By Sara Akrami

In February 2011, the news media reported that the screening of the controversial documentary, “Iranium,” had been banned in Ottawa due to pressure and threats from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s embassy. Despite all the threats, the documentary was shown in two different places such as Archives Canada in Ottawa and York University in Toronto and many citizens including students lined up to form their own opinions. The fact that this documentary made the Islamic Republic of Iran’s embassy concerned is a disclosure of the true face of this brutal government’s desire to procure nuclear weapons, its support of terrorism, and its violations of the basic human rights of the Iranian people during 31 years of its existence. But the most shocking aspect is: How is it possible that an embassy of a foreign government (that being Iran) that is isolated in the international arena and has the highest number of opponents among its citizens (within Iran and abroad) can exert its control over the Canadian government?

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By Fern Sidman

Human rights activists of all stripes took to the streets on Sunday afternoon, March 6th in a rally supporting the upcoming proposed congressional hearings in which Rep. Peter King (R-NY) will discuss the increased radicalization of American Muslims and the potential for an implementation of Sharia law in the United States. Approximately 80 members of the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam, the Liberty Alliance, the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero, Americans For a Safe Israel, Liberty Rocks, Blue Collar Corner, and Women United International gathered in the pouring rain near Times Square to make their voices heard. Rep. King is the chairman of the homeland security committee in Congress and has represented New York’s 3rd congressional district since 1993. His district includes parts of Nassau and Suffolk counties in central Long Island.

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By Barry Rubin

President Barack Obama told Democratic Party contributors  in Miami:

“When you look at what’s happening…in the Middle East, it is a manifestation of new technologies, the winds of freedom that are blowing through countries that have not felt those winds in decades, a whole new generation that says I want to be a part of this world. It’s a dangerous time, but it’s also a huge opportunity for us.” 

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

As Muslims prepare to erect a mega-mosque near the site of the 9/11 atrocities, it is well to reflect that the sort of tolerance, or indifference, that allows them to do so, is far from reciprocated to churches in the Muslim world. I speak not of Islamist attacks against churches — such as the New Year attack in Egypt that killed 21 Christians; or when jihadists stormed a church in Iraq, butchering over 50 Christians; or Christmas Eve attacks on churches in Nigeria and the Philippines. Nor am I referring to state-sanctioned hostility by avowedly Islamist regimes, such as Iran’s recent “round up” of Christians.

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By Fern Sidman

Graphic depictions of the most egregious forms of human rights abuses against women in Iran took center stage at a special seminar in New York City on March 3rd. Sponsored by “Iran180″, an organization dedicated to spotlighting the litany of human rights abuses that take place on a daily basis in Iran, the seminar was entitled, “Securing Gender Equality: Iran and the CSW”. Held at 777 UN Plaza, a building directly across the street from the United Nations, the objectives of the gathering included raising awareness of Iran’s violations of women’s rights and the staging of symbolic protests against the welcoming of the Islamic Republic of Iran as the newest member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women at its 56th session.

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by Phyllis Chesler

The Bloody Beast is really back. Only the willfully blind can deny it.

Let me spell it out, let me risk, yet again, being accused of “Islamophobia” (which does not exist), and of “racism” which very much does. Let the record show: I am not a “racist.”

The Beast is radical, fundamentalist, “Islamist” Islam; the beast is anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Hindu and anti-Jewish Muslim supremacists, who are now also terrorists/jihadists. They — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Moammar Gaddafi, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah — are not wrestling with themselves quietly, spiritually, to overcome lust or hatred. Oh the contrary. They are blowing people up, sending weapons, employing mercenaries, twisting minds, spewing hatred.

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Pakistan’s, “blasphemy law holds a death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. … Although no-one convicted under the blasphemy law has ever been executed, more than 30 accused have been killed by lynch mobs.” Today, Shahbaz Bhatti, the Pakistani government’s only Christian cabinet minister was, “shot dead by gunmen who ambushed his car in broad daylight in the capital, Islamabad. … In January, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who had also opposed the law, was shot dead by one of his bodyguards.”

Such savagery; such ignorance. The word “blasphemy” reeks of societal backwardness and smells of a total misunderstanding of free speech. Murder to silence free expression is anathema to everything the Western World has been built upon. Pakistani Minister Bhatti was not only savagely slaughtered, but he was set up by an increasingly bold Islamist movement in his home country:

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by Daniel Pipes*

Unprecedented convulsions across the Middle East, from Morocco to Iran, prompt three reflections:

First, these rebellions fit into the context of a regional chessboard, what I call the Middle East cold war. On one side stands the “resistance” bloc led by Iran and including Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Qatar; it seeks to shake up the existing order with a new one, more piously Islamic and hostile to the West. On the other side stands the status quo bloc led by Saudi Arabia and including most of the rest of the region (implicitly including Israel); it prefers things to stay more or less as they are.

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by Efraim Karsh*

Turbulent times often breed nostalgia for a supposedly idyllic past. Viewing the upheavals sweeping the Middle East as a mass expression of outrage against oppression, eminent historian Bernard Lewis fondly recalled past regional order.

“The sort of authoritarian, even dictatorial regimes that rule most of the countries in the modern Islamic Middle East are a modern creation. They are a result of modernization,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “The pre-modern regimes were much more open, much more tolerant. You can see this from a number of contemporary descriptions. And the memory of that is still living.”

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