Nuristan

An article on Afghanistan discusses the pullback of US troops from Nuristan leading to reconciliation between the area's Afghanis with Kabul and their repudiation of the Taliban.

Unmapped until the 1940s and peopled by blue-eyed tribes that claim descent from Alexander the Great, Nuristan is known for hostility to outsiders. Its inhabitants adopted Islam, shedding their ancient pagan beliefs, only about a century ago. A Hezb-i-Islami stronghold, Nuristan was one of the few parts of the country that remained outside Taliban control before the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Danes Study Immigrants After Cartoonist Attack

The housing project near central Copenhagen where the man accused of trying to kill a Danish cartoonist lived.

January 7, 2010

Danes Study Immigrants After Cartoonist Attack

By SARAH LYALL - NY Times

COPENHAGEN  As part of the prolonged national headache caused by a Danish newspaper's decision to publish 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005, last weekend's attack on one of the cartoonists responsible had a certain awful inevitability about it.

Once again, the motivation was fury, still fresh after all this time, over the dissemination of the cartoons. And once again, the circumstances ? in this case, the news that the person accused of the attack was a Muslim immigrant suspected of having links to terrorists ? has led Danes into an uneasy examination of their relationship to their Muslim population.

In a country that already has one of the strictest immigration policies in Western Europe, the attack has also spurred politicians from across the political spectrum to demand ever more stringent rules about who should be allowed to live here.

?I?m sorry to say, but it?s d?j? vu ? every time we experience an episode, then in 10 minutes we have them saying we have to have a new law,? said Naser Khader, a member of Parliament and the spokesman on foreign affairs and immigration for the Conservative People?s Party. He was speaking of the increasingly powerful Danish People?s Party, whose votes the government relies on to pass legislation and whose populist, anti-immigrant rhetoric has informed and inflamed debate in recent years.

After the attack, the People?s Party leader, Pia Kjaersgaard, said that it should be easier to deport Danes linked to terrorists. ?It must be crystal clear to everyone in this country that we cannot accept having Islamists who associate with terror being more or less tolerated in this country,? she said.

Mr. Khader is just as hostile toward Islamists as anyone in Danish politics; he recently proposed banning burqas. But he said the latest comments had gone too far. ?You have to be responsible when such incidents happen, and not let emotions take over,? he said.

New details about the suspect in the attack on the cartoonist, 74-year-old Kurt Westergaard, have increased complaints that the security service has been lax in monitoring people suspected of being terrorist sympathizers.

The attack took place late last Friday when Mr. Westergaard was threatened in his townhouse in Aarhus, Denmark?s second largest city, by a man carrying a knife and an ax. Mr. Westergaard has been a focus of Muslim ire since drawing perhaps the most provocative of the 12 cartoons, showing Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. He fled into a locked safe room and summoned the police with a panic button.

The suspected assailant, 28-year-old Muhudiin Mohamed Geele, was charged with two counts of attempted homicide, on Mr. Westergaard and on a police officer, and has pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Geele arrived in Denmark in 1995, a refugee from the civil war in Somalia, the authorities said, and the next year was granted indefinite leave to remain. He lived in the city of Aalborg and, as a boy, was a role model for others in a youth club there, said Nuuradiin Hussein, who worked at the club.

?He was one of my favorite boys at the club,? said Mr. Hussein, who is now a social worker. ?Most of the boys his age wanted to talk about girls and football, but he wanted to talk about the future and about getting an education.?

Mr. Geele married and had three children, and at some point, according to the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, known as PET, developed ties to the Shabab, a Somali terrorism organization, and to Al Qaeda in East Africa.

He also began making frequent trips abroad. Last summer, he was detained by the authorities in Nairobi, Kenya. The proximate cause was that he had lost his passport, but intelligence officials said he also was believed to have connections to suspects in a plot to blow up several buildings, including a hotel where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was staying.

Nicholas Kamwende, head of Kenya?s antiterrorism police, said that the Kenyan authorities verbally shared ?intelligence information? about him with the Danish Embassy.

?We told them, ?He is a dangerous man,? but their reaction was negative,? Mr. Kamwende said in an interview.

In an interview with the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Mr. Geele?s now ex-wife said that PET had tried to recruit him in 2006.

?The police wanted him as an informant,? she told the newspaper, ?and he became sad and more and more introverted. The police thought that he had participated in combat actions in Somalia against Ethiopian forces, and that he traveled back and forth to take part in war. But he had only been in Somalia in 2005 to visit the family.?

Officials declined to say whether the agency had indeed made overtures to Mr. Geele, but said that it was normal for PET to conduct ?interviews with individuals that may be of interest to the service.? And Jakob Scharf, the director general, said that there had been no evidence that might have been ?deemed sufficient grounds for arresting, prosecuting or expelling? him, despite his suspected terrorism links.

More recently, Mr. Geele had been living in an apartment in a down-at-heel housing project of concrete buildings typical of an immigrant neighborhood, about seven miles from central Copenhagen.

Residents said that Mr. Geele had been renting a room in an apartment owned by an Egyptian taxi driver and that he was known for his religious convictions ? one neighbor said he had been asked several times to turn down music and recordings of the Koran ? and also for being, at least at first, aloof and unfriendly.

After the arrest, the police spent more than eight hours searching the apartment, neighbors said.

What the attack on Mr. Westergaard shows perhaps more than anything is how the publication of the cartoons has irrevocably changed Denmark?s place in world affairs. The damage was compounded in 2008, when in response to a separate plot to kill Mr. Westergaard, all of Denmark?s major newspapers reprinted the cartoons.

It was then that Osama bin Laden denounced the cartoons as part of ?a crusade? against Islam, and other Qaeda officials called on Muslims to make Denmark a target of their fury. That June, a suicide bomber in Islamabad, Pakistan, killed eight people at the Danish Embassy.

In the latest manifestation of Denmark?s troubles, the Sudanese government on Tuesday publicly denounced ?The Revenge,? a movie about the Sudanese war by the Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier. The government compared the film ? which has not yet been screened, and which is due to be released this summer ? to the cartoons.

Each new incident forces the more extreme circles of both the anti-immigrant and Islamist groups to become more deeply entrenched in their positions, said Ole Waever, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen. Meanwhile, as the rhetoric grows ever more strident, he said, Denmark?s sense of itself is being sorely tested.

?There?s a strange dialectic in the reaction,? Mr. Waever said in an interview. ?There is an identity crisis where we can no longer recognize ourselves. This view of ourselves as a liberal, relaxed society no longer fits the reality.?

Walter Gibbs contributed reporting from Oslo, Johan Spanner from Copenhagen, and Reuben Kyama from Nairobi, Kenya.

Interfaith amigos

From left, Sheikh Jamal Rahman, Pastor Don Mackenzie, and Rabbi Ted Falcon read from their respective holy books during their presentation at the Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tenn., in October.


They call themselves the “interfaith amigos.” And while they do sometimes seem more like a stand-up comedy team than a trio of clergymen, they know they have a serious burden in making a case for interfaith understanding in a country reeling after a Muslim Army officer at Fort Hood, Tex., was charged with opening fire on his fellow soldiers, killing 13.

What distinguishes the “amigos,” who live in Seattle but make presentations around the country, is a unique approach to what they call “the spirituality of interfaith relations.” At the church in Nashville, the three clergymen, dressed in dark blazers, stood up one by one and declared what they most valued as the core teachings of their tradition The minister said “unconditional love.” The sheik said “compassion.” And the rabbi said “oneness.”

The room then grew quiet as each stood and recited what he regarded as the “untruths” in his own faith. The minister said that one “untruth” for him was that “Christianity is the only way to God.” The rabbi said for him it was the notion of Jews as “the chosen people.” And the sheik said for him it was the “sword verses” in the Koran, like “kill the unbeliever.”

Wear pants, get flogged

A Sudanese female journalist facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public in violation of the country's strict Islamic laws told a packed Khartoum courtroom Wednesday she is resigning from a U.N. job that grants her immunity so she can challenge the law on women's public dress code.

40 lashes for wearing pants.

Lubna Hussein was among 13 women arrested July 3 in a raid by members of the public order police force on a popular Khartoum cafe for wearing trousers, considered indecent by the strict interpretation of Islamic law adopted by Sudan's Islamic regime. All but three of the women were flogged at a police station two days later.

Swiftly punished. Trial? Jury? No need; that's what the police are for, no?

When asked about the case, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described himself as "deeply concerned" and said flogging was a violation of international human rights standards. "The U.N. will take every effort to ensure that the rights of its staff members are protected," Ban told a news conference.

He seems so ineffective. At least Kofi Annan was vocal, and visible.

Hussein's defense lawyer, Nabil Adeeb, said the U.N. wanted to protect its staff, but Hussein wanted her trial to proceed. "We have contradicting interests," he said. Hussein can face at least 40 lashes, according to Adeeb.

Mayor says NO

Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg should reconsider his opposition to the school holidays. “It’s an election year,” he said. (That's blunt)












Spurred by a broad coalition of religious, labor and immigrant groups, the City Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Tuesday to add two of the most important Muslim holy days to the public schools’ holiday calendar.

But the vote, which was nonbinding, put the Council in conflict with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has the final say to designate the days off and has said he is resolutely opposed to the idea.

The mayor told reporters before the vote that not all religions could be accommodated on the holiday schedule, only those with “a very large number of kids who practice.”

“If you close the schools for every single holiday, there won’t be any school,” he said. “Educating our kids requires time in the classroom, and that’s the most important thing to us.”

So there! The bully has spoken.

Exodus 20:3

As soon as the President returned from his Cairo trip this week, the Muslim rumors came out in full force. John Avlon on why 11 percent of Americans think Obama is Muslim.


Exodus 20:3 reads Thou shalt have no other gods before me. These geniuses are not only slandering the President, they are slandering Islam, describing it as having a false god. Twits.

Election: lost, or stolen?

In this news analysis, curious grammar and sentence construction. To wit:

It is impossible to know for sure how much the ostensible re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents the preference of an essentially conservative Iranian public and how much, as opposition voters passionately believe, it is the imposed verdict of a fundamentally authoritarian regime.

Fundamentally authoritarian? Does authoritarian merit qualification? A sham election is also mentioned.

Domestically, Mr. Ahmadinejad appealed to the fears of the more pious and poor who found change unsettling. This included those alarmed by the days of political street carnival preceding the election and those (not just men) put off by Mr. Moussavi’s attention to the traditional, second-class role of women in this paternalistic quasi-theocracy.

Quasi-theocracy? It either is, or it isn't a theocracy, right? An a ham-handed defiance of the West is added. Ham-handed is a curious choice of metaphor regarding an Islamic country that abstains from pork.

Aside from language, the politics of the election aren't encouraging. The mullahs have spoken.

Obama in Istanbul on Last Stage of Tour

President Obama, at a town hall meeting with Turkish students on Tuesday, is winding up his trip.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Obama in Istanbul on Last Stage of Tour

By HELENE COOPER 7:14 AM ET

• U.S. Seeks Bonds to Islam, Obama Says | Reaction in Turkey

Young Muslims Build a Subculture on an Underground Book

The novel is “The Catcher in the Rye” for young Muslims, said Carl W. Ernst, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture.

Now the underground success of Muslim punk has resulted in a low-budget independent film based on the book.

Very interesting. Only in America?

As part of the set, a Muslim punk rock musician, Marwan Kamel, 23, painted “Osama McDonald,” a figure with Osama bin Laden’s face atop Ronald McDonald’s body. Mr. Kamel said the painting was a protest against imperialism by American corporations and against Wahhabism, the strictest form of Islam.

Wahhabism is the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia. So, let's see: this youngster uses bib Laden's face to protest Wahhabism and American imperialism? How so?

Noureen DeWulf, 24, an actress who plays a rocker in the movie, defended the film’s message. “I’m a Muslim and I’m 100-percent American,” Ms. DeWulf said, “so I can criticize my faith and my country. Rebellion? Punk? This is totally American.”

Protest is fine, allowed, and good.

The novel’s title combines “taqwa,” the Arabic word for “piety,” with “hardcore,” used to describe many genres of angry Western music. For many young American Muslims, stigmatized by their peers after the Sept. 11 attacks but repelled by both the Bush administration’s reaction to the attacks and the rigid conservatism of many Muslim leaders, the novel became a blueprint for their lives.

Mr. Muhammad Knight was born an Irish Catholic in upstate New York and converted to Islam as a teenager. He studied at a mosque in Pakistan but became disillusioned with Islam after learning about the sectarian battles after the death of Muhammad. He said he wrote “The Taqwacores” to mend the rift between his being an observant Muslim and an angry American youth. He found validation in the life of Muhammad, who instructed people to ignore their leaders, destroy their petty deities and follow only Allah.

After reading the novel, many Muslims e-mailed Mr. Muhammad Knight, asking for directions to the next Muslim punk show. Told that no such bands existed, some of them created their own, with names like Vote Hezbollah and Secret Trial Five. One band, the Kominas, wrote a song called “Suicide Bomb the Gap,” which became Muslim punk rock’s first anthem.

David Ahntholz for The New York Times - Michael Muhammad Knight, the author of “The Taqwacores,” which a college professor has called “The Catcher in the Rye” for young Muslims

Noureen DeWulf and Bobby Naderi, both actors, with Jay Verkamp, center, the sound mixer for the film version of Mr. Knight’s novel. The film was shot in Cleveland.

Moved by a Crescent

Colin Powell talked about this picture during his endorsement of Barack Obama for President.


In the issue of the New Yorker magazine, which I saw online, the picture appeared under athis paragraph:

This summer, the photographer Platon took pictures of hundreds of men and women who volunteered to serve in the military and were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. He followed them on their journey through training and deployment, after demobilization and in hospitals, to compile a portrait of the dedication of the armed services today. Sergeant Tim Johannsen, who lost both legs when he drove over an I.E.D. on his second tour of duty in Iraq, made a point of buying an Army T-shirt to wear in his photograph. Of his sacrifice, he said, “It’s just part of the job. You know what you signed up for.” Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, a military reporter who has become a vocal opponent of the Iraq war, says that he and others like him “take our activism as a continuation of our oath of service.” Like many who enlist, Johannsen and Chiroux come from military families. Sergeant John McKay, a marine whose uncle and grandfather were marines, and whose three-year-old son posed in uniform at the wedding of a cousin, also a marine, said, “He’s just waiting till he’s eighteen.” He went on, “I’m scared for him, but if he wants to do it I’ll support him.”

General Powell:

On “Meet the Press” this morning, former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President. (Watch it; read the transcript.) In his endorsement, Powell said he was troubled that some Republicans have been spreading rumors that Obama is a Muslim.

Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards—Purple Heart, Bronze Star—showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life.

Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan.

What Would Ataturk Do?

Turkey is literally the bridge between Asia and Europe. It is also a figurative crossroads between Islam and Christianity. Its historical place is a mixed one: home of the Caliphate, the old Ottoman Empire, it was made a secular state by its modern founder, Ataturk.

Warnings of the demise of Ataturk's legacy have been around almost since he died 70 years ago. A relentless modernizer, hearty drinker and fan of the fox trot, the founder of the Turkish Republic – his name means "father of the Turks" – had issues with Islam. He shut down Islamic schools, banned Islamic garb and opened a German brewery in his new capital, Ankara. His was hardly the path of least resistance in a land that is 99% Muslim, once ruled Mecca and was for centuries home to the Caliph, Islam's supreme leader. Yet Ataturk's way prevailed for decades.

He is venerated the way Washington, Martí and Bolívar are: founders, beacons, idols.

One thing is clear: Ataturk worship, the world's most enduring personality cult, still holds this increasingly prosperous nation of more than 70 million people in its thrall. Ataturk shows scant sign of going the way of his contemporaries. Vladimir Lenin lies in Red Square but is barely mentioned in Russia now, except as a butt of jokes. Even Mao Zedong, embalmed in Tiananmen Square, has slipped from his pedestal: The Chinese Communist Party's official view of him is 70% good, 30% bad.

GW is highly respected, but he is a distant figure. Lincoln is less diatant, yet his veneration is also a somewhat distant one.

Ataturk, revered for defeating invading British, French and Greek forces, is untouchable. His mausoleum in Ankara drew more than 12 million visitors last year, up by four million from 2006. The constitution bans all deviation from the "reforms and principles" of "the immortal leader and the unrivalled hero." It is illegal in Turkey to publicly curse him. Virtually nobody, including members of the AK Party, disses him, at least not in public. One young, headscarf-wearing woman recently said on TV, "I do not like him." She is being investigated by prosecutors.

Defeated British, French and Greek forces?

Secularism a la Ataturk is not a simple formula. Unlike America's founding fathers, who separated church and state, Ataturk did not so much split Islam from the state as subordinate it to the state. He abolished the post of Caliph and placed all mosques and Muslim clerics under a government department. At the same time, he purged religion from other state agencies.

One way to do it is this way.

Ataturk, a very stylish dresser himself, clearly didn't like traditional Islamic garb, viewing it as an emblem of backwardness. His best-known comments on the dress question came in 1925 when he declared "international" – that is, Western – dress as "very important and appropriate for our nation. We shall wear it."

He even decreed what Turks would wear; that's control.

Obama Should Embrace His Muslim Heritage

File this one under undue optimism and na·ïve·té.

One young professional I know credited Muslims' enthusiasm for Sen. Obama to a perceived promise of a "brand new, informed international perspective." Other Muslims are moved by a broad and empowering message of hope and change in a tumultuous time of trouble and strife. And many see a reflection of themselves in Mr. Obama – a person who looks different, has a funny name, a sense of the world beyond our borders, and at the same time is very patriotic. That is how most Muslims in America view themselves.

As do may others: a new perspective, hope and change, someone who is different and patriotic: that is also me.

As a great leader, Mr. Obama should take a principled stand on the issue of Muslims and Islamophobia. While anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. is substantial, it is not an insurmountable challenge.

I agree: one he's elected, he should, but not until then.

Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque

So often liberals get so far ahead of themselves, so far out, that they say things that sounds so marvelous, so wonderful, so perfect, that they say them, write them, believe them, without reflecting on the practicality of them. This is a perfect example of that phenomenon: woolly-headed liberalism. Why Obama should visit a mosque. Idealistically, sounds grand, magnificent, righteous.

Roger Cohen is a New York Times reporter. He's a good reporter. He's a liberal. All of those qualities are fine with me.

I’ll admit it: I’m thin-skinned about the kinds of slurs and innuendo about Muslims that have accompanied Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Years of being subjected to them while I covered the Bosnian war did that.

I wasn't in Bosnia as he was, but I watched and read news from Bosnia that revulsed me. And I heard things that revulsed me. One thing that revulsed me was seeing Karadzic on the news, reported on as someone of importance, not as a war criminal. Another thing that revulsed me was seeing Serbs taking advantage of the paralysis of the UN, of Europe and the US, to herd up Bosnians and murder them en masse. Srebenica sickened me. The whole enterprise was a disgrace.

Give Americans the Rorschach test today and what they’ll detect in the ink blots are bearded Muslim “suiciders.”

Americans is a sweeping term. I object to this sweeping term. Jews is another sweeping term. I object to sweeping terms.

Obama has visited churches and synagogues, but no mosque. He had to apologize after two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred from appearing behind him at a recent rally in Detroit. Obama should visit a mosque. He has repeatedly shown his courage during this campaign; Americans have responded to his intellectual honesty. One of the important things about him is the knowledge his Kenyan and Indonesian experiences have given him of Islam as lived, rather than Islam as turned into monstrous specter.

True, there is political posturing on Obama's part. He has shown political courage. And it is also true that Islam is not a monster, but another major religion. But to visit a mosque, whilst a perfectly sensible idea to a liberal ideology, would be political suicide. There will be enough time for President Obama to visit a mosque after he wins the election. For him to do so during the campaign would be to hand a Swift Boat to the Repulicans as they are in the process of losing the 2008 election.

Free speech

This is a fascinating and critically important topic.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal. Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

Indeed: political correctness has been taken to such a degree that it has become impossible to speak freely, lest someone be insulted. Of course, this arose from the situation where there was no restraint on what was said, and not much care was taken over who might get insulted. Perfect example, of course, is what is meant by saying Selma, Alabama, circa 1960.

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their “dignity, feelings and self respect.”

Absurd. That article in MacLean's of Canada does say provocative things, such as: For example, I wonder how many pontificators on the "Middle East peace process" ever run this number: The median age in the Gaza Strip is 15.8 years. Once you know that, all the rest is details.

Provocative? Yes. Provocative is defined as:

• S: (adj) provocative (serving or tending to provoke, excite, or stimulate; stimulating discussion or exciting controversy) "a provocative remark"; "a provocative smile"; "provocative Irish tunes which...compel the hearers to dance"- Anthony Trollope
• S: (adj) provocative (exciting sexual desire) "her gestures and postures became more wanton and provocative"

So, not just to provoke, as in taunt, but also as in to stimulate discussion. Such matters need to be discussed, debated and illuminated by free speech. It is politically incorrect to ask what Islamic country would allow a Jew to turn that situation around, were an equivalent to MacLean's to write an article about the Jewish people; would a Jew be allowed to demand an apology on behalf of the Jewish brethren, and compensation for injuring their “dignity, feelings and self respect.” ?

The Maclean’s article, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” was an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn called “America Alone” (Regnery, 2006). The title was fitting: The United States, in its treatment of hate speech, as in so many areas of the law, takes a distinctive legal path.

Despite Bush and Cheney and their brethren, the US remains a bulwark for free speech. Bush and Cheney and their brethren want to chip away at that freedom, but they have not, and, I daresay, will not.

“In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one’s legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment,” Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called “The Exceptional First Amendment.”

Not just the developed world; criticizing the government or the Prophet is a jail sentence, if not a death sentence, for whomsoever is foolish enough to speak his or her mind freely. Of course, the other side of the equation in the US is Actress Scarlett Johansson claims she has regular email contact with Barack Obama. This is a 23-year0old actress with botoxed lips and silicon breasts and little modesty who happens to be a multi-million-dollar box office star who can help the Illinois Senator make inroads with young voters who would otherwise not be the slightest bit interested in elections.

“But in the United States,” Professor Schauer continued, “all such speech remains constitutionally protected.” Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France. Earlier this month, the actress Brigitte Bardot, an animal rights activist, was fined $23,000 in France for provoking racial hatred by criticizing a Muslim ceremony involving the slaughter of sheep. By contrast, American courts would not stop the American Nazi Party from marching in Skokie, Ill., in 1977, though a march would have been deeply distressing to the many Holocaust survivors there.

The contrast is pretty clear: banning hate speech versus allowing Nazis to march in Skokie. It is curious that, other than Israel (where the reason for banning of Nazi items is obvious) France is the only other country with such a ban, the France that has not yet come to terms with its Vichy past.

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

I get a chill reading that. Yes, seeing neo-Nazi jerks protected by the First Amendment is painful, but only until right-wingers are stopped in their tracks by US courts upholding the sanctity of that very First Amendment.

Harvey A. Silverglate, a civil liberties lawyer in Cambridge, Mass., disagreed. “When times are tough,” he said, “there seems to be a tendency to say there is too much freedom.” Scrutiny and debate are more effective ways of combating hate speech than censorship, he said, and all the more so in the post-Sept. 11 era.

Aye. Back to the article in Macleans: If you were a "moderate Palestinian" leader, would you want to try to persuade a nation – or pseudo-nation – of unemployed poorly educated teenage boys raised in a UN-supervised European-funded death cult to see sense? Any analysis of the "Palestinian problem" that doesn't take into account the most important determinant on the ground is a waste of time.

Well now. Are most Palestinian Arabs employed? Educated? The UN does supervise things there in the West Bank and Gaza, sort of (it is there, anyway), and, well, where does the funding come from?

The writer is provocative: Africa, to take another example, also has plenty of young people, but it's riddled with AIDS and, for the most part, Africans don't think of themselves as Africans: as we saw in Rwanda, their primary identity is tribal, and most tribes have no global ambitions. Islam, however, has serious global ambitions, and it forms the primal, core identity of most of its adherents -- in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere. Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare.

And right. Unflinching analysis. Rwanda is hardly the only African country where violence between citizens of the same nation is pervasive: Congo and Sudan are two others.

The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital.

Lebanese singer causes Gulf storm

All is not it seems to be.

Haifa Wehbe has a reputation for wearing revealing clothes

A raunchy Lebanese singer is causing controversy in Bahrain, where she is due to perform for the first time.

All but one of the members of the Gulf kingdom's Islamist-dominated parliament have approved a motion urging the government to ban Haifa Wehbe's show.

They objected on the grounds that the pop superstar's performance would be sexually provocative, violating Islamic conventions and Bahrain's traditions.

Dutch MP posts Islam film on web

Using fear and hatred, based on erroneous conclusions, this sort of things resonates with the intolerant. The film is on the LiveLeak website.

If it only were that easy to explain things. Cheney and Bush think things are that easy, but things aren't, and they are wrong.