Aseel al-Omari is a self-described "close friend" of Mohammed Asha, a suspect arrested in connection with last week's failed terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport in Scotland.

The Associated Press reports that al-Omari said the following in defense of her friend:

"He was a good Muslim but never a terrorist or involved in such activities," she added.

Emphasis mine. Apparently, al-Omari thinks it's noteworthy for a good Muslim not to be a terrorist. Hey, she said it, not me.

We don't often hear from moderate Muslims — largely because they so often face reprisals from extremists if they dare to speak out. So it's worth noting what happened last week at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Washington Post reports:

Local Muslim leaders lit candles Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide.

American Muslims "believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again," said imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.

And via LGF, the BBC reports on another Muslim who won't buy the Jews-are-evil extremist party line:

Khaled Mahameed admits his museum, in Nazareth in northern Israel, is small. But he believes it is unique.

According to Mr Mahameed, it is the first and only Arab run centre for promoting the study of the Holocaust.

The museum contains a collection of just 60 photographs depicting the genocide with Arabic captions explaining the scenes. The pictures were purchased from Yad Vashem - the Israeli national Holocaust memorial.

Mr Mahameed firmly believes that it is only by understanding the truth about how the state of Israel was created that Arabs can fully understand Jews and ultimately resolve the conflict between them.

The news isn't all good. Mahameed has been ostracized by his family and neighbors, reports the BBC. But stories like this are enough to give me hope that someday, there really will be peace in the Middle East. Someday.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports:

Philippine troops discovered a motorcycle rigged to explode in a southern province, amid threats of new attacks during the Christmas holidays, the military said yesterday.

The motorcycle was found on Saturday a few metres away from a military checkpoint in Esperanza town in Sultan Kudarat province, 930km south of Manila. Colonel Danilo Garcia, an army brigade commander, said the motorcycle’s fuel tank was converted into an explosive device using picric acid.

Al Qaeda-linked Muslim militants operate in the southern Philippines, including local Abu Sayyaf rebels and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militants. The Abu Sayyaf and the JI have been blamed for some of the worst terrorist attacks in the Philippines, including the bombing of a passenger ferry off a Manila port in February 2004.

So, help me out here — is this all because of the Israel-Palestine situation? Or the war in Iraq? Or could it simply be the nasty tendency of radical Islamists to attack anyone and everyone who happens to be around them?

For those of you keeping score at home, Islamic "militants" or terror groups are currently on the attack, or are threatening to attack, not only in the Philippines, but also in Thailand, Somalia, Algeria, Indonesia, Sudan, India, Pakistan, Denmark, Spain, Russia, Britain, France — ah, heck, let's just say all of Europe — and, of course, Iraq and all the usual suspects in the Middle East. It's really quite extraordinary. I haven't checked every country in the world, either, so let me know if I've left anyone out.

The never-ending laundry list of radical Islam's targets shows us that the problem isn't Bush, or Iraq, or Israel. It's radical Islam.

From the Associated Press, this is really unbelievable:

KARACHI, Pakistan Dec 11, 2006 (AP) — More than 20,000 supporters of an Islamic alliance rallied Sunday, demanding the government withdraw changes to a controversial rape statute that they say go against Islam.

The protesters condemned President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, many chanting "Death to Musharraf." One carried a sign reading, "No to conspiracy for indecency and obscenity."

Musharraf last week signed into law some amendments to the Hudood Ordinance, a 1979 law against rape that human rights activists said punished rape victims while providing legal safeguards for their attackers.

The ordinance required a rape victim to produce four witnesses in court to prove her assault claim. Under the new amendment, judges can choose whether a rape case should be tried in a criminal court where the four-witness rule does not apply or under the Islamic ordinance.

So here you have 20,000 Muslims protesting, on religious grounds, their country's decision to crack down on rapists. Sick. But then, I guess they're all "extremists", so it's okay.

The Associated Press reports on how Muslim men in Qatar are reacting to their country hosting this year's Asian Games:

When Salim Al-Nabit and his friends went out to see beach volleyball for the first time, they left their wives at home.

Al-Nabit said he was willing to force himself to watch the skimpily clad women play, but that he certainly wouldn't want his wife watching.

He was only there himself, he said, because it was a matter of national honor.

I never knew that checking out women in bikinis was a matter of national honor, but I hereby pledge to do my part for America.

Good news. Hamas appears to be moving away from its reprehensible practice of using eleven-year-olds and mentally-challenged teens as suicide bombers.

Now, reports the Times of London, it's using grannies instead:

A grandmother became the oldest Palestinian suicide bomber yesterday when she blew herself up in Gaza and slightly wounded two Israeli soldiers.

Fatma Omar An-Najar was the first suicide bomber to be claimed by Hamas for nearly two years. Its armed wing said that she was aged 57, but her family said that she was 68.

The brave men of Hamas are generous indeed to let old ladies and gullible kids share in the fruits of martyrdom, instead of hogging it all for themselves.

Why has the prize been awarded to 167 Jews, and to only four Arabs out of 380 million Arabs...?

That's Samir Ubeid, an Iraqi researcher, claiming the Nobel Prize is awarded disproportionately to Jews due to "racism".

MEMRI.org translates more of Ubeid's interview, which aired October 31 on Al-Jazeera TV, here (via Fark). Read the whole thing for some industrial-strength moonbattery. And here's the subtitled video (via LGF):


Why have so few Arabs won the Nobel Prize? It's a good question, but not for the reason Ubeid thinks it is.

The Associated Press reports that Hamas is urging Muslims worldwide to attack American targets:

Signaling a change in tactics, Hamas' military wing on Wednesday called on Muslims around the world to attack American targets after an apparent misfiring of an IDF artillery shell in the Gaza Strip.

"America is offering political, financial and logistic cover for the Zionist occupation crimes, and it is responsible for the Beit Hanoun massacre. Therefore, the people and the nation all over the globe are required to teach the American enemy tough lessons," Hamas said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

Of course, it just wouldn't be Hamas without a little bit of the old play-both-sides game:

Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, said the group had no intention of attacking American targets.

Whatever. The real question is, why would Hamas expect Muslims around the world to attack anyone? Doesn't it know that Islam is the religion of peace?

Via the unpermalinkable Steven Den Beste, LGF commenter jwbaumann is having second thoughts about the wisdom of American military intervention:

Lizard.1: Lizard 2: Lizard 3: Lizard 1: Lizard 2: Lizard 1: Lizard 2: Lizard 3: Lizard 2: Lizard 1: Lizard 2: Lizard 1: Lizard 3: Lizard 1: Lizard 2: Lizard 1: Lizard 2: Lizard 3:

It's terrible. The horrible loss of American soldiers freeing that country from tyranny... ...only to have it devolve into Civil War. Car fires, buses burning, security forces being attacked... ...and the native population seeming to be helpless to stop it. Unemployment sky high... ...no vision for the future... ...a leader at odds with the U.S. No-go zones with anti-government gangs in control. Terrible. We never should have "liberated" them. It was a mistake. And I was so hopeful.. They voted in a constitution... The economy was doing well — exports were increasing... But now, just thousands of dead and wounded Americans. Billions of dollars squandered. And for what? Muslim radical-driven civil war. Yeah. Sad. What a waste. But enough about France. Now what should we do about Iraq?

You can read more about radical Islam's war on France here, here, and here. Those stories are relatively recent, but the same stuff has been going on for over a year. And of course, the French are already starting to surrender.

The Japan Times reports on Muslims in Japan:

...Muslims in Japan, say their leaders, have escaped much of the antipathy and targeting experienced by those in Europe and elsewhere since 2001.

Maybe — just maybe, mind you — that's because Japanese in Japan have escaped much of the Islamic terrorism, riots, and other violence experienced by those in Europe and elsewhere since 2001. Just sayin'.

This past April, shortly after the Mohammed cartoon protests erupted, Comedy Central infamously refused to let South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone air an image of Mohammed on the show. It did let them show Jesus defecating on President Bush, though.

In a form email sent to concerned viewers, Comedy Central admitted its decision was made due to fear of Muslim attacks:

This decision was based solely on concern for public safety in light of recent world events.

With the power of freedom of speech and expression also comes the obligation to use that power in a responsible way. Much as we wish it weren’t the case, times have changed and, as witnessed by the intense and deadly reaction to the publication of the Danish cartoons, decisions cannot be made in a vacuum without considering what impact they may have on innocent individuals around the globe.

Well, things haven't changed much since then. Last month, Kirsten Harms, the director of the German opera house Deutsche Oper Berlin, decided to cancel a performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo in which the severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed were to be displayed on stage. The reason? Fear of attacks from angry Muslims.

The Daily Show, probably Comedy Central's biggest hit after South Park, made fun of Harms's decision in the October 21 edition of its recurring segment, "This Week in God". But when it came time to actually show the heads on stage, we see Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha... and a picture of a ham, superimposed on the screen to cover up Mohammed:


Did Comedy Central act out of respect for the religious beliefs of Muslims? Hardly. The entire "This Week in God" segment is devoted to mocking religious beliefs. Even its use of a ham is meant to be a sassy thumbing of the nose at the strictures of Islam. But of course, Muslims can look at ham; they just can't eat it. If Comedy Central had the courage of its convictions, it would show the uncensored image. It would let "This Week in God" (and South Park, for that matter) mock all religions equally.

This isn't respect for religion. It's fear of reprisals.

Michelle Malkin has two blog posts up about Muslims under attack. From who? Red-state rednecks? Israeli soldiers? Guantanamo guards? Nope. They're being hounded by... other Muslims.

First, Abdul Rahman (Wikipedia) is a former Muslim who lived in Afghanistan and converted to Christianity. This caused other Muslims there to demand he be killed for adandoning Islam. Rahman was formally charged with apostasy and faced the death penalty, which he dodged after foreign governments, thankfully, applied some diplomatic pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Yey many Afghan Muslims continued to demand that Rahman be put to death. As cleric Maulavi Habibullah told a crowd in Kabul, "The prophet says, when somebody changes religion, he must be killed." This past March, Rahman fled to Italy before he could be killed by mobs of his former Muslim brothers.

Case closed, right? Not so fast. Now, reports the BBC, Muslims in Afghanistan have kidnapped an Italian photojournalist, Gabriele Torsello, and are demanding that Italy hand over Rahman in exchange for Torsello's release. Nice.

And it gets better: Torsello is a Muslim himself. Apparently, the kidnappers believe their religion condones the kidnapping and perhaps even the murder of an innocent Muslim in order to avenge a supposed offense against Islam by an entirely unrelated man.

•        •        •        •        •
Next, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury (Wikipedia) is a Muslim newspaper editor in Bangladesh. Mr. Choudhury's offense was to dare to advocate that Muslim nations form closer ties with Israel, instead of calling for its destruction. The Jerusalem Post reports that this got him charged with sedition, since freedom of the press is an alien concept in Bangladesh, as in so many other Islamic countries.

But earlier this month, it also got him attacked by a Muslim mob of some 40 people, who broke into his house and beat him so soundly they broke his ankle, all the while calling him an "agent of the Jews". For good measure, the mob looted his safe. And this was no gang of street rabble: the mob that beat Choudhury allegedly included government officials, and afterwards, police made no arrests — just as they made no arrests after an Islamic extremist group bombed the offices of Choudhury's newspaper in July. Quite to the contrary, it is Choudhury who still faces "charges of blasphemy, sedition, treason and espionage in connection with his articles critical of Islamic extremism and favorable to Israel."

•        •        •        •        •
The sad cases of men like Rahman, Torsello, and Choudhury give the lie to the notion that extremist Muslims are a tiny minority that can be safely ignored. Even a tiny minority, united in a program of extremism, intimidation, and violence, can have a big impact on a more moderate majority. People who simply want to live in peace don't generally have the motivation to shape the society they live in. Radical extremists do. It only takes a few drops of poison to ruin the well, and the poison of radical Islam is potent indeed.

Another lie the above stories expose is that critics of radical Islam, like Michelle Malkin or myself, are somehow "anti-Muslim". We're not. We're anti-extremist. The real anti-Muslims are the imams who called for the death of Abdul Rahman, the men who kidnapped Gabriele Torsello, the mob that beat Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, and the many others who support or justify such acts of thuggery. They are not only harming their fellow Muslims, they are driving a wedge between their societies and those of the West. Their actions should be called out and condemned, not glossed over.

The U.S. military is holding a detainee in extreme solitary confinement, despite the fact that he hasn't been convicted of any crime.

Of course, since he's a U.S. Marine and not an enemy combatant, no one seems to care much. The L.A. Times reports:

Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington's mental condition is deteriorating because he is confined to a tiny cell 22 hours a day while awaiting court-martial in the April 26 slaying of a 52-year-old unarmed, disabled man in Hamandiya, said his parents, Deanna and Terry Pennington. Pennington, 22, has developed nervous tics and may not be able to assist in his own defense, his father said.

Attorneys for several of the Marines facing charges in connection with the killing have tried unsuccessfully to have their clients released pending court-martial.

"Life in the brig is total hell for these guys," Deanna Pennington said. "They've not been convicted of anything, and they're being treated like serial killers."

My advice to Lance Cpl. Pennington? Convert to Islam. It probably won't get you out of jail any faster, but it might get you better food.

What is often descibed as the "tiny minority" of Muslims who support Islamic terrorism would appear to be a good deal larger than one might have thought. Via LGF and Michelle Malkin, Reuters reports that a depressingly high 10% of Indonesian Muslims support terrorism in the name of Islam:

Around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims support jihad and justify bomb attacks on Indonesia's tourist island of Bali as defending the faith, a survey released on Sunday showed.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, with 220 million people, 85 percent of whom follow Islam, giving the Asian archipelago the largest Muslim population of any nation in the world.

"Jihad that has been understood partially and practiced with violence is justified by around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims," the Indonesian Survey Institute said in a statement.

"They approved the bombings conducted ... in Bali with the excuse of defending Islam," it added, saying the percentage of such support "is very significant."

I suppose the positive spin on this would be to say that 90% of Indonesian Muslims don't support Islamic terrorism. That's an important fact, and we shouldn't lose sight of it. But 18.7 million terror supporters (10% of 85% of 220 million) — in just a single country, mind you — is more than a "tiny minority". It's a big problem.

FOLLOW-UP:
The Reuters article continues:

The survey found one in five Indonesian Muslims more generally supported the aims of Jemaah Islamiah — an armed movement backing the creation of an Islamic superstate linking Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia, and Muslim areas in the Philippines and Thailand.

Jemaah Islamiyah is a terrorist organisation, as designated by the U.S. State Department. And 20% of Indonesian Muslims agree with its goal of taking land from sovereign states like Thailand to form an Islamic nation. If that's not supporting terrorism, it's pretty close.

(NOTE: Welcome, LGF readers! And thanks for the link, Charles.)

Michelle Malkin reports that YouTube took down a video she posted there, expressing her criticism of militant Islam. (It's available on her site here.)

Yet YouTube seems to have no problem hosting viciously anti-Israel propaganda videos. Check out some examples here, here, and here. (The last one in particular is so full of Jews-are-taking-over-the-world paranoia that it's almost a parody.)

How should YouTube determine where to draw the line between strongly-held political views, and unacceptably offensive content? Answer: It shouldn't. It shouldn't be in the viewpoint-regulation business. As is often said, the best response to offensive speech is more speech, not censorship.

I know YouTube is a business and wants to avoid controversy. But most people are smart enough to know that it doesn't endorse the message of any particular video uploaded to its site. And by censoring its user-generated content, YouTube is shooting itself in the foot.

Malkin quotes YouTube user Intelsum, who theorizes that the site automatically pulls videos "flagged" as offensive by a large enough number of users — and that Muslim groups are gaming the system, rallying their members to flag videos that criticize aspects of Islam, even though such videos don't violate YouTube's stated terms of use.

If that's what's going on, it's a flaw in YouTube's moderation system and should be stopped. The real attraction of YouTube has been the sense that you can find anything there. But those days may be past. Now it seems that you can find only what YouTube, and its most aggressive user groups, think you should see.

FOLLOW-UP: Charles notes that YouTube has since pulled the third anti-Israel video I linked above. However, this may have been due to copyright considerations, not issues of content, since the clip apparently used MEMRI TV footage with the MEMRI logo covered up.

ANOTHER FOLLOW-UP: And now the first of the three anti-Israel videos has been pulled by YouTube, raising the possibility that hordes of LGF's "lizardoid minions" flagged it as offensive. This is not a positive development. I want these videos to be widely available, so people can see just how deranged and hate-filled Israel's opponents can be. A tit-for-tat censorship battle only leaves all of us less informed.

Via kottke.org, The Atlantic reports on a diffence between Israeli diplomats and those from some Muslim countries:

Disentangling law and culture is a tricky business, but a pair of economists have come up with an ingenious way to do it: studying the frequency of parking violations committed by diplomats in New York City. Since, as their study reports, there is “essentially zero legal enforcement of diplomatic parking violations,” the authors hypothesized that any cross-national variation in parking-violation rates should flow from culture alone. And sure enough, diplomats from countries with high levels of corruption were significantly more likely to incur parking tickets, suggesting that cultural factors rather than legal norms drive a great deal of official misconduct.

The worst offenders were Kuwaitis, who accumulated an astonishing 246 violations per diplomat per year from the end of 1997 through 2002, followed by Egyptians, with 140 violations per diplomat per year; countries whose diplomats incurred no parking tickets included Canada, Israel, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

To be fair, the Koran says not a single word about parking violations.

Just a day or so ago, the Sunday Times of London reported that it had obtained an Al Qaeda video from 2000, featuring Osama Bin Laden and 9-11 hijackers Mohammed Atta and Ziad Jarrah. In particular, it shows Atta and Jarrah reading their "martyrdom" wills (clearly labeled al wasiyyah, or “the will”) to the camera. You can see the entire hour-long video (without audio) in five parts on the Jawa Report here.

Coincidentally, a few days before this video hit the news, I found the following in my inbox from a fellow named Jason Bainbridge. He represents a conspiracy-theory group calling itself Tokyo911.com:

Hello, I would like to submit an upcoming event in Tokyo for your blog.
------------------------------------------------------
Join us on October 7th for this first ever 911 Truth International Conference in Tokyo Japan!

[Rest of message deleted]

That's right; the moonbattery of 9-11 conspiracy theorists has hit Japan.

I wonder if the new Al Qaeda video will make the people behind this "truth" conference stop and think how silly they're being, even for just a second.

Ah, who am I kidding? Of course it won't.

From OhMyNews:

A French newspaper reported that the most wanted man on earth, Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan on Aug. 23, mainly because the terrorist mastermind's geographical location made all potential medical assistance impossible.

"His geographic isolation, provoked by constant fleeing, is believed to have made medical assistance impossible [and] on Sept. 4, 2006, the Saudi security services received preliminary information of his death," the paper reported.

It might not seem as satisfying as some other ways one might have imagined Osama meeting his end, but wasting away from disease, unable to get treatment, is actually pretty grisly when you think about it.

Assuming it gets confirmed, I assume the media will fall all over themselves crediting this one to Bush, for pushing Bin Laden into hiding, leaving him unable to get medical treatment. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course they won't. But this is enough good news for one day.

Understanding of the need to assassinate President Bush, that is. CNN reports that the tiny minority of Muslims bent on global Jihad is at it again, with a new videogame:

A video game that prompts players to kill characters that look like President Bush has been posted on a number of Islamist Web sites.

The game is called "Quest for Bush," or "The Night of Bush Capturing."

Players are prompted to advance through six missions against soldiers who look like Bush, followed by a seventh mission against a character that looks like the president that takes place in a desert-like region. During the game, jihadist songs are played in the background.

The video game says it is produced by the Global Islamic Media Front, which is described by the SITE Institute as "a jihadist mouthpiece organization."

Of course, the game is merely a clever bit of satire, and shouldn't get anybody angry. You know, just like those Mohammed cartoons from earlier this year.

As I prepare to head to the airport for a trip to New York, this happens:

LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - British police foiled a plot by would-be suicide bombers to simultaneously blow up several planes flying to the United States, arresting 24 people days before they could attack, officials said on Thursday.

Disclosure of the alleged plan to smuggle bombs on aircraft disguised as drinks immediately brought drastic new security measures and chaos at airports on both sides of the Atlantic.

British security sources said they had been watching the suspects for eight months, and London police's Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson described their goal as "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".

"The plan was to have multiple suicide bombings on aircraft, essentially at the same time," said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

A U.S. intelligence official said the planned bombings were just days away, with a dry run planned first: "They were a couple of days from a test, and a few days from doing it."

Almost five years after 9-11, it's good to see that major terror plots are being found and stopped before they can be carried out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a plane to catch.

FOLLOW-UP:
I was going to write something like, "How long will it be before some lefty blogger claims it was all just a government ruse designed to keep us afraid?" But I was too slow. It's already happening at DailyKos (via LGF), where the results of a reader poll asking whether the terror plot was "legit" or "more drama from BushCo to keep us all afraid" have split pretty much 50-50.