'Anjem Choudary: What threat might he pose once freed?’ | BBC Newsnight

Click above to go to vid

Part of the answer to the question -- what threat is Choudary? -- is that Choudary apparently influenced Ali Harbi Ali, the killer of Sir David Amess. Though, TBF, Ali didn’t need Choudary to be free. He just watched his videos on YouTube. 

The vid above is a BBC Newsnight report from 2018. And it does seem a pretty fair investigation by the BBC. Nothing much has changed since. Or are arguably worse. I wonder if the BBC would do a similar video today, or even an update? 

The main media reaction to the murder of Sir David Amess is to worry about the threat to MPs but not to touch on the reasons, the motivation, of the killer. [ADDED: and saying, as I’m just hearing, that nasty Twitter threads have something to do with it...]

The Newsnight vid did at least touch on the issues of motivation. Namely, what they call “radical Islam”. Which is followed by a disturbingly large proportion of Muslims. The Koran is clear, after all.

ADDED: And as former Islamic radical, turned professor and critic of radical Islam, Ed Husein, there are problems to be addressed at UK mosques:

In his latest book – ‘Among The Mosques: A Journey Across Muslim Britain’– author and political advisor Ed Husain has documented in detail how Islamic societies in the UK are slowly occupying households in the country and are enforcing strict Taliban-like rules. [Read on...]

And, not un-related to Amess’ killing: During his visit to these areas, Ed discovered bookstores filled with books glorifying violent jihad, especially by Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian godfather of Islamist terror and an acknowledged influence on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Link  

Erdoğan rejects reference to 'Islamic terror'. The “No true Muslim” fallacy

The Islamic version of the "No true Scotsman” fallacy. Here is Turkish PM, Erdoğan at the opening of the latest mosque in Cambridge:

A Muslim cannot be a terrorist and Islam does not produce terrorists, the Turkish president said on Dec. 5, once again rejecting the term "Islamic terrorism.” [here; and it's my emphasis].

But.... but.... the prophet himself said "I have been made victorious by terror”.  The official biography of Muhammad, the Sirah, reports at least 27 raids and battles he personally directed and took part in, and in which he often resorted to -- and named it as -- terror. Because, he said, it’s effective.

For Erdoğan to make the statement above is to create the boundary that defines Muslims out of any terrorism; that is, that by definition -- by Erdoğan’s specific definition --  someone who commits a terrorist act cannot be a Muslim. I’m gonna reckon that's a “No true Scotsman”, Islamic version, so I’ll see Stark’s fallacy-fallacy and raise him a fallacy.

LATER: Just after I posted this “No True Scotsman” fallacy, the next thing Google puts this into my feed. Kind of interesting, but pretty nerdy. One thing I learnt from it: it’s called a “move” rather than a “fallacy". Thus, for example: 'Erdoğan made the “no true Muslim” move in Cambridge.’  It’s a move, to cut off any discussion.  And occupy the ground, without argument or dissent. Like a killer move in “Go”. It’s effective, especially so when many in the west are keen to be duped.

ADDED (re Islamophobia and anti-semitism), prompted by Erdoğan‘s comment that linking Muslims to terrorism is “Islamophobia”, there is this, below the fold …

First we grieve....then we blame

Financial Times 16/3/19

First we grieve. First the families, friends, colleagues of the Christchurch mosques’ murdered fifty, grieve. And the world empathises. Thoughts and prayers. That is right and proper. The Muslim community in Christchurch, by all accounts small, integrated and well accepted, has suffered a shocking loss, tragic bereavement.
And then we blame.
When the terrorism is Jihadi there are the two well-worn reactions:
Apologists: the terrorist is a nutter. Nothing to do with Islam.
Critics: the terrorist is inspired by Islamic writings in the Koran, Hadith and Muhammad ‘s Sirah. Ideas have consequences.
When the terrorist is a white supremacist, again “one divides into two”:
Apologists: the terrorist is a nutter. Nothing to do with conservative ideology.
Critics: the terrorist is inspired by far-right ideology, self radicalised on the internet. Ideas have consequences.
I side with the Critics in both of cases. Jihadist ideology so plainly inspires violence around the world, not least amongst terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Shabab, that to gainsay it is disingenuous. Similarly far-right ideology inspires white supremacists to violence, and to gainsay is nonsense.
LATER: Maajid says it better.
There’s a difference though. The jihadists number in the hundreds of thousands, probably in the millions. The far-right white supremacists are orders of magnitude fewer. When I googled “are white supremacists increasing in number?”, I got a reference to groups that are infiltrating universities, posting white suprematist flyers about the campus. Their number has “skyrocketed” says Wikipedia, from 200 in 2013 to 500 now. That’s right, it’s not missing zeroes, it’s five hundred. There will be more around the world, of course. But clearly they’re not anywhere the number of jihadis world-wide. It’s true that we seem to have been suffering fewer jihadi attacks lately. Why? I don’t know, but I suspect that increased security is a factor.. Or it may just be the jihadis taking a breather. But still, as to which one is more dangerous, jihadi or far-right,  I’m still going to stick with worrying more about the jihadi-Islamist threat.
Meantime the predicted “it’s Trump’s fault” took all of about ten minutes after “guns down” to hit the screens. That’s also silly, if totally predictable.
In the article above clipped from the Financial Times yesterday, it’s incorrect that Trump praised white supremacists at Charlottesville last year. What he said was that there are “fine people” on both sides of the statues question (whether or not statues of now controversial people should be taken down). Misreading Trump’s comments — which, to be fair, were ineptly framed — is wilful ignorance or simple stupidity.
LATER: How could I forget? Christchurch killings are also the fault of we critics of Islam. All of whom are encouraged by and enabled by.....“the joooz”, the evil jooooz! Silly me! So now you can’t criticise Islam, you can’t criticise an ideology, you can’t criticise its misogyny, its homophobia, it’s child bridery and genital mutilation, and all the rest of it, you can’t criticise any of this because then you’re not just an islamophobe, you’re a mass murderer!

Islam on Stornoway: Why the church should support Muslims' right to build mosques | Christian News on Christian Today

David Robertson, writing in Christian Today, sounds like a very lovely fellow and I'm sure he is.  He welcomes Muslims building a new mosque on his remote Island, which has to this day been dominated by the Free Church.

He ends his homily with these words:

The whole story is another reminder that the world is not as black and white as our soundbite culture portrays it. Thank the Lord that we live in a diverse and multi-coloured culture in which we still have freedom to preach the gospel to all.

That's all very fine and nice, and to be hoped for.  But what of this: in the US, five separate studies, including one by an imam, have revealed 80% of mosques to be infiltrated by extremists and extremist literature (here).  In the post immediately below, we have the Mayor of Brussels stating that every mosque in the European capital is controlled by Salafists (here).  

What's to stop the eventual takeover of the very nice mosque in Stornoway by the same radicals.  Why, nothing, for the radicals are the ones most motivated and relentless in their pursuit of Allah's order to spread Islam worldwide.  This is their religious passion and religious duty.  

Poor Father Robertson.  He may not live to see this happen in his lifetime, but likely his progeny will, and find they lose "the freedom to preach the gospel to all", for that's blasphemy in Sharia law.

New York Times has problems with people being against Jihad

The way of the apologist for Islam: ignore Islam's bigotries

It's an odd feeling when you read an article in which the author does this: sets out a number of propositions that you're clearly supposed to find wrong and horrifying; to which you're supposed to mutter to yourself "how terrible!", but which in reality you think (or at least I do) "well those observations are spot on!".
One such recently in the New York Times an article by Laurie Goodstein, Pompeo and Bolton Appointments Raise Alarm Over Ties to Anti-Islam Groups.

Here's a few of the statements that Goodstein clearly thinks -- with no evidence -- are beyond the pale, but which are in fact true:

Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo both have ties to individuals and groups promoting a worldview that regards Islam not so much as a religion, but as a political ideology that is infiltrating the United States and other Western countries with the goal of imposing Shariah law, the Muslim legal code. These groups believe that the vehicle for this takeover is the Muslim Brotherhood, and they allege that American mosques, civic organizations and leaders and even government officials who are Muslims are suspected of being Muslim Brotherhood operatives.

But it's true that some Muslims are trying to impose Sharia in the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood has been explicit about this:

[Supporters] 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 (From “ An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America,” by Mohamed Akram, May 19, 1991.)  Via Jihad Watch

Then:

The founder of ACT, Brigitte Gabriel, has written that “the purest form of Islam” is behind the terrorist attacks: “It’s not radical Islam. It’s what Islam is at its core.”

Brigitte Gabriel is a brave woman who has suffered at the hands of Islamists who attacked her family when they lived in Lebanon.   She is 100% correct that "It's not radical Islam.  It's what Islam is at its core".  Just read the foundation documents of Islam.  The Islamic Trinity: The Koran, the Hadith and the Sirah.

Also have a look at Gabriel in action here; she's spot on, and powerful:



Again:

Both Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Bolton have appeared frequently on the radio show of Frank Gaffney Jr., the president and founder of the Center for Security Policy, a think tank that argues that mosques and Muslims across America are engaged in a “stealth jihad” to “Islamize” the country by taking advantage of American pluralism and democracy.

But it's true that 80% of mosques in the United States are radical. That's the result of four separate studies, including one by an Imam.

There's more, which I'll leave to Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch to finish off.  Taking the opportunity to say that Spencer is by no means a bigot, or Islamophobe, or xenophobe or racist.  His site does what it says: records the daily examples of Jihad around the world.  He's been doing that for many years.  I've watched him in innumerable videos and read most of his books.  He is hugely knowledgeable about Islam, and careful, always to specify that his criticisms are of Islam, the ideology, not of individual Muslims...

Attack on Egyptian mosque shows Islamic State remains a deadly threat but may also be a sign of desperate infighting | SCMP

Sufis having fun but hated by all other Muslims...

The headline in the print version of this article in the South China Morning Post was different:

"Motive for mosque murder a mystery"

It's only a "mystery" to those who are thoroughly ignorant of Islam. As the authors of this article in the left-leaning Washington Post clearly are. 

As soon as you see that it was a SUFI mosque that ISIS attacked, all is clear. 

Under the concept of Takfir, Sufis -- actually a sect of mainly Sunni  Muslims -- are considered non-Muslims by mainstream Sunni and Shi'a alike, and which together amount to about 98% of Muslims. 

Worse: Sufis are considered Apostates. Apostates are the worst of the worst and the crime of apostasy is worse than murder. 

So killing them is natural for the likes of the Sunni-based ISIS. 

One despairs at the ignorance in the western media, fully 16 years after 9/11. 

A related article in Bloomberg states that Muslims are often the first victims of Muslim terrorism. As if that somehow excuses the horrid doctrines of Islam. 

But that fact — and it is a fact — is about as relevant as this one: most people killed by Maoism were Chinese. Or most victims of the Nazis were Germans. Both true and both irrelevant to the nastiness of both doctrines. 

On the Bloomberg site I said in the comments:

Those murdered at the mosque? they were Sufis. They are considered non-Muslims by Sunni and Shi'a alike. Apostates. The only group Sunnis hate more than westerner infidels are Sufis. Then Shia. Then Jews and Christians. Etc, etc...
The concept of "Takfir" is alive and well. But not mentioned in this ignorant article.

Btw: Islam is a "religion of peace" as much as I am my Labrador Basil.

Is Marine Le Pen really far-right? | Douglas Murray | The Spectator

I too have often wondered why the MSM regularly — pretty much without fail — call Marine Le Pen "far right". Like Murray ("Is Marine Le Pen really far-right?") I assume that it's her statements on the Islamic question in Europe. Which situation is dire, but still can't be addressed by lefties without one's being labelled "Islamophobic", and that's the end of it: you're "far right".
The always reliable Douglas Murray nails it again, in this essay.
Interesting info that I didn't know: majorities of Europeans favour the blocking of immigration from majority Muslim countries.  They're awake, even if their political overlords are asleep, or feigning sleep:

In February, Chatham House released a poll which asked 10,000 Europeans whether they agreed or not with the statement 'All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped'. The majority of the public in eight out of the ten countries surveyed (including France and Germany) agreed with its premise. In only two countries was this a minority opinion. In one of them — the UK — only 47 per cent of the public agreed that all further Muslim immigration should be stopped.
Of course, the habit of the political left and mainstream right continues to be to call all such opinion 'far-right', even when it encompasses the majority of the public. However, doing so ignores political shifts occurring due to events rather than incipient fascism, and scares away mainstream politicians from addressing — rather than merely bloviating around — societal problem voters are asking them to tackle. 

We should also look at the policies of the late and much admired Lee Kwan-yew, which I read in his Hard Truths.  He was concerned to keep social stability in the face of increasing Islamism by the approx 15% (IIRC) of the Singaporean population that was Muslim. He notes in Hard Truths that his Muslim colleagues and friends were becoming increasingly "fundametalist".  They used to shake his hand, go out and enjoy a lunch together, with beer.  Lately (he's talking of the 90's IIRC), he'd noticed that they would avoid shaking his hand and no longer go out for fun lunches with him. This, remember, is Lee Kwan-yew!  A world-famous figure, and no racist.  In any case, Lee's policies included, the following, that I reckon we should adopt in the west.  There was no blowback to Lee.  Any blowback in the west must therefore be "racist", right?!
Lee Kwan-yew policies, re Singapore's Muslim population:

(1) Close mosques that preach extreme Islamist messages.
(2) Don't allow any foreign funding of mosques.  

This latter policy might need to include foreign funding to churches, synagogues and temples, to give cover.  But it needs to be done for mosques because the majority of mosques in western countries are funded by Saudi Arabia and preach a Salafist/Wahhabi version of extreme, intolerant Islam.  Why should they be allowed to fund mosques that call for the death of their host countries?  To turn them into hellholes like Saudi and Iran?

Lee is pretty much as un-toxic as you can get, and more people who are worried about islamification of the west should read and promote his ideas.

"Trump's Muslim ban may have served its hate mongering". 28 February

LETTER TO SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Associate professor Cherian George attacks what he sees as a vast right-wing islamophobia industry. [SCMP, 28 February]. 

But he should get his targets straight. He conflates Muslims (people) and Islam (an idea). 

Hateful actions towards Muslims certainly need to be criticised or prosecuted. 

Islam, the idea, (the ideology, the religion) must be subject to scrutiny and criticism, just as catholicism, communism, fascism or capitalism are. Ideas cannot take offense no matter what the criticism. I criticise communism. That doesn't mean I'm a Sinophobe. 

Yet George mixes people and ideas so that any critic of Islam (as I am) becomes a Muslim-hating Islamophobe (which I am not). 

He sees his targets as part of an "Islamophobic right-wing network".

I can't discern any "network" despite having followed the issues for twenty years. Moreover critics of problematic aspects of Islam range across the field: on the Left, there's Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Maajid Nawaz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Rizvi, Myriam Namazie, and many others. True liberals will find fault with misogyny, homophobia, sectarianism, intolerance, lack of religious freedom and so on, wherever it appears, in Islamic doctrines and practices or not. 

Concern about new mosque building may be rational.  Four separate studies in the US, including one by the NYPD and one by a Muslim sheik, have shown over 80% of American mosques promote disturbingly violent sermons and literature. 

An undercover (Muslim) photographer recently went back to Regent's Park Mosque in London. She found imams teaching the subjugation of women, hatred of non-Muslims and killing of homosexuals. This, years after mosque officials had promised to improve since the first BBC Channel 4 “Undercover Mosque” exposé.  Nothing had changed. 

In my own country, Australia, authorities are right now dealing with state-run schools that have allowed Muslim male pupils not to shake hands with females and excluded female teachers from public activities such as graduation days. All done under pressure of Islamic values. 

Surely these are illiberal things that must be resisted by liberals everywhere, without being branded "Islamophobes". We have fought for centuries to develop inclusive, fair and tolerant societies. We don't want to give up those values. 

Criticisms of illiberal values by people Left, Right or centre is only proper. 

It is not islamophobia, no matter how much apologists like associate professor George may say so. 

Yours, etc,

PF…

Canberra Islamic Centre opens its doors for National Mosque Open Day

Whenever you see some outfit offering to "dispel the myths" of Islam or to "correct the stereotypes" of Islam, you should turn around and walk briskly in the opposite direction. 

Take it from me: I've seen innumerable such offers and they are inevitably a mix of obfuscation and outright duplicity. Honey to make the Islamist pill go down smoothly.  

And so it is with this Islamic centre offering from Canberra, a town I spent much of my life in. Shame on the Canberra Times!

"Meet real Muslims!" is the offering here. I'm sure those ordinary Canberran Muslims would all be delightful people. I've met Muslims world wide and nary a one have I found unlovable. The same in the then Soviet Russia of the 80s or the then communist China of the 70s. Fine and peaceable Russians and Chinese. But that says nothing about the nastiness of communism. Same here: the fact of lovely Muslim folk -- your neighbors -- says nothing about the ideology of Islam. Which taken from its core texts of the Loran, the Hadith and the Sirah of Muhammad is irredeemably horrid. 

The imam quoted here says that Jesus is just like Muhammad. Well that's bollocks for a starter. Jesus was the "son of god".  For Muslims that's blasphemy: there's only one god and his name is Allah. To associate others with Allah, Muslims call "shirk". It is the "worst of crimes", punishable by death. Again: Muslims don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus. 

Again: Jesus was a peaceful carpenter. Muhammad was a warlord. 

Need I go on?? It is duplicitous nonsense, a simple plain lie to make such a claim. 

Shame on the Canberra Times for running this islamapologist article. 

And shame on the fellow in the article who is "in the process" of converting to Islam. How could you, man,? Have you not read the doctrines?  They are horrid. 

Australian Story: the Bendigo Mosque kerfuffle

Australia TV produces a rather sweet show called "Australian Story". Stuff like the Vietnamese refugee boat-child who became a cop, loves her job and loves Australia. That sort of thing. (That one was rather moving: a multi-tissue episode).
Here in Hong Kong they just replayed the 25 November 2015 episode, called "A Force of Nature".
It's a story set in Bendigo which, like the show, is also rather sweet. Though there's been a tinge of sour in the sweet, it seems. The "small Muslim community" there wants to build a mosque and the residents are revolting.
Residents are worried about sharia making inroads into their small Aussie town.
If we believe the ABC, the opponents are all tattooed skinheads, spittle-flecked racists. At least they're the only sort you see in the show.
Then there's the kind Spalding lady who stands up to this "bigotry and intolerance".
This is her story. It is she who is the Force of Nature.
Now that's all fine. The classic story of good v bad.
Except that this well-intentioned "force of nature" may well end up doing bad by Bendigo. Unintended consequence, of course.
The anti-mosque crowd are presented at slathering bigots. But there is a serious concern about immigrants who are also votaries of Islam. Not of other religions and certainly not of a race. But concern about the ideology of Islam. This supremacist, sectarian, homophobic, misogynist, ideology.
It's a concern that non-skinheads, non-bigoted, non-intolerant people can share. Such concerned citizens see the challenge to Australia of the pressure for implementation of sharia law.
In Muslim countries the support for sharia is up to 98% and never lower than 51%.
Amongst Muslims in the west a plurality and often a majority favour the introduction of sharia, often a majority favoring sharia for we infidels as well as Muslims.
I'm sorry, but I don't want the slightest chance that I might have to live under the horrid statutes of sharia. And neither do many fine, non-tattooed folk of Bendigo. No matter how much the Force of Nature might try to shame them from her virtuous eyrie.
See pew polls
So there really is a cause for concern about the Muslim community in Bendigo and its mosques. They may be "very small" now, but that will change and by all experience half or more of them will push for sharia law in Australia.
They've already done so elsewhere in Australia. So they have form. And for all those that shout "Islamophobia" I suggest that they way to overcome that is for Muslims to commit to live and let live. To publicly commit to abiding by Australian secular law.
That would go a long way to allay fears.
So far they're doing the opposite.

Moderate "European" Islam: Stemming Terror with Band Aids

I've written before about mosques in the west. In various studies the vast majority (~80%), preach extremism and have extremist literature. They are funded by the Middle East, especially our alleged ally, Saudi Arabia. 

Why not adopt Singapore's policy: don't allow any foreign funding of mosques. (I think Singapore also includes Churches and Temples in this policy, so they can't be accused of discrimination). 

/snip

• Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where the official form of Islam is Wahhabism, are the main financiers of mosques in Europe. Wahhabism discourages Muslim integration in the West, but actively encourages jihad against non-Muslims. Qatar has financed mosques in France, Italy, Ireland and Spain, among other places, thus spreading Wahhabism across the continent.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7520/moderate-european-islam

Sent from my iPhone

Religious Schools, Ideology and Terrorism > Samir Yousif

Long article (linked below) somewhat dour and tedious, but important. The same as the authors reveal here as happening in Islamic schools around the world -- namely as breeding grounds for terrorism -- is happening in mosques around the world too.
Better the Singapore solution: not to allow *any* foreign funding for any schools or mosques (or churches or temples, just to make it fair).
The main villain in the piece, as in so many of our problems with Islam around the world, is our supposed ally Saudi Arabia. God-awful Saudi Arabia. God, God awful Saudi Arabia, about which not one good thing can be said.
/snip
Today, religious schools are found everywhere including the USA and Europe. Granting Schools the right to teach Wahhabism is similar to licensing Neo-Nazism. Democratic and liberal societies should look beyond the surface and comprehend the consequences of implanting ideas of hatred in the minds of the young. Teaching Wahhabism in the USA and Europe means implanting the seeds of self-destruction.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/Samir_Yousif/Religious_Schools,_Ideology_and_Terrorism/

Sent from my iPad

Watch mosques, Islamic schools for radicalization, expert tells key committee

The wonderful and brave Aayan Hirsi Ali again.  This time warning about extremism in mosques and Islamic Centres.
She's right about this.  At least five studies of mosques, including one done by a moderate Muslim Sheikh, have shown that extremist views are preached and extremist literature handed out at many US mosques.  It would be no different in Canada, or my own country of Australia, for that matter.
/Snip:

The violent doctrine of extreme Islam is spreading in Canada through the foundation of mosques, Islamic centres and Islamic schools by wealthy Gulf state investors with radical goals, a controversial U.S. commentator is warning.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former devout follower of the Muslim Brotherhood, best-selling author, ex-politician and now a fellow at Harvard University’s JFK School of Government, was the final witness recently at the national security and defence committee, which is preparing a report on threats to national security.

“You should be looking out for the sprouting of mosques and Islamic centres. You should be looking out for the establishment of Islamic schools and anything that costs money,” she said via a video link from Boston. “Countries like Saudi Arabia and the oil-wealthy Gulf countries that have absolutely everything that money can buy, yet many of them choose, for their philanthropy, radical Islamic goals, institutions, activities, jihad.
“For the outside, for the non-Muslim, especially in the West where we believe in the freedom of religion and the freedom of conscience, when people come here and establish a network of schools, Islamic centres, mosques, it all falls within our freedoms and our laws but we rarely take an interest in the content of what is being preached and what’s being disseminated.”

Read the rest here.

"Is it time to make Iran our friend and Saudi Arabia our enemy?"

... asks The Guardian, of all papers.
And "YES", I would say (at least to the bit about Saudi Arabia).
That article just a day after Simon Tisdall's article "Saudi Araiba and the west: how a cosy relationship turned toxic". So it seems The Guardian has something of a campaign for a change in the west's relationship with Saudi Arabia.
And not before time, either.
It's long been one of those things "I don't get".  Why should the west, the US in particular, be allies with that horrid country?
Tindall lists its poisonous doings:

The relationship with the west has survived several wars between Israelis and Arabs, in Afghanistan and in Iraq (twice); the chilling predominance of Saudi nationals in the 9/11 attacks and the rise of al-Qaida; serious bribery and corruption scandals and diplomatic rifts; recurring oil crises; deepening concern over Saudi funding for extremist religious teaching and its links to terrorism; escalating rows about egregious human rights abuses and the repression of women, and most recently, the Syrian calamity and the ascendancy of the black-shirted head-cutters of Islamic State.

To which he could (should) have added Saudi funding of mosques throughout the west, with donations of extremist literature, well documented in at least five studies.
Of course the key reason for having them as an ally was the oil needs of the west.  But then a seller always needs buyers.  Did the buyers, the US and Europe, need to be quite so wilfully blind to the shenanigans of this terrorist-supporting, woman-stoning, head-cutting state?  Even as it needed Saudi oil? Did W Bush really need to hold hands with the old bugger, the newly-deceased king?  Did Obama need to bow to him?
Now that the oil issue, at least for the US, is much less important, what with shale oil and all, the question as to why ally with the horrid Saudis is more urgent, more germane.
Johan Hari posits his reason here.  The main one being that if not for the House of Saud, there would be no counterweight, within the country, to the Wahhabists.  So, from bad to worse.  Maybe.
But how much worse could they really be.
Not much.  See the wonderful Pat Condell on the Kingdom...  They couldn't be much worse.
[LATER: "Why are we friends with Saudi Arabia?"  An earlier Condell rant...]

Jihadi Rhetoric: Tiresome but Deadly

Says Raymond Ibrahim:

I just spent the better part of the day reading and listening to sermons by the leaders and jihadis of the new “caliphate” in Mesopotamia, the Islamic State (formerly “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”).

I did so in the vain hopes of learning something “new.”

But it was absolute déjà vu—taking me back to a decade ago, when I was reading and translating the Arabic writings and speeches of al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, as collated in The Al Qaeda Reader.

Now as then, it’s the same Koran verses; the same hadiths of Islamic prophet Muhammad waging and praising jihad; the same threats of hellfire for the munafiqun (hypocrites or lukewarm Muslims); the same carnal rewards in the now or hereafter for those who join the “caravan” of jihad....

... such jihadi rhetoric is regularly used in mosques all throughout Europe and America—explaining why an inordinate amount of jihadis in Syria and Iraq, such as Abu Muthana,  the aforementioned “Brit,” are in fact from the West.

Read on...

Man bites dog......Saudis monitor mosques

Odd.  And slightly encouraging? Will this make it any easier for the common-sense approach to take place in the US, where five studies (including one by a Muslim Sheikh, and one by the NYPD) have shown that over 80% of mosques there preach hatred and violence against the infidel?

Obama the Iftar troof shiftar. Cairo revisited...

A Chinese compass from 210 BC.  900 years before Islam.

President Obama gave a speech yesterday at the White House, to mark Iftar, the breaking of Ramadan fast, carried in the article: "Obama hails world's Muslims..."
In the speech he says:

Thomas Jefferson once held a sunset dinner here with an envoy from Tunisia -- perhaps the first Iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago. And some of you, as you arrived tonight, may have seen our special display, courtesy of our friends at the Library of Congress -- the Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. And that's a reminder, along with the generations of patriotic Muslims in America, that Islam -- like so many faiths -- is part of our national story.

Now, Thomas Jefferson did indeed have a copy of the Koran.  But not because he was fascinated by the Religion of Peace and wanted to sup of its peaceable tenets, but because he was involved in a negotiation with the Islamic Barbary pirates, and wanted to understand what drove them.
He found out.  The late great Christopher Hitchens shows how he did find out in "Jefferson's Quran"....  Tripoli's envoy told Jefferson that the right of Muslims to make piratical attacks on local shipping, including of the newborn US, was based on the Koran; that it was:

.... founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Hence Jefferson needed his copy of the Koran, to see what drove this supremacism.
And so Islam being "part of our national story", as Obama claims, is correct: in that from the founding of the Republic, Islam was at war with the US -- as made clear by the envoy from Tripoli.

LATER: Thomas Jefferson did not hold first Iftar dinner

STILL LATER: Thomas Jefferson did not hold first Iftar dinner; his Koran was to understand Barbary piracy... [here]

Women in Islam

Wandering the Intertubes, came across this article, by an English convert to Islam, an apologia for Islam's treatment of women.
To anyone who follows this issue, her article is full of errors of commission and omission.
Just a few:
There is no right for a woman to be a head of state or a judge (Ai-Attal herself points this out!...). She fails to note that while men can easily divorce a woman ("I divorce thee" said three times), the same is not true for women. That the inheritance of a woman is half that of a male.  That a husband may, according to Koranic teaching, beat his wife if she is disobedient.  That the testimony of a woman in court is worth only a quarter that of a man (four "witnesses" needed to prove rape, for example). That the Umdat al-Salik, the classic manual of Islamic jurisprudence recommends female cliterdectomy (aka FGM).  That her own "choice" to veil herself is either a reflection of her own piety or of male suzerainty over her and in any case reflects on the apparent inability of males to control themselves in the sight of her unveiled face.  That there is a high correlation between the percentage of Muslim population in a country and the percentage of child brides. And so it goes.  All dreary stuff, all part of Islam and all ignored here in this piece of drivel from a "revert" to Islam.
I note it's an ancient article.  But it's of the same cloth as we still see bruited about: that Islam was the originator or women's rights, because Muhammad made them free and equal.  Nonsense.  The Islamic texts and practice prove the opposite.  The status of women in Islam is one of oppression and getting worse.
Update (tx to BCF): Imams in Swedish mosques advise against reporting abusive husbands.  Eight out of ten recommend polygamous marriage.....

New Mosque design in the US

Email to BBC:
Jane O’Brien’s report [just now on BBC World Service in Hong Kong] of new mosque design in the US would have been rather better and more balanced had she not succumbed to the reflexive use of the word “Islamophobia”, as in “the rise of Islamophobia after 9/11”.
As it happens there was very little anti-Muslim reaction after 9/11 as revealed in FBI statistics on hate crime. Had there been, it would surely have been understandable in the light of what had happened.  But there wasn’t. (which speaks volumes for the tolerance of Americans).
Many people began their study of Islam after 9/11, myself included.  We have learnt of many problematic aspects of the “Religion of Peace”.  It is sheer ignorance — bigotry, even — to tar with one brush all those who have genuine and well-grounded concerns about some of the doctrines of Islam.  To label us all “Islamophobic” is plain wrong and inexcusably ignorant. Shame on Ms O’Brien.

As for the rest, interesting and encouraging to hear of the design of more benign mosques.
Recall that in 1997, Turkish PM Erdogan quoted the poem Siirt, which includes the lines:

The mosques are our barracks,
the domes our helmets,
the minarets our bayonets
and the faithful our soldiers...

Not very benign, ‘dat!

Mosques really ARE a problem

Earlier I wrote that "Mosques in the US really DO promote hate ideology", noting that five studies, including one by a Muslim cleric and one by the New York police, provide evidence for that judgement.
Andrew McCarthy reports that a previous imam of the New Jersey mosque -- one of the largest in the US --  "boasted of raising money at the mosque for Hamas".  That's only not a problem if you think that Hamas is not a problem.  But it's Hamas that has in its charter the call for jews to be killed "wherever they are", in short calling for genocide of jews.
And, in J. Glazov's "United in Hate" (p147):

Pierre Rehov, the French filmmaker, who produced the documentary Suicide Killers, spend hours speaking with would-be martyrs in Israel jails and with their families.  He notes how, in this culture, the dream of becoming a suicide bomber starts in the mosque, where the imams continually tell their congregations that Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs and are oppressors of humanity in general and of Palestinians in particular.

All of which makes this report, sourced from the Hudson Institute, all the more disturbing:

Islamic mosques are being built more often in France than Roman Catholic churches, and there now are more practising Muslims in the country than practising Catholics.

Woopie do.  There are now some 2,000 mosques in France, and growing at around 10% pa.  

This can only not be disturbing if you believe, either: (a) that the reports and studies -- about extremism and hate taught at mosques -- are wrong or (b) that even if true, it doesn't matter anyway, since it's all part of the mosaic of cultural diversity; we have benefitted from immigration and their practices, their places of worship, before, and will again.

To which, one can only say, re (a) On what basis do you say the reports are wrong? They are numerous and consistent.  And to (b) Studied Sharia law lately?  Had a look at the culture that Islam, piously followed, does to a society, to its women, to its minorities, to its non-Muslims? Had a look at its core texts?  Read the Koran?  Read the Hadith? Read about Muhammad and his life of looting and pillage?
You mean you can look at all that and still not be concerned?  Heaven help you (and us!)...
There is absolutely no evidence, or even any  logic, for the belief that since immigration has been beneficial in the past, immigration of those with beliefs inimical to the west will be beneficial now or in future.  Or for the belief that mosques are simply -- like churches or temples -- simply benign places of worship, for the "religion of peace".  It simply ain't so.