Glenn Reynolds, on the abysmal quality of reporting coming out of Afghanistan, where there seems to be a concerted effort on the part of the mainstream press to convince the public that the Taliban are reasserting control;

[T]he news reports, rather exaggerated to begin with, are of the form “Dozens killed in renewed fighting,” without mentioning that most of those killed are people who should be killed.

He has links to more.

Via Confederate Yankee (where there’s a lot more), this telling quote from Hizbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Kassem ;

“If we assume the worst possible scenario, that Iran was completely cut off, Hizbollah would continue because it is based on faith. We are a political, ideological and jihadist party…,” Kassem said. “This is a religion we believe in whether Iran is there or not.“

Emphasis mine.

Amir Taheri stands by his story;

Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun.
As far as my article is concerned I stand by it.The law has been passed by the Islamic Majlis and will now be submitted to the Council of Guardians. A committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of implementation.
Many ideas are being discussed with regard to implementation, including special markers, known as zonnars, for followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, the only faiths other than Islam that are recognized as such. The zonnar was in use throughout the Muslim world until the early 20th century and marked out the dhimmis, or protected religious minorities. ( In Iran it was formally abolished in 1908).
I have been informed of the ideas under discussion thanks to my sources in Tehran, including three members of the Majlis who had tried to block the bill since it was first drafted in 2004.
I do not know which of these ideas or any will be eventually adopted. We will know once the committee appointed to discuss them presents its report, perhaps in September.
Interestingly, the Islamic Republic authorities refuse to issue an official statement categorically rejecting the concept of dhimmitude and the need for marking out religious minorities.
I raised the issue not as a news story, because news of the new law was already several days old, but as an opinion column to alert the outside world to this most disturbing development.

Mark Helprin is being interviewed after 8:00 eastern, talking about Iran. Listen online live.
Station list
Another Helprin item – The Unvarnished Immigration Debate from Sunday’s WaPo.

“I feel it’s 1938 again – Bernard Lewis *

More: Joyner has been following the updates (as have readers in the comments).
Damian Penny;

The lefty bloggers, not surprisingly, are jumping up and down with faux outrage about righty bloggers (including myself) writing about this untrue story.
So, guys, has Karl Rove been indicted yet?

Jonah Goldberg;

Fascism — as opposed to its German variant Nazism — is not primarily, fundamentally or at least necessarily about bigotry, toward Jews or anybody else. It is about collectivism, in one form or another. It is about imposing — with both the carrot of socialism and the stick of the police state — uniformity on the entire body politic, to get all the oars pulling at the same time, in the same direction. The fact that the Iranian regime wants to enforce a national dress code which is “authentically” Iranian says more about their fascistic impulses than the regime’s anti-Semitism. Not only does anti-Semitism predate fascism by a lot of centuries, but anti-Semitism is not unique to fascism nor is it always present in fascist movements. What is always present is the desire to enforce conformity and uniformity on the masses. So breathe your sigh of relief if your concern is the maltreatment of Jews in Iran (though a small sigh it must be). But if your concern was that Iran might be fascistic, then the debunking of the yellow star story should not allay your fears at all.

May 23 Update: Amir Taheri stands by his story;

The law has been passed by the Islamic Majlis and will now be submitted to the Council of Guardians. A committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of implementation.
Many ideas are being discussed with regard to implementation, including special markers, known as zonnars, for followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, the only faiths other than Islam that are recognized as such. The zonnar was in use throughout the Muslim world until the early 20th century and marked out the dhimmis, or protected religious minorities. ( In Iran it was formally abolished in 1908).
I have been informed of the ideas under discussion thanks to my sources in Tehran, including three members of the Majlis who had tried to block the bill since it was first drafted in 2004.
I do not know which of these ideas or any will be eventually adopted. We will know once the committee appointed to discuss them presents its report, perhaps in September.
Interestingly, the Islamic Republic authorities refuse to issue an
official statement categorically rejecting the concept of dhimmitude and the need for marking out religious minorities.
I raised the issue not as a news story, because news of the new law was already several days old, but as an opinion column to alert the outside world to this most disturbing development.

Peaktalk;

The emergency debate turned into a marathon session of the Dutch lower house and early in the morning an apparently emotional Immigration Minster Verdonk accepted two separate motions to reconsider revoking Hirsi Ali’s Dutch nationality. She will now have six weeks to see if there are mitigating circumstances that will allow Hirsi Ali to remain a Dutch citizen.
What to say? It is a moral victory for our embattled heroine that much is certain, but at this point it is of course of little help to her. As she mentioned during her press conference yesterday, it was the court ruling that led to the eviction from her apartment a few weeks back that forced her decision to resign from parliament and leave the lowlands in search for greener pastures overseas. Upon joining AEI she will most likely be in a position to apply for US citizenship and consider her Dutch passport as a tainted relic that will forever remind her of her dreadful last few months in The Netherlands.

Which reminds me – in the wake of Gwyn Morgan’s treatment over remarks made about immigrant gang violence someone really ought to get opinions on the record about “the success of Dutch multiculturalism” from Flapjack Layton and some of those eager Liberal leadership hopefuls.

Thanks to reader Herman Dost for pointing out this transcript of a February interview with Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan (with Al-Jazeera TV);

Wafa Sultan: The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.
[…]
Host: I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?
Wafa Sultan: Yes, that is what I mean.
[…]
Host: Who came up with the concept of a clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not Bin Laden. I would like to discuss this issue, if you don’t mind…
Wafa Sultan: The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: “I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger.” When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to stop this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.
My colleague has said that he never offends other people’s beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them Ahl Al-Dhimma, another time he calls them the “People of the Book,” and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians “those who incur Allah’s wrath.” Who told you that they are “People of the Book”? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them “those who incur Allah’s wrath,” or “those who have gone astray,” and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?
I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others’ right to believe in it.
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Are you a heretic?
Wafa Sultan: You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural…
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran…
Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you.
[…]
Wafa Sultan: Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don’t throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people’s beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs.
[…]
Wafa Sultan: The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.

YMCFATWA!
They finally figured out the acronym.

A court action in Holland by neighbors of Somali born Dutch MP and critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali argued that her mere presence in the apartment complex was a violation of the European Treaty for Human Rights.
Courts found for the plaintiffs ruling her presence to be a “severe violation of one’s private life”. She must vacate her home.

“Now, officially she is a pariah. She cannot live anymore in a house or apartment, only on military bases. The orthodox Islamists and the progressive multiculti activists succeeded in isolating this remarkable person from society. Shame upon my country.”

Pieter Dorsman has been following the story closely, of course;

It’s five days now since the contentious court ruling, but all I can see in the Dutch and international media landscape is a ghastly silence. The blogosphere picked it up, looked at it and moved the story forward, the rest of the world didn’t care.

More commentary from D.J. Teeboom, Pipeline News;

Sixty years have passed but not much has changed. People still ask the police to remove their persecuted neighbors instead of giving them shelter. And why not? People are followers and in this case they simply follow the behavior of their leaders. Holland is a country where everybody loves to talk about solidarity yet no solidarity was shown with the Danish cartoonists. They get upset here about baby seals getting killed in Canada without ever loosing any sleep over the tens of thousands of women who are murdered each year due to honor killings. Each year they promise us ‘never again’ and they can do it with a straight face while everybody knows that Rwandan and Darfuri genocides can go on unopposed. It’s not that the UN does nothing, it is much worse than that. Jan Pronk, now a UN official, negotiates with the Sudanese government while they are they ones who have hired the Janjaweed to exterminate the population of Darfur. Instead of treating that government as a bunch of criminals he legitimatizes them by negotiating with them. One leads by example and when our leaders behave like cowards it’s no wonder the people behave like that as well.

Mu’ammar Qadhafi has never struck me as being particularly devout. In this interview with Al Jazeera though, he shares his thoughts on theology, the Danish cartoons and the future of Europe. It’s “rah-rah Islam” from beginning to end;

Mu’ammar Al-Qadhafi: “Some people believe that Muhammad is the prophet of the Arabs or Muslims alone. This is a mistake. Muhammad is the prophet of all people.”
[�]
“He superseded all previous religions. If Jesus were alive when Muhammad was sent, he would have followed him. All people must be Muslims.”
[…]
“We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe – without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.
[…]
“Europe is in a predicament, and so is America. They should agree to become Islamic in the course of time, or else declare war on the Muslims.”

Qadhafi is playing here to a domestic audience – is he concerned that Libya’s recent capitulation to the west may have placed his military dictatorship on the “to do” list of Islamists?
I decided to ask Michael Totten privately about this, and his response points to a book by Judith Miller, written in the 1980’s.

It’s hard to say why that guy does what he does and says what he says. Libya is one of the most opaque countries in the world. That said, I think your assumption is probably the best one. He is very afraid of lslamists.
I know Judith Miller is persona-non-grata right now with pretty much everyone, but she wrote a fascinating 50-page essay about Libya and Uncle Moammar in her book “God Has 99 Names.” He told her, back when Clinton was president, that he was desperately trying to get Clinton to “save the world” from the Islamists. It makes for fascinating pre-911 reading.

As I said, Qadhafi has never struck me as devout.

Blasts at an Egyptian resort, with dozens already reported dead.
James Joyner notes the timing;

One presumes this is the work of al Qaeda, especially in light of yesterday�s release of a tape by Osama bin Laden promising to ratchet up the murdering in moderate Muslim societies.

Big Pharoah reports from Egypt that he’s ok.

For the Canadian Islamic Congress, the inclusion of the word “Canadian” in their name is only a passing afterthought – a reference to the mailing address. Not that their loyalties were ever seriously in question;

Islamic Congress Encourages Iranian Nuclear Technology For Civilian Use And Calls On Canada To Cooperate With Iran In Developing Non-weapons-calibre Energy

In related news – in a move designed to send the strongest of signals to the increasingly hostile Ahmadinejad government, the UN has made Iran vice-chair of the Disarmament Commission. I agree with Senator Frist’s commentors – the time to reform the United Nations has come and gone. Time to evict them from North American soil and seek new funding from those dysfunctional tribal governments and one-party dictatorships they so love to put in charge of things.

Failing an unfortunate explosion under the Presidential reviewing stand, then a major explosion over it.
Followed by a nice monument and yearly protests, moments of silence, that kind of thing…
Call it a solution with a proven track record.

“Did you know that the Jews murdered 25 of the Prophets of Allah, and that their black history is full of crimes of murder and corruption? “Did you know that the criminal Jews frequently revile and curse our Lord? Among the things they have said is ‘The hand of Allah is fettered [Koran 5:64].’ [But] Allah is above this. “Did you know that the Jews made several attempts to murder our beloved Prophet [Muhammad], but that Allah the Omnipotent saved him from their plot? “Did you know that the corruption and deviance widespread in the world today are the result of activity and planning by the Jews, who are interested in leading people astray, away from the path of Allah?

Another antisemitic posting, in the “Members Participation” section, headlined “Murdering Children – Part of the Jewish Religion” by “Mahmoud Nabil,” claims that it is possible “to collect evidence from the Torah about the Jewish concept of annihilating [others], which has reached the level of ritual.”

More translation of the Muslim Brotherhood Children’s Website* up at Memri.