By: Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
When we started our journey, back in 2003, as one of the periodicals in Bangladesh, no one really had any problems with us. We even were receiving advertisements from the local advertisers. But, during mid 2003, when we started publishing positive articles and editorials on Israel and some other issues, which were almost considered to be taboo in Bangladesh, local advertisers swiftly turned away their faces from us. Then I was arrested on November 29 2003, at Dhaka International Airport, on my way to Tel Aviv for attending a peace conference. The then Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP]-led Islamist government used the state machinery in placing me on remand for 10 days, thus mentally and physically torturing with the 'hope' of extracted a confessional statement. They considered me to be a Zionist Spy. Later the government sent to an isolated cell at Dhaka Central Jail, where I was detained for 17 months in extreme hit and humidity.
In 2004 [January], the government brought sedition, treason and blasphemy charges against me. According to Bangladeshi law, sedition bears capital punishment.
I was not allowed to attend my mother's funeral when she passed away on August 9, 2004.
At the intervention of Congressman Mark Steven Kirk and relentless effort by Dr. Richard L Benkin [my Jewish brother] as well as Congressional aide Jeff Phillip, I was released on bail on April 30, 2005 from Dhaka Central Jail.
The sedition, treason and blasphemy charge is still hanging on me and every month I have to appear in the court to face trial. Though Bangladesh's present government is renewing its commitment in fighting Islamist militancy, it is reluctant in dropping the charge, fearing reaction from the Islamists.
On my release, Weekly Blitz resumed its publication in 2005 and since then, we never received even a single advertisement in our print edition. Only two or three advertisements were offered by some philanthropists and my supporters with a small amount of money, which is again not enough for Weekly Blitz to sustain for a week. But, still, my profound gratitude and admiration for those kind hearted people, who stood for us, during our difficult days.
From the mid of 2008, Weekly Blitz is again seeing extreme adversities in continuing its publication. In the same year, our office was attacked and we were evicted from our own office, illegally by some politically blessed thugs.
Thanks to Dr. Daniel Pipes and Middle East Forum, for helping us in taking a new office just in May this year. The entire amount received from MEF has already been spent for the new office and furniture.
Sensing our inability and economic adversities in running Weekly Blitz, a business tycoon with heavy affiliation with an Islamist party offered to buy the entire newspaper with an amount equivalent to US$ 300K. They even continued to offer us much higher amount, if we were ready to sell the newspaper. We knew they were planning to buy Weekly Blitz for turning it into a newspaper like all others in the Muslim nation, mostly spreading message of hatred against Israel and Jews. Their intention was to morally kill our newspaper. We did not bow to such dirty desire of the Islamists.
But, now, our very sustainability has become almost impossible. Each month, we are losing huge amount of money in continuing the print and online edition of this newspaper. For any newspaper, it is absolutely impossible to sustain without any advertisement revenue.
Can we expect, some of the philanthropists or organizations, who want this only anti-Jihadist newspaper in the Muslim world to sustain, would kindly help us with advertisements or grants? Such help is so much urgent for us. And, this is for the first time; we are making this appeal.
Please help us! And also refer our appeal to everyone you know. This is such critical time for us. Your actions and help can help us stay alive. If you are willing to help Weekly Blitz, kindly write to: [email protected] You can kindly send cheques or wire transfer the amount of Advertisement Cost, Grant or Donation. Also you can donate through Paypal by visiting the website of the online edition of Weekly Blitz at www.weeklyblitz.net
 The Telegraph reports that the National Association of Muslim Police has attacked government policy on countering Islamic extremism. In evidence to a parliamentary committee investigating Islamic extremism, the NAMP attacked the Government’s anti-terrorism strategy, warning that it is an ‘affront to British values’ which threatens to trigger ethnic unrest... that ministers were wrong to blame Islam for being the ‘driver’ behind recent terrorist attacks.
Far-Right extremists were a more dangerous threat to national security... that Muslims were being ‘stigmatised’ by the Government’s attempts to tackle terrorism, which was adding to ‘hatred’ against entire communities. ...The memorandum warned that Muslims were subjected to 'daily abuse' due to the strategy. 'We must not diminish our British values further by continuing to allow such behaviour and policies to continue unchecked.' This is an extremely alarming development. First, a general point. The very idea that police officers form themselves into interest groups of any stripe whatever should be anathema to the ethic of policing.
That applies equally to Black, Gay, Jewish or One-Legged Transgendered Red-Haired Police associations. Police officers should serve the entire community equally, and should have no agenda but that professional commitment of equal public service to all. The idea that they identify themselves as an interest group is simply wrong, and the police service should never have allowed this to develop. The memorandum by the National Association of Muslim Police, however, is of a different order of magnitude altogether. To take their least serious point first: the idea that there is no Islamic threat and that the real threat to Britain comes from the ‘far right’ is demonstrably ludicrous. The ‘far right’ poses no threat to Britain other than some low-level thuggery.
The Islamist threat to Britain is very great indeed.
Dozens of Islamist plots aimed at murdering thousands of people have been thwarted, and the security service say between 2000 and 4000 British Muslims are radicalised to potential acts of terrorism.
This terrorism is part of a global holy war being waged in the name of Islam. While many British Muslims support neither the aims nor the tactics of this holy war, an insupportable number do.
For Muslim police officers to deny this is extremely disturbing. It means they have bought into the radical narrative of systematic denial and deceit. But the NAMP went much, much further than this. They attacked government policy; worse, they attacked government policy aimed at protecting the lives and safety of British citizens; worse still, they suggested that British Muslims should resist that policy, and implicitly threatened disorder if it were not changed. Let us pinch ourselves: these are British police officers, subject to the same disciplinary and professional codes as any other police officers. Yet their call for action to ‘check’ counter-terrorism policy, and the implicit threat of violence if it is not so checked, suggests that rather than helping form the line of defence against the Islamist threat, these police officers must be considered to be part of that threat. On its website, moreover, NAMP recommends that British Muslims reporting crimes should also ‘report any such actions to the Islamic Human Rights Commission’. Let’s think about the implications of this for a moment.
The IHRC is an extremist organisation with links to Iran. The NAMP is therefore advising British Muslims to use an extreme Iran-linked Islamic jihadi front organisation, which threatens the security of this nation, as a parallel law enforcement mechanism in Britain. The attempt to set up parallel Islamic institutions and jurisdiction in Britain is a core element of the Islamist attempt to suborn and take over this country. The irony of this frightening situation is extreme. The government has bent over backwards to avoid associating Islam with terrorism. In an attempt to peel moderate Muslims away from the radicals, it has poured more than £140 million a year into ‘moderate’ Muslim groups. It has positively fallen over itself to encourage the recruitment of Muslim police officers in the belief that that this would persuade British Muslims that the government had no problem with them, only with the radicals in their midst. Yet these are precisely the policies which the NAMP claims have led to ‘hatred against Muslims’ which ‘has grown to a level that defies all logic and is an affront to British values’. Thus the fruits of appeasement. Rather than taming jihadi extremism in Britain, the cowardice of politicians has merely resulted in fracturing the thin blue line that protects us -- and turning it into a potential weapon of the jihad. Melanie Phillips 
 People in America are often shocked to discover the extent to which the authorities in Britain have been taken in by the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood, to such an extent the UK government and police use them as advisers on combating Islamic extremism. Americans would be even more shocked to discover that exactly the same thing is going on in their own backyard. Pajamas TV features two interviews with former US security people, one described merely as having been given some kind of intel-gathering assignment by the ‘joint chiefs’ and the other described as a ‘former FBI special agent’.
The first describes how, when he discovered to his alarm that there was not only no evidence that Islamic radicals were wrong in Islamic law but that there were no counter-arguments to them in that law, the US intel/law enforcement community that had instructed him just didn’t want to know. The second, the ex-FBI man, is even more alarming. He states that the American counter-terrorist establishment has allowed itself to be infiltrated by radical Islamists -- to whom counter-terrorism officials are going for advice and training in countering Islamic radicalism.
Every major Muslim representative organisation in the US, he says, is a Muslim Brotherhood front. Hamas fronts such as CAIR are used by the US authorities for outreach to the Muslim community in America. They are invited to sit in on brainstorming sessions about investigative techniques, and are actually training the FBI. ‘The Muslim Brotherhood are telling us how to fight them’, he says. The PJTV interviewer seemed stunned by this unbelievable situation. But it’s exactly what’s happening in the UK, too, where the Brotherhood are used – incredible as this sounds – as an antidote to radicalisation and as interlocutors in good faith with the Muslim community.
In the US, this profound and wilful institutionalised ignorance of the religious war being waged against the free world revealed itself most catastrophically recently when seven CIA officers, amongst them some of the most experienced and valuable, were blown up by a Jordanian triple agent. Not only were they duped, but it seems their professional training went by the board in inviting such a man onto their base and with so many of them clustering around him. As the Washington Post reported: ‘The tradecraft that was developed over many years is passé,’ complained a recently retired senior intelligence official, also with decades of experience. ‘Now it’s a military tempo where you don't have time for validating and vetting sources. . . . All that seems to have gone by the board. It shows there are not a lot of people with a great deal of experience in this field. The agency people are supporting the war-fighter and providing information for targeting, but the espionage part has become almost quaint.’ Endemic ignorance, sloppiness, incompetence -- even now, even after 9/11, even after the restructuring which was supposed to remedy the dysfunctionality and turf wars between intelligence agencies but which – as was predicted at the time – has merely stuck another layer of bureaucracy on top. And if one thinks back to the systematic failure over decades to identify and analyse correctly the rise of Islamism and before that, the imminent collapse of Soviet communism, one has to ask oneself the terrifying question whether US intelligence really is fit for purpose at all. Melanie Phillips
 In the ever-changing conflict between the West and Islamist radicals, one front – the Internet – has emerged as a major battlefield. And, while in many areas of this frontier the Islamists strut about unchecked, one man, code-name th3j35t3r ("The Jester"), has made it his point to strike back with (cyber) force. As first reported by the security blog ThreatChaos, "The Jester" made a different kind of New Year's resolution than most: to wage war on jihadist and pro-Islamist websites and forums by systematically disrupting their servers via denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Also unlike most, he has made good on his promise thus far – and there is no sign that he will let up. "The Jester has been documenting his attacks against www.alemarah.info, www.radicalislam.org, islamicpoint.net, www.almaghrib.org, www.as-ansar.com, www.islamicnetwork.com, www.islamicawakening.com, [and] www.ansarnet.info, since the beginning of 2010," according to the ThreatChaos report.
Research and reports by the Investigative Project on Terrorism have verified the radical nature of some of The Jester's targets. In one article posted on the Islamic Awakening website, author Abuz-Zubair drafts an introduction to a piece by Osama bin Laden spiritual mentor, Abdullah Azzam, in which he chastises those who assert that jihad can mean anything other than armed conflict. Zubair writes: "[O]ne cannot perform Jihad by giving lectures, feeding the family or serving the parents, rather Jihad can only be performed in the field of al-Qitaal (lit. fighting), as the sharee'ah dictates. Therefore when the word Jihad is used in the Qur'an and the Sunnah, in a general sense then it means Qitaal, and when it is mentioned in its linguistic sense (as in to strive with your parents and family etc.) then that is regarded to be Muqayyid (restricted) by the rules of Usoolul-Fiqh. […] Unfortunately, whenever Allah guides the Muslim youth to get up and fulfil [sic.] the obligation and the Sunnah of Qitaal in the way of Allah, we find some people amongst the Muslims hindering the youth away from the legal Jihaad to linguistic Jihaad, which is what lead me to translate this piece of work, so that it may be beneficial to the Muslims in general and a final blow to the obstacles in the path of the youths seeking martyrdom in the way of Allah..." [emphasis added] Similarly, the Al Maghrib Institute and its leadership have shown a long and radical history of support for violence. In one posting on islamicawakening.com, Al Maghrib Director Muhammad Ash-Shareef espoused attacks against those in the Russian army and their families: "O Allah! destroy the Russian army. O Allah! Make the ground shake in an earthquake from under them. O Allah, they do not glorify you, show them the blackest day of their lives, as you showed the People of Aad and Thamud. O Allah, destroy them all, not leaving anyone to escape. O Allah make their wives widows, their children orphans. O Allah! Grant victory to our brothers and sisters in Chechnya and everywhere in the world, Yaa Allah!" Al Maghrib officials are also on record making calls to dominate all others throughout the world. So, while The Jester's targets may indeed be troubling, should this cyber vigilante be given free rein to wage a one-man war against jihadists and extremists? Is he possibly doing more harm than good? One commenter (alias: danstermeister) on the popular social news website, Reddit, argues just that point: • "Using exploits means uncovering them. He's going to use up the ace-in-the-hole moves counter-intelligence already knows about these sites but were not using until those moments they felt they needed to be used (like interrupting comms [communications] about/during an impending attack). By using the exploits, the bad guys now have something to review about their systems and fix. Now counter-intel can't use that tool in the future when they need it. Bad guys:1, Counter-Intel:0. • Attacking sites drives bad guys back into the shadows. They already know they're being watched on these sites (at least, the guys that matter), but if they are now harassed, they won't even both on those sites, and they'll move to more inconspicuous locations on the web. • Attacking anything just creates more complexities for the actual people tasked to fight this. As has been mentioned already by others, this guy is making things more difficult for the officially tasked people that may be losing inside contacts, methods of access, and even their own identities (as things are reviewed post-attack by the bad guys). By stirring the hornet's nest, all he's done is wake up the hornets, not cause them one bit of actual anguish or real delay." On the other side of the argument, there are those who might make the case that such targets are not within the explicit domain of governments to monitor and disrupt. Moreover, governments often times are overwhelmed and, simply put, will fall short in the cyber-tug-of-war. The impact of such vigilante attacks in rendering radical Islamist websites impotent serves a purpose of its own in sending a message that not everyone will tolerate the hateful, and often times pro-violence, message. Wherever one may stand on the issue of cyber-vigilantism – independent citizens taking matters into their own hands without the requisite knowledge of ongoing investigations utilizing that open-source data – it is clear that matters are shaping up just as Dorothy Denning predicted in an August 2008 article in Scientific American: "Soon, every interstate conflict, however minor, may be accompanied by some form of hacker war that is beyond the control of ruling governments." IPT
 LONDON - Britain will outlaw an Islamist group that provoked anger with a plan to march through a town where British troops killed in Afghanistan are honored, the interior minister announced Tuesday. After a media outcry and criticism from politicians, the group Islam4UK dropped plans to march through the town of Wootton Bassett in southern England, saying it had successfully highlighted the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan. Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the ban aimed to help prevent terrorism. It will take effect Thursday and make it a criminal offence to be a member of Islam4UK, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. "I have today laid an order which will proscribe Al Muhajiroun, Islam4UK, and a number of the other names the organization goes by," Johnson said in a statement. "Proscription is a tough but necessary power to tackle terrorism and is not a course we take lightly." Johnson said the organization was already banned under two other names -- Al Ghurabaa and The Saved Sect -- and militant groups should not be able to circumvent proscription simply by changing their names. Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week denounced the group's plan to march through Wootton Bassett, where mourners regularly line the streets as coffins of British soldiers flown back from Afghanistan pass through on their way from a nearby air base. The government is keen to show it is tough on Islamist radicals after a Nigerian who had studied in London tried to blow up a plane flying into the United States on December 25. With a general election looming in the coming months, ministers do not want voters to see Britain as a haven for extremists. The leader of Islam4UK, Anjem Choudary, told BBC radio the ban would not prevent him from continuing his campaigns. "We won't be using those names and those platforms which have been proscribed, but I can't stop being a Muslim, I can't stop propagating Islam, I can't stop praying, I can't stop calling for the sharia," he said. "That is something which I must do, and ultimately I will pay whatever price I need to for my belief." Islam4UK has links to Islamist militant leader Omar Bakri Mohammed, who has been banned from entering Britain. Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College in London, said Islam4UK had only 50 to 100 full members, although the group attracted much bigger crowds at its events. "Islam4UK is very much a group that seeks publicity, that wants to be in the public eye, that provokes people in this country, and as a result gets onto the front page of the Daily Mail," Neumann said, referring to a popular newspaper. "That's why the home secretary felt compelled to react." Neumann described the group as a "conveyor belt" toward violent activities, citing evidence that numerous members had gone on to militant training camps in Afghanistan, where they had fought alongside the Taliban. Choudary denied that any member of his group had ever been involved in violence and denounced the ban as a breach of freedom of expression. Reuters
  For her courage in speaking out against the evils of Islamism in her new book.
 BY CHARLES KURZMAN, IJLAL NAQVI Do Muslims automatically vote Islamic? That's the concern conjured up by strongmen from Tunis to Tashkent, and plenty of Western experts agree. They point to the political victories of Islamic parties in Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey in recent years and warn that more elections across the Islamic world could turn power over to anti-democratic fundamentalists. But these victories turn out to be exceptions, not the political rule. When we examined results from parliamentary elections in all Muslim societies, we found a very different pattern: Given the choice, voters tend to go with secular parties, not religious ones.
Over the past 40 years, 86 parliamentary elections in 20 countries have included one or more Islamic parties, according to annual reports from the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
Voters in these places have overwhelmingly turned up their noses at such parties. Eighty percent of these Islamic parties earned less than 20 percent of the vote, and a majority got less than 10 percent -- hardly landslide victories. The same is true even over the last few years, with numbers barely changing since 2001. True, Islamic parties have won a few well-publicized breakthrough victories, such as in Algeria in 1991 and Palestine in 2006.
But far more often, Islamic parties tend to do very poorly. What's more, the more free and fair an election is, the worse the Islamic parties do. By our calculations, the average percentage of seats won by Islamic parties in relatively free elections is 10 points lower than in less free ones. Even if they don't win, Islamic parties often find themselves liberalized by the electoral process. We found that Islamic party platforms are less likely to focus on sharia law or armed jihad in freer elections and more likely to uphold democracy and women's rights.
And even in more authoritarian countries, Islamic party platforms have shifted over the course of multiple elections toward more liberal positions: Morocco's Justice and Development Party and Jordan's Islamic Action Front both stripped sharia law from their platforms over the last several years. These are still culturally conservative parties, by any standard, but their decision to run for office places them at odds with Islamic revolutionaries. In many cases, they're actually risking their lives. Almost two decades ago, even before his alliance with Osama bin Laden, Egyptian jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote a tract condemning the Muslim Brotherhood's abandonment of revolutionary methods in favor of electoral politics.
"Whoever labels himself as a Muslim democrat, or a Muslim who calls for democracy, is like saying he is a Jewish Muslim or a Christian Muslim," he wrote. In Iraq, Sunni Islamic revolutionaries recently renewed their campaign "to start killing all those participating in the political process," according to a warning received by a Sunni politician who was subsequently assassinated in Mosul. More at Foreign Policy
 THE leader of Somalia's al-Qa'ida-linked insurgency has declared he would send hundreds of fighters to join the Islamist campaign in Yemen, adding to fears that increased US involvement in anti-terrorism operations in the country could fuel even greater instability. Yemen said yesterday it would not allow foreign fighters to infiltrate the country as the international jihadi network was swinging into action to counter Western efforts to bolster the feeble government, which is struggling to confront the Islamist threat. "We tell our Muslim brothers in Yemen that we will cross the water between us and reach your place to assist you fight the enemy of Allah," declared Sheik Mukhtar Robow Abu Mansour, a senior official of the al-Shebab militia, as he addressed hundreds of newly trained recruits cheering "Allahu Akbar". "Today you see what is happening in Yemen; the enemy of Allah is destroying your Muslim brothers. I call upon the young men in Arab lands to join the fight there." On the one hand, it has to shore up a failing and often reluctant ally in the war against the Islamists, who launched the failed Christmas Day Detroit airliner attack from a base in Yemen.
On the other, it may energise hundreds of recruits among the fiercely anti-American tribes of Yemen, whose civilians have often been the casualties of airstrikes carried out by Yemeni warplanes acting on US intelligence. "The American entry into the war is very dangerous," said Abdulelah Haidar Shaea, a Yemeni expert on al-Qa'ida, who has met the Yemeni branch's leadership. "If most people hate the government, then all the people hate America for its alliance with Israel and its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." He said witnesses to an attack before Christmas on an alleged al-Qa'ida base in the south had told him that US missiles had killed at least five civilians. The government claimed its warplanes had wiped out the al-Qa'ida leadership as well as Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Yemeni preacher who inspired both Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Detroit bomber, and Major Nidal Hassan Malik, who shot dead 13 fellow US soldiers at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. After the attack, Mr Shaea said that relatives of the victims took their bloodstained clothes to al-Qa'ida leaders and pledged allegiance. The government has been unable to confirm any of the deaths it claimed because its forces are unable to enter the area without being attacked by the well-armed tribes and al-Qa'ida. Gregory Johnsen, of Princeton University, an expert on Yemen, said there was evidence that while the US military was being forced to invest in a weak and unpopular government, al-Qa'ida was building a powerful support base among the tribes. Foreign al-Qa'ida members are even marrying into local tribes, while many of the fighters are native Yemenis who enjoyed the full protection of their clans. "This development is both new and worrying because it has the potential to turn any counter-terrorism operation into a much broader war involving Yemen's tribes," Mr Johnsen said in a recent article, noting Said Ali al-Shihri, the deputy commander of al-Qa'ida, had moved his family from their native Saudi Arabia to Yemen. "Yemen will not accept on its territory any presence by (foreign) terrorist elements and will be on guard against anyone who tries to act against its security and stability," Yemen's official Saba news agency quoted Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi as saying. Saba said Mr Kurbi was "astounded" by the Shebab pledge to send militants to fight Yemeni government forces who have been battling al-Qa'ida. The Australian
 "The military might of Hamas in 2010 is equal to that of Hezbollah's in 2006," an analyst for Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar said. Ibrahim al-Amin, who is affiliated with the Shiite group, wrote "Fighters from Hamas and other (Palestinian) factions have been training for a year on the various uses of anti-aircraft missiles and on how to simultaneously set off a large number of explosives, which would enable it to blow up armored military vehicles the size of a Merkava-type tank." According to the analyst, the Islamist group also practiced firing mid and long-range missiles, as well bombing Israeli communities "located up to 100 kilometers (about 62 miles)" from Gaza. In addition, claimed al-Amin, Hamas has trained special units to expose spy networks and gather intelligence on the "occupation army's deployment and weaponry." "In light of these facts, it is safe to say that the (weapons) in Gaza are equal in their potency to what Hezbollah had on the eve of the ( Second Lebanon War)," he said. "At the time (Hezbollah) did not have the ability to threaten Israel's helicopters, but Israel had admitted that Hamas has been able to acquire anti-helicopter missiles. This will embarrass (Israel) on the battlefield." Al-Amin further claimed that in the past year Hamas fighters "went underground (referring to the construction of bunkers and ditches); this will give it added military capabilities in the face of Israel's aerial superiority." The analyst said Hamas was in possession of Russian-made RPG-29 anti-tank grenade launchers, which were employed by Hezbollah during the war with Israel, in addition to Kornet anti-tank missiles, "which can destroy a tank from five kilometers about three miles) out." Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday that Hamas' current capabilities are "better than they were on the eve of Operation Cast Lead," adding that Hamas, as well as other Palestinian terror groups, "will continue to grow stronger in 2010." "Hamas will continue with its efforts to smuggle rockets with a range exceeding 50 kilometers (31 miles) into Gaza, as well as anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank missiles and any other type of weapons," he said. In early November, the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Major-General Amos Yadlin, told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Hamas held a successful trial launch of a rocket with a 60 km range. The rocket, which could reach Tel Aviv from Hamas' stronghold in the Gaza Strip, is apparently Iranian-made.
 Our old friend Raymond Ibrahim peels back some doubletalk. "Shameless Islamist Doublespeak Rages On: To English audiences, jihadists talk of ending oppression; to Arabic ones, they talk of oppressing the infidel," by Raymond Ibrahim in Pajamas Media, December 24: "Al-Qaeda's Zawahiri Accuses Obama of Trying to 'Enslave' Arab World." So reads the headline of a recent Fox News report, which goes on to quote Zawahiri saying things such as "Obama's policy is nothing but another cycle in the Crusader and Zionist campaign to enslave and humiliate us, and to occupy our land and steal our wealth." Two years earlier, Zawahiri was even more dramatic.
Then he implored "blacks in America, people of color, American Indians, Hispanics, and all the weak and oppressed in North and South America, in Africa and Asia, and all over the world, to know that when we wage jihad in Allah's path, we aren't waging jihad to lift oppression from Muslims only; we are waging jihad ... to lift oppression from all mankind. ...
This is why I want every oppressed one on the face of the earth to know that our victory over America and the Crusading West -- with Allah's permission -- is a victory for them, because they shall be freed from the most powerful tyrannical force in the history of mankind." Unfortunately for al-Qaeda, its very own words -- the Arabic ones directed at fellow Muslims which Westerners rarely see or read -- unequivocally contradict its repeated attempts to portray itself as an organization out to spread Robin Hood-style justice and equanimity vis-Ã -vis a tyrannical U.S. For in these Arabic treatises, al-Qaeda makes it perfectly clear that, short of submitting to Islamic hegemony, the non-Muslim world is the enemy, ipso facto. Yet doublespeak is definitely not the sole province of al-Qaeda; the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict has furnished the world with some of the most flagrant examples of Islamist doublespeak -- emanating from such players as Arafat, the PLO, and Hamas. Hezbollah offers a recent example: According to Reuters, the terrorist organization's newly revised manifesto "tones down Islamist rhetoric but maintains a tough line against Israel and the United States. The new manifesto drops reference to an Islamic republic in Lebanon, which has a substantial Christian population, confirming changes to Hezbollah thinking about the need to respect Lebanon's diversity." In fact, this "new" manifesto has been hailed as a progressive step forward for the terrorist organization: an AFP headline tells us that "Hezbollah strikes softer tone in second manifesto: [according to] analysts," such as one Paul Salem, head of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center, who asserts that the "manifesto is reassuring as it shows Hezbollah's integration with Lebanese political life."... Read it all. With thanks to JihadWatch
 Does Islamist party Hizb-ut-Tahrir pose a threat to Western society? The answer may well be yes -- but that doesn't mean it should be banned. In recent weeks, Britain's Labour government and the Conservative opposition have been embroiled in a feud about, of all things, Islam -- or, more precisely, an Islamist organization called Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Arabic for "The Party of Liberation").
Tory leader David Cameron has been assailing Gordon Brown's government for allegedly funneling taxpayer money to two Hizb-supported schools where students are being exposed to Islamist ideology.
The education minister insists that the schools in question have nothing to do with the group. The issue is particularly tricky because many Britons, within government and out, have repeatedly called for Hizb-ut-Tahrir to be banned altogether. Their ranks included, at one point a few years ago, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. It hasn't happened yet, though, for reasons that will be touched upon below. One thing is for sure: We can all expect to hear more about Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) in the years to come. Founded 56 years ago in Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem, the party is estimated by some experts to have 1 million members around the world. A lot of them are now in jail. HT is banned outright in a number of countries, ranging from harsh dictatorships like Uzbekistan and Syria through countries like Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Bangladesh, to Western European democracies including Germany and Denmark. Yet the group persists, and in some respects -- judging by the vast amount of literature it continues to produce, on paper, and myriad websites -- it seems to be thriving. The party recently made headlines in the United States when it was revealed that one of President Barack Obama's religious advisors, Muslim polling expert Dalia Mogahed, had participated in a Hizb-ut-Tahrir-sponsored TV broadcast. (She subsequently said that she'd been unaware of the show's affiliation.) The party has undoubtedly been helped, over the years, by the clarity of its ultimate aim: the creation of a modern-day caliphate, an Islamic state that would bring together all the countries of the Islamic world.
Unlike al Qaeda, though, which professes comparable goals, Hizb-ut-Tahrir emphasizes political action rather than force, arguing that Muslims have to be "enlightened" through education, propaganda, and political agitation until they fully understand the need to seize the reins of power in their own countries and unite the ummah, the global community of believers.
According to one of the group's myriad pamphlets: "[I]f the Islamic Ummah were to rise as an Islamic Ummah, she would be more than capable of rescuing the world from the evil forces that control it, suppress it, and make it experience all kinds of misery, humiliation, and slavery." It's this openly revolutionary aim that has gotten the party into trouble in many of the more authoritarian countries where it has run afoul of officialdom. Yet even though it claims to profess non violent means, the party has still managed to get into trouble in more liberal societies for the extreme intolerance of some of its views.
The party became verboten in Germany, for example, after it shared a platform with neo-Nazis. HT officials insist that they are anti-Zionist rather than anti-Semitic -- though several studies of the group's literature have shown that the distinction doesn't always hold up.
The group was proscribed in Denmark after, among other things, distributing pamphlets urging Muslims to "kill [Jews] wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out." When I first came across the group's pamphlets in Central Asia in 2001, for example, I was struck by their references to the dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, whom they ritually denounced as "the Jew Karimov." (He has no Jewish background whatsoever, as it happens.) One of the party's pamphlets stresses that Muslims who elect to leave the faith automatically face the death penalty -- a stricture that would be hard to reconcile with democratic freedoms if they dared to put it into practice. Another source of concern is the group's role as a "conveyor belt," radicalizing members who then go on to participate in overtly violent actions. Its prominent members in Britain have included Omar Bakri Muhammad, founder of the group Al Muhajiroun, which gained notoriety for praising the 9/11 hijackers and harbored adherents who would later be implemented in terrorist attacks.
When British intelligence officials searched the home of Omar Sharif, the Briton who attempted to blow himself up in a Tel Aviv bar in 2003, they found a cache of Hizb-ut-Tahrir literature.
British journalist Shiv Malik claims that at least two major al Qaeda figures, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, originally had ties with the group. More at Foreign Policy
 Jihadists take note: The insanity defense may not work for you. On Tuesday, Naveed Haq, a self-styled soldier of Islam, was found guilty of aggravated first-degree murder and seven other counts related to a 2006 shooting rampage in Seattle. The prosecution successfully argued that Haq was a jihadi terrorist on a mission for martyrdom; the defense said that just proved he was crazy. The facts are open and shut. On July 28, 2006, Haq forced his way into the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and opened fire with two semiautomatic pistols, wounding five women and killing campaign director Pamela Waechter.
Haq was a methodical killer. When the wounded Ms. Waechter attempted to flee, Haq ran her down and shot her in the head. Haq explained his jihadist motives in detail after the shooting. He bragged about the killings in prison phone calls to relatives, tapes of which were played during the trial. "I'm proud of what I did," the murderer told his mother Nahida. "I'm a soldier of Islam." He said that she should be proud of him. "I'm a martyr now," he claimed. "I'm going to go to heaven." His mother argued with him that he was sick, that he was not in his right mind. "Yes I am," Haq said. "That's the path I've chosen. ... I did this for a reason. I wanted to be a martyr. I wanted to die on the battlefield." Haq showed evidence of premeditation. He told police he had planned the attack over several days. He chose the Jewish Federation office as his target to make a statement about U.S. policy in the Middle East.
He obtained the pistols specifically to conduct the attack and test fired them to see which was easiest to use. A police officer who pulled Haq over for a traffic violation just prior to the shooting found him calm and collected; he was not someone who simply snapped. Like many terrorists, Haq was seeking publicity. While holding one of his victims at gunpoint, a pregnant woman he had already wounded, the killer told a 911 dispatcher he wanted to be patched through to CNN to - among other things - demand the U.S. military pull out of Iraq. The legal defense conceded that Haq was the shooter, but contended that a "mental disease or defect" had impaired his ability to know right from wrong, which conforms to the standard for legal insanity in Washington state. Haq is an American born to Pakistani immigrants, had been raised a Muslim but for most of his life had not taken the religion seriously. He even renounced Islam for Christianity briefly before returning to the fold with a vengeance. Haq's jihadist orientation was central to the attack, but the prosecution initially downplayed it. At Haq's first trial in 2008, the jury did not hear the revealing prison phone tapes because prosecutors thought they were irrelevant.
The jury in that trial deadlocked over the question of Haq's intentions, and the judge declared a mistrial. The jury in the second trial heard the tapes, which seemed to have a clarifying effect on the question of intent.
Declaring "I'm a soldier of Islam" leaves little to the imagination. The Haq case has important implications for other domestic terror trials, such as the upcoming court martial of Fort Hood jihadist shooter Nidal Malik Hasan - or even the trial of al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others in New York City.
One lesson is that prosecutors should not downplay the jihadist motives behind such attacks.
Terrorist ideology is the central framework for this type of violence, and absent that context, jurors may well misunderstand the nature and purpose of these religiously motivated attacks. Another implication is that the insanity defense may not offer an escape route for terrorists. Violent jihadists may do things that normal people consider crazy, but they are not insane. They know right from wrong, they just think that killing innocents is acceptable behavior. They are clear in their motives; they see themselves as agents of a divine power waging war on the infidel. Given their premises, radical Islamists can justify everything from suicide bombing to Sept. 11-style mass murder. Ignoring the jihadist impulse as a motive for attack, either because of political correctness or some other rationale, makes the insanity plea more plausible. A jihadist without the jihad is just a crazed killer. Washington Times
 An economy in meltdown, a President of the Republic indicted for crimes against humanity, and a ruling clique fighting among themselves as piranhas in a pool. The last thing the Sudan, one of Africa's martyred nations, wanted was a new round of violence shaking its foundations. Yet, this is what happened on Monday as demonstrators took to the streets to call for an end to a despotic regime imposed with a military coup in 1989. Although spearheaded by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), a southern outfit campaigning for independence from Khartoum, the demonstrations attracted a range of opposition parties from across the country.
Protestors sacked President General Omar al-Bashir's offices in a number of key cities in the south, the west and the north. By mid-week, it had become clear that the movement enjoyed support from a broad spectrum of political groups, from the secular left to the Islamists led by Hassan al-Turabi, a former ally and, later, a prisoner of al-Bashir's. Even the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), an artificial concoction designed to offer despotism a democratic fig leaf, is now split. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the president and his entourage no longer enjoy any significant support base. President al-Bashir has always tried to justify his rule with the claim that he is the man who ended the north-south civil war that started in the 1950s, reaching its most intense phase from 1983 to 2005. According to estimates by the United Nations, this was Africa's longest war and, having claimed 2.5 million lives, the costliest in human terms. With almost 12 years of fighting, General al-Bashir's regime was responsible for at least half of those victims. Add to that the estimated two million believed to have died in the Darfur tragedy, and the general's record emerges as one of the bloodiest in modern African history. There are times when history dictates the closing chapters even of the longest surviving rulers. Today, it seems that General al-Bashir's rule is becoming the subject of precisely such a final chapter. The NCP regime may have reached the end of the line not only because of its disastrous political record, massive and well-documented corruption, and sheer brutality. The main reason it is in trouble is its perceived incompetence, its obvious inability to offer a roadmap for the major problems the nation faces. Today, the general looks like the Wizard of Oz at the end of the saga when he has to admit that he does not know how to lead Dorothy back to her home in Kansas.
It no longer matters whether he is a good man. What matters is that he is a bad wizard. More at Asharq Alawsat
 In recent weeks, a renewed epidemic of suicide bombings has swept Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, climaxing in huge blasts in Baghdad that killed 130 innocents on Tuesday. The Obama administration says these bombings have nothing to do with religion. It's purely coincidental that the perps preach severe Islam. The attacks are merely meant to destabilize governments. Once again, we grasp at a comforting explanation, deceiving ourselves. Yes, Islamist fanatics want to disrupt Pakistani society and Iraq's upcoming elections. But they're not butchering thousands of Muslims just over ward politics. Our make-nice president and even our generals refuse to accept the core motivation for mass atrocities committed by al Qaeda, the Taliban and affiliates: It's about punishing imperfect believers and infidels. But "punishment" isn't even in our vocabulary. When a bomb strikes a government ministry, that's one thing. But attacks that routinely turn public markets, clinics or schools into bloody craters aren't just about political rivalries. True fanatics don't really want to reform or convert you. They need to make you suffer to please their god — and for their own psychological needs. Aztecs without the architecture, fanatics always crave an angry god. They may preach the kingdom of heaven, but long to burn others in hell. Religious fanatics delight in killing and torturing the imperfect and impure. It's not about justice or redemption. The fanatic's joy lies in the deed itself, in the god-like thrill of inflicting pain. Religious butchers really love their work. This is "unthinkable" to us — because we refuse to think it. Like children, we want the world to be a certain way, so we insist that it is that way — lovely, innocent and darkened only by responsible parents. But the world is cruel, and no portion of this earth is crueler than the collapsed civilization of the Middle East. Underdevelopment is not the core problem. Poverty and injustice are symptoms. The region's catastrophic state is rooted in Wahhabi Islam — in the rise, three centuries ago, of a desert-dweller extremism that squeezed a once-great faith into a tribal cult. Now we stand on the side of the most destructive elements within the Muslim world, the Saudis and their fanaticism. The greatest modern tragedy for the Arab world wasn't Israel's triumph, but who got the oil money: It wasn't the sophisticates of Cairo or Damascus, but illiterate Bedouins whose god likes to hurt people. The combination of oil wealth and the Wahhabi cult created al Qaeda and internationalized violent jihad. The current tiff between the Saudi royal family and al Qaeda is a family quarrel over who gets to dictate the terms of Islamist tyranny. Yet, one American president after another imagines that the Saudis are our buddies, even bowing to Saudi royalty — thus doing a terrible disservice to those Muslims who promote worthier forms of their faith. When we lie and deny that religion has anything to do with Islamist terrorism, we're not doing Muslims a favor. We empower the worst elements in the Islamic world. But we don't want to hurt the feelings of fanatics. So we insist that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood avenger for Allah, was upset. And the deeds of Gitmo inmates had nothing to do with religion (although we rush to pander to their beliefs). Al Qaeda and the Taliban just want political power. And so on. But men don't rush to die to achieve political power they won't live to exercise. The current epidemic of massacres is about faith gone homicidal. It's about uncompromising hatred in Allah's name, a hatred unappeasable on this earth. And it's about punishment, that word we no longer dare think. Wahhabi Islam delights in tormenting women (paging Dr. Ali bin Freud). Our response to the general deprivation, enforced masking, lifelong imprisonment, random beating and cult murder of a half-billion human beings? "What right do we have to judge the culture of others?" We're not only fools, but cowards, too. The worst jihad isn't against us or the governments we back, but against a half-billion women. Think you'll ever get Washington to admit that? Faced with supremely dedicated enemies blazing with faith, we make excuses for their love of death. Then we wonder why we don't make progress. The recent bombings in Baghdad, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Kabul and elsewhere were committed by uncompromising believers. Compromise is our false god, not theirs. Ralph Peters' latest book is "The War After Armageddon." NYPost
 ACCORDING to Karl von Clausewitz's dictum, "the aim of any war has to be a situation better than when hostilities began". After nearly a decade of the global war on terror, how do we know if the situation has improved? One measure may be the cadence of terrorist attacks.
So far this year, more than 7500 people have been killed in more than 5000 incidents across four continents.
That is a significant improvement on last year, when more than 15,000 people were killed in more than 11,000 terrorist attacks.
Despite a clear desire to do so, Osama bin Laden and his central al-Qa'ida leadership have been unable to replicate the mass-casualty atrocities of the 2001 airlines plot against the US, nor can they get their hands on a nuclear weapon. Can we therefore say that terrorism is a declining security threat and the situation is better than when hostilities began? Public opinion in Australia supports this view. An Australian Strategic Policy Institute survey on national security and defence last year found terrorism had dropped to 13th out of 14 touchstone issues at the 2007 election.
Two-thirds of Australians think terrorism is now a part of everyday life. Climate change is the new terrorism.
But when we asked if the government was doing all it could to prevent a terrorist attack, the public's response was more equivocal. Only half thought the government was on the ball. Despite the investment of nearly $10 billion since 2001 in national security measures, 41 per cent of respondents said governments should be doing more.
That there has not been a serious terrorist attack on Australian soil since the Sydney Hilton bombing in 1978 leads some to argue that the threat is so low, national security funding should be channelled elsewhere. As Peter Clark of the British police said recently, "The current terrorist threat is of such a scale and intractability that we must not only defeat the men who plot and carry out appalling acts of violence. We must find a way of defeating the ideas that drive them." The number of terrorist attacks across the world may have decreased, but the corrosive ideologies that drive international terrorism continue to gain traction from Somalia to the southern Philippines. And the focus of this ideological brainwashing is increasingly directed towards children. In Indonesia, the radical Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir is focusing its attention on schools, providing reading materials and instruction to teenagers advocating the overthrow of secular democracy and the introduction of Islamic law and a caliphate. Although such organisations stop short of promoting violence, the radicalising link between propaganda and terrorism has been well-established. As internet coverage expands, so too does the extremist message. Hizb ut-Tahrir Indonesia runs a sophisticated website that rivals global news organisations. Teenagers are the greatest users of the internet, and interactive social networking websites provide terrorist groups with new opportunities to recruit and radicalise. It is no surprise the terrorist organisation in Somalia is called al-Shabaab (the youth). For the ideology to succeed it must constantly seek new recruits. As a new generation of terrorists is formed, the international community appears incapable of responding in a comprehensive, strategic way. To date, the global war on terror has been split between 95 per cent military operations and 5 per cent ideological operations. That must be reversed, because it is winning the ideological war that will ultimately determine whether we succeed or fail against the present wave of religious terrorism. Carl Ungerer is director of national security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The Australian
 The University of London has cancelled the appearance of a speaker from an Islamic group that opposes democracy and integration into British society.
A representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir was due to appear at Queen Mary college in east London to debate Sharia law in the modern world.
But the group was told it could not take part after students campaigned about its "blatantly
aggressive" views.
The university's union said the debate organisers acted to avoid controversy.
(..)
A union spokesman said the society's members were adamant Hizb ut-Tahrir would not use the event to "espouse hateful views", but decided to find a new speaker to avoid controversy.
But a spokesman for Student Rights said: "Hizb ut-Tahrir speakers have been known to condone suicide bombings and support Islamist movements which undertake terrorist acts such as Islamic Jihad.
"This can be frightening and intimidating for the student body."
He added: "On university campuses it is simply incomprehensible how such blatantly aggressive organisations can be invited to speak."
A Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman said: "By lobbying to stop this week's event those organisations seem to believe their inability to effectively counter our arguments gives them the right to stop others debating with us.
"Their actions only prove how empty their rhetoric on free speech and human rights is."
(more)
Source: BBC, h/t Islamophobia Watch
With thanks to Islam in Europe
 Introduction In May 2009, four women were elected to the Kuwaiti parliament, for the first time in this country's history. Two of these women – Dr. Asil Al-'Awadi and Dr. Rola Dashti – do not wear the veil, and since their election, Islamists in the country have been demanding that they be required to wear it. MP Muhammad Hayef appealed to the Minister of Endowments and Minister of Justice, Rashed Al-Hammad, with a demand to give a formal expression to the Kuwaiti law which states that "a condition for women to vote and be elected is to abide by the rules and terms of shari'a law."
In response, the Religious Endowments Ministry issued a fatwa stipulating that the MPs must wear a veil like all other Muslim women. The fatwa stated that "when appearing in front of men not related to her, a Muslim woman must abide by the shari'a requirement to wear a veil hiding her entire body, except for the face and hands. [Furthermore], the veil must not be sheer so as to reveal any part of the body, must not be narrow so as to reveal her figure, and must not attract men's looks in any way."[1] Islamist MPs treated the fatwa as binding, stating that "the veil is [both] a legal and a religious duty."[2] Liberals, on the other hand, including the women MPs themselves, argued that the fatwa contravenes Kuwait's democratic character, and that fatwas like these threaten to turn Kuwait into a Taliban state. They also pointed out that the fatwa is at odds with Kuwait's constitution, which upholds individual freedoms, and therefore cannot be binding, since the constitution is the supreme legal source of authority.[3] On October 11, 2009, woman MP Dr. Rola Dashti proposed abolishing the clause in the Election Law requiring parliamentary candidates to abide by shari'a.[4] On October 28, 2009, the Constitution Court rejected a lawsuit filed by attorney Hamad Al-Nashi against the two women MPs who do not don the veil, in which he demanded to revoke their membership in the parliament for violating the shari'a.
The court ruled that "the laws of the Islamic shari'a do not have a binding force like the basic laws [of the state], unless the legislator has intervened and so stipulated... The Kuwaiti constitution does not stipulate that the shari'a – that is, Islamic law – is the sole source of legislation, nor does it preclude the legislator from utilizing other sources [of legislation], out of consideration for the people's [needs]. Moreover, the constitution guarantees complete religious and personal freedom and forbids discrimination... based on [an individual's] religion or gender."[5] MP Asil Al-'Awadi welcomed the court's ruling, stating that it represents a triumph for Kuwait's constitution and will end the debate on the veil which has been taking up parliament's time.
MP Rola Dashti said: "We four women MPs will continue to represent the Kuwaiti people in the best possible manner... This is not a triumph [only] for two women MPs or [even] for the Kuwaiti woman – it's a triumph for democracy."
She explained that even though the parliament is not a holy place or a house of worship, the women MPs would be careful to dress modestly and elegantly. She added that the court's ruling put an end to the attempts of "those who wish to bring Kuwait back [to an earlier era]." [6] MP Muhammad Hayef, for his part, said that he planned to appeal again to the Constitutional Court in this matter, and called on MPs Dashti and 'Awadi to "abide by Allah's law... in order to turn over a new leaf and quell this storm that has pitched the country into a crisis [caused by] disobedience to Allah's laws."[7] The Endowment Ministry's fatwa and the court ruling reignited the debate between two prominent camps in Kuwait, that is, the Islamists and the liberals, over the character of the Kuwaiti state and over which is the ultimate source of authority – shari'a law or the statutory laws. More at MEMRI
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