Muslims Against Sharia Blog

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

CNN fretting: 'Right-wing' backlash against Muslims

By Aaron Klein

A column on a "right wing" website suggesting an Islamic motivation for last week's Fort Hood shooting massacre may help generate a backlash against American Muslim soldiers, according to CNN.

On CNN's American Morning show yesterday, reporter Carol Costello quoted the mother of a Muslim U.S. soldier as fearing "a backlash against Muslim American soldiers."

"She knows some are already reaching conclusions as to why Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly opened fire on his fellow soldiers," Costello stated.

Continued Costello: "The right-wing website, Pajamas Media, is an example. Phyllis Chesler writing, 'I knew in my bones that the shooter or shooters were Muslim. We must connect the dots before it's too late.'"

Costello was referring to a Pajamas Media column entitled "The Jihadist is always the victim," in which Chesler quoted from widespread reports of Hasan's ties to militant Islam.

Chesler wrote, "The only answer most people want to hear is that a lone, psychiatrically deranged shooter did it. All by himself, on his own."

"They may be right. Sometimes. And yet…The same Instant Personal Jihad Syndrome once led another Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, to shoot Robert Kennedy in cold blood."

Newsbusters notes Chesler herself does not exactly fit with CNN's grouping of "right wing."

Chesler, professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island, has been a noted feminist activist who co-founded the National Women's Health Network and the Association for Women in Psychology. She is the author of thirteen books, including "Women and Madness," "Woman's Inhumanity to Woman" and "The Death of Feminism."

In a 1998 interview with Time magazine about feminism, Chesler stated that 'a woman’s body is her own, and she should not be invaded against her will by a rapist, nor should she be prevented from having an abortion."

"Clearly, Chesler is no huge 'right-winger,' as Costello would have one believe," noted Newsbusters.

Chesler is a prominent critic of Islamic extremism and is a supporter of Israel.

In her 2003 book, "The New Anti-Semitism," Chesler argues that anti-Zionism and attacks against Israel are nearly indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.

A website run by Revolution Muslim honored Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas, as an "officer and a gentleman," saying his actions should not be denounced.

The massacre, which also left more than two dozen injured, was called a "pre-emptive attack" by supporters of the group.

Hasan, a Muslim psychiatrist who reportedly had been disciplined for pushing Islam on his patients at one point in his career, had given away his furniture and handed out Qurans before allegedly going to the military post and firing on soldiers at a processing center where soldiers prepared to deploy.

"Get Well Soon Major Nidal We Love You," said the website run by radicals who follow an imam once jailed in Britain. "Major Nidal Hasan M.D. An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a pre-emptive attack."

Source: WND

Rally for Rifqa is On! Your Attendance is still Required!

Source: Atlas

The rally is on. The authorities are bouncing the hearing date around but the rally in support of Rifqa is on for November 16th. We stand with Rifqa They will hear us. They will know we are watching their every move. They will know we will be at every rally, ruling, Rifqa hearing.

They can bounce all they want, we are firm in our commitment and support of Rifqa.

Be there on Monday November 16th. Say no to sharia law. Say not to an islamicized America. Speak up! Stand for freedom of religion.

PLEASE JOIN ATLAS SHRUGS, JIHAD WATCH, DR. BOSTOM

HUMAN RIGHTS RALLY!

A RALLY FOR RIFQA'S CIVIL RIGHTS
NOVEMBER 16TH
"DORRIAN COMMONS PARK"
ACROSS THE STREET FROM
FRANKLIN COUNTY JUVENILE COURT
11AM - 2PM

Simon Deng - ex-slave from Sudan

Nonie Darwish - Executive Director, Former Muslims United

James Lafferty - chairman of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force

Amal Imani, Iranian dissident and pro-democracy reformer

Jamal Jivanjee - apostate, Pastor and Rifqa's friend

Patricia Said, mother of Amina and Sarah Said

Honor killing victims' family members

Geller!

Spencer!

Bostom!

Deadly denial

by Lt. Col. Ralph Peters

As President Obama belatedly appears at Fort Hood today, will he dare to speak the word "terror?"

He won't use the word "Islamist." If he mentions Islam at all, it'll be to sing its praises yet again.

We've already learned that Islamist terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan attended the Northern Virginia mosque of Imam Anwar al-Aulaqi, a fiery al Qaeda supporter who later fled the United States. We know that Hasan's peers, subordinates and patients repeatedly raised red flags that his superiors suppressed. We know he was a player on Islamist-extremist Web sites. The FBI's uncovering one extremist link after another.

But to call this an act of terrorism, the White House would need an autographed photo of Osama bin Laden helping Hasan buy weapons in downtown Killeen, Texas. Even that might not suffice.

Islamist terrorists don't all have al Qaeda union cards in their wallets. Terrorism's increasingly the domain of entrepreneurs and independent contractors. Under Muslim jurisprudence, jihad's an individual responsibility. Hasan was a self-appointed jihadi.

Yet we're told he was just having a bad day.

Our politically correct Army plays along. Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey won't utter the word "terrorism." The Forces Command Public Affairs Office guidance for officers never mentions "Islam" or "terror," leaving you unsure whether there was a traffic accident down at Fort Hood, or maybe an outbreak of swine flu.

Meanwhile, the media try to turn Hasan into a victim. A sickening (and amateurish) Washington Post article portrayed him as a poor, impoverished minority living in a $320-a-month rathole apartment and driving a down-market car -- as if the squalor made him a terrorist.

Squalor he chose to live in, by the way: As a major drawing added professional pay for his medical credentials, plus his benefits, Hasan made a six-figure income. And he was single, without college loans or medical bills. Has anybody asked where the money went? I'll bet a chunk of it disappeared in cash donations to hard-core Islamist causes. Will a single journalist track the missing bucks?

It gets worse: On Sunday evening, a ranking officer in Hasan's medical chain of command raced to cover her butt. Asked why the killer was promoted to major after receiving career-killer performance reviews at Walter Reed, the officer claimed that Hasan faced the same promotion board requirements as everyone else.

Liar, liar, uniform on fire: A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers' promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don't call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn't hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It's almost impossible for the Army's politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the few lawmakers willing to whisper the word "terrorism," needs to call the officers who sat on Hasan's promotion board before the Senate, put them under oath, then ask if Hasan made major because of minority-quota requirements.

This corrupt (and now deadly) affirmative-action system does a severe disservice to the bulk of minority officers, who make the grade on quality and professionalism. It leaves other officers wondering if the new guy who just showed up in the unit is a "real" officer or an affirmative-action baby.

Ditto for our government's unwillingness to take on Muslim extremists on US soil. Blathering about freedom of religion, we foster hate speech. By protecting the fanatics, we betray the peaceful majority of our Muslim citizens, leaving them afraid to speak out, since the feds shield the fanatics in charge of their mosques and communities.

Let's be clear: Maj. Hasan's terrorism should not result in a witch hunt against Muslim service members. But soldiers who happen to be Muslims must be subject to the same level of scrutiny and discipline as those of other faiths.

Just as we'd expect the Army to get rid of a disruptive white supremacist, we need to cashier anyone who espouses violent Islamist extremism -- as Maj. Hasan did, again and again.

We won't. Because Islamist terrorism doesn't exist. Just ignore the dead and ask our president.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "The War After Armageddon."

Source: NYPost

Hoekstra: White House Blocking Investigation of Fort Hood Massacre

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, tells Newsmax that the White House intervened to keep him from obtaining critical information regarding the Fort Hood murders.

The Michigan legislator also warned that "homegrown jihadism" is a real threat to the U.S., and said a thorough investigation of Major Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood massacre, would help authorities learn how to deal with it.

Rep. Hoekstra charged in a statement on Monday that the Obama administration was withholding information and demanded that the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Director of National Intelligence preserve documents relating to the incident for use in any future investigation.

"On Friday afternoon I asked the director of national intelligence [Dennis Blair] to get a briefing," Hoekstra said. "We were already starting to hear that Major Hasan had some connection back to the Middle East, perhaps some jihadist link, and I just asked the DNI: Would you share with me the information you have available at this time?

"He indicated that he would give me a call back and let me know. He contacted me on Saturday and said, I think we're going to make this work. A couple of hours later he called back and said, between the lines, I've been overruled by the White House. There will be no briefing for you this weekend, and early next week on Tuesday we'll give you a briefing.

"Well, there was no reason why we couldn't be briefed on the information they had at that time. I get suspicious when they don't give us the information that we're looking for, especially when they're going to give it to us in a very limited form, perhaps only to me and the chairman of the whole committee. That's when my suspicions were raised.

"Now [Monday] night they did come back and brief my staff and some senators on what they knew about Major Hasan and when they knew it, but it was already after most of this information had somehow been leaked to the media."

As to why the administration might want to withhold information, Hoekstra said: "There are serious questions about whether the FBI did everything appropriately and whether there was enough information out there, enough red flags out there, that reasonable people would have assumed Hasan should have been more closely evaluated than he was.

"I don’t know if that's it or not, and I won't know or have a better idea until I've had access to all the information...

"I've just made it very clear that I want them to preserve all the documents, all the information that deals with Major Hasan, because I want to make sure that we don't get to a point where, well, we can't find that information anymore. I want a full, thorough investigation.

"I'm not looking to pin blame on anybody. I believe that radical jihadism, homegrown jihadism, is a real threat to the United States. We need to learn more about it, how to identify it, and how to stop it. This could be a classic case that will give us some of that information."

Martella noted that intelligence officials reportedly knew months ago that Hasan attempted to contact al-Qaida. Hoekstra agreed that should have raised "a big red flag," and went on to say:

"But you need to put together the whole picture. The whole picture is that it appears he had contact with overseas jihadists, including perhaps people connected with al-Qaida. He made presentations and statements to his colleagues here in the United States that would lead one to believe he might have jihadist tendencies.

"Did all of this information ever collect in one place and give us a thorough insight into who he was? Or did the intelligence community have part of it, the Army have part of it, and was it stored in three or four different places so that it never came together to provide one coherent picture of who Hasan might be and who he might become?"

Asked why the Army did not act against Hasan based on the information it reportedly had, Hoekstra said "what we have seen during this administration is a certain political correctness that just makes many of us uncomfortable.

"It was only a few months ago that the secretary of homeland security said we're not going to use the term 'terrorism' anymore. We're going to call it 'manmade disasters.'

"The bottom line here is that if we are unwilling to call terrorism terrorism, we will ever be able to deal with it, confront it, contain it, and defeat it."

Source: NewsMax

Taliban warns US of more base attacks

The Taliban has warned the United States of more attacks like the Fort Hood shooting rampage unless Washington ends its policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, the SITE Intelligence Group said on Tuesday.

The Afghan militants also described the American army psychiatrist suspected of carrying out the shooting in Texas as a "hero", the monitoring group said, quoting a message posted on the internet.

"The recent attack on the military base in Texas warns that if the occupation policy of the American rulers continues in this way, without them folding the carpets of occupation and transgression in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is natural then that incidents and attacks similar to Texas will spread to the Pentagon and other American military centres," the message said.

"According to media reports, the hero of the attack is a Muslim psychiatrist and major in the American army, of Palestinian origin," said the message posted on jihadist forums, SITE said.

Major Nidal Hasan, a Muslim of Palestinian origin, is suspected of killing 13 people in the shooting spree at a Texas army base last week.

Hasan was due to be deployed to Afghanistan later this month and his family has said that he complained of harassment in the military and was deeply concerned about his orders to go to Afghanistan.

He has emerged from a coma after being wounded in the Fort Hood shootings.

Colleagues of Hasan have told National Public Radio they were troubled by his performance as an army psychiatrist and had discussed removing him.

The doctors, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Hasan often failed to answer the phone when he was the psychiatrist on duty at the hospital outside Washington, the report said.

One hospital official said that Hasan, a devout Muslim with misgivings about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had tried to convert a patient to Islam, telling the patient his religion would save him.

Supervisors had warned Hasan that he needed to improve his job performance and the director of psychiatric resident doctors at the hospital discussed kicking Hasan out of the program, NPR said.

Psychiatrists said it was difficult to fire a doctor and that an elaborate trail of documents is required showing neglect.

Hasan's supervisors had not sufficiently documented his alleged shortcomings, it said.

Source: Military News

Why There Will Be More Military Base Shootings

by Patrick Poole

I was giving a briefing on Islamic radicalization and current domestic terror threats at a military conference earlier this year when I was approached afterward by an Army colonel who asked exactly what could be done to counter such threats.

He was taken aback when I replied, “The military can’t and won’t do what it needs to about jihadism, and we are going to see body bags coming out of our recruiting centers and military bases for the foreseeable future.”

Sadly, the killings at the Little Rock Army recruiting station in June and at Ft. Hood last Thursday confirm my analysis.

Much of the hand-wringing that has occurred in the media since the Ft. Hood shootings has been in the attempt to avoid the hard questions about the jihadist problem. In fact, significant energy is being expended by the media to assure us that there is no problem to solve.

Many talking heads now claim that this incident was entirely unpredictable and the cause ultimately unknowable. This widespread agnosticism is an element to the overall problem of why we will continue to see shootings at military facilities.

There are other identifiable reasons why there will be future incidents. I offer these three observations, which are by no means exhaustive:

1) The Pentagon has yet to attempt to create a threat model that identifies, let alone addresses, the internal and external jihadist threat.

In January 2008 my colleagues LTC Joseph Myers, Dr. Terri Wonder, and I delivered a series of lectures at the Department of the Army’s annual anti-terrorism conference focusing on three issues: 1) that our national security strategy has yet to incorporate any threat model for jihadist ideology and how that hampers our counterterrorism operations; 2) mosque-based scenarios that provide important indicators and warnings of potential local community radicalization; and 3) the sources of jihadist ideology and the need for military force protection personnel to engage their local community to identify potential threats.

In the audience were 350 of the top military counterterrorism, force protection, and law enforcement officials from Army commands and bases around the globe. The military brass can’t claim that they haven’t been warned.

In the two years since, some limited educational efforts have been made in response to our warnings, but on the command level there is an institutional obstinacy that prevents any substantive discussion leading to concrete policies to put into place DOD-wide. Under the present administration, that doesn’t look to change.

2) The military has made no apparent effort to address some of its stunning failures. For example, take the case of Ali Mohamed, al-Qaeda’s military chief who served as a U.S. Army sergeant at the Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg and gathered extensive intelligence in his position that advanced the terror group’s understanding of warfare and helped to plan the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa.

As documented in Peter Lance’s book Triple Cross and the National Geographic documentary of the same name, Mohamed was allowed to continue in his position at this sensitive facility despite warnings from the Egyptian military and acknowledgment from his Army superiors that he held jihadist ideas.

In light of what we presently know about Major Nadal Malik Hasan, it already seems clear that there were many obvious warning signs that were intentionally ignored, giving proof that very little has been learned from Ali Mohamed and several other similar cases since 9/11.

Read more here,,,,

Source: Pajamas Media

Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.

Start a war

As the Pakistan Army turns its guns on Waziristan, Manan Ahmed argues that the dysfunctional state remains its own worst enemy.

On May 11, Rehman Malik, the ubiquitous and consistently enervated Pakistani interior minister, declared the military’s ongoing operation against the Taliban in the Swat Valley a resounding success.

“We haven’t given them a chance,” he boasted. “They are on the run. They were not expecting such an offensive”. He added that the operation, then barely a week old, had already killed 700 Taliban. Over the summer the declarations of victory continued: prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani called the conflict “a great success”; the Pakistan Army spokesman, Major Gen Athar Abbas announced that “we have beaten the Taliban decisively in Swat”.

Since the army maintained a media blackout in the region, there were few voices to dissent from these cries of victory. But the extent of the army’s achievement remains unknown: areas of Swat are still under Taliban control, and many militants simply fled the territory for more favourable terrain elsewhere. What is clear, however, is that the army campaign – waged with heavy artillery and aerial strikes – forced some three million civilians to flee.

After declaring victory in Swat, and under pressure from the Americans to “take the fight to the Taliban”, the Pakistan army announced that it would soon proceed towards Waziristan, the hunting-ground for the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose founder and leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was assassinated by a US drone in early August. The targets struck back with a wave of terrorist attacks in October, many directed against the state itself – killing over 250 Pakistanis and injuring hundreds more.

The violence of the Taliban reprisal blew away the smokescreen of success that had been proclaimed in Swat: it was clear that the offensive, whatever its other accomplishments, had done nothing to undermine the capacity of the Taliban to organise and execute terrorist attacks anywhere in Pakistan – from Islamabad and Peshawar to Lahore. In fact, the self-appointed Taliban in Swat had always been imports from Waziristan, who established a bulwark in Swat by capitalising on local frustration with the federal state – and they easily slipped back into Waziristan as the army began to bombard the valley.

The military has now started to shell South Waziristan with the same fury. The exodus of civilians is under way – more than 250,000 have been displaced.

As before, this human cost does not figure in the army’s calculus. The humanitarian crisis will be left to fester for municipal authorities and the private sector. Already, we have an early declaration of “success” from the Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who says the Taliban are “on the run”. But on the run to where, exactly? Crossing over the border to southern Afghanistan, perhaps – the neighbouring province of Zabul is already a crucial zone of conflict between Nato troops and the Afghan Taliban.

But it is more likely that they will head south toward Baluchistan and its border city, Quetta – and that, soon enough, the deadly game will continue, this time with Baluchistan in the crosshairs of a new army offensive.

The Taliban are indeed a murderous lot, intent on disrupting and destroying civil society and cowing helpless civilians to their particularly offensive version of piety.

But their success in finding a foothold and destabilising Swat relied not on any appeal to a religious cause or tribal brotherhood but on exploiting existing political and judicial imbalances in the region.

Pakistan’s federally administered areas have never been integrated into the state apparatus – after 62 years, they lack basic infrastructure, any accountable civil administration, working courts or police, and have very few rights in Islamabad. The inhabitants of these regions have long experienced corrosive resource exploitation at the hands of the centre without receiving any benefit to their own communities.

Read more here,,,,

Source: The National

Iran's Moves Reveal Leadership Rift

One month after the U.S. launched a great diplomatic experiment by talking directly with Iran, the pressure of the effort is opening up some stress fractures.

Some small fractures are showing up in the wall of solidarity the U.S. and its partners have tried to show in confronting Iran over its nuclear program -- specifically over how long to give diplomacy a chance before turning to new economic sanctions.

A month after the U.S. began direct diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program, the effort appears to have opened fissures within the Iranian regime. WSJ's Executive Washington Editor Jerry Seib explains.

But the more meaningful stress fractures are showing up within Iran itself. There, the unwillingness to follow through on a nuclear deal the country's own negotiators worked out -- or even to offer a straight explanation of why Iran isn't following through -- has laid bare serious fissures within the country's ruling establishment.

If that continues to be the case, the U.S. and its partners will be heading in coming weeks toward a fundamental question: Are these splits within Iran more likely to be widened by the pressures generated through continued diplomacy, or by the pressures generated by tough new economic sanctions?

That's the picture that emerges from conversations in recent days with both American and European officials familiar with the diplomatic engagement with Iran. None pretend to have perfect knowledge of what is happening within the Byzantine world of Iranian decision-making, which has been made all the more complicated by the divisions opened up amid protests over what is widely seen as a rigged presidential election there during the summer.

But the bizarre back and forth from Iran in the aftermath of a nuclear negotiating session in Geneva on Oct. 1 has only confirmed the sense that the regime, always thought to be split by factionalism, is now only more so. "I think what we are seeing here is everything we know about Iranian decision-making" taking hold, says Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and an expert on Iran.

The subject on which Iran is incapable of rendering a coherent decision is the deal that was struck -- or seemingly struck -- at that meeting in Geneva. Under that agreement, Iran would ship to Russia and France a large proportion of the low-enriched uranium it has managed to produce, so that the uranium could be refined into fuel for a Tehran research reactor and sent back to Iran.

The beauty of the deal for the U.S. and its negotiating partners -- the other members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany -- was that it would take a majority of the Iranian raw material that eventually could be further enriched into nuclear-bomb fuel and allow the international community to turn it into something else, under close supervision.

But since Iran's own negotiators seemed to agree to that arrangement, their leaders back in Tehran have pedaled backward, and then sideways, and then in circles, never embracing the deal but never exactly rejecting it either.

Read more here,,,,

Source: WSJ

Poll: Do You Support or Oppose These Ideologies?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The enemy within

Philip Mendes and Nick Dyrenfurth

THIS week the world marks the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall. Thirty-five years ago an event with global ramifications likewise occurred. On November 13, 1974, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat famously addressed the UN General Assembly. Carrying a gun and an olive branch, Arafat appealed not to let the olive branch fall from his hand.

Arafat's speech signified that the Palestinians had moved in international eyes from being a group of stateless refugees to a legitimate national movement.

Whether Arafat intended it or not, his statement also signposted two dichotomous directions for the Palestinians.

One was the road to peace and reconciliation with Israel via mutual compromise and a two-state solution. This path would be encapsulated in the 1993 Oslo accord that led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and almost resulted, via the American-auspiced 2000-01 negotiations, in the creation of a Palestinian State.

The other was the unbending war of terror and violence reflected in suicide bombings and rocket attacks to achieve the destruction of Israel.

Notably they did not endorse a compromise two-state solution that recognised the legitimate claims of Israelis and Palestinians. Rather, they simplistically constructed the Israeli-Arab conflict as an extension of the struggle between Western colonialism and the Third World, and recommended the elimination of the Israeli side of the conflict.

Anti-Zionist fundamentalists captured the pro-Palestinian agenda. In 1974 and again in 1975, the extremist-influenced Australian Union of Students, passed motions calling for the elimination of the state of Israel and its replacement by a democratic secular state of Palestine. The latter term was a disingenuous euphemism for an ethno-religious Islamic Arab state, given that most Palestinian Muslims are highly religious. The motions were rejected by Australian students, but this did not deter the fundamentalists.

The fundamentalist agenda cooled following the PLO's implicit recognition of Israel in 1988. However the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000 produced a renewal of the inflammatory rhetoric from the far Left.

The higher the tide of violence perpetrated by the Palestinians, the greater the fury and blame directed at the Israeli victims.

The March 2002 attacks provoked the Israeli invasion of the leading West Bank cities in an attempt to destroy the terror networks, and stop the carnage. Yet the first Australian petition for an academic boycott of Israel initiated by a small clique of Australian academics after this invasion in May 2002 was directed at the victims of terror.

Another group condemned Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's visit to Israel last June.

The petition signatories seemed oblivious to the fact that more than one million Arabs are citizens of Israel; that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip overwhelmingly demand an Arab state rather than a Jewish-Arab entity, and that most Arab states ethnically cleansed their Jewish populations over 50 years ago.

No exposure of the infantile slogans of the fundamentalists obviates the need for Israel to promote rather than undermine the olive branch solution.

More and more Israelis and diaspora Jews understand that Israel will not only have to freeze West Bank settlements, but eventually dismantle at the very least all settlements east of the security barrier.

Equally the Palestinians will have to make concessions that facilitate peaceful relations. This means finally accepting that the 1948 refugees will only return to the Palestinian state and not to Israel.

The fundamentalists of course will never accept this win-win plan. Such is the nature of black-and-white revolutionary socialism. But their all-or-nothing demands for a similarly coercive utopia will bring only tragedy to the Palestinians.

Philip Mendes is the co-editor of Jews and Australian Politics (Sussex Academic Press, 2004). Nick Dyrenfurth is the co-editor of Confusion: the Making of the Australian Two-Party Political System (forthcoming with Melbourne University Publishing).

Source: The Australian

New jihad code threatens al Qaeda

Editors Note: This story is the result of a two-year CNN investigative report into peace talks held between the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and the Libyan Government which recently culminated in the LIFG, a militant jihadist group once close to Osama bin Laden, repudiating al Qaeda. "The Jihadi Code," a documentary on the breakthrough against al Qaeda in Libya, airs on November 15 at 1200 GMT.

Tripoli, Libya: From within Libya's most secure jail a new challenge to al Qaeda is emerging.

Leaders of one of the world's most effective jihadist organizations, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), have written a new "code" for jihad. The LIFG says it now views the armed struggle it waged against Col. Moammar Gadhafi's regime for two decades as illegal under Islamic law.

The new code, a 417-page religious document entitled "Corrective Studies" is the result of more than two years of intense and secret talks between the leaders of the LIFG and Libyan security officials.

The code's most direct challenge to al Qaeda is this: "Jihad has ethics and morals because it is for God. That means it is forbidden to kill women, children, elderly people, priests, messengers, traders and the like. Betrayal is prohibited and it is vital to keep promises and treat prisoners of war in a good way. Standing by those ethics is what distinguishes Muslims' jihad from the wars of other nations."

The code has been circulated among some of the most respected religious scholars in the Middle East and has been given widespread backing. It is being debated by politicians in the U.S. and studied by western intelligence agencies.

In essence the new code for jihad is exactly what the West has been waiting for: a credible challenge from within jihadist ranks to al Qaeda's ideology.

While the code states that jihad is permissible if Muslim lands are invaded -- citing the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine -- the guidelines it sets down for when and how jihad should be fought, and its insistence that civilians should not be targeted are a clear rebuke to the goals and tactics of bin Laden's terrorist network.

Read more here,,,,

Source: CNN

Barack Obama honours Fort Hood massacre victims

The helmets, rifles and combat boots of the fallen were lined up in front of a stage from where Mr Obama addressed a crowd of 15,000, which included soldiers wounded in the attack and the families of the dead.

"It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy," Mr Obama said in a speech delivered at the memorial service.

"But this much we do know - no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favour.

"And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice - in this world, and the next."

In his speech, Mr Obama mentioned each of the dead by name, but he did not mention Hasan by name.

The president and the first lady, dressed in black, then followed US military tradition by placing a coin in front of a photograph of each of the dead.

Mr Obama, who has been criticised for his initial reaction to the tragedy and accused of misjudging the public mood, put back a trip to Asia to attend the service on the army base in Texas.

As investigations into the massacre continued, the FBI admitted its agents had been warned about Major Hasan as part of an anti-terrorism inquiry a year before the Fort Hood massacre but decided he posed no danger.

Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, ordered an inquiry into why emails between the army psychiatrist and Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical imam in Yemen who had contact with two of the September 11 hijackers, were not followed up.

Hasan had also openly declared that in order to avoid "adverse events", the army should allow Muslims to be released as conscientious objectors.

In a lecture given to senior army doctors 18 months before the shootings, he talked about Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, jihad and suicide bombers while projecting a slide onto a wall which read: "We love death more than you love life!"

Despite the presentation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Hasan was later ordered to deploy to Afghanistan. A short time after that, he went on his gun rampage.

Hasan had sent between 10 and 20 emails to Awlaki, who replied twice.

The first emails were picked up by US intelligence in Dec 2008 and passed to the FBI, which said they consisted of questions from Hasan and "innocuous" replies from Alwaki.