
I really hate to dump my Zoolander...maybe we should just inform Jack Bauer
All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same unalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, if the governments of the world can't get that through their thick skulls, then, regime change will be necessary.
Anyone shocked?-- 73% of UAE citizens had a negative view of the United States; only 14% had a favorable view.
-- Only 5% of UAE citizens felt that "democracy" was an "extremely important" reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction was cited by 16%. "Oil" and "domination of the Muslim world" were the main reasons offered by UAE citizens for our invasion of Iraq.
-- 81% of UAE citizens felt Iraq was worse off after the war. Only 4% said it was better off without Saddam.
-- Asked to identify their "most admired" world leaders, 18% of UAE citizens chose Osama bin Laden. "No one" finished first with 22%.
-- When asked how they viewed themselves, only 19% said they identified first and foremost as citizens of the United Arab Emirates, while 66% said they saw themselves as "Muslims" first
Schumer and Clinton are comfortably ensconced in the pocket$ of corrupt unions (it's their bread and butter).) It is incumbent upon them to enable the deeply embedded corruption and featherbedding practices that have become a way of life at our port facilities. Perhaps a new management firm might shake things up, save money and perhaps even enhance security.
The day America hands the reins of power over to the Dhimmicrats, is the day we've signed our own warrants. Just look at what the left is up to here.
By their acts, ye shall know them. And so we know them.
Probe finds terrorists in U.S. 'training for war'
Neighbors of Muslim encampment fear retaliation if they report to police
The Pakistani terrorist group Jamaat ul Fuqra is using Islamic schools in the United States as training facilities, confirms a joint investigative report by an intelligence think tank and an independent reporter.
A covert visit to an encampment in the Catskill Mountains near Hancock, N.Y.,
called "Islamberg" found neighboring residents deeply concerned about military-style training taking place there but frustrated by the lack of attention from federal authorities, said the report by the Northeast Intelligence Network, which worked with an Internet blogger, "CP," to publish an interim report. (Entrance to Hancock, N.Y., encampment (Courtesy Northeast Intelligence Network))
The neighbors interviewed, who asked not to be identified, said they feared retaliation if they were to make a report to law enforcement officials.
"We see children – small children run around over there when they should be in school," one neighbor said. "We hear bursts of gunfire all of the time, and we know that there is military-like training going on there. Those people are armed and dangerous." Read it all
Why aren't Chuckie and Shrillary SHUTTING THESE TERROR CAMPS DOWN? So busy busy busy Chuckie is ~~ attempts to kill off the Alito and Roberts SCOTUS nominations, whining about Al Qaeda surveillance, and now screeching about the NON SECURITY issue of Dubai managing port operations (NO SECURITY INVOLVED).
Read the whole article and begin to understand how dangerous the left is to our national security. I want these camps closed down.
Members have been known to go to Pakistan for paramilitary training, but the investigation found evidence the U.S. encampments offer such training so members don't need to risk traveling abroad amid increased scrutiny following the 9-11 attacks.
The report says Jamaat ul-Fuqra members have "purchased isolated rural properties in North America to live as a community, practice their faith, and insulate themselves from Western culture. The group has established rural encampments that U.S. authorities allege are linked to murder, bombings and other felonies throughout North America."
U.S. authorities have probed the group for charges ranging from links to al-Qaida to laundering and funneling money into Pakistan for terrorist activities. The organization supports various terrorist groups operating in Pakistan and Kashmir, and Gilani himself is linked directly to Hamas and Hezbollah. hat tip Tom P
And where is this in the investigative press? When did the media abandon their role as watchdog and become the lazy bullhorn of the far left (don't answer that)?
"An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself." —Joseph Pulitzer
Greeting, fellow Americans. I have some serious news for you about the war against the terrorists, the war we are fighting to protect our liberties and our Constitution against Islamic totalitarianism. We're losing, big time. I don't mean we're losing in Iraq, where our brave men and women are fighting well in difficult conditions and with the home grown doubters at their heels. Nor in Afghanistan, where our men and women in uniform are also fighting brilliantly.
No, we are losing our freedom here at home, and in a particularly nasty way. It has to do with those cartoons mocking Mohammed that were published in a Danish publication and have excited riots and burnings across the Moslem world and fear and terror in Europe.
The problem here is that some students at the University of Illinois' student newspaper thought -- with some reason -- that the cartoons are newsworthy. They published six of them along with a written statement of why the cartoons were offensive. A few Moslem students complained, which surely is their right. The university officials stepped in and the student editors were essentially fired. Yes, because a student publication might cause offense. Imagine that.
That's on top of the fact that despite these cartoons being huge news, not one major paper has reprinted them. Not the fearless Washington Post, not the thorough Wall Street Journal, not any major newspaper of record that I know of. Nor have any of the major networks shown them, as far as I know.
So here's where we are: we have a first amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and separation of church and state. That means so-called artists can make art of a crucifix soaking in urine and of holy Christian images made of animal dung and no one can stop them. That means bookstores of brick and on-line can sell Mein Kampf and the vilest writings of Hitler's lackeys. These horrible excrescences are protected and the media screams bloody murder if anyone tries to protect the sacred in Christianity and Judaism from the most putrid attacks.
But the media censors itself about the cartoons mocking the prophet of a religion many of whose adherents want to destroy our country and our way of life. We will fight to the death to protect the artists who create Piss Christ, but we'll also fight to the death to protect the feelings of the people who hate us and kill our children. We have surrendered our free expression to people who are at war with us. They kill us in the name of a religion and we bow and scrape to that religion while letting people dump on Christianity and Judaism.
There's a word for this, beyond the words Stockholm Syndrome and the words Political Correctness. The word is cowardice. Or maybe an even shorter word: defeat. Wake up, America. This is serious.
Transcript (click the picture to watch the video):
Following are excerpts from a program with Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, aired on Qatar TV on February 25, 2006.
Yousef Al-Qaradhawi: Our war with the Jews is over land, brothers. We must understand this. If they had not plundered our land, there wouldn't be a war between us.
[...]
We are fighting them in the name of Islam, because Islam commands us to fight whoever plunders our land, and occupies our country. All the school of Islamic jurisprudence - the Sunni, the Shiite, the Ibadhiya - and all the ancient and modern schools of jurisprudence - agree that any invader, who occupies even an inch of land of the Muslims, must face resistance. The Muslims of that country must carry out the resistance, and the rest of the Muslims must help them. If the people of that country are incapable or reluctant, we must fight to defend the land of Islam, even if the local [Muslims] give it up.
They must not allow anyone to take a single piece of land away from Islam. That is what we are fighting the Jews for. We are fighting them... Our religion commands us... We are fighting in the name of religion, in the name of Islam, which makes this Jihad an individual duty, in which the entire nation takes part, and whoever is killed in this [Jihad] is a martyr. This is why I ruled that martyrdom operations are permitted, because he commits martyrdom for the sake of Allah, and sacrifices his soul for the sake of Allah.
We do not disassociate Islam from the war. On the contrary, disassociating Islam from the war is the reason for our defeat. We are fighting in the name of Islam.
[...]
They fight us with Judaism, so we should fight them with Islam. They fight us with the Torah, so we should fight them with the Koran. If they say "the Temple," we should say "the Al-Aqsa Mosque." If they say: "We glorify the Sabbath," we should say: "We glorify the Friday." This is how it should be. Religion must lead the war. This is the only way we can win.
[...]
Everything will be on our side and against Jews on [Judgment Day], at that time, even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say: "Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there's a Jew behind me, come and kill him." They will point to the Jews. It says "servant of Allah," not "servant of desires," "servant of women," "servant of the bottle," "servant of Marxism," or "servant of liberalism"... It said servant of Allah."
When the Muslims, the Arabs, and the Palestinians enter a war, they do it to worship Allah. They enter it as Muslims. The hadith says: "Oh Muslim." It says "oh Muslim," not "oh Palestinian, Jordanian, Syrian, or Arab nationalist." No, it says: "Oh Muslim." When we enter [a war] under the banner of Islam, and under the banner of serving Allah, we will be victorious.
Link...
Muslim Preacher on Temple Mount: Restore Worldwide Islamic RuleI'm shocked, shocked to find Imams suddenly preaching a return of the Khalifate and Shariah and the rest of the lot. I thought we had reached a kindler, gentler Islam
11:59 Feb 26, '06 / 28 Shevat 5766
By Hillel Fendel
Sheikh Ismail Nawahda, preaching to Moslem masses on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Friday, has brought it out into the open: the call to restore the Moslem Khalifate, or, "Genuine Islamic Rule."
A plan for the "Return of the Khalifate" was published secretly in 2002 by a group called "The Guiding Helper Foundation." The group explained that it wished to "give direction to the educated Muslim populace in its increasing interest in the establishment of Islam as a practical system of rule."
(Bernama) -- Action will be taken under the Multimedia and Communications Act against anyone found to have posted or distributed the offensive cartoons of [the alleged] Prophet Muhammad, Deputy Minister of Energy, Water and Communications Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor warned Friday.Can I lodge a complaint with this commission about their own official government censorship and oppression of free expression? Hmmm, probably not a good idea.
He said provisions in the Act were clear against anyone found to have posted or distributed materials containing pornographic elements, humiliating, degrading or damaging the reputation of any party [except Israel, Jews, and Zionists] was liable to a maximum fine of RM50,000 (US $ 13,157) or jailed for not less than a year, or both, upon conviction.
"If they're convicted and they're found to have repeated the offence, they will be fined RM1,000 (US $ 263) a day for posting or distributing through the Internet," he told reporters after the opening of an exhibition by Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan.
He said this when asked to comment on public concerns over posting and distributing of the controversial caricatures on the Internet which could be a subject of poking fun and ridicule by some people.
Stressing that the ministry was monitoring the matter, Shaziman said the people could co-operate by lodging complaints to the Multimedia and Communications Commission so that the ministry could detect the source which posted or distributed the caricatures.
We were ...surprised M(ontreal)M(uslim)N(ews) would comment on a statement made by Australian Treasurer Peter Costello that Muslim immigrants should adapt to Australian values as follows:
Calling on Muslim (sic) to embrace western values, or in this case Australian values, is merely coded speech calling on us to leave our faith. For believing Muslims our set of values are based on the Quran and the noble example of the prophet Muhammad. If we look deeply into the sickness of what passes for "western values" one can see why we choose Allah over human made systems of morality and conduct.
Allah unambigously says in the Holy Quran:
"O you who believe, obey Allaah and obey His Messenger, and the people in authority among you. And if you dispute over anything, refer it to Allaah and His Messenger if you really believe in Allaah and the Last Day, that is best in terms of consequences." (4:59)
"And he who does not rule by what Allaah sent down, it is they who are the disbelievers." (5:44)
"And he who does not rule by what Allaah sent down, it is they who are the wrongdoers." (5:45)
"And he who does not rule by what Allaah sent down, it is they who are the rebellious." (5:47)"
It was only a matter of time until MMN would make its Salafi creed unmistakably clear by overtly expressing such utter contempt for Western civilization and Muslims who strike a balance between religious imperatives and Western values. The fact that the site is hosted by Montreal Muslim Council President Salam Elmenyawi is all the more worrying, when one considers how Mr. Elmenyawi has become in the eye of the media the go-to Muslim for statements supposedly representative of Montreal's Muslim community.
"...[T]he girls can't accept that they have only been allowed to compete against girls basketball teams from other Muslim schools. There are only four in the Chicago area, they complain, and their competition isn't exactly tough.
"Since last year they've been beseeching Coach Farida Abusafa, 26, an English teacher who also coaches sports, to ask public schools and non-Muslim private schools if their girls teams would be willing to compete against girls from the Universal School.
"The problem is the schools would have to agree to bar men and boys above the age of puberty from watching the games.
"'It's not like it's a sin to play a public school,' Abusafa said. 'The problem is the males coming to the game.'
"The dilemma underscores the balancing act many Muslims perform as they toggle between American and Middle Eastern culture....
"Conceivably, the Muslim girls could play in headscarves, sweat pants and long sleeves. But the bulky attire might make playing difficult, they said...."
AUSTIN - A University of Texas student found a substance that has tested positive for ricin, a potentially deadly poison, in a roll of quarters she was using to do laundry in her dormitory, officials said.Has the Jihad come to the Longhorn State?
The student and her roommate were being treated for potential exposure to the poison, although neither has exhibited symptoms, said Dr. Theresa Spalding of UT Student Health Services.
The student told university police she found the chunky powder Thursday as she was doing her laundry at the Moore-Hill dormitory, Spalding said. Preliminary tests for ricin came back positive Friday.
“We were very concerned as soon as we heard about the positive testing late this evening,” Spalding said. She said the quarters had been in the students’ dorm room for several months.
Ricin is extracted from castor beans and can be added to food or water, injected or sprayed as an aerosol. It can be in the form of a powder, mist, pellet, or it can be dissolved in water or weak acid.
Symptoms can include anything from difficulty breathing, fever, cough, nausea and sweating to severe vomiting and dehydration.
The dorm was sanitized and inspected, and students were cleared to return, the university said.
Cries of "vive la France" and "la justice" accompanied President Jacques Chirac, his wife Bernadette and Premier Dominique de Villepin last night as they left the memorial evening held here yesterday for Ilan Halimi.Caroline Glick notes that the Islamic gang appears to have connections to the Hamas as well:
The ceremony, which was held in the Grand Synagogue on rue de la Victoire, was seen by many in the Jewish community as the state leaders' formal declaration that anti-Semitism was to blame for the horrific kidnapping, torture and murder of the 23-year-old Parisian.
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At 5 P.M., two hours before the ceremony's official opening, police cars surrounded the synagogue area. Police at roadblocks inspected the bag of everyone who entered the area. Hundreds of thousands of people crowded on either side of the street, waiting their turn to enter the synagogue. At the synagogue's entrance police used metal detectors and checked the identity cards and passports of all who pushed in.
The synagogue's 3,000 seats were full, dozens more mourners stood in the aisles and many thousands remained outside and could not get in.
During the chilling ceremony, an 8-year-old read the Psalm "I will raise my eyes to the mountains, whence will come my help?" near a giant picture of Halimi.
Halimi's family and others in the Jewish community said that had the authorities admitted earlier that the young man had been attacked for being a Jew, he could possibly have been saved.
Halimi was found dying, covered with burns and cuts, on Monday February 13. He had been kidnapped three weeks earlier, after a Muslim gang sent a blonde to seduce him. Halimi had agreed to meet with her after meeting in a chat room. Immediately after his abduction his mother went to the police, saying he was kidnapped by anti-Semites. Sources in the community said three Jewish youngsters had managed to escape similar abdications in recent months.
The police told Halimi's mother, Ruth, to stop all telephone connection with the kidnappers, as a way of forcing them to use electronic mail, which was traceable.
The police did not know that during the five days in which the kidnappers tried in vain to contact Halimi's family, Halimi suffered terrible torture. One of the kidnappers said, "We put our cigarettes out on him because he was a Jew."
Anti-Semitism in the Muslim dominated suburbs of Paris and other French cities is all-encompassing. As Nidra Poller related in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, "One of the most troubling aspects of this affair is the probable involvement of relatives and neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang [of kidnappers], who were told about the Jewish hostage and dropped in to participate in the torture."The police in France, and in fact, in many other places around the world, are going to have to start showing some serious reform.
It appears that Ilan Halimi's murderers had some connection to Hamas. Tuesday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that police found propaganda published by the Palestinian Charity Committee or the CBSP at the home of one of the suspects. The European Jewish Press reported this week that Israel has alleged that the organization is a front group for Palestinian terrorists and that in August 2003 the US government froze the organization's US bank accounts, accusing it of links with Hamas.
Halimi's family alleges that throughout the 20 days of Ilan's captivity, the French police refused to take the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers into account. The investigators insisted on viewing his kidnap as a garden variety kidnap-for-ransom criminal case, which they said generally involves no threat to the life of the captive. The police maintained their refusal to investigate the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan's family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background. The family alleges that if the police had been willing to acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish, they would have recognized that his life was in clear and immediate danger and acted with greater urgency.
In addition to the exterminationist anti-Semitism of Ilan's murderers and the unwillingness of the French authorities to acknowledge the anti-Semitic nature of the crime until it was too late, there is one more aspect of the case that bears note. That is Israel's reaction to the atrocity. In short, there has been absolutely no official Israeli reaction to the abduction, torture and murder of a Jew in France by a predominantly Muslim terrorist gang that kidnapped, tortured and murdered him because he was a Jew.If would-be governments like Kadima, led by people like Olmert, whose own corrupt activities were exposed recently, and can be read about in these earlier topics, are going to be the ones leading the country, acts of anti-Semitism like the horrifying murder of Halimi will never be effectively dealt with.
No Israeli government minister, official or spokesman has condemned his murder. No Israeli official has demanded that the French authorities investigate why the police refused to take anti-Semitism into account during Ilan's captivity. No Israeli official flew to Paris to participate in Ilan's funeral or any other memorial or demonstration in his memory. The Foreign Ministry's Web site makes no mention of his murder. The Israeli Embassy in Paris - which has been without an ambassador for the past several months - only publicly expressed its condolences to the Halimi family on February 23, 10 days after Ilan was found. This, when the French Jewish community considers Halimi's murder to have been the greatest calamity to have befallen it in recent years; when aliya rates rose 25% last year; and when Ilan's mother has told reporters that her son had planned to make aliya soon and was just staying in France to save money to finance his move to Israel. For its part, as Michelle Mazel pointed out in The Jerusalem Post yesterday, the French press has noted that the Israeli media has not given the story prominent coverage. Halimi's murder has not appeared on the front pages of the papers or at the top of the television or radio broadcasts.
Although appalling, the absence of an official Israeli outcry against Halimi's murder is not the least surprising. Today, the unelected Kadima interim government, like the Israeli media, is doing everything in its power to lull the Israeli people into complacency towards the storm of war raging around us. Against the daily barrages of Kassam rockets on southern Israel; nervous reports of al-Qaida setting up shop in Judea, Samaria and Gaza; the ascension of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority; and Iran's threats of nuclear annihilation, Israel's citizenry, under the spell of Kadima and the media, appears intent on ignoring the dangers and pretending that what happens to Jews in France has nothing to do with us.
Israel's societal meekness accords well with Kadima's ideology. Its creed was best expressed by Foreign Minister, Justice Minister and Immigration Minister Tzipi Livni last month at the Herzliya Conference and is best characterized as "conditional Zionism." In her speech, Livni explained that Israel's international legitimacy is conditional. Unless a Palestinian state is established in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, she warned, Israel will lose its legitimacy as a Jewish state.
So for Livni, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres and the rest of the Kadima gang, unlike every other people in the world, the Jewish people does not have an inherent, natural right to exist as a free, sovereign and independent people in its homeland. For Kadima, the Jewish people's right to self-determination in our land years is conditional on our enemies' acceptance of our right to be here.
Kadima's conditional Zionism finds expression in its policies in Judea and Samaria. There, the gist of the government's actions is that the only people with inherent human rights in Judea and Samaria are the Arabs.
When IKEA first approached TheHijabShop.com, their excited team was impressed that an internationally-acclaimed company like IKEA was making so much effort to accommodate Muslims in its workforce. (…) The IKEA branding was added by using a navy blue coloured cloth, with a thin yellow line bordering the top of the cap and the edge of the bottom part of the hijab, finishing it off with the IKEA logo embroidered on the back.
And Dubai -- I don't have to tell you -- is an Arab nation. Yes, two of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of the UAE, but, then again, as Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute notes, Richard Reid, the attempted "shoe bomber," was a British citizen, and Jose Padilla, among others, is an American citizen (as was Timothy McVeigh). The UAE has been a staunch ally in the war on terror, training security forces in Iraq and helping to cut off the flow of money to al Qaeda.Yeah, unless the loader and the terminal operator are in cahoots to smuggle deadly contraband into a U.S. port, James. Nice try, too, trying to scare us conservatives into thinking we're anything-goes, free-market libertarians by quoting a DEMOCRATIC!! Congressman. Problem is, we haven't exactly been "racist" up to this point in our choice of who operates our ports.CNN gets slammed frequently (and deservedly) for the "Bring Me The Head Of George W. Bush" slant it puts on the news. But I find that its stories often reward those who have the patience to stick it out until the last paragraph. As in, the last paragraph of this one:
Isn't this precisely what the United States preaches? Don't we want places like Dubai to fight terror and to grow, to invest, to buy, to trade, to adopt Western commercial practices, to expose themselves to the rest of the world and thus become tolerant and moderate?
Instead, congressional leaders are trying to kill the deal, which is set to go into effect next week. Why? "Outsourcing the operations of our largest ports to a country with a dubious record on terrorism is a homeland security and commerce accident waiting to happen," says Schumer.
This is rank racist nonsense. Schumer knows very well that responsibility for port security in the United States lies not with DP World or any other operator, but instead with the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Customs. "Nothing changes with respect to security under the contract," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "The Coast Guard is in charge of security, not the corporation."
Using Schumeresque logic, the U.S. should ban flights into the U.S. by airlines from Arab countries, and we should certainly bar any cargo from being loaded in Arab ports and bound for the U.S. ("If you are worried about a bomb in a box going off in New York, you need to worry about who loads the container overseas rather than the terminal operator who unloads it in the U.S.," says someone who actually knows something about port security, Theodore Price of Optimization Alternatives, a Texas company that provides terminal-operating software.) In fact, one would suppose that Dubai, with billions at stake, would be more careful -- not less -- about assisting in anti-terror activities at U.S. ports if it is actually operating them.
Foreign-owned companies operate many ports in the United States. For example, companies from China, Denmark, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan run docks in Los Angeles, California.Check it out, yo! All kinds o' non-Caucasians in that line-up! And what do they all have in common? Two very essential things, if you stop and think about it:
As the simmering dispute boiled over, it looked as if Bush’s only high-profile supporter would be former president Jimmy Carter, who said on CNN that he did not think the deal was a threat to the United States or its security.[...]Go ahead. Rub your eyes. Blink. Now read it again.Jimmy Effen Carter does not think the deal is a threat to our security.What else do you need to know, people?
Juste, guarded by two secret service bodyguards, noted “how fragile freedom of expression is” as he accepted the award, his newspaper reported.
When Amrozi bin Nurhasin, the smiling Bali bomber, entered a Bali courtroom on the day of his sentencing, he was shouting "Jews, remember Khaibar. The army of Muhammad is coming back to defeat you." What was this Khaibar, and why should it be remembered?
In the time of Muhammad, Khaibar was a fertile oasis in the Arabian desert. It was populated by Jews, who maintained its irrigation systems and lived off its produce. When Muhammad conquered the oasis in 628, the Jews who lived there managed to negotiate a surrender. The conditions of their surrender were that some of them could remain to tend the date palms and gardens, but in return they had to pay 50% of their harvest to the Muslims. The land itself would henceforth belong to the Muslim community. The Jews of Khaibar were also granted permission to keep practising their faith. Soon after, the Arab Christians of Najran were forced to accept the same conditions.
The right of the Jews of Khaibar to stay on their former lands was a temporary concession, withdrawn in 640 by Umar, in obedience to Muhammad’s dying wish: ‘Two religions shall not remain together in the peninsula of the Arabs’. In this same year the whole of Arabia was cleansed of non-Muslims.
Khaibar is a name all Muslims jurists will recognize, since it was the conquest of Khaibar which set the precedent in Islamic case law for the subsequent treatment of non-Muslims who surrendered to Islamic conquest and rule. (Khaibar also provided Muhammad with one of his wives, Safiya, a leading Jewish woman of Khaibar whom he selected for himself from among the enslaved captives.)
The discriminatory shari’a regulations applying to non-Muslims, who are referred to in Islamic law as dhimmis, are based upon the precedent of Khaibar. Through a twist of history the defeat of the Jews of this little-known Arabian oasis helped determine the treatment of many millions of non-Muslims after Islamic conquest, including the once-vast Christian populations of the Middle East.
For this reason, the name of Khaibar has great significance for us all. For extremist Muslims like Amrozi, it stands for the defeat of infidel enemies, and their humiliation and subjugation under shari’a conditions, an enduring signpost to the hope of an Islamist victory. For non-Muslims this name stands for centuries of obliterated history and oppressive discrimination, referred to by Bat Ye’or, historian of the dhimmis, as dhimmitude.
Amrozi the smiling terrorist was right — we should all remember Khaibar, as a turning point in world history. Today the precedent of Khaibar continues to shape the lives of the Jews of Iran, the Copts in Egypt, Africans in the Sudan, Pakistani Christians, Hindus and Zoroastrians, and many more. Widespread discrimination against non-Muslims is endemic in Islamic nations, to a significant degree, and there are signs that the problem is getting worse in the twenty first century, not better.
Amrozi’s laughing face has been constantly on the front page of Australian newspapers in recent months. The grief felt over the casualties in the Bali attacks is profound. So it was a irony that, when the Australian newspaper reported Amrozi’s words on the day after his sentencing, the editors did not recognize the name of Khaibar and misspelled it as Hibah. Despite its landmark significance for interfaith relations, the name of Khaibar now seems to be forgotten, its significance obscured. The fate of the Jews of Khaibar had momentous consequences for world history, yet this page of history has been torn out of the non-Muslim world’s collective consciousness. It is time for it to be returned to its rightful place.
Indeed.
The freedom of press in the democratic countris is menaced by the fanatic fundamentalists that have sworn to kill anyone who draws Mohammed. In this situation we only can show our incondicional solidarity with the people that are targets of fanatics, and to proclaim the freedom of expression as an inalienable human right. It should not be disminished by the murderers' violence or the politics' cowardice.There are people who have been their targets for decades. That is why showing our solidarity with all the Muslims that must live in silence and support the odious tyranny of their corrupt Governments or the permanent menace of the integrists. All of them must know we will fight for our and their own freedom. We reclaim for them the same freedoms that we have and of which we are not going to be deprived easily.In this time when the first reaction is to be "prudent" we have to take a moment of reflexion and take into account that we are free, and that this freedom, that has been so costly, is menaced.This is moment in which we have to compromise firmly with freedom: we have to support our democratic convictions to confront the integrism. This is the time to forge an Alliance of democrates of all the civilizations to put and end to this tyranny that holds its grip throughout half of the world and menaces the other half.We are grateful to Danish people because of the example that it is giving the world in the fight for our freedoms, against religious fanatism and cowardice. And we are demanding from our politicians to adopt the same attitude and take a firm stand with the Danes.That is why from Liberal Youths we want to call all organizations, associations and citizens that want to support all these values, to come next March 4th at 12.30 to the surroundings of Constitution's monument.