Posted on 09/20/2001 7:33:13 PM PDT by SlickWillard
| To: Revolting cat! LOL Dogs are despised throughout the Middle East. Even the rare people who keep them as pets (mostly as guard animals) consider them too dirty to allow them inside the house. No flames please! I like dogs. 13 Posted on 09/25/2001 16:00:28 PDT by Ultima Thule
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A campaign to smash the global terror network has already clashed head-on with Pakistan's two states within a state — the Islamist clergy and the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI). By any measure, Pakistan has long been a state sponsor of terrorism ... Successive Pakistani governments turned a blind eye to militant groups and shrunk from confronting them. When Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in October 1999, he decided to take on Islamist extremists, but ISI was against such a crackdown and the army was divided ... In fact, there are substantial army elements — especially among junior officers, noncoms and the rank and file — that favor the militant goals of the religious extremists. The two fathers of Pakistan's nuclear bomb are also anti-American fundamentalists ... Former high-ranking officers — such as Gen. Hameed Gul, a retired ISI chief — are also sympathetic to the mujahideen groups that were trained by Pakistan in the 1980s to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Taliban — plural for talib, or student of the Koran — was originally Pakistan's creation under the tutelage of Gen. Gul ... A steady stream of other visitors from Sudan, North Africa and the Middle East goes through his house ... The madrassas — or Koranic schools — were created in the early 1980s, mostly in the Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan, the two provinces bordering Afghanistan along the 1,300-mile Durand Line ... The madrassas eventually spread to the entire country. One million children now study at these schools. Arguably the most important Koranic institution is the University for the "Education of Truth" in the town of Khattak. Taliban's nine top leaders, with the exception of "Supreme Leader" Mullah Mohammad Omar, graduated from Khattak. ISI and wealthy Saudis have been funding the university for the past two decades. Every Muslim country is represented in its 2,500 student body. Two retired generals told UPI that each graduating class provides recruits for ISI ... A former army corps commander said, not for attribution, that ISI continues to help Taliban with communications and safe houses in Quetta and Peshawar to this day ... Gen. Gul now heads a NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) called Service for All (SFA). A former military intelligence officer, now in the private security field, told UPI it should be called CFA, or Cover for All. The officer said SFA organizes Afghan refugee volunteers for "a wide variety of conflicts in which guerrillas fight for Muslim causes." Gen. Gul wants for Pakistan what Bin Laden wants for his native Saudi Arabia: Destruction of established governments and their replacement by an Islamic state. His friends say he has political ambitions.
I never met him, but I did hear of him in 1989. There was a move of no confidence against my government, and I heard that $10 million came from Saudi Arabia in mango crates in a private plane [to support the effort]. I was very upset and sent one of my ministers to Saudi Arabia to meet with the king and to ask why was this money coming from Saudi Arabia. The king said his government was not sending money, that there were private citizens doing it on their own. My minister was told that bin Laden was very much into Islam and [he believed that] having a woman as a chief executive was un-Islamic.
The Saudi Arabian Government has ruled out the use of bases on its territory for American-led strikes against Afghanistan's ruling Taleban. "We do not accept the presence in our country of a single solider at war with Muslims or Arabs," Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan was quoted as saying in a government-run newspaper on Sunday.
Saudi defence minister 'rules out force'
In an Arab-language newspaper, the Saudi defence minister is quoted as saying it will not accept the presence of a single soldier at war with Muslims or Arabs.
Islam-Infonet, a news service of the supposedly mainstream Council on American-Islamic Relations, carried my column. Many American Muslims -- men, women; young, old; college students and professionals; almost all of Arab origin -- linked to it from there. Though they hardly represent the views of all the nation's 6 million or so Muslims, their venomous letters reveal anti-American biases and predispositions that don't square with the peace-loving and patriotic rhetoric mouthed by Muslim scholars and spokespeople on television.
SAMI AL-ARIAN, THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA PROFESSOR featured in the editorial I wrote for this week's print edition of The Weekly Standard, now appears to be in some difficulty with his employers. Last Wednesday, during an on-air interview with Fox News Channel controversialist Bill O Reilly, Al-Arian was invited to explain certain public remarks he's made ("Jihad is our path! Victory to Islam! Death to Israel!") and certain formal and informal relationships he's enjoyed (for example: with Sheikh Abdul Rahman, now in prison for directing the first World Trade Center bombing, and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, current head of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization). Professor Al-Arian told O Reilly that incendiary comments he's made in the past should be placed in proper "context." He further claimed to have been surprised when several of his acquaintances later surfaced in connection with political violence.
Arab League's Moussa warns against strike on Arabs
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa warned on Wednesday that any attack on Arab countries would have dire consequences for the Middle East and on the U.S.-led international coalition against "terrorism".
Washington officials say today that a severe attack of last-minute cold feet by some key Arab members of the coalition caused President Bush to postpone the operation. The waverers are Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Oman, and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is embarking on an urgent mission today to strengthen nerves in these countries ... Two senior US officials have told reporters that until yesterday the Saudis were firm in their offer to provide assistance for strikes, including use of a state-of-the-art command centre at the Prince Royal Sultan Air Force Base. Then the situation changed. One US official told Knight Newspapers: "That is no longer true. We fear there is something deeper here."
They waved Taliban flags, clobbered an effigy of George Bush and vowed death to all Americans. It felt like Afghanistan. In fact, Tuesday's demonstration was in Pakistan, the United States' ostensible ally in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, who is accused by the Bush administration of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The thousands of people who took to the streets here, urged on by a radical mullah, wanted to show the fragility of Pakistan's official support for the United States. "America murda abad! America murda abad!" they chanted - roughly, "We hate America! We hate America!"
"The people who brought down those towers were Muslims and Muslims must stand up and say that is not the way of Islam," Lady Thatcher told the paper. "Passengers on those planes were told that they were going to die and there were children on board. They must say that is disgraceful. I have not heard enough condemnation from Muslim priests."
A visiting New York Times magazine writer last year found 2,800 students enrolled in one school, ranging in age from 8 to 35. Most came from extremely poor backgrounds and spent their time memorizing the Koran. Subjects like math, computer science, or non-Islamic history were not taught. More advanced students reviewed the hadiths, or sayings and traditions of the Prophet Mohammad. Non-Arabic speakers, like the Afghan or Pakistani Pashtuns, or the students from former Soviet republics like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and some Chechens, learned or brushed up on their Arabic. Graduate students studied how to issue fatwas, or religious edicts, on subjects ranging from family law to the waging of jihad, or holy war. That course included about 600 students.
As Western security agencies intensify their search for possible cells of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorist group, reliable Arab diplomatic sources in Athens said yesterday that the network could have a very different and far more dangerous dimension. They claim that bin Laden's network is not made up only of illegal, dissident groups but has managed to infiltrate the military, the secret services and even government circles of Arab states, including the two leading countries of the Arab world, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. According to these sources, the heart of bin Laden's network is not in Afghanistan but in the country of his birth, Saudi Arabia. It is well known that bin Laden, a member of the Saudi economic elite, enjoyed close ties with the royal family during the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He clashed with the family when King Fahd allied himself with the United States in the Gulf War and after the bomb attack against US forces in Riyadh in November 1995. What is not known is that bin Laden never severed his ties with the strongest member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Abdullah, who, in effect, is ruling the kingdom as Fahd has been confined to a wheelchair.
What's up with this?
For politicians simply to call all this "terror", and to promise to extirpate it with precision strikes and the denial of funds is a folly. As the equivocations of Saudi Arabia and a nuclear-armed Pakistan reveal, the Islamic nations know that it is the resurgence of Islam not "terrorism" which has prompted the West's call to action. These nations cannot afford to support this call wholeheartedly, no more than can any "good Muslim" spokesman in Britain, whatever Baroness Thatcher may expect of them. In every war, the first casualty is said to be truth. In this one, our politicians have not even begun to admit to us what it is really about.
They are Americans who feel duty-bound by Islam to obey American laws. But some of them say that if their country called them to war against a Muslim army, they might refuse to fight. They cannot be shaken from the conviction that America is intrinsically anti-Muslim ... The students also said the Koran, which Muslims consider the literal word of God, provides a perfect blueprint for their lives. Their ideal society would follow Islamic law and make no separation between religion and state.
Muslim Parliament leader Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui said the United States should have given diplomatic efforts longer to take effect ... He said: "The first casualty of this attack has been the rule of law. The Americans have lost their credibility. They had this opportunity to somehow recover the moral high ground. The only people who will be happy will be the American arms industry and oil companies. It's a very, very sad day. They should have explored all other options."
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, 200 Islamic students rallied outside the US Embassy in Jakarta, the capital. No violence was reported, despite threats from some activists to attack US interests. "Holy war! Holy war! America is the great Satan," chanted many in the crowd. "America is the real terrorist." The embassy was protected by rows of razor wire, a water cannon truck and hundreds of riot officers with batons and firearms.
I hereby provide a speck of evidence that some would dismiss as “anecdotal” — a popular putdown when you’re made uncomfortable by what someone is reporting. I know an Egyptian woman, very well educated, widely traveled — about as “Westernized” and “liberal” as you can get in Arab society — and she e-mailed me to tell me, essentially, that Osama bin Laden, even if he really existed, couldn’t have planned and carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, it must have been you-know-who: the Jews, or, more specifically, the Israelis, the Zionists. The father of terrorist Muhammed Atta has said the same thing — It couldn’t have been my son; it must have been the Jews. The father is a distinguished Cairo lawyer.
Egyptian anti-terrorist police have foiled a second wave of suicide hijacker attacks - this one against "various world capitals." The plot was thwarted through the arrest of 12 al Qaeda-linked suspects in Egypt, according to local press reports. The suspects were part of a terrorist cell that was conspiring to commit "simultaneous attacks in various world capitals," said the report, in the weekly journal Al Mussawar ... Islamic terrorism has a firm footing in Egypt; the Egyptian Islamic Jihad - of which Atta was a member - is headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor believed to be the brains behind al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
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