Saudi Shakeup Spurs Smiles

Few people in Washington pay closer attention to Saudi Arabian education and human rights policy as Hudson Institute scholar Nina Shea and human rights activist Ali Al-Ahmed. So it is striking to see the Saudi monarchy do something that has them both hopeful.

Recent shake-ups by Saudi King Abdullah have pushed out hard-line Wahhabi ideologues for people considered more open-minded and tolerant, Shea writes. At the top of the list is new leadership over Saudi educational programming. Abdullah even created a position focusing on women's education, and appointed a woman to run it:

"[T]his gives hope that Saudi Arabia may finally be ready to adjust peacefully to a globalized, pluralistic modern world. And, with Saudi Arabia's disproportionate and distorting impact on Sunni Islam worldwide, this gives hope also for American security interests."

The education ministry will now be run by the king's son-in-law, Prince Faisal bin Abdullah. Shea notes the prince had been an assistant director of intelligence where he would have seen the connection between Saudi education and jihadist thought.

Both Shea and Al-Ahmed are seasoned enough to know there are no guarantees, and whatever reforms follow are likely to fall short of their own hopes. But, as Al-Ahmad notes, it's an encouraging start:

"This could be a watershed for Saudi education. Prince Faisal is known to be effective and have the king's trust. He is someone capable of overhauling the curriculum."

Reaction to a Shocking Murder

News last week that the founder of Bridges Television has been arrested and accused of beheading his wife is prompting renewed focus on domestic violence and honor killings among Muslims.

Muzzammil Hassan faces second-degree murder charges in the gruesome death Feb. 12 of his wife Aasiya Hassan. Aasiya had filed for divorce from Muzzammil Hassan and secured a protective order against him just before she was killed.

"This was apparently a terroristic version of honor killing, a murder rooted in cultural notions about women's subordination to men," New York State president of the National Organization for Women President Marcia Pappas told the Buffalo News.

Coincidentally, a German judge last week sentenced a 24-year-old German-Afghan man to life in prison for killing his sister by stabbing her 23 times last year. As awful as the crime is, the family's reaction to Ahmad-Sobair O.'s sentencing is telling:

The accused himself began screaming: "You son of a whore! What is this, honour? I know no honour!"

The murderer's mother then tried to throw herself out of a courtroom window, but was restrained by family members. Relatives of the accused also assaulted and threatened a journalist in the room.

There's not enough information yet to determine if Hassan's murder was, in fact, an honor killing – one in which a man kills a female relative in a twisted belief that she dishonored her family. Domestic violence murders are not new and not isolated to any faith. But it speaks to a simmering problem in parts of the Muslim community.

If any good is to come from such a heinous crime, perhaps it will shock the complacent and the deniers to confront the ugly truth. Mohamed Hagmagid Ali, vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, issued a strong statement acknowledging Aasiya Hassan's murder is "a wake up call to all of us, that violence against women is real and can not be ignored."

He further acknowledges that some members of the Muslim community have ignored or downplayed the problem:

"I call upon my fellow imams and community leaders to never second- guess a woman who comes to us indicating that she feels her life to be in danger. We should provide support and help to protect the victims of domestic violence by providing for them a safe place and inform them of their rights as well as refer them to social service providers in our areas."

However, as M. Zuhdi Jasser notes, the crime is not generating the media attention that might be expected, given its nature and the accused killer's high public profile:

"Imagine for just one second, a non-Muslim CEO of a cable network channel (i.e. the Oxygen channel) turning himself in after the beheading of his wife. Add to this the threat of the ideology of radical Islamism and the resources which our government is spending countering that threat since 9/11, and one cannot help but lament the dimming hope of any legitimate reporting being done about the Islamist movement and its threats in the United States."

Jasser blasts reactions that merely say such behavior is not permitted in Islam, as did Khalid Qazi, who leads a New York Muslim Public Affairs Council chapter. Islamist groups such as MPAC have supported Bridges TV and denied a problem of domestic violence and honor killing exists in the Muslim community:

"This should at least begin a national discussion on how remarkably parallel the tracks of the ideologies of Jihadism and the ideologies of male domination and dehumanization of women are. Most importantly, we need to address how both come out of political Islam. American Islamist organizations should account for their stances on the place of women in society and whether they recognize the inherent equality of women which has characterized one of the core values of modernity in the west. A review of many controversial laws passed in the name of Sharia in the "Muslim world" reveals a treatment of women which is only a "stone's throw away" from the so-called moderate veneer of the Islamism of Muzzammil Hassan's Bridges TV."

For more on U.S. honor killings, see this study by Phyllis Chesler.

Detailed History of a Budding Canadian Terrorist

Canada's Globe and Mail has a fascinating account of a home-grown terrorist who dreamed of waging massive attacks on Canadian military and industrial targets but settled for tossing Molotov cocktails at a Montreal-area Jewish school and placing a small propane bomb outside a Jewish center.

Omar Bulphred and an accomplice admit the attacks on the Jewish targets in respective guilty pleas. Bulphred was given a 7-year prison sentence Thursday. Police had been watching him for a while, after some of their sloppy ventures left a trail of clues behind, but Bulphred was able to attack the school despite being under frequent surveillance. An undercover officer posing as an anti-capitalist activist befriended the accomplice.

Police were on Bulphred's trail already, reporter Tu Thanh Ha's story details. Bulphred is described as "a small-time hoodlum with a big chip on his shoulders." He researched targets and bomb-making on the Internet. After at least two small attacks, the story details, notes were left at the scene urging conversion to Islam and "demanding the release of 17 Muslim terror suspects arrested earlier that year in Toronto."

His motivations are unclear. After being jailed in 2004, police found a note in his jail cell ranting against Jews and Americans.

Before his most recent arrest, they also heard the men discuss kidnapping and killing a random gay man.

Police arrested Bulphred and his accomplice after they scouted and shot videotape of an army base near his apartment. At home later, Bulphred was heard on a police bug saying "Take your knife and cut the throat of each Christian around you. No pity."

Police arrested the men two days later. As an officer explained: "It was getting too dangerous, considering the last conversation. We couldn't afford to wait."

More Tales of Extremism in Schools

It's difficult to assess three independent incidents and conclude a trend is brewing. However, public schools in the United States, Canada and England are battling efforts to add Muslim curriculum or to tolerate power plays by Muslim students and their parents.

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state-funded Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Minneapolis for violating the First Amendment's establishment clause. The school, founded and run by Muslim American Society (MAS) officials, "advances, endorses, and prefers the Muslim religion over other religions or nonsectarian approaches in connection with school activities and fosters entanglement between government and religion."

In England, a former school principal is seeking damages from a county council for what she considered to be harassment from the school's Muslim students and their parents. Erica Connor was accused of "racism and Islamophobia" in a petition seeking her ouster and claims to have been accosted by a group of Muslim students. The local education authority abandoned her, she claims in her litigation.

After an initial investigation cleared Connor of any wrongdoing, ongoing pressure prompted a second review. It found she "had not been responsive to the needs of the faith community."

Upon reading of the teacher's plight, Canadian writer Barbara Kay was reminded of a similar episode that happened to a friend of hers. Using a pseudonym, Kay describes a teacher, the child of Holocaust survivors, who taught at an Ottawa high school until 2004. She left because of ongoing harassment by Muslim students who figured out she is Jewish.

The teacher's complaints to her principal fell on deaf ears, Kay wrote.

"Conversely the principal admonished staff for every perceived slight to Muslim sensibilities. Miriam says that the principal insisted staff not look students in the eye, that they not gesture with their forefinger to indicate students should approach, and refused to act against Muslim students who were physically aggressive to male teachers (the principal was a woman)."

The teacher reached her breaking point after two students berated her with anti-Semitic taunts in front of her class:

"I don't have to listen to you - you are not a person, you are nothing, you are a Jew, you do not exist as a person."

The students were suspended, but then returned to the teacher's class. She took an early retirement rather than work in those conditions. According to Kay, 80 percent of the school's 75 teachers sought transfers that year.

Respect for others is obviously a vital part of an education. But so is respect for authority and the rule of law. Here's hoping these prove to be isolated events.

Shariah Life in Saudi Arabia: Rape Victim Jailed

The 23-year-old woman accepted a ride with a man who took her to a house where he and four men spent an entire night raping her. Now, the Saudi Gazette reports, the woman has been sentenced to receive 100 lashes and a year in prison.

The woman became pregnant from the assault and sought an abortion at a Saudi Arabian hospital. It's not clear if the punishment is for the attempted abortion or for the rape, or, perhaps, both.

As the story notes, "the woman will be sent to a jail outside Jeddah to spend her time and will be lashed after delivery of her baby who will take the mother's last name."

Religious Modesty and Women's Rights in Canada

A recent incident in a Canadian courtroom illustrates the depth of creeping Shariah, (Islamic law) writes Muslim reformist Tarek Fatah. There's been an uproar over a judge's decision requiring the victim of an alleged sexual assault to testify without her face veiled. It's an issue of modesty, the woman told the court. But Fatah is hearing none of it:

"There is no requirement in Islam for Muslim women to cover their faces. The niqab is the epitome of male control over women. It is a product of Saudi Arabia and its distortion of Islam to suit its Wahabbi agenda, which is creeping into Canada."

Fatah points to the 2004 establishment of the Al-Huda Islamic Institute for women as a turning point for driving more Canadian Muslim women toward the niqab. The institute advocates polygamy and encourages women to stay home to tend to their families rather than work. A spike in niqab-clad women soon followed.

"For the better part of the 20th century, Muslim reformists, from Egypt to India, campaigned against this terrible tribal custom imposed by Wahabbi Islam. My mother's generation threw off their burqas when Muslim countries gained their independence after the Second World War. Millions of women encouraged by their husbands, fathers and sons, shed this oppressive attire as the first step in embracing gender equality.

But while the rest of the world moves toward the goal of gender equality, right here, under our very noses, Islamists are pushing back the clock, convincing educated Muslim women they are sexual objects and a source of sin."

He is sympathetic toward the alleged rape victim, considering her victimized twice – once by her alleged assailant and then by "those who wish to keep women in their place."

Al-Arian Judge Seeks Plea Deal Background

ALEXANDRIA, VA -- The federal judge hearing a criminal contempt case against Sami Al-Arian asked government prosecutors for more information Thursday about the terms of a disputed plea agreement Al-Arian signed in 2006 admitting support for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist group.

Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted a request by Al-Arian for the information. But she said she didn't believe her new order should delay Al-Arian's scheduled March 9 trial on contempt of court charges.

"I don't mean to open up a whole fishing expedition," Brinkema said.

Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor, was charged with criminal contempt of court last June after refusing to testify before a grand jury in Virginia investigating terrorism financing allegations.

Al-Arian argues that the 2006 plea agreement he reached with prosecutors in Florida exempts him from further testimony about matters involving PIJ, despite a government grant of immunity from prosecution.

Al-Arian negotiated that agreement with prosecutors to avoid a re-trial on terrorism support charges. A Florida jury in 2005 had acquitted him on eight counts and failed to reach agreement on nine other counts. His attorneys claim that, as part of the plea negotiation, prosecutors granted Al-Arian's request to strike language from the agreement that he would cooperate with government investigators.

But the government argues that nothing in the agreement exempts him from testifying in other related cases.

Al-Arian's argument was already rejected by district court judges in Florida and Virginia, as well as the 4^th and 11^th circuit courts of appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice turned down Al-Arian's request to hear his appeals, most recently in October.

The judge, however, said she needs more evidence on the record about the Florida prosecutors' own understanding of the terms of the plea agreement.

"There is, in my view, a sufficient cloud as to what was the clear understanding of the parties," Brinkema said. She asked the government prosecutors who had been involved in the plea negotiations to submit affidavits explaining their understanding of the terms.

"This is now a criminal case. It's a different ball game." Brinkema added. Obtaining a "crystal clear" understanding of what prosecutors and Al-Arian agreed to in 2006 "is now relevant not just to culpability, but to sentencing" if he were convicted of contempt, she said.

The Virginia grand jury that Al-Arian has refused to appear before was investigating a Herndon, Va.-based think tank, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and its suspected financing of terrorism support networks. IIIT gave money to a PIJ-related think tank in Tampa that Al-Arian once ran. During the mid 1990s, this think tank employed several PIJ members, the government said, including Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who left Tampa in 1995 for Syria to assume leadership of PIJ. The PIJ affiliations of Shallah and others were acknowledged by Al-Arian in his plea agreement.

Al-Arian's refusal to testify resulted in a previous civil contempt citation against him, which was lifted in December 2007. He completed a 57-month prison sentence in April 2008, and is supposed to be deported if he is not convicted of the current criminal contempt charges against him.

Columbus Police Kick CAIR to the Curb

The law enforcement freeze on dealing with the Council on American-Islamic Relations is spreading. Last week, Mary Jacoby’s report for IPT News revealed that the FBI has cut ties with CAIR until officials answer questions about the group’s documented roots in a Hamas support network. Now the Columbus (Ohio) Police Department (CPD) has followed suit.

Last November, CAIR officials were invited to speak to the current class of police training recruits on Islam, which prompted criticisms of the training seminar both inside and outside the police department. CAIR’s status as unindicted co-conspirator in the successful Holy Land Foundation prosecutions and the CAIR-Ohio chapter’s previous fundraising events for the defense fund of convicted cop-killer Jamil Al-Amin were among the concerns cited.

CPD spokeswoman Amanda Ford confirmed Wednesday that CAIR representatives will no longer be used for teaching "cultural diversity" classes at the CPD Police Academy:

"After the latest information that has been received, a decision was made that CAIR reps will no longer be asked to come back for recruit training."

The Columbus FBI office also should be relieved at their agency’s decision to distance itself from CAIR. Despite having enlisted CAIR in 2006 as a leading member of the FBI’s Multi-Cultural Council for the Southern District of Ohio, which includes the Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton areas, a meeting hosted by CAIR-Ohio president Asma Mobin-Uddin featuring FBI Special Agents Kevin Bennett, Steve Flowers and Eric Thomas last March had the local office reeling.

The meeting was part of the FBI’s Community Relations Executive Seminar Training (CREST) program and the topic was federal wiretapping. Many Columbus-area CAIR supporters have been upset at the series of arrests and convictions of local Al-Qaeda cell members Iyman Faris, Nuradin Abdi, and Christopher Paul. Despite assurances from the FBI speakers that the phones of local Muslims were not being tapped, a subsequent Arab News article reported that the meeting quickly turned ugly, with Mobin-Uddin having to urge her supporters for restraint and calm as tempers flared and audience members began shouting at the FBI agents.

What remains to be seen is whether other local law enforcement agencies will follow the FBI and CPD’s lead, most notably the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy, which has regularly featured CAIR speakers at training seminars; and the Ohio Department of Homeland Security, which has sent high-ranking agency members to attend the annual CAIR-Ohio fundraising banquets and featured CAIR displays and speakers at homeland security events.

The "Humanitarian" Side of Hamas

When last we saw the "heroic resistance fighters" of Hamas, they had temporarily stopped shelling Israeli cities in the wake of an Israeli incursion aimed at neutering their ability to terrorize. Since then, it has been reported that Hamas summarily executed dozens of people it suspected of supporting either the Israelis or the secular Fatah movement. Rocket fire resumed this week, hitting the town of Ashqelon.

Now comes word that Hamas officers stole emergency relief aid that the United Nations sent to needy refugees. The "3,500 blankets and more than 400 food parcels [were] meant to help hundreds of families in the Gaza City Beach Camp."

"They were armed and we were not," said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness.

In Wednesday’s New York Daily News, Matt Levitt warns that $20 million in emergency U.S. aid for Gaza could meet the same fate unless some safeguards are created. Levitt wrote the book on Hamas financing and is frequently tapped as an expert witness by federal prosecutors in terror finance cases.

The U.S. Agency for International Development previously sent money to Gaza charities publicly tied to Hamas, Levitt writes, including the Hamas-controlled Islamic University of Gaza.

He suggests making future recipients submit information about their leadership that can be checked to ensure their independence:

"Aid organizations are sure to protest the extra administrative burden. But the critical need to provide humanitarian aid in conflict zones must be balanced with the risk that terrorist groups will try to benefit from that aid."

USAID is resisting new rules creating such a control system. The Obama administration needs to ensure no more tax money ends up in the hands of a designated terrorist organization.

Carter and the Soviets: A Lesson for the New President?

Echoing and expounding upon concerns first raised by Charles Krauthammer, columnist Jeff Jacoby is criticizing President Barack Obama for portraying tension between America and the Muslim world as a recent development triggered by American arrogance:

"Missing is any sense that the United States has long been the target of jihadist fanatics who enjoy widespread support in the Muslim world."

Krauthammer wrote that Obama thus far has been "needlessly defensive and apologetic" and pointed out that American soldiers have fought and died to save Muslim lives five times in the past 20 years.

Jacoby compares Obama’s overtures to Jimmy Carter’s conciliatory posture early in his presidency toward the Soviet Union. Carter tried to accentuate his belief that America and the USSR shared a desire to live in a "more peaceful, just, and humane world." But Soviet tanks stormed into Afghanistan a few years later and Carter had to adopt a harder line.

Jacoby worries that Obama could be following the same path, calling the President describing the President’s "seeming cluelessness about US-Muslim history":

"The golden age of American-Muslim relations that Obama harks back to did not exist. Radical Islam's hatred of the United States is not a recent phenomenon, it has nothing to do with 'respect,' and it isn't going to be extinguished by sweet words -- not even those of so sweet a speaker as Obama. Sooner or later, Barack Obama must confront an implacable reality: The global jihad, like the Cold War, will only end when our enemies lose their will to fight -- or when we do."

The Carter analogy is an interesting one. There’s nothing wrong with working toward better relations in the Muslim world, Jacoby writes. Just do it without absolving the party’s of their contributions to the problem.

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