by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*
As troops aligned with the Libyan interim government continue to advance on the few remaining strongholds of Gaddafi loyalists — such as Bani Walid (where the tribal elders are refusing to surrender) — much debate is still raging over Libya’s future. Will the country emerge as a stable liberal democracy, will it be torn by ethnic and tribal divisions, or will it transform into an Islamist state?
The apparently imminent eclipse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya has re-ignited hope among some Western commentators concerning the so-called Arab Spring. The entry of Libyan rebels to Tripoli is being depicted in some circles as the removal of a major obstacle to the onward march toward freedom alleged to be taking place this year throughout the Arabic-speaking world.
Some of the more enthusiastic observers are now turning their hopeful gaze toward Syria. They hope that with liberty victorious in Libya, the Assad regime will be the next to fall.
by Gary C. Gambill*
For all of their disagreement over particulars, Western pundits share a nearly unanimous consensus that Syrian President Bashar Assad has bungled his response to the current uprising. The Syrian regime is “digging its own grave,” the International Crisis Group concluded in a report last month. One prominent analyst went so far as to assert that the president “is losing his marbles.” The Obama administration’s recent call for Assad to resign, while long overdue, is largely premised on such boat-without-a-paddle views of the Syrian leader.
By Fern Sidman
“We are facing a new holocaust, and people of all faiths must demand that the truth be heard”, declared Oscar winning American actor Jon Voight on Monday evening, August 22nd in Jerusalem. Voight, 72, joined FOX news personality Glenn Beck as the featured speaker at the central train station in Jerusalem in an event commemorating the Holocaust. As a lead up to Beck’s “Restoring Courage” rally on August 24th, Monday evening’s event, which was carried on Beck’s new television network, featured a powerful film about Holocaust survivor Rudy Wolf’s visit to his childhood home in Germany. Other speakers at the event noted the significance of holding a Holocaust themed evening at the former Jerusalem train station after world armies did not bomb the tracks to Auschwitz in World War II.
The Assad regime’s brutal assault on the town of Hama should serve to dispel any notion that the struggle in Syria is nearing its end, or that the Assad regime has accepted its fate.
The general direction of the revolts in the Arab world now suggests that the region’s worst dictators have an even chance of survival, on condition that they have no qualms about going to war against their own people.
Syrian President Bashar Assad appears to have internalized the lesson.
Despite my own copious critiques, even I must concede that the American mainstream media really does print the bad news about Islamic gender apartheid — but it does so without drawing any “politically incorrect” conclusions, not even on their op-ed pages.
Over the years, the American mainstream media has printed articles about Islamic and African female genital mutilation, the public gang-rapes of innocent young girls in Pakistan (like Mukhtaran Bibi) and the repeated gang-rapes of girls and women in Darfur by ethnic Arab Muslims (the New York Times simply refused to use the word “Muslim”). The media has covered the disfiguring acid attacks on girls and women in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. Maddeningly, it draws no conclusion.
The uprising against the rule of Bashar Assad in Syria is continuing to grow. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are now taking part in the protests. As the month of Ramadan approaches, the forecast is intensified strife.
Still, serious fissures have yet to appear in the regime, and the Assads show every intention of fighting on. This opens up the prospect of a long period of violence ahead.
Israel continues to endure the fallout from the Mavi Marmara debacle; Israel gets blamed for defending herself even though Turkish hired assassins had come with the express purpose of assaulting and murdering Israeli soldiers.
In the teeth of this cruel public relations disaster, the indomitable Italian parliamentarian Fiamma Nirenstein, the chair of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, asked me to write something that would be read at a massive pro-Israel rally that she, together with Giuliano Ferrara, the publisher of Il Foglio, helped organize.
By Sara Akrami
When the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, it had two strategies to eliminate its opponents. First, it killed its internal opponents using mass executions and barbaric torture. Second, it killed its opponents abroad using assassin-spies from its embassies around the world.
Many of these opponents living overseas were Iranian intellectuals and activists who had escaped from Iran after the establishment of this notorious Islamist government. However, the terrorism of the Iranian government was not only directed at its own citizens — or former citizens — it also claimed victims from other nationalities.
by Gary Gambill*
With Syrian troops encircling the city of Hama, Barack Obama’s administration and its European counterparts continue to hold out hope that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can be coaxed into accepting a peaceful transition to democracy. Instead of joining the protesters in demanding Assad’s resignation, the U.S. envoy to Damascus, Robert Ford, is encouraging prominent dissidents to hold a dialogue with the regime.
Unfortunately, there are no plausible circumstances under which a democratic transition would constitute a rational choice for the embattled dictator, and it appears exceedingly unlikely that the Syrian people will peacefully accept anything less. The Syrian people’s fight for freedom promises to be long, uncertain, and violent.
During the time that Florida mother Casey Anthony was in custody and on trial, any number of American fathers, stepfathers, and live-in boyfriends killed their children.
Daily, the local and national media dutifully report awful examples of paternal cruelty and infanticidal violence.
by Raymond Ibrahim*
Earlier we saw Egyptian preacher Huwaini and Kuwaiti political activist Mutairi call for the reinstitution of sex-slavery. Before dismissing their position as aberrant, that is “radical,” for the record, here are respected Muslim scholar Majid Khadduri’s thoughts on the matter:
We live in ominous times. Our government embraces false “allies” while betraying true ones; our right to be armed is threatened; our religious freedoms are threatened by unethical political dogmas and nefarious foreign funding; our entertainment is dominated by a depraved group of money-hungry, unethical anthopomorphs; our primary and secondary schools are poisoned with political correctness that teaches that no one is responsible for his/her own actions; our academia is dominated by anti-Semitic, Islamo-philic bigots; and, our government is filled with self-serving, lying, unethical thieves. It is time to remember the sacred words penned by this great nation’s Founding Fathers, the American Declaration of Independence:
Last month, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “scrapped the laws” which guaranteed “leniency” for honor killers. Family honor will no longer be a mitigating factor in such cases. On the West Bank and in Gaza, such barbaric murders of girls and women routinely draw sentences of six months or less.
Abbas was apparently driven to this unusual act by public outrage about an alleged honor killing which took place near Hebron on the West Bank.
Over a year ago, on April 20, 2010, 20-year-old Aya Baradiya disappeared. Her paternal uncle, 37-year-old Iqab Baradiya, and two accomplices had kidnapped her, bound her hand and foot, and threw her down a well, leaving her to die a slow and painful death. Her remains were not found for more than a year.
By Andrew Whitehead
In the last few months much has been said about the rise of such new (for Americans) ideas as: “Sharia-compliant finance” and “Sharia Law for Muslims“. The mainstream press has either failed to report accurately on Sharia law, or purposely ignores its impact on America.
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