Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which turns 30 this year, has become only more deadly with age. Since blasphemy was made a capital crime under the nation’s secular penal code, the effect has been to suppress moderate influences, pushing “Pakistani society further out on the slippery slope of extremism,” said Mujeeb-ur-Rahman, senior advocate at the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in Washington last week. With its large population and sensitive location, Pakistan is a place where any societal shift in the direction of the Taliban deserves the attention of all concerned about Islamic extremism. Instead, this is one more foreign threat that the Obama administration underestimates.
On October 16, for the first time, an appeals court affirmed a death sentence for blasphemy meted out to a woman. A Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi was arrested in 2009 after fellow field hands complained that, during a dispute, she had insulted the prophet of Islam. No evidence was produced, because to repeat blasphemy is blasphemous. Similarly, anyone who defends an accused blasphemer risks being labeled a blasphemer; two officials who made appeals on Bibi’s behalf—Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab, and Shahbaz Bhatti, federal minister for minorities affairs—were assassinated in 2011. Bibi has one last legal recourse, an appeal to the federal Supreme Court, but now no public official dares speak up for her—or for any other blasphemy defendant.
Accusations of blasphemy are brought disproportionately against Pakistan’s Christians, some 2 percent of the population. Intent is not an element of the crime, and recent years have seen cases brought against illiterate, mentally disabled, and teenage Christians. Each case seems to heighten the sensitivities of the extremists and further fracture society. The flimsiest rumor of a Koran burning can spark hysteria ending in riots against entire Christian communities. Lahore’s St. Joseph Colony was torched last year in such a pogrom. (more…)
Reuel Marc Gerecht: The Next Breeding Ground for Global Jihad
Washington may have already helped create the deadliest Islamic movement since the Taliban merged with al Qaeda.
By
REUEL MARC GERECHT Mr. Gerecht, a former CIA operative, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is the author of “The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East” (Hoover, 2011).
When President Obama declared that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad must “step aside” two years ago, many believed that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. intervened on behalf of the rebels battling the regime. Now that seems increasingly out of the question. The growing power of hard-core Islamic radicals among the rebels has made the White House, and many in Congress, look upon the Syrian opposition with little enthusiasm. Instead, Washington focuses on the charade of trying to relieve Assad of his chemical weapons, as if that will have any effect on the civil war.
America ignores the rebels at its peril. Yet on the left and right, anti-interventionists argue against American airstrikes, or any serious military aid, because such assistance would abet al Qaeda-linked jihadists. Perhaps what these anti-interventionists don’t realize is that the president and Congress may have already done their part to create the most deadly Islamic movement since the Taliban merged with al Qaeda in the 1990s.
Social order in the Muslim world depends, as it so often does elsewhere, on older men keeping younger men in check. In Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban’s medieval mores—a zealously crude form of village Pashtun ethics—gained the high ground because older men and their moderating social structures had been obliterated over three decades by Afghan communists, Soviets and civil war.
AFP/Getty Images
A Sunni Muslim imam from the Liwa al-Tawhid rebel group talks to his comrades in Aleppo in September. (more…)
THIS ARTICLE GETS MY VOTE FOR BEST ARTICLE OF THE YEAR !!! Nancy
HTPP://PJMEDIA.COM/victordavishanson
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If Only Our Foreign Enemies Were
Republicans
Posted ByVictor Davis Hanson June 25, 2013
I cannot recall, in the last five years, Barack Obama ever identifying the Iranians, Hezbollah, or the late Hugo Chavez as among our “enemies,” in the fashion that he once urged Latino leaders to punish conservatives at the polls: “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” If only the president would treat those who don’t like the United States in the same manner that he does those who do, he might bring great clarity to his now listless foreign policy. Indeed, why waste his rich vocabulary of teleprompted invective on fellow Americans, when there is an entire world out there that wishes the United States ill?
Imagine if Obama declaimed of the Iranians in Tehran that “those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values,”[1] in the manner he once attacked John McCain for calling for border security in 2008. Could not a worldly Obama at least go after the intolerant Saudis for spreading Wahhabi-hatred worldwide and for sending subsidies to radical Sunni terrorists, in the detailed way he once deconstructed rural conservative voters of Pennsylvania[2]? He might have taken apart these dogmatic religious absolutists in the following manner: “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” All such invective seems to sum up current Saudi society far better than it does the people of Pennsylvania. Could not the president finish by noting that their madrassas encourage divisions and discourage cooperation, just as he boldly lectured an Irish audience about the problems with Catholic parochial schools[3]?
As far as these hyper-rich Persian Gulf sheikdoms go, could not the fearless Obama urge these “fat cats” to share their riches with poorer countries, in the manner he once sermonized to Americans in no uncertain terms: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”?
When Obama deals with the Palestinians, could he not say of them, as he once did without hesitation of the Republican Congress, “Even though most people agree … I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow do a Jedi mind-meld[4] with these folks and convince them to do what’s right”? Of the Gaza flotilla incident that was used against ally Israel, Obama at least could offer one of his accustomed blunt retorts like “there is no there there,” as he did to his own domestic critics of Benghazi. Or better yet, he could have flipped it off as a “sideshow.” (more…)
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Guantanamo Bay guards told Dr. Welner that Khadr was treated like a “rock star” by other detainees. That rock star may one day be touring the Canadian mosque circuit—just like his father did before him.
Two years ago this month, a Guantanamo Bay military jury sentenced a Canadian-born al Qaeda terrorist to 40 years in prison. Omar Khadr was convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan, including the killing, during an ambush, of a 28-year-old U.S. Special Forces medic named Christopher Speer, the father of two young children.
But what the jury didn’t know was that, even as they were deliberating the charges of “murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying,” Pentagon prosecutors had already struck a plea-bargain deal with Khadr, at the direction of Obama administration officials.
No public explanation for the deal has ever been given. But regardless of what the jury decided, Khadr would receive a sentence of just eight years. And he would have to serve only a single year of that sentence in U.S. custody before applying, with Washington’s blessing, to transfer to Canada. The application process took time, but eventually was complete.
So on Saturday morning, Khadr was flown from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay to a Canadian air force base in Trenton, Ontario, and then driven to a civilian prison an hour away. His lawyers are reportedly likely to press for his parole next year.
Associated Press/Janet HamlinOmar Khadr as sketched in court, 2010.
Canada’s minister of public safety, Vic Toews, was reluctant to approve the transfer and had requested more information from the Pentagon about Khadr’s dangerousness. According to stories in the Toronto Star over the weekend, Mr. Toews’s hesitancy had incensed senior Obama administration officials, who had warned that a refusal to take Khadr would jeopardize Canada-U.S. relations. (more…)
Former President Bill Clinton has emerged as a hero to many Americans, especially liberals. He has become a Democratic icon, a deeply beloved figure. This is why he was tapped to give the nomination speech for President Obama at the Democratic National Convention. The delegates in Charlotte, N.C., loved it. The reason is simple: His presence — and words — reminded everyone of better days. The 1990s were fat years, an age of supposed peace and prosperity. Mr. Clinton gave Mr. Obama his stamp of approval. Bubba assured America that a second Obama term would deliver economic recovery and a revived middle class — akin to a return to the 1990s.
As usual, he was peddling snake oil. His speech was vintage Clinton: dishonest, self-indulgent, cynical, wonky, pretentious and disconnected from reality. The fact is the 1990s was a disastrous decade, which America is still paying for. It was not just a holiday from history — dominated by an orgy of consumer spending and the coarsening of our culture — but something more pernicious: the squandering of our power and wealth. Mr. Clinton did not preside over America’s boom. Rather, he played a pivotal role in triggering our national decline.
Under his watch, the forces of radical Islam gathered steam — and went largely unopposed. The Taliban tightened their grip over Afghanistan. Pakistan attained the Muslim world’s first nuclear bomb. Iran embarked upon its nuclear program. Somalia became a jihadist haven. Mr. Clinton’s military interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo enabled Islamists to infiltrate the Balkans. Al Qaeda declared war on the United States. The 1993 World Trade Center attacks, the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, and the 2000 suicide assault on the USS Cole — Islamic terrorists were able to strike American targets with near impunity. Sudan’s government even offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to Washington. Mr. Clinton’s response: no thanks. Instead of confronting the rise of Islamofascism, he ignored it. The Sept. 11 terrorist atrocities were a direct result of Mr. Clinton’s negligent, reckless policies.
Moreover, he actively aided and abetted China’s march to global dominance. His administration transferred vital missile and nuclear technology to Beijing in exchange for illegal campaign contributions. China’s vassal state, North Korea, was allowed through the Agreed Framework agreement to buy the time needed to eventually become a nuclear rogue nation. His administration solidified trade ties with Beijing, encouraging China’s communists to embark upon economic liberalization combined with one-party rule. America’s market was flooded with cheap and shabby Chinese goods. Economic nationalism was sacrificed at the altar of globalization. (more…)
Is Barack Obama a warrior president? Not in the British tradition, of course, which gave us Winston Churchill, with his crazy cavalry charge against Sudanese spears, or the more cerebral Harold Macmillan, shot to pieces in World War I, lying in the blood and the mud reading Aeschylus. Obama is a post-Vietnam president: He walks in the footsteps of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who took different paths away from the jungles of Southeast Asia but later sent Americans into harm’s way in foreign wars. He is—if we are to believe his campaign ads, his vice presi-dent, and a recent breathless encomium in the New York Times—a commander in chief more in line with “Teddy Roosevelt than Jimmy Carter.” He is a “gutsy” guy, who has “embraced SEAL Team 6 rather than Code Pink.”
Politically, it’s common and fair for an American presi-dent seeking reelection to accentuate his manly qualities. Most Democrats to the right of the editors at Mother Jones—and that is still most Democrats—don’t want to elect a wimp. Modern democracies understandably don’t demand that their leaders come from military backgrounds, let alone have shown valor in battle. So we use a different standard to assess their martial toughness. President Obama, his minions, and his admirers have loudly told us he stakes his claim on two accomplishments: the raid to kill Osama bin Laden and the aggressive use of drones against jihadists. So let’s look.
The last two presidents, in fact, have used Predators to kill our enemies. For going after Muslim holy warriors in geographically challenging regions of the Greater Middle East, remote-controlled aircraft are militarily and politically safer and more economical than sending in special-operations teams. Early on, the Bush administration accelerated the development of drones because they were an immediately useful part of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s technology-driven transformation of the armed forces. Still, for the Bush administration to trumpet Predators as a sign of the president’s warrior ethos would have seemed surreal, given his invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It also would have appeared unseemly, when Rumsfeld’s high-tech doctrine fared poorly against insurgencies that demanded more troops than the secretary had deemed necessary.
In theory, killer drones are almost a liberal’s fighting dream-machine: no dead Americans (unless they are the targets), no captured U.S. soldiers, no wounded to transport home, no crashing helicopters, a minimum of soul-tormenting reflection, no blood or gore on TV or in print, and limited collateral damage. Perhaps best of all, because of drones’ stealth, cooperating Muslim governments can deny their complicity with the infidel superpower. True, some leftists have risen to question the ethics of drone use (if terrorism should be treated as a crime, which is sometimes the view of the Obama administration, then killing folks without trial or judicial review, remotely and clandestinely, is wrong). But most American liberals have approved or kept their reservations quiet. Killing jihadists overseas is apparently more moral than putting them alive into Guantánamo Bay. (more…)
In a re-election year, the U.S. president is making the world and all its troubles . . . vanish.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
In a re-election year, the U.S. president is making the world and all its troubles…vanish. Photo: Getty Images.
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, North Korea—one by one, Mr. Obama and his lovely assistants have methodically taken them all off the table. If he can make the world’s problems seem to go away until he gets re-elected, it will constitute his presidency’s greatest illusion.
Don’t get too distracted by the Republicans’ road-tour version of the 2012 presidential election as it hits theaters in the likes of Mississippi, Alabama, Hawaii and Illinois. The best show in town still plays daily at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If maestro Barack Obama wins re-election this fall, we will have watched one of the greatest magic acts in American history.
The new Obama magic show debuted in the State of the Union speech. Standing before Congress, Mr. Obama brought forth “An Economy Built to Last.” Not the real one we have now, but the one he’s going to conjure after he’s re-elected.
The way this works is the president breaks economic history into two parts. In his right hand are the awful policy mistakes someone else made before January 2009. In his left hand is the economy he’ll bring to life after November. In between is nothing. You think you’re looking at the Obama years from 2009 to 2012—8% unemployment, low growth, low investment—when whoa, it’s gone! Never happened.
The best was yet to come. The president of the United States is making the world itself and all its troubles . . . vanish. (more…)
PAUL MARSHALL is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. He has published widely in newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, First Things, The New Republic, and The Weekly Standard. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books on religion and politics, including Their Blood Cries Out, Religious Freedom in the World, and Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion. Most recently he is the co-author, with Nina Shea, of Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., on February 3, 2012.
A growing threat to our freedom of speech is the attempt to stifle religious discussion in the name of preventing “defamation of” or “insults to” religion, especially Islam. Resulting restrictions represent, in effect, a revival of blasphemy laws.
Few in the West were concerned with such laws 20 years ago. Even if still on some statute books, they were only of historical interest. That began to change in 1989, when the late Ayatollah Khomeini, then Iran’s Supreme Leader, declared it the duty of every Muslim to kill British-based writer Salman Rushdie on the grounds that his novel, The Satanic Verses, was blasphemous. Rushdie has survived by living his life in hiding. Others connected with the book were not so fortunate: its Japanese translator was assassinated, its Italian translator was stabbed, its Norwegian publisher was shot, and 35 guests at a hotel hosting its Turkish publisher were burned to death in an arson attack. (more…)
LAHORE, Pakistan A senior American official has for the first time admitted that a Pakistani doctor played a key role in tracking Osama bin Laden to his hideout in northern Pakistan, and called for his release.
The comments by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta were the first public confirmation of a part of the bin Laden operation reported by McClatchy Newspapers last July, about how the CIA used Shakil Afridi to try to establish whether the al-Qaida leader was really living in a large house in Abbottabad, northern Pakistan.
Afridi has been in Pakistani custody since the country’s own spy agency, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), learned of the secret task performed by the doctor, who set up a fake vaccination program in Abbottabad to get DNA samples from those staying at the compound.
The CIA was never certain that bin Laden was present in the house. Afridi worked for the American intelligence agency in the weeks leading up to the May 2 U.S. Navy Seals raid, setting up an elaborate scheme that was supposedly going house to house to vaccinate residents in Abbottabad. (more…)
