Sectarian bloodshed in a familiar place: Lebanon

One of the most powerful, raw, emotional photos I've seen in a long time. This shooting, but one bout of recent warfare between Sunnis and Shiites, occurred during a funeral procession last week. The story is here.

Pope urges Israel to help Christians in Mideast

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday asked Israel to ease travel restrictions for Mideast Christians, who in Gaza and the West Bank and places like Lebanon have been under attack.

Benedict has made concern over the future of Middle East Christians a
priority. Economic problems as well as violence in the Holy Land and Iraq have led Christians to emigrate from the region.

"I pray that, in consequence of the growing friendship between Israel and the Holy See, ways will be found of reassuring the Christian community that they
have a secure future in the region," Benedict said.

He said problems facing Christians are related to Israel-Palestinian tensions.

The Holy See recognizes Israel's legitimate need for security and self-defense and strongly condemns all forms of anti-Semitism, the pope said.

At the same time, he urged Israel to alleviate travel restrictions causing hardships for Palestinians.

The ambassador, in his remarks released by the Vatican, said Israel would do its utmost to help strengthen the Christian communities in Israel as their essential presence in the Holy Land is deeply rooted and historically self-understood.

This is a bit of a different tone from the Holy See than when the Vatican's former ambassador to Israel said, "relations between the Catholic Church and the state of Israel were better when there were no diplomatic relations."

Turkey moves to modernize Islam

The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.

Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.

Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it.

The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara University's School of Theology.

Fr Felix Koerner, a Christian theologian who has observed the project, says some of the sayings - also known individually as "hadiths" - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.

"Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation," he says.

"You can find messages which say 'that is what the Prophet ordered us to do'. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition."

More about the Islamic Reformation can be found here.

There have been tensions in the past year as Turkey struggles to find its soul. The country has been more moderate and secular than its neighbors to the east. (This is where Ismail Bardhi earned his doctorate in Islamic studies.) And it isn't entirely surprising that such a reformation would spring out of a country that straddles Europe and the Middle East.

Evangelicals kicked out of Jordan

There is an important post over at the CT Liveblog discussing recent reports that evangelical Christians have been kicked out of Jordan or had their visa renewals denied.

The government alleges covert missionary activity. Compass Direct reports on this aspect, noting in a late February dispatch:

Jordan last week [week of Feb. 17] admitted to expelling foreigners for “illegal” missionary activities. Acting Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh told the Jordanian parliament on Wednesday (February 20) that authorities had expelled missionaries operating “under the cover of doing charitable work,” suggesting that evangelistic activity is illegal in Jordan. If such evangelistic work were illegal, Jordan could be opening itself to accusations of violating of Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the country published in its official Gazette in July 2006, giving it the force of law.

On January 29 Compass reported that Jordan had deported and denied residence permits to at least 27 foreign Christian individuals and families in 2007. On February 20 the acting foreign minister, Judeh, read a statement by the Council of the Church Leaders of Jordan condemning the Compass report. The Jordanian parliament on Thursday (February 21) then passed a resolution condemning the Compass article. While it was unclear what the government considered false in the report, the fact of deportations of Christians was further verified as authorities on February 10 expelled an Egyptian pastor with the Assemblies of God church in Madaba and, the previous week, an Egyptian pastor from a Baptist church in Zarqa.

The big question for President Bush and Jordan's King Abdullah is this: How can they expect evangelicals, American or otherwise, to support a Middle East peace strategy that puts a very low priority on securing religious freedom for all peoples of the Middle East?

If religious freedom is in jeopardy in a Western-friendly nation like Jordan, then Islamic leaders in Gaza, Syria, Iran, or Afghanistan have little or no motivation provide religious freedom to their populations.

Islamic Jihad: Let's have a bake sale

I wasn't able to see Jeffrey Goldberg -- the author of "Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide" who had a great Atlantic cover story this month on the future nations of the Middle East -- when he spoke at UCLA Hillel and Sinai Temple this month. But Jewish Current Issues has an interesting quote about the presidential election from his talk at the latter location.

There is almost this childish belief that on January 20, 2009 we will elect another president and that it will be Obama, or at least a woman, and the world will say “Oh great! Now we can like you again!”

There is this level of childish certainty in that -- that I find unfathomable. Because the next American president will have to advance America’s interests around the world. Some of those interests will have to be advanced in hard ways.

I predict that if Barack Obama becomes president, by late 2009 the stories in newspapers in Europe and on TV across the Arab world will be “Oh my God, this Obama is like Bush Lite!”

Why? Because he’s had to take hard steps in Afghanistan. Because he’s had to take hard steps in Pakistan. Because he hasn’t actually pulled out of Iraq, because pulling out of Iraq is not as easy as it sounds when you are debating Hillary Clinton on a stage somewhere. . . .

Because the next president -- whoever it is -- is going to face the same set of enormous problems, and like any president is going to have limited maneuverability to deal with those problems. And those problems are not going to go away. The Islamic Jihad is not going to say “Well! They elected Barack Obama! I guess we should just have a bake sale or something.”

Imagining a newly divided Middle East

Not long ago, in a decrepit prison in Iraqi Kurdistan, a senior interrogator with the Kurdish intelligence service decided, for my entertainment and edification, to introduce me to an al-Qaeda terrorist named Omar. “This one is crazy,” the interrogator said. “Don’t get close, or he’ll bite you.”

Omar was a Sunni Arab from a village outside Mosul; he was a short and weedy man, roughly 30 years old, who radiated a pure animal anger. He was also a relentless jabberer; he did not shut up from the moment we were introduced. I met him in an unventilated interrogation room that smelled of bleach and paint. He was handcuffed, and he cursed steadily, making appalling accusations about the sexual practices of the interrogator’s mother. He cursed the Kurds, in general, as pig-eaters, blasphemers, and American lackeys. As Omar ranted, the interrogator smiled. “I told you the Arabs don’t like the Kurds,” he said. I’ve known the interrogator for a while, and this is his perpetual theme: close proximity to Arabs has sabotaged Kurdish happiness.

Omar, the Kurds claim, was once an inconsequential deputy to the now-deceased terrorist chieftain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Omar disputed this characterization. By his own telling, he accomplished prodigies of terror against the pro-American Kurdish forces in the northern provinces of Iraq. “You are worse than the Americans,” he told his Kurdish interrogator. “You are the enemy of the Muslim nation. You are enemies of God.” The interrogator—I will not name him here, for reasons that will become apparent in a moment—sat sturdily opposite Omar, absorbing his invective for several minutes, absentmindedly paging through a copy of the Koran.

During a break in the tirade, the interrogator asked Omar, for my benefit, to rehearse his biography. Omar’s life was undistinguished. His father was a one-donkey farmer; Omar was educated in Saddam’s school system, which is to say he was hardly educated; he joined the army, and then Ansar al-Islam, the al-Qaeda–affiliated terrorist group that operates along the Iranian frontier. And then, on the blackest of days, as he described it, he fell prisoner to the Kurds.

The interrogator asked me if I had any questions for Omar. Yes, I said: Have you been tortured in this prison?

“No,” he said.

“What would you do if you were to be released from prison right now?”

“I would get a knife and cut your head off,” he said.

At this, the interrogator smacked Omar across the face with the Koran.

Omar yelped in shock. The interrogator said: “Don’t talk that way to a guest!”

Now, Omar rounded the bend. A bolus of spit flew from his mouth as he screamed. The interrogator taunted Omar further. “This book of yours,” he said, waving the Koran. “‘Cut off their heads! Cut off their heads!’ That’s the answer for everything!” Omar cursed the interrogator’s mother once again; the interrogator trumped him by cursing the Prophet Muhammad’s mother.

The meeting was then adjourned.

In the hallway, I asked the interrogator, “Aren’t you Muslim?”

“Of course,” he said.

“But you’re not a big believer in the Koran?”

“The Koran’s OK,” he said. “I don’t have any criticism of Muhammad’s mother. I just say that to get him mad.”

He went on, “The Koran wasn’t written by God, you know. It was written by Arabs. The Arabs were imperialists, and they forced it on us.” This is a common belief among negligibly religious Kurds, of whom there are many millions.

“That’s your problem, then,” I said. “Arabs.”

“Of course,” he replied. “The Arabs are responsible for all our misfortunes.”

“What about the Turks?” I asked. It is the Turks, after all, who are incessantly threatening to invade Iraqi Kurdistan, which they decline to call “Iraqi Kurdistan,” in more or less the same obstreperous manner that they refuse to call the Armenian genocide a genocide.

“The Turks, too,” he said. “Everyone who denies us our right to be free is responsible for our misfortunes.”

We stepped out into the sun. “The Kurds never had friends. Now we have the most important friend, America. We’re closer to freeing ourselves from the Arabs than ever,” he said.

So goes the opening of Jeffrey Goldberg's amazing cover story for this month's Atlantic and the hope of Iraqi Kurds who believe the American-led ouster of Saddam Hussein was the beginning of the new nation of Kurdistan. In his article, Goldberg imagines a new map of the Middle East, seen above, which he says could be the greatest consequence of the war.

It used to be that the most far-reaching and inventive question one could ask about the Middle East was this: How many states, one or two—Israel or a Palestinian state, or both—will one day exist on the slip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River?

Today, that question seems trivial when compared with this one: How many states will there one day be between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates River? Three? Four? Five? Six? And why stop at the western bank of the Euphrates? Why not go all the way to the Indus River? Between the Mediterranean and the Indus today lie Israel and the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Long-term instability could lead to the breakup of many of these states.

These new nations would largely be drawn along racial and ethnic lines, which certainly would lead to lots of bloodshed, probably like what we saw in Iraq before the sectarian violence slowed toward the end of the year. In fact, many in the Middle East and some pro-Palestinian American academics think this was the goal: an American plot to Balkanize Arab countries for the benefit of Israel. Seriously. The article is so ripe with choice nuggets that I can't possibly mention them all, but here is a poignant one made by a long-quite voice.

The neoconservatives’ big idea was that American-style democracy would quickly take hold in Iraq, spread through the Arab Middle East, and then be followed by the collapse of al-Qaeda, who would no longer have American-backed authoritarian Arab regimes to rally against. But democracy has turned out to be a habit not easily cultivated, and the idea that Arab political culture is capable of absorbing democratic notions of governance has fallen into disfavor.

In December of 2006, I went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington for a ceremony honoring Natan Sharansky, who had just received the Medal of Freedom from President Bush. Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, had become the president’s tutor on the importance of democratic reform in the Arab world, and during the ceremony, he praised the president for pursuing unpopular policies. As he talked, the man next to me, a senior Israeli security official, whispered, “What a child.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s not smart … He wants Jordan to be more democratic. Do you know what that would mean for Israel and America? If you were me, would you rather have a stable monarch who is secular and who has a good intelligence service on your eastern border, or would you rather have a state run by Hamas? That’s what he would get if there were no more monarchy in Jordan.”

After the ceremony, I spoke with Sharansky about this critique. He acknowledged that he is virtually the lone neoconservative thinker in Israel, and one of the few who still believes that democracy is exportable to the Arab world, by force or otherwise.

“After I came back from Washington once,” he said, “I saw [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon in the Knesset, and he said, ‘Mazel tov, Natan. You’ve convinced President Bush of something that doesn’t exist.’”

The American wives of Saudi men

Yesterday's Column One by Jeffrey Fleishman was, as usual, an excellent read. The storyline was, as usual, unique and, as of late, about the collision of Western values and Muslim culture:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Teresa Malof knew she wasn't in Kentucky anymore when a cleric issued a fatwa against her secret Santa gift exchange.

Malof proposed the idea at the King Fahad National Guard Hospital, where she has worked for more than a decade. It was supposed to be discreet, but rumors were whispered amid veils and hijabs that the lithe, blond nurse, raised on farmland at the edge of Appalachia, was planning to celebrate a Christian tradition in an Islamic kingdom that forbids the practicing of other religions.

"Even though I'm a Muslim too, I like to celebrate the holidays and have gift exchanges," said Malof, a convert to Islam who is married to the son of a former Saudi ambassador. "But word got out and the religious people came with a fatwa [or edict] against the Santa party. My husband was having a heart attack. He was worried I'd be in a lot of trouble."

For American women married to Saudi men, such is life in this exotic, repressive and often beguiling society where tribal customs and religious fervor rub against oil wealth and the tinted-glass skyscrapers that rise Oz-like in the blurry desert heat. This is not a land of the 1st Amendment and voting rights; it is a kingdom run by the strict interpretation of Wahhabi Islam, where abayas hang in foyers, servants linger like ghosts, minarets glow in green neon and, as a recent court case showed, a woman who is raped can also be sentenced to 200 lashes for un-Islamic behavior.

"Haram, haram" (forbidden, forbidden). American wives know the phrase well. It is learned over years of peeking through veils at supermarkets or sitting in the back of SUVs while Filipinos behind the wheel glide through traffic. Their adopted Arab home is a traditionally close U.S. ally. But like much of the Islamic world, Saudi Arabia's relations with Washington have been strained since the rise of global jihad. Terrorist bombings, which have killed nearly 150 people here in recent years, have kept many American families in gated communities that have the aura of golf courses protected by small armies.

Most non-Muslim women convert to Islam as a prerequisite for marrying a Saudi and living in the kingdom. Many American women, including those who converted before they arrived, have embraced the Koran; for others, the adoption of Islam is a pantomime act, the disguise of a second self to hold them over until they peel off their head scarves and travel to the U.S. for summer vacations.

For both kinds of women, it is a life of sacrifices and measured victories: Women can't drive or vote in Saudi Arabia, but their children are largely safe from street crime and drugs; a wife can't leave the country without her husband's written permission, but tribal and religious codes instill a strong sense of family.

Freedom lies behind courtyard walls, where private swimming pools glimmer and the eyes of the religious police, known as the mutaween, do not venture. Rock 'n' roll (haram) is played, smuggled whiskey (haram) is sipped, and Christianity (haram) sometimes is practiced. This sequestered, contradictory experience, a number of American wives noted, can turn an expat into an alcoholic or a born-again Christian, and sometimes both.

"American women get together and we talk," said Lori Baker, a mother of two who met her Saudi husband at Ohio State University in 1982. "We ask one another, 'Where are you on your curve now? Have you hit bottom yet?' We all go through the highs and lows when it comes to moods and tolerance. . . . When I first got here, I felt naked without my head scarf.

"Then after the terrorist bombings in 2003, I even covered my face. Foreigners were a target then. I became very comfortable with my face covered. I felt safe. Nobody knows me. They can't see me, and if you're covered, they respect you. Sometimes without a covered face it's like walking down Main Street wearing a bikini."

Read the rest here.

The easy answer: The Jews did it

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, The Jewish Journal ran a cover story that superimposed these words over silhouettes of the World Trade Center towers: "THE JEWS DIDN'T DO IT, YOU IDIOTS!"

I mentioned this in September as one of many immortal fallacies, and was just reminded of it while reading a remembrance of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister who was assassinated last week.

Bhutto told me she knew that if she returned to Pakistan, she’d probably be killed. She was, on December 27, shot after a rally in Rawalpindi, the military garrison town abutting Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. No one who knew her — or understood what she was — was surprised.

Least of all Hamid Gul, the former director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s notorious intelligence service, famously aligned with Islamist extremists, and still known as the man at the ISI’s controls. Days after my first conversation with Bhutto, I met with Gul in his home in Rawalpindi, a few hundred yards from where Benazir was to die. First, Gul told me he knew for a fact that the Mossad was behind the 9/11 attacks, and that Monica Lewinsky was an Israeli agent sent by Tel Aviv to undo the Clinton presidency. Then he said, matter-of-factly, “Being prime minister again is a job Benazir will not do.” He paused and cocked his head. “But she can try it if she likes.”

Tucked in there, right in the middle, are two less-than-flattering-but-oft-mentioned maligns of Jews. These are, in essence, the descendant lies of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." And not only in the Muslim world.

Season 10 of "South Park" saw Cartman finger Kyle, the fourth grade's only Jew, as the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks. Here in Los Angeles, the head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council pondered on the radio whether Israel was behind the attacks "because, I think, this diverts attention from what's happening in the Palestinian territories, so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies." He later apologized for the remark.

Effort to destroy Old Damascus

The city of Old Damascus is presently threatened by an obtuse and cynical plan that would destroy great chunks of it. The Syrian regime is trying to push through a "modernization" and "re-development" scheme, which would raze areas dating back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, including Syria's second oldest mosque, Jami' al-Tawba, of great beauty and historical significance. The company that aims to do this is a regime protégé. The boorish mayor of Damascus, Bishr Sabban, recently described the buildings to be razed as "garbage", not heritage. Like most regime officials, he has been ordered to say (and may, to his shame, actually believe) that the ripping out of the world's oldest city's heart, to replace it with banal and vulgar multi-story hotels, tower blocks, American-style shopping malls and motorways, is a laudable thing.

I found this article in the current issue of Islamica magazine, which I picked up at the MPAC conference two weeks ago. It is a familiar story not simply because historic buildings are being destroyed for the sake of "progress" and profit but because, as is the case with many things in Syria, the hand of Iran is seen in this effort to reshape a neighborhood that is predominantly Sunni Muslim and Christian.

Christians approaching zero in PA-run parts of Holy Land

The ever-dwindling Christian communities living in Palestinian-run territories in the West Bank and Gaza are likely to dissipate completely within the next 15 years as a result of increasing Muslim persecution and maltreatment, an Israeli scholar said Monday.

"The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs," said Justus Reid Weiner, an international human rights lawyer in an address at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, where he serves as a scholar in residence.

He cited Muslim harassment and persecution as the main cause of the "acute human rights crisis" facing Christian Arabs, and predicted that unless governments or institutions step in to remedy the situation - such as with job opportunities - there will be no more Christian communities living in the Palestinians territories within 15 years, with only a few Western Christians and top clergymen left in the area.

"Christian leaders are being forced to abandon their followers to the forces of radical Islam," Weiner said.

The rest of the article from the Jerusalem Post is here. A Christian exodus has been a constant fear in not just Gaza and the West Bank but also Lebanon. (This to go with the fact that the Jordan River has become too toxic for baptisms.) Two years ago, the LA Times reported that Christians were becoming a scarce site in of Bethlehem, the West Bank town with a special meaning to Christians this Advent.

(Mayor Hanna) Nasser, 68, who is Catholic and displays a photograph of himself shaking hands with Pope John Paul II, gestured toward the church and considered a gloomy future for Palestinian Christians, most of whom are Greek Orthodox. "I'm afraid we'll come and see nothing but stones here -- the stones of the churches, but no people," he said.

'Hook-nosed, bloodstained Jews out to trick peaceful Arabs at Annapolis summit'

This is from my colleague Dennis Wilen, who runs JewishJournal.com and the blog Funny, you don't look bloggish:

OK, Olmert says it's no big deal the Saudis and their pals won't 'shake hands' with the Jews at the conference; at least they won't be trotting out shopworn stereotypes about conniving Jews hoodwinking the Arab world and the international community, right?

Or will they?

Yes they will, according to this batch of editorial cartoons from Mideast newspapers compiled by the Anti-Defamation League.

There was obviously far more from today's peace conference. Start here with the Jerusalem Post's home page. The liberal daily Haaretz also has wall-to-wall coverage, and American papers like the Washington Post and NY Times did their thing.

Now, let's see where this goes ...

Peace: Now or never?

Regarding the Annapolis peace summit, which will be held tomorrow, Time magazine reports:

When Middle East adversaries meet in Annapolis this week, will it be a peace conference, or rather a conference that ends all peace? Nearly 60 years since the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli conflict, that may well be the stark choice that awaits the conference's participants.

Doomsday predictions, of course, have long been a staple of Middle East commentary. Every negotiation seems to be the "last chance" for peace. Every crisis seems to threaten the outbreak of a major war, if not the great apocalypse. But there's reason to pay attention to the warnings this time. The 1979 Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel planted the seed for resolving the core of the conflict: the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Arab territories seized by Israel in the 1967 war. But if the Annapolis conference fails to provide urgently needed nourishment, the two-state solution and its hope of peace may die forever.

Saving Israel from Annapolis

Robert Avrech at Seraphic Secret has posted an impassioned piece about saving Israel from the Israeli prime minister and the peace summit he will attend with Arab leaders Monday.

Annapolis is coming up tomorrow and a stew of Judenrein Arab countries are going to show up in order to pressure Israel to, well, cease to exist.

Yep, let's face it, that is the end game.

Look, our friends the Saudis won't even shake hands with Jews. Now that's how to negotiate. And the left are so desperate for petro-approval they are willing to hand over Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, expel something like 85,000 Jews from their homes, hey Gaza Redux, that worked out really well, and offer citizenship to like a zillion jihadist Arabs—all for a handshake, and some vague promises of recognition.

Gee, what a bargain.

If I was offered a deal like that in Hollywood—I'd fire my agent.

No handshake to the infidel Jooz. Not surprising from a country—well not really a country—more like a massively corrupt family corporation that officially does not allow Jews to set foot on its soil, and soaks its people in the most ghastly Jew-hatred imaginable.

But the Saudis have a peace plan.

These people who condemn a gang rape victim to be whipped .

Yes, we're supposed to listen to their geo-political wisdom.

Who else is coming to Annapolis?

Algeria.

Oh goody. Now there's a model of state craft. Not a Jew left in Algeria. You know why? Because after the blood-soaked Algerian revolution against France the Muslims murdered or expelled the entire ancient Algerian Jewish community. Any reparations ever paid for property and money stolen?

You have to be kidding.

Who else is coming to Annapolis?

He goes on to discuss Yemen, Syria and Sudan, and suggests that PM Ehud Olmert "can be counted on to give away everything but a strategic coffee shop or two in Tel Aviv."

Regardless of what Olmert offers, it's unlikely he or his equally unpopular Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, can implement anything.

Double the lashings for gang-rape victim

You read that headline twice, right? I must have made a mistake. Judges don't punish the rape victim. Right? Well, they do in Saudi Arabia. From Mere Rhetoric:

As predictable as it is infuriating as it is surreal:

The General Court in Qatif yesterday doubled the number of lashes for a rape victim... TA year-and-a-half ago in the Eastern Province town of Qatif, a seven men gang-raped a 19-year-old girl 14 times. Three judges from the Qatif General Court sentenced the rape victim to 90 lashes for being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape. The sentences for the seven rapists ranged from 10 months to five years in prison. The Appeals Court sentenced the victim to 200 lashes and six months in prison... A source at the Qatif General Court said that the judges had informed the rape victim that the reason behind doubling her punishment was "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media."

LA drug ring fronting for Hezbollah

A seemingly small-time drug ring busted this week in Los Angeles was actually targeted for funding the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, the Daily News has learned.

Prosecutors left out the terror tie when they announced Tuesday that federal agents and local cops had arrested a dozen people for allegedly peddling cocaine and counterfeit clothing in Bell, Calif.

But several sources familiar with the investigation said the predominantly Arab-American gang was believed to have smuggled its crime cash to the Iranian-backed terror group.

"This was a classic case of terrorism financing, and it was pretty sophisticated how they did it," a source close to Operation Bell Bottoms told The News.

There's not much more to the story, but you can read the rest here.

Muslim metalheads rock out in Egypt

A shorty from GOOD:

In Egypt, you’re much more likely to hear the call to prayer than a face-melting guitar solo, so Dutch photographer Aukje Dekker was surprised to find a thriving underground heavy- and death-metal scene. Fascinated, she documented it in a series of photos.

“In the West, heavy metal is generally associated with low lifes and trailer trash,” says Dekker, “but the situation in Egypt is completely reversed. These kids are the children of diplomats and other well-off Egyptians who get to travel abroad or who own a satellite television, which is how they got be exposed to heavy metal.”

A 1997 government crackdown on “Satanic music” led to dozens of arrests and the banning of concerts, but the scene is enjoying something of a comeback. “There is still a general consensus that heavy metal is a Satanic expression,” says Dekker, “so when these kids walk down the street with their long black hair and matching T-shirts, they are often called names, but that doesn’t stop them from pursuing their musical passion.”

Pious Muslims serving Western sinners

Jeffrey Fleishman writes like a master:

SHARM EL SHEIK, EGYPT -- The men hurry down the narrow road to the whitewashed mosque, waiters, janitors, busboys, cooks; they peel off their shoes, wash their hands and pray. Then they return to the glittering resorts, hoping that serving alcohol and glimpsing topless women will not push them too far from God or their families back home in the Nile Delta.

They are at once ubiquitous and unseen, a service industry army of matching uniforms and smiles, cobbling enough English, German and French to charm the tourists lying on beaches and lingering in polished courtyards. They move briskly in the moonlight, bowing their heads and speaking in perfected cadences:

"Good evening, sir. How are you, sir? Have a nice time."

Learned phrases stretch only so far and much is left unsaid along the coast where the desert meets the sea. This poor country relies upon the tourist dollar, and Islam resides cordially, if uneasily, with a sunburned, thong-wearing, whiskey-tippling West.

"I pretend I don't see what's happening around me," said Hossam Helmy, a janitor in blue coveralls and a ball cap that read: Staff. "My religion protects me. It has kept me from sin. When I see a half-naked woman I feel guilty and I feel this is not my country anymore. But work is scarce and I need this job. What can I do except get used to it?"

It sounds like a parallel to the devout Catholic who works as a nurse at an abortion clinic. This is, of course, a very different kind of Ramadan struggle then the one I wrote about two years ago, not long after Sharm was bombed by Islamic radicals trying to hurt the town's tourist economy.

Hollywood's Arab typecast: terrorist

Welcome to the post-9/11 minstrel show. The LA Times today dedicates its Column One to the plight of Arab and Arab-American actors looking for work in Hollywood. It's an interesting chapter in the old tale of typecasting. Sayed Badreya's saga embodies the issue well:

The burly, bearded Egyptian-born actor has played an array of menacing characters in a 20-year Hollywood career. He'll appear with Robert Downey Jr. in next year's "Iron Man" as an Arab arms dealer who kidnaps the hero. In 2003, he and Issawi made a short film called "T for Terrorist" in which an Arab actor, frustrated with endless terrorist roles, takes over a movie set at gunpoint.

Badreya recalls when he first arrived in Hollywood in 1986. "I couldn't work. I was too handsome," he laughs. "So I put on some weight and grew a beard, and suddenly I was working every day and playing the angry Arab."

Some of the younger Arab newcomers to Hollywood look down on Badreya's career as one spent reinforcing stereotypes. Badreya, however, makes no apologies.

"I never played something that didn't happen. We hijack airplanes, I play a hijacker," he said. "I do my work. I'm not going to sit and cry about it."

I did, however, find a remark in the lede to be odd. See if you can find it:

"What kind of a name is that?" the voice coach asked at the end of the lesson. The name on the check he'd been handed by his student didn't match the young actor's European-sounding stage name.

The actor hesitated. He was fairly new in town and leery of any missteps. "Umm, my grandfather was Middle Eastern," he said.

The actor said the room temperature seemed to drop. The teacher took him aside and spoke urgently. "Look," the teacher said, "I see big things for you, but if you tell people this, you will not work in this town." Recently, the actor landed a prominent role in a big-studio film. But he still feels compelled to keep his heritage under wraps. Only his closest friends know his ethnicity; he tells others that his parents are Italian, French, anything but the truth.

"I'm really proud of who I am, but I'm constantly having to lie about it," said the actor, who didn't want to reveal his name for fear that he would be relegated to playing terrorists, the new Arab acting ghetto.

Did he really say his grandfather was Middle Eastern? Not that his grandparents were from the Middle East -- one from Iraq and the other from Lebanon -- but that granddad was from somewhere between the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea. Well, if you go back far enough, we're all from the Middle East; I wonder if the actor said what country his father was from, but asked the reporter to change it as a condition for quoting him. Or maybe he really said "the Middle East," which would further drive home the point that this actor is really aware of Hollywood's supposed sensitivities to all-things Arab.

(A year ago, NPR broadcasted a segment titled "Filmmakers Shatter Arab Stereotypes in Hollywood," focusing on Badreya, who had just finished shooting AmericanEast, a film that has yet to be picked up.)

* Updated: Anti-Jihadist at Pedestrian Infidel emails:

Hollywood can't type cast Arab Muslims as terrorists enough. Besides, it's overhyped as a 'problem'.

I think Hollywood's more insidious type casting is always making the US Government (or some 'disgruntled' or 'rogue' employee/agent[s]) out to be the real bad guys. Syriana, Diehard 4, Xmen 2, the list of movies that exemplifies this bad guy paradigm goes on and on. Even the recent movie on Daniel Pearl, a story about the horrific true-to-life torture and barbaric beheading murder of an American reporter in Pakistan became just another pathetic cinematic exercise in asking typically pointless questions. Questions like "why do they hate us so much?" If you have to ask or wonder about such things, six years after 9-11, I sincerely suggest that you go and get your head examined. Common sense is in sadly short supply.

No Jews allowed: Judenrein U.S. program

The U.S. State Department and the University of California had this genius program to give Middle Eastern businessmen a leg up. Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen, even Israel. That is, so long as you're not an Israeli Jew. I guess some people think Jewish businessmen already have too much power.

Jerusalem-based marketing specialist and businesswoman Miriam Schwab uncovered the bias last week when she checked into applying to the university's San Diego branch Beyster Institute program for Middle East Entrepreneur Training (MEET). She discovered that the program was open to citizens of "Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel (limited to Israeli Arab citizens), Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen."

(skip)

In response to an IsraelNationalNews.com question for confirmation of the restriction in Israel, program manager Mona Yousry verified, "It is only for Arab Israelis." A subsequent question as to why Israeli Jews are not eligible for the program elicited the following reply from the Institute's Director of Entrepreneurial Programs, Rob Fuller: "I’m sorry for the unfortunate misunderstanding about eligibility for the new MEET program. To be clear, for the programs for which we are now recruiting to be held in 2008, ALL Israeli citizens are eligible to participate. Sorry for any confusion we may have inadvertently caused."

Israeli Jews originally were excluded despite the program’s stated advantage as "an important cultural exchange." Fuller did not explain the initial "confusion" in barring Israeli Jews.

The programs are to be held in Jordan, Egypt and Morocco, all of which have relations with Israel.

Following the e-mail complaints to Beyster, the US Embassy of Yemen online document which announces the program was down for more than a day until the words "limited to Israeli Arab citizens" were deleted. [View the document announcing the program by clicking here. (I've disabled this link because it was virus-ridden.) When prompted with "Do you want to open or save this file," click on "Open."]

The US official who made the online edit, however, reposted the story in "track changes" format so that the document displays in the left margin, at the time of this writing, the words: "Deleted: Limited to Israeli Arab citizens." (See pics below).

That story came up in our budget meeting Wednesday, but long before next week's paper will be published it's been making the rounds on Jewish blogs. Big time. Yid with Lid appears to have been the first to follow the INN scoop:

Where was the ACLU? How come Congressman Ellison isn't screaming about profiling. Here we go again with another example of how the PC police only cares when things are convenient for them.

Syria in charge of U.N. nuclear watchdog

People say the United Nations is a joke. But what a punchline:

Two weeks after Israel's alleged bombing raid in Syria which some foreign reports said targeted North Korean nuclear material, the UN's nuclear watchdog elected Syria as deputy chairman of its General Conference on Monday.

The 51st session of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened in Vienna on Monday and will run through Friday.

The Syrian news agency SANA proudly reported the election on Tuesday, adding that Syria was also successful in including "the Israeli nuclear arsenal as an item on the agenda of the conference."

That's right. The country that's suspected of buying nuclear material from North Korea is now ostensibly policing non-proliferation. Yeah, right. Seraphic Secret likens the appointment to:

1. Putting a pedophile in charge of a kindergarten.

2. Appointing Goering to head up the Nuremberg Trials.

3. Having Lindsay Lohan as your drug counselor.