Everyday American images of the war on terror — the legacy of 9/11: Government buildings surrounded by ugly concrete blocks. Pennsylvania Avenue, the street that the White House — once known as the “people’s house” — faces, no longer open to traffic. ID cards required everywhere. Airline passengers waiting patiently in line to take off their shoes, belts, jewelry — and to have their bags searched and perhaps their bodies as well. Fans searched as they enter football stadiums. People on the watch for suspicious characters — including those who might take photos of bridges and tunnels. People fearing to retrieve lost bags in case they are booby trapped. Increased government surveillance of individual Americans, including their telephone calls overseas.
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:
There they all stand, guilty as sin, Afghan Taliban terrorists disguised in women’s burqas — but exposed when they were captured by the Afghan Border Police. Their photo (or rather photos) were taken by an Afghan photographer somewhere near Jalalabad and have just been seen worldwide.
At the end of a week in which U.S. military forces in Pakistan carried out the execution of Osama bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban declared that the death of “Sheikh Osama bin Laden will give a new impetus to the current jihad against the invaders in this critical phase of jihad,” a stunning display of Islamist insensitivity and arrogance took place at the University of California, Berkeley. On Friday, May 6, 2011, Ebrahim Moosa, a South African Muslim and professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, speaking at a UC Berkeley workshop on “Religious Norms in the Public Sphere,” defended Deobandism, the madrassa-based radical ideology that inspires the Taliban.
Although the execution of Osama bin Laden was mainly a symbolic and psychological act of counterterrorism, its most immediate consequence, ironically, affects U.S.-Pakistan relations.
In response to Pakistani upset about their national sovereignty being trespassed, the Zardari government severely condemned what it called “an unauthorized unilateral action.”
As the Afghan war enters its final and most decisive phase, India’s strategic position in the country has turned a full circle. Having maintained a close relationship with the post-Taliban government for years, New Delhi suffered a humiliating setback last January when its warning against the folly of making a distinction “between good Taliban and bad Taliban” was summarily ignored by the Afghanistan Conference in London.[1]
At a stroke, Pakistan squeezed its nemesis from the evolving security architecture by persuading the West that the time had come to incorporate the “moderate” faction of the Taliban into Afghanistan’s future state structure and to give Islamabad a key role in mediating this process.[2] Meanwhile, despite its best attempts to keep a low profile, India and its nationals have been increasingly targeted by extremist forces in Afghanistan. The Indian embassy in Kabul was struck twice over the past two years, and guest houses frequented by Indians were attacked with nine Indian nationals killed.[3]
Osama bin Laden Dead was killed today by American troops in a firefight. That means he knew he was going to die, which I find immensely more satisfying than if he were to have been instantly incinerated by a Predator-launched missile and spared pain. Congratulations to our brave men and women in the American military.
Why was bin Laden able to “hide,” basically out in the open, in Pakistan? There must’ve been collusion between Pakistan’s Islamist elements and al-Qaeda. In his announcement of bin Laden’s death tonight, President Obama said Pakistan had cooperated in the operation to kill al-Qaeda’s leader. My gut tells me that was political lip-service to Pakistan. More likely, the U.S. military told Pakistan, “Get out of our way or else!”
And why did Obama have to mention the, “We’re not at war with Islam,” bull-sh*t. Bin Laden was an evil criminal. All free-thinking people should be relieved. The U.S. certainly doesn’t have to cater to any special interest group and/or apologize for killing the world’s #1 scum-bag.
We’ll see as more info comes out. Justice has been done. G#d bless America.
After mentioning the sort of atrocities Christians in Pakistan suffer — including being killed by “blasphemy” laws, constantly “abused in public and harassed in the street by groups of Muslim youths,” ostracized and impoverished by the government — a recent Fox News report reminds us that Christian persecution is further exacerbated by anti-Americanism:
Hina Jilani is a Pakistani women’s rights activist, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, a former U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders, and a co-author of the Goldstone Report.
Dear Hina Jilani:
Greetings! I am familiar with and an admirer of your work as a Pakistani feminist and human rights lawyer, one who has gone on record opposing both honor killing and rape and the inadequate legislation against such crimes in Pakistan.
In 1999, you handled one very high profile honor killing case, that of a Pakistani woman, Samia Imran (aka Samia Sarwar), whose physician mother and politically powerful father arranged that she be shot to death in your office because she dared to seek a divorce from a dangerously violent Pakistani husband. I wrote about this case in 2004-2005 and have written about it again any number of times since then.
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:
The Afghan conflict has refocused world attention on Waziristan. Once one of the British Empire’s most volatile territories, the remote small province in northwestern Pakistan is now home to Taliban insurgents, al-Qaeda fighters, rogue elements within the Pakistani military, and Western jihadists, who use it as a base to rest, heal, rearm, train, and plan before they launch again across the porous border into Afghanistan. It is also the area where Osama bin Laden and many of his top lieutenants are probably hiding and a regular target for U.S. air strikes against key Taliban personnel. Pakistani military operations destroyed insurgent forces and caused mass civilian dislocation, yet efforts to produce a lasting peace deal with the local tribesmen and the Taliban have proved futile. Waziristan remains a dangerous and unpredictable region with the potential to unhinge President Hamid Karzai’s fragile regime in Afghanistan, threaten the Pakistani government, and pose a major challenge to regional stability.
Two readers asked me questions well worth answering. The first asked whether Islam itself isn’t the enemy; the second, how these distinctions appear from an Israeli standpoint.
Regarding the first question, I would stress that “Islam” as a religion functioning in the world is not at war with anyone as such. There are those who want to steer Islam toward an active war against how the majority of Muslims live at present and almost all the governments ruling them, using valid quotations and interpretations. And there are those who oppose them, including most of those governments, also using valid quotations and interpretations of Islam.
Western leaders’ and media’s mistake is not that they aren’t “anti-Islam” or that they are “pro-Islam” but that they don’t understand fully this conflict happening among Muslims, the contending forces, the stakes, and the nature of the struggle. Thus, dire Islamist enemies are often misjudged as friends merely because they aren’t violent at present or because they say soothing words to Western audiences, while genuinely moderate Muslims are shunned as “inauthentic” merely because they disagree with the radicals.
Below is a synopsis of the information that has been released on Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad’s immigration history. It reveals a familiar pattern of a terrorist easily taking advantage of weak spots in America’s immigration system. Shahzad was admitted long before 9/11, but the openings he exploited are still in place today. Until policymakers move to shrink them, they offer a sobering guarantee of job security for counter-terrorism and security personnel for the foreseeable future. The Center for Immigration Studies also offers several policy recommendations that would reduce the risks inherent in U.S. visa and immigration programs.
Contrary to what some news media have stated, it is not completely clear that Shahzad always maintained legal status. In addition, there are aspects of his immigration history that indicate his possible awareness of how to work our system, suggesting this was neither a case of “home grown” terrorism, nor a case of “a legal immigrant’s failed American Dream,” as suggested by a CBS newscaster. Consider the following chronology, based on reporting by the New York Times.
When news comes of Muslims engaging in violence, the triad of politicians, law enforcement, and media invariably presumes that the perpetrator suffers from some mental or emotional incapacity. (For a quick listing of examples, see my collection at “Sudden Jihad or ‘Inordinate Stress’ at Ft. Hood?“).
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