“It treats issues differently from one instance to another. This huge inconsistency can make Muslims confused. Based on this confusion, many Muslims have for centuries excluded non-Muslims from their orbit. In addition, the traditional script of the Qur’an exhorts repulsion of ‘others’ much more than acceptance. Many Muslims are unwilling to realise that the Qur’an was written and compiled by the pioneers of Islam through different political stages. Instead, many take the book as the final verdict of God. These Qur’anic teachings have been enforced by Sharia even more strictly than the Qur’an itself over the centuries. Now, for many, the whole essence of Islam is repulsion of others.”
“Today the spokespersons of Islam are ignoring fundamental realities in a fake attempt to show global harmony. They are trying to show Islam as a religion of peace. They blame the foreign policies of Britain and the USA for every misery in the Muslim world. Left-leaning groups across the world are allying themselves with Muslim fundamentalists because of a common hatred of the USA. So many leftwing academics are facilitating the denial and conspiracy theories of Muslims. Interestingly, we, as Muslims, have been accusing others of denying the ultimate ‘truth’ of Islam, hence calling them infidels. Actually, many of us are now in denial as to the religious roots of terrorism. According to our own definition of infidel, we can be viewed as being infidels. Without acknowledging the sin of denial, we can’t rectify our misdeeds. That’s the reason I have proposed the New Islam project, to encourage that realisation.”

An Interview with Tahir Aslam Gora..
Related: “The Term ‘Moderate Islam’ Is Ugly And Offensive; There Is No Moderate Islam”
Closer to home, an update on the Toronto letter bomber: “Bunch of guys named Mohammed say guy whose middle name is Mohammed seemed unstable.”

Bryan updates an Allahpundit post at Hot Air;

At least a subsection of the press in the US is self-censoring (again) out of fear of offending Muslims, hoping to prevent another cartoon jihad or at least keep themselves out of the way when another one erupts. They wouldn’t similarly self-censor for any other group, to the point of taking a couple of cartoon strips down to the local preacher or rabbi for approval as they did with the Islamic experts, because no one thinks the preachers or rabbis are going to spark a full-blown riot over any cartoons. Many people, like Chris Hedges and Andrew Sullivan, like to ride the “Christianist” threat to generate traffic or a best-seller, but even they don’t really believe it.
Which gets us back to the big fact of the day: Terrorism works.

(View the cartoon)

“When will it be time to stop showing respect for Islam?”

a) Unless the dead body or the tires are wet, tires do not become najis by crushing it, while if transmitting moisture is there, of course they become najis.”

(Well Sinbad was Persian, wasn’t he?)

Mark Steyn;

The war will be lost incrementally because we are unable to reverse the ongoing radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, yes, North America. And who’s behind that radicalization? Who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the past 30 years have set up shop on just about every Main Street around the planet?
For the answer, let us turn to a fascinating book called “Alms for Jihad: Charity And Terrorism in the Islamic World,” by J. Millard Burr, a former USAID relief coordinator, and the scholar Robert O Collins. Can’t find it in your local Barnes & Noble? Never mind, let’s go to Amazon. Everything’s available there. And sure enough, you’ll come through to the “Alms for Jihad” page and find a smattering of approving reviews from respectably torpid publications: “The most comprehensive look at the web of Islamic charities that have financed conflicts all around the world,” according to Canada’s Globe And Mail, which is like the New York Times but without the jokes.
Unfortunately, if you then try to buy “Alms for Jihad,” you discover that the book is “Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.” Hang on, it was only published last year. At Amazon, items are either shipped within 24 hours or, if a little more specialized, within four to six weeks, but not many books from 2006 are entirely unavailable with no restock in sight.
Well, let us cross the ocean, thousands of miles from the Amazon warehouse, to the High Court in London. Last week, the Cambridge University Press agreed to recall all unsold copies of “Alms for Jihad” and pulp them. In addition, it has asked hundreds of libraries around the world to remove the volume from their shelves. This highly unusual action was accompanied by a letter to Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, in care of his English lawyers, explaining their reasons…

Counterterrorism Blog;

Two news flashes on August 1, 2007. First, the lawyers representing the so-called Flying Imams in their lawsuit against US Airways announced that they were not going after the unnamed passengers whose concerns prompted the men to be pulled off the Arizona-bound flight (here). I suppose that is good to know, now that the long-term policy implications of their lawsuit are about to justify (literally) an act of Congress. Second, Cambridge University Press announced that it was going to destroy all copies of the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, in response to a libel claim filed in England by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker (here).
Connected? Absolutely.

Read them both.

Just kidding.
At LGF;

I’ve received an email from Stanislav Shmulevich, who has been arrested in New York for putting a Koran in a toilet at Pace University. And his case is even more outrageous than we first reported.
First, Shmulevich was arrested and jailed for 24 hours. Second, he’s not facing misdemeanor charges—he’s being charged with two felonies, criminal mischief and aggravated harassment.
Felonies. For putting a book in a toilet.
[…]
Mr. Shmulevich is caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare right out of the Soviet Union, and it’s all happening at the demand of the Muslim Student Association and the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Discussion at the New English Review.

Reporting from Londonistan;

A Kurdish woman was brutally raped, stamped on and strangled by members of her family and their friends in an “honor killing” carried out at her London home because she had fallen in love with the wrong man.
Banaz Mahmod, 20, was subjected to the 2-1/2 hour ordeal before she was garroted with a bootlace. Her body was stuffed into a suitcase and taken about 100 miles to Birmingham where it was buried in the back garden of a house.

If you say “Timothy McVeigh” three times and throw a handful of ammonium nitrate over your left shoulder, you can make this go away.
*
SDA Flashback: A Sunday Telegraph investigation has established that honour killings are increasing rapidly in Britain. Home Office statistics suggest that there are 12 such murders each year. However, according to research, the true figure is much higher. At a conference in Southampton last week, police chiefs revealed that they are re-examining 2,000 deaths and-murders between 1996 and 2006 to establish whether they involve honour killings. So far, 19 have now been found to be honour killings. A further 20 involved some element of “honour violence”.

“You grew up in freedom, and so you can spit on freedom, because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom.” – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Allahpundit;

Not quite parody but dangerously close. How can she be so disgustingly pro-American, he wonders, and yet so stridently anti-Islamic? Doesn’t she see that Islamists and “Christianists” are two sides of the same coin?

MWV file here if you have problems with the CBC version (34 megs).
Don’t miss the comments. It seems that having one’s genitals sliced half off in the name of Muslim purity, a colleague murdered in broad daylight in the street for the crime of criticizing Islam, living in hiding under armed guard, and being forced from your home by court order because your neighbors fear the jihadists who have pledged to kill you is insufficient personal experience from which to draw conclusions about the relative merits of Islam and America.
As one of the progressive CBC faithful so eloquently explains, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is little more than a “prized puppy”.
Or, to think of in another way – of about the same relative value under his belief system as the average Somali woman is entitled to under Sharia law.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
h/t.
(It was suggested I bump this item closer to page top so that readers don’t miss the Dennis Prager link below)
Update – Avi Lewis is becoming famouser by the minute…. developing….

Today we launch a new initiative to encourage a better understanding of Islam among readers of SDA: Project Openmind: Read Koran.

Spreads his moderate wings;

Freshman Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), the only Muslim in U.S. Congress, has set off a firestorm of controversy after comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler, and suggesting that the Bush Administration may have been complicit in the terror attacks of 9/11.

That didn’t take long.
(More here)
Update: Video now up.

Time for the Philippine government to admit defeat against the insurgency and pull their troops out of the Philippines;

At least 14 government troops were killed in some of the heaviest fighting with Muslim insurgents in the southern Philippines in recent months, officials said Wednesday.
Military officials said they had recovered the bodies of 14 marines after clashes with suspected Abu Sayyaf militants late Tuesday in Tipo-tipo, a hinterland town on Basilan island, and that at least 10 of them had been beheaded.

This has to be frustrating for Islamists who go to so much work for so little attention by the international press. Unless they can get the Americans involved, there’s virtually no hope of earning a media-declared victory.

Aaron Hanscom visits with in-laws in Spain;

Spain was under Islamic rule for 800 years, and many Muslims blame Spaniards for the loss of Al-Ándalus. Spanish politician and terrorism expert Gustavo de Arístegui has documented how there is already a policy underway to reconquer land and monuments that were once under the domain of Islam. In an interview with me last year, Arístegui said, “Spanish society today is not willing or ready to accept the threat we face.”
My conversations with Spaniards this month gave me reasons for hope and despair. While most people seem to be coming to the reluctant conclusion that radical Islamists pose a threat to their way of life (the first step in defeating radical Islam), they remain unsure how to fight back.