Home » Levitt Letter » Levitt Letter Extra News

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claims the promotion and teaching of the artform is not compatible with country’s sacred regime

By Saeed Kamali Dehghan, www.Guardian.co.uk

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said today that music is “not compatible” with the values of the Islamic republic, and should not be practiced or taught in the country.

In some of the most extreme comments by a senior regime figure since the 1979 revolution, Khamenei said: “Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.”

Khamenei’s comments came in response to a request for a ruling by a 21-year-old follower of his, who was thinking of starting music lessons, but wanted to know if they were acceptable according to Islam, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. “It’s better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music,” he said.

Unlike other clerics in Iran, whose religious rulings are practiced by their own followers, Khamenei’s views are interpreted as administrative orders for the whole country, which must be obeyed by the government. Last month Khamenei issued a controversial fatwa in which he likened his leadership to that of the Prophet Mohammed and obliged all Iranians to obey his orders.

Khamenei has rarely expressed his views on music publicly, but he is believed have played a key role in the crackdown on Iran’s music scene following the revolution. When Khamenei was president, he banned Western-style music, forcing many stars to go into exile.

Houshang Asadi, a former cellmate of Khamenei before the Islamic Revolution said: “He hated the music from the beginning.”

“There were times I sang a song by Banan (a popular vocalist) for him and he told me to avoid music and instead pray to God”, said Asadi, who shared a cell with Khamenei for four months in Moshtarak prison in Tehran in 1976 and stayed friends with him for several years after the revolution. “The only music he liked was revolutionary, and religious anthems,” said Asadi.

After the reformist President Khatami took office in 1997, official attitudes toward music and especially pop began to thaw.

After his election in 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cracked down on music. His ministry of culture and Islamic guidance has refused permission for the distribution of thousands of albums. Since last year’s disputed elections the authorities have given even fewer permits for public concerts, fearing they could be used by the opposition.

Iran has rarely given permission to concerts, as it fears that the opposition might use it as an opportunity to express itself, said Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Iran’s most prolific and popular classical vocalist.

“They are afraid of my concerts because of those moments before the concert is begun, when the whole hall is in silence and darkness when someone suddenly shouts ‘death to dictator’ and everybody accompanies and they are unable to identify that person,” Shajarian said.

Opposition figures, moderate politicians, and even hard-liners openly criticize the divisive Iranian president.

By Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, www.LATimes.com

Reporting from Beirut and Tehran —
In New York, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can boast that he’s the talk of the town, appearing on television shows with the likes of Christiane Amanpour and Larry King, hobnobbing with fellow heads of state, and addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Sept 23.

In Tehran these days, the outspoken hard-line politician is under withering attack from all political directions. His detractors in recent weeks have included assorted fundamentalist clergymen who have accused him of interfering in religious affairs, a judiciary that humiliated him by delaying the release of American hiker Sarah Shourd, the editor of a right-wing newspaper handpicked by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the moderate head of the powerful Assembly of Experts, and a member of parliament who condemned him for praising the pre-Islamic Persian king Cyrus, who is an icon of secular nationalists.

“The president should be aware that he is obligated to promote Islam and not ancient Iran, and if he fails to fulfill his obligation, he will lose the support and trust of the Muslim nation of Iran,” said lawmaker Ali Mottahari, who is loyal to a rival conservative faction.

Strife among reformists, conservatives, hard-liners, and extreme hard-liners has long shaped Iran’s political system. But in recent months, the arguments and infighting have taken on a far sharper tone, with attacks growing more virulent and vocal. At the heart of the matter, analysts say, is Ahmadinejad, a divisive figure whose heavily disputed reelection last year triggered Iran’s worst political crisis in decades.

That battle, between the country’s security apparatus and reformist opposition, continues to make waves throughout the country. On Monday night, as Ahmadinejad settled into his role as a Manhattan media magnet, opposition supporters in Tehran took to their balconies and rooftops for the first time in months, chanting protest slogans as pro-government Basiji militiamen swarmed through neighborhoods blowing whistles.

“Harsh repression has apparently given some extra oxygen to the regime,” said Michel Makinsky, an Iran specialist at the Poitiers School of Business and Management in France. “But the fire is still burning. There is a divorce between society and the regime.”

Instead of attempting to heal wounds caused by the election, Ahmadinejad during the first year of his second term embarked on an ambitious and rambunctious foreign and domestic policy agenda, which further alienated the middle class and angered rival conservative factions long suspicious of him and his entourage.

Recently the editor of the daily Kayhan, a hard-line mouthpiece, accused the president of being under the Svengali-like sway of his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. The newspaper described the aide as an enemy of Iran, duty-bound “to create riots and discord among conservatives” by influencing his boss to take positions on religion and foreign policy that differ from the rest of the establishment.

This came after Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful cleric who is known to be sympathetic to the opposition, accused Ahmadinejad of pushing Iran toward calamity with a belligerent foreign policy that has enraged much of the world.

“In the past 30 years, despite war, aggression against us, and our beleaguered revolution, we have never been under so much threat,” he said before Khamenei and others gathered for the annual meeting of the Assembly of Experts, which Ahmadinejad did not attend. “I would like you to take all the sanctions seriously and not as a joke.”

Analysts say the Internet has played a major role in sharpening tensions within Iran. Just as cable television has changed the nature of U.S. political discourse, the Internet has sped up the Iranian news cycle. Politicians have taken to the Web with glee, poking one another constantly via connected news agencies and blogs. Critics of Mashaei blasted him as a “pagan” within hours after he told Iranian expatriates at a conference in Tehran that the country ought to promote “an Iranian school of thought rather than the Islamic school of thought” abroad.

He fought back on his website, mashanews.com, accusing his detractors of slander.

“Now, you no longer have to read the tea leaves,” said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University, who served as a Middle East advisor to President Carter. “They say it to each other openly.”

Analysts say the nature of the current ruling class has also changed. Clerics accustomed to abiding by the decorum of the seminary are being eclipsed by former military personnel used to giving gruff battlefield orders. Many of the current politicians are former prison interrogators.

The unrest last year empowered the extremist and violent elements in the Basiji militia and Revolutionary Guard called upon to suppress it. Ahmadinejad is more beholden than ever to the unruly mobs, which are now demanding a share of political power and a say in matters of state from both the president they support and the clerical class they are displacing.

“On the one side, the Revolutionary Guard and military men are gaining increasingly dominant power and they are harsh in their dialogue and discourse,” said Reza Haqiqatnejad, political editor at Tehran Emrouz (Today’s Tehran), a daily newspaper close to the mayor of Tehran, Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, who is another conservative rival of Ahmadinejad. “On the other hand, those who were founders of the Islamic Revolution are scared of losing ground. The factions are struggling for power and survival. So do not expect them to be very civilized to each other at this juncture in time.”

Harsh political realities lend a desperate air to debates about relatively mundane issues such as the annual budget or the removal of food and fuel subsidies. Analysts say this is caused by the increased complexity and unpredictability of domestic and international events that affect Iran.

The danger of a surprise Israeli or U.S. attack always looms. International economic sanctions keep piling up, and inflation, which has eased somewhat during the global economic downturn, is expected to gallop again once the subsidies are lifted or re-targeted. The disputed results of last year’s election continue to sow mistrust within the establishment and contribute to a crisis of legitimacy.

“Conservatives are in deep division on major topics,” Makinsky of the Poitiers School said. “The nuclear crisis is a good example. While Ahmadinejad would be open to contemplate an agreement [with the West], he is unable to sell it to the supreme leader and to some ultraconservative Revolutionary Guards who consider any deal with the West as a threat against their power.”

Recently, Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi acknowledged that seemingly intractable disputes between powerful officials remain Iran’s weakest point. And there seems to be no way of stopping the escalating rhetoric. Khamenei, 71, who has tried to halt the squabbling factions from public disagreements, apparently has health problems and will eventually pass away. Within the zero-sum game of Iranian politics, any faction kicked out of the circle of power in the ensuing struggle fears for its own fate.

Opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi spent 20 years in the political wilderness after the death of his patron, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Making matters even more competitive, the election last year showed that the country’s large, powerful and educated middle class is up for grabs, and even Ahmadinejad, by praising Iranian nationalist icons, is attempting to woo them.

“The reformists … feel concern because they think hard-liners such as Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei and President Ahmadinejad’s government are competing with them,” said Farshad Qorbanpour, a political analyst in Tehran.

Few expect Iran to moderate its domestic or international policies as a result of the infighting, which is expected to grow until Ahmadinejad’s term ends in 2013 — although he can run again in 2017 — and may get worse afterward, especially if Khamenei passes away and the military attempts to further impose its will.

“There may be a silver lining here,” Sick said. “But you have to look for it pretty hard. If the troubles keep going, the temptation for a military strongman grows.”

By Ryan Jones, www.IsraelToday.co.il

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas clarified for his people on Monday, Sept 13, that he intends to make not even one concession or compromise in direct peace negotiations with Israel, and that for a final status peace to be achieved, Israel will have to fully meet all Arab demands and abandon its own conditions.

First and foremost, Abbas told Palestinian newspapers that if the Jewish building freeze in Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”) is not extended indefinitely, the negotiations will come to an immediate halt. But Abbas also said he would walk out of the talks if he is pressured at all to alter the Palestinians’ more hardline positions.

“If they demand concessions on the rights of the refugees or the 1967 borders, I will quit. I can’t allow myself to make even one concession,” Abbas told the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam.

Abbas was referring to the Palestinian demand that Israel solve the purported “Palestinian refugee” issue by opening its border to millions of new Arab citizens. Abbas has long championed that demand, despite the fact that it would mean the demographic destruction of the Jewish state. Even Israel’s most liberal politicians reject the so-called “right of return.”

The Palestinian leader’s position on the issue was two-faced, as he then turned around and insisted that an independent Palestinian state created by the current peace process must not have a single Jew living in it. “We clarified that [the Palestinian Authority] would not agree to continued Israeli presence, military or civil, within a future Palestinian state,” Abbas said.

In speaking of the 1967 borders, Abbas made it clear that he will not allow Israel to maintain control over a united Jerusalem as part of any peace deal. Up until 1967, the eastern half of Jerusalem was illegally occupied by Jordan. The Palestinians now claim it as their rightful capital.

Abbas reiterated his position in an interview with Jerusalem-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds when he rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s talk of a historic compromise between the two sides in order to reach a durable peace agreement.

Abbas also addressed Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as “the Jewish state.”

“We’re not talking about a Jewish state and we won’t talk about one,” Abbas said. “For us, there is the state of Israel and we won’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”

Israel Today
www.IsraelToday.co.il

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that when he attends the next round of direct peace negotiations with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday, he will demand that the agreement they are working toward mark a full end to the conflict.

Abbas “needs to recognize the principle that if we reach a settlement on borders then Israel will demand that it end the conflict, and the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state,” an Israeli official told the Ynet news portal. “The prime minister will not agree to a principle that allows the Palestinians to establish a state and then continue the argument over which territory belongs to whom.”

In that vein, Netanyahu on Sunday reiterated his demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as “the Jewish state,” and that after the signing of a peace deal.

“We both live on the same small piece of land but as soon as we suggest a two state solution for two nations, a Jewish one and a Palestinian one, unfortunately I do not hear from the other side the sentence ‘two states for two nations.’ I hear two states, but I don’t hear two nations,” Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting.

By Oleg Atbashian, PajamasMedia.com

Holy Shiite! Pious pilgrimage just got more exciting at Imam Reza’s shrine in Iran, where for a reasonable fee (see price list below) a mullah can join any eager pilgrim in holy matrimony of “temporary marriage” with his choice of a lovely, fully hijabed, and properly veiled prostitute for a period lasting between 5 hours to 10 days. Pedophiles welcome: girls as young as 12 years of age are standing by. Not to worry, the mullahs got them covered: all “temps” under 14 must show a written consent from their fathers or male guardians.

We are not making this up.

According to a document obtained by Planet-Iran.com, the mullahs are doing it not for the money (what’s a 5% pimp cut for a holy shrine?), but out of the noble desire “to elevate the spiritual atmosphere, create proper psychological conditions and tranquility of mind” of “those brothers who are on pilgrimage to the shrine.” Verily, what true believer can maintain tranquility of mind and not succumb to sexual yearning while away from his other wives for nearly a week? No pious man should have to suffer such inhumanity.

Here’s how it works. The mullah performs a ceremony that sanctions the “morality” of the relationship for a period specified in the “prenuptial agreement” (not more than 10 days, minimum charge 5 hrs) — in direct proportion to the size of the “bridegroom’s” wallet. When the “godliness” of their prepaid romance expires, the “honeymooners” descend from the moral high ground to get an easy, sharia-compliant divorce. As Allah and his prophet Mohammed would have it, a man can have many wives, so no laws are broken and the decorum is intact.

Everyone is happy: the mullahs count their money, the enlightened “pilgrim” goes home with a renewed sense of moral self-righteousness, and the recurrent bachelorette is back on the bridal market.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s the full document, translated into English by Planet-Iran.com:

In the name of Allah who is most gracious and merciful

Temporary Marriage
(Marriage is among the traditions of the Prophet Mohammad)

In order to elevate the spiritual atmosphere, create proper psychological conditions and tranquility of mind, the Province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan has created centers for temporary marriage (just next door to the shrine) for those brothers who are on pilgrimage to the shrine of our eighth Imam, Imam Reza, and who are far away from their spouses.

To that end, we call on all our sisters who are virgins, who are between the ages of 12 and 35 to cooperate with us. Each of our sisters who signs up will be bound by a two-year contract with the province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan and will be required to spend at least 25 days of each month temporarily married to those brothers who are on pilgrimage. The period of the contract will be considered as a part of the employment experience of the applicant. The period of each temporary marriage can be anywhere between 5 hours to 10 days. The prices are as follows:

• 5 hour temporary marriage — 50,000 Tomans ($50 US)

• One day temporary marriage — 75,000 Tomans ($75 US)

• Two day temporary marriage — 100,000 Tomans ($100 US)

• Three day temporary marriage — 150,000 Tomans ($150 US)

• Between 4 and 10 day temporary marriage — 300,000 Tomans ($300 US)

Our sisters who are virgins will receive a bonus of 100,000 Tomans ($100 US) for the removal of their hymen.

After the expiration of the two-year contract, should our sisters still be under 35 years of age and should they be so inclined, they can be added to the waiting list of those who are seeking long-term temporary marriage. The employed sisters are obligated to donate 5% of their earnings to the Shrine of Imam Reza. We ask that all the sisters who are interested in applying, to furnish two full-length photographs (fully hijabed and properly veiled), their academic diplomas, proof of their virginity and a certificate of good physical and psychological health which they can obtain through the health and human services of the township of their residence. Please forward all compiled material and send to the below address by the 31st of the month of Ordibehesht, 1389 (May 21st, 2010).

Attention: For sisters who are below 14 years of age, a written consent from their fathers or male guardian is required.

Address: Mash’had, Shrine of Imam Reza, Shaheed Navab-Safavi, Kossar passage, Bureau of Temporary Marriages

or call Haji Mahmood Momtaz: 98/511/222-5790

*********************************************
And you thought speech codes only existed on your local public radio. The mullahs have been perfecting the magic of word games too, and with great efficiency. For instance, the above document can be used as proof that there is no prostitution in Iran.

Obviously, it is not sex tourism as long as they call it “visiting holy shrines.” It is not sexual exploitation as long as the clients are called “brothers” and the whores are called “sisters.” It is not a brothel as long as you call it a “bureau.” It is not prostitution as long as it is called “temporary marriage,” the hustler is a mullah, and the pimp cut is an “obligatory donation.”

See? No prostitution whatsoever. Just like there are no homosexuals in Iran. Sanctimonious language works every time whenever an irrational culture keeps people blind to reality, compelling them to judge others by what they say and not by what they do.

The mullahs are very peculiar about maintaining a highly moral society. And the society plays along, by exhibiting a highly moral behavior. And what happens in the Shrine of the Eighth Imam, stays in the Shrine of the Eighth Imam.

You may still be smirking about the new definition of “temporary employment agency.” Or yucking that the meaning of “brothers” and “sisters” will never be the same again. And it may be a while before you stop associating the word “honeymoon” with the crescent on top of a mosque.

Original document translated at: http://planet-iran.com/index.php/news/19414

By Kelli Morgan, FoxNews.com

They may call it the “Land of the Pure,” but Pakistan turns out to be anything but. Call it Pornistan.

The Muslim country, which has banned content on at least 17 websites to block offensive and blasphemous material, is the world’s leader in online searches for pornographic material.

“You won’t find strip clubs in Islamic countries. Most Islamic countries have certain dress codes,” said Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame. “It would be an irony if they haven’t shown the same vigilance to pornography.”

So here’s the irony: Google ranks Pakistan No. 1 in the world in searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content.

Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for “horse sex” since 2004, “donkey sex” since 2007, “rape pictures” between 2004 and 2009, “rape sex” since 2004, “child sex” between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, “animal sex” since 2004, and “dog sex” since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.

The country also is tops—or has been No. 1—in searches for “sex,” “camel sex,” “rape video,” “child sex video,” and some other searches that can’t be printed here.

Google Trends generates data of popular search terms in geographic locations during specific time frames. Google Insights is a more advanced version that allows users to filter a search to geographic locations, time frames, and the nature of a search, including web, images, products, and news.

Pakistan ranked No. 1 in all the searches listed above on Google Trends, but on only some of them in Google Insights.

“We do our best to provide accurate data and to provide insights into broad search patterns, but the results for a given query may contain inaccuracies due to data sampling issues, approximations, or incomplete data for the terms entered,” Google said in a statement, when asked about the accuracy of its reports.

The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not reply to a request for an interview.

In addition to banning content on 17 websites, including islamexposed.blogspot.com, Pakistan is monitoring seven other sites—Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, MSN, and Hotmail—for anti-Islamic content, the Associated Press reported in June.

But it’s not to censor the Pakistani people, Reynolds said. It’s to shut out the rest of the world. “[It] could lead to conversion, which would undermine the very order of the state,” he said. “Part of protecting the society is making sure that there is no way it could be undermined in terms of foreign influences.”

Pakistan temporarily banned Facebook in May when Muslim groups protested the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” page, where users were encouraged to upload pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. The page remained on Facebook, but Pakistani users were unable to view it, said Andrew Noyes, manager of Facebook’s Public Policy Communication.

And while Pakistan is taking measures to prevent blasphemous material from being viewed by its citizens, pornographic material is “certainly” contradictory to Islam, too, Reynolds said. The country’s punishment for those charged with blasphemy is execution, but the question remains what—if anything—can be done about people who search for porn on the Web.

“It’s a new phenomenon,” Reynolds said.

By Daniel Byman and Christine Fair, www.TheAtlantic.com

They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine. Can being more realistic about who our foes actually are help us stop the truly dangerous ones?

In the years after 9/11, the images we were shown of terrorists were largely the same: shadowy jihadists who, even when they were foiled, seemed always to have come terrifyingly close to pulling off a horrific attack. We’ve all become familiar by now with the stock footage of talibs in black shalwar kameezes zipping across monkey bars or, more recently, perfecting kung fu kicks in some secret training camp. Even in the aftermath of the botched Times Square bombing earlier this spring, the perception persists that our enemies are savvy and sophisticated killers. They’re fanatical and highly organized—twin ideas that at once keep us fearful and help them attract new members.

But this view of the jihadist community is wildly off the mark. To be sure, some terrorists are steely and skilled—people like Mohamed Atta, the careful and well-trained head of the 9/11 hijackers. Their leaders and recruiters can be lethally subtle and manipulative, but the quiet truth is that many of the deluded foot soldiers are foolish and untrained, perhaps even untrainable. Acknowledging this fact could help us tailor our counterterrorism priorities—and publicizing it could help us erode the powerful images of strength and piety that terrorists rely on for recruiting and funding.

Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks. In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests. According to several sources at the United Nations, as many as six would-be suicide bombers died last year after one such embrace in Paktika.

Many Taliban operatives are just as clumsy when suicide is not part of the plan. In November 2009, several talibs transporting an improvised explosive device were killed when it went off unexpectedly. The blast also took out the insurgents’ own shadow governor in the province of Balkh.

When terrorists do execute an attack, or come close, they often have security failures to thank, rather than their own expertise. Consider Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—the Nigerian “underpants bomber” who boarded a Detroit-bound jet in Amsterdam with a suicidal plan in his head and some explosives in his underwear. Although the media colored the incident as a sophisticated al-Qaeda plot, Abdulmutallab showed no great skill or cunning, and simple safeguards should have kept him off the plane in the first place. He was, after all, traveling without luggage, on a one-way ticket that he purchased with cash. All of this while being on a U.S. government watch list.

Fortunately, Abdulmutallab, a college-educated engineer [University College (UK)], failed to detonate his underpants. A few months later another college grad, Faisal Shahzad [Southeastern University (D.C.) and University of Bridgeport (CT)], is alleged to have crudely rigged an SUV to blow up in Times Square. That plan fizzled and he was quickly captured, despite the fact that he was reportedly trained in a terrorist boot camp in Pakistan. Indeed, though many of the terrorists who strike in the West are supposedly well educated, their plots fail because they lack operational knowhow. On June 30, 2007, two men—one a medical doctor, the other studying for his Ph.D.—attempted a brazen attack on Glasgow Airport. Their education did them little good. Planning to crash their propane-and-petrol-laden Jeep Cherokee into an airport terminal, the men instead steered the SUV, with flames spurting out its windows, into a security barrier. The fiery crash destroyed only the Jeep, and both men were easily apprehended; the driver later died from his injuries. (The day before, the same men had rigged two cars to blow up near a London nightclub. That plan was thwarted when one car was spotted by paramedics and the other, parked illegally, was removed by a tow truck. As a bonus for investigators, the would-be bombers’ cell phones, loaded with the phone numbers of possible accomplices, were salvaged from the cars.)

A similar streak of ineptitude has been on display in the United States, where many of those arrested on terrorism-related charges possess long criminal records and little sense of how to put a nefarious idea into action. A group of Miami men schemed (often while smoking marijuana) to attack targets in South Florida as well as the Sears Tower in Chicago, but they couldn’t get their hands on explosives and were uncovered when the FBI easily penetrated their ranks.

If our terrorist enemies have been successful at cultivating a false notion of expertise, they’ve done an equally convincing job of casting themselves as pious warriors of God. The Taliban and al-Qaeda rely on sympathizers who consider them devoted Muslims fighting immoral Western occupiers. But intelligence picked up by Predator drones and other battlefield cameras challenges that idea—sometimes rather graphically. One video, captured recently by the thermal-imagery technology housed in a sniper rifle, shows two talibs in southern Afghanistan engaged in intimate relations with a donkey. Similar videos abound, including ground-surveillance footage that records a Taliban fighter gratifying himself with a cow.

Pentagon officials and intelligence analysts concede privately that our foes also have a voracious appetite for pornography—hardly shocking behavior for young men, but hard to square with an image of piety. Many laptops seized from the Taliban and al-Qaeda are loaded with smut. U.S. intelligence analysts have devoted considerable time to poring over the terrorists’ favored Web sites, searching for hidden militant messages. “We have terabytes of this stuff,” said one Department of Defense al-Qaeda analyst, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It isn’t possible that they are encrypting messages in all of this stuff. Some of these guys are just perverts.” [see Pakistan/Pornistan in Sept ’10 Levitt Letter]

Tawdry though this predilection for porn may be, it is not necessarily trivial. There is, after all, potential propaganda value in this kind of jihadist behavior. Current U.S. public diplomacy centers on selling America to the Muslim world, but we should also work to undermine some of the myths built up around our enemies by highlighting their incompetence, their moral failings, and their embarrassing antics. Beyond changing how the Muslim world perceives terrorists, we can help ourselves make smarter counterterrorism choices by being more realistic about the profile and aptitude of would-be attackers.

The difference between a sophisticated killer like Mohamed Atta and so many of his hapless successors lies in training and inherent aptitude. Atta spent months learning his trade in Afghanistan and had the help of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership—a fact that underscores the importance of rooting out al-Qaeda havens in Pakistan. After all, fighting terrorism is a chore made simpler when we can keep the terrorists as inept as most of them naturally are.

By Steven Simpson, www.AmericanThinker.com

It is a common belief that the “Arab-Israeli conflict” is a conflict of two peoples fighting over the same piece of land and is therefore one of nationalism. Rarely, if ever, do we hear or read of the religious component to this conflict.

However, if anything, the conflict is more of a “Muslim-Jewish” one than an “Arab-Israeli” one. In other words, the conflict is based on religion—Islam vs. Judaism—cloaked in Arab nationalism vs. Zionism. The fact of the matter is that in every Arab-Israeli war, from 1948 to the present, cries of “jihad,” “Allahu Akbar,” and the bloodcurdling scream of “Idbah al-Yahud” (“slaughter the Jews”) have resonated amongst even the most secular of Arab leaders, be it Nasser in the 1950s and 60s or the supposedly “secular” PLO of the 1960s to the present. Indeed, the question must be asked: If this is really a conflict of different nationalisms and not Islamic supremacism, then why is it that virtually no non-Arab Muslim states have full (if any) relations with Israel?

There is a common Arabic slogan that is chanted in the Middle East: “Khaybar, Khaybar! Oh Jews, remember. The armies of Mohammed are returning!” It would be most interesting to know how many people have ever heard what—or more precisely, where—Khaybar is, and what the Arabs mean by such a slogan. A short history of the Jews of Arabia is needed in order to explain this, and why Islam remains so inflexible in its hostile attitude towards Jews and Israel.

Until the founder of Islam, Mohammed ibn Abdallah, proclaimed himself “Messenger of Allah” in the 7th century, Jews and Arabs lived together peacefully in the Arabian Peninsula. Indeed, the Jews—and Judaism—were respected to such an extent that an Arab king converted to Judaism in the 5th century. His name was Dhu Nuwas, and he ruled over the Himyar (present day Yemen) area of the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, it is most likely that the city of Medina (the second-holiest city in Islam)—then called Yathrib—was originally founded by Jews. In any event, at the time of Mohammed’s “calling,” three important Jewish tribes existed in Arabia: Banu Qurayza, Banu Nadir, and Banu Kaynuka.

Mohammed was very keen on having the Jews accept him as a prophet to the extent that he charged his followers not to eat pig and to pray in the direction of Jerusalem. However, the Jews apparently were not very keen on Mohammed, his proclamation of himself as a prophet, or his poor knowledge of the Torah (Hebrew Bible, OT). Numerous verbal altercations are recorded in the Koran and various hadiths (sayings of Mohammed) about these conflicts between the Jewish tribes and Mohammed.

Eventually, the verbal conflicts turned into physical conflicts, and when the Jews outwardly rejected Mohammed as the “final seal of the prophets,” he turned on them with a vengeance. The atrocities that were committed against these tribes are too numerous to cite in a single article, but two tribes, the Kaynuka and Nadir, were expelled from their villages by Mohammed. It appears that the Kaynuka left Arabia around 624 A.D. The refugees of the Nadir settled in the village of Khaybar.

In 628 A.D., Mohammed turned on the last Jewish tribe, the Qurayza, claiming that they were in league with Mohammed’s Arab pagan enemies and had “betrayed” him. Mohammed and his army besieged the Qurayza, and after a siege of over three weeks, the Qurayza surrendered. While many Arabs pleaded with Mohammed to let the Qurayza leave unmolested, Mohammed had other plans. Unlike expelling the Kaynuka and Nadir, Mohammed exterminated the Qurayza, with an estimated 600 to 900 Jewish men being beheaded in one day. The women and children were sold into slavery, and Mohammed took one of the widows, Rayhana, as a “concubine.”

In 629 A.D., Mohammed led a campaign against the surviving Jews of Nadir, now living in Khaybar. The battle was again bloody and barbaric, and the survivors of the massacre were either expelled or allowed to remain as “second-class citizens.” Eventually, upon the ascension of Omar as caliph, most Jews were expelled from Arabia around the year 640 A.D.

This brings us, then, to the question of why modern-day Muslims still boast of the slaughter of the Jewish tribes and the Battle of Khaybar. The answer lies in what the Koran—and later on, the various hadiths—says about the Jews. The Koran is replete with verses that can be described only as virulently anti-Semitic. The suras are too numerous to cite, but a few will suffice: sura 2:75 (Jews distorted the Torah); 2:91 (Jews are prophet-killers), 4:47 (Jews have distorted the Bible and have incurred condemnation from Allah for breaking the Sabbath), 5:60 (Jews are cursed, and turned into monkeys and pigs), and 5:82 (Jews and pagans are the strongest in enmity to the Muslims and Allah). And of course, there is the genocidal hadith from Sahih Bukhari, 4:52:177, which would make Adolph Hitler proud. “The Day of Judgment will not have come until you fight with the Jews, and the stones and the trees behind which a Jew will be hiding will say: ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!”‘ Thus, the Arab Muslims had their own “final solution” in store for the Jews already in the 7th century.

The fact that Muslims still point to these (and many other) hateful verses in the Koran and hadith should give Jews—not just Israelis—pause to consider if there can ever be true peace between Muslims and Jews, let alone between Muslims and Israel. When the armies of Islam occupied the area of Byzantine “Palestine” in the 7th century, the land became part of Dar al-Islam (House of Islam). Until that area is returned to Islam, (i.e., Israel’s extermination), it remains part of Dar al-harb (House of War). It now becomes clear that this is a conflict of religious ideology and not a conflict over a piece of “real estate.”

Finally, one must ask the question: Aside from non-Arab Turkey, whose relations with Israel are presently teetering on the verge of collapse, why is it that no other non-Arab Muslim country has ever had full relations (if any at all) with Israel, such as faraway countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan? Indeed, why would Persian Iran—conquered by the Arabs—have such a deep hatred for Jews and Israel, whereas a non-Muslim country such as India does not feel such enmity? The answer is painfully clear: The contempt in which the Koran and other Islamic writings hold Jews does not exist in the scriptures of the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and other Eastern religions. Therefore, people who come from non-Muslim states do not have this inherent hatred towards Jews, and by extension, towards Israel. But when a people is raised with a scripture that regards another people and religion as immoral and less than human, then it is obvious why such hatred and disdain exists on the part of Muslims for Jews and Israel.

Islam—as currently interpreted and practiced—cannot accept a Jewish state of any size in its midst. Unless Muslims come to terms with their holy writings vis-à-vis Jews, Judaism, and Israel and go through some sort of “reformation,” it will be unlikely that true peace will ever come to the Middle East. In the meantime, unless Islam reforms, Israel should accept the fact that the Muslims will never accept Israel as a permanent fact in the Middle East.

www.Fides.org

Islamabad (Agenzia Fides) – There has been a long list of cases reported to Fides on discrimination against Christians, religious minorities, Dalits (“untouchables”), the poorest of the poor in humanitarian aid distribution. “The general framework of social and religious discrimination in Pakistan becomes more despicable at this stage and pollutes solidarity,” notes a source of Fides. There is growing anger among the refugees and this past Thursday, in the city of Hyderabad, many participated in a march protesting the mistreatment of religious minorities.

Humanitarian agencies and NGOs working in Pakistan have told Fides that in the Thatta district, heavily flooded in recent days, many Christian families have been denied aid, even from government officials.

Zubair Masih said: “I have come from Sukkur. We were overcome by waters and we lost everything. We went to a refugee camp near Thatta, but they did not allow us to enter because we are Christians.”

Abid Masih, a Christian who lives in a camp near Larkana, said: “My wife is sick, but the doctor refused to visit her and treat her, saying that we should wait for the World Health Organization to send Christian doctors. Aamir Gill, among the refugees from Dadu, says: “I arrived with my family at a camp near Hyderabad, but the camp administration refused to register us because we are Christians and they did not give us anything. We were forced to leave.”

Carl Moeller, President of the American organization Open Doors, which publishes a report on persecuted Christians around the world, in a statement sent to Fides says: “Some Christian refugees are openly denied aid, while others are told to leave or convert to Islam. You can imagine that terrible choice: either you abandon your faith or you cannot feed your child.”

The Ahmadi, considered by the official Islam as “heretics,” are also suffering discrimination: “The government and local Islamic leaders have denied tents and aid to over 500 families of the Ahmadi community in Southern Punjab. In other areas where the Ahmadi community lives, such as the Districts of Muzaffargarh, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Rajanpur (Punjab), were completely excluded from the distribution of humanitarian aid,” reads a note sent to Fides by local aid workers.

There is also great suffering, says another NGO, endured by the population of Dalits of Pakistan, the lowest on the social totem pole. “The Dalit families in Sindh suffer doubly: for the displacement and for exclusion from aid distribution. They are driven from the refugee camps and mistreated.”

The regime’s Quds Day rallies are smaller and tightly secured this year, indicating lack of support and concern about the growing opposition movement.

By Josh Shahryar, www.PajamasMedia.com

Iran managed to hold its annual anti-Israel Quds Day rallies this year [on Friday, September 3] in relative peace, as the opposition stayed away from the streets. Thousands of hard-line supporters of the Iranian government flocked to the streets of the capital Tehran and elsewhere in the country to denounce Israel, and to demand that Jews leave the Middle East. The numbers were a far cry from the rallies in past years that attracted millions, a good indicator of the government’s waning popularity.

Even though opposition activists had quietly indicated that they would hold rallies against the government, no one showed up after the government filled the streets with thousands of security forces. Their decision to not show up was also affected by the government’s brazen attacks on the house of opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi for the past two days.

The main government rallies in Tehran were marked by supporters marching through the streets in different parts of the city, carrying anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian placards and chanting anti-Israel slogans. By far the largest crowd gathered in Tehran University, which was under tight security, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave another of his anti-Israel speeches. This time, he managed both to denounce Israel and to call the current round of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians in Washington “a failure from the start.” He also accused the West of blatant pro-Zionist policies.

Quds Day is held on the last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in Iran. Initiated by Iran’s revolutionary leader Imam Khomeini, the protest was meant to show solidarity with Palestinians. It has now largely turned into a platform for Iran’s theofascist regime to promote its own version of anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and anti-everything the mullahs in power seek to denounce — including their domestic opposition.

The opposition spent the day tending to the attack on their leader, and according to some activists, enjoyed the degree to which the government has become frightened of their activities. One activist opined:

The government had to put thousands of security forces on Tehran’s streets under scorching heat for most of the day. Logistically speaking, this is a great blow, since not only did they spend a lot of money to contain a ghost, but also fatigued their thugs.

Another lamented that if the government hadn’t put too many security forces on the ground, they might have held a rally.

What the day proved, however, was that the government is indeed troubled by the opposition, and is ready to go to any lengths to control their activities. This is a hard blow to a regime that has recently boasted that it has crushed the opposition, and that the Green Movement — a coalition of anti-government opposition groups — is not a threat. The streets of Tehran today were a witness to how much of a threat they expected.

Two of the city’s main squares, Enghelab and Hafte Tir, were covered by security forces. Roads leading to many other squares were also completely sealed by baton-wielding Basijis — a militant organization under the direct control of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Basijis also patrolled the metro stations in the city and routinely questioned people there. Elsewhere, security forces set up checkpoints and searched ordinary Tehranis. Eyewitnesses have so far confirmed the arrests of at least a dozen people — indicating the real number to be much higher.

The situation in Tehran was much better compared to Shiraz, however.

Clashes broke out in this southern city when security forces attacked Ghoba Mosque, the main seat of Ayatollah Dastegheyb, a respected cleric and supporter of the opposition movement. Hundreds of Basijis entered the mosque and beat up the cleric’s students who’d gathered there. Mosque officials were told not to hold any gatherings, and the establishment was already surrounded by security forces before the attack.

Back in the capital, Basijis continued their attacks on Mehdi Karroubi’s house for the second day. They shot paintball guns, threw rocks, and shot at the house. They also beat up several people outside the house who were either passing by or attempting to enter the house. Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi called Karroubi to express his support, as did Grand Ayatollah Bayat Zanjani, another renegade cleric who supports the opposition. Sayed Yasser Khomeini — the grandson of the leader of Iran’s revolution, Imam Khomeini — visited Karroubi and decried the government’s actions.

Later in the day, videos from inside of Karroubi’s house were released, showing broken windows and bullet holes in walls. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFl-5hJ6_xM

As the day ended, most opposition supporters may have been disheartened, but one dissident summed up the situation with these words:

They held a small rally to make more enemies. We didn’t show up, but we’re making more friends every day.