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Homaidan Ali Al-Turki, 36, and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, 35, appear to be a model immigrant couple. They arrived in America in 2000 and now live with their four children in an upscale Denver suburb. Mr. Al-Turki is a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Colorado, specializing in Arabic intonation and focus prosody. He donates money to the Linguistic Society of America and is chief executive of Al-Basheer Publications and Translations, a bookstore specializing in titles about Islam. Last week, however, the FBI accused the couple of enslaving an Indonesian woman who is in her early 20s. For...

"MUSLIMS make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country," said President Bush shortly after September 11, noting that they are "doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads." He later added that "there are millions of good Americans who practice the Muslim faith who love their country as much as I love the country, who salute the flag as strongly as I salute the flag." These soothing words were clearly appropriate for a moment of tension and mounting bias against Muslims living in the United States. And it is absolutely true that the number of ...

The Ugly History of JihadBy Daniel PipesFrontPageMagazine.com | May 31, 2005 In his just-released, absorbing, and excellent book, Understanding Jihad (University of California Press), David Cook of Rice University dismisses the low-grade debate that has raged since 9/11 over the nature of jihad – whether it is a form of offensive warfare or (more pleasantly) a type of moral self-improvement.Cook dismisses as “pathetic and laughable” John Esposito’s contention that jihad refers to “the effort to lead a good life.” Throughout history and at present, Cook definitively establishes, the term primarily means “warfare with spiritual significance.”His achievement lies in tracing the...

In his just-released, absorbing, and excellent book, "Understanding Jihad", David Cook of Rice University dismisses the low-grade debate that has raged since 9/11 over the nature of jihad — whether it is a form of offensive warfare or (more pleasantly) a type of moral self-improvement. Cook dismisses as "bathetic and laughable" John Esposito's contention that jihad refers to "the effort to lead a good life." Throughout history and at present, Cook definitively establishes, the term primarily means "warfare with spiritual significance."

The Ugly History of Jihad By Daniel PipesFrontPageMagazine.com | May 31, 2005In his just-released, absorbing, and excellent book, Understanding Jihad (University of California Press), David Cook of Rice University dismisses the low-grade debate that has raged since 9/11 over the nature of jihad – whether it is a form of offensive warfare or (more pleasantly) a type of moral self-improvement.Cook dismisses as “pathetic and laughable” John Esposito’s contention that jihad refers to “the effort to lead a good life.” Throughout history and at present, Cook definitively establishes, the term primarily means “warfare with spiritual significance.”His achievement lies in tracing...

As the Koran-flushing-in-Cuba episode becomes old news, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has helpfully found a way to keep Koran desecration in the public eye. It does so – and I draw on MPAC's two press releases (here and here), plus reports from the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times – by promoting the story of one Azza Basarudin, who bought a copy of the Koran, Oxford University Press edition.A doctoral candidate at the University of California at Los Angeles specializing in Middle East studies, Basarudin ordered the volume in early May from Bellwether Books, a used book store...

Should you read Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005, an annual report issued last week by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), you’ll learn how the Muslim experience in America is worsening. Specifically, the number of “anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States” has gone up dramatically: from 42 cases in 2002, to 93 cases in 2003, to 141 in 2004. This news prompted headlines in the mainstream media. “Muslims Report 50% Increase in Bias Crimes,” announced the New York Times; “Crimes, Complaints Involving Muslims Rise,” broadcast the Washington Post; and “Muslims Cite...

Sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion mark the latest report that "anti-Muslim bigotry is on the rise." CAIR's Hate Crimes Nonsense By Daniel Pipes and Sharon ChadhaFrontPageMagazine.com | May 18, 2005Should you read Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005, an annual report issued last week by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), you’ll learn how the Muslim experience in America is worsening. Specifically, the number of “anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States” has gone up dramatically: from 42 cases in 2002, to 93 cases in 2003, to 141 in 2004. This news prompted headlines...

Yasir Arafat's demise in November excited great hopes among those who saw his malign personality as the main reason for Palestinian intransigence. But those of us who saw the problem as larger than Arafat — as resulting, rather, from the deep radicalization of the Palestinian body politic — expected little change. Indeed, I wrote at the time of Mahmoud Abbas' election to head the Palestinian Authority (PA) that, "he is potentially a far more formidable enemy to Israel" than was Arafat. How do things look a half year after Arafat's death? About as awful as anyone might have expected. Specifically,...

For all their rhetoric about Israel's "vicious" and "brutal" occupation, Palestinians — including their leaders — sometimes let down their guard and candidly acknowledge how much they prefer Israel to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Here are some of their themes: Restraints on violence. After the PA police raided the house of a Hamas supporter in an after-midnight operation, roughed up both him and his 70-year-old father, the father yelled at the police, "Even the Jews did not behave like you cowards." And the son, when he came out of the PA jail, declared his experience there much worse than in...

Is Grover Norquist an Islamist? Paul Sperry, author of the new book, Infiltration, in an interview calls Grover Norquist "an agent of influence for Islamists in Washington." When asked by FrontPageMag.com why a Republican anti-tax lobbyist should so passionately promote Islamist causes, Sperry implied that Norquist has converted to Islam: "He's marrying a Muslim, and when I asked Norquist if he himself has converted to Islam, he brushed the question off as too ‘personal.'" As Lawrence Auster comments on this exchange, "Clearly, if Norquist hadn't converted to Islam, or weren't in the process of doing so, he would simply have...

Zacarias Moussaoui, 36, a French national of Algerian origins, pleaded guilty on April 22, 2005, to six counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism. He says he intended to take part in a post-9/11 air attack on the White House. “I came to the United States of America to be part, O.K., of a conspiracy to use airplane as a weapon of mass destruction, a statement of fact to strike the White House, but this conspiracy was a different conspiracy than 9/11.” He never got to hijack a plane because two of the staff at the flight school where Moussaoui was...

Does the Bush administration really believe, as its leadership has kept repeating since right after 9/11, that Islam is a "religion of peace" not connected to the problem of terrorism? Plenty of indications suggested that it knew better, but year after year the official line remained the same. From the outside, it seemed that officialdom was engaged in active self-delusion. In fact, things were better than they seemed, as David E. Kaplan establishes in an important investigation in U.S. News & World Report, based on over 100 interviews and the review of a dozen internal documents. Earlier arguments over the...

What steps should Western border agencies take to defend their homelands from harm by Islamists? In the case of non-citizens, the answer is simple: Don't let Islamists in. Exclude not just potential terrorists but also anyone who supports the totalitarian goals of radical Islam. Just as civilized countries did not welcome fascists in the early 1940s (or communists a decade later), they need not welcome Islamists today. But what about one's own citizens who cross the border? They could be leaving to fight for the Taliban or returning from a course on terrorism techniques. Or perhaps they studied with enemies...

There are dangerous men in the world and Daniel Pipes is one of them. He first came to my attention several years ago during a visit to Washington. It appeared that a number of Arab-Americans were concerned about him and the growing influence he was exerting in the media and the political arenas. Prior to the attacks of Sept. 11 Pipes was voicing his apprehension regarding the dangers of Muslim immigration into the United States as a potential “fifth column” for radical Islamists. After the attacks, Pipe’s media exposure grew. Called upon as a “Middle Eastern expert,” he staged his...

D.C. understands to fight terror, you must promote moderate Islam. Washington Finally Gets It on Radical Islam By Daniel PipesFrontPageMagazine.com | April 25, 2005Does the Bush administration really believe, as its leadership has kept repeating since right after 9/11, that Islam is a “religion of peace” not connected to the problem of terrorism? Plenty of indications suggested that it knew better, but year after year the official line remained the same. From the outside, it seemed that officialdom was engaged in active self-delusion. In fact, things were better than they seemed, as David E. Kaplan establishes in an important investigation...

In the Palestinian Authority's (PA) elections that took place in January 2005, a significant percentage of Arab Jerusalemites stayed away from the polls out of concern that voting in them might jeopardize their status as residents of Israel. For example, the Associated Press quoted one Rabi Mimi, a 28-year-old truck driver, who expressed strong support for Mahmoud Abbas but said he had no plans to vote: "I can't vote. I'm afraid I'll get into trouble. I don't want to take any chances." [1] Asked if he would vote, a taxi driver responded with indignation, "Are you kidding? To bring a...

In a surprisingly fine editorial last week about the crisis at Columbia University, the New York Times observed that a university report investigating student complaints about Middle East studies “is deeply unsatisfactory” because it was “so limited.” The “Ad Hoc Grievance Committee Report,” the paper observed, focused on faculty intimidation of students, ignoring that the students primarily resented “stridently pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli bias on the part of several professors.” That the Columbia administration preferred to deal with bad classroom habits rather than on the deeper question of faculty bias was an obvious self-protective gambit. The former can be dealt with by...

What Are Islamic Schools Teaching? 04/2/05 "Shocked" is how Aisha Sherazi, principal of the Abraar Islamic school in Ottawa, described the reaction of the school's administration and board on learning last week that two of its teachers had incited hatred of Jews. And "shocked" was how Mumtaz Akhtar, president of the Muslim-Community Council of Ottawa-Gatineau, described his own reaction to the front-page news about the Abraar school. But they may have been the only two persons on the planet to be "shocked" to learn that teachers at an Islamic school are promoting anti-Semitism or other aspects of the Islamist agenda....

"Shocked" is how Aisha Sherazi, principal of the Abraar Islamic school in Ottawa, described the reaction of the school's administration and board on learning last week that two of its teachers had incited hatred of Jews. And "shocked" was how Mumtaz Akhtar, president of the Muslim-Community Council of Ottawa-Gatineau, described his own reaction to the front-page news about the Abraar school.