by Winfield Myers*

The U.S. Department of State has awarded a grant worth $494,368 to University of Delaware political scientist, Brookings Institution fellow, and Pentagon consultant Muqtedar Khan, who last fall objected to serving on a panel with a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces. According to a UD press release, the grant is to be used, “to initiate a dialogue on religion and politics between key members of religious and community organizations in the Middle East and the United States.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I so admire these Danish newspapers for standing up to Islamist intimidation (terrorism):

Denmark’s five major daily newspapers republished on Wednesday one of the 12 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad which angered Muslims around the world, as a protest against a plot to murder one of the cartoonists.

A Danish citizen of Moroccan descent and two Tunisians were arrested on Tuesday in western Denmark for planning to murder 73-year-old Kurt Westergaard, a cartoonist at Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that originally published the drawings in September 2005. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Imad Mughniyeh, aka “The Fox,” a Hezbollah murderer, may have been “an inspiration to bin Laden,” but he is now a dead one. Thanks most likely go to the Israeli Mossad, although the Jewish state is not commenting. Better to keep twisted, Palestinian terrorist master-minds guessing about their fates. Lest people bemoan the “assassination” of another “freedom fighter,” the National Post today pointed out what kind of an evil man Mughniyeh was:

… Mugniyeh cemented his dark reputation in 1983, when he orchestrated the vehicle bombing of the American embassy in Beirut and, six months later, similar attacks at the barracks of French and American peacekeepers.

He followed up with a spate of kidnappings, the 1985 hijacking of a TWA plane flying from Athens to Rome, the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the bombing two years later of the city’s Jewish community centre. Some 500 died in his attacks in just over a decade. Osama bin Laden has called Mugniyeh’s tactics in Beirut his inspiration for “destroying towers in America.”

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by R. John Matthies*

If the practice of stoning (lapidation) exists across the Islamic world — most visibly in Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates — it speaks much to Western forbearance that this same penalty, though reviled, can make the fortune of one who commends the practice. Consider the case of Hani Ramadan and the state of Geneva.

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by Bill Levinson

Speaker at federation event slammed for calling Obama an ‘anti-Semite’:

“Barack Obama is an anti-Semite,” said Gabriel, who founded the nonprofit organization American Congress for Truth following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. “No Jews should support him. Jews should vote for Hillary Clinton.”

We do not know whether Obama is an anti-Semite because we cannot read his mind, and we have not heard him say anything anti-Semitic. Aesop, however, told us long ago that birds of a feather flock together. If Obama does not wish to be taken for an anti-Semite (and racist), he should not surround himself with individuals like Al Sharpton, or anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic organizations like MoveOn.org. We also know that, when we complained to his campaign about his promotion of Sharpton, they responded with what is at best a patronizing brush-off if not a deliberate insult. On the other hand, we support McCain over Clinton, who also appeared with and promoted Sharpton.

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Despite UN Designation, Arab Culture Deserves Better ‘Capital’ Than Syria

By Jonathan Spyer and Nir Boms

The ancient city of Damascus received another mark of recognition last week. Following in the wake of Liverpool - which was recognized as the European Capital of Culture, and Stavanger in Norway, which was named the non-EU European Capital of Culture, UNESCO last week designated Damascus as the Arab Capital of Culture for 2008.

In a speech celebrating this decision, Syrian President Bashar Assad chose to highlight a very specific element of his capital city’s culture — namely, Damascus’s self-appointed role as the center of Arab ‘resistance.’ “Damascus is the capital of resistance culture by symbolizing Arab culture” he declared, and went on to define ‘resistance culture’ as “the culture of freedom and defending freedom.”

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by Daniel Pipes*

Beneath the deceptively placid surface of everyday life, the British population is engaged in a momentous encounter with Islam. Three developments of the past week, each of them culminating years’ long trend – and not just some odd occurrence – exemplify changes now underway.

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By Phyllis Chesler

The eminent scholar, Bat Ye’or, is tiny in height only; she is a towering intellect and a fierce judge of both human character and history. Her work predicted and documented the Islamification of Europe. We both agree that the battle for America has only begun—although I believe that it is well underway.

Here we are, two friends, ladies of a certain age, sitting in the most pleasant of surroundings, (a private club, tres ancien regime), and conversing most seriously, not about children and grandchildren, not about the ballet or the opera, (under other circumstances, a conversation we might certainly like to have), but given our times, and our views, a luxury we cannot afford. Thus, we talk about War and Peace and the Clash of Civilizations. What could be more enjoyable and yet more pathetic? Yes, pathetic. We two should be having this conversation in a government office and our views should be leading to co-ordinated government actions. More’s the pity that this is not the case.

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By Barry Rubin

Step right up! Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen! It’s easy, fun, and everybody’s a winner! Just guess which shell the nut is under.

After studying and living with the Middle East for a few decades one sees certain patterns endlessly repeated, though always with a new set of details. Understandably, naive newcomers fall for the carnival con-man’s traps. They should learn after one disaster. Veterans have no excuse.

A con-game is one in which a malefactor gains the mark’s confidence in order to rob him. Conventional examples include selling swampland as vacation homes or the Internet scam of pretending to be a distressed African official who promises rich rewards in return for a loan.

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From Aish.com:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Well all you critics of the Iraq war, and especially the troop surge; what have you got to say now? From the Times Online:

Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year’s mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group’s security structure suffered “total collapse”.

These are the words not of al-Qaeda’s enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group’s stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November. …

More than 80,000 Sunnis have joined the tribal groups of “concerned local citizens” [CLCs] that have helped to eject al-Qaeda from swaths of western and northern Iraq, including much of Baghdad. …

Yeah, yeah, I know it is not over ’til the fat lady sings, but please spare me your “blood-for-oil” crap…

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By Phyllis Chesler

On Friday, February 8th, I wrote about Professor Noah Feldman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he viewed a long-standing Turkish ban on the wearing of head-scarves in universities as a ban against religious “freedom.” On Saturday, February 9th, I noted here that on the very next day, February 9th, the New York Times (page A4) featured an interview with a Turkish woman lawyer, Fatma Benli, titled: “Under a Scarf, a Turkish Lawyer Fighting to Wear It.”

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By Phyllis Chesler

Why has the NY Times published an article today (“Veiled Democracy”), written by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, in which Feldman explains that if Turkey allows Muslim women to wear the Islamic headscarf in universities, that Turkey will be that much closer to a liberal democracy?

Pinch me. I must be dreaming.

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by Daniel Pipes*

“Listen to me carefully,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt instructed an interviewer on Jan. 30. “Gaza is not part of Egypt, nor will it ever be …. I hear talk of a proposal to turn the Strip into an extension of the Sinai peninsula, of offloading responsibility for it onto Egypt” but Mubarak dismissed this as “nothing but a dream.”

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By Fern Sidman

For the 4th consecutive year, anti-Israel apologists and propagandists will be convening at the University of Toronto, York University and Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada for a three week event (Feb 3-19) called Israel Apartheid Week. As in years past, the major objective of this smear campaign is to impugn and excoriate the Jewish State as a racist entity, as well as organizing symposiums to further an agenda of academic boycott and BDS (boycott, divestments and sanctions) against Israel. Through a series of cleverly crafted gross distortions of facts, outright lies and half-truths, the organizers of this event which include the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, Women in Solidarity with Palestine and the Arab Law Students Association have couched their flagrantly fraudulent and incendiary rhetoric in academic and intellectual terms in order to gain credibility. One of the groups participating in Israeli Apartheid Week is the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, which obtained its place in historical infamy by traveling Egypt in March of 2007 to attend a conference intended to forge closer links between the international antiwar movement and Islamic resistance groups, including several on Canada’s terrorism list.

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