“The human race,” quoth an anonymous wit, “is divided into adults and women.”

If we accept the division for the sake of argument, we would observe that many females belong in the adult column, but almost all feminists, along with all leftists, belong in the other. (Homosexuals are well distributed into both, the division having nothing to do with sexual preferences or who’s macho or who’s effeminate.)

Generally, but most significantly in the realm of public affairs, adults think, women feel.

One of the few exceptions among feminists is brave, intelligent, principled Phyllis Chesler.

Recently, on August 25, she gave an address at a Yale University conference on global anti-semitism.

Her speech, titled The History and Psychological Roots of Anti-Semitism Among Feminists, Their Gradual Palestinianization and Stalinization, is well worth reading in full. Here are a few passages from it:

I could not have predicted the rapid and extreme Stalinization and Palestinianization that would take place among academics and activists in general. I could never have imagined that the western intelligentsia, the “good” people, including feminists, would make so tragic an alliance with Islamic barbarism and misogyny.

I became a feminist leader in 1968-1969. I remain one. Most of the other feminists of my generation are no longer engaged in the historical moment. …

For the last decade, Jewish and non-Jewish feminists have marched in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel rallies, signed newspaper ads and petitions to divest from and boycott Israel—yes, even gay and lesbian feminists who would be tortured to death in Muslim countries, did so. These professed “humanitarians”—who carry on about the recent Turkish assassination flotilla—do not take as strong a stand against stoning or forced face-veiling. Some feminists think [face-veiling is] “liberating” or even the ultimate feminist choice. Most feminists do not take a stand against forced marriage, child marriage, first cousin marriage, polygamy, and honor-related violence, included honor killing. They fear that doing so might be seen as “racist” or as culturally insensitive. …

In October of 2004, a small group of San Francisco-based feminist activists … traveled to Duke University … to support the Palestine Solidarity Movement Conference that was taking place there. …

They did not have a balanced or particularly feminist agenda. Although many activists were lesbians or pro-gay, they had not come to protest the Palestinian persecution and torture of suspected homosexuals in Gaza or on the West Bank nor did they seem to know that Israel has granted political asylum to Palestinian homosexuals, including those who have literally been tortured and nearly killed by other Palestinians. Instead, these American feminists wore keffiyas, political buttons and tee-shirts that read “We are all Palestinians.”

The American and European Left and feminist and gay movements have made a marriage in Hell with Islamist terrorists. The same Left that has still never expressed any guilt over their devotion to communist dictators who murdered one hundred million of their own people in the service of a Great Idea, have now fatefully joined the world Jihadic chorus in calling for the end to “racist” Zionism and to the Jewish Apartheid and “Nazi” state. …

She notices the immaturity of these leftists and feminists:

These westerners share an extraordinary psychological rage which requires a scapegoat and cleaning messianic promises, a refusal to look within, an overwhelming need for group approval, an inability or refusal to think as independent individuals, an adolescent in-your-face rebelliousness towards certain authorities—coupled with an adolescent, slavish adoration of other authorities, a desire for cathartic violence, for the ecstasy of mob action …

And their often stunning stupidity:

In 2007, a Jewish Israeli feminist researcher at Hebrew University, doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, blamed Israeli soldiers because they refused to rape Arab and Palestinian women; she claimed this constituted “racism” against Palestinians.

Earlier this year, 2010, a team of researchers led by a female Harvard social scientist blamed Israel in the pages of The Lancet, a British medical journal, for an increase in Palestinian wife-battering in Gaza and on the West Bank. The researchers did not even consider the role that radical Islamification might play in the oppression of women or the fact that Gaza is ruled by terrorist gangsters and this might cause an escalation of violence towards women. Honor killings (and a relevant, recent study actually existed) were not included in their measures of violence against Palestinian women. Why? Because that cannot be blamed on Israel or on the West. …

In the summer of 2010, Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and former spokesman for the PLO, …

– who, it is said, arranged for Obama’s fees at Harvard to be paid presumably by some rich Arab or Arabs –

… a man who also happens to be a friend and former dinner companion of President Obama, signed an appeal for money to send yet another aid ship to Gaza named “The Audacity of Hope,” the title of Obama’s second autobiographical book. He publicly challenged the President, saying that “if the name [of the boat] is a problem for the administration, it can simply insist that Israel lift the siege: end of problem, end of embarrassment.” …

We’re perfectly sure he won’t be embarrassed. Though he might pretend to be.

Such feminists, leftists, and gay liberationists have not thought through what their lives might be like under Islamic rule. In fact, they still deny that there’s a “problem” with Islam and insist that the main problem is with American and Israeli colonialism, imperialism, and militarism. …

They should try converting to Islam to test their theory.

We like her whole speech, except the end of it where she says:

I have not come here today to bash feminists [as such]. I am one. As I’ve said, I don’t understand what happened to the best minds of my Second Wave generation. However, our feminist work is certainly not worthless and was not done in vain.

We say it was almost entirely done in vain. Worse, it was done to the detriment of generations of children. We regret that Phyllis Chesler still wants to describe herself as a feminist. To us she is a thinking adult. She is an asset to the cause of individual freedom, the cause that feminism is hysterically against.

Christine Brim at Big Peace reveals that the Obama administration is doing still more to assist Islamic organizations in America, including funding them with tax-payers’ money. To what end?

On August 31, this coming Tuesday, the Muslim Brotherhood-associated “Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations” (CCMO) will bring 25-30 Muslim leaders of 20 national Muslim groups to attend a special workshop presented by the White House and U.S. Government agencies (Agriculture, Education, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services etc.) to provide the groups “funding, government assistance and resources.” The workshop will apparently provide special access for these Muslim Brotherhood organizations: the organizers pledge to provide “direct access” and “cut through red tape.” Government and Muslim groups will hold an Iftar dinner (breaking the fast of Ramadan) after the workshop.

The event was announced in an email newsletter sent August 27 by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial, long associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the global Islamist network. …

The Muslim Brotherhood founded in 1928, is a global Islamist political movement dedicated to imposing Shariah law on all nations and institutions. Their credo is “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

While it promotes stealth jihad throughout the Western world, it also uses violent force when and where it can. It is the parent movement of Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza and wages perpetual war on Israel.

The Hudson Institute quotes the Muslim Brotherhood’s own declaration of its world-wide ambitions:

We have a clear mission—to implement Allah’s law, on the basis of our belief that that it is the real, effective way out of all our problems—domestic or external, political, economic, social or cultural. That is to be achieved by forming the Muslim individual, the Muslim home, the Muslim government, and the state which will lead the Islamic states, reunite the scattered Muslims, restore their glory, retrieve for them their lost lands and stolen homelands, and carry the banner of the call to Allah in order to bless the world with Islam’s teachings.

Christine Brim thinks that the groups attending the “workshop” and dinner are likely to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, because –

The sponsoring organization – the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (CCMO), co-sponsoring with the Department of Agriculture – has a long history of associations with the Muslim Brotherhood.

And because the CCMO officers are themselves Muslim Brotherhood leaders:

These are not just your garden-variety Muslim Brotherhood operatives. The CCMO officers include leading national and international figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, settled in the Washington DC suburbs to enjoy “direct access” to the Administration and Congress. CCMO is a major U.S. node in the loosely coordinated Muslim Brotherhood network. Just the fellows to give your tax dollars as stimulus money!

If Christine Brim is right and the organizations being aided by the government are pursuing the aims of the Muslim Brotherhood, this can only mean that the Obama administration is actively helping to promote those aims.

Is it doing so inadvertently, not realizing that these organizations have an anti-American agenda? Christine Brim doesn’t think so:

I suggest that the Administration knows these groups are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. They think that’s a good thing.

This isn’t incompetence; it’s intentional.

What can be done about it? Any chance the mainstream media will investigate these dark procedures as a start?

Not much of a one, we guess.

Obama has stopped the prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, “a major al-Qaeda figure”, who coordinated the lethal attack on the USS Cole.

October 10 will be the 10th anniversary of the bombing.

The Washington Post reports:

The attack …  killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens when a boat packed with explosives ripped a hole in the side of the warship in the port of Aden.

In a filing this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said that “no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future.”

The statement, tucked into a motion to dismiss a petition by Nashiri’s attorneys, suggests that the prospect of further military trials for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has all but ground to a halt, much as the administration’s plan to try the accused plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in federal court has stalled.

Why  has the prosecution of al-Nashiri been dropped?

We hear pundits on TV saying that it is because the US “needs Yemen”.

What for?

If  Yemen is a country that requires terrorist murderers to be acquitted, why does the US have anything whatsoever to do with it?

Oh, we remember now: Yemen is an Islamic country, and the president of the United States wants the country he leads to submit, submit, submit to Islam.

The imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who wants to build a mosque and Islamic center next to Ground Zero, preaches that Shariah is compatible with the US Constitution.

At WorldNetDaily, Nonie Darwish sets out 34 laws of Islam which make it perfectly clear that it is not.

We select some of them, but the ones we leave out are no less alien to American concepts of justice. Check them out here.

Jihad, defined as “to war against non-Muslims to establish the religion,” is the duty of every Muslim and Muslim head of state (caliph). Muslim caliphs who refuse jihad are in violation of Shariah and unfit to rule.

A percentage of Zakat (charity money) must go toward jihad. [But none may go to non-Muslim causes – JB]

A Muslim who leaves Islam must be killed immediately.

A Muslim will not get the death penalty if he kills a non-Muslim but will get it for killing a Muslim.

Shariah never abolished slavery or sexual slavery and highly regulates it. A master will not be punished for killing his slave.

Shariah dictates death by stoning, beheading, amputation of limbs, flogging – even for crimes of sin such as adultery.

Non-Muslims are not equal to Muslims under the law.

A non-Muslim cannot inherit from a Muslim.

No testimony in court is acceptable from people of low-level jobs, such as street sweepers or bathhouse attendants. Women in low-level jobs such as professional funeral mourners cannot keep custody of their children in case of divorce.

A non-Muslim cannot rule even over a non-Muslim minority.

Homosexuality is punishable by death.

There is no age limit for marriage of girls. The marriage contract can take place any time after birth and consummated at age 8 or 9.

Rebelliousness on the part of the wife nullifies the husband’s obligation to support her, and gives him permission to beat her and keep her from leaving the home.

Divorce is only in the hands of the husband and is as easy as saying, “I divorce you,” and becomes effective even if the husband did not intend it.

A woman inherits half what a man inherits.

A man is allowed to have sex with slave women and women captured in battle, and if the enslaved woman is married, her marriage is annulled.

The testimony of a woman in court is half the value of a man.

A Muslim woman must cover every inch of her body, which is considered “Awrah,” a sexual organ. Not all Shariah schools allow the face of a woman [to be] exposed.

It is obligatory for a Muslim to lie if the purpose is obligatory. That means that for the sake of abiding with Islam’s commandments, such as jihad, a Muslim is obliged to lie and should not have any feelings of guilt or shame associated with this kind of lying.

Nonie Darwish ends by challenging “the learned Imam Rauf” to “tell us what part of [the 34 laws] is compliant with the U.S. Constitution”.

We too would like to hear his answer.

Daisy Khan, wife of the imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who wants to build a mosque at Ground Zero, said on ABC news last Sunday that anti-Islam feeling in America was like “metastasized anti-Semitism.”

Just as unreasonable and unprovoked? Just as widespread?

Jonah Goldberg, author of that very good book Liberal Fascism, thinks not. He writes in the Los Angeles Times:

Here’s a thought: The 70% of Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from ground zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and anti-Muslim backlash is mostly a myth.

Let’s start with some data.

According to the FBI, hate crimes against Muslims increased by a staggering 1,600% in 2001. That sounds serious! But wait, the increase is a math mirage. There were 28 anti-Islamic incidents in 2000. That number climbed to 481 the year a bunch of Muslim terrorists murdered 3,000 Americans in the name of Islam on Sept. 11.

Now, that was a hate crime.

The so-called backlash against Muslims is largely a myth:

[In 2002] the number of anti-Islamic hate-crime incidents (overwhelmingly, nonviolent vandalism and nasty words) dropped to 155. In 2003, there were 149 such incidents. And the number has hovered around the mid-100s or lower ever since.

Sure, even one hate crime is too many. But does that sound like an anti-Muslim backlash to you?

Let’s put this in even sharper focus. America is, outside of Israel, probably the most receptive and tolerant country in the world to Jews. And yet, in every year since 9/11, more Jews have been hate-crime victims than Muslims. A lot more.

In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, again according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim ones by at least 6 to 1. Why aren’t we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America?

Because there isn’t one. And there isn’t an anti-Muslim climate either. Yes, there’s a lot of heated rhetoric on the Internet. Absolutely, some Americans don’t like Muslims. But if you watch TV or movies or read, say, the op-ed page of the New York Times — never mind left-wing blogs — you’ll hear much more open bigotry toward evangelical Christians (in blogspeak, the “Taliban wing of the Republican Party”) than you will toward Muslims. …

For 10 years we’ve been subjected to news stories about the Muslim backlash that’s always around the corner. …

… but has never happened.

Conversely, nowhere is there more open, honest and intentional intolerance — in words and deeds — than from certain prominent Muslim leaders around the world. And yet, Americans are the bigots.

And when Muslim fanatics kill Americans — after, say, the Ft. Hood slaughter — a reflexive response from the Obama administration is to fret over an anti-Islamic backlash. It’s fine to avoid negative stereotypes of Muslims, but why the rush to embrace them when it comes to Americans?

And now, thanks to the “ground zero mosque” story, we are again discussing America’s Islamophobia, which, according to Time magazine, is just another chapter in America’s history of intolerance.

When, pray tell, will Time magazine devote an issue to its, and this administration’s, intolerance of the American people?

And Ryan Mauro writes at FrontPage:

Over the recent Fourth of July weekend, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) interviewed attendees of the 47th annual Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention about their experiences in dealing with “Islamophobia.” Shortly afterwards, on July 6, CAIR called on the FBI to investigate an act of arson at a Georgia mosque, saying that hate crimes were increasing because of a “vocal minority in our society promoting anti-Muslim bigotry.” The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) referred to it as one of the “incidents of Islamophobia [that] are on the rise in this country.” However, police later arrested a Muslim suspect.

As Daniel Pipes has documented for years, Islamist organizations in the West are quick to label crimes as anti-Muslim hate crimes as part of their effort to make Muslims feel under attack and to paint themselves as Muslims’ protectors. For example, immediately following the Fort Hood shooting, CAIR asked Muslims to respond by donating to it. “We need financial help to meet these crises and push back against those who seek to score political points off the Muslim community in the wake of the Fort Hood tragedy,” the fundraising pitch read. To no one’s surprise, an anti-Muslim backlash did not ensue.

Cutting through the propaganda requires understanding the ways in which crimes are misrepresented as hate crimes — and why. There are two main culprits to consider: Muslims who stage fake hate crimes and Islamist organizations that seek to exploit them.

He goes on to examine why a Muslim “would fabricate a hate crime against himself or his mosque”.

In some cases, the faker has an obvious political goal of demonstrating the supposed prejudice against Muslims. A classic example occurred in 2008, when a 19-year-old female Muslim student named Safia Z. Jilani at Elmhurst College in Illinois claimed that she had been pistol-whipped in a campus restroom by a male who then wrote “Kill the Muslims” on the mirror. The alleged attack occurred just hours after she spoke at a “demonstration called to denounce the anti-Islamic slurs and swastika she had discovered … in her locker.” A week later, however, authorities determined that none of this had taken place and she was charged with filing a false police report. …

In other cases, individuals are driven to fabricate hate crimes not for political reasons, but to cover up more mundane criminal activity. Take the bizarre story of Musa and Essa Shteiwi, Ohio men who received media attention in 2006 after reporting several attacks on their store, the third being with a Molotov cocktail. A fourth “attack” then occurred, when an explosion was set off and badly burned the father and son, injuries from which they later died. CAIR highlighted it as a hate crime. However, investigators found that the two had set off the explosion themselves after they poured gasoline in preparation for another staged incident and one of them foolishly lit a cigarette. The pair had hired a former employee to carry out the previous attacks as part of an insurance fraud scheme.

Now let us turn to the motives of groups such as CAIR for exaggerating the prevalence of hate crimes against Muslims.

First and foremost, Islamists try to undermine and delegitimize their opponents by placing blame upon them for hate crimes. For example, a 2008 CAIR report attributes an alleged increase in hate crimes — “alleged” because the claimed increase is wholly contradicted by FBI statistics — to “Islamophobic rhetoric in the 2008 presidential election” and people who are “profiting by smearing Islam.” …

Islamist groups also use the fear created by their publicizing of alleged hate crimes and anti-Muslim sentiment to try to mobilize the community into opposing counterterrorism programs. As Daniel Pipes has noted, CAIR started down this path a decade and a half ago, when it described the prosecution of World Trade Center bomb plotter Omar Abdel Rahman and the arrest of Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook as hate crimes. …

These groups … try to make the Muslim community feel as if it is threatened by its own government committing state-sanctioned hate crimes. True to form, attendees of the ISNA convention this past July were told how the FBI supposedly is targeting Muslims and advised that they should not talk to FBI personnel without a lawyer. …

CAIR and other Islamist groups thrive off of convincing Muslims that they are under constant assault from roving bigots and an oppressive state.

The Ann Arbor Chronicle gives another example of how CAIR exploits any incident it can to claim that an anti-Muslim hate crime has been committed. It reports:

Last September, the start of the Ann Arbor Public Schools academic year was marred by news of a fight described as an attack on an Arab-American girl.

An incident last year at Hollywood and North Maple in Ann Arbor was originally described by some as a hate crime against an Arab-American girl. Instead, the girl was charged with disorderly conduct, and recently found guilty by a jury.

The episode prompted a media blitz by the advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations and calls for investigations by state and federal civil rights agencies. … Ordinarily, the matter wouldn’t be of much interest beyond the families of the young people involved. But in this case, CAIR … had raised the profile and the volume:

Detroit and local news organizations covered the story of a potential hate crime. …

What investigators found was very different than that CAIR description. …

The report goes on to describe what had really happened. It was not a hate crime but a fight between two girls. The facts didn’t please CAIR at all. They would have preferred the Arab-American girl to have been the victim of an anti-Muslim mob, as they falsely alleged she was.

The same paper provides some useful information.

Michigan’s law on hate crime, or ethnic intimidation, dates to 1988. It adds to the penalty in cases where an offender is found to have committed a crime motivated in whole or in part by bias against a race or national origin, religion, sexual orientation, mental/physical disability or ethnicity.

The state regularly has one of the highest incidences of reported cases (726 in 2008 and 914 in 2007), perhaps due to reporting practices. …

In Washtenaw County, there were 38 reported hate or bias incidents in 2007 and 24 in 2008, the most recent years data is available. That’s one incident per every 9,149 county residents in 2007 and one in every 14,487 residents in 2008. Statewide, the incidences for those years were one per 10,904 and one per 13,732 residents, respectively. …

There was a single report of an anti-Islamic bias crime in Washtenaw County during those two years. …

The term “Islamist” is an invention by non-Muslims who want to differentiate between what they insist is the ”the vast majority of peace-loving law-abiding Muslims” from the “radicals”, or “extremists”, or “Islamofascists” for whom they think “Islamist” is a politer word. Islamists are, in the eyes of the well-meaning tolerant non-Muslims who coined the term, a minority with whom the vast majority of “moderate” Muslims do not agree and of whom they do not approve. Even though few of them actually express disapproval, the well-meaning, respectful, tolerant non-Muslims assume it to be strongly felt, and wish the wider public would believe and appreciate this.

For convenience, let’s call the well-meaning, respectful, tolerant non-Muslims who advance this view the Defense. The Defense hopes to persuade non-Muslim public opinion that the law and values of Islam are compatible with the laws and values of what is generally called the West.

The question then arises, what do “moderate” Muslims believe that is different from what the Islamists believe? For both moderates and Islamists the Koran is the holy word of Allah. The holy word of Allah cannot be changed. So what does the Defense say to that? It is, the Defense argues, a matter of interpretation. (For a thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion of this idea in connection with the Ground Zero mosque dispute, see an article by Ron Radosh at PajamasMedia. We usually find much to agree with in his writing, but in this article we find much to criticize. Rather than do so, because we think a point-by-point exegesis would be boring for us and our readers, we’ve chosen to make our own statement on the issue.)

What interpretation can be put on commandments to beat wives (sura 4.32), amputate limbs (eg sura 5.38), treat women unequally (eg sura 4.11), kill apostates (eg 4.89) – to take just a few instances of Allah’s writ? They are laid down in the Koran, from which Sharia derives. It is hard to read them and think of an interpretation that cancels, contradicts, or even merely softens their meaning. Even by the most liberal definitions imaginable by the most elastic of legal minds – one that could find, for instance, gradations of meaning in the word “is” – the words of the commandments cannot be made to mean their opposites. But some have tried to make them less apodictic, and the Defense depends on the possibility.

The Defense maintains that if the Koran is interpreted as meaning in many essential instances something different from what it says, it can be made compatible with American Constitutional Law. But wouldn’t that require deeply radical change, even complete reversal? And if such a radical change were to be made (by whom?), how, or to what extent, would it still be Sharia? Wouldn’t such a profound alteration mean, in effect, the obliteration of Islam?  And if so, how likely is it that it will be accepted by (at least a large enough part of) Islam?

One point often made by the Defense that needs to be answered: The Bible also orders cruel punishments, including, for instance, stoning adulterers. True, but there is no country on earth that declares Biblical law to be its constitution, or makes the commandments of Jehovah, or God the Father, or Jesus Christ, the law of the land, even though some laws agree with some of the ten commandments. Israel decidedly rejected the idea of basing its state laws on Jewish religious law (though for political expediency governments have made some concessions to the religious political parties, causing more nuisance than oppression – such as that marriage must be by religious rite).

But every state in which Islam is the religion of the majority – even including Iraq when it was ruled by the ostensibly secular socialist Ba’athists – has Sharia as the basis of its law. Turkey was an exception that is now changing under an Islamist government to conform with the rest.

Islam wants the world to be Muslim. It declares that every Muslim must help achieve its goal. It prescribes violence as the chief if not exclusive means. Clearly by this alone Islam has set itself up as the enemy of all non-Muslims. In pursuit of its supreme goal and in obedience to the word of Allah, millions of Muslims, including the 19 who perpetrated the crimes of 9/11 in the name of Islam, have dedicated themselves to waging war on the rest of the world, and more will do so in the years to come.

They need to be stopped; by peaceful means if possible, by force whenever necessary. If “reinterpretation” of Islam’s holy writ is a way that can work peacefully, it should be pursued. But can it be done? Our answer is – almost certainly not.

These days there cannot  be many states, if any, with governments free from corruption, but some are more corrupt than others. Afghanistan looks to be among the worst. Its make-believe democratic institutions, president and parliament, and the police and the military, are oiled with corruption. Bribery and extortion characterize the politics of the country. A thousand busy Americans driven by noble intentions will not easily succeed in purifying the soul of the nation or changing the Afghan way. Even John Kerry, whose noble intentions are on display though his own soul has been tainted by fibs about his military adventures, has failed to persuade President Karzai – the fellow who literally wears a mantle of power – to play nice. And though Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls Karzai to inform him loftily of her “displeasure”, he continues to do it his way. This so disheartens the well-intentioned folk pursuing the counter-corruption endeavor that they are thinking of abandoning it.

This is from the Washington Post:

A close adviser to President Hamid Karzai, arrested last month on charges of soliciting a bribe, was also under investigation for allegedly providing luxury vehicles and cash to presidential allies and over telephone contacts with Taliban insurgents, according to Afghan officials familiar with the case.

The Afghan officials also said that it had been Karzai himself who intervened to win the quick release of the aide, Mohammad Zia Salehi, even after the arrest had been personally approved by the country’s attorney general. The new account suggests that the corruption case against Salehi was wider than previously known and that Karzai acted directly to secure his aide’s release. …

The intervention by Karzai came after the Afghan investigators had begun to pursue corruption cases against the aide and possibly other Karzai allies inside the presidential palace. A commission formed by Karzai after his aide was released concluded that Afghan agents who had carried out the investigation with support from U.S.-backed law enforcement units had violated Salehi’s human rights and were operating outside the constitution.

The back-and-forth revolves around the work of two American-backed Afghan task forces, one known as the Major Crimes Task Force and the other called the Sensitive Investigative Unit. It has created perhaps the most serious crisis this year in relations between Afghanistan and the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Karzai to express her displeasure with any decision that undermines anti-corruption enforcement, and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) flew to Kabul this week with a warning to Karzai that his actions put at risk U.S. funding and congressional support for the war. …

Salehi is a Pashtun from Wardak province who heads the administration of Afghanistan’s National Security Council. Salehi has played a key role in support of Karzai’s efforts to win reconciliation with Taliban insurgents and end the war in Afghanistan. The current and former Afghan officials said he had spoken regularly by cellphone with Taliban representatives and had arranged meetings between the Karzai administration and members of the Taliban …

The Afghan officials said that the investigation had determined that Salehi had also been involved with making cash payments from a palace fund to pay off Karzai’s political supporters, and distributed gifts such as armored Land Cruisers and luxury Lexuses.

“He was one of the most trusted staff members in the palace to do special things,” said one Afghan official with direct knowledge of the case. …

One of the special things he did was to accept a bribe not to investigate bribery:

Wiretapped conversations had also produced evidence that Salehi had accepted gifts, including a car provided to his son, in return for playing a role in opposing a corruption investigation aimed at New Ansari, the nation’s largest money-transfer business, which was raided by investigators in January. “The talk on the intercepts was pretty clear that this car was intended to get Salehi to interfere with the investigation,” said a senior U.S. official who worked with Afghan anti-corruption teams. The American official said the evidence had been presented to Afghanistan’s attorney general, Mohammad Ishaq Aloko, who signed an arrest warrant for Salehi and instructed the Major Crimes Task Force, an Afghan police unit mentored by the FBI, to execute the arrest. …

On July 25 … Salehi was taken to a counternarcotics detention center in Kabul.

By 6 p.m. the same day, however, police with the Major Crimes Task Force received a second letter from Aloko, the attorney general, ordering Salehi’s release.

An Afghan official with direct knowledge of the case said that Aloko had come under “enormous pressure” from Karzai to set Salehi free. A second Afghan official with direct knowledge of the events said that Aloko “received an order from the president” that Salehi be released. …

According to the Afghan officials, corruption investigators now say they fear for the safety of their families and do not believe it is possible to convict those close to the president. They do not expect Salehi to be indicted. Some believe the two elite task forces will be disbanded.

That would be a blow to General Petraeus. Apparently he’s pinned his hopes on them, believing that the country could be “restored” to stability if only the corruption could be got rid of.

Gen. David H. Petraeus the new American commander, has made clear that he sees the effort as central to restoring stability to the country.

So the story of Salehi is not encouraging to those who still believe there is something to be won in Afghanistan. To others it bears a message of despair.

In his speech to a largely Muslim audience at a Ramadan dinner at the White House on Friday August 13, 2010 [transcript here], Obama stressed points of US law and the values that inspired them to justify his support for the building of a mosque at the site of the 9/11 attack in New York. The speech was a ringing endorsement of religious tolerance. These are some of the statements he made:

Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.” The First Amendment of our Constitution established the freedom of religion as the law of the land.

Indeed, over the course of our history, religion has flourished within our borders precisely because Americans have had the right to worship as they choose – including the right to believe in no religion at all. And it is a testament to the wisdom of our Founders that America remains deeply religious – a nation where the ability of peoples of different faiths to coexist peacefully and with mutual respect for one another stands in contrast to the religious conflict that persists around the globe.

As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.

This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

He implied that Islam  shares the American value of tolerance, custom of “diversity”, and principle of mutual respect:

Tonight, we are reminded that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity.

We can only achieve “liberty and justice for all” if we live by that one rule at the heart of every religion, including Islam—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

That’s the so-called “Golden Rule”, holy writ for Jews and Christians. It’s also a sound principle for all civilized people to revere – and perhaps even to try and live by. But we doubt that you could find it stated or suggested in the Koran or any authoritative source of Islamic belief.

Obama, however, is not alone in alleging that the laws and values of America are compatible with the sharia law of Islam. One Muslim who supports his view, at least to some degree, is Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam who is planning to build the mosque at Ground Zero.

In his book What’s Right With Islam is What’s Right With America: A New Vision for Muslims and the West, Chapter 3, America: A Sharia-Compliant State, Rauf writes:

What I am demonstrating is that the American political structure is Shariah compliant.

The principles of the Declaration and Constitution are consistent with divine ordinance, the particular method of government and a particular scheme of sociopolitical cooperation that follow from it are thereby invested with divine sovereignty and command an authority that comes from God.

But the claim is exposed as fiction by Dr Jal Maharaj. He has devised a questionnaire for Muslims seeking U.S. Citizenship, which illustrates the essential difference between American law and sharia. He lists the contradictions, and at the end of each item asks the imaginary Muslim applicant, “Do you repudiate this verse in the Qur’an [which contradicts US law]?”

Here is an abridged version of his document:

1. The Constitution of the United States requires equal legal rights for men and women. [Sharia does not.]

Qur’an, Surah 2: 282 says, in part: “call in to witness from among 
your men two witnesses; but if there are not two men, then one man 
and two women from among those whom you choose to be witnesses…” 
This is the basis for Shariah law which holds that in all cases of 
law the testimony of two women is necessary to equal that of one man.

2. US Law does not tolerate wife beating and regards it as a crime [while sharia orders it].

Qur’an, Surah 4: 34 says: “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. But as to those women on 
whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone 
in the sleeping-places and beat them …”

(3) Cruel and unusual punishment is illegal by provisions of the 
US Constitution.

This includes such retribution as physical mutilation and injury to 
the body.

Quran, Surah 5: 38 “As for the thief, both male and female, cut off 
their hands. … ”

Surah 5: 33 “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief 
through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land:”

(4) The age of marriage varies by state, but in all cases requires 
that a wife should be of child bearing age, that is, she should be 
post-pubescent, generally 15 or 16 years of age minimum, 17 or 18 in 
other jurisdictions.

Qur’an, Surah 65: 4 “As for your women who have despaired of further 
menstruating, if you are in doubt, then their waiting period is three 
months as well as those who have not yet menstruated. As for those 
who are pregnant, their term shall be the time they deliver their 
burden. Allah will ease (matters) by His order for whosoever fears 
Him.”

As a Muslim scholar named Maududi has said in his official [and incomprehensible! – JB] interpretation of this verse:

“Therefore, making mention of the waiting-period for girls who have not yet menstruated, clearly proves that it is not only permissible to give away the girl at this age but it is permissible for the husband to consummate marriage with her. Now, obviously no Muslim has 
the right to forbid a thing which the Qur’an has held as 
permissible.”

(5) The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly outlaws slavery in all forms, male or female.

Qur’an, Surah 4: 92 “And it does not behoove a believer to kill a 
believer except by mistake, and whoever kills a believer by mistake, 
he should free a believing slave, and blood-money should be paid, but 
he who cannot find a slave should fast for two months successively.” 
As scholars have pointed out, this verse assumes that Muslims will own slaves, or a significant number will, as did Muhammad, who owned slaves and bought and sold them. This is just one verse out of dozens that approve the institution of slavery and present in as an eternal condition of humanity.

(6) Hate speech is objectionable in American culture, and federal 
law regards such language as legally actionable, deserving punishment.

Qur’an, Surah 5: 60 – 65, says in part, speaking specifically of Jews 
as verse 59 makes clear, “Those whom God has cursed and with whom He 
has been angry, he has transformed them into apes and pigs, and those 
who serve the devil”

This is the source of Muslim demonstrators’ signs and chants that Jews are apes and pigs — the Qur’an itself. There are still other 
passages in Muhammad’s book which also are anti-Semitic — as the 
term is generally used in America to refer to anti-Jewish bigotry.

(7) War or any acts of physical violence, or threat of violence, with the intention of forcing people to convert to a religion is utterly abhorrent to American law and is explicitly outlawed by the 
First Amendment.

Qur’an, Surah 8: 12 “Thy Lord inspired the angels (with the 
message): “I am with you: give firmness to the Muslims, I will instill terror into the hearts 
of the unbelievers. Smite them on their necks and cut all their fingers off.”

This is one of 164 jihad verses in Muhammad’s book. Of this number 
approximately 100 are commandments to able-bodied Muslim men to physically fight against non-believers.

There is no reasonable doubt that the meaning of the 100 
jihad verses in question all promote violence against people of other 
faiths. The main objective is conversion but also important is 
terrorizing others so that they fear the wrath of Muslims.

(8) The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion to all US 
citizens. No-one may prohibit someone from changing religion, or 
ceasing to belong to a religion. No-one may prohibit someone, in any 
appropriate setting, from seeking to convince someone else of the 
rightness of his or her faith and seeking to win converts. No 
believers of any faith are exempt from this provision of the First 
Amendment.

Qur’an, Surah 4:88-89 “Then what is the matter with you that you 
are divided into two parties about the hypocrites? Allah has cast 
them back (to disbelief )… Do you want to guide him whom Allah has 
made go astray?… They wish that you reject (Islam), and thus that 
you all become equal (like any other faith). So, take not… 
(friends) from them, till they emigrate in the way of Allah (to 
Muhammad). But if they turn away (from Islam), take hold of them 
and kill them wherever you find them.” One of several verses which 
deal with what Muslims characterize as apostasy. The penalty for what 
Americans insist is a God-given right, to free choice in religion, 
is death in an Islamic context.

(9) In America, free speech is sacrosanct and, while a people have 
the right to object to criticisms of their beliefs, and while others 
must obey libel or slander laws, everyone who so desires is free to 
make any criticisms of religion he or she wishes to make.

Qur’an, Surah 4: 140 “Allah will collect the hypocrites and those who defy faith – and put them in Hell.” This is one verse which is 
foundational to Shariah law penalizing all forms of what Muslims 
characterize as “blasphemy.” Depending on the “offense” and what 
country such law is enforced in, the punishment may be anything from 
jail time or banishment, to death.

What qualifies as blasphemy? A few examples–criticizing Islam making 
jokes about Muhammad or the Qur’an criticizing the Qur’an, … criticizing Muhammad, especially perceived insults 
of Muhammad criticizing such Muslim practices as saying prayers 5 times a day, … reporting objective facts that embarrass Muslims, such as the fact that Muhammad married Aisha, a 
girl of 6 and consummated the “marriage” when she was 9, creating an 
image of Muhammad or portraying him with an actor in a movie or stage play …

(10) The First Amendment guarantees freedom to worship any deity of 
your choice. Or freedom to be an Agnostic or Atheist. You may worship 
100 Gods or Goddesses, or just one, or none at all. All US citizens 
accept this principle but are free to express their opinions if they 
think someone else’s beliefs are wrong.

Qur’an 4: 116 “Verily Allah does not forgive setting up partners in 
worship with Him. But He forgives whom he pleases, sins other than 
that.” To be devoted to a Goddess, in other words, is, in Islam, the 
unforgivable sin. Also extremely serious is 2: 28, “How do you 
disbelieve in Allah, seeing that you were dead and he gave you life! 
Then he will cause you to die…”

In other words, Goddess worship [as in Hinduism] deserves death according to Islam, and Atheists also deserve death.

Dr Maharaj adds:

There are numerous other morally reprehensible passages in the 
Qur’an, all of which contravene American law and the freedoms 
guaranteed in the Constitution.

And declares that in his opinion:

Islam should be recognized for what 
it is, a subversive and criminal religion that functions in outright defiance of American law and which is based on principles which are totally incompatible with the US Constitution.

Quod erat demonstrandum.