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"Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.” I wrote those words days after 9/11 and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March 3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not go far enough. That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none were severely injured. Until his would-be murderous...

I have this simple question that no one seems to want to answer. Thankfully, the five-alarm debacle that was the lucrative deal to permit a company wholly owned by the United Arab Emirates to manage stevedoring operations at several U.S. ports has been averted. Backstage pressure induced the UAE to withdraw, avoiding further, immense embarrassment to President Bush, who inexplicably raised the stakes of this blunder by threatening a veto — his first, and what a bizarre cause to take that maiden voyage over. The end has unleashed another torrent of censorious caterwauling from the “Let’s Make a Deal” Right...

March 10, 2006 -- Mayor Bloomberg yesterday all but fired Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil as head of ministerial services at the city's Department of Correction. But no honor accrues to the mayor: He had no choice. Abdul-Jalil was iced after The Post revealed a series of hate-laced public remarks from the imam last year. "We know that the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House," Abdul-Jalil was caught on tape saying. He insisted Muslims are being "set up" - jailed just because they're Muslims and tortured in government prisons. "Zionists" are manipulating the news.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia is considering a plan to "de-programme" Islamic militants held in jail despite criticism by a rights group saying it amounted to brainwashing. Police Commissioner Mick Keelty proposed the idea, saying the technique involved using respected imams or people previously connected with militant organisations to convert extremists to more moderate views. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that while "re-programming isn't the phrase I would use", the idea would be considered as it had been implemented successfully in Europe, the Middle East and Indonesia. "Those governments have made an attempt to persuade extremists and terrorists who have been...

Since 9-11, I've received numerous letters like this recent one: "What can be done to help educate people on the dangers that radical Islam poses to Western civilization? I don't think this ideological conflict will go away." No, it won't. It is likely to be for the first half of the 21st century what the Cold War was for the last half of the 20th -- a long, subtle struggle with occasional days of fire. How to educate folks? Use of all media will be needed, but here's a list of books I've read and found useful. There are many...

THE torture and murder of a young Jewish man in Paris triggered outrage among Jewish leaders yesterday as the Government sought to prevent the affair from inflaming emotions in the Muslim-dominated housing estates of France. Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, and his ministers promised that justice would be done after the parents of Ilan Halimi, 23, who was held captive for three weeks on an immigrant estate, accused the police of playing down the anti-Semitic motives of his kidnappers. Voicing the anger felt among the Jewish population, Radio Shalom, a station in Paris, said that M Halimi had “been...

Mr. Moderator: I realize this is a vanity, but this is a question that I've never seen really raised here on Free Republic either by article or by vanity and I don't think it should be relegated elsewhere until it is thrashed about on Jim's main board. I've been a Freeper since 2000, so please honor this one request. What were the Muslims before the Prophet? Riots everyday against non-muslim institutions because of, primarily, a series of cartoons. As a nation that was founded upon Judeo-Christian ideals, but one that also founded upon the philosophy of accepting all religions as...

Srinagar, February 10: Nearly two dozen black-veiled Muslim women stormed gift and stationery shops Friday in Kashmir, burning Valentine's Day cards and posters to protest a holiday they say imposes Western values on Muslim youth. No one was hurt in the half-dozen or so incidents, and police cordoned off the area to prevent the women from marching through Srinagar's main shopping district to continue their ransacking. The women were from the Kashmiri Islamic group Dukhtaran-e-Millat, or Daughters of the Community, Kashmir's only women's separatist group, whose members are also known for their fiercely conservative social views. "We will not let...

When the Ayatollah called for the execution of Salman Rushdie upon publication of The Satanic Verses, only a few commentators - most notably John le Carré - said Rushdie brought the whole thing on himself by creating a work of art which he should have known would offend Muslims. This time around, a disturbing number of people who should know better are siding with the rampaging mob, like Simon Jenkins in The Times (column title: "These cartoons don't defend free speech, they threaten it"). Nobody has an absolute right to freedom. Civilisation is the story of humans sacrificing freedom so...

PALESTINIAN recognition of Israel was a mistake that needs correction, a senior Hamas leader said, as the group faces pressure from Europe and the US to recognise the Jewish state. The militant Islamist group will not consider recognising Israel while the status of the country's borders remains unclear and millions of Palestinian refugees are not unable to return to their homes, the group's deputy political leader said. "We believe that there was a mistake that happened in the past and this (recognition of Israel) in particular must be corrected," Moussa Abu Marzouk told reporters in Cairo without giving further details....

We are all Danes now, as Paul Belien, editor of the Brussels Journal said in his editorial this week. Or we should be. Because today Denmark is taking a beating for us all, fighting for press freedoms that can mean the difference between democracy and totalitarianism, between free speech and terror, between sleeping at night and being afraid of the knock on the door, between light and despair. And that tiny democracy is doing so under threat of economic sanctions -- and death for its citizens and those of other Western countries where news media have rallied to the defence...

Here's a video clip of an extraordinary exchange between one of CNN International's anchors and the Muslim Council of Britain, Abdurahmen Jafar. Skirting around the fact that there has been an "extreme" and "violent" response is naive. Anchor: It seems that has taken on a life of it's own. I mean you see in some Palestinian territories, for instance, in Gaza, where Europeans are being told to stay indoors, that they're at risk. And it's kind of taken on this dimension, that seems, from the outside, violent. Instead of a thoughtful response, Jafar says the publication of the cartoons is...

JERUSALEM - A Palestinian man stabbed five people on a minibus in central Israel, killing one woman before passengers subdued him, police and witnesses said. Police said the attack in the central Israeli city of Petach Tikva was politically motivated, but did not elaborate. They said the attacker came from the West Bank, but it was unclear how the he had entered Israel. Witnesses said the attacker stood up while the bus was moving and began stabbing passengers. "He jumped on people and started to stab them," said one witness, who gave only his first name, Benny. Other witnesses said...

The uproar in the Islamic world over Danish cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad reminds us that much of that world misunderstands what democracy means. A Danish paper published the 12 cartoons in September. One showed the prophet with a turban made of explosives; in another, he greets a line of suicide bombers in heaven with the words "Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins." The drawings have inspired protests from Muslim presidents, Arab boycotts of Danish goods, Pakistani demonstrations that torched the Danish flag, and calls by Gaza imams to sever the hands of the artists. In the Muslim...

Several terror groups have targeted Danish citizens and issued warnings. Intelligence services in Denmark are concerned An Al-Qaeda affiliated terror group issued a grim warning to Danish citizens on Thursday: 'You will see your own blood as an answer, and that is revenge from our prophet,' the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade, which has been active in Iraq, wrote to a London-based homepage. Another group based in England, Al Ghurabaa, called for a demonstration in front of the Danish embassy in London. Two extremist groups in the Palestinian occupied territories also issued warnings to citizens from Denmark, as well as Norway...

I received an email tonight that epitomizes various tendencies we have seen many times before. A Muslim writes in telling me that he has been very "docile," that he does not support Osama, but now my actions have driven him around the bend. And what exactly have I done now? Why, it's worse than bombing a village "to get osama's deputy": I have defended the cartoons of Muhammad and published them at my website. This is a common displacement of responsibility. Of course, it rings hollow. If he has really been a peaceful fellow, he will be able to put...

Last week, Muslims marched in the centre of London chanting "Freedom go to Hell!" There could be no more graphic illustration of the paradox at the heart of the cartoon row. These protesters were exercising - and in many cases abusing - the freedom of protest and freedom of assembly that are foundation stones of British democracy. Yet, even as they exploited these hard-won liberties, they were calling for them to be abolished. This newspaper would not have published the cartoons of Mohammed at the centre of this controversy, images which we regard as vulgar and fatuously insulting. But -...

STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY The United States condemns in the strongest terms the burning of the Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Damascus, Syria today, which also damaged the Chilean and Swedish Embassies. The Government of Syria's failure to provide protection to diplomatic premises, in the face of warnings that violence was planned, is inexcusable. The State Department has told the Syrian Ambassador that Syria must act decisively to protect all foreign embassies and citizens in Damascus from attack. We will hold Syria responsible for such violent demonstrations since they do not take place in that country without government knowledge...

Denmark and Norway have urged their citizens to leave Syria, after the embassies of both countries in Damascus were set on fire. Several thousand Syrian demonstrators set both embassies alight in protest at the publishing of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad by newspapers in several European countries. Police fired teargas to disperse the protesters. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said he had telephoned his Syrian counterpart, Faruq al-Shara and told him 'this was completely unacceptable'. He added that Mr al-Shara 'had distanced himself from the attack, and he apologised'. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his government should consider...

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered the cancellation of economic contracts with countries where the media have carried cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the ISNA news agency reported. The report said the hardline president had ordered the creation of an official body to respond to the cartoons, saying the regime "must revise and cancel economic contracts with the countries that started this repulsive act and those that followed them." The presidential decree also condemned Saturday the "the insult by certain Western media of the prophet which shows the hatred towards Islam and Muslims of the Zionists who...