By Jonathan Spyer

Sitting in the best bar in Jerusalem about four months ago (it’s called Sira, in case you’re interested), I entered into conversation with a tall, ginger-haired young man who turned out to be a member of the Swedish contingent in the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH). Our conversation ranged over the trials and tribulations of the life of a member of TIPH, the very large amounts of money he seemed to be making, and the merits of Jerusalem when compared with other cities in the region.

An offhand remark he made concerning the political balance of power in Hebron turned the conversation from mildly interesting to memorable. I asked him if Hamas was gaining ground in the city of Hebron. He replied wearily that the fastest-growing political force in the city was not Hamas, nor any of the other well-known Palestinian political movements. Rather, the most notable and noticeable development on the ground in Hebron was the sudden and rapid rise in support for the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir.

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By Canadian Coalition for Democracies

Ottawa, Canada - On Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier condemned Burma’s military junta for the regime’s escalating assaults on freedom, democracy and individual liberty. The junta has long detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, abused other pro-democracy leaders and protesters, and denied free expression and free association to its citizens.

“Canadians applaud Minister Bernier’s firm support for democracy in Burma,” said Alastair Gordon, President, Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD). “The Minister must now demonstrate Canada’s commitment with decisive action aimed at ending the dictatorship, and restoring freedom to the Burmese people.”

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By Barry Rubin

A fascinating way to try to improve one’s own understanding of the Middle East is to try to explain the region to people from a totally different culture and history. I’ve done this in several far-flung places around the world but Thailand provides a particularly interesting example of the particularity and–in global terms–bizarre nature of the Middle East.

Of course, many people in Asia have the fewest preconceptions about the region because Hindus and Buddhists do not have the links to the Holy Land or what might even be called the Holy Region, a factor which so affects Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinking.

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By Zachary Abuza*

Once again Thailand has brought in another Muslim dignitary in the hopes that they will be able to miraculously quell the violence in the restive south, in which nearly 2,400 people have been killed since the start of 2004.

In late June, the head of the quasi-official Saudi agency, the Muslim World League, Abdullah bin Abdul Mohsin Al-Turki, came and white washed any religious or ideological affinity of the insurgents. The MWL is one of the primary means that the Saudi government exports their virulent and intolerant version of Islam, often termed Wahhabism. Yet the Thai government is in denial that there is any correlation between the current outbreak of violence and the spread of Salafi/Wahhabism into the region. Southerners repeatedly tell me that the current generation of militants is comprised of ideological hardliners, completely intolerant of non-Muslims and moderate Muslims who seek accommodation with the Thai state. To wit, roughly 55 percent of the victims of the insurgent have been their co-religionists.

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A personal, historical vignette

By Cainnech O Sullibhain

Everyday, we go about our routine totally unaware of the lives of people around us. But sometimes our lives have been changed because of the circumstances.

So, I’ll begin my story. In early 1937, I was only four years old, and it was at lunch time that my father came home. Both my mother and father were sitting having lunch, and I was in the next room. The conversation between my mother and father was about the death of Sgt. M. Orchard of the Royal Artillery, 3rd Battery who had died in the British military hospital the night before. My father, an army doctor, had been responsible for that death. The colonel in charge had ordered my father to treat Sgt. Orchard for malaria, when in fact he had pneumonia. The reason for the misdiagnosis was that the colonel had been sweet on the wife of Sgt. Orchard and wanted him out of the way. My father had been forced to commit murder. I listened in to the whole conversation and was shocked. Little Jimmy Orchard was my friend. I was so angry that I could not even cry. So, I went out of the house and sat in the garden thinking about what I had heard. Being so young, I was not able to face up to the issue, so I blocked all of it out of my mind. One day in 1997, I awoke in the middle of the night. I was perspiring profusely and the whole story of what had happened on that day in 1937 came back with a bang. Everything in my life had been guided by an unknown hand.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Yesterday, I reported on mistreatment of gays in Moscow. This incident was “deplored” by all sorts of big-wigs, like London Mayor Ken Livingstone and “the mayors of Paris and Rome.” Now I find that a gay bar in Australia has banned heterosexuals from entering, with the approval of government and civil rights groups. Identity politics — special dispensations for certain groups — will lead us down a slippery slope, one where our laws will become untenable and confusing. How would we explain such contradictions to children? There’s too many of us straights anyway — I guess we should be wearing hetero armbands. From the BBC:

A gay pub in the city of Melbourne has won the right to ban heterosexuals - the first time such legislation has been passed in Australia.

The Victorian state civil and administrative tribunal ruled the Peel Hotel could ban patrons based on their sexual orientation.

The pub’s management said the move would stop groups of heterosexual men and women abusing gay people.

Civil liberties groups have supported the decision. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Internal Muslim politics in Australia are playing out like a soap opera — one where radicalism and corruption are major themes. The current “mufti” presiding over Australia’s national imams council got himself in hot water last year: “Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali said women who did not wear a hijab (head dress) were like ‘uncovered meat’.” A name being floated to replace Hilali is Mohammed Swaiti, who is currently under investigation by the tax office for taking Saudi money under the table, and reportedly “praised mujaheddin (holy warriors) in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Can you say “credibility problem?” From The Australian:

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A personal, historical vignette

By Cainnech Ó Sullibhain

In late October 1964 the M/V Kohinur (London Registry), fully loaded with general cargo, left Dunkerque, France headed for the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and Shanghai, China. When we reached Shanghai, it was respite and a time to relax. I got in the small ferry that took me from the anchorage in the Yang-Tse River to Shanghai. There, I went to visit the People’s Friendship Store not far from the old Ellie Cadoorie Building, which was the tallest building in Shanghai then. It was built by Sir Ellie Cadoorie, a businessman and self-made millionaire, in the days of the British Concession in China.

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A personal, historical anecdote

By Cainnech Ó Sullibhain

Our ship the M/V Ganges (London Registry) had just left the port of Tsamkong, China after unloading general cargo, when we were ordered by our head office in London, England to proceed to Cairns, Queensland, Australia. We had just made it to the South China Sea to discover that we did not have enough fuel to proceed. The master of the ship was a young man who, at 23 years of age, received the MBE from King George VI for saving the lives of his life boat crew after their ship was sunk by a German U-boat in the mid Atlantic in 1942.

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By Cainnech Ó Sullibhain

Ages have passed yet no one in the West has been able to come to terms with militant Islam. The question is why? That is because no one in the West really took the time to make a thorough study of how Islam operates.

Let us begin with Moro in the Northern Philippines. Islam supposedly came to these islands via Canton, China on a Chinese junk. When the first Arab Muslim missionary Sharif Aulia Karim al-Mukhdum arrived in the Jolo, the Philippines, in 1380 and began his conversion of the area to Islam, one had not expected that fanaticism would enter the fray. But, everywhere one looks at how Islam came one notice that fanaticism is a part of the very make-up of the new Islamic society.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

No tears for Malaysian women’s reproductive rights — let alone their right to religious and cultural freedoms? How would the West’s multiculturalists react to this?

Islamic authorities took away the baby of a Muslim woman who is living as a Hindu in defiance of the law in the latest case of religious conflict straining ties in multiethnic Malaysia, officials said Friday.

Revathi Masoosai’s 15-month-old daughter was taken by the Islamic Religious Department in southern Malacca state on March 26 and handed to Revathi’s Muslim mother, said department enforcement officer Mohamad Imran Ahmad.

“The baby’s grandmother has custody of her for now,” Mohamad Imran told The Associated Press.

Revathi, an ethnic Indian, is being held in a rehabilitation center run by Islamic authorities for her religious transgression. The baby was with Revathi’s husband when she was seized. He has filed a police complaint, but it was not clear if he plans to take the case to court. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

You’ve heard of beheading in the name of Islam… Well the Islamo-fascists have sunk to even lower lows, shooting a Buddhist ice cream vendor in the back, and then beheading him; I assume because the poor guy was… Buddhist:

Suspected separatists in Thailand’s majority Muslim province of Pattani on Thursday shot dead and then beheaded a Buddhist ice cream vendor, police said.

At 11 a.m. unknown assailants shot Virachai Utharaniyong, 45, in the back as he peddled his ice cream cart through a Muslim village on the outskirts of Pattani city, 730 kilometres south of Bangkok.

‘After shooting him dead they chopped off his head and took it with them,’ said Pattani Police Sub-Lieutenant Attapol Kunwongmannsoh, who inspected the scene of the crime.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Remember CSNY’s, “Teach Your Children,” a mainstay tune of the 60’s hippie revolution? Well, Australia’s ninemsn reported today that, “Sydney’s most influential radical Muslim cleric has been reportedly caught on film calling Jews pigs and urging children to die for Allah.” What a wide gulf there is between the tolerance of Western ideals and the ugly backwardness of radical Islam (Islamism). Great liberal democracies — Australia — welcome people like the above-mentioned “cleric” with open arms, and are repaid with hatred. Here’s what this “cleric” is teaching children:

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By Zachary Abuza*

Sunday, 19 November 2006, is the two-month anniversary of the Thai coup. Though the coup was executed for many different reasons, the Thaksin administration’s mishandling of the southern insurgency that had already claimed some 1,700 lives, was a major factor. The insurgency was spiraling out of control and the six bombings over a 30-minute period in Hat Yai, a major commercial center, concerned many that the coup was bleeding north of the three Muslim-majority provinces.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The “top” Australian Muslim cleric is now attempting to sanitize his blatant incitement to violence against women using the usual “taken out of context” excuse. Thankfully, Australian leaders aren’t buying it:

Australia’s most senior Muslim cleric has prompted an uproar by saying that some women are attracting sexual assault by the way they dress.

Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali said women who did not wear a hijab (head dress) were like “uncovered meat”.

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