Hamas vs Fatah

I think that may have been me and I may have been kidding. :whistle:

But, really, why stop with Saudi Arabia? There are plenty of good targets in the region.

 

Be honest, you lied about Daniel Pipes, didn't you.

Ruben

 

WND Exclusive NUCLEAR WAR-FEAR
Iran nuke commercial
hits TV markets
Spot depicting atomic terror attack in NYC to be seen in 20 cities
Posted: April 13, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

A commercial produced by an organization fighting for the freedom of Iran that depicts a nuclear terror attack in America – the kind many experts believe is possible should Tehran get the bomb – will run in 20 markets across the country this month.

Titled "An Atomic 9-11: When Evil is Appeased," the spot, sponsored by the Iran Freedom Foundation, is based on a scenario described in the new WND Books release "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians," by Jerome R. Corsi, co-author of the best-selling "Unfit for Command."

The ad can be viewed on the IFF website.

Corsi believes an atomic 9-11 is an imminent threat once a terrorist state like Iran has the capability to develop nuclear weapons.

"The major technical problems that have kept terrorists from exploding improvised nuclear devices within American cities are solved once a terrorist regime like the Islamic Republic of Iran has the capability to manufacture a nuclear weapon and deliver it in containers to a major U.S. port," he said.

"The device can be picked up by sleeper terrorist cells, assembled and driven into the heart of the city, where it can be detonated at the height of an ordinary business day."

The resulting destruction from a successful atomic 9-11 attack on a major U.S. city like New York would be enormous.

"In the blink of an eye, the United States could be reduced to second-class economic status," Corsi said.

The scenario described in "Atomic Iran" shows that a 150-kiloton IND exploded in New York would reduce much of the city to rubble. Some 1.5 million people would be killed instantly, with another 1.5 million certain to die over the next few days.

The television ad will air for 13 days four times daily in each city. The markets include cities in Maine, Mississippi, Texas, Oregon, California, New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Washington, Florida, and Washington, D.C.

SPECIAL OFFER: For a limited time, you can get "Atomic Iran" from WND at a steep discount – below Amazon's price!

If you prefer ordering by phone, call our toll-free order line: 1-800-4-WND-COM (1-800-496-3266).

 

I.
Skip to next paragraph
Illustration by James Victore

For nearly 50 years, worries about a nuclear Middle East centered on Israel. Arab leaders resented the fact that Israel was the only atomic power in the region, a resentment heightened by America’s tacit approval of the situation. But they were also pretty certain that Israel (which has never explicitly acknowledged having nuclear weapons) would not drop the bomb except as a very last resort. That is why Egypt and Syria were unafraid to attack Israel during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. “Israel will not be the first country in the region to use nuclear weapons,” went the Israelis’ coy formula. “Nor will it be the second.”

Today the nuclear game in the region has changed. When the Arab League’s secretary general, Amr Moussa, called for “a Middle East free of nuclear weapons” this past May, it wasn’t Israel that prompted his remarks. He was worried about Iran, whose self-declared ambition to become a nuclear power has been steadily approaching realization.

The anti-Israel statements of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, coupled with Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas, might lead you to think that the Arab states would welcome Iran’s nuclear program. After all, the call to wipe the Zionist regime from the map is a longstanding cliché of Arab nationalist rhetoric. But the interests of Shiite non-Arab Iran do not always coincide with those of Arab leaders. A nuclear Iran means, at the very least, a realignment of power dynamics in the Persian Gulf. It could potentially mean much more: a historic shift in the position of the long-subordinated Shiite minority relative to the power and prestige of the Sunni majority, which traditionally dominated the Muslim world. Many Arab Sunnis fear that the moment is ripe for a Shiite rise. Iraq’s Shiite majority has been asserting the right to govern, and the lesson has not been lost on the Shiite majority in Bahrain and the large minorities in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah of Jordan has warned of a “Shiite crescent” of power stretching from Iran to Lebanon via Iraq and (by proxy) Syria.

But geopolitics is not the only reason Sunni Arab leaders are rattled by the prospect of a nuclear Iran. They also seem to be worried that the Iranians might actually use nuclear weapons if they get them. A nuclear attack on Israel would engulf the whole region. But that is not the only danger: Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere fear that the Iranians might just use a nuclear bomb against them. Even as Iran’s defiance of the United States and Israel wins support among some Sunnis, extremist Sunnis have been engaging in the act of takfir, condemning all Shiites as infidels. On the ground in Iraq, Sunni takfiris are putting this theory into practice, aiming at Shiite civilians and killing them indiscriminately. Shiite militias have been responding in kind, and massacres of Sunni civilians are no longer isolated events.

Adding the nuclear ingredient to this volatile mix will certainly produce an arms race. If Iran is going to get the bomb, its neighbors will have no choice but to keep up. North Korea, now protected by its own bomb, has threatened proliferation — and in the Middle East it would find a number of willing buyers. Small principalities with huge U.S. Air Force bases, like Qatar, might choose to rely on an American protective umbrella. But Saudi Arabia, which has always seen Iran as a threatening competitor, will not be willing to place its nuclear security entirely in American hands. Once the Saudis are in the hunt, Egypt will need nuclear weapons to keep it from becoming irrelevant to the regional power balance — and sure enough, last month Gamal Mubarak, President Mubarak’s son and Egypt’s heir apparent, very publicly announced that Egypt should pursue a nuclear program.

Given the increasing instability of the Middle East, nuclear proliferation there is more worrisome than almost anywhere else on earth. As nuclear technology spreads, terrorists will enjoy increasing odds of getting their hands on nuclear weapons. States — including North Korea — might sell bombs or give them to favored proxy allies, the way Iran gave Hezbollah medium-range rockets that Hezbollah used this summer during its war with Israel. Bombing through an intermediary has its advantages: deniability is, after all, the name of the game for a government trying to avoid nuclear retaliation.

Proliferation could also happen in other ways. Imagine a succession crisis in which the Saudi government fragments and control over nuclear weapons, should the Saudis have acquired them, falls into the hands of Saudi elites who are sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, or at least to his ideas. Or Al Qaeda itself could purchase ready-made bombs, a feat technically much less difficult than designing nuclear weapons from scratch. So far, there are few nuclear powers from whom such bombs can be directly bought: as of today, only nine nations in the world belong to the nuclear club. But as more countries get the bomb, tracing the seller will become harder and harder, and the incentive to make a sale will increase.

II.

The prospect of not just one Islamic bomb, but many, inevitably concentrates the mind on how Muslims — whether Shiite or Sunni — might use their nuclear weapons. In the mid-1980’s, when Pakistan became the first Islamic state to go nuclear, it was still possible to avoid asking the awkward question of whether there was something distinctive about Islamic belief or practice that made possession of nuclear technology especially worrisome. Most observers assumed that Islamic states could be deterred from using nuclear force just like other states: by the threat of massive retaliation.

During the last two decades, however, there has been a profound change in the way violence is discussed and deployed in the Muslim world. In particular, we have encountered the rise of suicide bombing. In historic terms, this development is new and unexpected. Suicide bombing has no traditional basis in Islam. As a technique, it was totally absent from the successful Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. Although suicide bombing as a tool of stateless terrorists was dreamed up a hundred years ago by the European anarchists immortalized in Joseph Conrad’s “Secret Agent,” it became a tool of modern terrorist warfare only in 1983, when Shiite militants blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon.

Since then, suicide bombing has spread through the Muslim world with astonishing speed and on a surprising course. The vocabulary of martyrdom and sacrifice, the formal videotaped preconfession of faith, the technological tinkering to increase deadliness — all are now instantly recognizable to every Muslim. And as suicide bombing has penetrated Islamic cultural consciousness, its list of targets has steadily expanded. First the targets were American soldiers, then mostly Israelis, including women and children. From Lebanon and Israel, the technique of suicide bombing moved to Iraq, where the targets have included mosques and shrines, and the intended victims have mostly been Shiite Iraqis. The newest testing ground is Afghanistan, where both the perpetrators and the targets are orthodox Sunni Muslims. Not long ago, a bombing in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, killed Muslims, including women, who were applying to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. Overall, the trend is definitively in the direction of Muslim-on-Muslim violence. By a conservative accounting, more than three times as many Iraqis have been killed by suicide bombings in the last 3 years as have Israelis in the last 10. Suicide bombing has become the archetype of Muslim violence — not just to frightened Westerners but also to Muslims themselves.

What makes suicide bombing especially relevant to the nuclear question is that, by design, it unsettles the theory of deterrence. When the suicide bomber dies in an attack, he means to send the message “You cannot stop me, because I am already willing to die.” To make the challenge to deterrence even more stark, a suicide bomber who blows up a market or a funeral gathering in Iraq or Afghanistan is willing to kill innocent bystanders, including fellow Muslims. According to the prevailing ideology of suicide bombing, these victims are subjected to an involuntary martyrdom that is no less glorious for being unintentional.

So far, the nonstate actors who favor suicide bombing have limited their collateral damage to those standing in the way of their own bombs. But the logic of sacrificing other Muslims against their own wills could be extended to the national level. If an Islamic state or Islamic terrorists used nuclear weapons against Israel, the United States or other Western targets, like London or Madrid, the guaranteed retaliation would cost the lives of thousands and maybe millions of Muslims. But following the logic of suicide bombing, the original bomber might reason that those Muslims would die in God’s grace and that others would live on to fight the jihad. No state in the Muslim world has openly embraced such a view. But after 9/11, we can no longer treat the possibility as fanciful.

Raising the question of Islamic belief and the bomb, however, is not a substitute for strategic analysis of the rational interests of Islamic governments. Like other states, Islamic states act on the basis of ordinary power politics as much as or more than on the basis of religious motivation. Pakistan, which tested a series of warheads in 1998, at the height of tensions with India, has not used its atomic power as a tool of the faithful in a global jihad. The proliferation operation spearheaded by the nuclear scientist — and sometime Pakistani national hero — Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan appears to have been based on a combination of national interest and greed, not on religious fervor. Khan found buyers in Iran and Libya, but also in decidedly non-Islamic North Korea. (In a twist much stranger than fiction, Saddam Hussein apparently turned down the offer.)

Some observers think that Iran, too, wants the bomb primarily to improve its regional position and protect itself against regime change — not to annihilate Israel. According to this view, Iran’s nuclear push reflects a drive to what is sometimes called national greatness and might more accurately be defined as the ability of a country to thumb its nose at the United States without fear of major repercussions. A televised pageant hastily arranged to celebrate Iran’s atomic program in April of this year featured traditional Persian dancing and colorful local garb intermixed with make-believe vials of enriched uranium. To an Iranian audience accustomed to decoding official symbols, these references were nationalist, not pan-Islamic. (They were also subtly subversive of the mullahs: singing and dancing are not favored forms of expression in the clerical enclave of Qom.)

But at the same time, Ahmadinejad has emphasized Iran’s pan-Islamic aspirations to act on behalf of Muslims everywhere. An emerging nuclear power needs friends. Right now Iran wants to reduce, not promote, division between Sunnis and Shiites — and promoting broader “Islamic” interests by going after Israel is one way to lessen Sunni fears about Iran’s rise. Ahmadinejad has put his money where his mouth is, providing Hezbollah with medium-range missiles — though apparently not chemical warheads — to use against Israel. The nationalist language he has sometimes used at home may be a cover for sincerely held pan-Islamic ends — a version of the old revolutionary strategy of making nationalist claims in order to attract the support of those fellow Iranians who do not respond well to Islamist ideology. That it is convenient for Iran to emphasize Islamic unity does not mean that at least some of its leaders do not believe in it as a motivating goal.+

 

In Saudi Arabia in particular, radical Muslim scholars with much more learning than bin Laden have sought to develop legally persuasive justifications for civilian killings. Probably the most sophisticated effort from a legal standpoint is a document titled “A Treatise on the Law of the Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction Against the Unbelievers,” written in 2003 by a brilliant Saudi dissident named Sheik Nasir bin Hamad al-Fahd. (Fahd, a theorist rather than an activist, is currently back in prison, as he has been off and on for almost a decade.) The treatise begins with the assumption that the world’s Muslims are under attack. But how are today’s Muslims supposed to defend themselves, given their military inferiority? Fahd’s response is that, if they have no other choice, they may use any means necessary — including methods that would otherwise violate the laws of jihad. “If the unbelievers can be repelled . . . only by using” weapons of mass destruction, then “their use is permissible, even if you kill them without exception.”

Lest his argument prove too much, Fahd tempers it by the claim that the Muslims fighting the jihad may not inflict disproportionately more harm on the enemy than the enemy has inflicted on them. That raises the question of the extent of American guilt. “Some Brothers have added up the number of Muslims killed directly or indirectly by [American] weapons and come up with a figure of nearly ten million,” the treatise states. This total, Fahd concludes, would authorize the use of weapons of mass destruction to kill 10 million Americans: indeed, “it would be permissible with no need for further [legal] argument.” (The number is never explained or analyzed, and you might assume that it was meant to correspond very roughly to the population of New York.)

Fahd’s arguments sit uneasily with the classical Islamic discussions of the laws of jihad. The classical Islamic law never explicitly says that women and children may be intentional targets if it is the only way to win the jihad. It does not allow violations of the law just because the enemy has broken the rules or killed many Muslims. So the treatise must fall back on whatever evidence it can muster from the classical sources that seems to modify the basic rules. The catapult rears its head and is cited as precedent for nonspecific killing. The right to fight even when Muslim hostages may be killed is brought out as proof of the permissibility of collateral damage when there is no other choice.

The legal arguments in use here are stronger than bin Laden’s makeweights, but they, too, would probably not be sufficient on their own to justify the deviation from the legal traditions of jihad wrought by today’s jihadis. The notion that it’s right because it’s necessary is doing the real work, and old-fashioned legal arguments are following along. It is no accident that the argument from necessity has been so prominent in modern Western writing about modern warfare in general and the nuclear bomb in particular. If the technology of mass destruction can be exported, why not the justification that comes with it?

Within the world of radical Islam, there are those who believe that the erosion of the laws of jihad has gone too far. There are reports of difficulty recruiting foreign candidates for suicide missions directed at Iraqi civilians. The debate about how jihad may be prosecuted is not over by any means. But it is an unavoidable fact that the classic restrictions on the killing of women, children and Muslims in jihad have been deeply undermined in the last decade.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/m...5d&ex=1319774400&partner=rssus&pagewanted=all

 

Do the federal authorities coordinate with local governments?

Yes. Perhaps the most important domestic counterterrorism resources are the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs): groups of federal and local officials who share information and coordinate operations aimed at preventing terrorist attacks. New York City, for example, has more than one hundred officers assigned to its JTTF. Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism Richard A. Falkenrath says this gives the city access to the federal government’s “awesome” national intelligence capabilities. It is highly possible, says P.J. Crowley, a homeland security expert at the Center for American Progress, “that the next [terrorism] plot will be discovered on a police beat or by a private security guard.”
How are relations between the federal government and New York?

Still strained, analysts say. Funding remains a sore spot: In 2006, New York received 40 percent less federal funding than in 2005 through the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), a program enacted by Congress in 2003 to provide funds for municipal governments to respond to terrorist threats. But cooperation between New York and Washington has improved since 2001. Shortly after 9/11, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned the White House that a nuclear weapon might be smuggled into New York City. Though the report was eventually discredited, the Bush administration waited weeks to inform then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of the threat. “That would never happen now,” Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told the New Yorker.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/12312/

 

An American Hiroshima
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: August 11, 2004




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ASPEN, Colo. — If a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon, a midget even smaller than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, exploded in Times Square, the fireball would reach tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

It would vaporize or destroy the theater district, Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal and Carnegie Hall (along with me and my building). The blast would partly destroy a much larger area, including the United Nations. On a weekday some 500,000 people would be killed.

Could this happen?

Unfortunately, it could - and many experts believe that such an attack, somewhere, is likely. The Aspen Strategy Group, a bipartisan assortment of policy mavens, focused on nuclear risks at its annual meeting here last week, and the consensus was twofold: the danger of nuclear terrorism is much greater than the public believes, and our government hasn't done nearly enough to reduce it.

Graham Allison, a Harvard professor whose terrifying new book, "Nuclear Terrorism," offers the example cited above, notes that he did not pluck it from thin air. He writes that on Oct. 11, 2001, exactly a month after 9/11, aides told President Bush that a C.I.A. source code-named Dragonfire had reported that Al Qaeda had obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon and smuggled it into New York City.

The C.I.A. found the report plausible. The weapon had supposedly been stolen from Russia, which indeed has many 10-kiloton weapons. Russia is reported to have lost some of its nuclear materials, and Al Qaeda has mounted a determined effort to get or make such a weapon. And the C.I.A. had picked up Al Qaeda chatter about an "American Hiroshima."

President Bush dispatched nuclear experts to New York to search for the weapon and sent Dick Cheney and other officials out of town to ensure the continuity of government in case a weapon exploded in Washington instead. But to avoid panic, the White House told no one in New York City, not even Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Dragonfire's report was wrong, but similar reports - that Al Qaeda has its hands on a nuclear weapon from the former Soviet Union - have regularly surfaced in the intelligence community, even though such a report has never been confirmed. We do know several troubling things: Al Qaeda negotiated for a $1.5 million purchase of uranium (apparently of South African origin) from a retired Sudanese cabinet minister; its envoys traveled repeatedly to Central Asia to buy weapons-grade nuclear materials; and Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, boasted, "We sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other Central Asian states, and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase [nuclear] bombs."

Professor Allison offers a standing bet at 51-to-49 odds that, barring radical new antiproliferation steps, a terrorist nuclear strike will occur somewhere in the world in the next 10 years. So I took his bet. If there is no such nuclear attack by August 2014, he owes me $5.10. If there is an attack, I owe him $4.90.

I took the bet because I don't think the odds of nuclear terror are quite as great as he does. If I were guessing wildly, I would say a 20 percent risk over 10 years. In any case, if I lose the bet, then I'll probably be vaporized and won't have much use for money.

Unfortunately, plenty of smart people think I've made a bad bet. William Perry, the former secretary of defense, says there is an even chance of a nuclear terror strike within this decade - that is, in the next six years.

"We're racing toward unprecedented catastrophe," Mr. Perry warns. "This is preventable, but we're not doing the things that could prevent it."

That is what I find baffling: an utter failure of the political process. The Bush administration responded aggressively on military fronts after 9/11, and in November 2003, Mr. Bush observed, "The greatest threat of our age is nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the hands of terrorists, and the dictators who aid them." But the White House has insisted on tackling the most peripheral elements of the W.M.D. threat, like Iraq, while largely ignoring the central threat, nuclear proliferation. The upshot is that the risk that a nuclear explosion will devastate an American city is greater now than it was during the cold war, and it's growing.

In my next column, I'll explain how we can reduce the risk of an American Hiroshima.

 

* APPENDIX - About Al-Minbar

Friday sermons delivered in the main mosques of Saudi Arabia are available on the Saudi-based website www.alminbar.net.[1] The following is a review and analysis of the major themes featured in these sermons:

Part I - 'The Christians and the Jews are "Infidels," "Enemies of Allah"'
The majority of sermons discuss Christians, Jews, or the "Camp of Kufur"[2] concurrently. However, some sermons specifically target Christians and Christianity. In a sermon delivered at the Al-Salaam mosque in 'Al-Unayzah, Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-Qadhi said: "Today we will talk about one of the distorted religions, about a faith that deviates from the path of righteousness… about Christianity, this false faith, and about the people whom Allah described in his book as deviating from the path of righteousness. We will examine their faith, and we will review their history, full of hate, abomination, and wars against Islam and the Muslims."

"In this distorted and deformed religion, to which many of the inhabitants of the earth belong, we can see how the Christians deviate greatly from the path of righteousness by talking about the concept of the Trinity. As far as they are concerned, God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three who are one…"

"They see Jesus, peace be upon him, as the son of Allah… It is the Christians who believe that Jesus was crucified.[3] According to them, he was hanged on the cross with nails pounded through his hands, and he cried, 'My God, why have you forsaken me?' According to them, this was so that he would atone for the sins of mankind…"

"Regardless of all these deviations from the path of righteousness, it is possible to see many Muslims… who know about Christianity only what the Christians claim about love, tolerance, devoting life to serving the needy, and other distorted slogans… After all this, we still find people who promote the idea of bringing our religion and their's closer, as if the differences were miniscule and could be eliminated by arranging all those [interreligous] conferences, whose goal is political…" [4]

While Islam considers both Jews and Christians "People of the Book" - i.e. non-Muslims with special status under Islamic rule - Sheikh Abd Al-'Aziz Qari discussed the differences between the religions in a sermon delivered at the Qabaa mosque in Al-Madina: "Two groups - the Jews and the Christians - are the main elements constituting the 'Camp of Kufur' and will continue to be its two foundations until Allah allows their downfall and annihilation at the end of days..."

"When the Prophet Muhammad was sent out, the 'Camp of Kufur' declared war on his message. At the center of this war were these groups, particularly the Jews. These two groups will continue to serve as the grindstones of the conflict and the war between belief and Kufur until eternity comes… The conflict will end when Jesus the son of Mary, peace be upon him, arrives to break the cross and wipes it off the face of the earth, and kills the blind [false] Messiah, the leader of the Jews and the tyrant whom they await. Until that day, the conflict between us, the Muslims, and the Jews and Christians will continue, and it will ebb and flow, one day ours, another day theirs…"

"The Jews are the objects of Allah's [promised] wrath, while the Christians deviate from the path of righteousness… The Koran described the Jews as a nation cursed by Allah, a nation at which he was angry - some of whom he turned into apes and pigs…"[5]

International initiatives aimed at promoting interreligious harmony have been condemned by many Saudi preachers. In a sermon at a Mecca mosque, Sheikh Adnan Ahmad Siyami said, "[Islam] believes that only Islam and the 'Camp of Kufur' exist, and that there is no way to reach Paradise and to be delivered from Hell except by walking in the path of our Prophet Muhammad and joining Islam. Any other way leads to Hell… In light of this, my believing brethren, how can it be claimed that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all paths leading to Allah?!…"

"Several years ago, a sinful call arose, which unfortunately garnered support from some clerics and preachers of this religion, Islam… [a call] for the unification of the monotheistic religions. They flaunted an empty and false slogan of 'religious harmony,' Christian-Islamic friendship, and uniting the three religions into a global religion'…"

"The call for the unification of the religions is a call for the abolition of religious differences among people: No more Muslim and infidel. All will come under the unity of human harmony… This accursed call has ramifications that most certainly will shake Islam in the hearts of its people, leading them to the lowest of the levels of Hell. This call will lead… to presenting the infidels' schools of thought as correct, and to silence regarding them; to permitting conversion to Judaism and Christianity with no shame whatsoever; to the abolition of the vast difference between the Muslims and others - a difference underpinning the conflict between truth and falsehood; to the transformation of the religion of Islam into a religion like the other, false religions, into a religion that has no advantage over the other religions…; to refraining from calling [people] to join Islam, because if the Muslim wants to do so, he must tell the truth about the infidels… This will also facilitate the conversion to Christianity in Muslim lands."

"The Pope's recent visit to Syria, to the Al-Umawi mosque is, without a doubt, another manifestation of that call. The call by [the Pope] - may Allah punish him as he deserves - to the people of the [different] religions in Syria to live in peaceful coexistence is nothing more than an audacious call for the unification of religions, in accordance with the principle of human religious harmony… This Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, and those behind him calling for the unification of the religions, are the descendants of the Spanish inquisitors who tortured the Muslims most abominably… They are the descendants of those who led the Crusades to the Islamic East, in which thousands of Muslims were killed and their wives taken captive in uncountable numbers. They are the perpetrators of the massacres in Bosnia-Herzegovina… in Kosovo, in Indonesia, and in Chechnya… Can we expect compassion from these murderous wolves? What made the Pope go on his visit was his dissatisfaction with the robbing of the Muslims' lands; he wanted also to rob their religion, so that they lose both this world and the Hereafter…"

"[This is]… a call to dismantle the pact among Muslims in all the corners of the Islamic world and to replace it with an accursed alternative harmony - the 'Harmony of the Jews and Christians.' This is, in truth, a call to Muslims to stop accusing Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims of being infidels…"

"There can be neither an agreement nor a meeting point between the people of Islam and the Jewish and Christian People of the Book… How can we allow the Catholic Pope's talk of a need to find meeting points and agreement between Islam and Christianity, so that there will be peaceful coexistence between the two religions and harmony between the two communities? Is it conceivable that there should be agreement and a meeting point with those who fabricate terrible falsehoods about Allah… claiming that Jesus, peace be upon him, is his son?!…"[6]

Sheikh Mustafa Bin Sa'id Aytim was also agitated by the Pope's Syrian visit. In a sermon at a Mecca mosque, he cited it as proof that "Christian missionaries are invading the Islamic world."[7]

Sheikh Aytim also objected to the concept of interreligious harmony, saying: "It is no surprise that the Jews and Christians deny the Koran. What is amazing is that some ignoramuses and traitors from among the Muslims say: 'The Jews and Christians are our brothers...' It is quite amazing that anyone claiming he believes in the Koran says that the Jews and Christians love us and feel no loathing and hatred for us!!... The People of the Book's hatred of Muslims is certain and absolute. This is a solid belief, which Allah has proven in the Koran, and there is also historical evidence of it… And lo, today we see that they lie about security and peace - a security council here, a peace emissary there; a security plan here, a prayer for peace there. By Allah, who told you that wild animals can become human? Can wild animals give birth to anything other than wild animals?"[8]

In a sermon delivered at the Manar Al-Islam mosque in Mecca, Sheikh 'Ali Muhammad Al-Baroum said: "The idea of intertwining religions and the claim that the Jews and the Christians believe in religions of truth… are sinful claims and deceitful ideas unacceptable to the religion [of Islam]… It is forbidden to bring together Islam and the infidels, monotheism and polytheism… Allah's path of righteousness and Satan's path of Kufur."[9]

At Al-Rahmah mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Marzouq Salem Al-Ghamdi spoke against interreligious harmony: "For some time, we have been hearing calls for bringing the religions together, and for unification of the religions. This call is aimed at uniting falsehood with truth, good with abomination… The Jews and Christians are infidels, enemies of Allah, his Messenger, and the believers. They deny and curse Allah and his Messenger… How can we draw near to these infidels?… They deny even the messengers sent to them. They do not believe in Moses, they do not believe in Jesus - because if they really believed in them, they would join Islam, because every prophet heralded to his nation the coming of the Prophet Muhammad and the need to believe in him …"

 

Some may say: 'How can the inventor of electricity be placed in Hell - he illuminated the world for us.' Others may say, 'How can we be hostile to the Jews and Christians when they invented and manufactured even the items we use in our mosques?' Yet others may say, 'The messenger of Allah left his shield with a Jew and went to visit his sick Jewish neighbor. Why do you preach to us to do differently?' The truth is that this is an inversion of the facts, and deception. The Jew whom the Prophet considered a citizen had accepted the agreement [that the Prophet Muhammad had concluded with the Jews of Al-Madina]… and when his people violated that pact, and supported the polytheists instead of the Muslims, their punishment was death, captivity, and the expropriation of their assets."

"If the infidels live among the Muslims, in accordance with the conditions set out by the Prophet -there is nothing wrong with it provided they pay Jizya[10] to the Islamic treasury. Other conditions are… that they do not renovate a church or a monastery, do not rebuild ones that were destroyed, that they feed for three days any Muslim who passes by their homes… that they rise when a Muslim wishes to sit, that they do not imitate Muslims in dress and speech, nor ride horses, nor own swords, nor arm themselves with any kind of weapon; that they do not sell wine, do not show the cross, do not ring church bells, do not raise their voices during prayer, that they shave their hair in front so as to make them easily identifiable, do not incite anyone against the Muslims, and do not strike a Muslim… If they violate these conditions, they have no protection."[11]

While Arab intelligentsia generally object to the concept of the "clash of civilizations" between the East and the West, preachers in Saudi mosques are stressing that it is precisely this - the struggle between Islamic and Western civilizations - that is the true and eternal struggle for the leadership of the human race.

Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, Imam of the Al-Haraam mosque in Mecca, told worshipers: "The most noble civilization ever known to mankind is our Islamic civilization. Today, Western civilization is nothing more than the product of its encounter with our Islamic civilization in Andalusia [medieval Spain] and other places. The reason for [Western civilization's] bankruptcy is its reliance on the materialistic approach, and its detachment from religion and values. [This approach] has been one reason for the misery of the human race, for the proliferation of suicide, mental problems… and for moral perversion…"

"Western civilization's credibility as the one capable of leading the world to happiness and man to stability - is shaken… Only one nation is capable of resuscitating global civilization, and that is the nation [of Islam]… No decent man in the world will deny that there has never been a culture more merciful towards [all] creatures, with more supreme values, and which rules with greater justice than [Islam]… While the false cultures sink in the swamp of materialism and suffer moral crises… our Islamic nation is the one worthy of grasping the reins of leadership and riding on the back of the horse of pioneering and world sovereignty."

"When this happens, our nation will not use cultural progress as a tool for exploiting the peoples, exhausting their resources, and dishonoring them. It will not use [scientific] inventions and discoveries to spread secularism and support terror... It will not use military equipment and war technologies as an excuse to threaten the security of countries and peoples, or for barbaric and wild operations, and it will not recruit the media to mislead public opinion… The Islamic message, whose aim is to save the human race and to bring about happiness for man who is today lost in the dark tunnels of injustice and misery… takes this burden upon itself…"[12]

In a sermon at the Al-Nabawi mosque in Al-Madina, Sheikh Sallah Bin Muhammad Al-Budeir concured with this line of thought: "What is the use of [Western] culture, in which the value of man has shrunk to the level of slavery to anything but Allah? Man becomes a slave to his money and his desires… It is distressing that some of our people who speak our own language [serve] as procurers of the West, glorifying and extolling it, and calling for its imitation…"

"[Only] Islam is worthy of delivering the human race from its misery and despair. Only Islam is capable of bringing happiness to the human race."[13]

Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abd Al-'Aziz Aal Al-Sheikh addressed the matter at the Nimra mosque in 'Arafa: "Those who attack Islam and its people - what have they given to the human race?! What have they to be proud of?! They gave a false, contemptible culture; they gave various kinds of damage to [human] freedoms and rights on the pretext of preserving these values; they gave discrimination among people by color, gender, language, and race; they gave technology to create weapons of mass destruction for the destruction of the human race; they gave forms of deceit and falshood…"[14]

One issue that is frequently discussed when comparing Islamic and Western civilizations is 'Western permissiveness.' Sheikh Sa'd Bin Abdallah Al-'Ajameh Al-Ghamdi discussed this subject in a sermon which focused on homosexuality; the sermon was delievered at the Sa'id Al-Jandoul mosque in Al-Taif: "This act is not alien and uncommon to the brothers of monkeys and pigs [i.e. Jews] and the debased among the infidels…"

"It shocked me to read and hear about the audacity of the 'Betrayer-General' of all nations [a reference to the U.N. Secretary-General], who by affiliation and loyalty is a combination of a Jew and a Christian and leads the people to Hell. He called to stop the incursion of this disease called AIDS - although two months earlier he had contradicted this call when, in stupidity and brazenness, he led the nations calling for permissiveness that causes this disease. He called for permitting adultery and spreading acts of abomination and homosexuality, which is a sexual perversion, and even invited this kind of people to a conference in order to call for premitting them marriage of the third kind…"[15]

Part II - 'Jews - The Descendants of Pigs and Apes'
"The Jews" are the central issue of many sermons delivered in Saudi mosques. When discussing Jews, preachers base their sermons on Koranic history, as well as on pseudo-historic events which affirm the Koranic view. In addition, many preachers refer to the Jews as "apes and pigs," a Koranic reference. "When will the sleepers awake?" asked Sheikh Bandar bin Khalaf Al-'Utaibi, in a sermon at the Abu Bakr Al-Saddiq mosque in Al-Damam. "Is there any kind of humiliation we have not tasted from the brothers of apes and pigs?!"[16]

"Oh Muslims, see the state of the nation today, after it deviated from the path set out by the clerics," said Sheikh Mustafa Bin Said Aytim in a sermon given at a mosque in Mecca. "[The nation] has made the offspring of apes and pigs its stars; the hangers-on of the apes and pigs have become the centers of influence and power… The Jews, Christians, and the hypocrites gnaw away at the body of the nation and then carry out raids on it with the knights of the destructive media and with the deadly weapon of globalization…"[17]

Although the preachers base their claims about the Jews on the Koran and the traditions (Hadith), many also borrow classic European antisemitic motifs. Numerous sermons refer to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In a sermon at the Al-Jafali mosque in Al-Taif, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Hakmi stated: "We live in an era in which we are facing a cruel attack planned by the Jews and their hangers-on. Dr. Oscar Levy said, We the Jews are masters of the world, and its corrupters; we set off civil strife in it, and we are its hangmen…"[18]

Islamic traditions regarding three Jewish tribes of Al-Madina's violation of their agreement with the Prophet Muhammad and the Jews' attempts to kill him, and their treaty with the Prophet's enemies, the polytheists, recur in various forms in many sermons. Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-Qassem discussed the matter in a sermon at Al-Nabawi mosque in Al-Madina: "When our Prophet Muhammad was sent, the Jews incited the people and fought against him. Again and again they conspired to betray him and kill him. [The Jewish tribe] Banu Nadhir tried to drop a large rock on him from the roof of a house under which he sat, but he was warned by the heavens. They gave him poisoned roast mutton; he was saved [from death] but suffered from injury until he died…"

"They killed some of the prophets… sometimes by slaughtering them and sometimes by sawing them in two. They spilled the blood of [the prophet] Yahya, sawed Zacharia in two, planned to kill Jesus, and tried several times to kill Muhammad… The Jews are ingrates, whoever treats them well they harm, and whoever treats them with honor they rebel against. Allah saved them from drowning with Moses [at the Red Sea]; they did not thank Allah, but arrogantly and haughtily asked Moses to make another god for them instead of Allah, so they could worship it as they wished…"

"They annihilated people and nations with usury… They consume the Muslims' resources by destroying their economy, and introduce prohibited things into trade. They harm Muslims so as to bankrupt them. They seek to cause them poverty. … In their own eyes, they are Allah's chosen people, and they see others as slaves created to meet their needs."

"Their tongues never cease lying, [disseminating] abomination and obscenity. About Allah they said: 'His hands are tied… He is poor and we are wealthy.' They brought great disasters upon Jesus and his mother, and of the Prophet Muhammad they said: 'He is a trickster and a liar.' Curses were laid upon them, one after another, and punishments too… The Jews preached permissiveness and corruption, as they hid behind false slogans like freedom and equality, humanism and brotherhood. They kill Muslim youth, entice the [Muslim] woman with shameful deeds, and act to lure others through her… They defile the minds of adolescents by arousing their urges… they are envious of the Muslim woman who conceals herself and protects her honor; for this reason, they preach to her to expose herself and throw off her values… Their goal is to destroy the Muslim family, to shatter religious and social ties and foundations… They are cowards in battle… they flee from death and fear fighting… They love life…"[19]

Sheikh Muhammad Al-Saleh Al-'Athimein related the story of the three Jewish tribes in a sermon at the Great Mosque in Al-'Unayza: "The perverse nature and base temperament of the Jews caused them to violate [the treaty with the Prophet Muhammad] and betray [him]. [The Jewish tribe] Banu Qaynuqa' showed treachery after Allah caused the victory of His Prophet in the battle of Badr [624 AD], so the Prophet exiled them from Al-Madina…"

"The Banu Nadhir [tribe] showed treachery after the battle of Uhud [625 AD] and the Prophet besieged them, and Allah cast fear into their hearts, until they asked the Prophet to exile them and allow them to take what property they could carry on their beasts, except for weapons…"

"The [Jewish tribe of Banu] Qurayza violated the agreement in the Battle of Al-Ahzab [626 AD], and the Prophet besieged them. They were brought to trial before Sa'd Ibn Mu'adh [head of the Aus tribe, an ally of the Jews] who ruled that the men among them would be executed, their property divided, and their women and children taken into captivity. Accordingly, 600 to 700 of the men among them were executed…"

"Oh Muslims, the Jews are treacherous and deceitful people over whom lies the curse and anger of Allah. They permitted what Allah forbade, with the lamest of excuses; therefore, He cursed them and turned them into apes and pigs. Allah sentenced them to humiliation anywhere they might be…"[20]

Saudi preachers often speak of "the Jews' traits," passed down from generation to generation. They claim that the Jews of today are the same Jews "who murdered the prophets" and "violated agreements with the Prophet Muhammad." The Koran's statements on "the Jews," they claim, are valid for all times and all places: "The current behavior of the brothers of apes and pigs, their treachery, their violation of agreements, and their defilement of places of worship… are connected to their forefathers' deeds in the early time of Islam. This proves the great similarity between every Jew living today and the Jew living during the dawn of Islam," stated Sheikh Sa'd bin Abdallah Al-'Ajameh Al-Ghamdi in a sermon at the Sa'id Al-Jandoul mosque in Al-Taif.[21]

 

Sheikh Abd Al-Hamid Al-Daghastani explained at the Bin Hassan mosque in Mecca that "to disseminate moral or ideological corruption ... the Jews hand these traits down from father to son."[22] As the Imam of the Al-Harram mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudais explained in one of his sermons: "Brothers in faith, what do our Koran and our Sunna say? What does our belief say? What does our history prove…? They show clearly that the conflict between us and the Jews is one of belief, identity, and existence…"

"Read history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are the evil forefathers of the even more evil Jews of today: infidels, falsifiers of words, calf worshippers, prophet murderers, deniers of prophecies… the scum of the human race, accursed by Allah, who turned them into apes and pigs… These are the Jews - an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption…"

"Oh nation of Islam, today our nation is at the height of conflict with the enemies of yesterday, today, and tomorrow - the offspring of [the three Jewish tribes of Al-Madina] Banu Qurayza, Banu Nadhir, and Banu Qaynuqa, upon whom Allah's curse rests until Judgment Day. Do the sons of our people realize the truth about the nation of wrath and deceit…? The insult to and contempt of Arabs, Muslims, and their holy places reaches its height at the hands of the rats of the world, the violators of agreements, in whose minds abide treachery, destruction, and deceit and in whose veins flow occupation and tyranny… They are indeed worthy of the curse of Allah, of the angels, and of all people…" [23]

In a sermon delivered at the Al-Nour mosque in Al-Khobar, Sheikh Nasser Muhammad Al-Ahmad said: "In the Jews, an astonishing quantity of moral abomination and corrupt behavior has accumulated. These cannot exist in any other nation. What is amazing is that this corruption in all things concerning morality, and this impudent behavior, are not limited to a specific generation of Jews, or to a specific group of Jews, but are manifest in the distorted Jew everywhere. Every Jew, except for the prophets and the believers among the [ancient] Children of Israel, is a human model of the same moral traits, from which the contemptible Jew who lived in the time of Pharoah or the liberated Jew who lives today on the land of Palestine, is not spared."

"Moral corruption is a general trait of the Jews, all the Jews. [These are] stable hereditary genes [found] in the Jew in every time and in every place. If you want to know the Jew through and through, imagine a group of perverse moral traits…"

"The Jews are liars …in their religious life, in their ritual, in the way they see Allah. The Jews lie to their enemies and friends alike… What is strange is that they have turned the lie into a religion, a faith, and a ritual through which they draw closer to their god… If we say that they speak the truth this time [regarding the peace process], it would mean that we are denying the Koranic text - a very serious matter…"

"Similarly, the Jews are treacherous… If they smile, their smile is perverted… The Jews are miserly, and enslaved by money… The Jews disseminate corruption in the land; this is one of their salient moral traits, even in the time of their prophet Moses… Most of the world's wars, particularly the great modern wars, were planned and started by the Jews so as to disseminate corruption in the land, and to achieve their goals on the ruins of the human race… I will conclude the matter of these moral traits with something else connected to the Jews: The Jews are an accursed nation. This is part of our belief. We believe that the Jews are accursed…"[24]

"The desire to corrupt the people is present also in the Jews of our time," explained Sheikh Mushabbab Fahd Al-Qahtani in a sermon at 'Ubad Al-Rahman mosque in Al-Zahran: "See the great interest-charging banks, the cinemas, the alcohol factories, the drugs, the tobacco companies, the fashion houses, the sex networks, the secret organizations - the Jews are behind them."[25]

In a sermon at the Qaaba mosque in Al-Madina, Sheikh Abd Al-'Aziz Qari addressed the matter: "In ancient times, the Jews, the enemies of Allah, killed the prophets unjustly… Afterwards they became the enemies of all humanity and they [termed] non-Jews 'gentiles,' and used all means to destroy them by starting wars among these gentiles, destroying their beliefs, and corrupting their moral values…"

"See for example, how they show the woman on television and on the front pages of the newspapers. They show her without modesty or shame, made up and exposing her curves, with the aim of destroying and corrupting the nation's general moral values… They exploited the woman in the most abominable way. And this is a known Jewish conspiracy… "[26]

Part III - 'It is Impossible to Make Peace With the Jews'
Saudi preachers urging Jihad are opposed, obviously, to the peace process. Sheikh Nasser Muhammad Al-Ahmad said in a sermon at Al-Nour mosque in Al-Khobar: "There is no doubt that the [Muslim] nation is today reaping the fruit of agony because of its renunciation of its honor on the day it begged [peace] at the negotiating tables, chasing after a false peace that could never be. Because, in all honesty, these are people with whom no agreement or pact can be made…"

"[Muslims] should have never been led under any pressure of any kind towards the so-called peace process, which is in effect a process of surrender. The Muslims should have acted… as their forefathers did when they faced the Crusader's occupation of Palestine for over 90 years, and nevertheless did not surrender…" "The events proved that no one has the authority to make Palestinian decisions except for the Palestinian masses, and that these crimes [against the Palestinians and the Muslims] will be stopped only by Jihad. The sites holy to Muslims will be regained only by Jihad for the sake of Allah… When true Islamic Jihad is declared, the balance of power will shift. What frightens the West more than anything else is the word Jihad, because they understand what it means…"

"Humiliation and misery will be the lot of the ones who anger Allah, who cursed them and turned them into apes and pigs… There is no solution to this problem, and to any problem to which the infidel enemy is party, except by waving the banner of Jihad."[27]

Sheikh 'Adel Bin Ahmad Bana'ma said in a sermon at the Muhammad Al-Fatih mosque in Jiddah: "For the thousandth time, the [Islamic] nation is losing its memory and sits with its enemy to discuss peace, agreements, and treaties… The Jews themselves do not forget their hatreds. Today, they disseminate everywhere the lie of the Holocaust and claim that Hitler killed six million Jews in gas chambers. Although this is pure falsehood, they have made it part of their history of trials and tribulations, disseminated it with their mighty propaganda machine, and extorted the countries of the world with it. They obtained huge reparations from Germany with it, and still accuse everyone who denies it of antisemitism, and incite the world against him. [The French Holocaust denier] Garaudy's story happened not long ago!"

"…How many times have the Jews bitten the hand stretched out to them for peace? How many times have the Jews violated the agreements they have signed? Didn't they betray the Prophet…? Didn't they betray the Ottoman state and cause its downfall…? Haven't they violated all the modern agreements, from Oslo through Sharm Al-Sheikh? Isn't this enough for those misled by illusions of peace to awaken?"[28]

According to the Saudi preachers, the only way of solving the problems of the Islamic nation is by espousing the "missing precept" - Jihad. "Who would have believed it?!" cried Sheikh Sultan Al-'Uweid in a sermon at the Prince Tareq mosque in Al-Damam, "a handful of brothers of apes and pigs torments a billion [Muslims]… There is no other way, oh Muslims, but restoring the missing precept - Jihad for the sake of Allah… There is no other way but educating to Jihad…"[29]

Sheikh Muhammad Saleh Al-Munajjid also discussed the matter in his sermon at a mosque in Al-Damam, saying: "The issue is historic, religious, and ideological. It is impossible ever to make peace with the Jews; we must not [enter into] a pact with them, we must not [sign] a treaty with them - despite those [among us] who maintain otherwise, who are Jews just like the Jews. There is no hiding from the evil of the Jews; there is no concealment from their deception. The Jews are defiled creatures and satanic scum. The Jews are the helpers of Satan. The Jews are the cause of the misery of the human race, together with the infidels and the other polytheists. Satan leads them to Hell and to a miserable fate. The Jews are our enemies and hatred of them is in our hearts. Jihad against them is our worship… "[30]

Part IV - 'Muslims Must Educate Their Children to Jihad… and to Hatred of Jews and Christians'
Sheikh Muhammad Saleh Al-Munajjid also discussed education to Jihad, stating: "Muslims must… educate their children to Jihad. This is the greatest benefit of the situation: educating the children to Jihad and to hatred of the Jews, the Christians, and the infidels; educating the children to Jihad and to revival of the embers of Jihad in their souls. This is what is needed now…"[31]

While educating Muslim children to Jihad, elements of "manliness" must be developed in their souls, maintained Sheikh Majed 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Firian, in a sermon at the Suleiman Bin Muqiran mosque in Al-Riyadh: "One of the ways of developing manliness in the personality of the children is to tell them of the heroic deeds of our forefathers; of the Islamic battles; and of the Muslim victories, so that courage will develop in their souls - as courage is one of the most important traits of manliness."

"Zubeir Bin Al-'Awwam had two children… One of them would play with the scars of his father's wounds after the battles… His [other] son, Abdallah participated with his father in the battle of Al-Yarmouk, and when the polytheists were defeated he… completed the killing of anyone he found wounded - which attests to the courage of his heart, even in his youth."[32]

Many preachers seek to dismiss Western claims that their education to Jihad is education to terrorism. In his sermon at the Al-Manshawi mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Wajdi Hamza Al-Ghazawi[33] said: "The [kind of] terror [in Arabic, "striking of fear"] that Islamic religious law permits is terrifying the cowards, the hypocrites, the secularists, and the rebels by imposing punishments according to the religious law of Allah…"

"The meaning of the term 'terror' used by the media… is Jihad for the sake of Allah. Jihad is the peak of Islam. Moreover, some of the clerics… see it as the sixth pillar of Islam. Jihad - whether Jihad of defense of Muslims and of Islamic lands such as in Chechnya, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, or Jihad aimed at spreading the religion - is the pinnacle of terror, as far as the enemies of Allah are concerned. The Mujaheed who goes out to attain a martyr's death or victory and returns with booty is a terrorist as far as the enemies of Allah are concerned… Accordingly, the believer must not use this word… Jihad, oh believers, is an integral part of our religion. The word 'terror' is used to damage this mighty and blessed foundation…"[34]

 

Part V - 'The Palestinian Struggle Must be An Islamic Jihad'
In Saudi sermons, preachers place special emphasis on the Islamic nature of the Palestinian cause. The national Arab movement is often ridiculed and condemned by Saudi preachers, who insist that the only way to liberate Palestine is through Jihad.

Sheikh 'Abd Al-'Aziz Qari expanded on this issue in a sermon at the Qabaa mosque in Al-Madina: "What has the national Pan-Arab movement been doing for the past 40 years? What has it done in the conflict with the Jewish nation? The national movement [based on] land, and the racist pan-Arab movement, have been defeated by the apes and pigs [referring to the Jews]. Furthermore, the repeated defeats of the past 40 years have become the trademark of the national land movement and the movement of Pan-Arab racism. They go on fighting in the name of the olive and orange groves and the watermelon [fields]. The nationalist men of the soil and of the Pan-Arab racism have been wandering for the past 40 years, refusing to return to their religion, to their Islam. They are reluctant [to consider] the battle between them and the nation of the Torah, the nation of Israel - an Islamic battle. The Jews are fleeing to their religion, seeking [roots] for unity and power, while the Arabs flee from their religion, from their Islam…"

"They feed their nation and their people's false, useless slogans that will never give them the power to confront the Jews who wave the banners of Torah and Israel. The war between us and the Jews is, in truth, a religious war, and only Islam can wage it in the path of truth… It is a divine decree, a military-political decree, a religious decree, but it is not directed at those who still fight in the name of the olives, the oranges, and the watermelon. It is a divine decree directed at the nation of Jihad, the Islamic nation, the Muslims… "[35]

In a sermon delivered at an Al-Damam mosque, Sheikh Muhammad Saleh Al-Munajjid said: "The [Palestinian] cause is exploited by hypocrites, the secular, polytheists, and pan-Arabs… They must be silenced, disregarded. We must unite around those who talk of the Islamization of the cause… If we say that the cause is an Arab cause, there are among us Christian Arabs, and infidels… and Socialists. What do all these have to do with Al-Aqsa Mosque?!"[36]

Sheikh 'Abd Muhsin Al-Qadhi addressed the matter in a sermon at the Al-Salaam mosque in Al-'Unayza, saying: "We must recognize that one of the reasons for our defeat by the Jews is that the [Islamic] nation was not allowed to confront them… Our nation must know that our defeats by the Jews were the defeats of regimes that did not wave the banner of Islam. They waved any banner except for the banner of Islam…

"If those who have gone astray return to the truth, the Jews will return to the humiliation and misery to which they were sentenced [by Allah]… Then, nothing will help the Jew… They will not see victory as long as they persist with misleading concepts, heretical curricula, and a shameful 'peace of the brave.' All this is the seed of Satan and the seedling of the infidels, and it is this which prevents the victory of Allah and throws a lifeline to the Jews."[37]

In a sermon at the Suleiman Bin Muqiran mosque in Al-Riyadh, Sheikh Majed 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Firian said: "The modern countries of Kufur [that is, Western countries] have realized that the [Palestinian] Authority that speaks today on behalf of the Palestinian cause has not waved the banner of Islam, and its goal is to establish a secular state. Therefore, they protect it and prohibit attacking it, as [this authority] is the one that will give them concessions when they pressure it. In contrast, the alternative to this authority arouses fear in their hearts. This is a deep-rooted solution to the conflict: Intifada and Jihad for the sake of Allah, not for the sake of pan-Arabism, and not for the sake of protecting the homeland and the soil. Today, the Islamic nation already knows that the Holy Land will not be liberated by dallying at vacation sites or sitting around the negotiating table with infidels. The solution is to do what the Prophet did to the Jews when they violated the agreements… The solution regarding the Jews is as the Prophet Muhammad said: 'I have brought slaughter upon you'…Yes, the solution for these is not peace and harmony… Jihad, not peace, is the solution."

"The one who retreated and surrendered to Judaism and Christianity is not Islam, but secularism. The one who threw down its weapon and sought to surrender was not Islam but secularism. Islam was not defeated by Judaism and Christianity in the ideological battle because it was prevented from entering it."[38]

Part VI - 'Muslim Women's Rights are a Western Ploy to Destroy Islam'
One major point of conflict between Islam and the West discussed by Saudi Imams is the status of women, which is perceived as a matter of life and death for Muslim society. The Saudi preachers see the West's preoccupation with the status of women in Islamic countries as an attempt to undermine and topple Islamic society.

In a sermon at the Al-Huweish mosque in Al-Taif, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Nimr explained, "The enemies of Islam… know that the woman is a double-edged sword, and that she can be transformed into the most dangerous weapon of destruction [of Islamic nations]. Thus, the woman has suffered from most of the conspiracies to shatter the Islamic nation - because the woman has a group of traits allowing her to either build or destroy the nation…"

"The enemies of Islam have decided to distance the Muslims from their religion. Therefore, they have made the woman the most important weapon in this destruction. Ostensibly, they are showing her mercy and defending her rights. Many among the Muslim women have been misled by this, because of their ignorance about their religion, which sees the woman as the man's partner and as possessing rights and obligations appropriate to her nature and character..."

"Permitting women to leave the home, so that they rub up against men in the marketplaces and talk with people other than their chaperones - with some even exposing parts of their bodies prohibited from exposure - are forbidden acts, a disgrace, and lead to destruction. The first crime perpetrated by the Israelites was letting their women loose when they were adorned, so that they would stir up Fitna [inner strife]. For this, Allah punished them with the plague."[39]

In a sermon at the Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq mosque in Al-Taif, Sheikh Mansour Al-Ghamdi said: "The Muslim who is aware of what is happening can connect the prodigious attack on men's and women's modesty and morals… with the Jewish plan to destroy their humanity and make them look like animals - that is, exposed and naked."[40]

To illustrate the danger of female permissiveness, the preachers often cite "historical" examples of societies that collapsed in its wake. Sheikh Mansour Al-Ghamdi said, "The enemies realized that the woman is a mighty and important fortress of the Muslim nation, and that for centuries this fortress protected the strength of Islamic society…"

"The enemies learned the lesson of what happened to the Greek and Roman societies, which collapsed because of the woman's corruption. When these cultures began, the woman was protected and modest, and engaged in housework… Then [the Greeks and Romans] succeeded in their conquest, establishing mighty empires. When the woman began to beautify herself, and to go out to clubs and public places… she corrupted the moral values of the men, weakened their combat skills - and their civilization collapsed. Yes, these two mighty cultures collapsed, and [the enemies] maintain that the Muslim nation must collapse in such a way that will make it incapable of recovery. This is the strategic goal towards which the enemies of the Muslim nation strive, as is written in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion… The enemies of the Muslim woman are the Jews, the Christians, the hypocrites, the secular, and the opportunists trailing behind them."[41]

Another illustration was provided by Sheikh Muhammad Abdallah Al-Habdan in a sermon at the Al-'Izz Bin Abd Al-Salaam mosque in Al-Riyadh: "I warn of the danger [inherent] in the woman if she deviates from the divine path. The man can be steadfast in many battles, but surprisingly the same giant man often founders in the face of the woman and her enticements… The main reason for the downfall of Paris and the French army's swift surrender to the German armies, as historians have acknowledged, was overindulgence in urges and immersion in pleasure…"

"Why do the West and the secular Westernizers focus on the [Muslim] woman? The answer is that they grasped the status of the woman and her role in the building of the nation, and her influence on society, and therefore realized that if they corrupt the woman and manage to entice her into deviating from the path of righteousness, it will facilitate their infiltration of the Muslim strongholds… The satanic Jews say in their Protocols: 'We must get the woman. The day she stretches out her hand to us is the day of our triumph'…"[42]

Another way preachers illustrate the imminent danger to Islamic women is by showing the "downfall" of the Western woman. Speaking at an Al-Riyadh mosque, Sheikh Fahd Bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-'Abyan said: "Some people have been influenced by the putrid ideas spread by the infidel West about the [Islamic principle of] man's custodianship over the woman. On the face of it, these ideas appear to protect the woman's rights. But in truth, their goal is to push the people into sinful liberty that has caused the downfall of [entire] societies. [In the West] this false liberty has engendered a society with crime as its hobby, adultery as its entertainment, and murder as its means of sublimating rage; a society in which the number of illegitimate children approaches and sometimes even surpasses the number of children from permitted unions… a society in which the woman does as she pleases even if she is married... a society in which underage girls know and do what married women know and do, and even more… These putrid ideas - no more than conceptual trash disseminated by the West - have begun to appear in the whorish journals and on the [Arab] satellite channels…"

"[In the West] the woman leaves the home whenever she feels like it, goes where she wants, and wears what she wants, without her husband's permission. Furthermore, in some homes the situation has reached the point where the woman gives the orders, and that is that… It is no wonder, then, that the [Western] women have become masculine. But what is amazing is that some men have become feminine. You can see some husbands with nothing in common with men except external appearance, while the woman calls the shots and controls the children's fate without asking her husband's opinion, even without consulting him or informing him of her intentions…"[43]

Sheikh Saleh Fawzan Al-Fawzan discussed the situation of Western women in a sermon at the Al-Basateen` mosque in Al-Riyadh: "In [Western] societies, the woman has become cheap merchandise, displayed naked or half-naked before the eyes of men… Women are servants in homes, clerks in offices, nurses in hospitals, hostesses on airplanes and in hotels, teachers of men in schools, film and television actresses. If they do not succeed in presenting the woman in these ways, they present her voice on the radio, as an announcer and a singer… As is known, the number of women in society surpasses the number of men. Nevertheless, they have limited marriage to a single wife, abandoning the rest of the women to corrupt and be corrupted…"

"They travel unsupervised and live as strangers among strangers, with danger threatening from all sides. Thus, the enemies of Allah and of humanity have stripped the miserable woman of all the elements of a happy life and of all her social rights, so that she serves as a tool of corruption and destruction. You will be surprised to hear that in spite of these crimes, they claim that they are protecting the woman's freedom."[44]

According to the preachers, the status of the Muslim woman is far better not only than that of Western women, but also than that of women in any other culture. "In India," said Sheikh Mansour Al-Ghamdi in a sermon at the Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq mosque in Al-Taif, "the woman has no right to independence from her father, husband, or son… She must die the day her husband dies, and be burned alive, together with him, on the same pyre. In China, a man has the right to sell his wife as a slave. If a Chinese woman is widowed, her husband's family has the right to her, as property. A Chinaman has the right to bury his wife alive…"

"Western culture waves around empty slogans about women's liberation, women's equality with men, and no controlling of women. In the wake of these slogans, the woman has left her home… lives a life of misery, and is burnt in the fire of this false liberty… Acts of abomination have proliferated in an unprecedented manner… and they are no longer restricted to the brothels, but are also committed in hotels, cafes, dance clubs, and even on the roads. It is no longer considered strange or perverse for a father to lie with his daughters, or a brother with his sister…"

"To the woman, the man has become a predatory animal treating those weaker than himself with cruelty... On the other hand, the man sees the woman as a wildcat. [Even] Sylvester Stallone said: 'I have all the reasons [in the world] to hate women.'"[45]

At the same time, many sermons instruct women how to behave so as not to slide down the slippery slope of the "moral degradation" pervasive in the West. The sermon of Sheikh Hamad Ibrahim Al-Hariqi at Al-Basateen mosque in Al-Riyadh is one example of many: "One of the mistakes made by women with regard to their husbands is to avoid [joining] the husband when he calls her to bed claiming that she is fatigued, or simply because she wants to anger him, or because she is ignorant and does not know that by doing so she denies her husband the greatest of his rights and places herself under serious threat… As it was said: 'If a man calls his wife to his bed and she refuses to come, the angels curse her until she wakes up'…"

"Another mistake is deficient service to her husband. If she does not fulfill his needs, such as cooking, laundering, keeping the house clean, and the like, it is because she is lazy and for no other reason. There is no doubt that this is a grave thing. [These tasks] are the woman's right and obligation towards her husband… The wise Muslim woman must take care of and serve her husband, in a way that will gladden him and cast happiness between them."

"Another mistake is to allow entrance to anyone whom the husband does not permit to enter the home. The husband has the right to bring only the people he likes into his home, and the woman must obey him. She has no right to bring in anyone he hates, even if it is her relatives … When the husband takes other wives, some women behave with exaggerated jealousy, ignorance, and stupidity."[46]

APPENDIX - About Al-Minbar
The website Al-Minbar (www.alminbar.net)[47] - "Direct From Mecca" - was founded by Wajdi Al-Ghazzaawi, who is also the website's executive director. According to Al-Ghazzawi, "Alminbar (The Pulpit) is a site for every Muslim who seeks knowledge and more specifically for every Imam looking to improve his speech and enhance the knowledge level of his congregation." According to VeriSign, Al-Minbar.net was created on July 13, 1999 and is registered to Wajdi Alghazzawi. All phone numbers and other contact information provided by Wajdi Alghazzawi and listed on VeriSign and on Al-Minbar.net list the website as Saudi-based.[48] [49] ,

According to Al-Minbar's introduction page, Al-Ghazzaawi created the website in an attempt to "provide [Imams] with the educational support they need, similar to the support other professionals have in their fields." Al-Ghazzaawi considered the Internet a perfect vehicle for accomplishing his objective, and despite facing a level of resistance from Imams who proclaimed that they "do not even have computers let alone internet access," the site was formed.

The website, which contains "thousands of written and audio khutbas [i.e. sermons]," was initially staffed by a team of "three sincere brothers" and has since grown to require a staff of "fifteen professional brothers." Al-Minbar apparently receives, or at least seeks to receive, funding from "prosperous Muslims," as in the site's introduction, Al-Ghazzaawi mentioned the difficulty of soliciting Muslims who were accustomed to donating to "traditional forms of charitable projects such as building Masjids or schools."

Al-Minbar states that the website is visited by "about three thousand Imams on [a] weekly basis," representing "sixty two countries and territories."

The following are listed as Al-Minbar.com's "education" staff:

"The site is being supervised by a distinguished team of students of knowledge. They are graduates of Islamic universities and Institutes of Hadeeth from Saudi Arabia, and specialized in different fields of knowledge. The following is a summarised introduction to the educational team."

* Dr. Munqith Saqqaar, Monotheism (Tawheed), Ummul-Quraa University.
* Mustafaa Aitiem, College of Hadeeth, University of Medinah.
* Adnan Siamie, Hadeeth, Daarul-Hadeeth.
* Adnan Safa Khan, Hadeeth, Daarul-Hadeeth.
* Abdur Rahmaan Qaaid, Hadeeth, Daarul-Hadeeth.
* Zahir Balfaqieh, The Advanced Academy For Imams and Du'aat.
* Abdul Khaaliq Juma'aan, The Advanced Academy For Imams and Du'aat.
* Tariq al-Wahidie, Islamic University of Madinah.

 

All links provided were accurate at the time of publishing but may no longer be so.

[1] Some sermons are undated. There may be also be slight inaccuracies in the dates given, due to conversion from the Muslim to the Gregorian calendar.

[2] An umbrella term for the ideologies and actions of infidels.

[3] According to Muslim belief, Allah delivered Jesus from crucifixion at the last minute.

[4] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=1455, September 13, 1997.

[5] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=1220.

[6] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4141, May 11, 2001.

[7] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4142.

[8] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4142.

[9] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=2761, September 2, 2000.

[10] A poll tax levied on non-Muslims under Islamic rule.

[11] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4068.

[12] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=5942 , February 1, 2002.

[13] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4450 , August 3, 2001.

[14] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=5979, February 22, 2002.

[15] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4341.

[16] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4954, April 27, 2001.

[17] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=3246

[18] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=2188, July 10, 1998.

[19] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=6071, April 12, 2002.

[20] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=920.

[21] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4331.

[22] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?media*URL=1810.

[23] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.qasp?mediaURL=6086, April 19, 2002.

[24] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=2773, April 21, 1995.

[25] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=3174.

[26] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=1370. February 13, 1986.

[27] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=3047. October 7, 2000.

[28] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4367. October 22, 2000.

[29] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=3094.

[30] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=3095.

[31] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=3095.

[32] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=5948.

[33] Wajdi Al-Ghazzaawi is also the editor of the website Al-Minbar.

[34] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=5628, October 6, 2001.

[35] Undated. http://www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=1216.

[36] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=3095.

[37] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=6057, March 22, 2002.

[38] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=5949.

[39] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=1845, February 12, 1999.

[40] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=1620, June 5, 1999.

[41] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=1628, May 22, 1999.

[42] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=2699, June 13, 1998.

[43] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4096.

[44] Undated. www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=1069.

[45] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=1633, May 1, 1999

[46] www.alminbar.cc/alkhutab/khutbaa.asp?mediaURL=4461, September 4, 1999.

[47] Al-Minbar maintains three web addresses: www.alminbar.com, www.alminbar.net, www.alminbar.cc.

[48] http://www.alminbar.com/aboutus.asp.

[49] http://www.alminbar.com/intro.asp.

 

I AM A JEW AND MY FATHER WAS A JEW:
DANNY PEARL AND THE FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP
Bob Friedland

In the summer of 1963, at the height of the Cold War, and within spitting distance of the thermonuclear abyss, American president, John Kennedy stood before a crowd of Germans in West Berlin. In Bostonian cadenced German, he proclaimed, Ich bin ein Berliner—“I am a Berliner”. At the time, that wall-divided city was held fast by the claws and sinews of a formidable adversary, the formerly super-powerful, Soviet Union. The world's memory of German responsibility for the Second World War was then less than two decades old. It was an act of supreme political courage for an American president to identify himself and the cause of freedom with the besieged former enemies of the United States and the world. This was leadership.

In the spring of 1965, American president, Lyndon Johnson, told the American people and the people of the world, "We shall overcome". In this, he consciously adopted the words of the hymn of the Civil Rights Movement. The occasion was the death of a voter registration marcher in Selma, Alabama. Johnson identified himself with the cause of those who risked their lives fighting for freedom. This too was leadership.

It is reported that the kidnappers and killers of Danny Pearl, made a videotape of his murder. Pearl is heard to say, "I am a Jew and my father was a Jew." His throat is cut. He is decapitated, and his brains are thrown around the room. There is an outcry. His killing was barbarous. But what is barbarous is not that he was killed, or even how he was killed, horrible though it was. What is barbarous is that he was killed in this manner because he was a Jew and his father was a Jew. It is the same kind of killing that has been going on in Israel since 1948, and before 1948. It is precisely what is barbarous about the killing of Israeli Jews by Muslims and it is about the failure of leadership in the West and in the Islamic world.

It is about the failure of a single Muslim cleric or head of state to say, "You cannot kill Jews, because I am a Jew and my father was a Jew." It is about the failure of the Secretary General of the United Nations and the failure of every single leader of a Western nation to say, "You must stop killing people because they are Jews, because I am a Jew and my father was a Jew." It is about the failure of editors of major media outlets to say, "You must stop killing people because they are Jews, because I am a Jew and my father was a Jew."

Danny Pearl would not have been kidnapped, he would not have had his throat slit, and he would not have been decapitated if he was not a Jew whose father was a Jew. The children who have been blown to pieces at pizza parlors and teenagers whose blood washed the floors at dance halls in Israel would not have been slaughtered if they were not Jews and their fathers were not Jews.

 

We hear much about why the situation in the Middle East is so intractable and so complex. Surely, the conflict is also about political power, land, oil, cultural values, etc. However, in the final analysis, it is the fact of Israel's Jewishness that is unacceptable. All Muslim regimes, not just the frontline states, continue to teach the hatred of Jews that enable Muslims to commit these atrocities. In other words, if every other problem were resolved, the matter would still be unresolvable because of the race hatred.

If we pull back the veil of hypocrisy, it really is not so complex after all. It is time to stop pussy-footing and admit that it is about a people and nations who think it is just fine to kill people who are Jews and whose fathers are Jews. It is about people who think that Jews whose fathers are Jews are not entitled to have a state of their own. But it is really about the failure of leadership. The failure of those who should, but do not have the courage to say, "I am a Jew and my father is a Jew."

(Bob Friedland is a lawyer in Victoria, British Columbia)
PEARL’S RITUAL MURDER:
A WARNING TO US ALL
Cynthia Yacowar-Sweeney

Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl set out on an assignment to try to understand the outrage of the Islamic extremists and “why they hate us so”, a question asked by many North Americans post-Sep.11, including President Bush.

In his writings, Pearl sought to explain the Islamic world to his readers, hoping to shed light on the other side of the coin, to bridge the gap between two very different worlds. He saw his mission as trying to bring peace through an understanding of Islamic world suffering. Few could have done it better than Pearl.

Daniel Pearl paid for his understanding with his life.

A cell of Islamic extremists, apparently linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and well-known to Indian, Pakistani and U.S. authorities, chopped off his head with a blunt weapon after slitting his throat proudly for the video camera. The last scene of the videotape shows his head separated from his body. No doubt this video will be used to recruit more holy war (jihad) members.

There was no justification or excuse for this barbaric act of savagery, especially when we pause to consider what Daniel Pearl was attempting to accomplish. These people--if one can call them that--have no place in civilization. Lacking total regard for human life, they are beyond understanding, the atrocities they commit beyond explanation. Searching for underlying motives and “root causes” of Islamic rage, as the British Independent's Robert Fisk continues doing ("brutality is entirely the product of others") is a futile exercise. "Claims of root causes are distractions from the real work at hand", writes New York Times cultural critic Edward Rothstein. They absolve the perpetrators of all evil, and bounce the blame back to the victims themselves. This suggests that the victims brought it upon themselves for having caused this outrage in the first place.

The "real work at hand" is not poverty, contrary to Ted Turner's recent claim at Brown University (many of the Sep.11 hijackers came from very wealthy families), or U.S. support for Israel, as American essayist Susan Sontag insists. It is a deeply engrained hatred of all that is non-Islamic, nourished for years by a pervasive, hateful rhetoric. It is precisely this brutal hatred, these chants of “kill the Jews” and “death to America” permeating the Middle East and Pakistan, that have paved the way for these atrocious acts of savagery. Last week, the end of the annual Moslem pilgrimage (or Hajj) to Islam's holiest place, Mecca, was marked by such chants coming from thousands of Iranian pilgrims.

Anti-semitism is one of the main driving forces of Islamic extremism. That's why Pearl was killed: because he was an American who was also a Jew and an Israeli. Just before they yanked his head back and slashed his throat, Pearl’s captors forced him to blurt “I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew”.

According to Ahmed Saeed Sheikh, the only conspirator arrested in connection with the Jan.23 kidnapping, Pearl was targeted because he was a Jew. Islamic extremists hate the Jews as virulently as Hitler did, and encourage their followers, as did a recently-arrested British Moslem cleric, to murder Jews. They believe that the Koran commands them to fight the enemies of Islam, the Jewish and Christian infidels, who stand in the way of the creation of an Islamic world order. In fact, their greatest glory next to achieving martyrdom, is to kill as many Americans, Israelis and Jews as possible. And Pearl represented all of the aforementioned.

The ritual murder of Daniel Pearl should be the only proof the Western world needs that there can be no peace with these extremists and their networks of supporters worldwide. Their anti-semitic and anti-American poisonous views have already spread to Asia, Europe and the U.S. Britain’s al-Muhajiroun, a UK-based militant Islamic group, is recruiting dozens of non-Moslems to join the fight for an Islamic Republic of Great Britain, according to London's Observer. Furthermore, hundreds of British recruits have already trained in bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan during the past few years.

In Southeast Asia, the al-Qaeda terrorist network stretches through Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and over to the Philippines, where the Islamic extremist group Abu Sayyaf, linked to al-Qaeda, is beheading captured government soldiers with machetes, on videotape. One of its three American hostages was beheaded last year. Abu Sayyaf, like other Islamic extremist groups, is fighting for an independent Islamic state. Islamic extremists have increasingly become a clear and present danger not only overseas, but on our own continent. North America is home to potentially thousands of terrorist “sleeper” cells capable of far worse than Sep.11 (see the New York Post, January 31, 2002). Think otherwise? There’s reason to believe that those four Moroccan nationals arrested last week in Rome were preparing a cyanide attack, either on the U.S. embassy or on the Italian capital’s water supply.

So instead of fretting about the plight of the al-Qaeda, al-Muhajiroun and Taliban terrorist prisoners in Cuba--who were treated to a special lamb meal to celebrate their Moslem festival of sacrifice Eid al-Adha--we should remember Daniel Pearl, murdered because he was an American and a Jew. Then think twice about the safety of the world, lest we too fall victim to the war on Western civilization being waged by evil forces in the name of Islam.

 

"Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill the Jews, the Americans, who are like them, and those who stand by them. They are all in one trench against the Arabs and the Moslems. ... It is forbidden to befriend Israelis or to aid them. Don't love them or enter into agreement with them, don't help them or sign accords with them. Anyone who does this is one of them. This is the word of Allah, blessed be He. They, they are the terrorists. They should be slaughtered. They should be murdered. Such is the word of Allah." [citation needed]Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, the leading imam of the Grand mosque located in the Islamic holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, referred to Jews as "the scum of the human race" and "offspring of apes and pigs".[38] During his sermons he also said:

 

Same old lines, Jews vote overwhelming for the left yet the three biggest states with Jewish populations have republican governers. New York, California and Florida.
I always wondered where those numbers come from when they "poll" jews and do they actually go over to people and ask them "are you jewish can you prove it to me". "Oops" the leftists pollster said, "I dropped my pen. It writes in red ink. Let me bend down and get it Leroy".

Anyway I'm tired of so called nobel attacks on a tiny nation filled with perhaps five million jews who are surrounded by car bombing, gay stoning, head cutting off muslim nations of hundreds of millions.
I always thought the disguised line of well it is only critical thinking as an excuse of it is easy to pick on a few million rather then address the one billion and three hundred million.

Remember what happened to the leftist party in Iran after the Shah was overthrown by our then leftist government and the muslim radicals who then in turn killed and brainwashed that nation into submission.
The same thing will happen here in 50 years if we don't get our heads straight on this matter.

 

AZ is overwhelmingly conservative yet a dem won be 20%. This just goes to show that sometimes people vote for the candidate ant the party.

 

Terrorism and the Hajj
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 11, 2003

No matter how often the President repeats that Islam is a religion of peace, the Administration just can’t seem to avoid offending Muslims. The professional victims at the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) took umbrage to Attorney General John Ashcroft’s linkage of the heightened terror alert to the conclusion of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj.

Said CAIR’s Executive Director Nihad Awad: "The unnecessary linkage of Hajj to terrorism merely serves to promote the growing perception in the Muslim world that the war on terrorism is in reality an attack on Islam. That perception damages our nation’s interests and could generate increased suspicion of and discrimination against ordinary Muslims. Hajj has nothing to do with terrorism. To imply otherwise is an insult to the American Muslim community. Attorney General Ashcroft needs to clarify his position on this important issue."

However, according to AP reports, it wasn’t Ashcroft who linked the Hajj to terrorism, but al-Qaeda: "Attorney General John Ashcroft said the government had received intelligence information, corroborated by multiple sources, that Osama bin Laden’s terror organization sought to attack Americans at home or abroad during the time of the annual Hajj pilgrimage to the holy Saudi city of Mecca."

Up to now the line has been that Islamic terrorists are discredited heretics who twist peaceful Islam for their own purposes. Yet apparently Awad assumes that the Muslims of al-Qaeda will scrupulously adhere to CAIR’s depiction of the Hajj as "a once-in-a-lifetime journey of spiritual purification, repentance and renewal, not an excuse for killing innocent people."

Pity poor Awad. It’s an unenviable task to have to keep straight all the labyrinthine complexities of the "religion of peace" mantra. It must be especially tough to maintain a chip on his shoulder about Ashcroft’s Hajj alert in light of the fact that the Saudi government has deployed "no less than 20,000 security personnel" in the Muslim holy city of Mecca for the Hajj, according to Major Moussa al-Tanbi of the Saudi Public Security Office.

Why would so much security muscle be needed to oversee this gentle time of spiritual purification, repentance and renewal?

One reason may be that the Hajj can be a scene of unimaginable chaos, particularly as the number of pilgrims to Mecca annually has risen from fewer than 100,000 in 1950 to well over a million today. Stampedes killed 35 pilgrims in 2001, which is down significantly from 180 in 1998, 270 in 1994, and 1,426 in 1990.

But the 20,000 Saudi cops won’t just be directing traffic: they’ll also be on the lookout for terrorist activities. Prince Nayef, the Saudi Interior Minister, vowed: "Terrorist organizations seeking to tamper with our security during the Hajj will be dealt an iron fist." CAIR’s Awad doesn’t seem to have lodged a protest with Prince Nayef for linking the Hajj to terrorism.

In light of the history of the Hajj, Awad might have trouble making a case anyway. A few notorious incidents from recent years include the seizure of Mecca’s Grand Mosque by Muslim terrorists in November 1979. The terrorists took hundreds of pilgrims hostage; 250 people were killed in the ensuing battle. In 1989, one pilgrim was killed and 16 wounded when bombs went off near the Grand Mosque.

Two years before that, tensions between the Saudi government (which makes life difficult for its Shi’ite minority) and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Shi’ite Islamic Republic boiled over at the Hajj. 402 people were killed in a riot as Saudi security forces clashed with Shi’ites staging an anti-U.S. demonstration.

The Saudis have been frank this year about the need for heightened security to stave off just such demonstrations by supporters of Saddam Hussein. Demonstrators may find irresistible the prospect of an anti-American protest in Mina, a spot where the patriarch Abraham is said to have resisted temptation by throwing stones at Satan. Pilgrims throw their own rocks at a stone stele popularly known as "the Great Satan." Evidently the Saudis thought this was enough of a possibility to mobilize 20,000 security personnel.

Once again, therefore, CAIR is muffing an opportunity to prove that Islam really is a religion of peace. Instead of protesting the terror alert and smearing the Attorney General, it could follow the line of our "friends and allies" the Saudis and applaud their efforts to stop terrorists from sullying the Hajj. But just as Saudi Arabia’s real commitment to eradicating terrorism is questionable, so are the actual motives and priorities of the good folks at the Council on American Islamic Relations. So far they have given little indication that they see the Bush Administration as less of a danger than al-Qaeda. Shows what pandering will get you.

 

Well Andy, let me clue you in. Whereas NY, FL, and CA my have the biggest populations of Jewish Americans ( I don't actually know this to be true but I'll play along) Jews don't make up that large of a percentage of total population to begin with. Blacks, Hispanics, elderly, and other demographic populations far, far outweigh the Jewish demographic. So even if every Jewish person voted Democratic in those states it wouldn't necessarily hand the election to the Democrats. Does that make anymore sense to you now?

The only part of either of these sentences I can figure out is that you are tired. Take a nap and try to explain it more clearly after you wake up.

So what you are saying is that WE overthrew the Shah of Iran? :loud: Andy, I don't know what history books you read there in Mayberry but you might want to chuck them suckers out and reorder the ones that actually have historically factual information in them.

You and Pat Robertson are like oracles...All I really want to know is who is going to win the Superbowl next month. Can one of you get back to me on this matter. It's really, really important and I could use your powers of prediction to make a quick buck in Vegas. I was initially going to bet on the Leftists to win but if you think differently, well gosh, I'll go with your prediction. :goof: