Murder In Anaheim (Updated)

From this source, on May 29, 2007:

The victims were stabbed, strangled and burned, according to the documents. The Dhanaks' Anaheim Hills home was set on fire.

Iftekhar Murtaza was identified by a "victim," according to police documents presented to the Superior Court.

The motive for the crime appears to be a dispute over religion.

"Information developed revealed the suspect was upset with Shayona's parents and sister for discontinuing the relationship due to different religious backgrounds, Hindu and Muslim," the papers said.

The Dhanaks were reported by friends and neighbors to be devout members of the strict Swaminarayan branch of Hinduism. Murtaza is Muslim.

Read the entire article.

This blogger has posted about the above story, here and here. From the second of those postings:

second recent hate crime in america by the beloved 'south asian' brothers. first one last week was when a sikh boy had his hair chopped off forcibly in new york. second is this.

it is clearly a religious hate crime.

[...]

this is a premedidated and absolutely brutal act of jihad by more than one mohammedan.

MSNBC has published this story on the web. In spite of the family's financial and legal difficulties,

Anaheim police spokesman Sgt. Rick Martinez said police did not believe the crime to be a murder-suicide.

"We're treating this as a double homicide," Martinez said.

Not as a hate crime, as was the bacon on the Koran?

According to this source:

...Van Nuys resident Iftekhar Murtaza was arrested by U.S. Marshals at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona, as he was attempting to leave the country.

Murtaza is being called a person of interest in the May 21, 2007, Anaheim murders of 56-year-old Jayprakash Dhanak and 20-year-old Karishima Dhanak, and the assault on 53-year-old Leela Dhanak. Karishima Dhanak was the daughter of Jayprakash and Leela.

Leela Dhanak was beaten with a blunt instrument and taken to the hospital. The burned bodies of Jayprakash and Karishima were found later on May 22 on a remote bike path in Irvine.

According to court documents acquired by the Orange County Register, Murtaza was arrested at a Phoenix airport with a one way ticket to Bangladesh.

The court documents detail for the first time a motive for the brutal crimes. Murtaza is Muslim. His girlfriend, 18-year-old Shayona Dhanak, younger sister of Karishma and daughter of Jayprakash who were killed are Hindu, according to the OC Register.

Court documents say that the parents and sister pushed Shayona to discontinue her relationship with Murtaza, according to the OC Register.

Witnesses told detectives they saw two people attacking Leela on the front lawn on May 21, and the Dhanak's Anaheim house was set on fire; the cars in front of the house were also burned.

Details are still developing. Let's see how much coverage the mainstream media will give the above story, particularly if the crime turns out to have been motivated by the kill-the-infidel ideology of Islam.

Update from the May 31, 2007 LA Times, update reproduced in full:

Rampage against Anaheim family tied to breakup?
Hindu parents of a UC Irvine student disliked her boyfriend being Muslim. The parents and another daughter were brutally attacked.
By Ashley Powers and Dave McKibben
Times Staff Writers

May 31, 2007

She was a college freshman whose Hindu family didn't believe in dating before marriage. He was a Muslim, which troubled her parents, and they convinced her that he wasn't the one.

Their breakup, investigators said, might have played a role in a string of vicious crimes that unfolded in Orange County last week: Her Anaheim Hills home was set ablaze, her mother savagely beaten and her father and sister killed. The victims had been strangled, bludgeoned, burned and stabbed, according to court records.

The young man, Iftekhar Murtaza, 22, of Van Nuys, was arrested last weekend at the Phoenix airport in connection with the slayings. He had left Southern California after investigators questioned him and was carrying a one-way ticket to Bangladesh.

Phone records indicated that Murtaza's cellphone had been used less than two miles from one of the crime scenes an hour or so before the killings. He told authorities he was not in Anaheim that day, court documents said.

Even with the arrest, much about the sequence of the brutal acts — with two crime scenes, three victims and varying witness accounts of what happened over a five-hour span — remains a mystery.

Murtaza, described by authorities as a "person of interest" and considered a flight risk, is being held in Phoenix, with an extradition hearing to return him to California scheduled for this morning. No charges have been filed against him, and police said they are looking for multiple suspects. His attorney did not return phone calls seeking comment.

A few weeks before the slayings, Murtaza and his girlfriend, Shayona Dhanak, an 18-year-old UC Irvine student, had broken up after three years. It was unclear how the pair met and how they had dated for so long despite her family's disapproval.

Murtaza had stayed off and on at a condominium on Langdon Avenue in North Hills, where his parents most recently lived. He worked at a loan company, said a woman affiliated with the Langdon Village homeowners association.

His penchant for blowing through stop signs in flashy cars — first a Mustang convertible, lately a Range Rover — annoyed neighbors, said the woman, who declined to give her name. Murtaza has been ticketed for speeding in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Murtaza's family sold the condo about a month ago and had purchased real estate in Gilbert, Ariz., property records show. His father, however, still works at a convenience store in Van Nuys called Discount Cigarette. He declined to comment Wednesday.

"I strongly believe that he has no part in it," said Ishtiak Murtaza, one of Iftekhar Murtaza's older brothers, according to the Associated Press.

Shayona Dhanak, said several friends, often brought Murtaza to movies, the mall and miniature golf with her girlfriends. He "was a goofy guy. He was a happy-type person," said one 20-year-old UC Irvine student who asked not to be identified.

He "was a caring guy and a good friend," said another young woman. "I never saw any tension of any kind. He was really friendly. We would all just hang out. I never could have imagined anything like this."

The Dhanaks and their elder daughter, Karishma, an Orange Coast College student who dreamed of becoming a makeup artist, apparently pushed for Shayona Dhanak to end the relationship "due to different religious backgrounds, Hindu and Muslim," court documents said.

Leela Dhanak, 53, and her husband, Jayprakash, 56, had emigrated from India to California, where the couple worked their way up from low-level mail sorting jobs, said neighbors and their former attorneys. They had lived in a two-story Anaheim Hills home for about a decade.

Neighbors described them as polite and unobtrusive, though Jayprakash "Jay" Dhanak had a criminal record. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to bilking the U.S. Postal Service as the operations manager for a direct-mail company and was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison.

The case represented about $7.9 million in losses, postal inspectors said. Charges against Leela Dhanak were dropped.

Investigators are continuing to look into whether Jay Dhanak's past is linked to the slayings.

Leela and Jay Dhanak were active in their Whittier temple, where she taught religion classes and which they represented at Hindu conventions. The temple advocated a rigorous style of Hinduism "as a way of preserving culture and protecting their children from what they perceive to be the evils of Western society," according to a Times article about the temple.

Strict adherents forgo television, drugs, meat, alcohol and dating before marriage. Men and women are separated during worship.

Women may not hold leadership positions or speak to the saints or the swami, tenets uncommon to other Hindu sects, the article said.

The temple "was saddened to learn of the tragic events surrounding the Dhanak family…. However, with the strength of our collective faith and the blessings of God, we are sure that we will overcome this period," read a spokesman's statement after the crimes were publicized.

Authorities arriving at a late-night blaze at the Dhanaks' home on May 21 discovered Leela Dhanak bludgeoned and unconscious on a neighbor's lawn. Neighbors reported seeing a young, slender man dragging Leela Dhanak out of her home just before smoke started pouring from the back of the house and a vehicle sped away.

Just after 4 a.m. May 22, Irvine authorities responded to reports of smoke coming from William R. Mason Regional Park, near Concordia University and UC Irvine, about 20 miles from the home.

At the origin of a quickly doused brush fire were the badly burned bodies of Jay and Karishma Dhanak. She was identified through fingerprints that day and her father through dental records later that week.

Leela Dhanak, and her daughter — who did not live with her family and was unharmed — were placed under police protection.

Authorities interviewed Murtaza last week, and shortly afterward he left for Arizona, said a source close to the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. Court records indicated that a victim had alerted officers to Murtaza's possible involvement.

Over the weekend, authorities filed an arrest warrant in Orange County, which has been sealed, the source said. Anaheim police told U.S. marshals Friday that Murtaza was flying into Sky Harbor International Airport from LAX on the first leg of a trip to Bangladesh, said Arizona District U.S. Marshal David Gonzalez.

Four deputy U.S. marshals stopped Murtaza in a terminal that night and confirmed his identity with his passport and ID. "It was very uneventful," Gonzalez said.

This story is looking more and more like a personal jihad.

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A Sad Time

I haven't felt much like blogging the past few days. We lost another friend last week.

Mike died unexpectedly. Cancer. Not diagnosed until the very end.

He was 34 years old.
-----------------------------------
Last night, my husband and I attended the gathering of friends at the funeral home. Because Mike was a down-to-earth, Harley guy, at his father's and his fiance's request we donned jeans and t-shirts and gathered at the funeral home. Mike's Harley, a beautiful machine now draped with flowers to commemorate his passing, stood majestically on a trailer attached to his pickup truck.

As I expected, the place was packed. The three rooms allotted for the gathering of friends weren't nearly enough to hold us all, and we milled around outside on the grounds of the funeral home. There was no laughter as one sometimes encounters upon the passing of an elderly person. The most difficult part of the evening: speaking to Mike's father, who lost his other son to cancer when the boy was but a teenager. I've never seen Mike's father look so sad. Broken, really. I don't know how he'll recover from the shock of losing his two sons to cancer. He had thought that Mike had escaped this terrible disease. Obviously, not so.

Today will be taken up with the rites we use to honor those who have left this life. The funeral service. The procession to the cemetery, the procession to include Mike's truck trailering his beloved Harley. The graveside service. Gathering at the Moose Lodge for fellowship after the services.

The day will be a long one. We don't want to say good-bye! But we will. What choice do we have?

Our friend Mike was a part of our family gatherings and a regular at the VFW where my husband tends bar. We saw our friend often, and he never failed to have a smile and to share a joke or two. As the phrase goes, "He was the life of the party."

We're going to miss Mike. A lot.

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The Hugh Grant Of Pseudostine?

This is too funny! I guess that Arafat's "sacred" burial site didn't bring the fellow too much good will from Allah:

RAMALLAH – Israel today arrested a longtime wanted terror leader here in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

According to Israeli security officials and Palestinian sources in Ramallah speaking to WND, the terrorist was arrested while having car sex just a few hundred feet from late PLO leader Yasser Arafat's gravesite.

[...]

According to Israeli security officials and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades sources in Ramallah, Shawish was arrested after the Israeli police stormed his jeep, which was parked in a lot outside the Muqata, about 200 feet from Arafat's grave. The sources said at the time of his arrest, Shawish was having intercourse in the back seat of his jeep with a Palestinian woman, whose identity is being withheld by WND. The woman was not his wife.

The Brigades, founded by Arafat, largely considers the late PLO leader's resting place to be a sacred site.

[Hat-tip to KuhnKat, who emailed me the above article]

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QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Society

(Each "Question of the Week," an idea which I gleaned from A Republic If You Can Keep It, will remain toward the top of the blog until the next question appears. The previous Questions of the Week are HERE. Please scroll down for recent postings)

Not long ago, Farmers Branch, Texas, conducted a referendum in which the voters there indicated overwhelming support for the local ordinance forbidding the renting of residences to illegal immigrants:

"The thing that strikes me most about it, is just the level of emotion, the level of frustration regarding the whole immigration issue," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

It's no wonder that emotions are running high. Consider this May 13, 2007 article in the Washington Post. The article discusses the issue of overcrowding in residences occupied by larger numbers than some established neighborhoods are used to and whether or not zoning regulations permit large numbers of occupants to dwell in single-family homes.
---------------------------------------
Excerpt from the article in the Washington Post:

Harry Gault doesn't think of the small ranch home next door as a hot-button political issue in this year's Fairfax County election or realize how frequently his complaint is heard throughout the region.

"I don't mind an Hispanic neighborhood," said Gault, 73. "But they've turned a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home into a nine-room boarding house."

Long a source of tension in the suburbs, where high prices force many immigrants to pool financial resources and share housing, residential crowding has generated a surge of complaints in Fairfax, a county where one in four residents is foreign-born.

With the entire Fairfax Board of Supervisors up for reelection this year, this issue, which has raised ire in communities across the Washington area, has taken on a hard edge among voters riled by single homes that have been converted to house eight or 10 adults. Suddenly, multiple cars clog driveways designed in the 1950s for one or two vehicles. Trucks park on narrow streets, making them difficult to navigate in the morning and evening. And in the 24-7 service economy -- where nine-to-five is only one of several shifts and workdays begin and end at all hours -- workers and their vehicles are in the streets day and night.

Read the entire article here.



QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Have you observed or been impacted by similar overcrowding of residences in your neighborhood or in a neighborhood with which you are personally familiar?

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Without Consent

Here we have another manifestation of The Nanny State. According to this story in the May 27, 2007 edition of the Washington Post, our government is about to embark upon a specialized program of providing medical care, whether you want it or not.


Excerpt from the article:

The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting patients' permission.

The $50 million, five-year project, which will involve more than 20,000 patients in 11 sites in the United States and Canada, is designed to improve treatment after car accidents, shootings, cardiac arrest and other emergencies.

The three studies, organizers say, offer an unprecedented opportunity to find better ways to resuscitate people whose hearts suddenly stop, to stabilize patients who go into shock and to minimize damage from head injuries. Because such patients are usually unconscious at a time when every minute counts, it is often impossible to get consent from them or their families, the organizers say.

The project has been endorsed by many trauma experts and some bioethicists. Others question it. The harshest critics say the research violates fundamental ethical principles.

[...]

The studies are being conducted by the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, a network of medical centers that do research in Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Dallas, Birmingham, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Toronto and Ottawa, and in Iowa and British Columbia.

[...]

...[C]hildren as young as 15 might be included in the research....

[...]

Others are concerned patients may be getting experimental therapies that could turn out to be inferior to standard treatments.

Read the entire article here.

Certainly emergencies arise, and family members cannot always be reached before medical personnel begin treatment. But conducting taxpayer-funded, medical experiments as to effective treatment? Sounds like God-playing to me.

And who is going to pay for the failed experiments, for those outcomes in which a family is left to care for one severely compromised who might have been better treated by another method? What about "First, do no harm"?

Most veterinarians I know wouldn't conduct such experiments on pets. Rather, health-care specialists for animals go with the tried and true first, before trying an experimental or alternative method. Yet our government is funding experimentation on trauma cases who can't speak for themselves. Did we learn nothing from Tuskegee and the Willowbrook studies? Not quite the same, but close.

Additional reading: Famous Cases in Medical Ethics

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Memorial Day 2007 (Updated with video)

As frequenters of this blog know, I sometimes post my students' work from time to time. For this Memorial Day, I have below a student's response to one of the assignments I gave: to write a first-person story telling the point of view of an inanimate object (limit = 600 words).

The following story was contributed by homeschooler B.C.M., a ninth grader:

Emotions of Those Bound by War
My small, metal rectangular frame is clutched in the hand of a young child. Although others like myself are not normally possessed by twelve-year-old boys, my first master was a brave and loyal warrior who fought for his country.

I met my first master when I was presented to him on a satin-covered tray. A rough hand scooped me from that tray, and my chain was wrapped around the man's neck. Despite leaving my home behind, I felt exhilarated about future adventures.

For quite a while, my life was uneventful. I did, however, meet my master's family — a son, a daughter, and a wife. The wife detested me and forbade my master to wear me within the house. One day, though the wife did not protest when my master put me on. Rather, she wept as my master and I left the house.

We took a bus and arrived at a building with airplanes and helicopters waiting to fly. After boarding one, excitement flooded my body. I heard a loud roar. My little heart thumped when I realized that we were no longer on the ground. I must have fallen asleep because my next memory is getting out of the machine dressed in camouflage. My master and twenty other men raced from the airship towards the trees ahead of us. We arrived in safety.

Several weeks later, I got my first taste of excitement. My companions got into a gunfight. Screams echoed around me. Luckily, however, we escaped with minor injuries.

After recovering from the shock and excitement of my first battle, I could taste and smell the fear surrounding me. I heard many men muttering about when they would see their families next. Over the next few weeks, the terror surrounding me increased. My master shuddered with dread before each new battle.

Within a few days, our worst fears came true. We entered a gunfight in which several casualties occurred. Seeing how easily our companions died truly terrified my master and his comrades. In addition, seeing the deaths of friends reminded us that we, too, had killed.

Emotional turmoil set in within my combat unit. Our minds tortured us over our murderous skirmishes. How many had my master killed?

Being inexperienced in war and death caused some of our men great mental damage. They gradually became a burden and were shipped back to America. My master, however, was not one of them. I wondered how long my master could remain unscathed.

During the next week, we were caught in another gunfight. My master's luck ran dry. He was shot. To save his life, my master and I were flown to a hospital to remove the bullet. Then we boarded a plane for America. My master didn't survive the trip home. An attendant removed me from my master's chest and placed me in an envelope. Later he gave me to my master's family.

Now I am in the care of a child. He is not soldier now, so he has no use for me. But I am a piece of his father, the father who died for his son's home and country.

— Contributed by B.C.M.

May God bless all those who have fought to protect our freedoms and the freedoms of others! And may He bless their families, too.

On this Memorial Day may we remember the meaning of the holiday.

Addendum: Read Wordsmith's post. Be sure to watch the video, pasted below, then to visit Wordsmith's site:



May we also take time on this holiday weekend to offer our prayers for those who are presently serving.

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Islam In America

Graphic from the May 23, 2007 Washington Post

(Click on the above image to enlarge it)

Click on "CONTINUE READING" below for the accompanying article in full (emphases mine):

Survey: U.S. Muslims Assimilated, Opposed to Extremism

Unlike Muslim minorities in many European countries, U.S. Muslims are highly assimilated, close to parity with other Americans in income and overwhelmingly opposed to Islamic extremism, according to the first major, nationwide random survey of Muslims.

The survey by the Pew Research Center found that 78 percent of U.S. Muslims said the use of suicide bombings against civilian targets to defend Islam is never justified. But 5 percent said it is justified "rarely," 7 percent said "sometimes," and 1 percent said "often"; the remaining 9 percent said they did not know or declined to answer.

By comparison, Muslims in France, Spain and Britain were almost twice as likely to say suicide bombing is sometimes or often justified, and public acceptance of the tactic is even higher in some countries with large Muslim populations, such as Nigeria, Jordan and Egypt.

Titled "Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream," the Pew report draws a picture of a diverse population of about 2.35 million U.S. Muslims, of which two-thirds of the adults were born abroad, and which has a generally positive view of the larger society.

Most call their communities good or excellent places to live, and most report that a large portion of their closest friends are non-Muslims. They are slightly more satisfied than the general public is with the state of the nation.

On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the United States should adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct. And they are even more inclined than other Americans to say that people who want to get ahead can make it if they work hard; 71 percent of U.S. Muslims agreed with that statement, compared with 64 percent of the general public.

"What emerges is the great success of the Muslim American population in its socioeconomic assimilation," said Amaney Jamal, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University who was a senior adviser on the poll. "Given that for the past few years they've been dealing with the backlash from 9/11, these numbers are extremely impressive."

A majority say their lives have become more difficult since Sept. 11, 2001, and most think the government has singled out Muslims for monitoring. About one in four said they do not think that "groups of Arabs" were responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Though socially conservative, Muslims lean toward the Democratic Party, six to one.

Farid Senzai, another Muslim adviser on the poll, said the findings are in sharp contrast to the "ghettoization" of Muslim minorities in parts of Western Europe, where Muslim immigrants are markedly less well off than the general population, frustrated with economic opportunities and socially isolated.

Just less than half of Muslim Americans have attended or graduated from college, close to the national figure of 54 percent, and the income distribution among Muslim families closely matches the national norm.

Still, the poll found "pockets of sympathy for extremism" particularly among African Americans and young Muslims, said Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center.

Native-born African American Muslims, who represent about 20 percent of the total Muslim population, are its most disillusioned segment, the report shows. They are more skeptical than foreign-born Muslims of the idea that hard work pays off. About 13 percent are satisfied with the way things are going, compared with 29 percent of other native-born Muslims and 45 percent of Muslim immigrants.

One of the poll's most striking findings, Kohut said, is that African American Muslims are considerably more likely than immigrant Muslims to express support for al-Qaeda.

Nine percent of African American Muslims expressed a favorable attitude toward Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, while 36 percent held a very unfavorable view. Among foreign-born Muslims, 3 percent had a favorable view of al-Qaeda while 63 percent chose "very unfavorable."

Jamal, the Princeton professor, said the data seem to indicate that African American Muslims are sympathetic to the goals but not the means of al-Qaeda, because 85 percent said suicide bombing is rarely or never justified. She speculated that they may see al-Qaeda "not just as the force behind terrorist attacks . . . but as resistance to a status quo that is seen to treat them unfairly."

The poll found that U.S. Muslims overwhelmingly oppose the war in Iraq, while the general population is closely split on that question. Muslims also oppose the war in Afghanistan, 48 percent to 35 percent. The reverse view prevails in the general populace, which supports the Afghan war by nearly two to one.

Muslims under age 30 are more religious than their elders, as well as more inclined to support suicide bombing and more likely to identify themselves as Muslims first, then Americans, the poll found.

Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said the Washington-based nonprofit organization spent $1 million on the poll. It surveyed 1,050 Muslim adults in four languages -- English, Arabic, Urdu and Farsi -- and paid them $50 each for their time.

To generate the sample, Pew used randomly dialed telephone numbers to reach more than 57,000 households. In addition, it gleaned likely Muslim names from a commercial database and re-contacted some English-speaking Muslim households that had been identified in other surveys since 2000. The overall margin of sampling error was plus or minus five percentage points.

One finding likely to generate controversy is Pew's estimate of 2.35 million Muslims in the United States, including 1.5 million adults. Because the U.S. Census does not ask about religious identity, there has been no previous, widely accepted estimate of the Muslim population. Smaller, less random surveys have come up with lower numbers, while some Muslim groups have contended, based on loose methodology, that there are 7 million Muslims or more.

The above information appears to be mostly good news. It seems that many Muslims do indeed see America as the land of opportunity unless one considers the possibility of Islamic lying, that is.

The finding that younger Muslims are more inclined to support jihad is a disturbing aspect of the survey. Can we rely on their becoming less supportive of terrorism as they grow older? I've heard from both Muslims and non-Muslim Arabs that we can't count on such a thing to happen. As I see it, ss long as these younger Muslims "identify themselves as Muslims first," they will likely be less willing to assimilate.

Last night, not having yet seen the above survey, one of my students emailed me the following:

"Can a good Muslim be a good American?" I sent that question to a friend who worked in Saudi Arabia for 20 years. The following is his reply:

Theologically - no. Because his allegiance is to Allah, the moon god of Arabia.

Religiously - no. Because no other religion is accepted by his Allah except Islam(Quran, 2:256)

Scripturally - no. Because his allegiance is to the five pillars of Islam and the Quran (Koran.

Geographically - no. Because his allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day.

Socially - no. Because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews.

Politically - no. Because he must submit to the mullah (spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel and Destruction of America, the great Satan.

Domestically - no. Because he is instructed to marry four women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34).

Intellectually - no. Because he cannot accept the American Constitution since it is based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.

Philosophically - no. Because Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran do not allow freedom of religion and expression. Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist. Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic.

Spiritually - no. Because when we declare "one nation under God," the Christian's God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in The Quran's 99 excellent names.

[...]

The war is bigger than we know or understand.

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A Beautiful Blog

A blog I stumbled across yesterday: SMILNSIGH.

Sometimes our souls just cry out to be fed with beauty.

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Another photo there which caught my eye:



Visit SMILNSIGH, and take a breather from our troubled world.

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Technology In The Boonies & A Question

Recently, some residents of Loudoun County, Virginia, discovered that the carrot offered by a builder turned out to be a long-term contract which they didn't expect and no longer need. Excerpt from this article in the May 21, 2007 Washington Post:

...Just a few years ago, developers lured homebuyers to the outer suburbs with the promise of lightning-fast Internet access and high-definition television to go along with Olympic-size swimming pools, tennis courts and other amenities.

Residents bragged about not just keeping up with their inner-suburb neighbors but leapfrogging them altogether -- only to watch their technological advantage give way to newer offerings.

What was once state of the art is now par for the course, a frustration familiar to any early adopter who has bought the latest and greatest only to find something better, or cheaper, soon after. For Southernwalk, the price of chasing Internet Nirvana turned out to be a contract that could run 75 years.

[...]

"It was the only way to get Internet out here back then, so the concept seemed like a good idea," said Hodell-Cotti, who moved into the neighborhood with her husband four years ago. She recently bought a satellite dish for better reception, but she still pays the mandatory fee for OpenBand services. "Now there are more options out there, but we're stuck in a monopoly."

[...]

Murali Pavuloori, who works on computer networks for a living, moved into the neighborhood three years ago in part because he wanted Internet speeds often reserved for huge corporations. He doesn't mind the slower connection as much as he does the high fees.

"It's a total rip-off," he said during a meeting with neighbors. "Everybody bought into the promises they [OpenBand] can't keep."...

Homeowners in Loudoun County are lawyering up, of course, and have some hope that they might be able to get the contract overturned; other similar contracts have been abrogated in other similar developments. The real-estate market and the price of gasoline for a longer commute are now such that those hinterland homes with costly Internet access are not as marketable, especially with at monthly fee as described above.

I love my own Internet access, which I upgraded from dial up to broadband about a year and a half ago. But a contract for 75 years? No thank you! Life has a way of changing, and people should have the foresight to remember that good times don't last forever.

This isn't a Friday, so it's not time for the QUESTION OF THE WEEK. But just as a matter of curiosity, I have a question for readers here: What do you pay for Internet access and all those channels for your television?

I pay about $105/month, a fee which includes satellite television ($80) and Internet access with broadband ($25). Of course, I can cancel or switch servers at any time. I can't imagine signing a contract for 75 years!

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Another Caption Contest

To go with the one I put up yesterday...

[Spew alert!]





I call this one "Mo at the Mosque." Not very original, I know. Maybe you have a better caption?

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Dissonance In The Senate (Updated With Information From Ogre)

Looks as if some Senators are worried about backlash from their constituents. Excerpt from this May 21, 2007 article in the Washington Times:

...Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this weekend said he will insist that the bill's guest-worker provision be slashed from 400,000 per year down to 100,000 per year.

"I don't want a program that is a funnel for cheap labor," Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, said, according to the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal. Mr. Reid said the 400,000 number "will not remain in the bill."...

According to the article, fewer than twenty Senators will be supporting the bill when it hits the Senate floor today because

the deal was written in secret by a dozen senators and the Bush administration [and] wasn't even finalized until yesterday and still hasn't reached many Senate offices.

One wonders if some of the reticence found in the recent survey is the result of voters' having flooded Capitol Hill with objections to the bill.

Read the entire article from the Washington Times. The grapevine here says that the voters' communiques the past several days have been running overwhelmingly against the bill.

According to Ogre's analysis of the bill, which he dubs "the Kennedy-StupidMorons Immigration Bill":

...I've heard lots about what's in the bill. I've heard nothing good at ALL about the bill. But I decided to try and do what the Senators won't -- I wanted to read the entire bill. So if you don't want to read the whole 790 pages, I'll attempt to provide the cliff notes version here....

[...]

If this bill passes, and I'm not just blowing smoke here, say goodbye to America -- at least as a free country and a representative republic.

If this passes, you will be able to tell your grandchildren that you were able to witness the fall of America. We had a good run, but I guess this is it.

Ogre's analysis is a long read, but worth your time.

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Springtime For Infidels & Caption Contest

I'm still busy, but as I mentioned before, I am posting from time to time and attempting some unusual material, including some of the photos I've taken. Forthwith, here is one of those personal postings:

(Click on the photos to enlarge them)

I took this photo (unedited) a few weeks ago. This azalea bush sits very near our front porch and is over six feet in height. Don't ask me why it grew so well. I didn't do a think for it except water it. In the spring, the azalea, the wisteria, and the black locust all bloom at the same time, providing a delicate scent to the breezes.

"But, AOW," you ask, "why did you mention infidels in the title of this posting? Springtime comes for all."

Yes, but at this house...



LOL!

What caption would you give the above photo? Or maybe you'd like to compose a little story or poem to go with the photo.

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North American Model Parliament

Are many Americans aware of THIS? The meeting is May 20-25. The target date of integration is 2010.

[END OF THIS POSTING]

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Islamberg, New York

On today's radio show (At first the volume is faint, but it improves soon), during the first half hour, Dr. Paul L. Williams discussed this story. Excerpt from "Springtime In Islamberg" (emphases mine):

Situated within a dense forest at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains on the outskirts of Hancock, New York, Islamberg is not an ideal place for a summer vacation unless, of course, you are an exponent of the Jihad or a fan of Osama bin Laden.

The 70 acre complex is surrounded with "No trespassing" signs; the rocky terrain is infested with rattlesnakes; and the woods are home to black bears, coyotes, wolves, and a few bobcats.

Update on story: Blogger who posted CFP Islamberg story had life threatened

[...]

Islamberg is a branch of Muslims of the Americas Inc., a tax-exempt organization formed in 1980 by Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, who refers to himself as "the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr," Gilani, has been directly linked by court documents to Jamaat ul-Fuqra or "community of the impoverished," an organization that seeks to "purify" Islam through violence.

Though primarily based in Lahore, Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Fuqra has operational headquarters in New York and openly recruits through various social service organizations in the U.S., including the prison system. Members live in hamaats or compounds, such as Islamberg, where they agree to abide by the laws of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which are considered to be above local, state and federal authority. Additional hamaats have been established in Hyattsville, Maryland; Red House, Virginia; Falls Church, Virginia; Macon, Georgia; York, South Carolina; Dover, Tennessee; Buena Vista, Colorado; Talihina, Oklahoma; Tulare Country, California; Commerce, California; and Onalaska, Washington. Others are being built, including an expansive facility in Sherman, Pennsylvania.

[...]

Over the years, numerous members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra have been convicted in US courts of such crimes as conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, gun smuggling, and workers' compensation fraud. Others remain leading suspects in criminal cases throughout the country, including ten unsolved assassinations and seventeen fire-bombings between 1979 and 1990.

The criminal charges against the group and the criminal convictions are not things of the past. In 2001, a resident of a California compound was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of a sheriff's deputy; another was charged with gun-smuggling' and twenty-four members of the Red House community were convicted of firearms violations.

[Click on map to see larger image]

By 2004 federal investigators uncovered evidence that linked both the DC "sniper killer" John Allen Muhammed and "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid to the group and reports surfaced that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded in the process of attempting to obtain an interview with Sheikh Gilani in Pakistan.

Even though Jamaat ul-Fuqra has been involved in terror attacks and sundry criminal activities, recruited thousands of members from federal and state penal systems, and appears to be operating paramilitary facilities for militant Muslims, it remains to be placed on the official US Terror Watch List. On the contrary, it continues to operate, flourish, and expand as a legitimate nonprofit, tax-deductible charity.

Read the rest HERE. Use THIS LINK to see all the photos.

Yes, "Islamberg" is really the name of this community in New York.

Dr. Paul L. Williams has written these books, beginning with the most recent: Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World, Dunces of Doomsday: 10 Blunders That Gave Rise to Radical Islam, Terrorist Regimes, And the Threat of an American Hiroshima, and The Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime, And the Coming Apocalypse.

On today's radio show, Dr. Williams also discussed the probability and the consequences of an American Heroshima.

Read about the lawsuit against Dr. Willams HERE. Important details to know are HERE.

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Dell CAIR-ifies

HERE is Dymphna's piece "The Submission Train" on the recent Islamification of the Dell plant in Nashville, Tennessee — with a little help from CAIR in obtaining the employees' reinstatement, back pay, and newly granted religious accommodations, as well as some sensitivity training for Dell Inc.


As Dymphna said in the conclusion of her posting at Gates of Vienna:

So what will they walk out for next time? Toilets that face Mecca? Piglet on a poster? A woman’s ankle exposed where men might — gasp — see it?

There is no end in sight.

Watch for wudu washers, too, I guess.

Also watch for CAIR's booklet "An Employer's Guide to Islamic Religious Practices" — coming soon to a workplace near you. Hustle over to this link from CAIR, and get your copy before supplies run out.

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Posting Requested By the Washington DC Examiner

Via email to me, Lak Vorha, D.C. Online Editor of The Washington Examiner Newspapers, requested that I post this....

Picture caption:

(AACE Worldwide Pty Ltd)
An automatic wudu washer, shown here on a promotional brochure manufactured by Australia-based AACE Worldwide, has come under scrutiny as many public institutions have approved their use paying for their installation through tax-funded dollars while turning down other religious groups to install equipment to follow their own faith and service.

Article from the Washington DC Examiner Newspaper:

Editorial: No favors for Muslim students

The principle of separation of church and state in tax-funded institutions has been upheld in more than a dozen Supreme Court rulings. As a result, overtly religious symbols of mainstream religions such as Nativity scenes, the Ten Commandments and menorahs have largely been banished from the public square on the grounds that they offend unbelievers.

But many public colleges and universities have been quietly accommodating some students’ religious activities while ignoring or even trampling on the First Amendment rights of other students.

For example, last year administrators at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College banned a coffee cart operator from playing music “tied to Christmas,” but approved the use of tax dollars to install special basins for Wudu so that Muslims could ritually wash their feet before prayer. College President Phil Davis defended this glaring double standard by absurdly insisting that “the foot-washing facilities are not about religion, they are about customer service and public safety.” At least a dozen other public colleges and universities in the nation have also installed Wudu facilities, including George Mason University in Fairfax.

A GMU spokesman said there were no complaints from other student religious groups when the Muslim Student Association was given permission by administrators to convert a common third-floor meditation room into a makeshift mosque. Would Campus Crusade for Christ be allowed to turn the facility into a makeshift Resurrection scene? The spokesman acknowledged that the other student religious groups have to reserve rooms or meet off campus when they want to pray together. At another state-supported school in Virginia, The College of William & Mary President Gene Nichol recently agreed to return the cross he had removed last year from the college’s historically Christian chapel only after angry alumni threatened to withhold millions in donations.

The paradox strains logic. Church and state remain firmly separated on campuses where the majority of students are Christian, Jewish or of no faith, but administrators toss the principle right out the window to satisfy a minority of Muslim students. Many college officials are granting prerogatives to Muslim students in the United States and Canada that are not permitted to other groups. For instance, the Ontario Human Rights Commission regards failure to make special accommodations for Muslim students, including inserting “Islamic perspectives” into secular curriculums like nursing and finance, as a form of “Islamophobia.” Expect similar political correct demands soon on American campuses.

This Orwellian, some-religions-are-more-equal-than-others approach is both hypocritical and discriminatory. The Constitution, to say nothing of basic fairness, demands that the same rules regarding the public expression of religious faith be applied equally to everybody. And for once wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a college president show some real backbone when faced with unreasonable demands from activist minority students seeking exclusive privileges?

Read Other Articles About Muslims on Examiner.com

Northern Virginia blogs Islam

Source

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Europe To Monitor Mosques

From this source:

Security officials from Europe's largest countries backed a plan Saturday to profile mosques on the continent and identify radical Islamic clerics who raise the threat of homegrown terrorism.

The project, to be finished by the fall, will focus on the roles of imams, their training, their ability to speak in the local language and their sources of funding, EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini told a news conference after a meeting on terrorism.

Italian Interior Minister Guiliano Amato said Europe had extensive experience with the "misuse of mosques, which instead of being places of worship are used for other ends.

"This is bringing about a situation that involves all of our countries and involves the possibility of attacks and developing of networks that use one country to prepare an attack in another," Amato said....

Too little, too late?

How about a little of that kind of investigation here in the States?

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Low-Tech Terrorism

Citing the low-level methods and apparent bumbling of the Fort Dix Six, the media and a certain commenter here have disparaged last week's arrest of the aspiring terrorists in New Jersey.

To all those who might think that low-tech terrorist attacks cannot be of significance, I offer the following editorial, which appeared two days before the story broke.
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Complete article, as it appeared in the May 6, 2007 edition of the Washington Post, emphases mine:

The Rise of Low-Tech Terrorism
The movies were an affront to God, encouraging vice and Western-style decadence. So in August 1978, four Shiite revolutionaries locked the doors of the Cinema Rex in the Iranian city of Abadan and set the theater on fire. The firefighters were late, and nearby hydrants did not work. The victims' shrieks could be heard while firefighters and police stood outside, watching helplessly. At least 377 people -- perhaps many more -- were burned alive.

Never heard of the Cinema Rex fire? You're not alone. But the tragedy is more than an obscure, grisly memory from the run-up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. It's also the second-deadliest terrorist attack in modern history -- deadlier even than airline bombings such as Pan Am Flight 103 -- and one that offers many lessons about the changing threat of terrorism today.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, most Americans have worried about what terrorism experts call "spectaculars": massive, ingenious and above all theatrical extravaganzas such as al-Qaeda's attack on the twin towers, its simultaneous 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and its brazen 2000 suicide-boat assault on the USS Cole in Yemen. But perhaps we should be more worried about the Cinema Rex attack.

Although Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants still dream of spectaculars, a quick glance at the terrorist acts committed since 9/11 suggests that perpetrators are going low-tech, too. As the survivors of attacks in London, Madrid and the Russian town of Beslan will confirm, such tried-and-true terrorism methods as low-tech bombs, hostage-taking and arson have tremendous appeal to jihadists. Indeed, the State Department's annual survey on terrorism, released last week, notes that "in 2006 most attacks were perpetrated by terrorists applying conventional fighting methods that included using bombs and weapons, such as small arms."

While the United States and other countries have devoted lots of attention to bracing themselves for the big one, we've spent far too little time considering what we can learn from more mundane -- and more repeatable -- terrorist attacks that can inflict mass casualties.

A look at the various suspects arrested in recent years for crimes linked to radical Islamic terrorism in the United States suggests that the immediate threat we face is angry amateurs, not poised, professional killers such as Mohamed Atta, the leader of al-Qaeda's 9/11 team. Most of those arrested do appear to have meant Americans harm, whether by conducting attacks on their own or by raising money for other would-be killers. But these plots were rarely well-developed, and the operators were at best enthusiastic novices.

Consider the case of one of the few Americans actually convicted of terrorism since 9/11: Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver and naturalized U.S. citizen born in Kashmir who pleaded guilty in 2003, plotted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge by severing its cables with blowtorches. Scary, sure -- but a completely absurd way to destroy the bridge, whose many cables are more than a foot in diameter.

These homegrown terrorists don't necessarily share the zeal and anonymity of a seasoned professional such as Atta. Many of those arrested on terrorism charges have a prison record and thus are known to law enforcement officials.

One of the most advanced post-9/11 plots, against the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles and U.S. military facilities in the area, involved four former inmates who began their plotting while behind bars. Former prisoners rarely make ideal comrades; many would sell their own mother for a small reward.

But it's a mistake to write off the angry amateurs. They're not terribly skilled, but it doesn't take that much skill to kill dozens of people -- as the shootings at Virginia Tech so tragically demonstrate. Attacks such as the Cinema Rex fire are easily repeated, and they don't take the years of onerous training and planning that spectaculars demand.

So how can we stop low-tech terrorism? Unfortunately, better defenses can solve only part of the problem. We should defend the White House, nuclear plants and other high-profile targets that would tempt terrorists to stage a spectacular. But we can't defend every movie theater, synagogue, local government building or shopping mall without spending hundreds of billions of dollars and turning the United States into an armed camp.

That leaves offense -- at home as well as abroad. The FBI has tried to penetrate cells of would-be terrorists, often opening itself to criticism for spending enormous resources on disrupting what seems to be a bunch of bungling blowhards. The bureau should keep at it. Of course, sometimes a ballyhooed terrorism arrest will look foolish when the media reveal the plotters' amateurish plans and backgrounds. But aggressive law enforcement can help prevent these amateurs from becoming something more deadly.

Perhaps the best way to fight low-tech terrorists is through community support. For instance, the FBI began to focus on the "Lackawanna Six," who pleaded guilty in 2003 to providing material support to al-Qaeda, after receiving an anonymous letter from a member of the Yemeni community in Lackawanna, N.Y., near Buffalo. But to get these sorts of tips, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans need to see the police as protectors, not persecutors.

In this respect, Europe provides a cautionary tale. Governments there, particularly France's, have spent more time trying to shake down their Muslim communities for intelligence than they've spent reassuring and integrating them. The result? An angry, unassimilated Muslim minority whose fringes produce terrorists while its mainstream often resists police efforts to find them. The U.S. government has a fine line to walk here, too. But when in doubt, we should jettison intrusive measures in favor of those likely to win sustained support from Muslim Americans.

Finally, the government needs to talk coolly and calmly to the American people. Complete protection against arson, shootings and low-level bombings is impossible. Americans will have to accept a certain amount of risk in their daily lives, recognizing that effective government policies can reduce the threat but not eliminate it. Public opinion is the fulcrum of counterterrorism. Terrorists -- high-tech and low-tech alike -- rely on overreaction from a rattled public and government to do their dirty work. We shouldn't indulge them.

About the author of the above:

Daniel L. Byman is director of Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies and a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Additional information from Google Search about the author of the above.

Information about Brookings Institution.

I'm not sure that Mr. Byman's conclusions as to how to prevent such attacks are correct. But I know that part of the statement from CAIR certainly is inaccurate and promotes dhimmitude. From American Crusader:

CAIR's statement: “Based on the information gathered in this case, it seems clear that a potentially deadly attack has been averted. We applaud the FBI for its efforts and repeat the American Muslim community’s condemnation and repudiation of all those who would plan or carry out acts of terror while falsely claiming their actions have religious justification.”

If they had stopped there, it would have been almost un-CAIR-like, but of course they had to add a little caveat.

CAIR went on to say “refrain from linking this case to the faith of Islam.”

Be sure to read American Crusader's entire posting.

We in the West can soothe ourselves by pointing out that moronic terrorists got nabbed last week in New Jersey. But we're creating a false sense of security if we don't address the ideology behind Islamic terrorism. After all, the Fort Dix Six had a common bond. They didn't just "go postal," nor did they suffer from sudden jihad syndrome. And there are bound to be many more like them.

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The Mexican Migration

Maybe the numbers don't have significance. Or maybe we're annexing Mexico.
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Item from U.S. News & World Report:

More to a Better Life Than Afterlife
File this under interesting statistics: Mexico has lost more people to migration to the United States than to death since 2000, according to the country's demographics agency. An average of 577,000 people up and moved to the United States annually during the 2000-2005 period, while 495,000 people a year died in Mexico. The agency reports that about 11 million Mexicans are living, legally or not, in the United States.

Of course, the above item does not take into account the birth rate in Mexico.

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QUESTION OF THE WEEK: World Politics

(Each "Question of the Week," an idea which I gleaned from A Republic If You Can Keep It, will remain toward the top of the blog until the next question appears. The previous Questions of the Week are HERE. Please scroll down for recent postings)

The dust has settled from the latest national election in France, and by now all who read the world section of the newspaper know that Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president of France by a significant margin in an election which saw a near-record turnout of some 84% of French voters and soundly defeated Socialist candidate Segolene Royal.

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Various political commentators and analysts are drawing their own conclusions as to the significance of the recent election results. BBC News offered a profile of Sarkozy and stated the following:

France's president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy casts himself as a moderniser, championing a clean break with the country's traditional ruling elite.

[...]

Unlike most of the French ruling class, Mr Sarkozy did not go to the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, but trained as a lawyer.

The son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French mother of Greek Jewish origin, he was baptised a Roman Catholic and grew up in Paris.

[...]

It seems that rather than a new ideology, he is a pragmatist who will use any solution as long as it works, the BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris says....

In the May 11, 2007 edition of the Washington Times stated the following:

Nicolas Sarkozy's election as president of France is likely to make Turkey's membership in the European Union more elusive than ever, Turkish analysts say.

His categorical opposition to Turkish membership in the 27-nation bloc is "hammering the last nail into the coffin of Turkish-EU relations," one analyst said.

"This is bad for Turkey," said Mehet Ali Birand, a leading Turkish liberal commentator.

During his electoral campaign, Mr. Sarkozy stressed his view that Turkey is not a European country and that its membership would dilute the bloc's cohesion and dangerously stretch its borders. Mr. Sarkozy also has said he would sign a French bill passed by parliament penalizing all those who deny the genocide of Armenians.

[...]

Instead of admitting Turkey, Mr. Sarkozy has proposed that the European Union give the country the leading role in a planned grouping of Mediterranean-area countries. Turkey has rejected suggestions of a "privileged association" with the bloc.
Regardless of whether Mr. Sarkozy's election will have an immediate effect on Turkey's EU talks, relations between France and Turkey appear to be heading into troubled waters....

I think my favorite commentary so far is that of Ann Coulter, especially the last two paragraphs:

Apparently, even the French prefer Western civilization to clitorectomy-performing, car-burning savages.

The Democratic Party is now officially the only organization on Earth that does not take the threat of Islamic fascism seriously. Between the Democrats and the media, America has gone from its usual position as the world's last hope to radical Islam's last hope.

Of course, it remains to be seen how much significance Sarkozy's election will hold for both France and the world. But I have to admit that I've enjoyed the shell-shocked expressions on some of the leftist commentators' faces over the past few days. Alan Colmes's facial expression the day after France's national election was a sight to behold. I confess that I tuned in to that particular edition of Hannity and Colmes just to see the alien-looking-one's reaction. Sure enough, Colmes lived up to my expectation.




QUESTION OF THE WEEK: What is your commentary on Sarkozy's election? Please remember that this is a family site. More or less.

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Quite An Overreaction

You probably recognize the face, that of Nihad Awad. He appears with some frequency in television interviews.

Recently at Vigilant Freedom/910 Group Blog, Christine posted about an email response to an earlier post. A cleaned-up excerpt from an email apparently sent by a follower of the "religion of peace," in reaction to Christine's having posted audios and transcripts, as well as this earlier posting, regarding a townhall meeting led by Nihad Awad, board member of and front man for CAIR:

i m going to f*** your mumy
how u dare to attack on islam and muslims..
write your adderess..ungratefull bitches you…
there are hundred thousand Nihad Awad..
you r swearin us ..provaketing us…and you want to go to hell..ok we will do it ..no worry..

Christine's entire post is HERE and includes details as to the sender's email address, IP, etc. From what I understand, the email originated in Turkey, presently seeking admission to the EU.

I left the following comment at Christine's article:

“Ungratefull bitches”? A deprecatory reference to “mumy” Hmmm….An arrogant misogynist, apparently.

The Koran places a lot of emphasis on women’s role as being of the obedient type.

Well, I suppose that I’m ungrateful and disobedient. I will not submit!

You may have some comments of your own to add below. LOL.

Have a nice day.

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Dodging A Terrorist Attack

According to Steven Emerson, who appeared tonight on The O'Reilly Factor, this was the most advanced plotting of a terrorist attack since 9/11.
-----------------------------------
From the Washington Post:

According to the documents, U.S. authorities were alerted to the group's existence by a video store employee, who said a man had brought in a recording of 10 young men shooting assault weapons and shouting jihadist slogans. The man asked for the videotape to be copied onto a DVD, the charging documents said.

The store complied, but also turned the material over to the FBI. In March 2006, an FBI informant established a relationship with one of the men believed to be in the videotape, the charging documents say. Eventually, two informants infiltrated the group, recording numerous conversations and events over the next year.

[...]

Officials today called the video store clerk an "unsung hero" but declined to identify him for the time being, although they said he would eventually be called to testify in the case.

Score one for the "John Does"!

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Afraid To Break Free

(All emphases by Always On Watch)

From this article, which appeared on the front page of the May 8, 2007 Washington Post:

"My husband beat. He show knife. I am scared for him, for all family," said Shamim, 21, the Pakistani bride, who was rescued by police. She is being sheltered and tutored in English at a private home. "They say no money, no call mother at home. I cook for all, I not eat. I not know 911 what is. I think I go crazy."

Here, in the United States. In the D.C. area, hardly a backwater region.
---------------------------------------------
The article goes on to state the following:

A major obstacle to recognizing and fighting abuse, experts said, can be Islam itself. The religion prizes female modesty and fidelity while allowing men to divorce at will and have several wives at once. Many Muslims also believe that men have the right to beat their wives. An often-quoted verse in the Koran says a husband may chastise a disobedient wife, but the phrasing in Arabic is open to several interpretations.

A few imams have spoken out:

In Sterling [Viriginia], Imam Mohamed Magid at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society offers counseling to engaged couples, ensuring they understand their mutual rights and duties. In Silver Spring, Imam Faizul Khan at the Islamic Society of the Washington Area holds weekly counseling sessions for troubled couples.

"For many years, our community did not face these issues. Women suffered in silence and fear. Even today, many imams think it could never happen in their mosque," Khan said. "Islam gives equal rights to men and women, but there are myths in Muslim society that men are superior and violence is permitted. This is wrong, and it needs to be said."

Khan and others are also trying to bring men into the debate by forming a group called Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence. But they said recruiting participants is not easy. Even when taken to court on charges of abuse, several experts said, many Muslim men will argue that they were within their rights or are being victimized by vindictive spouses.

Perhaps the following, portions of the Koran not in keeping with the imams' soothing words, explain why Muslim men are not coming forward to support rescuing abused Muslim women:

Sura 2:228 states, "Women have such honorable rights as obligations, but their men have a degree above them." Sale is more to the point in declaring that "the women ought also to behave towards their husbands in like manner as their husbands should behave toward them, according to what is just; but the men ought to have a superiority over them. God is mighty and wise." (p. 32) The superiority is expressed in another fashion toward their wives. "Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God’s guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey you, look not for any way against them." (Sura 4:34)

[...]

The Qur’an declares that a man shall purify himself before prayer, and among those polluting sources are women. (Sura 5:6) It may be worth noting explicitly here that men apparently are not similarly a source of pollution for women. Apparently women are inherently more unclean than men...

More examples at the above link.

Additional information from "Muhammad's Low Opinion of Women":

FACT #1: The Qur’an allows (or, perhaps, commands) men to beat their wives into subservience.

[...]

FACT #2: According to Muhammad, women lack common sense because their minds are deficient.

[...]

FACT #3: Muhammad offered women little hope for the afterlife.

Supporting data for Fact #1, the imams' concern as express in today's Washington Post:

Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret what Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.

Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.

Men are the protectors And maintainers of women, Because Allah has given The one more (strength) Than the other, and because They support them From their means. Therefore the righteous women Are devoutly obedient, and guard In (the husband’s) absence What Allah would have them guard. As to those women On whose part ye fear Disloyalty and ill-conduct, Admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); But if they return to obedience, Seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For Allah is Most High, Great (above you all).

Perhaps the imams mentioned in the Washington Post article are abrogating certain portions in the Koran or advancing a more enlightened interpretation. If they are they should say so — not try to spin what the Koran says.

Sadly, even here in America, Muslim women are trapped, both culturally and physically. According to the Washington Post:

Social workers and government officials said there are numerous programs in the area to help Muslim women who are abused, such as hotlines with links to Arabic and Urdu speakers and shelters that serve meat slaughtered according to Islamic ritual. But if a young woman is brought to the United States, speaking no English and surrounded by in-laws, she might be as far from help as if she were living in a Pakistani or Moroccan village.

"Many women are kept inside, with no one to turn to," said Catherine Juhel, a counselor at the Foundation for Appropriate and Immediate Temporary Help (FAITH), an assistance program for Muslim women in Herndon. "They don't know the language or the laws here, only what their husband tells them. Often they come from a society where if you go to the police, they will bring you right back home. How can they be sure it would be any different here?"

A cudgel often wielded by abusive Muslim husbands in the United States is their power over the legal immigration status of their wives. Many brides arrive with temporary "marriage" visas obtained through husbands who are U.S. residents or citizens. Lawyers and social workers say an angry or demanding husband might threaten to "call immigration" and have the wife deported, raising the horrifying specter of her returning home in shame.

[...]

[E]ven U.S.-educated women can be browbeaten into enduring abuse for fear of shaming their families or facing cruel gossip at the mosque. Organizations that help them escape are viewed by some conservative Muslims here as dangerous saboteurs of Muslim values and family.

In Shireen's case [a professional born in Turkey but reared here in the United States], even a college degree and a good job could not fend off the demands of family and community bent on fitting her into a traditional Muslim mold. Now that she finally has freed herself from an unhappy match, she said, she has become a pariah to the family that once hovered around her.

"I know I was stupid to give in, but you get overwhelmed by all the pressure," she said. "Now I have been totally shunned. I embarrassed my husband in the eyes of the community. It doesn't matter why I left him or what he did to me. Even in America, you can't always get away from home."

Near the end of the Washington Post article, we find this poignant passage:

"Now I am freedom," Shamim said, grinning broadly as she took a tea break recently from her English studies. "I stay America. Not go home. In home, everyone blame woman, it is my culture. Everyone blame me."

May Shireen, Shamim, and others like them find true freedom here in America and break the shackles of Islam!

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QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Society

(Each "Question of the Week," an idea which I gleaned from A Republic If You Can Keep It, will remain toward the top of the blog until the next question appears. The previous Questions of the Week are HERE. Please scroll down for recent postings)

The commentary "Mother of All Blunders," published in the Washington Post around the time that the British sailors and marines were being held hostage by Iran, received quite a bit of input in "Letters to the Editor." Not quite a firestorm, but close.

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Excerpt from the article:

It is not fashionable these days to suggest that women don't belong in or near combat -- or that children need their mothers. Yes, they need their fathers, too, but children in their tender years are dependent on their mothers in unique ways.

[...]

Why the West has seen it necessary to diminish motherhood so that women can pretend to be men remains a mystery to sane adults. It should be unnecessary to say that the military is not a proper vehicle for social experimentation but is a machine dedicated to fighting and, if necessary, killing.

[...]

What kind of man, one shudders to wonder, is willing to allow his country's women to be raped and tortured by men of enemy nations? None that I know, but our military is gradually weaning men of their intuitive inclination to protect women -- which, by extrapolation, means ignoring the screams of women being assaulted.

At the point when our men can stand by unfazed while American servicewomen are raped and tortured, then we will have no cause to fight any war. We will have already lost.

Positioning women to become pawns of propaganda, meanwhile, is called aiding and abetting the enemy.

Read the entire essay. Read the reaction here and here.


QUESTION OF THE WEEK, in two parts: (1) What is your view of women in the military? (2) Has the West, over the past several decades, been diminishing the role of motherhood?

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UAE's Gift To Johns Hopkins

Item from the May 6. 2007 edition of the Washington Post:

Johns Hopkins Gets Major Gift From Sheik

An Arab sheik has made a major gift to Johns Hopkins Medicine and will have a tower at Hopkins hospital named in honor of his father, a founder of the United Arab Emirates, officials announced.

The size of the gift was not disclosed, but Hopkins officials described it as "transformational."

The gift, from Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, will support heart research, an AIDS research program in Uganda and a billion-dollar construction project that will replace half of Hopkins Hospital by 2010.The sheik is the ruler of Abu Dhabi and the president of the United Arab Emirates. Hopkins has agreed to name a 355-bed clinic after the sheik's late father, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

Now for some additional information about the sheikh....

Sheikh Kalifa, of equestrian-circles fame, is the head of the Supreme Petroleum Council. An article at Wiki includes the following about his philanthropic donations:

...[C]haritable contributions by Sheikh Khalifa are not from his own wealth but that of his nation's, given the vast sums of the state's wealth accumulated by his father and his family.

The sheikh gets the glory but the funds apparently come from UAE's national treasury.

It seems that the dollars which the West pays for UAE's oil get used for all sorts of purposes. Consider the following information about the Sheik, from this source, emphases mine:

On July 27, 2005, the Palestinian Information Center carried a public HAMAS statement thanking the UAE for it’s “unstinting support.” The statement said: “We highly appreciate his highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan (UAE president) in particular and the UAE people and government in general for their limitless support…that contributed more to consolidating our people's resoluteness in the face of the Israeli occupation".

The HAMAS statement continued: "the sisterly UAE had… never hesitated in providing aid for our Mujahid people pertaining to rebuilding their houses demolished by the IOF… The UAE also spared no effort to offer financial and material aids to the Palestinian charitable societies." Indeed, as documented by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S), HAMAS charitable societies,” are known as integral parts of the HAMAS infrastructure, and are outlawed by Israel and the U.S.

The HAMAS statement included a special tribute: "One can never forget the generous donations of the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan,” the father of the current UAE president. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahayan of Abu Dhabi, was the first Arab leader to understand the importance of waging economic Jihad against the West...

Does Johns Hopkins have a clue about Sheikh Khalifah's and his family's connections to Hamas?

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