GOOD READS OF RECENT EVENTS AND LOOK AT ISLAMIC ACTIONS

January 14, 2009
Police say three rockets fired from Lebanon have landed in northern Israel.

Police say the rockets landed in open areas near the town of Kiryat Shemona on Wednesday and there were no reports of damage or injuries. People in northern Israel were asked to head to bomb shelters.
Israeli officials have expressed concern that militants in Lebanon could try to open a second front in solidarity with Gaza's Hamas rulers against Israel's 19-day offensive against the militant group.

Four rockets were fired on northern Israel last Thursday. Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group denied responsibility and speculation focused on small Palestinian groups in Lebanon.

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Christian Girls Drugged and Sold As Sex Slaves in Pakistan (back)
January 14, 2009

The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) www.persecution.org has learned that two Christian girls in Pakistan have finally been rescued after two Muslim men kidnapped them two months ago, raped them repeatedly, forcibly converted them to Islam, and sold them to other men as sex slaves.

Sisters Parvisha, 18, and Sanam, 14, received a call in November 2008 from their neighbor, Muhammad Irfan, offering them training in cosmetology and jobs in his beauty salon. Parvisha, the oldest of seven children, convinced her father, Pastor Sharif Alam, to allow her to take the opportunity so that she could help support their struggling family. Irfan told the girls that he would come to pick them up since they did not know where his shop was.

Kidnappers Drug, Rape, and Force Sisters to Accept Islam
On November 12, 2008, Irfan picked the girls up with the help of another man, Muhammed Mehboob, drove them 30 minutes away from home and stopped to get drinks. The girls' drinks were heavily drugged and when the sisters came to they found themselves locked in a small hotel room almost 500 miles away from their home in Gujranwala. At gunpoint, the girls were told that if they tried to escape or made any noise they and all of their family would be killed. During the night, each man raped both girls.

The next day the men drove the sisters to Karachi where they stayed at Mehboob's brother-in-law's house. There they repeatedly raped both girls over several days and then took them to an Islamic religious school where they forced them to convert to Islam. Parvisha and Sanam were given Muslim names and told that if they cooperated they would be released soon.

Irfan and Mehboob then took the sisters to a local law office. They met with two lawyers, Nayer Zia-Ul-Din and Kokab Sahab-Ul-Din, and told them that both girls had embraced Islam and wished to stay in a government run shelter home for women. The lawyers asked the girls to sign a blank sheet. Irfan told the girls that the lawyers would present them in the court tomorrow and then they would be free to go. Irfan and Mehboob then left, leaving the girls with the two lawyers.

Lawyers Rape Parvisha after Promising a Safe Place to Stay

The lawyers told Parvisha and Sanam that since they had no place to spend the night, they could come with them and stay with their family. They took the girls to their apartment but there were no other family members present, and when the girls asked about it, they were told that everyone was attending a family function and would be back before midnight. They gave them a room to sleep.

The lawyers waited until both girls fell asleep and then dragged Parvisha into another room where they raped her. Sanam woke up when she heard someone crying and yelling for help. She ran out of the room and saw both lawyers inserting electrical equipment into Parvisha's private parts.

While Sanam was looking for a weapon she could use to defend her sister, she saw a cell phone lying on the table, grabbed the phone and dialed the emergency mobile police number. Within no time the police arrived and arrested Kokab Sahab-Ul-Din. An FIR was registered against him. Parvisha was immediately taken to the hospital. Sanam called her father from the police station, informing him of the situation. Pastor Sharif Alam rushed to Karachi to bring his daughters back home.

Muslim Mob Defends Rapists, Attacks Girls' Father

Pastor Alam then contacted a Christian legal group called CLAAS for help. On December 31, the CLAAS team visited Pastor Alam and his family to ascertain what had happened. While they were still talking to the victims and their family a large crowd of about 35 people gathered outside the house. They chanted for the pastor to hand the newly 'converted' girls over to the custody of local Muslim authorities.

The crowd quickly became hostile and started throwing bricks and stones at Pastor Alam's house. When Pastor Alam and a representative of CLAAS went out to talk to the crowd, someone shot at them but hit a bystander.

Immediately, Pastor Alam called the local police, but not before the mob had seized Pastor Alam's son Sheraz and severely beat him. The police arrived as the angry mob was trying to break into Pastor Alam's house and dispersed the crowd, arresting three people responsible for the attack.

Since then, Pastor Alam has reported that his son in-law, Stian Akram Khokhar, has been missing. He believes that the Irfan and Mehboob are responsible and are threatening him to back off the case.

On January 2 both girls gave official statements to the local Magistrate. They stated that they were abducted from their home, raped and then forcibly converted to Islam, and that they want to live and die as Christians and at no cost will leave their family.

Please pray for Parvisha and Sanam and their family. Pray that God would strengthen their faith and heal their wounds. Pray that those responsible for these heinous crimes would be caught and punished appropriately.

Christians in Pakistan are often targeted not only for their faith but because they live in poverty and have little means to defend themselves. Please call the Pakistani embassy in your country and ask them to work harder to protect the rights of religious minorities.

Source: http://www.aina.org/news/20090113141518.htm

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5 Minutes to Midnight: Dangerous Times
January 14, 2009
by Ilana Freedman

These are dangerous times. The volume and ferocity of anti-American chatter across the Internet have reached a level we have not seen since the days leading up to 9/11. The radical Islamists, who would use violence against those who do not accept their view of life, have become arrogant enough to bring their savage methods to new depths of depravity. To understand this bolder enemy, we must recognize what they are capable of.

Mumbai Last November, a handful of terrorists came into Mumbai by stealth, and within hours brought a city of 18 million to its knees. They attacked ten symbolic sites favored by tourists, murdered some 200 people, and left a wake of indescribable destruction, shattering thousands of lives in their wake.

They singled out American, British, and Jewish targets, and ordered the terrorists to 'kill to their last breath'. Many of their victims were savagely tortured before being murdered. So brutal was the torture that experienced doctors who later examined the bodies were in shock and could not find the words to even speak about it.

Amjal Kamal, Mumbai Terrorist

Gaza In Gaza, Hamas brought a different kind of terror into the news. Hamas fights her enemies with cowardice and unspeakable cruelty. While terrorists have been given free reign to shell civilians living in southern Israeli towns, they hide behind the women and children of Gaza, drawing Israeli fire to its rocket launchers which are placed deep in densely populated areas, putting their own people at mortal risk.
During the last two years, nearly 6,000 rockets were fired from Gaza, aimed at schools and homes, mostly in the little town of Sderot, which has taken the brunt of the ceaseless barrage. Israel finally responded with a mighty attack to silence the rockets that had plagued its citizens for the last eight years, and while the number of rockets has been reduced, they did not stop, continuing to terrorize the people of southern Israel.

San Francisco, January 2009

The True Face of Hamas There is now a mountain of documentation demonstrating that over recent months, Hamas has acquired massive caches of weapons and explosives which they stored in mosques, schools, and throughout residential neighborhoods.

They have humiliated, brutalized, and murdered their Christian and Fatah 'enemies' in cold blood. And after Israel dropped leaflets in Gazan neighborhoods, urging civilians find shelter away from the aerial attack, Hamas forced them back into their homes, preventing them from finding safety from the bombs. No wonder the number of civilian casualties is so high.

On December 24, in a final blow to any semblance of civilized governance, Hamas passed a new penal code firmly rooted in Shari'a law. Among the punishments that this new code enables are forty lashes for drinking wine, cutting off hands for theft, and crucifixion for 'treason'.

Their reversion to a seventh century penal code underscores their intention to achieve ultimate power that will drive the lives of their people back into the dark ages. The current plight of the people of Gaza can be laid squarely at the feet of Hamas.

What This Means for the West Hamas supporters have used the current conflict as another excuse to stir the boiling cauldron of Islamist hatred against the West. Their mantra of 'Death to Israel, Death to America' feeds their frenzy and has spawned demonstrations throughout the United States, demonstrations that are growing increasingly hysterical and out of control.

Last week in New York City, seven police officers were hurt - two with head wounds - when a pro-Hamas demonstration became violent.
In San Francisco, pro-Hamas demonstrators shouted, 'I want you to watch as I kill your children, cover your children in their own blood! I want you to watch me blow your children's brains out'.

In Florida, a demonstrator screamed, 'Go back to the oven,' referring to the murder of Jews in the Holocaust, 'You need a big oven, that's what you need.'

Here in America, we watch these events unfold as if we were viewing a new kind of reality show. But this is not theater and we, who watch passively, as we sit comfortably in front of the television, need to be alarmed.

It is difficult for Westerners to comprehend the depth of hatred that radical Islamists feel against those who are unwilling to adopt their faith. For them, multi-culturalism is not an acceptable way of life, it is evil

Their view of life demands that we either convert to their version of Islam, or die. They have made it plain that their goal is to globalize jihad, and turn the world into a global Islamist state ruled under shari'ah law. For them, negotiation is not an option, there is only one way, and there is nothing to negotiate.

A few years ago, Abdurahman Alamoudi presented himself as a so-called 'moderate' Muslim, and that he had a large following. He was an open supporter of Hamas and Hezballah, yet so highly esteemed that he had access to the White House (before he went to federal prison for his role in an assassination plot against the Saudi Crown Prince).

Not surprisingly, few took note when he told a Muslim conference in Chicago, 'Muslims sooner or later will be the moral leadership of America . . . either we do it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country.' It was one of many warnings that we ignored.

Yousef al-Khattab, a NYC taxi driver, enjoys the benefits of life in America, even as he runs a website called RevolutionMuslim.com. On his website, he wrote, 'We pray that we may witness the dismantlement of western, secular dominance across the world as we hold it to be pagan and idolatrous in the majority of its presumptions.

We seek a resurrection of the just example set forth by centuries of Islamic rule throughout the ages and we hold it to be self evident for the objective soul and mind that Allah is One and that Muhammad ibn Abdullah is His Prophet and that the religion offers the solution to all of the world's ills and afflictions.' Is anybody listening?

Radical Islam has taken a firm hold in our society. Hamas is only one of an undetermined number of radical Islamic groups that aim to do us harm. They have used the freedoms that they profess to hate to achieve access to our universities, our industries, our government, and our collective conscience.

They use our sense of fair play against us to impose their moral superiority, and demand our sensitivity to their rights, while simultaneously demanding that we forfeit our own.

So now, while Christian children can no longer pray in school, the same schools have adopted programs that teach our children what it is like to be Muslim, how they eat, and how they pray.

There are now terrorist cells in virtually every state in the union. Their aim is to globalize jihad, and replace our Constitution with the Koran, our penal code with shari'a law.

They range from the well known names such as al Qaeda, Hizballah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood (which masquerades under many other names), and includes lesser known groups like Jamaat al-Fuqra, Darul Uloom, and Islamic Jihad. Associated with these groups are not-for-profit front organizations through which these groups launder money to support terroist activities.

For example, Jamaat al-Fuqra compounds have sprung up all over the country to provide Muslim warriors with rural campuses for combat training. Security is high and outsiders are not welcome.

Darul Uloom, the school of Islam embraced by the Taliban, have active centers in Florida, Maryland, Texas, Connecticut and New York.

And CAIR, which claims to be nothing more than 'a Muslim civil liberties
and advocacy group', was named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the recent Holyland Foundation terrorist funding trial, Never-the-less, it provides sensitivity training to the FBI.

Today, in unassuming Muslim centers in Brooklyn, NY; Jersey City, NJ; Boston, MA; Fairfax, Virginia; and Dearborn, Michigan, jihad is being plotted, while we bend over backwards to ensure that they are not disturbed.

Today, we in America stand on the threshold of madness as we allow our nation to be undermined by those who would destroy all that generations of Americans have fought and died for.

The time is 1939 and we are Europe denying the growing threat of the Third Reich. Here in America, it is five minutes to midnight and it is time to wake up.

Ilana Freedman is the Editor of IntelAnalysis and is CEO of Gerard Group International, Inc.

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by Daniel Pipes

Europe's long-term relations with its burgeoning Muslim minority, the continent's most critical issue, will follow one of three paths:

harmonious integration, the expulsion of Muslims, or an Islamic takeover. Which of these scenarios will most likely play out?

Europe's future has vast importance not just for its residents. During a half-millennium, 1450-1950, this 7 percent of the world's landmass drove world history; its creativity and vigor invented modernity. The region may have already lost that critical position sixty years ago, but it remains vitally important in economic, political, and intellectual terms. Which direction it goes in, therefore, has huge implications for the rest of humanity, and especially for its daughter countries, such as the United States, which historically have looked to Europe as a source of ideas, people, and goods.

Here is an assessment about the likelihood of each scenario.

I. Muslims Rule

The late Oriana Fallaci observed that, with the passage of time, 'Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam.' The historian Bat Ye'or has dubbed this colony 'Eurabia.' Walter Laqueur predicts in his forthcoming Last Days of Europe that Europe as we know it is bound to change. Mark Steyn, in America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, goes further and argues that much of the Western world 'will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries.' Three factors – faith, demography, and a sense of heritage – argue for Europe being Islamized.

Faith: An extreme secularism predominates in Europe, especially among its elites, to the point that believing Christians (such as George W. Bush) are seen as mentally unbalanced and unfit for public office. In 2005, Rocco Buttiglione, a distinguished Italian politician and Catholic believer, was denied a position as Italy's European Union commissioner because of his views on such issues as homosexuality.

Entrenched secularism also means empty churches: in London, researchers estimate, more Muslims attend mosques on Friday than do Christians churches on Sunday, although the city is home to roughly 7 times more born-Christians than born-Muslims. As Christianity fades, Islam beckons; Prince Charles exemplifies the fascination of many Europeans with Islam.

Many conversions could be in Europe's future, for as the saying is ascribed to G.K. Chesterton, 'When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything.'

Europe's secularism shapes its discourse in ways quite unfamiliar to Americans. Hugh Fitzgerald, formerly vice president of JihadWatch.org, illustrates one dimension of this difference:

The most memorable utterances of American presidents have almost always included recognizable Biblical phrases. … This source of rhetorical strength was on display this past February [2003] when the Columbia shuttle blew up.

Had it not been an American but a French shuttle that had blown up, and were Jacques Chirac having to give such a speech, he might well have used the fact that there were seven astronauts, and evoked an image of the Pleiades first named in pagan antiquity. The American President, at a solemn national ceremony that began and ended with Biblical Hebrew, did things differently. He took his text from Isaiah 40:26, which led to a seamless transition from mingled wonder and awe at the heavenly hosts brought forth by the Creator, to consolation for the earthly loss of the crew.

The buoyant faith of Muslims, with its attendant jihadi sensibility and Islamic supremacism, could not differ more from that of lapsed European Christians. This contrast leads many Muslims to see Europe as a continent ripe for conversion and domination.

Outrageous supremacist claims result, such as the statement of Omar Bakri Mohammed, 'I want Britain to become an Islamic state. I want to see the flag of Islam raised in 10 Downing Street.' Or the prediction of a Belgium-based imam: 'Soon we will take power in this country. Those who criticize us now, will regret it. They will have to serve us. Prepare, for the hour is near.'[1]

Population: Demographic collapse also points to Europe being Islamized. The total fertility rate in Europe today averages about 1.4 per woman, whereas sustaining one's population requires just over two children per couple, or 2.1 children per woman. The existing rate is just two-thirds of what it needs to be; one-third of the requisite population is simply not being born.

To avoid a severe diminution of population, with all the woes that implies – and specifically, an absence of workers to fund generous pension plans – Europe needs immigrants – lots of them. That imported third of the population tends to be Muslim, in part because Muslims are close by – it's only thirteen kilometers from Morocco to Spain, only a couple of hundred to Italy from Albania or Libya; in part because colonial ties continue to bind South Asia to Britain or the Maghrib to France; and in part because of the violence, tyranny, and poverty so prevalent in the Muslim world today, which prompts wave after wave of emigration.

Likewise, the high fertility of Muslims complements the paucity of children among indigenous Christians. Although the Muslim fertility rate is falling, it remains significantly higher than that of Europe's indigenous population. No doubt, the high birth rates have something to do with the premodern circumstances in which many Muslim women of Europe find themselves. In Brussels, 'Muhammad' has for some years been the most popular name given to infant boys, while Amsterdam and Rotterdam are on track to be, by about 2015, the first major European cities with majority Muslim populations.

The French analyst Michel Gurfinkiel estimates an ethnic street war in France would find the children of indigènes and of immigrants in a roughly one-to-one ratio. Current predictions see a Muslim majority in Russia's army by 2015 and in the country as a whole by about 2050.
Sense of heritage: What often is depicted as Europe's political correctness reflects what I believe is a deeper phenomenon, namely, the alienation of many Europeans from their civilization, a sense that their historic culture is not worth fighting for or even saving.

It's striking to note differences within Europe in this regard. Perhaps the country least prone to this alienation is France, where traditional nationalism still holds sway and the French take pride in their identity. Britain is the most alienated country, as symbolized by the plaintive government program, 'ICONS - A Portrait of England,' that lamely hopes to rekindle patriotism by connecting Britons to their 'national treasures,' such as Winnie-the-Pooh and the miniskirt.

This diffidence has had direct and adverse implications for Muslim immigrants, as Aatish Taseer explained in Prospect magazine.
> Britishness is the most nominal aspect of identity to many young British Pakistanis. … If you denigrate your own culture you face the risk of your newer arrivals looking for one elsewhere. So far afield in this case, that for many second-generation British Pakistanis, the desert culture of the Arabs held more appeal than either British or subcontinental culture.

Three times removed from a durable sense of identity, the energised extra-national worldview of radical Islam became one available identity for second-generation Pakistanis.

Immigrant Muslims widely disdain Western civilization, and especially its sexuality (pornography, divorce, homosexuality). Nowhere in Europe are Muslims being assimilated, rarely does intermarriage take place. Here is one colorful example, from Canada:

The mother of the notorious Khadr brood, known as the country's first family of terrorism, returned to Canada from Afghanistan and Pakistan in April 2004 with one of her sons. Despite her seeking refuge in Canada, she publicly insisted just a month earlier that Al-Qaeda-sponsored training camps were the best place for her children. 'Would you like me to raise my child in Canada to be, by the time he's 12 or 13 years old, to be on drugs or having some homosexual relationship? Is it better?'

(Ironically, in centuries past, as the historian Norman Daniel has documented, Christian Europeans looked down at Muslims with their multiple wives and harems as overly-sexualized, and therefore felt morally superior.)

To sum up: this first argument holds that Europe will be Islamized, quietly submitting to the dhimmi status or converting to Islam, because the yin of Europe and yang of Muslims fit so well: low and high religiosity, low and high fertility, low and high cultural confidence.[2] Europe is an open door through which Muslims are walking.

II. Muslims Rejected

Or will the door be shut in their face? American columnist Ralph Peters dismisses the first scenario: 'Far from enjoying the prospect of taking over Europe by having babies, Europe's Muslims are living on borrowed time. … predictions of a Muslim takeover of Europe … ignore history and Europe's ineradicable viciousness.' Instead, depicting Europe as the place 'that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing,' he predicts its Muslims 'will be lucky just to be deported,' and not killed.

Claire Berlinski, in Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too, implicitly agrees, pointing to the 'ancient conflicts and patterns … now shambling out of the mists of European history' which could well trigger violence.

This scenario has indigenous Europeans – who do still constitute 95 percent of the continent's population – waking up one day and asserting themselves. 'Basta!' they will say, and reclaim their historic order. This is not so remote; a chafing among Europeans, less among elites than the masses, loudly protests changes already underway. Illustrations of that resentment include the anti-hijab legislation in France, irritation over the restrictions of national flags and Christian symbols, and the insistence on serving wine at state dinners.

A movement spontaneously developed in several French cities in early 2006 to serve pork soup to the poor, thus intentionally excluding Muslims.

These are minor issues, to be sure, but insurgent anti-immigrant parties have already emerged in many countries and are beginning to demand not just effective control of borders but the expulsion of illegal immigrants. A nativist movement throughout Europe is forming largely unnoticed beneath our eyes. However meager its record so far, it has huge potential.

Parties opposed to immigration and Islam generally have neo-fascist backgrounds but are growing more respectable over time, shedding their antisemitic origins and their dubious economic theories, focusing instead on the questions of faith, demography, and identity, and learning about Islam and Muslims.

The British National Party and Belgium's Vlaamse Belang offer two examples of such a move toward respectability, which may one day be followed by electability. The presidential race in France in 2002 came down to a contest between Jacques Chirac and the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Other parties have already tasted power. Jörg Haider and the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs were briefly in office. The Lega Nord in Italy was for years part of the ruling coalition. They will likely grow stronger because their anti-Islamist and often anti-Islamic messages resonate, and mainstream parties will partially adopt their messages. (Denmark's Conservative Party offers a model; after 72 years in the wilderness, it returned to power in 2001 due basically to anger concerning immigration.)

These parties will likely benefit when immigration to Europe surges uncontrollably to ever-higher levels, including perhaps a mass exodus from Africa, as many indications suggest will happen.

Once in power, nationalist parties will reject multiculturalism and try to re-establish traditional values and mores. One can only speculate about their means and about the Muslim reaction, but the French riots of late 2005 give a possible taste of what lies ahead.

Peters dwells on the fascistic and violent aspects of some groups and expects an anti-Muslim backlash to take ominous forms. He even sketches a scenario in which 'U.S. Navy ships are at anchor and U.S. Marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe's Muslims.'

For years, Muslims have worried about just such incarceration and brutalization, followed by expulsion or even massacres. Already in the late 1980s, the late Kalim Siddiqui, director of London's Muslim Institute, raised the specter of 'Hitler-style gas chambers for Muslims.' Shabbir Akhtar warned in his 1989 book, Be Careful With Muhammad that 'the next time there are gas chambers in Europe, there is no doubt concerning who'll be inside them,' meaning Muslims.

A character in Hanif Kureishi's 1991 novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, prepares the guerilla war that he expects will follow after 'the whites finally turned on the blacks and Asians and tried to force us into gas chambers.'

But it is more likely that European efforts at reclamation will be initiated peaceably and legally, with Muslims – in keeping with recent patterns of intimidation and terrorism – being the ones to initiate violence. Multiple polls confirm that about 5 percent of British Muslims endorse the 7/7 bombings, suggesting a general readiness to resort to force.

However it happens, a European reassertion cannot be assumed to take place cooperatively.

III. Muslims Integrated

In the happiest scenario, autochthonous Europeans and Muslim immigrants find a modus vivendi and live together harmoniously. Perhaps the classic statement of this optimistic expectation was a 1991 study, La France, une chance pour l'Islam ('France, an Opportunity for Islam') by Jeanne-Hélène and Pierre Patrick Kaltenbach.

'For the first time in history,' they wrote, 'Islam is offered the chance to waken in a democratic, rich, laic, and peaceable country.' That hopefulness lives on. An Economist leader from mid-2006 asserts that 'for the moment at least, the prospect of Eurabia looks like scaremongering.' Also at that time, Jocelyne Cesari, associate professor of Islamic studies at the Harvard Divinity School, claimed a balance exists: just as 'Islam is changing Europe,' she said, 'Europe is changing Islam.' She finds that 'Muslims in Europe do not want to change the nature of European states' and expects them to adapt themselves into the European context.

Such optimism, unfortunately, has little foundation. Europeans could yet rediscover their Christian faith, have more babies, and cherish their own heritage. They could encourage non-Muslim immigration or acculturate the Muslims already among them. But such changes are not now underway, nor are their prospects good.

Instead, Muslims are cultivating grievances and ambitions at odds with their indigenous neighbors. Worryingly, each generation appears more alienated than its predecessor. Canadian novelist Hugh MacLennan dubbed his country's English-French split the 'Two Solitudes'; one sees something similar, but far more pronounced, developing in Europe.

Those polls of British Muslims for example, find that a majority of them perceive a conflict between their British and Muslim identities and want Islamic law instituted.

The possibility of Muslims accepting the confines of historic Europe and smoothly integrating within it can virtually be dismissed from consideration. Even Bassam Tibi, professor at the University of Göttingen, who has often warned that 'Either Islam gets Europeanized, or Europe gets Islamized,' has personally given up on the continent. Recently, he announced that he is leaving Germany after 44 years' residence there, to move to Cornell University in the United States.

Conclusion

As the American columnist Dennis Prager sums them up, 'It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for Western Europe than its becoming Islamicized or having a civil war.' Indeed, these two deeply unattractive alternative paths appear to define Europe's choices, with powerful forces pulling in the contrary directions of Muslims taking over or Muslims rejected, Europe an extension of North Africa or in a state of quasi-civil war.

Which will it be? The decisive events that will resolve this question have yet to take place, so one cannot yet make the call. Decision-time is fast approaching, however. Within the next decade or so, today's flux will end, the Europe-Islam equation will harden, and the continent's future course should become apparent.

Correctly anticipating that course is the more difficult for being historically unprecedented. No large territory has ever shifted from one civilization to another by virtue of a collapsed population, faith, and identity; nor has a people risen on so grand a scale to reclaim its patrimony. The novelty and magnitude of Europe's predicament make it difficult to understand, tempting to overlook, and nearly impossible to predict. Europe marches us all into terra incognita.

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and visiting professor at Pepperdine University. This article is adapted from a talk for a Woodrow Wilson Center conference on 'Euro-Islam: The Dynamics of Effective Integration.'

[1] De Morgen, Oct. 5, 1994. Cited in Koenraad Elst, 'The Rushdie Rules', Middle East Quarterly, June 1998.

[2] It's striking to note that in these three ways, Europe and the United States were much more similar 25 years ago than today. This suggests that their bifurcation results less from historical patterns going back centuries and more from developments in the 1960s. However deeply that decade affected the United States, it had a far deeper impact on Europe.

Source: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4323


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by Dexter Filkins

One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

'Are you going to school?'

Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.

Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.

Full story

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world/asia/14kandahar.html

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Nigerian Terrorist Commander Killed
January 14, 2009

A leader of a main armed militant group in Nigeria has been killed in the volatile Niger Delta region, according to a military official.

Tubotamuno Angolia, known as 'Boy Chiki', was shot and killed when he attempted to escape shortly after his arrest Tuesday morning, said Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa.

'Troops on static deployment in Bakana ...today succeeded in the arrest of one of the most wanted criminals on our list,' said Musa.

Angolia is believed to be one of the commanders of the Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND), a rebel group that has led a campaign of attacks on oil installations and its workers in the region.
For the past three years, armed groups in the Niger Delta, who claim to be acting on behalf of the local population, have staged violent attacks on oil companies and their staff.

The violence has reduced crude production to some two million barrels a day, compared to 2.6 million in 2006.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=82173 ionid=351020505



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Ex-FBI Agent in Secret Iranian Prison? (back)
January 13, 2009

A U.S. senator revealed Tuesday that he believes a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran nearly two years ago is being held in a secret prison there.

Sen. Bill Nelson shed new light on the disappearance of Robert Levinson during a confirmation hearing for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington. Levinson, of Coral Springs, Fla., was last seen on Iran's Kish island in March 2007 where he had gone to seek information for a client of his security firm.

Nelson, D-Fla., said the Iranian government has rebuffed numerous requests for information on Levinson's whereabouts.

'The door has been closed at every turn,' Nelson said. 'We think he is being held by the government of Iran in a secret prison.'

Clinton: Opportunity to improve relations

Clinton, who is President-elect Barack Obama's choice for secretary of state, said Iran could improve relations with the U.S. by offering information on Levinson, who was an FBI agent in New York and Florida until he retired in 1998.

'With respect to the Floridian who is in prison, it would be an extraordinary opportunity for the government of Iran to make such a gesture to permit contact, to release him, to make it clear that there is a new attitude in Iran,' Clinton said during the hearing.

Levinson's wife, Christine, said the comments were the first she had heard about her husband's possible whereabouts.

'I haven't received any information about my husband,' she told The Associated Press.

She met with government officials in Iran in December 2007, but there has been no word of his fate.

'I don't understand what happened that I don't have my husband home with me,' she said. 'I've always believed he's still alive.'

Telephone messages left for Nelson aides were not immediately returned. The State Department said the agency continues to urge Iran to increase its efforts in the investigation and provide more information. A spokesman at Iran's U.N. mission wouldn't immediately comment.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28644567/

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Saudi National killed fighting for HAMAS

http://zawya.com/story.cfm/sidANA20090113T092302ZEZH35/S audi%20militant%20killed%20in%20Gaza%20campaign

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Between the lines: there are residents of Washington State who fought as jihadis in Chechnya...

We reported last month that Washington state jihadi Ruben Shumpert (a.k.a. Amir Abdul Muhaimeen) was recently killed in Somalia fighting for the al Qaeda linked al Shebaab. You'll recall that Shumpert actually called the FBI from Somalia mocking their efforts to capture him. All's well that ends well, eh?

The group has now released a 'biography' of Shumpert which recounts his childhood in a rough neighborhood, how he converted to Islam in jail, and how he eventually went to Somalia for the jihad. You can read the entire bio here.

But perhaps the most important piece of the story is an admission that Shumpert turned to the Salafi strand of Islam after he met with some Muslims in Washington who had recently returned from fighting the jihad in Chechnya:

Allah guided him to the path of righteousness, when he met some brothers who had returned from Chechnya. He became acquainted with them, and they provided him with some educational and jihadi video recordings. Our knight was very fond of Shaykh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may Allah have mercy on him, and he hoped to join [Zarqawi] in Mesopotamia.

In the bio we learn that these friends were not the Somalians who later convinced Shumpert to heed the call of Zawahiri and join the jihad in Somalia.

So, who are Ruben Shumpert's friends who had been to Chechnya and are they still on the loose in Washington?

Source: http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/195835.php

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DEBKAfile's military sources reveal a secret war waged by the US, Israel and Egypt to shut down Iran's serpentine maritime routes through the Red Sea and Suez for refilling Hamas' depleted arsenal by sea.

After Hamas lost an estimated 60 percent of its weapons stocks to Israeli bombardments, Iran enlisted Somali pirates to step up the flow of smuggled hardware to Gaza. Tehran is rearming the Palestinian Islamists at top speed to persuade them to carry on the war against Israel and not surrender to Egypt's ceasefire terms.

According to our military sources, the Iranian sealift is conducted along three routes:

1. The Iranian segment: Iranian freighters from the Persian Gulf port of Bandar Abbas sail to the Gulf of Suez. Some are intercepted by the American warships patrolling the sea against Somali pirates. US Marines board the ships and confiscate any weapons cargoes in their holds. But not all are caught; some of the Iranian freighters, especially the small vessels, escape the anti-piracy net.

Western intelligence informants report that in the past week, Iranian agents hired Somali pirates to rendezvous with their freighters before they entered the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea, offload the weapons and carry them in small Somali craft to Eritrea. The pirates have strong ties with Eritrea.

The Iranian freighters sail straight back to Bandar Abbas to reload.

2. The Eritrean route: Some of the Iranian arms freighters put into the Eritrean port of Assab to unload the cargoes, which are then consigned to Sudan, where the authorities turn a blind eye, for transit to southern Egypt. At that point, they are picked up by Egyptian smuggling gangs and carried by boat to Sinai shores.

3. The European route: The Balkan ports at Montenegro and Croatia are the starting points for freighters laden with containers carrying weapons for Hamas - mostly mortars and anti-air and anti-tank missiles. They head for the Suez Canal where they drop their cargoes overboard for waiting pirates' boats to collect.

DEBKAfile's military sources reveal that Iran's seaborne arms corridor to Hamas depends heavily on three Sinai Bedouin tribes: The Tarabin, which controls areas adjoining the Israeli and Gazan borders; the Tiyaha, which rule central Sinai; and the Azazmeh, whose wide spread covers northern Sinai, the Israeli Negev, Jordan and Syria.

They form a human chain to relay the Iranian shipments, including heavy Grad rockets, into the Gaza Strip.

Source: http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5848


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ABUSE OF CHILDREN IN ISLAM

by Mumin Salih

Muslims are not the only people, who pass on their religious beliefs to children; this is a standard practice all over the world. But Islam is a very demanding religion even to adults and assumes total control of its adherents’ lives. Resulting from the mass immigration of Muslims to Western countries, millions of Muslim children now live in the West and their number is bound to increase. This situation creates a dilemma, to which the West is either oblivious or in denial: whilst Muslim children enjoy full protection of the Western laws, and, at the same time, they have to abide by Islamic laws. This article will shed some light on some practices that are forced upon Muslim children living in the West, which amount to 'child abuse' of one form or another.

Definition of a child

The transition between childhood and adulthood is a gradual process, associated with both intellectual and sexual maturity. The medical profession, as I am told, considers childhood to extend up to the age of sixteen. However, the demarcation-line between childhood and adulthood remains slightly different in different countries of the world. In most of the Western world, children are considered to have reached their adulthood at the age of eighteen.

In Islam, the separation line between childhood and adulthood is based on sexual maturity. In general, boys are considered to have reached adulthood when they grow pubic hair or show other signs of sexual maturity.

In case of girls, the onset of menstruation is considered to signal that they have reached their adulthood.

When Prophet Mohammed committed the mass-slaughter of the Jews of Bani Qurayza by killing all the adult males (the rest, women and children were taken as slaves), he used the growth of pubic hair as a mark of adulthood of young boys.

FULL STORY

http://islam-watch.org/MuminSalih/child-abuse-islam.htm

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Senior Saudi Cleric Oks 10-year-old Girls to Marry
January 14, 2009

A pan-Arab newspaper quotes Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric as saying it is OK for 10-year-old girls to marry.

The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper also quotes Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Baz, the country's grand mufti, as saying that those who believe women should not marry before the age of 25 are following a 'bad path.'

His comments during a lecture Monday come as Saudi human rights groups are fighting to put an end to marriages involving the very young. The groups are pressing the government to define the minimum age for marriage.

On Sunday, the government-run National Human Rights Commission condemned marriages of minor girls, saying such marriages are an 'inhumane violation.'

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479878,00.html

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