Bloodthirsty Liberal

Man refused citizenship because wife wears full Islamic cover

The French are more sophisticated than Americans (just ask them!), and also wiser, more tolerant, more cultured, and the food is better. But, they are uncomfortable with aspects of their Muslim population and it is starting to show. Recently there have been a spate of stories involving imams who were unceremoniously given the boot. They have banned headscarves in public schools and government jobs. And now this:

France has denied citizenship to a man because he allegedly forced his wife to wear a full Islamic veil, the French immigration minister said in a statement Wednesday.

The man was applying for citizenship in order to join his French wife in France, Immigration Minister Eric Besson said. The man was refused citizenship because he was depriving his wife of the liberty to come and go with her face uncovered, Besson said.

The decision, made Tuesday, came exactly a week after a French parliamentary commission recommended a partial ban on any veils that cover the face — including the burqa, the full-body covering worn by some Muslim women.

The ban — which has not yet come up for a vote — would apply in public places like hospitals and schools, and on public transport, the commission announced.

Foreigners may become French citizens if they marry French nationals and meet certain criteria, including integrating well in French society and having “good morality,” Besson said. It is on the criteria of morality that the man’s citizenship request was denied, Besson said.

“This individual imposes the full veil upon his wife, does not allow her the freedom to go and come as she pleases, and bans her from going out with her face unveiled, and rejects the principles of secularism and equality between man and woman,” Besson said he told President Nicolas Sarkozy.

France’s top court denied a Moroccan woman’s naturalization request in 2008 on the grounds that she wore a burqa.

Do I understand where they are coming from? Yes I do. But let’s face it, it’s fun to poke fun at the French. Sarkozy is much nicer than the leadership they’ve had for who knows how long, but it is still fun. Besides, if Israel or the US were as openly concerned about radical Islam, and instituted laws that amounted to a dress code, as if the entire country were one big Catholic school, circa 1960, the French would find a soap box, climb up, and, between sips of excellent wine, would begin the Euro-power-whine.

- Aggie

An ayatollah can’t-ah get-ah enough-ah this-ah:

Speaking in a Friday prayer sermon, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the wave of street demonstrations sparked by the disputed June presidential election would not have lasted until now if protesters had been executed early on.

“Whatever we suffered was because of our weakness. How many did the judiciary execute on July 9?” he said, referring to one of the particularly large protest days.

“We showed weakness, so then we had Ashoura,” he said, referring to a major protest on December 27. “If you show weakness now, the future will be worse … There is no room for Islamic mercy.”

“Islamic mercy”, that’s a good one.

“Stand up courageously for the sake of God, the same way you executed these two persons very quickly.”

Jannati cited verses from the Quran, Islam’s holy book, that he said show Islam permits rulers to kill their opponents, including “hypocrites, those with evil intentions and those who spread rumors.”

I took some heat here a while back for asking of the Buddhist protesters in Burma what did they expect to happen. They could take to the streets with all the righteous indignation and karmic justification they could muster, but if they weren’t armed, if they didn’t have a Plan B should the government choose not to surrender to their moral superiority, their saffron robes just made them target practice.

In the short term, I was right, of course. Who knows, maybe millennia from now, I’ll look like an ass (don’t say it!).

I was more hopeful of the Iranian protesters. If anything, the government was even more entrenched, more determined to defeat them—but the common Iranian man and woman (we still weep for Neda) had a little more fight in them, I thought.

And, who knows, maybe America was supporting them. (If we ever were, I could see President Obama putting an end to it.)

But now I have to wonder what it was all about. There is certainly no cause more just than liberating yourself from a cruel and repressive totalitarian regime, be it in Iran, or Burma, or wherever. But failure can’t be an option. The picture above was intended to be offensive and cruel to those who didn’t expect it. That’s the nature of failed insurrections. I wouldn’t blame you for not trying, but I can’t celebrate you for trying and losing. It’s not fair to those in the picture.

Nice country.

- Aggie

The Left snores on

Two more churches in Malaysia were firebombed Sunday, bringing the total to six since a court ruled that non-Muslims can use the word “Allah” as a term for God.

No one has been hurt in the attacks, which began Friday. They follow a high court’s ruling that Christians can use the word “Allah” in literature printed in the country’s official language, Malay.

In Malay, the word for God is “Allah,” as it is in Arabic.

But many in the predominantly Muslim country, including the government, believe the word should be exclusive to Islam.

The government has banned the use of the word in Christian literature, saying it is likely to confuse Muslims and draw them to Christianity.

It has also appealed the high court’s ruling.

The bombings may be an attempt to intimidate judges to overturn the decision, said the Rev. Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Council of Churches in Malaysia.

Prime Minister Najib Razak visited one of the targeted churches on Saturday and called for calm.

Emphasizing his resolve to maintain ethnic and racial harmony in society, Najib also said the Muslim faith prohibits insulting other religions or destroying their sanctuaries.

In recent months, authorities in Malaysia have seized more than 20,000 Bibles because they refer to God as Allah.

And so it goes.

- Aggie

It was a failed appeasement strategy

Not long after the Ayatollah Khomeini announced his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British novelist suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London late one night and told his interviewer he’d converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn’t be happier, Allahu Akbar and all that.

And the Ayatollah said hey, that’s terrific news, glad to hear it. But we’re still gonna kill you.

Well, even a leftie novelist wises up under those circumstances.

Evidently, the president of the United States takes a little longer.

The Great and Glorious Mark Steyn explains it to Captain Obvious (thanks Maureen Dowd).

Barack Obama has spent the past year doing big-time Islamoschmoozing, from his announcement of Gitmo’s closure and his investigation of Bush officials, to his bow before the Saudi king and a speech in Cairo to “the Muslim world” with far too many rhetorical concessions and equivocations. And at the end of it the jihad sent America a thank-you note by way of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear: Hey, thanks for all the outreach! But we’re still gonna kill you.

According to one poll, 58 percent of Americans are in favor of waterboarding young Umar Farouk. Well, you should have thought about that before you made a community organizer president of the world’s superpower. The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate, and you can’t blame the world’s mischief-makers, from Putin to Ahmadinejad to the many Gitmo recidivists now running around Yemen, from drawing the correct conclusion.

Exactly. Elections have consequences.

Other fun facts for our Messiah-In-Chief:

Nor did young Umar Farouk, come to that. Granted the general overcredentialization of American life, the notion that it doesn’t count as terrorism unless you’re a member of Local 437 of the Amalgamated Union of Isolated Extremists seems perverse and reductive.

What did the Pantybomber have a membership card in? Well, he was president of the Islamic Society of University College, London. Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a burning jeep into the concourse of Glasgow Airport, had been president of the Islamic Society of Queen’s University, Belfast. Yassin Nassari, serving three years in jail for terrorism, was president of the Islamic Society of the University of Westminster. Waheed Arafat Khan, arrested in the 2006 Heathrow terror plots that led to Americans having to put their liquids and gels in those little plastic bags, was president of the Islamic Society of London Metropolitan University.

As annoying as President Obama and Nancy Pelosi are, the real problem is The Rest Of Us. We had done this to ourselves.

- Aggie

Talk about holding contradictions in your mind!

The link takes you to his interview. He is a visitor at the Gush Katif Museum, which is a museum commemorating the Jewish community in Gaza which was expelled by the government of Israel in August 2005, in the demented belief that this action would bring about Peace. It brought roughly 10,000 documented rocket attacks into southern Israel instead. The Sheik’s English is terrific and his opinions rarely heard. It is the sort of thing that makes on think there is hope for the world.

- Aggie

This often happens to Copts in Egypt when they celebrate the Christian holidays

I’ve actually heard first hand reports of this sort of thing from Egyptian Christians I have known. Usually when we think of terrorism in the region, we think of Palestinians killing Jews, but the Christians have also been victimized.

CAIRO – Three men in a car sprayed automatic gunfire into a crowd of churchgoers in southern Egypt as they left a midnight Mass for Coptic Christmas, killing at least seven people in a drive-by shooting, the church bishop and security officials said.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry said the attack Wednesday just before midnight was suspected as retaliation for the November rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian man in the same town. The statement said witnesses have identified the lead attacker.

The attack took place in the town of Nag Hamadi in Qena province, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the famous ancient ruins of Luxor. A local security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, confirmed that seven were dead and three seriously wounded.

Bishop Kirollos of the Nag Hamadi Diocese told The Associated Press six male churchgoers and one security guard were killed. He said he had left St. John’s church just minutes before the attack.

“A driving car swerved near me, so I took the back door. By the time I shook hands with someone at the gate, I heard the mayhem, lots of machine gun shots,” he said in a telephone interview. He said he saw five bodies lying on the ground when he first looked at the site of the shooting, about 600 yards from where he was.

The bishop said he was concerned about violence on the eve of Coptic Christmas, which falls on Thursday, because of previous threats following the rape of the 12-year-old girl in November.

He got a message on his mobile phone saying: “It is your turn.”

“I did nothing with it. My faithful were also receiving threats in the streets, some shouting at them: ‘We will not let you have festivities,’” he said.

Because of the threats, he said he ended his Christmas Mass one hour early.

He said Muslim residents of Nag Hamadi and neighboring villages rioted for five days in November and torched and damaged Christian properties in the area after the rape.

“For days, I had expected something to happen on Christmas day,” he said. The bishop said police have now asked him to stay at home for fear of further violence.

Qena is one of Egypt’s poorest and most conservative areas.

Christians, mostly Coptic, account for about 10 percent of Egypt’s predominantly Muslim population. As Islamic conservatism gains ground, Christians have increasingly complained about discrimination by the Muslim majority.

Clashes between Muslims and Christians are not uncommon in southern Egypt and in recent years have begun seeping into the capital. An Amnesty International report said sectarian attacks on the Coptic Christian community, comprising between 6 million and 8 million people in Egypt, increased in the year 2008. Sporadic clashes between Coptic Christians and Muslims left eight people dead.

Vendetta killing is also common among southern Egyptians, and is usually over land or family disputes.

The bishop said he had an idea of who the attackers were, calling them “Muslim radicals.”

“It is all religious now. This is a religious war about how they can finish off the Christians in Egypt,” he said.

- Aggie

A Nigerian picks up loaded underpants in Yemen and boards a plane in The Netherlands.

I blame Israel:

Following are excerpts from a TV debate with Abdul Alim Musa, Imam of the Islam Mosque, Washington DC….

Abdul Alim Musa: … I am just going to go straight to the point. If you go back for the last 20 years, from the first World Trade Center bombing in ‘93… This is our view, from those who… We said it then, and we say it now, and this is the belief in the Muslim world: 90% of the bombing plots – or this plot or that plot – we believe is done by and with the help and the aid of Mossad, and the United States government. This is our experience. We believe that whoever this guy is from Nigeria - we don’t believe he has any ties with Islam.

…

Interviewer: Wait a second, did you say that America may have played a role in this?

Abdul Alim Musa: No, we said they definitely did.

Interviewer: Definitely played a role?

Abdul Alim Musa: Yes, definitely.

It may shock you to learn that before gettin’ religion, Moose was a big time drug dealer and sympathizer with the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam. Discover the Networks, the Anti-Defamation League, and The Investigative Project have the details.

Suffice it to say, this is mild for him.

This is more typical:

When they go out and strike at the heart of Zionism. They are not suicide bombers they are heroes they are she-roes, isn’t that right? That’s a part of our deen, that’s a part of our religion, lets not become weak boned and apologetic, and run around trying to appease this government and that government.

And this:

We have Imams going on television and radio talking about how there is no Jihad in Islam. Oh no there is no Jihad in Islam. Islam means peace. But Allah (swt) says [Arabic] He loves those who fight in his way like a solid cemented structure. So when we have believers in Palestine going out and fighting in the way of Allah, our Imams should not be jumping up on television talking about how they are suicide bombers. They are not suicide bombers They are martyrs.

I just wonder where he gets his money?

I few days ago I posted something about terrorist engineers. I alluded to the fact that physicians seem to love committing terror attacks too.

Here’s a fine example

WASHINGTON – A former senior intelligence official is confirming that the suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in Afghanistan was a Jordanian doctor recruited by Jordanian intelligence to support U.S. efforts against al-Qaeda.

The bombing killed seven CIA employees — four officers and three contracted security guards — and a Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, according to a second former U.S. intelligence official. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

The former senior intelligence official confirmed an NBC News report Monday that the bomber was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year old doctor from Zarqa, Jordan. He was arrested over a year ago by Jordanian intelligence, and was thought to have been flipped to support U.S. and Jordanian efforts against al-Qaida.

Other examples include the Hamas pediatrician, Rantisi, who loved to get young adolescents to blow themselves up in the service of slaughtering Jews and Ayman al-Zawahri, the al qaeda #2 guy, also physician. But we don’t have to obsess about Muslim terrorist physicians - although can I mention one other? They guy who tried to blow up the Glasgow airport a few years ago and ended up burning himself very badly, forget his name, a physician in London and an Islamic terrorist. We can look at Holocaust era physicians and learn about all sorts of fascinating medical experiments and news ways to torture people. Or we can check out the work of Japanese physicians as they performed vivisection on Chinese and others during WWII.

So evil comes in all shapes and sizes and many professionals enjoy the indulgence if they believe that they can get away with it - or if they believe that they are helping their people. Presumably, these are people that are attracted to sadism and violence, but need a nifty excuse to participate. They can feel good about this sort of thing as long as it is socially sanctioned.

- Aggie

I don’t know about Daniel Pipes, but I’d feel creeped out if I found out one of my readers was a mass murderer (and no, I don’t mean you, Chris):

A startling fact just emerged in the course of some routine maintenance work on the mailing lists for www.DanielPipes.org: One “Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan” has been subscribed as nidalhasan@aol.com since March 2009 to all the Middle East Forum mailing lists, including my own. He opened some but not many of the mailings.

In addition to the name, there are several reasons to think this is the butcher of Ft. Hood: He received the mailings for over half a year before his identity became notorious; he has not opened any e-mails in a while, presumably since he has been jailed; and a search for nidalhasan@aol.com on the internet finds this address associated with the Texas jihadi (for example, by the Northeast Intelligence Network).

Comments: (1) I have never assumed that all the Middle East Forum’s or my readers share our outlook. To the contrary, the lively debates carried on in the more than 100,000 published reader comments show that readers have all outlooks. Still, I never imagined that a future terrorist would subscribe himself to our writings.

(2) Why, I can’t help but wonder, would Hasan have wanted to see the Middle East Forum’s work? Opposition research? Or might he have been stalking us?

(3) This subscription gives new urgency to the concerns I addressed at “Am I Helping the Terrorist Enemy?” and I hereby rededicate myself to assuring that the Middle East Forum does not inadvertently provide guidance to the country’s foes.

(4) On a sad note, this news brings to the mind that I learned just two months earlier, again while doing routine chores, that my articles were still being sent to the late Daniel Pearl’s Wall Street Journal e-mail address, which had been initially subscribed before his murder nearly eight years ago.

To any potential jihadists out there, let me strongly encourage you to give up on the whole martyrdom thing. What are 72 virgins compare to our large-breasted American women?

These guys have it figured out: