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NOW that Hamas has apparently won the Palestinian elections, the West is hoist with its own petard. On the one hand, Hamas is a terrorist group that unabashedly targets Israeli civilians and calls for the elimination of the Jewish state. On the other hand, it just won what observers deem to have been a reasonably fair election, and so enjoys the legitimacy that comes from the ballot box. Every foreign ministry now confronts a dilemma: nudge Hamas to moderation or give up on it as irredeemably extremist? Meet Hamas members or avoid them? Continue to donate to the Palestinian Authority...

The interior ministers of two German states have recently advanced important measures for containing radical Islam. They bear close attention across the West. In Baden-Wurtenberg, Heribert Rech (of the ruling Christian Democratic Union party) has overseen the administering of a 30-topic loyalty test for applicants to become naturalized citizens. Following an intensive and sophisticated study by the Baden-Wurtenberg government of Muslim life, it developed a manual for the naturalization authorities explaining that applicants for citizenship must concur with the "free, democratic, constitutional structure" of Germany.

Shareholding prince claims change made after he called Rupert Murdoch

"Iran’s stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon [i.e., Israel]. We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region.” No, those are not the words of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking last week. Rather, that was Ali Khamene’i, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader, in December 2000. In other words, Ahmadinejad’s call for the destruction of Israel was nothing new but conforms to a well-established pattern of regime rhetoric and ambition. “Death to Israel!” has been a rallying cry for the past quarter-century. Ahmadinejad quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, its founder,...

GLASGOW, Scotland, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- One of Scotland's leading bagpipes manufacturers is marching to the oblivion of liquidation. Hardie and Weatherston was founded in 1950 by champion bagpipers Bob Hardie and John Weatherston. The company's pipes were awarded a royal warrant, featured in a hit Paul McCartney song, "Mull of Kintyre" and played by military pipe bands from Scotland to India. In fact, Hardie pipes are the equivalent of Steinway pianos, Robbie Wallace, principal of the Scottish Piping College, told the BBC. But the company, sold to a new owner last year, has fallen on hard times. Maureen Leslie,...

Amidst the vacuum of Judy Miller saying nothing and the misshapen vessel of Bob Novak's obfuscations, informed speculation swirls, on this site among many. At bottom, we wonder if Miller -- perhaps the private citizen singly most responsible for the current quagmire -- is admirably upholding a principle underlying one of the few brakes on an unbridled administration. Or has she realized, potential book deal and all, the salutary power of a four-month stint in reputation rehab? Or just maybe, as has been recently and deliciously floated, is she protecting her own Tinkers to Evans to Chance role as a...

Symposium: The Showdown By Jamie Glazov FrontPageMagazine.com | July 29, 2005 The rise to power of Islamic hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran has spelled precarious danger for the West. An Islamic fundamentalist who is determined to continue Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Ahmadinejad has brought the inevitable confrontation between Iran and the U.S. to a head. To discuss the coming showdown, Frontpage has assembled a distinguished panel. Our guests today are: Dr. Patrick Clawson, the Deputy Director at the The Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Kenneth Timmerman, a best-selling investigative reporter and the author of the new book Countdown to Crisis:...

CAIR cuts back on crucial libel claims in its infamous lawsuit against anti-CAIR. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, Inc., filed a defamation lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead, of Anti-CAIR (or ACAIR), a grass-roots project whose name explains its mission: to expose the largest, most vocal, and dangerous Islamist organization in North America. CAIR’s March 2004 lawsuit is part of what seems to be a policy of . In this case, CAIR claimed it had been harmed by six statements on ACAIR’s website, including CAIR’s being founded by Hamas supporters, being partially funded by terrorists, and intending to impose Islamic law on...

The Council on American Islamic Relations, better known as CAIR, fashions itself as a mainstream, moderate group. Well, read this article by noted scholar Daniel Pipes, and see if you agree with CAIR's claims. An excerpt: CAIR is particularly worrisome because it claims to be nothing but a mild public affairs organization promoting "interest and understanding among the general public with regards to Islam and Muslims in North America," and is widely seen as such. In fact, it is radical to the core; to quote its chairman, Omar M. Ahmad (as reported by the San Ramon Valley Herald in July...

Terrorism usually comes like a bolt from the blue, but not so the four explosions yesterday in London, killing at least 37. Some British Islamist leaders have been warning for months that such violence was imminent. An Islamist British group called Al-Muhajiroun (Arabic: “the immigrants”) for some time publicly stated that the United Kingdom was immune from Islamist violence because of its acceptable behavior. In an April 2004 conversation, the 24-year-old head of Al-Muhajiroun’s Luton branch, Sayful Islam, announced that he supports Osama Bin Laden “100 percent” in the quest to achieve “the worldwide domination of Islam.” Toward this end,...

Palestinians Who Cling to Israelby Daniel PipesNew York Sun July 6, 2005 Israel's interior minister recently declared that after their release from long jail sentences, four Palestinian Arabs convicted of helping with suicide bombings in 2002, killing 35, will be expelled from Israel. They would, the Associated Press reported, "lose the privileges of permanent residents, such as social security and health insurance."The minister's decision raises a question: Why would Palestinians engaged in destroying the state of Israel feel punished by losing the right to live in Israel? One would expect that anti-Israel terrorists would prefer to live in the Palestinian...

In his just-released, absorbing and excellent book Understanding Jihad, David Cook of Rice University dismisses the low-grade debate that has raged since 9/11 over the nature of jihad – whether it is a form of offensive warfare or (more pleasantly) a type of moral self-improvement. Cook dismisses as "bathetic and laughable" John Esposito's contention that jihad refers to "the effort to lead a good life." Throughout history and at present, Cook definitively establishes, the term primarily means "warfare with spiritual significance." His achievement lies in tracing the evolution of jihad from Muhammad to Osama, following how the concept has changed...

Does Terrorism Advance the Islamist Cause? The Islamist movement has two wings, one illegal and violent, the other legal and political. I believe the latter enjoys better prospects of success than the former. That's because law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and military forces know how to deal with the illegal and the violent, but the Western world lacks the muscles to defend itself from an insidious radical movement. For these reasons, I consider the major terrorist assaults – 9/11, Bali, Madrid, Beslan – to be failures. They foul the nest and they rouse Westerners to action. Or, as I put it...

by Daniel Pipes New York Sun April 26, 2005 What steps should Western border agencies take to defend their homelands from harm by Islamists? In the case of non-citizens, the answer is simple: Don't let Islamists in. Exclude not just potential terrorists but also anyone who supports the totalitarian goals of radical Islam. Just as civilized countries did not welcome fascists in the early 1940s (or communists a decade later), they need not welcome Islamists today. But what about one's own citizens who cross the border? They could be leaving to fight for the Taliban or returning from a course...

What Are Islamic Schools Teaching? 04/2/05 "Shocked" is how Aisha Sherazi, principal of the Abraar Islamic school in Ottawa, described the reaction of the school's administration and board on learning last week that two of its teachers had incited hatred of Jews. And "shocked" was how Mumtaz Akhtar, president of the Muslim-Community Council of Ottawa-Gatineau, described his own reaction to the front-page news about the Abraar school. But they may have been the only two persons on the planet to be "shocked" to learn that teachers at an Islamic school are promoting anti-Semitism or other aspects of the Islamist agenda....

Throughout the West, Muslims are making new and assertive demands, and in some cases challenging the very premises of European and North American life. How to respond? Here is a general rule: Offer full rights — but turn down demands for special privileges. By way of example, note two current Canadian controversies. The first concerns the establishment of voluntary Shar'i (Islamic law) courts in Ontario. This idea is promoted by the usual Islamist groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Canada and the Canadian Islamic Congress. It is most prominently opposed by Muslim women's groups, led by Homa Arjomand, who...

An American citizen trained by the Saudi government in Virginia will stand trial for plotting to assassinate the president of the United States and yet the media focus on allegations of torture? For a free people in the age of terrorism, what is the proper balance between civil liberties and national security? This debate wracks every Western country. Looking at the United States, the "united we stand" solidarity that followed September 11, 2001, lasted just some months, after which a much deeper divide emerged as conservatives proved far more profoundly affected by the atrocities than did liberals. The result has...

With the passage of the "Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004," it is now possible (according to section 5502, on p. 108) to deport "foreign government officials who have committed particularly severe violations of religious freedom." This is then spelled out to mean "Any alien who, while serving as a foreign government official, was responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom, as defined in section 3 of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998." That section specifies "particularly severe violations of religious freedom" to mean systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of...

An eye-opening examination of worldwide trends that should lead communal leaders and others to re-consider their stances and policies Anti-Semitism may seem to be a static, unchanging phenomenon, but in fact the obsessive hatred of Jews has a history that goes back millennia and continues to evolve. Developments since World War II and the Holocaust have been especially fast-paced and portentous. Here are four of the most significant shifts: From Right to Left:... From Christian to Muslim:... From religious to secular:...The conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism:...

Antisemitism may seem to be a static, unchanging phenomenon, but in fact the obsessive hatred of Jews has a history that goes back millennia and continues to evolve. Developments since World War II and the Holocaust have been especially fast-paced and portentous. Here are four of the most significant shifts: • From Right to Left: For centuries, antisemitism was the hallmark of the Right and merely episodic on the Left. To take the ultimate examples of these trends, Stalin’s Judeophobia was peripheral to his monstrous project but Hitler’s was central to his. Even a decade ago, this pattern still basically...