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By Andrea Peyser, www.NYPost.com

A mosque rises over Ground Zero. And fed-up New Yorkers are crying, “No!”

A chorus of critics — from neighbors to those who lost loved ones on 9/11 to me — feel as if they’ve received a swift kick in the teeth.

Plans are under way for a Muslim house of worship, topped by a 13-story cultural center with a swimming pool, in a building damaged by the fuselage of a jet flown by extremists into the World Trade Center.

The opening date shall live in infamy: Sept. 11, 2011. The 10th anniversary of the day a hole was punched in the city’s heart.

How the devil did this happen?

Plans to bring what one critic calls a “monster mosque” to the site of the old Burlington Coat Factory building, at a cost expected to top $100 million, moved along for months without a peep. All of a sudden, even members of the community board that stupidly green-lighted the mosque this month are tearing their hair out.

Paul Sipos, member of Community Board 1, said a mosque is a fine idea — someplace else.

“If the Japanese decided to open a cultural center across from Pearl Harbor, that would be insensitive,” Sipos told me. “If the Germans opened a Bach choral society across from Auschwitz, even after all these years, that would be an insensitive setting. I have absolutely nothing against Islam. I just think: Why there?”

Why, indeed.

A rally against the mosque is planned for June 6, D-Day, by the human-rights group Stop Islamicization of America. Executive director Pamela Geller said, “What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack? Any decent American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn’t dream of such an insult. It’s a stab in the eye of America.”

Called Cordoba House, the mosque and center is the brainchild of the American Society for Muslim Advancement. Executive director Daisy Khan insists it’s staying put.

“For us, it’s a symbol, a platform that will give voice to the silent majority of Muslims who suffer at the hands of extremists. A center will show that Muslims will be part of rebuilding lower Manhattan,” said Khan, adding that Cordoba will be open to everyone.

“We were pleased to see that the community welcomed us as an asset to lower Manhattan,” she added. “The community board approved it.”

Not so fast.

The Financial District Committee of Community Board 1 seems to have gotten ensnared in a public-relations ploy by mosque-makers. At a May 5 meeting, the committee gave the project an enthusiastic thumbs-up. But boards have zero say over religious institutions.

Board chair Julie Menin, blind-sided by the move, predicts “this will be overturned by the full board” later this month.

But the damage is done.

Wounds that have yet to heal are now opening, as mosque opponents are branded as bigots.

“The worst tendency is the knee-jerk, emotional, angry, hateful response to acts of violence and war,” said Donna Marsh O’Connor, who lost daughter Vanessa on 9/11 and supports the mosque. “I think it’s racist tendencies.”

Many more feel like Bill Doyle — doubly maimed as he’s forced to defend himself against charges of prejudice.

“I’m not a bigot. What I’m frightful about is, it’s almost going to be another protest zone. A meeting place for radicals,” said Doyle, whose son, Joseph, was murdered on 9/11.

“It’s a slap in our face!” said Nelly Braginsky, who lost son Alexander.

Unclear is how the mosque will raise the $100 million-plus it needs.

“We would be seeking funding from anyone who would help,” Khan told me. “Seeking maybe some bonds or something like that.” At the May 5 community board meeting, she displayed a sign with names like “Rockefeller Brothers Fund” and “Ford Foundation,” which observers believed meant money is coming from those organizations. But Khan says those groups merely gave money in the past, and no funding is yet in place.

There are many questions about the Ground Zero mosque. But just one answer.

Move it away.

Masked Pakistani pro-Taliban militants are seen in Pakistan in a 2008 file photo. Credit: Reuters/Adil Khan

(Reuters) – Pakistani Taliban militants have warned America that it will soon “burn” while calling for Pakistan’s rulers to be overthrown for following “America’s agenda”.

The United States is convinced Pakistani Taliban militants allied with al-Qaeda and operating out of northwestern Pakistani border regions were behind an attempted car-bomb attack in New York’s Times Square on May 1.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing. If confirmed, it would be the first time their members were involved in an attempted attack in the West.

A Pakistani Taliban spokesman, in a video message obtained by Reuters, repeated a claim of responsibility, saying:

“The movement proved what America could not have even imagined … It was just an explosive-laden vehicle which did not explode.

“But it (America) will see, all imperialist forces will see that it will explode also and America will also burn,” said the spokesman, Azim Tariq, sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of a rock face and speaking in Urdu.

America’s allies would meet the same fate, he said.

“They can neither eliminate the mujahideen nor jihad, nor they can harm Islam,” he said, referring to Muslim holy warriors and holy war.

“Instead, they will have to die themselves, they will be burned themselves, they will have to dig their own graves,” said the spokesman, sporting a long black beard and turban.

Pakistan has been battling its homegrown Taliban, who are allied with the Afghan Taliban, and who have been accused of numerous suicide bombings killing hundreds of people across the nuclear-armed country.

But Tariq denied responsibility for bombings in public places, saying authorities wanted to malign the militants with such attacks.

Tariq spoke of fighting in various places in Pakistan saying his men were holding their own and the security forces, which he said were being paid with U.S. aid money, were suffering significant losses.

“They are being defeated,” he said.

“JIHAD WILL CONTINUE”

Tariq did not refer specifically to any attacks abroad, but said mujahideen “wherever they were, in any part of the world” were supporting each other.

Analysts have long doubted the Pakistani Taliban, operating out of remote mountains along the Afghan border, had the sophistication to plan and execute a bomb attack in a Western country on their own.

They can, however, support and train people who are able to travel to the West and carry out attacks. Tariq said the Pakistani people were being sacrificed for the sake of the United States by their own government, which he called un-Islamic.

“Now is a time to remove them from power as soon as possible. All their policies are anti-Islam, anti-people,” he said.

“Jihad will continue as long as the ruling coterie and the unholy army continue to follow the American agenda,” he said.

Pakistan has been cooperating with U.S. investigators trying to determine what links the Pakistani-American man suspected of carrying out the attempted Times Square bombing, Faisal Shahzad, had with militants in Pakistan.

The Washington Post reported that Pakistani authorities had arrested a man linked to the Pakistani Taliban who said he helped Shahzad travel to northwest Pakistan for bomb-making training.

It was not clear if the newspaper was referring to a man officials said earlier was detained in the southern city of Karachi on May 4.

The government has denied that any arrests have been made in connection with the case but security officials said the man held in Karachi, Mohammad Rehan, was suspected of having taken Shahzad to northwest Pakistan to link up with militants.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said despite Pakistan’s recent improved efforts to tackle militants, it must do more.

“We think that there is more that has to be done and we do fear the consequences of a successful attack that can be traced back to Pakistan,” she said.

By Barbara Kay, PajamasMedia.com

Whether they admit it or not, virtually all Westerners hate the nikab and burka for the anti-democratic ideology and misogynistic gender relations they signify. Many are increasingly willing to say so.

Why does political correctness fall away when it comes to the nikab? Because other Islamist inroads, like sharia (Islamic law) banking, happen offstage, so to speak. They are not “seen” by the public. But the nikab is open to the collective public gaze. Individuals responding to their own discomfort observe that discomfort mirrored in other people’s faces, which in turn emboldens them to protest. Politicians know grassroots support when they see it and several Western leaders have seized the moment for legislating partial or full nikab bans.

Parallel to the parliamentary efforts now advancing in France and Belgium, Quebec recently tabled a new law, Bill 94, which will ban the nikab — or any face cover — when extending and receiving public services in such institutions as courts, hospitals, schools, and licensing bureaus.

It is no accident that Quebec is leading the way in North America on this file. Quebec, apart from multicultural Montreal and its diffuse northern native populations, is the last bastion of ethnic homogeneity on the continent (with a not-unrelated tendency amongst ethnic Québécois to politically incorrect candor), a province where obsession with cultural preservation drives the political agenda.

Since the Quiet Revolution of Quebec in the 1960s, cultural preservation has become synonymous with the linguistic hegemony of French. But Catholicism, however vestigial in terms of practice and influence, still rallies the loyalty of Québécois in the face of perceived challenges to their cultural security.

Because the controlling hand of the Catholic Church fell particularly heavily on women in the past, Quebec is also the most militantly feminist of Canadian provinces. Female politicians exert a powerful influence over all social and cultural policies and disbursements here. The galling sight of veiled, depersonalized women in this women’s rights stronghold arouses far more animus than any multiculturalist ideal can counter.

The decisive move, approved by 95% of Quebecers (a rare moment of political accord uniting federalists and nationalists) and 75% of all Canadians, followed a cultural tipping point, arrived at in November 2009, when a nikab-clad Egyptian woman, Naema Ahmed, was expelled from a government-run French class. This was done for pedagogical reasons, not religious ones; hostile to suggested compromises in advancing phonological competencies for which the teacher’s direct observation of her mouth is crucial, she exhausted the administration’s patience. Notable in her case, however, is the fact that the school felt so hamstrung by political correctness and dithered so long, the government stepped in to order the expulsion.

Ahmed’s indifference to the sensibilities of her classmates and her general belligerence were helpful in reinforcing the public’s impression that she was making a political rather than a religious statement. That she later tried to re-enroll, still veiled, in another French course — unsuccessfully — and promptly filed a complaint with a human rights commission gives the whole caper the earmarks of an Islamist shot across the bow.

Ahmed’s rebarbative attitude happily precluded the kind of public sympathy elicited by another Montreal case in which a veiled Indian Muslim woman, “Aisha,” was removed from a French course. Aisha tried to cooperate and was heartbroken, not angry, when expelled. Her story served to make a reasonable law seem draconian to sentimentalism-driven commentators.

Quebec has been poised for some time to draw a line in the unstable sands of “reasonable accommodation.” Justifying the Ahmed expulsion, Quebec immigration minister Yolande James was forthright in making it plain that “if you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values. We want to see your face.”

The road to Bill 94 can be said to begin in Hérouxville, Quebec, a tiny rural hamlet of 1,300 souls, with nary a nikab in sight, or likely to be. In January 2007, following a number of controversial cases involving the reasonable accommodation of religious sensibilities in Montreal, one of its outspoken councilors, André Drouin, published a “code of conduct” for immigrants including bans on the stoning of women and female circumcision, while privileging in public institutions the Christian symbols that are familiar to the 95% of Quebecers who identify themselves as Catholics. The retired engineer was pilloried as a racist at the time, but today he feels vindicated by Bill 94. The manifesto served to reveal the fault lines between elite theorists and the population, as well as to kindle passionate debate on the limits of reasonable accommodation.

Embarrassed by the worldwide attention the manifesto received, with its attendant images of Quebec as a redneck backwater, Premier Jean Charest instituted the costly ($7 million) yearlong Bouchard-Taylor commission in February 2007, its mandate to investigate and make recommendations on the treatment of religious minorities in Quebec. The expressed goal was to avoid French-style minority ghettoization and encourage integration.

The commission, headed by earnestly paternalistic academic multiculturalists who were totally out of sync with the mood of the population and visibly affronted during public hearings by outspoken expressions of resentment against religious minorities — chiefly Hasidim and Muslims — arrived at their foreordained conclusion that Quebec culture was not threatened by minorities and that their pet concept, “interculturalism,” which maximizes tolerance for individual choices, deserved further study. The public was not buying any of it.

Is Quebec racist? Polls indicate Quebecers admit to racist attitudes disproportionately to other Canadians, but there is no hate crime evidence to suggest heritage Québécois are more racist in practice than other provinces. Is Quebec xenophobic? Yes, somewhat, although it is a mild version that asserts itself in grumbling, not in organized vituperation, vandalism, or violence.

Quebec is a distinct society, culturally isolated in North America and understandably defensive around realistic threats of cultural dilution. Elevated xenophobia relative to other provinces has not, however, made inroads on Quebec’s record as a peaceful, democratic, and behaviorally tolerant society.

Xenophobia is reflexively condemned as a cultural sin amongst our intellectual bien-pensants (conformists). But what if another cultural group really is out to dominate your own group? In that case, benign xenophobia — the kind that aligned with feminism to produce Quebec’s Bill 94 — is what one might call an atout, a trump card in the grim cultural war games to which all democratic societies have been co-opted, where victories that do no harm to democracy, like the nikab ban, are few and should be regarded as precious.

By Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, www.TabletMag.com

11th century No. African Koran in the British Museum

Over the past 15 years, the political conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs has been reframed as a religious war in which leaders from Yasser Arafat to Hassan Nasrallah to Osama bin Laden have appealed to the authority of the Koran to support their goal of eliminating the State of Israel. The authority of the Koran has also been cited in support of a revisionist history that seeks to deny the historical connection of the Jewish people to the city of Jerusalem and to its holiest sites, including the Temple Mount. Ignorant of what the Koran actually says about Jerusalem, Western reporters have recently tended to ignore archaeological and historical evidence and give equal weight to the supposedly competing religious narratives of Jews and Muslims: Jews are said to believe that there was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, while the Koran states that the historical and religious claims of the Jews are false.

The transformation of a political conflict over land into a religious war is one of the most dangerous and frightening goals of radical Islamist politicians—but it has nothing to do with the Koran.

Here the Italian Muslim communal leader and Koranic scholar Sheik Abdul Hadi Palazzi examines what the Koran says about the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. Far from negating the historical claims of a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Koran actually confirms Jewish accounts of the building of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem and supports the biblical claim that the land of Israel was given to the Jews by God.

1. Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem

In August 2002, the Yasser Arafat-appointed “mufti of Jerusalem and the Holy Land,” Ikrima Sabri, told the Western media that “there is not even the smallest indication of the existence of a Jewish temple in Jerusalem in the past. In the whole city, there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish history.” By saying this, he confirmed what Arafat had already said to the London-based Arabic paper al-Hayat and reportedly repeated to Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak at Camp David: “Archaeologists have not found a single stone proving that the Temple of Solomon was there because historically the Temple was not in Palestine.”

In making such statements, Sabri and Arafat not only blatantly denied history, archaeology, and the teachings of the Bible, but they also denied the words of the Koran. From the time of the Revelation of the Noble Koran until recently, all Muslims unanimously accepted that the Haram as-Sharif, or Holy Esplanade, on which the Dome of the Rock today stands is the same place where Solomon’s and Zorobabel’s Temples once stood. As a matter of fact, Haram as-Sharif, the Sacred Area of Temple Mount, includes a place called Solomon’s Standpoint, or Maqam Sulayman—according to the Muslim tradition, Solomon used to sit there and supplicate while Hiram’s masons were engaged in building the Temple. From that same place the Muslim tradition says that Solomon prayed to dedicate the House once it was completed and to intercede for those who will approach it for worshiping.

Accepting that Solomon’s Temple was in Jerusalem is compulsory for every Muslim believer, because that is what the Koran and the Islamic oral tradition, called the Sunnah, teach.

In the Koran, Sura Bani Isra’il (the Chapter of the Children of Israel), verses 1-7, we find a description of Solomon’s Temple and of how it was destroyed twice by the enemies of the Jewish people:

Glory to Him Who caused His servant [Mohammed] to travel by night from Masjid al-Haram [in Mecca] to Masjid al-Aqsa [in Jerusalem] whose precincts We did bless, in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who heareth and seeth everything. We gave Moses the Book [Torah], and made it a Guide to the Children of Israel, commanding: ‘Take not other than Me as Disposer of your affairs.’ O ye that are the offspring of those whom We carried [in the Ark] with Noah, verily he was a devotee most grateful. And We warned the Children of Israel in the Book, that twice would they do mischief on the earth and twice be elated with mighty arrogance. When the first of the warnings came to pass, We sent against you Our creatures [Babylonians], given to terrible warfare: they entered the very inmost parts of your homes, and thus the first warning was fulfilled. Then We did grant you the return as against them; We gave you increase in resources and sons and made you abundant in human power. If ye did well, ye did well for yourselves; if ye did evil, [ye did it] against yourselves. So when the second of the warnings came to pass, [We permitted your enemies] to disfigure your faces, and to enter your Temple as they entered it once before, and to bring to destruction all that fell into their power.

Imam Abu Abdullah al-Qurtubi, who lived from 1214 to 1273 and was one of the most authoritative medieval Koranic annotators, in his Al-Jami’ li Ahkam il-Qur’an, or Encyclopedia of Koranic Rules, explains the context (asbab) of the verses by mentioning among other sources the authentic Prophetic tradition (hadith). He wrote:

Hudhayfah Ibn al-Yaman asked the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him:

‘I traveled more than once to Jerusalem, but saw no Temple standing there. What is the reason?’

The Prophet Muhammad replied:

‘Verily Solomon son of David raised Bayt al-Maqdis [i.e., Beth ha-Mikdash, the First Temple] with gold and silver, with rubies and emeralds, and Allah caused human beings and spirits to work under his command, until the raising of the House was completed. Afterward, a Babylonian King destroyed Bayt al-Maqdis and brought its treasures to the land of Babylonia, until a King of Persia defeated him and ransomed the Children of Israel. They rebuilt Bayt al-Maqdis for the second time [the Second Temple], until it was destroyed for the second time by an army led by a Roman Emperor.’

One can easily verify that Jewish and Muslim traditional sources are confirming each other: The Temple was built by Solomon and destroyed by a Babylonian king. A Persian king later defeated the Babylonians and ransomed the Jews, permitting them to return to the Land of Israel. The Temple was rebuilt but afterward was destroyed by the Romans. This Temple stood in the area referred to as Beth haMikdash in Hebrew and Bayt al-Maqdis in Arabic. Those political and pseudo-religious Palestinian leaders who claim that “there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem” are surely aware that, in order to support their political claims, they are compelled to lie, hide sources, and contradict the letter of the Koran and the Islamic tradition.

An earlier Koranic exegete and jurist, Imam Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari, who lived from 838 to 923, writes in his Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, or History of Prophets and Kings, that the same sacred area was the place where Jacob had his vision of the Heavenly Ladder:

When Jacob awoke he felt blissful from what he had seen in his trustful dream and vowed, for God’s sake that, if he returned to his family safely, he would build there a Temple for the Almighty. He also vowed to perpetual charity one tenth of his property for the sake of God. He poured oil on the Stone so as to recognize it and called the place Bayt El, which means ‘the House of God.’ It became the location of Jerusalem later.

In Jerusalem on a huge Rock, Solomon son of David built a beautiful Temple to expand the worship of God. Today on the base of that Temple stands the Dome of the Rock.

Historical negation of Jewish and Islamic sources concerning Jerusalem is recent and does not predate the PLO and its political propaganda. In 1932, during the British Mandate period, the Supreme Muslim Council of Jerusalem published a Brief Guide to Haram as-Sharif for Muslim pilgrims, written in English. “This site is one of the oldest in the world,” it says. “Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.”

Not only were Arafat’s minions and heirs in Jerusalem attempting to rewrite the history of Arabs and Jews in the region as told by others; they were also attempting to rewrite the history of Arabs and Jews in the region as told by Islamic Arab sources, too.

2. Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel

The Biblical notion that God granted the land of Canaan to the Children of Israel is confirmed by the Koran. In the Sura of Jonah, verse 93, we read:

We settled the Children of Israel in a beautiful dwelling-place, and provided for them sustenance of the best.

In Sura al-Ahraf (of the Barrier), verse 137, we read:

We made a people considered weak inheritors of the Land in both Eastern and Western side [of the Jordan river] whereon we sent down Our blessings. The fair promise of thy Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel, because they had patience and constancy, and We leveled to the ground the great works and fine buildings which Pharaoh and his people erected.

Sura al Maidah (the Table), verse 21, is the only passage in which the Holy Land is mentioned by that title (al-Ard al-Muqaddas). It refers to the words Moses spoke to the descendants of Isaac:

Remember Moses said To his people: ‘O my People, call in remembrance the favor of God unto you, when He produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave You what He had not given To any other among the peoples. O my people! Enter The Holy Land which God hath written for you, and turn not back ignominiously [to this heritage of yours], for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.

In a commentary of Imam Abu al-Qasim Mahmud al-Zamakshari, who lived from 1074 to 1144, titled al-Kashaf, or The Revealer, we read the following explanation:

As for the borders of ‘the Holy Land,’ some scholars says its northern border is the Mount [Hermon] and its surroundings, and for others in also includes a part of the Land of Sham [the Golan]. Others say it extends from the territory of the Philistines [Gaza] until Damascus and a part of Urvum. Some say that God presented to Abraham this Land as an inheritance for his children when he went up to the mountain and said to him: ‘Look around as far as your gaze can reach. Every place reached by your eyes will be theirs.’ The Holy Temple was the dwelling place of the prophets and the residence of the believers. ‘God hath written for you’ means ‘God swore it and wrote in the Divine Tablets of Predestination: that it is yours, belongs to your people and do not turn back from it. Do not be afraid of the Philistine giants who live there.

A similar note is also found in a commentary of Abdallah ibn ‘Umar al-Qadi al-Baidawi, who lived from 1226 to 1260, titled Asrar ut-Tanzil wa Asrar ut-Ta’wil, or The Secrets of Revelation and the Secrets of Interpretation.

3. Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was never abolished

Moreover, the Koran explicitly refers to the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel before the Last Judgment when it says in the Sura of the Children of Israel, verse 104:

And thereafter We [God] said to the Children of Israel: ‘Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd.’

Therefore, from an Islamic point of view, Israel is the legitimate owner of the land God deeded to her and whose borders were defined by Abraham in Genesis.

All recent claims according to which the “assignment of the Land of Israel to the Jewish people was withdrawn or abrogated” are bereft of scriptural or traditional evidence. The Koran mentions the territory that God assigned to the Jewish people, but neither it nor the traditional Islamic sources mention a supposed withdrawal.

Imam al-Qurtubi explains in al-Jami that the last promise concerning the return of the Jewish people “together in a mingled crowd” after the destruction of the Second Temple will be a sign that precedes the coming of the Messiah.

The Koran only mentions a double period of mischief and a double punishment with exile from the Land. God says:

We warned the Children of Israel in the Book, that TWICE would they do mischief on the earth and TWICE be elated with mighty arrogance.

According to this Koranic proof, the contemporary Zionist rebuilding of the State of Israel—the third entry of the Jews to their divinely appointed land—is not mischief but rather a fulfillment of what Imam az-Zamakshari reminds the Jews: “God swore it and wrote in the Divine Tablets of Predestination: that it is yours, belongs to your people and do not turn back from it.”

By Frida Ghitis, www.philly.com

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Despite much-quoted claims to the contrary, evidence abounds that the sword frequently defeats the pen. If you don’t believe me, come to the bustling street in this city where, in plain daylight four years ago, a man named Mohammed Bouyeri cut the throat of Theo Van Gogh, almost severing his head.

The Dutch-born Bouyeri plunged a knife into Van Gogh’s body, skewering into him a letter threatening to also kill Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fierce critic of Islam who had collaborated with Van Gogh on a film about the Quran. The killer, it seems, did not like the film.

Another, similarly disposed art critic brought up Van Gogh’s name a few days ago in the United States. Writing on the Web site RevolutionMuslim.com, he threatened a fate equal to what befell Van Gogh’s for the creators of South Park, the animated Comedy Central series that makes it a point to offend just about everyone. According to Revolution Muslim, a recent South Park episode depicting the prophet Muhammad (in a bear suit, along with figures from other religions) is a crime punishable by death.

Quoting Islamic scholars, Revolution Muslim explained, “Whoever curses the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) – a Muslim or a non-Muslim – he must be killed and this is the opinion of the general body of Islamic scholars.”

While most Muslims would not shed blood over a comedy show, we have known for a good many years that among the followers of Islam, there are those who would kill anyone – even another Muslim – who offends their religious sensibilities. That is not news.

What we learned from the South Park event, however, is just as troubling. In the face of threats, the bosses at Comedy Central folded like cheap TV trays. Comedy Central heavily censored the cartoon, granting such blackmailers exactly what they want.

Forget land of the free, etc. The channel gave up without even considering a fight.

Comedy Central faux anchorman Jon Stewart recently regaled viewers with a musical number carrying a message to Revolution Muslim. Marveling that the extremists have the chutzpah to live in New York – home of the world’s best Jewish delis – and enjoy American freedoms while threatening South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker and their freedom of expression, Stewart sang a feverish rendition of “Go F- Yourselves,” complete with backup gospel choir.

But Stewart went curiously easy on Comedy Central’s spinelessness. “It’s their right,” he allowed. “The censorship is a decision Comedy Central made to protect their employees.”

Yes, it’s the channel’s right to do so. But that doesn’t make it any less scandalous. Comedy Central should have hired bodyguards for Stone and Parker and aired the episode uncut. That way, Viacom, the rich and powerful corporation that owns Comedy Central, could have really protected them – protected their safety and their freedom of speech and their ability to do their often-hilarious and frequently cringe-worthy work.

It goes without saying – but let’s say it anyway – that nobody is required to watch the show. Not Muslims, not Mormons – whose theology South Park mercilessly mocks. Not Jews, not Christians, not patriotic Americans, who might have seen an episode showing Jesus defecating on the American flag.

The show often goes over the line. Those who find it offensive can change the channel. They can write letters, start boycotts, picket the studios. But death threats are simply not acceptable. Caving in to them is shameful.

Too many times in the West, we have seen powerful media empires behave like craven weaklings. It was Bart Simpson, aptly, who put it best, writing a hundred times on the blackboard: “South Park – We’d stand beside you if we weren’t so scared.”

A few years ago, after extremists threatened (and later attempted) to kill a Danish cartoonist for depicting Muhammad in his work, I saw the artist interviewed on CNN, my once-proud home. When the cartoonist tried to hold up a page with the drawings, CNN almost tackled the camera to the ground to keep the pictures from airing. Cowardice was never so pathetically hilarious.

Theo Van Gogh, whose antics occasionally resembled South Park‘s in their tastelessness, discovered that his pen was no match for a killer’s sword. And yet, the pen – the keyboard, the comedian, and the editorial cartoon; Bart, Cartman, Kyle, and Kenny – actually holds enormous power. To win, however, it needs its backers to show backbone. Too bad South Park‘s have none.

By Baron Bodissey, GatesOfVienna.blogspot.com

The following article is behind the subscription wall at this month’s New Criterion. The text is an appropriate companion to the subtitled video of the documentary Turban and Swastika, so I have taken the liberty of excerpting some of the key paragraphs here.

National Socialism and the Muslim Brotherhood appeared at about the same time — in the 1920s — and shared a central ideological imperative: the extermination of the world’s Jews. The National Socialist dream ended in a Berlin bunker in 1945, but the Muslim Brotherhood dream never died.

It is alive and well today, and is gaining ground on all fronts in ways that Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Haj Amin el-Husseini could never have imagined, thanks to a worldwide petroleum-based economy and the self-immolation of Western Civilization.

The excerpts below are taken from “Anti-Semitic symbiosis” by Sol Stern, which reviews the book Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf:

After the military defeat of Nazi Germany the center of radical Jew-hatred shifted from Europe to the Arab Middle East. The foundation for an Islamic version of Nazi eliminationist anti-Semitism had, in fact, already been created in Egypt and Palestine, right under the noses of the British colonial administration. The Muslim Brotherhood emerged from the war as the largest mass movement in the Arab world, with over one million followers and an armed paramilitary cadre of 40,000. The charismatic preacher Hassan Al-Banna launched the Brotherhood in 1928 as a vehicle for a religious awakening, calling on all Muslims to return to the purity of early Islam by rejecting the corrupting influence of Western political ideas and social customs.

By the 1930s, Al-Banna had found much to emulate in the western totalitarian movements in Germany and Italy. Like the Fascists and Nazis, the Brotherhood claimed to speak for the oppressed working class and the unemployed against predatory Jewish capitalism and British imperialism. To the Koranic narrative depicting the Jews as treacherous enemies, Al-Banna appended the modern Nazi doctrine that “international Jewry” was the spearhead of a worldwide conspiracy to enslave the German Volk as well as the Muslim Umma. Al-Banna arranged for the translation and distribution of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while elements of the Brotherhood’s paramilitary wing volunteered for active duty with the nascent Nazi war machine.

Hitler’s most effective Islamic messenger to the Arabs, however, was the Palestinian Haj Amin el-Husseini. In 1921, the British appointed Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (charged with overseeing the Islamic holy places). He soon became the preeminent Arab leader opposing the British mandatory administration. Some Arab nationalists were drawn to an alliance with Nazi Germany based on the political calculus that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But, for Husseini, it was a matter of deep ideological affinity. Even before Hitler came to power the Mufti expressed his admiration for the Nazis and their solution for the “Jewish problem”—at the time, expulsion from Germany—and sent delegations of young Islamists to Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. Eventually the Mufti took up residence in Berlin, where he played an active role in the wartime extermination of European Jewry.

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By all rights Husseini should have been tried and executed as a war criminal. In June 1946, however, the postwar French government allowed him to escape to Egypt, where he was given asylum by King Farouk. Al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood and other nationalist groups welcomed him as a returning hero. Al-Banna called Husseini a hero who “challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone but Amin Al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”

[…]

We owe it primarily to the German political scientist and journalist Matthias Kuntzel and to the American historian of modern Germany Jeffrey Herf for connecting the historical dots and showing that the concept of “Islamofascism” cannot be dismissed as a glib political epithet. In his path-breaking 2007 book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, Kuntzel argued persuasively that revolutionary anti-Semitism is at the core of twentieth-century Islamism and jihad, that this is no mere coincidence, and that there is a direct line from the Nazi-influenced Muslim Brotherhood and the Grand Mufti to Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the present government of Iran. Herf wrote the forward to Kuntzel’s book, calling attention to the fact that this connection had so far been ignored by most scholars:

Unmistakable echoes of Nazism’s violent, paranoid conspiracy theories about the evil nature and vast destructive power of the Jews have been evident in the ideological tracts and political purposes of radical Islam since it’s crystallization during and after World War II in Egypt. Yet despite the obviousness of these lineages and echoes, many of the fine works of scholarship and government commissions on the subject mention this connection briefly and, in some cases, ignore it completely.
Herf has now written his own study, Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World, that will hopefully make it more difficult for commentators and government officials to ignore the affinities between radical Islam and Nazi eliminationist anti-Semitism. During the war, the Nazi regime distributed millions of copies of printed works and, through short-wave radio, broadcast thousands of hours of ideological propaganda to the Arab world. Herf has gained access to this previously classified record and analyzes the content of the propaganda offensive. He also adds to the existing scholarship on the activities of Husseini and other Arab exiles in Germany during the war years. Herf concludes that although the Nazis expected to win allies among the Arabs based on mutual opposition to the British Empire, they also sought to “extend Nazism’s genocide of the Jews.” The Nazis were aware of the radical Islamist tendencies represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Grand Mufti and this collaboration represented the “diffusion of ideology and of a meeting of hearts and minds that began from very different civilizational starting points.”

By Ron Kampeas, www.jta.org

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When Elie Wiesel says it’s all kosher, it’s good.

For now, anyway.

President Obama capped an intensive two weeks of administration make-nice with Israeli officials and the American Jewish community by hosting Wiesel, the Nobel peace laureate and Holocaust memoirist, for lunch at the White House.

“It was a good kosher lunch,” was the first thing Wiesel pronounced, emerging from the White House to a gaggle of reporters.

And not just the food.

“There were moments of tension,” Wiesel said. “But the tension I think is gone, which is good.”

That echoed Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, who a few days earlier told leaders of the American Jewish Committee that the “slight disagreements are behind us.”

The tension and the “slight” disagreements, of course, were between the United States and Israel — and by extension, the mainstream pro-Israel community — and started March 8, when Israel announced a major housing start in eastern Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden rebuked Israel, but it didn’t stop there. Next came an extended phoned-in dressing down from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and claims by Clinton and other U.S. officials that Israel had “insulted” Biden.

Then, when Netanyahu arrived in Washington to address the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, Obama all but snubbed the Israeli leader, agreeing to meet him only without photo ops.

The pro-Israel community was virtually unified in its reaction: Yes, Netanyahu had screwed up, but this was piling on.

As the recriminations grew more pronounced, so did concerns about the relationship: Did this portend a major shake-up? Was Obama distancing himself from Israel?

In private, Jewish organizational leaders reached out to White House friends and said whatever you’re selling, you need to explain it before “tensions” become a full-fledged “crisis.”

There were signs of that, with messages — some blunt, some oblique — about the dangers of pressing Israel on Jerusalem. The author of one of the messages, in the form of a full-page New York Times ad, was Wiesel.

In response to such rumblings — around the time of Israel Independence Day, mid-to-late April — the Obama administration launched its love assault. If you were a Jewish organization, no matter how particularized, you would get administration face time from Clinton (the American Jewish Committee) through Attorney General Eric Holder (the Anti-Defamation League) down to Chuck Hagel, the co-chairman of Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board (American Friends of Hebrew University.)

Clearly there was a checklist for the speakers:

* Mention that there is “no gap — no gap” (and say it like that) between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security. (Jim Jones, the national security advisor, to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; his deputy, Daniel Shapiro, to the ADL.)

* Repeat, ad infinitum, the administration’s “commitment to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.” (Clinton to the AJC; Dennis Ross, the top White House official handling Iran policy, to the ADL and just about everyone else.

* Make it clear that while resolving the conflict would make it easier to address an array of other issues, the notion that Israel is responsible for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in the region is a calumny. (Robert Gates, the defense secretary, at a news conference with Barak: “No one in this department, in or out of uniform, believes that.” Shapiro to the ADL: “We do not believe this conflict endangers the lives of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.”)

* Resolve to resolve differences “as allies” and don’t forget to criticize the Palestinians as well, for incitement and for recalcitrance in refusing to come to direct talks (proximity talks are resuming this week).

* And explain the fundaments of what is good about the relationship: defense cooperation.

The most pronounced evidence of this approach was in the ADL’s double whammy: The civil rights group got two speeches from two officials, Ross and Shapiro, who had not spoken publicly since taking their jobs in the administration. Each was in a position to go into detail about the details of the defense relationship, Ross handling the Iran perspective, and Shapiro handling Israel and its neighbors.

“We have reinvigorated defense cooperation, including on missile defense, highlighted by the 1,000 U.S. service members who traveled to Israel to participate in the Juniper Cobra military exercises last fall,” Shapiro said. “We have intensive dialogues and exchanges with Israel — in political, military and intelligence channels — on regional security issues and counterterrorism, from which we both benefit, and which enable us to coordinate our strategies whenever possible.

“We have redoubled our efforts to ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region, which has been publicly recognized and appreciated by numerous senior Israeli security officials. And we continue to support the development of Israeli missile defense systems, such as Arrow and David’s Sling, to upgrade Patriot missile defense systems first deployed during the Gulf War, and to work cooperatively with Israel on an advanced radar system to provide early warning of incoming missiles.”

Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, was impressed, saying this was more than just rhetoric.

“We’ve heard all kinds of phraseology in the last few weeks, but this is an inventory,” he said.

Tom Neumann, who heads the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, agreed that the defense relationship remains strong — but wondered whether the rhetoric did not portend more substantive changes.

“On a soldier-to-soldier basis it remains solid,” Neumann said. “But much of the defense relationship is ultimately dictated by the administration. Obama may yet put pressure on Israel through the transfer of arms through how to confront Iran.”

Geert Wilders Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Bruno Waterfield, www.telegraph.co.uk

The far-right politician Geert Wilders is poised to become the next Dutch prime minister after making major gains in regional elections. Municipal results announced in March put his party in first place in Almere, a region near Amsterdam, and second in The Hague, one the country’s largest cities and the seat of the Dutch government.

If repeated in national elections on June 9, the Freedom Party could win 27 out of 150 seats, becoming the largest single party and putting Wilders in line to become prime minister and form a new government.

Wilders has called Islam a backward religion, wants a ban on headscarves in public life, and has compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

“We are going to conquer the entire country we are going to be the biggest party in the country,” he said after the vote.

“The leftist elite still believes in multiculturalism, coddling criminals, a European superstate, and high taxes. But the rest of the Netherlands thinks differently. That silent majority now has a voice.”

The Freedom Party currently has nine of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, and five of the country’s 25 European parliament seats. But some polls suggest it is now the most popular party in Holland, traditionally seen as a bastion of tolerance.

The Dutch political mainstream made clear its outrage at the election results. NRC Handelsblad, the Dutch newspaper of record, observed: “The Dutch political system, based on consensus and co-operation, is coming apart at the seams.”

Muslims in Almere, where one third of the 190,000 population is of immigrant origin, reacted with shock and anger to his party’s success, fearing his victory would fan animosity.

“It is terrible,” said computer sciences student Kadriye Kacar, 35, who was born in Holland but is of Turkish descent. “People are looking at us in a new way today as if they are thinking – ‘We won and you are leaving’.

“I don’t wear a headscarf normally but I have decided to start doing so now out of protest. Other people in my community are planning to do the same. We will protest until Wilders is gone.”

Wilders popularity has grown since he was banned from entering Britain last year. He was arrested and deported after being declared a threat to public safety.

The bar has now been lifted and he showed his anti-Muslim film, Fitna, in the House of Lords, at the invitation of invitation of Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the UKIP (UK Independent Party) leader and Baroness Cox, a cross-bench peer.

“I do not agree with Geert Wilders that the Koran should be banned – even in Holland where Mein Kampf is banned. I don’t want it banned but discussed and specifically as to whether it may promote or justify – or has promoted or justified – violence. I am therefore promoting freedom of speech,” said Lord Pearson.

Wilders is facing prosecution in Holland for “inciting hatred” with the controversial film which depicts the Koran burning and focuses on the links between Islam and terrorism.

By Mortimer B. Zuckerman, www.USNews.com

Ramat Shlomo, the area of the proposed new construction at the center of the most recent row with the United States is a thriving community of over 100,000 Jews located between two larger Jewish communities, Ramat and French Hill. Its growth would not interfere with the contiguity of new Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. In every peace treaty that has ever been discussed, these areas would remain a part of Israel. No wonder the Israelis reacted so strongly when Obama called Ramat “a settlement.” This was a change in the policies pursued by many previous U.S. administrations. For over 43 years, there has been a tacit agreement about construction, never something that constituted a problem in negotiations. The new policy was therefore seen as an Obama administration effort to force Israel to accept the division of Jerusalem, even before the peace talks start, taking yet another negotiating card off the table for the Israelis.

But what the world never remembers is what the Israelis can never forget. When Jordan controlled the eastern part of the city, including the Walled City, the Temple, and the ancient Wailing Wall, it permitted reasonably free access to Christian holy places. But the Jews? They were denied any access to the Jewish holy places. This was a fundamental departure from the tradition of freedom of religious worship in the Holy Land, which had evolved over centuries—not to speak of a violation of the undertaking given by Jordan in the Armistice Agreement concluded with Israel in 1949. Nobody should expect the Jews to risk that again.

Since Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967, it has faithfully protected the rights and security of Christians, Arabs, and Jews. Muslims have enjoyed the very freedom the Jews were denied under Jordanian occupation. Christians now control the Ten Stages of the Cross; Muslims control the Dome of the Rock. Yet the Palestinians often stone Jewish civilians praying at the Western Wall below. Their leaders and imams repeatedly deny the Jewish connection to Jewish holy sites. Freedom of religion is an American value that should not be compromised.

That is not all. Dividing Jerusalem would put Palestinian forces and rockets a few miles from Israel’s Knesset. Also, the Jewish neighborhoods bordering Arab neighborhoods would be within range of light weapon and machine-gun fire. This is exactly what happened after the Oslo Accords, when the Palestinians fired from Beit Jalla toward Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhoods, wounding scores of residents.

The vast majority of Israelis believe Jerusalem must be shared and not divided. Even the great Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, who made the Oslo agreement, said, “There are not two Jerusalems; there is only one Jerusalem.” The status of Jerusalem will be on the table if and when Palestinians and Israelis talk. But Obama’s policy reversal has yet again given the Palestinians every reason not to negotiate. Now, the positions of both the Palestinians and the Israelis have hardened and the possibility of serious negotiations is again thrown into chaos.

Mr. Spencer is director of  Jihad Watch.