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If we believe the spin of Associated Press headline writers, there's little cause for concern about a new Pew poll of American Muslims. "Most U.S. Muslims reject suicide bombings," the AP headline writer blithely reports. But the details of the poll show the always-downplayed tiny minority of jihadi sympathizers in America is cause for big concern. The poll found that while 80 percent of U.S. Muslims believe suicide bombings of civilians to defend Islam cannot be justified, fully 13 percent said they can be justified, at least rarely. One in four younger American Muslims find suicide bombings in defense of...

The Left has developed no end of tricks to manipulate debates without the trouble of making a case or putting together an argument. Many of them have been in wide use for decades without ever being identified, much less counteracted. One example widely seen in recent weeks is a technique closely related to what the PR industry calls "rebranding": taking a group that is loathed for any number of good reasons - terrorists, criminals, druggies, what have you - and subtly reworking their image over time to present them instead as victims. One group that benefited from this style of...

It's said to be Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels or Hitler himself who said, "If you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it." Certain huge whoppers keep circulating, and they've been repeated so often, so insistently – and increasingly by people who should know better and probably do – that they are being accepted as fact. It's become so irritating to me that I feel I've got to shout: "Quit saying that! It's not so." Someone else said famously, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free"; and since I'm a fan of both...

Since Muslim Keith Ellison's election to Congress, there's been a lot of noise in the media about the growing clout of the 8 million-Muslim electorate. Eight million? 'There are 8 million Muslims in America now," boasted a spokeswoman for something called the Muslim Advancement Society. She appeared on CNN to talk about what a proud day it was for her and other Muslim-Americans to see a Muslim brother sworn into Congress for the first time. It seems the size of the Muslim population in America jumps by an additional million every other year or so. Just a couple of years...

Federal officials were "outrageously obstructive" during a congressional probe examining possible Islamic terrorist and foreign ties to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, according to a congressman who disclosed to WND some of the highlights of a subcommittee report scheduled for release next week.

Poets and philosophers, merchants and mathematicians, artisans and astronomers re-enacted the Golden Age of Islam at the Al-Arqam Islamic School in south Sacramento on Friday. The artistry, story-telling and role-playing was a creation of 233 students from kindergarten through ninth grade who brought to life the sights, tastes and smells of an Islamic empire that spanned three continents from the eighth to the 13th centuries. From incense to Turkish coffee, dates to oranges, minarets to miniature mosques and castles -- you could find it all at The Islamic Civilization Exhibit and Festival in the school's multipurpose room. Pageantry was accompanied...

Ahmadinejad: Israel, US will vanish / News agencies Ahmadinejad says Israel, US, Britain will vanish – 'this is a divine promise;' Iran demands UN Security Council condemn Israel's nuclear development, place Israel's facilities under inspection

The leader of an al-Qaeda-backed group has offered US forces safe withdrawal from Iraq within a month if they left their heavy weapons behind, according to an audio tape posted on the internet on Friday. The authenticity of the tape could not be verified, but it was posted on two main web sites used by al-Qaeda and other armed groups in Iraq. "We call on [President George] Bush not to waste this historic opportunity," said the speaker, identified as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, head of the so-called Islamic state in Iraq, which was announced in October by al-Qaeda and groups linked...

Meanwhile, Holocaust Memorial Museum distances itself from board member's criticism of representative-elect's plan to use Quran for oath of office WASHINGTON — Rep.-elect Keith Ellison said Thursday he would tell a Virginia congressman who expressed concern about "many more Muslims" being elected that there is nothing to fear about Muslims. "They are our nurses, doctors, husbands, wives, kids who just want to live and prosper in the American way," Ellison, D-Minn., said on CNN. "And that there's really nothing to fear. And that all of us are steadfastly opposed to the same people he's opposed to, which is terrorists, and...

Columnist, novelist, and retired United States Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters has earned a reputation as an often insightful and provocative analyst of military affairs and geopolitics. But of late, he has taken to villifying those who examine the theology and practice of Jihad in Islam. Writing what can only be characterized as an unhinged column in the September 7, 2006 New York Post, military analyst Ralph Peters lashed out at those he labeled “Islam haters”. In a breathless series of vicious calumnies (summarized here), Peters claimed that those he lacked the courage to name, were: “an enemy within”, represent...

In their continuing effort to raise consciousness, spread enlightenment, and deprecate the traditions that made Britain Britain, the BBC has posted extensive information on major world religions on their internet site (www.bbc.co.uk/religion). A friend directed us to the section on Islam. It makes instructive reading for anyone wishing to chart the progress of the virus of multiculturalism—that odd compact of self-righteousness, nihilism, and pusillanimity—in elite British society. The site offers some standard historical exposition about the origin and doctrines of Islam as well as some inadvertently comical items such as the entry “Muslim internet matchmaking,” in which we learn that...

One could easily argue that Al Qaeda and the worldwide jihad pansurgency have their roots in the Algerian War. Alistair Hornes’s magnificent book Savage War of Peace, Algeria 1954-1962 is a must read for a thorough understanding of what’s going on in Iraq and the Muslim world today. The Algerian insurgents were, at the beginning, a mix of westernized intellectuals and Muslim fundamentalists, but soon enough the jihadists took over. Simply put, they were more brutal, willing to commit the kind of atrocities that would put them in the vanguard. It is vital to understand that what’s going on in...

Early in 2006, I discovered a relatively new Arabic web site: www. kwtanweer.com It originates in Kuwait, and its goal, as its name Tanweer (Enlightenment) implies, is to provide a forum for the discussion of such topics as Religion & Modernity, Civil Society, Democracy, Human Rights, and Women’s place and role in society. The subjects discussed in this forum are intriguing, as most of them would be considered avant-garde by an average Muslim. What catches my attention in my frequent perusal of the articles on this site are the readers’ comments. They tend to be very negative, and annoyed by...

Your morning cup of coffee, the watch on your wrist and the fantastic three-course meal you had last night are all part of Islam’s cultural legacy, according to an exhibition currently on in the UK. ‘1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World’, on at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester until June 4, charts one thousand years of Muslim contributions to medicine, science, education, architecture and astronomy. Organisers, the Manchester-based Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, hopes the exhibition will show how hundreds of innovations now associated with the Western world owe their origins to Muslim...

"Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.” I wrote those words days after 9/11 and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March 3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not go far enough. That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none were severely injured. Until his would-be murderous...

Essentially Obama is a Christian convert--but also then a Muslim apostate. The "What If" category of "the new face of change and reform for the democratic party" doesn’t get written up by the mainstream media. What if Obama is engaged in pious fraud? This is a Muslim practice of pretending not to be Muslim to further the cause of Islam or to "defend the faith". He becomes President and then says, "Gee…I think I want to be Muslim again" after he finds the "football" in his hands that carries the launch codes for the USA nuke forces. Is the "New...

Jihad Watch News Editor Rebecca Bynum takes us inside the cartoon controversy in Music City at her new site New English Review: The Muslim cartoon riots abroad have been nothing if not clarifying for the average American. The sheer anodyne innocuousness of the images juxtaposed against a backdrop of 45 deaths, countless injuries and massive property damage coupled with the intense political pressure being felt by the western world to yield to Muslim blasphemy considerations is revealing to the American people just how wide the gap really is between Islam and the West. Many are quietly concluding that the chasm...

In TV speech, Sheikh Qaradawi stresses Islamic nature of Israeli-Palestinian conflict Top Islamist cleric Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi has delivered a speech on Qatari television calling on Muslims to murder Jews in "in the name of Islam." The speech has been translated by the Arabic translation service MEMRI . On February 25, Qaradawi told viewers: "Everything will be on our side and against Jews on (Judgment Day); at that time, even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say: 'Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there's a Jew behind me, come and kill him. They will...

An interview with Hamas's new prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh: "Do you accept the Oslo agreement signed by Yasser Arafat? Israel has stopped completely committing itself to Oslo. ... So you will not abide by past agreements made by the Palestinians and Israel? I have not said that. I have said that Israel . . . But you are not the prime minister of Israel. Will you abide by past agreements made by the Palestinian governments and Israel? We will review all agreements and abide by those that are in the interest of the Palestinian people. What agreements will you honor?...

Jyllands-Posten denies reports that it published cartoon apology in Arabic newspapersDanish newspaper Jyllands-Posten has denied reports that it was behind an ad published in Arabic-language newspapers to apologize for cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad that have sparked deadly protests around the world. Earlier, news agencies reported Saudi Arabian newspapers printed an apology on behalf of the Danish newspaper. The full-page advertisements appeared in al-Sharq al-Awsat, which is printed around the Arab world, as well as the local al-Riyadh and al-Jazira. They were dated February 5, but an advertising spokesman at al-Riyadh said it may have taken time for the papers,...