[Note by Tom Gross]

TUNISIA AND EGYPT CONFISCATE LE FIGARO, F. A. Z.

Authorities in Tunisia and Egypt have confiscated last Tuesday’s edition of the French newspaper Le Figaro because it ran an article which they deemed insulting to Islam.

The French daily carried a piece by philosopher Robert Redeker about the controversy over the pope’s recent remarks. Redeker described the Koran as a “book of unprecedented violence,” and accused Muslims of seeking to intimidate the West.

Redeker wrote: “Merciless warrior, pillager, murderer of Jews and polygamist – that is how Mohammed portrays himself in the Koran... the book by which every Muslim is educated.”

The banned article can be read in French here. (Please scroll down two boxes.)

Yesterday, the Egyptian information ministry followed the Tunisians by banning not only Le Figaro, but another important European newspaper, the leading German daily, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In its September 16 edition, German historian Egon Flaig had used examples of the Prophet Mohammed’s military leadership to support the idea that Islam has had a violent history (which it has).

Egypt says that for the time being copies of Le Figaro and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung will not be allowed into Egypt.

Le Figaro and Le Monde are competing for the highest circulation in France. Le Figaro has a circulation of 400,000 and is perceived as conservative. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is a quality national German newspaper with a circulation of over 380,000 and a daily readership of over one million.

Lest anyone need reminding, the Egyptian media is rife with highly offensive caricatures of Jews and others. For example, see Cartoons from the Arab World.

MOZART PERFORMANCE CANCELLED IN GERMANY DUE TO FEAR OF OFFENDING MUSLIMS

One of Germany’s leading opera houses, Deutsche Oper Berlin, announced on Monday that it was canceling a controversial production because of the likelihood that it might offend Muslims.

The original opera, Idomeneo, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, makes no reference to Islam, but director Hans Neuenfels introduced a scene to his production that depicts the decapitated heads of the Prophet Mohammed, Jesus Christ, the Buddha, and the Greek god Poseidon.

Security authorities in Berlin advised that the performance posed an “incalculable” security risk. The production had been on for the last three years before recent threats were made against it.

The cancellation of the 225-year-old opera has triggered a storm of protest among German political and cultural figures. Berlin’s mayor, Klaus Wowereit, warned today that “Our ideas about openness, tolerance and freedom must be lived on the offensive. Voluntary self-limitation gives those who fight against our values a confirmation in advance that we will not stand behind them.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that “self-censorship out of fear” should not be tolerated.

For the German speakers on this list/website, an article about this can be read here.

“CONQUERING ROME IS THE ANSWER”

Thousands of Muslim worshippers marched against Pope Benedict XVI in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza on Friday. At the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, considered to be Islam’s third-holiest shrine, worshippers hoisted banners that read “Conquering Rome is the answer.”

In the streets of Nablus, protestors waving Hamas flags called the pope a “coward and agent of the Americans.” In northern Gaza, more than 1,000 Islamic Jihad supporters shouted in praise of the prophet, and waved black flags and condemned the pope. In Ramallah, hundreds of Hamas supporters marched around the city center.

Rallies were also held in Pakistan and Malaysia. Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior leader of Pakistan’s main alliance of radical parties, told demonstrators in Islamabad, “If the pope comes here we will hang him on the Cross.” Another Islamic leader said the pontiff should be crucified.

Malaysia’s opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party staged demonstrations outside mosques nationwide, and held up banners that read, “We Muslims are peace-loving people.”

The pope had already apologized several times and said he was “deeply sorry” about the reactions to his remarks and stressed that they did not reflect his own opinions, and that he had “deep respect” for Islam.

HAMAS LEADER: POPE IS “IGNORANT AND STUPID”

On Fatah-controlled Palestinian TV last Friday, Hamas religious leader Dr. Osama Al-Mazini called the pope “criminal and arrogant,” and “ignorant and stupid.”

Al-Mazini said: “To this arrogant Pope – criminal and arrogant – this message is from Allah the Elevated and the Exalted, as it was said: ‘Think not that Allah is unaware of what the wicked do. He but gives them a respite until a day when eyes will stare (in terror).’ [Sura14:42]”

The official Hamas weekly “Al Risala” featured a cartoon of Pope Benedict holding a Swastika while wearing a scarf of U.S. and Danish flags. The text under the cartoon is “The Pope and those who live under his cloak.”

The cartoon from “Al Risala” can be seen here.

(With thanks to Palestinian Media Watch, the senior staff of whom subscribe to this list, for the above information.)

For more cartoons on the recent controversy over the pope’s remarks about Islam, please see Cartoonists against the Pope (Sept. 19, 2006).

MORE CHURCHES ATTACKED IN WEST BANK AND GAZA

Palestinian police guarding a Roman Catholic church in Nablus were involved in an exchange of fire with assailants and chased them away on Saturday morning.

On Friday evening, three small pipe bombs were thrown at a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza city. One bomb blackened the main entrance of the church.

Police were posted at churches in the West Bank and Gaza after the first spate of attacks. For more on this, see Palestinians attack churches as anti-Pope sentiment grows around world (Sept. 18, 2006).

“A CONSPIRACY BETWEEN THE POPE AND BUSH”

In Cairo, a “Day of Anger” was held at the 10th century al-Azhar mosque, a traditional center of Sunni Muslim learning. A banner strung between two mosque pillars urged, “Wake up Muslims! It’s a conspiracy between the pope and Bush!”

Kamal Habib, a scholar who helped organize the protest in Cairo, commented that “It looks as if the Vatican is providing the religious justification for the wars waged in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

After prayers in the Iranian capital Teheran, 300 people staged a protest rally. Whilst burning U.S., British and Israeli flags, they chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

POPE MEETS WITH ENVOYS FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD

Pope Benedict XVI expressed “total and profound respect” for the Muslim faith during a meeting yesterday with envoys from the Muslim world.

The pope also called for “sincere and respectful dialogue” during the meeting, held at the pope’s residence near Rome. It is thought this was a reference to restrictions on the church’s activity in some Muslim countries.

Attending the meeting were ambassadors from 21 countries, a representative from the Arab League, as well as local Islamic representatives from Italy.

Following the meeting, the ambassador of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, complained that the pope had not referred directly to the speech which sparked the controversy.

Iraq’s ambassador said it was time to move on from the row and build bridges.

TWO ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS KILLED IN IRAQ OVER POPE REMARKS

An Assyrian Christian man was stabbed to death at the Assyrian market in the Doura District in Baghdad on Saturday. This came a day after an attack on the Syriac Catholic Church in the Ashar district of central Basra where another man was murdered.

Christian leaders in Iraq have warned their congregations to be extremely cautious and not to leave their homes as a new group called the Young Brigades of Fundamental Islam has distributed leaflets announcing that all Iraqi Christians would be killed in three days if the Pope does not apologize.

EUROPEAN UNION HEAD DEFENDS POPE

“Attacking the pope because he refers in a discourse to a historical document is completely unacceptable,” EU Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper. Barroso added that he was “disappointed that there weren’t more European leaders who said, ‘obviously the pope has the right to express his opinion.’ The problem is not the comments of the pope but the reactions of the extremists ... We must defend our values.”

AZNAR CALLS ON MUSLIMS TO “APOLOGIZE FOR OCCUPYING SPAIN FOR 800 YEARS”

The former Spanish prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, pointed out in a speech a few days ago that Muslims have never apologized for the nearly 800-year Moorish occupation of Spain that began in the year 711 with an invasion from North Africa.

Aznar said: “It is interesting to note that while a lot of people in the world are asking the pope to apologize for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries.”

The former Spanish prime minister described it as “absurd” if one compared it to the constant call by Muslims demanding apologies whenever they feel offended by remarks by non-Muslims.

In the same speech, delivered at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C., Aznar said the West is under attack from radical Islam and must defend itself. “It is them or it is us. There is no middle ground.”

Aznar was voted out of office in 2004 within days of Spain being hit by the biggest terror attack in Europe since the Second World War. For more, see Madrid 1: Does Bin Laden wish to reclaim “Occupied Spain”? (March 13, 2004).

SAUDI MORALITY POLICE WILL NOT BE DISSOLVED

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz has resisted calls to dissolve the morality police, a 4,000-strong force known as Mutawas.

Prince Nayef said at the weekend in defense of the Islamic police: “They talk about an organ that promotes the good and prevents the bad. Its dissolution has been rejected in the past, it is rejected today, and it will be rejected tomorrow.”

For more on some of the laws that are enforced by the Mutawas, please see Saudi police ban the sale of cats and dogs (& Gaddafi’s son: Pope must convert) (Sept. 21, 2006).

THE WEST SHOULD “QUIT SAYING SORRY AND UNITE”

Jeff Jacoby, writing in the Boston Globe, warns that another “frenzy” will occur soon. “It’s only a matter of time until the next one erupts. This time it was a 14th-century quote from a Byzantine ruler that set off – or rather, was exploited by Islamist firebrands to ignite – the international demonstrations, death threats, and violence. Earlier this year it was cartoons about Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. Last year it was a Newsweek report, later debunked, that a Koran had been desecrated by a U.S. interrogator in Guantanamo. Before that it was Jerry Falwell’s comment on ‘60 Minutes’ that Mohammed was a ‘terrorist.’ Back in 1989 it was the publication of Salman Rushdie’s satirical novel, ‘The Satanic Verses.’”

“In every case, the pretext for the Muslim rage was the claim that Islam had been insulted. Freedom of speech was irrelevant: While the rioters and those inciting them routinely insult Christianity, Judaism, and other religions, they demand that no one be allowed to denigrate Islam or its prophet. It is a staggering double standard, and too many in the West seem willing to go along with it. Witness the editorials in U.S. newspapers this week scolding the pope for his speech.”

The article by Jacoby, a subscriber to this list, can be read in full here.

***

I attach two further articles in full below. Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post, expresses shock at all the apologies by the pope: “No one, apparently, can remember any pope, not even the media-friendly John Paul II, apologizing for anything in such specific terms: not for the Inquisition, not for the persecution of Galileo and certainly not for a single comment made to an academic audience in an unimportant German city.”

She calls on the “West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don’t see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.”

The second article, by Bret Stephens in today’s Wall Street Journal, compares Pope Benedict XVI to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “the nearest thing Sunni Islam has to a pope… His fatwas, or religious edicts on matters personal or political, are widely considered definitive among Sunnis.”

One of the many examples given by Stephens is from February of this year. In response to the Danish cartoon controversy, Qaradawi said on al-Jazeera: “The nation must rage in anger… We are not a nation of jackasses... We are lions that zealously protect their dens, and avenge affronts to their sanctities.”

Stephens notes that the following day, “mobs attacked the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus; the day after that, they burned the Danish consulate in Beirut to the ground. The same day, a Catholic priest was shot in Turkey by a teenage boy. In all, some 30 people were killed answering Mr. Qaradawi’s call to rage.”

As I have pointed out before, Qaradawi remains the darling of certain leftist western politicians, such as London mayor Ken Livingstone, who makes a point of publicly hugging Qaradawi, even after he praised Palestinian suicide bombers.

-- Tom Gross

[Note by Tom Gross]

This dispatch includes news on attacks and would-be attacks on Israelis and Jews in northern Europe in recent days, and a possible change in policies in Sweden, arguably the country which has had the most anti-Israeli government in Europe.

FOUR ARRESTED IN PLOT TO KILL ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO NORWAY

Norwegian authorities have arrested four men over a plot to decapitate the Israeli ambassador to Norway, Miriam Shomrat, and blow up the Israeli and American embassies in Oslo. The four could face jail terms of up to 12 years if convicted.

The suspects, two of Pakistani background, one of Turkish origin and a native Norwegian, are also charged with firing at least 10 shots from an automatic weapon at Oslo’s only synagogue last week, causing damage but no injuries. The youngest suspect, who is 26, is not an immigrant. Norwegian media report he is the son of a royal residence employee, and until May lived in the area of the royal residence.

Norway’s Jewish population, which numbers 7,000, has been the object of several attacks in recent months. Among other incidents, a person wearing a skull cap was attacked and a Jewish cemetery desecrated. The police have now greatly increased security around Jewish sites.

According to a Norwegian Jewish journalist, such acts were legitimized by the anti-Israel atmosphere following the Lebanon war and by a letter sent by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder*, prophesying a flood of biblical proportions engulfing Israel, and saying that “the first Zionist terrorists started operating in the days of Jesus.”

Norway was the target of Islamic rage earlier this year after a Norwegian publication became the first to reprint the cartoons of Mohammed from a Danish newspaper, cartoons which many Muslims found highly offensive. About 75,000 Muslims live in the country, less than 2 percent of the population.

(* For more on “Sophie’s World” author Gaarder, please see the dispatch Firm with Nazi past buys 25% of Ha’aretz (& animals recover from Hizbullah), Aug. 21, 2006.)

TWO SYNAGOGUES ATTACKED IN RUSSIA HOURS BEFORE JEWISH HOLIDAY

Just hours before Jewish communities gathered to celebrate the Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year’s) holiday on Friday evening, two synagogues in Russia were attacked.

The windows of a synagogue in Khabarovsk, a city of 580,000 on the border with China, were shattered. And a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the second synagogue, in the Volga River city of Astrakhan in southern Russia, setting a door on fire.

Russia’s chief rabbi Berel Lazar (who is a subscriber to this email list) said that although the Jewish community was shocked by the attacks, “if those who attacked the synagogues expected to scare Jews on those holy days, they have been mistaken.”

According to Russian anti-racism groups, recent years have witnessed a rise in xenophobia and hate crimes, partly as a consequence of the authorities’ reluctance in prosecuting the perpetrators. Possibly in response to such criticism, Russian courts sentenced to 16 years in prison the man who stabbed nine people in a Moscow synagogue last January.

NAZI FLAG AND SALUTE IN LITHUANIA BAR

Last week, a bar in Kaunas, Lithuania, decided to celebrate its 10th anniversary by flying a Nazi flag and dressing one of its waiters as Adolph Hitler, who was then instructed to give the Nazi salute to its customers. According to a Lithuanian daily, the bar also celebrates Hitler’s birthday.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, of the Wiesenthal Center (who is a subscriber to this list), expressed his outrage and called for the prosecution of those responsible. The display of the Nazi flag did not come as a surprise, he said, since Lithuania has failed to prosecute and punish local Nazi war criminals and is a country in which those who facilitated the annihilation of its Jewish population are treated with undue sympathy and mercy.

In 2001, Dr. Zuroff handed the Lithuanian government a list of 97 names of suspected Nazi collaborators. So far only three have stood trial for Holocaust-related crimes and none has received a sentence.

More than 220,000 Jews lived in Lithuania before WWII and the first mass murder of Jews during the war took place in Kaunas. Today, there are about 4,000 Jews remaining in the country.

POLAND HAS ITS FIRST NATIVE RABBI IN 40 YEARS

Poland’s Jewish community now has its first native Pole to serve as a rabbi since the fall of communism in 1989. Rabbi Mati Pawlak, 29, who had no idea he was Jewish for the first half of his life, is the first Pole to become a rabbi in 40 years and is being seen as an important symbol of hope for Poland’s Jewish community. Pawlak, from the town of Szczecin in northwestern Poland, didn’t learn until he was 14 that his family was Jewish. His mother only told him after communism fell and it became safer for Poles to admit that they were Jewish, even to their own families.

Since the end of communism, many other Poles have been told by their parents or grandparents that they are Jewish, and today there are estimated to be around 30,000 people identifying themselves as Jews in Poland. 90 percent of the 3.5 million Jews who lived there before WWII were murdered by the Nazis.

Three other rabbis – an American, an Israeli and a Swede of Polish origin – have also recently begun working in Poland, pushing up the number nationwide from three to seven – the highest in 50 years.

Last week, Germany’s Jewish community also had its first three rabbis ordained since the Holocaust.

ISRAEL WARMLY WELCOMES SWEDISH ELECTION RESULT

Israeli government officials welcomed the defeat of Sweden’s Social Democratic government at last week’s elections, saying they hope it will end an “unabashedly pro-Arab, anti-Israeli” position. Sweden's center-right opposition alliance claimed victory in the elections, ending 12 years of Social Democrat rule. Israeli officials say that Sweden has been more critical of Israel than any other European country and that the election of a center-right government will change things.

For more on Swedish hostility to Jews and Israel, see the article below, as well as the following dispatches. In the first of these dispatches, we are reminded of how the Swedish government defended an exhibit glorifying the suicide bomber of a Haifa restaurant. That bomber killed 23 people.

* Sweden 1: The killer as Snow White (Jan. 19, 2004).
* Sweden 2: The ambassador and the artist debate live on radio (Jan. 19, 2004).
* Sweden 3: Suicide posters removed from subway stations (Jan. 22, 2004).

-- Tom Gross

[Note by Tom Gross]

DID ANYONE SAY DOUBLE STANDARDS?

The following notes, about some of the excesses of the Islamic world, accompanies this week’s other dispatches about the reaction by some Muslims to Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on Islam.

Those so vigorously protesting the pope’s remarks seem to have little to say about fellow Muslims citing the Koran to justify, and even command, the killing of “apostates” who leave Islam (like former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali), and of “blasphemers” (like Salman Rushdie), and of “infidels” in general and Jews and homosexuals in particular.

They have little to say about the numerous senior Islamic preachers who have savagely incited against Jews from their pulpits – often broadcast live on state-television – informing worshippers that Jews are descended from monkeys and dogs, are subhuman, and undeserving of life.

They have little to say about the Koranic commands for amputating hands, for public floggings and beheadings, and for wife-beating, let alone about the lack of freedom of worship afforded to other faiths in countries like Saudi Arabia. They have little to say about the suicide bomb attacks on Christians, Jews, Hindus and others carried out in the name of Islam.

Here are a few news items from recent days:

SAUDI RELIGIOUS POLICE BAN CATS AND DOGS

Saudi Arabia’s religious police, who usually spend their time making sure women cover themselves, men attend prayers and that married men and women don’t mix, have a new rule to enforce. They have issued a decree banning the sale of cats and dogs in the Red Sea port city of Jiddah and in the holy city of Mecca because “some youths have been buying them and parading them in public,” according to a memo from the Municipal Affairs Ministry, republished by the Associated Press.

No other Arab country restricts pet ownership. Last year Iranian police urged people not to bring their dogs out in public, but this was never enshrined in law and was widely ignored by Iranian dog-owners.

The prohibition on dogs in Saudi Arabia does not come as a surprise, since conservative Muslims think dogs are unclean. The ban on cats has been questioned by some since Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Mohammed loved cats and once let a cat drink from his ablutions water before washing himself for prayers.

NIGERIAN PICKPOCKET AT MECCA’S GRAND MOSQUE HAS HAND CUT OFF

A Nigerian man, convicted of stealing at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, has had his right hand severed.

Kurba Thani Mohammed was found guilty of “pickpocketing inside the Great Mosque,” according to a statement carried by the official Saudi government SPA news agency.

Saudi Arabia applies a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law) that provides for severing the hand for theft, and the death penalty for a host of other offenses.

GIRL, 6, BURNED TO DEATH IN “HONOR” KILLING IN ENGLAND

Alisha Begum, a six-year-old girl living in Birmingham, England, was killed in an arson attack on her home, Birmingham Crown Court heard yesterday. The attack was planned by Hussain Ahmed, a 26-year-old dentist, and Daryll Tuzzio, 18, after Ahmed found out his 15-year-old sister was seeing Alisha’s brother, Abdul Hamid, 21.

Birmingham Crown Court was told yesterday by prosecutor Adrian Redgrave: “One hears of so-called honor killings though one may wonder how by any stretch of the imagination there can be any honor in what happened here, resulting in the death of a six-year-old child.” For more, see here.

12-DAY GANG RAPE OF MOTHER/DAUGHTER FOR GOING TO COLLEGE

One of Australia’s leading papers reports that news of another horrific gang rape in Pakistan emerged over the weekend. A mother and daughter in a rural area were abducted and gang-raped for 12 days because the daughter refused to stop going to college in defiance of local Islamic custom. I have not seen this crime reported in most North American and European news media, many of which instead fill up their foreign news pages with articles critical only of America and Israel. For more see here.

RULER OF DUBAI ACCUSED OF CHILD TRAFFICKING

A suit has been filed in a Florida court alleging that the ruler of Dubai and his brother have enslaved around 30,000 children over the past 30 years for use as camel jockeys.

The defendants include Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, and Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the minister of finance and industry.

The brothers, who are among the world’s best-known racehorse owners, are accused of trafficking boys as young as 2 from Bangladesh, Sudan and southern Asia.

The claim is based on an international law banning slavery and child labor and was filed in Florida because the defendants own property there.

ISLAMISTS CLOSE SOMALI RADIO STATION FOR AIRING “LOVE SONGS”

Islamists in control of large parts of southern Somalia shut down a radio station for airing “music and love songs.” Radio Jowhar was closed last week after Sheikh Mohammed Abdirahman ordered that playing “music and love songs for the people” was un-Islamic and would be banned.

The station has since resumed broadcasting on condition it no longer plays any music or jingles. It was the only radio station in Jowhar, 55 miles from the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Elsewhere in Somalia, radio stations are still broadcasting normally, playing all kinds of music, including western hip-hop and R ‘n’ B.

Since capturing a large swathe of southern Somalia (including the capital) in June, Islamic groups have imposed strict Sharia rule. Islamists in Mogadishu have banned the watching of films, and broken up wedding celebrations where bands were playing music and women and men were seen socializing together.

During the recent soccer World Cup, Islamist gunmen in Somalia pulled the plug on makeshift cinemas airing the soccer tournament. For more, see Banning the World Cup, Israeli wine labels, and other items (June 14, 2006).

ISLAMIC CONFERENCE: MUSLIMS MUST BUY UP WESTERN MEDIA

Almost none of the above stories received much coverage in mainstream western media, which tends to be dominated by journalists with leftist opinions who wish to avoid reporting on human rights abuses in the Muslim world. However, it seems government ministers from Islamic countries would like to see even less western coverage.

Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world’s largest Islamic body, were told at a conference in Saudi Arabia last Wednesday that Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change reporting on Muslims around the world.

“Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world so that they have the ability to affect their policies via their administrative boards,” the chief of the OIC, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, said.

He added that “This would benefit in terms of correcting the image of Islam worldwide.” He called on Muslim countries to set up more television channels in widely-spoken foreign languages.

Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal already has a sizeable stake in News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-run group which owns the Fox News Channel.

Egyptian Information Minister Anas el-Feki also told the OIC: “Now more than ever we need a new Islamic media message that reaches all parts of the world.”

SUICIDE BOMBING SPREADS

The phenomena of the suicide bomb, which some in the west (such as Tony Blair’s wife Cherie) were almost sympathetic to when its prime victims were Israelis*, continues to spread to more and more countries. On Monday, Somalia became the latest country to witness its first suicide bomb attack, during which the Somalian president survived an assassination attempt. Five members of the president’s entourage died in the blast in the central Somalian city of Baidoa.

“The assassination attempt today in Baidoa is associated with what happened in Mogadishu on Sunday where the Catholic nun was killed in the cold blood. Whoever was behind that attack is also behind this,” the Somali foreign minister said.

* One prominent western politician who continues to offer encouragement to Palestinian suicide bombers is Dr. Jenny Tonge, a prominent parliamentarian for the British Liberal Democratic party who on Tuesday at the annual Lib Dem Conference reiterated her support for suicide bombings in Israel. She also made anti-Semitic comments, which as British journalist and commentator Stephen Pollard points out could have come straight out of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

For more on Tonge, see For and against: the British MP who would be a suicide bomber, (Jan. 26, 2004).

GADDAFI’S SON: POPE MUST CONVERT TO ISLAM “IMMEDIATELY”

The elder son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has told Pope Benedict XVI that he must convert to Islam “immediately,” dismissing Sunday’s apology from the pontiff for supposedly offending Muslims.

“If this person were really someone reasonable, he would not agree to remain at his post one minute, but would convert to Islam immediately,” Mohammed Gaddafi told an awards ceremony in Tripoli for an international competition to memorize the Koran. “We say to the pope – whether you apologize or not is irrelevant, as apologies make no difference to us.”

Gaddafi junior also hit out at “those Muslims who look for comfort in the words of a non-Muslim”. He said Muslims “should not look for charity from the infidel... but should fight Islam’s enemies who attack the faith and the Prophet Mohammed.”

AL-QAEDA “LEADER” CLAIMS BEHEADING OF SUDAN NEWSPAPER EDITOR

While Islamist-backed Arab militias continue to carry out mass killings verging on genocide in the Darfur region of southern Sudan, other atrocities are taking place elsewhere in the country.

Abu Hafs al-Sudani, who says he is the leader of an African branch of al-Qaeda, has claimed responsibility for the beheading of a Sudanese newspaper editor last week.

A statement by al-Sudani called the beheaded editor, Mohammed Taha a “dog of dogs from the ruling party,” and accused him of insulting the prophet Mohammed.

Last year Taha reprinted a series of articles questioning the roots of the Prophet Mohammed. He was kidnapped from outside his home in Khartoum, and beheaded last Wednesday. The north of Sudan is under Sharia law.

For commentary on the mass killings in the south, see Sudan genocide 2: Where’s Sean Penn when you need him? Where’s the ISM?, (Aug. 9, 2004), and other previous dispatches.

AL-QAEDA THREATENS FRANCE

Al-Qaeda has for the first time announced a union with the Algerian insurgent “Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat,” which is known by its French initials GSPC, and has designated France as an enemy. They say they will act together against French and American targets.

Al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the “blessed union” in the most recent al-Qaeda video posted on the internet to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Al-Zawahiri said “All the praise is due to Allah for the blessed union which we ask Allah to be as a bone in the throats of the Americans and French Crusaders and their allies, and inspire distress, concern and dejection in the hearts of the traitorous, apostate sons of France.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister, said “We take these threats very seriously.” He added that the threat to France was “high” and “permanent,” and that “absolute vigilance” was required. France’s leaders have warned previously that the decision not to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq would not shield the country from Islamic terrorism.

In an article published on September 14, the French daily Le Figaro confirmed that the French secret services believe that there are several dozen Algerian GSPC terrorist cells in France. Le Figaro said GSPC is in deep difficulties in Algeria but is gaining strength in Europe. The French authorities are worried about the consequences of their policies aiming at a national reconciliation in Algeria. Since the beginning of 2006, more than 2,000 prisoners (including former members of the armed Islamist group GIA) have been freed.

(For more, in French, see this article in Le Figaro. There is a slightly shorter version in English here.)

40 KILLED IN YEMEN STAMPEDE

At least 40 people were killed when a political meeting in Yemen ended and too many people tried to exit from a single door. Another 100 people were injured at the rally addressed by President Ali Abdallah Salih in the run-up to the upcoming presidential election.

Separately, four French tourists were kidnapped in Yemen last Sunday. It is the latest in a series of hostage takings as the Abdallah tribe attempts the release of many of its members from government detention.

Yemeni authorities have announced that they prevented a double suicide-bombing on oil refineries in the country. The announcement last Friday came two days after al-Qaeda had warned it intended to carry out attacks against Arab states in the Persian Gulf region. According to the Sana news agency, four would-be bombers, on their way to two oil and gas facilities, were intercepted and killed. One security officer also died.

HEAD OF MUSLIM COUNCIL OF BRITAIN WARNS OF 2 M. TERRORISTS

Mohammed Abdul Bari, the secretary-general of Britain’s main Muslim group, the Muslim Council of Britain, has blamed “some police officers and sections of the media” for “demonizing Muslims, treating them as if they’re all terrorists – and that encourages other people to do the same.” Bari also told The Sunday Telegraph that if the supposed “demonization” continues then “Britain will have to deal with two million Muslim terrorists – 700,000 of them in London.”

HIZBULLAH ANNOUNCES “VICTORY RALLY” TOMORROW

Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has set this Friday evening, while Israelis are celebrating the Jewish new year, as the time to hold a massive rally celebrating Hizbullah’s “victory” over Israel in 34 days of warfare. Nasrallah, who has been in hiding since the start of the war, said the rally would “celebrate the divine and historic victory over the Zionists.”

For more on the aftermath of the recent Hizbullah-Israel war, see “The Arabs have become wise enough to know TV victory from real victory” (Sept. 5, 2006).

REPORT: FREED TERRORISTS KILLED 132 ISRAELIS AFTER RELEASE

Hizbullah is demanding that Israel release prisoners, including convicted terrorists.

A new report issued by an Israeli NGO reveals that 132 Israelis were killed by terrorists who had previously been released from Israeli jails between 1993 and 1999. Israel had released these terrorists under UN and international pressure, including that from the Clinton administration in the United States.

The report by the Almagor Terror Victims Association listed 14 specific attacks perpetrated by released terrorists, including some of the most notorious incidents in recent years.

SADDAM RAGES AGAINST “AGENTS OF ZIONISM”

Saddam Hussein attacked Kurdish survivors giving evidence at his genocide trial in Baghdad last week. Saddam and six other defendants are accused of killing up to 180,000 Kurds during “Operation Anfal” in 1987 and 1988. Saddam accused Kurds who survived the massacres, and are now testifying about how their wives and children had been gassed to death by Saddam, as “agents of Zionism.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS EMPLOYEE “SPIED FOR SADDAM”

An Iraqi Intelligence officer’s report to different Iraqi Intelligence Directorates referring to secret information provided to them from a trusted source who works for the Associated Press, has been made public. The information was about the formation of a new UN weapons inspectors team called UNMOVIC. For more, see www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=6058.

-- Tom Gross

* Update: Some of the cartoons referred to in this dispatch have since been removed by the various websites linked to here.

[Note by Tom Gross]

As an update to yesterday’s dispatch Palestinians attack churches as anti-Pope sentiment grows around world, here is some more reaction to the pope’s comments on Islam in cartoon form:

BENEDICT XVI SHOOTS AND KILLS ON AL-JAZEERA

Last night, one of the main Italian TV news programs, TG5, showed in its evening prime-time edition an animated cartoon which had been put online by al-Jazeera. The cartoon shows former Pope John Paul II taking white doves out of a box where it is written “religious harmony.” His successor, Benedict XVI then fires a rifle, and kills the doves. To see the cartoon, accompanied by music and gunfire click here from Italy.

And here directly from al-Jazeera.

Il Corriere della Sera, reports that the cartoon was created by Shujaat Ali, a Pakistani cartoonist, the recipient of many prizes from his country as well from Japan and Iran. He now works for al-Jazeera. Another of his recent animated cartoons, dedicated to the Israeli-Lebanese crisis, shows a journalist interviewing the Statue of Liberty that has the face of U.S. President George W. Bush, holding a mini-Ehud Olmert setting fire to the Middle East.

A CARTOON FROM AUSTRALIA

This cartoon from “The Australian” newspaper, reproduced here on this Australian blog, has a different viewpoint to that of Shujaat Ali.

It is also available by clicking on number 2 in the “bleak” gallery here.

AND THE POPE WITH A SWASTIKA

The front page of the new edition of the Egyptian weekly Ruz al-Yusuf includes a cartoon of the pope with a swastika round his neck. The cartoon accompanied an article about the heads of the Egyptian Coptic Church attacking the pope’s comments. The cartoon can be seen here.

Other cartoons of the pope made to look like Hitler were found on Islamist websites by the journalist Hamza Boccolini and published by the Italian daily Libero (subscription only). The cartoons have been put online for free by Informazione Corretta and can be seen at the bottom of this page.

AND THE POPE CONNECTED TO A FUSE

The Jordanian website, “mahjoob,” which along with other Arab and European media is monitored specially for this email list/website, has a cartoon of the pope attached to one of the Danish Mohammed cartoons, the one that depicts the prophet with a turban and has a fuse attached. The Jordanian cartoonist connects the pope to the fuse. The speech bubble above the pope says (translated from the Arabic): “This is not my opinion, but a quotation only.” Many of the cartoons on this website are often featured in Arabic-language newspapers, for example the London-based Palestinian daily al-Quds al-Arabi.

The cartoon can be seen here.

For more on the Danish cartoon controversy, see:

* Portraying the prophet from Persian art to South Park, (Feb. 6, 2006)

* “To be or not to be, that is the question,” not just asked by a famous fictional Dane, (Feb. 7, 2006)

* Belgium Muslim leader calls on Arabs to use Danish flag as a substitute for toilet paper, (Feb.6, 2006)

NOT YOUR USUAL MESSAGES BY THE CATHEDRAL

You may also want to watch this demonstration outside Westminster Cathedral in London last Sunday, in which British Muslim extremists call for the execution of the pope: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyMbYlCHXLY&eurl=

DANISH NEWSPAPER REPRINTS IRANIAN HOLOCAUST CARTOONS

Meanwhile, “Information,” a Danish newspaper, has printed six of the anti-Semitic cartoons about the Holocaust, which were commissioned for an Iranian exhibition recently. The cartoons had been on display in Teheran. Editor-in-chief of “Information,” Palle Weis, said he thought the cartoons were “tasteless but predictable.” The newspaper said he wanted to “even out” the Mohammed cartoons. But as I have noted before, the “Mohammed cartoons” were fair comments about people who themselves gloriously invoke Mohammed and Allah to kill civilians, whereas the Holocaust is a historical fact, and to compare the two types of cartoon is itself a form of Holocaust revisionism and anti-Semitism.

GREEK GOVERNMENT INCLUDES IRANIAN HOLOCAUST CARTOONIST

The small remaining Greek Jewish community (Greek Jews suffered particularly harshly during the Holocaust and were all but wiped out) have expressed disbelief after the Greek Culture Ministry last week decided to include an Iranian artist involved in a recent “competition” caricaturing the Nazi Holocaust, as a judge in a contest entitled: “The Cartoon as a Bridge Between Civilizations.”

The inclusion of Massud Shojai, the head of Iran Cartoon, the group that co-sponsored a (Nazi) Holocaust Cartoon contest that demeaned the victims of history’s worst genocide, has left Greek Jews in despair. Greece is a member of the European Union.

“NIGHT OF BUSH (AND BLAIR) CAPTURING”

A new game by al-Qaeda’s media arm GIMF (Global Islamic Media Front) has been announced, according to my sources that monitor terrorist groups. The trailer, which reads “Night of Bush capturing,” (but also shows a picture of Tony Blair) can be downloaded through www.alnusra.net/vb/showthread.php?t=6292.

And the “game” is here: hewar.khayma.com/showthread.php?t=57490

-- Tom Gross

[Note by Tom Gross]

FIVE CHURCHES IN WEST BANK & GAZA ATTACKED

Palestinians wielding guns and firebombs attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza over the weekend. The fire bombings at Nablus’ Anglican and Greek Orthodox churches left trails of black scorch marks. Church doors were charred and walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. Separately, a group of masked gunmen doused the main doors of Nablus’ Roman and Greek Catholic churches with lighter fluid and set them afire.

A group calling itself the “Lions of Monotheism” claimed responsibility; they said the attacks were to protest Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks last week which some claim were offensive to Islam.

In supposedly impoverished Gaza, a Greek Orthodox Church came under gunfire from a car, this only a day after explosive devices were set off in the same church.

Palestinian Christians are already under great pressure from the Islamic-led Palestinian Authority, but the Western media (despite having many Christians among their readers) rarely report on this, preferring to highlight Israeli actions.

On Tuesday, in one small passage from a lengthy speech in German, Pope Benedict XVI quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, Islam’s founder, as “evil and inhuman.”

The pope yesterday apologized, following the angry reaction to his remarks. At his summer palace outside Rome, he told pilgrims “these (words) were in fact a quotation from a medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought.”

He continued “At this time I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.”

On Saturday, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone issued a statement explaining the pontiff’s remarks, apologizing and insisting that the church “esteems Muslims.”

MUJAHEDEEN ARMY THREATENS POPE

Efforts by Pope Benedict XVI to assuage anger in the Muslim world caused by his comments appear to have had little effect. Over 1,000 people demonstrated in the Iraqi city of Basra today, and effigies of Benedict were burned.

The Mujahedeen Army, an Iraqi terrorist group which has claimed responsibility for scores of attacks in Iraq, threatened the Vatican with a suicide attack over the pope’s remarks about Islam. Addressing “the dog of Rome,” they threatened to “shake your thrones and break your crosses in your home.” The message, posted on a website also said “we swear to God to send you people who adore death as much as you adore life.”

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has also demanded “a personal apology [from the pope]. We feel that he has committed a grave error against us and that this mistake will only be removed through a personal apology,” Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Leader Mohammed Habib told Reuters.

On Friday night, 2,000 Palestinians angrily protested against the pope in Gaza City, accusing him of leading a new crusade against the Muslim world. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh sent a message to the protestors saying Pope Benedict XVI had offended Muslims everywhere.

ITALIAN NUN MURDERED BY ISLAMISTS

According to the Turin-based daily La Stampa, a hard-line Somali cleric called on Muslims to “hunt down” and kill the pope. Following this call a 65-year-old Italian nun working in Somalia was shot and killed yesterday in Mogadishu. According to the leading Italian national daily, Il Corriere della Sera, the nun was killed by members of a pro-Taliban group as a response to the pope’s lecture in Germany. The nun had been working at a children’s hospital in north Mogadishu.

Lebanon’s most senior Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, told worshippers during his Friday prayers sermon: “We call on the pope to carry out a scientific and fastidious reading of Islam. We do not want him to succumb to the propaganda of the enemy led by Judaism.”

Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party, said Friday that Benedict “is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.”

The Moroccan Foreign Ministry recalled its ambassador to the Holy See in protest over the pope’s remarks. On Friday, Pakistan’s parliament unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the pope for what it called “derogatory” comments about Islam.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq cited a hadith (a saying of the Prophet Mohammed) promising Muslims they would “conquer Rome ... as they conquered Constantinople.” Also on Saturday, an Iranian-based terrorist group threatened suicide attacks against the Vatican.

On Friday evening, 50,000 Israeli Arabs at the 11th annual congress of the Israeli Islamic Movement, in the northern Israeli town of Umm al-Fahm, heard Sheikh Raëd Salah tell them “Soon Jerusalem will be the capital of the new Muslim caliphate.”

EUROPEAN POLITICIANS DEFEND POPE. NEW YORK TIMES CRITICIZES HIM

While European Muslims were quick to attack the pope’s words, the continent’s political leaders declined to follow. “Whoever criticizes the pope misunderstood the aim of his speech,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with the German newspaper Bild. “What Benedict XVI emphasized was a decisive and uncompromising renunciation of all forms of violence in the name of religion,” she explained.

Italian European parliament vice president Mario Mauro condemned as “monstrous” the manipulation of the pope’s remarks by Islamic leaders which he claimed were used to “hit out at Christians and the West.”

Some western liberal media though criticized the pope. The New York Times editorialized on Saturday that the pope must give a “deep and persuasive” apology for his remarks. “The world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly,” it said.

ARAB MEDIA: “THE POPE’S COMMENTS MAY LEAD TO WAR”

Opinion articles in Arabic-language newspapers have been filled with strong rhetoric over the pope’s comments. Writing in the London-based Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat, Hani Pahas said “We fear that the pope’s statements may lead to a war that we, Muslims and Christians alike, are trying to prevent through dialogue between East and West.”

The pope has in recent days been compared to both Osama bin Laden and Hitler. Hussein Shabakshy, writing in al-Sharq al-Awsat, another London-based Arabic-language daily, commented that: “It is clear that such remarks only contribute to the fueling of the fire raging between Islam and the West. There is no difference between Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri speaking from their caves in Tora Bora and the stage of an important Christian saint. Both parties contribute to the world verbal weapons of mass destruction.”

Shabakshy continued, “These are ignorant comments previously made by Adolf Hitler, who spoke of a supreme white race against all the other races, especially the African race,” he added, ignoring the fact that most of Hitler’s venom was directed at Jews.

IRANIAN NEWSPAPERS SAYS U.S. AND ISRAEL BEHIND POPE’S COMMENTS

The Iranian daily Jomhuri Islami claimed that Israel and the United States dictated the pope’s comments to distract attention from the recent war between Israel and Hizbullah.

The newspaper commented that “the reality is that if we do not consider Pope Benedict XVI to be ignorant of Islam, then his remarks against Islam are a dictat that the Zionists and the Americans have written (for him) and have submitted to him… The American and the Zionist aim is to undermine the glorious triumph of Islam’s children of Lebanese Hizbullah, which annulled the undefeatable legend of the Israeli army and foiled the Satanic and colonialist American plot.”

Another Iranian daily newspaper, Kayhan, argued that “There are many signs that show that Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks regarding the great prophet of Islam are a link in a connected chain of a Zionist-American project… The project, which was created and executed by the Zionist minority, aims at creating confrontation between the followers of the two great divine religions.”

CHRISTIANS BLAME MEDIA DISTORTION FOR MUSLIM VIOLENCE

Some Christian leaders and theologians have blamed certain sections of the Western media for distorting Pope Benedict’s comments. For example, Father David Neuhaus, professor of Scripture at the Roman Catholic Seminary in Beit Jalla, argued that the western secular liberal media “ripped” the pope’s statement about Islam out of context.

He said “The pope’s speech was about how there was no room for violence in the relationship between reason and faith, and his message was directed primarily at secularism, not Islam.”

POPE ALSO OFFENDS JEWS

Barely minutes after saying he was “deeply sorry” about the reaction to his earlier remarks on Islam yesterday, the pope cited a passage from the New Testament highlighting the gulf between Christian and Jewish attitudes to the crucifixion of Jesus.

The Pope quoted St. Paul, the New Testament author most often accused of anti-Semitism, saying “We preach the crucified Christ – a scandal for the Jews, a folly for the pagans.”

In response, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, a member of the board of the Council of Christians and Jews, a group set up to oppose prejudice between different religions and races, said “The pope has every right to quote his own holy texts, but it may be unwise in the current climate to choose those which relate to other faiths.”

The rabbi added that “it is especially important that anyone who does protest does so verbally, not physically, otherwise they put themselves even more at fault.”

***

I attach two articles below. In the first, William Rees-Mogg says “Islam has only partially experienced the modern process of enlightenment and reform, which was, after all, resisted by a number of pre-Vatican II popes. Pope Benedict will have done Islam a service if he has started a debate within Islam and between Islam and the critics.”

The second article is written by Magdi Allam, the Egyptian-born deputy-editor of Italy’s highest circulation newspaper, Corriere della Sera. “Why do not Muslims, especially the so-called moderates, react with strength and intensity against the real and eternal desecrators of Islam – that is, the Islamic terrorists who kill other Muslims in the name of the same God, radical Muslims who legitimize the destruction of Israel and brainwash ordinary Muslims into martyrdom?” he asks.

-- Tom Gross

 

FULL ARTICLES

“JOURNALISTS SHOULD NOT CRITICISE POPE BENEDICT XVI”

Why the Pope was right
By William Rees-Mogg
The Times of London
September 18, 2006

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-2362630,00.html

Journalists should not criticise Pope Benedict XVI for his lecture at Regensburg. He has done only what every sub-editor on the Daily Mail does every day. Confronted with a long and closely written text, he inserted a lively quote to draw attention to the argument. We all do it. Sometimes the quote causes trouble, but more often it opens up an argument that is needed.

The question is not whether the quotation from the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus is offensive: it is.

The question is whether the emperor is justified in what he said. His main thrust was at least partly justified. There is a real problem about the teaching of the Koran on violence against the infidel. That existed in the 14th century, and was demonstrated on 9/11, 2001. There is every reason to discuss it. I am more afraid of silence than offence.

The Pope’s actual quotation is not just a medieval point of view. It is a common modern view; even if it seldom reaches print; it can certainly be found on the internet. “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and then you shall find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Is it true that the Koran contains such a command, and has it influenced modern terrorists? The answers, unfortunately, are “yes” and “yes”.

The so-called Sword Verse from Chapter 9 must have been in the emperor’s mind: “So when the sacred months have passed away, Then slay the idolaters wherever you find them.

“And take them captive and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in every ambush.”

This does shock many Muslims: extremists are angered by the implied criticism of those who quote it, while moderates who cannot disavow the terms of the Koran prefer more evasive interpretations. The shock it creates shows the importance of the doctrine.

One man who does not question the meaning of the verse is Osama bin Laden. His attitude is discussed at some length in Chapter 14 of an excellent new book, The Qur’an, a Biography, by Bruce Lawrence, who is the Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, North Carolina. Lawrence observes the use of this verse as a central argument for jihad in Bin Laden’s manifesto in 1996; that was a declaration of war against native and foreign infidels.

Lawrence makes several relevant points. Bin Laden selects only those verses that fit his message, and then cites them exclusively for his own purposes. He ignores both their original context and also the variety of historical differences between committed Muslims about how to apply their dicta. He collapses the broad spectrum of Koranic teaching into a double requirement: first to believe; and then to fight.

Lawrence also draws attention to the qualifications that surround the Sword Verse; particularly that those infidels who repent should be allowed to go free: “For God is most forgiving; most merciful.”

It is impossible to reconcile the consistent Koranic teaching that God is most merciful with suicide bombing, which is indiscriminate and murders faithfuls and infidels alike.

It is a mistake to think that all the major religions are identical: they have real differences of doctrine that have real impacts on human society. What is true, however, is that no religion shall survive for more than a generation or two unless it has a substantial element of truth in it. The diabolical cult of Nazism lasted for only one generation. It is natural for Christians of different denominations to love what they have in common without ceasing to be aware of their differences.

A Christian should also rejoice in the positive spiritual values of the other major religions. It is natural for a Christian to feel enriched by Judaism, which was the religion of Jesus; or by Platonism, the philosophy of the opening chapter of St John’s Gospel and of St Augustine. Yet Christians also find spiritual truths in Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam itself. There is a significant link between aspects of Islamic Sufi mysticism and the Christian mystical tradition.

When one lists these religions it becomes obvious that there are two problems: violence and the influence of reason, both of which Pope Benedict identified in his lecture. Violence is a fault from which no major religion has historically been free. St Patrick’s conversion of Ireland is sometimes given as a unique example of the conversion of a nation without the loss of a single life. It is one of the great scandals that so many persecutions have taken place in the name of Jesus.

This has been more or less true of all the great religions: human beings are the most savage of beasts, and they will kill each other in any cause, however noble.

Yet nowadays Islam is the only major religion in which violence is a serious doctrinal issue. It is true that tribalised Roman Catholics and Protestants in Ireland have only recently stopped killing each other and vengeful Sikhs assassinated Indira Gandhi in India, but neither the Catholic nor the Protestant churches believe in terror; nor do the Sikhs.

A significant proportion of the Islamic community does believe that suicide bombers are martyrs carrying out a religious duty. Suicide bombing causes Islamophobia. There are varying degrees of authority and uniformity in different religions; rather low in most cases. This pluralism has its own virtues, but in Islam they are outweighed by the disadvantages. Those imams who preach al-Qaeda’s view of the duty of jihad are not required to answer to any authority, even the authority of reason.

Islam has only partially experienced the modern process of enlightenment and reform, which was, after all, resisted by a number of pre-Vatican II Popes. Pope Benedict will have done Islam a service if he has started a debate within Islam and between Islam and the critics.

 

“SAD AND WORRYING”

The historical truth
By Magdi Allam
Corriere della Sera
September 15, 2006

www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Editoriali/2006/09_Settembre/15/magd1.shtml

It is sad and worrying that Muslims have given birth to an international united front to attack the Pope and ask for public apologies. From Bin Laden to the Muslim Brotherhood, from Pakistan to Turkey, from al-Jazeera to al-Arabiya, the transversal and universal alliance, which has already come into being following the Danish cartoons affair, has reappeared. Reaffirming very clearly that the root of evil is like a blind and prevailing ideology which outrages the faith and darkens the minds of many Muslims.

Why do not Muslims, especially the so-called moderates, react with such strength and intensity against the real and eternal desecrators of Islam – that is, the Islamic terrorists who kill other Muslims in the name of the same God, radical Muslims who legitimize the destruction of Israel and brainwash ordinary Muslims into martyrdom? Why do they now believe they must start a kind of Islamic “holy war” against the head of the [Catholic] Church who has the right to respectfully express his views about Islam, all the while with clarity on the evident difference between the two religions?

The pope’s quoting the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, regarding the expansion of Islam through the sword, either during the time of Mohammed and on the Arab Peninsula and after him, elsewhere, underlines an undeniable historical truth. The Quran itself states it; furthermore, the forced conversion of the entire Byzantine Empire, to Islam in the East and South of Mediterranean, and the further expansion northwards in Europe and Eastwards in Asia, demonstrates the point made by the Byzantine Emperor. It is foolish to deny the truth, as it can only cause deranged reaction. In the mid-Nineties one of the most prominent scholars of Islamic studies, the Egyptian Mohammed said al-Ashmawi, told me that he did not approve the Arab tribes’ military conquest of Christian lands in the Mediterranean and that he would have preferred Islam to expand peacefully, like it did in South-Eastern Asia. The Pope is threatened because he has said things that every single honest and rational Muslim should accept: the historical truth.

Time has come for both the West and Christianity to stop thinking that they are the source of all that happens – good or evil – within Islam as well as around the world. The ideology of hate is an ancestral reality at the core of Islam; it has been so since its inception, due to its’ refusal to recognize and respect the plurality of religious communities – a natural thing since in Islam the relationship between the believer and God is personal and there is no unique spiritual guide who embodies the absolute dogmas of faith. In fact, since the defeat of the Arab armies in the June 5th, 1967 war, the situation has been worsening while Islamic extremism has been on the rise starting from Iran to Indonesia, to the point where the advance of global Islamic terrorism has turned the West into a “Kamikaze factory”.

This is the tragic truth of the ideology of hate which binds all Muslims who are obsessed with anti-Americanism, anti-West and the prejudicial denial of Israel’s right to exist. They are able to find many pretexts to rage – from Israeli occupation, to the U.S.-led coalition into Iraq, to the cartoons about Mohammed and even the Pope’s words. Nevertheless the problem is at the root of Islam itself, an Islam which extremists turned from a faith in God into an ideology aiming for a theocratic and totalitarian order to impose on everyone who is not like them. And I am really scared when I realize that even the so-called moderates have given in to a “holy war” where they will be the primary victims.

[Note by Tom Gross]

BLACK FREEDOM MOVEMENTS MEET IN ISRAEL

In today’s Hebrew edition of Yediot Ahronot (on page 14), there is an amazing picture: a grandson of Nelson Mandela and a grandson of Martin Luther King meet for the first time and shake hands. They met in the northern Israeli town of Tiberias at the hotel of the Scottish Church. The former is on an official visit. Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, was recently hit by Hizbullah rockets.

FINALLY, THE BBC COVERS ISRAELI DEAD

Here is some news with a difference. Amnesty International has accused Hizbullah of war crimes for targeting Israeli civilians.

And the BBC ran this development this morning as their main item on the front of their world service home page, and on air on the world service. It links to this page: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5343188.stm

By the time you read this, the home page may have changed. But it was top of the world service home page (www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice) at 02:15 GMT, 03:15 UK, on Thursday, September 14, 2006, although NOT on the top of the BBC Arabic home page at that time or since (news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/news).

Furthermore, in the Arabic version, the BBC added changes that make the article more sympathetic to Hizbullah, adding some untrue anti-Israel propaganda comments from Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah (news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/news/newsid_5344000/5344374.stm).

In their English language (but not in their Arabic language) article, the statistics for Lebanese civilian and military dead have been reduced by the BBC to 1000. BBC correspondents and news announcers have previously (and wrongly) said 1400 Lebanese died.

Of course, we shouldn’t confuse today’s story with the still very poor coverage the BBC – and Amnesty – gives Israel elsewhere. By lunchtime today, BBC news was back to its old tricks, claiming that 140 Israelis were killed by Hizbullah rather than the 161 documented Israeli dead. The BBC wouldn’t reduce the numbers of British murdered in the July 7, 2005 London bomb attacks. (Or perhaps they would?)

For my previous criticism of BBC coverage, see The media war against Israel.

(The Guardian and other papers continue to make figures up concerning Lebanese dead. Last weekend The Guardian again ran a large photo of Qana – The Guardian has nothing else to write about – and said “more than 50 people died” there at Israeli hands. This is even though it is several weeks since the Lebanese Red Cross, the Lebanese government, Hizbullah and other western newspapers acknowledged that no more than 28 people died there.)

NO MORE “FREEDOM FIGHTERS” ON ABC

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has decided to drop the term “freedom fighters” from its style guide when referring to Hamas and Hizbullah terrorists.

John Cameron, the ABC’s head of news, announced the changes to the style guide last week. Cameron reportedly described the old reference as “a note of caution and education rather than instruction.”

The change follows Cameron’s admission during a Senate Estimates Committee hearing in May that in certain circumstances, Hamas, Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad could justifiably be classed as “terrorists”.

Michael Ronaldson, a liberal Australian Senator commented that he was “pleased that the appalling failure of ABC journalists to label terrorists as terrorists appears to be coming to an end... We must not be afraid to label such acts as terrorism. We must not be afraid to describe such acts in moral terms as evil.”

In the past I have criticized ABC’s anti-Israel coverage so this change is welcome. Some Australian Jews have argued that the marked increase in anti-Semitic attacks in Australia recently has in part been the result of slanted coverage of the Middle East by ABC and other media.

Groups representing the Australian victims of terrorist attacks said the change in the style book was “a step in the right direction but not much more than that. The change to the editorial guidelines does not represent a full admission that people who target civilians for political motives are terrorists.”

“CANCEL ISRAEL” STICKERS ON LONDON BUSES

Stickers have been found on traditional red double-decker buses in London calling on readers to “cancel Israel” to achieve “peace in the Middle East”.

According to the sticker the “current crisis” was “started with the kidnap of some democratically elected Hamas (members) and the killing of 8 Palestinians picnicking on the beach.”

The stickers also accuse the media of “giving a false impression” of the Middle East conflict. The words “cancel Israel” are written on the middle of the sticker in a large font.

The sticker can be seen here.

The accusation that Israel killed 8 Palestinians on a Gaza beach earlier this year has been discredited, after shrapnel taken from an injured child was found by forensic experts not to have come from an Israeli shell. There is also no record of the IDF firing at the beach at the time the explosion took place. The media have failed to report this properly. (See