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 Daniel Pipes*

“Since 9/11, there have been over 2,300 arrests connected to Islamist terrorism in Europe in contrast to about 60 in the United States.” Thus writes Marc Sageman in his influential new book, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press).

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by Daniel Pipes*

If you cannot name your enemy, how can you defeat it? Just as a physician must identify a disease before curing a patient, so a strategist must identify the foe before winning a war. Yet Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the opponent in the conflict the U.S. government variously (and euphemistically) calls the “global war on terror,” the “long war,” the “global struggle against violent extremism,” or even the “global struggle for security and progress.”

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by Michael Rubin*

On April 29, answering a question on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Sen. Hillary Clinton warned that if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, “we would be able to totally obliterate them.” On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama chided Clinton. “It’s language reflective of George Bush. …This kind of language is not helpful,” Obama told Tim Russert.

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By Bill West*

Lately, we hear much from supporters of detained ex-University of South Florida computer engineering professor Sami Al-Arian, who pleaded guilty to (was convicted of) the Federal felony violation of providing assistance and support to members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization. Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months prison time for his crime. He was also ordered to be deported from the United States at the completion of his criminal incarceration.

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By Andrew Whitehead

In an article carried by MyrtleBeachOnline.com, Rep. Sue Myrick says she wants America to “wake up” and do something about terrorism. To that end, Rep. Myrick has introduced a ten-point plan apparently designed to both alert Americans to the threat of terrorism and also lay out a blue-print for taking action now to hopefully prevent incidents in future.

Among Myrick’s points (”Wake Up America”) is a call for examining the tax exempt status of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) a Washington, D.C. based front group that supports Islamist terrorism and Islamist terrorists in North America.

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by Daniel Pipes*

There’s an impression that Muslims suffer disproportionately from the rule of dictators, tyrants, unelected presidents, kings, emirs, and various other strongmen — and it’s accurate. A careful analysis by Frederic L. Pryor of Swarthmore College in the Middle East Quarterly (”Are Muslim Countries Less Democratic?“) concludes that “In all but the poorest countries, Islam is associated with fewer political rights.”

The fact that majority-Muslim countries are less democratic makes it tempting to conclude that the religion of Islam, their common factor, is itself incompatible with democracy.

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By Barry Rubin

Many years after September 11, despite more than 10,000 terrorist attacks by radical Islamist groups alone, there is still an amazing amount of confusion and falsehood over what should be a very simple point: What is terrorism all about?

The answer is politics and, to be specific, revolutionary politics. Most obviously, terrorism is a tactic used by political groups but, most importantly, it is a strategy. Defining who and what is “terrorist” should be neither a moral judgment nor a propaganda exercise. It is a simple use of political analysis.

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by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Kyle Dabruzzi*

Government officials, scholars, and analysts continue to debate the extent to which Al-Qaeda’s central leadership remains relevant to today’s battle against terrorism. After U.S. forces eliminated the group’s safe haven in Afghanistan in late 2001, many argued that Al-Qaeda had transformed into a decentralized organization with little vertical hierarchy, that it had become “more of an ideology than an organization.”[1] In the words of one analyst, Al-Qaeda was seen as “a fragmented terrorist group living on the run in the caves of Afghanistan.”[2] This description may have been true in the months following the overthrow of the Taliban, but the notion of a scattered and ineffective Al-Qaeda central leadership has been overplayed over the past several years. Many analysts have exaggerated the capabilities that the terror group’s top leaders require to remain relevant and so have overlooked the fact that even during its nadir from 2002 through 2004, Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership was able to develop terrorist plots for regional nodes to execute. Now that Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has gained a safe haven in the tribal regions of Pakistan, the organization’s power and relevance grow even greater. Today, the Al-Qaeda network—with a resilient central leadership—is the most dangerous terrorist adversary that the United States faces, possessing a lethal combination of capability and, unlike Hezbollah, a demonstrated desire to carry out mass-casualty attacks on U.S. soil.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

LiveLeak has re-posted Geert Wilders’ film “Fitna,” after having pulled the video off its site due to death threats. LiveLeak is the British video/media sharing service which first released Wilders’ movie. Following suspension of “Fitna,” LiveLeak issued a statement alluding to several British newspapers’ complicity in the death threats. According to the Daily Kos, “various British newspapers actually printed the names and addresses of Liveleak staffers. Needless to say, lots of very pointed death threats followed.” Whatever the details, LiveLeak has refused to succumb to Islamist intimidation and has stated (with admirable attitude):

On the 28th of March LiveLeak.com was left with no other choice but to remove the film “fitna” from our servers following serious threats to our staff and their families. Since that time we have worked constantly on upgrading all security measures thus offering better protection for our staff and families. With these measures in place we have decided to once more make this video live on our site. We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules. We apologise for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don’t consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted.

You can watch “Fitna” at LiveLeak by clicking here. Note that “Fitna” has been continuously available on sites like Google and here at netwmd.com.

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By Phyllis Chesler

I am intimately surrounded by enemy propaganda and I’ve only myself to blame. For example, I have been reading Publishers Weekly (PW) for a very long time. I don’t have to but I won’t give it up. Yes, I have noted the leftward drift of their reviews but, like the New York Times, whose editors and book reviewers have drifted similarly left-ward, PW remains a “must” for all those who want to read reviews of upcoming book titles and who want to know what publishing deals are in the works.

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“Islam is a religion that wants to rule the world.” “Freedom go to hell.” “Mosque will be part of the system of government of Holland.” Wilders’ film (below) speaks for itself — the Koranic verses and the corresponding acting out (terrorism), the interviews, the images, the headlines, quotes from imams, etc. Of course, those who deny there even is such a thing as Radical Islam will watch this and still deny the indisputable evidence. Just wait for them to scream “racism” and try to destroy all copies of Wilders’ movie. Please distribute using this link, and watch below (please be patient as the movie starts loading).

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By Andrew Whitehead

On Wednesday, 26 March, a grand jury indictment against Muthanna Al-Hanooti was unsealed in Michigan. The indictment accuses Al-Hanooti of violations of 18 and 50 United States Code. The specifics include allegations that Al-Hanooti provided information on members of the congress who were of interest to the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS), acted under direction of the IIS, accepted payments in oil (two million barrels) from the Iraqi government for acting as its agent, and provided a written brief to the Iraqi government outlining methods that could be used to lift the sanctions then in place against Iraq.

The indictment may be read here (PDF):
http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/112.pdf

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Interview by MEF*

Mohamed Sifaoui was born on July 4, 1967, and spent most of his childhood in Algeria. He holds a master’s degree in political science and studied theology for two years at the University of Algiers and for two additional years at Zeitouna University’s Institute of Theology in Tunis. In 1994, he began work for the Algerian daily Le Soir and survived a February 11, 1996 bomb attack at Le Soir’s headquarters at the Maison de la Presse. In 1999, the French government granted him political asylum after he received death threats both from Algerian Islamists and the military. In Paris, Sifaoui works at the French weekly Marianne. Between October 2002 and January 2003, he infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell in France in order to research his book, Mes frères assassins: Comment j’ai infiltré une cellule d’Al-Qaïda. (My assassin brothers: How I infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell).[1]

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by Irwin J. Mansdorf and Mordechai Kedar*

U.S. military lawyers acknowledge that “civilians may not be used … to render an area immune from military operations… [or] to shield a defensive position, to hide military objectives, or to screen an attack. Neither may they be forced to leave their homes or shelters in order to disrupt the movement of an adversary.”[1] Such restraint is not unique to the United States but also extends to Europe, Israel, and in the post-World War II era, many Asian countries as well. Increasingly, though, Israel’s Arab foes and Islamist groups discount such constraints in order to seek psychological advantage against technologically superior foes. Western governments are challenged today by an enemy whose behavior is inspired by theological doctrines that not only disregard the Western concept of ethical combat but for whom the killing of civilians—on both sides of a conflict—also serves a vital purpose.

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