Religious Hate:

• Pop quiz: where did Jihadwatch find this quote on the exegesis of Jihad?

  And prepare against them all you can of power, including steeds of war to terrorise the enemies of Allah and others besides whom you may not know, but Allah does know. And whatever you shall spend in the Cause of Allah shall be repaid unto you, and you shall not be treated unjustly." [Quran 8:60]…

  According to the verse above ("And prepare against them all you can of power..."), military training is an obligation in Islam upon every sane, male, mature Muslim, whether rich or poor, whether studying or working and whether living in a Muslim or non-Muslim country. The Prophet (SAWS) explained the meaning of the term 'power' in the above verse during a Friday Sermon by mentioning that power was specifically shooting.

  This is fascinating precisely because Muskurahat.com is not a jihadi site, but apparently a secular, general interest site (I found this two clicks off the front page. Cricket coverage also features prominently.) To be fair, the article explicitly disavows terrorism against innocents, but Spencer’s snark is appropriate:

  John Esposito, Ibrahim Hooper, and Karen Armstrong should stop lecturing non-Muslims about peaceful jihad and devote themselves to explaining it to Muslims.

  Like this guy. And this guy. And these guys.

• Hezbullah’s Sheik Hassan Nasrallah showed up and spoke at the pro-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon on Tuesday. Earlier in the month he made some remarks which were less well reported:

  "The most honorable death is to be killed, as the Leader Imam Al-Khamenei said when 'Abbas [Musawi] was martyred. He said: 'Congratulations to 'Abbas, congratulations to 'Abbas.' The most honorable death is death by killing, and the most honorable killing and the most glorious martyrdom is when a man is killed for the sake of Allah, by the enemies of Allah, the murderers of the prophets [i.e. the Jews]."

  Any similarity to the rants of other Islamist terrorists must be purely coincidental. Don’t miss the “Death to America” speech, either. Nasrallah admits that EU terror sanctions would “destroy” Hezbullah. Faster, please.

• An Iranian military court sentenced Hamid Pourmand, Iranian pastor and former army colonel, to three years in jail because he did not declare his conversion from Islam to Christianity before he was promoted to the rank of officer.

• After the November 2003 suicide bombings in Istanbul that left 63 people dead, the son of one of the attackers told a journalist he was sorry that so many Muslims, and not more Jews, had been killed. For his statement, the 17-year-old was charged with inciting ethnic hatred. But the reporter who took the interview and wrote the article for Milliyet, a mainstream Turkish newspaper, also was charged under the same law for quoting him.

• in Pakistan, blasphemy laws are to blame for death threats against a teenage girl who allegedly threw a copy of the Qu‘ran in the trash.

  Last July, a Muslim woman accused 16-year-old Safad Tasneem Dean of throwing a copy of the Qu‘ran into a trash bin. An enraged group of Muslims gathered with the intention of burning the girl’s house. They tried to kill her but a group of local elders was able to save her by getting the police to arrest her.

• Even though the three Arab communities in the Galilee village of Mughar have traditionally maintained good relations, a false rumour started a riot against the Christians indicating that tensions are never far below the surface: When young Druse rioted in village, decades of amity took it on the chin

  The immediate reason was a rumor spread by a young Druse that Christian youths had placed doctored pictures of Druse girls on the Internet, attaching their faces to nude bodies.

• Hindu nationalism, with the backing of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is alive and well: Persecuting Christians

  In light of the situation, local Muslims have expressed their solidarity with the persecuted Christians of Rajasthan. Mohammed Seleem, a local Mulsim community leader, said that the state government, which is run by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), backs Hindu "fascist" organisations; "instead of punishing the persecutors, it takes aim at the their victims".

Idiotarian Seethings:

• Honest Reporting reminds us that anti-Israel media bias remains:

  On Monday (1/31), 10-year-old Nuran Deab was struck by a bullet in southern Gaza and died shortly thereafter. The IDF immediately suggested the gunshots may have come from nearby Palestinians firing celebratory shots in the air. Further, Reuters stated that 'it did not appear that Israeli soldiers some 600 meters away could have seen into the [school] compound from their position behind high walls.'
  
  Despite this, many news agencies were very quick to promote the Palestinian version of events, backed by the UN:
  
  - Agence France-Presse, under the headline 'Palestinian schoolgirl shot dead by Israeli troops in Gaza,' prominently quoted the PA prime minister condemning it as 'a crime.' The Israeli denial of responsibility was buried at the very end of the AFP report.
  
  - The Independent based its story on a UN official who directly accused the IDF of firing on Deab, then passed off IDF spokespersons who denied culpability as 'plainly embarrassed.'
  
  - Knight Ridder-Tribune quoted both Ahmed Qurei decrying the shooting as an IDF 'war crime,' and a UN official condemning 'the Israeli military's indiscriminate firing into civilian areas.'

  Will they report that the Palestinian Authority has arrested a Palestinian man for the shooting?

• “There's never been a positive article about North Korea, not one”, complains an anonymous businessman totalitarian apparatchik of the DPRK. Taking pity, Barbara Demick of the LA Times obliges him in an article titled N. Korea, Without the Rancor. “Winds” treats this obsequious and offensive puff piece to some well deserved ridicule and fiskage.

• A best-selling novel in Turkey depicts a future attack on Turkish soil by American forces in order to "seize Turkey's rich borax mines, which account for 60% of the world's boron production." All you boron are belong to us.

• Who was responsible for the assassination of Hariri? Who else? An Australian conspiracy nut says it was a “Jewish Special Forces micro-nuke” Meanwhile the Guardian publishes Patrick Seale’s musing: unable to grasp the idea that Syria could have made a grave mistake, he notes that Israel possessed means and motive. The Egyptian daily “al-Osbo” agrees.

• Ward Churchill on appeared on Bill Maher’s show, and Jeff Jarvis liveblogged and subsequently performed an audio podcast fisking. Churchill graces our Idiotarian section on the strength of his Lifetime Achievement Award in this space, not this particular TV appearance - I saw Churchill on Maher but flipped past faster than I would past monkey pr0n on Discovery. If I’m being horribly unfair, let me know.

Race and Culture:

• From MEMRI, news that France will ban Iran’s Sahar TV for its anti-Semitic programming – specifically for broadcasting a “libelous, odious, and highly inflammatory fiction” called “Zahra's Blue Eyes” (which we’ve covered here before). The producer, Ahmad Mir-'Alawii, on the inspiration for his series which “documents” how Israelis steal the organs of Palestinian children:

  "There is a white ship sailing the oceans. It doesn't enter the territorial waters of Iran or similar countries. Our Arab brothers must look out for this ship. In it [the Zionists] hold children only one or two years old, who don't know anything... They become teenagers, not knowing what their fate will be. They receive the best medical care and are under constant physical monitoring and supervision. Why do [the Zionists] give them such care? To use them for medical purposes. They use the heart, the kidneys, and their other organs.

  What’s scarier, that Mir-'Alawii is making this up, or that he believes it?

• According to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which advises the US Congress, Pakistan is probably the “most anti-American country” in the world.

  Pakistan is “probably the most anti-American country in the world right now, ranging from the radical Islamists on one side to the liberals and Westernised elites on the other side,” according to a CRS analysis up to February 14, reports the Press Trust of India.

• The Pakistanis will perhaps find competition with Turkey, where columnist Cengiz Çandar cites a recent BBC survey to claim that Turks are the Gold Medalists in Anti-Americanism. Frankly, the MEMRI article contains mostly fairly standard political screed, not rising to the level of hate speech, but this, by columnist Dr. Burhan Ozfatura, goes over the top:

  I strongly believe that the U.S. had its hand in the earthquakes of Istanbul-Izmit and the recent Southeast Asia disasters.

  I take it Dr. Ozfatura’s PhD is not in Geology.

• Via Drudge: An African-American diplomat has been attacked by skinheads in Ukraine . Maybe they figure that with the lack of clout from black Americans at State… oh, wait…

• A mixed picture of Palestinian reaction to the recent suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv nightclub. Mark Steyn cites Charles Johnson’s inability to find Palestinian celebrations as progress – in Charles’ words:

  I admit, I’ve been scanning headlines and photos for the traditional Palestinian celebrations of mass murder ... but they didn’t appear this time.

  (He did find some later in Hebron, and a reference by the Voice of Palestine to the nightclub as a “military target”). The Jerusalem Post surveys the reaction in the Palestinian media, finding that although the timing of the attack is criticized, the morality is not – the suicide bomber is declared a shahid (martyr).

  On Monday, Hassan Asfour, a member of the PA parliament, put it this way on Palestinian TV: "This is the first action that no one is happy about. Everyone felt that the timing is not [right] and there is absolutely no need for it... It is not because the resistance against the occupation is a mistake, but because the nature, location and timing of the action are a mistake."

  A broader survey of incitement in Palestinian media and society since the election of Abu Mazen finds several positive steps against incitement taken by the Palestinian Authority, but (surprise) the incitement by Hamas continues. More on the bomber and Palestinian Islamic Jihad here, including background on current leader Dr. Ramadan Shalah, who once taught Middle East studies at the University of South Florida.

• Sadly, the fraud “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” persists:

  JERUSALEM – Syria has published an updated version of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an anti-Semitic story that claims Jews run the world by proxy, adding to it Islamic extremist ideology and dedicating the work to Palestinian suicide bombers, WorldNetDaily has learned.

  And via LGF, a commentary at an Venezuelan online news site (which seems to be a vehicle for Chavez rants) touting the Protocols as the key to the threats against the “Bolivarian Revolution”.

  These protocols are definitely not the rantings of some crazed lunatic as the these puppet masters would have us believe. I invite the leaders of the democratic South American nations to read them. After doing so, they will have to come to the same conclusion as I have, that these bankers are 'Grand Conspirators' who will go to any length to subvert all nations and impose a world fascist dictatorship and as such it is these co-conspirators who have to be democratically eliminated.

  “Democratically eliminated” - gee, wonder what he means...

• Impunity for tribal gang-rapes in Pakistan: one step forward, two steps back Mukhtaran Bibi was ordered to be gang-raped by a tribal council. This is a brutal story and now the Pakistani courts have set the rapists free.

  Her 12-year-old brother was accused of having an affair with a woman from the higher-caste Mastoi tribe. In punishment, the elders ordered that Mukhtaran be raped. As several hundred people watched, four men dragged her screaming through a cotton field. Pushing her into a mud-walled house, they assaulted her for more than an hour.
  ...
  Government investigators found the accusation against her brother, Shakoor, was false. Instead they found evidence to support his claim that two Mastoi men had sodomised him.
  Yesterday a high court judge in Multan overturned the decision against the Mastoi rapists, citing flaws in the prosecution case. Faiz Ahmad, the Mastoi elder who allegedly ordered the rape punishment, and four other men were freed. A sixth man had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

• In Pakistan, a man murders his sister, a divorced mother of four, to save his family honour. He blames it on societal pressure. Through the eyes of an honour killer

• The sad story of Hatin Sürücü, who was gunned down by her brothers at a Berlin bus stop for the crime of living like a German, has received substantial coverage. Apparently there have been six “honor” killings in the last four months in Berlin alone. While the German authorities have hesitated in scrutinizing the situation of immigrant women for fear of appearing “racist”, Serap Cileli, a Turkish author and filmmaker, notes there is a different kind of racism now manifest:

  "A European [Theo Van Gogh] was killed because he defended us -- and the world press stood up to listen. But how many women died before him?"

  Ouch. Don’t miss Robin Burk’s posts on the subject of “honor” killings, and this anthology of wife beating discussions from Arab TV.

A Hopeful Note:

• In Israel, where over 60% of Jewish women are in the work force, efforts are being made to help Israeli Arab women advance in the business world as well. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the PA followed example and similar efforts were started in West Bank and Gaza?

  For years, in the silence of midnight, Gamila Khir secretly perfected her homemade olive oil and herb soaps. When she launched her soap-making business, her Druse neighbors and even her husband mocked her.
  
  Now that she runs two factories, employs 26 workers and sells her products as far away as the United States, Hong Kong, Japan and the Netherlands, no one is laughing anymore.

• In France, where the Muslim population has yet to be assimilated into a French society that's never accepted "les beurs," Dounia Bouzar, anthropologist, convert to Islam and author of "Monsieur Islam n'existe pas; Pour une desislamisation des debats" (Mr. Islam doesn't exist; de-islamisizing the discussions) says that "you can't fight discrimination by building mosques."

  "Concerning the youth that are connecting directly to sheikhs in Saudi Arabia, I want to know why they're going there - discrimination over the years hasn't changed in France so why are they looking to Saudi Arabia now for solutions?" she says, adding that in the more fundamentalist line of thinking "there's almost a pathological obsession with the past."

  What does it mean to be Muslim in a secular society?

• Via Glenn, news that Spanish Islamic clerics have issued a Fatwa against bin Laden:

  “Inasmuch as Osama bin Laden and his organization defend terrorism as legal and try to base it on the Quran ... they are committing the crime of 'istihlal' and thus become apostates that should not be considered Muslims or treated as such.” The Arabic term 'istihlal' refers to the act of making up one's own laws.

  Mr. bin Laden could not be reached for comment.

• The word on the [Arab] street is Kifaya – Enough.

• Finally, on a lighter note: here’s a hatesite we can all get behind, red in tooth and claw. How is this? Hint, this is the blogosphere, and it is Friday. [Hat tip: LGF]