Death in the D.R.

Five Muslims allegedly beat the crap out of a kafir in the Dominican Republic, killing him. Not that anyone in the lamestream media is reporting it that way. (H/T JB)

Buffalo Beheader Found Guilty

Brutalized for years by her controlling husband Muzzamil "Mo" Hassan, an ambitious would-be TV mogul (his niche market: Muslim lifestyle broadcasting), Aasiya Hassan asked for a divorce. Rather than acceed to her request (who did the uppity woman think she was?) "Mo" chopped off her head. He then claimed in court, where he ended up acting as his own defense attorney, that he was the one who'd been brutalized by an abusive wife, and was driven to murder her via decapitation. It has taken a Buffalo, N.Y. jury less than an hour to decide that "Mo" is guilty as charged.

Update: Mark Steyn reacts to the verdict.

Blindsiding Us With Islamic 'Science' (Again)

I just finished reading The Closing of the Muslim Mind, Robert R. Reilly's brilliant elucidation of the struggle that wrapped up in the 10th Century between those Muslims who wanted to bring reason into the faith (an import from the Greeks) and those who were insistent that to do so would inhibit Allah's "free will" (Allah having all the free will--being pure will, in fact--and man, therefore, having none and being Allah's puppet). The free-will-for-Allah forces triumphed, the cataclysmic result being that Islamic science was stopped dead in its tracks, never to be revived. (The reason being that if Allah's will trumps all, nothing can be predicted--not gravity, not cause and effect, not even the germination of seeds; if Allah controls all, he could just as easily decide to, say, make things fall up--or even sideways--instead of down, just to keep us on our toes and prove who's in charge.)

A search of the Toronto Public Library catalogue shows that this valuable book is not in the system. More's the pity. Instead, the TPL has joined the shilling-for-Islamic "science" crowd, and Torontonians have to put up with this:

Science and Technology in the Medieval Islamic World

Tue Feb 08, 2011 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. 90 mins: Northern District

During the eighth and ninth centuries, while Europe was locked in the Dark Ages, Muslim civilization was at its zenith. Were if not for the scientists and thinkers of the medieval Islamic world, the modern world would not have algebra, modern medicine, astronomy and much else. Guest speaker: Dr. Ingrid Hehmeyer, Associate Professor, History of Science and Technology Ryerson University.

Hilariously (unintentionally so, of course), this program is part of the "Thought Exchange" Series.

Update: BTW and FYI, last month the TPL had as its featured speaker Karen Armstrong, a noted apologist for Islam.

The Sun Sets On British Values (and on Britain)

Mihir Bose, who came to the U.K. decades ago from India, asks, "Has Britain lost the values that drew me here?" He concludes that, alas, it has:

...My migrant’s road was different from that of most. I did not come here fleeing oppression, nor to seek my fortune. I decided to make my home here because I believed that this was a fairer society where I could achieve my goal of becoming a writer more easily than in India. I have never regretted my decision.

The tragedy with modern Britain is that it seems not to care any longer for the qualities that make it so special and that drew me and many others to this country.

Not just tolerance and kindness – India has that as well – but a sense of fair play and justice, giving everyone a chance. These qualities are unequalled anywhere else in the world.

Of course various racial and religious groups, particularly the Muslims, must accept this country. But this country must help them – not by pandering to them but by broadcasting its own virtues.

For too long it has given the impression of not just being ashamed of them but ignorant of them.

Unless Britain rediscovers its pride in its values this wretched multiculturalism will never die.

If "wretched multiculturalism" lives, Britain will die.

Anti-Sorosism and Anti-Semitism

As this Jew 'splains, they are not the same.

The Left's--and Obama's--Deranged, Delusional Love Affair With Tyrants (and More Pipes Dreams Re Islam)

Jamie Glazov writes:

The list of examples of the leftists engaging in political romances with tyrants is infinite: Noam Chomsky traveling to Lebanon in May 2006 to embrace Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah; Academic Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish leftist, venerating Hamas and Hezbollah; Naomi Klein calling out in a column in The Nation for Muqtada al-Sadr's killing fields to come to New York; Tom Hayden reaching the next stage of his totalitarian high by meeting Klein's hero, al-Sadr, in London; and British Member of Parliament George Galloway visiting Syria in November 2005, prostrating himself before its despot and giving a speech at Damascus University in which he denounced America and Israel and extended his support to every possible enemy of the United States – from the terrorists in Iraq to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.

What Obama is pursuing with the Muslim Brotherhood, therefore, is simply to be expected. And in typical fashion, the left is clamoring behind him to indulge in its own romance with the Egyptian jihadist entity.

The deranged and delusional leftist support for the Muslim Brotherhood today is a replay of how the left supported the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979...

No, no, no. According to Islam expert Daniel Pipes (in the National Post),

The Muslim faith is undemocratic in spirit. Then again, so was every other pre-modern religion.

Meaning, says Pipes, that Islam is "potentially" (his word) compatible with democracy. And, further, "with enough effort and time, Muslims can be as democratic as Westerners."

To which the only sane response is: Who has the energy; who's got the time?

If you buy Pipes' assertion re Islam's "potential," you probably also think that the "cure" for radical Islam is moderate Islam. And, in the absence of any evidence of that elusive "moderate" strain (an "absence" accounted for definitively in the immortal words of a Turkish Islamist ), who in their right mind could believe that?

'Diversity'--and the Lack Thereof--in T.O.

Look around the city and you'll see faces from all around the world--the "diversity" we're so proud of and about which we boast in our city's motto. But look for "diversity" in city mosques and you will look in vain; our local masjids, as per this in the Holy Post, are fairly uniform--uniformly "radical," that is:

...A rise in population alone is not cause for concern. What has some members of the Muslim community here more worried is what they describe as an increasing tendency toward more radical and political sermons being delivered in Toronto mosques.

“I see Wahhabism as a growing factor in Toronto,” says Imtiaz Baloch, who lives in Markham and works as an accountant.

Born in Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism is among the most conservative and fiercely insular forms of Islam, in which followers subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Koran. The term isn’t being thrown around in mosques here just yet, but its fundamental principles provide the underlying theme for the majority of sermons Mr. Baloch has heard in recent years.

“I mean sermons about Afghanistan, about Iraq, about Kashmir, about suicide bombing and chaos in the Muslim world. As a project I visited mosques in each corner of the city and in lectures, statements and sermons at Sunni mosques from Stouffville to Toronto, imams are preaching about how Muslims all over the world are being attacked by non-Muslims and they are justifying the violence by Muslims against NATO and everyone else,” he said. “I’m scared to take my children to the mosque. So I don’t.”

Another audience member who wished to remain anonymous said he has stopped going to mosques in Toronto altogether.

“I used to go to the downtown mosque [at Dundas and Bay] but I don’t anymore,” he said. “I didn’t like the political discussions, they were divisive. I saw no indication of interest in promoting integration into Canadian society. It was always about how different we are, how Muslims should live in Canada. There were political undertones of why some of the international events were happening and how we should feel about them.”

The “downtown mosque” refers to both Masjid Toronto and the Muslim Association of Canada, both of which are housed in the same building just south of the Greyhound bus station. It first opened in 2002 — Dr. El-Tantawy Attia, a retired engineer originally from Alexandria, Egypt, has been there since day one. Mr Attia says there are few bad apples in every bunch and that the Toronto Muslim community is no exception, but says he preaches “middle of the road Islam” — a seemingly innocuous statement until he qualifies it.

“Here, we follow the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said...

Swell. The mushrooming Muslim population can choose between Wahhabism, Khomeinism and the Ikhwan--a trifecta of zany Islamotarianisms, and, pace multiculti bromides, all three of them terrible for our body politic's health.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Quasi-Totalitarian 'Human Rights' Bodies?

The editorial in the National Post uses the occasion of the overturning of the Ontario "human rights" court's "curry in a hurry" case to call for change:

...The one-sided nature of the Ontario human-rights bureaucracy is striking. No wonder the province's tribunal has seen more than a 10-fold increase in hearings over the past three years. It's an institutionalized bonanza for anyone who carries a grudge against his or her boss or landlord. (For their part, the HRTO's staff continually complain of being overwhelmed, and cite their increased workload as evidence of pervasive bigotry in Ontario society. If the Saadi-Telfer case is any indication, the bigotry seems to be mostly imaginary.)

The basic problem is that there is no downside for complainants: The whole apparatus resembles a slot machine that requires no coin. Bringing a case costs them nothing, while it can cost defendants tens of thousands in legal bills -- or even their house.

Human rights commissions were created 40 years ago as a convenient, quasi-judicial method for urging compromise on landlord-tenant disputes and allegations of workplace discrimination. They were supposed to offer a way to find common ground between plaintiffs and defendants, so both sides could avoid costly and time-consuming trials.

Instead, they have evolved into modern-day Star Chambers. Commissioners and investigators all too often act as though they have -- or should have -- the same authority as judges. Yet given their biases and the lack of safeguards for defendants' rights, they seldom dispense true justice. It is long past time that politicians found the courage to rein them in.

Reign them in? Hah! You may as well try to "reign in" a tsunami. No, the only thing that'll work is, in the words of someone who's been hit by the "human rights" sledgehammer: FIRE. THEM. ALL.

And the Brick Winner Is...

I loved this--Oscar best picture noninees as rendered in Lego.

Jeff Bridges as Rooster "Brick" Cogburn in True Grit

O.C. D.A. Leads the Way

The Orange County D.A. shows timorous Canuckis (so quick to cite "security concerns" and cancel events featuring "controversial," i.e. politically incorrect, speakers) how to deal with threatening/disruptive "protesters". From the L.A. Times:

The Orange County district attorney’s office on Friday charged 11 defendants with conspiring to disrupt a meeting and a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States at UC Irvine last year.

The move comes after about 50 protesters rallied in front of the Orange County district attorney’s office Tuesday. Though some have criticized the students’ method of protest, many said that university punishment was sufficient enough for the “Irvine 11,” as the students came to be known.

In a statement, Orange County Dist. Atty.Tony Rackauckas said the case was filed because of an “organized attempted to squelch the speaker.” He also said the students “meant to stop this speech and stop anyone else from hearing his ideas, and they did so by disrupting a lawful meeting.”

“We must decide whether we are a country of laws or a country of anarchy,” he said. “We cannot tolerate a pre-planned violation of the law, even if the crime takes place on a school campus and even if the defendants are college students. In our democratic society, we cannot tolerate a deliberate, organized, repetitive and collective effort to significantly disrupt a speaker who hundreds assembled to hear.” ...

Exactly. Kudos to a man who understands that "free speech" is only free if you're willing to stand up and defend it against those who believe that they have the "right"--by virtue of their own supposedly inherent and therefore unquestionable virtuousness--to shout it down.

Foran's Version

Lit-geek that I am, I happened to pick up Mordecai: The Life and Times, Charles Foran's biography of Canuck literary icon Mordecai Richler. I must say that I was gobsmacked to read the hitherto unknown anecdote which opens the book. Perhaps the best way to set it up is to quote from a speech Richler delivered--one his biographer dredged up during the course of his lengthy research--to a group of Jews in 1973.

This is not my prepared speech. I left that in my hotel room. Because it would be a waste to deliver it here to such moral and intellectual primitives.

My prepared speech...dealt with present literary confusions, moral philosophies, brutalized sex and rampaging Canadian nationalism, cultural nationalism which I consider unfortunate. In a word, it dealt with non-Jewish themes, and I don't think that would interest you. You are altogether too narrow. But let it pass. What I've really come here to question is the nature of your Jewishness...about which you seem so confident.

To return to last night.

Once I decided to stay on, my second thought was to buy a bucket of paint and dab the outside wall of this hotel with swastikas...because, above all, I am a considerate guest...and I can think of nothing that would have given you more pleasure, a larger thrill, certifying you ghetto-paranoia, as it were.

What I'm trying to say is that your Jewishness, unlike mine, is distorted, mean-spirited, self-pitying, and licensed not by Hillel or Rabbi Akiba, but by urban ignorance. Bigotry born of know-nothingness...

MiGod, MiGod, until last week babies were being fried in napalm in Vietnam: as I speak, other babies are dying in Latin Amerian, dying for lack of nourishment. Black men are being beaten in South Africa. The world is charged with injustice, insult, and depravity, and you are worried about...

Well, can you guess who these Jews were and what they were "worried about," the "what" that got Richler so hot that he felt compelled to leave his original speech back in the hotel room and, summoning up his considerable powers of invective, give them a devastating drubbing?

They were Jewish teenagers. At a conference of Jewish students in Niagara Falls, Ontario. And the thing that they were "worried about" was whether or not to hold a dance on Friday night, thereby violating the Jewish Sabbath.

That's it. That's what provoked Richler's rage.

Of course, the fact that he was stuck in writer's hell--on a book tour, in a crappy hotel, in a cheesy city--and was booze-sozzled and sleep-deprived, probably didn't do a whole lot to improve his mood. Not that Foran sees it that way. No, old Charlie is blown away by the power, the passion, the wisdom, the sheer courage of Richler's words. Foran writes (the emphasis is mine):

He held them for maybe a declamatory half-hour. Imagine being a teenager on the receiving end of this demanding, moral harangue. But March 1973 was not only Vietnam, Latin American and South Africa; it was less than a year after the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympics and a few months before the Yom Kippur War. This was no time for youthful complacency about equating the ideals of Judaism with holding a dance--or not--on the Sabbath. "Beware of those who don't upset you," Richler warned the students. Upset them he surely did. Crack jokes, he did not; any humour stayed back in the grubby hotel, along with the original speech. That afternoon in Niagara Falls, an event of no consequence to his tour, let along to his career--these remarks were never published or used again--he have seemed more a cross of Old Testament prophet with drill sergeant than anything so effete as a novelist mixed with cultural commentator. What a public voice he possessed, too--learned and authoritative, blunt and blistering. Decades later, the furious words still read like a combination by a heavyweight at the peak of his form.

Maybe to Foran. To me they read like the words of brute and a bully. I can only imagine how someone in that audience must have felt. Surely, some of them must have been crushed, obliterated. But maybe one or two of them thought, "Man, this guy Richler is one huge a-hole."

That Richler was so upset about Jewish kids grappling with what to them was an important religious matter says a lot more about him and his shtick than it does about them; it seems clear that they had done nothing--nothing--to deserve the Great Writer opening the floodgates and unleashing his wrath. That Foran considers this a creditable performance--so creditable that he chose to open his 700+ page biography with it--speaks volumes about him.