"I am a Jew when synagogues are attacked. I am a Christian when Christians are persecuted for example in Iraq. And I am a Muslim when firebombs are thrown at their places of worship."
Aiman Mazyek, chairperson of the Central Muslim Council, Germany
The central council of Muslims has also condemned recent fundamentalist activities, accusing them of "perverting the name of [Islam]." Earlier this month, a number of civilians calling themselves the"Sharia police" began patrolling the streets of the western city of Wuppertal, located roughly 50 kilometers (31 miles) northeast of Cologne.
"The action day should be a sign of accord in society," Mazyek stressed.
Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich and Bielefeld, along with roughly 2,000 other cities are to hold events on Friday. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere is to attend the demonstration in Hanover, according to the central council.
We were warned that the paranoia of endless war could lead to the creation of a Security State that would threaten our basic rights of free speech and privacy.
That warning seems less and less like a theory and more and more like a fact.
The warnings about "endless war" also seem more and more like a new reality.
Consider:
We invaded Afghanistan for it's role in hosting and protecting the violent fanatics who attacked us on 911.
Afghanistan is still a mess and still hosts violent fanatics.
We invaded Iraq and deposed its dictator.
Iraq is a mess and now under assault by violent fanatics.
And now, over a decade later, a different president is again declaring that he doesn't need the approval of congress and will put together a 'coalition of the willing' to attack- violent fanatics.
I will admit I once believed in the WOT. I wanted our country to be safe from violent, regressive fanatics. I wanted women and religious minorities to enjoy the same security and freedom I take for granted.
I still want those things.
But I look around me and I see a generation of servicemen and women who are disabled or permanently traumatized by multiple tours of duty.
I'm discouraged by flaws in these societies that no amount of military intervention can correct:
Emirates who speak soothing words to the west while silently sending money to violent fanatics.
A constant desire to blame the west for these ills, even while begging the west to rescue the societies that cling to them.
I still want a better life for the innocent victims of violent fanatics.
But I want a better life for this country, too.
I cant help wondering: our armed forces are strictly volunteer. What happens when they can no longer attract sufficient recruits to feed the WoT?
Too many Americans can no longer find jobs that will support their families. How long will it be before some smart politician decides to reinstate the draft?
After all, the easiest way to reduce unemployment is to simply ship masses of the unemployed overseas.
Viola!
That said, I still love this country. I love it for the magical mix of people who are born here or who are drawn here. I love it for the miracles that crazy mix oftens creates. I love it for our never-ending struggle to make our founding ideals a reality.
I guess that's all I have to say for this 911. I love my country. And that changes how I see certain things, 13 years on.
A talk-show host in Iraq breaks down in tears as he describes the persecution of Christians as ISIS rapes Mosul.
His compatriot describes Iraqi Christians as "the petals of the rose" that is Iraq, and praise their "honorable" moral culture:
"Good" and "Bad" are not defined by race, religion, sexual preference or nationality. Prayers and blessings for the good people of Iraq, who feel instinctively that their 'bouquet' of diverse worship is what makes them strong and whole.
I have been doing September 11 posts every year for over a decade.
I have not run out of things to say; only the heart to say them.
On September 11, 2001 millions of Americans were abruptly introduced to the kind of murderous zealots the Middle East has endured for generations.
The kind of zealots that carefully plan and ecstatically cheer the deaths of unarmed, non-military men, women and children.
The kind of zealots who demand that the world reshape itself to suit their ethnic grievances, whether real or imagined.
The kind of zealots for whom purity is never pure enough; the kind who will violently punish anyone who deviates from perfect compliance with their beliefs.
Zealots like that murdered thousands of innocent, unsuspecting Americans in multiple locations in just a few hours.
At first we were stunned.
Then we were angry.
Then we took up arms and went out to meet them.
The result has been neither success nor failure, but a kind of toxic stalemate.
Like a sick body kept alive and suffering while the twin toxins of chemotherapy and cancer fight it out.
Like many Americans I had hoped we could spread democracy and freedom to millions of like-minded individuals. But once those concepts passed through the overseas looking glass, they kept turning into "freedom for my gender/ethnic group and oppression for all others!"
We had barged into a broken region that can never be repaired from without. But what's worse is that we seem to have taken some of the poisonous shards back home as toxic souvenirs.
Our political parties have fractured into zealous cults. Cults that demand complete purity and absolute fealty. Cults that would rather cling to radical and illogical concepts than actually work together to solve problems.
Don't agree with the President? You're a racist. Worn down by an economy that produces only minimum-wage jobs? You're a taker, not a maker.
Right now the American people are ruled by warring zealots that know more about each other than they do about the people they represent.
And many of them somehow think that the most important thing to do right now is return to a broken region and help break it further.
What was that famous definition of insanity again?
The FBI has set-up 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), prompt #3, for anyone who has information, visual images, and/or details regarding the explosions along the Boston Marathon route and elsewhere. No piece of information or detail is too small.
Any images, however trivial at first glance, could help the investigation. This includes footage of the area in the day or so before the race.
That goofy pic you took of your cousin could have an important clue hiding in the background.
And to Boston:
When the rest of this country was still a wilderness, the people of Boston stood up to one of the greatest empires the world had ever known.
You got this, Boston. And the rest of us have your back.
In Pakistan, a single masked man can stop a school bus while his compatriot climbs inside and shoots a child in the head.
This is because the Taliban is terrified of educated teenage girls.
That is exactly what happened to 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai on Tuesday this week. The man who climbed into her school bus asked for her by name and then shot her. (Others were wounded as well.)
That he felt compelled to shoot her is testament to her precocious courage and gifts. That he was able to shoot her is testament to the Pakistani government's double-dealing, corrupt embrace of Islamist extremism.
Malala Yousafzai has become famous as a kind of Pakistani Anne Frank. She lives in the Swat Valley, an area once openly controlled by the Taliban and now supposedly controlled by the government of Pakistan.
During the Taliban occupation Miss Yousafazai wrote a diary under the pen name Gul Makai. It was published by the BBC Urdu Online. Some excerpts in English:
In the past the reopening date [after her school's winter break] was always announced clearly. The principal did not inform us about the reason behind not announcing the school reopening, but my guess was that the Taleban had announced a ban on girls' education from 15 January.
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My friend came to me and said, 'for God's sake, answer me honestly, is our school going to be attacked by the Taleban?' During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colourful clothes as the Taleban would object to it.
"Gul Makai's" published diary became very popular. That made its young author very dangerous. When she observed to her father “The Talibs are where the army is but the army doesn`t go where the Talibs are,” it was more than a family conversation. It ended up in the newspaper.
In December 2011, Miss Yousafzai was awarded the first National Peace Award for Youth by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. A school was named after her. She told the press she hoped to form a political party one day.
That was too much for the Taliban; she had to be assassinated.
Miss Yousafzai has so far survived the shooting. The government immediately swept in, declaring that she would get the best medical care and loudly denouncing the attack:
“We have to fight the mind-set that is involved in this. We have to condemn it,” Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf told the Pakistani Senate. “Malala is like my daughter and yours, too. If that mind-set prevails, then whose daughter would be safe?”
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland called the shooting “barbaric” and “cowardly.”
Yet Miss Yousafzai herself observed that Pakistan's military seemed to avoid confronting the Taliban. The Washington Post adds this observation:
While school children throughout the nation held prayer vigils for Yousafza, and many Pakistanis and politicans expressed revulsion over the shooting, major religious parties and mosque leaders were largely silent. Clerics frequently do not rebuke suicide bombings or sectarian attacks for fear of alienating their increasingly conservative congregants or provoking the Taliban.
Whose will is being defied and whose will is being done?
Egypt is afraid of children, too. Earlier this month two boys aged 9 and 10 were thrown in jail on blasphemy charges. Local officials claimed that they had torn up an urinated on a copy of the Koran that they found in a garbage dump.
Just today it was announced that the two boys had been freed:
"The case has been closed ... and today we knew that the charges were dropped and the children were released after a deal was reached between Muslims, Christians and security officials in the area," said Gamal Eid, a human rights activist and part of the team of lawyers defending the boys.
He did not explain what kind of deal had been reached.
In the Internet age it is difficult for Islamist authorities who threaten children to conceal their actions. The civilized world is watching.
A popular revolution overthrows a dictator formerly supported by the United States. His regime is replaced by an agressive theocracy that rejects western influences and promises reform. The U.S. embassy is threatened by demonstrators who breach its walls, shouting "Death to America!" and demanding that "criminals" currently living in the U.S. be handed over for trial.
That was Tehran in 1976. Is it also Cairo in 2012?
For those of us old enough to remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis, there are haunting similarities. Here are some examples as reported by the Egyptian press.
Like Iran in 1979, Egypt's economy has stuttered to a halt, crippled in part by strikes:
Teachers and administrative staff of Cairo University have been on strike since last week demanding an increase in minimum wages, transport workers escalated their strike on Monday after their union representative was arrested and now Doctor Mostafa Al-Behairy has resumed the sit-in and hunger strike he started Saturday at the doctors’ syndicate in Cairo, demanding better working conditions for medical staff.
These work stoppages and Egypt's weakening tourist industry present a serious challenge to newly-elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. The economy is further threatened by delays in U.S. aid:
The violent demonstrations sparked by an anti-Islam video, and Egypt’s initially clumsy response, have temporarily halted talks about a proposed $1 billion in debt relief and how to speed millions in other aid to Egypt, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
.................................
Just days before protests erupted outside the fortress-like embassy compound, American and Egyptian officials had been in the final stages of negotiating the details of assistance that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Like the newly-installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, President Morsi is the head of a group once outlawed by the previous regime. He must now establish his leadership and consolidate his support:
Once upon a time, the MB could have argued it was a victim; it was a proscribed organisation, and frequently the scapegoat for the Mubarak regime. But, those days are over. Two years ago, it could only win seats in parliament if it ran members as independents. Today, the MB can virtually count on being the largest political force in a new parliament, due to its organisation and efforts, and one of its own sits in the president’s chair. The MB is many things: but it is not a victim.
Many political parties in democracies struggle with the notion of switching from a ‘party in opposition mode’ to a ‘party in power mode’. It is understandable if the MB has that struggle too. But the MB’s perception of victimhood and supporters identifying opposition to the MB as somehow rooted in an instinctive anti-Muslim and/or anti-Islam sentiment cannot be good for Egypt.
Some observers have suggested that the recent demonstrations were staged by Salafists in an attempt to undermine Mr. Morsi's authority. They hint at possible rifts among Egypt's Islamists and suggest that various factions are jockeying for greater power:
As for the Salafists, Jihadists and various other Islamist extremists, the film was the answer to a prayer. Not only did it provide a golden opportunity to strike against the revolutionary values they abhor as atheistic Western imports, it also gave them renewed access to the nation's political stage.
The furore in defence of the Prophet would also serve to undermine the rule of the reasonable, pragmatic Brotherhood, in favour of the more radical, more regressive, tendencies within Egyptian Islamism.
Those "radical, more regressive tendencies" have already been on worrisome display:
What is new now after the appointment of a member of the Muslim Brotherhood to the Ministry of Information is that Egyptian state television allowed the appearance of a veiled newscaster. This step comes after all we have recalled about the development of the state of dress in Egypt and its movement from one form of radicalism to another. The step also comes in the light of the closure of a satellite channel, the imprisonment and trial of a journalist, and the banning of prominent writers’ articles following the appointment of members of the Muslim Brotherhood to the press leadership positions.
Accusations of blasphemy followed by show trials are keeping tensions at a steady simmer:
A Coptic Christian schoolteacher, Bishoy Kamel, has been sentenced to six years in prison for posting cartoons on Facebook deemed defamatory to Islam and the Prophet Mohamed, and for insulting President Mohamed Morsi and his family.
Members of Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya and various Salafist groups attempted to attack Kamel when he was led out of the court after receiving his sentence. They pelted with rocks the police car used to transport him away from the court.
It's not clear from President Morsi's recent actions if he is trying to harness this rising tension or simply control it:
A controversial draft bill, named the 'protecting society from dangerous people' bill, replicates the worst features of the widely-misused and now defunct emergency law, according to a statement issued by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR).
The bill, which was prepared by the interior and justice ministries and introduced by the incumbent cabinet led by premier Hisham Qandil, is yet to be approved by President Mohamed Morsi.
Like the old emergency law, which gave the police the right to arrest civilians without evidence and without charges, the 'protecting society from dangerous people' bill would give the interior ministry the right to put suspects under house arrest for up to 30 days. It would also enable the ministry to put suspects under surveillance or to order them to carry out community service, for an indefinite period of time.
Sometimes it appears that he is trying to co-opt it:
Egypt's general prosecutor issued arrest warrants Tuesday for seven Egyptian Coptic Christians and a Florida-based American pastor and referred them to trial on charges linked to an anti-Islam film that has sparked riots across the Muslim world.
The case is largely symbolic since the seven men and one woman are believed to be outside of Egypt and unlikely to travel to the country to face the charges. Instead, the prosecutor's decision to take legal appears aimed at absorbing at least some of the public anger over the amateur film, which portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, womanizer and buffoon.
The prosecutor's office said in a statement that the eight accused, who include the film's alleged maker, face charges of harming national unity, insulting and publicly attacking Islam and spreading false information. The office said they could face the death penalty, if convicted.
It's not inevitable that events in Cairo will lead to another 1979, but it's not paranoid or bigoted to notice the similarities. The conflicting pressures closing in on Mr. Morsi could even make such an outcome seem attractive now and then:
Seizing the U.S. Embassy, taking hostages and demanding extradition of the accused filmmakers in exchange for their release would allow President Morsi to "out-Islamist" his Salafist rivals. It could broaden his base of support and enhance his stature in the region.
A dramatic hostage situation would pull the public's attention away from strikes and economic hardship.
The American hostages could be used as bargaining chips for a better aid package.
Mr. Morsi need not seize the embassy himself; he need only fail to prevent it. (Recall that the Egyptian police were mysteriously slow to respond to the previous assault.) This would allow him to reap all the benefits of the situation while suffering few of the disadvantages.
And to those pundits now claiming that the anti-film demonstrations were small, it's worth remembering that the Tehran Embassy in 1979 was overrun by only 400 unarmed students.
History doesn't always repeat itself. But we should all pay attention when it starts to rhyme.
A video of Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has been making the rounds. I first noticed in a post by Michael Totten. He calls it 'sordid' and describes it as showing a Mr. Perez refusing- 4 times in a row- to declare that the DOJ would never consider a law criminalizing blasphemy.
The video does indeed seem to show that, but I noticed as I watching watching it on Youtube that it was posted July 26, 2012, well beforethe current Egypt/Libya/video mayhem. Scanning the description posted beneath it, I learned that the clip emerged from a hearing motivated, in part, by an October 2011 report in the Daily Caller about a conference Mr. Perez had attended in which he allegedly embraced ideas about criminalizing blasphemy put forth by radical Muslims.
And the hunt was on.
It took me the better part of this morning, but I eventually located an October 19, 2011 conference at George Washington University titled "Confronting Discrimination in the Post 9/11 Era: Challenges and Opportunities 10 Years After." (PDF here.) It was a day-long event bringing together DHS and DOJ officials with various advocates and speakers.
I was never able to find the original October 2011 piece from the Daily Caller, but descriptions of the article kept referring to a lawyer named Sahar Aziz and an Imam named Magid, so I scanned videos of the event (available here) until I saw both of them on a panel. I also viewed the closing remarks made by Mr. Perez.
(Mr. Totten refers to him as "Edward Perez" and the official video refers to him as "Thomas E. Perez." It's very obviously the same person.)
During the panel discussion I watched ("Looking Forward: Remaining Challenges and Opportunities") the main topic seemed to be recent scandals caused by surveillance of the mosques and the use of police training materials that were allegedly bigoted and pushed stereotypes.
Ms. Aziz, an associate law professor at the Texas Wesleyan School of Law, argued that DHS/DOJ officials could use Title VI requirements to investigate police departments that used biased training materials. Title VI prohibits the use of Federal Funds by any organization practicing discrimination. During the discussion she urges officials to be "creative" and "aggressive" in finding ways to demonstrate that anti-muslim bias is the same as racial discrimination:
"The other interrelated issue is the DOJ's guidelines on the use of race and this is really a housekeeping issue, that has been on the civil rights agenda for 10 years...It essentially prohibits the use of race, only if it is the sole factor. It does not include national origin and doesn't include religion..."
She calls this limitation a "loophole," and suggests a strategy to close it by eliding race, religion and ethnic origin:
"And, I think a creative lawyer, I'd be willing to at least give a shot at it is to say that one, 'muslim' has become racialized, and that even if-- It's not just limited to religion...It's against the arabs because most of the images are of these racialized, these racial brown, dark, bearded men who axiomatically hate us. And so I don't accept this formalistic copout of, well, this is all about religion, we can't enforce Title VI."
Imam Magid referred multiple times to books and radio shows that he called "propaganda" and "preaching hate":
"We need more people to speak against the propaganda and islamaphobia that we see today on radio. Three hours, a radio talk show will speak negative toward Islam and Muslims. You think this go to deaf ears? There's millions of people listening to this. Some of them are the police officers, customs officers, immigration officers, teachers in the school. Words can really have great impact on people's perception about others, therefore we need more people to speak on this issue."
Later in the discussion the Imam says that Anders Breivik was motivated by such propaganda, and that those who produce it "have blood on their hands."
People can disagree about the merits of this type of reasoning. I include it here to give some background on the now-famous video snippet below:
Perhaps Mr. Perez was thinking about the controversial police manuals and so forth when Congressman Franks questioned him. I don't know.
But I do know that there is often more to these YouTube snippets than meets the eye, so for my own peace of mind I like to do a bit of digging.
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