The WSJ asked Anwar Ibrahim, Bernard Lewis, Ed Husain, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Tawfik Hamid and Akbar Ahmed to reflect on the nature that ever-elusive unicorn, moderate Islam."A Symposium: What Is Moderate Islam?," from the Wall Street Journal, September 1 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia's opposition leader, makes this admission:

Skeptics and cynics alike have said that the quest for the moderate Muslim in the 21st century is akin to the search for the Holy Grail. It's not hard to understand why. Terrorist attacks, suicide bombings and the jihadist call for Muslims "to rise up against the oppression of the West" are widespread.

The radical fringe carrying out such actions has sought to dominate the discourse between Islam and the West. In order to do so, they've set out to foment anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. They've also advocated indiscriminate violence as a political strategy. To cap their victory, this abysmal lot uses the cataclysm of 9/11 as a lesson for the so-called enemies of Islam.

Countering this, he invokes the undeniable existence of Muslims who are just trying to live ordinary lives:

These are the Muslims who go about their lives like ordinary people--earning their livings, raising their families, celebrating reunions and praying for security and peace. These are the Muslims who have never carried a pocketknife, let alone explosives intended to destroy buildings. These Muslims are there for us to see, if only we can lift the veil cast on them by the shadowy figures in bomb-laden jackets hell-bent on destruction.

In the end he does not posit the existence of a Moderate Islam, but calls for its creation:

Yet Muslims must do more than just talk about their great intellectual and cultural heritage. We must be at the forefront of those who reject violence and terrorism. And our activism must not end there. The tyrants and oppressive regimes that have been the real impediment to peace and progress in the Muslim world must hear our unanimous condemnation. The ball is in our court.

The renowned scholar Bernard Lewis makes a similar admission:

A form of moderation has been a central part of Islam from the very beginning. True, Muslims are nowhere commanded to love their neighbors, as in the Old Testament, still less their enemies, as in the New Testament. But they are commanded to accept diversity, and this commandment was usually obeyed. The Prophet Muhammad's statement that "difference within my community is part of God's mercy" expressed one of Islam's central ideas, and it is enshrined both in law and usage from the earliest times.

However, he then trots out the familiar claim that historically Muslims were more tolerant than Christians:

This principle created a level of tolerance among Muslims and coexistence between Muslims and others that was unknown in Christendom until after the triumph of secularism. Diversity was legitimate and accepted. Different juristic schools coexisted, often with significant divergences.

Even if this is true, and there is a lot of evidence that it isn't (why were 17 million Jews living in Europe and only one million in the Islamic world at the dawn of the twentieth century?), it establishes nothing. Laws of any kind can and will be relaxed, ignored, and broken. But if they remain on the books, they will likely be enforced again by someone with the will to do so. And so if Islam has no command to love one's neighbor, Muslims will generally not be loving to their neighbors, except when human nature gets the better of what they're taught.

Even after retailing this soothing nonsense, Lewis tells the truth:

For the moment, there does not seem to be much prospect of a moderate Islam in the Muslim world. This is partly because in the prevailing atmosphere the expression of moderate ideas can be dangerous--even life-threatening. Radical groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban, the likes of which in earlier times were at most minor and marginal, have acquired a powerful and even a dominant position.

But for Muslims who seek it, the roots are there, both in the theory and practice of their faith and in their early sacred history.

In that, Lewis contradicts his earlier statement. Practice, yes. Theory, no. As Lewis himself pointed out.

Then Ed Husain, who is just another deceiver, chimes in with a tissue of detours entitled "Don't Call Me Moderate, Call Me Normal":

[...] The Prophet Muhammad warned us against ghuluw, or extremism, in religion. The Quran reinforces the need for qist, or balance. For me, Islam at its essence is the middle way in all matters. This is normative Islam, adhered to by a billion normal Muslims across the globe.

Normative Islam is inherently pluralist. It is supported by 1,000 years of Muslim history in which religious freedom was cherished. The claim, made today by the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia, that they represent God's will expressed through their version of oppressive Shariah law is a modern innovation.

The classical thinking within Islam was to let a thousand flowers bloom. Ours is not a centralized tradition, and Islam's rich diversity is a legacy of our pluralist past.

Nothing about dhimmitude. Nothing about the deprivations, discrimination and harassment suffered by non-Muslims in Islamic societies for centuries. For a corrective, complete with numerous primary source documents showing what actually went on behind the facade of Islam's history of "pluralism," see Bat Ye'or's Islam and Dhimmitude and The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam.

Reuel Marc Gerecht then explains that "moderate Islam is the faith practiced by the parents of my Pakistani British roommate at the University of Edinburgh--and, no doubt, by the great majority of Muslim immigrants to Europe and the United States." They were very nice to him, you see, and were "devout Muslims." He confuses, as do so many, the individual practitioner of the religion with the teachings of the religion itself. Yet people behave in all sorts of ways for all sorts of reasons; the behavior of any given Muslim no more changes the teachings of Islam than the behavior of a non-practicing Catholic means that the Catholic Church doesn't teach what it teaches.

Only Tawfik Hamid gets to the heart of the matter:

Moderate Islam should be defined as a form of Islam that rejects these violent and discriminatory edicts. Furthermore, it must provide a strong theological refutation for the mainstream Islamic teaching that the Muslim umma (nation) must declare wars against non-Muslim nations, spreading the religion and giving non-Muslims the following options: convert, pay a humiliating tax, or be killed. This violent concept fuels jihadists, who take the teaching literally and accept responsibility for applying it to the modern world.

Moderate Islam must not be passive. It needs to actively reinterpret the violent parts of the religious text rather than simply cherry-picking the peaceful ones. Ignoring, rather than confronting or contextualizing, the violent texts leaves young Muslims vulnerable to such teachings at a later stage in their lives.

Finally, moderate Islam must powerfully reject the barbaric practices of jihadists. Ideally, this would mean Muslims demonstrating en masse all over the world against the violence carried out in the name of their religion.

Moderate Islam must be honest enough to admit that Islam has been used in a violent manner at several stages in history to seek domination over others. Insisting that all acts in Islamic history and all current Shariah teachings are peaceful is a form of deception that makes things worse by failing to acknowledge the existence of the problem.

Ed Husain just above is an example of the tendency Hamid refers to here.

Akbar Ahmed, following Hamid, is smooth but empty. And so after all that, what is moderate Islam? None of these analysts seem to know, or to be able to point to it. One would think that would lead to some rather obvious conclusions for the WSJ, the nation, and the world. But it doesn't.

More tendentious, misleading and false information from yet another blinkered ideologue given a platform in a major "news" source. "Five myths about mosques in America," by Edward E. Curtis IV in the Washington Post, August 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):

In addition to spawning passionate debates in the public, the news media and the political class, the proposal to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York has revealed widespread misconceptions about the practice of Islam in this country -- and the role of mosques in particular.

1. Mosques are new to this country.

Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque, or masjid, is literally any place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of Mecca; it needn't be a building. One of the first mosques in North American history was on Kent Island, Md.: Between 1731 and 1733, African American Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Solomon, a cattle driver, would regularly steal away to the woods there for his prayers -- in spite of a white boy who threw dirt on him as he made his prostrations....

See, folks? Curtis is here semaphoring that Muslims are a victim class, that they always have been, and that opposition to them is racially-based. As for Job Ben Solomon, I suspect that Curtis's source here is a Muslim one, designed to reinforce a sense that Muslims are victims rather than tell actual history. The story is curiously reminiscent of this one about Muhammad:

Narrated 'Abdullah bin Mas'ud:

Once the Prophet was offering prayers at the Ka'ba. Abu Jahl was sitting with some of his companions. One of them said to the others, "Who amongst you will bring the abdominal contents (intestines, etc.) of a camel of Bani so and so and put it on the back of Muhammad, when he prostrates?" The most unfortunate of them got up and brought it. He waited till the Prophet prostrated and then placed it on his back between his shoulders. I was watching but could not do any thing. I wish I had some people with me to hold out against them. They started laughing and falling on one another. Allah's Apostle was in prostration and he did not lift his head up till Fatima (Prophet's daughter) came and threw that (camel's abdominal contents) away from his back. He raised his head and said thrice, "O Allah! Punish Quraish." So it was hard for Abu Jahl and his companions when the Prophet invoked Allah against them as they had a conviction that the prayers and invocations were accepted in this city (Mecca). The Prophet said, "O Allah! Punish Abu Jahl, 'Utba bin Rabi'a, Shaiba bin Rabi'a, Al-Walid bin 'Utba, Umaiya bin Khalaf, and 'Uqba bin Al Mu'it (and he mentioned the seventh whose name I cannot recall). By Allah in Whose Hands my life is, I saw the dead bodies of those persons who were counted by Allah's Apostle in the Qalib (one of the wells) of Badr.

Back to the WaPo. Their second "myth" is really a whopper:

2. Mosques try to spread sharia law in the United States.

In Islam, sharia ("the Way" to God) theoretically governs every human act. But Muslims do not agree on what sharia says; there is no one sharia book of laws. Most mosques in America do not teach Islamic law for a simple reason: It's too complicated for the average believer and even for some imams.

The Saudi, Iranian and Sudanese authorities don't seem to have notable trouble sorting it out. In any case, the idea that Sharia is some complex and nebulous collection of arcana is a myth that is growing increasingly popular as Islamic supremacists try to advance Sharia in the U.S. In reality, "the four Sunni schools of Islamic law, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali, are identical in approximately 75 percent of their legal conclusions..." ('Umdat al-Salik, p. vii). Islamic law regarding the stoning of adulterers, the amputation of the hand for theft, the institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims, is not hard to understand, and is not subject to notable disagreement.

Anyway, what do mosques in America teach? As long ago as January 1999, the Naqshbandi Sufi leader Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani declared in a State Department Open Forum that Islamic supremacists controlled most mosques in America: "The most dangerous thing that is going on now in these mosques," he said, "that has been sent upon these mosques around the United States - like churches they were established by different organizations and that is ok - but the problem with our communities is the extremist ideology. Because they are very active they took over the mosques; and we can say that they took over more than 80% of the mosques that have been established in the US. And there are more than 3000 mosques in the US. So it means that the methodology or ideology of extremism has been spread to 80% of the Muslim population, but not all of them agree with it."

Terrorism expert Yehudit Barsky affirmed the same thing in 2005, saying that 80% of the mosques in this country "have been radicalized by Saudi money and influence." The Center for Religious Freedom found in 2005 a massive distribution of hateful jihadist and Islamic supremacist material in mosques in this country. And in June 2008 federal investigators found that the Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia, despite promises to stop teaching such material, was still using books that advocated that apostates from Islam be executed and that it was permissible for Muslims to kill and seize the property of "polytheists."

WaPo:

Islamic law includes not only the Koran and the Sunna (the traditions of the prophet Muhammad) but also great bodies of arcane legal rulings and pedantic scholarly interpretations. If mosques forced Islamic law upon their congregants, most Muslims would probably leave -- just as most Christians might walk out of the pews if preachers gave sermons exclusively on Saint Augustine, canon law and Greek grammar. Instead, mosques study the Koran and the Sunna and how the principles and stories in those sacred texts apply to their everyday lives....

This is just silly. Christian preachers may convey the substance of what is contained in "Saint Augustine, canon law and Greek grammar" in simplified form in their sermons if they choose to do so. So also may Muslim preachers convey in simplified form the content of Sharia if they so choose. In any case, "if anyone changes his religion, kill him" (a statement of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and a universal among the schools of Islamic law) is not really all that arcane.

4. Mosques are funded by groups and governments unfriendly to the United States.

There certainly have been instances in which foreign funds, especially from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region, have been used to build mosques in the United States. The Saudi royal family, for example, reportedly gave $8 million for the building of the King Fahd Mosque, which was inaugurated in 1998 in Culver City, a Los Angeles suburb.

Apparently the WaPo is admitting here that the Saudi government is unfriendly to the United States.

But the vast majority of mosques are supported by Muslim Americans themselves. Domestic funding reflects the desire of many U.S. Muslims to be independent of overseas influences. Long before Sept. 11, 2001, in the midst of a growing clash of interests between some Muslim-majority nations and the U.S. government -- during the Persian Gulf War, for instance -- Muslim American leaders decided that they must draw primarily from U.S. sources of funding for their projects.

In reality, it is estimated that as many as 80% of mosques in America are Saudi funded.

5. Mosques lead to homegrown terrorism.

To the contrary, mosques have become typical American religious institutions. In addition to worship services, most U.S. mosques hold weekend classes for children, offer charity to the poor, provide counseling services and conduct interfaith programs.

No doubt, some mosques have encouraged radical extremism. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik who inspired the World Trade Center's first attackers in 1993, operated out of the Al-Salam mosque in Jersey City, N.J. But after the 2001 attacks, such radicalism was largely pushed out of mosques and onto the Internet, mainly because of a renewed commitment among mosque leaders to confront extremism.

There is a danger that as anti-Muslim prejudice increases -- as it has recently in reaction to the proposed community center near Ground Zero -- alienated young Muslims will turn away from the peaceful path advocated by their elders in America's mosques. So far, that has not happened on a large scale.

Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.
sion.

All right, so some mosques promote "radical extremism," and some don't, and since some don't, mosques should not be "feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination," despite the fact that "alienated young Muslims" might "turn away from the peaceful path advocated by their elders in America's mosques" in their rage over "Islamophobia."

Funny how no amount of rage would ever lead me to blow myself up in a crowded restaurant. But that's just me.

The International Security Assistance Force killed a senior commander of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who also serves as the Taliban's shadow governor in the northern province of Takhar.

ISAF attacked the commander after intelligence assets indicated he was "traveling in a sedan on a series of remote roads" in the district of Rustaq in Takhar earlier today. A senior US intelligence official told The Long War Journal that the senior commander was Mohammed Amin, and said he was killed during the strike.

Mohammed Amin's car is thought to have been part of a six-vehicle convoy, according to an ISAF press release. Strike aircraft "conducted a precision air strike on one sedan and later followed with direct fire from an aerial platform." Between eight to 12 "insurgents," including a Taliban commander, were killed or wounded during the attack, ISAF estimated.

But a spokesman for the provincial government claimed that 10 election workers were killed and a candidate for parliament was wounded in the strike. ISAF is investigating reports that civilians may have been killed during the strike.

Amin "regularly coordinates and conducts attacks with known IMU and Taliban insurgents, and traveled from Pakistan to Takhar this spring."

His dual role as the deputy shadow governor of Takhar as well as an IMU commander highlights the interconnectedness of the Taliban and al Qaeda and Central and South Asian terror groups. In the past, ISAF has identified several Taliban commanders who have also served as top leaders for al Qaeda and the IMU in Afghanistan.

Recently, ISAF killed Abu Baqir, "a dual-hatted Taliban sub-commander and al Qaeda group leader," who also was a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Abu Baqir was based in Kunduz province. ISAF has also been hunting Qari Zia Rahman, who is the Taliban's top regional commander in the northeast as well as a senior military leader in al Qaeda. He operates in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan province in Afghanistan, and he also operates across the border in Pakistan's tribal agency of Bajaur. Qari Zia is closely allied with Faqir Mohammed as well as with Osama bin Laden. Qari Zia's fighters are from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and various Arab nations.

Over the past month, ISAF has put the pressure on Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan commanders in northern Afghanistan. ISAF has conducted multiple raids in an effort to kill or capture IMU commanders and operatives in Kunduz and Takhar [see LWJ report Senior Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan commander targeted in northern Afghanistan, and Threat Matrix report ISAF continues to hunt IMU commanders in Kunduz for more details].

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is an al Qaeda affiliate that operates both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The IMU is most active in the Afghan north and east. The IMU's former leader, Tahir Yuldashev, was killed in a US Predator airstrike in South Waziristan in September 2009. Yuldashev sat on al Qaeda's top council, the Shura Majlis. He has been replaced by Abu Usman Adil.

The Taliban have also made inroads in Takhar and in neighboring Badakhshan. Security in both provinces has deteriorated over the past year as US forces have withdrawn from remote districts in nearby Kunar and Nuristan provinces. Attacks against the government, Afghan security forces, and civilians have spiked in Badakhshan and Takhar. The most egregious attack took place in early August in Badakhshah. Both the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin claimed that their forces killed 10 medical workers, including eight foreigners, in an ambush in the province.

Sources:

• Coalition forces conduct precision strike against senior IMU member in Takhar province, ISAF press release
• US strike kills 'dual-hatted' al Qaeda and Taliban commander in northern Afghanistan, The Long War Journal
• Senior Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan commander targeted in northern Afghanistan, The Long War Journal
• ISAF continues to hunt IMU commanders in Kunduz, Threat Matrix
• Afghan, US forces hunt al Qaeda, Taliban in northeast, The Long War Journal
• US hunts wanted Taliban and al Qaeda commander in Kunar, The Long War Journal
• Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan confirms leader Tahir Yuldashev killed, The Long War Journal
• Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan names Abu Usman as new leader, The Long War Journal
• Hizb-i-Islami, Taliban both claim killing 10 medical workers in northern Afghanistan, The Long War Journal

More duplicity and deception from this vaunted "moderate." "Questions Raised About Rauf's Nonexistent Mosque," from IPT News, September 1:

The federal government considers the Muslim group founded by Ground Zero Mosque leader Feisal Abdul Rauf to be a tax-exempt church. But federal records show the group obtained that status by claiming to hold prayer services for up to 500 people in a Manhattan apartment building that has no space to hold that many people.

The application for tax exempt status from the American Sufi Muslim Association (ASMA) in 1998 claimed the group had an established place of worship at 201 W. 85th St. in New York. That is a 17-floor apartment building.

The 1998 tax filing, called a 1023 form, is required for any institution that wants to be considered a religious house of worship and therefore exempt from taxation. In the filing, Rauf is identified as ASMA's founder. The application said the group was already operating as a prayer center for between 450 and 500 daily worshipers.

However, a review of the building and real estate records indicates there is nowhere in the building to house that many congregants. ASMA lists its office address as 201 W. 85th St., Apt. 10E on the tax form, while it cites only the building address as its location for prayer services.

The building has apartments only and no public spaces, such as a conference or a board room, to accommodate 450 people. Apartment 10E, building records show, is a one-bedroom apartment with about 800 square feet of living space. In the 1997 incorporation records filed with the state of New York, Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, was named as an ASMA director living at that address.

But when ASMA filed for its church status with the IRS, Khan was no longer listed as a director. Instead, Rauf signed the form that said ASMA's address was the same as Khan's apartment - 201 W. 85^th St., Apt. 10E....

Read it all.

al-Reuters:

In a separate development in the United States, [Anjem Choudary] added, debating groups such as Revolution Muslim, the Islamic Thinkers' Society and Authentic Tawheed launched in the past two years were at the stage "we were at maybe about 10 years ago."

"I believe they (U.S. groups) are on the verge of something big," said Choudary, who follows the ultra-conservative Salafist brand of Islam, admires Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-based preacher who has called for attacks on the United States and says he has empathy with Somalia's al-Shabaab Islamist fighters.

"The seeds have been laid down by organizations like Revolution Muslim and Authentic Tawheed."

"CALLING FOR JIHAD"

U.S. officials are worried about the emergence of so-called homegrown militants in the United States who apparently radicalized themselves by visiting Internet sites that host strongly anti-Western Islamist commentary written in English.

Among sites hosting such material are Revolution Muslim, the Islamic Thinkers' Society and Authentic Tawheed, which say they are non-violent, their online material is intended for education only and they merely speak up against tyranny and injustice.

"Now they've suddenly started to call for the sharia and are coming out publicly...In general there's more freedom there."

"In the videos they are openly calling for jihad on the streets of New York whereas we can't do that anymore here because you have (a law against) glorification of terrorism."

Islam4UK was banned under counter-terrorism laws after it provoked public anger with a plan to march through a town where British troops killed in Afghanistan are honored.H/T: Revolution Muslim

From the New York Times via Jihad Watch:

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo should not investigate the financing of the proposed Islamic community center near ground zero, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Tuesday, reiterating his support for the project.

“I think it’s a terrible precedent,” he said. “You don’t want them investigating donations to religious organizations, and there’s no reason for the government to do so.”

Bloomberg is out to lunch on this issue. Non-profit organizations, including religious institutions, routinely have their funding examined. Many, if not most, are fully transparent in their financial dealings.

If the Ground Zero mosque is to be funded by foreign entities, especially foreign governments, the American people need to know. We believe that such an investigation will reveal the “tip of the iceberg,” as the overwhelming majority of major mosque expansion projects in this country are funded by foreign powers.

In America we have a clause in our constitution referred to as the “establishment clause.” This prohibits the U.S. government from promoting or inhibiting the free practice of religion.

But that does NOT mean that we have to allow foreign governments to spend huge sums of money establishing their official state religions in this country…

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/09/bloomberg-funding-of-islamic-supremacist-mega-mosque-at-ground-zero-should-not-be-investigated.html

This is getting so ridiculous, one wonders if Bloomberg himself has something to hide in not wanting the mosque's finances investigated. He is here in effect saying that any group can now call itself a religious organization and then engage in shady financial dealings with impunity. Talk about setting a "terrible precedent."

"Mayor Opposes Examining Islamic Center's Finances," by Sharon Otterman and Colin Moynihan in the New York Times, August 31 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo should not investigate the financing of the proposed Islamic community center near ground zero, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Tuesday, reiterating his support for the project.

"I think it's a terrible precedent," he said. "You don't want them investigating donations to religious organizations, and there's no reason for the government to do so."

Mr. Bloomberg made his remarks about the controversial development project, known as Park51, in response to questions about a Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday that found voters in New York State deeply divided, with more than 70 percent of them wanting Mr. Cuomo to investigate the project's financing.

Sticking to what he said were the larger principles at stake, Mayor Bloomberg played down recent reports that the project's main developer, Sharif el-Gamal, has a history of misdemeanors, including disorderly conduct, drunken driving and hiring a prostitute.

"I don't know anything about his personal life," he said, speaking after the opening of a new Italian marketplace in the Flatiron district. "The issue here to me is very simple: The government shouldn't be in the business of telling people who they pray to, where they pray, when they pray. There's an issue of what American values are."...

Hakeemullah and Waliur Rehman Mehsud, before the Pakistani Army launched the South Waziristan offensive.

Years after its appearance as a major terrorist organization, the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan was today named as a terrorist entity by the US Treasury, and the group's top two leaders were listed as foreign terrorists.

Today under Executive Order 13224, the Treasury designated the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan as a terrorist entity, and Hakeemullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman Mehsud as specially designated global terrorists. The designation allows the US to freeze the assets of the Pakistani Taliban and its two senior leaders, prevent them from using financial institutions, and prosecute them for terrorist activities.

Hakeemullah, Waliur, and the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, which is also known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, have been involved in multiple terror attacks inside Pakistan and in neighboring Afghanistan, as well as in the failed Times Square car bombing in New York City on May 1, 2010.

Hakeemullah is the emir, or top leader, of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, while Waliur is the leader of the Taliban in South Waziristan, the heartland of the terror movement. Over the past several years, the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan has taken control of large swaths of territory in Pakistan's tribal areas as well as in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the Northwest Frontier Province) and Baluchistan. The Taliban shelter al Qaeda and other Pakistani, Central Asian, and South Asian terror groups.

In its statement today, the US State Department described the Pakistani Taliban as an al Qaeda affiliate.

"TTP [ Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan] and al Qaeda have a symbiotic relationship; TTP draws ideological guidance from al Qaeda, while al Qaeda relies on TTP for safe haven in the Pashtun areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border," said the statement released by State. "This mutual cooperation gives TTP access to both al Qaeda's global terrorist network and the operational experience of its members. Given the proximity of the two groups and the nature of their relationship, TTP is a force multiplier for al Qaeda."

Both Hakeemullah and Waliur have also been added today to the Rewards for Justice website. The Taliban leaders now have a $5 million bounty out for information leading to their capture and prosecution.

In the fall of 2009, the Pakistani government placed an estimated $600,000 bounty out for Hakeemullah and Waliur. Both men are wanted for terrorist attacks against the military, police, the government, and civilians inside Pakistan.

Image of Hakeemullah Mehsud (left) and Humam Khalil Muhammed Abu Mulal al Balawi (right) on a videotape released on the Internet.

Hakeemullah has appeared on several videotapes with al Qaeda operatives who have conducted attacks against US interests in the US and in Afghanistan. In early January 2010, Hakeemullah appeared on a videotape with Humam Khalil Muhammed Abu Mulal al Balawi, the al Qaeda operative who killed seven US CIA operatives and guards, and a Jordanian intelligence official, in a suicide bombing at Combat Outpost Chapman on Dec. 30, 2009. Balawi, who was also known as Abu Dujanah al Khurasani, was a Jordanian Islamist who was thought to have been turned against al Qaeda. He was a longtime Internet jihadi who had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence to provide targeting information for the US' covert air campaign against al Qaeda's leaders and operations in Pakistan's tribal areas.

On the tape, Balawi said he carried out the suicide attack to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, Hakeemullah's predecessor, who was killed in a US airstrike in South Waziristan on Aug. 5.

"We will never forget the blood of our emir Baitullah Mehsud," Balawi said. "We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside. It is an obligation of the emigrants who were welcomed by the emir [Baitullah]."

Today, in addition to the terror designation, the US Justice department has charged Hakeemullah with counts of "conspiracy to murder US citizens abroad and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives) against US citizens abroad" for his involvement in the suicide attack on Combat Outpost Chapman.

And earlier this year, Hakeemullah appeared with failed Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad in a short videoclip that was released in July.

"Today, along with the leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Hakeemullah Mehsud and under the command of Amir al-Mumineen Mullah Mohammed Omar Mujahid (may Allah protect him), we are planning to wage an attack on your side, inshallah (god willing)," Shahzad said. "Amir al-Mumineen" means the leader or commander of the faithful. Mullah Omar is recognized as their overall leader by Taliban commanders on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Image of Hakeemullah Mehsud (left) and Faisal Shahzad (right) on a videotape obtained by Flashpoint Partners.

Background on the Taliban's involvement in the Times Square plot

On May 3, Shahzad was detained by the FBI when he tried to flee the country, just two days after attempting to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in New York City. He has pled guilty to 10 counts of terror activities, including attempting to detonated a weapon of mass destruction, and has cooperated with the FBI. Shahzad will be sentenced in October.

Shahzad has admitted to the FBI that he was trained in a Taliban camp in Waziristan beginning in late 2009, and that he received money from the organization twice after returning to the US in early 2010.

The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, led by Hakeemullah Mehsud, claimed credit for the failed Times Square bombing within hours of the failed attack. Two top leaders of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan who are currently thought to be sheltering in North Waziristan released tapes claiming the attack and threatening more attacks in the US. But senior US officials initially dismissed the reports and speculated that the attack was carried out by a "lone wolf."

In the early morning of May 2, a person identifying himself as a member of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel sent The Long War Journal the location of an audiotape made by Qari Hussain Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban master trainer of suicide bombers. In the tape, which had been uploaded to a YouTube site created by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel, Qari Hussain took credit for the failed bombing.

Significantly, Qari Hussain's audiotape was uploaded on April 30, one day before the failed attack, and the Taliban news channel was also created on April 30. On May 2, YouTube quickly removed the audiotape and shut down the site.

Sixteen hours after receiving the initial Taliban contact, The Long War Journal was contacted by a person using a Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan email address who pointed to the location of a new YouTube website with both an audio and a video tape of Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. In these tapes, Hakeemullah officially broke his months-long silence, denied that he had been killed in a US strike in Pakistan on Jan. 14, and threatened more attacks in the US.

US officials initially described the Times Square plot as a lone wolf attack and downplayed links to to the Pakistani Taliban despite the existence of the tapes. But one week after the attack, the Obama administration admitted that Shahzad was indeed linked to the Taliban.

Wall Street Journal, 1 Sep 2010: The controversy over a proposed mosque in lower Manhattan has spurred a wider debate about the nature of Islam. We asked six leading thinkers—Anwar Ibrahim, Bernard Lewis, Ed Husain, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Tawfik Hamid and Akbar Ahmed—to weigh in. . . .

. . . . Don’t Gloss Over The Violent Texts, By Tawfik Hamid

In regards to Islam, the words “moderate’” and “radical” are relative terms. Without defining them it is virtually impossible to defeat the latter or support the former.

Radical Islam is not limited to the act of terrorism; it also includes the embrace of teachings within the religion that promote hatred and ultimately breed terrorism. Those who limit the definition of radical Islam to terrorism are ignoring—and indirectly approving of—the Shariah teachings that permit killing apostates, violence against women and gays, and anti-Semitism.

Moderate Islam should be defined as a form of Islam that rejects these violent and discriminatory edicts. Furthermore, it must provide a strong theological refutation for the mainstream Islamic teaching that the Muslim umma (nation) must declare wars against non-Muslim nations, spreading the religion and giving non-Muslims the following options: convert, pay a humiliating tax, or be killed. This violent concept fuels jihadists, who take the teaching literally and accept responsibility for applying it to the modern world.

Moderate Islam must not be passive. It needs to actively reinterpret the violent parts of the religious text rather than simply cherry-picking the peaceful ones. Ignoring, rather than confronting or contextualizing, the violent texts leaves young Muslims vulnerable to such teachings at a later stage in their lives.

Finally, moderate Islam must powerfully reject the barbaric practices of jihadists. Ideally, this would mean Muslims demonstrating en masse all over the world against the violence carried out in the name of their religion.

Moderate Islam must be honest enough to admit that Islam has been used in a violent manner at several stages in history to seek domination over others. Insisting that all acts in Islamic history and all current Shariah teachings are peaceful is a form of deception that makes things worse by failing to acknowledge the existence of the problem.

Mr. Hamid, a former member of the Islamic radical group Jamma Islamiya, is an Islamic reformer and a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

Not so long ago, I had a conversation with a Pakistani businessman about the prospects for economic growth. The conversation turned to import and export. Now, as someone who has personally had to clear Ms Henley-on-Thames "minimised" 250+kg of shipping through Islamabad airport customs, I have seen a little of the dark dealings it takes to get things done in a place where corruption is part of the background noise.

The businessman, who regularly ships finished products to the UK, was saying that importing and exporting in Pakistan was pretty straight forward. I was saying that it wasn't as there is no clarity in the regulations. We argued back and forth about this until we came to a point we agreed on - well, nearly. The businessman said the customs' payments were reasonable and not prohibitive to business. I said the bribe I had to pay (through some pretty dodgy cunning manoeuvrings) hadn't been as bad as I feared. We both repeated our positions not really thinking about what the other said until it clicked. We both looked at each other for a few seconds and it became clear that we were talking about different ends of the same customs official's twirly moustache.

"Um, you know. The things you have to do here to build your business, your life or whatever... They warp your mentality."

I didn't think it was worth pressing home the point that the businessman had come to consider corruption "normal".

I've seen lots of corruption; bucket loads; all over the place. I still remember feeling slightly thrilled when as an 18-year old landing in Cairo to start an Arabic course, I had to pay my first bribe to get my bags waved away by the narcotics police - not that I had anything illegal in my bags, but only because they were obviously taking about 30 minutes to check each bag in a crowded and sweltering queue in the hope that the better off would self select themselves and offer to pay up to move things along.

Corruption isn't corruption in Pakistan, it's life. As some commentators have already pointed out, it's not a huge surprise that a phenomenon that permeates society is also present in sport.

But just as corruption isn't just corruption, cricket isn't just cricket in Pakistan. It's a metaphor for how the country views itself at its best. The team can be chaotic, unruly, but from the depths of defeat and despair it can tap into some sort of unseen fount of resolve and produce dazzling displays of skill and determination. Equally, from a position of unassailable confidence, it can collapse in less time than it takes to place a bet at your local bookies. At the same time, cricket is the one thing the entire country regardless of religious affiliation, ethnic background or social class can rally around.

Which is what makes the cricket betting scandal so painful for Pakistanis. If cricket is Pakistan, it makes sense that there's an element of corruption involved. But of course, Pakistanis hope beyond the expectations of logic that there isn't. Cricket is Pakistan at its best, and its worst.

As an editorial in Pakistan's most popular newspaper Jang stated the other day:

"The whole nation is ashamed...Corruption has marred the country... and this is going on and on unabated. This latest cricket corruption case shows again the need for revising the whole system."

In the same way the floods have shown up Pakistan's governance problems then the cricket scandal shows up corruption. I don't want to contribute to the sense of beating Pakistan when it's down, but I do feel that responsibly highlighting problems is the first step to solving them. If the cricket fiasco encourages Pakistanis to take matters into their own hands and do something, it will, ultimately, have a positive impact.

Corruption is some times described as a cancer - and I think that's accurate. In a decade of reporting from the Muslim world, across countries and regions, I noticed the all-encompassing presence of corruption. Once it's in your system, it's near impossible to eradicate. Often, the only way to get rid of it, will wreak havoc on the wider body politic, and then there's still no guarantee it's going to stay away.

Corruption is not something to be opposed merely on the grounds of principle or morality. In practical terms it damages a state's ability to enact policy by providing people with ways around laws. It allows the unscrupulous to make enough money to influence the decision making power of the state. It allows those with connections to increase their gains and widen further the gap between rich and poor. There are many other reasons, but perhaps the most damaging in the current climate is the effect it has of alienating the disenfranchised and propelling them to turn to non-state actors to provide security, legal redress or relief.  It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that ending corruption is a recurrent theme with extremists.

I remember sitting in Cairo's Journalist Union on the eve of the US-led invasion of Iraq with Arab journalist friends. It's hard to imagine now, but despite all our worries about civilian deaths and US intentions towards Iraqi oil, we all took it for granted that the US would establish a competent government in Iraq. At the time, whether you agreed with US policies in the region or not, you didn't doubt its capacity to carry out its aims. The one good thing we thought the US would be able to do in Iraq was to remove corruption as a ubiquitous aspect of life in Arab and Muslim countries. In the end, the US not only failed to stamp out corruption but by its actions encouraged it. It didn't take long before US officials in Iraq were accused of taking part in it.

What usually happens when Pakistan or another Muslim country is in the limelight for deceitful shenanigans is that some Western commenters somewhere will imply (or flat out state) that the problem is cultural. This puts people on the defensive. They object to being portrayed as morally bankrupt down to the last man, woman and child. And I would agree. In a system where getting your kids into school requires bribes and not grades and even obtaining your driving licence is in essence a financial transaction, I am constantly surprised and humbled when I meet stringently honest people like Jahangir Tareen who, for example, pay their taxes even when this requires more effort than just flying under the radar and risks further unwarranted, predatory attention from greedy officials.

But the response of those who are labelled as "culturally corrupt" is often to say "There is even more corruption in the West. They are just better at hiding it." This isn't entirely true. Yes, there is corruption in the West. For example, in the UK not so long ago, Tony Blair while prime minister, ordered the Serious Fraud Office on national security grounds to stop a corruption investigation into an arms deal between a British defence firm and Saudi Arabia. The result was outrage that the executive arm of government had pulled rank over the judicial branch for economic reasons. However, this sort of thing doesn't impact the average person's life several times a day. But what it does do is degrade the checks and balances that keep the cancer out of the system.

And that's what it's about; the system. It's not about culture or DNA, it's about having properly functioning, fair systems that give people faith that even if they are poor, they will be treated like everyone else and have the same (or similar) opportunities to better their lot in life.

US and Afghan troops have killed 19 Taliban fighters and detained five more during an air assault on a known Taliban stronghold in a village in Kunar province.

The combined force launched "a major air assault" against Taliban fighters operating in the village of Omar in the district of Pech (which is also known as Monogai) in Kunar yesterday. The International Security Assistance Force did not respond to an inquiry on the size of the air assault.

US troops, from the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, and Afghan soldiers found "numerous insurgent fighting positions, weapons caches, and stockpiles of ammunition within the village" during the assault.

Over the past month, ISAF and Afghan forces have stepped up operations in Kunar, a known haven for al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hizb-i-Islami, and Pakistani Taliban fighters.

On Aug. 26, US troops killed four Taliban fighters in an airstrike in the Pech district. On Aug. 19, special operations forces killed three members of the Taliban subgroup Jamaat ul Dawa al Quran during a raid in the village of Shamun in Pech. Sayed Shah, a wanted commander in Jamaat ul Dawa al Quran, was among those killed.

And in late July and early August, ISAF announced that it was hunting Qari Zia Rahman, who is the Taliban's top regional commander as well as a senior military leader in al Qaeda. He operates in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan province in Afghanistan, and he also operates across the border in Pakistan's tribal agency of Bajaur. Qari Zia is closely allied with Faqir Mohammed as well as with Osama bin Laden. Qari Zia's fighters are from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and various Arab nations. Earlier this year, the Pakistani government claimed to have killed Qari Zia in an airstrike, but he later spoke to the media and mocked Pakistan's interior minister for wrongly reporting his death.

The US military has killed other top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in Pech in Kunar over the past year. On Nov. 26, 2009, Dowron, the Taliban commander of the Pech River Valley was killed in a US strike. Dowron had ties to multiple al Qaeda members and was involved in attacks on Afghan and Coalition forces and bases, as well as on Afghan civilians.

On Dec. 1, 2009, Qari Masiullah, the al Qaeda chief of security for Kunar province, was killed during another operation. Masiullah ran a training camp that taught insurgents how to use and emplace IEDs that were used in attacks on Afghan civilians and Afghan and Coalition forces throughout the provinces of Nangarhar, Nuristan, Kunar, and Laghman.

Also, on Oct. 11, 2009, US forces targeted an al Qaeda base in the mountains in Pech. The raid targeted an al Qaeda commander who is known to use the mountainside base near the village of Tantil to conduct attacks in the Pech Valley. The al Qaeda leader, who was not named, and his cadre are also known to facilitate the movement of foreign fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

Kunar province is a known sanctuary for al Qaeda and allied terror groups. The presence of al Qaeda cells has been detected in the districts of Pech, Shaikal Shate, Sarkani, Dangam, Asmar, and Asadabad; or six of Kunar's 12 districts, according to an investigation by The Long War Journal.

ISAF has ceded ground to al Qaeda and the Taliban over the past year when it withdrew from outposts in remote districts in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan as part of its population-centric counterinsurgency strategy. The Taliban and al Qaeda have taken advantage of these new safe havens to strike at neighboring districts and provinces.

Sources:

• Afghan, coalition forces conduct air assault in Kunar, ISAF press release
• Insurgents struck during operation in Kunar; civilian casualty allegations, ISAF press release
• US targets Salafist group allied with the Taliban in Kunar, The Long War Journal
• US hunts wanted Taliban and al Qaeda commander in Kunar, The Long War Journal
• Afghan, US forces hunt al Qaeda, Taliban in northeast, The Long War Journal
• US, Afghan forces target insurgent leaders in the East, The Long War Journal
• Joint forces assault al Qaeda base in Afghan East, The Long War Journal

A followup to my earlier post on an online jihadi arrested in Spain who was helping facilitate the transfer of money to Chechen and Afghan terrorists. We know of a few eHadis in Spain, but no way to link them to this arrest.

But Hetz Shahor did a little digging and who does Faical (Faisal) Errai ... turn out to be? None other than the webmaster of the Ansar al Mujahideen Arabic Forum!

This. Is. Big. Well, in my little world it's big.

Ansar is easily one of the top ten jihadi forums -- and has been for some time. How connected to terrorists are they? This would be the forum that recently brought you a Q&A session with top Taliban commander Sirraj Haqqani.

You'll know their sister English language forum from our long standing feud with them. The Ansar al-Mujahideen English Forum (AMEF) bills itself as a "member of the Ansar al-Jihad Network" which started in the bowels of as-Ansar and which also includes a German language site.

The German language sister site is closely associated with the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF). Several GIMF members have been arrested on terror related charges. Recently, the administrator of the German Ansar forum was arrested.

AMEF's most well known member is one "Abu Risaas". You would know him by his meat world name, Samir Khan. AMEF hosts Khan's now defunct blog as brother Abu Risaas is now working with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's spiritual leader, Anwar al-Awlaki.

Another graduate of AMEF is "Abu Talhah al-Amriki", who you would know in the real world as Zachary Chesser. I wonder how prison food is treating Zach?

The list really does go on and on, but let's get on to the story. Here's a Google translation of a Spanish story on the arrest:

According to the order issued today by the judge, Errai, which it accuses of a crime of belonging to the Islamist group Ansar Al Mujahideen Network, bought the Internet domain www.ansaraljihad.net, which created a forum for disseminating "radical concepts religion, speech extremist propaganda materials of different terrorist groups and communication platform reserved. "

And if I have the facts straight.

German Ansar administrator in jail: check.
Arabic Ansar administrator in jail: check.
English Ansar administrator .... on the loose.

Run Forrest, run!

As promised ....

Update(Matt Damon): Sami you still watching those skies? Never know what is lurking up there.......heh.

Somebody buy a round.

Because the bros at Revolution Muslim like to rip our posts off. Go ahead guys, post this up on your site.

KABUL, Afghanistan (Aug. 31) - An Afghan and coalition security force detained several insurgents in Kandahar province Monday, including a Taliban commander who coordinated weapons movements and improvised explosive device and direct fire attacks on Afghan civilians, as well as Afghan and coalition forces.

The security force targeted a compound in the village of Jelawur in Arghandab district to search the area. Afghan soldiers used a loudspeaker to call for all occupants to exit the buildings peacefully and then secured the area. After initial questioning on the scene, the assault force detained the commander and three of his associates for further questioning.

The security force did not fire their weapons and they protected the women and children for the duration of the search.

Said Ali al Shihri, former Guantánamo detainee and deputy leader of al Qaeda in Yemen. Photo from The SITE Institute.

In a nearly 15-minute audio tape released in early August, Said al Shihri, one of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) top leaders, tried to convince Saudi soldiers and security officers to serve al Qaeda. Al Shihri set forth a dozen reasons why Saudi citizens should betray the royals, and he offered a cursory plan for doing so.

Al Shihri said it should be “easy” to overthrow the House of Saud if his plan is followed.

Al Shihri called for willing recruits to form cells that can attract logistical support from members of the Saudi Air Force, Army, and office of the Interior Ministry. Al Shihri urged guards for the Saudi royals to turn on “the tyrant princes” and “kill them.” Those in charge of security at “weapons warehouses” inside the Kingdom and employees of the Interior Ministry are especially valuable recruits, al Shihri said.

Operational cells should also perform surveillance on “important targets” inside the Kingdom, al Shihiri advised, according to a translation of the tape obtained by the Long War Journal.

Al Shirhi’s tape is the just the latest example of how the Saudis’ rehabilitation program for former Gitmo detainees and other jihadists has faltered. Al Shihri was captured in northern Pakistan in late 2001 and handed over to American authorities. He was detained at Guantanamo until Nov. 9, 2007, when he was repatriated to the Saudis.

The Saudis arranged for a private jet to fly al Shihri and other Gitmo detainees back to the Kingdom. Typically, the former detainees are pampered, and are offered inducements to renounce al Qaeda, including jobs, cars, and wives. The Saudis set up an art therapy program as part of the rehabilitation effort, too.

The program does not try to convince the former detainees that waging violent jihad is inappropriate. Instead, the Saudis tell the Gitmo grads that jihad must be authorized by the right religious authorities – i.e., those loyal to the Saudi establishment – and not target Saudi Arabia itself. In written testimony supplied to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February 2009, then Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair explained:

The rehabilitation course covers various religious topics, including takfir, loyalty, allegiance, terrorism, legal rules for jihad, and psychological instruction on self-esteem. The course does not address anti-Western/anti-U.S. views, focusing only on the difference between Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's conservative branch of Islam, and takfirism, the violent ideology espoused by al Qaeda.

Al Shihri, who graduated from the Saudi rehabilitation program, clearly did not buy the program’s lessons. Throughout the tape, al Shihri warns Saudis that if they continue to remain loyal to the Kingdom, then they should “fear Allah” because they are serving the “sheikhs of Satan.”

Four assassination attempts on Saudi deputy interior minister

AQAP is actively targeting some Saudi princes for assassination, just as Said al Shihri calls for in his tape. According to the Saudi Gazette, al Qaeda has tried to kill Prince Muhammad Bin Naif Bin Abdul Aziz, who is the Saudi deputy interior minister and oversees the Kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts, four times since 2004.

The first attempt “involved a bomb-laden vehicle that was used to target the Ministry of Interior building in Riyadh.” In a second attempt, al Qaeda fired a missile at the prince’s plane but missed when the pilot took “evasive action.”

In a third attempt, an al Qaeda suicide bomber stuffed explosives in his rear and tried to blow up the prince. The bomber was on the Saudi Kingdom’s most wanted list, as is Said al Shihri, and pledged to turn himself in. The prince agreed to accept his surrender in person and that opened up a window of opportunity for al Qaeda. The suicide bomber was reportedly directed by senior AQAP leaders, including perhaps Said al Shihri himself.

Yousef al-Shihri, a former Gitmo detainee and now a member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Photo courtesy of the NEFA Foundation.

The fourth attempt on the prince’s life is noteworthy because it involved Said al Shihri’s brother-in-law, Yousef al Shihri, who was also a former Guantanamo detainee. The Saudi Gazette reports that Yousef al Shihri and another al Qaeda terrorist were killed in a shootout with Saudi security forces along the border on Oct. 13, 2009. [For more on Yousef al Shihri, see LWJ report, Another former Gitmo detainee killed in shootout.]

The pair were dressed as women at the time, and their garb hid two suicide explosive belts. They had two other suicide belts in their possession that were reportedly intended for two other al Qaeda operatives living inside the Kingdom. Their intended target was Prince Muhammad Bin Naif.

Echoes of Anwar al Awlaki's messaging

Said al Shihri’s tape is similar in its message to the sermons delivered by Anwar al Awlaki, who is in hiding in Yemen. Awlaki has consistently tried to convince Muslim soldiers to turn on their armies in the name of jihad. Awlaki’s most infamous recruit in this regard is Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., on Nov. 5, 2009.

Shortly after the Fort Hood attack, Awlaki wrote on his web site:

Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear the contradiction of being a Muslim and fighting against his own people. No scholar with a grain of Islamic knowledge can deny the clear cut proofs that Muslims today have the right — rather the duty — to fight against American tyranny.

This theme – that Muslims cannot serve infidel armies and Allah at the same time – has been part of Awlaki’s messaging for years. Maj. Hasan even explored this theme in a presentation he gave to his colleagues at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. After the Fort Hood shooting, it emerged that the FBI was aware that Maj. Hasan was in contact with Awlaki via email, but the communications were dismissed as innocuous.

Anwar al Awlaki, from a jihadist website.

In a more recent tape, Awlaki proudly called Hasan one of his “students” and said that Hasan asked about the religious permissibility of certain acts, including serving in the American military.

Said al Shihri’s tape echoes Awlaki’s messaging. Al Shihri says that “some members” of the Saudi armed forces have asked for guidance from AQAP as to “whether they should remain at their jobs” or join al Qaeda in Yemen. Al Shihri counsels them to stay in Saudi Arabia and only flee if it is necessary to evade authorities.

Al Shihri wants Saudi recruits to serve al Qaeda from inside the Saudi establishment. AQAP is clearly hoping that some Saudis follow Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s path.

AP:

Pete Seda is accused of tax fraud in an attempt to smuggle $150,000 to Muslim fighters in Chechnya.

Federal prosecutor Chris Cardani said this is not a terrorism case, but that it is a tax case. Cardani said Seda falsified records to avoid a paper trail for the money.

No, this is not a David Letterman skit. He is a useless tool. This is a great article from The American Thinker, so be sure to hammer any idiot who believes America is harming muslims, and remember: No one is better at killing muslims than muslims. Same with Latin-Americans, Africans, Asians, etc… Yeah I know, it is not PC (politically correct) but I don’t give a damn. It’s true.

Top Ten Things America Has Done for Muslims – American Thinker

[...]
Americans have given thousands of their youngest, best and brightest in combat to save Muslims. This provides a number of important counterarguments to anti-American radicals who ground their rhetoric in the religion of Islam.

1. The world recently commemorated the inexcusable 15th  anniversary of Srebrenica, where U.N. forces allowed 8,000 Muslim men to be massacred. In the 1995 military intervention in Yugoslavia, the United States lead a NATO military coalition, against the wishes of the United Nations, to rescue a Muslim minority from ethnic extermination by Serbian President Milosevic. The extermination was typified by the U.N.’s failed defense of Muslims at Srebrenica. There was no member of the intervening coalition from a Middle East Islamic nation. Today, that minority enjoys a new sovereign state created for their benefit by the United States — Kosovo.
2. The United States, in its first war with the government of Iraq in 1991, liberated the 2.5  million Muslims of Kuwait. Since that time, Kuwait has consequently adopted a greater measure of political freedom, including the right of women to vote. Saddam Hussein was by his own political definitions a secular Baathist dedicated to oppressing and suppressing Muslims in his own country and in Kuwait when he conquered it in 1991. The United States ended his rule of Kuwait and established humanitarian no-fly zones over Northern Iraq and Southern Iraq to protect Muslim dissidents in those regions.
3. In the second war with the anti-Muslim government of Saddam Hussein, the United States lost more than 4,000 men and women combating former Baathist radicals and al-Qaeda radicals in the country. Even the viciously anti-American Lancet report acknowledged that more than 75% of the civilian deaths in Iraq during the war were directed by anti-American forces against Muslims. The relative peace that has returned to Iraq since 2006 primarily benefits human life in Muslim communities of Iraq.
4. The Iraq war of 2003 ended the deadliest military rivalry ever fought since the end of World War II — the Iran/Iraq war. That war, fought during the 1980s, killed more than one million Muslims, utilizing chemical weapons, forced conscription of teenage males, and an array of grotesque inhumanities that never garnered any major “antiwar” movements in Europe or the United States. The ethically pretentious antiwar movement sat on its hands during the epic annihilation which primarily victimized Muslims.
5. Whatever one thinks of the oil trade, it is definitively the largest transfer of wealth in human history from affluent societies to impoverished societies. Since at least 1973, roughly one trillion dollars has been transferred annually from the economies of Japan, the U.S., Europe, and China to the Middle Eastern oil-producing states. In many instances, the United States imposed embargoes in defense of human rights for Muslims in places such as Iran and Iraq — increasing the cost and limiting the consumption of such imports to the U.S. Many of those oil-producing states have chosen to use that wealth inappropriately, but the oil can hardly be argued to be “stolen” or “imperial American acquisitions.”

6. The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan brought to an end the inhumane rule of the Taliban for more than 20 million Muslims who live there. The Taliban constituted one of the most misogynist governments in human history. Delighting in public executions at soccer stadiums where family members were compelled to discharge AK-47s in the skulls of “adulterers,” this government murdered Muslim women in order to create its own despicable spectacle of governance by terror. Today, those marginalized and dissident members of the Taliban ride about on motorcycles throwing acid in the faces of liberated schoolgirls across the Afghan countryside in hopes of returning to power.

7. In 2005, Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, populated by more than 200 million adherents, was struck by a deadly tsunami, which killed more than 150,000 people. The theological center of Islam — Saudi Arabia — provided a paltry ten million dollars in aid for victims. But Indonesia was struck by another tsunami soon after: a tidal wave of charitable giving from the U.S. The United States government provided almost one billion dollars in aid. Private charitable giving by private individual Americans provided another $800 million.

8. More than $370 billion in remittances is provided annually by the United States economy to the world. Many billions of these dollars flow to countries such as Kuwait, Lebanon, and Iran. These funds benefit Muslim communities in these countries. Remittances are funds earned in the United States by family members but sent back to communities in their host country.

9. The United States does provide demonstrable religious freedom unlike any other place in the world. While European governments tightly regulate what is recognized as a legitimate religion, the United States does in fact allow the free exercise of religion — including millions of Muslims. In sharp contrast, converts from Islam in Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia face death sentences for a well-known crime called “apostasy.”

10. The U.S. war on terrorism destroys radicals who have as their first and most significant victims Muslims who disagree with their violent supremacist interpretations of Islam. When young girls are murdered by these radicals all around the world in the form of “honor” killings, it is rarely non-Muslims who are killed. These are Muslim women dying at the hands of these bizarre misogynists. The terrorists disproportionately kill Muslims. This is why in Iraq, hatred of al-Qaeda is higher than it is in the United States. Iraqis witness on a daily basis the peculiar logic of bombings targeted at marketplaces where Muslims shop with their families. It is practices like these that are turning Muslims against groups such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Ultimately, terrorism is but a tactic in a larger war of ideas. We must all be prepared with reasons and arguments to defend beliefs such as American patriotism. The continuation of the “America mistreats Muslims” meme creates and bolsters the rationales motivating this violence around the world. These terror radicals are not crazy. These radicals have been taught and nurtured by our own self-deprecating intellectual communities as to the legitimate self-loathing Americans should feel for their “arrogance,” “pride,” “narrow-mindedness,” and “callous feelings” toward the international body politic. This intellectual indictment is painfully false and misdirected at humanity’s great heroes and nurturers rather than humanity’s murdering thugs. The pundits who pander to these deadly radicals in the misguided view of “helping Muslims” are hurting us all — the entire human family.

Ben Voth is the chair of communication and director of debate at Southern Methodist University.

Original posting.

Related posts:

1. Taliban: “Right now America is the biggest enemy of Islam. We have sent our mujahedeen to America and you will soon see the results.”
2. Panel of former Muslims speaking on Capitol Hill says U.S. needs to “wake up” to threat of Islamism
3. The leftard media, muslims waging jihad, and non-existent backlash
4. OIC muslims get TV crew kicked out of UN debate on human rights, free speech
5. Radical Islamic networks flourishing in America

Remember the moon-walking, Avril Lavigne singing Canadian idol guy who was just indicted for terrorism? Well, no surprise here but one of the three indicted in the plot, Misbahuddin Ahmed, used to raise money for an Islamic "charity" the RS Foundation:

For years, he played ball hockey at a biannual charity tournament for Muslim men based in Montreal, which raises funds for the Canadian-based RS Foundation (helping impoverished people in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, according to its website).

Any surprise that a would be terrorist would raise funds for a "charity" by an antisemitic, conspiracy prone, terror apologist?

And apparently this is just the tip of the iceberg. I have it on good authority that others arrested in the plot were also involved in the RS Foundation, and that the Foundation's ties to the terror plot also run deeper. More on that when Square Mile Wife gets off the road.

In the mean time, Blazing Cat Fur has more.