'Iran Elected to Top Post at UN Arms Trade Conference'

by Israel Hayom Staff

Conference aims to create binding multilateral treaty regulating global arms trade • Iranian news agency says country was elected to senior role of "deputy head" during the talks • U.N. Watch: After U.N. found Iran guilty of illegally transferring weapons to Syria "it defies logic, morality and common sense" for U.N. to elect same regime to the conference.

Iran has been named to a top post at the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Conference, which opened last week in Geneva, U.N. Watch reported on Sunday.

Although the conference's website fails to name the 15 members who were elected to serve on the conference earlier this month, U.N. Watch, a nongovernmental organization that monitors U.N. activities, revealed that Iran was elected as a representative of the Asian working group, together with Japan and South Korea, and deputy head of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Conference earlier in the week

The conference, which continues until July 27, aims to formulate a binding multilateral treaty regulating the global arms trade.

On Saturday, IRNA, Iran's official news agency, confirmed the country's election to the conference, saying that Iran was selected for the senior role of deputy head during the talks.

"Some 193 participating countries unanimously voted in favor of Iran during the 4th day of the meeting underway in the United Nations headquarters to draft a bill on regulating arms trade in the world," IRNA reported.

In response to Iran's election, U.N. Watch has called on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who spoke to the conference last week, to condemn the move.

“Right after a U.N. Security Council report found Iran guilty of illegally transferring guns and bombs to Syria, which is now murdering thousands of its own people, it defies logic, morality and common sense for the U.N. to now elect this same regime to a global post in the regulation of arms transfers,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch.

"This is like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud on the stock market. And the U.N.'s scandalous choice of Iran is exactly why we fear that Syria's declared bid for a U.N. Human Rights Council seat is not impossible," he added.

Last week, U.N. Watch revealed that Syria is a candidate for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, saying that the country would likely win a seat on the council "due to the prevalent system of fixed slates, whereby regional groups orchestrate uncontested elections, naming only as many candidates as allotted seats."

Neuer said the U.N. secretary-general, "should remind the conference that the Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt its prohibited nuclear program, and that Iran continues to defy the international community through illegal arms shipments to the murderous Assad regime."

The recent U.N. Security Council report on Iran said, "Syria continues to be the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers." It cited the discovery of Iranian shipments to Damascus containing assault rifles, machine guns, explosives, detonators, 60-mm and 120-mm mortal shells and other weapons.

According to a U.N. Watch statement, Neuer has expressed concern that Iran's election to the conference, "injects ambiguity about the U.N.'s position on illicit Iranian arms transfers, fuels Iranian propaganda, and grants international legitimacy to a regime that tortures student activists, hangs gays and subjugates women."

Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=4978

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Egypt President Recalls Parliament, Generals Meet

by Reuters

Mohamed Mursi's order challenges authority of military generals who had dismissed assembly based on court ruling; military council holds emergency session to respond after being taken by surprise.

Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

CAIRO - Egypt's new president ordered the dissolved Islamist-led parliament on Sunday to reconvene until a new one was elected, challenging the authority of the military generals who had dismissed the assembly based on a court ruling.

President Mohamed Mursi was handed power on June 30 by the generals who had been in charge since Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year. But, shortly before handing over, the army curbed some presidential powers and gave itself a legislative role.

Mursi's decision removes those legislative powers from the army and returns them to a parliament dominated by the party of Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, analysts said.

The state news agency MENA said the military council had held an emergency session to discuss the decree. A member of the council, who declined to be identified, told Reuters the generals had not been given prior warning of Mursi's decision.

Mursi also called for an early vote once a new constitution was drawn up. That suggested a possible compromise by indicating that the assembly, criticized by some for a poor initial performance, would not serve a full four-year term.

"President Mohamed Mursi ordered the reconvening of the elected parliament to hold sessions," according to a presidential statement read out by Mursi's aide Yasser Ali.

An early parliamentary election will be held within 60 days of a new constitution being approved by the nation, Ali said.

Meetings of a body to draw up a new constitution are still in their early stages, delayed by rows between liberals, Islamists and others over who should write the new document.

Analysts said they had not expected an easy relationship between the army and the Islamist president, but believed Mursi would tread cautiously to avoid a confrontation.

"Everyone was expecting this to happen but not now, unless this decision was taken in agreement with the army council, but I doubt this," said political analyst Mohamed Khalil of Sunday's decree.

"This means he is taking legislative power from the army council and returning it to parliament. So maybe in this period he needs certain laws to empower the government or to implement the 100-day plan" for his first days in office, Khalil said.

The background to the decision was still not clear but the call for early elections could placate demands for a new parliament, he said.

"The military wanted to dissolve parliament and the Brotherhood doesn't. There has to be somewhere they can meet in the middle or there will be an indefinite stand-off and both sides will have to compromise," said Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center.

"This could be a compromise arrangement for the short term, so the military gets part of what it wanted - a new parliament in coming months - and Islamists can avoid a situation where the military dominates a legislative authority," he said.

The Supreme Constitutional Court ordered the lower house of parliament dissolved on June 14 after finding fault with the election process. The generals implemented the decision two days later and then issued a decree outlining presidential powers on June 17, even before presidential election votes were counted.

The Brotherhood has filed a legal suit in another court challenging the ruling to dissolve parliament, arguing such a decision should only be taken with popular consent.

Reuters

Source:

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The Region: My Message to the Iraqis

by Barry Rubin

In the new Middle East, we have far more frequent interactions with people who live in countries ostensibly at war with Israel.

In the new Middle East where people talk a lot behind the scenes using the new high-technology communications, we have far more frequent interactions with people who live in countries ostensibly at war with Israel. Such conversations are always interesting and useful for analysts.

Sometimes the exchanges are even happening in public. I’ve been interviewed a number of times, for example, by Iraqi journalists. But this time there was a different kind of question at the end of the interview. In the last query, the journalist asked what message I had for Iraq’s people.

For a moment, I was speechless. I’ve been waiting more than 30 years for that kind of opportunity. What should I say that wasn’t just special pleading or an obvious exercise in hasbara (public diplomacy)?

BUT LET me start at the beginning. Not long ago I wrote that Iraq might be the best model realistically available right now for the Arabic- speaking world. Iraq dropped out of the seemingly endless and futile race by countries to conquer the region; moved away from radical and disastrous ideology; developed a measure of democracy, pluralism and federalism; defeated an internal terrorist insurgency that was being helped by its neighbors; and seemed to be pursuing a pragmatic path.

Unfortunately, though, there has been steady deterioration. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is grabbing for supreme power; Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi has fled, pursued by Maliki’s charges of terrorism.

President Jalal Talabani was thrust into the middle. What’s important to keep in mind is that the first man is a Shia Arab, the second is a Sunni Arab and the third is a Kurd.

So while these are personal rivalries – not everyone lines up neatly along sectarian or ethnic lines – such disputes also represent communal rifts and could reignite a bloody civil war in Iraq. This is risky.

Then there’s the perennial question of how much influence does Iran have in Iraq? Less than one might expect on the national level, I’d say, but still some real behind- the- scenes power in southern Iraq.

Iran can interfere in the country with relative ease.

Tehran has apparently instructed its Shia Iraqi assets to support the current government and not make trouble. So the threat is not high at this point. Still, the Baghdad government is going to be careful to stay on good terms with Tehran. At the same time, though, Iraq’s leaders have no desire to be Iran’s clients, despite some of them having such close ties during the Saddam Hussein era. And so the whole sad tragedy may be starting again.

As Michael Corleoni said, “Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.”

WHAT ARE the diseases of the Middle East that refuse to go away? • The belief that certain countries – nowadays mainly Egypt, Iran, and Turkey – think they can dominate the whole region and are willing to sacrifice blood and treasure to do so.

• Instead of fixing problems, hate is focused on scapegoats.

• The assumption that one ideology – formerly Arab nationalism, now Islamism – can conquer everyone and everywhere.

• The conclusion that one can only be a leader by being a dictator.

• The rejection of pluralism, freedom, pragmatism and the emphasis on political power maneuvers over socio-economic development.

Whatever its shortcomings, Europe overcame these maladies. Many in Asia are doing so, as are some leaders and countries elsewhere. In the Middle East, though, while there are hints of enlightenment, outside of Israel it cannot really be found enthroned elsewhere.

Turkey, which long seemed immunized to the Middle East malady, has leaped back into the swamp. Lebanon has long since done so. Morocco and Jordan linger on the brink. The Iraqi Kurds are – temporarily? – on dry land.

And so that was the theme of my message to Iraqis: Does it make sense to plunge back into conflict at a moment when the region is descending toward an international struggle between Sunni and Shia blocs that will last decades? No country can suffer more from that battle than Iraq.

At a time when revolutionary Islamism is adding additional bloodshed and misery for millions, is this the direction Iraq wants to go? After sacrificing so much of its wealth to no less than three avoidable wars – Iran-Iraq (1980-1988), Kuwait (1990-1991), a war provoked by Saddam Hussein’s breaking sanctions (2003) – followed by a horrible civil war, isn’t that enough? Are Iraq and the Middle East really doomed to plunge into another 60 years of horror? Who is going to try to remain outside this fray?

UNFORTUNATELY, THE West is not going to save you from this and America, at least under its current leadership, won’t help you. On the contrary, the Obama administration is rewarding the radicals, pushing the Islamists, and neglecting its friends. People in the region are well aware of this reality; Western “experts” and governments are not.

Several people lately have asked me what I think of Israel’s future.

My answer is that I’m extremely optimistic. But as for everything else for a thousand miles or so in every direction, things look grim.

Please wake up and don’t do it all over again.

This is your chance to escape from the waterboarding of history, from the grim cycle of war, hatred and death. Choose life, democracy, moderation, pragmatism and prosperity.

But I know that plea probably won’t work. I feel a grim sense that the watchword of the day is: Here we go again.

Barry Rubin is the director of Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center. He also publishes the Rubin Report blog and is the author of Israel: An Introduction.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=276704

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Mahmoud Abbas, Serial Liar

by Jonathan S. Tobin

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has consistently refused to negotiate in good faith or to make peace with Israel since he succeeded the equally obdurate Yasir Arafat in 2004. He’s also been consistent in another way: he lies a lot. Abbas’s mendacity isn’t the garden-variety white lies, exaggerations and obfuscations that are the routine fare of American politicians. Instead, he is given to telling the barefaced lies we tend to associate with the heads of dictatorial regimes. Which is, of course, the sort of government the Palestinian Authority has more in common with than democratic systems such as that of Israel and the United States.

The latest example of this came in an interview Saturday night with Israel’s Channel Two in which Abbas was reduced to claiming that some well-documented statements of his never actually happened. According to Abbas, he never discussed Israel’s offer to allow some Palestinian refugees into the country with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He also claimed he never told respected Washington Post editor and columnist Jackson Diehl that he had no intention of negotiating with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That both of those figures can prove he did say those things goes without saying. But the point here is not just that Abbas is a liar, though that is exactly what he is. Rather, it is that Palestinian political culture is such that Abbas knows he has no choice but to lie about these things. To do otherwise would place him in opposition to the overwhelming sentiment of those opposed to peace or to even the appearance of compromise with Israel.

Abbas is, after all, in a difficult position. In order to maintain the pose of moderation he has cultivated with the West, he has had to engage in talks with American and even Israeli leaders and say things about peace terms that he wouldn’t dare mention to an Arab audience. But conversations such as the one Rice documented in her memoir are not the sort of thing he can admit. Doing so will weaken his already shaky popularity among Palestinians at a time when his Hamas rivals are seeking to poach on his West Bank fiefdom.

As for his controversial interview with Diehl, Abbas’s candor about his unwillingness to talk to Israel in 2009 was as much the fault of President Obama as it was the Palestinian’s intransigence. In those early months of the Obama presidency, the hostility of the new administration for Israel was palpable, and Abbas figured it made no sense for him to accept Netanyahu’s offers of talks. With the president trying to extract concessions from Israel without the Palestinians having to do anything in return, Abbas’s stance made sense, especially because he may have shared the delusion held by many in the White House and State Department they could topple the newly elected Netanyahu.

In retrospect, Abbas probably regrets thinking that Obama would hand Israel to him on a silver platter as much as the administration may (or at least should) regret banking on the PA be willing to take advantage of all the help they were trying to give. Thus, Abbas must lie about his talk with Diehl as well as his conversations with Rice.

But lest you think Abbas’s fibs are merely the function of diplomacy, elsewhere in the interview, Abbas played to his Palestinian base with another lie about the events of 1948. He claimed that nearly a million Arabs left the territory of Israel during the fighting and they now numbered five million, among whom he counts himself. In fact, the number he cites would have included almost the entire Arab population of the Palestinian Mandate at the time. Because almost 200,000 remained inside the territory of the new state of Israel and hundreds of thousands more remained in their homes in Gaza and the West Bank (which were illegally occupied by Egypt and Jordan), the numbers don’t add up.

Of course, Abbas has experience lying about numbers. His doctoral thesis claimed six million Jews were not killed during the Holocaust. What are a few lies about conversations with Rice and Diehl when compared to Holocaust denial?

If this is Israel’s peace partner, there’s no mystery about why the peace process has been dead in the water for years.

Jonathan S. Tobin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/07/08/mahmoud-abbas-serial-liar/

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Those Stupid Arafat Conspiracy Theories

by Omri Ceren

I honestly can’t believe we’re expected to take seriously the Al Jazeera “scoop” about Yasir Arafat being murdered. Disgraceful innuendo-filled articles of the type being written by the AP and published by the Washington Post are reporting “evidence” to the effect that Arafat might have been poisoned with Polonium 210. The proof, such as it is, comes from unusual levels of Po 210 reportedly detected on Arafat’s clothing and toothbrush by a Swiss lab in the last few months.

But given how math works, and taking into account the isotope’s 138 day half-life, that’s inane.

The minimum amount of Po 210 that’s fatal when ingested is about 50 nanograms (ng). Alexander Litvinenko, widely thought to have been poisoned with the radioactive element by the Russians in 2006, ingested around 10,000 ng, or 200 times the minimum lethal dose. That’s a tiny amount, but nonetheless there was so much Polonium in Litvinenko’s system that his sweat left a car permanently unusable and his house uninhabitable for six months. As a diagnostic matter, it was obvious to doctors he had been poisoned.

None of that was true for Arafat. Doctors couldn’t tell by looking at him whether he had been poisoned and he was not irradiating entire cars and buildings. So he would have had to ingest less Po 210 than Litvinenko. Let’s peg the amount at 5,000 ng, which is 100 times more than the fatal dose but still half of what Litvinenko ingested. As you’re about to see, the math works out in such a way that the actual amount doesn’t matter as long as it’s kept reasonable.

After having planned and launched Intifada II and been militarily defeated, Arafat died in November 2004. The Swiss lab had his clothing for a few months. so let’s round down to 7 years as the interval between his death and the tests. That’s 2556 days (one leap year) divided by a half-life of 138 equals about 18.5 iterations. Put everything together – 5000 ng/(2^18.5) – and the result is about 0.0135 ng of Po 210 that should have been detectable on Arafat’s possessions today. That’s 0.0000135 micrograms. Four zeros of padding.

If we double the dosage to what Litvinenko ingested, the amount left over today would double to 0.0000270 micrograms. Double the dosage again – so now it would be twice as much as received by Litvinenko, who was visibly poisoned and who leaked radiation across half of London – and the amount today should be 0.0000540 micrograms. There’s just no way to get a reasonable amount of Polonium left over because the denominator, representing halving every 138 days for 7 years, overwhelms everything else.

The conspiracy mongers, however, have found a solution. They simply assert that given how much Polonium was found at the Swiss lab, whatever the math says should have been the original amount, that’s ipso facto the amount Arafat ingested. QED. As Elder of Ziyon pointed out, that amount of Po 210 contradicts the only thing we do know, which is that Arafat died slowly in a not-obviously-poisoned condition. Al Jazeera has been trying to dodge the obvious point by blandly inventing the idea we just don’t know what Polonium poisoning looks like. The dearth of knowledge will be news to the Swiss lab investigator who flatly stated that “the clinical description of Chairman Arafat’s symptoms prior to his death is not compatible with Polonium poisoning.”

This tripe is the worst anti-Israel conspiracy theory since the tourism-destroying Zionist attack sharks, and more’s the pity. I was really looking forward to following Newsweek’s suggestion that I “get smarter in 2012″ by watching Al Jazeera. Now it turns out the network would rather indulge in feverish conspiracy mongering than carry out junior high school arithmetic before running stories. One begins to really worry that Hillary Clinton was wrong about Al Jazeera’s vaunted news ethics.

Omri Ceren

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/07/08/those-stupid-arafat-conspiracy-theories/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Steyn: 'American Twilight'

by Rick Moran

Here's Mark Steyn writing at NRO on the Roberts decision and what it means:

In recent years, speaking to audiences hither and yon, I'm wont to say something on the lines of "The lamps are going out on liberty all over the world." It's my update on a famous observation by Edward Grey, British foreign secretary on the eve of the Great War. In August 1914, Sir Edward stood at his window in the summer dusk, and said, "The lamps are going out all over Europe." He was speaking metaphorically. After all, his remark was prompted by the sight of London's lamplighters going about their evening routine lighting the lamps in Whitehall. Metaphorically speaking, the lights of liberty were certainly dimmed by Roberts's hideously convoluted Supreme Court decision: I don't see why I should be fined $695 for declining to participate in an overpriced and dysfunctional "insurance" "market."

But that's a philosophical argument, and most folks just want to get on with their lives. And in that sense last week's power outages are more relevant to where the U.S. is headed than what passes for John Roberts's thinking in his Obamacare opinion. It was a reminder, as if you needed one, that in the American twilight the lights will be going out literally. Last week, as the East Coast was fading to black, the West Coast was sinking deeper into the red: Stockton, Calif., became the largest U.S. city to date to file for bankruptcy. America is seizing up before our eyes, and the action necessary to reverse the sclerosis is stymied at every turn by rapacious unions, government micro-regulators, dependency-spreading social engineers, and crony capitalists who know how to weave their way through the bureaucracy.

The Roberts decision was horrible but is it really the end of the world? It's easy to cherry-pick the bad news -- and the good for that matter -- to buttress one's argument either for or against American Armageddon. But I think you have to ignore the trend over the last 60 years in order to believe the notion that the last 3 years have been any worse for American democracy than anything previously. Job destroying regulations have been written under both Democratic and Republican presidents. The GOP Congress overreached with the Medicare drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. The alphabet soup of federal agencies that came into being in the 1960's and 70's had both party's imprimatur on them.

And the American people voted these people into office. If Obamacare is a tipping point -- and I've read good arguments both for and against that notion -- the people can vote politicians into office who will rectify that mistake. Robert's decision -- disastrous as it was -- nevertheless left us an out; repeal. It may be harder to get the Congress to do what's right, but it will legitimize the act of repeal if we base it on the will of the voter and not the capricious whim of an unelected judge.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/07/steyn_american_twilight.html

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Ancient Koranic Origins and Modern Islamic Intolerance

by Andrew G. Bostom

Wednesday, July 4, 2012, Americans celebrated the 236^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, affirming yet again our unique God-given heritage of freedom.

... that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The same day, prosecutors in Indonesia -- that bastion of contemporary Islamic tolerance and moderation -- insisted upon a four-year prison term for Shiite leader Tajul Muluk, under Article 156, Paragraph A of the Criminal Code, which penalizes "blasphemy." Tajul was accused, specifically, of informing his students that the contemporary Koran they (and all Muslims) now study was not the original "sacralized" text. Currently incarcerated, Tajul Mulk has received death threats from fellow inmates even before his trial, while in December 2011, over 300 members of Tajul's Shiite community were displaced when a mob of 500 people attacked and burned houses, a boarding school, and a place of worship.

Tajul Muluk's prosecution epitomizes contemporary Islamdom's consistent, utter rejection of basic freedom of speech, even in a much-ballyhooed "tolerant" Muslim society. This liberty-crushing suppression of free speech -- in accord with Islam's totalitarian sharia -- is exercised with particular vehemence regarding any questions about Islam's origins, even when such queries comport with major aspects of the pious Muslim narrative, not to mention objective textual discoveries.

Arthur Jeffery (1892-1959) was a great 20^th-century scholar of Islam, who, in the finest Western traditions of objective inquiry, conducted pioneering, magisterial analyses of the Koranic text's evolution. Jeffery laid out his unbiased, scholarly views on such endeavors on October 31, 1946, at a meeting of the Middle East Society of Jerusalem:

Wherever we find a religion that has a Scripture, that fact presents scholarship with the problem of the textual history of that Scripture. There are no exceptions to this among the historic religions. In the case of Buddhism, for example, we have the problem of the Pali Canon, the Sanskrit Canon, the Tibetan Canon, and the Chinese Canon. In the case of Zoroastrianism there is the liveliest dispute among Iranian scholars at this very moment as to the Avestan text, and, as is well known, the text of the Pahlavi books is an exceedingly complicated problem. Each generation of students for the last hundred years has found itself faced with new problems concerning the text of the Old Testament, and our own memories are still fresh with the excitement caused by the discovery of the Chester Beatty Papyri and the Ryland's Gospel fragment, both of which raised lively discussions on matters related to the textual history of the New Testament. Whether we face the text of the Book of the Dead, coming from the ancient Egyptian religion, or the text of the Qur'an coming from the youngest of the great historic religions, we have the problem of the history of the text.

The acknowledged existence of Koranic "variants," albeit ostensibly different "dialectical forms," purportedly led Caliph Uthman (r. 644-656) to appoint a committee of learned Muslim men to "homogenize" the text and destroy all other copies. Arthur Jeffery's scholarship, and the work of many other textual analysts, amassed considerable evidence of various human recensions in the evolution of the Koranic text. One striking example was Jeffery's discovery of a variant text of the Koran's brief opening prayer itself, the so-called Fatiha (chapter or sura 1, verses 1-7). This important finding was consistent with earlier Western, and even classical, pious Muslim scholarship, as Jeffery noted in 1939:

The peculiar nature of the Fatiha has been recognized by Western scholars from Nöldeke [the great Koranic scholar; d. 1930] downward, but it is not merely a hostile Western opinion, for Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi [the great Koranic commentator and Muslim philosopher; d. 1209] quotes Abu Bakr al-Asamm [d. 816/17; early theologian and scholar] as saying that he considered it not to be part of the Koran and apparently the oldest commentaries began with Surat-al-Baqara [i.e., the second chapter, or sura of the Koran].

Earlier, despite Jeffery's yeoman effort to apply Western methods of textual analysis with the greatest deference to Muslim sensibilities, his sincere endeavors were ultimately deemed offensive by institutional Islam. Former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, and then president of the American University in Cairo John Badeau recounted the circumstances surrounding Arthur Jeffery's departure as head of the university's modest School of Oriental Studies in 1937:

It was very interesting why he left. After all, Cairo was the natural spot for a scholar doing his research. He had come across a very early commentary on the Quran. I think it had been in one of the mosque libraries in Damascus. In any case, he had got hold of it and brought it to Cairo and was working in it; its value was that it contained variant readings of the Quran text that are not otherwise in existence. So Jeff [Jeffery] got one of the shaykhs of Al-Azhar to come down and do work with him, and they were working through this commentary, annotating, and translating it. He never would use a typewriter, and wrote his notes out in longhand in a series of notebooks. One of the things that Jeff would not have was a telephone in his office. He abominated it, and the telephone was at the end of the hall. After some months of work, he and the shaykh had had a session; the notebooks were piled on one side of the table. The telephone rang, Jeff's secretary came in to tell him he was wanted, so he left the room and went to the telephone. When he came back, the shaykh who had been helping him was gone, and all the pages were ripped out of the notebooks and torn up. The shaykh could not stand the heresy of being confronted with these variant readings of the Quran. Apparently it had been bothering him for some time. In effect, Jeff said, "You know, I simply cannot do this kind of work in Cairo." At that time, Columbia had lost its Arabic scholar and approached him, and he left the American University and came to Columbia, where he remained until he died.

Jeffery's predicament -- circa 1937 -- and the far worse current plight of Indonesian Shiite leader Tajul Muluk are pathognomonic of Islam's stultifying affliction: the angry, doctrinaire suppression of open, critical inquiry and self-examination. Until Muslim societies allow such inquiries to proceed unencumbered, they will remain in their ossified medieval fortresses, devoid of basic freedoms, or even the fundamental awareness of why those freedoms represent the quintessence of human nobility.

Andrew G. Bostom

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/07/ancient_koranic_origins_and_modern_islamic_intolerance.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

RIP: Free Speech about Islam

by Adam Turner

The right of Westerners to speak freely regarding Islam-related topics -- radical Islam or Islamism, Islamist terrorism, and Islamist terror funding -- is in jeopardy. Islamists and their sympathizers try to silence any and all questions possibly critical of Islam with a vicious, multi-pronged assault until a critic is silenced, punished, or made an example of for others.

Islamists seem to use at least three different methods: 1) the initiation of legal proceedings, known as "lawfare" -- i.e., frivolous or malicious lawsuits which often do not even hope to succeed in court and are reluctant to reach discovery to avoid disclosing information, but which therefore seem intended, on charges of hate speech or defamation, to harass and financially crush the defendant; 2) threats of violence, or violence itself; or 3) pressure applied based on political correctness, as with attempts to smear reputations by alleging "racism," "Islamophobia," or other epithets. Sometimes the Islamists use only one of these methods -- sometimes two, or all three. Regardless, the assault is often successful.

The Danish cartoon controversy, for example, began in September of 2005, after an author in Denmark stated that he could not find an artist willing, under his own name, to illustrate a book about the Islamic Prophet Mohammed's life. In Islam, it is considered blasphemous to draw a picture of the prophet. In response, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten ran twelve cartoons by various artists depicting Mohammed, with the editor explaining that the project was an attempt defend the Danish right to exercise free speech and to contribute to the debate regarding criticism of Islam and self-censorship. The most controversial of these cartoons -- the "bomb in the turban" picture of Mohammed -- was drawn by Kurt Westergaard. These cartoons were soon reprinted in magazines/newspapers in more than 50 other countries. However, the only major U.S. magazines/newspapers to reprint any of the cartoons were the conservative Weekly Standard, the atheist Free Inquiry, and the Denver Rocky Mountain News. Many organizations cited their unwillingness to publish them out of concern for the sensitivities of Muslim readers. A fear of violence may also have been a significant concern.

Soon after the cartoons were published, Islamist, Islamic, or politically correct pressure groups swung into action. In October of 2005, some ambassadors from Muslim countries sent a letter requesting a meeting with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, stating that they wished to discuss the "on-going smearing campaign in Danish public circles and media against Islam and Muslims." They also hinted that the Danish government should legally prosecute the paper's editors.

At the same time, a nearly identical letter arrived in Copenhagen from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC -- now known as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation), an intergovernmental organization of fifty-seven Muslim states, also protesting the publication of the cartoons. As noted here, "[t]he diplomatic protests aimed to use international disapproval to sanction the newspaper -- and the Danes -- for Islamophobia," an invented term patterned after the term "homophobia." Coinciding with the arrival of the letters, three thousand Danish Muslims demonstrated in Copenhagen and demanded an apology from the newspaper for insulting Muslims.

The Danish prime minister, however, refused to bend to the politically correct pressure and declined to meet with the ambassadors. As he explained, "[t]his is a matter of principle. I won't meet with them because it is so crystal clear what principles Danish democracy is built upon that there is no reason to do so. As prime minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press --nor do I want such a power." He did concede, however, that offended parties could attempt to seek legal relief from Danish courts.

Sure enough, later that same month, several Danish Muslim organizations filed a complaint with the Danish police claiming that the Jyllands-Posten had committed an offense under the law. They cited sections 140 and 266b of the Danish Criminal Code. Section 140 is the blasphemy law, which prohibits disturbing public order by publicly ridiculing or insulting the dogmas of worship of any lawfully existing religious community in Denmark. Section 266b criminalizes insults, threats, or degradation of natural persons, by publicly and with malice attacking their race, color of skin, national or ethnical roots, faith, or sexual orientation. But in early 2006, the Danish regional public prosecutor discontinued the investigation, as he ruled that the cartoons concerned a subject of public interest and thus were protected. This judgment was later confirmed by the highest Danish authority, the director of public prosecutions. Although his ruling protected the speech rights of the Danish cartoonists in this case, the director still insisted on correcting Jyllands-Posten's expansive view of the right to free expression in the Danish code:

Although there is no basis for instituting criminal proceedings in this case, it should be noted that both provisions (Sections 140 & 266b) of the Danish Criminal Code contain a restriction of the freedom of expression[.] ... To the extent publicly made expressions fall within the scope of these rules there is, therefore, no free and unrestricted right to express opinions about religious subjects. It is thus not a correct description of existing law when the article in Jyllands-Posten states that it is incompatible with the right to freedom of expression[.]

Of course, a legal dead end was not the end of the pressure. In December of 2005, two Danish imams began a tour of the Middle East to publicize the Jyllands-Posten drawings. In their "dossier," the imams stuffed some other inflammatory information, including three additional -- and more insulting -- pictures, untruthful allegations of discrimination against Muslims in the West, and an interview discussing Islam with Dutch then-member of parliament and former Muslim-turned-critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Ayaan Hirsi Ali had once been honored for her advocacy for free speech by the Danish governing party.) This first imam tour, and a second tour by the same individuals, as well as instigation by various Arab governments, led to widespread protesting across the Muslim world throughout 2006. In the Muslim world, protestors took to the streets, destroying buildings, burning the Danish flag, and sometimes setting fire to Danish embassies. Eventually, more than 200 people were killed and hundreds more injured in violence surrounding the publication -- and republication -- of the cartoons.

Most disturbingly, starting in 2005, and continuing until today, Muslim radicals began to physically threaten Jyllands-Posten's employees, the cartoon artists, and Danes in general for the drawing and the publishing of the Mohammed cartoons. Most prominent among the Islamist targets was cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who was immediately forced into hiding under police protection. Since 2005, there have been countless threats, plots, and/or attacks against Danish targets stemming from these cartoons. Here are just some of the more prominent ones:

• In 2005, a Pakistani Islamist party offered a reward to anyone who killed a cartoonist.
• In 2006, the Danish embassies were sacked in Damascus and Beirut.
• In 2008, the Danish Embassy in Islamabad was damaged in a suicide vehicle bombing. The bombing killed six people and wounded 30, mostly Pakistani Muslims.
• In 2009, following the arrest of U.S. citizen David Headley for planning the 2008 Mumbai attacks, American officials learned that Headley had also conducted surveillance in Denmark for an attack against Jyllands-Posten, with the codename of "The Mickey Mouse Project."
• In 2010, Danish police shot and wounded an Islamist at the home of Kurt Westergaard. The Islamist broke down the front door with the axe, before being stopped by the door to a panic room. Luckily, neither Westergaard nor his five-year-old granddaughter was harmed. Although sentenced to nine years in prison in 2011, the terrorist appealed the sentence, claiming that he was only trying to scare Westergaard to make him "stop bragging about drawing the cartoon." His sentence was subsequently affirmed.
• In 2011, three Norwegian Muslims were prosecuted for planning to bomb the offices of the Jyllands-Posten. On the first day of the trial, the prosecutors said the plot was planned with al-Qaeda in Pakistan, which is where one of the men had been trained.
• On May 28, 2012, Danish domestic intelligence services picked up two Danish-Somali brothers suspected of plotting a terror attack in Denmark.

For more comprehensive lists, please see here and here and here and here and here.

It has been seven years since one Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, printed cartoon depictions of Mohammed. Seven years. Yet to this day, the opponents of this cartoon speech have continued their efforts to punish the paper, and the Danish people, for their desire to preserve free speech in Denmark. These speech thugs have hit the Danes with legal threats, with politically correct shaming, and with murderous violence. While the legal process may have been abandoned (for now?), the violence, and the attempted shaming, have never stopped. But, to their great credit, the owners and employees of Jyllands-Posten remain unbowed against the threats to their speech rights.

Unfortunately, this unrelenting assault on free speech regarding Islam-related topics has had its effect on others -- both in and out of Denmark -- who, unlike Jyllands-Posten, are not so brave. The Danish paper Politiken, which originally stood with Jyllands-Posten, later caved in the face of Islamist (either legal or physical threat) pressure and apologized for its republication of the Mohammed cartoons. Yale's press capitulated too, refusing to publish the Mohammed cartoons in a book about the Mohammed cartoons. The Washington Post chose to rerun an old Non Sequitur cartoon rather than use the new submission that used a "Where's Waldo?" gag, replacing Waldo with Mohammed, to satirize the media's hesitancy to offend radical Islam. Comedy Central censored their hit show South Park after threats over simply showing Mohammed, in four episodes, in 2006 and then in 2010. (In contrast, Mohammed was depicted in a South Park episode aired prior to the Cartoons Controversy.)

There are a few who get what this struggle is all about and fight to keep their free speech regarding Islam alive. Ezra Levant is one such individual. And then there is the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was bombed for its courage. But these are the exceptions. The vast majority do what is most rational -- cave in to the pressure, and censor their Islam-related speech.

Adam Turner serves as staff counsel to the Legal Projectat the Middle East Forum. He is a former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he focused on national security law.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/rip_free_speech_about_islam.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israel: UN Council on Settlements is Biased

by The Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Israel's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yigal Palmor: "The mission's existence embodies the inherent distortion that typifies the UNHRC treatment of Israel and the hijacking of the important human rights agenda by non-democratic countries."

Israel spokesman: UNHRC distorts treatment of Israeli settlements. Pictured: The Ofra settlement, 20 miles north of Jerusalem. | Photo credit: Reuters

A U.N. Human Rights Council mission on West Bank settlements is "flawed and biased," Israel said Friday, accusing the rights body of corruption for again singling out the Jewish state while "systematically ignoring massive human rights violations" elsewhere.

The U.N.'s top human rights body appointed three officials Friday afternoon to conduct a fact-finding mission on how Israel's West Bank settlements affect the lives of Palestinians. The Council president, Uruguay Ambassador Laura Dupuy Lasserre, named three women to the panel: Christine Chanet of France, Unity Dow of Botswana and Asma Jahangir of Pakistan. Dupuy Lasserre said their mission will be to look how the Israeli settlements impact "the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people."

Israel said it will not cooperate with the mission.

"The mission's existence embodies the inherent distortion that typifies the UNHRC treatment of Israel and the hijacking of the important human rights agenda by non-democratic countries," said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

The U.N. Human Rights Council, which has a large representation of Arab and Muslim regimes, has long been criticized for heavily focusing on Israel while doing little regarding other places where people suffer from serious state violations of their human rights.

Israel severed ties with the Council after the Geneva-based 47-nation council passed a resolution in March to establish such a probe.

"Israel was left with no other choice than to take this decision, after it became apparent that putting the disproportionate focus on Israel, while systematically ignoring massive human rights violations in the very countries who bear responsibility for this focus, only leads to the contempt and degradation of the important cause of universal human rights," Palmor said.

"One example among many: In times when President Assad's regime massacres thousands of its own people, the UNHRC only dedicates it symbolic time, as if to go through the motions, while turning its resources to obsessively focus on Israel, yet again," he said.

The U.N. already considers Israeli settlements illegal under international law. Some 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, territory that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war from Jordan.

West Bank settlements are a core dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.

Palestinians claim the West Bank as part of their future state and object to any settlements there.

Settlers view the territory as Israel's biblical heartland.

The issue has paralyzed peace talks for years. Palestinians refuse to resume negotiations until Israel halts settlement construction. Israel says talks should resume without preconditions.

The Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=4974

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Arab World: Sunni Islamism Stirs In Lebanon

by Jonathan Spyer

As the civil war in Syria grinds on and assumes an increasingly sectarian character, echoes of the strife are being heard across the border in Lebanon.

The main beneficiary of the Arab uprisings of the last year has been Sunni Islamism. In Syria, Sunnis are playing an increasingly important role in the rebellion against President Bashar Assad. In Lebanon, too, individuals and movements of this type are emerging to prominence and issuing a challenge to the dominant political force in the country – Hezbollah. Sunni northern Lebanon, in particular the town of Tripoli, is a center both of Sunni Islamism and of support for the Syrian rebellion. The town has become a gathering point for foreign jihadi fighters on their way to fight the Assad regime.

The fate of Lebanon has always been acutely influenced by events in its larger neighbor, to the sorrow of many Lebanese. Currently, too, the Assad regime and Hezbollah are members of the same Iran-led regional bloc.

Lebanese Sunnis are aware of this alliance. Most have not happily acquiesced to the de facto Shi’a domination of Lebanon. They are aware also that Hezbollah is actively aiding Assad. Many are keen to play their own part in the unfolding battle, and to launch a Sunni resistance both to contest Hezbollah’s dominance of Lebanon and to support their fellow Sunnis against Assad’s local allies.

The problem for Lebanese Sunnis wishing to express and organize their discontent with Hezbollah has been a de facto vacuum of leadership in the community. The March 14 movement led by Saad Hariri sought to challenge Hezbollah in May,2008, and was quickly swept off the streets by the Shi’a militia. Saad Hariri has not been in Lebanon since last April.

Few Sunnis now see Hariri as a potential leader of the country. The March 14 strategy was to oppose Hezbollah’s guns with an appeal to international legality. Hezbollah contemptuously rolled over this approach.

As a result of this vacuum, and perhaps also in line with the mood of the times, the stirrings of Sunni discontent against the de facto domination of the country by Hezbollah are taking Islamist form. Sunni anger is currently coalescing around the figure of Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, a Salafi cleric from the town of Sidon, in the south of the country. Assir, the Imam of the Bilal Ibn Rabah mosque in Sidon, has achieved prominence over the last year because of his outspoken statements in opposition to Hezbollah. In particular, the Salafi sheikh has focused on the independent military capacity maintained by the Shi’a movement.

On June 23, in an interview on Al- Jadeed TV in west Beirut, Assir appeared to offer a direct challenge to Hezbollah’s independent weapons capacity and to its domination of the country.

“Either we live as equal partners,” he said, “or else, I swear by God, O Hassan Nasrallah and Nabih Berri, I, Ahmad Assir, will shed every drop of my blood to prevent you from relaxing until balance is restored to Lebanon.”

Two days later, gunmen fired on the offices of Al-Jadeed TV.

Following this interview, Assir launched a permanent demonstration in Sidon (with echoes of the sitin launched by Hezbollah and its allies in Beirut in late 2006 against the then-government of Fuad Siniora.) He has vowed to maintain this protest until the issue of Hezbollah’s independent arms capacity is resolved.

Assir’s rise to prominence is built on a perception that he is stating openly what many Sunnis are saying privately.

Thus, in spite of the apparently quixotic aspect of a provincial Lebanese Sunni cleric making demands of a powerful Iran-backed militia, Hezbollah and its allies are taking the latest developments seriously.

The emergence of Assir as a spokesman for Sunni grievances is going hand-inhand with a broader rise in Sunni militancy elsewhere in Lebanon. There are reports of military training of Sunni Lebanese volunteers in the Bekaa Valley, before they cross the border into Syria to fight Assad’s forces. In the Sunni heartland of rural northern Lebanon, sentiment in favor of the Syrian rebels runs high, increased by close acquaintance with Sunni refugees who have fled Syria for Lebanon over the course of the last year.

It is, of course, impossible to predict whether the current Sunni ferment in Lebanon will take on the form of action against the de facto Shi’a domination of the country. Outside of the Salafi fringe, the Lebanese Sunnis lack a deep tradition of paramilitary activity.

Large numbers of more middle-class and Westernized Lebanese Sunnis distrust the Islamists. Hezbollah, meanwhile, is a daunting, well armed and brutal foe.

Still, it is worth remembering that in the Lebanese sectarian system, nothing is forever.

The various sects reach their uneasy modus vivendi based on the relative power balance between them at any given time. Until 2011, the Shi’a power of Hezbollah, armed, trained and financed by Iran, seemed to brook no possible rivals. The civil war in Syria brings with it the undermining of Iran’s local Arab state ally, which formed a vital partner for Hezbollah and its allies in their domination of Lebanon.

This for Sunnis makes feasible, or at least imaginable, a challenge to the current situation of Hezbollah/Shi’a domination. As a result of the Syrian civil war, the first stirrings of a Sunni attempt to once again “renegotiate” the sectarian balance of power in Lebanon are being felt.

This “re-negotiation,” if it happens, will be led by Sunnis. In Lebanon, however, they will face not a decrepit military-nationalist regime, but rather a powerful, mobilized, rival Shi’a Islamism. The Arab Spring, which should more accurately be called the Revolt of Sunni Islam, may be coming to Lebanon.

This article was also published in the Jerusalem Post.

Jonathan Spyer

Source: http://www.gloria-center.org/2012/07/arab-world-sunni-islamism-stirs-in-lebanon/

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