International banks that facilitate the financing of terrorism are being sued with satisfying results, according to this heartening report:

In a recent ruling that sent shockwaves through the Western financial world, the New York District Court revealed that Clearstream, a Luxembourg subsidiary of Deutsche Borse bank, is being sued by 1,000 victims of international terror attacks as part of a larger lawsuit against Iran.

Plaintiffs in the suit, known as Peterson vs. Iran, are suing Tehran over its alleged funding of Islamic Jihad, the Hezbollah paramilitary wing that perpetrated the 1983 US Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut. They allege that Clearstream, one of the world’s largest international securities depositories settling cross-border transactions, helped Iran move millions of dollars in frozen assets out of the US banking system. …

The lawsuit, brought under US anti-terror legislation, is one of a string of ongoing actions that legal experts say are exposing the role played by international banks in helping finance terror.

One of the largest and most influential of the antiterror funding suits is Almog vs. Arab Bank, filed by survivors and family members of victims of attacks by groups including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

While usually only US citizens can file complaints in US courts, in the case of Arab Bank the judge has allowed other nationals – including citizens from Israel, Russia, Ukraine and France – to join.

Arab Bank, which is headquartered in Amman, is accused of aiding and abetting terrorist acts by providing extensive banking services for several organizations that gave money to suicide bombers’ families.

Among those organizations is the Saudi Committee, which is alleged to have routed over $100 million raised in a Saudi-government-supported campaign to Palestinian terror groups.

According to Prof. Reuven Paz, an Israeli expert on Islamic movements who has been involved in 18 of the terror-funding lawsuits, Arab Bank acted as a “pipeline” that channeled funds to Gaza bank accounts. … [and] set up an administrative process whereby the relatives of suicide bombers had to receive official certification of their deceased family member’s “martyr” status before receiving funds.

According to attorney Richard D. Heideman – whose Washington firm Heideman Nudelman and Kalik, PC, represents American terror victims in several civil actions – although Arab Bank filed a motion to dismiss the suit in the US District Court of New York, the judge overruled that in a published opinion and has allowed the case to proceed. It is expected to go to trial.

And also according to Heideman, the German Commerzbank is being sued for “providing financial services to Hezbollah through various front organizations”. That case too is expected to go to trial.

Whatever the final outcome of these civil suits in terms of damages settlements for terror victims and their families, lawyers and regional experts agree they are raising public awareness about the global reach of terror funding, as well as making it increasingly harder for Hamas and Hezbollah to route funding through international banks.

Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Tel Aviv-based NGO the Israel Law Center, who is involved in a number of civil cases against terror sponsors in the US courts, agrees with Heideman that “terror funding” lawsuits are effective. … She also pointed to several UK banks, including Barclays and Lloyds TSB, which had provided accounts to charities that were giving money to terror groups.

“Those accounts were closed,” Darshan-Leitner said. “As a result of the lawsuits, banks stopped providing financial services to areas where terror groups work, like Gaza. So the suits have also affected Hamas’s government operations there because Hamas now can’t get money for its activities.”

Paz believes the Arab Bank action is so far the most effective of the civil lawsuits, in terms of its impact on terror funding. “One of the most successful fights against global Jihad has definitely been in the world of finance,” he said. “And one of the results is that terror groups have become more cautious about their financial activity… Arab Bank is in a panic… It is a very large private bank in the Arab world, and it is a very important basis of the Jordanian economy. … If Arab Bank collapses, it will hurt Jordan and the West Bank.”

The lawsuit against Arab Bank has forced it to freeze the accounts of the Saudi Committee, and is frustrating other Gulf states’ efforts to fund and reward terrorist activity.

It tried moving its “Hamas financial operations” to China, “where Hamas is not considered a terror group”, but “China’s policy on Hamas does not prevent the Bank of China being sued in the US courts under US antiterror legislation” and –

A  judge in the Supreme Court of the State of New York recently gave the green light to a lawsuit against the Bank of China by 84 victims of Hamas rocket attacks.

Because it has a branch in New York, the Bank of China must act according to US rules on terror funding.  And so  –

China has closed Hamas’s account. 

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner’s firm, Shurat HaDin, is also suing insurance companies:

Shurat HaDin aims to prevent blockade breach by bringing lawsuits in the US against companies offering services to participating ships. …

In letters to maritime insurance firms and satellite communications companies, Shurat HaDin … has warned that any companies that provide services that assist in the breach of the Israeli blockade on Gaza will be sued in the United States for aiding the Hamas terrorist organization.

Their warnings to insurance companies kept ships from participating in the last flotilla that was planned to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The group has also sent letters to 30 of the top maritime insurance companies in the world announcing their intent to sue if they provide insurance to ships participating in the flotilla. “Every boat that travels from any country’s seaports or marinas needs to have maritime insurance,” explained Darshan-Leitner. “Without insurance, a ship is not permitted to set sail. Yet, the maritime insurance companies insuring the boats utilized by the Gaza Flotilla surely have no idea that the passenger boats that they are indemnifying are being used by the organizers to run the coastal blockade, violently challenge the IDF and smuggle weapons into Gaza. No legitimate insurance company nor its shareholders would reasonably agree to insure an expedition like that. We have begun to send letters placing the maritime insurance companies on notice concerning the Gaza Flotilla, and warning them that if they provide insurance … they themselves will be legally liable for any future terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas.”

And they are thinking of more ways to hamper sea-borne support for terrorists by using the law:

Shurat HaDin … recently approached mobile satellite services company Inmarsat– the only company that provides communications and navigations services to ships that sail in the region – requesting that they refuse to provide their services to ships participating in the flotilla. “We informed them that if they do so, they will be in violation of the American Neutrality Act, which prohibits aiding a group in their struggle against the military of an ally country,” said Darshan-Leitner. “Since Imarsat has offices in the US, the law binds them.The group has already received assurances from the world’s largest maritime insurance company, Lloyd’s, that they would not insure ships participating in the flotilla, as well as an agreement from the International Union of Marine Insurance that they would send their requests to all their members.

*

Spurred by success, Shurat HaDin are now threatening to sue Columbia University if they host Iran’s nasty President Ahmadinejad, according to this report in Commentary-contentions:

Columbia University has hosted Iranian President Ahmadinejad in years past, but the upcoming banquet it’s reportedly planning for the universally-loathed leader might not go as smoothly this time around.

An Israeli law center is vowing to hit Columbia University with massive lawsuits if it goes ahead with the banquet, according to a letter the legal group sent to university president Lee Bollinger …

The letter (read it here in full) declared and warned that –

Hosting Ahmadinejad at a banquet is not merely morally repulsive: it is illegal and will expose Columbia University and its officers to both criminal prosecution and civil liability to American citizens and others victimized by Iranian-sponsored terrorism.

Iran is officially designated under U.S. law as a state-sponsor of terrorism, as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and as a perpetrator of human rights abuses. Ahmadinejad is Iran’s chief executive and personally directs Iran’s terrorist and nuclear proliferation activities and human rights abuse. …

The planned Columbia University event for Ahmadinejad would constitute the type of seemingly innocuous material support that would render both Columbia University and you personally criminally and civilly liable notwithstanding any putative First Amendment claims.

Shurat HaDin demanded that the University cancel the event. “Otherwise, the group says it will ‘feel a moral obligation to take all measures permitted to ensure that the laws are enforced’.”

We wait to know if the event will be cancelled, and if it isn’t what will follow. We believe Shurat HaDin will carry out its threat, and we raise a brimming glass to everyone in that enterprising firm.

A Muslim, Hasan Mahmud, criticizes another Muslim, John Esposito, for his Deceptions on ‘Islamophobia’:

I am a Muslim. I believe that accepting our (Muslims’) share in creating “Islamophobia” in the West will help eliminate it.

Is there any significant Islamophobia in the West? Not much if the word means “irrational” fear of Islam. But Islam has done its damnedest to make the West afraid of it, and considering that 0ver 17,700 deadly terrorist attacks have been carried out world-wide in the name of Islam since 9/11 (see the figure in our margin), it is rational to fear this murderous cult, this Religion of War.  Muslims do not merely “have a share” in creating fear and hatred of Islam, they are totally responsible for it.

But let’s read more of what Hasan Mahmud has to say. It is worth reading.

Dr. John Esposito’s recent article in the Huffington Post, “Islamophobia: A threat to American Values?” puts the entire blame on Western “media commentators, hard-line Christian Zionists and politicians.” He even neglects to mention the huge contribution Muslim societies have had on the issue. Esposito ignores that in our global village the West is regularly flooded by violence coming from Muslim societies; violence which is perpetrated in the name of Islam while citing Quranic verses and the Prophet’s examples. The list is long. Here are some examples:

1. A Sharia court stoned to death a gang-raped girl, who was a minor at the time.

2. A Sharia court flogged another girl to death for having an affair.

3. Punishing raped girls/women by Sharia courts is continuing.

4. Wife-beating is openly preached.

5. Child-marriage is openly preached.

6. “No rape in marriage” is openly preached.

7. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is supported by many clergics including some of Al Azhar University.

8. Women are instantly divorced – there is no maintenance in such cases.

9. A woman appealed to a Sharia court to order her husband to beat her not every day but once a week.

10. Sharia-police (Hisba) are invading people’s lives.

11. The persecution of Muslims with different ideas is reaching a frightening level.

12. Non-Muslims are arrested for carrying their holy books.

13. The persecution of non-Muslims is continuous and reaching a disturbing level.

14. Hate preaching against non-Muslims in media is common.

15. Indoctrination of children with such hate is open and alarming.

16. School syllabi are full of hatred directed at “The Other.”

17. Non-Muslim places of worship are destroyed regularly.

18. Lying and deceiving are supported.

19. Civil rights are violently suppressed by “Islamic” governments — often by hanging.

With such phenomena and experience, what else does Dr. Esposito expect from the West except “Islamophobia”? He also blames the West for resisting the Ground Zero Mosque.

Now comes something we find surprising:

I wish he knew how many Muslims around the world are opposed to the proposed Islamic center, not because we don’t want mosques, but because before its construction, the notion of the center created “fitna” (division) and violently divided the whole nation.

The issue has “violently divided the whole nation”? He must mean the American nation. (Islam is not a nation.) But did it divide “the whole nation”?  And has there been violence because of it? Not that we know of.

But then Mahmud goes on to condemn Esposito’s indulgence in just such exaggeration, and praises the concessions the West makes to Islam – which we believe are made out of fear:

Esposito is also utterly wrong to state: “Today, opposition to mosque construction with claims that all mosques are ‘monuments to terrorism’ and ‘house embedded cells’ in locations from NYC and Staten Island, to Tennessee and California, has become not just a local but a national political issue.” I wish he knew that only last month a new mosque, Baitul Gaffar, was constructed in New York without a shadow of resistance, or how many euros European governments are pouring into the construct of new mosques.

That, Mr Mahmud, is very bad news.

Mr Mahnud, what is your view of Islam? We can’t make it out. You say next, in what presumably is a spirit of disapproval:

By the way, women were barred from attending the opening ceremony of Baitul Gaffar (House of Creator) in New York.

Do you like Islam with its inbuilt uncompromising contempt for women, or not?

Despite overwhelming support for Muslims among politicians, [Esposito] cites a few bad apples. For instance, Esposito says, “Politicians use fear of Islam as a political football.”…

If politicians who do not “support Muslims” are “bad apples”, then you are …. for sharia? It’s difficult to know. You say:

Aren’t there Islamists trying to establish Sharia courts in the USA? Yes, the blueprint of American Sharia courts was created as early as 1993 by TAM, The American Muslims.

And the sharia courts, you say, with apparent disapproval, are being established with Saudi money. Next, you say of Islamic terrorism:

Who is breeding the home grown terrorists? Are they Western media commentators, hard-line Christian Zionists and politicians?

No. The breeders are Muslims. And you seem to wish they wouldn’t do it.

You also come out strongly against Muslim hatred of Jews and the West as a whole:

I wish Esposito mentioned the hate-sunami against Jews and the West that roars in the media and throughout the pulpits of the Muslim world, constantly in Himalayan magnitude. One cartoon against our Prophet (SA) caused chaos to break loose, but during my long years in the Middle East, I saw many dozens of worse cartoons in the media about Jews and their holy book. No government contained that, nor was there a sane Muslim voice against these cartoons.

There wouldn’t be, would there, considering what Muhammad/Allah had to say about Jews and infidels generally?

Esposito also states that “all Muslims have been reduced to stereotypes of Islam against the West, Islam’s war with modernity, and Muslim rage, extremism, fanaticism, and terrorism” and “all leaders of that [American] society look at all Muslims with suspicion and prejudice.” These are hyperbolic overstatements. I am a Muslim; I live in Canada and often travel to the US – there is a general sense of concern, but in general, Muslims are doing well, living well and are treated well. The overwhelming support and protection of Muslims by common North Americans and churches after 9/11 is on record, but is sadly overlooked. …

The West is continuously bombarded by the news of serious violence from the Muslim world against women, non-Muslims and Muslims of different Islamic ideas, in the name of Islam.

This is the main reason for “Islamophobia” — and a logical one.

Yes. Right.

But please show us where your holy script is against this violence. Show us an Islam that does not insist on war, conquest, enslavement, and the subjugation of women and non-Muslims.

Can you?

We enjoy Andrew Klavan’s writing. We like the way he thinks, we like his humor.

How does a man of such engaging intelligence bring himself to believe in a god, and (adding a riddle to a nonsense) that “God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit”, we wonder.

Here are parts of a column of his at PajamasMedia, in which he argues that the present war is a Holy War, between Islam and other religions, chiefly Christianity:

What has been fatuously called “The War on Terror,” this ongoing struggle between Islamism and the rest of the world (including some of the Islamic world) is, in fact, a holy war: a violent argument over the nature of our Creator.

Americans right and left hate this fact. Many can barely face it. Almost no one in authority or the media ever dares mention it at all…  In principle, through tradition, by law and nature, most of us are repelled by the idea of killing over religion. Freedom in these matters is our watchword. I say Jesus; you say Allah; let’s call the whole thing God.

This is not to indulge in any mealy-mouthed moral equivalence or dribble out some balderdash about how all religions are one and faith is a mountain that can be climbed from any side. Not likely. If there is a God — whether or not there is, in fact — there will be things you can say about Him that are true [how will you know they are? – JB] and things that are not true and some religions will surely contain more of the truth than others. …

None will. But on we go:

Over hard history, we have learned that there are some struggles in which the evil of the fight itself supersedes the good of any potential victory. Faith is not knowledge …

Right, Klavan!

We should approach the super-natural with humility in our beliefs and forbearance towards the beliefs of others. And anyway, many cherished doctrines, no matter how deep or meaningful, don’t have much immediate effect on our lives. I believe that God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit — but if it turns out He’s five guys named Moe, I’m not going to change my weekend plans.

That’s quite funny. He goes on:

So we hate the idea of fighting a holy war. But we have no choice.

We have no choice but to fight the war, and certainly the other side believes it is a holy war (that’s what “jihad” means), but is it? He hasn’t established that yet.

No matter what moral knots some self-loathing westerners tie the facts into, the truth remains, the other bastards started it and now it’s on. Doesn’t matter how tolerant you think you are. Doesn’t matter how many “Coexist” bumper stickers you own. If a man with a gun kicks your door down and starts telling you how to pray, there are only two possible outcomes: victory or surrender.

In order to secure victory in a holy war [or any war – JB], however, you have to know what you’re fighting for. It’s not enough to kill the jihadis who want to kill us, or to dismantle the no-go Sharia enclaves being purposely created in cities throughout the west. A holy war is a violent argument about the nature of our Creator …

This one isn’t. And a war is instead of an argument. But yes, we do need, in the long run, to win our argument against Islam. How? By opposing one irrationality with another irrationality? That is Klavan’s belief:

So in order to win, we have to know what Creator we’re trying to defend.

He recognizes a difference between Islam’s allah and the Christian three-in-one godhead. But if either of those absurd fictions were to “win”, war would be just beginning for us. Fortunately –

This isn’t easy in a nation committed to religious liberty — a commitment that could not survive a kill-or-be-killed smackdown between your prophet and mine.

There are those, of course, who believe the problem is religion itself: remove the subject of the argument, they say, and the argument would end.

Right, right.

But he then goes on ridiculously as the gullible-of-the-gods often do:

The murder and oppression that defined the atheist empires in communist Russia and China – not to mention the slow, insidious death currently claiming “post-Christian” Europe — strongly suggest otherwise. Culturally, atheism is a disaster— although atheists are entitled to express their opinion right up until the moment the Islamists [or any sole-possessor of religious “truth”] kill them.

It wasn’t the atheism of the Communists that made them murder and oppress: it was their Communism. It isn’t their atheism that is making European nations commit suicide, its their Socialism.

For the rest of us — including those atheists who have the wherewithal to think it through …

Nice being patronized by a Christian, isn’t it?

… we must be willing to stand in open argument…

Agreed!

… and, if it’s our calling, in bloody battle for the God our founding principles, in fact, imply. …

So he plants his riddle-of-a-God more firmly in the Constitution than the Founders themselves cared to.

Sure, if we had to choose between living under modern Christianity, it being a flaccid religion except among the very few who will kill for it, or under  intensely oppressive and cruel Islam, for which all Muslims are instructed by their holy writ to kill, we’d have to choose the former.

But we don’t have to choose between them. The fight – or, as the man says, the argument –  is not between the Cross and the Crescent. It is not between God and Allah. It is between Western civilization and Islam. Reason is on one side only (impeded somewhat by the religious with their unreasonable declamations), and that’s why guns and drones and bombers are in operation.

Reason will win eventually. The little grey cells are mightier than the  sword and the scimitar, the drone and the suicide bomber. But it might take a weary long time.

From The Religion of Peace

Picture of the Week The progeny of Muslim asylum seekers mar a moment of silence at a London memorial for 9/11 victims by burning an American flag. Most of the men in this photo actually live on public benefits.

From the transcript of President Obama’s speech on the 10th. anniversary of 9/11 we quote only one sentence:

I’ve made it clear that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. 

That is a lie. Islam is waging war on America, and on the whole of the non-Muslim world. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military is engaging the enemy. In the US itself, security forces have foiled Muslim terrorist plots. American civilians have saved lives by averting Muslim terrorist strikes on aircraft. The enemy is not just a single terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, as the president pretended in his appalling speech on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the United States by Muslim jihadis, but Islam itself.

It should outrage the entire nation that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, made a speech on 9/11 exonerating Islam.

The attack by Muslims on the United States on September 9, 2001, was an act of war. It was an act carried out by the RELIGION OF WAR, which is Islam.

Yesterday we claimed that in the very long run we atheists will win the war with Islam, because in the very long run mankind will outgrow religion.

We have to concede that at present Islam is winning most of the battles.

Diana West explains this well. She writes:

It is something to have gone 10 years without an Islamic attack of similarly gigantic proportions to those of Sept. 11, 2001, but it is not enough. That’s because the decade we look back on is marked by a specifically Islamic brand of security from jihad. It was a security bought by the Bush and Obama administrations’ policies of appeasement based in apology for, and irrational denial of, Islam’s war doctrine, its anti-liberty laws and its non-Western customs. As a result of this policy of appeasement — submission — we now stand poised on the brink of a golden age.

Tragically for freedom of speech, conscience and equality before the law, however, it is an Islamic golden age. It’s not just the post-9/11 rush into Western society of Islamic tenets and traditions on everything from law to finance to diet that has heralded this golden age, although that’s part of it. More important is the fact that our central institutions have actively primed themselves for it, having absorbed and implemented the central codes of Islam in the years since the 9/11 attacks, exactly as the jihadists hoped and schemed.

Take the U.S. military, symbol plus enforcer of American security.

In Afghanistan, our forces are now “trained on the sanctity of the holy book (the Quran) and go to significant steps to protect it,” as the official International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) website reported last year.

Are they similarly trained to take “significant steps” to “protect” other books? Hardly. It’s reckless and irresponsible to demand that troops make the protection of any book a priority in a war zone. But it’s not merely the case that U.S. troops have become protectors of the Quran in the decade following 9/11. “Never talk badly about the Qu’ran or its contents,” ISAF ordered troops earlier this year. Did the Pentagon restrict language about “Mein Kampf” or the “Communist Manifesto”? They, too, were blueprints for world conquest that the United States opposed. Of course not. But the Quran is different. It is protected by Islamic law, and that’s enough for the Pentagon. Not incidentally, ISAF further cautioned troops to direct suspects to remove any Qurans from the vicinity before troops conduct a search — no doubt for the unstated fear that infidel troops might defile the protected book. None may “touch the Qu’ran except in the state of ritual purity,” the Islamic law book Reliance of the Traveller declares. …

Since when did Uncle Sam incorporate Islamic law into military protocols?

Since 9/11.

Now take the State Department, symbol and nerve center of U.S. action on the world stage.

In July, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a collaborative effort between the United States and the OIC, newly repackaged as Organization of the Islamic Cooperation. (It used to be “C” for Conference.) The get-together planned for Washington, D.C., is supposed to implement a non-binding resolution against religious “stereotyping” (read: Islamic “stereotyping”) that passed last March at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Such “stereotyping,” of course, includes everything from honest assessments of the links between Islamic doctrine and Islamic terrorism to political cartoons. This makes this U.S.-led international effort nothing short of a sinister attempt to snuff free speech about Islam. And that sure sounds like a U.S.-co-chaired assault on the First Amendment. Not only is this treachery on the part of the U.S. government, it also happens to be part and parcel of the OIC’s official 10-year-plan.

Since when did Uncle Sam get in the business of doing the bidding of the OIC?

Since 9/11.

This is just a snapshot of what the rush toward Islamization as a goal of national policy looks like, 10 years since the Twin Towers collapsed in a colossal cloud of dust and fire. The air has cleared, but the appeasement and the Islamization go on. Thus, a golden age begins, but unless we throw off this mental yoke of submission, it cannot be our own.

*

Palestinians handed out candy to celebrate the Islamic victory of 9/11.

Conservatives are saying, with a touch of restrained triumphalism, that the (badly named) “War on Terror”  is over, and America has won it.  (See for instance here and here.) The idea is that because of the security measures and military actions President Bush initiated and President Obama (however much against his will) has had to continue, there have been no repeat assaults on America on the scale of 9/11. That is true, and it is an important achievement. But it doesn’t mean that the war is over, and certainly not that the war is won. Plots have been laid by would-be terrorists that have been found out and foiled. Individual Muslims have carried out, or almost carried out, mass murder. And in the world at large, there have been to date over 17,700 murderous attacks by Islamic terrorists since September 2001. Some yesterday. Some today. And there will be more tomorrow.

And there are conservative thinkers who understand this. Frank Gaffney writes at Townhall:

So, where are we ten years after 9/11? It is comforting that we have been blessed with a near-unbroken decade without further mass-casualty attacks since those that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, our government is pursuing policies that can only encourage those who aspire to do us harm to redouble their efforts.

Such an assessment was implicit in a critique of President Obama’s new counter-terrorism”strategy” delivered last week by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman. The Democrat-turned-Independent from Connecticut described the President’s so-called “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States” white paper as “ultimately a big disappointment”:

“The administration’s plan… suffers from several significant weaknesses. The first is that the administration still refuses to call our enemy in this war by its proper name, violent Islamist extremism. We can find names that are comparable to that, but not the one that the administration continues to use which [is] ‘violent extremism.’ It is not just violent extremism. There are many forms of violent extremism. There’s white racist extremism, there’s been some eco-extremism, there’s been animal rights extremism. You can go on and on and on. There’s skinhead extremism, but we’re not in a global war with those. … We’re in a global war that affects our homeland security with Islamist extremists. To call our enemy violent extremism [or “terror” – JB] is so general and vague that it ultimately has no meaning. The other term used sometimes is ‘Al-Qaeda and its allies.’ Now, that’s better, but it still is too narrow. … It is vital to understand that we’re not just fighting an organization Al-Qaida, but we are up against a broader ideology, a politicized theology, quite separate from the religion of Islam that has fueled this war. Success in the war will come consequently not when a single terrorist group or its affiliates are eliminated, but when broader set of ideas associated with it are rejected and discarded. The reluctance to identify our enemy as violent Islamist extremism makes it harder to mobilize effectively to fight this war of ideas.

As it happens, Sen. Lieberman is … right up to a point. If we are properly to recognize the enemy we face, however, we must appreciate two facts the Senator misses, as well: 1) The threat from adherents to the “politicized ideology that has fueled this war” are also using non-violent … techniques to wage it against us. And 2) that ideology is actually not “separate from the religion of Islam.” Rather, this politico-military-legal doctrine known as shariah is derived from the sacred texts, interpretations, rulings and scholarly consensuses of Islam. The reality that many Muslims around the world practice their faith without following the dictates of shariah simply means that some believe this code is separable from Islam. But, it is surely not “separate” from it. …

One the most important dimensions of their cognitive war is to get infidels, even without being conquered, to behave according to the restrictions of Islam. Among the most important impositions we have seen of this phenomenon…is the absolute prohibition on criticizing Allah or his prophet [known as “shariah blasphemy” laws]. …

What the Muslim Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad,” is about creating the conditions under which so-called “non-violent” Islamists can achieve their ultimate objective – which is precisely the same as the one pursued by their violent co-religionists: imposing shariah worldwide and a Caliph to rule according to it.

So where are we ten years after shariah-adherent Islamists sought to destroy the centers of American economic, military and government power? We remain dangerously exposed to similar sorts of violence from an enemy the President declines to name. Worse yet, to the extent we fail to perceive the cognitive war being waged against us against by al-Qaeda’s partners in the Muslim Brotherhood and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation – to say nothing of persisting in the Obama administration’s willingness to give ground in that war, notably by submitting our freedom of speech to shariah blasphemy laws – our Islamist foes will only be emboldened.

The war will be won when the ideology of Islam – or if you will, of sharia – is as universally discredited as is Nazism and Communism. Sure there are still Nazis lurking about, but there’s no significant movement that openly calls itself by that name. And there are still all too many Communists in the West, mainly in the Universities and the Obama administration, but they don’t like being called Communists.

The ideology that commands death for homosexuals and apostates, the stoning of adulterers, the subjugation and beating of women, the amputation of hands and feet as a punishment for petty crime (to give just a few examples), and commands its followers to be at war with the rest of the world until it brings the entire human race into its house, can only ultimately be defeated by words. It must be so shamed by accusation that it cannot hold its head up. And it can be. The Organization of Islamic Co-Operation knows and fears this, which of course is why it is trying to criminalize criticism of Islam.

Let’s assume that this ideology goes the way of Nazism and Communism and is brought to being ashamed of itself. Will it mean that the billion-plus-millions of Muslims in the world or most of them therefore give up their belief in and practice of their religion? Probably not. Terrorism and aggressive proselytizing may be suspended, but as  long as the teachings of Muhammad are believed and followed by many, the danger remains that the war will be resumed.

It must not be forgotten that 9/11 was a profoundly religious act. 

The best hope for the human race to be freed from the threat of Islam lies with the hope of its being freed from religion. It is not a vain hope. With every generation religious belief among the literate and well-informed is fading. As it becomes easier and cheaper for individuals to communicate personally across and within the borders of countries and continents, as ideas and knowledge spread further and faster, institutionalized superstition will come to be despised and the psychological darkness which preserves it dissipated.

See how far the religious have already had to retreat. The philosophers of religion are clinging to a last spar: “Intelligent Design”. They are claiming that the Big Bang proves the universe came into being just the way the Book of Genesis says it did. They have some frail arguments for those positions. But you don’t hear them going on much about a personal god who answers prayers, or insisting that a Jewish virgin gave birth to baby God in the reign of the Emperor Augustus. They know what’s indefensible, or at least beyond their best powers of debate.

We atheists are winning. Quite soon – in say two or three generations from now – we ourselves may have cause to express some restrained triumphalism.

On 9/11, Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pa, when some of the passengers on the hijacked plane, having heard that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been attacked, acted to prevent their plane from being flown by the Muslim hijackers into another building, possibly the Capitol or the White House. Everyone on the plane died.

Their memorial is in the shape of a crescent. The crescent is the symbol of Islam. It is placed so that anyone entering the crescent in the middle of its open arms and proceeding forward is facing Mecca.

Below is a picture of the memorial. Is its shape a mockery of the victims, and America, or is its resemblance to the symbol of Islam a mere coincidence?

Either way, shouldn’t it have been changed once the resemblance was pointed out and reactions of outrage and unhappiness were expressed?

Even if it isn’t intended to be shrine, will its shape and placement not all too easily lend itself to being held and honored as one by Muslims, to the distress of millions of others?

Alec Rawls and Tom Burnett Sr. believe the shape is no error, that it has been designed to be a mihrab pointing to Mecca. A mihrab is a semicircle, usually in the wall of a mosque, that indicates the direction in which Mecca lies –  the qibla in Arabic – which is the way Muslims must face when praying.

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs also believes that the memorial is an Islamic shrine.  She writes:

Please read the following plea from the father of Thomas Burnett. Thomas was the ringleader of the small group of courageous men who fought back against the Muslim terrorists on United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, that crashed in the fields in Pennsylvania. He made four now-famous cell phone calls to his wife from the plane, making a quick assessment of the Muslims’ suicidal flight plan, and made a decision to “do something.” He gave his life to ensure that the plane would not reach its intended destination in Washington.

This was the email from Thomas Burnett’s father after I told him in no uncertain terms that I would be honored to post his letter:

Dear Pamela

Thank you for posting my letter on your blogs.

We thank you for speaking out against the planned mosque in New York.

We too need your help; we need to stop the National Park Service building another mosque in Shanksville. PA.

I served on the 2005 2nd jury that was commissioned to select a design honoring the passengers and crew on Flight 93. The public submitted over 1100 designs. The first jury went through those 1100 designs and selected 5 designs that were presented to the 2nd jury.

When I saw Crescent of Embrace, I immediately saw the Islamic symbols. I spoke out against the design and explained my reasons to the other members of the jury. The vote was taken, 9 for the Crescent of Embrace and 6 against that design. That vote was not unanimous.

There were 4 excellent designs left; there was absolutely no reason to select a design that even suggested Islamic symbols.

I knew that the public would agree with me when they saw the Crescent of Embrace design. They did, but our government would not listen or investigate our claims. All of our letters ended up in the same hands, the National Park Service. We can’t give up; we must stop this mosque being built in Shanksville, as well as the one in New York.

Thank you for helping us.

Warmly, Tom Burnett Sr.

And here is Michelle Malkin’s view:

Tons of you are stunned, outraged, and sickened by the new Flight 93 Memorial, the “Crescent of Embrace.” I called the architect responsible for the redesign, Paul Murdoch of Los Angeles, yesterday for comment. He did not return my call, but he did speak with the Johnstown, Pa., Tribune Democrat, as quoted in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Neither Murdoch nor his supporters see any problem with the red crescent wrapped around the crash site near Shanksville, Pa., where 40 innocent people were murdered at the hands of Islamic terrorists:

“This is not about any religion per se,” Murdoch said in a telephone interview with the Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown. “It’s a spiritual space, and a sacred place, but it’s open to anyone.”

The word “crescent,” he said, was used as a generic architectural term for a curved line.

“Sure, there is an Islamic crescent,” Murdoch said. “Theirs is a lunar crescent. Ours isn’t based on that.” …

[Yet] even the second-stage jury that selected the design recommended changing its name [not the design! – JB] to steer clear of religious overtones. Rather than crescent, the jury suggested using circle or arc of embrace instead.

Michelle Malkin thinks that the plan has the feel of a practical joke, “a very sick one”.

Here it is:

Crescent of Betrayal

(Credit: Zombie)

Pointing to Mecca

Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey is furious that the Palmer report found Israel was acting legally when it intercepted the protest flotilla launched from Turkey to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in May 2010. (See our post A surprise, Sept. 1, 2011). The report – although issued by the United Nations – actually found fault with the protestors and with Turkey itself.

The Islamic world is not used to being found fault with by the UN, especially in relation to Israel. And Erdogan won’t stand for it.

He plots revenge – not against the UN but against Israel.

“I will do such things – what they are, yet I  know not: but they shall be the terrors of the earth!”

Well, that wasn’t exacty what he said – that was King Lear. Erdogan has some definite plans in mind, not very awe inspiring, but he sure would like them to be the terrors of the earth.

These are the things he has threatened to do:

Strengthen the presence of the Turkish navy in the eastern Mediterranean, and “pursue a more aggressive strategy”.

Again send ships to “carry aid” to Gaza. Turkish naval vessels will accompany civilian ships carrying aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.Whether to try reaching the shore of Gaza itself, in order to incite action by the Israeli navy, is not clear.

Personally visit Gaza. Whether he’ll sail directly to Gaza, to incite interception, is again not clear. An official said –

“Our primary purpose is to draw the world’s attention to what is going on in Gaza and to push the international community to end the unfair embargo imposed by Israel.”

If the blockade is not illegal it is at least “unfair”, Turkey maintains. To be fair, the Israelis should allow Hamas to import weapons freely into Gaza to use against them.

Will Erdogan really do what he threatens and risk a clash at sea with Israel? Or is all his vengeful talk mere bluster?

According to this report, Israel’s navy is far superior to Turkey’s:

The Turkish Navy is no match for Israeli missile boat technology and their electronic jamming and tracking systems. Neither do the Turks have advanced submarines like Israel’s German-made Dolphins or close air cover.

Stamping about the stage raging against Israel may be all he can do.

Time will tell.

The Palmer report on the flotilla which sailed from Turkey to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and was intercepted on May 31 2010 by Israeli forces, is here in full. It is to be published tomorrow, Friday September 2, 2011.

Proceeding as it does from the nefarious UN, it is something of a surprise.

Here’s a summary of its findings from the New York Times. Since the NYT is an organ of the Left and and ideologically anti-Israel, the information it provides is unlikely to be deliberately spun in favor of Israel’s account of the events. In fact it does its best to stress every fault found with the Israelis, but conveys the report’s conclusion that Israel did not act illegally. 

[The report] found that when Israeli commandos boarded the main ship they faced “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers” and were therefore required to use force for their own protection. But the report called the force “excessive and unreasonable,” saying the loss of life was unacceptable and the Israeli military’s later treatment of passengers was abusive. …

Turkey is particularly upset by the conclusion that Israel’s naval blockade is in keeping with international law and that its forces have the right to stop Gaza-bound ships in international waters, which is what happened here. …

Israel considers the report to be a rare vindication for it in the United Nations. A Security Council statement at the time assailed the loss of life and Israel suffered widespread international condemnation. …

The United Nations investigation into the events …  was headed by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, former prime minister of New Zealand, aided by Álvaro Uribe, former president of Colombia, along with a representative each from Israel and Turkey.

It takes a broadly sympathetic view of Israel’s sea blockade of Gaza.

“Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza,” the report says in its opening paragraphs. “The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”

The report is hard on the flotilla, asserting that it “acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade.” It said that while the majority of the hundreds of people aboard the six vessels had no violent intention, that could not be said of IHH, the Turkish aid group that primarily organized the flotilla. It said, “There exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH.”

It also said that the Turkish government tried to persuade the organizers to avoid an encounter with Israeli forces but that “more could have been done.”

Regarding the boarding of the [Mavi Marmara] ship, the Palmer committee said Israel should have issued warnings closer to the moment of action and should have first turned to nonviolent options. …

Some earlier reports say they did just that, firing nothing more lethal than paint balls in self-defense.

The [Palmer] report does, however, acknowledge that once on board the commandos had to defend themselves against violent attack.

The report also criticizes Israel’s subsequent treatment of passengers saying it “included physical mistreatment, harassment and intimidation, unjustified confiscation of belongings and the denial of timely consular assistance.”

But they were armed passengers according to this source:

The passengers … pulled out bats, clubs, and slingshots with glass marbles, assaulting each soldier as he disembarked. The fighters were nabbed one by one and were beaten up badly …

And as for “the majority of the hundreds of people aboard the six vessels” having “no violent intention”, a video clip casts doubt on that claim. It shows –

the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today — and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.