It’s a bizarre, and telling, concatenation of contemporary events. The series of happenings starts on the web forum of Jordanian “protector of jihad” Muhammad al-Maqdisi. The forum is called Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad (Pulpit of Monotheism – “unity of God” – and Jihad), and its purpose is to defend proper jihad against the bad name it has been given by groups like al-Qaeda.
You may not have heard of Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad (MTJ), but it has heard of you. Its sharia council issue fatwas right and left, and you and your laws are the subject of a number of them. It’s hard to pick among the forum’s many interesting features, but perhaps this will serve as a taste. In June 2011, London-based radical cleric Sheikh Hani al-Sibai was admitted to the MTJ sharia council. Al-Sibai made a name for himself in 2005 by justifying the gruesome murder of two Israeli truck drivers in Ramallah, based on Mohammed’s eye-gouging, limb-lopping punishment of sheep stealers.
One of the recent fatwas issued through MTJ came from Jordanian Sheikh Abu Humam Bakr bin Abd’ al-Aziz al-Athari. Al-Athari had already popped up a few months ago with a fatwa permitting Libyan rebel fighters to kill members of the former Qadhafi regime. He is also the author of the seminal work The Exalted Declaration of the Justness of Our Sheikh al-Maqdisi.
On 28 October, al-Athari issued a fatwa permitting mujahedin to “kidnap, imprison, and have sexual intercourse with infidel women.” (H/t: Belladonna Rogers at PJM Tatler) Robert Spencer has taken it apart here.
From there the story moves to Norway, where a police report uncovered by the media in June 2011 indicated that all of the rapes reported in Oslo in the previous year had been committed by “non-Western” males. According to a victim interviewed for the news story, her Pakistani immigrant rapist told her that he “had the right to do exactly as he wanted to a woman … because that’s how it was in his religion. Women didn’t have rights or opinions, he was in charge.”
A new article from a Norwegian source (link below) indicates that 45 of the 48 rapes reported in Oslo in 2011 (a new set of crimes, distinct from the earlier ones considered in the June 2011 story) were committed by “non-Western” males.
But here our tale moves in a remarkable, if not entirely unpredictable, direction. Confronted with these statistics, Norway’s political leaders had a ready answer (emphasis added):
After [the police report was publicized in June 2011] a stormy public debate erupted … “the government ministers, most of them avowed anti-Semites, claimed that the report and its publication serve Israel and its policy of occupation.”
Norway’s justice minister defended the police report but also said that “Israel must be glad to hear about it.”
Of course.
Remember, these aren’t bloggers in their mamas’ basements. They’re members of the Norwegian cabinet.
But then, Leon Panetta is a member of the Obama administration’s cabinet, and he made headlines this weekend with his heated exhortation to Israel to “get to the damn table” with the Palestinian Arabs. Hillary Clinton, also a member of Obama’s cabinet, decided to weigh in on the internal condition of Israeli democracy, which she regards as perilous due to some pending legislation on NGOs. Hillary is worried about democracy in a few other places, although not at all in the Arab Spring nations. When it comes to those nations, harboring skepticism about Islamists and democracy is “insulting, dangerous, and wrong.”
And then there was Obama’s ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, who blamed Israel in a 30 November speech for the growth of anti-Semitism. (See Ron Radosh link above; see Omri Ceren here.) In Gutman’s words, the problem is:
[A] tension and perhaps hatred largely born of and reflecting the tension between Israel, the Palestinian Territories and neighboring Arab states in the Middle East over the continuing Israeli-Palestinian problem.
(The UK Telegraph, among others, points out that Gutman was referring in this speech to the 18 November attack in which a Belgian Jewish girl was severely beaten by Muslim classmates.)
Gutman congratulates himself that when he communicates this “Israel is the problem” message to Muslim audiences in Europe, he gets applause:
But the longest and loudest ovation I have ever received in Belgium came from the high school with one of the largest percentages of students of Arab heritage. It was in Molenbeek. It consisted of an audience dominated by girls with head scarves and boys named Mohammed, standing and cheering boisterously for a Jewish American, who belongs to two schuls and whose father was a Holocaust survivor.
The Emergency Committee for Israel isn’t buying it. And it is a sign of interesting times, when government officials are retailing, in lockstep, a meme of such falsity.
The road to the “Israel made us do it” meme is littered with false syllogisms and defensive triangulations. It has no use for the crystalline courage of positive assertions; it is all angry eruptions, innuendo, euphemism, red herrings, inverted implications, and a retreat behind the twin barricades of riot and applause. The meme is wielded like a mantra and assumed as background like the “consensus” about global warming. As the recent words of American and Norwegian political leaders indicate, this isn’t something peculiar to Islamism. It resonates with political factions in the West as well.
They are factions Americans can choose not to vote for. Legitimizing Jew-hatred and reflexive animosity toward Israel won’t be the last line they try to cross, as they rely on the indifferent silence of the public.
J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.
The Optimistic Conservative 
“It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth — and listen to the song of the siren, till she transforms us into beasts.” — Patrick Henry 1775
“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.” – John Stuart Mill
“One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”
Algerian leader Houari Boumedienne speaking at the UN, 1974
“We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.”
Jens Orback, Minister for Democracy, Metropolitan Affairs, Integration and Gender Equality, Government of Sweden
Apologies that this went to the spam queue yesterday, GB. I still can’t figure out why.
It’s happened before JE but only (mostly?) on WordPress blogs. WordPress seems to have an on&off glitch when submitting comments with multiple URL links or multiple html quotes.
THis fellow, who was Zarquawi’s mentor, perish the thought, JE;
http://www.jihadica.com/maqdisi-composes-elegy-for-zarqawi/
Maqdisi is about as representative of European Moslems as Rev Jones is of American Christians, or that rabbi who is behind the recent raft of mosque burnings and stonings of Arab school-kids in Israel, is of Jews.
Most rapes in Europe are committed by white “Christian” males. Ditto in the US. They are catholic in their tastes and they don’t particularly discriminate between Christian or Moslem, black or white.
Violence isn’t a particularly Moslem thing either. In the recent urban riots in the United Kingdom (The official report on the events was released today) the perpetrators were white youths. The victims of their arson and rampage were predominantly Moslems and Hindus of south Asian origin who run inner-city convenience-stores, laundrettes and other small businesses. A number of young Moslem and Hindu women were attacked and sexually assaulted. One young Moslem man was attacked by a mob of white youths and was murdered. His heartbroken father went on TV and called for calm and for no retaliation. That is fact. Inconvenient fact to those who like to stir up hate against Moslems and portray them collectivly as threatening and alien.
On the other hand, your “facts” are culled in selected and distorted form (and laced with misquotes, and quotes taken out of context) from various right and extreme-right sources (The far-right in Europe and elsewhere has a long and ugly history for this sort of thing). Of course the vast majority of sex crimes in Norway are committed by white males on white women – mostly on victims related or known to the perpetrators. You are indulging in the sort of drek that permeated Europe in the 30s. Shame on you.
And yes, the Israeli Palestinian conflict causes anger among European Moslems who witness the ongoing theft of the homes and resources of their fellow Moslems in occupied Palestine. People are inclined to react in anger when people with whom they identify are attacked by the “other”. Just like we did after 9/11. Only the Moslems didn’t then go out and retaliate by killing and mutilating tens of thousands of men women, and yes, children, in a war of choice constructed on a lie.
And there is no evidence whatsoever that Europeans blame Israelis for everything. They just blame them for the ongoing theft of Palestinian land, and they are not best pleased at the strife being imported from the Middle East as a result.(Oh I forgot, you don’t consider theft to be theft when the robbers are Jews and the victims Palestinians – you prefer to call theft “disputing” or some such euphemism in this instance). Other than that, Europeans are pretty much positive about Israel. If only it would just stop the stealing…..
(And please don’t refer to Israel as a democracy. It isn’t. It’s a kleptocracy/ethnocracy. Israeli democracy was the other victim of the occupation)
“Violence isn’t a particularly Moslem thing either”
More people are killed by Islamists each year than in all 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition combined.
More civilians were killed by Muslim extremists in two hours on September 11th than in the 36 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
Islamic terrorists murder more people every day than the Ku Klux Klan has in the last 50 years.
19 Muslim hijackers killed more innocents in two hours on September 11th than the number of American criminals executed in the last 65 years.
Since 9/11 Islamic terrorists have carried out more than 18,090 deadly terror attacks…
According to figures obtained by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (Ikwro), in 2010 at least 2,823 incidents of ‘honour-based’ violence took place in Britian, with the highest number recorded in London.
The Qur’an never once speaks of Allah’s love for non-Muslims, but it speaks of Allah’s cruelty toward and hatred of non-Muslims more than 500 times.
Once in a while, we stumble upon the truth, will you face it or decide to pick yourself up and hurry along, as if nothing had happened? (Churchill paraphrased)
In our war of choice on a lie we killed many multiples of the number of people killed in all the incidences you list. And far more civilians.
That’s a commonly asserted load of BS. Saddam killed far more people every year than in all of the WoT. As for the ‘lie’, with the exception of Obama, who of course wasn’t in Congress yet, every major democrat is on record asserting that Saddam was pursuing a covert nuclear program, most prior to 9/11.
“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” — From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998
“Saddam’s goal … is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed.” — Madeline Albright, 1998
“(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983” — National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998
“The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.” — Bill Clinton in 1998
“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.” — Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002
“I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons…I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out.” — Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003
“Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people.” — Tom Daschle in 1998
“Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.” — Al Gore, 2002
“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” — Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002
“There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein’s regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed.” — Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 2002
“I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force – if necessary – to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.” — John F. Kerry, Oct 2002
“As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” — Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998
“Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production.” — Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998
Democrat members of Congress had access to Intelligence reports, which is what they based their their assessments upon, not Powell putting on an explanation in the UN for US actions (admittedly flawed), which is what the meme that it was a lie is based upon.
There is no excuse for these people and their lying about the desires of God in their attempts to justify rape and murder.
They are degraded liars no better than Joseph Smith or David Koresh.
Absolutely. And neither is there any excuse for the fanatics who claim that God told them it is ok to steal other people’s homes, water and land. And why use God as an excuse at all? Why not just invent tales about Chadean uranium ore and poison-gas trailers as an excuse to wage war on a country you well know had nothing to do with 9/11? But then again, there seems to be a certain pathology of mind in certain quarters that lArab) semitic people don’t experience pain and bereavement like we do, so its ok
The victims of our lie-motivated war on Iraql cost multiples of the number of lives lost in 9/11 or killed by Al Quaeda or its associates. None of the victims of either set of gangsters and fanatics was more deserving of their fate than any others.
(Perhaps you should add Cheney & Co to your list of degraded liars. Except that Cheney & Co can boast a body count that puts the other gents to shame)
I’m sure he would cheer James Byrd’s killers, equally Herr Grosch, thankfully one of them, has gone the way of the Norwegian Blue, I don’t even get why
Gutman would make that reference at all
In WWII, the Norwegian collaboration with the invading Nazis was every bit as widespread as the French spineless debacle.
The militaristic anti-semitism of Norway is alive and well.
A note to the Arab Apologists. You have a lot to apologise for.
The Jewish homeland exits. They are better organized, better educated, more prosperous, better trained, better defended, more cohesive,technically superior and stout hearted.
Apologize for the sorry state of the Arab World. They are responsible for their backward,un-educated,poor,tribal,woman hating culture.
I say again, if the Jews didn’t exist, the Arabs would still be a joke and an embarrassment for Hillbillys world wide.
The Fatwas issued to their betters is a delightful morsel to enjoy. The Arabs don’t accomplish much on their own, but they gripe about everybody else. They remind me of my children when they were 8 or 9 years old.
The true section 8 residents reside in the Arab World. Let us toast the complete failure of a civilization and make excuses for them.
Just thinking out loud: What happens when the legitimate authority is unable or unwilling to defend the population from the depradations of an identifiable group of criminals?
You find yourself in the same position as Israeli Arabs and occupied Palestinians. Luckily for you and I. the courts and laws of the US protect our lands and persons equally – regardless of race creed or color, and the State enforces those laws impartially. It is the greatest blessing that Western Democracy bestows on its citizens.
It is pretty much a constant in those less-fortunate nations who exist outside the fold of Western Democracy that members of some ethnic,r social, or economic elite can steal from their less influential fellows with legal impunity. This is happening in China, the Congo, places in South America, Israel/Palestine, etc.
They move to Detroit and apply for welfare.
Ask the people of Khaybar in the Yathrib valley, that Hamas is always crying on about, oh you can’t they were either killed and converted, and the place
was renamed Medinah, the Fortress
Or ask the Jews today who are taunted with the following chant:
Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud,
Jaysh Mohammed saya ‘ud
Which translates:
Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews,
The army of Mohammed will return
The chant was shouted at the synagogue in Tunis in January, when the Tunisians began their leg of the Arab Spring. It was shouted in Tahrir Square in Egypt. It was shouted by flotilla participants in May 2010. It was shouted by Kuwaitis in 2006, when Hezbollah was firing rockets into Israel. It is shouted often, in numerous venues; you can find video of the chant being shouted in the streets of London and Paris as well as in the Middle East.
The historical record on the massacre at Khaybar is summarized here:
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=3196
There are a lot of Muslims who would personally repudiate this tactic and the sentiment behind it. But it is vain to pretend that they have political momentum in most of the Muslim countries of the Middle East.
is it vain to speculate that a peace deal with the Pals would change the momentum?
And for balance, perhaps you could give us a sample of the slogans daubed on the burnt out Mosques by the fanatical fundamentalist settlers who are currently conducting (with utter impunity) a campaign of Mosque-burning?
Is it vain to speculate that anything will stop the Israelis from their ongoing theft of Palestinian land?
“…ongoing theft of Palestinian land”
the Pals may have dicked around too long P…..it was always in their power from1967 through 2000
There are a lot of Jews who repudiate the policy of land theft being perpetrated by the settlers and their political facilitators, but it is vain to pretend that they have political momentum in most of the parties that comprise the Israeli government coalition or their US paymasters.
(I note a thread that runs through some of the comment here – to the effect that the Palestinians are asking for their homes to be stolen from them. This is an ironic twist on the standard rapist’s defence i.e “she was asking for it”)
the Palestinians went to war in 48 saying that they would control all of Palestine or die trying….to enforce a 7% solution.
Jews 3
Arabs 0
Jews 3 home runs
Arabs No Hits, No Runs, 3 Errors
In a light hearted note: During the 7th inning stretch the Arabs provided Stonings, Beheadings, Female Genital Mutilation, 150 Fatwas, 3 IEDs, 1 plane bombing and free prayer rugs.
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/07/9252482-afghan-woman-ill-marry-rapist-even-though-i-cant-look-at-him