Mecca Mean Time

From the BBC:

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

It's the sort of statement where the only reasonable response is a long, blank stare.

French Courage

From Yahoo.news:

More than 1,000 police, some wearing black hoods, raided housing projects outside Paris in a massive sweep Monday, kicking open doors and detaining 33 people in a search for rioters who led an outburst of violence last year, a prosecutor said.

This is France? If this keeps up, they might actually end up not surrendering this time.

Reuters Enigma

Reuters reports on the seventh night of rioting and burning by "youths" in Denmark:

Bands of youths set fire to cars, buses and schools in Denmark on Saturday, the seventh night of rioting and vandalism in the capital Copenhagen and other Danish cities, police said on Sunday.

So far, business as usual. But in paragraph seven, this peculiar non sequitar showed up:

Social workers said an alleged plot to kill a Danish cartoonist for his drawing two years ago of the Prophet Mohammad might have fuelled the riots. Danish newspapers reprinted the cartoon on Wednesday in protest against the plot. What is this doing here?

What on Earth do cartoons of Mohammed have to do with rioting "youths", who are no doubt confirmed secularists and can trace their ancestry unbroken to King Ongendus?

Someone should look into this mystery.

"Youths" Riot in Denmark

If you get your news from the mainstream outlets you may not be aware that "youths" of indeterminate religion have been rioting and burning cars and schools in Denmark for five nights.

The money quote is from Chief Inspector Henrik Olesen of the Copenhagen police:

We don't know why they're rioting. I think it's because they're bored. Some people say it's because of the cartoons but that's not my opinion.

Boredom? Such denial hasn't been witnessed since Stalin acted all surprised when the Wehrmacht rolled over his border.

Headless Corpse of Indeterminate Religion

The decapitated body of an Algerian national named Lakhdar Ouyahia was found in Kilburn and a man and woman are in police custody.

Predictably, the BBC is singularly lacking in curiosity as to the religion of the interested parties and the Archbishop of Canterbury was unavailable for comment.

Context is All

A collection of photographs of gay men? That's truly art and worthy of a major museum exhibit... Unless, that is, the artist is a woman. And the men are Muslims. In Mohammed masks. And the museum is in the Netherlands. In that case, it's one cancelled exhibit and one artist literally on the run for her life.

Welcome to Europe 2008.

Follow Up

Yesterday's news: The Bishop of Rochester states that some Muslim areas of Britain are becoming "no-go" zones for infidels.

Not news: Muslim "leaders" demand that the Bishop resign or be sacked.

News: The C of E backs the Bishop.

Next up: Porcine aviation.

Made in Britain

One of the ironies of the Jihadists is that on the one hand they are spilling blood left, right and centre to impose a hopelessly puritanical society on the whole of humanity, yet the Jihadists in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are notorious for their drinking, drug taking, and whoring wherever they hold power.

Some of these men will admit they were insurgents who switched sides because they realized that they are more likely to get what they want with a stable government. Al Qaeda promised them everything under the baking sun, yet al Qaeda killed people who smoked—and Iraqis like to smoke. They killed people who had satellite dishes or televisions, but al Qaeda would be drinking and with prostitutes. Iraqis have told me some interesting anecdotes about the religious technicalities of prostitution. They are not supposed to have sex out of wedlock, so they marry the prostitute (and the house of ill-repute has the proper religious authority present to make the marriage), and then they divorce the prostitute after completing their business. Another rumor in the area is that al Qaeda tried to force shepherds to make their female sheep wear underwear.

Counterinsurgency/FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5

The frightening thing about this is that it gives a better insight into the mind of Jihadist recruits in Britain and Europe better than all the blather about disaffection, foreign policy and the like. According to Mary Jackson at The New English Review, it isn't a question of potential Islamofascists rejecting Western culture, but of assimilating only the worst parts of it.

Don’t mess with us, they say. We know our rights. For Britain, once home to the stiff-upper lip, now has a rights culture. And British Muslims scream “Islamophobia” if they don’t get their rights: the right to special food or clothing in schools, the right to be spared any kind of real or imagined offense, the right to a job – on their terms, however unreasonable - and above all the right to welfare payments, which they receive in disproportionately high numbers.

These demands, this sense of entitlement, should worry us far more than niqabs, gangsta rap, or even drugs. Welfare scrounging is not peculiar to Muslims, but Islam alone demands tribute from non-believers in the form of a special tax or jizya. This “right” is set out in the Koran, as part of the rules of jihad. Muslim scrounging is an act of jihad, and payment of benefits an act of dhimmitude.

Or, as Mark Steyn put it:

More than three years ago, I wrote about the "tournante" or "take your turn" -- the gang rape that's become an adolescent rite of passage in the Muslim quarters of French cities - and similar phenomena throughout the West: "Multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women -- combine with the worst attributes of Western culture -- licence and self-gratification. Tattooed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of northern England areas are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort." Islamofascism itself is what it says: a fusion of Islamic identity with old-school European totalitarianism. But, whether in turbans or gangsta threads, just as Communism was in its day, so Islam is today's ideology of choice for the world's disaffected.

One of the disturbing truths of this war is that the real threat is not the enemy without or the enemy within, but the brutal fact that in a war of ideologies the West has ceded so much ground without a shot being fired. In a single generation we have dismantled so many of our vital institutions; spurned so many traditions; rejected high culture until only the transient ephemera of pop remains, turned our back on the faith of our fathers to the point where Christianity is often treated as something disreputable; swapped virtues for "values"; exalted the material, the carnal and the perverse without a moments reflection on what that means; sneered at innocence as naiveté; made chastity into a joke; promoted the most graphic of violence as entertainment in a manner that would give Caligula pause; championed tolerance above all else until it becomes an instrument of intolerance, divided race against race and sex against sex in the name of equality; and wallowed in irony until it has seeped into our souls that it is little wonder that so many second generation Muslims in the Britain and Europe grow up to be 7th century fanatics with 21st century vices or that even after six years of war we are still so ill prepared against these monsters. When you yourself reject the best and what is decent that your culture has to offer, don't be surprised if those that come after only assimilate the worst.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was getting ready to post the new Future Cinema section. So many of the films there have been dismissed in recent decades as "propaganda" and "Utopian" and (worst of all modern sins) "naive", but having reviewed a number of them over recent days, the conclusion I have come to is that, whatever their faults, our fathers and grandfathers lived in a time when people were given armour to protect them as plain, yet as strong as that of the first Crusaders, while ours provides us with gaudy crepe costumes that couldn't protect us against a cold east wind.

That allusion? It's from "An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which end with this from Holmes:

There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.

That was in 1916 and that wind ended up blowing for a generation and beyond. I wonder how we will fare against this one.

Shadow Riots

Paris is again burning as "youths" attack policemen and set cars alight.

As per form, the BBC shows its hard-hitting get-to-the-bottom-of-things journalism by stalwartly refusing to identify the "youths" in any way shape or form; including running a series of photos that make it appear as if the riots are being conducted by invisible men.

Kingmaker

Guardian headline:

Muslim politician could be kingmaker in Danish elections

I don't know anything about Mr. Naser Khader, the Muslim Danish Member of Parliament in question; he may well be a sound fellow who has declared war to the knife against the Jihadists and I'm perfectly happy to give him the benefit of the doubt.

However, in the current situation, and especially in Denmark where a 25-year-old social worker from the far-left Red-Green Alliance candidate declares that if elected to Parliament she will show in a hijab, it is a telling illustration that Muslims in Europe do not have to obtain anything like a majority in the population to wield political power and there is no guarantee that that power will be benign.

A Costly Venture

Been there, done that, got smashed with the battleaxe.

The British government is giving Muslim "groups" £70 million as danegeld to fund combating "extremism".

Spanish Maths

The Jihadists who carried out the Madrid bombings back in 2004 have been sentenced to 43,000 years in prison each.

Don't chill the champagne, though. Under Spanish law these monsters can't serve more than forty years no matter what the sentence.

They kill us and we hit them with soft pillows.

Update: According to the Los Angeles Times, it gets worse:

One of the accused masterminds of the 2004 Madrid terror bombings was acquitted of all charges today by a Spanish court in the culmination to a politically divisive trial over Europe's worst Islamic militant terror attack.

Rabei Osman, a 35-year-old Egyptian, allegedly bragged during a wiretapped phone conversation that the attacks, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800, were his idea. Twenty-eight people were charged in the attacks.

They have him boasting of his perfidity and they let him walk scot free. Dear God.

The Mulculturalism of Fear

Glen Reynolds comments on the recent uncovering of Jihadi propaganda in British Mosques and hits the nail on the head about the poison of Multiculturalism:

Europe mostly tolerates those whom it fears.

To coin a phrase, indeed.

Religion of Peace

"Youth" of indeterminate religion rioting continues in Amsterdam for a sixth night.

That won't do much for the "Moroccan-Dutch" of indeterminate religion's stigma.

Update: According to reports, part of the problem is that even as the "Moroccan-Dutch" of indeterminate religion "leaders" demand a crack down, the Dutch police are taking a softly-softly approach that amounts to letting the "Youths" of indeterminate religious burn and pillage as they see fit.

Uh huh. Worked so well with the Vikings, why shouldn't it with these barbarians.

"Youth" in Amsterdam

The Digital Journal reports that on Tuesday night Morrocan-Dutch "youths" of indeterminate religion rioted, set cars alight and stoned a police station in Amsterdam after 22-year old Bilal Bajaka, another "youth" of indeterminate religion, walked into a police station with a knife and was shot to death after he stabbed two police officers, leaving them in a "serious, but stable" condition.

Though the religion of the "youths" of indeterminate religion was not mentioned in the article, the fact that the assailant was "personally acquainted with Mohammed Bouyeri, the convicted killer of the late film director Theo van Gogh, as well as with other Moroccan-Dutch terrorist suspects", it is a fair bet that they were not Methodists.

Asked about the incident and riots,

Moroccan-Dutch residents of Slotervaart complained to reporters they were "sick and tired" of continuous "negative news reports" about fellow Moroccan-Dutch, adding they felt increasingly stigmatized.

"Sick and tired" of "negative news reports"? Here is a small suggestion for what it is worth: Maybe the "Moroccan-Dutch" of indeterminate religion would stop being "stigmatised" if they stopped brutally murdering filmmakers, forswore attacking police officers, and refrained from rioting in the streets when one of their co-indeterminate-religionists is brought to justice.

It's called civilisation. Try it some time.

Blaming the Victim

Lars Vilks, the cartoonist at the centre of the Swedish Cartoon War, is interviewed by Paula Newton of CNN, who interjects this observation (emphasis added):

Still one could argue Vilks should have known better because of what happened in Denmark in 2005, when a cartoonist's depictions of the prophet sparked violent protests in the Muslim world and prompted death threats against that cartoonist's life.

Translation: How dare Mr. Vilks refuse to act the good dhimmi and draw the wrath of the Faithful upon his head. Remember what happened to the Danes!

It's as one with Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali's claim that Australian women who refuse to wear the hijab are "abandoned meat" and therefore deserve to be raped. I expect that sort of bile from a raving Jihadist, but from a respected Western news agency it is nothing less than counseling cowardice in a time of war.

Multiculti Madness

Mark Steyn on Mohammed Fayed's assertion that the Princess of Wales was assassinated by MI6 because she was dating a Muslim:

David Pryce-Jones made the point that, in persisting with his lurid accusations, Mohammed Fayed revealed how little he understands Britain: He’s lived there for years, it’s been good to him, he owns Harrod’s and the Paris Ritz and various other baubles. No big deal. He’s one of many, many beneficiaries of Western openness to “the other.” And yet he’s convinced himself that Buckingham Palace is so consumed by “Islamophobia” that the Queen’s husband dialed M, and M called in Moneypenny, and Moneypenny faxed 007, and a week later the princess and her Islamostud are dead.

Reality is more humdrum: In multiculti Britain, everyone was indifferent to Di’s Muslim lover. Could have been a Hindu, could have been a Buddhist. Who cares? But instead Mr Fayed has retreated into the paranoia and victim mentality that stunts so much of the Muslim world. A while back, I was in Jordan, and a wealthy Saudi told me that the Iraq war was part of a continuous western assault on Islam that includes the British Royal Family’s assassination of Dodi Fayed. And so, in a London courtroom, a freak one-off celebrity death becomes just another snapshot of the big geopolitical picture.

Progress Report

The Times learns that half the mosques in Britain are under the control of a radical Islamist sect.

Treating terrorism as a purely criminal matter is really working well, I see.

Outrage Football

The US military handed out footballs festooned with flags of all nations to Afghan children as goodwill gift and received heartfelt thanks in return. No, actually the kids' elders were (all together now) outraged because one of the flags in question was the Saudi Arabian flag, which has the ward "Allah" written on it.

Did the elders take the footballs away from the kids and put them in a place of veneration and leave it at that? Was the "outrage" aimed at the Saudis for the presumption and poor foresight of putting a supposedly inviolable holy word on a flag, given that flags tend to end up on footballs and other things that get kicked, thumped, bashed, sloshed and shot depending on circumstances? Of course not. It was focused like a gun sight at those wicked Americans for distributing something that they almost certainly did not manufacture themselves and was intended to be used in a way that no one who has a sense of proportion and was not constantly looking for a new grievance would regard as unreasonable. After all, the Union Jack, to give one example, has not one but four Christian crosses on it and no one howls sacrilege when a pair of Reeboks gets scuffed.

This is one of those situations where a strong "get a life" statement is the only one appropriate. For propaganda reasons the Pentagon can't do it, so let's leave it to the more general observations of Pat Condell via Theo Spark.

Cartoon Dhimmitude

America's media outlets have demonstrated that they have spines of pure linguine by censoring Berke Breathed's Opus strip for this week because it might might spark a homicidal Jihadist attack it's "insensitive." Not that it's any big deal. I mean, it's not like it's a hard news story about the FBI looking for two men caught casing Seattle ferries, right?

The outcome of the Danish Cartoon Wars is now clear.

We lost.

Jesus, ITV & Dhimmitiude

From the Guardian:

There was no manger, Christ is not the Messiah, and the crucifixion never happened. A forthcoming ITV documentary will portray Jesus as Muslims see him.

With the Koran as a main source and drawing on interviews with scholars and historians, the Muslim Jesus explores how Islam honours Christ as a prophet but not as the son of God. According to the Koran the crucifixion was a divine illusion. Instead of dying on the cross, Jesus was rescued by angels and raised to heaven.

If this was 1975, I wouldn't have any quarrel with Lord Bragg et al for putting this film out. I would merely file it away as a study in comparative religion of no more or less importance than a discussion of the Arian heresy and leave it at that. However, when it comes at a time when we are in a war for our lives with a load of suicidal Jihadists who use the Koran for their marching orders and when Her Majesty's government allows a most prominent and vocal Islamofascist to walk free and active on British soil, this comes perilously close to carrying the enemy's water for him.

A rule of thumb for the media: If the Allied press wouldn't do something that would aid the Axis cause in 1943, don't do it for the Jihadists today.

Reality Check

The Jihadists are just a load of cranks egged on by desperation and the evils of Western foreign policy and they have no real ambitions of their own.

Right. And I'm the Queen of the May.

Update: When I came across this video I thought it was a slightly hysterical anti-Jihadist compilation video of the sort I take with a large grain of salt.

Then I discovered that it's an advert for the Khilafah Conference International 2007 in Indonesia.

These people are not joking. It's like switching on one of the first televisions and discovering a live feed from the Nuremberg rally.

Dhimmi Street

The Wall Street watchdog organisation SIRA has changed its name to FINRA.

Why? Because the previous acronym sounded too much like the Arabic word for biographies of Mohammed and, according to a spokeswoman,

We operate in a global, multi-racial, multi-religion environment, and we strive to be sensitive and respectful to all. To remain true to that spirit, we have decided that selecting the alternative name for our new organization is simply the right thing to do.

Translation: We'll be good dhimmis. Don't hurt us.

All Wet

The problem: Crazed Arab Jihadis are waging genocide against black African Muslims in Darfur.

The solution: Dig wells.

At last, a sane plan to... WHAT?!?!

The Pope, Bears, & Islam

From the BBC:

The failed bomb attacks on London and Glasgow have damaged public perceptions of Islam, a survey has suggested.

No doubt that would be the "No #&%$, Sherlock" survey.

Blacklash and Moonbeams

A convenience store in Glasgow owned by a "man of Pakistani descent" was vandalised by persons unknown who "set a fire" and the Al AP's Tariq Panja is there on the scene to triumphantly declare that it is a confirmed sighting of the Bigfoot of journalism: The Inevitable anti-Muslim Backlash.

Ignoring the fact that the identity and motives of the vandals are completely unknown to the reader, Mr. Panja not only claims that this is part of a wave of anti-Muslim attacks and implies that the BNP is behind it, he even manages a marvelous bit of alchemy by mixing in one alleged bit of graffiti at a mosque and less than two-dozen unspecified incidents that turn a vandalised shop into "fire-bombed businesses" (note both the plural and escalation of the offence) without need to cite any specifics.

Imagine if, during the Falklands War, the AP had turned a Saturday night dust-up at the Argentine Steak House in Aberdeen into an anti-Argentinian pogrom and you get the idea.

Deer In The Headlamps

Europe is beginning to recognise that the Jihadis are a real threat, but haven't the slightest clue as to what to do about it. This is demonstrated no more obviously in the remarks of Britain's new security minister Admiral Sir Alan West, who admits that Britain is in for a fight against the Islamists that might last fifteen years, but whose only plan is less than impressive.

Is he calling the war a war? Is he advocating taking the fight to the enemy on his own ground? Going after the tyrants financing and harbouring the Jiahdis? Is he talking about securing the borders and getting control of immigration? Damning multiculturalism? Demanding that Muslims assimilate and that whether or not they're treated with suspicion is up to them and not their neighbours, who have every right to be wary until assured otherwise?

Sorry. Sir Alan's remedy is... "snitching."

On The Payroll

Up to eight people with suspected links to terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, have been discovered working for British police forces.

Have they been arrested? Questioned? At least sacked? Nope (emphasis added).

Astonishingly, many of the alleged jihadists have not been sacked because - it is claimed - police do not have the "legal power" to dismiss them.

Translation: "Here, let me help you put that noose around my neck."

No Respect

The AP's Thomas Wagner puzzles over why all those doctors became involved in a terrorist plot and for all his research and pondering cannot come up with a single common denominator as to what could cause these professional men to plant car bombs in London and Glasgow. Could it be a religious motive. No, of course not. Don't be silly.

It is enough to make one show genuine sympathy for the Jihadists. I mean, here they are shouting from the rooftops that they're a load of crazed Muslim fanatics dedicated to establishing a worldwide Caliphate and have sworn war to the knife against any infidel or fellow Muslim who does not subscribe to their twisted brand of Islam and you can't even get the Western elite to give you a look in. What do you have to do to be taken seriously as a power-hungry megalomaniac around here?

The Australian Connection

In the wake of last week's bombing attempts in London & Glasgow, Australian authorities are carrying out raids and are questioning five more doctors with (if you read the BBC) nothing in common beyond being doctors.

By a staggering coincidence, at least one is named "Mohammed", so I suspect that they are not Methodists

A Former Jihadi Speaks Out

Hassan Butt, who was once a member of radical group Al-Muhajiroun, addresses the ostrich mentality of the West and moderate Muslims when it comes to radical Islam:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Death With Indignity

The Telegraph reports on a terrorist web site based in Britain where 45 Muslim doctors threatened to blow up naval bases and "clubs for naked women" in the vicinity of Jacksonville, Florida.

I guess that's what happens when you start treating the Hippocratic Oath as "guidelines."

Blackburn Arrests

Two "Asian" men have been arrested in Blackburn on terrorist charges.

In other developments, the number of Jihadi doctors has now risen to seven. The eighth is a medical technician.

We Have Met The Enemy And He is...

The Prime Minister Mr. Gordon Brown has finally stood up and addressed the threat of radical Islam by leaping boldly into action and... banning any use of the words "Muslim" and "War" in connection with the war being waged against us by radical Muslims.

Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word “Muslim” in ­connection with the ­terrorism crisis.

The Prime Minister has also instructed his team – including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – that the phrase “war on ­terror” is to be dropped.

The shake-up is part of a fresh attempt to improve community relations and avoid offending Muslims, adopting a more “consensual” tone than existed under Tony Blair.

Start as you intend to continue, I suppose.

Meanwhile, the BBC has finally found something to link together the perpetrators of the recent bombing attempts; they all worked for the NHS.

It's as I've always suspected. Now we must ask ourselves why does the National Health Service hate us?

Now We Are Eight

The bombing arrest toll has risen to eight.

It also brings the number of doctors under arrest to three.

Update: Make that five doctors. This is starting to slip into surrealism.

Update: Six doctors and arrests in Brisbane. Surrealism achieved.