Bloodthirsty Liberal

Maybe poverty does cause terrorism: her student loans alone must be a “daily humiliation”:

After two days of deliberations, a jury yesterday found Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman with MIT and Brandeis degrees, guilty of attempted murder and assault of Americans in Afghanistan.

Following the verdict, Siddiqui, a 37-year-old former Roxbury resident, calmly addressed the spectators in the courtroom.

“This is a verdict coming from Israel, not from America,’’ she said, speaking through a white scarf that covered her face. “Your anger should be directed where it belongs.’’

I’m sorry, did she say Israel?

“This is a verdict coming from Israel, not from America.”

And you went to Brandeis, honey?

Maybe you can use that MIT degree to explain how Israel was responsible for this:

Insisting she had been framed by the US government, Siddiqui said she had been tortured and held for years in a secret US prison.

Oh gee, sweetie, that’s awful. I wonder why they treated you so bad?

The verdict ends a two-week trial in which prosecutors used eyewitnesses - but little forensic evidence - to prove that Siddiqui grabbed a machine gun from an American soldier, who had come to interrogate her, and fired it toward his colleagues but missed. Another soldier testified he barely escaped with his life, and an Afghan interpreter said he tried to wrestle the gun from her. She was subdued when a US soldier shot her in the abdomen.

The jury also heard from an employee of the Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club, who said Siddiqui had taken a 12-hour pistol training course in the 1990s.

Defense lawyers, backed by expert witnesses, countered that her fingerprints were not found on the gun and that there was no evidence it had been fired.

Reasonable objections, I suppose, but the jury didn’t buy them.

I just want to point out that this Pakistani woman who has advanced degrees from America, (allegedly) shot at American troops in Afghanistan—and blames Israel.

So I guess education isn’t the answer to terrorism either.

Jail is one answer, but I have to ask why an assault on US servicemen in Afghanistan is a criminal offense, not a military one.

Not kidding.

If you don’t digest soil well, just skim on by.

[Via Steyn]

A 16-year-old girl was buried alive by relatives in southeast Turkey in a gruesome honour killing just because she reportedly befriended boys, the Anatolia news agency reported Thursday.

Acting on a tip-off, police discovered Medine Memi’s body in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre-deep hole in a chicken pen outside her house in Kahta town, Adiyaman province, 40 days after she went missing, the agency said.

A subsequent post mortem revealed that she had a significant amount of soil in her lungs and stomach, meaning that she was buried alive, foresic experts told the agency.

“The autopsy result is blood-curdling. According to our findings, the girl — who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood — was alive and fully conscious when she was buried,” one anonymous expert said.

Medine’s father and grandfather have been formally arrested and jailed pending trial over her killing, the agency said.

The father is reported to have said in his testimony that the family was unhappy she had male friends.

“Acting on a tip”—forty days after she was murdered. Are pay phones that rare in Turkey that no one could have dropped a dime any sooner?

Why didn’t they do this poor girl a favor and abort her before she was born? Wouldn’t that have been more humane than burying her alive? What say you, NOW?

Well, this is one way to deal with Muslim critics, I suppose:

Following are excerpts from a TV report on a mosque and school in Pakistan, which was destroyed by the Taliban after its imam criticized the Taliban’s conduct.

Anchor: Taliban militants destroyed a mosque and a school in the Charbagh region, in the northeastern part of Swat Valley, after the imam of the mosque criticized the ways of the Taliban. Many students left the school out of fear for their lives, and those who stayed found themselves facing harsh conditions, due to what befell the school. Let’s watch the following report.

Reporter: This is what is left of the Dar Al-’Ulum school and its mosque in Charbagh, after Taliban militants turned it to rubble, in which the students are now digging in search of hope to renew their studies.

Student: There were hundreds of students studying here. The Taliban fighters came and destroyed the school and the mosque. They killed the imam, Sheik Mas’oud Ahmad. They destroyed the furniture, the books, and everything. Most of the students have not yet returned to their studies, out of fear.

…

Reporter: The school principal wonders how they can possibly destroy a mosque and a school in the name of Islam.

School principal: Islam does not permit the killing of Muslims, or the destruction of mosques and schools for any reason. If the Taliban fight for the sake of Islam and the Muslims, wh[y] do they destroy a religious school?

What part of “Taliban” was unclear to him? To call them primitives and savages does a disservice to pre-industrialized societies everywhere. Same goes for calling them animals. They are more like a human ebola virus—with apologies in advance to any viruses in our reading audience—reducing whatever they come across to oozing puddles of blood.

But they are Muslim. They read the same Koran, pray to the same Allah. Same goes for Osama and Zawahiri, Zarqawi and Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad—all with Muslim blood all over their dead, dying, or hopefully soon to be so, bodies. I could go on, but you get my point. I doubt the principal does.

Such a nice young man:

A man has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to support terrorists by videotaping U.S. landmarks.

Twenty-three-year-old Ehsanul Islam Sadequee could have received as many as 60 years in prison at Monday’s hearing. Sadequee, a U.S. citizen, was convicted of four terror-related charges in August for sending the tapes of landmarks in Washington to terror suspects overseas in hopes of boosting his reputation.

His friend Syed Haris Ahmed, also a U.S. citizen, faces 15 years in prison at a sentencing hearing later Monday. Ahmed, 24, was convicted in June of conspiring to support terrorist groups.

Prosecutors say the two never posed an imminent threat to the U.S. but took concrete steps to help terrorists.

From another account:

The crowded courtroom was filled with media and supporters of Sadequee.

After the prosecution asked for a 20-year sentence, Sadequee spoke for 21 minutes about his religious beliefs before Duffey interrupted him and reminded him that this was a sentencing hearing and he was expected to talk about why the maximum should not be imposed.

“I have not and I will not request any sentence,” Sadequee said. “It does not matter to me. I submit to no one’s authority but to the authority of God.”

As to the impact of his speech on his sentencing, Sadequee said, “If it makes it less, it makes it less. If it makes it worse, it makes it worse.”

Sadequee told Duffey he needed “less than two hours” to finish his prepared comments, but Duffey said he would grant Sadequee another 20 minutes and allowed him to speak for another 28 minutes.

Don Samuel, an Atlanta-based criminal defense attorney, said he would discuss with Sadequee the possibility of an appeal. One reason Duffey allowed Sadequee almost and an hour to speak to the court was to try and avoid reversal of the sentence on the grounds Sadequee did not get a fair hearing.

Because he’s such a patriotic boy!

I have no way of knowing if this scurrilous charge is true, but since one complaint about the bloggers is that we’re not “responsible” like the mainstream media, I’ll just pass it on without examination—as they do all the time with libels about Israel.

I feel so journalistic! Call me Scoop. Call me Chris Hedges.

Every three minutes a Christian is being tortured in the Muslim world, and in 2009 more than 165,000 Christians will have been killed because of their faith, most of them in Muslim countries, according to a human rights organization that is visiting Israel starting Sunday.

“Hamas digs up the bodies of Christians from Christian burial sites in the Gaza Strip claiming that they pollute the earth,” said Reverend Majed El Shafie, President of One Free World International (OFWI), who will head a delegation of human rights activists, members of parliament from Canada and religious personalities.

…

El Shafie said that between 200-300 million Christians are being persecuted in the world, 80 percent of whom lived in Muslim countries and the rest in communist and other countries.

Maybe so, but do they build settlements?

Daniel Pipes on the minaret thingy:

What importance has the recent Swiss referendum to ban the building of minarets?

…

I see the referendum as consequential, and well so beyond Swiss borders. First, it raises delicate issues of reciprocity in Muslim-Christian relations. A few examples: When Our Lady of the Rosary, Qatar’s first-ever church opened in 2008, it did so minus cross, bell, dome, steeple or signboard. Rosary’s priest, Father Tom Veneracion, explained their absence: “The idea is to be discreet because we don’t want to inflame any sensitivities.” And when the Christians of a town in Upper Egypt, Nazlet al-Badraman, finally after four years of “laborious negotiation, pleading, and grappling with the authorities,” won permission in October to restore a tottering tower at the Mar-Girgis Church, a mob of about 200 Muslims attacked them, throwing stones and shouting Islamic and sectarian slogans. The situation for Copts is so bad, they have reverted to building secret churches.

Why, the Catholic Church and others are asking, should Christians suffer such indignities while Muslims enjoy full rights in historically Christian countries? The Swiss vote fits into this new spirit. Islamists, of course, reject this premise of equality; Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned his Swiss counterpart of unspecified “consequences” of what he called anti-Islamic acts, implicitly threatening to make the minaret ban an international issue comparable to the Danish cartoon fracas of 2006.

Second, Europe stands at a crossroads with respect to its Muslim population. Of the three main future prospects - everyone getting along, Muslims dominating or Muslims rejected - the first is highly improbable, but the second and third seem equally possible. In this context, the Swiss vote represents a potentially important legitimation of anti-Islamic views. The vote inspired support across Europe, as signaled by on-line polling sponsored by the mainstream media and by statements from leading figures.

The polling shows overwhelming support for the move. It should be noted that Pipes doesn’t support or condemn the Swiss decision; he’s merely observing. Mark Steyn, the Quasimodo of commentators, predicted a backlash against creeping Islamization—again without passing judgement. It’s just that you can’t be more European than the Swiss (or, in a very different way, the Dutch); and you can’t be less European than fundamentalist Muslims. Eurabian yes, European no.

Bonne chance.

Why is this the first I’ve heard of this story?

Another Case of PTSD? [Mark Steyn]

…and this time the poor guy’s not even in the military! From Channel 12 WBNG:

A Binghamton University professor is dead tonight after being stabbed by an anthropology student.

That’s one way of putting it. Another is that Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani killed Richard T Antoun, author of Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian, Islamic and Jewish Movements.

More here, including a mug shot of the “alleged” assailant:

As usual, he seemed like such a nice person:

“The police, they came, and when they were allowed to enter into his room, they took all his stuff,” said Jules Sakho, Al-Zahrani’s roomate.

His roommates say police also found a knife in a dumpster near the apartment.

But police do not have a motive at this time.

…

“I would think it was because of the whole dissertation being rejected. But I cannot confirm it, he had issues with his financials.

…

His roommates and neighbors also say his behavior was strange.

“He was all the time shouting in Arabic, shouting threats, insulting this country for no reason,” said Sakho.

…

“Sometimes, for no reason, asking if I am afraid of death or not, ” said Sakho.

“He says a comment like, ‘I feel like just waking up and destroying the world’,” said Pena.

Al-Zahrani was a Saudi Arabia national and Sakho says he was Muslim.

But the D.A. believes the stabbing was not religiously motivated. Sakho says he thinks Al-Zahrani had psychological problems as well.

Holmes, you amaze me!

Look, the guy was nuttier than a Snickers bar—hardly unusual for a grad student—but police are supposed to look for motive when investigating a murder. I hope they look beyond “financials”.

The predictable denouement:

But both roommates say they never thought Al-Zahrani would kill.

“It’s crazy that you can have someone living with you like that and not know,” said Pena.

“He kept on making threats, but I thought it was just a way to intimidate people. I couldn’t imagine that he could go so far,” said Sakho.

Doesn’t that describe Muslim terrorism? For years we thought their howling and ululating about death to the Great Satan and lopping off heads was their just blowing off steam. Little did we realize (fools that we are), that the steam was actually the black acrid smoke of jet fuel and skyscraper in flames.

I may not agree with Switzerland’s decision to ban minarets—even though it was made by the people in a referendum, not by a autocrat, and even though minarets had essentially been banned at the local level already.

But this guy is a pig:

Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe chairman Chakib Makhlouf has condemned the Swiss ban on minarets on mosques, saying that “the racist spirit that we as Muslims face is the same spirit that Adolf Hitler once harbored against the Jews prior to World War II.”

He added that the greatest danger was that the persecution of the Muslims was disguised as democracy, unlike the direct persecution of the Jews in the Nazi era.

Pig.

Pig.

Why can’t we be more like that nice continent Europe? They’re always so polite and tolerant:

Swiss voters are deciding in a referendum Sunday whether to accept a ban on the construction of minarets, which right-wing parties regard as symbols of militant Islam.

The move - led by the Swiss People’s Party, which has campaigned in previous years against immigrants - has stirred fears of boycotts and violent reactions from Muslim countries.

Polls indicate growing support for the proposal, but doubt remains about whether it will pass. The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government has spoken out strongly against the initiative.

…

Business leaders say a ban on minarets, the distinctive spires attached to mosques, would be disastrous for the Swiss economy because it could offend wealthy Muslims who bank in Switzerland, buy the country’s luxury goods and visit its resorts.

I suppose that’s as good a reason as any to abandon your national identity and sacrifice women’s rights.

I’ll confess I’m torn. Obviously, any government ban on religious expression is detestable. But what if the religious expression is the burka, as the Swiss People’s Party suggests? I get a little itchy and sneezy around European political parties with the word “people” in their name, but I’ll accept their point.

Countries are comfortable with immigration as long as the immigrants make an effort to integrate themselves into their host country’s society. They get a little twitchy when the immigrants remain insulated and segregated, intentionally, and when the newcomers hold on to ways that are anathema to the mores of their new home. The ban on minarets can’t be the best way to solve this problem, but we must at least acknowledge that Switzerland—and all of Europe—has a problem.

Is this how Switzerland sees its future?

Farrakhan… Hasan… Al Jazeera…: this can’t possibly go well:

Interviewer: … To what extent might this incident affect the Muslims in the U.S. and make them targets of persecution?”

[…]

Louis Farrakhan: “As you know, since 9/11, in America and in other parts of the world, those anti-Islamic forces have stepped up their efforts to make Muslims… to cause the Muslims to be looked at as uncivilized, savage, or wicked people. This is an attempt by anti-Islamic forces, and some members of the Jewish community, and some members of the Christian community, who have united to condemn Islam and to speak ill of our Prophet Muhammad, and to even go so far as to say that the Muslims worship the devil.

[…]

“This recent unfortunate event, which took place at the Fort Hood base in Texas, has only added fuel to the fire. On behalf of all the Muslims in the Muslim world, we are saddened by the loss of these 13 American soldiers and the 30 others who were wounded in the incident. No human being would be pleased to see that kind of slaughter, coming from a fellow officer in the U.S. Army.

“However, we have to look at Major Nidal Hasan. What happened to him? What kind of stress was he under? What kind of insults had he borne?

[…]

“When there are Muslims who love America, and who join the armed forces to protect America, and to serve the interests of America, and then America, unfortunately, under the falsehoods of the George W. Bush administration, launches attacks against Iraq and against Afghanistan, and now, those soldiers are killing Muslims… So when they go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the kind of hatred that is built up in the American forces, when they call the Muslims ‘ragheads’ and ‘desert niggers,’ and then, in the Abu Ghreib prison, Muslim women were raped, and Muslim men were sodomized… All this affects Muslims serving in the army. So when you are being insulted by your superior officers or by your fellow soldiers, at some point, a person might break. Unfortunately, I believe this is what happened to Captain [sic] Nidal Hasan.”

Don’t forget being buried with pig entrails, Lou. Didn’t we do that, too, or did we miss a trick? I even have it on good authority that one sergeant at Guantanamo once urinated while thinking of a Koran. That’s one hell of an insult to be borne, a whole lot of stress to be under.

But thanks for your kind words on “this unfortunate event”. We’ll never forget them.