JDL Stages Demonstration at Arab Federation Building

By Fern Sidman

Defiant chants of “Condemn Muslim Terrorism Now” and “Jewish Blood Is Not Cheap” could be heard in streets of downtown Toronto, on Thursday afternoon, July 31st, as 30 members of Toronto’s Jewish Defense League staged an angry demonstration in front of the offices of the Canadian Arab Federation. Responding to the dramatic rise in anti-Semitic attacks on Jews by Muslims in the Toronto area, Meir Weinstein, director of the JDL in Toronto said, “The abject silence on the part of the Canadian Arab Federation in the face of vitriolic attacks on Jews by Muslim perpetrators is tantamount to tacit approval of anti-Semitism and gives a green light to others who would entertain the notion of attacking Jews.”

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Preface by Melanie Phillips*

In February 2008, Gwyn Prins, a professor at the London School of Economics, and Robert Salisbury, the marquess of Salisbury and a privy counselor, published a breakthrough essay in the RUSI Journal on the incongruity between current British defense discourse and the threat posed by radical Islam.[1] The essay, a portion of which is excerpted below, represents the consensus view not only of the authors but also of ten former military chiefs, diplomats, analysts and academics. As important as are the authors is the place of publication: The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) sits at the heart of Britain’s defense establishment and is recognized internationally as an authority on defense and security issues. Their paper highlights the profound conceptual flaws at the heart of Britain’s strategy for combating the threats facing the country, criticism made more devastating by the combined weight and authority of its authors.

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By Jonathan Spyer

Over the last two months, Israeli security forces have arrested six young Arab men suspected of seeking to form an extreme Islamist cell for the purpose of carrying out high-profile terror attacks in the capital. Two of the six held Israeli citizenship, while the other four were residents of east Jerusalem. It appears that they were radicalized through involvement in an Islamic study circle and via the Internet. Two Arab Israeli citizens from the town of Rahat were arrested in recent weeks on similar suspicions.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Four female suicide killers just murdered 57 people and wounded 300 others in Iraq. Many of their victims were on a religious pilgrimage.

This should no longer surprise us. Like men, women are human beings and are therefore as close to the apes as to the angels. Thus, like men, women are as likely to nourish as to destroy. Still, we live in a culture that on the one hand, suspects women of being sneaky, “bitchy,” even evil but on the other hand, idealizes women as morally superior to men and as Natural Born Mothers, not as Natural Born Killers. … (Continue reading…)

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By Phyllis Chesler

This weekend, on both Saturday and Sunday evenings at 8pm, EST, Fox-TV will be airing a one hour documentary about honor murders in America. They interviewed me at length and you may see my face and my words on camera. … (Continue reading…)

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By Phyllis Chesler

Once upon a time, the King invited the infidels to Madrid–but he only invited a handful of Jews who are all, rightly or wrongly, perceived as more critical of Israel and of Judaism than of Islam. The King did not invite any influential, religious women. This did not stop any man of faith from attending.

I am talking about Saudi King Abdullah’s interfaith conference in Madrid which was attended by nearly 300 delegates representing Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other faiths from over 50 countries. King Abdullah opened the conference on July 16, 2008 in the presence of Spain’s King Juan Carlos… (Continue reading…)

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By Phyllis Chesler

The photo arrests my gaze. It instantly haunts me. It shows two Afghan women chatting while sitting on their heels, close to the ground. They are both wearing iridescent light blue burqas. One seems to be clutching a shopping bag. They are about to be shot to death by Taliban fighters who accused them of running a prostitution ring that catered to American soldiers. For good measure, the Taliban also accused them of working for the local governor. According to the BBC here: (Continue reading…)

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by Dmitry Shlapentokh*

Chechnya has been at war with Russia for generations. By 1999, when the second Chechen war broke out, two resistance groups had emerged: nationalists and jihadists. While long simmering below the surface, the schism between the two camps erupted publicly in 2006 on the Internet after Akhmed Khalidovich Zakaev, the moderate foreign minister of the shadow Chechen government, argued that the goal of the Chechen resistance should be an independent Chechen state modeled after Western democracies and integrated into the global community. Movladi Udugov, a jihadist and editor of Kavkaz Center, the best-known online resistance publication, vehemently disagreed and declared that for real Muslims, spiritual bonds should be more important than blood ties. He argued that he would rather embrace ethnic Russians who had converted to Islam than Chechens who had strayed from their religion. There was no point modeling society after Western states, he contended, because all non-Muslim states, or those that are Muslim only in name but not in essence, are corrupt. Instead, Chechens should fight for the establishment of a global caliphate.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

… “We should prepare our children and men for jihad,” she said.

The crowd responded with shrill chants of “we are ready” and “al jihad”. …

Such was the atmosphere at a perverse Islamist rally held last week in Islamabad, Pakistan: Female protesters calling for their children and husbands to kill “infidels” by killing themselves. I hope the generation of Westerners who grew up listening to Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s Teach Your Children will take note. From the Mail Online:

About 2,000 Islamist women gathered at the radical Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital on Wednesday and vowed to raise their children for holy war, days after a suicide bomber killed 18 people after a similar rally.

Chanting slogans of “jihad is our way”, burqa-clad women, some with babies, listened to fiery speeches from the daughter of the mosque’s jailed cleric on the eve of the anniversary of a commando raid on the complex in which more than 100 people died.

“Our mujahideen (fighters) laid down their lives for the enforcement of the Islamic system in Pakistan. We are left behind to carry forward their mission,” the daughter of cleric Abdul Aziz told the tightly guarded rally in the mosque compound. …

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by Daniel Pipes*

As one of the few pro-U.S. and pro-Israel voices in the field of Middle East studies, I find my views get frequently mangled by others in the field – thus I have had to post a 5,000-word document titled “Department of Corrections (of Others’ Factual Mistakes about Me)” on my website.

Usually, the precise evolution of such mistakes escapes me. Recently, however, I discovered just how one developed in three steps and confronted the two academics who made the errors. Their unwillingness to acknowledge their errors illustrates the mixture of incompetence and arrogance of Middle East studies as it is, unfortunately, too often practiced in the academy.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Cultural differences exist, they are real and they matter. As a lifetime critic of injustice, I understand that it exists everywhere but as someone who has also once lived in the Islamic Third world and studied it thereafter, I understand that, as my dear friend Ibn Warraq says, the West is worth defending; our values and virtues, our laws and customs are different from and in many ways more evolved than the (absence) of laws and abusive customs that characterize totalitarian, fascist, tyrannical, and fundamentalist regimes.

Just today, here is a small sampling of news about the recent and ongoing fate of women in the Islamic world. …

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By E.D. Kain

Harry’s Place, a UK blog dedicated to promoting the ideals of freedom and democracy, is being sued by Mohammed Sawalha, the President of the British Muslim Initiative, which has been linked to Hamas and the Islamic Brotherhood, both terrorist organizations. The blog reports that Mr. Sawalha, according to the BBC…

“master minded much of Hamas’ political and military strategy” and in London “is alleged to have directed funds, both for Hamas’ armed wing, and for spreading its missionary dawah”.

In their revelation of the impending lawsuit against them leveled by Mohammed Sawalha, they write:

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By Jonathan Spyer

An interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared in the Sunday Times this week. The interview took place in Jerusalem’s American Colony Hotel. It was concerned with Blair’s role as the Quartet’s Middle East envoy, and was written by journalist Lesley White. Journalist Lesley White is evidently not a specialist on the Middle East. I say “evidently” because the article contains a series of ludicrous errors which leave one slack-jawed in astonishment at the standards apparently now prevailing in this august publication.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Good afternoon dear people!

Well, this time, the mainstream media is actually beginning to cover the honor murder in Atlanta. I do not understand why they never covered the honor murder of the Said sisters in Dallas about which I have previously written many times at this blogsite. But–in only a matter of days, CNN not only wrote about it; they also turned to an alleged expert who says that honor murders are no different than domestic violence cases world-wide. …

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by E. Haldun Solmazturk*

Policymakers and future historians may get whiplash from divergent analyses of where Turkey is headed. Some Turkish writers—The Turkish Daily News‘ Mustafa Akyol and Zaman’s Ali Aslan, for example — argue that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) have succeeded at melding Islam to modern democracy. Other writers — The Turkish Daily News’ Yusuf Kanlı or the Washington Institute’s Soner Cagaptay — are far more suspicious.

—The Editors

At the heart of the political debate in Turkey lies the tension between Islam and secularism. Is the former democratic and the latter, at least in Turkey, autocratic? Ömer Taşpinar, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institute, recently argued this case in Foreign Affairs (”The Old Turks’ Revolt,” November/December 2007). His thesis is trendy in certain circles, but it is dishonest. He bases his argument on false assumptions, cherry-picks data, and ignores context. What results is not so much scholarship as propaganda.

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