This is a sequel to two articles posted on Jihad Watch (28 September and 3 October): Slapstick Jihad triumphs again at the UN Human Rights Council (texts and links to UN video webcast) and Slapstick Jihad: Act 2 – a total flop at the UN Human Rights Council (text and links to UN webcast).

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On 2-3 October, over 200 national delegates and NGO representatives attended a unique two-day Expert Seminar at the United Nations in Geneva to discuss limits to freedom of expression under the title: “Freedom of expression and advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.” It was convened by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the request of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). A dozen experts and others explored the links between freedom of expression and incitement to religious hatred.
(See the end of this article for all details and links to the ‘index’, ‘experts’ – and their ‘papers’.)

The new High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR) Navi Pillay did not beat about the bush:

Barak Obama's Muslim outreach adviser is under fire for meeting with Islamic groups with extremist views, just months after her predecessor resigned for links to a radical cleric.

Minha Husaini met with members of several Islamic organizations in Virginia on September 15 -- including some that terrorism experts say have ties to Hamas and the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

Among the attendees were senior members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was listed by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-related trial.

Several people connected to CAIR have been convicted of felonies -- including on terrorism-related charges.

CAIR bills itself as the nation's largest Muslim civil-rights advocacy group. As recently as last year, it advised the Transportation Security Administration on sensitivity training regarding Muslim air travelers. Nihad Awad, a CAIR co-founder and executive director, met with President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11.

But critics say CAIR has a long history of masquerading as a moderate Islamic group.

"These groups, even if they themselves are not active terrorist organizations, do subscribe to large amounts of the ideology that fuels the terrorism that we are being confronted with," said Andrew McCarthy, former Assistant U.S. Attorney.

CAIR did not return repeated calls for comment.

Awad, who was at the September meeting with Husaini, recently attended a dinner with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Also present at the Sept. 15 meeting was Mahdi Bray, who has publicly announced his support for the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Bray, the executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, raised his fist in the air during a rally in Washington in October 2000 to demonstrate his support for the terror groups.

Bray refused to comment on the recent gathering. "It was a closed meeting," he told FOX News.

Johari Abdul Malik, imam of the Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Va., also participated in the meeting. During a conference in Chicago in 2001, he told attendees, "You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work." In November 2004 he told followers, "You will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America -- to being the first religion in America."

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said the campaign would not have sent a representative to the meeting had it known the list of participants.

"This meeting was not organized by the campaign -- our outreach staff attends many meetings in the course of each day and they accepted an invitation from community leaders to attend," LaBolt told FOX News in a written statement.

The Obama campaign's previous Muslim outreach advisor, Mazen Asbahi -- who stepped down in August following reports he was linked to a radical imam -- also attended the meeting.

In a brief telephone conversation, Asbahi refused to discuss why he was at the meeting or whom he was representing.

According to LaBolt, "[Asbahi] is not an employee of the campaign and does not speak on behalf of the campaign."

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan- A US missile strike targeting a high-level meeting of Al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in a Pakistani tribal area missed most of them by just minutes, security officials said Friday.

Two missiles hit the house of Pakistani Taliban leader Hafiz Sahar Gul in the North Waziristan district bordering Afghanistan on Thursday night, killing nine people including six Arab militants, the officials said.

"There was a meeting of around 30 foreign Al-Qaeda and local Taliban commanders in the house of Hafiz Sahar Gul but the majority of them left the building ten minutes before the missile struck," a security official told AFP.

"The six Arabs who were killed are all believed to be lower level operatives," the official added on condition of anonymity.

Officials did not immediately give the identities of the targeted militants. But they said that they were not Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Residents said the other three people killed in the strike in the remote village of Tapi were women and children, but there was no official confirmation.

The incident in the lawless district, a known haunt of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, is the latest in a string of attacks on Pakistani soil that have raised tensions between Islamabad and Washington....

It appears that while Robert Spencer gets several mentions by Suhail Khan, Assistant to the Secretary of Transportation for Policy, as a hate-monger during a debate on Shariah with Frank Gaffney, I also got a special “drive-by” mention due to my legal scholarship pointing out the dangers of Shariah-compliant finance for U.S. financial institutions. Mr. Khan’s description of me is as some “guy who hates blacks, Muslims, women, Asians and liberal Jews.” I have asked Robert for a bit of space to respond specifically and generally to Mr. Khan and he has graciously granted it to me.

Keep in mind that Mr. Khan is an Assistant to the Secretary of Transportation for Policy. That is not an unimportant position in the Bush administration. He himself is a protégé of Grover Norquist. Now you begin to understand the danger. No one will be blind to the danger of an Obama presidency in this battle space. But know that the Republicans, at least under the Bush administration, have not been much less dangerous.

Given that predicate, let’s examine Mr. Khan and his ad hominem attack. First, Mr. Khan could have read my legal analysis of Shariah-compliant finance had he chosen to and addressed the substance of my argument. He did not. In fact, he could have read my more political and polemical essays and criticized me for my actual statements. He did not.

When East Tennessee State University (ETSU) grad student Sean Rife tried to bring author Robert Spencer to campus, he wasn’t looking to start a fight. As the president of ETSU’s Society for Intellectual Diversity (SID), a non-partisan student group that champions free debate and academic freedom, Rife was just looking to stir discussion about a subject, Islamic terrorism, which increasingly has come to dominate Americans’ concerns. But a fight – and a lesson in politically correct bullying – is exactly what he got.

It began when Rife presented his request to the school’s Student Government Association. Like any other student, Rifled filled out the required paperwork, and submitted a funding request to a student government committee. Then, on Monday, he went before the committee to discuss his request – and that’s when the trouble started.

“I immediately got the impression that they were never seriously going to consider approving our request,” Rife said. Confirming the impression was the loaded question put to him by one the student representatives, Chad Hall. “He asked whether inviting Robert Spencer to campus would make Muslim students feel ostracized,” Rife recalls. “I thought that was pretty telling.”

Islamic extremists Bilal Abdulla, 29, and Mohammed Asha, 27, plotted the "spectaculars" as "punishment" for Britain's foreign policy in Iraq and Israel, it is alleged.

Iraqi national Abdulla and a third man, Kafeel Ahmed, tried and failed to blow up cars packed with gas canisters, nails and petrol outside a nightclub in London's West End in June 2007.

When those devices failed to detonate, Abdulla and Ahmed launched the alleged suicide attack on Glasgow Airport the following day. Ahmed, 28, later died from burns he sustained after setting off petrol bombs which failed to blow up their Jeep.

Saudi-born Asha, a senior house officer in the neurology department of University Hospital of North Staffordshire, was not directly involved in either attack but supplied money to buy the cars and bomb components, was in touch with the other two men at crucial stages of the plot and may have offered "spiritual and ideological guidance", the prosecution allege.

Three other cars had been purchased by the gang and other possible targets including the Old Bailey and the City of London had been filmed by the plotters, Woolwich Crown Court in south east London was told.

Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting, said: "In addition to the killing of the innocent the objective was to seize public attention, both here and internationally. By the carrying out of a series of explosions, with no warning as to where the next strike would occur, the terrorists knew the public would be gripped by fear."

He added that the attacks failed through sheer "good fortune" on the part of the public.

"Apart from the shocking nature of the activity these two defendants were engaged in, the extraordinary thing is that both men are doctors," said Mr Laidlaw. "They turned their attention away from the treating of illness to the planning of murder."

Mr Laidlaw said the plot had not been picked up by the security services, but "who would have suspected two doctors to have been involved in such planning?"

Both men deny conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.

The jury was told that the plot, which had taken six months to plan, was put into action when Ahmed and Abdulla drove two Mercedes cars packed with gas canisters and nails from their rented house in Glasgow to London, where they parked outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in the Haymarket, which was packed with more than 500 people.

The second of the cars, a blue, L-registered Mercedes, was parked near a bus stop in Cockspur Street, just south of the night club, possibly as a secondary device "deliberately placed there so it would be in the path of those evacuated."

Muslim prison gangs are trying to force other inmates to sign up to Islamic radicalism, prison officers have warned.

Extremists at high security HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire were pushing a "strict and extreme" interpretation of Islamic practice, inspectors were told.

There was a perception among officers that some Muslim prisoners operated as a gang and put pressures on non-Muslim prisoners to convert, and on other Muslim prisoners to conform to a strict and extreme interpretation of Islamic practice.

She was told: "The new gang are the Muslims. The Muslim group is a big group and others are looking for protection.

"Those who are isolated are looking for protection and so are the ones converting as they won't get help from screws."

Earlier this week, an EU-commissioned report warned urgent action was required to stop brainwashing by jailed extremists.

Dr Peter Neumann from King's College London said governments across Europe should observe prisons more closely in the future as they were likely to become "major hubs" for terrorist recruitment.

He suggested creating "jihadist prisons" in which to isolate Islamist militants.

BAGHDAD: A female suicide bomber detonated an explosives vest Wednesday in a city northeast of Baghdad, killing 11 people and wounding 19, Iraqi officials said.

The attack occurred around 11:30 a.m. in front of a courthouse in central Baquba, the provincial capital of Diyala, one of the most violent areas in Iraq, the police said.

It was apparently intended to be a double suicide bombing, but a man accompanying the woman failed to detonate his explosives vest and was arrested at the scene, said Ibrahim Bajilan, the provincial council chief.

"We were inside the court building when we heard a thunderous explosion followed by people's cries," said Abu Mohammed, a 55-year-old lawyer who was in the courthouse at the time. "We rushed outside the building. We couldn't see anything because smoke was everywhere."

Abu Mohammed, who would only give his nickname for security reasons, said the target of the attack appeared to be Iraqi Army Humvees parked nearby. He said about five shops in front of the courthouse had been damaged.

Algiers, 8 Oct. (AKI) - The leader of Al-Qaeda's North African branch has sacked its Islamic scholar or mufti, Rashid Zerami, for opposing suicide bombings in Algeria, local daily Ennahar reports.

Zerami clashed over the issue with the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb's leader, Abdel Malik Droukedel, Ennahar said.

The paper cited the testimony of an unnamed Al-Qaeda turncoat who is now in police custody.

Besides the use of suicide bombers, Droukedel and Zerami also clashed over Al-Qaeda's recent strategy of kidnapping Algerian businessmen or their relatives to obtain a ransom, especially in the northern coastal Kabylia area.

Droukedel has replaced Zerami with Abu Asim, a former leader of the hardline Algerian Salafite Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which in 2006 joined the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb.

Zerami, also known as Abu al-Hasan al-Rashid headed Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb's religious committee and was in charge of armed combat.

CBNNews.com - Several recent studies have shown that American students are alarmingly ignorant about U.S. history and world events.

Experts have contributed the problem to everything from failing schools to substandard teachers.

But what about content?

For instance, did you know that Muslims discovered America? Or that Jerusalem is an Arab city? That's just some of the "history" that students in America's K-12 classrooms have been taught in recent years--with the help of taxpayer money.

A new report by the non-profit Institute for Jewish and Community Research finds that American high school and elementary textbooks contain countless inaccuracies about Christianity, Judaism, Israel and the Middle East.

The Institute examined 28 of the most widely-used history, geography and social studies textbooks in America. It found at least 500 errors.

One book ignored the Jewish roots of Christianity, saying the faith was founded by a "young Palestinian" named Jesus.

Another stated as fact that the Koran was revealed to Mohammed from God.

Yet another said ancient Jewish civilization contributed "very little" to to the arts and sciences.

Textbooks like these are used by millions of schoolchildren in all 50 states.[...]

Harvard is one of 18 universities that receives government funding under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965. To qualify for that funding, the universities are required to conduct outreach to K-12 teachers, helping them to shape lessons for schoolchildren. Elementary and secondary teachers have taken full advantage of the arrangement: after all, they believe they're getting expert insight on Islam and the Middle East from distinguished university scholars.

"You have a lot of politically naive teachers--well intentioned teachers who do want their students to learn more about Islamic history," says Stotsky. "It has not been well covered in most history courses they've ever taken, so they do genuinely want to learn more for themselves and teach their students more."

In some cases they may be getting more than they bargained for: the Saudi government has donated millions of dollars to Middle East Centers at universities that receive Title VI funding.

The Harvard Middle Eastern Studies Center--whose recommendations to the Massachusetts Board originally drew Stosky's concern--is one of them. As CBN News reported earlier this year, the Harvard Center received a $20 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in 2005. Georgetown University--another title VI recipient--also received $ 20 million from the Prince that same year.

It's through these Title VI university centers--all of them government-sanctioned and taxpayer supported--that Saudi-funded materials find their way into K-12 classrooms.

"Saudi donations to American universities should be seen in a much larger picture of Saudi promotion of a Saudi point of view," said Daniel Pipes, Director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia. "Whether it be Islamic or political, the Saudis have a point of view. And they have been very clever and very generous over the decades to promote that point of view."

I am a Christian pastor who lived and worked in the Middle East for over ten years. I have no affiliation with CAIR. But I also take exception to what you write here, particularly with regard to the so-called experts you cite. [...]

Robert Spencer is the worst. Claiming to be a scholar of Islam, he like his friend, Daniel Pipes, deliberately distorts legitimate scholarship to perpetuate the worst kind of anti-Muslim invective. The only reason he gets away with it is because most who read his hate-soaked material know nothing about credible scholarship of Islam.

These people represent the worst kind of hatred and bigotry. CAIR is right to be concerned.

Dear Mr. Hubers:

You write:

Leaving aside the defamatory ("hate-soaked material") content of your words, you claim here that I "deliberately" distort "legitimate scholarship."

Prove it, please. I challenge you to produce from my books or articles, or from my writings at my website jihadwatch.org, even one false statement about Islam or its doctrine of jihad. Please also demonstrate from sources that a significant number of Muslims consider authoritative that the statement is indeed false.

I can be reached at director@jihadwatch.org. I look forward to hearing from you, and will publish your response at that site.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Prosecutors believe two doctors accused of mounting car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow were motivated by Islam, a court heard today.

Bilal Abdulla, 29, and Mohammed Asha, 28, are accused of terrorism motivated by "a fundamental form of Islam", potential jurors were told.

Speaking at Woolwich Crown Court, Mr Justice Mackay said jurors must try the men on the facts alone and not on any prejudices, beliefs or personal opinions.

He said the men are charged with conspiring to murder and cause explosions in attacks on London's West End and Glasgow Airport over two days last summer.

Abdulla, of Glasgow, and Asha, of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, deny the offences.

The judge said: "The prosecution case is that both these defendants and a third man called Kafeel Ahmed, who died in the third of these incidents, were terrorists motivated by their belief in a fundamental form of Islam.

"It is essential that the jury that is to try them makes its decisions based solely on the evidence it hears and it is given in this court and not based on any prejudices, beliefs or personal opinions the members of the jury may have."

Mr Justice Mackay was addressing potential jurors before the case begins tomorrow. It is expected to last between eight and 10 weeks.

Members of the public selected for jury service were told the two defendants worked as doctors at several NHS hospitals.

They were told Abdulla worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, outside Glasgow.

Asha worked at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge; Prince Philip Hospital, Llanelli; Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the University Hospital of North Staffordshire.

Potential jurors were told they may not be able to serve if they or a close relative had been treated by either of the doctors or if they knew any of the witnesses in the case.

They were also asked if they had been the victim of a terrorist attack or worked for the police, Crown Prosecution Service, Prison Service, Armed Forces or security services....

In recent years, the skills of Indian software engineers have been sought by companies worldwide to help advance them in a digital age.

Now, the same Indian IT professionals are being recruited by terrorist cells to be part of a new "media wing" aimed at enhancing their potency through use of the latest technology, say Indian police.

The warning came afer Indian police arrested three software engineers alleged to be part of terror group Islamic Mujahideen, and who allegedly sent emails to media outlets just moments before bomb blasts in Delhi, Ahmedabad and Jaipur that killed 78 people.

The head of the "media terror cell" was named by police as Mohammed Mansoor Peerbhoy, a 31-year-old Yahoo! employee, the Guardian reported.

"The Indian Mujahideen started a media wing with software engineers," said Rakesh Maria, joint commissioner of Mumbai police.

"They had the technical knowledge to know to send out messages just before the blasts and after the blasts took place."

Police said the hi-tech unit hacked into unprotected wireless networks in Mumbai and sent emails to Indian media outlets just minutes before the blasts.

"Await, only for 5 minutes, to feel the fear of death," one of the emails said.

They also claimed responsibility for Indian Mujahideen, and warned Hindus that the "falsehood" of their "dirty mud idols" would not prevent them "from being slaughtered".

The three programmers were among a total of 15 people arrested by Indian police in the past week.

For many years, software engineers in India have been highly respected, the qualifications seen as a gateway to well-paid work both overseas and in India's rapidly growing IT sector.

'White-collar jihadists, a cause for growing concern', was the title of an article about the arrests in The Hindu this week.

"With a job that brought in an annual salary of over Rs. 19,00,000 ($56,000) a year, 31-year-old Peerbhoy is as distant as could be imagined from the madrasa-educated, no-prospects jihadist of media caricature," it said.

The arrested trio were also considered "model citizens" prior to their arrest, it said.

Police said Peerbhoy spoke good English, was as a principal software engineer, lived in Pune - a city in southern India known for its IT companies - and visited the US for work several times, The Guardian said.

But Peerbhoy had "radicalised himself" after a pilgrimage to Mecca in 2004, The Hindu said.

Unfortunately, however, jihad as warfare against non-believers in order to institute “Sharia” worldwide is not propaganda or ignorance, or a heretical doctrine held by a tiny minority of extremists. Instead, it is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology.

In response to a casual question, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates dropped a historical bombshell, an offhand remark telling more about how the Middle East works than 100 books. And a former Marine commander adds an equally big revelation about long-ago events quite relevant for today.

Almost thirty years ago, President Jimmy Carter tried to show what a nice guy he was by pressing the Shah not to crush the revolutionaries. After the monarch fell, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski met top officials of the new Islamist regime to pledge U.S. friendship to the government controlled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the time, I wrote that by approaching some of the milder radicals, the administration frightened the more militant ones. U.S.-Iran relations must be smashed, they concluded, lest Washington back their rivals. In fact, as we'll see in a moment, the Carter administration offered to back Khomeini himself.

Three days after the Brzezinski meeting, in November 1979, the Islamist regime's cadre seized the U.S. embassy and its staff as hostages, holding them until January 1981. This was our introduction to the new Middle East of radical Islamism. Carter continued his weak stance, persuading the Tehran regime that it could get away with anything.

So we've long known that undermining U.S. allies, passivity toward anti-American radicals, and inaction after a massive terrorist act against Americans didn't work. The hostages were only released because Iran was suffering desperately from an Iraqi invasion and feared Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, as someone likely to be tougher.

The lesson of being strong in defending interests and combating enemies has not quite been learned. Today, the opposite is the mainstream prescription for success and the United States may be about to elect a president whose world view parallels the way Carter worked.

Here's where Gates comes in. On September 29, while giving a lecture at the National Defense University in Washington DC, someone asked him how the next president might improve relations with Iran. Gates responded:

"I have been involved in the search for the elusive Iranian moderate for 30 years." Then Gates revealed what was actually said at Brzezinski's meeting, in which he participated, summarizing Brzezinski's position as follows:

"We will accept your revolution....We will recognize your government. We will sell you all the weapons that we had contracted to sell the Shah....We can work together in the future."

Shortly before John McCain and Barack Obama, as the Car Guys would say, wasted a perfectly good hour-and-a-half of America’s time last night in a largely uninformative town hall meeting, a really interesting debate about the most important issue of our time took place near Baltimore. Sponsored by a local educational organization called The Harbor League, I had at last an opportunity to confront publicly and directly one of the most senior and controversial Muslim officials in the Bush Administration: the Assistant to the Secretary of Transportation for Policy, Suhail Khan.

Readers of these pages will recall my previous writings about Khan and his patron, conservative activist Grover Norquist (notably, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C7CD908B-6D7E-49EB-A0A9-DA0A18745A29 and http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F557837D-A312-41E4-8997-618CB77B3E30).

In these articles, I carefully documented Khan’s personal ties to Wahhabi mosques in California and a variety of organizations identified by the Department of Justice as Muslim Brotherhood front organizations and, in some cases, as un-indicted co-conspirators in a terrorism financing conspiracy. I also reported on the role Norquist has played before and during the George W. Bush administration in facilitating Islamist influence operations involving – at key points, with Suhail Khan’s help at the White House Office of Public Liaison – the likes of now-convicted terrorist-supporters like Abdurahman Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian. Khan serves on the board of the Islamic Free Market Institute, the organization Alamoudi helped Norquist establish a decade ago in his Americans for Tax Reform offices, apparently for the purpose of credentialing Islamists as conservatives, promoting their agenda in Washington and placing their friends in government jobs.

While Khan and Norquist have used various vehicles to denounce these treatments – notably, accusing me of racism and bigotry – they have yet to disprove any of my findings. Last night’s debate addressing the question of whether Islamic law (Shariah) is consistent with a “religion of peace” and the U.S. Constitution was an opportunity for Khan to do so. At the very least, it was a chance for Khan to allay concerns about the attitude of such a highly placed individual towards the Islamists’ stealthy efforts to advance the repressive theo-political-legal code they call Shariah and its stated objective of global Islamic rule under a theocratic leader.

Unfortunately, as the audio of the “Other Debate” shows, Suhail Khan chose to do neither. Instead, from his opening remarks to his impassioned conclusion, he extolled America, its people, its culture, even its national pastime. He inveighed against those “hate-mongers” and “racists” whom he accused of knowing nothing of and defaming Islam (Jihad Watch’s extraordinary director, Robert Spencer, came in for repeated defamation, as did my esteemed colleague, David Yerushalmi). Perhaps in deference to the moderator, Sinclair Broadcasting’s Mark Hyman, who enjoined us from ad hominem attacks, Khan expressed those aimed at me only through oblique references.

The FBI took a new slap at the Council on American-Islamic Relations today at the Holy Land Foundation trial.

FBI Special Agent Lara Burns was going over more transcripts from the Philadelphia meeting -- the 1993 gathering of Holy Land officials and Hamas sympathizers that the government contends was meant to brainstorm ways to downplay the Foundations extremist ties -- when talked turned to a passage from defendant Shukri Abu Baker.

He is quoted on the wiretap transcript talking about how it would be beneficial to have more traditional, secular American organizations to help spread the Islamist message.

He and others envisioned an "alternative" organization "which can benefit from a new atmosphere, one whose Islamic hue is not very conspicuous," according to the transcript.

Prosecutor Barry Jonas asked Burns whether any groups formed after the Philadelphia gathering fit this mold. "CAIR," she said.

CAIR is one of about 300 unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land case, and testimony has shown that its founder, Omar Ahmad, and current executive director, Nihad Awad, both participated in the Philadelphia meeting.

CAIR has strenuously denied having any terrorist ties, and has filed a request -- similar to other groups -- to have its name removed from the government's list of co-conspirators. CAIR maintains that it is a civil rights group focused on promoting understanding of Islam and combating unfair treatment of American Muslims.

Joshua Dratel, attorney for defendant Mohammad El-Mezain, later grilled Burns on her CAIR testimony.

"Just to be sure," he said, raising up a large posterboard with the name "Council on American-Islamic Relations" scrawled across it, "this is the one with the inconspicuous Islamist hue?"

Later Tuesday, Burns' counterpart, FBI Special Agent Robert Miranda, began his testimony detailing the type of people Holy Land routinely called on to speak at its fundraisers in the U.S.

He and prosecutor Jim Jacks went through a list of Holy Land speakers, seized from a computer at its Richardson offices in 2001, and compared it to lists of known Hamas members and associates.

They found dozens of matches of names and phone numbers among Holy Land speakers and a roster of Hamas members found at the Mississippi apartment of unindicted coconspirator Abdelhaleem Ashqar. Holy Land speakers' names also showed up in the address book of Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, who has extensive ties financially and personally to many of the defendants.

Defense attorneys and their clients grinned and looked at each other every time Miranda referred to the owner of the address book as "the terrorist Marzook."...

Two far-right parties, the Austrian Freedom Party and the Movement for Austria's Future, managed to win 29% of the vote in Sunday's general elections in Austria. This is double what they got in the elections of 2006.

Both parties share the same attitudes toward immigrants, especially Muslims, and the European Union: a mixture of fear and loathing. Because the leaders of the two parties, Heinz-Christian Strache and Jorg Haider, can't stand each other, there is little chance of a far-right coalition actually taking power. Nonetheless, this is Adolf Hitler's native land, where Jews were once forced to scrub the streets of Vienna with toothbrushes before being deported and killed, so the result is disturbing. The question is: How disturbing?

Twenty-nine percent is about 15% more than populist right-wing parties usually get even in very good (for them) years in other European countries. Strache, leader of the Freedom Party, wants the government to create a new ministry to manage the deportation of immigrants. Muslims are openly disparaged by leaders of both parties. Haider once praised the employment practices of Hitler's Third Reich. Inevitably, the new rightists bring back memories of storm troopers and race laws.

Yet to see the rise of the Austrian right as a revival of Nazism would be a mistake. For one thing, neither party is advocating violence, even if some of their rhetoric might inspire it. For another, it seems to me that voters backing these far-right parties may be motivated less by ideology than by anxieties and resentments that are felt in many European countries, including ones with no Nazi tradition, such as the Netherlands and Denmark.

In Denmark, the hard-right Danish People's Party is the third-largest party in the country, with 25 parliamentary seats. Dutch populists such as Rita Verdonk, or Geert Wilders, who is driven by a paranoid fear of "Islamization," are putting the traditional political elites -- a combination of liberals, social democrats and Christian democrats -- under severe pressure.

And this is precisely the point. The biggest resentment among supporters of the right-wing parties in Europe these days is reserved not so much for immigrants as for political elites that, in the opinion of many, have been governing for too long in cozy coalitions, which appear to exist chiefly to protect vested interests. In Austria, even liberals admit that an endless succession of social democrat and Christian democrat governments has clogged the arteries of the political system. It has been difficult for smaller parties to penetrate what is seen as a bastion of political privilege. The same is true in the Netherlands, which has been governed for decades by the same middle-of-the-road parties, led by benevolent but rather paternalistic figures whose views about multiculturalism, tolerance and Europe were, until recently, rarely challenged.

Expressions of nationalism in postwar European democracies were always tolerated in soccer stadiums, but not in public life, by these leaders. Skepticism about European unity was routinely denounced as bigotry or even a form of racism.

All this is linked to resentment about immigrants. When the offspring of workers from countries such as Turkey and Morocco in the 1960s began to form large Muslim minorities in European cities, it caused tensions in working-class neighborhoods. Complaints about crime and unfamiliar customs were often dismissed by the liberal elites as racism. People simply had to learn to be tolerant.

This advice was not necessarily wrong. Tolerance, European unity, distrust of nationalism and vigilance against racism are all laudable goals. But promoting these aims without discussion, much less criticism, has resulted in a backlash. When the Dutch, the French and the Irish voted against the European Constitution, they were expressing their distrust of the political elites. And populists who promise to restore national sovereignty by rejecting "Europe," fighting "Islamization" and kicking out the immigrants are also exploiting this distrust.

The rhetoric of xenophobia and chauvinism is unpleasant, to be sure, and, especially in a country with Austria's past, even hateful. But the new populism is not yet undemocratic or even anti-democratic. The phrase most often heard in Austria among those who support the right-wing parties is "fresh air." People say they voted for Haider or Strache to break the stranglehold of the ruling parties.

This is not an illegitimate motivation. And there's certainly a case to be made that if people are anxious about their national identities, the sovereignty of their governments or the demographic and social complexion of their societies, such fears are best heard in the political arena. As long as people express their concerns, however distasteful to liberal ears, by votes rather than violence, democracy will not be seriously harmed....

24-year-old Derrick Shareef was sentenced yesterday to 35 years in prison for planning a terrorist attack on a Chicago mall using hand grenades two years ago.

At sentencing, Shareef declared that he no longer believes in violent jihad and has "adopted more positive Muslim beliefs." "What these positive beliefs are should be a central concern to the Metropolitan Correctional Center since his attorney cited his rise as the Imam of the Muslim population while interred there.

In 2005, then FBI Director Robert Mueller stated, "Prisons continue to be fertile ground for extremists who exploit both a prisoner's conversion to Islam while still in prison, as well as their socio-economic status and placement in the community upon their release."

As an Imam, Shareef is technically taking on the role of a Chaplain, though it does not seem likely that he applied for such a position given its requirements, including but not limited to a Master of Divinity degree or its equivalent and at least two years of "autonomous experience…in a parish or specialized ministry setting." Shareef was arrested at 22.

Indoctrination by Islamists in prisons is a real threat to democracy and remains a prime example of lawful jihad in America.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Iraqi forces arrested on Tuesday a woman suspected of heading up the recruitment of female suicide bombers in Iraq, including that of a teenager caught at a market recently with explosives strapped to her waist.

"Ibitisma Odwan was arrested by our forces," defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said.

He said police had caught the 38-year-old woman dubbed "Mother Fatima" in Hommadi village in Baquba's east side after a tip-off.

"The Al-Qaeda woman was responsible for training girl suicide bombers," Askari said, adding that she had been directly involved in the training of 15-year-old Rania Ibrahim.

Rania, who claimed she was drugged and tricked by her husband and two women into wearing an explosives belt, was arrested in late August at the crowded central Baquba market carrying 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of explosives.

Her shocking case threw the spotlight on Al-Qaeda's methods in the recruitment of young women to their cause.

Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, is one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq. Insurgent groups and Al-Qaeda have continued launching attacks there despite a massive military crackdown by US and Iraqi forces.

A number of attacks there, especially suicide bombings, have been carried out by women.

Last week the Governor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, issued a statement on the Obama campaign’s “abusive use of Missouri law enforcement.” What was striking about the allegations Blunt made was the eerie parallel between the Obama camp’s activity and the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s efforts to stifle all criticism of Islam and destroy the freedom of speech -- also by means of legal intimidation -- at the UN and elsewhere.

Blunt charged that four Missouri state officials along with the leader of Obama’s campaign in Missouri “have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.” In declaring an intent to prosecute those who spread what they considered to be falsehoods about Obama, they were, said Blunt, “abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.”

MADRID (AFP)--Spain's Supreme Court Tuesday acquitted on appeal 14 of the 20 men who were sentenced jail in February for belonging to an Islamic terrorist group suspected of planning to blow up a courthouse.

The National Audience, Spain's top antiterrorism court, had sentenced the 14 to prison terms from seven to 11 years for membership in an al-Qaida-inspired cell.

The Supreme Court also reduced the sentence of another man from nine to two years. It acquitted him of belonging to a terrorist cell but upheld a conviction for document forgery.

The court confirmed all the convictions against five others, including Abderrahman Tahiri, also known as Mohammed Achraf, who was found to have tried to obtain explosives to blow up a court with a massive truck bomb....

Prosecutors charged the men during their trial with planning an attack either on the National Audience, the Supreme Court, a Madrid metro station or the headquarters of Spain's opposition Popular Party.

(IsraelNN.com) The Islamist Hamas terrorist organization has initiated an online course in explosives, military weapons and tactics for would-be jihad fighters. Aimed at the population of the Palestinian Authority, the course is called "Get Ready" and is designed to prepare the population for war with Israel.

First exposed outside Palestinian Authority and jihadist circles on Monday by Israel's Channel 10 TV, the sophisticated course includes highly detailed practical and theoretical lessons, as well as sample videos of jihadist attacks. All manner of weapons are described, analyzed and their proper use explained by masked Hamas instructors.

Students also learn about such things as the manufacture and detonation of explosives, the functioning of rocket launchers, weak points on IDF tanks, and the physics of firing at a moving vehicle. Lessons cover possible scenarios such as an IDF ground incursion into Hamas-controlled Gaza or an airborne Israeli commando assault.

Each instructive section concludes with test questions. For example, a fatigues-wearing Hamas teacher asks, "A truck is moving at a rate of 15 meters per second, at a distance of 200 meters, from left to right. How will you succeed in hitting this truck?"

In its report, the Channel 10 corespondent speculated that the instruction was not only intended to teach Hamas members to more effectively fight Israel, but also to prepare them for confrontation with the rival PA terrorist movement, Fatah. Such a confrontation has already occurred periodically in recent years, but Hamas hopes that an armed clash with PA Chairman's Fatah forces in Judea and Samaria would end with the Islamists in control of the entire PA.