It will be good to listen to Pat Condell, like he says Islam is peaceful and that the Republic of North Korea is a democracy ! Here’s Pat Condell on the Islamic world’s reaction to the dreaded 15-minute film of blasphemy

Researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests are proposing controversial theories about the Koran and Islamic history, and are striving to reinterpret Islam for the modern world. This is, as one scholar puts it, a "sensitive business" . IN 1972, during the restoration of the Great Mosque of Sana'a, in Yemen, laborers working in a loft between the structure's inner and outer roofs stumbled across a remarkable gravesite, although they did not realize it at the time. Their ignorance was excusable: mosques do not normally house graves, and this site contained no tombstones, no human remains, no funereal jewelry. It contained nothing more, in fact, than an unappealing mash of old parchment and paper documents -- damaged books and individual pages of Arabic text, fused together by centuries of rain and dampness, gnawed into over the years by rats and insects. Intent on completing the task at hand, the laborers gathered up the manuscripts, pressed them in...

THE RIOTING IN France by primarily Muslim youths and the hotel bombings in Jordan are the latest events to prompt sincere questions that law-abiding Muslims need to answer for Islam's sake, as well as for the sake of worried non-Muslims. Here are five of them: 1) Why are you so quiet? Since the first Israelis were targeted for death by Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up in the name of your religion and Palestinian nationalism, I have been praying to see Muslim demonstrations against these atrocities. Last week's protests in Jordan against the bombings, while welcome, were a rarity. What I have seen more often is mainstream Muslim spokesmen implicitly defending this terror on the grounds that Israel occupies Palestinian lands. We see torture and murder in the name of Allah, but we see no anti-torture and anti-murder demonstrations in the name of Allah. There are a billion Muslims in the world. How is it possible that essentially none have demonstrated against evils perpetra...

The film is accurate. Will Muslims rage against the truth? 1. Quranic text. "Behead them, burn them" 2. This text affirmed and preached today. Imams preaching "Behead them, burn them." 3. This text acted upon. Literally. Images of actual infidels beheaded. Burned. 4. Often further affirmation of the literal meaning of the text from 'the street'. "Yes if converted to christianity should be killed. Yes, if my mother committed adultery I would kill her..."

Rewriting British History Any revised compulsory history syllabus needs to give full recognition to the massive contribution that Islam has made to the development of Western civilisation. Historically the recognition of this contribution has been suppressed because in the past control of the educational system rested with the Christian churches which saw Islam as a competitor. It is extremely difficult to see how such extreme remarks fit with a political party that stands for the rule of law, the defence of the West against rogue regimes, the centrality of the Anglo-American Special Relationship, and support for key allies such as Israel. The support which the Conservative Muslim Forum gives to the Iranian dictatorship, at a time when British soldiers are still dying at the hands of Iranian backed militias in southern Iraq, should draw public outrage in the U.K. There is no mention of Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism, its systematic violation of human rights, or its threats to wi...

The open letter from 138 Muslim scholars to the Pope and the leaders of other Christian churches on the subject of peace between the faiths has got the British establishment purring with pleasure. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London have fallen on their knees and given thanks. The Times raved: Rarely, indeed, has the Muslim world spoken out so clearly on the need for global peace or addressed Christianity in such terms of respect and acceptance of common beliefs… it will make it harder for those who thrive on a narrow, militant interpretation of Islam to pose as the true guardians of the faith. The Telegraph gushed: In an age when Islamic extremism, with its call for lethal revolution, appears to be making the running, it is deeply encouraging to hear a large group of Muslim leaders advocating peaceful coexistence with Christians. At least one cleric gets it. In the Times the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the one Anglican who understands the threat fro...

I have recently been reading Paul Scott’s series of novels about the last years of British India. It’s hard not to notice that the British rulers of India, especially the military men, rather favored Muslims over Hindus. You get the same impression from Kipling’s stories, and from George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books . There was a perception that Hinduism was a bit snivelly, pacifistic, commercial, and lower-middle-class. This is very unfair to Hinduism, whose most sacred text, after all, is a battlefield conversation , and whose military castes could, at the height of their vigor, have given any samurai or ghazi a run for his money. (And that’s not even to mention the fightingest Hindus of all .) The perception was plainly there, though. It was much fortified in later years by Gandhi, with his doctrine of non-violence, his spindly frame, his fussiness about diet and sex, his high-pitched voice and his clerkish glasses. (Gandhi’s War Medal — for organizing a battlefield ambulanc...

Who recently said: “These Jews started 19 Crusades. The 19th was World War (1). Why? Only to build Israel.” Some holdover Nazi? Hardly. It was former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan of Turkey, a NATO ally. He went on to claim that the Jews — whom he refers to as “bacteria” — controlled China, India, and Japan, and ran the United States. Who alleged: “The Arabs who were involved in 9/11 cooperated with the Zionists, actually. It was a cooperation. They gave them the perfect excuse to denounce all Arabs.” A conspiracy nut? Actually, it was former Democratic U.S. Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota. He denounced Israel on a Hezbollah-owned television station, adding: “I marveled at the Hezbollah resistance to Israel. . . . It was a marvel of organization, of courage and bravery.” And finally, who claimed at a United Nations-sponsored conference that democratic Israel was “much worse” than the former apartheid South Africa, and that it “undermines the international community’s reaction to...

IN GAZA'S SHADOW June 14, 2007 -- WONDER what Iraq would look like if we left to morrow? Take a look at Gaza today. Then imagine a situation a thousand times worse. We need to stop making politically correct excuses. Arab civilization is in collapse. Extremes dominate, either through dictatorship or anarchy. Thanks to their dysfunctional values and antique social structures, Arab states can't govern themselves decently. We gave them a chance in Iraq. Israel "gave back" the Gaza Strip to let the Palestinians build a model state. Arabs seized those opportunities to butcher each other. The barbarity in Gaza has become so grotesque that not even the media's apologists for terror can ignore it (especially since Islamist fanatics began to target journalists). Over the weekend, Hamas gangbangers-for-Allah grabbed a Fatah functionary and dropped him from the roof of a high-rise to check out the law of gravity (the only law that still obtains in Gaza). Tit-for-tat, Fatah ...

Behead All Those Who Insult Islam - This is the enemy. Jihadi’s Guide to Etiquette Rule 11: Never leave home without your matches, effigy-hanging sticks and death threat placards. You never know when they’ll come in handy. In Pakistan, dutiful followers of the jihadi guide have found a new pretext this week for an anti-Western bonfire party: the knighting of author Salman Rushdie in Britain. Muslim groups are burning Queen Elizabeth and Rushdie in effigy. The Union Jack is in flames. The Religion of Perpetual Outrage strikes again. It’s not just some obscure spokesman for a “tiny minority” objecting to Rushdie’s knighthood and leading the renewed calls for Rushdie’s death and Britain’s submission. Pakistan’s religious-affairs minister, Mohammed ljaz ul-Haq, bellowed: “If someone blows himself up he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?” He says he was misunderstood, but the message is as loud and clear as t...

By Raymond Ibrahim Islamic apologist extraordinaire Karen Armstrong is at it again. In an article entitled “ Balancing the Prophet ” published by the Financial Times, the self-proclaimed “freelance monotheist” engages in what can only be considered second-rate sophistry. The false statements begin in her opening paragraph: Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure.… The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy. This is just an obvious error of fact. Armstrong and others try as a routine to tie European sentiments toward Islam to the Crusades, but in fact, “people in the west” had something of a “dim” view of Mohammed half a millenium before the Crusades. As early as the 8th century — just a fe...

By Raymond Ibrahim For three consecutive days, April 10-12, Tariq Ramadan, the controversial Muslim activist who was denied a U.S. visa for questionable activities (such as making “charitable” donations to the terrorist organization Hamas, which regularly commissions suicide-attacks), was invited by Georgetown University to give a one-way talk live via satellite — a move which many, including several Georgetown faculty, protested. The Washington Post reports that Ramadan’s overarching theme was that “Islam and democracy are not incompatible in their tenets of equality and freedom for all and that tensions between them have arisen because of historic problems — such as European colonialism, political manipulation by Middle Eastern autocrats and the influence of minority Islamic groups he described as ‘literalists.’” As to the question of Islam and violence, the Georgetown Voice reports he asserted that, “[Terrorism] is not only non-Islamic, it’s anti-Islamic.” And when discussing the pr...

In reference to Mazeni Alwi's article Mazeni is dishonest in that he says that "Christians of Jerusalem decided to give in to the Muslim army", they were attacked and it was the culminating point. With the help of the local Jews who welcomed the Muslims as liberators, the Muslims had subjugated the remainder of Palestine but had not been able to capture Jerusalem. Beginning in July 637, the Muslims began a siege of Jerusalem which lasted for five (hardly bloodless) months before Jerusalem fell in February 638. Arabs did not sack the city, and the Arab soldiers were apparently kept in tight control by their leaders. No destruction was permitted. This was indeed a triumph of civilized control, if imperialism, colonization, and bloody conquest can ever be said to be "civilized." It was at this conquest that many significant hallmarks of Muslim colonialism began. The conquered Christian and Jewish people were made to pay a tribute to the colonialist Muslims.The Musl...

All humans generally live according to some set of priorities. A person may make a priority of health, of pleasure, of study, of almost anything, really. But it is practically a law of nature that a person must make a priority of something. Even those who lead unstructured existences unconsciously live according to some set of unarticulated priorities, if only according to something so basic as the primal need for food, drink, and shelter. For many people, religious practice — striving to obey God’s commandments — is a high priority, the highest, even. Yet this priority can come into conflict with the character of the society in which one lives. This is undoubtedly the case for devout Muslims who voluntarily relocate to Western nations. This invariably will compromise what many of them profess to be their ultimate priority: living in accordance to the divine laws of Allah (i.e., sharia — most of which is derived from the words and deeds of seventh-century Mohammad). Some of these Musli...

Stand up for Denmark! Why are we not defending our ally ? Put the case that we knew of a highly paranoid religious cult organization with a secretive leader. Now put the case that this cult, if criticized in the press, would take immediate revenge by kidnapping a child. Put the case that, if the secretive leader were also to be lampooned, two further children would be killed at random. Would the press be guilty of "self-censorship" if it declined to publish anything that would inflame the said cult? Well, yes it would be guilty, but very few people would insist on the full exertion of the First Amendment right. However, the consequences for the cult and its leader would be severe as well. All civilized people would regard it as hateful and dangerous, and steps would be taken to circumscribe its influence, and to ensure that no precedent was set. In full....Stand up for Denmark! - Why are we not defending our ally? By Christopher Hitchens

This is happening in Pakiland.A Christian was accused of blasphemy by a Muslim neighbour who had a bone to pick with him. This sparked off a sequence of events which have been well covered in the press by news items and in several columns. The point is that violence occurred because of the fact that our theocratic thugs insist that these laws remain in place and have prevailed upon the General to toe their line. Early in November, churches in the Sangla Hill area were desecrated and destroyed, Christian students were beaten up, and one Pir Mohammad Afzal Qadiri, Markazi Ameer Alam-i-Tanzeem Ahl-e-Sunnat (unworthy of this impressive sounding name and title) not only condoned the attack by his fellow Muslims upon the Christian churches and properties, but urged those of his faith to unite and eliminate Christians for the honour and integrity of Islam. In full......

The UN Human Wrongs Council The UN’s Human Rights Council has long been a sick joke, an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. To see a most graphic demonstration of its interpretation of human rights, just look at this to see what happened when Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, told it a few home truths. This is what he said: Mr. President, Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Réné Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream? In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided? Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal. One might say, in Harry Truman’s words, tha...

Achilles' Heel - August 28, 2006 - The New York Sun Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni , the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza : "We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it." Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig , had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah." More........

The leader of the world's most ancient institution, one with an unbroken continuity that spans over two millennia, and a memory to match, took a stand with his report of the dialogue between Byzantine Emperor Manuel II and an "educated Persian". That dialogue occurred in year 1391. There is a context, which only ignoramuses could suspect the pope of not having taken into full account: in those years, the Ottoman Turks crushed and overran the Serbian kingdom, the Muslim warlord Tamerlane broke the back of the Persian empire and occupied it, the empire of Bulgaria was destroyed by the Ottomans and incorporated into their empire. The Muslim jihad was threatening the whole of Christendom, and was devastating Muslim lands as well, such as the anciently civilized Persia. To broaden the perspective, add that in short order, the Islamicized Mongols were to besiege Moscow, crush a Hungarian-German army in Central Europe, occupy Bosnia, besiege, sack, and slaughter New Delhi, and t...

At the dawn of a new century, a newly elected United States president was forced to confront a grave threat to the nation — an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim terrorists. Worse still, these Islamic partisans operated under the protection and sponsorship of rogue Arab states ruled by ruthless and cunning dictators. Sluggish in recognizing the full nature of the threat, America entered the war well after the enemy’s call to arms. Poorly planned and feebly executed, the American effort proceeded badly and at great expense — resulting in a hastily negotiated peace and an equally hasty declaration of victory. Barbary Pirates being boarded. As timely and familiar as these events may seem, they occurred more than two centuries ago. The president was Thomas Jefferson, and the terrorists were the Barbary pirates. Unfortunately, many of the easy lessons to be plucked from this experience have yet to be fully learned. The Barbary states, modern-day Morocco, Algeria,...