Michelle Malkin » Oriana Fallaci

Behold the forbidden blasphemous balls!

Michelle Malkin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 03:52:12 +0000

Burn them!

File this under “No good deed goes unpunished” by the Religion of Perpetual Outrage:

A demonstration has been held in south- east Afghanistan accusing US troops of insulting Islam after they distributed footballs bearing the name of Allah.

The balls showed the Saudi Arabian flag which features the Koranic declaration of faith.

The US military said the idea had been to give something for Afghan children to enjoy and they did not realise it would cause offence.

The footballs were dropped from a helicopter in Khost province.

Some displayed flags from countries all over the world, including Saudi Arabia, which features the shahada, one of the five pillars of Islam – the declaration of faith.

The words, which include the name of Allah, are revered, and Muslims are very sensitive about where and how they can be used.

As we’ve learned from Rushdie Rage, MoCartoon Rage, Burger King Ice Cream Cone Rage, Koran Flushing Rage, Valentine’s Day Rage, Veil Rage, Pope Rage, Fallaci Rage, Miss World Pageant Rage, and Rushdie Knighthood Rage, they’re pretty damned “sensitive” (read: ready to riot) about everything.

For crying out loud:

Mullahs in Afghanistan criticised the US forces for their insensitivity, and around 100 people held a demonstration in Khost.

Afghan MP Mirwais Yasini said: “To have a verse of the Koran on something you kick with your foot would be an insult in any Muslim country around the world.”

A spokeswoman for the US forces in Afghanistan said they made “significant efforts to work with local leaders, mullahs and elders to respect their culture” and distributing the footballs was an effort to give a gift the Afghan children would enjoy.

Instead of taking Allah’s name off its flag, Saudi Arabia is whining about football manufacturers putting the flag on its balls. But do you have any doubt in your minds that those manufacturers would be damned by the Islamophobe card-playing rabble-rousers if they purposely left the Allah-bearing flag off its balls?

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Military officials, who did nothing wrong, can’t apologize fast enough:

Sgt. Dean Welch, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said Friday’s “distribution of soccer balls was done in the spirit of goodwill, something that we hoped would bring Afghan children some enjoyment.”

“We regret any disturbance that was caused in this case,” he said. “If we hurt one person, that is one too many.”

Ridiculous groveling. Robert Spencer predicted the predictable about these blasphemous balls back in May 2006. LGF weighs in on the Dreaded Balls of Blasphemy.

Perhaps we should put this Arabic script on the next supply of soccer balls:

2006: The year of perpetual outrage

Michelle Malkin — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 18:05:48 +0000

***update and bumped to the top: Zawahiri rings in the new year with a call to jihad for the Religion of Perpetual Outrage***

It began with the Danish cartoons. It ended with the flying imams. 2006 was a banner year for the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. Twelve turbulent months of fist-waving, embassy-burning, fatwa-issuing mayhem, intimidation, and murder resounded with the ululations of the aggrieved. All this in the name of defending Islam from “insult.” Let’s review.

In late January, masked Palestinian gunmen took over a European Union office in Gaza City to protest the publication of a dozen cartoons about Islam, Mohammed, and self-censorship in the Danish newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten. They stormed the building, burned Danish flags, and spearheaded an international boycott of Denmark products across the Muslim world.

The rage was manufactured pretext. The cartoons had been published four months earlier with little fanfare. It wasn’t until a delegation of instigating Danish imams toured Egypt with the cartoons—plus a few inflammatory fake ones including an old image of a French hog-calling contest participant deceptively portrayed as “anti-Muslim”—that the fire started burning. Think the mainstream media will remember that? Not likely. They fell for the ruse and were slow to acknowledge it after American bloggers and Danish television exposed the scheme.

What was really behind Cartoon Rage? Muslim bullies were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. The chairmanship of the council was passing to Denmark at the time.

Alas, Western journalists, analysts, and apologists were too clouded by their cowardice and conciliation to see through the smoke. More than 800 were injured in the ensuing riots and 130 people paid with their lives. The innocents included Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro, who was shot to death in Turkey on Feb. 5 by a teenage boy enraged by the illustrations. The Muslim gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as he murdered Father Santoro while the priest knelt praying in his church. Several brave moderate Muslim editors who stood up to the madness were jailed, fined, and convicted of crimes related to insulting Islam. The Danish cartoonists remain in hiding.

The world soon tired of Cartoon Rage, but the “peaceful” Muslim ragers were just warming up. They found excuses large and small to riot and threaten Western infidels.

In India, they protested the magazine publication of a picture of playing card showing an image of Mecca and also burned Valentine’s Day cards. An insult to Islam, they screamed. In Spain, they protested a Madrid store for selling a postcard with a mosque on it with the words “We slept here.” An insult to Islam, they protested.

In Pakistan, they burned down a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, a Pizza Hut, and toppled Ronald McDonald. In Jakarta, they smashed the offices of Playboy magazine. You know why.

In June, the trial against lioness journalist Oriana Fallaci for insulting Islam commenced in Bergamo, Italy. She had been charged by professional Muslim rager Adel Smith of the Muslim Union of Italy of “vilipendio”—vilifying Islam—in her post-9/11 books slamming jihad. A judge had refused to throw out the case. She faced a pile of death threats and accusations of “Islamophobia” for speaking truth to Islamo-power.

Fallaci’s death from cancer during the fifth anniversary week of the September 11 terrorist attacks preempted the trial in Italy, but her passing did nothing to preempt the eternal rage of the perpetually outraged. The day she died, the grievance-mongers were shaking their fists and calling for the head of Pope Benedict XVI for his speech that made reference to a 14th century conversation touching on holy war and jihad.

For engaging in open, honest intellectual and spiritual debate, he was condemned, lit afire in effigy, and targeted anew. The ragers bombed Christian churches in Gaza City and Nablus.

They murdered Italian Sister Leonella Sgorbati, an elderly Catholic nun shot in the back by a Somalian jihadist stoked by Pope Rage. “Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim,” a Somalia cleric had declared. The Vatican made nice with Muslim leaders.

New outrages are always in bloom. In late September, it was a Berlin production of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” that featured the decapitated head of Mohammed. A week later, it was a banyan tree attacked by Indonesian Muslims who wanted to disprove its mystical powers. A few days after that, it was former British foreign secretary Jack Straw, who had the audacity to make the very obvious observation that full Muslim veils impede communications between women and Westerners. Offensive! Disturbing! An insult to Islam!

Not to be outdone, a delegation of extortionist imams boarded a U.S. Airways flight in Minneapolis in November and tried to manufacture an international human-rights incident.

They clamored for a boycott and threatened to sue.

The good news: The fire did not catch here this time. The bad news: As Oriana Fallaci warned before her death:

“The hate for the West swells like a fire fed by the wind. The clash between us and them is not a military one. It is a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come.”

The Pope in Turkey

Michelle Malkin — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:46:46 +0000

Looks like Pope Benedict XVI is safe so far. Via Breitbart.com:

He began his first visit to a Muslim country Tuesday with a message of dialogue and “brotherhood” between faiths, and Turkey’s chief Islamic cleric said at a joint appearance that growing “Islamophobia” hurts all Muslims…

… The pope is expected to call for greater rights and protections for Christian minorities in the Muslim world, including the tiny Greek Orthodox community in Turkey.

Benedict, seeking to ease anger over his perceived criticism of Islam, met with Ali Bardakoglu, chief of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directories.

“The so-called conviction that the sword is used to expand Islam in the world and growing Islamophobia hurts all Muslims,” Bardakoglu said at a joint appearance.

Maybe if Muslims stopped using swords and bombs and guns in the name of Islam, and if more Muslims stopped embracing violent jihad, and if more Muslims urged others to renounce jihadism without having to risk reprisals and their own lives, the self-inflicted wound would start to heal.

Robert Spencer zeroes in on Muslim intolerance in Turkey:

Unfortunately, the danger of and anger over the Pope’s visit to Turkey has overshadowed both the real focus of the visit, and what should be its major preoccupation. The main purpose of the Pope’s trip is to meet with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church. One may hope also that the Pope will take an opportunity to shed some light upon the woeful condition of religious minorities, principally Christians, in what is nominally a secular state that allows for religious freedom. Two converts from Islam to Christianity, Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal, are currently on trial on charges of “insulting ‘Turkishness’” and inciting hatred of Islam. What seems to be behind the charges is that Tastan and Topal were proselytizing – which, while not officially illegal, is frowned upon and has sometimes resulted in beatings of Christians trying to hand out religious literature. On November 4, a Protestant church in western Turkey was firebombed, after months of harassment that was ignored by Turkish authorities. The murderer of a Catholic priest, Fr. Andrea Santoro, last February in the Turkish city of Trabzon was recently sentenced to only eighteen years in prison. (The killer shouted “Allahu akbar!” as he fired shots at the priest.)

All this bespeaks a Turkish officialdom that is hostile – at best – to non-Muslim forms of religious expression, Turkey’s guarantees of religious freedom be damned. The institutionalized subjugation and second-class status of religious minorities under the Ottoman Empire was bad enough, but Turkish secularism has been, if anything, even worse. Constantinople was 50% Christian as recently as 1914 (its name was changed to Istanbul in 1930); today, it is less than one percent Christian. The Catholic Church has no legal recognition; Catholic churches, like other churches, remain inconspicuous so as not to draw the angry attention of mujahedin. Even the recognized Churches are not allowed to operated seminaries or build new houses of worship – in accord with ancient Islamic Sharia restrictions on non-Muslims in an Islamic state, which restrictions paradoxically enough still have at least some force in secular Turkey.

The righteous fury with which the Pope will likely be greeted in Turkey will shift attention from the shame Turkish authorities should feel over the mistreatment of Christians in their land that nominally allows for religious freedom. The mainstream media will focus on protests against the Pope, and pay scant attention to anything he may say, if he says anything at all, about the oppression of Christians in Turkey. And that, in the final analysis, may lead the Turkish government – for all its security precautions — to hope that the protestors will turn out in force.

***

Jim Geraghty is blogging in Turkey and spots the Pope’s motorcade.

Also blogging in Turkey: Josh Trevino.

And here’s more on the Christian converts on trial for–yup–”insulting Islam:”

Hakan Tastan, 37, and Turan Topal, 46, are accused of making the insults and of inciting hate while allegedly trying to convert other Turks to Christianity. If convicted, the two Turkish men could face up to nine years in prison.

The men were charged under Turkey’s Article 301, which has been used to bring charges against dozens of intellectuals — including Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk.

The law has widely been condemned for severely limiting free expression and European officials have demanded Turkey change it as part of reforms to join the EU.

They also are charged under a law against inciting hatred based on religion.

Prosecutors accuse the two of allegedly telling possible converts that Islam was “a primitive and fabricated” religion and that Turks would remain “barbarians” as long they continued practicing Islam, Anatolia reported.

The prosecutors also accused them of speaking out against the country’s compulsory military service, and compiling databases on possible converts.

Tastan and Topal denied the accusations in court.

“I am a Turk, I am a Turkish citizen. I don’t accept the accusations of insulting ‘Turkishness,’” Anatolia quoted Tastan as telling the court. “I am a Christian, that’s true. I explain the Bible … to people who want to learn. I am innocent.”

***

Pope will visit Turkey
Report: Another victim of Pope Rage
Remembering Sister Leonella
This is what a real martyr looks like
It’s always Code Red for the jihadists
Report: Catholic priest missing in Iraq; London jihadis: “Pope Benedict watch your back”
The Pope’s e-mail address
Sister Leonella Sgorbati, RIP
Italian nun killed, Pope sorry for Muslim reaction
The Religion of Firebombs and Fatwas
Pope Rage on the Internet; church bombings in Gaza
I support the Pope
Oriana Fallaci, RIP, and the Religion of Perpetual Outrage

What American journalists should be thankful for

Michelle Malkin — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:05:01 +0000

In between breathless condemnations of the Bush administration for stifling its free speech, endless court filings demanding classified and sensitive information from the military and intelligence agencies, and self-pitying media industry confabs bemoaning their hemorrhaging circulations (with the exception of the New York Post), my colleagues in the American media don’t have much to time to give thanks.

Allow me:

Give thanks we don’t live in Bangladesh, where you can be put on trial for writing columns supporting Israel and condemning Muslim violence. Just ask Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of Blitz, the largest tabloid English-language weekly in Bangladesh. He is currently facing a sedition trial for speaking out about the threats radical Islam poses in Bangladesh. He has been imprisoned, harassed, beaten, and condemned. In court last week, his persecutors read these charges against him: “By praising the Jews and Christians, by attempting to travel to Israel and by predicting the so-called rise of Islamist millitancy in the country and expressing such through writings inside the country and abroad, you have tried to damage the image and relations of Bangladesh with the outside world.” For expressing these dissident opinions, he faces the possibility of execution.

Give thanks we don’t live in Egypt, where bloggers have been detained by the government for criticizing Islam and exposing the apathy of Cairo police to sexual harassment of women. Just ask Abdel Karim Suliman Amer, 22, who was arrested earlier this month for “spreading information disruptive of public order”, “incitement to hate Muslims” and “defaming the President of the Republic.” Ask Rami Siyam, who blogs under the name of Ayyoub, and has been outspoken in his criticism of Egyptian brutality. He was detained this week along with three friends after leaving the house of a fellow blogger. His host, 24-year-old reformist Muslim Muhammad al-Sharqawi, had been detained by the Egyptian government this spring as he left a peaceful demonstration in Cairo where he had displayed a sign reading, “I want my rights.” Sharqawi was beaten in prison over several weeks.

Give thanks we don’t live in Sudan, where editors can lose their heads for not kowtowing to the government line. Ask the family of Mohammed Taha, editor-in-chief of the Sudanese private daily Al-Wifaq, who was found decapitated on a Khartoum street in September. He had been kidnapped by masked jihadi gunmen. What did Taha do that cost him his life? He insulted Islam, and dared to question Muslim history, the roots of Mohammed, and other Muslims. Before his murder, his paper was shuttered for three months and he was hauled into court for “blasphemy.”

Give thanks we don’t live in China, the world’s leading jailer of journalists and Internet critics. Consider Yang Xiaoqing, jailed for five months because he reported corruption among local officials in the central Hunan province. Or Yang Tianshui, sentenced to 12 years in jail this spring for posting essays on the Internet supporting a movement by exiles to hold free elections. Or Li Yuanlong, a Guizhou reporter for the Bijie Daily jailed for two years on subversion charges because he dared to criticize the ruling Communist Party on foreign websites. Or any of the other 32 journalists and 50-plus bloggers behind bars.

Give thanks we don’t live in Lebanon, where outspoken writers pay with their lives. Journalist and Christian Orthodox activist Samir Kassir, who was critical of Syrian involvement in Lebanon, was assassinated in a Beirut car bombing in 2005. His colleague, An-Nahar newspaper manager Gibran Tueni was killed in a car bombing last December. Lebanese TV anchorwoman and Christian journalist May Chidiak survived a separate car bombing last fall, but lost an arm, leg, and use of one eye.

Give thanks we don’t live in Russia, where investigative journalists routinely wind up dead. Last month, unreleting reporter and Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya was found shot dead in her apartment. In the days before her death, Politkovskaya had been working on a story about torture in Chechnya, according to her newspaper Novaya Gazeta. She joins a death toll that includes Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, who had been investigating the Russian business underworld, and was gunned down outside his Moscow office in 2004; Valery Ivanov, editor of the newspaper Tolyatinskoye Oborzreniye, also shot dead after investigating organized crime and drug trafficking in 2002; and Larisa Yudina, editor of the opposition newspaper Sovetskaya Kalmykia in southern Russia, who was stabbed to death by former government aides.

Give thanks we don’t live in Denmark, where the cartoonists who dared to caricature Mohammed and challenge creeping sharia are still in hiding, in fear for their lives.

Give thanks we don’t live in Italy, where a spineless judge bowed to jihadists and put famed war journalist Oriana Fallaci on trial for her sharp-tongued critiques of Islam. She succumbed to cancer before they could exact a vengeful penalty against the lioness. But they made the price of “insulting” Islam known far and wide to the cowering Western media.

Give thanks we live in America, land of the free, home of the brave, where the media’s elite journalists can leak top-secret information with impunity, win Pulitzer Prizes, cash in on lucrative book deals, routinely insult their readership and viewership, broadcast enemy propaganda, turn a blind eye to the victims of jihad, and cast themselves as oppressed victims on six-figure salaries.

God bless the U.S.A.

***

Readers have suggested a few additions to my Thanksgiving column.

Reader R.P.:

And give thanks you don’t live in Turkey, where you would face three years’ imprisonment for acknowledging the Armenian Genocide and the mass killings of Kurds. Jeff Jacoby wrote a great piece about this some three weeks ago. Here’s more.

Speaking of Lebanon, here is the widow of assassinated prominent anti-Syrian Christian politician Pierre Gamayel (left) with Siham Tueini (right), the widow of An-Nahar general manager and anti-Syrian lawmaker, Gibran Tueni, mentioned above:

Yahoo! News/AP

Yahoo! News/AP

Pope will visit Turkey

Michelle Malkin — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:02:26 +0000

The Vatican confirms:

The
Vatican on Monday officially confirmed that
Pope Benedict will visit Turkey at the end of November, a trip that had been put into doubt by Muslim anger over controversial comments he made about Islam.

The confirmation of the Nov 28-Dec 1 trip to the predominantly Muslim nation came in an advisory to journalists on accreditation and a separate announcement that he was making the trip at the invitation of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

The German Pope will spend four days in Turkey, making stops at the capital, Ankara, as well as Izmir, Ephesus, where legend says Christ’s mother went after his death, and Istanbul.

The main purpose of the visit is to meet in Istanbul — the former Constantinople — with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians.

But the issue of Christian unity — although still the main topic of the trip — has been largely overshadowed by the worldwide controversy that followed his September 12 lecture at Regensburg University in his native Germany.

In the lecture, he quoted 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus who spoke of the Prophet Mohammad’s “command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The leader of more than one billion Catholics has several times expressed regret for the reaction to the speech but he has stopped short of the unequivocal apology wanted by some Muslims.

Since the speech, the Pope or Vatican officials have said at least a dozen times that it has been misunderstood.

Some of the strongest criticism of the speech came from Turkey, where Turkish nationalists and Islamic activists have pushed for the trip to be canceled.

Meanwhile, Islamic scholars attempt to persuade the Pope that, among other things, “the argument that Muslims are commanded to spread their faith ‘by the sword,’ or that Islam was largely spread ‘by the sword,’ does not hold up to scrutiny.”

Yeah. That “convert or die” stuff is just a figment of our wild imagination.

***

Report: Another victim of Pope Rage
Remembering Sister Leonella
This is what a real martyr looks like
It’s always Code Red for the jihadists
Report: Catholic priest missing in Iraq; London jihadis: “Pope Benedict watch your back”
The Pope’s e-mail address
Sister Leonella Sgorbati, RIP
Italian nun killed, Pope sorry for Muslim reaction
The Religion of Firebombs and Fatwas
Pope Rage on the Internet; church bombings in Gaza
I support the Pope
Oriana Fallaci, RIP, and the Religion of Perpetual Outrage

Report: Another victim of Pope Rage

Michelle Malkin — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 14:50:49 +0000

The Pope Rage death count rises. Reader Steve G. sends word of a priest murdered by jihadists–who once again prove their critics right:

Relatives of a beheaded Iraqi priest said his captors had demanded a church apology for recent papal comments about Islam.

They said the Orthodox priest was abducted Sunday by an unidentified group, which demanded a ransom. The kidnappers also wanted the priest’s church to condemn controversial recent remarks by Pope Benedict. In a speech last month, the pope quoted a medieval text describing Islam as a religion spread by the sword.

The relatives said the priest’s church had already posted signs condemning the pope’s statement. A similar message was posted again after the abduction.

The priest’s son had apparently been talking with the kidnappers by phone, and had agreed to pay a $40,000 ransom. But contact abruptly ceased Tuesday night. The priest’s decapitated body was found Wednesday in the northern Iraq city of Mosul.

Since the start of the Muslim holy month, U.S. officials in Baghdad said the number of attacks there is up by 15 percent.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said Ramadan “historically” brings more violence. And Caldwell warned that the military is assuming “it will still get worse before it gets better.” He’s anticipating a continued increase in violence over the next two weeks, until the holy month ends.

AINA has more details and a plea:

On Monday, October 9, a prominent Assyrian (also known as Chaldean and Syriac) priest, Fr. Paulos Iskander (Paul Alexander), was kidnapped by an unknown Islamic group. His ransom was posted at either $250,000 or $350,000. This group had demanded that signs be posted once again on his church apologizing for the Pope’s remarks as a condition for negotiations to begin.

Father Alexander was beheaded on Wednesday.

An email from a priest in Sweden, Adris Hanna, describes the Muslim terror campaign against the Christians in Iraq:

The Syriac-Orhtodox priest Paulos Iskandar was kidnapped this Monday, October 9, and beheaded today Wednesday October 11.

The Bishop in Mosul wrote me an email tonight and told me that the funeral will be held in Mosul tomorrow.

Christians are living a terrified life in Mosul and Baghdad. Several priests have been kidnapped, girls are being raped and murdered and a couple of days ago a fourteen year old boy was crucified in the Christian neighborhood Albasra.

I have also spoken to a group of nuns that were robbed and treated brutally on their way between Baghdad to Amman in Jordan.

The murder of father Paulus is the final blow for Christians, and now only hell is expected for the Christians of Iraq.

We the oriental Christians in Sweden and the rest of the Western world must protest against the genocide. We must do what we can to stop the rape, threats, hatred, robberies, murders… We must do something.

The “day of rage” is an eternity of rage.

***

Remembering Sister Leonella
This is what a real martyr looks like
It’s always Code Red for the jihadists
Report: Catholic priest missing in Iraq; London jihadis: “Pope Benedict watch your back”
The Pope’s e-mail address
Sister Leonella Sgorbati, RIP
Italian nun killed, Pope sorry for Muslim reaction
The Religion of Firebombs and Fatwas
Pope Rage on the Internet; church bombings in Gaza
I support the Pope
Oriana Fallaci, RIP, and the Religion of Perpetual Outrage

Remembering Sister Leonella

Michelle Malkin — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 05:09:12 +0000

Sister Leonella: Paying last respects

To borrow a phrase from Rush Limbaugh, the “drive-by media” gave a few hours’ attention to the victims of jihadists’ Pope Rage last weekend and then quickly moved on to the next headline.

I think the murder of Sister Leonella deserves a few more seconds of your time. The latest on her case:

Three people have been arrested in connection with the murder of Italian Consolata missionary Sister Leonella Sgorbati Sept. 17.

The announcement was made by Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad, security representative of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which since June 4 controls Mogadishu and a large part of Somalia.

The remains of Sister Sgorbati, 65, were interred on Sept. 21 at Nazareth Hospital cemetery in Kiambu, Kenya, where she once worked as a nurse.

“We have three men in custody; one is a suspect in the killing and two are being held as witnesses”, stated Siad Sept. 21, according to the missionary news agency MISNA.

Security forces of the courts are on the tracks “of a second gunman suspected of involvement in the killing,” the UIC official said.

Eyewitness accounts indicate that two gunmen opened fire on Sister Sgorbati and her guard Mohammed Mahmud as they crossed the road between the pediatrics hospital and the SOS Village for children in Mogadishu.

Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to Sister Leonella:

In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus announced to his disciples for the second time his passion, death and resurrection (cf. Mark 9:30-31). The Evangelist Mark highlights the strong contrast between His mentality and that of the Twelve Apostles, who not only didn’t understand the words of the Master and clearly rejected the idea that he was going to meet death (cf. Mark 8:32), but also disputed over who among them was to be considered “the greatest” (cf. Mark 9:34). Jesus patiently explains to them his logic, the logic of love that involves service up to the gift of self: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35).

This is the logic of Christianity, which responds to the truth of man created in the image of God, but at the same time it contrasts with his egoism, a consequence of original sin. Every human person is attracted by love — which ultimately is God himself — but often [the person] errs in the concrete ways of loving, and thus from a tendency that is at its origin positive, though tainted by sin, can be derived evil intentions and actions.

Also recalled, in today’s liturgy, is the Letter of St. James: “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice. But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity.” The apostle concludes: “A fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace” (3:16-18).

This word brings to mind the witness of so many Christians who, with humility and in silence, spend their life at the service of others for the sake of the Lord Jesus, working concretely as servants of love and therefore “artisans” of peace. Some are asked to give the supreme testimony of blood, as happened a few days ago to the Italian religious, Sister Leonella Sgorbati, who fell victim to violence. This nun, who for many years served the poor and the children in Somalia, died pronouncing the word “pardon”: This is the most authentic Christian witness, a peaceful sign of contradiction which shows the victory of love over hate and evil.

Consolata Sisters in Michigan also remembered the fallen nun:

Before she died this week in Somalia, Sister Leonella Sgorbati forgave her attackers, exhibiting the deep faith that binds members of the Consolata Missionary Sisters.

Her final act, 42 years after joining the Catholic religious order, may be the most telling of Sgorbati’s strength and compassion, according to nuns who now live in West Michigan and worked with the 65-year-old sister.

“There are some people you will never forget in life, and Sister Leonella was one of them,” said Sister Mercedes Verjan, who is part of the Consolata order that has a convent near Belmont. “Her sense of integrity, enthusiasm, courage and desire left a definite imprint on me. I admire her even more for forgiving the ones who killed her.”

She will not be forgotten.

***

This is what a real martyr looks like
It’s always Code Red for the jihadists
Report: Catholic priest missing in Iraq; London jihadis: “Pope Benedict watch your back”
The Pope’s e-mail address
Sister Leonella Sgorbati, RIP
Italian nun killed, Pope sorry for Muslim reaction
The Religion of Firebombs and Fatwas
Pope Rage on the Internet; church bombings in Gaza
I support the Pope
Oriana Fallaci, RIP, and the Religion of Perpetual Outrage

This what a real martyr looks like

Michelle Malkin — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:25:43 +0000

Sister Leonella: Murdered by jihadists

There’s a new Associated Press report on the murder of Sister Leonella that confirms the bloody obvious:

An elderly nun who was gunned down at the hospital where she worked in Somalia’s capital was “specifically targeted before being executed by gunmen lying in wait,” a hospital official said Monday.

Willy Huber, regional director of the Austrian-funded hospital where 65-year-old Sister Leonella had worked for four years, said the killing was not random. “She had no chance,” said Huber, who heads the S.O.S. Kinderdorf organization in East Africa. “It was like an execution.”

It was an execution:

…Sister Leonella was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital. Her bodyguard also was slain. The two had been walking the 10 meters (30 feet) from the Mogadishu hospital to the sister’s home, where three other nuns were waiting to have lunch with her.

“The gunmen specifically targeted her,” Huber said. “They were waiting for her. As she crossed the road they opened fire. We had no warning of this.”

He spoke after accompanying the Italian nun’s body to Nairobi, Kenya, late Sunday. He said she will be buried in the capital later this week. Three other nuns who also worked at the hospital were pulled out of the Somali capital, and no decision has been made on their return.

Sister Leonella, whose birth name was Rosa Sgorbati, had lived and worked in Kenya and Somalia for 38 years, her family said.

Her last words:

Sister Leonella, 65, muttered the words ‘I forgive, I forgive’ in Italian after being targeted by gunmen in an apparent execution-style killing, father Maloba Wesonga told The Associated Press at the nun’s memorial mass in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Monday.

Those are the words and deeds of a true martyr. God bless her.

***

Meanwhile, they burn the cross and firebomb Christian churches because they know they have nothing to lose–not their heads, their lives, anything. But if we so much as drop a Koran, joke about Muslims, or draw Mohammed…

***

It’s always Code Red for the jihadists
Report: Catholic priest missing in Iraq; London jihadis: “Pope Benedict watch your back”
The Pope’s e-mail address
Sister Leonella Sgorbati, RIP
Italian nun killed, Pope sorry for Muslim reaction
The Religion of Firebombs and Fatwas
Pope Rage on the Internet; church bombings in Gaza
I support the Pope
Oriana Fallaci, RIP, and the Religion of Perpetual Outrage

The Religion of PeaceFirebombs & Fatwas

Michelle Malkin — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 03:09:55 +0000

Yahoo News: Anglican church in Gaza firebombed

***

New item via AINA: “According to the website Islam Memo, one Christian was killed in Baghdad after the Pope’s speech two days ago. The speech created a wave of anger throughout the Islamic world, including Iraq. A poster has been placed in many Baghdad mosques for the previously unknown group, “Kataab Ashbal Al Islam Al Salafi,” (Islamic Salafist Boy Scout Battalions). This group threatens to kill all Christians in Iraq if the Pope does not apologize in three days in front of the whole world to Mohammed.”

Item: Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malin’s fatwa:

“Whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim.”

Item: Iraqi jihadi threat:

“We swear that we will destroy their cross in the heart of Rome … and that their Vatican will be hit and wept over by the Pope,” said Jaish al-Mujahideen (the Mujahideen’s Army) in the statement, whose authenticity could not be confirmed.

The statement lashed out at “Zionised Christians and loathsome crusaders” and was accompanied by six films showing attacks against US military targets in Iraq, which it said were “dedicated to the dog of the crusaders (an apparent reference to the Pope) in retaliation for his remarks”.

“We will not rest until your thrones and your crosses have been destroyed on your own territory,” said the group, which has claimed many attacks against US and government forces in Iraq.

Item: The Taliban demands an apology…or else.

***

More enraged Muslims prove the Pope’s point.

An Arab op-ed threatens: Pope’s remarks may lead to war.

Security has been tightened for the Pope’s weekly Sunday blessing tomorrow. The Pontif will give his traditional Sunday address at midday (2000 AEST) from the balcony of his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, just south of Rome.

***

Father Raymond de Souza speaks out in the National Post: “Rioters’ madness shames Muslim world” (hat tip: Jihad Watch). A few excerpts from this must-read:

The eruption of rage in some quarters of the Islamic world against Pope Benedict XVI requires that several tough things be said.

Painful though it may be, speaking frankly is necessary if there is to be honest and open dialogue between the Abrahamic faiths. Given the reaction to Benedict’s address, though, one wonders if that dialogue is even possible.

The Pope devoted almost 4,000 words to examining the relationship between faith and reason, and the prospect for dialogue between modernity and the world of religion.

In the course of that address he quoted a dialogue recorded between the Byzantine (Christian) Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an erudite Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam. The dialogue took place during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402.

During their conversation, the Pope said, the Emperor “turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’ ”

Benedict was quoting a 14th-century Christian emperor, under siege from the Ottomans, defending the position that spreading religion by violence is contrary to the nature of God. The Emperor, quite reasonably given his circumstances, suggested to his Persian interlocutor such a view did not prevail in Islamic thought.

In response to this historical excursus in an academic lecture by one of the world’s most erudite theologians, we are witnessing a wave of madness and malice, no doubt an embarrassment to millions of Muslims.

An embarrasment to some. An inspiration to far more.

Continuing, de Souza rights the jihadists’ historical wrongs:

It does a disservice to children to call the wild-eyed statements and deranged behaviour of the past days childish.

It is not only the obscenity of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist terrorist band suppressed in several Muslim states, demanding an apology from anyone, let alone the Holy Father.

It is not only the grandstanding Pakistani politicians passing resolutions condemning a papal speech few read, and even fewer understood. It is not only the extraneous charges about the Holocaust and Hitler by the agitated and excited.

It is that we have seen this before.

When Pope John Paul II made his epic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Palestinian Muslim representatives jostled him on the Temple Mount, shouted at him, and, in one episode of maximum rudeness, abandoned him on stage during an interfaith meeting. Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, treated him to an anti-Semitic rant when the late pope visited Syria.

Catholic goodwill toward global Islam is severely attenuated by such continued maltreatment of our universal pastors.

And it is well past time that the maltreatment of history ceased too.

The irony of the accusations that Pope Benedict has a “Crusader mentality” is that he was speaking about the period in which the Crusades themselves took place.

Catholics have for quite some time now confessed the sinful and wicked shadows that marked the Crusades, but any suggestion the whole affair was about rapacious Christians setting upon irenic Muslims must be rejected.

After all, the formerly Christian lands of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia Minor were not converted to Islam by Muslim missionary martyrs. Those lands were conquered by the sword.

The Crusader idea was that they could be recovered. Who wronged who first is a fruitless historical inquiry, but historical honesty requires an admission that Muslims wronged as much as they were wronged against.

The sword of Islam is carried today by self-professed jihadis. In most countries with Muslim majorities, Christians do not have the full freedom to practise their faith without fear.

Whether private harassment or state-sanctioned torture, Christians the world over know all too well that the sword of Islam has not been sheathed. No doubt the extreme reaction to Benedict’s address will serve the purpose of keeping local Christians in their place throughout the Islamic world.

For telling these blunt, unshirking truths, Father de Souza will no doubt earn his own firebomb and fatwa squad.

I believe Oriana Fallaci would have approved.

***

Father Samir K. Samir also speaks out:

“Rather than criticizing Islam, the pope is actually offering it a helping hand by suggesting that it do away with the cycle of violence,” Fr. Samir K. Samir, SJ one of the Vatican’s leading experts on Islam wrote in the Catholic newspaper Asia News.

The pope’s academic lecture “was trying to show how Western society-including the Church-has become secularized by removing from the concept of Reason its spiritual dimension and origins which are in God,” Fr. Samir stated.

…The tragedy in this controversy, Fr. Samir suggested was that “only by listening to the Pope’s suggestions, and those of a few Muslim intellectuals, can Islam’s chances for renewal become real.”

“It is high time that Islam deal with modernity; not to be swallowed up by it, but rather to take what good it has to offer and improve on it,” he said.

***

Dafydd has fun with the Dhimmi Times.

Speaking of dhimmis, meet the head of the Coptic Christian church, who has joined jihadists in denouncing the Pope.

***

Technorati tags: Pope Islam

***

Pope Rage on the Internet; church bombings in Gaza
I support the Pope
Oriana Fallaci, RIP, and the Religion of Perpetual Outrage

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P., and the Religion of Perpetual Outrage

Michelle Malkin — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:30:47 +0000

Deeply saddening news at the end of this 9/11 anniversary week. The outspoken lioness Oriana Fallaci has died of cancer:

Oriana Fallaci, one of Italy’s best-known writers and war correspondents who goaded the world’s great and issued a vitriolic assault on Islam after the September 11 attacks on the United States, died on Friday aged 77.

Fallaci died in her home town of Florence after battling cancer for several years, a hospital official said.

Aggressive and provocative to the end, Fallaci made her name as a tenacious interviewer of some of the most famous leaders of the 20th century.

She quarreled with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, provoked U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger into likening himself to a cowboy, and tore off a chador (enveloping Islamic robe) in a meeting with Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

“A great Italian and brave writer has died who has led a life full of passion, full of love, with great civil courage,” Ferruccio De Bortoli, editor-in-chief of Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper, told Reuters.

She refused to candycoat her criticisms of Islam. She refused to submit to jihadi thugs. Her books, her life, her rage and her reason serve as fiery inspirations in an era of flinching dhimmitude.

Buy her books if you haven’t yet to see why the jihadists wanted her put in jail for “insulting Islam:”

There is a translation of her essay last summer on the London bombings, which appeals directly to Pope Benedict, here. An excerpt:

Now, I ask myself: “What do you say, what do you have to say, about what happened in London?” They ask me face-to-face, via fax and email; often scolding me because up until now I have remained silent. Almost as if my silence were a betrayal. And each time I shake my head and murmur to myself: what else should I say?!? I’ve been saying it for four years–that I fight against the Monster that has decided to eliminate us physically and, along with our bodies, to destroy our principles and values. Our civilization. For four years I’ve been talking about Islamic Nazism; about the war against the West; about the death cult; about European suicide. About a Europe that is no longer Europe, but Eurabia, and that with its feebleness, its inertia, its blindness, its servitude to the enemy is digging its own grave. For four years, like another Cassandra, I’ve been shouting until I’m hoarse “Troy is burning! Troy is burning!” and I despair of the Danaids for whom, like Virgil in the Aeneid I weep for a city entombed in its torpor. [A city] that, through its wide-open doors receives fresh troops and joins complicit parties [inside]. For four years I’ve been repeating to the wind the truth about the Monster and its accomplices; that is, the accomplices of the Monster who, in good or bad faith, open wide the doors–who, like [those] in the Apocalypse of John the Evangelist, throw themselves at his feet and allow themselves to be stamped with the mark of shame.

I began with “The Rage and the Pride.“ I continued with “The Force of Reason.“ I followed [those] with “Oriana Fallaci Interviews Oriana Fallaci,” and “The Apocalypse.” And in each one I preached, “Wake up, West! Wake up!“ The books, the ideas, for which in France they tried me in 2002, accusing me of religious racism and xenophobia. For which Switzerland asked our Minister of Justice to extradite me in handcuffs. For which in Italy I will be tried for vilifying Islam; that is, for an offense of opinion. (An offense that carries a sentence of three years in prison; none of which will be served by the Islamist caught with explosives in his cantina). Books, ideas, for which the “Caviar” left, the “Fois Gras” right, and even the “Prosciutto” Center have denigrated and vilified me, putting me in the stocks together with all who think as I do. That is, together with the sensible and unprotected people who are defined by the radical-chic in their frivolous talk as “the riff-raff of the Right.”

Yes, it‘s true: In newspapers that in the best of cases pharasaically opposed me with a conspiracy of silence now appear titles using my concepts and words.–“War Against the West.”; “Cult of Death”; “The Suicide of Europe”; Wake up, Italy! Wake up!“ Yes, it’s true: Though without admitting I wasn’t wrong, the ex-secretary of the Democratic Left now submits to interviews in which he declares that “these-terrorists-want-to-destroy-our-values”; that “this-slaughter-is-facist-in-nature-and-expresses-hatred-for-our-civilization”. Yes, it‘s true: In speaking of Londonistan, the section of London where some 700,000 Muslims live, the newspapers which at first gave comfort to the terrorists–going so far as to make excuses for their crime are now saying what I did when I wrote that in each one of our cities exists another city. A subterranean city; equal to Beirut when it was invaded by Arafat in the 70s. A foreign city that speaks its own language and observes its own customs; a Muslim city where terrorists go about their business undisturbed and, thus undisturbed, plan our deaths. The rest is now spoken of openly; even Islamic terrorism, something that was carefully avoided in order not to offend moderate Muslims. Yes it’s true: Now, even the fifth columnists and the imams express their hypocritical condemnations, their mendacious loathing, their false solidarity with the relatives of the victims. Yes, it’s true: Now, thorough searches are being made in the cases of the accused Muslims; suspects are arrested; perhaps it will even be decided to expel them. But in substance, nothing has changed.Does the matter of the One God really suffice to establish a concord of concepts, of principles, of values?!? This is the point, in the unchanged reality of post-attack London that perhaps troubles me the most. I am also troubled because it goes along with, and thereby reinforces that which I consider the error committed by Papa Wojtyla: not to fight as much as he should have, in my opinion, against the illiberal and anti-democratic–no, cruel–essence of Islam. During these last four years, I have done nothing but ask myself why a warrior like Wojtyla, a leader so singular who contributed more than anyone else to the downfall of the Soviet empire and, therefore, of Communism, showed himself to be so weak towards a disease worse than the Soviet empire or Communism. A disease that, above all, targets Christianity (and Judaism) for destruction. I have done nothing but ask myself why he did not inveigh openly against what was happening (and is happening), for example, in Sudan where the fundamentalist regime was practicing (and is practicing) slavery. Where Christians were eliminated (are eliminated) by the millions. Why he was silent about Saudi Arabia where anyone with a Bible in hand or a cross around his neck was (and is) treated like a scum to be put to death. Still today, there is that silence I don’t understand, and…

***

Naturally, I understand that the philosophy of the Catholic Church is based on ecumenism and on the commandment “Love-your-enemy-as-yourself.“ That one of its fundamental principles (at least theoretically) is forgiveness, sacrifice, turning the other cheek. (A sacrifice I refuse not only for pride; that is, for my way of maintaining my dignity, but also because I believe there is a motive of Evil on the part of those who do evil.) But there also exists the principle of self-defense or, instead, legitimate defense and, if I’m not mistaken, the Catholic Church has made use of this principle more than once. Charles Martel turned back the Muslim invaders lifting up the crucifix. Isabel of Spain tossed them out of Spain while doing the same. And at Lepanto there were even Papal troops. In order to defend Vienna, the last bulwark of Christianity, in order to break the siege of Kara Mustafa, there was also, and above all, the Pole Jan Sobienski with the image of the Virgin of Chestochowa. And if those Catholics had not applied the principle of self-defense–of legitimate defense–we, too, would be wearing the burka or the calabash. We, too, would be calling the few survivors infidel dogs. We, too, We, too, would be cutting off their heads with the halal knife. And Saint Peter’s Basilica would be a mosque, like the Church of Saint Sofia in Istanbul. Worse: the Vatican would be Bin Laden and Zarqawi.

Thus, three days after the latest massacre, when Pope Ratzinger renewed the theme of dialogue, I was astonished. Your Holiness, I speak to you as a person who admires you very much. Who loves you, because you are right about so many things. Who, because of this, is mocked along with those nicknamed “devout atheist,“ “sanctimonious layperson,“ “clerical liberal.“ A person, above all, who understands politics and its necessities. Who understands the drama of leadership and its compromises. Who admires the stubbornness of faith and respects the renouncements and generosity that it demands. But I must pose the following question all the same: do you really believe that the Muslims would accept a dialogue with Christians, or with other religions, or with atheists like me? Do you really believe that they can change, reform, quit planting bombs? You are a very erudite man, Your Holiness. Very cultured. And you know them well. Much better than I. Explain to me then: When ever, in the course of their history–a history that has lasted for 1400 years–have they changed and reformed?

Oh, neither have we been, nor are we, angels. Agreed. Inquisitions, defenestrations, executions, wars, infamies of every kind; as well as Guelphs and Ghibellines without end. And if we want to judge ourselves severely, it’s enough to think about what we did sixty years ago with the Holocaust. But afterwards, we applied a little wisdom, of course. We thought about what we had done and if for no other reason than in the name of decency, we bettered ourselves a little. They have not. The Catholic Church experienced epochal changes, Your Holiness. And again, you know this better than I. At a certain point, it is remembered that the Church was preaching reason; thus choice; thus the Good, thus Liberty, and she ceased to tyrannize. To kill people. Or constrain them to paint only Christs and Madonnas. She understood laicism. Thanks to men of the first order, a long list of which You are a part, she leant a hand to democracy. And today, she speaks to people like me. She accepts them and, far from burning them alive (I never forget that up until four hundred years ago the Holy Office would have sent me to the stake), she respects their ideas. They do not. Therefore, there can be no dialogue with them. And this does not signify that I want to promote a war of religion, a Crusade, a witch hunt, as imbeciles and frauds. (Religious wars, Crusades–me?!? A non-religious person? Go figure. Like I’d want to incite a religious war or a Crusade. A witch hunt–me?!? Being considered a witch and a heretic by the same laypeople and the same liberals, go figure. Like I’d want to start a witch hunt. It simply signifies that to delude one’s self about them is against reason. Against Life, against one’s own survival. And woe unto those who take them into their confidence.

Given the Pope’s brave remarks just this week about Islam and jihad, which has Muslim leaders fuming (when are they not?), it has been heartening to see that Fallaci has had an obvious impact on his thinking.

May her life, an embodiment of the rejoinder “I will not submit,” continue to inspire more boldness.

***

From Gitmo Rage to Cartoon Rage to Fallaci Rage to Pope Rage, it’s always something with the Religion of Perpetual Outrage…and here we go again:

Turkey’s ruling Islamic-rooted party joined a wave of criticism of Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, accusing him of trying to revive the spirit of the Crusades with remarks he made about Islam. Muslim leaders in the Middle East expressed dismay, and Pakistan’s parliament unanimously condemned him.

The Vatican said the pope did not intend the remarks _ made in Germany on Tuesday during an address at a university _ to be offensive.

The pope quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian scholar on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

“The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,” the pope said.

“He said, I quote, ‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,’” he quoted the emperor as saying. He did not explicitly agree with them nor repudiate them.

Turkey’s top Islamic cleric, Religious Affairs Directorate head Ali Bardakoglu, asked Benedict on Thursday to apologize about the remarks and unleashed a string of accusations against Christianity, raising tensions before the pontiff’s planned visit to Turkey in November on what would be his first papal pilgrimage in a Muslim country.

Bardakoglu said he was deeply offended and called the remarks “extraordinarily worrying, saddening and unfortunate.”

***

Calling Oriana Fallaci
La Fallaci Decapitata
The trial of Oriana Fallaci
Solidarity with Oriana Fallaci
Oriana Fallaci on trial
Fallaci: “I stand with Israel”

Courageous women of the war
The murder of Father Santoro
Diana West: The pope’s unexploded bombshell
Bryan Preston: Fallaci and the pope
Oriana Fallaci Has Enrolled in the Society of Jesus

9/11 pledge: “I will not submit”

Michelle Malkin — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 19:27:00 +0000

The above phrase in Arabic is “lan astaslem.” It means “I will not surrender/I will not submit.” (Thanks to Rusty, Laura, and Daveed for translation help.) This is the last line of my 9/11 column and it’s my 9/11 anniversary message to the convert-or-die jihadists.

And yes, I’ve got t-shirts in the works as a response to Cindy Sheehan’s own Arabic moonbat version, which protests national security profiling.

Hers reads: “We will not be silent.” Yeah, well neither will I.

My morning has been devoted to paying tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks five years ago. They will never be forgotten. But as I wrote last night in noting the new Zawahiri video:

“Remembrance is worthless without resolve. And resolve is useless without recognition. You can’t know our enemies, let alone defeat them, with your head buried in the sand hiding from the ‘Islamophobia’ brigade.”

Remembrance. Resolve. Recognition. Those have been major themes of this blog over the past several years in covering everything from the battle over the Ground Zero memorial to the fight over the Flight 93 memorial to the terror-coddling by CAIR to our persistently stupid open-door policies to jihadis to the Mohammed Cartoon rage to the plight of Abdul Rahman to the blogger whistle-blowing on “Fauxtography.”

In keeping with those three tenets, I have chosen to welcome best-selling author Robert Spencer over at Hot Air today to provide much deeper historical context for the 9/11 attacks–context the appeasers and the Islamophobia-phobes prefer to ignore, misremember, or whitewash. We’ll be running another program later this week hosted by Robert, who will have a rejoinder to American al Qaeda Adam Gadahn. Gadahn named Robert and several other outspoken American analysts and authors, including Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson, who write critically on Islam and jihad.

We owe these and many other outspoken dissidents our thanks. I personally owe Robert, Daniel, Steve, Diana West, and Andy Bostom deepest gratitude for helping educate me about a threat I shrugged my shoulders at before 9/11. More: Bat Ye’or. Oriana Fallaci. Wafa Sultan. Aayan Hirsi Ali. Irshad Manji. Ibn Warraq. Bruce Bawer. MEMRI. Bloggers: Charles Johnson, The Jawa Report, Laura Mansfield, Gates of Vienna, The Counterterrorism Blog, Zombie, Honest Reporting, Paul Belien and The Brussels Journal. So many more.

Not all of them agree on every aspect of the Islamic terrorist threat to the West or how best to defend ourselves against it. And I don’t agree with everything they’ve written. But all of these men and women are inspirations who share a common intellectual defiance against submission to jihad.

For their refusal to submit, they have earned death threats, scorn, and endless accusations of “Islamophobia.” And not just from the unhinged Left. Ralph Peters of the New York Post, a venerable writer and author whose work I’ve admired and respected, lost it completely last week pointing fingers at unnamed “right-wing extremists” as “Islam Haters: The Enemy Within.” He refuses to name any names. He rages that his anonymous targets are the “Ku Klux Klan with higher-thread-count sheets.” And he plays the chickenhawk card to the hilt, as if civilians have no ammunition to offer in the battle against jihadists.

Sputters Peters:

“The most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism isn’t the irresponsible nonsense on the left – destructive though that is. The really ugly “domestic insurgency” is among right-wing extremists bent on discrediting honorable conservatism.”

Um, who’s shouting? And if “right-wing extremists” are more destructive than the jihadi-coddling Left, why can’t Peters muster up the cojones to name a single one of these destructive forces?

Andy Bostom has a scathing response. So does Spencer, who writes:

As I have said many times, I am all for encouraging and working with moderate Muslims. But for their moderation to be effective, they have to confront, repudiate, and help other Muslims to repudiate the elements of Islam that are giving rise to violent fanaticism. Most self-proclaimed moderates instead simply deny those elements exist, while the mujahedin continue to use those same elements to recruit new members. And now Ralph Peters, in his fog of confusion, has just contributed to that destructive denial.

It’s a measure of how triumphant the forces of political correctness have been over the past five years that attempts to discuss what Islam is actually about immediately invite cries of bigotry and “Islamophobia”–not only from the unhinged Left, but also from the obsequious Right.

I share my friend and Hot Air colleague Bryan Preston’s related thoughts on this:

Five years on, a psychosis has gripped millions who can’t and won’t fathom the true nature of the war we are in. For many of them, having been born and raised in an essentially post-Christian West, they can’t imagine that anyone might be motivated to kill and die because of something a warlord wrote down centuries ago. They cannot imagine any religion other than the one they believe they have outgrown being violent or causing violence. They cannot imagine anyone fighting for a cause that offers no material gains and therefore cannot be negotiated away. In our essentially materialist West, millions lack the imagination to believe that bin Laden’s pining for the return of Andalusia to Muslim rule is in his mind a legitimate reason to wage war on America now. They can imagine their own countrymen being so motivated, though, and I think that’s key to understanding their state of mind. They can imagine the Rotary Club member down the street plotting mayhem because he goes to church and votes Republican, but they can’t imagine that the Muslim in Karachi is a real, live enemy who is actually plotting an attack.

This lack of imagination has bred the anti-war madness we have now. Rather than accept the reality of an enemy that cannot and therefore will not negotiate away what he believes to be the will of God, and rather than accept that this enemy will understand nothing outside total victory or total defeat, and rather than understand that this enemy’s goals include enslaving the entire world in a global caliphate, and rather than accept that this reality necessitates the use of all tools including military might to defend ourselves, millions have embraced an alternate reality. The reality of the enemy outside the West and its motivations being too terrifying and too far beyond their own control, millions now imagine that the enemy in this war is within. The enemy, to them, isn’t the turbaned man behind the plot to hijack multiple airplanes and crash them into multiple buildings in America. The real enemy, to these millions, is the man in the Oval Office, and the man or men behind him.

Imagining the enemy as a Westerner who has a Western worldview and essentially Western motivations gives these millions the comfort of thinking that they can understand and defeat the enemy easily. They can expose him in the press or on their blog. They can spread the word through a bumper sticker or a sign in their yard. They can vote against him and encourage others to help vote him out. They can impeach him. They can shout and rail at anyone who supports him. They can destroy his political party and ruin his name. They can, in their own minds, win the war on their own terms without exposing themselves to danger. Because they have imagined their own enemy from before that day to be the enemy of civilization. And because it’s not really a war at all, just a made-up threat some evil neocons conjured up to scare everyone into giving them power. And that being the case, the deniers imagine that they can save civilizaton at the ballot box. They don’t have to find out what makes the enemy tick, they don’t have to fight him, and they don’t have to change their fundamental and now obviously flawed assumptions about humanity and the world.

If only it were that easy.

Five years on, the illness of replacing an implacable, indeed alien enemy with one from our own civilizational family has spread and metastasized through the majority of one of our two political parties, and may yet claim a majority of the country itself. History has a way of fading out as the day’s current noise rises in volume, and to them 9-11 is either history or a historic lie. The loudest voice, though not always or even often right, is often the one that gets the last word. And the 9-11 deniers and their allies across the left are nothing if not loud.

Five years on, it’s hard to take a positive look at the war because we are failing to comprehend it. The mass denial of reality is taking half our arsenal of unity and morale away from us. Those of us who see the threat for what it is still say that we will prevail because we are right and because we are America, but that’s just letting the others off the hook. If we’re going to prevail anyway, why should they snap out of their fog? And why should we demand that they do? The truth is, we need the denial to end and we need our countrymen to understand and help, but since we’re powerless to cure it with reason we shrug or laugh at it. But it’s eating away at our ability to defend ourselves.

And so I commemorate the fifth anniversary of the jihadi attacks on America with a small gesture.

“Lan astaslem.”

I will not submit. I will not surrender.

None of us can know exactly how we would act in Todd Beamer’s or Barbara Olson’s or Robert Stethem’s or Fabrizio Quattrocchi’s shoes. But we can gain strength in their memory, in the reinforcing presence of each other’s company, in making our refusal to submit public, and in working to honor this anniversary vow in small ways and large–long after the memorial candles have been blown out.

“I STAND WITH ISRAEL”

Michelle Malkin — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 22:55:37 +0000

Kate at Small Dead Animals reminds us of Oriana Fallaci’s searing essay from December 2002–which deserves to be reprinted far and wide (update: I’ve added hyperlinks for reference/background).

I find it shameful that in Italy there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they have drawn the swastika, incite people to hate the Jews. And who, in order to see Jews once again in the extermination camps, in the gas chambers, in the ovens of Dachau and Mauthausen and Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen et cetera, would sell their own mother to a harem.

I find it shameful that the Catholic Church should permit a bishop, one with lodgings in the Vatican no less, a saintly man who was found in Jerusalem with an arsenal of arms and explosives hidden in the secret compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to participate in that procession and plant himself in front of a microphone to thank in the name of God the suicide bombers who massacre the Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets. To call them “martyrs who go to their deaths as to a party.”

I find it shameful that in France, the France of Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, they burn synagogues, terrorize Jews, profane their cemeteries. I find it shameful that the youth of Holland and Germany and Denmark flaunt the kaffiah just as Mussolini’s avant garde used to flaunt the club and the fascist badge.

I find it shameful that in nearly all the universities of Europe Palestinian students sponsor and nurture anti-Semitism. That in Sweden they asked that the Nobel Peace Prize given to Shimon Peres in 1994 be taken back and conferred on the dove with the olive branch in his mouth, that is on Arafat. I find it shameful that the distinguished members of the Committee, a Committee that (it would appear) rewards political color rather than merit, should take this request into consideration and even respond to it. In hell the Nobel Prize honors he who does not receive it.

I find it shameful (we’re back in Italy) that state-run television stations contribute to the resurgent anti-Semitism, crying only over Palestinian deaths while playing down Israeli deaths, glossing over them in unwilling tones. I find it shameful that in their debates they host with much deference the scoundrels with turban or kaffiah who yesterday sang hymns to the slaughter at New York and today sing hymns to the slaughters at Jerusalem, at Haifa, at Netanya, at Tel Aviv.

I find it shameful that the press does the same, that it is indignant because Israeli tanks surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, that it is not indignant because inside that same church two hundred Palestinian terrorists well armed with machine guns and munitions and explosives (among them are various leaders of Hamas and Al-Aqsa) are not unwelcome guests of the monks (who then accept bottles of mineral water and jars of honey from the soldiers of those tanks).

I find it shameful that, in giving the number of Israelis killed since the beginning of the Second Intifada (four hundred twelve), a noted daily newspaper found it appropriate to underline in capital letters that more people are killed in their traffic accidents. (Six hundred a year).

I find it shameful that the Roman Observer, the newspaper of the Pope–a Pope who not long ago left in the Wailing Wall a letter of apology for the Jews–accuses of extermination a people who were exterminated in the millions by Christians. By Europeans. I find it shameful that this newspaper denies to the survivors of that people (survivors who still have numbers tattooed on their arms) the right to react, to defend themselves, to not be exterminated again.

I find it shameful that in the name of Jesus Christ (a Jew without whom they would all be unemployed), the priests of our parishes or Social Centers or whatever they are flirt with the assassins of those in Jerusalem who cannot go to eat a pizza or buy some eggs without being blown up.

I find it shameful that they are on the side of the very ones who inaugurated terrorism, killing us on airplanes, in airports, at the Olympics, and who today entertain themselves by killing western journalists. By shooting them, abducting them, cutting their throats, decapitating them. (There’s someone in Italy who, since the appearance of Anger and Pride, would like to do the same to me. Citing verses of the Koran he exorts his “brothers” in the mosques and the Islamic Community to chastise me in the name of Allah. To kill me. Or rather to die with me. Since he’s someone who speaks English well, I’ll respond to him in English: “F*** you.”)

I find it shameful that almost all of the left, the left that twenty years ago permitted one of its union processionals to deposit a coffin (as a mafioso warning) in front of the synagogue of Rome, forgets the contribution made by the Jews to the fight against fascism. Made by Carlo and Nello Rossini, for example, by Leone Ginzburg, by Umberto Terracini, by Leo Valiani, by Emilio Sereni, by women like my friend Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti who was shot at Florence on June 12, 1944, by seventy-five of the three-hundred-thirty-five people killed at the Fosse Ardeatine, by the infinite others killed under torture or in combat or before firing squads. (The companions, the teachers, of my infancy and my youth.)

I find it shameful that in part through the fault of the left–or rather, primarily through the fault of the left (think of the left that inaugurates its congresses applauding the representative of the PLO, leader in Italy of the Palestinians who want the destruction of Israel)–Jews in Italian cities are once again afraid. And in French cities and Dutch cities and Danish cities and German cities, it is the same. I find it shameful that Jews tremble at the passage of the scoundrels dressed like suicide bombers just as they trembled during Krystallnacht, the night in which Hitler gave free rein to the Hunt of the Jews.

I find it shameful that in obedience to the stupid, vile, dishonest, and for them extremely advantageous fashion of Political Correctness the usual opportunists–or better the usual parasites–exploit the word Peace. That in the name of the word Peace, by now more debauched than the words Love and Humanity, they absolve one side alone of its hate and bestiality. That in the name of a pacifism (read conformism) delegated to the singing crickets and buffoons who used to lick Pol Pot’s feet they incite people who are confused or ingenuous or intimidated. Trick them, corrupt them, carry them back a half century to the time of the yellow star on the coat. These charlatans who care about the Palestinians as much as I care about the charlatans. That is not at all…

I know Fallaci must be absolutely incensed–as am I–by the Vatican’s condemnation of Israel.

Douglas Urbanski, who has inside Vatican contacts, reports that the views expressed by Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who issued the statement while the Pope was on vacation, are renegade views and asks the question that needs to be asked: Does the Pope back Sodano’s statement? Urbanski points to this story on the rift between Pope Benedict XVI and Sodano. He’ll have more tonight as a guest host on the Rusty Humphries show. Tune in.

Relevant:

The murder of Father Santoro
The Pope takes on Islam * Pope Benedict on Islam and the West

Allah has all the latest news developments and a classic Pshop.

***

Reader John M. writes:

Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State, is an extreme liberal who has spewing anti-American and anti-Israel statements for years. Catholics like me have been constantly frustrated by him.

Thankfully, he was basically fired on June 22.

Here is a better article than the one you put on the blog. It talks about
Sodano and Pope Benedict’s opposition to him.

Also, Cardinal Arinze, the conservative Nigerian cardinal who is very close
to Benedict XVI, will be talking at Christendom College in Front Royal, VA
on July 28. Christendom is an excellent, very orthodox and conservative
Catholic university, with a graduate school in Northern Virginia.

Here is a link.

At his speech, I’m hoping someone will ask him his thoughts on Cardinal
Sodano’s statements and whether Pope Benedict condones them. I’m sure the
pope does not.

***
Previous:

Solidarity with Oriana Fallaci
The trial of Oriana Fallaci
Courageous women of the war
La Fallaci Decapitata
Oriana Fallaci on trial
Terrorism on Good Friday

SOLIDARITY WITH ORIANA FALLACI

Michelle Malkin — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 19:28:20 +0000

Sign a letter supporting Oriana Fallaci. (Hat tip: Gates of Vienna)

THE LETTER OF SOLIDARITY WITH ORIANA FALLACI

Judge Armando Grasso of Bergamo acknowledged a suit against Oriana Fallaci filed by the president of Muslim Union of Italy. On June 6th the trial against a journalist and a publicist over insult of Islam by statements made in her book “The force of reason” will start. We want to express our concern about the decision made by the judge of Bergamo, since such practices can lead to restrictions of freedom of speech in the realm of European democracy with human rights being its largest achievement.

We believe that freedom of speech is a universal value and should not fall within political, cultural or religious interests. Oriana Fallaci has been fighting for the freedom of expression in her work as a journalist throughout her whole life. As we intend to protect the freedom of speech we want to express our solidarity with Oriana Fallaci. Being aware of contentiousness of her latest statements, we still stand against the trial which is infringing the freedom of expression.

So far, the letter was signed by: KS. ADAM BONIECKI, ZBIGNIEW BUJAK, PROF. JANUSZ DEGLER, RED. KAMIL DURCZOK, WŁADYSŁAW FRASYNIUK, PROF. BRONISŁAW GEREMEK, PROF. MARIA JANION, RED. KATARZYNA KOLENDA-ZALESKA, BOGDAN LIS, PROF. STEFAN MELLER, PRIME MINISTER TADEUSZ MAZOWIECKI, ADAM MICHNIK, PROF. JAN MIODEK, RED. PIOTR NAJSZTUB, JANUSZ ONYSZKIEWICZ PH.D., RED. JUSTYNA POCHANKE, PROF. ADAM ROTFELD, PROF. BARBARA SKARGA, PROF. MAGDALENA SRODA, PRESIDENT LECH WAŁĘSA.

Will any American free-speech leftists sign the letter? The ACLU?

Yeah, right. And the NYTimes will print the Mohammed Cartoons on its front page.

***

Cinammon Stillwell has a timely overview of When Speech Becomes a Crime.

***

The trial of Oriana Fallaci
Courageous women of the war
La Fallaci Decapitata
Oriana Fallaci on trial
Terrorism on Good Friday

THE TRIAL OF ORIANA FALLACI

Michelle Malkin — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:07:36 +0000

This lioness has taught me much. Opened my eyes. Talk about speaking truth to power. Her trial in Italy for insulting Islam–for insulting Islam–commenced in Italy today.

Where are the free-speech champions? The feminists? The human rights brigade?

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

***

Robert Spencer weighs in on the trial and provides great background.

New Yorker: The Agitator

WSJ: Prophet of Decline

***
Previous:

Oriana Fallaci on trial
La Fallaci Decapitata
Hot Air: Women Warriors

TERRORISM ON GOOD FRIDAY

Michelle Malkin — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 19:14:11 +0000

Source: Free Copts

AP reporting multiple attacks on Christian Coptic churches in Egypt today…

A man with a knife attacked worshippers at two Coptic churches in the northern Mediterranean city of Alexandria during Mass on Friday, killing one person and wounding five before he was arrested, the government said.

The Interior Ministry identified the attacker as Mahmoud Salah-Eddin Abdel-Raziq and said he suffered from “psychological disturbances.”

The attacks came on what is Good Friday to many of the world’s Christians, although Egypt’s Copts _ and other followers of the Greek Orthodox church _ mark the holiday a week later.

Earlier, police officials said three men had been arrested in four simultaneous church assaults, one of them foiled by police. They said 17 people were wounded, and one later died.

There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancies between the reports. In the past, the government has tried to play down incidents that can be perceived as sectarian in nature so as not to inflame tensions between the Coptic minority and Muslim majority.

“This morning, a citizen attacked three worshippers inside the Mar Girgis Church in al-Hadhra with a knife and then fled and went into the Saints Church, where he attacked three other worshippers and again fled,” the ministry statement said.

While he was trying to enter a third church, he was stopped and arrested by police, the statement said.

It said one of the worshippers died of his wounds. The semiofficial Middle East News Agency identified the victim as Nushi Atta Girgis, 78.

…About 600 angry Copts, mostly young men, gathered to protest the attacks in the Sidi Bishr neighborhood, outside Saints Church. The area was ringed by about 200 riot police, and truckloads more were nearby. “Stop the persecution of Copts in Egypt,” read one banner.

Coptic Christians, who account for about 10 percent of Egypt’s 72 million people, complain of discrimination in getting jobs, particularly in senior levels of government. They generally live in harmony with the Muslim majority, although violence flares occasionally. “Hosni Mubarak, where are you? State security is between us and you!” some chanted.

Nearby, bloodstains could be seen on the top step of the church.

Howie at The Jawa Report points to more details at The Times of London website:

Police said three people were wounded at the nearby Mari Girgis (St. George) Church, and four attacked at a church in Abu Qir, several miles to the east.

“The attacker stormed the church armed with a knife and shouted ’There is no God but Allah’ and ’Allah is the greatest’ before stabbing the worshippers,” one of the Marie Girgis church employees told an AFP reporter at the scene.

***

Related: Bryan Preston notes a very interesting article on the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, Oriana Fallaci, and the Islam Question. Read it.