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‘We are sovereign nation and can pretty much post anything we want’

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If you are nostalgic for the days when the Ten Commandments were posted in public buildings, you might want to consider visiting the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians.

The tribal council is making plans to mount a copy of the Ten Commandments in the council house where government meetings are held, and possibly display them throughout other public buildings in the Cherokee Nation of western North Carolina.

The idea was introduced by Councilwoman Angela Kephart last month. She said the tribe should display the Ten Commandments out of respect and devotion to God. The motion passed unanimously.

“We aren’t saying you have to abide by the Ten Commandments,” Kephart said, according to the Smoky Mountain News. “We are simply displaying God’s Ten Commandments. That’s what He expects from each and every individual. If you break that, it is between you and God. It is not between you and the tribal council; it is between you and God.”

There is no First Amendment issue involved, and even if the American Civil Liberties Union wanted to make one, it can’t. The U.S. Constitution does not apply to Cherokee, nor to any other Native American tribe for that matter, according to Cherokee’s Attorney General David Nash.

“We are a sovereign nation and we can pretty much post anything we want in our council chambers,” said Kephart. “For once the federal government is not going to tell us what to do. We can feel good about it because we are standing up for God. The more it becomes controversial, the more we need to stand firm.”

Kephart was clear about her desire to promote Christianity.

“God has blessed our tribe,” she said. “We have a very rich tribe, per se. We are operating on over a $200 million budget thanks to our gaming enterprise.”

Posting the Ten Commandments doesn’t prevent others from practicing their religion, explained Nash.

“Anybody can practice any religion they want to practice,” Nash said.

The following is a translation of an article written by a Spanish journalist, Sebastian Villar Rodriguez:

I was walking along Raval (Barcelona) when all of a sudden I understood that Europe died with Auschwitz.

We assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20 million Muslims!

We burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create.

We burnt the people of the world, the one who is proclaimed the chosen people of God.

We must admit that Europe, by relaxing its borders and giving in under the pretext of tolerance to the values of a fallacious cultural relativism, opened it’s doors to 20 million Muslims, often illiterates and fanatics that we could meet, at best, in places such as Raval, the poorest of the nations and of the ghettos, and who are preparing the worst, such as the 9/11 and the Madrid bombing and who are lodged in apartment blocs provided by the social welfare.

We also have exchanged culture with fanaticism, the capacity to create with the will to destroy, the wisdom with the superstition. We have exchanged the transcendental instinct of the Jews, who even under the worst possible conditions have always looked for a better peaceful world, for the suicide bomber. We have exchanged the pride of life for the fanatic obsession of death. Our death and that of our children.

What a grave mistake that we made!!!

By Jamie Glazov
www.frontpagemagazine.com

Interview with Laurent Murawiec, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of the new book Princes of Darkness : The Saudi Assault on the West.

FP: Mr. Murawiec, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Murawiec: Thank you, Jamie.

FP: What inspired you to write Princes of Darkness?

Murawiec: In the first place, I was asked to brief the Defense Policy Board at the Dept. of Defense on Saudi Arabia, and possible policy options. The ruckus that followed was enlightening: after my briefing was leaked to the Washington Post, the long-delayed debate about our Saudi “allies” that had until then been kept under wraps exploded on the front pages finally broke out. That was the start. Then a French publisher asked me to write a book — here it is, in English translation.

FP: Tell us more about your Defense Department briefing in July 2002 and its significance.

Murawiec: There’s been a big problem with Saudi Arabia since, at least, 1973: the Saudis were a prime mover in slapping an embargo on oil on the US and all countries deemed to be friendly to Israel; they embargoed the US Navy in the middle of the tension of the Yom Kippur War; they took the lead in launching the great oil raid on the world economy, the quadrupling of oil prices that nearly tanked the world economy and did tank the weaker economies, those of the Third World. Friends! Allies!

Now there was a time when the deal between the Saudis and us made sense: after 1945, we need oil, lots, cheap, in guaranteed amounts and at stable prices. In return, we protected them from regional and extra-regional predators — Nasser, the Soviets, etc. They became rich, we powered industry. Good deal. Problems started later: as soon as the kingdom stabilized, King Faisal conceived a great design of taking over Sunni Islam to the Wahhabi creed, and Saudi imperial goals.

There was a brief period of apparent renewal of the alliance, in the common fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. But the Saudis and their Pakistani clients were channelling all resources to the fundamentalists, the bigots, the pre-Taliban haters, not to the fighters. And once the Red Army left Afghanistan, any vestigial reason for the alliance vanished. We were facing an entrenched power which favored Sunni despots and dictators, was dead-set on destroying Israel, was manufacuring and exporting an ideology of hatred towards America, Christianity and Judaism, the West in general; was powering the “Talibanization” of countries such as Algeria or Indonesia, and well on its way to capture Sunni Islam. In short, an enemy. But — fifty or more years of presence of a powerful Saudi lobby in Washington — these people mean business, and money’s not the matter — as well as the ensconsed “Eisenhower Doctrine” — let’s be friends with the owners of the real estate under which the oil is — had rigidly shaped America’s Middle East policy. Loving Riyadh was an article of faith.

I was not the first to say that this was wrong. Nor were my arguments new. It just happened that saying what I said where I said it and when I said it — at the Pentagon, after September 11 — and the ensuing leak, gave traction to the line of argument.

FP: Ok, expand a bit on the specific ways in which the Saudi Arabian elite is an enemy of the West in general and of the U.S. in particular.

Murawiec: Let’s start with Wahhabism. It is not “an austere version of Islam.” It’s a deadly, simplistic, bigoted, brutal creed which relishes in forbidding everything in sight; it is an Islam that kept itself totally isolated from the great centers of the Golden Age, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Kayruwan, Samarkand and Tashkent. It is a creed which returns to an imagined, and wholly fantastical, 7th century Islam. It makes a claim to being the exclusive repository of Allah’s mandate. To Wahhabism, non-Wahhabi Muslims are infidels (kufr). Shiites are apostates who should be killed. Christians and Jews ought to be killed as well. Prof. Bernard Lewis has aptly proposed a simile: imagine the KKK in power in Texas in 1900 and using the vast oil resources there to spread its ‘faith.’ Now, the organic connection between the Al-Saud and the Wahhabi dates back to 1744 when the two families tied up and struck a deal that still holds: I give you religious legitimacy, and you can plunder anybody you want in the name of Islam; I protect you zany cult and we’ll spread it together.

Now today’s princes are not — unlike bin Laden — feverish zealots intent on rocking every boat in sight. They are rich, fat, gorged with oil and whisky, powerful and scheming. They are like Stalin: defend the Fatherland, use it as the tool of world domination. Bin Laden is like Trotsky: permanent Islamic revolution no matter what. So they differ tactically. The princes know that they have somehow to keep the US is not happy, at least not mad at them: they want a dependent US. We’ll deliver oil, and stability in the Middle East. They do oil, which makes them rich, and the kind of stability that’s called Saddam, Assad, Arafat, etc.

The Saudi system is manufacturing by the dozen of thousands every year graduates from Islamic schools whose brains have been addled by the unending outpouring of red-hot hatred against anything non-Wahhabi, especially the West, the US in the first place. They’re exporting Jihad. They’re funding it, generating the indoctrination, the miseducation, the propaganda. They’re exporting Jihadis.

Now the job of some of the princes is to sweet-talk Washington. So you have the slick, oily types who speak reasonableness itself in English, and spew fire and brim in Arabic. You have King Abdallah who twice threatened the US with a new oil embargo in recent years, and repeatedly alleged that Israel “was behind” Sept. 11. Allies! Friends!

FP: Why has the U.S. supported the royal family despite all of these circumstances?

Murawiec: Inertia, corruption, short-sightedness. Inertia, because 50 years of a strategic partnership became embodied in people, institutions, ideas, doctrines, which weigh on any policy: love for Saudi Arabia and their Saudi Highnesses is an article of faith at the State Department. To join the Foreign Service, you have to be vaccinated with Saudophilia tremens, this virulent disease. This also means corruption: since 1973, Saudi oil income has topped two trillion dollars (in 2002 value). A lot of it spills back to “friends.” As just-departing Ambassador Bandar once famously said “If the reputation, then, builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you�d be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office.� What cheek! When you chart the extent of that corruption, at I did in the book, you stumble from surprise to shocking surprise. Short-sightedness: stability in the Middle at all costs — including the cost of the World Trade Center, of the sprawling international Jihad.

FP: Tell us about the connection between the Saudi royals and bin Laden.

Murawiec: First, there’s the old Afghan connection: bin Laden was one of the chief operatives the top princes and Saudi intelligence used in the first war there against the Soviets. Their joint war was less one fought against the Soviet Army that a war for power (our stupidity was to allow the Saudis and their Pakistani friends to hijack our resources and use them on behalf of their radical jihad agenda). This is what in time created the Taliban. Back home after that war, bin Laden was made into a folk hero by the Royals, a picture boy of jihad.

Second, look at the Royals and at bin Laden. What’s the difference? The Royals are fat, rich, gorged in luxury, sitting on top of the oil, the income, the palaces, their state, their power. They don’t want to risk it. They want to implement the grand design King Faisal launched in 1973, when they really became rich, and take over Sunni Islam, extend the writ of their insensate Wahhabi creed, as they have successfully done, e.g., in Pakistan, they want pro-Wahhabi madrasas throughout the world, they want the World Muslim League and all the other Islamic NGOs to recruit, influence. They have taken over al-Azhar, the great institution of learning in Cairo, the primus inter pares in the Sunni world. They want to go on. They want to go on being able to manipulate the United States, buy influence, blackmail Washington with the threat of bin Laden taking over Saudi Arabia, offer “stability” by way of supporting Sunni dictators and other despots.

Bin Laden — and the other killers, Zarkawi, Zawahiri, etc. — is lean and mean. Remember Shakespeare’s Caesar, “yon Cassius has a mean and hungry look…” He has not seen a boat he does not want to rock. He is held by no tactical consideration, mostly: he is the Trotsky to their Stalin. He plays the role of the Mahdi, or the sub-Mahdi. So the difference between the ones and the others is one of tactics: the Saudi Royals want a regulated form of terrorism, which they can largely control, bin Laden wants a deregulated form of terrorism, which he controls. If you study the sociology of sectarianism in Muslim history, such divisions are nothing new.

When al Qaeda started wreaking some havoc inside Saudi Arabia — while never, ever, touching a hair of any of the Royals, note — the Royals reacted with fury: don’t tread on my turf! But they kept on allowing large numbers of Jihadis to go from Saudi — where they are known — to Iraq. They kept on having their clerics issue murderous fatwas that call for killing GIs in Iraq. The al Qaeda bombs inside Saudi Arabia, which somehow mostly end up killing foreigners, or lowly Saudis, are a means of negotiation between al Qaeda and the Royals: see what we can do to you if you don�t do this or that.

FP: Is the new King Abdallah a reformer?

Murawiec: Nice joke. He’s been in power for about 40 years; he’d led the Saudi National Guard (SANG) for that long; it is Bedouins-based, the most reactionary, bigoted, illiterate, xenophobic segment of Saudi society: that’s his power base, the tribes. His reputation for austerity is a sham. He’s the guy who twice in recent years threatened the US with a new oil embargo. He’s the guy who repeatedly stated that Israel was behind September 11. I know no element that would allow anybody to call him a reformer on any other basis that “he said.” Bring it on, if it’s there!

FP: So if the Saudis aren�t really our ally in the terror war, why does Saudi Arabia keep getting hit by terrorism?

Murawiec: I’ve covered part of the question above. The terrorist acts inside Saudi Arabia just express a well-know truth: you can’t breed attack dogs and hope they will never come back to bite you. Saudi Arabia, its mosques, its schoolbooks, its universities, its imams and predicators, its very creed, have been spawning Jihadis for decades. That some of the attack dogs turn into wolves should be no surprise. The control mechanism for a long time was to export them: Saudi killers were all over the place. Most of the September 11 hijackers as you know. But their numbers are overflowing. There are ‘only’ 50,000 mosques in the country. They can employ ‘only’ a corresponding number of crackpots and would-be killers. The unemployed, trained killers turn against the hand that fed them. But, as I remarked earlier, there’s been not the slightest intimation of an attempted hit at the princes… strange!

FP: Can we do without the Saudis?

Murawiec: We have to get tough with them. They got a pass for decades, no matter how outrageous their actions. When they bought missiles from the Chinese, in the ’80s, and the US Ambassador Hume Horan was tasked by the State Dept. to protest to King Fahd, Fahd demanded — and got — his head. Even the great Ronald Reagan caved in! When they ran the ’73 oil crisis, Kissinger, in a rare fit of toughness, hinted at military action, only to backtrack timorously within 48 hours. Enough already! We have to demand that they shut down the pseudo-’charities’ that fund terror, deliver their officers and the archives to us. They must shut down the universities and schools that teach jihad and hatred. They must silence completely the predicators of jihad. They must scrap the ugly schoolbooks that call for murdering Jews, Christians, Shiites, etc. They must shut down the World Muslim League, the World Association of Muslim Youth, the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and the bevy of other Saudi-based, Saudi-funded NGOs that are the infrastructure of the Saudi “Islamintern.”

FP: What about the oil?

Murawiec: The oil is a common good. We cannot accept the politicization of the markets. All the nice multilateralists, the cute UN-minded people, and the likes of Sweden and John Kerry should recognize that: the more we allow the Saudi raiders to tinker with the oil markets, the worse the consequences. Fools have been babbling about the Third World debt crisis for one generation, blaming the IMF, the World Bank, the greedy banks, etc. But, for Heaven’s sake, the fundamental cause of the debt crisis was the quadrupling of oil prices in ’73, and the next round in ’79, it was this giant razzia on the world economy. The modern economy, being innovative and flexible, did not take. They adapted. The anti-capitalist economies of the Third World, run by kleptocracies and Soviet-like killers, did not adapt, they tanked. Thank the Saudis and their OPEC cohorts. So if it turned out that the Saudis denied large quantities of oil, withheld them from the market, or continued to jack up prices — they make it into a political (as opposed to market) affair — we return the favor. Threats backed up by capability and demonstrated intent are a very good tool of diplomacy.

FP: President Bush calls you tomorrow and asks you for advice on American policy toward the Saudis. What concrete steps do you immediately advise?

Murawiec: The “shut down” list. And I’d say: “Sir, Mr. President, judge people according to their deeds, not to their sugary words.” I’d also advise that a lot of heads that having talking the Saudis up, at the State Department, the CIA especially — the “we-love-the-Sunni-dictators-and-despots-forever-because-they-deliver-stability” school of the three monkeys who see, hear and say no evil — should roll. The ‘Arabists’ have controlled US policy in the Middle East — and not the Likud! As every cretin, every liar and every falsifier repeats endlessly — for too long.

FP: Laurent Murawiec, you always call a spade a spade my friend. Thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Murawiec: Thank you — always a pleasure

Wants to Destroy Israel

www.worldnetdaily.com

WorldNetDaily conducted an exclusive interview with Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar, the most senior Hamas member in all of Israel and the Palestinian territories; second in power only to overall Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who resides in Syria. The conversation has been translated from Arabic by Ali Waked.

By Aaron Klein

WND: Dr. Al-Zahar, you’re the leader of Hamas, which has attacked and killed a large number of Israeli civilians. Are you a terrorist?

Al-Zahar: If I am a terrorist then there is a need to change the history of America and all of Europe. In this case we must call all the freedom fighters of America, like George Washington, a terrorist. Same for Charles de Gaulle, who fought against the occupation of France. Was he also a terrorist? From [U.S. President George W.] Bush’s point of view I am a terrorist, but America which kills children is not a terrorist state? Israel, which has already killed more than 4,800 Palestinians, with more than a third of that number being children, this is also not terrorism from Bush’s point of view. Unfortunately, history is being written in dirty ink through a dirty vision.

WND: OK, then what is terrorism?

Al-Zahar: Terror is the use of mass-destruction weapons against innocent and weak people to impose on them your policies and political facts and solutions.

I want to ask about what happened [when America pounded the caves in 2001 during operations in Afghanistan] at Tora Bora? And what happened and is still happening in Fallujah? Are the Americans shooting chocolates and biscuits on the local and innocent population? No, they are shooting missiles.

What about the Americans in charge of their prison in Abu Ghraib, sending dogs on the prisoners. Is this OK? And a president who lies to his people and says the war in Iraq is led in order to abolish the mass-destruction weapons while it was discovered there were no such weapons in Iraq. Is it OK? Is it OK that the Americans who say they want to establish democracy in Iraq nominate a Kurdish agent as president of this country? What about promoting Ahmed Chalabi and [interim Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem] Shaalon, who stole millions in Iraqi currency? Is this democracy or is it no more power of the majority? Is this the cultural and democratic message of Bush to the world?

WND: If you knew President Bush were reading this interview, what would you have to say to him?

I am telling him that I think he is doing an enormous historical crime by fighting against Islam and giving Islam adjectives like fascism and terrorism. He is hurting American interests. No honorable person can deny the contribution of Islam to humanity and its development.

Therefore, I say that President Bush puts in danger American interests when he chooses to fight against Islam and describes Islam in a negative way that makes him face 1.3 billion Muslims in the world. It is stupid that a person decides to push the West and Islam into a confrontation. Doing so puts in danger his own interests.

WND: Hamas has taken responsibility for some of the Qassam rocket attacks before, during and after Israel’s Gaza withdrawal. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has now threatened to assassinate you if there are more Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza. What’s your response to his threat?

Al-Zahar: These threats of Mofaz do not exist in reality. These are only talks. Mofaz knows that every attempt to hurt the leadership of our movement means the launch of immediate attacks against Israelis living around Gaza, which creates a lot of pressure on the Israeli government, especially after the withdrawal from Gaza. The impact of these threats of assassination on Hamas is positive at the level of the movement and its position among Palestinians. While the impact of our attacks on the Israeli government and society will be very negative.

WND: Was Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza a victory for Hamas and other Palestinian groups’ so-called resistance operations against Israelis? Did your resistance operations cause Israel to leave Gaza?

Al-Zahar: This is not a matter of analysis and interpretation. [That our operations caused Israel to withdraw from Gaza] is the truth and the reality and we lived this reality during the last few weeks. The withdrawal happened after years of political and diplomatic activity that achieved nothing. The military resistance, the tunnels, the explosions of Israeli military posts, as well as the explosions of tanks and stubborn fighting every time the Israeli army entered our territories, all this is what caused the withdrawal. The resistance caused Israel heavy damages, including on Israeli soldiers and Israeli society. Therefore, the resistance is the Palestinians’ main tool and option and will remain so.

WND: Does that mean this kind of resistance you describe will work to get Israel out of the rest of what you say is Palestinian land?

Al-Zahar: That must be the conclusion of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon from what happened in Gaza. Sharon must realize what brought him to withdraw from Gaza and do the same thing in the West Bank. But if sharon does not understand the message from what happened in Gaza and will try to impose a reality in the West Bank, we will not have any choice.

After years of failed negotiations from 1991 until [the collapse of the Camp David Accords in] 2000, negotiations that took place in every capital in the world brought no results. After all that the Palestinians had no choice other than the resistance. And this is the option that the great majority of our people, except a minority of opportunistic people, is deeply convinced is the best choice because any negotiation with the occupiers will be helpless and will not bring back to the Palestinians any of their rights and it will not free their lands.

WND: Hamas’ official website had an article in Arabic that said Qassam rockets will be the future strategic weapon of your group instead of focusing on suicide attacks. The article said you would eventually fire rockets into Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Is this Hamas’ plan?

Al-Zahar: These reports are Israeli propaganda. Still Palestinian territories are occupied and if the political negotiations will fail, we have the right to use all the tools we have in order to free our occupied land. … What is taking place here is not a pure war in which Israel uses pure and clean weapon against us. This is a war in which Israel is responsible for ugly crimes; therefore, it’s our right to use every weapon we have.

WND: When you talk of occupied Palestinian land, are you referring to the West Bank and the eastern sections of Jerusalem, or do you mean the entire state of Israel? Let’s be clear here. Is your goal the destruction of Israel?

Al-Zahar: No one will deny the fact that before 1948, the state of Israel did not exist and that for thousands of years this land was part of an Islamic and Arabic land. History proves that this is the land of the Palestinian people and we will never give up any part of it. If our generation will not succeed to liberate all of historical Palestine then that mission will be for the following generations.

WND: Let’s say Hamas liberates all of Israel and the Palestinians are in control. What would you do with all the Jews and Christians living there?

Al-Zahar: To begin with, I must say that we differentiate between Zionism and Judaism as a religion. I suggest you ask the Christians living among us about their lives. They have very good lives. And let me tell you that it would not be a big surprise if in the future there would be a Christian among the Hamas leadership. In the past on our lists for the professional union elections there was a Christian candidate.

As for the Jews, we must remember that when they were expelled in 1290 by the British, they found a shelter in the Islamic states. This was also what happened when they were expelled by the French in 1302 and in the year 1492 by Spain. And I do not want to mention the German crimes in modern history. In all these cases, the Jews found a shelter and honorable life in the Islamic states. Wasn’t there a Jewish minister of finance in the state of Islam when it ruled Spain? He was called Musa ben Maimon. And ask the Jews about their life now in Morocco. The question you pose has no base in history.

WND: If Hamas were in charge, would you ban Western music or mixed functions between men and women? Would you make women wear head-dresses? There have already been reports of Hamas banning music festivals and imposing strict Islamic law.

Al-Zahar: I hardly understand the point of view of the West concerning these issues. The West brought all this freedom to its people but it is that freedom that has brought about the death of morality in the West. It’s what led to phenomena like homosexuality, homeless and AIDS.

The Palestinian people are Muslim people and we do not need to impose anything on our people because they are already committed to their faith and religion. People are free to choose their way of life, their way of dress and behavior.

It is wrong to think that in our Islamic society there is a lack of rights for women. Women enjoy their rights. What we have, unlike the West, is that young women cannot be with men and have relations outside marriage. Sometimes with tens of men. This causes the destruction of the family institution and the fact that many kids come to the world without knowing who are their fathers or who are their mothers. This is not a modern and progressed society.

Here I refer to what was said in the early ’90s by Britain’s Prince Charles at Oxford University. He spoke about Islam and its important role in morality and culture. He said that the West must learn from Islam how to bring up children properly and to teach them the right values.

WND: Palestinian legislative elections are currently scheduled for January. Do you think Hamas will win big? Will your group be a part of the overall Palestinian government?

Al-Zahar: The results of the elections will decide whether we’ll be in the government or out of it. We will be part of the parliament, but as for the government we must wait for the results.

About our chances, I can say that in the local Gaza elections we saw good results that surprised the Palestinian polling institutions. In the coming elections our people will choose between the activities and achievements of the Palestinian Authority, which is very mediocre, failed and corrupt, and our activities and work, which has been successful in all fields of life.

The population will be asked to decide between our strong record and powerful plans and those of the PA. By the way, it is not normal that a party that has failed in everything will base its campaign on a slogan that says, “I’ve got promises for you.” We will have a strong and representative list of candidates. Our goal is to achieve a position in which we will be a part of the decision making based on true political partnership.

WND: The Palestinian Authority, backed by the international community, is demanding that you disarm before participating in January’s elections. Does Hamas have plans to disarm?

Al-Zahar: In this issue, it is not Hamas against [PA President] Abu Mazen. Abu Mazen will be obliged also to face large parts of his own Fatah movement who are armed. There are also many members in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and they all carry weapons. Abu Mazen must face other organizations too, like the Popular and Democratic Fronts, the Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and not only Hamas.

But what reason do they have to ask us and the other organizations to disarm while the enemy is continuing to attack the Gaza Strip and is planning to occupy it? Didn’t Sharon bombard Gaza with aircraft after the withdrawal? Didn’t he put in position artillery and threaten to use it? If any of this happens, who will defend the Gaza Strip? Will it be the PA that is against any armed struggle and that has never done anything against Israeli attacks? Therefore disarming the organizations is not a possibility. If we are disarmed, how will we face Israel while it is trying to occupy the Gaza Strip again?

WND: If Hamas wins in the elections, will your group focus on building a life for the Palestinians and abandon operations against Israel?

Al-Zahar: The resistance is a tool used to liberate the occupied territories. Once these lands are free, we can speak about other issues. The resistance is not a train that can just be stopped. It exists in order to remove the occupation, and once this happens our activity will focus on rebuilding what was destroyed by the occupation, on developing the economy, the society, the culture, the education and the health car.

Hamas started as a movement that dealt with these civil and social issues in giving our people services in many fields they did not have. We gave them a different level of services. Cleaner, more successful, more committed and more productive. Therefore we don’t see ourselves obliged to choose between the armed struggle on the one hand and authority and power on the other hand. We managed all these years to successfully combine the two.

WND: Hamas has admitted to kidnapping and killing Jerusalem resident Sasson Nuriel last month, releasing a video of your members interrogating the Jewish merchant with a blindfold strapped around his head. Should Israel expect more kidnappings of its citizens?

Al-Zahar: The issue of kidnapping is not new. This tool of kidnapping has existed since the ’80s and even before. Israeli soldiers Ilan Saadon and Avi Sasportas were kidnapped in order to free our prisoners. And if kidnapping will be the only way to get our prisoners freed, we shall do everything needed. There is occupation, there are prisoners and we have rights to get back, therefore we have the right to use any method in order to get our rights back.

WND: Israel is saying al-Qaida agents are in Gaza. That they were able to enter when the border with Egypt was wide open immediately following Israel’s withdrawal of its troops from the area. Is al-Qaida in Gaza? And in general, do you work with al-Qaida?

Al-Zahar: All these talks about the presence of al-Qaida is Israeli talks and propaganda. Israel tries to link al-Qaida, which acts abroad, and the resistance in Palestine in order to gain sympathy in the international community and in public opinion against Hamas and the Palestinian resistance. Israel tried in the past to link the Sept. 11 attacks to the Palestinian resistance.

We know that Israel tried through its agents to have contacts with marginal activists in the Palestinian resistance. The agents represented themselves as al-Qaida members and tried to tempt these people with money and weapons. This is part of the Israeli effort to represent things even though they are not that way, in order to say that al-Qaida exists in the Gaza Strip. I don�t believe there is any presence of al-Qaida in the Gaza strip. We in the Hamas, with the great number of activists we have, why would we need the help of al-Qaida or any other group in order to fight the occupation? We hardly even collaborate with other Palestinian organizations.

WND: A bit of a side question. The PA recently formed a new investigative committee to look into late PLO Leader Yasser Arafat’s demise. Do you think PA elements were involved in Arafat’s death?

Al-Zahar: I can tell you from the beginning that this committee will never publish its results. It will not do so in order to keep from harm elements and members in the PA. Also, its members do not want Palestinian elements and other personalities and even other states to be involved in their investigation. I, myself, as a doctor wonder what is the disease Arafat supposedly had that cannot be diagnosed and that the big France did not succeed in diagnosing. This is a crime and it is a political issue. And many persons, many elements and many states are not interested in clarifying this story in order to prevent problems. I also believe that Arafat died a long time before the official statement of his death was given. He died at least a week before it was announced.

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
www.frontpagemag.com

The West is gearing up to stop the much-feared pandemic of Avian flu at its sources. Two decades ago, it should have done the same to stop the pandemic of Wahhabism and Islamo�Fascism. Our inaction facilitated the funding of terrorism that has killed and maimed many thousands and infected tens of millions around the world.

The National Intelligence Reform Act, passed in December 2004, requires the development of a Presidential strategy for confronting Islamic extremism in collaboration with Saudi Arabia. So far, according to the September Government Accounting Office (GAO) report on the subject, U.S. agencies have been unable to determine the extent of Saudi Arabia�s domestic and international cooperation to end radical Islamist propaganda. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the Saudis have done precious little to comply.

Furthermore, the Saudis are continuing to fund terrorists activities as evident from the August capture of Y’akub Abu Assab, a senior HAMAS operative who with Saudi money opened the HAMAS communication center for the region of Judea, in East Jerusalem. Assab transferred hundred of thousands of dollars from HAMAS headquarters in Saudi Arabia to East Jerusalem, and from there, following instructions he received from Saudi Arabia, he distributed operational instructions and funding for HAMAS activities in the West Bank and Gaza. and gave money to families of suicide bombers.

Moreover, in Saudi Arabia, the secretary-general of the government’s Muslim World League Koran Memorization Commission, Sheikh Abdallah Basfar, urges Muslims everywhere to fund terrorism. On Iqra TV, on August 29, 2005st 29, 2005
English: World English Bible - WEB
Izbrano poglavje ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin, Sheikh Basfar said: “The Prophet said: ‘He who equips a fighter — it is as if he himself fought.’ You lie in your bed, safe in your own home, and donate money and Allah credits you with the rewards of a fighter. What is this? A privilege.�

Indeed, �[I]n the Kingdom, … young people are systematically infused with hostility for ‘infidels’,� writes former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey in the forward to the January 2005 Freedom House report on Saudi fanaticism.

Under U.S. pressure, Saudi Arabia declared repeatedly that it would close some of the charities that have been identified as spreading Wahhabism and funding terrorism. However, the September GAO report notes that: � in May 2005, a Treasury official told us it was unclear whether the government of Saudi Arabia had implemented its plans.� As for the Saudi promise to establish a new National Commission for Relief and Charity Work Abroad, the GAO said that:� �as of July 2005, this commission was not yet fully operational.�

In fact, at least two members of the Saudi government, Prince Salman, the Governor of Riyadh, and Prince Sultan, the Minister of Defense, are affiliated with the Saudi High Commission which was dropped from the 9/11 victims lawsuit because �it is an organ of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,� and therefore enjoys the protection of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The Saudi High Commission, according to the 9/11 victims� lawsuit, ��has long acted as a fully integrated component of al-Qaida’s logistical and financial support infrastructure� and the Sept. 11 attacks were a �direct, intended and foreseeable product of [its] participation in al-Qaida’s jihadist campaign.��

Prince Salman and Prince Sultan are also affiliated with the International Islamic Relief Organization, which although not designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department, was permitted by the court to be sued by the 9/11 victims, because it �had been involved in terror plans and plots and had purposely directed its activities against the United States.� The Saudi Princes have been also affiliated with the Saudi Charity al Haramain. The U.S. government shut down al Haramain branches in the U.S., and demanded the Saudis shut the entire organization down. But according to the GAO report, and despite Saudi assurances, al Haramain apparently continues to operate.
Regarding the attempts to distinguish between the Saudi government and Saudi Private entities and individuals that fund Islamic propaganda and terror activities, a GAO footnote comments that, �the distinction between the [Saudi] government�s support and funding versus that provided by entities and individuals, especially in the case of Saudi charities� alleged activities, is not always clear.�

As for the Saudi promises to stop the propagation of Islamic extremism, which President George W. Bush denounced recently as �the murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals [which] is the great challenge of our century,� the GAO report says that the U.S. Treasury Department �does not identify, monitor, or counter the support and funding or the global propagation of Islamic extremism as it relates to an ideology.� The GAO report further clarifies that this ideology �denies the legitimacy of non-believers and practitioners of other forms of Islam, and that explicitly promotes hatred, intolerance, and violence��

The President recently also acknowledged, for the first time, the dangers of Islamo-Facism, and said that the organizations that propagate it �are sheltered and supported by authoritarian regimes – allies of convenience like Syria and Iran.� Omitting Saudi Arabia from this list is understandable in view of the oil crisis. Alas, continuing to pretend that the Saudis are our true allies in the war against Islamo-Facism will do nothing to end this virulent incitement. Likewise, no progress will be made fighting radical Islam unless Saudi Arabia is held accountable.

By Omar El Okeily
Asharq Alawasat

Riyadh — The opening of a new shopping mall or a central market in a city is usually an occasion for celebration for most sectors of society. People will usually celebrate these new retail outlets where one can walk, sit, relax, visit various restaurants that in turn usually make good use of the large number of shoppers. However, young Saudi men, unlike other sectors of society such as children and young women, cannot celebrate new shopping malls and are largely indifferent to their existence. The main reason for this is that they are prevented from entering the malls by the orders of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice or by the mall’s administration that usually conforms to the orders of that authority.

Saleh, Fahd, and Abdullah, all in their twenties, gather daily in one of Riyadh’s coffee shops to smoke Shisha (water pipe). Fahd told Asharq Al-Awsat, “Why would we celebrate the opening of these malls if we have no right to enter them or to shop in them? Even though I am married, I have not been free from harassment when I enter the malls with my wife, not harassment from other young men but from those who interfere as my wife and I being a young couple, like to hold hands.” Saleh supported Fahd’s opinion when he said, “As young men, we cannot even buy a gift for our mothers or sisters from these malls that are the only places where the best products are available. I could not take my mother or my sister with me to buy her a gift, as this does not quite have the same effect. The beauty of the gift is when it comes as a surprise.” Abdullah also added that he is not a great admirer of malls and has never visited them. However, he stressed that he could understand the frustration of those young men who enjoyed walking and sitting in crowded places such as malls, which is no longer allowed.

These days, young men talk of a new large mall opening soon in Riyadh. However, unfortunately like other malls they will not be allowed to enter except under certain conditions. They will not even be allowed within close vicinity of the new mall. Fahd further said, “As full time employees we cannot go to the malls. We need time to shop and look around for the best merchandise. At the weekends we are usually more relaxed as we have had more sleep and are free from the burdens of work; but we can not enter the malls as usual.”

The problem of the preventing single males from entering the malls has deteriorated over the past few years, especially as demands of young men to enter the malls increased after several new malls were opened in Riyadh. However, they were only permitted entrance between Saturdays and Wednesdays, while in some malls they are only allowed in on Wednesday mornings.

Asharq al-Awsat spoke to a few young men in front of one of the malls. Waleed, 18 years old, told us about new ways that he had concocted to enter these malls despite the new rules. He explained that, “At the times of prayers, the men of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice order the shopkeepers to close their shops and go the mosque which is usually situated on the ground floor of the mall or next to the mall. My friends and I go to the mosque and hide, slipping in between the hundreds of shopkeepers who return to the mall to re-open their shops after prayers. We enter amongst the crowd.”

Waleed told us of a difficult situation that he found himself in. “I once asked a young man who had come to one of the malls with his family (young men with their families are admitted) to help me get in to the mall. The young man who appreciated my request allowed me to walk with him and his family until we reached the doors of the mall. As we were entering, however, the security guard who had seen me before asked the young man about me. As the young man was telling the guard that I was with the family, his old mother pointed to me and said, “My son, who is this boy?” I was caught and kicked out immediately.”

By Don Feder
www.frontpagemag.com

A committee appointed by the British government, composed of Muslims, wants the nation to scrap its Holocaust Memorial Day, in the name of inclusiveness and sensitivity. No word yet on whether they also want to eliminate Passover — said to be insensitive to Egyptians.

The committee recommends replacing the observance (started in 2001 and held annually on January 27) with a Genocide (a.k.a., Victimhood) Day, which would recognize the alleged mass murder of Muslims in “Palestine,” Chechnya, Bosnia, and wherever else followers of the Religion of Peace have come into conflict with the accursed infidel.

In making its case for inclusiveness, the committee somehow neglected to mention the many victims of Muslim mayhem — Armenians, Sudanese Christians, Kosovar Serbs (ethnically cleansed in the wake of NATO�s war on Yugoslavia), and Hindus — to name but a few. If an Arab stubbed his toe on the boot of a Christian knight sometime in the 11th century, it�s a crime against humanity that must be memorialized throughout the ages, according to the imams. On the other hand, the slaughter of infidels is seen as the will of Allah, and worthy of a Heavenly reward.

The committee maintains that Britain�s Holocaust Memorial Day fuels feelings of isolation and alienation among Muslim youth. And, well, to have a special commemoration of the systematic slaughter of one in every three Jews on earth (in an effort to annihilate an entire people), is grossly unfair, the committee suggests.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, cautions: “We can never have double standards in terms of human life. Muslims feel hurt and excluded that their lives are not equally valuable to those lives lost in the Holocaust time.”

Perhaps Sir Iqbal also believes that 9/11 memorials should pay homage to the Muslims in the planes, as well as the infidels in the office buildings — so that his coreligionists won�t feel that their lives have less meaning.

To understand the obscenity of Iqbal�s equation of the Holocaust with casualties in the aforesaid armed conflicts, consider the Muslims favorite “genocide”: that supposedly inflicted on the Palestinians.

Since the onset of the latest Intifada (started and maintained by Muslims), 4,000 Palestinians have died, out of a population of more than 1 million. Most were combatants. At the same time, almost 1,000st 1,000
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Štetje svetopisemskih vrstic se začne z ¹! Vrstica ⁰ ne obstaja!

WP-Bible plugin Israelis have lost their lives — overwhelmingly civilians, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Palestinian society celebrates jihad and suicide bombings. Israeli society unilaterally relinquishes territory in its quest for peace.

For the Palestinian/Holocaust analogy to be valid, Israel would have to be operating death camps — herding naked Muslims into gas chambers and burning their remains in crematoria. And Jerusalem would have to have slaughtered every third Palestinian in the world.

Instead the Palestinian population has increased dramatically — as has their life expectancy and standard of living — since Israel came into possession of the territory they inhabit at the end of the Six-Days War. To put it in Shakespearean terms, genocide should be made of sterner stuff.

Muslims can�t stand the thought of Holocaust commemorations, because, with certain honorable exceptions, Islam�s attitudes toward the Jews frequently mirror those of the Nazi killers.

Islamic polemicists have three responses to the destruction of European Jewry: 1) It never happened; 2) It happened, but the numbers are grossly exaggerated, and Zionist leaders collaborated with the Nazis; and 3) It happened, and the Jews, those enemies of humanity, had it coming.

Mahmoud Abbas, capo mafioso of the Palestinian Authority and renowned moderate, is the author of a 1983 book entitled, The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and the Zionist Movement. In it, the first president of Palestine (if Washington has its way) maintains that Hitler killed “only a few hundred thousand Jews,” not six million. Moreover, the Zionist leadership “was a partner in the slaughter of the Jews” — supposedly to create sympathy for the Jews, thus facilitating the creation of the Jewish state.

Holocaust denial is rampant in the Muslim world.

• In 1964, then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nassar (who precipitated the Six-Days War) insisted:, “No one…takes seriously the lie about six million Jews who were murdered.”
• In 2000, a columnist for The Syria Times wrote, “The most famous myth is that of the so-called Holocaust� We strongly believe that gas chambers were not used for burning (sic.) Jews.”
• Also in 2000, Sheikh Adel Bin Ahmad Bana�ma, a Saudi religious authority speaking at a Jeddah mosque, charged that Jews “disseminate everywhere the lie of the Holocaust and claim that Hitler killed six million Jews in gas chambers�This is pure falsehood.”
• A year later, Palestinian religious leader Sheikh Ibrahim Mahdi declared, “One of the Jews� evil deeds has come to be called the Holocaust.” However, the Sheikh insisted, it has been irrefutably proven that “this crime, carried out against some of the Jews, was planned by the Jews� leaders.”

Like other Holocaust-deniers, those of the Islamic world aren�t just flat-Earth cranks, but virulent anti-Semites. Except for a handful of European skinheads and Aryan Nation types holed up in Idaho, The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion is still taken seriously only among Muslims — where it�s the Harry Potter of Middle East publishing.

This Czarist forgery (which purports to expose a Jewish conspiracy to control humanity) is ubiquitous in jihad land. Saudi Arabia�s late King Faisal often gave copies to foreign visitors. Yasser Arafat was a fan. Arab periodicals quote it religiously, to demonstrate the perfidy of the Jews. In 2002, Egyptian television broadcast a 41-episode, dramatized version of The Protocols, entitled. “Horseman Without A Horse.”

The roots of Islamic anti-Semitism run deep. Mohammed never forgave the Jews for rejecting his message. After he came to power, Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula were converted by the sword, or massacred. The Koran is rife with the Prophet�s disdain for Jews. (He called them descendants of apes and pigs.) Alongside this are calls to fight the Jews, who are indicted as the enemies of Allah.

Over the centuries, this theological anti-Semitism has evolved into a conviction that Jews are the repositories of evil in the world and Islam�s principal enemies.

It�s not surprising that the resurgence of widespread anti-Semitism on the European continent, after years of quiescence, parallels the influx of Middle East Muslims.

When Pope John Paul II paid a state visit to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in 2001, he must have thought he�d stepped off the plane and into a Nuremberg rally. In welcoming the pontiff, Assad proclaimed, “They [the Jews] try to kill all the principles of divine faiths with the same mentality of betraying Jesus Christ and torturing Him, and in the same way that they tried to commit treachery against the Prophet Mohammed.”

One who took the Prophet�s call to its logical conclusion was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem before World War II. The mufti spent the war years in Berlin as an honored guest of Adolf Hitler.

Working from his office in the capital of the Third Reich, al-Husseini devoted himself to a Nazi victory, recruiting spies to serve in the Middle East and raising a Bosnian Muslim division of the Waffen SS. Described at Nuremberg as one of Eichmann�s best friends, the mufti even visited Auschwitz and urged those who ran the gas chambers to “work more diligently.”

In a radio broadcast from Berlin on November 2, 1943r 2, 1943
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WP-Bible plugin, Hitler�s partner in genocide condemned the Jews in language that echoed Mein Kampf : “The overwhelming egotism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God�s chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other people are animals” is the reason “[t]hey cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals�The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews.”

After the war, the mufti met a young Yassar Arafat in Cairo, and the torch was passed to the next generation of Islamo-fascists. (Arafat often referred to the Nazi henchman as “our hero al-Husseini.”)

In his book, The Myth of Hitler�s Pope, Rabbi David Dalin discloses, “Arafat continued the mufti�s Nazi legacy by recruiting Nazis and neo-Nazis for Fatah and the PLO. In 1969, for example, the PLO recruited two former Nazi instructors, Erich Altern, a leader of the Gestapo�s Jewish affairs section, and Willy Berner, an SS officer in the Mauthausen extermination camp. Another former Nazi, Johann Schuller, was found supplying arms to Fatah.”

There are unavoidable parallels between Nazis and Islamists. Both adhere to totalitarian ideologies (though one is disguised as a religion); each group trains its adherents to kill without compunction and to show mercy to neither the young nor old; both nurse historical grudges and long for a settling of accounts; and each see Jews as the principal obstacle to the achievement of its utopian vision.

Of course, British Muslims are offended by Holocaust Memorials. While Nazism was a European phenomenon, post-World War II Hitler wannabes are found almost exclusively in the Arab and Muslim world. After the fall of Berlin, the center of anti-Semitic agitation shifted to Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh, and Ramallah.

If the Blair government is really in an appeasement mode, it could balance Holocaust Memorial Day — and lessen the awful sense of alienation among Muslim youth — with a Hajj Amin al-Husseini Appreciation Day.

By Joshua Muravchik
for The Los Angeles Times

The most shocking outcome of the recent U.N. summit was the failure, once again, of the world organization to take a definitive stand against terrorism. It was scarcely surprising that the 191 member-states could not come to agreement on adding members to the Security Council or on sweeping management reforms or on foreign aid, however disappointing these failures were to some. But a long-overdue declaration on terrorism had seemed well within reach.

That it was needed in the first place will surprise many. The sad fact is that the U.N. has never spoken clearly on this issue, thanks to the stubborn efforts of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, made up of 56 states � nearly 30% of the U.N.’s membership.

After 9/11, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan took it upon himself to secure a blanket condemnation of terrorism, but it was beaten back by the OIC. Last year, after the attack that killed hundreds of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia, Annan tried to get a resolution of this kind through the Security Council but was forced to settle for equivocal language in order to secure the votes of OIC members Pakistan and Algeria.

A proposed U.N. convention against terrorism has been stalled since 1997. The holdup? How to define terrorism. But this is nothing more than a semantic trick. The Islamic states insist that terrorism must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose. Putting a bomb in a market or train or bus is not an act of terrorism, they say, if it is done for a righteous purpose; namely national liberation or resistance to occupation.

To say there is a problem of definition is to focus on a word. The real question is whether it is ever legitimate to target women, children and other noncombatants. For the Islamic states, the answer is yes.

Not only have they succeeded in blocking anti-terror resolutions, they have secured votes endorsing their approach. In 1970, the General Assembly adopted a resolution “reaffirm[ing] � the legitimacy of the struggle of the colonial peoples and peoples under alien domination to exercise their right to self-determination and independence by all the necessary means at their disposal.” This has been repeated several times by the General Assembly and the Commission on Human Rights. Everyone understands that the last phrase is a euphemism for terrorism.

Still, it had seemed that in the aftermath of 9/11, the bombings in Bali, Madrid and London and the shootings in Beslan, not to mention the continuing carnage in Iraq and Israel, that the time had come to turn a new page. In 2004, the U.N.’s High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change proposed to cut the Gordian knot by having the U.N. embrace this common-sense language: “Any action constitutes terrorism if it is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.”

This proposal apparently enjoyed the support of the panel’s two key Islamic representatives, Nafis Sadik of Pakistan and Amr Moussa of Egypt, who is the secretary-general of the Arab League. Annan embraced this language and included it in the proposals he sent to last week’s summit. With Annan and the U.S. representatives working together, supported by other Western diplomats, and with Moussa having already signed on, it looked as if the new language would sail through.

But then Islamic states again dug in their heels, and these words were stripped out of the final document. In its place was a ringing denunciation of terrorism, which, however, leaves Islamic leaders free to insist, as leading Sunni theologian Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi did recently, that bombings of civilians in places such as Israel and Iraq carried out to “resist occupation” are not covered by this resolution because they do not amount to terrorism.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns claimed victory nonetheless because we had at least blocked an explicit reiteration of the U.N.’s support for terrorism. “Sometimes in diplomacy, defeating negative measures is a very important achievement,” he said.

If blocking yet another pro-terror resolution is an achievement by U.N. standards, then the institution’s moral corruption may prove harder to cure than the material corruption so much at the center of attention.

By Robert Spencer
www.frontpagemagazine.com

Pigs are disappearing all over England, but not because of some porcine variant of Mad Cow Disease: rather, the most implacable foe of the swine is turning out to be multiculturalism.

The latest assault came in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, where employees were told that they were no longer allowed to have any representations of pigs at their desks. Some had little porcine porcelain figurines. Others had toys or calendars of cute little pigs. One had a tissue box depicting Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. All of this had to go, not because of new some new anti-kitsch ordinance, but because Muslims might be offended � particularly now, what with Ramadan beginning. How could a pious Muslim in the Dudley Council, West Midlands benefits department redouble his efforts to conform his life to the will of Allah with all these�pigs staring him in the face? It was an insult!

This was not the first anti-pig initiative in Britain. In Derby, Muslims took offense at plans to restore the statue of the Florentine Boar, which had stood in the Derby Park for over a hundred years before it was decapitated by a German bomb in 1942. Recent plans to rebuild the Boar�s head ran into resistance from local Muslims. Suman Gupta, a local Council member, warned: �If the statue of the boar is put back at the Arboretum I have been told that it will not be there the next day, or at least it won�t be in the same condition the next day at least. We should not have the boar because it is offensive to some of the groups in the immediate area.� However, after more than 2,000 locals signed petitions in favor of the Boar, local authorities decided to bend to public opinion and go ahead with their original plans to restore the statue.

Elsewhere in England pigs did not fare so well. In March 2003, Barbara Harris, head teacher at Park Road Junior Infant and Nursery School in Batley, West Yorkshire, banned stories mentioning pigs. �Recently,� Harris explained, �I have been aware of an occasion where young Muslim children in class were read stories about pigs. We try to be sensitive to the fact that for Muslims talk of pigs is offensive.� Harris didn�t mention whether or not she intended to allow Muslim students to possess copies of the Qur�an at the school, despite its repeated mention of how Allah cursed Jews and turned them into apes and pigs (2:62-65; 5:59-60; 7:166).

Why have pigs become so unpopular in Britain? Mahbubur Rahman, a Muslim Councillor in West Midlands, summed it up in explaining why the toy pigs had to go: �It�s a tolerance,� he said, �of people�s beliefs.�

How�s that again? It�s �a tolerance of people�s beliefs� to deny to others the right to display harmless pictures and figurines? Mahbubur Rahman seems unacquainted with the dictum, widely attributed to Voltaire, that �I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.� Yet this is what tolerance really is: the acceptance of the fact that in a free society, some will do and say things of which one may disapprove, and that one has no consequent right to command or force them to stop. If this is not recognized in any given society, that society is not in fact free at all � any more than Henry Ford�s offer that �You can have a car in any color you want, as long as it�s black� represented a genuine choice.

For Rahman instead to equate a British capitulation to Muslim sensibilities with tolerance indicates that he has confused Islamic supremacism with tolerance. This is perhaps not surprising given the near-universal tendency among Muslims and non-Muslims alike to laud Medieval Muslim Spain as a proto-multiculturalist paradise of tolerance, when actually it was a paradise for Islamic supremacists. Christians and Jews lived in harmony with Muslims only as inferiors. Historian Kenneth Baxter Wolf notes that the after the Muslim conquest, the conquerors imposed new laws �aimed at limiting those aspects of the Christian cult which seemed to compromise the dominant position of Islam.� After enumerating a standard list of the laws restricting non-Muslims (dhimmis) � no building of new churches, no holding authority over Muslims, distinctive clothing, etc. � he adds: �Aside from such cultic restrictions most of the laws were simply designed to underscore the position of the dimm�s as second-class citizens.�

Multiculturalism? Tolerance? Not by any modern standard. And neither are the disappearing pigs of Great Britain.