by Sherry Jones
New York: Beaufort Books, 2008. 432 pp. $25

Reviewed by Robert Spencer*

Muhammad and Aisha, a Love Story

Jones, correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs news agency, never expected her novel about Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr, the first caliph, and favorite wife of the prophet of Islam, to become a battleground in the war over free speech between the West and the Muslim world. Rather, as she explained, “I have deliberately and consciously written respectfully about Islam and Mohammed … I envisioned that my book would be a bridge-builder.”[1]

The Jewel of Medina became a cause célèbre when Random House dropped it in August 2008 just before publication, citing fear of threats from Muslims — threats, it bears noting, that had not yet materialized. Subsequently, three Muslims were arrested in London for firebombing the offices of the book’s new British publisher, Gibson Square, which also then dropped the book.[2] It has now been published in the United States by Beaufort Books, which, in a press release, said that it “knows how to look for trouble.”

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

So, I’m guilty, I also stood on line with everyone else and contributed to James Bond’s record-setting weekend box office receipts of $70.4 million dollars in hard American currency. Daniel Craig’s Bond in Quantam of Solace has just trumped his earlier record in Casino Royale of $40 million dollars for an opening weekend. … (Continue reading…)

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

Two men on a motorcycle used water pistols to spray acid on girls walking to school Wednesday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, blinding at least two of them, military spokesmen said. ….

CNN.com, 11/12/08

Also yesterday in Afghanistan, a “… suicide bombing … occurred near a government building hours later that killed and wounded several civilians, including women and children.” And in neighboring Pakistan yesterday, “Gunmen shot dead a U.S. aid official along with his driver as he left his home in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Wednesday, a senior police official said.”

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

Ali ibn Abi-Talib, the seventh-century figure central to Shiite Islam, is said to have predicted when the world will end, columnist Amir Taheri points out. A “tall black man” commanding “the strongest army on earth” will take power “in the west.” He will carry “a clear sign” from the third imam, Hussein. Ali says of the tall black man: “Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us.”

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler*

She knew.

She told her friends that her father was going to kill her. She ran away, stayed at a shelter, stayed with friends. She was lured back home by honeyed sentences. Her family could not sleep without her. Late last year, on December 10th, in Toronto, sixteen year-old Aqsa Parvez’s father. Mohammed, and her brother, Waqas, collaborated in her murder.

Aqsa’s crime? She refused to wear hijab, she was becoming too assimilated.

Mohammed and Waqas Parvez are currently in jail awaiting trial.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee Australians defiant

Australians have finally found some justice and hopefully, a sense of peace and closure. Three Islamists were executed by Indonesian authorities on Sunday, shortly after midnight, for the heinous, cowardly, and evil bombings of several nightclubs in Bali on October 12, 2002, an act which “killed 202 people — most of them young Australians — and injured more than 300.” Australians have held steadfast in the war against Islamo-fascism, and will probably become even more unwavering in defense of Western ideals after hearing the twisted and unremorseful ramblings of the three Bali bombers before their executions.

(more…)

By Raheel Raza*

If you are Canadian and Islamist, you probably voted for the New Democratic Party (NDP), which won 18.2% of the vote on October 14, 2008. This was an increase in of about 1% in the vote and led to seven more seats from the 2006 elections. However, the party could not budge itself from its permanent 4^th place in Canada’s parliament. Endorsed by the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), the left-leaning NDP has shown an incredible lack of understanding of the Islamist agenda and how soft jihadis are using democratic institutions by manipulating our respect for multiculturalism.

(more…)

By Joe Kaufman*

Combating radical Islam requires understanding the lawful or peaceful means Islamists use to spread their doctrines.

Islamism is a threat to America because it does not accept the principles of general religious freedom, as protected under the U.S. Constitution. Rather, it has a totalitarian agenda that does not recognize national boundaries or the separation of religious dictates from the social, political, and economic governance of society — including the private lives of its citizenry. The Islamist view of law is based on Shari’a (Islamic law), not the American Constitution.

(more…)

by George Saliba
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. 315 pp. $40 (£24.95).

Reviewed by Toby E. Huff*

Saliba has been studying Arabic scientific texts for many years, mainly those written by astronomers, and this volume offers his account of astronomical studies in Islamic civilization to the end of the sixteenth century. He argues that Islamic civilization, with no mention of Muslims, Christians, or Jews, hosted a “brilliant scientific production” in astronomy, medicine, and optics into the sixteenth century.

This is, however, a highly problematic and exaggerated story.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

Radical Muslims have once again perpetrated a heinous, misogynistic act of barbarity against a female child. Such acts reveal the deeply repressed state of some Muslim males. They force their women to cover themselves up so as not to arouse sexual temptations, apparently not trusting themselves. They blame women who are, for example, raped — even executing them. Such “punishments” are almost incomprehensible to most Westerners, but the civilized world needs to pay attention to these acts of violence, as they provide deep insight into the “thinking” of Islamists. From the Daily Mail, entitled, “Somali girl ‘pleaded for mercy’ before Islamists stoned her to death for being raped:”

(more…)

by Michael Rubin*

As Iran’s nuclear program has developed, the Bush administration appeared to draw a red line: a nuclear weapons-capable Islamic Republic would be unacceptable. On August 8, 2004, for example, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC News that the United States “cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon” and that President George W. Bush would “look at all the tools that are available to him.”[1] In an October 27, 2006, Oval Office meeting with NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Bush remarked, “the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.”[2] A year later, Bush declared that “Iran will be dangerous if they have the know-how to make a nuclear weapon.”[3] If Bush’s statement was a red line then, today it appears to have been more a rhetorical flourish than a policy truth.

(more…)

By Douglas Farah*

Every once in a while, it is necessary to step back from the abstract world of ideas and see what the ideas actually mean in people’s lives. That is particularly true as the new administration enters and has to think about what the radical Islamist agenda really means to those who live under it.

It is also worth noting the little-noticed support some of the worst parts of the Islamist agenda get from so-called moderate and mainstream Islamist groups who are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

The American people are voting in droves today. There are incredibly long lines at all my neighborhood polling sites. Feminists are especially concerned with women’s reproductive rights. They believe that the Democrats share their views.

While this is true, it may be true only for American women, not for women living elsewhere, especially in the Islamic world. … (Continue reading…)

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

From the perspective of a Middle East & Islam specialist, the just-concluding U.S. presidential election is extraordinary for the outsized role of one’s subject area. Consider some of the topics:

(more…)

By Phyllis Chesler

My sister’s blood, a child’s blood, cries out to me.

Last week, a barbaric gang of Somali Muslim fundamentalists gang-raped a 13 year-old girl after which they stoned her to death. One thousand spectators in the Kismayo stadium cheered the stoning on. The victim’s name was Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. … (Continue reading…)

(more…)