(Washington, DC - 1/19/06) The Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism urges the United States to reject bin Laden’s call for a truce and to continue hunting him down.

The al-Jazeera satellite television network played an audio-video of Osama bin Laden, warning that his terrorist network is preparing new terrorist attacks in the United States.

Ironically, in the very same audio tape, he indicated that he is open to a truce with the United States in response to changing public U.S. opinion against the war in Iraq.

The Free Muslims Coalition Against Terrorism interpreted bin Laden’s remarks as a sign of weakness and an attempt to divide the American people.

On one hand he stated that attacks on the United States maybe forthcoming and on the other hand, he conditioned his attacks on the U.S. leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. The Free Muslims reminds the American people that bin Laden attacked the United States before the United States invaded Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, it is precisely because bin Laden attacked the United States that the United States invaded Afghanistan and sent bin Laden and his colleagues on the run.

The United States should ignore bin Laden’s offer of truce and continue the search for him until he and everyone in his network is brought to justice.

Moreover, the Free Muslims would like to remind everyone about the “Eye on Extremism” program that was enacted in 2004. By visiting www.FreeMuslims.org, anyone can make an anonymous report about suspicious activities or individuals. In return, the Free Muslims will pass along all information to the proper authorities.

Contact Kamal Nawash, 202-776-7190, 301-905-6438, president@freemuslims.org

For more information, visit our website at www.freemuslims.org

Today, Osama bin Laden both threatened the U.S. and, in the same fatwa, played to the weakness of Western civilization: those of the radical Left. From the AP:

Al-Jazeera on Thursday aired an audiotape from Osama bin Laden, who says al-Qaida is making preparations for attacks in the United States but offers a truce on “fair” but undefined conditions. The CIA has authenticated the voice on the tape as that of bin Laden, an agency official said. …

“We do not mind offering you a long-term truce with fair conditions that we adhere to,” he said. “We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war.

“There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America,” he said.

Translation of “long-term truce with fair conditions:” al-Qaeda is hurting badly; it wants time to regroup so that it can eventually kill all us infidels and then establish a world-wide Islamic caliphate.

I can already hear those of the radical Left: “C’mon… can’t you see? He’s suing for peace! He’s reasonable. Give peace a chance.”

9/11 and 3,000 dead already forgotten. It was our fault, by the way.

Too much fear; too little intelligence.

Dear Osama: This is a fight to the death that you started. We’ll finish it. Take your “truce” and shove it.

After blaming America for Hurricane Katrina and calling for his city to become a “chocolate New Orleans”, Mayor Ray Nagin has issued the standard political apology. His original statements belie his true motives, and his mea culpa is digging him into a deeper hole.

Here’s what Nagin said about America and its African-American citizens:

As we think about rebuilding New Orleans, surely God is mad at America. He’s sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane. . . Surely he’s not approving of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America, also.

Nagin has yet to explain what Iraq has to do with hurricanes, and hasn’t presented any evidence of “false pretenses.” He also urged that the Crescent City’s residents should

…rebuild a “chocolate New Orleans” and saying, “You can’t have New Orleans no other way.”

The UK’s Guardian presented a sanitized version of Nagin’s apology today:

The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, has apologised for a speech in which he predicted the city would be a “chocolate” city once more and asserted that Hurricane Katrina was a sign that “God was mad at America” and black communities for their violence.

“I said some things that were totally inappropriate … it shouldn’t have happened,” Mr Nagin said, explaining that his speech was meant to convey that black people were a vital part of New Orleans’ history and should be encouraged to return.

But CNN presented more revealing insight into Nagin’s mea culpa:

“I don’t care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day,” he said. “This city will be a majority African-American city. It’s the way God wants it to be.”

After the statement, he insisted he wasn’t being divisive.

“How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about,” he said. “New Orleans was a chocolate city before Katrina. It is going to be a chocolate city after. How is that divisive? It is white and black working together, coming together and making something special.”

One New Orleans resident presented the best rebutal to the mayor’s comments:

Resident Alex Gerhold called Nagin’s remarks “stupid” and “pitiful.”

“He used the wrong dairy product to describe us. We’re more Neapolitan, not chocolate,” Gerhold said. “It doesn’t do the city any kind of justice.”

The Boston Globe revealed Nagin’s true motives:

If God is intent on wreaking havoc on the Gulf Coast, as Nagin suggested, who could blame the mayor if the response to the disaster was ineffective or if rebuilding plans haven’t advanced very far? God, it would seem, is being used as a shield for individual shortcomings.

It is quite awful for Nagin to speak so harshly of the Big Easy’s Garden District (Uptown). Wealthy or not, the residents there have stayed on, and continued to pay their taxes, despite being subject to the city’s rampant crime and corruption.

It is also inexcusable for Nagin to invoke God and point fingers instead of accepting responsibility for his own mismanagement of his city.

What New Orleans needs is not apologies, but a new mayor.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin
Middle East Quarterly*
Winter 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/890
* Cross-posted with permission

Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American analyst, notes the contradiction of “an Arab world that besieges American embassies for visas and at the same time celebrates America’s calamities.”[1] But this seeming paradox actually makes sense. The more attractive the United States is to Arabs, the more pro-U.S. feelings threaten Arab nationalists and Islamists. As a result, both Arab nationalists and Islamists have an even greater incentive to distort Washington’s policies and the nature of U.S. society in their propaganda. For these opponents of liberalism, the United States becomes the great Satan whose devilishness justifies their behavior and explains their failures. The anti-American card is too useful and popular to be abandoned.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun*
January 17, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3281
* Cross-posted with permission

Islam and Muslims are expected to be a priority for Pope Benedict XVI, but he has been publicly quite muted on these topics during his first nine months in office. One report, however, provides important clues to his current thinking.

Father Joseph D. Fessio, SJ, recounted on the Hugh Hewitt Show the details of a seminar he attended with the pope in September 2005 on Islam. Participants heard about the ideas of a Pakistani-born liberal theologian, Fazlur Rahman (1919-88), who held that if Muslims thoroughly reinterpret the Koran, Islam can modernize. He urged a focus on the principles behind Koranic legislation such as jihad, cutting off thieves’ hands, or permitting polygyny, in order to modify these customs to fit today’s needs. When Muslims do this, he concluded, they can prosper and live harmoniously with non-Muslims.

(more…)

I regularly watch the NBC nightly news at 6:30 PM daily. When at least 345 Muslims were trampled to death by other Muslims at the Hajj, NBC briefly mentioned the event — it was the fifth story, not the headline; a footnote, if you will. The anchor, Brian Williams, looked a bit guilty while he swept another Muslim atrocity under the rug. Yet a U.S. airstrike aimed at killing al-Qaeda’s #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was the top headline on NBC last week.

The NBC report bemoaned the airstrike’s killing of 18 civilians, chided the U.S.’s faulty intelligence, and partially blamed Pakistani President Musharraf for being too soft on terrorists. The story’s video was mostly devoted to angry Islamists chanting, “Death to America!”

Well, well. Will NBC even mention today’s revelations from the provincial government of Bajur, a Pakistani tribal region sharing a border with Afghanistan:

“Four or five foreign terrorists have been killed in this missile attack whose dead bodies have been taken away by their companions to hide the real reason of the attack,” the statement said, citing the chief official in the Bajur region where Damadola is located.

“It is regrettable that 18 local people lost their lives in the attack, but this fact also cannot be denied, that 10-12 foreign extremists had been invited on a dinner,” it said.

The Washington Post reports Pakistani “confusion” over the airstrike’s circumstances:

Confusion over the incident deepened in Pakistan because of contradictory official statements. Although the administrator of the Bajur tribal region where the strike occurred said four or five foreign terrorists had been killed, the federal information minister said there was “no information about the presence of any foreign terrorists” in Bajur. “Such a violation of our territories will not be tolerated next time,” he said.

[Pakistani President] Musharraf’s government has come under intense conflicting pressures as it tries to cooperate with U.S. anti-terrorism efforts without provoking influential domestic Islamic organizations. Those groups can easily arouse the emotions of devout Muslims who are suspicious of American motives in the region.

The only confusion here is Pakistani government vacillation over what side it will choose to take in the war against Islamo-fascism. President Musharraf has made that choice already, but not forcefully enough. After all, he has survived several assassination attempts by Islamists.

In September, Musharraf initiated talks with Israel for the first time ever. The foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan met in Turkey. Pakistan initiated contact as thanks for Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Turkey helped broker the unprecedented meeting.

On September 17, Musharraf spoke before the American Jewish Congress and said:

According to the Holy Quran and our Holy Prophet, Jews and Christians are the ‘People of the Book,’ belonging to the same spiritual tradition. … Our experiences and histories intertwine in many regions of the old world and most significantly in the Holy Land.

According to the BBC :

… in July 2003, President Pervez Musharraf called for a national debate on the possibility of opening diplomatic ties with Israel.

There were a few rumbles in reaction to this news. But Pakistan’s teeming masses of hysterical Islamists reacted rather mildly, relatively speaking, e.g., there weren’t quite as many car-swarms as expected. After Pakistan and Israel announced that their foreign ministers met in Istanbul, the BBC reported that Islamist reaction in Pakistan to the news was “muted.”

Musharraf has already opened the Pandora’s Box by cooperating with Washington (somewhat) and initiating contacts with Israel. His country’s Islamists want to kill him, so why hesitate now? It is do or die — side with the civilized world or sit around wringing hands about what the extremists think, and end up dead.

By Michael Rubin
Wall Street Journal*
January 16, 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/889
* Cross-posted with permission

On Friday, George Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood together in the White House to condemn Iran. “Iran, armed with a nuclear weapon, poses a grave threat to the security of the world,” Mr. Bush said. “We will not be intimidated,” Ms. Merkel added. The press conference marks a turning point in a decade-long saga. Europe’s engagement with Iran has failed. While Iranian diplomats met with their British, French and German counterparts in Vienna and Geneva, Iranian technicians toiled to ready Iran’s uranium enrichment capability. European officials discussed a China model for Iran, in which they could use trade to catalyze political liberalization. Between 2000 and 2005, EU trade with the Islamic Republic almost tripled. But rather than moderate, Iranian authorities used the hard currency to enhance their military. They built secret nuclear facilities and blocked inspections. They failed to explain why there were traces of weapons-grade uranium on Iranian centrifuges, and refused to detail what assistance Tehran received from Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. On Sept. 24, 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency declared Iran to be in non-compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s Safeguards Agreement.

(more…)

Remember all the talk about the Axis of Weasel? Here’s a new revelation about the Iraq war from Reuters:

German spies in Baghdad helped U.S. warplanes strike at least one target during the 2003 Iraq war despite Berlin’s statements it was not involved in the conflict, German media reported on Thursday.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and NDR television said two agents of Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency remained in Iraq throughout the war, supplying U.S. counterparts with information.

“They gave us direct support. They gave us information for targeting,” NDR quoted a former U.S. military official as saying in a preview of a programme to be broadcast later on Thursday.

I borrowed the title of this blog from Sarah McLaughlin’s beautiful song, Building A Mystery; not to be cynical, not to be critical; but to emphasize the fact that Iraqis themselves have entered uncharted territories since their liberation from Saddam in 2003. That territory, that undiscovered country, is democracy, which Winston Churchill said, “is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” I never believed that planting the seed of free wil in Iraq would be easy, but always believed it was the right thing to do, WMD’s or not.

There have been many successes in Iraq since the toppling of Saddam but, unfortunately, it seems to be the bad news that makes for eye-popping headlines — not always. The AP reported:

Shiite and Sunni Arabs celebrated the Islamic feast of sacrifice Tuesday with calls for an end to the bloodshed that has wracked Iraq since last month’s elections.

Indeed, the last week has been relatively quiet. I may be going out on a limb, but the lull in violence has been due to some good, old democratic politicking; the coalescing of anti-terrorist forces, increasingly led by Iraqis, with Coalition support; and a tide turning against the “insurgents.” According to the Wikipedia:

While some have noted an alliance of convenience that existed between the foreign fighters and the native Sunni insurgents, there are signs that the foreign militants, especially those who follow Zarqawi, are increasingly unpopular among the native insurgents. In the run-up to the December 2005 elections, Sunni insurgents are warning al Qaeda members and foreign fighters not to attack polling stations. One former Baathist told Reuters, “Sunnis should vote to make political gains. We have sent leaflets telling al Qaeda that they will face us if they attack voters.” And a Sunni insurgency leader specifically commented on Zarqawi: “Zarqawi is an American, Israeli and Iranian agent who is trying to keep our country unstable so that the Sunnis will keep facing occupation.”[28]

Why would there be a turning tide? 6,000 innocent Iraqis were slaughtered by terrorists in 2005 alone, while 30,000 have been murdered since 2003. This is Muslims (Sunni/Wahabi) killing other Muslims (mostly Shitte). When is enough enough?

Even in former terrorist strongholds like Al Anbar province, both Iraqi security forces and civilians are turning against the “insurgents.”

Iraq’s elections are bearing a bitter-sweet fruit, but I say this with positive connotation:

Final results are expected as early as this week, and the Shiite religious bloc may win about 130 seats - short of the 184 seats needed to avoid a coalition with other parties.

The Kurds could get about 55, the main Sunni Arab groups about 50 and the secular bloc headed by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a Shiite, about 25.

The fact that no one party will control parliament is a damn good thing, as it will force Iraqis into learning something that established democracies go through constantly: building a coalition government. Already, Sunnis are meeting with Shiites, Shiites are meeting with Kurds, Sunnis are meeting with Kurds, etc.

Iraqis are learning the intricacies of democratic politics, as “accountability has taken root.” Coalitions are being formed and reshuffled. Pundits are speculating on party endorsements. A free press is flourishing. Millions have voted in three rounds of elections. Sunnis participated big-time in most recent elections, allaying all the fears about whether they were “engaged” (the link is from Aljazeera). With a new constitution ratified — the vote endorsed by the UN — Iraqis are entering the final stretch in proving that democracy can work in an Arab country (the Lebanese have recently proved that, too).

Iraq’s economy is booming (see here also). Though still “fragile,” it grew an astonishing 50% last year. Some investors see the country as an opportunity, despite all the bad news. The United Gulf Bank (UGB) of Bahrain increased its holdings in Iraq’s Bank of Baghdad from $3.6 million to $36 million. That’s a vote of confidence from an Arab country.

The loss of American lives in our effort to democratize Iraq is tragic, but not meaningless. Some would immediately pounce on me for accentuating the positive or using the word “liberation,” but they are moral relativists, equivocating about “blood-for-oil.”

John Kerry blames the U.S. for Iraq’s “insurgency” (terrorists). Is Iraq becoming the “next Vietnam,” or is it being made into one?

John Murtha - a decorated Vietnam War veteran - said US troops had become “a catalyst for violence” in Iraq. …

“Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency, they are united against US forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence,” Mr Murtha said at an emotional news conference in Washington.

Now Murtha claims “he would not join the U.S. military today.” But Murtha was confronted last week by an American veteran:

Like yourself I dropped out of college two years ago to volunteer to go to Afghanistan, and I went and I came back. If I didn’t have a herniated disk now I would volunteer to go to Iraq in a second with my troops, three of which have already volunteered to go to Iraq. I keep hearing you say how you talk to the troops and the troops are demoralized, and I really resent that characterization. (applause) The morale of the troops that I talk to is phenomenal, which is why my troops are volunteering to go back, despite the hardships they had to endure in Afghanistan.

I am not painting all Iraq war opponents with a single stroke, as there are legitimate reasons for opposing the invasion. Rather, I am speaking of the radical Left and their Islamist allies who still cling to the belief that the U.S. can do no right — ever.

Maybe not all hope is lost for the “opposition.” One of the few remaining sane Democrats, Joe Lieberman, wrote recently:

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America’s bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory. …

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration’s recent use of the banner “clear, hold and build” accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.

To pull out of Iraq now, as people like Ted Kennedy and John Murtha propose, would be a catastrophic decision. Remember that, love him or hate him, President Bush has been unequivocal in warning that the war on terror will be an extremely long and arduous process.

For the Iraqi people, who have known nothing but tyranny, building a democracy may be a mysterious and difficult process, but it is a task that they will eventually complete, to the betterment of the own lives, and a positive influence on the rest of the world.

(more…)

By Michael Rubin
FrontPageMagazine.com*
January 13, 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/888
* Cross-posted with permission

Few terrorists groups garner the bipartisan endorsement and support that Iran’s Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization [MKO] has. On October 20, 2005, several congressmen and many aides attended a briefing in Congress. Maryam Rajavi, co-leader of the group and self-styled president-elect of Iran, addressed the gathering by video from France.[1] She received a warm reception. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) thanked “Sister Maryam.”[2] A bipartisan group of U.S. Congressmen have signed petitions calling for the U.S. Department of State to lift its 1997 classification of the group as a terrorist organization.[3] In an April 8, 2003 interview, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House International Relations Committee’s Central Asia and Middle East Subcommittee said, “This group loves the United States. They’re assisting us in the war on terrorism; they’re pro-U.S. This group has not been fighting against the U.S. It’s simply not true.”[4] Ros-Lehtinen is wrong. Unfortunately, hers is a mistake common to some on the left and the right who care deeply about Iranian freedom but fail to understand the nature of a group which, in public, says the right things about freedom and democracy but, in reality is dedicated to the opposite. Maryam Rajavi and her husband Masud are adept at public relations and adroit at reinvention, but the organization over which they preside eschews democracy and embraces terrorism, autocracy, and Marxism.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes
National Interest*
Winter 2005/06
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3275
* Cross-posted with permission

Editors’ introduction: The Fall 2005 issue of The National Interest included a provocative contribution from Robert W. Tucker, a founding editor of this magazine, and David C. Hendrickson. Entitled “The Freedom Crusade“, this essay questioned whether making the promotion of democracy around the world a central organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy was in keeping with America’s diplomatic traditions and national interests. Readers of The National Interest are well aware that there has been a vigorous debate in these pages over the “democracy question.” We invited several distinguished commentators [Leslie H. Gelb, Daniel Pipes, Robert W Merry, and Joseph S. Nye, Jr.] to offer their own opinions about the points of view expressed in “The Freedom Crusade” and more generally on the relationship between democracy and U.S. interests.

Daniel Pipes’s introduction: The other three responses can be found on the National Interest website.

The debate over promoting democracy is hardly a new one for Americans; indeed, the locus classicus for the ambitious argument is Joshua Muravchik’s 1991 study, Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destiny, where he argues for democratization as the central theme of U.S. foreign policy. “The American president”, he wrote, “should see himself not merely as custodian of the country, but as the leader of the democratic movement.” This is full-bodied idealism, implying American exceptionalism and its special calling.

(more…)

What could possibly explain the violence that seems to occur almost yearly at the Muslim Hajj in Mecca? Thousands of Christians gather every year at the Vatican and there is no violence. One has to wonder how a ritual stoning can still be an integral part of Islam’s most holy event in the 21st century. The Muslim community has tough questions that it can only address itself. Today, the BBC reported:

More than 100 Muslim pilgrims have been killed in a crush in the stone-throwing ritual during the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, officials say.

A BBC correspondent at the scene in Mina saw dozens of bodies lined up on the ground. Doctors warned that the death toll could reach 300.

Last week, a hotel hosting Muslim pilgrims in Mecca collapsed. 23 people died and 60 were injured.

(more…)

A few days ago, I wrote about an email I received, written in Farsi, and seemingly from an Iranian dissident group. In the process of trying to figure out what the letter said, I consulted with my friends at the SMCCDI (Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran). Here’s their input on the Farsi message:

The subject line is stating: “The Leader of Iranian Nation, Mr. Professor Ebrahim Mirzaie”.

The attached text is a mixture of Persian Erfan (moral values) and a call for a better being and conditions.

It’s a hidden way of political expression emanating from the leader of the group. But the group nor his leader have any real impact in the Iranian society except the limited number of disciples.

I’m trying to get the letter translated into English. Stay tuned…

by Sharon Chadha
Middle East Quarterly*
Winter 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/887
* Cross-posted with permission

A federal court will soon sentence attorney Lynne Stewart to prison for “providing material support” to terrorists, among related charges.[1] The charges center upon her assistance to Egyptian sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman who, from a federal prison cell in Minnesota, has continued his quest both to install an Islamist government in Egypt and to kill Americans and Jews around the world. Stewart’s case is symbolic of a corollary battle in the war against terror and highlights the need not only to counter terrorism but also the ideology of Islamism. Her infatuation with her client’s cause evolved into an example of what author David Horowitz terms the “unholy alliance” between radical Islam and the American Left.[2] Her embrace of violent jihad illustrates the growing confluence between militant Islam on one hand and non-Muslim radicals on the other.

(more…)

After more than a decade of stagflation, Japan has reemerged as an economic powerhouse:

• Japan Emerges from Stagflation… Finally
• Losing Money in Japan’s Yucho
• Japan: Victory for Koizumi and the World Economy
• Can Japan Ever Emerge from Stagnation?

(more…)