glass block count to 44, equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists.)

The path that divides the wall into two parts can be seen on the Crescent of Embrace site plan:

Purple: the path that divides the Memorial Wall into separate upper and lower sections. Aqua: the separate upper section of Memorial Wall, inscribed with the 9/11 date. Red arrow: the centerline of the giant crescent (points to Mecca).

Just by looking, you can see that the upper section of section of Memorial Wall is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, placing it in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. (Click picture for larger image.)

The date goes to the star on the Islamic flag. The date goes to the terrorists.

Just one of many Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the planned memorial, and all of it remains completely intact in the Circle of Embrace redesign, which only disguises the giant crescent with a few irrelevant trees.

August 2nd

At about 1PM (when the Memorial Project meeting lets out) Mr. Burnett and Alec Rawls will host a press conference and a rally outside the Somerset County Courthouse (where the meeting will be held).

Saturday evening we will have dinner someplace that can be flexible about our numbers (probably a big buffet style restaurant). Sunday morning we will visit the crash site. (Alec is making arrangements with the Park Service now, in case we get a large turn out.)

The only reason to try to make it to the meeting itself (10AM-1PM) is if you want to sign up to speak during the public comment period at the end. Otherwise the meetings are pretty dreary.

The larger purpose is to make a statement to the national news outfits that Mr. Burnett’s presence will likely bring. (Fox news gave Mr. Burnett some nice coverage a couple of months ago.) A substantial rally would help that cause, hard as that will be to achieve out in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania.

Somerset is a long way to go to make a statement, but the crash site is well worth visiting in its own right. If you’ve been thinking of making the trip, the weekend of August 2nd would be the time. It is a chance not just to pay a visit, but to in some small way honor the heroes of Flight 93 by following their footsteps and tackling our own hijacker.

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The message that this sends to any would-be good Samaritans is huge!

I wonder how much the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will award the families of the deceased when someone fails to report suspicious activity for fear of being prosecuted if their intuition turns out to be wrong?

Update #1 - More background info available HERE

Muslim man of Arab descent awarded $11,000 in human rights case
The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — A Muslim man of Arab descent has been awarded $11,000 by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal as a result of his co-workers’ paranoia that he helped organize the 9-11 attacks.

Ghassan Asad, who moved to Canada from Saudi Arabia, was questioned by RCMP after co-workers at a high-tech firm reported that he’d visited New York and Washington a few weeks before the terrorist attacks. One co-worker at Kinexus even went so far to interpret the fact that Assad had given up candy as a fasting ritual.

The Mounties spent three days questioning him but no charges were laid.

When he returned to work, Assad was told by his bosses that police were called for a legitimate reason saying he resembled the terrorists involved in the 9-11 attacks.

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal concluded that the company’s management engaged in “improper conduct” that had a “serious and substantial impact” on Asad.

I was going to skip this article because I think it has blatantly obvious flaws. I do not believe in “self-radicalization” as I think the term “moderate muslim” is a myth; a dangerous myth that takes away personal responsibility and gives back the victim status to the young jihadi wannabe.

Nameless online imams are not responsible for the rise in violence-islam is. It always has been and any other term used to describe the jihad process is just bullshit and a detractor. Even minions without computers radicalize.

Millions of muslims are on the net and only a small group of easily influenced islamic children wig out? Come on, muslim boys spend way more time in porn rooms than seeking divine guidance from mythical jihadi recruiters. Oh, the recruiters are real, but the part of the process I doubt is the kids seeking them out.

All of these aspiring jihadi have a social structure that could have ended the process; so too could have teachers, parents, friends and family. None of them did. Strange, very strange.

Here is what I think happens, the local muslim community encourages these kids. Friends and family ask around and point these little minions straight to the online freak who wants them dead.

Not exactly “self radicalization,” more like community driven murder. The article does a great job on the process, but I have problems with the terminology and motivation.

Jonathan Spyer, 24 July, 2008, THE JERUSALEM POST
Over the last two months, Israeli security forces have arrested six young Arab men suspected of seeking to form an extreme Islamist cell for the purpose of carrying out high-profile terror attacks in the capital. Two of the six held Israeli citizenship, while the other four were residents of east Jerusalem. It appears that they were radicalized through involvement in an Islamic study circle and via the Internet. Two Arab Israeli citizens from the town of Rahat were arrested in recent weeks on similar suspicions.

In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these events reflect strange, unfamiliar patterns. Place them on a broader canvas, however, and the novelty sharply decreases. The latest events appear to reflect the arrival of global jihad methods and codes of practice to our shores.

They are the most visible part of a broader and little-remarked-upon process taking place in Jerusalem, the West Bank and (particularly) in Gaza. This is the growing presence of preachers, organizations and individuals committed to the extreme Sunni Islamist current known as “Salafiyya.” This is the ideology associated with al-Qaida. However, it is important to stress that what is happening is the penetration of ideas and models of activity, rather than the establishment of a new, centralized movement.

The process whereby young men become radicalized through contact with Islamist ideas via preachers or the Internet and then go on to form ad hoc terror cells has been observed in Muslim communities in Europe and further afield. So how is Salafism gaining its foothold west of the Jordan River? Through the relatively simple formula of preaching, education, the creation of groups of devotees, and the subsequent self-organization of those devotees.
-So they are poor victims? BULLSHIT!

In the West Bank, the removal of Hamas-affiliated imams in over 1,000 mosques has paradoxically opened the door for the rising prominence of Salafi-oriented preachers.

Some of the radical preachers are associated with the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) party. This veteran Islamist group was long regarded as a curiosity because of its failure to maintain an armed wing and its refusal to engage in active politics. However, HT has enjoyed an unprecedented rise in popularity in the West Bank over the last 18 months. Many of its imams are known to be in contact with the broader, amorphous Salafi subculture. HT itself is not a Salafi grouping. But its role as a radicalizing force and then a conduit for young men to violent activity is a key concern.

Salafi Imams with significant regional links are also active. The presence of a certain Saudi-Palestinian sheikh in the city of Nablus, for example, is attracting the attention of the authorities. This individual, whose brother is in a Saudi jail accused of al-Qaida ties, has been in Nablus since early 2008. He has a lot of money (presumably from supporters in Saudi Arabia), and has been engaging in ‘Dawa’ (outreach) activities, gathering around himself a circle of young activists committed to the Salafi-Jihadi path.

Despite the significance of their activities in the West Bank, it is Hamas-controlled Gaza that remains the key area of activity for the Salafis. In Gaza, the Salafis have been particularly engaged in activities associated with the enforcement of Islamic “morality,” as they define it. These have included a rash of “honor killings” of both women and men. For example, members of the Salafi al-Saif al-Haq al-Islam vigilante group are considered responsible for the murder of the owner of the Teachers Bookshop - the only Christian bookshop in Gaza - on October 7 of last year. In the same month, Lina Suboh, daughter of a prominent Gaza university professor, was also murdered. These are two of hundreds of such killings that have taken place in Gaza over the last 18 months. They have been accompanied by bombings of various dens of iniquity in the Strip - including restaurants and cafes that allowed mixed dining.

But the Salafis are not concerned only with Palestinian internal moral health. Prominent individuals within existing political organizations are known to sympathize with this trend. This is particularly noticeable in Hamas’s armed wing in Gaza, Izzadin Kassam. Sheikh Nizar Rayyan, a leading tactician in the group, is considered close to the Saudi-Palestinian imam mentioned above. Rayyan is the most prominent of a large number of individuals in Izzadin Kassam in Gaza who are known to adhere to the uncompromising ideas of Salafism.

With Fatah and Palestinian secular politics in decay, and Hamas facing the failures associated with governance in the real world, the stage is set for the further growth of the Salafi trend. Its growth should be placed within the context of a broader Islamization of Palestinian politics and society, in line with regional trends.

It is not possible to draw any causal link between the growth of Salafism and the “self-radicalization” associated with it, and the three acts of terror by apparently “self-radicalized” individuals in Jerusalem over the last months. Undoubtedly, however, behind the scenes, this is an angle of investigation energetically being pursued.

On Wednesday, the Israeli security cabinet held its first discussion ever on the issue of the global jihad. One may assume that this discussion was not held purely for the general education of cabinet members. Salafi-Jihadism, with its hard-to-trace links between idea and deed, its loose frameworks of organization, and its utterly uncompromising ambitions, has arrived among us.

Part of the fun in scouring the web is reading the Islamic Squatters’ side of a well known story.

This one is particularly funny:

Bulldozer incident in Jerusalem being described by many as a traffic accident, not an attack

Jerusalm / PNN - As Israeli forces continue to bulldoze Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, this is the second Palestinian bulldozer incident ever. They both took place in West Jerusalem this month.

Ghassan Mustafa Abu Tair, just 23 years old, died Tuesday afternoon after being shot by an armed Israeli civilian and then shortly after by Israeli forces when he hit a bus and five cars near the King David Hotel. One of his co-workers stated, “Ghassan worked for seven years on the bulldozer and this seems to have been a traffic accident and no more.” Members of the Israeli government are threatening to demolish the family home and revoke their Jerusalem identification.

[Yeah, 'cause we all know how fast those bulldozers can go! After all, NO ONE has EVER been stuck behind one in a long line of traffic on a country road... Nope. No time to react and turn off the ignition after several minutes of destruction while plowing into a bus, some vehicles, and a few pedestrians before being shot... Yup, after seven years on the job... - Give me a frackin' break!]

The number of Israeli injuries are said to be at 19, but only one in serious condition, according to Israeli medical reports. Shortly after the operation, Israeli forces broke into his family home and arrested his father.

Abu Tair is the relative of imprisoned Palestinian Legislative Council member Mohammand Abu Tair. Israeli forces have held him in their prisons for approximately two years.

Ghassan Abu Tair is from the East Jerusalem village of Umm Tuba, one of many suffering under the Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population. Shortly after he was identified, Israeli forces went to his family home and tore through its contents, investigated the family, and arrested his father, 47 year old Abu Ghassan Abu Tair. Israelis also attacked several Palestinian workers in West Jersualem with knifes shortly after the incident. Among the injured are the young man Abdullah Musa Ali Mustafa, his uncle Fadi Ali Musa Mustafa, and his cousin Ali Ahmed Mustafa. All are hospitalized.

The injured Israelis have been sent to hospitals while Ghassan is dead and the Palestinian official from his family remains in Israeli prison. Members of the Israeli government are threatening to demolish the family home and revoke their Jerusalem identification.

One of his co-workers stated, “Ghassan worked for seven years on the bulldozer and this seems to have been a traffic accident and no more, because Ghassan does not belong to any political faction.” The area where the indicent occurred is heavy with traffic and several are saying that Abu Tair hit the bus on accident, and then lost control of the bulldozer causing him to hit the cars.

Now that the U.S. has cleared out most of al-Qaeda in Iraq, it will be interesting to see how well Iraq’s Security forces can perform in the mop-up operations.

BTW - My favorite war reporter, Michael Yon, has recently declared victory in Iraq.  Too bad the MSM didn’t take notice of this historical moment..

Thousands of Iraqi troops to drive out al-Qaeda
Iraq was today massing 30,000 troops in advance of an assault on one of al-Qaeda’s surviving strongholds that will be a litmus test of the country’s growing security forces.

By Damien McElroy in Baghdad
23 Jul 2008 - www.Telegraph.co.uk

Officials said a major clearing operation of the troubled central province of Diyala would be launched on Aug 1, spearheaded by Iraqi army and police personnel and backed by 10,000 American troops. If successful the operation will add to an impressive run of victories for the security strategy of the prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

On his initiative, the country’s army has made major inroads in militia-controlled Basra and eastern Baghdad this year. The al-Qaeda presence in Mosul has been significantly eroded by operations overseen by a well-regarded local commander, General Riyadh Tawfeeq.

A succession of disruption campaigns have already been waged in Diyala. American forces encountered major resistance last year in Operation Arrowhead Ripper, which was supposed to clear the city of Baquba, once declared the capital of al-Qaeda’s putative Islamic State of Iraq.

Diyala is often described as a microcosm of Iraq with significant tensions between settled ethnic and sectarian populations. In addition its terrain ranges from mountains to densely vegetated river valleys criss-crossed with rat-runs for terrorist groups. It is also a major conduit for Iranian arms and supplies to Shia militias.

“Diyala remains the most dangerous province in Iraq,” said Colonel Ali al-Karkhi, an Iraqi officer in the province.

“But understand that it is a mini-Iraq. There are Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians. The other provinces are far less mixed which is why it is so difficult to restore peace here. It is also the reason why people are so extremist.”

Pro-government irregular forces have been established throughout the province but often these village guardians have borne the brunt of attacks by terrorist groups. A tractor laden with explosives killed seven members of a local patrol in the village of Wais on Monday.

Female suicide bombers have carried out nine deadly attacks in the province this year. To counter the tactic, the government has formed an all-women Daughters of Iraq contingents to guard public venues in disputed villages.

Three-quarters of a group of 130 women employed in towns in the Diyala River Valley are widows of police officers killed in terrorist attacks. The unarmed women will be tasked with frisking their female neighbours.

“In Iraqi culture it is very difficult to search women,” said Captain Charles Knoll, the American commander overseeing the project. “We had to find a way to fill this gap.”

If successful the assault on Diyala will strengthen Mr Maliki’s hand in negotiations with the US over its troop strength in Iraq. He has announced that the American military should be withdrawn to barracks by 2010.

As its combat role is wound up, American army deployments to Iraq will be reduced dramatically.

Of course, leave it to a bunch of liberal multiculturalist dhimmis and Bollywood to produce a film that turns an act of violence against infidels into a Muslim victimhood propaganda piece.

Film explores tensions after 2005 London bombings
By Mike Collett-White Wed Jul 23, 2008 - via Yahoo News

LONDON (Reuters) - A film inspired by the 2005 London suicide bombings that killed 52 people explores the mistrust they stoked between communities and how Islamist radicals threatened to drown out the voice of moderate Muslims.

“Shoot on Sight,” starring Greta Scacchi, is set in the capital just after the July 7 bombings and follows the story of a Muslim police officer thrust into the limelight when a Muslim man is mistaken for a bomber and shot dead.

Tariq Ali, played by Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah, finds himself caught between police officers who are prejudiced against him because of his race and religion and a Muslim community that shuns him for betraying them.

“They don’t trust him in the department because he is a Muslim and they don’t trust him at the mosque because he is a police officer,” director Jagmohan Mundhra told Reuters ahead of the film’s release in Britain on August 22.

“I have always admired British society for being the most tolerant. It’s not just lip service, they have actually done it.

“Then the actions of a few suddenly start causing this chasm. It becomes us versus them, and I think all these years of blending, suddenly, in one night, comes to naught.”

[Yeah, "blending..." - So, that's what they're calling the stealth jihad now and days, eh??? Careful, better watch out for the blades, or you might lose a hand...]

Mundhra, an Indian Hindu, was in London at the time of the attacks on the underground train system and a bus, and noticed how people’s attitude to him changed because he was assumed by many to be a Muslim from South Asia.

Later the same month, a Brazilian man mistakenly believed to be a suicide bomber was shot dead by police. Mundhra used the incident as a trigger for his thriller, but made the victim a Muslim man instead.

He denied that “Shoot on Sight,” the first feature film to deal with the July 2005 events, was insensitive to victims.

“I feel that you can’t be an ostrich in the sand, you cannot ignore what is happening in society.”

REAL EVENTS, CHARACTERS

As well as following Ali, a moderate Muslim, “Shoot on Sight” portrays a radical London cleric who encourages followers to turn to violence to address injustices he says have been carried out against Muslims around the world.

Played by Om Puri, imam Junaid is a charismatic teacher whose ideas appeal on one level and yet border on incendiary.

“Any progressive, liberal Muslim would agree with a lot of the arguments which he makes,” Mundhra said. “But what he’s suggesting to do about it is absolutely unacceptable in a civilized society.”

Mundhra said he read speeches made by radical Muslim clerics Abu Hamza al-Masri and Omar Bakri Mohammed during his research. Bakri has been banned from Britain and Hamza has been jailed.

The director said radical Muslims had succeeded in drowning out the voice of mainstream Muslims since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the 2005 bombings in London.

“The noise caused by the actions of a few radical extremist Muslims has silenced the voice of the majority,” he argued.

“However, I also feel that the Muslim majority, which I believe my film is representing, should also speak up.”

Italian-born Scacchi, star of films like “White Mischief” and “Presumed Innocent,” plays Ali’s English wife, and strains in society at large are reflected in the mixed-race marriage.

The actress said she took on the role in order to confront her own prejudices in the aftermath of the London attacks.

“My experience, I have to confess, was my own prejudice, my own fear,” she told Reuters.

She said she would “notice if there was anyone getting on the same bus or tube (subway train) as me, or particularly an airplane, where your mind can’t help leaping to those sort of possibilities.”

But, she added, it had been far harder for Britain’s large Muslim minority, which had “suffered enormously.”

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Well, this is encouraging:

Hoekstra fights ban on terms that describe terrorists
Gregg Krupa / The Detroit News

The Bush administration advises officials to avoid the use of certain words when describing terrorism, saying the terms are inappropriate and counter-productive. But four members of the Michigan congressional delegation want to ban federal funds for initiatives that prohibit the use of the words, like “jihadist” and “Islamist.”

Muslims have long considered the words slurs. The American and British governments now say the words unintentionally honor terrorists while marginalizing moderate Muslims, who believe that Islam provides no rationale for extremism, let alone terrorism.

Regardless, U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Holland [MI], offered an amendment last week to the 2009 Intelligence Authorization Act that would ban financing for any restriction on such words. Reps. Joe Knollenberg, R-Bloomfield Hills[MI], Thaddeus McCotter, R-Livonia[MI], and Bart Stupak, D-Menominee[MI], also voted for the amendment.

“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this act may be used to prohibit or discourage the use of the words or phrases ‘jihadist,’ ‘jihad,’ ‘Islamo-fascism,’ ‘caliphate,’ ‘Islamist’ or ‘Islamic terrorist’ by or within the intelligence community or the Federal Government,” the amendment reads. It was approved by a 249-180 vote in the House. The Senate is working on its own authorization bill, and no such amendment has been offered, to date.

“I am sympathetic to the argument that if used inappropriately, the words can be counterproductive, but I find that the people who are criticizing this are very short on alternatives,” Hoekstra said. “So how do they want us to describe al-Qaida and what they are involved with?”

Muslim leaders said that even the Bush administration, which they blame for critical errors in the war on terrorism, now realizes the terms are ill-advised.

“We believe that Rep. Hoekstra’s misguided decision reinforces the positions of extremists and may unintentionally legitimize al-Qaida and other anti-American forces,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations-Michigan. “CAIR supports using terminology such as ‘criminals,’ ‘murderers’ or ‘terrorists’ that helps isolate extremists and remove the false cloak of religiosity they use to justify their barbaric actions.”

Muslims and government officials say jihad often in everyday life, against immorality and evil. Jihad is a spiritual pursuit to which they are called, Muslims say, and those who embrace jihad bring themselves closer to God. The fact that terrorists like Osama bin Laden and others brandish the word to rationalize murder demonstrates how far they exist beyond the bounds of Islam.

A memo issued to state department employees this year cautioned against the usage. The Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center followed with similar advisories.

Spokesmen for McCotter and Knollenberg said while they are aware Muslims find the words objectionable, they believe intelligence officials must be free to describe events as they see them.

The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Arab American Institute, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and CAIR have all urged officials to adopt a broader view of Islam, to more effectively counter the extremists.

AN AMERICAN ‘HONOR KILLING’
By JOHN P. AVLON
July 23, 2008 - NY Post

ON July 6, police say, a Pakistani named Chaudhry Rashid strangled his 25-year-old daughter San- deela Kanwal with a Bungee cord in her bedroom because she wanted to end her arranged marriage. This “honor killing” came not in Pakistan, but in Jonesboro, Ga. - a suburb 16 miles outside Atlanta.

At his arraignment, Rashid said through an Urdu interpreter that he was “not in the state of mind to talk because of the death of his daughter,” but stated “I have done nothing wrong.”

This is not the same as declaring innocence. His attorney, Tammy Long, explained, “My client is going through a difficult time. As you can imagine, he is distraught.” Apparently, it takes a stronger man to murder his daughter without sentiment.

The national media has paid little attention to the story of Kanwal’s murder, though most outlets found plenty of time to debate the cover of The New Yorker.

When a blonde girl goes missing, cable networks stop in their tracks - but when a Muslim woman is murdered by her father, there’s not a ripple of sustained interest. Where’s the outrage?

Maybe it’s muted because we’ve grown reluctant to pass judgment on other culture’s customs - but multiculturalism hits a crossroads when honor killings come to America.

The United Nations estimates that the world sees 5,000 honor killings a year - overwhelmingly in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, but increasingly among Muslim immigrant communities in Europe.

The United States has avoided this bloodstained trend until recently. Some consider Kanwal’s death the first documented honor killing here. Others point to the murder of sisters Amina and Sarah Said in Irving, Texas, on New Years’ 2007. (Their MySpace page remains up. Featuring assimilated teen culture and American music, it is haunting.) Their father remains on the run from police.

Few doubt that other honor killings have occurred behind closed doors. In upstate Monroe County just a few days ago, a girl was stabbed by her brother for wearing immodest western clothing and wanting to move to New York City. According to court documents, Waheed Allah Mohammad explained the stabbing by saying his sister was a “bad Muslim girl.”

“Honor killing is a misnomer,” author and exile Ayaan Hirsi Ali told me. “The killing occurs because these girls have allegedly brought shame on their family. The paradox is that these are individuals who have emancipated themselves.

“These girls embody the American dream. They want to become self-reliant - deciding who they marry, when they marry and how many children they will have.”

On the surface, this sounds like a classic case for the left - outrages well worth protesting. Honor killings and other tribal customs like female genital mutilation represent a far greater threat to human rights than comparatively benign examples of Western sexism, like unrealistic measurements on a Barbie doll.

But this would require recognizing that the greatest danger to civil liberties in the world today comes not from the United States, but from a medieval tribalism that’s still murdering people around the world under the guise of enforcing piousness.

“America is an assimilating nation,” affirms Ayaan, “and so when immigrant Muslim men assimilate into American society they are applauded for it. But when some immigrant Muslim women assimilate into American society, they find themselves ostracized - beaten and even killed by their own families. And the American public ignores their plight to protect the immigrant Muslim community from stigma.”

There should be wall-to-wall coverage when Rashid’s pretrail hearings begin tomorrow in Atlanta. By any standards, this is a sensational crime.

Instead, the trial may well get dismissed as old news or swept under the rug as just another domestic-violence case. These rationalizations cover up a discomfort with wading into cultural judgment - and a desire to avoid the risk of violence that always comes with criticizing radical Islam.

There’s a cost to such squeamishness. In England, Lord Chief Justice Phillips, the country’s top judge, has said that sharia law should be incorporated into British law, while the Archbishop of Canterbury described such incorporation as “inevitable.”

This slippery slope threatens to undermine liberal democracy and even the concept of civilized norms. America must make a stand, because many Europeans either can’t or won’t.

As Ayaan says: “As an immigrant Muslim woman running for your life, from your own family, I think America is a better place for us, because we know that Americans are individualist enough that they will ultimately chose to protect us - while Europeans choose to stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is going on.”

Our ultimate victory in the War on Terror will be to encourage a Muslim reformation by offering examples of successful Muslim-American citizens - especially women - who thrive within the equal rights and open opportunities of American society. For Muslim women who want to live in freedom, America is the last best hope on earth - and we must remain nothing less.

John P. Avlon is the author of “Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics.”

StrategyPage.com

American troops in Afghanistan are not happy with how a July 13th battle with the Taliban was reported. In that action, some 200 Taliban attacked a U.S. “base” and killed or wounded more than half the 50 or so U.S. and Afghan troops found there. Actual U.S. casualties were nine dead and fifteen wounded (including walking wounded).

U.S. troops were irked that, once again, the mass media got lazy and didn’t bother to report the action accurately. For one thing, there was no “base”. What the Taliban attacked was a temporary parking area for vehicles used to conduct patrols of the area. These are set up regularly, and have been used for years. These are secure areas, but basically a parking lot surrounded by barbed wire and several sandbagged observation posts. This one was set a few days before the attack, and was due to be taken down soon, as the patrol activity moved to another area.

Such defensive precautions are taken any time U.S. troops stop for more than a few hours. That’s a tactic pioneered by the Romans over two thousand years ago. In this case, it paid off. The Taliban infiltrated several hundred fighters into a nearby village, and opened fire from homes, businesses and a mosque. The U.S. and Afghan troops called in air support and kept fighting until the Taliban fled, taking most of their dead and wounded with them.

The troops are angry because, while the Taliban got lucky (such attacks are rare), the enemy did not succeed in taking the U.S. position, and fled the battlefield after suffering heavier casualties. The U.S. troops are much better shots, and know they killed far more of the Taliban. Moreover, they saw smart bombs and missiles hitting buildings that Taliban were firing from. From long experience, they know that people inside bombed buildings rarely survive the explosion.

Finally, the troops involved were from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and paratroopers do not like anyone implying they were beaten at anything. Especially because, in this case, they weren’t.

Good news from Afghanistan that you won’t be hearing much about from the MSM:

Senior Taliban leader killed in Afghanistan

via Yahoo News

KABUL (Reuters) - A senior Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan surrendered to Pakistani authorities and British forces killed another leader, dealing a “shattering blow” to the militant group’s leadership, the British army said on Tuesday.

Mullah Rahim, the top commander for southern Helmand province, gave himself up after British forces had killed two other Taliban leaders in little over three weeks.

Hours after his surrender, another senior Taliban commander, Abdul Rasaq, also known as “Mullah Sheikh,” was killed in a British missile strike 15 km (9 miles) north of the town of Musa Qala in Helmand on Monday morning, the British army said in a statement. Three other insurgents also died.

Rasaq headed Taliban actions around Musa Qala and was active in the insurgency for a number of years, it said.

“The Taliban’s senior leadership structure has suffered a shattering blow,” British army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Robin Matthews said in the statement.

Musa Qala town holds a symbolic importance after Taliban fighters forced British troops out of the dusty opium-trading centre in late 2006. The Taliban then seized it in February last year making it the only town of any size held by the rebels.

Afghan, British and U.S. forces took back Musa Qala in an offensive in December but Taliban insurgents are still active around the town.

Elsewhere, U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces backed by airpower killed or wounded more than 30 Taliban insurgents in fighting in the west of Afghanistan, a senior police official said on Tuesday.

Fighting broke out in the Bala Boluk district of Farah province on Tuesday, regional police chief Ikramuddin Yawar said.

“The toll might be more than 30 because the operation is ongoing,” Yawar told Reuters.

SUICIDE ATTACK

A U.S.-led convoy was hit by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades on Tuesday morning in Bala Boluk, a U.S. military spokesman said.

Air strikes were called in but no munitions were dropped. The U.S. military could not confirm if any Taliban were killed dead. International forces do not usually give casualty figures for insurgents.

In the capital, Kabul, a Taliban suicide bomber wounded five civilians when he blew himself up as he was challenged by police on Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said.

Taliban militants have launched some 100 suicide attacks so far this year, mostly targeting Afghan and international security forces but as many as 80 percent of their victims are civilians, security experts say.

The bomber struck in the morning in the Gozargah area of the capital, next to the walls of the historic tomb of Babur, the 16th century founder of India’s Mughal dynasty. Only a leg of the bomber remained, lying on the ground, Reuters witnesses said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi, Yousuf Azimy and Sharafuddin Sharafyar; Writing by Jon Hemming and Jonathon Burch; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Yup… That sounds about right:

[Center - Mohammad Momin Khawaja]

Terrorism claims against Khawaja stunned his ex-fiancée
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - CBC News, Canada

The ex-fiancée of the Canadian man accused of involvement in a British bomb plot testified at his trial in Ottawa that she was surprised he had been arrested on terrorism charges and that he held views typical of many young Muslim men.

After several postponements because of logistical difficulties in having her testify from Dubai, Zeba Khan finally appeared via video link Tuesday at the trial of Mohammad Momin Khawaja.

Khan, testifying about her e-mail correspondence with Khawaja in late 2003, before they broke off their engagement, said she was stunned when her sister told her that a man with the same name as her one-time fiancé had been arrested.

Khawaja’s involvement with Islam “did not in any way line up to terrorist activity,” Khan said, and was more in the spirit of, “Let’s work in a refugee camp or something.”

And Khawaja certainly never suggested setting off a bomb in London during their e-mail correspondence, Khan testified.

“Oh, very definitely no,” Khan said.

The prosecution read excerpts of Khawaja’s letters to the court. In one e-mail, he wrote: “We need [constant] economic J [jihad] blow after blow until they cripple and fall never to rise again.” In another, he asks, “Would you not say that the actions of 19 men on Sept. 11 are the most accurate, effective and honourable way of conducting economic J? Imagine if there were 10 Sept. 11s.”

In response, Khan explained that “jihad” to her has a much broader meaning, referring to engaging with life’s big struggles. “So, of course I believe in jihad,” she said. “It does not mean that I believe in blowing things up.”

Typical muslim views?

[Yeah, that's the typical apologetic line she just threw out there, but check out the next sentence:]

Khan also said Khawaja’s views were typical of the opinions of lots of Muslim men around the world who have been angered by the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Yup, she knows what Jihad really means, and it's not that inner spiritual struggle crap... She's a liar...]

Khawaja, 29, is being tried on seven charges of financing and facilitating terrorism, accused of being part of a plot to set off a fertilizer bomb in England. As part of the indictment — the first under Canada’s Anti-terrorism Act — he is alleged to have built the remote-control device for detonating the bomb.

Khawaja was working as a software developer for Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department when he was arrested in 2004. He has pleaded not guilty. Five of his alleged co-conspirators were convicted last year by a British court and sentenced to life in prison.

Khan was the last prosecution witness at the trial. The defence must now decide whether to call any witnesses or to proceed straight to closing arguments, where it would attempt to refute the Crown’s case.

New Disclosures Tighten ISNA-Muslim Brotherhood Bonds
by Steven Emerson
IPT News
July 22, 2008

The Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) roots in the Muslim Brotherhood have been strengthened by newly declassified FBI memos and from a second, highly unlikely source.

The records, recently obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism through Freedom of Information Act requests, show that FBI agents investigated a parent organization to ISNA, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), during the mid 1980s.

The FBI investigation concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood members who founded U.S.-based groups had risen to “leadership roles within NAIT and its related organizations,” including ISNA, “which means they are in a position to direct the activities and support of Muslims in the U.S. for the Islamic Revolution.” The FBI memo also said that:

Within the organizational structure of NAIT, there have been numerous groups and individuals identified as being a part of a covert network of revolutionaries who have clearly indicated there (sic) support for the Islamic Revolution as advocated by the AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI and his government as well as other fanatical Islamic Shiite fundamentalist leaders in the Middle East. This faction of Muslims have declared war on the United States, Israel and any other country they deem as an enemy of Islam. The common bond between these various organizations is both religious and political with the underlying common goal being to further the holy war (Islamic Jihad).

The FBI memos date back to 1987-88. Dozens of pages of the released files are redacted in their entirety. But others contradict ISNA claims that it “never was, and is not now, affiliated with or influenced by any international organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood.” Furthermore, ISNA still considers NAIT an affiliated organization. ISNA’s president is an ex-officio NAIT board member and Muzammil Siddiqi, NAIT’s chairman, serves on ISNA’s governing board.

NAIT holds the deeds to more than a quarter of the mosques in the United States and continuously seeks to build on that volume.

The dispute is important as ISNA officials assert that the organization is a voice of moderation in the American Muslim community, actively courting outreach and dialogue with government officials and leaders of other religions. ISNA President Ingrid Mattson was among the organization’s representatives at last week’s international interfaith conference in Madrid. As the IPT reported last week, conference organizer Abdullah al-Turki is alleged in civil lawsuits to have ties to a senior Al Qaeda financier and has openly justified Palestinian suicide bombings.

ISNA’s denials, however, are challenged by the Chicago Tribune, federal prosecutors in Dallas, internal Muslim Brotherhood documents and the newly declassified FBI memos. ISNA officials have ignored those reports or denied their legitimacy. Their most recent denial came in the wake of a mistrial in the first HLF trial last October. A retrial is scheduled for September.

But in the past month, ISNA co-founder and convicted terrorist Sami Al-Arian acknowledges that he was a Muslim Brotherhood member in 1981 – the year ISNA formed. Click here and read paragraph 6 on page 5, then see Al-Arian’s biography to see his claim that he is an ISNA founder.

In his June 24 affidavit, Al-Arian admits for the first time that his former charity, the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP) advocated for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a fact he heatedly denied for more than a decade. ICP conferences routinely featured leaders of the PIJ and other terrorist groups.

Similarly, the FBI concluded that ISNA conferences in the 1980s “provided opportunities for the extreme fundamentalist Muslims to meet with their supporters.”

Among the recently declassified FBI memos, NAIT activities are described:

Their support of JIHAD (a holy war) in the U.S. has been evidenced by the financial and organizational support provided through NAIT from Middle East countries to Muslims residing in the U.S. and Canada. The organizational support provided by NAIT includes planning, organizing and funding anti-U.S. and anti-Israel demonstrations, pro-PLO demonstrations and the distribution of political propaganda against U.S. policies in the Middle East and in support of the Islamic Revolution as advocated by the (Government of Iran).

ISNA and NAIT are fighting their continued inclusion as unindicted co-conspirators in the Hamas-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) and five former officials. In a recent rebuttal, prosecutors listed a series of checks routed by ISNA to HLF, often dedicated for “Palestinian Mujahideen” in the memo line. The military wing of Hamas initially was referred to as the Palestinian Mujahideen, prosecutors said.

Internal documents released at the trial show ISNA’s founders had been leaders of the Muslim Students Association, which also was founded by Muslim Brotherhood members who came to the U.S. for college. In addition to introducing all the financial transactions between ISNA/NAIT and HLF, prosecutors introduced a Muslim Brotherhood “Explanatory Memorandum” on the group’s goals, as the document explains:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.

ISNA is the first U.S.-based organization listed under a section titled “A list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends.”

In their brief, prosecutors continue in describing the Explanatory Memorandum:

At the end of the document, the memorandum lists those Muslim Brotherhood organizations that – if they all worked together – could help accomplish this grand objective. These organizations include ISNA, NAIT, the Occupied Land Fund (OLF)(the former name of the Holy Land Foundation), the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), and others.

The documented links between ISNA and the Muslim Brotherhood have reached critical mass. While it is not illegal to be a part of the Brotherhood, ISNA knows its credibility is at stake here. It appears to have dug in its heels too deeply.

An interesting proposition from George Pitcher in the Telegraph:

Church beats Hazel Blears at ‘interfaith issues’

By George Pitcher
22/07/2008

The Government yesterday launched its latest inter-faith “Framework for Partnership”, headed by the unformidable Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, with a blizzard of New Labour buzz-words that sound energetic, but signify nothing.

“As a nation we are cohesive,” she wittered. “Our recent empowerment White Paper recognised the role that religion and belief can play in motivating and providing the opportunities for individuals to be active and empowered citizens.”

Mercifully little taxpayers’ money, some £7.5 million, is being thrown at this effort to make us even more cohesive, motivated active and empowered, compared with the tens of millions that are being invested in trying to stop young Muslims being radicalised, which is almost certainly being wasted too.

But such relative parsimony shouldn’t hinder us from noting what vacuous nonsense this Government produces on inter-faith issues. We shouldn’t really be surprised. Ministers are either too dim or too pusillanimous to get properly stuck in to issues of how Islam in Britain can co-exist peacefully with the Christian culture into which it has been inserted.

Ms Blears is singularly ill-equipped to undertake this exercise. When issues of faith arise on her agenda, she repeats by rote that we live in a “secular democracy” and that the Government is obliged to spend more time and money on Muslim youths than any other kinds, because they might blow themselves up.

This was all said by her in response to a report, highly critical of Government, commissioned by the Church of England from the Von Hugel Institute in Cambridge, called Moral, But No Compass, which inter alia disclosed that the Government ignores the incomparable natural social resource offered by the Church.

Nothing is said in the latest “initiative” of how the Church of England might be deployed in the effort for social integration, preferring to talk vaguely of “an independent Regional Faith Forum in every English region.” Would that be the established Church of England, with the monarch at its head, that still manages to exist in Ms Blears’ “secular democracy”?

It is astonishing how this Government continues to ignore the resource it has at its disposal in the pastoral care of the Church of England. And it’s a Church that shows it is more than ready and able to make practical and tangible contributions to religious integration.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, followed by the Lord Chief Justice, have both publicly explored ways of representing Sharia in aspects of our civil life, such as marriage and finance. The former, Dr Rowan Williams, last week wrote a 17-page letter to Muslim leaders and scholars, spelling out theological and educative steps that can be taken to deepen understanding between our Muslim and other communities.

How does our Government tap in to this vast, natural and established national resource? It doesn’t even try. It talks of providing “supportive guidance to local authorities on the practical steps they can take such as supporting shared community spaces”, with leaflets and an Inter-Faith Week.

It was Alastair Campbell who said that this Government doesn’t “do God”. How deeply and profoundly true that has turned out to be.

SnappedShot.com is having fun with the recent NY MTA subway ad campaign.  Check out their artwork HERE.

Yeah, what a bunch of whiners!

Just because the US Government did not designate Hamas as a terrorist organization until after the dates indicated on some evidentiary material used by prosecutors does not excuse NAIT and ISNA of their crimes as co-conspirators.  They knew full well that Hamas was engaged in murderous, terrorist activities against the Israelis, and yet, they still endeavored to finance Hamas.

It’s akin to financing a hitman to kill your spouse.  Then, after the dirty deed is done and the cops throw you in jail, you cry foul and asseverate your “innocence” because you financed the hitman BEFORE the judicial system had finally tracked him down and declared him guilty of murdering your spouse.

Nope.  It just doesn’t pass muster.  Hopefully, Judge Jorge Solis will be smart enough to figure that one out.

Muslim Groups Argue Terror Case Prosecutors Use Old Evidence

By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun

July 22, 2008  - The NY Sun

Two major Muslim organizations, the North American Islamic Trust and the Islamic Society of North America, are arguing that the government’s evidence of their ties to Hamas is old and, in any event, is no excuse for a decision by prosecutors to name the American groups publicly as unindicted co-conspirators in a criminal case.

“Assuming the authenticity of the documents’ dates, the most recent documents to mention either ISNA or NAIT are dated 1991,” an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing the two groups, Hina Shamsi, wrote in a brief filed in federal court in Dallas yesterday. “Almost all of the numerous exhibits that purport to show financial transactions and that contain any mention of ISNA or NAIT are dated 1988 and 1989 … almost a decade before the majority of the overt acts the government alleged in support of its conspiracy charges.” The filing also notes that the American government did not designate Hamas as a terrorist group until 1995.

Last May, prosecutors pursuing a terrorism-support case against the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation and five of its officers filed court documents listing more than 100 groups and individuals as unindicted co-conspirators. NAIT and ISNA were included as groups that are part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is closely related to Hamas.

A lawyer for NAIT and ISNA, which were never charged with a crime, negotiated with the government about having their names removed from the list, but the government never formally moved to do so. The trial ended in October with no convictions, some acquittals, and a mistrial on counts where jurors could not reach a verdict.

Last month, with a retrial approaching, NAIT and ISNA asked a federal judge to strike them from the list and to sanction the government for violating their rights. In a response last week, prosecutors did not directly address the propriety of naming the groups before trial, but said there was no recourse at this point because exhibits admitted at the trial showed an “intimate relationship” involving the groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Holy Land defendants.

NAIT and ISNA said in their brief that the government’s response and reports on it by The New York Sun and the Associated Press “exacerbated the injury” the groups have suffered. “The government utterly fails to grasp the singular weight and consequence that an official accusation of criminal conduct carries in our criminal justice system and in our society,” Ms. Shamsi wrote.

Judge Jorge Solis has given no indication of when he will rule on the groups’ request. Another Muslim group on the unindicted co-conspirator list, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, filed a similar motion before another judge last year. It is still pending.

JMB emailed us with a link to an excellent blog that tracks Sharia Financing:

ShariahFinanceWatch.WordPress.com

Also, be sure to check out their list of Banks that are Sharia Compliant HERE.

If you  need some info on what Sharia Compliant Banking is all about, and how it helps finance terrorism, check out the link HERE at RightSideNews.