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On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh? But the Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions. Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow...

Why the hard Left can’t accept the Islamic roots of Nidal Hasan’s shooting spree As the United States prepares to try Nidal Malik Hasan for 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder at Fort Hood last month, few question the suspect’s guilt, but many disagree about his motives. Yet the evidence is now conclusive: the Fort Hood massacre was an act of Islamic terror. Before his shooting spree, Hasan told colleagues that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell and that they should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats. Hasan traded 18 e-mails with...

Pope Leo XIII on True LibertyA Great Pontiff Condemns a Modern ErrorMICHAEL DAVIES IN his encyclical letter Libertas, Pope Leo XIII warns that there are certain so-called liberties which modern society takes for granted that every man possesses as a right. These are the liberties "which the followers of liberalism so eagerly advocate and proclaim." (The terms freedom and liberty will be considered synonymous for the purposes of this article; the Latin word libertas is expressed by either, depending on the translator.) The essence of liberalism is that the individual human being has the right to decide for himself the...

How do we know that the attack at Fort Hood was an act of Islamist terrorism? Simple, Major Nidal Hassan told us so. You’ve seen reports of a long list of things he did and said along these lines. But what’s most amazing of all is this: Hassan is the first terrorist in history to give an academic lecture explaining why he was about to attack. Yet that still isn’t enough for too many people—including the president of the United States--to understand that the murderous assault at Fort Hood was a Jihad attack. It was reported that the audience was...

The Jihadi attacks against New York and Washington created an unforgettable date in the collective psyche of Americans: this nation was bled by men indoctrinated by an ideology that, both in its texts and in its actions, knows no mercy for free societies. The terrifying three numbers and a hyphen 9-11 took their place in the country's national identity, alongside Pearl Harbor in the high drama of American history. But 9-11 became also a benchmark to other nations and regions of the world. In Europe, Russia, and India, civil societies began identifying the date 9/11with their own subsequent traumas. Madrid...

The Jihadi attacks against New York and Washington created an unforgettable date in the collective psyche of Americans: this nation was bled by men indoctrinated by an ideology that, both in its texts and in its actions, knows no mercy for free societies. The terrifying three numbers and a hyphen 9-11 took their place in the country's national identity, alongside Pearl Harbor in the high drama of American history.  But 9-11 became also a benchmark to other nations and regions of the world. In Europe, Russia, and India, civil societies began identifying the date 9/11with their own subsequent traumas. Madrid...

Islamic Supremacist Group Holds First U.S. Conference Friday, July 17, 2009 Diane Macedo Print ShareThis YouTube The Khilafah Conference 2009 is scheduled to be held July 19, 2009 at the Hilton Oak Lawn hotel. A group committed to establishing an international Islamic empire and reportedly linked to Al Qaeda is stepping up its Western recruitment efforts by holding its first official conference in the U.S. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda in Iraq's onetime leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It has operated discreetly in the U.S. for...

President Obama seeks to realign relations between the West and the Muslim world, calling for a "broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect." In particular, while on his visit to Turkey, he tacitly criticized the Iraq war. Mr. Obama blamed it for triggering tensions with Ankara and for fanning the flames of anti-Americanism on the Arab street. "I know that the trust that binds the United States and Turkey has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced." There is something not only grotesque, but also pathetic about...

The assumption that the Obama administration's diplomatic initiative to our enemies will enhance America's image in the world has yet to be proven. What should concern us more however is the price our enemies will exact from us as part of that rapproachement, and whether it is really and truly worth the cost? As Barry Rubin of the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel wrote recently: "In the Middle East, it is not so useful to think yourself popular and show yourself to be friendly. You have to inspire fear in your enemies and confidence in your friends....

ONE of the most moving but little-known episodes of the Second World War was Operation Exodus when, in the early summer of 1945, the RAF flew home tens of thousands of liberated British prisoners of war from northern Europe. Many had been incarcerated for five years in German PoW camps until they were freed by the Allies. As the planes flew over the English Channel and the white cliffs of Dover came into view, the spirits of this bedraggled but heroic army soared. Some cheered, others whistled. A few brave souls sat still with tears rolling down their cheeks. They...

There has been an outpouring of sympathy for India from all over the world after the recent Mumbai carnage just like what the US received after 9/11. In recent years there have been such senseless killings in Bali, Indonesia (October 2002), Madrid train killings (March 2004), and the London bombings (July 2005). Between 9/11 in the US and 26/11 in India, there have been regular jihadi killings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Algeria, China and Russia. But jihadi terrorism involving the World Trade Center (New York), Madrid, Bali and London has been getting the world attention without any attempt to...

Commandos are battling the last few militants at a landmark Mumbai hotel, two days after the start of attacks which have killed at least 144 people. While almost 100 people were rescued from a second hotel, six bodies were found at a Jewish centre and battles rage on at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. A 29-year-old rabbi and his wife were confirmed as among those killed. India's foreign minister has said "elements with links to Pakistan" were involved in the attacks on Mumbai. See a detailed map of the area However, his Pakistani counterpart has urged India not to bring...

Europe must realize: Jihadism is an ideology, not a theology World Defense Review - Aug 7, 2008 The Jihadists in Sudan, for example, have clearly displayed racism in Darfur. c. New theories are claiming that the root causes are socio-psychological ...

Government and police spokesmen would have us believe that the carnage in Jerusalem on Wednesday was unavoidable. Husam Taysir Dwayat, the convicted rapist, burglar and drug dealer turned jihadist who mowed down innocent people with his bulldozer on Jaffa Road was not suspected of links to terrorist organizations. The sociopathic, violent criminal who had "returned" to Islam over the past month raised no red flags. There was nothing to be done. No one is to blame. If the protestations of the government and the police that nothing could have prevented Dwayat from using his bulldozer to murder three people sound...

The West stands by idly as its foundations are rent asunder.Last Friday the UN's Human Rights Council took a direct swipe at freedom of expression. In a 32-0 vote, the council instructed its "expert on freedom of expression" to report to the council on all instances in which individuals "abuse" their freedom of speech by giving expression to racial or religious bias. The measure was proposed by paragons of freedom Egypt and Pakistan. It was supported by all Arab, Muslim and African countries - founts of liberty one and all. European states abstained. The US, which is not a member...

Jihad, Islamism, and Non-Interventionism Part Two of Three Jeffrey Imm3. Non-Interventionism: U.S. Foreign Policy to Blame for Islamist Terrorism3.1. Occidentalism and Non-Interventionists - Islamist Terrorism as a Reaction to U.S. Foreign PolicyIn his book "Marching Toward Hell", Mr. Scheuer mocks those concerned about Islamism as "Cold Warriors" (p. 148), while adopting a Cold War mentality towards Islamism himself. In Mr. Scheuer's efforts to promote Non-Interventionism, his argument is that Islamist terrorism is exclusively a reaction to U.S. foreign policy. Since logical contortion is inconsequential to the larger Non-Interventionist cause of preventing America from recognizing an enemy, Mr. Scheuer does not...

In his final State of the Union address on Monday, President George W. Bush spoke again at length about the war on terror, and the strategic importance of a "free Iraq" in securing a beachhead for freedom and democracy in the Arab heart of the Middle East. Bush reminded Americans and others that the free world is "engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century" against those -- the Islamists and their supporters -- opposed to "every principle of humanity and decency" that free people hold dear. Iraq and Afghanistan liberated from the clutches of tyranny will be...

The Candidate Who Can See the Enemy, Can Defeat It by Walid Phares The post 9/11 era has changed the rules of engagement for national security experts and for those who can read the mind of the Jihadists, when it comes to US Presidential elections. While the principle was that the counter Terrorism community should let the voters chose their candidates and select their chief executive first, then offer the expert advice to the President later, unfortunately for that principle, things have changed. Indeed, since the attacks against New York and Washington and the engagement of the nation in the...

What kind of campaign is this? Six-plus years after 9/11; while the Taliban attempts an Afghanistan comeback; as Islamist terrorists cause mayhem in Algeria and occupy huge swaths of tribal Pakistan; despite "United 93" and "The Kite Runner," a library-full of books, presidential commissions, congressional hearings, and four election cycles—despite all of that, a strange, Victorian reticence about naming the enemy in the contest for the human future in which we are engaged befogs this political season.Such reticence is an obstacle to victory in a war we cannot avoid and in which we must prevail. For if there is...

As noted in Cliff's post yesterday (relying on a Bill Gertz report in the Washington Times), the Pentagon has sacked an authentic, influential scholar of Islam, Stephen Coughlin, who evidently refused to lie about — er, I mean, "soften his views on" — Islamic extremism (which, like it or not, is rooted in Islamic scripture) at the insistence of one Hasham Islam, Army Chief Gordon England's Islamophilic factotum (one of countless such creatures now pervading the federal government). For more on this, check out this post on the new website of Andrew Bostom, another scholar of Islam. Andy knows Coughlin...