Radical Muslims in America

Raymond Ibrahim on jihadis in America: all the benefits and still turning to jihad
Common sense and pointed questions from our old friend Raymond Ibrahim. "Radical Muslims in America: All the Benefits and Still Turning to Jihad," by Raymond Ibrahim in Hudson New York (via RaymondIbrahim.com), January 12: [...] Holder's assertion that "the Terrorists only have to be successful once" has important implications: aside from the obvious--that it only takes one strike to create devastation on U.S. soil--it is also a reminder that when people argue that most American Muslims are mo...

Dean Obeidallah: The Palin Standard
Sarah Palin declared in her new video today: "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own...They begin and end with the criminals who commit them..." Palin's above manifesto is clear: Only the individuals who commit a crime should be held responsible for their wrongs. She even goes on to denounce "collectively" holding others responsible for the conduct of criminals. Sarah -- If you are reading this, or having someone else read it to you -- I have a question, and I'm not trying to "Katie...

What makes Arizona's killer just a loner, not a terrorist? | Mehdi Hasan
Did you know that Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in the Arizona Shooting Spree that left six dead and 14 wounded, including the US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had speculated beforehand on YouTube whether he would be labelled a "Terrorist"? He needn't have worried. Loughner has yet to be described in such terms by the authorities or the media. "Loner"? Yes. "Extremist"? Yes. Terrorist? No. Perhaps, you might say, it's because we have difficulty agreeing on a definition of Terrorism, despit...

Sarah Palin's not interested in real guns, see it's mephatorical, stoopid
The alleged Arizona gunman Jared Loughner is, his bonkers online postings imply, obsessed with grammar. I think that’s the Chomskyan variety, rather than the Simon Heffer, Telegraph Style Book sort. Anyway, if that’s the case, he’d be delighted to hear the rest of the world struggling to agree on a satisfactory set of labels for him and his supposed actions. Mehdi Hasan, political editor of the New Statesman, has a piece in the Guardian today asking why we’d call a M

Peter King hates Muslims
By Michael J.W. Stickings (As I've stressed before, no, not that Peter King, that Peter King -- who seems to call himelf "Pete," perhaps to distinguish himself from the more famous other Peter King. Obviously.) ********** Think Progress: Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the new chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has promised to launch a series of investigations of Muslim Americans beginning in February. "I've made it c...

David Kris Resigns from DOJ
The U.S. Department of Justice just announced that Assistant Attorney General David Kris just resigned, effective March 4. “David Kris led the National Security Division (NSD) with great distinction through a period when the department confronted a number of threats to the nation’s security, and there is no doubt that his tireless work helped keep the American People safe,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “I will miss his leadership.” “I am grateful for my two years

California man arrested for threats on Rep. McDermott, others
A California man who has been accused of threatening Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) and other political figures was arrested Wednesday and charged Federal Court. Charles Turner Habermann -- a 32-year-old Palm Springs, Calif., resident with a $3 million trust fund -- was arrested Wednesday morning on allegations that he made threatening phone calls to the office of the Seattle Democrat late last year.... Federal Prosecutors in Seattle described statements left by Habermann in two Dec. 9 phone calls a...

After Arizona -- What Message Are We Sending About America?
This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demonstrated convincingly that the Obama Administration does not understand the biggest foreign threat facing America. When asked in Abu Dhabi about Islamist Terrorists, Ms. Clinton said “Look we have Extremists in my country” and then referenced the attempted Assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. This was disingenuous on a number of levels but raises a key question: How can a country win a war if its leaders choose not to understand ...

What U.S. "justice" signifies around the world
AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth Julian Assange In London this morning, a British court held a procedural hearing regarding Sweden's attempt to extradite Julian Assange in order to question him about Sex Crimes accusations.  Afterward, Assange's lawyers released an outline of the arguments they intend to make in opposition to Extradition.  Most of them centered around the impermissibility of extraditing someone who has not been charged with a Crime -- i.e., merely to interrogate them --...

Tyranny, Congressman Peter King and the Tucson massacre Pt 2
Casper, Wyoming citizens know the American concept of being considered Innocent Until Proven Guilty in a court of law, is closely tied with the core constitutional concepts of Freedom of Speech, right to keep and Bear Arms, and to be secure in one’s person and possessions, and thus also a prime aspect of what it means to be American. Sadly, professional politicians who have for the most part become power elitists through making a career of politics, which was never a design of the Fr...

Tyranny, Congressman Peter King and the Tucson massacre Pt 1
Casper, Wyoming residents are much like their peers throughout the rural Rocky Mountains: people say what’s on their minds forthrightly, own guns, and hold dear their constitutional freedoms as American Citizens. Normally Casperites see the radical Left, other wise known as Social Progressives and other types of Socialists, calling for greater and greater restrictions on American liberties. The Framers of the US Constitution took the opposite view: the rights of the individual to pursue &#...

Obama to meet with Pakistan's president Friday (AP)
WASHINGTON – The White House says President Barack Obama will meet with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari when he comes to Washington for the memorial service of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Friday's meeting comes as the United States faces challenges in the unstable, nuclear-armed Islamic country. The pro-Washington government has teetered on the edge of collapse with its coalition partners threatening to pull out. Vice President Joe Biden met with Zardari in Pakistan on Wednesday a...

Updates on Mohamed, WikiLeaks and Manning
There are three updates to note about issues I've written about over the last week: (1) Gulet Mohamed -- the Somali-born American Citizen who just turned 19 and who described how he spent a week being interrogated, beaten and tortured by unknown captors -- remains in custody in Kuwait despite not being charged with any Crimes or wrongdoing of any kind.  As his lawyer said in an interview with me on Tuesday, it is the Americans, not the Kuwaitis, who are responsible for his ongoing detenti...

Azeem Ibrahim: Katie Couric's Idea of a "Muslim Cosby Show" Might Not Be So Crazy After All
Katie Couric's recent comments recommending a "Muslim Cosby show" to combat anti-Muslim Bigotry has been decried by some as a naïve, simplistic remedy for the festering sore of Islamophobia in America. However, research and common sense in fact suggest that authentic and accessible American Muslim narratives can emerge as popular, effective tools of cultural Diplomacy in helping bridge the divides between Muslim Communities and the U.S. As an expert on cultural Diplomacy and one of founding m...

Creating Enmity With Words
No, this is not about the shootings in Tucson — at least, not in any direct sense. This is about Rep. Peter King (R-NY) accusing Muslim-Americans (all Muslim-Americans) of being uncooperative with anti-terrorism efforts, of being disloyal Americans and, in fact, of not being real Americans at all when it comes to defending the United States: Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the new chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has promised to launch a series of investigations of Muslim Americans be...

OIC slams "Islamophobia" in the West, says nothing about jihad violence or Islamic supremacism
It is, as always, all someone else's fault. "OIC Slams Islamaphobia In West," from Bernama, January 12: Islamabad, Jan 12 (Bernama) -- The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) has termed the institutionalisation of Islamophobia in the western countries as a major challenge, as it was becoming the political agenda in some countries, reports Iranian national news agency, IRNA, Wednesday. The OIC Secretary General, Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in his meeting with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilan...

The Islamic Fantasy Zionist Jihad
Did you know that Israeli Mossad agents murdered 22 people and wounded 80 more at the Coptic Christian Church of Saints George and Peter in Alexandria, Egypt, on New Year'’s Eve? Neither did I. But all around the Islamic World, that's the story being told -- in yet another instance of Muslim denial of Jihadist violence, and displacement of responsibility upon their favorite scapegoat, the Jews. Iran's PressTV, an official organ of the Islamic Republic, claimed in an unsigned editorial tha...

A New Role for Jihadi Media
Aspiring Jihadis need to improve their media skills, such as operating websites and developing their own video sites that resemble YouTube, to be more effective in their fight against the West, according to a new article circulating on a variety of Islamist Internet forums. Improved media, author Abu Sa'd al-'Amili writes, will help increase recruitment of American and Western jihadis, and conduct "continuous psychological media war" against the West. "The enemy can no longer stand alone in the...

Relax: Turkish PM again says theres no Islamic terrorism
Erdogan also famously said this about "Moderate Islam": "These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it." In this case, of course, he appears to be saying that the Terrorists are twisting and hijacking Islam, but he could also mean that what the jihadis are doing is not Terrorism. For Erdogan, groups like Islamic Jihad and Hizballah (the Party of Allah) and Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Mov...

Biden to Pakistan: "We are not the enemies of Islam"
He doesn't seem to have addressed the question of whether or not large segments of Islam are at war with us, and what the implications of that might be. He doesn't seem to have addressed how it is that Pakistan can be a "key anti-terror ally" when it has funneled much of the money it has received from the U.S. to fight Jihadists to those same jihadists. He doesn't seem to have addressed the involvement of Pakistan's spy service in Jihad activity, including the Mumbai Jihad massacre. Instead, h...

Douglas MacKinnon: How much is the life of a U.S. soldier worth?
What is the life of a U.S. soldier worth compared to that of a Member of Congress? Apparently much less in the eyes of some in the Mainstream Media if we go by two tragic news-making examples. The first, this past weekend’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-AZ, and the Murder of innocent civilians around her.. The second is the killing of 12 brave Soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood, TX, in 2009. While many in the media have insidiously created false reasons for the shooting of Giffo...

Obama to meet with Pakistan's president Friday
The White House says President Barack Obama will meet with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari when he comes to Washington for the Funeral of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Friday's meeting comes as the United States faces challenges in the unstable, nuclear-armed Islamic country. The pro-Washington government has teetered on the edge of collapse with its coalition partners threatening to pull out. Vice President Joe Biden met with Zardari in Pakistan on Wednesday as part of a swing through the ...

The Arizona Shooting and Jihad: Immoral Equivalency?!
Few noticed a disturbing and remarkable comment made by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton yesterday. While taping a satellite television show for Arab women at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, Ms. Clinton compared the alleged psychotic killer in the tragic Arizona shootings, Jared Loughery, to Islamic Extremists. Her comments; “look, we have extremists in my country,  a wonderful, incredibly brave young woman Congress member, Congresswoman Giffords, was just shot by an extremist in ou...

New English-Language Jihad Forum
A new English-language Jihadi forum offers sections dedicated to Military preparations and speeches by Anwar al-Awlaki. Al Mojahden English Network, founded by the Iraq-centered Al Mojahden Electronic Network, is another addition to the proliferation of English sections on major Jihadi websites. The new page features forums dedicated to Mujahideen Press Releases, news, and commentary. Uniquely, it has additional pages for threads in French, Turkish, German and Hebrew, although they have yet to ...

President Obama at Tucson memorial service
About 45 minutes into the service, following remembrances by Gov. Brewer, former Governor and current DHS Secretary Napolitano, and Attorney General Holder, President Obama is introduced by UA President Robert N. Shelton. The text of his remarks as prepared are available below the fold. President Obama is expected to speak for just under twenty minutes. Update: President Obama's begins: To the families of those we’ve lost; to all who called them friends; to the Students of this university...