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.

Letters from Europe;

[The] Internet is still awash in hate mail. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that the country remains preoccupied by what happened to Theo van Gogh and what the politically correct position toward people who live in your midst but feel free to kill you should be. Friends who a few years earlier would walk you through a neighborhoold like the Baarsjes, with its shrouded women and its state-funded Islamic school and it’s defiantly secretive mosque, and call this a “multicultural success” or a “model of tolerance,” have begun to suspect that that peculiarly Dutch myth of a democracy integrated but not assimilated might be not only a contradiction in terms but a dangerous fiction.

The rest (PDF)
Via Pieter Dorsman

Jonah Goldberg;

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran’s forces were no match for Saddam Hussein’s professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child’s neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.

(click image)
Update: “Freedom isn’t free, but glass isn’t cheap.”

More sectarian bloodshed. Time to pull the armies of the Emperialist BushMcChimpyHitler Neo-Con Fascists out of Pakistan!

“I formally declare that Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries,” [Ahmadinejad] told an audience that included top military commanders and clerics in the northwestern holy city of Mashhad. The crowd broke into cheers of “Allahu akbar!” or “God is great!” Some stood and thrust their fists in the air.

Driving home the point the historically literate already understand – this isn’t “Bush’s war”. It’s Jimmy Carter’s.

Via private email;

The BCCLA has decided to intervene in two human rights complaints against publishers of words and images that are alleged to promote hatred. In Alberta, a complaint has been lodged against Ezra Levant and the Western Standard magazine for publishing the Muslim cartoons that have been the subject of so much controversy and violence in 2006.
The BCCLA will intervene in a complaint lodged with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal against operators of an internet website. The complaint alleges that inflammatory comments and offensive ‘jokes’ that were posted to the bulletin board service discriminate against Italians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, francophones, blacks, First Nations persons, East Asians, non-whites, and Jews and promote hatred and contempt.
The BCCLA takes the position that citizens and NGOs have a responsibility to censure offensive speech but that it can not be left to the state to censor speech. Freedom of expression is a democratic value no matter the colour of your skin, the country of your origin or the nature of your metaphysical beliefs.

You can read their statement on the initial controversy over publication of the Danish “Mohammed” cartoons here.

AP

An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released soon, officials said.
The announcement came as U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai faced mounting foreign pressure to free Abdul Rahman, a move that risked angering Muslim clerics here who have called for him to be killed.
An official closely involved with the case told The Associated Press that it had been returned to the prosecutors for more investigation, but that in the meantime, Rahman would be released.
“The court dismissed today the case against Abdul Rahman for a lack of information and a lot of legal gaps in the case,” the official said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
“The decision about his release will be taken possibly tomorrow,” the official added. “They don’t have to keep him in jail while the attorney general is looking into the case.”
Abdul Wakil Omeri, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, confirmed that the case had been dismissed because of “problems with the prosecutors’ evidence.”

Considering the death threats that have been made towards him, may I propose we offer refugee status to Rahman – and send back the Khadr family in exchange?
Update: Related reading. – ” If Islam is a religion one can only convert to not from, then in the long run it is a threat to every free person on the planet.”
Update 2: “Still, there were those who said this entire case is illustrative of how evil Islam is, and how awful the intervention there has been. What utter nonsense. Had this poor bast*rd been caught by the Taliban, he’d have been summarily executed by a kangaroo court. We likely wouldn’t even know his name, or we would have had to find it out through Amnesty International rather than the Associated Press.” Read it all.

France-Echos;

After destroying the Buddhas of Afghanistan, burning the Churches of Kosovo, Muslims are now destroying the Christian legacy of France.
[…]
Today (march 22, 2006) we learn that this government has let 1,000 years of cultural and religious legacy to become smoke and ashes.
Barbarians and savages entered in the library of �l�Ecole des Chartes� (100,000 books) in the Sorbonne, and destroyed writings of abbeys of �le-de-France containing all the official documents since the middle age.

In related news, Tim Blair notes an early start to Car-b-q season this year.
More at WaPo – “Paris Burning, Once Again”;

France is still in the grip of precisely the political mentality that has prevailed here since the Middle Ages. As the protesters themselves cheerfully declare: It’s the street that rules. Today’s mobs, like their predecessors, are notable for their poor grasp of economic principles and their hostility to the free market. Only wardrobe distinguishes these demonstrations from those that led to the invasion of the national convention in 1795, when first the mob protested that commodity prices were too high; when the government responded with price controls, it protested with equal vigor that goods had disappeared and black market prices had risen. Similarly, the students on the streets today espouse economic views entirely unpolluted by reality. If the CPE is enacted, said one young woman, “You’ll get a job knowing that you’ve got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked.”
Imagine that.

(Via Instapundit)

Via the Corner;

An Afghan Christian facing possible execution for converting from Islam was likely to be released from jail “soon,” a senior government official said following huge Western pressure over the case.
“He is likely to be released soon,” the official said, adding there would be a top-level meeting on the matter Saturday.
Abdul Rahman was arrested two weeks ago under Islamic Sharia law and faced a possible death sentence in a case that has attracted widespread condemnation, especially from the United States.

If this comes to pass, then we can be satisfied that the series of events has transpired as it should – diplomacy and international pressure will have resulted in an innocent life saved.
I do not join with those, however, who have called for a withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan should the efforts to have Rahman freed fail. As much as I am troubled by the details of the case, I’m no more so than I have been by reports of corruption, honour killings, human rights abuses or any number of injustices perpetrated under, or tolerated by, regimes that enjoy various types of Canadian military and/or foreign aid. If the Rahman case is justification to pull Canadian troops from the theatre – in a country that was used as safe haven and launch point for Islamist terror attacks on the West – then surely the revelations of United Nations child porn rings should prompt the Canadian government to send back our blue helmets for a refund as well.
We might at least set a precedent by cutting off all foreign aid to China.
It’s disturbing to hear voices on talk radio and across the blogosphere suggest Canadian military support for the fledgling Afghan government be withdrawn as a mere consequence of the trial taking place at all – for none of them seem to have considered the obvious followup question – “and then what?”
As we are often reminded – democracy is a process, not a destination. One does not have to dig too deeply into the histories of our own Western democracies to realize that our modern protections of human rights and personal liberty did not congeal fully formed from the ether – they evolved over hundreds of years.
As the beneficiaries of that long and bloody process of democratic trial and error, living in societies more likely to face problems created by the excesses of liberalism than any shortage of it, we tend to view fledgling democracies like Afghanistan from the wrong end of the lens. Instead of comparing them to current Western democratic norms, it is probably more appropriate to measure events against that of Western democracies of the 1800 and 1900’s.
In that context, Afghanistan has come a very long way from the unspeakably repressive Taliban regime, and in an extraordinarily short time. But the process has only just begun, and progress is not likely to be plotted on a linear graph. Nor, needless to say, is the outcome assured.
It will be at least a generation before we can hope stories such as that of Abdul Rahman are consigned to Afghanistan’s dustbin of history – and that only if those forces helping sustain the progress of democracy and liberalization of Islamic governments stay the course. The alternative is to surrender Afghanistan back to the very forces that brought us there in the first place.
And then what?

For those who cannot understand how it is that the big-government, nanny-state “liberal” left finds kinship with fundamentalist Islam and fascist dictators – an interview with poet Ali Ahmad Sa’id, who is known by the pseudonym “Adonis”;

Interviewer: “What are the reasons for growing glorification of dictatorships – sometimes in the name of pan-Arabism, and other times in the name of rejecting foreigners? The glorification comes even from the elites, as can be seen, for example, in the Saddam Hussein trial, and in all the people who support him.”
Adonis: “This phenomenon is very dangerous, and I believe it has to do with the concept of ‘oneness,’ which is reflected – in practical or political terms – in the concept of the hero, the savior, or the leader. This concept offers an inner sense of security to people who are afraid of freedom. Some human beings are afraid of freedom.”
Interviewer: “Because it is synonymous with anarchy?”
Adonis: “No, because being free is a great burden. It is by no means easy.”
Interviewer: “You’ve got to have a boss…”
Adonis: “When you are free, you have to face reality, the world in its entirety. You have to deal with the world’s problems, with everything…”
Interviewer: “With all the issues…”
Adonis: “On the other hand, if we are slaves, we can be content and not have to deal with anything. Just as Allah solves all our problems, the dictator will solve all our problems.”
[…]
“I don’t understand what is happening in Arab society today. I don’t know how to interpret this situation, except by making the following hypothesis: When I look at the Arab world, with all its resources, the capacities of Arab individuals, especially abroad – you will find among them great philosophers, scientists, engineers, and doctors. In other words, the Arab individual is no less smart, no less a genius, than anyone else in the world. He can excel – but only outside his society. I have nothing against the individuals – only against the institutions and the regimes.
“If I look at the Arabs, with all their resources and great capacities, and I compare what they have achieved over the past century with what others have achieved in that period, I would have to say that we Arabs are in a phase of extinction, in the sense that we have no creative presence in the world.”
Interviewer: “Are we on the brink of extinction, or are we already extinct?”
Adonis: “We have become extinct. We have the quantity. We have the masses of people, but a people becomes extinct when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change its world.”

(Emphasis mine.)
The only portion that puzzles is why Ali Ahmad Sa’id doesn’t quite make the connection to “understand what is happening in Arab society today”. The two traits he mentions in the quote I selected (dependency on “higher” authority and lack of creativity) are not simply related – the latter is the expected consequence of the former.
The rest at Memri.

The recent election of Hamas in Palestine has shown the world that democratic elections don’t always work out quite the way the western world might like. This article shows a similar issue with Afghanistan. Note also that this AP article is in Jamaican papers… I wonder why the Globe doesn’t see fit to include it as news? The Canadian papers I found carrying this were the Toronto Star (which is surprising me daily with Afganistan stories) and the Ottawa Citizen, behind a subscriber wall.

“AN AFGHAN man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death after being charged with converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country’s Islamic Shari’a laws, a judge said yesterday.
The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam will take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.”

So what can or should the Canadian government or military try to do about this? As the article points out, if the man is put to death it will be seen as a real win for the Taliban. However, according to the Afghan constitution, they follow Shari’a law which does NOT allow for conversion from Islam (although I find it interesting that if he re-converted back to Islam, all would be forgiven, and he has refused to do that).
h/t to molarmauler for finding this gem while posting on the media’s remarks around PMSH’s “cone of silence.” As MM points out, the media make decisions daily on what they think is worth reporting, yet get their knickers in a knot when the PMO does the same thing. Go figure.
UPDATE: Apparently the Globe DID carry this, but it didn’t appear in my online search, so maybe it’s just in the dead-tree version? *Here’s a link* (behind a subscription wall)
UPPERDATE: It has been suggested that an email campaign to the Afghan Ambassador might be in order. I’d recommend you also cc your MP and Peter MacKay. Following is contact info (I hope the Ambassador’s hotmail account is up to this):
Embassy of Afghanistan in Ottawa
246 Queen Street, Suite 400
Ottawa Ontario KIP 5E4
Email: contact@afghanemb-canada.net
Ambassador: H E Mr Abdul Jalil JAMILI
Peter MacKay
Minister of Foreign Affairs
E-Mail: Mackay.P@parl.gc.ca
UPUPDATE: Corrected email address for the Afghan Ambassador to Canada